Summing up in the broadest possible way the characteristics of the religious life, as we havefound them, it includes the following beliefs:-1. That the visible world is part of a more spiritual universe from which it draws its chiefsignificance;2. That union or harmonious6 relation with that higher universe is our true end;3. That prayer or inner communion with the spirit thereof--be that spirit "God" or "law"--is aprocess wherein work is really done, and spiritual energy flows in and produces effects,psychological or material, within the phenomenal world.
Religion includes also the following psychological characteristics:-4. A new zest10 which adds itself like a gift to life, and takes the form either of lyrical enchantmentor of appeal to earnestness and heroism12.
5. An assurance of safety and a temper of peace, and, in relation to others, a preponderance ofloving affections.
In illustrating13 these characteristics by documents, we have been literally14 bathed in sentiment. Inre-reading my manuscript, I am almost appalled15 at the amount of emotionality which I find in it.
After so much of this, we can afford to be dryer16 and less sympathetic in the rest of the work thatlies before us.
The sentimentality of many of my documents is a consequence of the fact that I sought themamong the extravagances of the subject. If any of you are enemies of what our ancestors used tobrand as enthusiasm, and are, nevertheless, still listening to me now, you have probably felt myselection to have been sometimes almost perverse17, and have wished I might have stuck to sobererexamples. I reply that I took these extremer examples as yielding the profounder information. Tolearn the secrets of any science, we go to expert specialists, even though they may be eccentricpersons, and not to commonplace pupils. We combine what they tell us with the rest of ourwisdom, and form our final judgment2 independently. Even so with religion. We who have pursuedsuch radical18 expressions of it may now be sure that we know its secrets as authentically19 as anyonecan know them who learns them from another; and we have next to answer, each of us for himself,the practical question: what are the dangers in this element of life? and in what proportion may itneed to be restrained by other elements, to give the proper balance?
But this question suggests another one which I will answer immediately and get it out of the way,for it has more than once already vexed22 us.[330] Ought it to be assumed that in all men the mixtureof religion with other elements should be identical? Ought it, indeed, to be assumed that the livesof all men should show identical religious elements? In other words, is the existence of so manyreligious types and sects23 and creeds24 regrettable?
[330] For example, on pages 135, 160, 326 above.
To these questions I answer "No" emphatically. And my reason is that I do not see how it ispossible that creatures in such different positions and with such different powers as humanindividuals are, should have exactly the same functions and the same duties. No two of us haveidentical difficulties, nor should we be expected to work out identical solutions. Each, from hispeculiar angle of observation, takes in a certain sphere of fact and trouble, which each must dealwith in a unique manner. One of us must soften26 himself, another must harden himself; one mustyield a point, another must stand firm--in order the better to defend the position assigned him. If anEmerson were forced to be a Wesley, or a Moody27 forced to be a Whitman, the total humanconsciousness of the divine would suffer. The divine can mean no single quality, it must mean agroup of qualities, by being champions of which in alternation, different men may all find worthymissions. Each attitude being a syllable28 in human nature's total message, it takes the whole of us tospell the meaning out completely. So a "god of battles" must be allowed to be the god for one kindof person, a god of peace and heaven and home, the god for another. We must frankly29 recognizethe fact that we live in partial systems, and that parts are not interchangeable in the spiritual life. Ifwe are peevish30 and jealous, destruction of the self must be an element of our religion; why need itbe one if we are good and sympathetic from the outset? If we are sick souls, we require a religionof deliverance; but why think so much of deliverance, if we are healthy-minded?[331]
Unquestionably, some men have the completer experience and the higher vocation31, here just as inthe social world; but for each man to stay in his own experience, whate'er it be, and for others totolerate him there, is surely best.
[331] From this point of view, the contrasts between the healthy and the morbid32 mind, andbetween the once-born and the twice-born types, of which I spoke33 in earlier lectures (see pp. 159164),cease to be the radical antagonisms34 which many think them. The twice-born look down uponthe rectilinear consciousness of life of the once-born as being "mere35 morality," and not properlyreligion. "Dr. Channing," an orthodox minister is reported to have said, "is excluded from thehighest form of religious life by the extraordinary rectitude of his character." It is indeed true thatthe outlook upon life of the twice-born--holding as it does more of the element of evil in solution-isthe wider and completer. The "heroic" or "solemn" way in which life comes to them is a "highersynthesis" into which healthy-mindedness and morbidness36 both enter and combine. Evil is notevaded, but sublated in the higher religious cheer of these persons (see pp. 47-52, 354-357). Butthe final consciousness which each type reaches of union with the divine has the same practicalsignificance for the individual; and individuals may well be allowed to get to it by the channelswhich lie most open to their several temperaments37. In the cases which were quoted in Lecture IV,of the mind-cure form of healthy-mindedness, we found abundant examples of regenerativeprocess. The severity of the crisis in this process is a matter of degree. How long one shallcontinue to drink the consciousness of evil, and when one shall begin to short-circuit and get rid ofit, are also matters of amount and degree, so that in many instances it is quite arbitrary whether weclass the individual as a once-born or a twice-born subject.
But, you may now ask, would not this one-sidedness be cured if we should all espouse38 thescience of religions as our own religion? In answering this question I must open again the generalrelations of the theoretic to the active life.
Knowledge about a thing is not the thing itself. You remember what Al-Ghazzali told us in theLecture on Mysticism--that to understand the causes of drunkenness, as a physician understandsthem, is not to be drunk. A science might come to understand everything about the causes andelements of religion, and might even decide which elements were qualified39, by their generalharmony with other branches of knowledge, to be considered true; and yet the best man at thisscience might be the man who found it hardest to be personally devout40. Tout41 savoir c'est toutpardonner. The name of Renan would doubtless occur to many persons as an example of the wayin which breadth of knowledge may make one only a dilettante42 in possibilities, and blunt theacuteness of one's living faith.[332] If religion be a function by which either God's cause or man'scause is to be really advanced, then he who lives the life of it, however narrowly, is a better servantthan he who merely knows about it, however much. Knowledge about life is one thing; effectiveoccupation of a place in life, with its dynamic currents passing through your being, is another.
[332] Compare, e.g., the quotation43 from Renan on p. 37, above.
For this reason, the science of religions may not be an equivalent for living religion; and if weturn to the inner difficulties of such a science, we see that a point comes when she must drop thepurely theoretic attitude, and either let her knots remain uncut, or have them cut by active faith. Tosee this, suppose that we have our science of religions constituted as a matter of fact. Suppose thatshe has assimilated all the necessary historical material and distilled45 out of it as its essence thesame conclusions which I myself a few moments ago pronounced. Suppose that she agrees thatreligion, wherever it is an active thing, involves a belief in ideal presences, and a belief that in ourprayerful communion with them,[333] work is done, and something real comes to pass. She hasnow to exert her critical activity, and to decide how far, in the light of other sciences and in that ofgeneral philosophy, such beliefs can be considered TRUE.
[333] "Prayerful" taken in the broader sense explained above on pp. 453 ff.
Dogmatically to decide this is an impossible task. Not only are the other sciences and thephilosophy still far from being completed, but in their present state we find them full of conflicts.
The sciences of nature know nothing of spiritual presences, and on the whole hold no practicalcommerce whatever with the idealistic conceptions towards which general philosophy inclines.
The scientist, so-called, is, during his scientific hours at least, so materialistic46 that one may wellsay that on the whole the influence of science goes against the notion that religion should berecognized at all. And this antipathy47 to religion finds an echo within the very science of religionsitself. The cultivator of this science has to become acquainted with so many groveling and horriblesuperstitions that a presumption49 easily arises in his mind that any belief that is religious probably isfalse. In the "prayerful communion" of savages51 with such mumbo-jumbos of deities52 as theyacknowledge, it is hard for us to see what genuine spiritual work--even though it were workrelative only to their dark savage50 obligations-- can possibly be done.
The consequence is that the conclusions of the science of religions are as likely to be adverse53 asthey are to be favorable to the claim that the essence of religion is true. There is a notion in the airabout us that religion is probably only an anachronism, a case of "survival," an atavistic relapseinto a mode of thought which humanity in its more enlightened examples has outgrown54; and thisnotion our religious anthropologists at present do little to counteract55.
This view is so widespread at the present day that I must consider it with some explicitnessbefore I pass to my own conclusions. Let me call it the "Survival theory," for brevity's sake.
The pivot56 round which the religious life, as we have traced it, revolves57, is the interest of theindividual in his private personal destiny. Religion, in short, is a monumental chapter in the historyof human egotism. The gods believed in--whether by crude savages or by men disciplinedintellectually--agree with each other in recognizing personal calls. Religious thought is carried onin terms of personality, this being, in the world of religion, the one fundamental fact. To-day, quiteas much as at any previous age, the religious individual tells you that the divine meets him on thebasis of his personal concerns.
Science, on the other hand, has ended by utterly58 repudiating59 the personal point of view. Shecatalogues her elements and records her laws indifferent as to what purpose may be shown forth60 bythem, and constructs her theories quite careless of their bearing on human anxieties and fates.
Though the scientist may individually nourish a religion, and be a theist in his irresponsible hours,the days are over when it could be said that for Science herself the heavens declare the glory ofGod and the firmament61 showeth his handiwork. Our solar system, with its harmonies, is seen nowas but one passing case of a certain sort of moving equilibrium62 in the heavens, realized by a localaccident in an appalling63 wilderness64 of worlds where no life can exist. In a span of time which as acosmic interval65 will count but as an hour, it will have ceased to be. The Darwinian notion ofchance production, and subsequent destruction, speedy or deferred66, applies to the largest as well asto the smallest facts. It is impossible, in the present temper of the scientific imagination, to find inthe driftings of the cosmic atoms, whether they work on the universal or on the particular scale,anything but a kind of aimless weather, doing and undoing67, achieving no proper history, andleaving no result. Nature has no one distinguishable ultimate tendency with which it is possible tofeel a sympathy. In the vast rhythm of her processes, as the scientific mind now follows them, sheappears to cancel herself. The books of natural theology which satisfied the intellects of ourgrandfathers seem to us quite grotesque,[334] representing, as they did, a God who conformed thelargest things of nature to the paltriest68 of our private wants. The God whom science recognizesmust be a God of universal laws exclusively, a God who does a wholesale69, not a retail70 business. Hecannot accommodate his processes to the convenience of individuals. The bubbles on the foamwhich coats a stormy sea are floating episodes, made and unmade by the forces of the wind andwater. Our private selves are like those bubbles--epiphenomena, as Clifford, I believe, ingeniouslycalled them; their destinies weigh nothing and determine nothing in the world's irremediablecurrents of events.
