In view of this political fidelity the changing opinions of men are all indifferent to true religion. It is not a question of _correctness_ in opinion or conduct, since for the idealist there can be no external standard of truth, existence, or excellence on which such correctness could depend. Ideas are so much real experience and have no further subject-matter. Thought is simply more or less rich, elaborate, or vehement, like a musical composition, and more or less consistent with itself. It is all a question of depth and fulness of experience, obtained by hacking one's way through this visionary and bewitched [Pg 31] existence, the secret purpose of which is to serve the self in its development. In this philosophy imagination that is sustained is called knowledge, illusion that is coherent is called truth, and will that is systematic is called virtue. Evidently the only sanction or vindication that such a belief will look for is the determination to reassert it. Religion is here its own heaven, and faith the only proof of its own truth. What is harmonised in the end is not the experience through which people have actually passed but only the echoes of that experience chiming in the mystic ear. Memory too can play the egotist. Subjectivism can rule even within the subject and can make him substitute his idea of himself, in his most self-satisfied moment, for the poor desultory self that he has actually been. The German philosophers have carried on Protestantism beyond itself. They have separated the two ingredients mingled in traditional religions. One of these ingredients--the vital faith or self-trust of the animal will--they have retained. The other--the lessons of experience--they have rejected. To which element the name of religion should still be given, if it is given to either, is a matter of indifference. The important thing is that, call it religion or irreligion, we should know what we are clinging to. [Pg 32] CHAPTER III TRANSCENDENTALISM