Problems of defining religion Syed Hussein Alatas The distinctive traits of religion Since the eighteenth century, when the first rudimentary beginning was made in the study of religion in a scientific manner, scholars have been confronted by the problem of definition, which became more complicated with the rise of a philo- sophical humanism in Western Europe that denied the notion of the supernatural. Secular humanism has gained a considerable following in the West and consequently spread amongst scholars, some of whom redefined religion so as to include philo- sophical humanism. It is my contention here that such inclusion of non-religion under the convept of religion is to retrograde from the viewpoints of scientific principle and the proper classification of phenomena. A basic requirement for truly scientific investigation is to select its subject- matter according to the degree of relevance it possesses not only to human needs but also to the clarification, if not the solution, of philosophical and religious problems which have engaged the assiduous attention of mankind since time immemorial. Human beings, by the nature of what is given, have only two choices in their orientation and organization of life: an organization of life not extending beyond the secular, or one with reference to non-secular goals, embracing what is termed as the spiritual and supernatural. While the secular outlook does not exclude interest in matters transcending the purely utilitarian, the non-secular orientation is also not devoid of concern for the mundane and secular aspects of life. There is no third alternative, although there are degrees of approximation to either one of them: one cannot be neither religious nor secular simultaneously. The overwhelming majority of mankind has opted for a fundamentally trans- secular orientation which, as exhibited in societies and their institutions and in its individual manifestations, is called the religious way of life. The influence of religion Syed Hussein Alatas is professor of Malay Studies at the University of Singapore and this Journal's correspondent. He has published books and articles on developmental questions, corruption and modernization, including The Myth of the Lazy Native (1976), Intellectuals in Developing, Societies (1976) and two articles on development and ‘ihe captive mind’ in this Journal, Vol. XXIV, No. 1, 1972, and Vol. XXVI, No. 4, 1974. Int, Soe. Sel. J. Vol. XXIX, No, 2, 197724 Syed Hussein Alatas upon human society has been so profound and widespread that there is almost a consensus amongst scholars in the social sciences dealing with it (such as psychology, sociology, anthropology and history) that religion, quite independent of its truth, possesses great functional value. Most contemporary social scientists recognize the social need for religion, though not all of them believe in one. Amongst what have been called the universal categories of culture, religion is listed as one. It has been generally recognized that there is no society without religion although there are individual members who profess to have no such faith. ‘We find in the past,’ writes Bergson, ‘we could find to-day, human societies with neither science nor art nor philosophy. But there has never been a society without religion.”* Malinowski, along with many other social scientists, has included magic and science as belonging to the categories found in all societies.* ‘There are no peoples, however primitive without religion and magic. Nor are there, it must bbe added at once, any savage races lacking either in the scientific attitude or in science, though this lack has been frequently attributed to them. In every primitive community, studied by trustworthy and competent observers, there have been found two clearly distinguishable domains, the Sacred and the Profane; in other words, the domain of Magic and Religion and that of Science. Sir James Frazer, however, took a different view. He did not believe that there is no society without religion, but suggested that religion develops following magic and corresponding to the increase of intelligence in man.‘ This evolutionary approach has been severely criticized from various quarters. Apart from inaccurate obser- vation, Frazer's selection of data is directed to fit a preconceived framework in an attempt to apply the theory of progressive evolution to the origin and development of religion, and is further based on conjecture. In the interest of sound thinking and scientific procedure it is always necessary toclarify the terms and concepts used. Four elements are essential to the investigation of any social institution or phenomenon: (a) its definition or description; (b) its function; (©) its interrelation with factors within a dynamic framework; and (d) a sound methodology. For our purposes we shall confine ourselves to religion as one type of observable phenomena and its function in society. The interrelation of religion with other factors within a dynamic framework is not to be dealt with, nor, in this case, would it be wise to describe so complex and multiform a phenomena as a dynamic interrelationship shorn of concrete settings. Certain scholars have, at present, accepted the futility of arriving ata complete definition of religion, its nature being so complex and varied that what can be hoped for at most is the recognition of its traits or common denominators. Differential emphasis has been placed on the significance of these traits. Thus Durkheim has emphasized the dichotomy of the sacred and the profane. Others have emphasized fear of and dependence on a supernatural being or forces. Although such emphasisProblems of defining religion 25 is not always correct, it is, in principle, correct to stress certain traits provided they are related to a particular religion in a concrete spatio-temporal setting and socio- historical situation. Religion, as a dimension of human life is believed to have been present since the earliest times. It has been suggested that the remote ancestors of modern man must have possessed some kind of religion, since there is evidence that their dead were buried in a particular position with tools placed at their sides, indicating beliefin a life after death.' Due to its extended history, and its roots deeply embedded. in certain human needs difficult to specify, religion has manifested itself in innumer- able variants. While it is impossible to characterize all elements or common denomi- nators of phenomena subsumed under religion, and while knowledge of all such elements as have so far been discovered does not itself explain religion, it is sufficient to enable us to distinguish religion clearly from other types of human psychology and behaviour. James H. Leuba has come across at least forty-eight definitions of religion. Goblet d’Alviella, quoted by Leuba, defined the following characteristic elements of religious ways of life: (a) belief in the existence of superhuman beings who intervene in a mysterious manner in the destinies of Man and Nature; (b) attempts to draw near to these beings of to escape them; (c) to forecast the object of their intervention and their forms or how to escape them; (d) to modify their action by conciliation or compulsion; (¢) recourse to the mediation of certain individuals supposed to have special qualifications for success in such attempts, and (f) the placing of certain customs under the sanction of superhuman powers.* While this description covers the known variants of religious life collectively it does not apply equally to each religion. Neither is the belief in priesthood and the efficacy of mediation present in all religions (¢.g. Islam) nor is belief in compelling the supernatural a universal trait. In Islam the mere thought of it is extreme blasphemy, while amongst the pre- Islamic Arabs attempts were sometimes made to compel idols to grant wishes. From these characteristicelements of religion many others can be derived. We shall enumerate as exhaustively as possible by drawing on the various constituents of the religious life, the psychological, the social and the philosophical. It must, however, be understood that our enumeration is not final and is subject to extension. Similarly the division between the psychological, social and philosophical should not be considered as rigid. In reality the various aspects and elements of religious life overlap or fuse as in other aspects of life. A widow in tears watching her husband’s body lowered to the grave does not only express certain inner psychological states, but also behaves in that situation according to the prescriptions of her culture, as manifested by her conduct, her physical attitude, her dress, etc. Thus religious experiences are very often accompanied by secular rituals. The following traits identified by various scholars of religion are listed: in no