Now my rules of conduct are based on the supposition that moral
decisions are to be determined by the belief that the individual life
guided by its perception of beauty is incidental, experimental, and
contributory to the undying life of the blood and race. I have decided
for myself that the general business of life is the development of a
collective consciousness and will and purpose out of a chaos of
individual consciousnesses and wills and purposes, and that the way to
that is through the development of the Socialist State, through the
socialization of existing State organizations and their merger of
pacific association in a World State. But so far I have not taken up the
collateral aspect of the synthesis of human consciousness, the
development of collective feeling and willing and expression in the
form, among others, of religious institutions.
Religious institutions are things to be legitimately distinguished from
the creeds and cosmogonies with which one finds them associated. Customs
are far more enduring things than ideas,--witness the mistletoe at
Christmas, or the old lady turning her money in her pocket at the sight
of the new moon.
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