Page:Logic Taught by Love.djvu/17

 CHAPTER II THE NATURAL SYMBOLS OF PULSATION

Heaven and Earth declare the wonder of His Work.

History of early religions is very much a history of the successive introductions into public worship of various symbols, by means of which the Seers hoped to make the masses realize the perpetual Flux or Pulsation which underlies the phenomena of Nature. The Seer perceives the Law of Pulsation by observing a certain phenomenon; that phenomenon becomes for him interesting; he tries to make the masses share his interest in it, as a revelation of Nature's fundamental Law; the masses lose sight of the idea of pulsation, and get up an idolatrous (i.e. fixed) tension on the symbol itself. To the pure in heart who see the Logos, all things are pure, because all things suggest the ineffable "process of becoming"; and those things are naturally sacred to any man, and an object of religious reverence, which most vividly suggest it to him. But to the masses things are not thus pure; because they see, in each thing, not the Creative Logos, but some special quality which is, or which they suppose to be, the especial characteristic of that object. Each Seer tries to break up the association of special Sanctity which clings round the symbol employed by his predecessor; in all good faith and innocence he tries to teach Flux-doctrine by some new symbol; and so the process begins again. It has in various forms gone on throughout the History not only of religion, but of all the intellectual and moral