RELIGION AND SCIENCE 285 



One side-issue. Such experience, if not absolute 

 in the philosophical sense, is absolute for us. If I 

 may be Irish, its absoluteness is relative to our organ- 

 ization and to reality as we perceive it. We cannot 

 perceive anything fuller, more absolute — until per- 

 haps one day, with the growth of our minds, we come 

 to have some still richer and more complete experi- 

 ence. As William James was so fond of reminding 

 the world, we have no right to assume that our minds 

 are, much less that they must be, the highest type of 

 mind realized in the universe — no more right than 

 our domestic animals have, although our minds to 

 them could only be measured by their own standards. 



What is more, owing to our power of framing 

 general concepts and ideals, and of accumulating past 

 and future in our present, we can focus a vast deal 

 to one point. In such experiences, whether they 

 come through religion, or love, or art, we may say 

 that although we are but a system of relations, we 

 touch the Absolute — although we are mortal, we 

 mount to the Eternal for a moment. Only, to guard 

 against error, we must remember that it is obviously 

 not in reality the Absolute or the Eternal that we at- 

 tain to, but only the nearest approximation to them 

 of which we are capable. 



We can therefore sum up this^ second part of our 

 investigation by saying that religion, to be more 

 than mere ritual, must involve the possibility of har- 

 monizing the parts of the soul, of wiping out the 

 sense of sin, of sublimating instinct, of rendering the 