[334] How was it ever conceivable, we ask, that a man like Christian71 Wolff, in whose dry-asdusthead all the learning of the early eighteenth century was concentrated, should have preservedsuch a baby-like faith in the personal and human character of Nature as to expound72 her operationsas he did in his work on the uses of natural things? This, for example, is the account he gives of thesun and its utility:-"We see that God has created the sun to keep the changeable conditions on the earth in such anorder that living creatures, men and beasts, may inhabit its surface. Since men are the mostreasonable of creatures, and able to infer God's invisible being from the contemplation of theworld, the sun in so far forth contributes to the primary purpose of creation: without it the race ofman could not be preserved or continued. . . . The sun makes daylight, not only on our earth, butalso on the other planets; and daylight is of the utmost utility to us, for by its means we cancommodiously carry on those occupations which in the night-time would either be quiteimpossible. Or at any rate impossible without our going to the expense of artificial light. Thebeasts of the field can find food by day which they would not be able to find at night. Moreover weowe it to the sunlight that we are able to see everything that is on the earth's surface, not only nearby, but also at a distance, and to recognize both near and far things according to their species,which again is of manifold use to us not only in the business necessary to human life, and when weare traveling, but also for the scientific knowledge of Nature, which knowledge for the most partdepends on observations made with the help of sight, and without the sunshine, would have beenimpossible. If any one would rightly impress on his mind the great advantages which he derivesfrom the sun, let him imagine himself living through only one month, and see how it would bewith all his undertakings74, if it were not day but night. He would then be sufficiently75 convinced outof his own experience, especially if he had much work to carry on in the street or in the fields. . . .
From the sun we learn to recognize when it is midday, and by knowing this point of time exactly,we can set our clocks right, on which account astronomy owes much to the sun. . . . By help of thesun one can find the meridian76. . . . But the meridian is the basis of our sun-dials, and generallyspeaking, should have sun-dials if had no sun." Vernunftige Gedanken von denAbsichter der (we) naturlichen Dinge(no) , 1782. pp.74-84.(we)Or read the account of God's beneficence in the institution of "the great variety throughout theworld of men's faces, voices, and hand-writing," given in Derham's Physico-theology, a book thathad much vogue77 in the eighteenth century. "Had Man's body," says Dr. Derham, "been madeaccording to any of the Atheistical78 Schemes, or any other Method than that of the infinite Lord ofthe World, this wise Variety would never have been: but Men's Faces would have been cast in thesame, or not a very different Mould, their Organs of Speech would have sounded the same or notso great a Variety of Notes, and the same Structure of Muscles and Nerves would have given theHand the same Direction in Writing. And in this Case what Confusion, what Disturbance80, whatMischiefs would the world eternally have lain under! No Security could have been to our persons;no Certainty, no Enjoyment81 of our Possessions; no Justice between Man and Man, no Distinctionbetween Good and Bad, between Friends and Foes82, between Father and Child, Husband and Wife,Male or Female; but all would have been turned topsy-turvy, by being exposed to the Malice83 of theEnvious and ill-Natured, to the Fraud and Violence of Knaves84 and Robbers, to the Forgeries85 of thecrafty Cheat, to the Lusts86 of the Effeminate and Debauched, and what not! Our Courts of Justicecan abundantly testify the dire79 Effects of Mistaking Men's Faces, of counterfeiting87 their Hands,and forging Writings.
But now as the infinitely88 wise Creator and Ruler hath ordered the Matter, every man's Face candistinguish him in the Light, and his Voice in the Dark, his Hand-writing can speak for him thoughabsent, and be his Witness, and secure his Contracts in future Generations. A manifest as well asadmirable Indication of the divine Superintendence and Management."A God so careful as to make provision even for the unmistakable signing of bank checks anddeeds was a deity90 truly after the heart of eighteenth century Anglicanism.
I subjoin, omitting the capitals, Derham's "Vindication91 of God by the Institution of Hills andValleys," and Wolff's altogether culinary account of the institution of Water:-"The uses," says Wolff, "which water serves in human life are plain to see and need not bedescribed at length. Water is a universal drink of man and beasts. Even though men have madethemselves drinks that are artificial, they could not do this without water. Beer is brewed92 of waterand malt, and it is the water in it which quenches93 thirst. Wine is prepared from grapes, which couldnever have grown without the help of water; and the same is true of those drinks which in Englandand other places they produce from fruit. . . . Therefore since God so planned the world that menand beasts should live upon it and find there everything required for their necessity andconvenience, he also made water as one means whereby to make the earth into so excellent adwelling. And this is all the more manifest when we consider the advantages which we obtain fromthis same water for the cleaning of our household utensils94, of our clothing, and of othermatters. . . . When one goes into a grinding-mill one sees that the grindstone must always be keptwet and then one will get a still greater idea of the use of water."Of the hills and valleys, Derham, after praising their beauty, discourses96 as follows: "Someconstitutions are indeed of so happy a strength, and so confirmed an health, as to be indifferent toalmost any place or temperature of the air. But then others are so weakly and feeble, as not to beable to bear one, but can live comfortably in another place. With some the more subtle and finer airof the hills doth best agree, who are languishing98 and dying in the feculent and grosser air of greattowns, or even the warmer and vaporous air of the valleys and waters. But contrariwise, otherslanguish on the hills, and grow lusty and strong in the warmer air of the valleys.
"So that this opportunity of shifting our abode99 from the hills to the vales, is an admirableeasement, refreshment100, and great benefit to the valetudinarian101, feeble part of mankind; affordingthose an easy and comfortable life, who would otherwise live miserably102, languish97, and pine away.
"To this salutary conformation of the earth we may add another great convenience of the hills,and that is affording commodious73 places for habitation, serving (as an eminent103 author wordeth it)as screens to keep off the cold and nipping blasts of the northern and easterly winds, and reflectingthe benign104 and cherishing sunbeams and so rendering105 our habitations both more comfortable andmore cheerly in winter.
"Lastly, it is to the hills that the fountains owe their rise and the rivers their conveyance106, andconsequently those vast masses and lofty piles are not, as they are charged such rude and uselessexcrescences of our ill-formed globe; but the admirable tools of nature, contrived107 and ordered bythe infinite Creator, to do one of its most useful works. For, was the surface of the earth even andlevel, and the middle parts of its islands and continents not mountainous and high as now it is, it ismost certain there could be no descent for the rivers, no conveyance for the waters; but, instead ofgliding along those gentle declivities which the higher lands now afford them quite down to thesea, they would stagnate108 and perhaps stink109, and also drown large tracts89 of land.
"[Thus] the hills and vales, though to a peevish and weary traveler they may seem incommodiousand troublesome, yet are a noble work of the great Creator, and wisely appointed by him for thegood of our sublunary world."You see how natural it is, from this point of view, to treat religion as a mere survival, for religiondoes in fact perpetuate110 the traditions of the most primeval thought. To coerce111 the spiritual powers,or to square them and get them on our side, was, during enormous tracts of time, the one greatobject in our dealings with the natural world. For our ancestors, dreams, hallucinations,revelations, and cock-and-bull stories were inextricably mixed with facts. Up to a comparativelyrecent date such distinctions as those between what has been verified and what is only conjectured,between the impersonal112 and the personal aspects of existence, were hardly suspected or conceived.
Whatever you imagined in a lively manner, whatever you thought fit to be true, you affirmedconfidently; and whatever you affirmed, your comrades believed. Truth was what had not yet beencontradicted, most things were taken into the mind from the point of view of their humansuggestiveness, and the attention confined itself exclusively to the aesthetic113 and dramatic aspectsof events.[335]
[335] Until the seventeenth century this mode of thought prevailed. One need only recall thedramatic treatment even of mechanical questions by Aristotle, as, for example, his explanation ofthe power of the lever to make a small weight raise a larger one. This is due, according toAristotle, to the generally miraculous114 character of the circle and of all circular movement. Thecircle is both convex and concave; it is made by a fixed115 point and a moving line, which contradicteach other; and whatever moves in a circle moves in opposite directions. Nevertheless, movementin a circle is the most "natural" movement; and the long arm of the lever, moving, as it does, in thelarger circle, has the greater amount of this natural motion, and consequently requires the lesserforce. Or recall the explanation by Herodotus of the position of the sun in winter: It moves to thesouth because of the cold which drives it into the warm parts of the heavens over Libya. Or listento Saint Augustine's speculations116: "Who gave to chaff117 such power to freeze that it preserves snowburied under it, and such power to warm that it ripens118 green fruit? Who can explain the strangeproperties of fire itself, which blackens all that it burns, though itself bright, and which, though ofthe most beautiful colors, discolors almost all that it touches and feeds upon, and turns blazing fuelinto grimy cinders119? . . . Then what wonderful properties do we find in charcoal120, which is so brittlethat a light tap breaks it, and a slight pressure pulverizes121 it, and yet is so strong that no moisturerots it, nor any time causes it to decay." City of God, book xxi, ch. iv.
Such aspects of things as these, their naturalness and unnaturalness122 the sympathies andantipathies of their superficial qualities, their eccentricities123, their brightness and strength anddestructiveness, were inevitably124 the ways in which they originally fastened our attention.
If you open early medical books, you will find sympathetic magic invoked125 on every page. Take,for example, the famous vulnerary ointment126 attributed to Paracelsus. For this there were a varietyof receipts, including usually human fat, the fat of either a bull, a wild boar, or a bear, powderedearthworms, the usnia, or mossy growth on the weathered skull127 of a hanged criminal, and othermaterials equally unpleasant--the whole prepared under the planet Venus if possible, but neverunder Mars or Saturn128. Then, if a splinter of wood, dipped in the patient's blood, or the bloodstainedweapon that wounded him, be immersed in this ointment, the wound itself being tightly bound up,the latter infallibly gets well--I quote now Van Helmont's account--for the blood on the weapon orsplinter, containing in it the spirit of the wounded man, is roused to active excitement by thecontact of the ointment, whence there results to it a full commission or power to cure its cousingermanthe blood in the patient's body. This it does by sucking out the dolorous129 and exoticimpression from the wounded part. But to do this it has to implore130 the aid of the bull's fat, andother portions of the unguent131. The reason why bull's fat is so powerful is that the bull at the time ofslaughter is full of secret reluctancy and vindictive132 murmurs133, and therefore dies with a higherflame of revenge about him than any other animal. And thus we have made it out, says this author,that the admirable efficacy of the ointment ought to be imputed134, not to any auxiliary135 concurrenceof Satan, but simply to the energy of the posthumous136 character of Revenge remaining firmlyimpressed upon the blood and concreted fat in the unguent. J. B. Van Helmont: A Ternary ofParadoxes, translated by Walter Charleton, London, 1650.--I much abridge137 the original in mycitations.
