IDEALIZATION AND RELIGION 3 II 



To conclude this present discussion: Man must adapt himself 

 to his physical environment and adapt it to his needs. Out of 

 this problem and process arises the necessity of adapting himself 

 to his social environment and in the case of the cultured man of 

 influencing others for the purpose of satisfying his manifold 

 personal interests (or needs). But among these needs are some 

 that are social, intellectual, aesthetic, moral and religious, and the 

 satisfaction of these demands co-operation with his fellow-men 

 rather than exploitation. Thus the self develops both intensively 

 and extensively, each experience of mal-adaptation making possible 

 a higher form of adaptation culminating, as we have seen, in the 

 formation of the personal ideal, the group quasi-personal ideal, and 

 the cosmic or divine ideal. 



The process of adjusting oneself progressively to the ever- 

 enlarging personal and group ideal is a phase of spiritual adapta- 

 tion which might be called moral adaptation, and if the personal 

 and group ideal is given religious sanction, i. e., if the intellectual 

 form is supported by beUef in and adoration of an objective cor- 

 relate of the ideal, and the individual endeavors to conform his life 

 to that ideal we have religious adaptation. 



Is there another phase of the religious Hfe and thought which 

 corresponds to active material and active social adaptation in the 

 sense of a manipulation of the ontological correlate of the per- 

 sonal religious ideal in the interest of self-satisfaction ? In other 

 words, instead of conceiving of this object of religious thought 

 and worship as a self-conscious intelligence to whose will the 

 individual and society must conform, may it be conceived as the 

 cosmic order in process of self-evolution, of which man is a part 

 and which he, in turn, helps to create ? The religious ideal as a 



cf. article by him in The Medical Times, Oct. 1914. According to this theory, self- 

 control is entirely spontaneous and primarily a matter of germinal qualities that 

 develop, under normal conditions, in all but the feeble-minded. This automatic 

 self-control, if there be such, is not the kind the author has in mind, but the control 

 that comes through training and is at least in part the result of conscious effort. In 

 both cases, however, there is struggle, for struggle, as we have seen, is a determining 

 factor in the development of germinal capacity including these inhibitors; effective 

 training has a considerable element of coercion, and conscious effort is anything but 

 " spontaneous." We seem justified in saying, then, that power of active adaptation 

 is dependent on struggle or mal-adaptation in some form and to some degree. 



