CHAPTER II.
THE IDEA OF GOD.
An intuition common to the species .-- Words expressing it in American languages derived either from ideas of above in space, or of life manifested by breath .-- Examples .-- No conscious monotheism, and but little idea of immateriality discoverable .-- Still less any moral dualism of deities, the Great Good Spirit and the Great Bad Spirit being alike terms and notions of foreign importation.
If we accept the definition that mythology is the idea of God expressed in symbol, figure, and narrative, and always struggling toward a clearer utterance, it is well not only to trace this idea in its very earliest embodiment in language, but also, for the sake of comparison, to ask what is its latest and most approved expression.

The reply to this is given us by Immanuel Kant.

He has shown that our reason, dwelling on the facts of experience, constantly seeks the principles which connect them together, and only rests satisfied in the conviction that there is a highest and first principle which reconciles all their discrepancies and binds them into one.

This he calls the Ideal of Reason.

It must be true, for it is evolved from the laws of reason, our only test of truth.
Furthermore, the sense of personality and the voice of conscience, analyzed to their sources, can only be explained by the assumption of an infinite personality and an absolute standard of right.