They are generally conscious of the fact that their doubts are absurd and abnormal, but are powerless to prevent them. In all cases of fixed ideas or Zwangsvortellungen, under which general term the insanity of doubting and questioning or Grübelsucht falls, there is an almost absolute impotence of the will, not only to control the absurd ideas, but also an irrestrainable tendency to those acts" (to which the ideas lead).1 "To one whose mind is healthy," writes one of these unfortunates, "thoughts come and go unnoticed; with me they have to be faced, thought about in a peculiar fashion, and then disposed of as finished, and this often when I am utterly wearied and would be at peace; but the call is imperative. This goes on to the hindrance of all natural action. If I were told that the staircase was on fire and I had only a minute to escape, and the thought arose — · Have they sent for fire-engines? Is it probable that the man who has the key is on hand? Is the man a careful sort of person? Will the key be hanging on a peg? Am I thinking rightly? Perhaps they don't lock the depot'- my foot would be lifted to go down; I should be conscious to excitement that I was losing my chance; but I would be unable to stir until all these absurdities were entertained and disposed of. In the most critical moments of my life, when I ought to have been so engrossed as to leave no room for any secondary thoughts, I have been oppressed by the inability to be at peace. And in the most ordinary circumstances it is all the same. Let me instance the other morning I went to walk. The day was biting cold, but I was unable to proceed except by jerks. Once I got arrested, my feet in a muddy pool. One foot was lifted to go, knowing that it was not good to be standing in water, but there I was fast, the cause of detention being the discussing with myself the reasons why I should not stand in that pool. "'2

There is a prophylactic for this, much more efficient than any philosophical argument or impassioned exhortation, namely, work-interesting and absorbing work. Work by satisfying a deep-seated instinct in us, gives pleasure and satisfaction and withdraws the mind from morbid hair-splittings, barren reflections and contemplations. Satisfying the instinct of workmanship, if it does not create the will to live,' certainly

1See Cowles: Insistent and Fixed Ideas, Amer. Jour. Psych., Vol. 1, p. 226. 2 James: Psychology, Vol. 2, p. 284 footnote.

strengthens it. The muse of idleness is the demon Doubt, and the theme of his dirge is pessimism, despair, death! The doubting mania is probably more a disease of the will than of the intellect, and one of the best means of developing the will is work.

"Produce! Produce!" cries Carlyle in his chapter entitled The Everlasting Yea." "Were it but the pitifullest infinitesimal fraction of a Product, produce it, in God's name! 'Tis the utmost thou hast in thee: out with it, then. Up, Up! Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy whole might. Work while it is called To-day; for the Night cometh, wherein no man can work." The same Gospel of Work is preached in Goethe's Faust, and has recently been emphasized from the physiological side by Prof. Jaques Loeb, and from the pedagogical side by Dr. Wm. H. Burnham.

Religious doubts make their first appearance during the 'storm and stress' period of adolescence. "Doubt seems to belong to youth" writes Starbuck, as its natural heritage. More than two-thirds of his cases and three-fourths of those studied by Dr. Burnham "passed through a period sometime, usually during adolescence, when religious authority and theological doctrines were taken up and seriously questioned. ''1 It is then that the "unconscious cerebration'' wells up above the threshold, and the middle layer of tangential fibres, corresponding to Hughling Jackson's highest level, begin to function. The reasoning faculty rapidly develops, new sensations begin to pour in, the reproductive powers and sex instincts are born, the emotions are heightened; love, altruism, and the social instincts suddenly emerge; in short a new consciousness is born. Former habits of thought and action are found unfit for the changed conditions and are abandoned. Old beliefs are cast into the scales and too frequently found wanting. The child is a child no more. The young savage suddenly becomes poet, philosopher, philanthropist, reformer, with his lofty ideals, gigantic plans, air-castles, his vague yearnings and cravings, and his pleasing moods of melancholy. The brain cells and nerves are charged with vitality up to the danger point. Whether the storm will blow over without causing any damage or not will, of course, depend on the resistance power of the cells and nerves, that is upon the neurological condition,

1 The Psych. of Religion, p. 232.

and this in its turn will be determined largely by the individual's general health, education, environment, heredity,

etc.

