When the inquiry is not based upon this moral foundation, when a man enters upon it in full autonomy and with purely profane instincts, as though it were a purely indifferent question and one which did not concern man’s vital interests, or even as though he were judge and God a suspected defendant, then he is sadly misconceiving the very basis of his being and in a wholly inadmissible fashion making himself absolute. We sometimes steal into the sphere of the Absolute, as though we stood on a level with It, or as though It were incarnate in us. At the bottom of all uninterested or autonomous thinking about God lies such a secret delusion. And this secret delusion is the real source of error which all too easily makes the inquiry unfruitful. For although God has plainly manifested Himself to human reason in His creation, yet such a natural knowledge of God can enkindle vital religion only if it be accompanied by humility and reverence. All self-assured, proud inquiry is excluded. Reverence only should inspire us and a humble yearning for the truth. If my inquiry has this ethico-religious character, then is my mind free and open to the deepest intuitions; it is no longer imprisoned in the narrow limits of my self, but truly unprejudiced in the best sense of the word. Then only am I thoroughly accessible to all the possibilities of the mystery of the universe and therefore in a position to see natural reality as it is in itself, as it really is, and not as my imperious mind would have it be. I see clearly how thousands of lines of the macrocosm and the microcosm lead concurrently to a single point, by which alone their unity and their ultimate meaning are intelligible. I attain to the recognition of a primal First Cause, to the assumption of an ultimate Idea and an ultimate Will dominating the world; and I reach even further still, for I come to believe in an intelligent Will which realizes Itself absolutely in the world of reality.