The author goes on to prove by the analogy of many other natural facts that this sympatheticaction between things at a distance is the true rationale of the case. "If," he says, "the heart of ahorse slain138 by a witch, taken out of the yet reeking139 carcase, be impaled140 upon an arrow and roasted,immediately the whole witch becomes tormented141 with the insufferable pains and cruelty of the fire,which could by no means happen unless there preceded a conjunction of the spirit of the witchwith the spirit of the horse. In the reeking and yet panting heart, the spirit of the witch is keptcaptive, and the retreat of it prevented by the arrow transfixed. Similarly hath not many a murderedcarcase at the coroner's inquest suffered a fresh haemorrhage or cruentation at the presence of theassassin?--the blood being, as in a furious fit of anger, enraged142 and agitated143 by the impress ofrevenge conceived against the murderer, at the instant of the soul's compulsive exile from thebody. So, if you have dropsy, gout, or jaundice, by including some of your warm blood in the shelland white of an egg, which, exposed to a gentle heat, and mixed with a bait of flesh, you shall giveto a hungry dog or hog144, the disease shall instantly pass from you into the animal, and leave youentirely. And similarly again, if you burn some of the milk either of a cow or of a woman, thegland from which it issued will dry up. A gentleman at Brussels had his nose mowed146 off in acombat, but the celebrated147 surgeon Tagliacozzus digged a new nose for him out of the skin of thearm of a porter at Bologna. About thirteen months after his return to his own country, the engraftednose grew cold, putrefied, and in a few days dropped off, and it was then discovered that the porterhad expired, near about the same punctilio of time. There are still at Brussels eye-witnesses of thisoccurrence," says Van Helmont; and adds, "I pray what is there in this of superstition48 or of exaltedimagination?"Modern mind-cure literature--the works of Prentice Mulford, for example--is full of sympatheticmagic.
How indeed could it be otherwise? The extraordinary value, for explanation and prevision, ofthose mathematical and mechanical modes of conception which science uses, was a result thatcould not possibly have been expected in advance. Weight, movement, velocity149, direction,position, what thin, pallid150, uninteresting ideas! How could the richer animistic aspects of Nature,the peculiarities151 and oddities that make phenomena9 picturesquely152 striking or expressive153, fail tohave been first singled out and followed by philosophy as the more promising154 avenue to theknowledge of Nature's life? Well, it is still in these richer animistic and dramatic aspects thatreligion delights to dwell. It is the terror and beauty of phenomena, the "promise" of the dawn andof the rainbow, the "voice" of the thunder, the "gentleness" of the summer rain, the "sublimity155" ofthe stars, and not the physical laws which these things follow, by which the religious mind stillcontinues to be most impressed; and just as of yore, the devout man tells you that in the solitude156 ofhis room or of the fields he still feels the divine presence, that inflowings of help come in reply tohis prayers, and that sacrifices to this unseen reality fill him with security and peace.
Pure anachronism! says the survival-theory;--anachronism for which deanthropomorphization ofthe imagination is the remedy required. The less we mix the private with the cosmic, the more wedwell in universal and impersonal terms, the truer heirs of Science we become.
In spite of the appeal which this impersonality157 of the scientific attitude makes to a certainmagnanimity of temper, I believe it to be shallow, and I can now state my reason in comparativelyfew words. That reason is that, so long as we deal with the cosmic and the general, we deal onlywith the symbols of reality, but as soon as we deal with private and personal phenomena as such,we deal with realities in the completest sense of the term. I think I can easily make clear what Imean by these words.
The world of our experience consists at all times of two parts, an objective and a subjective158 part,of which the former may be incalculably more extensive than the latter, and yet the latter can neverbe omitted or suppressed. The objective part is the sum total of whatsoever159 at any given time wemay be thinking of, the subjective part is the inner "state" in which the thinking comes to pass.
What we think of may be enormous--the cosmic times and spaces, for example-- whereas the innerstate may be the most fugitive160 and paltry161 activity of mind. Yet the cosmic objects, so far as theexperience yields them, are but ideal pictures of something whose existence we do not inwardlypossess but only point at outwardly, while the inner state is our very experience itself; its realityand that of our experience are one. A conscious field PLUS its object as felt or thought of PLUS anattitude towards the object PLUS the sense of a self to whom the attitude belongs--such a concretebit of personal experience may be a small bit, but it is a solid bit as long as it lasts; not hollow, nota mere abstract element of experience, such as the "object" is when taken all alone. It is a FULLfact, even though it be an insignificant162 fact; it is of the KIND to which all realities whatsoevermust belong; the motor currents of the world run through the like of it; it is on the line connectingreal events with real events. That unsharable feeling which each one of us has of the pinch of hisindividual destiny as he privately163 feels it rolling out on fortune's wheel may be disparaged164 for itsegotism, may be sneered165 at as unscientific, but it is the one thing that fills up the measure of ourconcrete actuality, and any would-be existent that should lack such a feeling, or its analogue,would be a piece of reality only half made up.[336]
[336] Compare Lotze's doctrine166 that the only meaning we can attach to the notion of a thing as itis "in itself" is by conceiving it as it is FOR itself, i.e., as a piece of full experience with a privatesense of "pinch" or inner activity of some sort going with it.
If this be true, it is absurd for science to say that the egotistic elements of experience should besuppressed. The axis167 of reality runs solely168 through the egotistic places--they are strung upon it likeso many beads169. To describe the world with all the various feelings of the individual pinch ofdestiny, all the various spiritual attitudes, left out from the description--they being as describableas anything else --would be something like offering a printed bill of fare as the equivalent for asolid meal. Religion makes no such blunder. The individual's religion may be egotistic, and thoseprivate realities which it keeps in touch with may be narrow enough; but at any rate it alwaysremains infinitely less hollow and abstract, as far as it goes, than a science which prides itself ontaking no account of anything private at all.
A bill of fare with one real raisin95 on it instead of the word "raisin," with one real egg instead ofthe word "egg," might be an inadequate170 meal, but it would at least be a commencement of reality.
The contention171 of the survival-theory that we ought to stick to non-personal elements exclusivelyseems like saying that we ought to be satisfied forever with reading the naked bill of fare. I think,therefore, that however particular questions connected with our individual destinies may beanswered, it is only by acknowledging them as genuine questions, and living in the sphere ofthought which they open up, that we become profound. But to live thus is to be religious; so Iunhesitatingly repudiate172 the survival-theory of religion, as being founded on an egregious173 mistake.
It does not follow, because our ancestors made so many errors of fact and mixed them with theirreligion, that we should therefore leave off being religious at all.[337] By being religious weestablish ourselves in possession of ultimate reality at the only points at which reality is given us toguard. Our responsible concern is with our private destiny, after all.
[337] Even the errors of fact may possibly turn out not to be as wholesale as the scientistassumes. We saw in Lecture IV how the religious conception of the universe seems to many mind-curers "verified" from day to day by their experience of fact. "Experience of fact" is a field with somany things in it that the sectarian scientist methodically declining, as he does, to recognize such"facts" as mind-curers and others like them experience, otherwise than by such rude heads ofclassification as "bosh," "rot," "folly," certainly leaves out a mass of raw fact which, save for theindustrious interest of the religious in the more personal aspects of reality, would never havesucceeded in getting itself recorded at all. We know this to be true already in certain cases; it may,therefore, be true in others as well. Miraculous healings have always been part of thesupernaturalist stock in trade, and have always been dismissed by the scientist as figments of theimagination. But the scientist's tardy174 education in the facts of hypnotism has recently given him anapperceiving mass for phenomena of this order, and he consequently now allows that the healingsmay exist, provided you expressly call them effects of "suggestion." Even the stigmata of the crosson Saint Francis's hands and feet may on these terms not be a fable175. Similarly, the time-honoredphenomenon of diabolical176 possession is on the point of being admitted by the scientist as a fact,now that he has the name of "hystero-demonopathy" by which to apperceive it. No one can foreseejust how far this legitimation177 of occultist phenomena under newly found scientist titles mayproceed--even "prophecy," even "levitation," might creep into the pale.
Thus the divorce between scientist facts and religious facts may not necessarily be as eternal as itat first sight seems, nor the personalism and romanticism of the world, as they appeared toprimitive thinking, be matters so irrevocably outgrown. The final human opinion may, in short, insome manner now impossible to foresee, revert178 to the more personal style, just as any path ofprogress may follow a spiral rather than a straight line. If this were so, the rigorously impersonalview of science might one day appear as having been a temporarily useful eccentricity179 rather thanthe definitively180 triumphant181 position which the sectarian scientist at present so confidentlyannounces it to be.
You see now why I have been so individualistic throughout these lectures, and why I haveseemed so bent182 on rehabilitating183 the element of feeling in religion and subordinating its intellectualpart. Individuality is founded in feeling; and the recesses184 of feeling, the darker, blinder strata185 ofcharacter, are the only places in the world in which we catch real fact in the making, and directlyperceive how events happen, and how work is actually done.[338] Compared with this world ofliving individualized feelings, the world of generalized objects which the intellect contemplates186 iswithout solidity or life. As in stereoscopic or kinetoscopic pictures seen outside the instrument, thethird dimension, the movement, the vital element, are not there. We get a beautiful picture of anexpress train supposed to be moving, but where in the picture, as I have heard a friend say, is theenergy or the fifty miles an hour?[339]
[338] Hume's criticism has banished187 causation from the world of physical objects, and "Science"is absolutely satisfied to define cause in terms of concomitant change-read Mach, Pearson,Ostwald. The "original" of the notion of causation is in our inner personal experience, and onlythere can causes in the old-fashioned sense be directly observed and described.
