[3] The relation of chastity to the birth of the idea of personality among the Hebrews I have touched upon elsewhere. The Hebrew people abhorred promiscuity, or the dishonoring of oneself by indiscriminate mingling. It is instructive that this did not stand in the way of polygamy. Those persons whom the Hebrew received, so to speak, into the sphere of his personality, did not imperil his sense of personal intactness. And personal intactness seems to have been the determining motive in the severe attitude taken toward prostitution. The fact that the worship of other gods, the worst of crimes in the eyes of the Hebrew legislator, was described as “whoring after other gods” is particularly significant. The sacred, sensitive self, the holy thing whatever it might be, which the Hebrew discovered within his own sex experience, was thereafter attributed also to others, and especially to those who had the same aversion to promiscuity as he. Hence perhaps the limited ascription of holiness to members of the Hebrew people. [4] Pantheism has always seemed to me the least satisfactory of theological or ethical solutions. The system of thought which will be found later on in this volume may have a certain superficial resemblance to Pantheism, but in reality is as far from it in origin and purpose as pole from pole. [5] There are also passages in books that have the same revolutionizing effect (Cf. the passage quoted from St. Paul in St. Augustine’s “Confessions”). However, it is curious to observe that the effect brought about may be quite out of proportion to the cause. The book or the passage may prove to be of inferior value, so far as its subject is concerned, and may yet serve suddenly to call attention to the subject itself, and give rise to trains of thought that eventually go far beyond the impetus that set them in motion. “Ripeness,” says Shakespeare, “is everything,”—ripeness to receive the impetus. Relatedness to the state of mind of the recipient is the decisive factor, and this accounts for the astounding changes that result. CHAPTER II THE HEBREW RELIGION