t extremity.
This is true, even when men are largely preoccupied with the mere
struggle for existence. It appears more and more plainly as life becomes
aggressive, and is engaged in the constructive enterprise of
civilization. Religion expresses man's highest hope of attainment,
whether this be conceived as the efficacy of a fetich or the kingdom of
God.

Such, then, are the general facts of religion, and the fundamental
critical principles which justify and define its development. Religion
is man's belief in salvation, his confident appeal to the overruling
control of his ultimate fortunes. The reconstruction of religious belief
is made necessary whenever it fails to express the last verified truth,
cosmological or ethical. The {232} direction of religious development is
thus a resultant of two forces: the optimistic bias, or the saving hope
of life; and rational criticism, or the progressive revelation of the
principles which define life and its environment.

I shall proceed now to the consideration of types of religion which
illustrate this critical reconstruction. The types which I shall select
represent certain forms of inadequacy which I think it important to
distinguish. They are only roughly historical, as is necessarily the
case, since all religions represent different types in the various stages
of their development, and in the different interpretations which are put
on them in any given time by various classes of believers. I shall
consider in turn, using the terms in a manner to be precisely indicated
as we proceed, _superstition, tutelary religion_, and two forms of
_philosophical religion_, the one _metaphysical idealism_, and the other
_moral idealism_.

III

_Superstition_ is distinguished by a lack of organization both in man and
his environment. It is a direct cross-relationship between an elementary
interest, passion, or need, and some isolated and capricious natural
power. The deity is externally related to the worshipper, having private
interests of his own which the worshipper respects {233} only from
motives of prudence. Religious observance takes the form of barter or
propitiation--_do ut des, do ut abeas_. The method of superstition is
arbitrary, furthermore, in that it is defined only by the liking or
aversion of an unprincipled agency.

Let us consider briefly the type of superstition which is associated with
the most primitive stage in the development of society.[8] The