[339] When I read in a religious paper words like these: "Perhaps the best thing we can say ofGod is that he is THE INEVITABLE188 INFERENCE," I recognize the tendency to let religionevaporate in intellectual terms. Would martyrs189 have sung in the flames for a mere inference,however inevitable it might be? Original religious men, like Saint Francis, Luther, Behmen, haveusually been enemies of the intellect's pretension190 to meddle191 with religious things. Yet the intellect,everywhere invasive, shows everywhere its shallowing effect. See how the ancient spirit ofMethodism evaporates under those wonderfully able rationalistic booklets (which every one shouldread) of a philosopher like Professor Bowne (The Christian Revelation, The Christian Life TheAtonement: Cincinnati and New York, 1898, 1899, 1900). See the positively193 expulsive purpose ofphilosophy properly so called:-"Religion," writes M. Vacherot (La Religion, Paris, 1869, pp. 313, 436, et passim), "answers to atransient state or condition, not to a permanent determination of human nature, being merely anexpression of that stage of the human mind which is dominated by the imagination. . . .
Christianity has but a single possible final heir to its estate, and that is scientific philosophy."In a still more radical vein194, Professor Ribot (Psychologie des Sentiments, p. 310) describes theevaporation of religion. He sums it up in a single formula--the ever-growing predominance of therational intellectual element, with the gradual fading out of the emotional element, this lattertending to enter into the group of purely44 intellectual sentiments. "Of religious sentiment properlyso called, nothing survives at last save a vague respect for the unknowable x which is a last relic195 ofthe fear, and a certain attraction towards the ideal, which is a relic of the love, that characterizedthe earlier periods of religious growth.
To state this more simply, religion tends to turn into religious philosophy.--These arepsychologically entirely145 different things, the one being a theoretic construction of ratiocination,whereas the other is the living work of a group of persons, or of a great inspired leader, calling intoplay the entire thinking and feeling organism of man."I find the same failure to recognize that the stronghold of religion lies in individuality in attemptslike those of Professor Baldwin (Mental Development, Social and Ethical196 Interpretations197, ch. x)and Mr. H. R. Marshall (Instinct and Reason, chaps. viii. to xii.) to make it a purely "conservativesocial force."Let us agree, then, that Religion, occupying herself with personal destinies and keeping thus incontact with the only absolute realities which we know, must necessarily play an eternal part inhuman198 history. The next thing to decide is what she reveals about those destinies, or whetherindeed she reveals anything distinct enough to be considered a general message to mankind. Wehave done as you see, with our preliminaries, and our final summing up can now begin.
I am well aware that after all the palpitating documents which I have quoted, and all theperspectives of emotion-inspiring institution and belief that my previous lectures have opened, thedry analysis to which I now advance may appear to many of you like an anti-climax, a tapering-offand flattening199 out of the subject, instead of a crescendo200 of interest and result. I said awhile ago thatthe religious attitude of Protestants appears poverty-stricken to the Catholic imagination. Still morepoverty-stricken, I fear, may my final summing up of the subject appear at first to some of you. Onwhich account I pray you now to bear this point in mind, that in the present part of it I amexpressly trying to reduce religion to its lowest admissible terms, to that minimum, free fromindividualistic excrescences, which all religions contain as their nucleus201, and on which it may behoped that all religious persons may agree. That established, we should have a result which mightbe small, but would at least be solid; and on it and round it the ruddier additional beliefs on whichthe different individuals make their venture might be grafted148, and flourish as richly as you please. Ishall add my own over-belief (which will be, I confess, of a somewhat pallid kind, as befits acritical philosopher), and you will, I hope, also add your over-beliefs, and we shall soon be in thevaried world of concrete religious constructions once more. For the moment, let me dryly pursuethe analytic202 part of the task.
Both thought and feeling are determinants of conduct, and the same conduct may be determinedeither by feeling or by thought. When we survey the whole field of religion, we find a great varietyin the thoughts that have prevailed there; but the feelings on the one hand and the conduct on theother are almost always the same, for Stoic203, Christian, and Buddhist204 saints are practicallyindistinguishable in their lives. The theories which Religion generates, being thus variable, aresecondary; and if you wish to grasp her essence, you must look to the feelings and the conduct asbeing the more constant elements. It is between these two elements that the short circuit exists onwhich she carries on her principal business, while the ideas and symbols and other institutionsform loop-lines which may be perfections and improvements, and may even some day all be unitedinto one harmonious system, but which are not to be regarded as organs with an indispensablefunction, necessary at all times for religious life to go on. This seems to me the first conclusionwhich we are entitled to draw from the phenomena we have passed in review.
The next step is to characterize the feelings. To what psychological order do they belong?
The resultant outcome of them is in any case what Kant calls a "sthenic" affection, an excitementof the cheerful, expansive, "dynamogenic" order which, like any tonic205, freshens our vital powers.
In almost every lecture, but especially in the lectures on Conversion206 and on Saintliness, we haveseen how this emotion overcomes temperamental melancholy207 and imparts endurance to theSubject, or a zest, or a meaning, or an enchantment11 and glory to the common objects of life.[340]
The name of "faith-state," by which Professor Leuba designates it, is a good one.[341] It is abiological as well as a psychological condition, and Tolstoy is absolutely accurate in classing faithamong the forces BY WHICH MEN LIVE.[342] The total absence of it, anhedonia,[343] meanscollapse.
[340] Compare, for instance, pages 200, 215, 219, 222, 244-250, 270-273.
[341] American Journal of Psychology208, vii. 345.
[342] Above, p. 181.
[343] Above, p. 143.
The faith-state may hold a very minimum of intellectual content. We saw examples of this inthose sudden raptures209 of the divine presence, or in such mystical seizures210 as Dr. Bucke described.
[344] It may be a mere vague enthusiasm, half spiritual, half vital, a courage, and a feeling thatgreat and wondrous211 things are in the air.[345]
[344] Above, p. 391.
[345] Example: Henri Perreyve writes to Gratry: "I do not know how to deal with the happinesswhich you aroused in me this morning. It overwhelms me; I want to DO something, yet I can donothing and am fit for nothing. . . . I would fain do GREAT THINGS." Again, after an inspiring interview, he writes: "I went homewards, intoxicated212 with joy, hope, and strength. I wanted to feedupon my happiness in solitude far from all men. It was late; but, unheeding that, I took a mountainpath and went on like a madman, looking at the heavens, regardless of earth. Suddenly an instinctmade me draw hastily back --I was on the very edge of a precipice213, one step more and I must havefallen. I took fright and gave up my nocturnal promenade214." A. Gratry: Henri Perreyve, London,1872, pp. 92, 89.
This primacy, in the faith-state, of vague expansive impulse over direction is well expressed inWalt Whitman's lines (Leaves of Grass, 1872, p. 190):-"O to confront night, storms, hunger,ridicule, accidents, rebuffs, as the trees and animals do. . . .
Dear Camerado! I confess I have urged you onward215 with me, and still urge you, without the leastidea what is our destination Or whether we shall be victorious216, or utterly quell'd and defeated."This readiness for great things, and this sense that the world by its importance, wonderfulness,etc., is apt for their production, would seem to be the undifferentiated germ of all the higher faiths.
Trust in our own dreams of ambition, or in our country's expansive destinies, and faith in theprovidence of God, all have their source in that onrush of our sanguine217 impulses, and in that senseof the exceedingness of the possible over the real.
When, however, a positive intellectual content is associated with a faith-state, it gets invinciblystamped in upon belief,[346] and this explains the passionate219 loyalty220 of religious personseverywhere to the minutest details of their so widely differing creeds. Taking creeds and faith-statetogether, as forming "religions," and treating these as purely subjective phenomena, without regardto the question of their "truth," we are obliged, on account of their extraordinary influence uponaction and endurance, to class them amongst the most important biological functions of mankind.
Their stimulant221 and anaesthetic effect is so great that Professor Leuba, in a recent article,[347]
goes so far as to say that so long as men can USE their God, they care very little who he is, or evenwhether he is at all. "The truth of the matter can be put," says Leuba, "in this way: GOD IS NOTKNOWN, HE IS NOT UNDERSTOOD; HE IS USED--sometimes as meat-purveyor, sometimesas moral support, sometimes as friend, sometimes as an object of love. If he proves himself useful,the religious consciousness asks for no more than that. Does God really exist? How does he exist?
What is he? are so many irrelevant222 questions. Not God, but life, more life, a larger, richer, moresatisfying life, is, in the last analysis, the end of religion. The love of life, at any and every level ofdevelopment, is the religious impulse."[348]
[346] Compare Leuba: Loc. cit., pp. 346-349.
[347] The Contents of Religious Consciousness, in The Monist, xi. 536, July 1901.
[348] Loc. cit., pp. 571, 572, abridged223. See, also, this writer's extraordinarily224 true criticism of thenotion that religion primarily seeks to solve the intellectual mystery of the world. Compare whatW. Bender says (in his Wesen der Religion, Bonn, 1888, pp. 85, 38): "Not the question about God,and not the inquiry225 into the origin and purpose of the world is religion, but the question about Man.
All religious views of life are anthropocentric." "Religion is that activity of the human impulsetowards self-preservation by means of which Man seeks to carry his essential vital purposesthrough against the adverse pressure of the world by raising himself freely towards the world'sordering and governing powers when the limits of his own strength are reached." The whole bookis little more than a development of these words.
At this purely subjective rating, therefore, Religion must be considered vindicated226 in a certainway from the attacks of her critics. It would seem that she cannot be a mere anachronism andsurvival, but must exert a permanent function, whether she be with or without intellectual content,and whether, if she have any, it be true or false.
We must next pass beyond the point of view of merely subjective utility, and make inquiry intothe intellectual content itself.
First, is there, under all the discrepancies227 of the creeds, a common nucleus to which they beartheir testimony228 unanimously?
And second, ought we to consider the testimony true?
I will take up the first question first, and answer it immediately in the affirmative. The warringgods and formulas of the various religions do indeed cancel each other, but there is a certainuniform deliverance in which religions all appear to meet. It consists of two parts:-1. An uneasiness; and2. Its solution.
1. The uneasiness, reduced to its simplest terms, is a sense that there is SOMETHING WRONGABOUT US as we naturally stand.
