Page:Psychology of Religion.djvu/14

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THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION
13

religious belief in that way. . . . Anyhow, it would not be prudent.

You do not look for prudence, but plain English, in Haldeman-Julius publications, and we shall see here what amount of truth there is in the various psychologies of religion. We are going, together, to examine the religious beliefs of the men and women you actually know. Academic writers are very apt to construct their own "religious man," and too often they construct him to fit a preconceived theory of what he ought to be. Other writers take eccentric and exceptional types of believers and make general theories of religion out of their analysis of these. Let us try, as far as possible, to ascertain the actual attitudes of a very great variety of religious men and women—there is, of course, no such thing as a religious type—and see what influences give them the different shades of religious belief or emotion which most of us lack.