Excerpt from A Study in the Psychology of Ritualism: A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Arts and Literature in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Department of Philosophy)

Religious and moral problems have never been more assiduously and faithfully studied than they are today. On the one hand are the conservative theologians who are bending every effort to keep intact the dogmas and traditions of Christianity. The wel fare oi humanity, they think, depends upon doing this. On the other hand are the scientists, motivated not by a spirit of oppo sition but by an earnest desire to get hold Of the truth. Truth, they hold, cannot permanently injure humanity. Any light that anthropology, psychology, archaeology, or any other line of research can throw on questions Of religion and morality Should be welcomed. Scientific research Should be encouraged.

A central problem of religion and morality, and one to which comparatively little attention has been given, is ritualism. The Object of the present undertaking is a critical study from the point of View of the psychology of religion and social psychology of this type of reaction, for the purpose of describing the laws of its origin, development, and survival. The thesis which we shall defend is that the type of reaction designated as ritual ism is always social, that it is performed to mediate practical control, and that it has a natural history in accordance with well-known psychological laws. It is, of course, impossible to examine every ceremony past and present, nor is it necessary, for we are interested less in morphological classification than in psychological function. Modern scholars now generally recognize that all available historical and contemporary data point to the fact that, notwithstanding the differences in the stages of culture among men, the structure of mind and the laws of mental develop ment are essentially the same wherever man is found. The similarity in rituals and objects of worship among primitive peoples separated far in time and space has long been one of the conspicuous phenomena of the history of religion and is in striking confirmation of the above.

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