serenity we find everywhere else, and that the obstacle must be surmounted, the balance restored. Regarded from this point of view, which is that of a genesis and no longer that of an analysis, all the elements of disquiet and weakness entailed in the application of intelligence to life, with all the peace brought by religions, become a perfectly simple thing. Unrest and myth-making counteract and nullify each other. In the eyes of a god, looking down from above, the whole would appear indivisible, like the perfect confidence of flowers un- folding to the spring. .CHAPTER III DYNAMIC RELIGION LET us cast a glance backward at Life, this life which we had previously followed in its development up to the point where religion was destined to emerge from it. A great current of creative energy is precipitated into matter, to wrest from it what it can. At most points, remember, it carne to a stop; these stops are equivalent, in our eyes, to the phenomena of so many living species, that is to say, of organisms in which our perception, being essentially analytical and synthetic, dis- tinguishes a multitude of elements combining to fulfil a multi- tude of functions; yet the work of organization was but the step itself, a simple act, like the making of a footprint, which instantly causes a myriad grains of sand to cohere and form a pattern. Along one of these lines, the one along which it succeeded in going furthest, we might have thought