ORIENTATION OF MENTAL IMAGERY 299 



veracity can be made and answered in terms of life 

 and death, into realms where the more deliberate meth- 

 ods, peculiar to science are not available, or cannot be 

 applied. 



But perhaps the chief reason was the crystallization 

 of its imagery into simple formulas, and because of 

 the urgency and the democracy of its message. Re- 

 ligion could preserve its form and continuity through 

 the simplicity of its fundamental concepts, as well as 

 through the intelligibility and durability of its sym- 

 bols, such as amulets, material images, monuments and 

 temples, and its fixed ceremonials, dancing, incanta- 

 tions and rituals. Man's intangible mental concepts 

 were thereby preserved in wood, clay, bone, and stone, 

 in pigments, and in music, through the pleasurable ex- 

 ercise of his highest artistic faculties. Above all his 

 religious messages, and their accompanying regulations 

 of conduct, were essentially unselfish, democratic, and 

 universal, for the obligations of service and obedience 

 were laid on all alike. 



This was not, and could not be the case with sci- 

 ence. Science, so far as it was distinct from religion, 

 had no temples of its own save the great temple of 

 nature itself; no processionals, save the moving pa- 

 geantry of world-life; no simple message intelligible to 

 the great masses of humanity, and no immediate com- 

 pulsion to action in prospective profits, or in fear. It 

 had no means of preserving the form, or continuity, of 

 its imagery till a more exact verbal language had de- 

 veloped, more enduring verbal symbols were created, 

 and the physical instruments and materials for more 

 numerous tests and records invented. 



When its messages did come, they came as mists 



