se phenomena in life which we call
religious are primarily the expression of the collective life of a
social group, after it has attained a degree of consciousness which is
analogous to the self-consciousness of the individual. When a
collective life becomes self-knowing we have a religion, which may
therefore be considered the flowering stage in the organic growth of
the tree of social life. The problem of religious adjustment is at
bottom that of maintaining in a social group the psychical or
spiritual energy which expresses itself in beliefs, ideals, customs
and standards of conduct. Accordingly, when a religion is passing
through a crisis, what is really happening is not so much that certain
accepted truths or traditional habits are threatened with
obsolescence, as that the social group with whose life it has been
identified is on the point of dissolution. Whatever interest we have
in the cultivation of the spiritual life must go towards conserving
this kind of social energy. To have roses we must take care of the
tree on which they grow, and not content ourselves with having a
bouquet of them put into a vase filled with water. This newer
conception of the religious life is fraught with far-reaching
consequences, some of which we shall have to point out in a later
article.

In Judaism we encounter the same three stages in the process of
self-adjustment, though less clearly defined, by reason of much
overlapping. What is known as the Haskalah movement represents the
application of the rationalistic method to the spiritual problems of
Jewish life. Having taken place in Russia, it was bound to be delayed
in its coming for nearly a century. It received the first setback in
its career when the pogroms broke out in the early "eighties," and the
Russian Government inaugurated its policy of hounding and repression.
The type which the Haskalah movement produced is the "Maskil," a man
who curls his lip at ceremony and tradition, who lacks a sense of
history and dabbles in cosmopolitanism. Not having had the courage to
be thoroughgoing in his principles, or realizing that it was futile to
be so, he tolerated what was distinctively Jewish so long as it was
kept indoors and withdrawn from public gaze. In practice, however,
"Haskalah" moved in the same direction as eighteenth century
rationalism which made for the abrogation of the historic faiths.

_Judaism in the Rationalistic and Historic Stages_

CONTEMPORANEOUSLY with