GOD only determine what conduct it is fitted to produce, and that conduct is for us its sole significance If we apply this principle to God’s metaphysical attributes, we have to confess them destitute of all intelligible significance Take God’s aseity for example; or his necessariness; his immateriality; his ‘simplicity’ or superiority to the kind of inner variety and succession which we find in finite beings, his indivisibility, and lack of the inner distinctions of being and activity, substance and accident, potentiality and actuality, and the rest; his repudiation of inclusion in a genus; his actualized infinity; his ‘personality’, apart from the moral qualities which it may comport; his relations to evil being permissive and not positive; his self-sufficiency, self-love, and absolute felicity in himself:—candidly speaking, how such qualities as these make any definite connection with our life? And if they severally call for no distinctive adaptations of our conduct, what vital difference can it possibly make to a man’s religion whether they be true or false? (VRE 428) So much for God’s metaphysical attributes But what of his moral attributes, such as holiness, justice, and mercy? Surely these are, from the point of view of pragmatism, on a different footing: they positively determine fear and hope and expectations, and are foundations for the saintly life Well, perhaps these predicates are meaningful; but dogmatic theology has never produced any convincing arguments that they in fact belong to God And modern idealism, James believed, has said goodbye to dogmatic theology for ever It is not reason, he maintained in conclusion, that is the source of religion, but feeling Philosophical and theological formulas are secondary All that philosophy can is to assist in the articulation of religious experience, compare different expressions of it, eliminate local and accidental elements from these expressions, mediate between different believers, and help to bring about consensus of opinion The theologians’ enumeration of divine epithets is not worthless, but its value is aesthetic rather than scientific ‘Epithets lend an atmosphere and overtones to our devotion They are like a hymn of praise and service of glory, and may sound the more sublime for being incomprehensible’ (VRE 437–9) In a world governed by science and its laws, is there any room for prayer? James distinguishes between petitionary prayer, and prayer in a wider sense Among petitionary prayers, he makes a further distinction between prayers for better weather, and prayers for the recovery of sick people The first are futile, but not necessarily the second ‘If any medical fact can be considered 312