PREFACE
This book would never have been written had I not been honored with an appointment as GiffordLecturer on Natural Religion at the University of Edinburgh. In casting about me for subjects ofthe two courses of ten lectures each for which I thus became responsible, it seemed to me that thefirst course might well be a descriptive one on "Man's Religious Appetites," and the second ametaphysical one on "Their Satisfaction through Philosophy." But the unexpected growth of thepsychological matter as I came to write it out has resulted in the second subject being postponedentirely, and the description of man's religious constitution now fills the twenty lectures. In LectureXX I have suggested rather than stated my own philosophic conclusions, and the reader whodesires immediately to know them should turn to pages 501-509, and to the "Postscript" of thebook. I hope to be able at some later day to express them in more explicit form.

In my belief that a large acquaintance with particulars often makes us wiser than the possessionof abstract formulas, however deep, I have loaded the lectures with concrete examples, and I havechosen these among the extremer expressions of the religious temperament. To some readers I mayconsequently seem, before they get beyond the middle of the book, to offer a caricature of thesubject. Such convulsions of piety, they will say, are not sane. If, however, they will have thepatience to read to the end, I believe that this unfavorable impression will disappear; for I therecombine the religious impulses with other principles of common sense which serve as correctivesof exaggeration, and allow the individual reader to draw as moderate conclusions as he will.

My thanks for help in writing these lectures are due to Edwin D. Starbuck, of StanfordUniversity, who made over to me his large collection of manuscript material; to Henry W. Rankin,of East Northfield, a friend unseen but proved, to whom I owe precious information; to TheodoreFlournoy, of Geneva, to Canning Schiller of Oxford, and to my colleague Benjamin Rand, fordocuments; to my colleague Dickinson S. Miller, and to my friends, Thomas Wren Ward, of New York, and Wincenty Lutoslawski, late of Cracow, for important suggestions and advice. Finally, toconversations with the lamented Thomas Davidson and to the use of his books, at Glenmore, aboveKeene Valley, I owe more obligations than I can well express. Harvard University, March, 1902.
Lecture I   RELIGION AND NEUROLOGY
It is with no small amount of trepidation that I take my place behind this desk, and face thislearned audience. To us Americans, the experience of receiving instruction from the living voice,as well as from the books, of European scholars, is very familiar. At my own University ofHarvard, not a winter passes without its harvest, large or small, of lectures from Scottish, English,French, or German representatives of the science or literature of their respective countries whomwe have either induced to cross the ocean to address us, or captured on the wing as they werevisiting our land. It seems the natural thing for us to listen whilst the Europeans talk. The contraryhabit, of talking whilst the Europeans listen, we have not yet acquired; and in him who first makesthe adventure it begets certain of apology being due for presumptuous an act.

Particularlymustthisbet(a) hecaseona(sense) soilassacredtotheAmerican(so) imagination as that ofEdinburgh. The glories of the philosophic chair of this university were deeply impressed on myimagination in boyhood. Professor Fraser's Essays in Philosophy, then just published, was the firstphilosophic book I ever looked into, and I well remember the awestruck feeling I received from theaccount of Sir William Hamilton's classroom therein contained. Hamilton's own lectures were thefirst philosophic writings I ever forced myself to study, and after that I was immersed in DugaldStewart and Thomas Brown. Such juvenile emotions of reverence never get outgrown; and Iconfess that to find my humble self promoted from my native wilderness to be actually for the timean official here, and transmuted into a colleague of these illustrious names, carries with it a senseof dreamland quite as much as of reality.

But since I have received the honor of this appointment I have felt that it would never do todecline. The academic career also has its heroic obligations, so I stand here without furtherdeprecatory words. Let me say only this, that now that the current, here and at Aberdeen, hasbegun to run from west to east, I hope it may continue to do so. As the years go by, I hope thatmany of my countrymen may be asked to lecture in the Scottish universities, changing places withScotsmen lecturing in the United States; I hope that our people may become in all these highermatters even as one people; and that the peculiar philosophic temperament, as well as the peculiarpolitical temperament, that goes with our English speech may more and more pervade andinfluence the world.

As regards the manner in which I shall have to administer this lectureship, I am neither atheologian, nor a scholar learned in the history of religions, nor an anthropologist. Psychology isthe only branch of learning in which I am particularly versed. To the psychologist the religiouspropensities of man must be at least as interesting as any other of the facts pertaining to his mentalconstitution. It would seem, therefore, that, as a psychologist, the natural thing for me would be toinvite you to a descriptive survey of those religious propensities.

If the inquiry be psychological, not religious institutions, but rather religious feelings andreligious impulses must be its subject, and I must confine myself to those more developedsubjective phenomena recorded in literature produced by articulate and fully self-conscious men,in works of piety and autobiography. Interesting as the origins and early stages of a subject alwaysare, yet when one seeks earnestly for its full significance, one must always look to its morecompletely evolved and perfect forms. It follows from this that the documents that will mostconcern us will be those of the men who were most accomplished in the religious life and best ableto give an intelligible account of their ideas and motives. These men, of course, are eithercomparatively modern writers, or else such earlier ones as have become religious classics. Thedocuments humains which we shall find most instructive need not then be sought for in the hauntsof special erudition--they lie along the beaten highway; and this circumstance, which flows sonaturally from the character of our problem, suits admirably also your lecturer's lack of specialtheological learning. I may take my citations, my sentences and paragraphs of personal confession,from books that most of you at some time will have had already in your hands, and yet this will beno detriment to the value of my conclusions. It is true that some more adventurous reader andinvestigator, lecturing here in future, may unearth from the shelves of libraries documents that willmake a more delectable and curious entertainment to listen to than mine. Yet I doubt whether hewill necessarily, by his control of so much more out-of-the-way material, get much closer to theessence of the matter in hand.

