Since the first publication of his book Art and Visual Perception in 1954, Rudolph Arnheim has been unflagging in his dedication to constructing a theory of art, one that acknowledges the central activity of the mind and sees in the striving for visual order and harmony the necessary conditions of understanding. In writings of uncommon literary grace and intellectual scholarship, Arnheim has proved to be a cosmopolitan traveller in the world of ideas. He has ploughed scholarly furrows across what he holds to be essential dichotomies of the age, between art and science, perception and conception, structure and chaos. He is committed to the view that acts of perception are, by nature, ordered and provide direct access to inner essences. The mandate for the arts is to offer structural equivalents to these hidden abstractions and in so doing act as external metaphors of the human condition. Like many artists, Arnheim believes in a kind of truth-in-perception that is direct, absolute, unique, and-when reflected in the arts-offers universal knowledge. Given the natural propensity of the mind for simplicity and order, it has sometimes been less clear in Arnheim’s writings whence comes the chaos and confusion he often evokes as foils to his arguments. Similarly, by harnessing imagination and invention to the search for order and simplicity, that is Truth, his writings sometimes curtail questions of personal imagery, interpretation, and the determinants of aesthetic judgment. In this essay, Arnheim returns to familiar themes by raising questions about the nature of the religious experience linked to the role of art as expression of “worshipful reverence.” He paints a compelling picture of “disturbed seekers” of religion caught between traditional confessions of faith and the chill facts of science, trapped by Avarroes ’ “double truth” and envious of an ordered universe long past. Arnheim offers us, as guide through this morass, the 17th century philosopher, Spinoza who, like Ruskin after him, believed in a seamless universe governed by scientific laws of which God is suprenle giver and authority. For Arnheim, God is apprehended directly throught what he calls the “intelligent attitude” which, when directed towards contemplation of the universe, experiences a vision of time and space of unfathomable greatness, of awe, of the oceanic feeling of Einstein and Freud’s friend. Within this view of cosmic necessity, the human will is free only when it acts out of the demands of it own nature. Desiring lawfulness and seeking truth, the will is unfree, or coerced,