The sallies of the two German authors remind one, half the time,
of the sick shriekings of two dying rats. They lack the
purgatorial note which religious sadness gives forth.

There must be something solemn, serious, and tender about any
attitude which we denominate religious. If glad, it must not
grin or snicker; if sad, it must not scream or curse. It is
precisely as being SOLEMN experiences that I wish to interest you
in religious experiences. So I propose--arbitrarily again, if
you please--to narrow our definition once more by saying that the
word "divine," as employed therein, shall mean for us not merely
the primal and enveloping and real, for that meaning if taken
without restriction might prove too broad. The divine shall mean
for us only such a primal reality as the individual feels
impelled to respond to solemnly and gravely, and neither by a
curse nor a jest.

But solemnity, and gravity, and all such emotional attributes,
admit of various shades; and, do what we will with our defining,
the truth must at last be confronted that we are dealing with a
field of experience where there is not a single conception that
can be sharply drawn. The pretension, under such conditions, to
be rigorously "scientific" or "exact" in our terms would only
stamp us as lacking in understanding of our task. Things are
more or less divine, states of mind are more or less religious,
reactions are more or less total, but the boundaries are always
misty, and it is everywhere a question of amount and degree.
Nevertheless, at their extreme of development, there can never be
any question as to what experiences are religious. The divinity
of the object and the solemnity of the reaction are too well