RATIONALISM AND IDEA OF GOD 221 



and subconscious, unbounded possibilities for the 

 invasion of the ordinary and humdrum personality 

 of every day by ideas apparently infinite, emotions 

 the most disinterested and overwhelming. 



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 comparative 

 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 distinc- 

 tion 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 process. Still later, the 

 divinity was purged of the grossness of human form 

 and members, and, gradually, of characteristically 

 human passions ; but God remained personal, although 

 the personality was now organized chiefly of ideals. 



