The Sphere of Religion 289 



not feelings. But, when we speak of an object which makes a 

 unique impression, we have common ground in our feelings about 

 it for mutual understanding. Now the sense of the holy at every 

 stage is peculiarly easy to distinguish in this way, because it is 

 stirred only by what is valued as sacred. From this sacred or 

 absolute valuation it has its special quality as feeling, a certain 

 absolute quality of awe or reverence, which at once distinguishes 

 even its lowest forms from the merely uncanny or magical. The 

 feelings both of the uncanny and of the magical are attached to 

 our fears and wishes, and are to be subjected, as best we can, to our 

 uses ; whereas the holy is a feeling neither to be run away from 

 nor to be put in subjection. Thus, if the feeling is attached to a 

 sacred value, then it is the sense of the holy ; but if to one of merely 

 comparative value as it satisfies our desires or suits our convenience 

 or our profit, the feeling with which we respond to it cannot be so 

 described. 



This valuation, we shall see later, is not necessarily a moral 

 valuation, but may be of a curiously material quality, so that there 

 is a material and moral sacred, which reflects the difference be- 

 tween the awesome holy and the ethical : and we shall also see 

 that, just as the holy, in the sense of exalted moral purity, is 

 continuous with the holy as the sense of awe akin to dread, so is 

 the ethical sacred continuous with the material. 



7. The Judgement of the Sacred 



The sense of the holy, we have seen, has its own peculiar 

 quality as feeling, being a direct response to a special kind of environ- 

 ment. But we have further seen that it goes inseparably with the 

 valuation of this environment as sacred, and that the feeling can 

 only be described through the values to which it is attached, the 

 unique character of the feeling being made plain only by the 

 absoluteness of the sacred with which it is bound up. The sacred, 

 as used here, means this valuation as of absolute worth, and not 

 anything less, being that which may not be brought down and 

 compared with values of pleasure or ease or any visible good. 



The interaction between this sense of the holy and this valua- 

 tion as sacred is not all in one direction. On the one hand, the 

 valuation may immediately follow the feeling, or, on the other, 

 the feeling may immediately follow the valuation, though it is not, 

 in either case, mere sequence. We value things because they 



