and in that sense of the exceedingness
of the possible over the real.

When, however, a positive intellectual content is associated with a
faith-state, it gets invincibly stamped in upon belief,[346] and this
explains the passionate loyalty of religious persons everywhere to the
minutest details of their so widely differing creeds. Taking creeds
and faith-state together, as forming "religions," and treating these as
purely subjective phenomena, without regard to the question of their
"truth," we are obliged, on account of their extraordinary influence
upon action and endurance, to class them amongst the most important
biological functions of mankind. Their stimulant and anaesthetic
effect is so great that Professor Leuba, in a recent article,[347] goes
so far as to say that so long as men can USE their God, they care very
little who he is, or even whether he is at all. "The truth of the
matter can be put," says Leuba, "in this way: GOD IS NOT KNOWN, HE IS
NOT UNDERSTOOD; HE IS USED--sometimes as meat-purveyor, sometimes as
moral support, sometimes as friend, sometimes as an object of love. If
he proves himself useful, the religious consciousness asks for no more
than that. Does God really exist? How does he exist? What is he?
are so many irrelevant questions. Not God, but life, more life, a
larger, richer, more satisfying life, is, in the last analysis, the end
of religion. The love of life, at any and every level of development,
is the religious impulse."[348]

[346] Compare Leuba: Loc. cit., pp. 346-349.

[347] The Contents of Religious Consciousness, in The Monist, xi. 536,
July 1901.

[348] Loc. cit., pp. 571, 572, abridged. See, also, this writer's
extraordinarily true criticism of the notion that religion primarily
seeks to solve the intellectual mystery of the world. Compare what W.
Bender says (in his Wesen der Religion, Bonn, 1888, pp. 85, 38): "Not
the question about God, and not the inquiry into the origin and purpose
of the world is religion, but the question about Man. All religious
views of life are anthropocentric." "Religion is that activity of the
human impulse towards self-preservation by means of which Man seeks to
carry his essential vital purposes through against the adverse pressure
of the world by raising himself freely towards the world's ordering and
governing powers when the limits of his own strength are reached." The
whole book is little more than a development of these