IDEALIZATION AND RELIGION 311 
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 zntensively 
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 belief 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 life 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. 
