rth--since
otherwise science would be useless and religion demoralising--its power
and fascination lie in its acquiring a more and more profound affinity
to the human mind, so long as it can do so without surrendering its
relevance to practice. Thus natural science is at its best when it is
most thoroughly mathematical, since what can be expressed mathematically
can speak a human language. In such science only the ultimate material
elements remain surds; all their further movement and complication can
be represented in that kind of thought which is most intimately
satisfactory and perspicuous. And in like manner, religion is at its
best when it is most anthropomorphic; indeed, the two most spiritual
religions, Buddhism and Christianity, have actually raised a man,
overflowing with utterly human tenderness and pathos, to the place
usually occupied only by cosmic and thundering deities. The human heart
is lifted above misfortune and encouraged to pursue unswervingly its
inmost ideal when no compromise is any longer attempted with what is not
moral or human, and Prometheus is honestly proclaimed to be holier than
Zeus. At that moment religion ceases to be superstitious and becomes a
rational discipline, an effort to perfect the spirit rather than to
intimidate it.

[Sidenote: Summary of this book.]

We have seen that society has three stages--the natural, the free, and
the ideal. In the natural stage its function is to produce the
individual and equip him with the prerequisites of moral freedom. When
this end is attained society can rise to friendship, to unanimity and
disinterested sympathy, where the ground of association is some ideal
interest, while this association constitutes at the same time a personal
and emotional bond. Ideal society, on the contrary, transcends
accidental conjunctions altogether. Here the ideal interests themselves
take possession of the mind; its companions are the symbols it breeds
and possesses for excellence, beauty, and truth. Religion, art, and
science are the chief spheres in which ideal companionship is found. It
remains for us to traverse these provinces in turn and see to what
extent the Life of Reason may flourish there.

*** End of Volume Two ***

REASON IN RELIGION

Volume Three of "The Life of Reason"

GEORGE SANTAYANA

he gar noy enhergeia zohe

This Dover edition, first published in 1982, is an unabridged
republication of volume three of _The Life of R