682 Causes and Course of Organic Evolution 



and changing organic bodies. For the words "infinite, eternal, 

 and unchangeable" can only convey meaning to us when they 

 are measured alongside sense impressions that have exact 

 significance to us, as finite, fleeting, and changing. 



But often synonyms for "religion" are given as "devotion, 

 faith, godliness, holiness, morality, piety, theology, worship." 

 In all of the above then, the fundamental idea involved is 

 that of a reaching out toward, and desire after, a being or 

 power who is viewed as higher than man, as of infinite exten- 

 sion, and who deserves man's regard. If we add to the above 

 the further conception that this being has a certain utilitarian 

 connection with, a sympathy for, and a capacity to, at some 

 time, reward each human being, if his or her deeds are accept- 

 able, this is merely to state what all know to be true of most 

 religious faiths, since about 7000 B. C. 



In order to at once indicate the goal toward which our in- 

 quiry will lead us, we would now define religion as ''the per- 

 ception and reverent appreciation, to greater or less degree by 

 each human individual, of a universal Power, Energy, or Spirit 

 which energizes and evolves all conditions, by which such human 

 individual is surrounded or is influenced.'' 



Contrasting our definition with others above given, the 

 writer would consider that the conception of Max MUller, 

 and even more that of Pfleiderer, approaches most nearly 

 to the one required. But "the infinite" is in every sense too 

 vague and intangible a state to lead man upward from his 

 most primitive condition to the platform of thought and 

 aspiration that he now occupies. Even when Muller attempts 

 to show that man constantly passes from the finite to the in- 

 finite, he fails to define or to determine what the "finite" or 

 tlie "infinite" is that impresses man. 



But unquestionably it is energy, spiritus, the wind, the 

 "breath of life" that man has ever sought to unravel the mean- 

 ing of. It was the quest of the rudest savage, as he gazed 

 on his recently deceased child, or favorite dog of the chase, 

 and wondered whither the energy, the breath, the spiritus 

 that had lately animated it had gone. It is the unceasing 



