BELIEF 155
sensible objects and relations which are felt to be necessary for the satisfaction of the fundamental needs of the per sonality. It declares that back of all sensory experiences the material universe are beings, activities, tendencies, ends, which constitute the ultimate meaning of all life. In this assurance the cognitive activity is motived by deep in stinctive longings. These postulates of the heart are at most only negatively controlled by the intellectual system; and often the stress of these vital needs impels the intellect to reconstruct the system of ideas which places its veto upon them. It has been truly said : " The soul likes to project that which is most deeply rooted in its own being furthest beyond itself. The objective lies for it, so to speak, in the middle distance ; but that which is inmost, which originates in the most subjective stratum of the soul, it extends from itself into an Absolute, Overobjective." * That is, our own inmost heart postulates for us a universe of reality that lies beyond the objective world of the senses. The formulation of this reality is the work of the intellect, but in that work it is controlled by affection and desire. The soul, using the imagination as a brush, paints the far background of exist ence in the colours of its own intimate feelings. We require a spiritual world which will answer and satisfy our central cravings. Thus the Psalmist cried, " My soul thirsteth for God."
Since, however, we are under the necessity of conceiving, of clothing in intellectual forms, the supersensible reality which the heart postulates, no little trouble arises in the realm of belief. The materials which the intellect uses are sensuous images. Its most abstract constructions are built up out of these images. We have to dress up the super sensible in the garments furnished by the senses. When the intellect has thus formulated what the heart has postulated in the realm beyond the senses, these forms themselves can not be changed without a profound disturbance of the heart. But as the intellectual system undergoes reorganization, as
1 Simmel, " Die Probleme der Geschichtsphilosophie," p. 154.
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