3o8 ADAPTATION AND PROGRESS 



approval and disapproval, — says the religious sense, — to me who worships 

 him. . . . 



The divine person is, in the religious hfe, very much the same sort of a 

 postulate that the social fellow is in the ethical life, and that the world of 

 external and personal relationships is in the intellectual life. 



Third. The intelligence is baffled both by the limitations of its own growth 

 and by the very " projective " and " prospective " nature of the movement upon 

 which the religious sense rests. . . . 



Fourth. The essential mysticism of the religious consciousness lives to the 

 last.^ 



Our author concludes his discussion as follows: " The place of 

 religion in social development is, in view of its dependence upon 

 the growth of self at all its stages, that of emotion of the social 

 sort. It becomes most important in its alHance with the ethical 

 hfe in the higher reaches of human development.'' ^ 



Thus out of the activities, the conflicts and the relationships of 

 life evolves in the child and in the race, by the dialectic of personal 

 growth, reference for ideal personality. 



Professor Baldwin's analysis of the dialectic of personal growth 

 issuing in reverence for personaUty is most suggestive and helpful, 

 but there are other processes of idealization issuing in so-called 

 religion which his analysis does not cover. He lays stress on the 

 esprit de corps ^ to be found in certain groups and on the social 

 instincts that give rise to the social self but he has not analyzed 

 the expansion of self-consciousness to include a group so satis- 

 factorily as has McDougall for example. The truth seems to be 

 that whereas empirical self -consciousness is clarified and intensi- 

 fied by conflict with nature and with other individuals, social 

 self-consciousness, i. e., self -feeling that includes a group, de- 

 velops through co-operation with other selves imited by common 

 interests and by conflicts with other groups. 



In proportion as esprit de corps is developed and enthusiastic 

 effort put forth for the success of the group; in proportion as the 

 members have faith in the organization or institution and in the 

 ideal for which it exists; in proportion as they love and serve it, 

 sometimes being willing even to die for it, a phenomenon results 

 that has some warrant to be called " social religion." This was 



* Social and Ethical Interpretations, p. 355 (italics in text). 

 2 Ihid., p. 357. ^ Ibid., pp. 232, 407 f. 



