if objectively apprehended through the senses, would necessarily be apprehended as mechanistic in terms of reflexes.

So when we think in terms of mind, we must think in terms of mechanisms and reflexes. In principle it is immaterial which terms we use. Each has equal validity. Practically, however, as we know nothing about brain processes, we are compelled to explain causal antecedents of behavior in terms of mind, of will, and purpose. [This theory is discussed at length in the paper.]

6. The Mechanistic versus the Personalistic Psychology as Applied to Religious Education

[BENTLEY, John Edward, "The Mechanistic and Personalistic Psychological Contributions to the Field of Religious Education," Boston University Bulletin, August 15, 1925, Vol. 14, No. 24.]

Materialistic and naturalistic systems of philosophy and psychology applied to religious education have tended to reduce religion to a set of social values in which God has been exchanged for social substitutes. A few influential writers on religious education have built their theories on a more or less pragmatic philosophy and extremely functional psychology. Since these types of philosophy and psychology have been current in the literature of secular education it has seemed quite natural for religious educators to borrow from this source. But, in our judgment, they have borrowed unwisely. A continuation of this practice would constitute a serious menace to the Christian religion.

Functional psychology can make a valid contribution to the methods and technique of religious pedagogy, but to the subject-matter of religious education its contribution is limited. Extreme functionalism is too mechanical and too materialistic to be an asset to religious educational content. Undue emphasis on mechanical science will place the religious educator in a dilemma. He will find himself at the cross roads of functional adjustment and theistic faith. The mechanical conception will render him unfit to present the ideals, needs, purposes and powers of a religion that demands a God who is a vital presence; a religion that recognizes the need of the religious consciousness; a religion that knows God to be the source of man's deepest intuitions and aspirations.

Religious education needs a metaphysical philosophy in addition to psychology. Its supreme end is seen in the universal demand for unity. It asserts its faith in a changeless Reality

beneath the flux of phenomena. Despite our training in modern scientific psychology, many of us still accept the view that the changes in phenomena are governed by moral law; that the world is something more than change or chance; that there is some purpose, some final cause, some end in things. We assert, therefore, that there is a belief in the Right, which we experience in our own Spirit rather than in Nature. And, moreover, we cannot find any theory based on utility that has, so far, accounted for the moral and religious consciousness. God, for us, represents causality, and creates in us the demand for human perfection and felicity connected with the belief in the Right. These beliefs and demands, centered in the human consciousness, are then not "by-products" of lower utilitarian or mechanical attitudes and habits but are found in the earliest and even crudest forms of thought; and thought is Being-Cogito, ergo sum-for in the principles of human reason man glimpses the Supreme Reality. The age-long problem of the Heraclitean flux, or Becoming, while it is not denied philosophically urges us to say somewhat with the contemplative mind of Parmenides, that we seek a permanence and changelessness amid the varieties of phenomena. We are compelled therefore to postulate a Supreme Being in which there is a fixed order of purpose and law, guiding human destiny.

Functionalism in religious education, stressing a religion of expanded social values, will rob the Christian consciousness of its God, who is a vital, dynamic and valid presence. Functionalism makes God a mechanical sequence to human action.

Many of us still believe in theistic Reality but it is to be feared that there are those who do not take this to be the essential groundwork of religious education. They are, in our judgment, moralizing education, and this is not necessarily religious education. A constructive philosophy of religious education must be created in which the child is made to feel his responsibility and relationship to a personal God who is the center of religious faith and from whom proceeds the impetus for moralized conduct. Without such a center something is lacking that cannot, in our opinion, be supplied by the functional emphasis alone.

The purpose of this paper is to enquire specifically what are the legitimate contributions of mechanical psychology and personalistic philosophy to the theory of religious education. shall attempt to present a sketch of the schools of modern scientific psychology in order to state their varied trends, thus

constituting a background for the theories connected with religious education. And we shall endeavor, also, to show that a psychology of the Self is needed if religious education is to make an enduring contribution to human welfare.

The need for such . . . will be seen in the following quotation, which is taken from a thesis on the Self, presented by one student who maintains that it is representative of his former training in psychology and religious education:

"A child comes into the world a mere sentient thing with a capacity for growth. During his years of development he is continually reacting to his environment, building up thereby a countless number of stimulus-response bonds. These bonds become a permanent part of the nervous system of the child and are related in the synapses. They are therefore purely physical. These bonds determine entirely the nature of the child and form his essential Self. He is and has no other Self apart from these. Whichever particular set of bonds happens to predominate at any time determines which of his many Selves is in control. His mind is merely the sum total of mental states produced and brought together from without.

"His mental movement of every sort is due, not to any selfdetermination of reason, but to his nervous mechanism; and this, in turn, is subject only to the laws of molecular mechanics. The coexistence of ideas means the coexistence of appropriate nervous states. A conclusion, or a choice, means that one nervous set has displaced another nervous set. Truth in any case is only a nervous resultant and is not fixed but depends on the nerves.