2. The solution is a sense that WE ARE SAVED FROM THE WRONGNESS by making properconnection with the higher powers.
In those more developed minds which alone we are studying, the wrongness takes a moralcharacter, and the salvation229 takes a mystical tinge230. I think we shall keep well within the limits ofwhat is common to all such minds if we formulate the essence of their religious experience interms like these:-The individual, so far as he suffers from his wrongness and criticises it, is to that extentconsciously beyond it, and in at least possible touch with something higher, if anything higherexist. Along with the wrong part there is thus a better part of him, even though it may be but amost helpless germ. With which part he should identify his real being is by no means obvious atthis stage; but when stage 2 (the stage of solution or salvation) arrives,[349] the man identifies hisreal being with the germinal higher part of himself; and does so in the following way. He becomesconscious that this higher part is conterminous and continuous with a MORE of the same quality,which is operative in the universe outside of him, and which he can keep in working touch with,and in a fashion get on board of and save himself when all his lower being has gone to pieces inthe wreck231.
[349] Remember that for some men it arrives suddenly, for others gradually, whilst others againpractically enjoy it all their life.
It seems to me that all the phenomena are accurately232 describable in these very simple generalterms.[350] They allow for the divided self and the struggle; they involve the change of personalcentre and the surrender of the lower self; they express the appearance of exteriority233 of the helpingpower and yet account for our sense of union with it;[351] and they fully192 justify234 our feelings ofsecurity and joy. There is probably no autobiographic document, among all those which I havequoted, to which the description will not well apply. One need only add such specific details aswill adapt it to various theologies and various personal temperaments, and one will then have thevarious experiences reconstructed in their individual forms.
[350] The practical difficulties are: 1, to "realize the reality" of one's higher part; 2, to identifyone's self with it exclusively; and 3, to identify it with all the rest of ideal being.
[351] "When mystical activity is at its height, we find consciousness possessed235 by the sense of abeing at once EXCESSIVE and IDENTICAL with the self: great enough to be God; interiorenough to be ME. The "objectivity" of it ought in that case to be called EXCESSIVITY, rather, orexceedingness." ReCeJac: Essai sur les fondements de la conscience mystique, 1897, p. 46.
So far, however, as this analysis goes, the experiences are only psychological phenomena. Theypossess, it is true, enormous biological worth. Spiritual strength really increases in the subjectwhen he has them, a new life opens for him, and they seem to him a place of conflux where theforces of two universes meet; and yet this may be nothing but his subjective way of feeling things,a mood of his own fancy, in spite of the effects produced. I now turn to my second question: Whatis the objective "truth" of their content?[352]
[352] The word "truth" is here taken to mean something additional to bare value for life,although the natural propensity236 of man is to believe that whatever has great value for life is therebycertified as true.
The part of the content concerning which the question of truth most pertinently237 arises is that"MORE of the same quality" with which our own higher self appears in the experience to comeinto harmonious working relation. Is such a "more" merely our own notion, or does it really exist?
If so, in what shape does it exist? Does it act, as well as exist? And in what form should weconceive of that "union" with it of which religious geniuses are so convinced?
It is in answering these questions that the various theologies perform their theoretic work, andthat their divergencies most come to light. They all agree that the "more" really exists; thoughsome of them hold it to exist in the shape of a personal god or gods, while others are satisfied toconceive it as a stream of ideal tendency embedded238 in the eternal structure of the world. They allagree, moreover, that it acts as well as exists, and that something really is effected for the betterwhen you throw your life into its hands. It is when they treat of the experience of "union" with itthat their speculative239 differences appear most clearly. Over this point pantheism and theism, natureand second birth, works and grace and karma, immortality240 and reincarnation, rationalism andmysticism, carry on inveterate241 disputes.
At the end of my lecture on Philosophy[353] I held out the notion that an impartial242 science ofreligions might sift243 out from the midst of their discrepancies a common body of doctrine which shemight also formulate in terms to which <501> physical science need not object. This, I said, shemight adopt as her own reconciling hypothesis, and recommend it for general belief. I also saidthat in my last lecture I should have to try my own hand at framing such an hypothesis.
[353] Above, p. 445.
The time has now come for this attempt. Who says "hypothesis" renounces244 the ambition to becoercive in his arguments. The most I can do is, accordingly, to offer something that may fit thefacts so easily that your scientific logic8 will find no plausible245 pretext246 for vetoing your impulse towelcome it as true.
The "more," as we called it, and the meaning of our "union" with it, form the nucleus of ourinquiry. Into what definite description can these words be translated, and for what definite facts dothey stand? It would never do for us to place ourselves offhand247 at the position of a particulartheology, the Christian theology, for example, and proceed immediately to define the "more" asJehovah, and the "union" as his imputation248 to us of the righteousness of Christ. That would beunfair to other religions, and, from our present standpoint at least, would be an over-belief.
We must begin by using less particularized terms; and, since one of the duties of the science ofreligions is to keep religion in connection with the rest of science, we shall do well to seek first ofall way of describing the "more," which psychologists may also recognize as real. Thesubco(a) nscious self is nowadays a well-accredited psychological entity249; and I believe that in it wehave exactly the mediating250 term required. Apart from all religious considerations, there is actuallyand literally more life in our total soul than we are at any time aware of. The exploration of thetransmarginal field has hardly yet been seriously undertaken, but what Mr. Myers said in 1892 inhis essay on the Subliminal252 Consciousness[354] is as true as when it was first written: "Each of usis in reality an abiding253 psychical254 entity far more extensive than he knows--an individuality whichcan never express itself completely through any corporeal255 manifestation256. The Self manifeststhrough the organism; but there is always some part of the Self unmanifested; and always, as itseems, some power of organic expression in abeyance257 or reserve."[355] Much of the content ofthis larger background against which our conscious being stands out in relief is insignificant.
Imperfect memories, silly jingles258, inhibitive259 timidities, "dissolutive" phenomena of various sorts,as Myers calls them, enters into it for a large part. But in it many of the performances of geniusseem also to have their origin; and in our study of conversion, of mystical experiences, and ofprayer, we have seen how striking a part invasions from this region play in the religious life.
[354] Proceedings260 of the Society for Psychical Research, vol. vii. p. 305. For a full statement ofMr. Myers's views, I may refer to his posthumous work, "Human Personality in the Light ofRecent Research," which is already announced by Messrs. Longmans, Green & Co. as being inpress. Mr. Myers for the first time proposed as a general psychological problem the exploration ofthe subliminal region of consciousness throughout its whole extent, and made the first methodicalsteps in its topography by treating as a natural series a mass of subliminal facts hitherto consideredonly as curious isolated261 facts and subjecting them to a systematized nomenclature. How importantthis exploration will prove, future work upon the path which Myers has opened can alone show.
compare my paper: "Frederic Myers's services to Psychology," in the said Proceedings, part xlii.,May, 1901.
[355] Compare the inventory262 given above on pp. 472-4, and also what is said of the subconsciousself on pp. 228-231, 235-236.
Let me then propose, as an hypothesis, that whatever it may be on its FARTHER side, the"more" with which in religious experience we feel ourselves connected is on its HITHER side thesubconscious continuation of our conscious life. Starting thus with a recognized psychological factas our basis, we seem to preserve a contact with "science" which the ordinary theologian lacks. Atthe same time the theologian's contention that the religious man is moved by an external power isvindicated, for it is one of the peculiarities of invasions from the subconscious263 region to take onobjective appearances, and to suggest to the Subject an external control. In the religious life thecontrol is felt as "higher"; but since on our hypothesis it is primarily the higher faculties264 of ourown hidden mind which are controlling, the sense of union with the power beyond us is a sense ofsomething, not merely apparently265, but literally true.
This doorway266 into the subject seems to me the best one for a science of religions, for it mediatesbetween a number of different points of view. Yet it is only a doorway, and difficulties presentthemselves as soon as we step through it, and ask how far our transmarginal consciousness carriesus if we follow it on its remoter side. Here the over-beliefs begin: here mysticism and theconversion-rapture and Vedantism and transcendental idealism bring in their monisticinterpretations[356] and tell us that the finite self rejoins the absolute self, for it was always onewith God and identical with the soul of the world.[357] Here the prophets of all the differentreligions come with their visions, voices, raptures, and other openings, supposed by each toauthenticate his own peculiar25 faith.
[356] Compare above, pp. 410 ff.
[357] One more expression of this belief, to increase the reader's familiarity with the notion ofit:-"If this room is full of darkness for thousands of years, and you come in and begin to weep andwail, 'Oh, the darkness,' will the darkness vanish? Bring the light in, strike a match, and lightcomes in a moment. So what good will it do you to think all your lives, 'Oh, I have done evil, Ihave made many mistakes'? It requires no ghost to tell us that. Bring in the light, and the evil goesin a moment. Strengthen the real nature, build up yourselves, the effulgent268, the resplendent, theever pure, call that up in every one whom you see. I wish that every one of us had come to such astate that even when we see the vilest269 of human beings we can see the God within, and instead ofcondemning, say, 'Rise, thou effulgent One, rise thou who art always pure, rise thou birthless anddeathless, rise almighty270, and manifest your nature.' . . . This is the highest prayer that the Advaitateaches. This is the one prayer: remembering our nature.". . . "Why does man go out to look for aGod? . . . It is your own heart beating, and you did not know, you were mistaking it for somethingexternal. He, nearest of the near, my own self, the reality of my own life, my body and my soul.--Iam Thee and Thou art Me. That is your own nature. Assert it, manifest it. Not to become pure, youare pure already. You are not to be perfect, you are that already. Every good thought which youthink or act upon is simply tearing the veil, as it were, and the purity, the Infinity271, the God behind,manifests itself--the eternal Subject of everything, the eternal Witness in this universe, your ownSelf. Knowledge is, as it were, a lower step, a degradation272. We are It already; how to know It?"Swami Viverananda: Addresses, No. XII., Practical Vedanta, part iv. pp. 172, 174, London, 1897;and Lectures, The Real and the Apparent Man, p. 24, abridged.
Those of us who are not personally favored with such specific revelations must stand outside ofthem altogether and, for the present at least, decide that, since they corroborate273 incompatibletheological doctrines274, they neutralize275 one another and leave no fixed results. If we follow any oneof them, or if we follow philosophical276 theory and embrace monistic pantheism on non-mysticalgrounds, we do so in the exercise of our individual freedom, and build out our religion in the waymost congruous with our personal susceptibilities. Among these susceptibilities intellectual onesplay a decisive part. Although the religious question is primarily a question of life, of living or notliving in the higher union which opens itself to us as a gift, yet the spiritual excitement in whichthe gift appears a real one will often fail to be aroused in an individual until certain particularintellectual beliefs or ideas which, as we say, come home to him, are touched.[358] These ideaswill thus be essential to that individual's religion;--which is as much as to say that over-beliefs invarious directions are absolutely indispensable, and that we should treat them with tenderness andtolerance so long as they are not intolerant themselves. As I have elsewhere written, the mostinteresting and valuable things about a man are usually his over-beliefs.
