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George Santayana, "Natural and Ultimate Religion"  

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70-Santayana's reasoning here is evidently thoroughly classical, i.e., monopolar. To share the enterprise of life is one thing; to be in every respect simply a part of life, evenr it is full of "the truth of experience," even if the spirit cast that truth in such terms as it found at hand. Being itself a work of the spirit that is "essentially a poet," "traditional religion, ancient or modern, mythological or scriptural," is not something with which the spirit need trouble to quarrel. But if even natural religion is, to this extent, or for this reason, spiritual, it is nonetheless different from "the ultimate religion of the spirit," by which I take Santayana to mean, the kind of religion to which spirit finally comes, given knowledge of the predicament of life simply as life. if greater than any other part, is something else. It is perfectly possible to conceive of _an individual,_ _Le., a genidentical concrete, that universally interacts with all things, and in that sense shares the enterprise of life, but that, precisely because its interaction is_ _universal,_ _is not and cannot be simply one part of life alongside all others, however great. For this reason as well as others,_ _it_ _is false to say that "we living animals \[including_ _the_ _living animal\] are all alike a temporary brood of chaos."_