mpirical philosophy: the true is what works well, even though the
qualification "on the whole" may always have to be added. In this
lecture we must revert to description again, and finish our picture of
the religious consciousness by a word about some of its other
characteristic elements. Then, in a final lecture, we shall be free to
make a general review and draw our independent conclusions.

The first point I will speak of is the part which the aesthetic life
plays in determining one's choice of a religion. Men, I said awhile
ago, involuntarily intellectualize their religious experience. They
need formulas, just as they need fellowship in worship. I spoke,
therefore, too contemptuously of the pragmatic uselessness of the
famous scholastic list of attributes of the deity, for they have one
use which I neglected to consider. The eloquent passage in which
Newman enumerates them[301] puts us on the track of it. Intoning them
as he would intone a cathedral service, he shows how high is their
aesthetic value. It enriches our bare piety to carry these exalted and
mysterious verbal additions just as it enriches a church to have an
organ and old brasses, marbles and frescoes and stained windows.
Epithets lend an atmosphere and overtones to our devotion. They are
like a hymn of praise and service of glory, and may sound the more
sublime for being incomprehensible. Minds like Newman's[302] grow as
jealous of their credit as heathen priests are of that of the jewelry
and ornaments that blaze upon their idols.

[301] Idea of a University, Discourse III. Section 7.

[302] Newman's imagination so innately craved an ecclesiastical system
that he can write: "From the age of fifteen, dogma has been the
fundamental principle of my religion: I know no other religion; I
cannot enter into the idea of any other sort of religion." And again
speaking of himself about the age of thirty, he writes: "I loved to
act as feeling myself in my Bishop's sight, as if it were the sight of
God." Apologia, 1897, pp. 48, 50.

Among the buildings-out of religion which the mind spontaneously
indulges in, the aesthetic motive must never be forgotten. I promised
to say nothing of ecclesiastical systems in these lectures. I may be
allowed, however, to put in a word at this point on the way in which
their satisfaction of certain aesthetic needs contributes to their hold
on human nature. Although some persons aim most at intellectual pu