Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 37.djvu/365

Rh they are only a hindrance to the attainment of the God-consciousness. Hegel-like, they find that "religion is a perfect freedom, for it is nothing more or less than the Divine Spirit becoming conscious of itself through the finite spirit." They can also say, with Martineau, it is "the human mind standing in reverence and inspiration before the Infinite Energy of the universe, asking to be lifted into it," or "ascent through the conscience to God." Religion to them is the last step of the Leibnitz's monad coming into the consciousness of the divinity ever potentially present.

Besides the types of minds thus far studied, there is a large proportion of the race influenced almost entirely by what may be called personal influences—love, pity, sympathy, and the like. All these, upon becoming religious, at once bestow similar feelings on the gods, and imagine that these in turn bestow the same on them. This mode of religious awakening is almost a universal one in the earlier stages of race development. Many also feel, as Mr. Martineau says in his Study of Religion, that in some form or other this will be likewise the final and highest stage of religious growth. It is well described by both Profs. Flint and Whitney, as noted above, and is also implied in the terse expression of De Pressensé', "Religion is the relation of the soul to God."

Thus it will be seen that the various definitions of religion are but facets of a common precious truth, reflecting at different angles the light of a heart all aglow with the thought of personal responsibility in individual destiny. They vary at times so as to indicate almost generic differences, but they all describe facts having a common psychological cause and point to a single purpose. As the same sunlight that hardens the bricks in the cathedral walls also melts the waxen taper at the altar, so a reflection on personal destiny often calls forth in one a religious life entirely different from that in another; for the precise effect depends as much on surroundings and internal difference as on that which calls forth the religious life. These definitions are not found to be like the Ptolemaic planets, mere lawless wanderers, in the realm of religious thought, but have a common center, and are guided by a universal law.

later observations on the number of dust-particles in the atmosphere show that a very large proportion of the pollution caused thereby is the product of human agencies. Both dust and humidity tend to decrease the transparency of the air. Humidity alone seems to have no influence on the transparency apart from the dust, but it increases the effect of dust by increasing the size of the particles. Its modifying effect is influenced by the temperature. Dust appears to condense vapor long before the air is cooled to the dew-point. Haze is shown in many cases to be simply dust, on which there seems to be always more or less moisture. All the fogs tested contained much dust.