RATIONALISM AND IDEA OF GOD 209 



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 elementary 

 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 

 system of powers operating in events. These powers 

 (to use a general, and what is intended to be a non- 

 committal, term) are in constant action upon man's 



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