What is the most fundamental need of man? It would be interesting to conduct a plebiscite of such a question, a plebiscite of the same sort that was conducted by one of the French newspapers some years ago, to discover the opinions of its readers as to who was the greatest Frenchman of the century. When I say the most fundamental need of man, I do not mean those basic needs for food and drink and shelter which he shares with the animals: I mean the most fundamental to him _as man_, as an organism differing from all other organisms in the power of thought, in reflection and self-consciousness. What variety of answers would be given, I dare not guess; but I hazard the belief that the majority, if the suggestion were put before them, would agree that his deepest need was to discover something, some being or power, some force or tendency, which was moulding the destinies of the world--something not himself, greater than himself, with which he yet felt that he could harmonize his nature, in which he could repose his doubts, through faith in which he could achieve confidence and hope. That need has been felt by all those to whom life has been more than a problem of the unreflective satisfaction of instincts and desires--however pure those instincts, or beautiful those desires; it has been felt by all in whom the problem of existence has been apprehended by intellect and disinterested imagination. I say all. There may be rare creatures who, secure in strength of body and mind and in unhampered unfolding of their faculties, possess a confidence by which this need is never felt. They are like those whom Wordsworth drew for us in the “Ode to Duty”:-- “There are who ask not if thine eye Be on them; who, in love and truth, Where no misgiving is, rely Upon the genial sense of youth: Glad hearts! without reproach or blot; Who do thy work and know it not.” But such are rare; or should we say that their type of mind, though not uncommon in the earlier years of life, only by the rarest chance achieves its course without a descent into that vale where the finite human intellect grapples unequally with infinite problems? The need has been felt in all ages and in all countries; and the answers, the partial satisfactions of the needs which have been found by the mind of men, are correspondingly diverse. Savages have endowed the objects around them, living and inanimate, with supernatural qualities. At a higher grade of development they have created gods made with hands, visible images of their fears or their desires, by whose worship and service they assuaged the urgent need within their breast. Still later, turning from such crudity, they became servants and worshippers of unseen gods, conceived under the form of persons, but persons transcending human personality, beings in whom was vested the control of man and of the world.