particular order of priority: (a) belief in a supernatural being (or beings) together with a corresponding invisible order opposed to the natural one; (b) belief that man216 ‘Syed Hussein Alatas is destined to establish a personal relationship with that being or beings; (c) certain rites and beliefs supposed to be sanctioned or commanded by supernatural reality, including the belief in a future life, in prayer, in norms and codes of behaviour, etc.; (@) the division of life into the sacred and the profane accompanied by various resultant activities, such as the institution of sacred objects or precincts, houses or places of worship with the attendant rituals; (¢) belief that the supernatural communicates its will and injunctions through human messengers chosen by it; (f) the attempt to order life, regarded only as a stage in this world, in harmony with what is believed to be the truth according to the supernatural designs; (g) belief that the revealed truth supersedes other types resulting from human efforts, so far as the most transcendental problems of thought are concerned; (h) the practice of bringing those who believe into the fold of a community of believers thus enabling religion to pervade both individual and collective life. ‘Numerous other traits may be found in the religions of various communities. In some instances, magicis present side by side with religion as though it were part of it, but such combinations are not an essential and universal characteristic of religious life. Another variable trait is that some religions claim primarily if not completely to represent a particular nation or group. But the traits listed above form the permanent characteristics of religion wherever and whenever found and to a certain extent can serve to form a general idea of the nature of religion, even if they do not exhaust the description of religious life. They include thought, feeling and behaviour, which, in religion, are all present and interwoven. This is why it is believed to be man’s total reaction to the challenges and impressions of life, and probably also explains why the investigations of religion is beset by what Ruth Benedict calls a ‘fundamental difficulty’ in the sense that, whereas other social institutions have biological bases found also amongst animals, this is not the case of religion. It is by no means clear upon which specifically human endowment religion is built.” If it is indeed a total reaction towards existence, it is conceivable that to trace its roots to any single characteristic is very difficult if not impossible. Apart from this, as Durkheim earnestly emphasized, it is not correct to derive the social from the biological, although the two are linked. Religion is thus like a building with hidden foundations. We know there are foundations but we do not know the exact compo- sition of all their materials; or their design. It would thus be quite in keeping with the difficulty of the field that any outline of the function religion performs in individual and collective human life will suffer from severe limitations for the simple reason that, in clarifying the function of belief or behaviour, reference to their origins is necessary, particularly if they are highly problematic. In psychiatry, for instance, it is not possible to understand the function of a hysterical symptom without reference to its origin. Only if we have sufficiently understood the function of an institution like the State, or the family, is reference to its origin not always necessary. But in the case of religion it remains necessary to refer its functions and origins (whichever we take as the variable) to each other the moment we posit the question of its validityProblems of defining religion 27 or indispensability. Unfortunately, discussion regarding the origins of religion is still shrouded in vagueness and the suggestions offered are mostly speculative. There are even some who consider it futile. Despite reasons to explain this state of affairs, there is no need to go into it here. Broadly speaking, the function religion performs in collective and individual ‘human life is that of integration, either the integration of group life as described by Durkheim, or the integration of individual life as depicted in the writings of William James, G. W. Allport, E. Fromm or C. G. Jung. Many aspects of life have to be given meaning, related to each other, to form a cohesive harmony for social soli- darity. There is also the fight against evil. No society and no individual can live where there is no right and no wrong, no good and no bad. A differentiation of action according to right and wrong is one of the fundamental categories of human life, an integral part of what we call conscience. While particular conceptions of right and wrong, good and bad, may differ the sense and significance of such a basic differentiation remains universal. Religion answers this need by providing normative moral codes clearly demarcating the good from the evil. For such experiences as frustration and grief, failure, unfulfilled hopes, death and calamity, religion channels reactions into forms which act as shock-absorbers. As Malinowski has it, funeral ceremonies ensure the resistant capacity of the bereaved, based not on the negative impulse of horror and dread of death but on a positive one in the form of a phil- osophy and psychological modes of reaction accepting death and investing it with meaning. Other events in human life, in particular during critical situations such as conception, pregnancy, birth, puberty and marriage, equally evoke numerous religious rites and beliefs, which, if analysed in greater detail, reveal its underlying integrative function on a positive basis. As Malinowski puts it,* religion, by sacralizing and thus standardizing the other set of impulses, bestows on man the gift of mental integrity. Exactly the same function it fulfills also with regard to the whole group. The ceremonial of death which tics the survivors to the body and rivets them to the place of death, the beliefs in the existence of the spirit, in its beneficient influences or malevolent intentions, in the duties of a series of commemorative or sacrificial ceremonies—in all this religion counteracts the centrifugal forces of fear, dismay, demoralization, and provides the most powerful means of reintegration of the group's shaken solidarity and of the reestablishment of its morale. Due to its nature and function, religion pervades and embraces almost all areas of life. This is particularly the case in traditional societies but equally holds for modern ones with the notable exception of Western society which includes an influential non-religious segment. Yet even in the West the overwhelming majority still believe that their outlook on life is based on religion. This all-embracing nature of religion is expressed very clearly in societies studied by cultural anthropologists and Edward Sapir writes of it in these terms:218 ‘Syed Hussein Alatas ‘The sharp distinction between religions and other modes of conduct to which we are accustomed in modern life is by no means possible on more primitive levels. Religion is neither ethics, nor science, nor art, but it tends to be extremely bound up with all three. It also manifests itself in the social organization of the tribe, in ideas of higher or lower status, in the very form and technique of government itself. It is sometimes said that it is impossible to disentangle religious behaviour among primitives, however, it seems almost more correct to say that religion is the one structural reality in the whole of their culture and that what we call art and science and ethics and social organization are hardly more than the application of the religious point of view to the functions of daily life. Were one to condense the traits and function of religion into a single sentence containing a minimum number of concepts one would find the concept of meaning predominant, It is not fear, hope for security in this world or the hereafter, the desire for reward or mere conditioned habit that motivates a genuinely religious person in his devotion: it is the sense that life has a particular meaning, and only one single meaning, which is that provided by his faith. Whatever psychological states flow out in the form of overt religious behaviour, underlying it is always this profound sense of meaning. ‘There are, as indicated, other emphases possible on the essential nature of religion. The sense of dependence on forces beyond human control has very often been noted by investigators. In the opinion of Radcliffe-Brown, for instance, religion is everywhere an expression, in one form or another, of a sense of dependence on a power beyond man." From this spring other elaborations and manifestation, in which action and not belief occupies the leading position.