which these were unified as a thing more misleading than
enlightening. And why may not religion be a conception equally
complex?[9]

[9] I can do no better here than refer my readers to the
extended and admirable remarks on the futility of all these
definitions of religion, in an article by Professor Leuba,
published in the Monist for January, 1901, after my own text was
written.



Consider also the "religious sentiment" which we see referred to
in so many books, as if it were a single sort of mental entity.
In the psychologies and in the philosophies of religion, we find
the authors attempting to specify just what entity it is. One
man allies it to the feeling of dependence; one makes it a
derivative from fear; others connect it with the sexual life;
others still identify it with the feeling of the infinite; and so
on. Such different ways of conceiving it ought of themselves to
arouse doubt as to whether it possibly can be one specific thing;
and the moment we are willing to treat the term "religious
sentiment" as a collective name for the many sentiments which
religious objects may arouse in alternation, we see that it
probably contains nothing whatever of a psychologically specific
nature. There is religious fear, religious love, religious awe,
religious joy, and so forth. But religious love is only man's
natural emotion of love directed to a religious object; religious
fear is only the ordinary fear of commerce, so to speak, the
common quaking of the human breast, in so far as the notion of