melody. In these partial experiences something, as it were, of the
richness of Reality overflows and is experienced by us. But it is in the
wholeness of response characteristic of religion--that uncalculated
response to stimulus which is the mark of the instinctive life--that
this Realty of love and power is most truly found and felt by us. In
this generous and heart-searching surrender of religion, rightly made,
the self achieves inner harmony, and finds a satisfying objective for
all its cravings and energies. It then finds its life, and the
possibilities before it, to be far greater than it knew.

We need not claim that those men and women who have most fully realized,
and so at first hand have described to us, this life of the Spirit, have
neither discerned or communicated the ultimate truth of things; nor need
we claim that the symbols they use have intrinsic value, beyond the
poetic power of suggesting to us the quality and wonder of their
transfigured lives. Still less must we claim this discovery as the
monopoly of any one system of religion. But we can and ought to claim,
that no system shall be held satisfactory which does not find a place
for it: and that only in so far as we at least apprehend and respond to
the world's spiritual aspect, do we approach the full stature of
humanity. Psychologists at present are much concerned to entreat us to
"face reality," discarding idealism along with the other phantasies that
haunt the race. Yet this facing of reality can hardly be complete if we
do not face the facts of the spiritual life. Certainly we shall find it
most difficult to interpret these facts; they are confused, and more
than one reading of them is possible. But still we cannot leave them out
and claim to have "faced reality."

Höffding goes so far as to say that any real religion implies and must
give us a world-view.[30] And I think it is true that any vividly lived