*" Lowie emphasizes the impression made by nature on the human mind characterized by a sense of awe, mystery and the supernatural.?* Religion is verily a universal feature of human culture, not because alll societies foster belief in spirits, but because all recognize in some form or other awe-inspiring, extra- ordinary manifestations of reality. In the study of religions attention has centred around certain clusters which can be grouped under four main headings: (a) the objective validity of religious phenomena; (b) whether religion is indispensable and desirable for human life; (c) whether the emotional religious experience is embedded in a specific religious feeling sui generis qualitatively different from other known feelings; and (d) whether religion is pri- marily a social or an individual phenomena, Around these numerous other problems cluster and intertwine. There is for one the question of the normality or abnor- mality of religious life. Since both phenomena are to be found, which is the true manifestation? Freud, for instance, regards religion as ‘the universal obsessional neurosis of humanity’ warped by illusionary beliefs, the origin of which can be explained by what he describes as infantile fixation to the parent-child relationship in the pre-puberty years,** Fromm reverses the position and suggests that neurosis is a private form of religion conflicting with the officially recognized pattern ofProblems of defining religion 219 religious thought."* Riimke claims that those who disbelieve in religion suffer from a developmental disturbance in their personality growth to maturity."* Ten Have, on the other hand, objects to this and defends the non-religious philosophy as perfectly compatible with sound personality growth. Both healthy and thwarted development can be found in non-religious as in religious groups."* Erroneous extensions Our definition of religion was formulated on the basis of enumerative induction. Religions as they are manifested in history, are the phenomena covered by this definition, but the term ‘religion’ has also been attached to phenomena as diverse as Hitler’s Nazism and American baseball. Our concern centres on the criteria to distinguish religious from non-religious phenomena. The view of Dewey can serve us here for it represents arguments usually put forward by those who uphold the wider application of the term ‘religion’, as well as constituting an interesting case of a famous logician displaying, with all the logical clarity of his reasoning and attractiveness of style, what amounts to his own apparent confusion on the subject. Inhis Terry Lectures, Dewey delivered a forceful attack on religion, as we understand the term. He made a distinction between religion, religious life and the religious.?” Religion, as a general term, according to Dewey, possesses no value because it cannot truly represent the differing concrete individual religions. These actual historical religions, he claims, should not be considered as the genuine manifestation of the religious in man. They merely affixed to themselves the religious quality, superimposing upon it accretions which are nothing but encumbrances.” The belief in a supernatural divinity stands in the way of progress, and it is imperative that it should be abandoned.” After insisting on the separation of the religious quality from historical religions and their postulates of the supernatural, Dewey advances his conception of a religious life, which he describes by its effect, operation and function. The effect is the improved adjustment to life and its conditions. Itis accompanied by a sense of security and stability. Such an experience of the religious takes place in a multitude of ways in different persons, sometimes by devotion to a cause, and sometimes through a passage of poetry. It brings a deeper and enduring adjustment to life.° It also provides a sense of unity with a wider reality. In the experience Dewey calls ‘religious’, there is also a note of submission.” The sense of an unseen power is the power of an ideal. Faith is to be directed to ideal, as the self is always directed towards something beyond itself with which it aspires to be united. This unity is the totality of existence.** Religious morality can arouse emotions which are intense and inclusive, having as their end the unification of the self with the universe.** In Dewey's conception of religious life, the division of the world into the sacred and the profane has no place, taking the terms in the sense we use them. Religious experience,220 Syed Hussein Alatas Dewey believed, can be interpreted in many ways. The historical religions link it with the belief in the supernatural. Similarly mystical experience is associated with the idea of Divine intrusion. Dewey’s effort to defend his conception of religious life merely as one to which the adjective ‘religious’ is attached, with the traits he suggests, in reality represents a retrogression. He does not admit that, whatever attempts are made to appropriate the word ‘religious’ and to insist on its separation from the historical religions does not detract from the fact that there is a marked difference between phenomena of religious life in the sense we understand them, and those in Dewey's sense which, to us, are non-religious. The religious quality which Dewey describes is so broad and distributed amongst people sharing diverse beliefs, religious and non-religious alike, that it is devoid of value as a scientific concept. The bipersonal conception of rapport with the Divine, for example, like numerous other phenomena associated with religion, such as prayer, penance, etc., deserve as a whole a differ- entiated concept because they give rise to phenomena which do not arise in Dewey’s forms of religious life. Devotion to an unseen supernatural Being, cannot be equated with loyalty to an ideal, for the simple reason that the two follow a different path of phenomenology. Befogging the distinction is thus retrogressive running counter to the scientific aim of clarifying phenomena by differentiation. Another question is what might be the actual term most proper to describe a certain type of phenomena. We cannot accuse Dewey, and those who think like him in this matter, of gross misunderstanding of modern psychology, for both he and many who share a similar conception of the religious, like Erich Fromm, are well versed in that science. One of the familiar dimensions in psychology is that future expectations or images of what may happen, considerably influence present behaviour. The belief in a life after death influences behaviour, with a force no counterpart can match, and is distinctive of the religious believer. I propose to invent a hypothetical psychiatric scenario to demonstrate the inadequacy of positions like Dewey’s on religion. Let us imagine a man suffering under the stress of emotional disturbances, upsetting his inner harmony, tormenting him day and night. There is a glimmer of hope to relieve his suffering with the assistance of a certain psychiatrist, who happens to be a rather mysterious personage. No one has ever seen him but many believe in his power to cure and alleviate suffering. In order to contact him, also ina mysterious manner, one has to go to a certain place, a building, at which the mysterious psychiatrist can usually be reached. On arriving at that place the attendant ushers our sufferer into a room and suggests paying attention to instructions, supposed to originate from the mysterious psychiatrist, just to get acquainted with his science and the method of approaching him. Thereafter the sufferer is supposed to confess his troubles and invoke the help of the unseen psychiatrist, which he does. He feels that he establishes a kind of relationship with the mysterious psychiatrist, and believes that a response will come in some mysterious way. Sometimes he feels thatProblems of defining religion 22 things are revealed to him in his sleep or otherwise, in the form of sudden insights into his troubles and their solutions. In the course of time, a kind of transference relationship is developed between the sufferer and the mysterious psychiatrist, for whom the sufferer develops attitudes of awe, reverence, respect, humility, obedience, trust in his goodness and confidence in his interest in the sufferer’s life. The opposite case, to take another analogy, is similar to that above except that there is no such figure as the unseen psychiatrist. When the sufferer is ushered into the room by the attendant, he is told to read a book or listen to a lecture on the principles of psychotherapy. The transference relationship to the unseen psychiatrist is replaced by adherence to the principles of right living and psychotherapy. The sufferer is told to solve his problems by his own efforts, without assistance from a being transcending him in power and wisdom. Without assessing which method may have better therapeutic results, all we want to emphasize is the fact that they differ in their basic foundation. The first involves a kind of transference, the second not. Because of this important difference it would be absurd to Jump them under one rubric, Between the two attitudes there are certain common factors, like respect and devotion to the right principles, and also important basic differences, like trans- ference and the sense of attracting the attention of a superior transcendent power. Dewey would ignore this distinction and extract only certain common factors which he would consider of value. These common factors he would combine into a concept of the religious, a procedure clearly fallacious, since the factors omitted are the very ones that define the basic quality of each phenomenon. A similarly arbitrary selection of traits affixed to the concept of the religious is displayed by Fromm when he defines religion as ‘any system of thought and action started by a group which gives the individual a frame of orientation and an object of devotion’.