its environment, of permeating it, of feeling
its way through it, of getting to understand it, of dealing with it
at last with skill and success. As is the particular environment, so
is the subtle, tactful, adaptive, directly perceptive, subconsciously
cognitive faculty,--the "sense," as I have called it--by means of
which the soul acquires the particular knowledge that it needs. The
more highly specialised (whether by subdivision or by abstraction)
the environment, the more highly specialised the sense. The larger
and more comprehensive the environment, the larger and more "massive"
the sense. The acquired aptitude which enables an omnibus driver to
steer his bulky vehicle through the traffic of London is a highly
specialised sense. At the other end of the scale we have the
"massive" spiritual faculties which deal with whole aspects of life
or Nature, such as the sense of beauty or of moral worth.

But there is a sense which is larger and more "massive" even than
these. When the environment is all-embracing, when it covers the
whole circle of which the soul is or can be the centre, the growth
made in response to it is the growth of the soul as such, and the
knowledge which rewards that growth is the knowledge of supreme
reality, or, in the language of religion, the knowledge of God. The
highest of all senses is the religious sense, the sense which gives
us knowledge of God. But the religious sense is not, as we are apt
to imagine, one of many senses. No one individual sense, however
"massive" or subtle it might be, could enable its possessor to get
on terms, so to speak, with the totality of things, with the
all-vitalising Life, with the all-embracing Whole. _The religious
sense is the well-being of the soul._ For the soul as such grows in
and through the growth of its various senses,--its own growth being
reinforced by the growth of each of these when Nature's balance is
kept, and retarded by the growth of one or more of them when Nature's
balance is lost,--and in proportion as its own vital, central growth
is vigorous and healthy, its power of apprehending reality unfolds
itself little by little. That power is of its inmost essence. When
reality, in the full sense of the word, is its object, it sees with
the whole of its being; it is itself, when it is at the centre of
its universe, its own supreme perceptive faculty, its own religious
sense.

If this is so, if the soul in its totality, the soul acting through
its