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Reason and Religion 133and to present the form as if it were the essence. And, at best,it has to use a language which is not the very tongue of thesuprarational truth but its inadequate translation and, since itis not the ordinary tongue either of the rational intelligence, itis open to non-understanding or misunderstanding by the ordinaryreason of mankind. It is well-known to the experience ofthe spiritual seeker that even the highest philosophising cannotgive a true inner knowledge, is not the spiritual light, does notopen the gates of experience. All it can do is to address theconsciousness of man through his intellect and, when it hasdone, to say, “I have tried to give you the truth in a form andsystem which will make it intelligible and possible to you; if youare intellectually convinced or attracted, you can now seek thereal knowledge, but you must seek it by other means which arebeyond my province.”But there is another level of the religious life in which reasonmight seem justified in interfering more independently and entitledto assume a superior role. For as there is the suprarationallife in which religious aspiration finds entirely what it seeks, sotoo there is also the infrarational life of the instincts, impulses,sensations, crude emotions, vital activities from which all humanaspiration takes its beginning. These too feel the touchof the religious sense in man, share its needs and experience,desire its satisfactions. Religion includes this satisfaction also inits scope, and in what is usually called religion it seems evento be the greater part, sometimes to an external view almostthe whole; for the supreme purity of spiritual experience doesnot appear or is glimpsed only through this mixed and turbidcurrent. Much impurity, ignorance, superstition, many doubtfulelements must form as the result of this contact and union ofour highest tendencies with our lower ignorant nature. Hereit would seem that reason has its legitimate part; here surelyit can intervene to enlighten, purify, rationalise the play of theinstincts and impulses. It would seem that a religious reformation,a movement to substitute a “pure” and rational religionfor one that is largely infrarational and impure, would be adistinct advance in the religious development of humanity. To