Excerpt from The Religious Consciousness: A Psychological Study
The chief function of a preface is, I suppose, to provide information for the hurried reviewer who has not time to read further. In a sense the preface might be called the author's own book-review; or it is the book's Apologia pro vita sua. No apology, to be sure, need be made for a new book on the psychology of religion. The science, if such we may call it, is still young, and good books upon it are scarce. Perhaps, however, it is incumbent upon one who lays before the public so formidable-looking a volume as the present one, even within so new a field, to state at least his purpose and his point of view in writing it.
My purpose is easily stated. It is, namely, to describe the religious consciousness, and to do so without having any. point of view. Without, that is, having any point of view save that of the unprejudiced observer who has no thesis to prove. My aim, in short, has been purely descriptive, and my method purely empirical. Like other men I have my own theories about the philosophy of religion, but I have made unremitting efforts (and I trust with some success) to describe the religious consciousness without undue influence from my philosophical theories, but merely by going to experience and writing down what I find.
I have also sought to cover the field with a fair degree of adequacy; to do justice by both religion and science; to hold the scales even between the individual and society (no easy matter in these days); and to make my book of value and (if possible) of interest to both the general reader and the technical student. I am, of course, painfully aware of the fact that in many ways I have fallen short of my aims.
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