Elements of Folk Psychology Outline of a Psychological History of the Development of Mankind · Wilhelm Max Wundt
4. WORLD RELIGIONS.
The truth is that the transformation of the personal god into a superpersonal deity is probably the most important mark of world religion. National religion displaced the subpersonal demon in favour of the personal god; in world religion, the personal god is exalted into a superpersonal deity. At this point there is a very close connection between world religion and world culture. As the idea that the universe is bounded by a sphere of fixed stars must give way to the conception of the infinitude of the universe, so also does world culture transcend the limits imposed upon it by the preparatory world empire, whose own origin was the State. World Culture, as we have seen, comes to signify a cultural unity of mankind, such as includes the national States. Similarly, world religion strives toward the idea of a deity who is superpersonal, and who, though only in so far as he is superpersonal, transcends the world of experience. The foundations of this concluding stage in the development of religion had long been laid by philosophy. In religion itself, the culmination was actually attained with the recedence of the deity in cult; in theology, it came with the ascription to the deity of attributes of absoluteness and infinitude, even though the deity-conception did not clearly emerge from a mystic incomprehensibility rendered inevitable by the combination of contradictory ideas.
Though the transition from a personal god to a superpersonal deity is the decisive characteristic that marks a world religion, there is closely connected with it a second distinctive feature. In Christianity, indeed, it was the latter that prepared the way for the idea of the non-personal character of God. The fact to which I refer is that, in addition to the non-personal deity, there is believed to be a personal god in the form of an exalted human individual. Cult continues to require a personal being to whom man may come with his needs and desires. And by whom could his trouble be better understood than by a deity who himself lived and suffered as a man? In Buddhism, therefore, as well as in Christianity, the god-man became the personal representative of the non-personal deity, not as the result of any external transference, but in consequence of the same inner need. The god-man is a representative in more than one respect. Cult honours him as the deity who dwelt upon earth in human form, and who represents the godhead; it turns to him also as the human individual who represents mankind before God. Back of these two ideas of representativeness that dominate belief and cult, there is still a further, though an unrecognized, need for a representative.
The religious nature requires that there shall be a personal god as the representative of him who has been exalted into a non-personal deity and has become inaccessible. The infinite god posited by the religious intellect is unable to satisfy the religious nature that is pressed by the cares and sufferings of finitude. Herewith the way is opened for a development whose course is determined by the changing relations into which the two aspects of the concept 'god-man' enter with one another. On the first stage, the divine aspect of the god-man overshadows the human character. At this period, it might appear as though world religion merely substituted a new god for the older gods. Though the superpersonal deity receives recognition in dogma, and the development, therefore, marks an important religious advance over the age of gods, the cult is directed to the person of the god-man. Then comes a second stage, in which the human aspect of the concept 'god-man' occupies the foreground. The god-man becomes an ideal human being who succours man in the afflictions of his soul, but who does so not so much by his divine power as by the example of human perfection which he represents. At the third stage, the god-man finally comes to be regarded as in every respect a man.
It is recognized that, through the religious movement which bears his name, he indeed prepared the way for the idea that the deity is a non-personal source of being, exalted above all that is transitory. Nevertheless, the god-man is conceived as an ideal man only in the sense in which one may speak of any ideal as actual. Hence, the world religion derives its name from him not so much because of what he himself was as because of that which he created. From this point of view, it is eventually immaterial even whether or not Jesus or Buddha ever lived. The question becomes one of historical fact, not one of religious necessity. Jesus and Buddha live on in their religious creations. That these creations, to say nothing of any other proofs, point back to powerful religious personalities, the unbiased will regard as certain, though from this third point of view the question is of subordinate importance.
A world religion may lay claim to being such not merely on account of its wide acceptance, but also because of its ability to incorporate the elements of other religions. In a similar manner, and more particularly, a world religion is one that includes within itself elements representing past stages of its own development. Historically considered, religious elements are juxtaposed in such a manner that the religious life of the past is mirrored in the present. Hence the religion can at no time emancipate itself from its historical development. It is just as impossible to return to the religious notions of earlier times as it is to transform ourselves into the contemporaries of Charlemagne or even of Frederick the Great. The past never returns. Nevertheless, it is universally characteristic of mental development, particularly within the sphere of religion, that the new not only continues to be affected by the old, but that the more advanced stages of culture actually embody many elements of the past. That these be permitted to exist side by side with higher conceptions, and that there be no limiting external barriers in either direction, is all the more demanded by world religion inasmuch as the independence of State and society, which its very nature implies, presupposes, first of all, the freedom of personal belief.
Inasmuch as it possesses a universal human significance, religion cannot escape the change to which everything human is subject. This appears most strikingly in the undeniable fact that the fundamental idea of the two great world religions, Buddhism and Christianity, has in both cases changed. I refer to the idea of _salvation_. We do not, of course, mean to deny that an individual may either permanently or temporarily return to the religious ideas of the past with a fervour which again reinstates in him impulses that have long since disappeared. Nevertheless, the present-day idea of salvation is no longer identical with that which animated the primitive Christian Church when it looked forward to the return of its Saviour. Christianity is a religion of humanity. Precisely for this reason, it, in every age, took up into itself the feelings and aspirations representing the ideal spiritual forces of that age. All that was permanent in the midst of this change was really the religious impulse as such, the feeling that the world of sense belongs to an ideal supersensuous order--a feeling for which world religion seeks external corroboration in the development of religion itself. In distinction from national religions, which sprang from an infinitely large number of sources, a world religion requires a personal founder. To this personality is due also the direction of the further development of the religion. Thus, the final and most important characteristic of world religion is the fact that it is pre-eminently an _historical_ religion. It is historical both in that it has an historical origin, and in that it is constantly subject to the flux of historical development.
Ideas discussed in this chapter
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