* Dewey and Fromm share many ideas on religion, and both are caught in the snare of circular reasoning, since they define religion by the traits they find in what they believe to be religious. Their common error stems from their belief that a general concept such as the one used by us is not borne out by reality, in the sense that it does not cover all the phenomena of religion. According to Dewey, such a general concept does not possess the unity of a regiment or assembly, but only that of any miscellaneous aggregate.** The reasons why I consider this to be an error are the following: First, let us presume that the general concept must cover all particular religions. Such a general concept depends on its inductive base, the total phenomena of particular cases of religion, from which common characteristics, including ideas, overt behaviour, psychological processes, and the hierarchy of significance attached to them within each religion, are selected. This selection determines the constant of our general concept, but before we start selecting we must have a notion of what a general concept should be, which in turn is subject to continual modification by particular cases, so that it cannot avoid being a dynamic concept. It must always be fed from2 ‘Syed Hussein Alatas below. If the particular cases remain constant in their fundamentals over a considerable time, a relatively constant general concept, applicable to existing cases, can be derived. Such a concept of religion exists and is applicable to all known cases. It is used here to define types of phenomena designated by historical consensus, as religious and differing from the type designated as non-religious or naturalistic. ‘Second, the function of a definition is to isolate a set of phenomena belonging to a certain type from others. In such a process the presence of borderline cases should always be accepted as natural and does not invalidate the general concept, unless their number is sufficiently large. A borderline case falling under the category of phenomena conceived as religion in the empirical and historical sense has not been known to occur, but for the sake of argument I am assuming the possibility of its occurrence, and propose immediately to appeal to empirical data. It has been alleged, to my mind erroneously, that the Buddha’s idea of religion does not completely conform to our definition, It is thus a possible borderline case about which more below. Third, the ultimate basis of induction is empirical reality which, however, can be wrongly conceived so thatit affects the formation of a general concept. Within the totality of human beliefs and behaviour, taken in the broadest sense, one can measure religion against one referent only, the naturalistic outlook on life without super- natural admixture, or against two referents, the former, and a type of belief and attitude, without a deity but yet embracing a cosmic order transcending the natural. It has been conjectured that early Buddhism belongs to this type, that the Buddha was an agnostic; and did not affirm a belief in a supernatural being. Were this true, it would still not invalidate the concept of religion suggested here, because the religion actually embraced by the millions of Buddhists in Asia, conforms to it. Were these millions of Buddhists only meditating agnostics with certain psycho- logical techniques and metaphysical principles, one would have reason to question the tenability of the general concept, but this is by no means the case. The writings of agnostic Buddhists and some Western authors in fact conveyed an entirely wrong picture of Buddhism as a historical religion in Asia. A loose concept of religion can lead to further complications, as in Fromm’s use of the following different meanings: (a) a set of doctrines (theistic, non-theistic); (b) an attitude (humanitarian, authoritarian); (c) an outcome of underlying psycho- logical tendencies suchas love, masochism, sadism, insecurity; (d) a private obsession in the form of neurosis (ancestor worship, fetishism, cult of cleanliness).*" The category of the holy and sacred discussed by Durkheim and Otto, for instance, has not been considered by Fromm as the necessary and unavoidable factor to qualify an attitude as religious, any more than belief in the Divine, life after death or the efficacy of prayer. The resulting ambiguity makes it impossible scientifically to distinguish religions from naturalistic ways of life. To Fromm the most important thing that determines types of religiousness is the underlying psychological attitude, like strivings after love, domination, submission, self-alienation, and so forth.Problems of defining religion 223 ‘The difficulty of using such a multi-meaning concept is shown by Fromm himself, compounded by his peculiar way of classifying religion and philosophy into two basic types, authoritarian and humanistic. In authoritarian religion man depends on a power external to him, while in humanistic religion the power is considered as a projected symbol of what is inherently ideal in man. Both these attitudes can be found in the same religious community. Early Buddhism, Taoism, the teachings of Isaiah, Jesus, Socrates, Spinoza, certain trends in Jewish and Christian religions, particularly mysticism, and the ‘religion’ of Reason of the French Revolution, are demarcated as the humanistic portion. In this collection, God is regarded as a symbol of man’s own potential powers, and not as force and domination, having power over man.** The teachings of Jesus and the ‘religion’ of Reason of the French Revolution arelumped together, though nothing could offer greater contrast, both in doctrinal content, and in effect on believers. Before we go further, it is advisable to bear in mind another aspect of our definition, put forward not to explain the nature of religion, but only to assist in differentiating the phenomena with a view to a better understanding of its nature. Such a procedure is valid not only for religion, but also for other social institutions and human activities, such as science, government, marriage, etc., where definition expressing the essences of what is defined is equivalent to discovering a solution before making an inquiry. Another factor to note is the compound nature of our definition. Certain elements of this compound can appear in other combinations: thus religious devotion to an ideal can be found also in naturalistic systems of belief, corresponding to types of common factors selected by Dewey. Increased generality in definition is not always justified. As a scholar on definitions puts it:** It cannot, however, be true for all purposes that a concept is improved by being made more general; for, if it were so, then, after improving all our concepts as much as possible, we should have no specific concepts left. For example, we should have no concept of robin as opposed to bird, since bird is a concept very similar to robin but more general. Other things, being equal, generality is a loss as well as a gain. Yet basic ideas on religion such as Dewey's have spread and proliferated over the years. Recently an anthropologist expressed the attitude of many others when he Suggested that we may wish to define religion without any association with the supernatural because this offers advantages for anthropology.