JOHN
McTAGGART ELLIS McTAGGART
Some Dogmas of
Religion
London: Edward Arnold,
1906 [N.Y.: Kraus Reprint Co., 1969), p. 3.
Religion is clearly a state of mind. It is also clear that it
is not exclusively the acceptance of certain propositions as true. It seems to
me that it may best be described as an emotion resting on a conviction of a
harmony between ourselves and the universe at large. [4] Any definition less
wide than this would be too narrow.
The word religion is habitually used of the traditional national
systems, such as those of the Hindoos, Greeks, and Romans; it is used of the
revealed systems of religion1; and it is used of the attitude of
various people who do not accept any of them. Plato, Spinoza, and Hegel would all, I suppose, be called
religious men.
[1 For the sake of brevity, I shall
use the term Ôrevealed religionsÕ for all those systems which are held, by
those who believe in them, to have been revealed.]