ensify
moral feeling, it often, as in mystics of all creeds and ages, deadens
the consciousness of real ties by feigning ties which are purely
imaginary. This self-deception is the more frequent because there float
before men who live in the spirit ideals which they look to with the
respect naturally rendered to whatever is true, beautiful, or good; and
the symbolic rendering of these ideals, which is the rational function
of religion, may be confused with its superstitious or utilitarian
part--with exploiting occult forces to aid us in the work of life.

Occult forces may indeed exist, and they may even be so disposed that
the ideal is served by their agency; but the most notable embodiment of
a principle is not itself a principle, being only an instance, and the
most exact fulfilment of a law is not a law, being simply an event. To
discover a law may meantime be the most interesting of events, and the
image or formula that expresses a principle may be the most welcome of
intellectual presences. These symbols, weighted with their wide
significance, may hold the mind and attract its energies into their
vortex; and human genius is certainly not at its worst when employed in
framing a good myth or a good argument. The lover of representation, be
he thinker or dramatist, moves by preference in an ideal society. His
communion with the world is half a soliloquy, for the personages in his
dialogue are private symbols, and being symbols they stand for what is
not themselves; the language he imputes to them is his own, though it
is their ways that prompt him to impute that language to them. Plastic
images of his own making and shifting are his sole means of envisaging
eternal principles and ultimate substances, things ideal and potential,
which can never become phenomenal in their own persons.

[Sidenote: Contrast between natural and intellectual bonds.]

It is an inspiring thought, and a true one, that in proportion as a
man's interests become humane and his efforts rational, he appropriates
and expands a common life, which reappears in all individuals who reach
the same impersonal level of ideas--a level which his own influence may
help them to maintain. Patriotism envisages this ideal life in so far as
it is locally coloured and grounded in certain racial aptitudes and
traditions; but the community recognised in patriotism is imbedded in a
larger one embracing all living creatures. While in some respects we
find sympathy m