e become
possessed by it than they can fall in love with a given woman by mere
word of command. Religious feeling is thus an absolute addition to the
Subject's range of life. It gives him a new sphere of power. When the
outward battle is lost, and the outer world disowns him, it redeems and
vivifies an interior world which otherwise would be an empty waste.

If religion is to mean anything definite for us, it seems to me that we
ought to take it as meaning this added dimension of emotion, this
enthusiastic temper of espousal, in regions where morality strictly so
called can at best but bow its head and acquiesce. It ought to mean
nothing short of this new reach of freedom for us, with the struggle
over, the keynote of the universe sounding in our ears, and everlasting
possession spread before our eyes.[18]

[18] Once more, there are plenty of men, constitutionally sombre men,
in whose religious life this rapturousness is lacking. They are
religious in the wider sense, yet in this acutest of all senses they
are not so, and it is religion in the acutest sense that I wish,
without disputing about words, to study first, so as to get at its
typical differentia.

This sort of happiness in the absolute and everlasting is what we find
nowhere but in religion. It is parted off from all mere animal
happiness, all mere enjoyment of the present, by that element of
solemnity of which I have already made so much account. Solemnity is a
hard thing to define abstractly, but certain of its marks are patent
enough. A solemn state of mind is never crude or simple--it seems to
contain a certain measure of its own opposite in solution. A solemn joy
preserves a sort of bitter in its sweetness; a solemn sorrow is one to
which we intimately consent. But there are writers who, realizing that
happiness of a supreme sort is the prerogative of religion, forget this
complication, and call all happiness, as such, religious. Mr. Havelock
Ellis, for example, identifies religion with the entire field of the
soul's liberation from oppressive moods.

"The simplest functions of physiological life," he writes may be its
ministers. Every one who is at all acquainted with the Persian mystics
knows how wine may be regarded as an instrument of religion. Indeed,
in all countries and in all ages some form of physical
enlargement--singing, dancing, drinking, sexual excitement--has been
intimately associated with worship. Even the momentary expa