Adolescence is the golden age of heredity. Now every link in the chain stretching back for many generations is put to test and if any of them have been abused the adolescent pays the penalty. In this sense he suffers for the sins of his fathers. It is not surprising, therefore, to find that "in some instances," as Maudsley says, "physiological evolution of puberty passes into a pathological revolution." Next to heredity as a predisposing cause of insanity comes education, or rather mal-education, and this we find is also the most common cause of doubt. Early, narrow, religious training followed by the study of science and philosophy, by contact with a new and much less orthodox environment, and by the growth which these factors naturally bring about has blighted the happiness of many an adolescent, and robbed him forever of the blessings of religion. Mr. H. Fielding, in his Hearts of Men,' has given an admirable account of his own early religious education and the causes which led him to break with it. He was brought up he tells us until he was twelve entirely by women, and from these he received his moral and religious ideas. At twelve he was sent off to a large boy's school, and there his troubles began. Little by little the great incongruities between the world as he had seen it through his aunts' spectacles, and the world as it really is, between the Christian religion as he had been taught it, the teaching of Christ, the very simple teaching that is in the Gospel," and the actual concrete Christianity with which he now came in daily contact, the disharmony between the accepted doctrines and professed beliefs and the habitual conduct of those about him, and the world at large, forced themselves upon him and caused him to shrink from religion and everything pertaining to it." "He found himself at eighteen far adrift from all guidance and counsel, shunning religion because he saw that the teachings of Christ were quite unadapted for the world he had to live in, and condemning his teachers for what seemed to him hypocrisy." His reaction, however, was not yet complete. The aversion he felt towards religion was not as yet well defined, but vague and undifferentiated, so to speak. "About this time he read the Origin of Species' and 'The Descent of Man. This surprised It was not only that this was his first introduction to

him.

the science of biology, his first peep behind the curtain of modern forms into the coulisses of the world that interested him, but there was here contained a complete refutation, a disastrous overthrow, of all that system of the Creation which he had been taught. The Old Testament was wrong, the New Testament was wrong. It was all an old woman's tale.' At the touch of science the whole fabric of religion fell into dust. Christianity was a fraud, and there was an end of it." Such biographies and confessions show us better than any metaphysical theories or psychological analysis could, the main cause of religious doubt, its origin, and the course of its development. Taught in early childhood to believe the Bible literally; refused, evaded, and even deceived when innocent and natural questions were asked, given an ethical code, and ideals which though lofty and ennobling to the mature man, are as yet anti-natural and impossible for children and youths, it is little wonder that so many thoughtful and earnest adolescents, when they begin to think for themselves and study the sciences are tortured with doubts, until finally they bolt the whole religion. The clergy and religious pedagogues cannot be reminded too often that not only is it dangerous to the well-being of their charges and to religion to teach the bible literally, but also that the same ideals cannot be preached to old and young alike. Children, adolescents, marriageable young men and women, middle aged persons, and senescents, each need different ideals and sermons. Religious teaching, like secular teaching should be graded to suit the varying needs of the different stages of the individual's development.1

What evil effects the older religious pedagogical system was productive of can be further seen from the many replies received by Drs. Hall, Leuba, and Starbuck. One respondent writes, "When sixteen I read the doctrine of evolution and The Idea of God.' Everything seemed different; I felt as if I had been living all my life on a little island and now was pushed off into a great ocean. I have been splashing around, and hardly know my bearings yet. I don't see any need for a belief in the resurrection. Another writes, "At fifteen I began to give up the faith of my childhood point by point, as it would not stand the test of

1 See an excellent article by Jean du Buy: 'Stages of Religious Development,' Am. Jour. of Religious Psy, and Ed., Vol. 1, pp. 7-29. 2 Starbuck: loc cit., p. 233.

reason. First the belief in miracles went, then the divinity of Christ; then at eighteen metaphysical studies showed me that I could not prove the existence of a personal God, and left me without a religion.''1 And so on ad libitum. There is a passage in the Talmund which reads "Histallek min Ha' sofek," "Keep away from doubt." This has been the policy of all churches, but it is hardly a good pedagogic precept. We should rather face all honest spontaneous doubts and endeavor to overcome them. "A preliminary doubt, says Sir W. Hamilton, is the fundamental condition of philosophy," and Aristotle declared that " Philosophy is the art of doubting well."

6

There is as much truth as poetry in Tennyson's lines,

"There lies more faith in honest doubt,

Believe me, than in half the creeds."

As also in the following:

"Who never doubted never half believed;

Where doubt there truth is

't is her shadow."

The child should be so educated that when the doubting period comes his doubts will be of the kind consecrated by Descartes-dubito ut intelligam,' and characterized by Goethe as the active skepticism whose whole aim is to conquer itself."' It is the task and duty of religious pedagogy to devise, along some such line as suggested by Dr. du Buy, a curriculum adapted to the changing needs of the growing child, and harmonizing with our modern civilization, and thus prepare him for the battle before it comes.

SCIENTISM AND APATHY.

Between the believers and skeptics, both of whom are swayed by their emotions and volitions, stand the disbelievers or atheists who hate religion, and the scientists and others who are indifferent to it. The scientist deals with religion in the same impartial, impersonal spirit as he does with the arts and the natural sciences. He is no partisan; he is the champion of no special form of religion, not even the one in which he was reared. Facts and truths are what he seeks, and he cares not in whose domain he finds them. He compares, analyses, and dissects religions, reverently and sympa

1 Starbuck: loc cit., p. 237.