The indispensableness to religion of the imagination is due to that faculty's power of realizing what is not perceptually present. Religion is not interested in the apparent, but in the secret essence or the transcendent universal. And yet this interest is a practical one. Imagination may introduce one into the vivid presence of the secret or the transcendent. It is evident that the religious imagination here coincides with poetry. For it is at least one of the interests of poetry to cultivate and satisfy a sense for the universal; to obtain an immediate experience or appreciation that shall have the vividness without the particularism of ordinary perception. And where a poet elects so to view the world, we allow him as a poet the privilege, and judge him by the standards to which he submits himself. That upon which we pass judgment is the _fitness of his expression_. This expression is not, except in the case of the theoretical mystic, regarded as constituting the most valid form of the idea, but is appreciated expressly for its fulfilment of the condition of immediacy. The same sort of critical attitude is in order with the fruits of the religious imagination. These may or may not fulfil enough of the requirements of that art to be properly denominated poetry; but like poetry they are the translation of ideas into a specific language. They must not, therefore, be judged as though they claimed to excel in point of validity, but only in point of consistency with the context of that language. And _the language of religion is the language of the practical life_. Such translation is as essential to an idea that is to enter into the religious experience, as translation into terms of immediacy is essential to an idea that is to enter into the appreciative consciousness of the poet. No object can find a place in my religion until it is conjoined with my purposes and hopes; until it is taken for granted and acted upon, like the love of my friends, or the courses of the stars, or the stretches of the sea. [Sidenote: The Special Functions of the Religious Imagination.] § 36. The religious imagination, then, is to be understood and justified as that which brings the objects of religion within the range of living. The central religious object, as has been seen, is an _attitude_ of the residuum or totality of things. To be religious one must have a sense for the _presence of an attitude_, like his sense for the presence of his human fellows, with all the added appreciation that is proper in the case of an object that is unique in its mystery or in its majesty. It follows that the religious imagination fulfils its function in so far as it provides the object of religion with properties similar to those which lend vividness and reality to the normal social relations.