** The psychology of religion In the psychology of religion, there have been, from our particular angle, two basic approaches which need to be developed into a psychology of religion proper, though beyond doubt, they have already increased our understanding of religious phenomena tremendously,204 Syed Hussein Alatas The first approach, represented by Freud and Nietzsche, and also Menninger and Dewey, for instance, considers religion to be basically explicable in terms of ordinary psychology, normal and abnormal. Religious phenomena are seen as the manifest reaction towards latent, ordinary motivations and religion is understood as a kind of self-deception with integrative value for certain people at certain times. In the other approach, as represented by James and Boisen, religion is considered as going beyond phenomena explicable in terms of ordinary psychology, though a language suitable to express these further dimensions has not yet been formulated in psychologically meaningful terms. ‘Mystical ecstasy’, for instance, is not psycho- logically meaningful unless further broken down to reveal the differentiating elements in the ecstasy of mystics from their counterpart in other areas,** To clarify the nature of our problem, we will resort to a parallel from chem- istry which examines an aspect of nature based on the analysis of matter into certain irreducible elements like gold, copper, silver, iron, etc. At one time, the number of these elements was thought to be limited to 92. Nowadays no chemist believes in the finality of this number. An indefinite variety of combinations is believed to exist, despite certain limitations. Some elements combine to form a compound, like hydrogen and oxygen in the case of water. The compounds can also combine to form other compounds, an example of which is fruit juice. A synthetic compound is any human creation like icecream, shaving soap, mayonnaise, whisky and innumerable others including medicines and explosives. The compound is not wholly reducible to its elements. The progress of our understanding of matter depends upon the recognition of this fact, that the elements themselves have not all been discovered, and that the processes of compound formation, and their mutual interactions, in an indefinite number of forms, which compose the totality of nature, provide a boundless field of research. In this effort we must also categorize the objects of our inquiry under different headings. In psychology, we also have the elemental data, irreducible to any other, conceived under different categories, as well as the formation of compounds, their interactions, development and meanings, in the life of the individual, as an organism interacting with his physical and cultural environment. Obviously our analogy with natural phenomena is valid only up to a point. Yet in discussions around the problem of emotion, the suggestion has been made that this phenomenon is susceptible to further subdivision into ultimately irreducible elements. According to William James, there is no limit to the number of possible emotions which may exist. Some of the elements suggested are fear, happiness, sorrow, anger, depression, etc.** McDougall, in his discussion on the nature of the mind, calls the irreducible elements ‘faculties of the subject’. He says: Feeling or affection, again seems to be of at least two ultimate kinds, namely, agreeable and disagreeable feeling, or pleasure and displeasure. There seems good reason also to recognize feeling of excitement and feeling of depression as equally ultimate and. irre- solvable, and, therefore, as faculties of the subject. It is difficult to see how we can refuseProblems of defining religion 25 to admit a larger variety of faculties of feeling. Our emotions are infinitely various; but most of them seem capable of being analysed and exhibited as conjunctions of a small number of primary emotions; each of these seems to be a mode of feeling which is not capable of further analysis, and which is, therefore, an ultimate mode of being conscious that implies a corresponding faculty. But this is a very difficult question; and in respect to it we must keep open minds. Apart from elements of emotion, there are other concepts in psychology which are irreducible, such as hunger, the sexual drive, sympathy, suggestion, imitation and a multitude of others. There are also concepts like catharsis, projection, displace- ment, introjection, transference, etc., the analyses of which usually refer to their causes, effects or associated phenomena, not to be confused with reductionism. Amongst mental phenomena, there are thus definite sets of known concepts and processes, pertaining to states, as well as causes, function, pattern and structure, but these are very general terms which require specification to be operationally meaningful. Since our purpose is not to deal with them as such, but only to suggest the need for increasing their number, we may be pardoned for not going into further detail but merely noting that, at present, psychology is not sufficiently equipped for the adequate understanding of religious life, This is due, on the one hand, to the lack of suitable concepts, and on the other to a curious phenomenon which, for present purposes, we may call ‘conceptual imperialism’. By this is meant the application of a concept valid for a particular phenom- enon, to another apparently identical phenomenon without recognizing the subtle differences between the two. A good example is what Huizinga calls the vision of death in the later Middle Ages. No other epoch, he claims, laid so much stress on thoughts of death. He explains:* In earlier times, too, religion had insisted on the constant thought of death, but the pious treatises of these ages only reached those who had already turned away from the world. Since the thirteenth century, the popular preaching of the mendicant orders had made the eternal admonition to remember death swell into a sombre chorus ringing throughout the world. Towards the fifteenth century, a new means of incalcating the awful thought into all minds was added to the words of the preacher, namely, the popular woodcut. Now these two means of expression, sermons and woodcuts, both addressing themselves to the multitude and limited to crude effects, could only represent death in a simple and striking form. All that the meditations on death of the monks of yore had produced, was now condensed into a very primitive image. This vivid image, continually impressed upon all minds, had hardly assimilated more than a single element of the great complex of ideas relating to death, namely, the sense of the perishable nature of all things. It would seem, at times, as if the soul of the declining Middle Ages only succeeded in seeing death under this aspect. He writes further:** Ascetic meditation had, in all ages, dwelt on dust and worms. The treatises on the contempt of the world had, long since, evoked all the horrors of decomposition, butit is only towards26 ‘Syed Hussein Alatas the end of the fourteenth century that pictorial art, in its turn, seizes upon this motif. To render the horrible details of decomposition, a realistic force of expression was required, to which painting and sculpture only attained towards 1400. At the same time, the motif spread from ecclesiastical to popular literature. Until far into the sixteenth century, tombs are adorned with hideous images of a naked corpse with clenched hands and rigid feet, gaping mouth and bowels crawling with worms. The imagination of those times relished these horrors, without ever looking one stage further, to see how corruption perishes in its turn, and flowers grow where it lay. Huizinga notes that the object obviously was to show the perishable nature of earthly things, but that it was expressed in terms very different from other attempts to show the transciency of earthly things, as in Greek poetry, some Christian literature, or in Islam. He feels that this particular way of renouncing life was based on disgust rather than on genuine Christian wisdom, and explains it as a kind of spasmodic reaction against excessive sensuality.* However adequately explained, the fact remains that the example is histori- cally unique and cannot be assimilated to Buddhist or Islamic visions of death. All religions share visions of death including the ideas that man, if not everything else is doomed to perish; that death is a passage to another life; that attachment to earthly existence is illusory; and that man must prepare for death. But renunciation to prepare for death takes different forms. Buddhism and some Christian sects hold celibacy to be the highest form of renunciation, but not Islam. Renunciation, for present purposes, can be analysed into three parts: its form, as suggested by the religion concerned, its actual historical manifestation interwoven with other factors, as described by Huizinga, and the set of causes and conditions inducing the phenomenon both in its individual and collective aspects. Clearly, to extend Huizinga’s example to other cases in its entirety is to force it upon quite independent phenomena, an instance of conceptual imperialism. One may refer baok to another tendency treated earlier, to dilute the meaning of a term, at the cost of precision and clarity, as in the definition of religion, suggested by Dewey and many others, which one may call ‘conceptual inflation’, borrowing from Huizinga’s inflatie der termen which he uses in discussing trends in historiography. His example is the Renaissance, a term so extended in its meaning as to lose its value.” There are many kinds of inflation. In Freudian psychoanalysis, the concept of sex has been inflated. In the phenomenology of religion Van der Leeuw has inflated the concept Power (Macht) to the extent that his treatment becomes subtly misleading, and constitutes an interesting example of what a scientific study of religion should not be.