senses they are not so, and it is religion in the acutest sense
that I wish, without disputing about words, to study first, so as
to get at its typical differentia.



This sort of happiness in the absolute and everlasting is what we
find nowhere but in religion. It is parted off from all mere
animal happiness, all mere enjoyment of the present, by that
element of solemnity of which I have already made so much
account. Solemnity is a hard thing to define abstractly, but
certain of its marks are patent enough. A solemn state of mind is
never crude or simple--it seems to contain a certain measure of
its own opposite in solution. A solemn joy preserves a sort of
bitter in its sweetness; a solemn sorrow is one to which we
intimately consent. But there are writers who, realizing that
happiness of a supreme sort is the prerogative of religion,
forget this complication, and call all happiness, as such,
religious. Mr. Havelock Ellis, for example, identifies religion
with the entire field of the soul's liberation from oppressive
moods.

"The simplest functions of physiological life," he writes may be
its ministers. Every one who is at all acquainted with the
Persian mystics knows how wine may be regarded as an instrument
of religion. Indeed, in all countries and in all ages some form
of physical enlargement--singing, dancing, drinking, sexual
excitement--has been intimately associated with worship. Even the
momentary expansion of the soul in laughter is, to however slight
an extent, a religious exercise. . . . Whenever an impulse from