RATIONALISM AND THE IDEA OF GOD 209 



ing them to his fellows. Through sense-organs and 

 brain, an organism reflects in its mind some of the 

 events of the world outside, creates some sort of a 

 microcosm over against the macroscosm. But the 

 animal with no more than associative memory can 

 at best create a haphazard microcosm, a mere cinema 

 record, and incomplete at that, of the most elemen- 

 tary organization; while all one can say of its power 

 of profiting by experience is that a certain primitive 

 plot is thus provided for the series of adventures 

 which make up the scenario. 



With an organism like man, however, in which to 

 the faculty of associative memory there has been 

 superadded the power of framing concepts and of 

 accumulating experience by tradition, the picture is 

 altogether changed. The microcosm becomes more 

 highly organized; from rough-and-tumble cinema it 

 develops into an elaborate drama, whose plot is 

 knotted up in the same general way as that of the 

 great macrocosmic drama unrolling itself outside. 

 Microcosm images macrocosm more nearly, both in 

 its form and in its scope. As result of this, life is 

 for the first time enabled in man's person to frame 

 some general ideas of the outer world. Not only is 

 it enabled, it cannot help but do so. The outer world 

 is there; it impinges through man's sense-organs on 

 his mind, and his mind is so constructed that, if it 

 thinks at all, it must think in general terms. 



For the first time, life becomes aware of something 

 more than a set of events; it becomes aware of a 



