ase, the 'disenchantment of the world.' The extent and direction of 'rationalization' is thus measured negatively in terms of the degree to which magical elements of thought are displaced, or positively by the extent to which ideas gain in systematic coherence and naturalistic consistency (Gerth and Mills 51).
Weber's examination of the linkages in history between religion and secular rational processes finds expression in the affinity he sees between Protestant Christianity and the capitalist ethic. But he emphasizes that "one may . . . rationalize life from fundamentally different basic points of view and in very different directions. Rationalism is an historical concept which covers a whole world of different things (Weber 77-78). If it is from the standpoint of historical development of civilizations religious modalities of rationalization and social organization make sense, and it is from the standpoint of developmental psychology--or, more broadly, of the distinctively human self-consciousness of human experience--that the mythical foundations of religious rationalization make sense. As Campbell observes, "in all times and under every circumstanc, the myths of man have flourished; and they have been the living inspiration of whatever else may have appeared out of the activities of the human body and mind" (Campbell 3). Religion, he adds, is just one aspect of human experience that "boil[s] up from the basic, magic ring of myth" (3).
Whatever else is true of the connections between and among religion, myth, and rationalization, it is undoubtedly true that they supply explanations and a rationale, so to speak, for major transitions in human experience. Developmental psychology, as the term implies, explicates attributes of difference between one stage of development and another. Campbell makes much of the contribution of Freudian and Jungian psychoanalysis in decoding the mythical symbols and therefore meanings of dreams, and ...