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The dogmas of religion are the attempts to formulate in precise terms the truths disclosed in the religious experience of mankind. In exactly the same way the dogmas of physical science are the attempts to formulate in precise terms the truths disclosed in the sense-perception of mankind.

In the previous section we have been considering religious experience in the concrete; we have now to define its general character. Some general descriptions of religion were given in the former lecture. It was stated that “Religion is force of belief cleansing the inward parts”; and again, that “Religion is the art and theory of the internal life of man, so far as it depends on the man himself, and on what is permanent in the nature of things”: and again, “Religion is what the individual does with his own solitariness.”

This point of the origin of rational religion in solitariness is fundamental. Religion is