ear; commencing with an exaltation of the
love to sex, it etherealized and ennobled passion; it taught man to look
elsewhere than to material things for his highest pleasure, for the work
of art always has its fortune in the imagination and not in the senses
of the observer; conceptions of order and harmony are familiar to it;
its best efforts seek to bring all the affairs of life under unity and
system;[246-1] and thus it strengthens the sentiment of moral
government, which is the first postulate of religion.

The symmetry of the individual, as understood in the religion of
culture, is likewise a cherished article of true religion. Thus only can
it protect personality against the pitfalls of self-negation and
absorption, which communism and pantheism dig for it. The integrity and
permanence of the person is the keystone to religion, as it is to
philosophy and ethics. None but a false teacher would measure our duty
to our neighbor by a higher standard than our love to ourselves. The
love of God alone is worthy to obscure it.

Professor Steinthal has said: "Every people has its own religion. The
national temperament hears the tidings and interprets them as it
can."[246-2] On the other hand, Humboldt--perhaps the profoundest
thinker on these subjects of his generation--doubted whether religions
can be measured in reference to nations and sects, because "religion is
altogether subjective, and rests solely on the conceptive powers of the
individual."[247-1] Whatever the creed, a pure mind will attach itself
to its better elements, a base one to its brutal and narrow doctrines. A
national religion can only be regarded as an average, applicable to the
majority, not entirely correct of the belief of any one individual,
wholly incorrect as to a few. Yet it is indubitable that the national
temperament creates the ideal which gives the essence of religion. Races
like the Tartar Mongols, who, as we are informed by the Abbe Huc, not
unfrequently move their tents several times a day, out of simple
restlessness, cannot desire the same stability that is sought by other
races, who have the beaver's instinct for building and colonizing, such
as the Romans. Buddhism, which sets up the ideal of the individual, is
an acceptable theory to the former, while the latter, from earliest
ages, fostered religious views which taught the subordination of the
individual to the community, in other words, the _idea of the perfected
commonwealth_.

T