It is like maintenance of health, which is more a natural condition to be aspired for than a business to be dealt with or executed. Teachers of philosophy and religion have been persistently making the mistake of suddenly commencing to teach the outer forms rather than the essence of this knowledge. It may be called, if we would so like it, the philosophy and psychology of religion, understood in its proper sense, and not in terms of the schools of thought in the history of philosophy or the forms of practice in the history of religion. It should always be remembered that the student's mind is to be approached with caution, for it rejects what it cannot understand or absorb into its constitution. To be rational is not to be dogmatic but sympathetic and tolerant.
Toleration is the mark of real religion.
It is impossible to have one religion for the whole world in its outer form, though its essence and content are one, even as we cannot have a common form of diet for the whole world, though it is true that everyone needs food. Religion is not so much practice of form as living of its essence. When this is achieved, true culture emerges. It is my intention to present to modern students certain broad outlines of the fundamental principles that can pave the way for world-understanding and conduce not only to social prosperity but also personal solace and real freedom which everyone seeks. I have attempted to lay in this book the foundations of that impersonal meaning on which the personal forms of philosophy and religion are constructed.