ify it with the
feeling of the infinite; and so on. Such different ways of conceiving
it ought of themselves to arouse doubt as to whether it possibly can be
one specific thing; and the moment we are willing to treat the term
"religious sentiment" as a collective name for the many sentiments
which religious objects may arouse in alternation, we see that it
probably contains nothing whatever of a psychologically specific
nature. There is religious fear, religious love, religious awe,
religious joy, and so forth. But religious love is only man's natural
emotion of love directed to a religious object; religious fear is only
the ordinary fear of commerce, so to speak, the common quaking of the
human breast, in so far as the notion of divine retribution may arouse
it; religious awe is the same organic thrill which we feel in a forest
at twilight, or in a mountain gorge; only this time it comes over us at
the thought of our supernatural relations; and similarly of all the
various sentiments which may be called into play in the lives of
religious persons. As concrete states of mind, made up of a feeling
PLUS a specific sort of object, religious emotions of course are
psychic entities distinguishable from other concrete emotions; but
there is no ground for assuming a simple abstract "religious emotion"
to exist as a distinct elementary mental affection by itself, present
in every religious experience without exception.

As there thus seems to be no one elementary religious emotion, but only
a common storehouse of emotions upon which religious objects may draw,
so there might conceivably also prove to he no one specific and
essential kind of religious object, and no one specific and essential
kind of religious act.

The field of religion being as wide as this, it is manifestly
impossible that I should pretend to cover it. My lectures must be
limited to a fraction of the subject. And, although it would indeed be
foolish to set up an abstract definition of religion's essence, and
then proceed to defend that definition against all comers, yet this
need not prevent me from taking my own narrow view of what religion
shall consist in FOR THE PURPOSE OF THESE LECTURES, or, out of the many
meanings of the word, from choosing the one meaning in which I wish to
interest you particularly, and proclaiming arbitrarily that when I say
"religion" I mean THAT. This, in fact, is what I must do, and I will
now preliminarily seek to mark o