** An opposite mistake is conceptual deflation. The concept asceticism in certain psychoanalytic circles, for instance, has been deflated so as. to represent only its neurotic manifestations. The tendency to deflate is very often the outcome of reductionism. If allowed to influence scientific investigation seriously such tendencies can lead to what we may call the liquidation of the subject, or its transmutation. InProblems of defining religion 21 Durkheim's study of the elementary forms of religious life it has been suggested by Yinger that he arrives at a liquidation of his problem. In many ways his major study of religion is a technical monograph on totemism in Australia, But Durkheim was first and last a theorist and he used the data, drawn from the work of several anthropologists, primarily to construct a thorough-going sociologistic theory of religion. By sociologistic I mean a theory that so heavily emphasizes the importance of the fact of society as the starting point of religion that it obscures other significant factors. Durkheim seems to accept as his central task the attempt to find the origin of religion. In his characteristic polemic style, he attacks as inadequate the existing theories of origin, especially those of Tylor, Spencer and Miller. By the time he has finished, however, it is clear that he is working out not a theory of religious origins, but an analysis of the continuing place of religion in social life. The problem in the psychology of religion is to avoid such tendencies so as to enable us to recognize the variety of phenomena and consequently to increase sui generis concepts, comparable to the elements in chemistry. The attempt to increase the fund of sui generis data in psychology has already been started though not directly connected with religion. Under the influence of Existentialism, for instance, a few additional types of anxiety have been suggested. Similarly, Boisen has stressed the need to recognize new formsof mental illness which cannot be satisfactorily explained by current psychopathology. His experience convinced him of the necessity to extend the existing set of classification for mental illness to include kinds of psychotics with religious interests exhibiting the characteristics of a creative problem-solving experience. He writes:*° Where I differ from the prevailing view is in my interpretation of their sickness. I sec them in their acute phases as representing a type of disorder which is closely related to religious experience and should be sharply contrasted with the rank and file of mental hospital cases. ‘The latter are commonly persons who make and accept some malignant adaptation to defeat and failure. They escape into alcohol. They indulge in erotic phantasy. They become bitter and suspicious. They maintain self-respect by blaming others or by developing an organic scape-goat. Theit’s is a chronic character difficulty. Such persons seldom show religious concern and their chances for recovery are poor. Those, on the other hand, in whom calls to the ministry are most likely to be found are persons in whom the better self has been struggling so desperately for possession that they become temporarily disordered. In that struggle they are likely to feel themselves face to face with ultimate Reality. Their eyes may be suddenly opened to their undreamed-of importance, and great responsibility seems laid upon them. In such periods religious concern is much in evidence and the creative forces are exceptionally active. So also are the forces of destruction. They are periods of seething emotion which tend either to make or to break. As such they are analogous to fever or inflammation in the body. They may thus be regarded as mani- festations of the power to heal and closely akin to the conversion experience so well known in the history of the Christian Church since the days of Saul of Tarsus. With such experi- ences they form a continuum in which the degree of freedom from malignant tendencies and the value of the results achieved become the significant variables.28 Syed Hussein Alatas ‘The recognition of sui generis phenomena must always be preceded by the rejection of reductionism. Among Dutch psychologists Riimke strongly rejects reductionism which he considers a narrow understanding of religious life.* William James, Otto and others also suggest the recognition of sui generis phenomena in religion. The problem is to discover means of introducing meaningful new concepts into psy- chology; which poses both the theoretical and practical difficulties. Possibilities are to be shown here by drawing on that vast domain of religious experience which gives extensive scope for further codification. Let us consider mystical ecstasy, about which there has been much confusion and which has been inflated to include the effects of drug inhalation or erotic climax. It is suggested that, because of the complexity and incommunicability of the experience, a distinct conceptualization is well nigh impossible. Stace however has shown the possibility of distinguishing the experience of religious mystics from apparently identical phenomena. For our purpose it is not necessary to follow his distinction, important though it may be. Mystical ecstasy is to be distinguished from comparable phenomenon, like the effect of drugs, because: (a) it cannot be induced and the effort to experience it is not always successful unlike the effect of drugs; (b) it strengthens the integrative aspects of the self and evokes moral elevation, which is not always true of drugs, and must be explained through a prevailing personality orientation towards religious mysticism; (c) drugs may leave the subject in nihilistic or agnostic abeyance, depending on outlook, whereas mystical ecstasy counters such tendencies, to result in conversion; (d) repeated drug-taking may be harmful, both psychologically and organically, but this is not the case with mystical ecstasy. The theoretical need for reserving a distinct concept for mystical ecstasy, both in its sober and elated aspects, is reinforced by the fact that such an experience cannot be reduced to any other current sets of explanations, as Stace explains: An examination of the major documents of the world’s mystical literature will leave any sensitive reader in no doubt that the alleged ineffability of mystical experience cannot be explained by any of the psychological principles which apply to our common every day consciousness. The mystics believe that their special kind of consciousness does not differ merely relatively and in degree, but rather absolutely and in kind, from the common consciousness. And as they alone are in possession of both kinds, they alone are in a position to know. It is not indeed impossible that they may be mistaken about their own experiences but it is more likely that the mistake lies with those who would explain away those experiences because they are unable to believe that anything exists which they cannot themselves see or comprehend. If then the mystics are right, their special kind of consciousness is such that it cannot in any way be understood in terms of the common consciousness or its categories, because they have nothing in common except the fact of being consciousness. Ecstatic phenomena as described by mystics should not be confused with the religious psychosis suggested by Boisen, for they include no undertones of panic or fright. The undertones are bliss and harmony, followed by a yearning to recover theProblems of defining religion 9 experience, not a psychotic dread of re-experience. On the other hand, mystical experiences associated with mental disturbances as studied by Boisen have also been known to exist. He divides religious psychotics into two main groups, the arrested and the successful. Mystics like St Paul, George Fox, John Bunyan, and Boisen himself, belong to those who succeeded in attaining richer and deeper personalities accompanied by psychosis whose function is like the pangs of a new birth. The arrested cases are those who did not succeed in solving their problems and remained in the psychotic state. Historically we may suggest that violent messianic claimants with paranoid traits are probably the failures who passed into social life at several points, Attempts to distinguish the two types have usually been cast in the form of true and false prophets or saints, It must, however, not be forgotten that all through the ages religious communities do make a distinction between various kinds of madness, one of which is our present scientific conception of madness, Not all insanity is explained in terms of revelation or the devil. To press the question of increasing concepts further, by reference to concrete instances, we must further distinguish conceptual deflation from reductionism. When a concept is deflated it does not mean that it is necessarily reduced to a single dimension, merely that it is diminished in scope, so as to exclude relevant potential content as much as possible. A striking instance of conceptual deflation is the identification of religiosity with a particular religion. Another instance is furnished by Van der Leeuw. He claims that ‘atheism’ does not reflect an attitude to life.