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as such, is bad; conformism CAN be good, if it is historically founded and alive, as it still was in England in the first half of this century. Conformism^a is bad if it extinguishes (as mass society^b tends to do) the individual^c reactions, creativity^d of the individual person. Therefore perhaps if this would be possible linguistically, one should distinguish patternization^e and conformism. The danger certainly is patternization.

Now this was the result of our analysis. What does religion do in this situation? Why has the relation of culture^f and religion become such a problem in our period, for the Western world, for our generation? The answer is that religion is that dimension of experience which transcends subjectivity and objectivity and cuts through the realm of subject and object, and that if religion is brought down to the dimension in which subjects manage the objective world, religion loses its meaning. This is a very simplified formula for an infinitely complex process. But in this formula we can grasp the whole situation in a nutshell. Religion brought down to the level of objectivation^g and then lost, whether attacked or defended. Both the defenders of religion on this level, and the critics of religion on this level, have LOST the meaning^h of religion!

We can show this in the theoretical realms as well as in the practical realms. I showed it to you in the most expressive of all realms, that of the arts. You remember that level which I call the third level: religious symbolsⁱ used in a naturalistic style^j. First in a man like Giotto^k, still the greatness of a religious substance^l expressed in naturalistic forms. Then step by step the loss of this substance: it is wasted. And what is left is the objective world as we