214 ESSAYS OF A BIOLOGIST 



not only act upon man as they act upon all organisms, 

 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 v^ith 

 horror, storm v^ith fear, the grow^ing of crops with 

 gratitude. 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 human 

 affairs, as they can be classified by the anthropologist, 

 analysed by the philosopher, experienced by the mystic. 

 These have always been constituted as we have 

 described — as a particular idea of the powers of nature, 

 the cosmic forces taking shape through the moulding 

 and organizing capacity of human thought, or, if you 

 prefer it, as an interpenetration 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. 