* If the Dutch word /evenshouding is deflated to exclude atheism, this may seem plausible, but in reality no one can be without some attitude towards life. Two kinds of reductionism are further relevant here: that which traces the root of a phenomenon to a single cause, and that which provides an explanation not by one but by a number of causes (pluralistic reductionism). The characteristic of pluralistic red nism is to stick to a set of possible causes as the key to explanation without recognizing the legitimacy of future additions to that set, which sometimes makes it difficult to disentangle a pluralistic reductionistic approach from a genuine analysis involving a pluralistic explanation. Pluralistic reductionism as applied to the birth of Islam, for instance, would explain it in terms of sociological and psycho- logical factors that rob it of its religious character. The phenomenology of the event is considered in terms of secular social reforms or revolution, its religious character not being considered essential, It is portrayed as social ideology, and not asa distinct. type of ideology, which differs from the non-religious variety. There is a cultural aspect to the problem of increasing psychological concepts in the study of religion. Since the psychology of religion is a child of modern psychology which in turn was born and developed in Western societies, certain characteristics of these societies tend to act in an inhibitory manner. There is resist- ance from certain quarters to the claims of science to understand the nature of religion, which made it necessary for William James to presentexcusesand arguments230 Syed Hussein Alatas for treating religion as a proper object of scientific study.“ Further there is the depreciation of the value and significance of religion among a large number of psychologists who do not have religious leanings and who explain it away in terms of Projection, on social solidarity in critical situations and the like, relative to a certain stage of collective enlightenment. Religion as a whole is considered to be a derivative phenomenon which can best be replaced by something else. There are, of course, other psychologists who see in religion something of value without believing in its doctrines. Both groups, however, reinforce each other in the sense that the phenomena of religion are explained away in the manner of pluralistic reductionism. Since the phenomena are believed to be already explained, the problem of their explanation does not arise and additions to the basic concepts of psychology in the sense we have in mind can then be considered redundant. In the psychological study of religion, pluralistic reductionism has gained attention owing to its success in explaining given phenomena. But on further insistence certain serious defects are brought to light, as shown by Cantril’s admirable and lucid study on the social psychology of religious reform movements. After instructively analysing the Father Divine movement (in collaboration with Muzafer Sherif), he quotes the findings of a committee:' An official investigation of the movement, ordered by a New Jersey judge, summarized as follows the reasons for its growth: 1) Search for economic security. 2) Desire to escape from the realities of life and impoverished conditions. 3) Search for social status, 4) Instinctive search for God and assurance of a life hereafter. The first three of these conclusions are similar to those outlined above as basic causes for ‘the movement's appeal. The committee's fourth conclusion, however, will not withstand psychological scrutiny. It would be more accurate to substitute, for the phrase ‘instinctive search for God’, the idea that individuals are constantly seeking to give meaning to their environment and that, when a meaning rooted in the realities of the world cannot be found, the individual either creates and reifies for himself a symbol that will satisfactorily resolve his conflicts or accepts from his culture some preestablished symbol around which to relate his environment meaningfully. ‘What is interesting is Cantril’s reformulation of the fourth cause. The word ‘God’ is dropped and in its place he adopts another formulation which completely confuses the issue, a surprising performance for such a famous psychologist. He completely distorts what is indicated by the term ‘search for God’. Instead of taking the phrase in its phenomenological sense, he replaces it with an interpretation which is contrary to the facts. Believers in religious doctrine do not consider God as a symbol but asa reality, as the followers of Father Divine considered him to be God incarnate. The formulation of the judge is thus more accurate than Cantril’s own. He diffuses the focus of accuracy, by altering a more particular to a more general form. The constant search for meaningful adjustment towards life is very basic and general.Problems of defining religion 21 There is no behaviour without a meaning attached to it by the subject. Even in psychosis and neurosis all behaviour is impregnated with meaning, or meanings. There are different kinds of search for different kinds of meaningful orientations towards life, the movement of Father Divine being one. It falls under the category of those that include the supernatural in their scheme of things, and within it under a sub-category which borders on the social pathological. Since many reform movements, religious and non-religious, have been known to operate associated with the causes evoked to explain the Father Divine movement, an analysis confined to such a level of generality cannot be considered as adequate. It is an instance of pluralistic reductionism which liquidates the distinction between phenomena. What appears to be religious movement falling under a distinct phenomenological category is subsumed under a category somewhat similar to, and serving the same psychological functions as, Moral Rearmament and the Nazi Revolution. Here is a clear indication that a social movement is inflated to such an extent as to override the differences between the Kingdom of Father Divine and the Nazi Revolution, the inflated concept being Cantril’s Weberian ideal type of a social movement analysed in terms of pluralistic reductionism. In Cantril’s analysis of the Nazi Revolution, he takes note of the complexity involved. Amongst the array of causes, German nationalism figures along with economic insecurity, the threat of chaos, the overthrow of the old norms, the enhancement of the individual's sense of self-regard and status, susceptibility to the appeal of a forceful leader, the need for a scapegoat community, and so on. In the case of Father Divine, Cantril does not regard the search for God as a sentiment comparable to German nationalism. The religious sentiment is not properly recognized as a distinct and identifiable element which does not disappear upon analysis and become condensed into other forces, like a hallucination upon its discovery by the subject, or the reification of symbols as Cantril puts it. Since the religious phenomenon is regarded as nothing but an understandable wish fulfilment, it can be subsumed under the psychology of wishful thinking, which is apparently felt to be adequate to the task, so the need for expanding concepts is not acutely felt. While the notion that religious experience is qualitatively different from non-religious experience has often been expressed, that this has not resulted in the creation of recognized concepts generally applied by the community of social scientists is not an isolated case. The Oedipus complex appeared in literature and mythology long before Freud introduced it as a scientific concept. The same may be said of sexual neurosis. But there has been a failure to establish a definition of religion which really isolates the object in a realistic and meaningful way, the underlying cause