Contributions of Psychology to Morality and Religion

James Gibson Hume (1898)

Classics in the History of Psychology

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Christopher D. Green
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Contributions of Psychology to Morality and Religion

James Gibson Hume (1898)

First published in Psychological Review, 5, 162-163.

[Abstract of paper presented at the sixth annual meeting of the
American Psychological Association, , December, 1897.].

Posted October 2001

An appreciative statement of the chief results of recent advances in psychology and an

endeavor to justify a still wider application of thorough psychological analysis, experiment and
theoretical reconstruction

Former objections to experimental psychology from introspective psychologists and

natural scientists were due to a misunderstanding and to an abstract dualistic theory.

The psychologist is not merely entitled to a scientific field beside others, he should claim
all psychical facts directly accessible to his inquiries, and should contribute toward the
reconstruction of other sciences.

He should assist the natural scientist in guarding him against the misconceptions of
materialism. A psychology that takes its stand upon the actual, concrete, active self is the most
positive refutation of the abstractions of materialism and pantheism. This self-revealing active
self enables us to meet the old difficulties of ethics with new insight. Theory must not be
separated from practice. Neither should morality be separated from religion nor religion from
morality. Religion includes and transforms morality. The Divine Being is personal and in social
cooperation with the struggling finite moral self.