And one can hardly fail to see that this recognition of the relatedness of all necessarily carries with it a denial of the possible separation of the sacred and the secular. What has already been said concerning the need of a wide range of interests shows that the very constitution of the mind demands, for the sake of the higher interests themselves, that they do not receive exclusive attention. A broad and sane view of even the highest interest requires sympathetic understanding of many other interests. The reaction, too, in one's own case, which is certain to follow exclusive attention to any subject, is most disastrous to the interests which it was sought thus exclusively to conserve. Moreover, if one wishes to make some higher interest prevail with others, he must fulfil the conditions of influence, and these, again, we have seen, demand a broad range of interests. From every point of view, therefore, it is seen that no ideal interest can conquer by simple negation, and that no idea interest has anything to gain by mere exclusiveness. For the denial of legitimate worldly interests only narrows the possible sphere of both morals and religion; it makes the ethical and the religious life less, not more, signifi

B

cant. For it is the glory of religion not to be set apart from life, but to permeate it powerfully.

So, too, in the supposed interests of religion, we too often lay exclusive emphasis on certain specific channels of revelation, and virtually deny that God is creator of any but a small part of his world, and thereby shut ourselves up against all other channels by which he might speak to us. This is no mean and narrow world in which we live, no cribbed and confined existence to which we are called. God made us complex, and there is no single avenue of approach to our being that he does not know, and through which he would not speak.

The history of philosophy corroborates the witness of psychology here with telling effect. Religion's most dangerous enemies have been nourished in its own fold, in this very spirit of exclusiveness. The mystics of the seventeenth century, for example, with their denial of the trustworthiness of the reason, which was made for the sake of exalting faith, definitely prepared the way for a sensationalism which ended logically in the French Enlightenment, with its attempt to sweep not only historic Christianity, but

all religion and even morality from the earth.1

So, too, the weapon that in the years just past has been used most effectively against revealed religion-the doctrine of the relativity of human knowledge-was forged by Hamilton and Mansell in defense of Christianity. And to-day, no possible attacks upon Christianity from without are half so dangerous as the still too common assumption within of the actual and natural antagonism of faith and reason, of religion and science, of religion and morality, of the sacred and the secular. For the sake of exalting religion, we treat it as something utterly apart, only to pay the penalty of finding it, in the end, put utterly aside from the real life of man.

And the true significance, on the other hand, of some of the most hopeful religious movements of our time, is to be found in a genuine, even where half-unconscious, effort to bring religion everywhere into touch with life, and with all of life, to make man's relation to God a reality. This is the religious significance of such phenomena as the higher criticism, the greatly increasing reverence of men of science for religion, the growing

1Cf. Erdmann, History of Philosophy, Vol. II, pp. 99 ff.

insistence that all things are to be so used as to minister to the spirit,- that the whole world, according to Canon Fremantle's conception, is "the subject of redemption."

It follows that, just as exclusive attention to the higher interests has its inevitable reaction, so, too, the absorption in the lower defeats itself. A man's life can be no larger than the objects to which it is given. Things pass away, and even the desire for them fails. It is only he that does the will of God, St. John reminds us, and so gives himself to the really permanent, who abides forever. His life is poor indeed who has not gained a store of valuable and permanent interests. Without these, even the lower interests themselves must fail to give their full contribution. The full pulse of life cannot be felt without a wide range of interests, and a thoughtful relating of each to the rest of life.

We are learning to recognize, we may hope, the complexity of life.

It means much for rational living when the complexity of life has been fairly recognized with its logical consequences. For this implies that there can be no rule-ofthumb methods, no "patent process" char

acter, no magical inheritance of results. In particular, this assertion of the complexity of life involves recognition of the paradoxes of life and emphasis on conditions. Both have direct suggestions for living, and may be made to include the most important, practical inferences from psychology's first great insistence the complexity of life.