t lightly over particular issues and envisaged
rather distant goods, it was possible through them to give aspiration
and reflection greater scope than the meaner exigencies of life would
have permitted. Where custom ruled morals and a narrow empiricism
bounded the field of knowledge, it was partly a blessing that
imagination should be given an illegitimate sway. Without
misunderstanding, there might have been no understanding at all; without
confidence in supernatural support, the heart might never have uttered
its own oracles. So that in close association with superstition and
fable we find piety and spirituality entering the world.

[Sidenote: Piety and spirituality justified.]

Rational religion has these two phases: piety, or loyalty to necessary
conditions, and spirituality, or devotion to ideal ends. These simple
sanctities make the core of all the others. Piety drinks at the deep,
elemental sources of power and order: it studies nature, honours the
past, appropriates and continues its mission. Spirituality uses the
strength thus acquired, remodelling all it receives, and looking to the
future and the ideal. True religion is entirely human and political, as
was that of the ancient Hebrews, Romans, and Greeks. Supernatural
machinery is either symbolic of natural conditions and moral aims or
else is worthless.

[Sidenote: Mysticism a primordial state of feeling.]

There is one other phase or possible overtone of religion about which a
word might be added in conclusion. What is called mysticism is a certain
genial loosening of convention, whether rational or mythical; the mystic
smiles at science and plays with theology, undermining both by force of
his insight and inward assurance. He is all faith, all love, all vision,
but he is each of these things _in vacuo_, and in the absence of any
object.

Mysticism can exist, in varied degrees, at any stage of rational
development. Its presence is therefore no indication of the worth or
worthlessness of its possessor. This circumstance tends to obscure its
nature, which would otherwise be obvious enough. Seeing the greatest
saints and philosophers grow mystical in their highest flights, an
innocent observer might imagine that mysticism was an ultimate attitude,
which only his own incapacity kept him from understanding. But exactly
the opposite is the case. Mysticism is the most primitive of feelings
and only visits formed minds in moments of intellectual arrest and
dis