ertakes to give us convincing external evidence. Religious
faith, indeed, relates to that which is above us, but it must arise from
that which is within us. And any faith which has indeed a worthy
religious object is either merely a mystic ecstasy, which must then be
judged, if at all, only by its fruits, or else it is a loyalty, which
never exists without seeking to bear fruit in works. Now my thesis is
that loyalty is essentially adoration with service, and that there is no
true adoration without practical loyalty. If I am right, all of the
loyal are grasping in their own ways, and according to their lights,
some form and degree of religious truth. They have won religious
insight; for they view something, at least, of the genuine spiritual
world in its real unity, and they devote themselves to that unity, to
its enlargement and enrichment. And therefore they approach more and
more to the comprehension of that true spiritual life whereof, as I
suppose, the real world essentially consists.

Therefore I find in the growth of the spirit of loyalty which normally
belongs to any loyal life the deepset source of a genuinely significant
religious insight which belongs to just that individual in just his
stage of development.

In brief: Be loyal; grow in loyalty. Therein lies the source of a
religious insight free from superstition. Therein also lies the solution
of the problems of the philosophy of life.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 77: Commencement address delivered at Simmons College, Boston.
Published in "William James and Other Essays," copyright, 1911. Printed
here by permission of The Macmillan Company.]

POETRY FOR POETRY'S SAKE[78]

A.C. BRADLEY

The words "Poetry for poetry's sake" recall the famous phrase "Art for
Art." It is far from my purpose to examine the possible meanings of that
phrase, or all the questions it involves. I propose to state briefly
what I understand by "Poetry for poetry's sake," and then, after
guarding against one or two misapprehensions of the formula, to consider
more fully a single problem connected with it. And I must premise,
without attempting to justify them, certain explanations. We are to
consider poetry in its essence, and apart from the flaws which in most
poems accompany their poetry. We are to include in the idea of poetry
the metrical form, and not to regard this as a mere accident or a mere
vehicle. And, finally, poetry being poems, we are to think of a poem as
it ac