predisposition to believe in the existence of an invisible, supernatural and miraculous world, a predisposition which it has been possible to consider sometimes as a reminiscence of an anterior state, sometimes as an intimation of a future destiny” (Traite de l’enchainement des idees fondamentales dans les sciences et dans l’histoire, Sec. 396).  And it is this problem of human destiny, of eternal life, or of the human finality of the Universe or of God, that we have now reached.  All the highways of religion lead up to this, for it is the very essence of all religion.

Beginning with the savage’s personalization of the whole Universe in his fetich, religion has its roots in the vital necessity of giving human finality to the Universe, to God, and this necessity obliges it, therefore, to attribute to the Universe, to God, consciousness of self and of purpose.  And it may be said that religion is simply union with God, each one interpreting God according to his own sense of Him.  God gives transcendent meaning and finality to life; but He gives it relatively to each one of us who believe in Him.  And thus God is for man as much as man is for God, for God in becoming man, in becoming human, has given Himself to man because of His love of him.

And this religious longing for union with God is a longing for a union that cannot be consummated in science or in art, but only in life.  “He who possesses science and art, has religion; he who possesses neither science nor art, let him get religion,” said Goethe in one of his frequent accesses of paganism.  And yet in spite of what he said, he himself, Goethe...?

And to wish that we may be united with God is not to wish that we may be lost and submerged in Him, for this loss and submersion of self ends at last in the complete dissolution of self in the dreamless sleep of Nirvana; it is to wish to possess Him rather than to be possessed by Him.  When his disciples, amazed at his saying that it was impossible for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven, asked Jesus who then could be saved, the Master replied that with men it was impossible but not with God; and then said Peter, “Behold, we have forsaken all and followed thee; what shall we have therefore?” And the reply of Jesus was, not that they should be absorbed in the Father, but that they should sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel (Matt. xix. 23-26).

It was a Spaniard, and very emphatically a Spaniard, Miguel de Molinos, who said in his Guia Espiritual[49] that “he who would attain to the mystical science must abandon and be detached from five things:  first, from creatures; second, from temporal things; third, from the very gifts of the Holy Spirit; fourth, from himself; and fifth, he must be detached even from God.”  And he adds that “this last is the completest of all, because that soul only that knows how to be so detached is that which attains to being lost in God, and only the soul that attains