"This materialistic philosophy," he continues, "drove me right into skepticism."

If the Self is thus a mechanical resultant there is then little need for religion. Indeed, religious values are destroyed by a materialistic interpretation of life. If mental facts can be induced from a reacting physiological organism, can it be said that all factors in human organization are explainable by the operation of neural activity? If religion is nothing more than a series of reflexes, an emotion of fear, or an impulse directed toward social objectives, then the Self we experience, with its spiritual ideals and values, is ruled out as a persona non grata. The attributes of the Self, by which communion with God is maintained, vanish, because prayer, worship and similar forms of religious expression are not needed. We are led then to enquire if mechanical psychology in its elimination of Self has

discovered substitutes for teleology; or does it assume an agnostic rôle because its materialistic emphasis deprives it of any concern for teleology and metaphysics which are considered essentially philosophic? As previously pointed out we shall endeavor to say that mechanistic psychology has rendered a worthy contribution to the methods and technique of religious pedagogy but that it is incapable of evaluating the subjectmatter, the content of religious education, because its methodology is too narrow to include the field of philosophy.

A Statement of Terms.-What is meant by "mechanical psychology," "personalistic psychology" and "religious education"?

(a) Mechanical psychology represents the objective physiological theory of behavior. It reduces all behavior to the interaction of physiological mechanisms, rules out consciousness and the popular terms "mind" and "soul," substituting human response. It emphasizes the parallelism of "reaction patterns," "conditioned reflexes," "adjustments," etc. It denies that conscious states have the least influence on behavior, because the nervous system, with its physical and chemical laws, accounts completely and absolutely for all the conduct of man. Consciousness cannot then be antecedent to human behavior, as was once generally supposed by orthodox psychologists, for the reason that physiological functions determine behavior. A rigid mechanism is thus claimed to be the foundation of human life. Modification of conduct by reflection is rendered impossible because behavior is completely explained by the interplay of inherited tendencies and acquired habits in the physiological mechanism. Habit formation is thus a capacity of the synapses progressing through the integrative properties of neural activity.

(b) "Personalistic psychology" proceeds from the Self of introspective psychology-the self-conscious, self-directive, self-communicative ego. It is an individual, a potential person, with a capacity for personality. Personalistic psychology accepts consciousness as a reality. It argues that consciousness is a reality because it represents the unity of self-experience: Theoretically, consciousness is basic to the religious life and essential to any theory of religious education which includes theism. The Self then, as a potential personality, is beyond the forms of neural energy and biological categories, and not a physical process or a thing. It is a self-directing force which makes man a creative being, qualified to use the mechanism of intelligence by the persuasion of ideals and values which make growth of intellect and morals possible.

Self-psychology gives the psychological method of introspection its valid place, relating it to a central experience as a factor in the states of consciousness. This, for the student of religious education,

forms the essential groundwork of mind and gives insight into the inner nature of mental data.

Personalistic psychology recognizes the causal nature of consciousness, which is purposive and creative. Here we discover the pull of the psyche in contrast to the push of impulses which proceed from man's somatic nature; for to penetrate into the problems of selfcontrol and self-achievement is to deal with causes rather than mechanical consequences. No theory of religious education can overlook the importance of this essential emphasis of religious ideals and values, since religious education is concerned with content as well as technique, with ends as well as means.

Mechanistic psychology, building its system on the physiological reactions of the biological organism, is therefore a method in natural science. Self-psychology and personalistic philosophy deal with the facts of human experience. They belong to the realm of general science, since "the man who classifies facts of any kind whatever, who sees their mutual relation and describes their consequences, is applying the scientific method." Moreover, it cannot be denied, that the domain of science, broadly speaking, is to elicit all possible human knowledge which can be rightly used to guide human conduct. (For fuller treatment of self-psychology, see Marlatt, Earl, What Is a Person?)

(c) "Religious Education" is training and instruction in religion. It is a recognized instrument in the promotion of civilization based on values which proceed from the acceptance of a supreme controlling power. . .

Religious education is built on the philosophy that the child has a moral capacity that will respond to nurture through the appeal of religious stimuli. It takes for granted that man has a religious consciousness rather than a religious or regulative instinct. This religious consciousness is capable of training and instruction. With the aid of spiritually controlled attitudes, motives and feelings, it results in moral character and socialized conduct. And these depend on man's personal relationship to God.

Structuralism considers "mental content" as the qualitative aspect of experience. It is interested with the "kind of experience" involved in consciousness. Its method is to take some momentary state of consciousness, and analyze its elementary components. It then proceeds to show how these factors combine to form the more complex contents with which experience is ordinarily concerned. Structuralists would therefore delimit psychology as the scientific study of consciousness, which is, of course, an abstraction examined by the method of introspection -a method of enumerating the elemental and the complex factors in mental states.