RATIONALISM AND THE IDEA OF GOD 221 



Still Other light has of late years been thrown by 

 psychology upon the inner component of the idea of 

 God. Recent work has shown, for instance, that the 

 mind, unless deliberately corrected and trained, tends 

 to think in terms of symbols instead of along the 

 more arduous paths of intellectual reasoning, tends 

 to explain the unknown in terms of the known, tends 

 accordingly to project the familiar ideas of its own 

 personality as symbols for the explanation of the 

 most varied phenomena. The science of compara- 

 tive religion has shown us an early stage of religious 

 belief in which but one idea held sway — the idea of 

 a magical influence residing in all things potent for 

 good or ill: the projection was so complete that no 

 distinction whatever was made between the personal 

 and the impersonal. Later, the idea of particular 

 divine beings or Gods arose; and in early stages man 

 still continued to project not only his own passions, 

 but even his own form, into these divinities. The 

 statement of Genesis that God made man in his own 

 image is in reality an admission of the converse proc- 

 ess. Still later, the divinity was purged of the gross- 

 ness of human form and members, and, gradually, 

 of characteristically human passions; but God re- 

 mained personal, although the personality was now 

 organized chiefly of ideals. 



There is, however, no reason whatever to admit 

 that personality is a genuine characteristic of any 

 knowable God; but every reason to suspect that it 

 is, as a matter of hard fact, merely another product 



