the Divine, all the racial habits and traditions of response to the
Divine. But its valid thought about the Divine comes as yet to very
little. Thus we see that the author of "The Cloud of Unknowing" spoke as
a true psychologist when he said that "a secret blind love pressing
towards God" held more hope of success than mere thought can ever do;
"for He may well be loved but not thought--by love He may be gotten and
holden, but by thought never."[80] Nevertheless, if that consistency of
deed and belief which is essential to full power is to be achieved by
us, every man's conception of the God Whom he serves ought to be the
very best of which he is capable. Because ideas which we recognize as
partial or primitive have called forth the richness and devotion of
other natures, we are not therefore excused from trying all things and
seeking a Reality which fulfils to the utmost our craving for truth and
beauty, as well, as our instinct for good. It is easy, natural, and
always comfortable for the human mind to sink back into something just a
little bit below its highest possible. On one hand to wallow in easy
loves, rest in traditional formulæ, or enjoy a "moving type of devotion"
which makes no intellectual demand. On the other, to accept without
criticism the sceptical attitude of our neighbours, and keep safely in
the furrow of intelligent agnosticism.

Religious people have a natural inclination to trot along on mediocre
levels; reacting pleasantly to all the usual practices, playing down to
the hopes and fears of the primitive mind, its childish craving for
comfort and protection, its tendency to rest in symbols and spells, and
satisfying its devotional inclinations by any "long psalter unmindfully
mumbled in the teeth."[81] And a certain type of intelligent people have
an equally natural tendency to dismiss, without further worry, the
traditional notions of the past. In so far as all this represents a
slipping back in the racial progress, it has the character of sin: at