and idealize all values …, gathers into itself the interests and values of our daily concerns …, involves a living process, law, or movement in the working of which distinct ideals are attained” (p. 318).
There is evident here, once more, a mistiness of positive conception and an insensitiveness to the limitations imposed by the nature of the argument. In the opinion of the writer, Ames argues effectively against the purely intellectualistic form of the personalistic conception of religion. But this does not justify him in his opposition to all forms of personalism. For a consciousness of self, however dim, is personal, not impersonal; and the awareness of God may be of any grade of clearness and of any conscious type. It may therefore be freely admitted that neither savage nor philosopher ever attains a consciousness of self which is free from contradictions, and that the religious experience of most people, civilized as well as primitive, is impulsive and emotional rather than reflective, practical rather than speculative. But it does not follow that the religious consciousness is impersonal or that it lacks a personal object. Rather, the consciousness of oneself in relation to a superhuman self is preeminently a feeling and willing consciousness even when it contains intellectual elements. From Schleiermacher down, the personalistic conception of religion has been held by scholars who have opposed, as vigorously as Ames himself opposes, a rationalistic account of the religious experience.
To conclude as we began: one may grant all the premises of Professor Ames without reaching either of his two conclusions: (1) that religion is merely the “highest” type of social experience, (2) that religion does not consist in the conscious relation to personal gods or God. On the other hand, there is abundant reason to conclude that every religion is a realized relation to a divine object conceived, or at least treated, as personal.
Wellesley College.
Reviews and Abstracts of Literature
La psychologie animale de Charles Bonnet. Ed. Claparède. Geneva: Georg & Co. 1909. Pp. vi+95.
This interesting memoir by Claparède was published on the occasion of the jubilee celebrating the three hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the University of Geneva.
The debt which philosophy and science owe to Charles Bonnet (Geneva, 1720–1793) is by no means small. “His name figures in the history of philosophy beside those of Condillac and Hartley, whose contemporary he
