Group Theories of Religion And the Individual

is clear that such a doctrine will afford a basis for a theory of Religion as essentially belonging to a stage of mental development which the civilized European has outgrown, but the products of which he is for that very reason apt to misunderstand. For he is naturally inclined to suppose that religious doctrines must rest upon perceptions such as he might have had himself, that they areamenable to the logical methods which he is accustomed to use, and that they can be legitimately discussed as he would discuss a scientific theory or hypothesis of to-day. Hence we have a Philosophy of Religion and a religious Psychology which are alike, in M. LeVy Bruhl's judgment, vitiated from the outset by ignoring the origin of religious doctrines in " collective representations" belonging to a pre-logical stage of mental development, and essentially inconsistent with the methods of a modern philosopher or psychologist. The now familiar distinction of " judgments of value " from " judgments of existence," by which many thinkers have sought to express a difference between the subject-matter of Moral Philosophy or Philosophy of Religion and that of Natural Science, appears to him to be an evasion. " Judgments of value " are merely " sentimental aphorisms." Their source is in " collective representations," and apart from a knowledge of the constitution of the group in which any such" collective representation " originated it cannot be understood. So, too, the religious experien... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.