[358] For instance, here is a case where a person exposed from her birth to Christian ideas had towait till they came to her clad in spiritistic formulas before the saving experience set in:-"For myself I can say that spiritualism has saved me. It was revealed to me at a critical momentof my life, and without it I don't know what I should have done. It has taught me to detach myselffrom worldly things and to place my hope in things to come. Through it I have learned to see in allmen, even in those most criminal, even in those from whom I have most suffered, undevelopedbrothers to whom I owed assistance, love, and forgiveness. I have learned that I must lose mytemper over nothing despise no one, and pray for all. Most of all I have learned to pray! Andalthough I have still much to learn in this domain278, prayer ever brings me more strength,consolation, and comfort. I feel more than ever that I have only made a few steps on the long roadof progress; but I look at its length without dismay, for I have confidence that the day will comewhen all my efforts shall be rewarded. So Spiritualism has a great place in my life, indeed it holdsthe first place there." Flournoy Collection.
Disregarding the over beliefs, and confining ourselves to what is common and generic279, we havein the fact that the conscious person is continuous with a wider self through which savingexperiences come,[359] a positive content of religious experience which, it seems to me, is literallyand objectively true as far as it goes.
If I now proceed to state my own hypothesis about the farther limits of this extension of ourpersonality, I shall be offering my own over-belief--though I know it will appear a sorry under-belief to some of you--for which I can only bespeak280 the same indulgence which in a converse281 caseI should accord to yours.
[359] "The influence of the Holy Spirit, exquisitely282 called the Comforter, is a matter of actualexperience, as solid a reality as that of electro magnetism283." W. C. Brownell, Scribner's Magazine,vol. xxx. p. 112.
<506> The further limits of our being plunge284, it seems to me, into an altogether other dimensionof existence from the sensible and merely "understandable" world. Name it the mystical region, orthe supernatural region, whichever you choose. So far as our ideal impulses originate in this region(and most of them do originate in it, for we find them possessing us in a way for which we cannotarticulately account), we belong to it in a more intimate sense than that in which we belong to thevisible world, for we belong in the most intimate sense wherever our ideals belong. Yet the unseenregion in question is not merely ideal, for it produces effects in this world. When we communewith it, work is actually done upon our finite personality, for we are turned into new men, andconsequences in the way of conduct follow in the natural world upon our regenerative change.
[360] But that which produces effects within another reality must be termed a reality itself, so Ifeel as if we had no philosophic277 excuse for calling the unseen or mystical world unreal.
[360] That the transaction of opening ourselves, otherwise called prayer, is a perfectly285 definiteone for certain persons, appears abundantly in the preceding lectures. I append another concreteexample to rein7 force the impression on the reader's mind:-"Man can learn to transcend267 these limitations [of finite thought] and draw power and wisdom atwill. . . . The divine presence is known through experience. The turning to a higher plane is adistinct act of consciousness. It is not a vague, twilight286 or semi-conscious experience. It is not anecstasy, it is not a trance. It is not super-consciousness in the Vedantic sense. It is not due to selfhypnotization.
It is a perfectly calm, sane287, sound, rational, common-sense shifting of consciousnessfrom the phenomena of sense-perception to the phenomena of seership, from the thought of self toa distinctively288 higher realm. . . . For example, if the lower self be nervous, anxious, tense, one canin a few moments compel it to be calm. This is not done by a word simply. Again I say, it is nothypnotism. It is by the exercise of power. One feels the spirit of peace as definitely as heat isperceived on a hot summer day. The power can be as surely used as the sun s rays can be focusedand made to do work, to set fire to wood." The Higher Law, vol. iv. pp. 4, 6, Boston, August,1901.
God is the natural appellation289, for us Christians290 at least, for the supreme291 reality, so I will call thishigher part of the universe by the name of God.[361] We and God have business with each other;and in opening ourselves to his influence our deepest destiny is fulfilled. The universe, at thoseparts of it which our personal being constitutes, takes a turn genuinely for the worse or for thebetter in proportion as each one of us fulfills292 or evades God's demands. As far as this goes Iprobably have you with me, for I only translate into schematic language what I may call theinstinctive belief of mankind: God is real since he produces real effects.
[361] Transcendentalists are fond of the term "Over-soul," but as a rule they use it in anintellectualist sense, as meaning only a medium of communion. "God" is a causal agent as well asa medium of communion, and that is the aspect which I wish to emphasize.
The real effects in question, so far as I have as yet admitted them, are exerted on the personalcentres of energy of the various subjects, but the spontaneous faith of most of the subjects is thatthey embrace a wider sphere than this. Most religious men believe (or "know," if they be mystical)that not only they themselves, but the whole universe of beings to whom the God is present, aresecure in his parental293 hands. There is a sense, a dimension, they are sure, in which we are ALLsaved, in spite of the gates of hell and all adverse terrestrial appearances. God's existence is theguarantee of an ideal order that shall be permanently294 preserved. This world may indeed, as scienceassures us, some day burn up or freeze; but if it is part of his order, the old ideals are sure to bebrought elsewhere to fruition, so that where God is, tragedy is only provisional and partial, andshipwreck and dissolution are not the absolutely final things. Only when this farther step of faithconcerning God is taken, and remote objective consequences are predicted, does religion, as itseems to me, get wholly free from the first immediate21 subjective experience, and bring a REALHYPOTHESIS into play. A good hypothesis in science must have other properties than those ofthe phenomenon it is immediately invoked to explain, otherwise it is not prolific295 enough. God,meaning only what enters into the religious man's experience of union, falls short of being anhypothesis of this more useful order. He needs to enter into wider cosmic relations in order tojustify the subject's absolute confidence and peace.
That the God with whom, starting from the hither side of our own extra-marginal self, we comeat its remoter margin251 into commerce should be the absolute world-ruler, is of course a veryconsiderable over-belief. Over-belief as it is, though, it is an article of almost every one's religion.
Most of us pretend in some way to prop20 it upon our philosophy, but the philosophy itself is reallypropped upon this faith. What is this but to say that Religion, in her fullest exercise of function, isnot a mere illumination of facts already elsewhere given, not a mere passion, like love, whichviews things in a rosier296 light. It is indeed that, as we have seen abundantly. But it is somethingmore, namely, a postulator of new FACTS as well. The world interpreted religiously is not thematerialistic world over again, with an altered expression; it must have, over and above the alteredexpression, a natural constitution different at some point from that which a materialistic worldwould have. It must be such that different events can be expected in it, different conduct must berequired.
This thoroughly297 "pragmatic" view of religion has usually been taken as a matter of course bycommon men. They have interpolated divine miracles into the field of nature, they have built aheaven out beyond the grave. It is only transcendentalist metaphysicians who think that, withoutadding any concrete details to Nature, or subtracting any, but by simply calling it the expression ofabsolute spirit, you make it more divine just as it stands. I believe the pragmatic way of takingreligion to be the deeper way. It gives it body as well as soul, it makes it claim, as everything realmust claim, some characteristic realm of fact as its very own. What the more characteristicallydivine facts are, apart from the actual inflow of energy in the faith-state and the prayer-state, Iknow not. But the over-belief on which I am ready to make my personal venture is that they exist.
The whole drift of my education goes to persuade me that the world of our present consciousnessis only one out of many worlds of consciousness that exist, and that those other worlds mustcontain experiences which have a meaning for our life also; and that although in the main theirexperiences and those of this world keep discrete298, yet the two become continuous at certain points,and higher energies filter in. By being faithful in my poor measure to this over-belief, I seem tomyself to keep more sane and true. I CAN, of course, put myself into the sectarian scientist'sattitude, and imagine vividly299 that the world of sensations and of scientific laws and objects may beall. But whenever I do this, I hear that inward monitor of which W. K. Clifford once wrote,whispering the word "bosh!" Humbug300 is humbug, even though it bear the scientific name, and thetotal expression of human experience, as I view it objectively, invincibly218 urges me beyond thenarrow "scientific" bounds. Assuredly, the real world is of a different temperament--moreintricately built than physical science allows.
So my objective and my subjective conscience both hold me to the over-belief which I express.
Who knows whether the faithfulness of individuals here below to their own poor over-beliefs maynot actually help God in turn to be more effectively faithful to his own greater tasks?
