for certain parts of nature as against others, and for certain natural processes, such as love, as against other natural processes, such as selfishness. The standpoint of the natural and physical sciences, taken by itself alone, implies, as an inclusive finality, the non-individual, the impersonal, the regardless. But precisely at the bloom period of these sciences the social movement, with its vast sensitiveness for humanity and for the individual, also arose with insistency and with no little power. What, now, is the relation between these parallel movements? The natural and physical sciences have not furnished fresh motives for loving, but they have opened fresh opportunity for it in the increase of human intercourse, and men have simply seized the opportunity. The fact seems to be that we love just because we can!

The immediacy of our social consciousness, that is to say, is not a static aspect of it, but dynamic. It is pressure toward further acquaintance, toward increasing recognition of myself in others and of others in myself. This dynamic principle of human nature appears in religion as follows: Its spirits and gods have been real to men because of the inner pressure to love and hate, but chiefly, as with human society, because of the inner pressure to idealize or love. These superior beings are differentiations of the immediate social consciousness by the ordinary method. Similarly, the decline of faith in any of them has followed the same law. As science never discovers an individual, so it never of itself dispels a social illusion. We outgrow the crude gods of our ancestors because we require greater scope for our loves and hates, particularly our loves. The prophets are

zealous to make the character of God appear admirable. Xenophanes (about 500 B.C.) says:

Mortals fancy gods are born, and wear clothes, and have voice and form like themselves. Yet if oxen and lions had hands, and could paint with their hands, and fashion images as men do, they would make the pictures and images of their gods in their own likeness; horses would make them like horses, oxen like oxen. Ethiopians make their gods black and snub-nosed; Thracians give theirs blue eyes and red hair. Homer and Hesiod have ascribed to the gods all deeds that are a shame and a disgrace among men: thieving, adultery, fraud.

In opposition to all this, Xenophanes declares:

There is one god, supreme among gods and men; resembling mortals neither in form nor in mind. The whole of him sees, the whole of him thinks, the whole of him hears. Without toil he rules all things by the power of his mind. And he stays always in the same place, nor moves at all, for it is not seemly that he wander about, now here, now there.1

Similarly, but with more fire, a Hebrew prophet describes in most humorous fashion the attitudes and the inconsistencies of idol-worshipers:

The smith maketh an axe, and worketh in the coals, and fashioneth it with hammers, and worketh it with his strong arm: yea, he is hungry, and his strength faileth; he drinketh no water, and is faint. The carpenter stretcheth out a line; he marketh it out with a pencil; he shapeth it with planes and he marketh it out with the compasses, and shapeth it after the figure of a man, according to the beauty of a man, to dwell in a house. He heweth him down cedars, and taketh the holm-tree and the oak, and strengtheneth for himself one among the trees of the forest; he planteth a fir-tree, and the rain doth nourish it. Then shall it be for a man to burn; and he taketh thereof, and warmeth

Bakewell's translation in his Source Book in Ancient Philosophy (New York, 1907), pp. 8 f.

himself; yea, he kindleth it, and baketh bread; yea, he maketh a god, and worshippeth it; he maketh it a graven image, and falleth down thereto. He burneth part thereof in the fire; with part thereof he eateth flesh; he roasteth roast, and is satisfied; yea, he warmeth himself, and saith, Aha, I am warm, I have seen the fire: and the residue thereof he maketh a god, even his graven image; he falleth down unto it and worshippeth, and prayeth unto it, and saith, Deliver me; for thou art my god. They know not, neither do they consider: for he hath shut their eyes, that they cannot see; and their hearts that they cannot understand. And none calleth to mind, neither is there knowledge nor understanding to say, I have burned part of it in the fire; yea, also I have baked bread upon the coals thereof; Í have roasted flesh and eaten it; and shall I make the residue thereof an abomination? shall I fall down to the stock of a tree? He feedeth on ashes; a deceived heart hath turned him aside; and he cannot deliver his soul, nor say, Is there not a lie in my right hand ?1

It is the same immediate social dynamic that constitutes the basis of the Christian's experience of the God of love. Precisely as acquaintance between lovers is idealization—yes, as all acquaintance is constituted by the outward pressure of the social dynamic that constitutes us individuals—so a great love is the only conceivable mode of discovering the Christian God, or of being discovered by him. The Christian does not first find God, and afterward love him. Rather, repeated exercise in loving one another and in overcoming hate and indifference (exercise that starts on the instinctive plane) at last fixes attention upon the love motif itself, and we take an approving attitude toward it, an attitude exactly parallel with that which we take toward one another. An ancient Christian writer says: "He that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen cannot love God whom

Isa. 44:12-20.

he hath not seen," and "No man hath beheld God at any time: if we love one another, God abideth in us"; and yet again, "Let us love one another: for love is of God; and everyone that loveth is begotten of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love." That is, the self-manifestation of God to us is precisely in this love that we experience toward one another, so that our communion with him lies in the attitude that we take toward the social motive itself.

To say that we fall in love with loving should not seem too paradoxical, especially in a world in which artists fall in love with beauty and thinkers fall in love with consistency. In any case, it is a fact. Jesus, gathering into one the intimate affection of Jewish family life, the prophetic appreciation of social righteousness, and sympathy for the needy life around him, found in this experience himself and the Father, and by his own steady living in this "love way" he helped his followers also to the unreserved love that is their experience of God.

To take as a personal presence this outgoing, social, or common will that is within us involves no process that is not already practiced in ordinary social intercourse. My neighbor is present to me, not independent

'H. A. Overstreet ("God as the Common Will," Hibbert Journal, XIII, 155-74) thinks that religion is being transformed into devotion to the common will. He regards this will on grounds that are not specified as impersonal. Yet he makes it an object of affectionate devotion. He is on doubtful ground when he supposes that men do as a matter of fact devote themselves thus to such abstractions as "laws," "truth," or "the spirit of" something. Certainly the parallel that he gives the transfer of political devotion from kings to democracy— hardly illustrates his point since devotion to democracy is above all things a deeper recognition of personality as defining the sphere and ground of devotion.

of, but by virtue of, the love that I bear to him. My certainty of him is inseparable from my will-to-have-andto-be-a-neighbor. This, of course, is not inference or proof in the case of either my neighbor or God, but the positing of a premise. Formal logic is at liberty to treat it as pure assumption. Nor is this anything strange or exceptional. "States of consciousness themselves," says James, "are not verifiable facts." Because these matters are assumptions, they will never be verified, but only repeated. The Christian will never see God any more than he will see the neighbor. The beatific vision, if it should ever be realized, would be naught else than a society wholly controlled by love. God would still be, just as he is now, the common will in which each individual will realizes itself.

But the conditions for repeating the assumption of both neighbor and God may grow more or less favorable. In general, it is by indulging social impulses belonging to our original nature that acquaintance with others grows firm. Conversely, by suppressing these impulses, or by allowing them to atrophy through lack of exercise, we first stratify society, assuming that the many are not as we are, and then, having narrowed the range of our affection to our "set," we proceed to curb affection itself. It is perfectly possible for us thus to depersonalize our world. We can go on with such depersonalization until our fellows seem to be little more than things. On the other hand, by exercising social impulses, by forming, criticizing, and re-forming social purposes, by sharing in the joys and the woes of others, and by self-sacrifice for the neighbor, we can focalize and intensify our 1 Psychology (Briefer Course), p. 467.