According to Professor Toynbee, this view is put forward by Father
Schmidt, who based his theory on observations made by him of
“common elements in the religions of the most primitive surviving
peoples, now scattered in holes and corners at opposite extremities
of the inhabited surface of the Earth(13).” The present writer cannot
say how the scholars who are working in this field have reacted to
this theory. If they regard it as at least worthy of serious
consideration, it would mean that a different approach to the
question “What is God?” is possible. If God’s existence was
recognised even by the most primitive people, it may be safely
argued that the idea of God has a genuine reference to the Real,
however imperfectly and inadequately it may represent the Real.
Religion too, as a means of contracting the Real, therefore becomes
validated. Instead of being the expression of subjective wishes,
religion is seen to be a transaction with the objective Reality. The
goal of religion, from this standpoint, is not a phantom of
imagination but Reality itself. The point being important, we should
bear in mind its implication which we have to consider later on. For
the moment, it should suffice to remark that in this context the idea
of objective Reality and belief in a being who exists independently
of us – a being who is both immanent and transcendent – is a dim
reminiscence of the original deen.*
We can now take up the question, “What is Religion?”
IV. What Is Religion?Two different views of God were considered in the preceding
section. According to the first view, God is the Ultimate Reality, and,
according to the second, God exists only as an idea in the human
mind. Corresponding to these two views of God, there emerge two
views of religion. According to one, religion deals with the
Absolute. Its business is to interpret the Absolute to us and to tell us
how we can get close to it. According to the second view, religion is a
superstition born of human wishes and fantasies. Its function is to
provide illusory gratification to human wishes which are denied
satisfaction in the physical world. From this point of view, religion
originates in the primitive mentality of man in his ignorance, his
*Deen to be explained later.
What is Religion 41