214 ESSAYS OF A BIOLOGIST 



not only act upon man as they act upon all organ- 

 isms, but are by him perceived so to act in a way 

 special and peculiar to man alone. 



But, being so perceived, they are inevitably taken 

 up into his mental life and made part of his mental 

 organization. They are 'often perceived emotionally 

 — to take the simplest examples, pestilence with hor- 

 ror, storm with fear, the growing of crops with grati- 

 tude. They are bound to enter into relation with 

 his emotions, with his ideals and hopes; bound also 

 to be in some degree generalized intellectually. When 

 thus emotionally and intellectually built up so as to 

 form a coherent and unitary idea, then only do they 

 deserve the name of a God. 



In parenthesis, let us make it quite clear that we 

 are speaking of God and Gods as they operate in hu- 

 man affairs, as they can be classified by the anthro- 

 pologist, analysed by the philosopher, experienced by 

 the mystic. These have always been constituted as 

 we have described — as a particular idea of the pow- 

 ers of nature, the cosmic forces taking shape through 

 the moulding and organizing capacity of human 

 thought, or, if you prefer it, as an interpretation and 

 unification of outer and inner reality. The Absolute 

 God, on the other hand, may be one — may, in fact, 

 operate as a unitary whole in the same sense as this 

 extraordinary product of the evolutionary process, 

 this anthropological God; but we can never know it 

 as such in the same sense as we know a person to be 

 one. 



