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CHAPTER II
POPULAR BELIEF AND UNBELIEF
PERIODICALLY in the history of our race a marked
antagonism appears between popular belief and individual insight.
Wide differences of personal interpretation within the context
of the general accepted faith are, of course, always to be found;
but when the belief of the individual is opposed to popular
belief the results of the cleavage can be momentous: sometimes
fatal for the individual; sometimes cataclysmic for the race.
When popular belief finds expression in personal experience
it is vitalised, enriched and enlarged. Faith then means
something more than observance of custom and formal acts of
worship; but cult and custom do not die. They acquire a new
significance.
Unbelief appears not only as opposition to popular belief but
as a contradiction of the purely individual faith.
In primitive communities sociability implies, as Tor Andrae
points out, participation in the faith and cultus of the people.
Where religion is essentially a social attitude it is quite proper to
speak of a primitive churchmanship. A corporate faith of this
kind does not require from the individual an act of decision, in
any deep sense; nor does a cult, which usually degenerates into
a folk custom.
The Emancipation of the Personality
Tor Andrae describes a remarkable epoch in the history of
Greece: the period from the seventh to the fourth century B.c.
when the emancipation of the personality occurred. At this time
religion appeared as an essentially individual concern. The
outstanding feature of the period is that then, for the first time, the
individual dared to confront established dogmas and traditional
views with his own thoughts and opinions. This new freedom
rose to expression in science and literature, especially in lyric
poetry, as well as in religion. There, individualism gave rise to a
new type of piety, from which at length a new religion developed
alongside the older one. It was not primarily concerned with
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