Page:Religion of a Sceptic (IA religionofscepti00powy).djvu/26

the full æsthetic reaction from these ancient usages, is that they should be performed automatically and mechanically, with as little emphasis as possible upon the mere beauty of ritual.

The æsthetic sense, to which the true dignity and pathos of religion appeals, is completely unconcerned with the "artistic" element in Christian worship. It is occupied with something much more serious than this. It is occupied with the fact that man has so deeply associated his goings out and comings in, his health and his sickness, his memories and his hopes, with these particular festivals, that they have become the illuminated marginal hieroglyphs to the very scroll of his Life-Illusion.

They have indeed fallen into their place, along with the remembered landscapes, and the yet more familiar groupings of animals, houses, gardens, streets, as evocative of that vague inherited race-consciousness which comes and goes so mysteriously about certain material things; and which extends backwards so far into the womb of prenatal darkness.

And because these periodic festivals have been associated with the whole secular history of our lives the feeling we have come to entertain about them is something more massive and more natural than any merely ethical emotion.