religious motives; on the other hand, I am to emphasise the
mysterious seeming of the religious objects. And I am thus to show the
reason why the faiths of men are so diverse but their religious needs
so nearly common.

At the last time I tried to define for you, in my own terms, what the
supreme purpose of human life is, or, in other words, what that
highest good is which we are all in such peril of missing that we need
salvation from this peril. My definition was this: We are naturally
creatures of wavering and conflicting motives, passions, desires. The
supreme aim of life is to triumph over this natural chaos, to set some
one plan of life above all the others, to give {45} unity to our
desires, to organise our activities, to win, not, indeed, the
passionless peace of Nirvana, but the strength of spirit which is
above the narrowness of each one of our separate passions. We need to
conceive of such a triumphant and unified life, and successfully to
live it. That is our goal: Self-possession, unity, peace, and
spiritual power through and yet beyond all the turmoil of life--the
victory that overcometh in the world.

Now this definition of the ideal life will have seemed to some of you
too much a merely philosophical formula. You will say that this is not
what plain men have in mind when they ask God's help, or lament their
sins, or look to religion for consolation.

I grant you that, since I am here concerned with philosophy and not
with preaching, I, of course, prefer, for my present purpose, a
formulation of the ideal of life in reflective, in thoughtful terms.
But I cannot admit that plain men, in their religious moods, are not
concerned with the ideal of fife which I thus reflectively formulate.
I am trying to formulate the ideal of life that seems to me to
underlie all the higher religions. It is one thing, however, to feel
an interest and another thing to become conscious of the meaning of
the interest. No matter how inarticulate may be a man's sense of his
need, that sense, if deep and genuine, may imply a view of life which
a whole system of ethics and of metaphysics may be needed to expound.
{46} Philosophy ought to be considerate, and to use more or less
technical speech, but it need not be on that account inhuman. Its
concern is with what common-sense means but does not express in
clearly conscious terms. It does not want to substitute its formulas
for life. It does desire to add its thoughtfulness to the