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1
foretold
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| v.预言，预示( foretell的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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judgment
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| n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见 | |
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judgments
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| 判断( judgment的名词复数 )； 鉴定； 评价； 审判 | |
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appreciations
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| n.欣赏( appreciation的名词复数 )；感激；评定；（尤指土地或财产的）增值 | |
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formulate
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| v.用公式表示；规划；设计；系统地阐述 | |
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harmonious
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| adj.和睦的，调和的，和谐的，协调的 | |
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rein
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| n.疆绳，统治，支配；vt.以僵绳控制，统治 | |
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logic
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| n.逻辑(学)；逻辑性 | |
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phenomena
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| n.现象 | |
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zest
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| n.乐趣；滋味，风味；兴趣 | |
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enchantment
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| n.迷惑，妖术，魅力 | |
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heroism
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| n.大无畏精神，英勇 | |
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illustrating
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| 给…加插图( illustrate的现在分词 )； 说明； 表明； （用示例、图画等）说明 | |
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literally
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| adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实 | |
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appalled
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| v.使惊骇，使充满恐惧( appall的过去式和过去分词)adj.惊骇的；丧胆的 | |
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dryer
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| n.干衣机，干燥剂 | |
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perverse
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| adj.刚愎的；坚持错误的，行为反常的 | |
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radical
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| n.激进份子，原子团，根号；adj.根本的，激进的，彻底的 | |
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authentically
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| ad.sincerely真诚地 | |
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prop
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| vt.支撑；n.支柱，支撑物；支持者，靠山 | |
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immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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vexed
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| adj.争论不休的；（指问题等）棘手的；争论不休的问题；烦恼的v.使烦恼( vex的过去式和过去分词 )；使苦恼；使生气；详细讨论 | |
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sects
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| n.宗派，教派( sect的名词复数 ) | |
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creeds
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| （尤指宗教）信条，教条( creed的名词复数 ) | |
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peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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soften
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| v.(使)变柔软；(使)变柔和 | |
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moody
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| adj.心情不稳的，易怒的，喜怒无常的 | |
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syllable
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| n.音节；vt.分音节 | |
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frankly
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| adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说 | |
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peevish
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| adj.易怒的，坏脾气的 | |
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vocation
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| n.职业，行业 | |
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morbid
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| adj.病的；致病的；病态的；可怕的 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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antagonisms
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| 对抗，敌对( antagonism的名词复数 ) | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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morbidness
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| （精神的）病态 | |
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temperaments
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| 性格( temperament的名词复数 )； （人或动物的）气质； 易冲动； （性情）暴躁 | |
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espouse
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| v.支持，赞成，嫁娶 | |
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qualified
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| adj.合格的，有资格的，胜任的，有限制的 | |
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devout
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| adj.虔诚的，虔敬的，衷心的 (n.devoutness) | |
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tout
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| v.推销，招徕；兜售；吹捧，劝诱 | |
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dilettante
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| n.半瓶醋，业余爱好者 | |
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quotation
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| n.引文，引语，语录；报价，牌价，行情 | |
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purely
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| adv.纯粹地，完全地 | |
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45
distilled
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| adj.由蒸馏得来的v.蒸馏( distil的过去式和过去分词 )；从…提取精华 | |
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46
materialistic
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| a.唯物主义的，物质享乐主义的 | |
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47
antipathy
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| n.憎恶；反感，引起反感的人或事物 | |
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48
superstition
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| n.迷信，迷信行为 | |
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presumption
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| n.推测，可能性，冒昧，放肆，[法律]推定 | |
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50
savage
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| adj.野蛮的；凶恶的，残暴的；n.未开化的人 | |
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savages
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| 未开化的人，野蛮人( savage的名词复数 ) | |
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52
deities
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| n.神，女神( deity的名词复数 )；神祗；神灵；神明 | |
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53
adverse
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| adj.不利的；有害的；敌对的，不友好的 | |
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outgrown
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| 长[发展] 得超过（某物）的范围( outgrow的过去分词 )； 长[发展]得不能再要（某物）； 长得比…快； 生长速度超过 | |
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55
counteract
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| vt.对…起反作用，对抗，抵消 | |
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56
pivot
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| v.在枢轴上转动；装枢轴，枢轴；adj.枢轴的 | |
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57
revolves
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| v.（使）旋转( revolve的第三人称单数 )；细想 | |
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58
utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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59
repudiating
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| v.（正式地）否认( repudiate的现在分词 )；拒绝接受；拒绝与…往来；拒不履行（法律义务） | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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61
firmament
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| n.苍穹；最高层 | |
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62
equilibrium
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| n.平衡，均衡，相称，均势，平静 | |
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63
appalling
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| adj.骇人听闻的，令人震惊的，可怕的 | |
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64
wilderness
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| n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等，荒漠 | |
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interval
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| n.间隔，间距；幕间休息，中场休息 | |
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66
deferred
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| adj.延期的，缓召的v.拖延，延缓，推迟( defer的过去式和过去分词 )；服从某人的意愿，遵从 | |
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67
undoing
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| n.毁灭的原因，祸根；破坏，毁灭 | |
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68
paltriest
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| paltry（微小的）的最高级形式 | |
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69
wholesale
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| n.批发；adv.以批发方式；vt.批发，成批出售 | |
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retail
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| v./n.零售；adv.以零售价格 | |
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71
Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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72
expound
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| v.详述；解释；阐述 | |
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commodious
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| adj.宽敞的；使用方便的 | |
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undertakings
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| 企业( undertaking的名词复数 )； 保证； 殡仪业； 任务 | |
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sufficiently
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| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
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meridian
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| adj.子午线的；全盛期的 | |
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Vogue
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| n.时髦，时尚；adj.流行的 | |
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atheistical
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| adj.无神论（者）的 | |
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dire
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| adj.可怕的，悲惨的，阴惨的，极端的 | |
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disturbance
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| n.动乱，骚动；打扰，干扰；(身心)失调 | |
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enjoyment
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| n.乐趣；享有；享用 | |
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82
foes
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| 敌人，仇敌( foe的名词复数 ) | |
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malice
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| n.恶意，怨恨，蓄意；[律]预谋 | |
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84
knaves
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| n.恶棍，无赖( knave的名词复数 )；（纸牌中的）杰克 | |
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forgeries
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| 伪造( forgery的名词复数 )； 伪造的文件、签名等 | |
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lusts
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| 贪求（lust的第三人称单数形式） | |
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87
counterfeiting
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| n.伪造v.仿制，造假( counterfeit的现在分词 ) | |
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infinitely
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| adv.无限地，无穷地 | |
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tracts
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| 大片土地( tract的名词复数 )； 地带； （体内的）道； （尤指宣扬宗教、伦理或政治的）短文 | |
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deity
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| n.神，神性；被奉若神明的人(或物) | |
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vindication
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| n.洗冤，证实 | |
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brewed
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| 调制( brew的过去式和过去分词 )； 酝酿； 沏（茶）； 煮（咖啡） | |
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quenches
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| 解（渴）( quench的第三人称单数 )； 终止（某事物）； （用水）扑灭（火焰等）； 将（热物体）放入水中急速冷却 | |
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utensils
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| 器具，用具，器皿( utensil的名词复数 )； 器物 | |
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raisin
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| n.葡萄干 | |
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discourses
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| 论文( discourse的名词复数 )； 演说； 讲道； 话语 | |
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languish
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| vi.变得衰弱无力，失去活力，（植物等）凋萎 | |
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languishing
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| a. 衰弱下去的 | |
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abode
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| n.住处，住所 | |
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refreshment
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| n.恢复，精神爽快，提神之事物；（复数）refreshments:点心，茶点 | |
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101
valetudinarian
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| n.病人；健康不佳者 | |
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102
miserably
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103
eminent
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| adj.显赫的，杰出的，有名的，优良的 | |
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104
benign
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| adj.善良的，慈祥的；良性的，无危险的 | |
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105
rendering
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| n.表现，描写 | |
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106
conveyance
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| n.(不动产等的)转让，让与；转让证书；传送；运送；表达；（正）运输工具 | |
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107
contrived
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| adj.不自然的，做作的；虚构的 | |
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108
stagnate
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| v.停止 | |
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109
stink
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| vi.发出恶臭；糟透，招人厌恶；n.恶臭 | |
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110
perpetuate
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| v.使永存，使永记不忘 | |
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111
coerce
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| v.强迫，压制 | |
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112
impersonal
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| adj.无个人感情的，与个人无关的，非人称的 | |
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113
aesthetic
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| adj.美学的，审美的，有美感 | |
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114
miraculous
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| adj.像奇迹一样的，不可思议的 | |
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115
fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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116
speculations
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| n.投机买卖( speculation的名词复数 )；思考；投机活动；推断 | |
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117
chaff
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| v.取笑，嘲笑；n.谷壳 | |
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118
ripens
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| v.成熟，使熟( ripen的第三人称单数 ) | |
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119
cinders
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| n.煤渣( cinder的名词复数 )；炭渣；煤渣路；煤渣跑道 | |
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120
charcoal
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| n.炭，木炭，生物炭 | |
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121
pulverizes
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| v.将…弄碎( pulverize的第三人称单数 )；将…弄成粉末或尘埃；摧毁；粉碎 | |
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122
unnaturalness
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123
eccentricities
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| n.古怪行为( eccentricity的名词复数 )；反常；怪癖 | |
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124
inevitably
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| adv.不可避免地；必然发生地 | |
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125
invoked
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| v.援引( invoke的过去式和过去分词 )；行使（权利等）；祈求救助；恳求 | |
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126
ointment
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| n.药膏，油膏，软膏 | |
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127
skull
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| n.头骨；颅骨 | |
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128
Saturn
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| n.农神，土星 | |
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129
dolorous
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| adj.悲伤的；忧愁的 | |
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130
implore
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| vt.乞求，恳求，哀求 | |
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131
unguent
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| n.（药）膏；润滑剂；滑油 | |
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132
vindictive
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| adj.有报仇心的，怀恨的，惩罚的 | |
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133
murmurs
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| n.低沉、连续而不清的声音( murmur的名词复数 )；低语声；怨言；嘀咕 | |
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134
imputed
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| v.把（错误等）归咎于( impute的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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135
auxiliary
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| adj.辅助的，备用的 | |
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136
posthumous
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| adj.遗腹的；父亡后出生的；死后的，身后的 | |
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137
abridge
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| v.删减，删节，节略，缩短 | |
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138
slain
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| 杀死，宰杀，杀戮( slay的过去分词 )； (slay的过去分词) | |
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139
reeking
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| v.发出浓烈的臭气( reek的现在分词 )；散发臭气；发出难闻的气味 (of sth)；明显带有（令人不快或生疑的跡象） | |
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140
impaled
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| 钉在尖桩上( impale的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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141
tormented
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| 饱受折磨的 | |
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142
enraged
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| 使暴怒( enrage的过去式和过去分词 )； 歜； 激愤 | |
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143
agitated
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| adj.被鼓动的，不安的 | |
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144
hog
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| n.猪；馋嘴贪吃的人；vt.把…占为己有，独占 | |
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145
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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146
mowed
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| v.刈，割( mow的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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147
celebrated
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| adj.有名的，声誉卓著的 | |
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148
grafted
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| 移植( graft的过去式和过去分词 )； 嫁接； 使（思想、制度等）成为（…的一部份）； 植根 | |
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149
velocity
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| n.速度，速率 | |
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150
pallid
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| adj.苍白的，呆板的 | |
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151
peculiarities
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| n. 特质, 特性, 怪癖, 古怪 | |
