That there may be beings, of whom we have no idea, is a proposition which it is impossible to disprove. Such beings would be _ex hypothesi_ no part of our experience; and if God were such a being, man would have no experience of Him. And, having no experience of Him, man could have no idea of Him. But the experience man has, of those beings whom he knows, is an experience in which idea and being are given together. Even if in thought we attend to one rather than to the other of the two aspects, the idea is still the idea of the being; and the being is still the being of the idea. So far from there being an impassable gulf between the two, the two are inseparable, in the moment of actual experience. It is in moments of reflection that they appear separable and separate, for the memory remains, when the actual experience has ceased. We have then only to call the memory the idea, and then the idea, in this use of the word, is as essentially different from that of which it is said to be the idea, as the memory of a being or thing is from the being or thing itself. If we put the memory into words, and pronounce those words to another, we communicate to him what we remember of our experience (modified--perhaps transmogrified--by our reflections upon it) but we do not communicate the actual experience, simply because we cannot. What we communicate may lead him to actual experience for himself; but it is not itself the experience. The memory may give rise, in ourselves or in others to whom we communicate, to expectation and anticipation; and the expectation is the more likely to be realised, the less the memory has been transmogrified by reflection. But, both the memory and the anticipation are clearly different from actual experience. It is only when they are confused with one aspect of the actual experience--that which we have called the idea--that the idea is supposed to be detachable from the being of whom we have actual experience. The idea is part of the experience; the memory obviously is not. If then it be said that the being of God is always an inference and is never anything more, the reply is that the being of anything whatever that is remembered or expected is, in the moment of memory or of anticipation, inferential; but, in the moment of actual experience, it is not inferred--it is experienced. And what is experienced is, and from the beginning has always been, in religions of the lower as well as of the higher culture, at once the being and the idea of God. INDEX Aaron, 11 Adoration, 108 ff., 126, 144 Aeschylus, 37 Aetiological myths, 50, 53 Africans, 59 Allegory, 47 Animism, 17, 35, 50 Anthropomorphism, 18 ff., 27 Anti-social character of fetishism, 8, 14 Anu, 136 Aristotle, 121 Assyria, 134 ff. Atonement, 54, 75 Australians, 57, 58, 59, 86-89, 113, 114 Awe, 24 Axe-heads, 11 Aztecs, 77, 78, 88 Babylonian psalms, 145 Basutos, 143 Being, and idea, 161 ff. Bergson, 123, 125 Black-fellows, 57