Is this true?
Does not the loaf of bread that I have converted into my flesh and blood
enter more into my consciousness than the other loaf which I see and
touch, and of which I say: "This is mine"? And must I refuse objective
reality to the bread that I have thus converted into my flesh and blood
and made mine when I only touch it?
There are some who live by air without knowing it. In the same way, it
may be, we live by God and in God--in God the spirit and consciousness
of society and of the whole Universe, in so far as the Universe is also
a society.
God is felt only in so far as He is lived; and man does not live by
bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God
(Matt. iv. 4; Deut. viii. 3).
And this personalization of the all, of the Universe, to which we are
led by love, by pity, is the personalization of a person who embraces
and comprehends within himself the other persons of which he is
composed.
The only way to give finality to the world is to give it consciousness.
For where there is no consciousness there is no finality, finality
presupposing a purpose. And, as we shall see, faith in God is based
simply upon the vital need of giving finality to existence, of making it
answer to a purpose. We need God, not in order to understand the _why_,
but in order to feel and sustain the ultimate _wherefore_, to give a
meaning to the Universe.
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