RELIGION AND SCIENCE 287 



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 

 harmonizing the parts of the soul, of wiping out the 

 sense of sin, of sublimating instinct, of rendering the 

 subconscious reservoirs of energy and being available 

 for the personal self, and of organizing the ideas of 

 external reality into a single organized mental whole 

 — the idea of God — capable of reacting with the 

 personal self by interpenetration. 



Although he was moving to quite other conclusions, 

 it is worth recalling James' ideas. For instance, ' The 

 line of least resistance ... is to accept the notion 

 . . . that there is a God, but that he is finite. . . 

 These, I need hardly tell you, are the terms in which 

 common men have usually carried on their active 

 commerce with God ; and the Monistic ' [sc. Absol- 

 utist] ' perfections that make the notion of him so 

 paradoxical practically and morally are the colder 

 addition of remote professorial minds operating in 

 distans upon conceptual substitutes for him alone.' 

 (James, '09, p. 311.) 



I may perhaps be rebuked for trying to analyse the 

 unanalysable, for neglecting the supreme and sufficing 

 fact of experience of God in favour of the unprofitable 

 and impossible task of catching the infinite in an 

 intellectual net. There are two answers to this. 

 One is that unanalysed experience is selfish because 

 less communicable : with that we deal later. The 