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152
picturesquely
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153
expressive
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| adj.表现的，表达…的，富于表情的 | |
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154
promising
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| adj.有希望的，有前途的 | |
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155
sublimity
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| 崇高，庄严，气质高尚 | |
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156
solitude
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| n. 孤独; 独居,荒僻之地,幽静的地方 | |
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157
impersonality
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| n.无人情味 | |
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158
subjective
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| a.主观(上)的，个人的 | |
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159
whatsoever
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| adv.（用于否定句中以加强语气）任何；pron.无论什么 | |
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160
fugitive
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| adj.逃亡的，易逝的；n.逃犯，逃亡者 | |
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161
paltry
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| adj.无价值的，微不足道的 | |
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162
insignificant
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|
| adj.无关紧要的，可忽略的，无意义的 | |
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163
privately
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| adv.以私人的身份，悄悄地，私下地 | |
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164
disparaged
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| v.轻视( disparage的过去式和过去分词 )；贬低；批评；非难 | |
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165
sneered
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| 讥笑，冷笑( sneer的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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166
doctrine
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| n.教义；主义；学说 | |
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167
axis
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| n.轴，轴线，中心线；坐标轴，基准线 | |
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168
solely
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| adv.仅仅，唯一地 | |
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169
beads
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| n.（空心）小珠子( bead的名词复数 )；水珠；珠子项链 | |
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170
inadequate
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| adj.(for,to)不充足的，不适当的 | |
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171
contention
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| n.争论，争辩，论战；论点，主张 | |
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172
repudiate
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| v.拒绝，拒付，拒绝履行 | |
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173
egregious
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| adj.非常的，过分的 | |
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174
tardy
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|
| adj.缓慢的，迟缓的 | |
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175
fable
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| n.寓言；童话；神话 | |
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176
diabolical
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| adj.恶魔似的，凶暴的 | |
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177
legitimation
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| n. 合法, 合法化 | |
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178
revert
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| v.恢复，复归，回到 | |
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179
eccentricity
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|
| n.古怪，反常，怪癖 | |
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180
definitively
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| adv.决定性地，最后地 | |
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181
triumphant
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| adj.胜利的，成功的；狂欢的，喜悦的 | |
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182
bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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183
rehabilitating
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| 改造（罪犯等）( rehabilitate的现在分词 )； 使恢复正常生活； 使恢复原状； 修复 | |
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184
recesses
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| n.壁凹( recess的名词复数 )；（工作或业务活动的）中止或暂停期间；学校的课间休息；某物内部的凹形空间v.把某物放在墙壁的凹处( recess的第三人称单数 )；将（墙）做成凹形，在（墙）上做壁龛；休息，休会，休庭 | |
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185
strata
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| n.地层（复数）；社会阶层 | |
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186
contemplates
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| 深思，细想，仔细考虑( contemplate的第三人称单数 )； 注视，凝视； 考虑接受（发生某事的可能性）； 深思熟虑，沉思，苦思冥想 | |
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187
banished
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| v.放逐，驱逐( banish的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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188
inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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189
martyrs
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|
| n.martyr的复数形式；烈士( martyr的名词复数 )；殉道者；殉教者；乞怜者（向人诉苦以博取同情） | |
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190
pretension
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| n.要求；自命，自称；自负 | |
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191
meddle
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| v.干预，干涉，插手 | |
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192
fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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193
positively
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| adv.明确地，断然，坚决地；实在，确实 | |
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194
vein
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| n.血管，静脉；叶脉，纹理；情绪；vt.使成脉络 | |
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195
relic
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| n.神圣的遗物，遗迹，纪念物 | |
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196
ethical
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| adj.伦理的，道德的，合乎道德的 | |
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197
interpretations
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| n.解释( interpretation的名词复数 )；表演；演绎；理解 | |
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198
inhuman
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| adj.残忍的，不人道的，无人性的 | |
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199
flattening
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| n. 修平 动词flatten的现在分词 | |
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200
crescendo
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| n.(音乐)渐强，高潮 | |
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201
nucleus
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| n.核，核心，原子核 | |
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202
analytic
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| adj.分析的，用分析方法的 | |
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203
stoic
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| n.坚忍克己之人，禁欲主义者 | |
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204
Buddhist
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| adj./n.佛教的，佛教徒 | |
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205
tonic
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| n./adj.滋补品，补药，强身的，健体的 | |
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206
conversion
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| n.转化，转换，转变 | |
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207
melancholy
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| n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的 | |
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208
psychology
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| n.心理，心理学，心理状态 | |
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209
raptures
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| 极度欢喜( rapture的名词复数 ) | |
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210
seizures
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| n.起获( seizure的名词复数 )；没收；充公；起获的赃物 | |
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211
wondrous
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| adj.令人惊奇的，奇妙的；adv.惊人地；异乎寻常地；令人惊叹地 | |
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212
intoxicated
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| 喝醉的，极其兴奋的 | |
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213
precipice
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| n.悬崖，危急的处境 | |
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214
promenade
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| n./v.散步 | |
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215
onward
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| adj.向前的，前进的；adv.向前，前进，在先 | |
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216
victorious
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| adj.胜利的，得胜的 | |
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217
sanguine
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| adj.充满希望的，乐观的，血红色的 | |
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218
invincibly
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| adv.难战胜地，无敌地 | |
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219
passionate
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，激昂的，易动情的，易怒的，性情暴躁的 | |
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220
loyalty
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| n.忠诚，忠心 | |
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221
stimulant
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| n.刺激物，兴奋剂 | |
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222
irrelevant
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| adj.不恰当的，无关系的，不相干的 | |
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223
abridged
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| 削减的，删节的 | |
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224
extraordinarily
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| adv.格外地；极端地 | |
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225
inquiry
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| n.打听，询问，调查，查问 | |
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226
vindicated
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| v.澄清（某人/某事物）受到的责难或嫌疑( vindicate的过去式和过去分词 )；表明或证明（所争辩的事物）属实、正当、有效等；维护 | |
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227
discrepancies
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| n.差异，不符合（之处），不一致（之处）( discrepancy的名词复数 ) | |
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228
testimony
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| n.证词；见证，证明 | |
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229
salvation
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| n.（尤指基督）救世，超度，拯救，解困 | |
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230
tinge
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| vt.(较淡)着色于，染色；使带有…气息；n.淡淡色彩，些微的气息 | |
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231
wreck
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| n.失事，遇难；沉船；vt.(船等)失事，遇难 | |
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232
accurately
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| adv.准确地，精确地 | |
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233
exteriority
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| n.在外，外在性 | |
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234
justify
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| vt.证明…正当(或有理)，为…辩护 | |
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235
possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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236
propensity
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| n.倾向；习性 | |
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237
pertinently
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| 适切地 | |
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238
embedded
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| a.扎牢的 | |
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239
speculative
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| adj.思索性的，暝想性的，推理的 | |
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240
immortality
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| n.不死，不朽 | |
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241
inveterate
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| adj.积习已深的，根深蒂固的 | |
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242
impartial
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| adj.(in,to)公正的，无偏见的 | |
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243
sift
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| v.筛撒，纷落，详察 | |
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244
renounces
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| v.声明放弃( renounce的第三人称单数 )；宣布放弃；宣布与…决裂；宣布摒弃 | |
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245
plausible
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| adj.似真实的，似乎有理的，似乎可信的 | |
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246
pretext
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| n.借口，托词 | |
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247
offhand
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| adj.临时，无准备的；随便，马虎的 | |
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248
imputation
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| n.归罪，责难 | |
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249
entity
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| n.实体，独立存在体，实际存在物 | |
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250
mediating
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| 调停，调解，斡旋( mediate的现在分词 )； 居间促成； 影响…的发生； 使…可能发生 | |
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251
margin
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| n.页边空白；差额；余地，余裕；边，边缘 | |
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252
subliminal
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| adj.下意识的，潜意识的；太弱或太快以至于难以觉察的 | |
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253
abiding
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| adj.永久的，持久的，不变的 | |
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254
psychical
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| adj.有关特异功能现象的；有关特异功能官能的；灵魂的；心灵的 | |
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255
corporeal
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| adj.肉体的，身体的；物质的 | |
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256
manifestation
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| n.表现形式；表明；现象 | |
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257
abeyance
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| n.搁置，缓办，中止，产权未定 | |
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258
jingles
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| 叮当声( jingle的名词复数 )； 节拍十分规则的简单诗歌 | |
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259
inhibitive
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| a.起抑制作用的 | |
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260
proceedings
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| n.进程，过程，议程；诉讼(程序)；公报 | |
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261
isolated
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| adj.与世隔绝的 | |
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262
inventory
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| n.详细目录，存货清单 | |
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263
subconscious
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| n./adj.潜意识(的)，下意识(的) | |
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264
faculties
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| n.能力( faculty的名词复数 )；全体教职员；技巧；院 | |
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265
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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266
doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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267
transcend
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| vt.超出，超越(理性等)的范围 | |
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268
effulgent
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| adj.光辉的；灿烂的 | |
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269
vilest
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| adj.卑鄙的( vile的最高级 )；可耻的；极坏的；非常讨厌的 | |
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270
almighty
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| adj.全能的，万能的；很大的，很强的 | |
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271
infinity
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| n.无限，无穷，大量 | |
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272
degradation
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| n.降级；低落；退化；陵削；降解；衰变 | |
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273
corroborate
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| v.支持，证实，确定 | |
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274
doctrines
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| n.教条( doctrine的名词复数 )；教义；学说；（政府政策的）正式声明 | |
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275
neutralize
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| v.使失效、抵消，使中和 | |
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276
philosophical
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| adj.哲学家的，哲学上的，达观的 | |
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277
philosophic
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| adj.哲学的，贤明的 | |
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278
domain
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| n.(活动等)领域，范围；领地，势力范围 | |
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279
generic
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| adj.一般的，普通的，共有的 | |
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280
bespeak
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| v.预定；预先请求 | |
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281
converse
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| vi.谈话，谈天，闲聊；adv.相反的，相反 | |
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282
exquisitely
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| adv.精致地；强烈地；剧烈地；异常地 | |
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283
magnetism
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| n.磁性，吸引力，磁学 | |
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284
plunge
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| v.跳入，(使)投入，(使)陷入；猛冲 | |
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285
perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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286
twilight
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| n.暮光，黄昏；暮年，晚期，衰落时期 | |
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287
sane
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| adj.心智健全的，神志清醒的，明智的，稳健的 | |
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288
distinctively
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| adv.特殊地，区别地 | |
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289
appellation
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| n.名称，称呼 | |
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290
Christians
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| n.基督教徒( Christian的名词复数 ) | |
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291
supreme
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| adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的 | |
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292
fulfills
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| v.履行（诺言等）( fulfill的第三人称单数 )；执行（命令等）；达到（目的）；使结束 | |
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293
parental
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| adj.父母的；父的；母的 | |
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294
permanently
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| adv.永恒地，永久地，固定不变地 | |
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295
prolific
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| adj.丰富的，大量的；多产的，富有创造力的 | |
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296
rosier
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| Rosieresite | |
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297
thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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298
discrete
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| adj.个别的，分离的，不连续的 | |
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299
vividly
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| adv.清楚地，鲜明地，生动地 | |
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300
humbug
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| n.花招，谎话，欺骗 | |
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