IDEALIZATION AND RELIGION 309 



Comte's attitude toward humanity idealized and personified as 

 the " Great Being." Such is the attitude of many toward 

 socialism. There is a third phenomenon that is frequently 

 called religion, namely a worshipful attitude toward the cosmos. 

 A sense of mystery and power above and beyond the highest 

 reach of intellect or of experience evokes the negative self-feeling 

 with a sense of dependence, submission, and obedience. With 

 feeling dominant the result is mysticism; with the intellect 

 dominant we are apt to have some form of religious monism, i. e., 

 an attitude of belief and trust in the Eternal Source of Power. 

 Now as the process of the evolving self-consciousness on the one 

 hand and of the expanding self-consciousness or self-feeling on the 

 other are not distinct processes but essentially one with two 

 aspects, and as the processes of idealization growing out of them 

 are valid for lif e activity, so the religious culmination of each may 

 be considered as true. We need a reverence for personality, 

 individual and transcendental, as we have in theism; we need 

 also reverence for personality as incarnate in our fellow-men and 

 as approached in the unity and power of intelligent social en- 

 deavor. 



In the chapter on biological evolution we noted the value of 

 the doctrine of adaptation in explaining the origin of conscious- 

 ness and the development of the instincts (including the social) 

 and of the higher intellectual qualities of man. In our discussion 

 of the transition from passive to active adaptation we considered 

 this same question further with the addition of new material, 

 especially the importance of " prolongation of infancy " in 

 enabling the individual to become adjusted to his spiritual 

 environment. We have seen how Baldwin has endeavored to 

 explain the development of idealization and religion by the " di- 

 alectic of personal growth," and have discussed the function of 

 these two factors through the writings of several authors, especially 

 Comte and Ross. The sum of the whole matter seems to be that 

 beginning historically in the personification of the forces of nature 

 as in animism, the process of idealization has culminated now in 

 the personification and worship of the social ideal as with Comte, 

 now in the personification and worship of the cosmic process itself 



