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 life 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 