being the rise of secular humanism, which dispenses with the supernatural, prayer, the holy and life after death. Secular humanism represented the rebellion against historical religion in the West and science was revived along with it. Since psychology itself was the product of this movement, itis understandable that it did not initially occupy itself with the conceptual assimilation of religious232 Syed Hussein Alatas phenomenon as a qualitatively independent and distinct human experience. ‘An interesting dimension raised by Berger concerns the ideological purpose of the functional definition of religion, as found in the works of Durkheim and Dewey wherein the specificity of the qualitatively distinct religious phenomena is erased. Berger suggests two sources: the first” comes from what may be called the imperialism of academic disciplines, and it is often relevant to the scholarly projects of individuals. Thus there are sociologists who know very little about religion but who want to study a particular phenomenon with religious ‘overtones. Conversely, there are scholars with religion degrees who want to study, say, communes, or changing sexual mores, or political movements. Both sets of individuals have a mild ideological interest in subsuming under the same definition their earlier field of specialization and the area into which they are now branching out. The other is more serious. ‘My thesis is this: The functional approach to religion, whatever the original theoretical intentions of its authors, serves to provide quasiscientific legitimations of a secularized world view. It achieves this purpose by an essentially simple cognitive procedure: The specificity of the religious phenomenon is avoided by equating it with other phenomena. The religious phenomenon is ‘flattened out’. Finally, it is no longer perceived. Religion is absorbed into a night in which all cats are grey. The greyness is the secularized view of Teality in which any manifestations of transcendence are, strictly speaking, meaningless, and therefore can only be dealt with in terms of social or psychological functions that can be understood without reference to transcendence. Yet, the idea that religious experience is qualitatively different from non-religious experience has been in the air for some time. Otto, for instance, has emphasized. That the fear of God is different from other kinds of fear, which may be readily accepted but the problem of according it a legitimate conceptual status in psychology remains. If a neurosis or psychosis occurs as a result of the fear of God, psychology should have a concept which would be used in analysis and explanation, treating the problem as autonomous, not as a derivative one whose roots lie in the non- religious domain. Recognizing the possibility of genuinely religious disturbances also implies recognizing genuinely religious motivations integrative of the personality.5* Paul Pruyser underlines the necessity of conceptually differentiating between religion and non-religion, or what he calls ‘irreligion’.** Right now I tend to think that irreligion, like religion, has a certain thickness, substance, content, style, structure, and function which qualify a person’s total experience. Irreligion is not merely the absence of something, and certainly not simply the missing of something good, desirable, or pleasant. It is much closer to adopting an active stance or posture, involving the act of excluding another posture which, despite its popularity or naturalness, is deemed to be a poor fit in an acquired life style. Irreligion, like religion, can be zealous,Problems of defining religion 233, militant, declarative, dogmatic, or persuasive. Like religion, it can be the product of training, existential decision-making, or drifting. And all too often it can be a product of religious instruction! The definition of religion should be resolved free from constraints arising out of the particularities of Western society. The ideological purpose of philosophical secularism noted by Berger, the emotive appeal of the word ‘religion’ to convey something noble and aesthetic, the aim of developing a spirit of harmony, all these, however laudable, should not be allowed to obstruct the attempt. Observers from the non-Western world should separate the genuine problems around the definition of religion from historical and cultural influences peculiar to Western society which tend to push such a definition into a particular direction. Needless to say this caution is also appropriate with regard to influences from their own tradition. Notes 2G. P. Murdock, ‘The Common Denominator of Cultures’, in: Ralph Linton (¢d.), The Science of Man in World Crisis, New York, Columbia University Press, 1945. * Henri Bergson, Two Sources of Morality and Re~ ligion, p. 102, New York, Doubleday, 1954. 2 B. Malinowski, Magic, Science and Religion, p. 17, ‘New York, Doubleday, 1955. « Sir James Frazer, The Golden Bough, p.55, London, Macmillan, 1954. ® B.O. James, Prehistoric Religion, London, Thames ‘& Hudson, 1957. Indication of ‘religious burials was present at least from the middle palacolithic period. The remains of the Grimaldi burials point to this. J, H. Leuba, A Psychological Study of Religion, p. 354, New York, Macmillan, 1912. He himself prefers to describe rather than to define religion, which he believes possesses no ‘objective validity outside our desires and imaginations. 7 Ruth Benedict, ‘Religion’, in F. Boas (ed.), General Anthropology, p. 627, United States, Heath & Co., 1938. 5 Malinowski, op. cit., p. 53. °G. Mandelbaum, Selected Writings of Edward ‘Sapir, p. 358, London, Cambridge University Press, 1949. 2 A. R. Radeliffe-Brown, Structure and Function in Primitive Society, p. 157, London, Cohen & West, 1956. 4 ibid., p. 155. 1° R. Lowie, Primitive Religion, p. xvi, London, Routledge, 1956. %® Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Mlusion, p. 76, London, Hogarth Press, 1953 (trans. by W. D. Robson-Scott). M Erich Fromm, Psychoanalysis and Religion, p. 29, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1950. 38 H.C. Rimke, Karakter en Aanleg in Verband ‘met het Ongeloof, Amsterdam, W. ten Have, 1953. 36 T. T. ten Have, Echt en Onecht in Geloof en Onge- loof, Utrecht, Humanistisch Verbond, 1956. 17 John Dewey, A Common Faith, p. 3, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1934. 28 ibid., p. 2, 6. 28 ibid., p. 27, 32, 46, 80. Sec the whole book. % ibid. p. 14. 2 ii bid., p. 37. % R. Robinson, Definition, p. 101, London, Oxford University Press, 1950. 8° Ward H. Goodenough, ‘Toward an Anthropo- logically Useful Definition of Religion in Allan W. Eister (ed.), Changing Perspectives in the Scientific Study of Religion, p. 166-17, New York, John Wiley, 1974. See also J. E. Barnhart, ‘Is One’s Definition of ““Re- ligion™ Always Cireular?’, Jnternational Year- book for Sociology of Knowledge and Religion, Vol. IX, 1975,234 ‘Syed Hussein Alatas Notes (continned) 51 On the problem of conceptualizing mystical ec- ‘ Rumike, op. cit., p. 47. stacy, see W. T. Stace, Mysticism and Philos- ophy, London, Macmillan, 1956. #2 William James, Varieties of Religious Experience, P. 41-2, New York, Modern Library, un- dated. First ed. 1902. = W. McDougall, Psychology, p. 50, London, Oxford University Press, 1959. ‘J, Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages, p. 140. Trans. by F. Hopman, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, Penguin Books, 1950. 5% ibid., p. 142. 28 ibid. 3 J, Huizinga, De Wetenschap der Geschiedenis, p. 70-1, Haarlem, Tjenk Willink, 1937. 98 See G. van der Leeuw, De Verhouding van God en Mensch Vroeger en Nu, Amsterdam, Noord- Hollandsehe, 1940. 3° J, Milton Yinger, “The Influence of Anthropology ‘on Sociological Theories of Religion’, in American Anthropologist, Vol. 60, No. 3, p. 498, June 1958. 4° A. T. Boisen, ‘Ideas of Prophetic Mission’, in Journal of Pastoral Care, Vol. XV, No. 1, p. 2, 1961 * Stace, op. cit., p. 280-1. Van der Leeuw, op. cit., p. 42. James, op. cit., p. 29. © Hadley Cantril, The Psychology of Social Move- ‘ments, p. 143, New York, John Wiley, 1951 4 ibid., p. 123. © Peter L. Berger, ‘Some Second Thoughts on Sub- stantive versus Functional Definitions of Religion’, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Vol. 13, No. 1, 1974, p. 128. 48 ibid, p. 128-9. 4 Sco Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy, Trans. by J. W. Harvey, Pelican Books Middlesex, 1959. 430 The several publications of the late Anton T. Boisen are of special interest here. See A. T. Boisen, The Exploration of the Inner World. Harper Torchbook, New York, 1962. Boisen deserves special treatment for his attempt to establish the concept of religious psychosis. ® Paul W. Pruyser, ‘Problems of Definition and Conception in the Psychological Study of Religious Unbelief, in Eister (ed.), op. cit., p. 197.