The question, What are the religious propensities? and the question, What is their philosophicsignificance? are two entirely different orders of question from the logical point of view; and, as afailure to recognize this fact distinctly may breed confusion, I wish to insist upon the point a littlebefore we enter into the documents and materials to which I have referred.

In recent books on logic, distinction is made between two orders of inquiry concerning anything.

First, what is the nature of it? how did it come about? what is its constitution, origin, and history?

And second, What is its importance, meaning, or significance, now that it is once here? Theanswer to the one question is given in an existential judgment or proposition. The answer to theother is a proposition of value, what the Germans call a Werthurtheil, or what we may, if we like,denominate a spiritual judgment. Neither judgment can be deduced immediately from the other.

They proceed from diverse intellectual preoccupations, and the mind combines them only bymaking them first separately, and then adding them together.

In the matter of religions it is particularly easy to distinguish the two orders of question. Everyreligious phenomenon has its history and its derivation from natural antecedents. What isnowadays called the higher criticism of the Bible is only a study of the Bible from this existentialpoint of view, neglected too much by the earlier church. Under just what biographic conditions didthe sacred writers bring forth their various contributions to the holy volume? And what had theyexactly in their several individual minds, when they delivered their utterances? These aremanifestly questions of historical fact, and one does not see how the answer to them can decideoffhand the still further question: of what use should such a volume, with its manner of cominginto existence so defined, be to us as a guide to life and a revelation? To answer this other questionwe must have already in our mind some sort of a general theory as to what the peculiarities in athing should be which give it value for purposes of revelation; and this theory itself would be what I just called a spiritual judgment. Combining it with our existential judgment, we might indeeddeduce another spiritual judgment as to the Bible's worth. Thus if our theory of revelation-valuewere to affirm that any book, to possess it, must have been composed automatically or not by thefree caprice of the writer, or that it must exhibit no scientific and historic errors and express nolocal or personal passions, the Bible would probably fare ill at our hands. But if, on the other hand,our theory should allow that a book may well be a revelation in spite of errors and passions anddeliberate human composition, if only it be a true record of the inner experiences of great-souledpersons wrestling with the crises of their fate, then the verdict would be much more favorable. Yousee that the existential facts by themselves are insufficient for determining the value; and the bestadepts of the higher criticism accordingly never confound the existential with the spiritualproblem. With the same conclusions of fact before them, some take one view, and some another,of the Bible's value as a revelation, according as their spiritual judgment as to the foundation ofvalues differs.

I make these general remarks about the two sorts of judgment, because there are many religiouspersons--some of you now present, possibly, are among them--who do not yet make a working useof the distinction, and who may therefore feel first a little startled at the purely existential point ofview from which in the following lectures the phenomena of religious experience must beconsidered. When I handle them biologically and psychologically as if they were mere curiousfacts of individual history, some of you may think it a degradation of so sublime a subject, andmay even suspect me, until my purpose gets more fully expressed, of deliberately seeking todiscredit the religious side of life.

Such a result is of course absolutely alien to my intention; and since such a prejudice on yourpart would seriously obstruct the due effect of much of what I have to relate, I will devote a fewmore words to the point.

There can be no doubt that as a matter of fact a religious life, exclusively pursued, does tend tomake the person exceptional and eccentric. I speak not now of your ordinary religious believer,who follows the conventional observances of his country, whether it be Buddhist, Christian, orMohammedan. His religion has been made for him by others, communicated to him by tradition,determined to fixed forms by imitation, and retained by habit. It would profit us little to study thissecond-hand religious life. We must make search rather for the original experiences which werethe pattern-setters to all this mass of suggested feeling and imitated conduct. These experiences wecan only find in individuals for whom religion exists not as a dull habit, but as an acute feverrather. But such individuals are "geniuses" in the religious line; and like many other geniuses whohave brought forth fruits effective enough for commemoration in the pages of biography, suchreligious geniuses have often shown symptoms of nervous instability. Even more perhaps thanother kinds of genius, religious leaders have been subject to abnormal psychical visitations.

Invariably they have been creatures of exalted emotional sensibility. Often they have led adiscordant inner life, and had melancholy during a part of their career. They have known nomeasure, been liable to obsessions and fixed ideas; and frequently they have fallen into trances,heard voices, seen visions, and presented all sorts of peculiarities which are ordinarily classed aspathological. Often, moreover, these pathological features in their career have helped to give themtheir religious authority and influence.

If you ask for a concrete example, there can be no better one than is furnished by the person ofGeorge Fox. The Quaker religion which he founded is something which it is impossible tooverpraise. In a day of shams, it was a religion of veracity rooted in spiritual inwardness, and areturn to something more like the original gospel truth than men had ever known in England. Sofar as our Christian sects today are evolving into liberality, they are simply reverting in essence tothe position which Fox and the early Quakers so long ago assumed. No one can pretend for amoment that in point of spiritual sagacity and capacity, Fox's mind was unsound. Everyone whoconfronted him personally, from Oliver Cromwell down to county magistrates and jailers, seems tohave acknowledged his superior power. Yet from the point of view of his nervous constitution, Foxwas a psychopath or detraque of the deepest dye. His Journal abounds in entries of this sort:-"As I was walking with several friends, I lifted up my head and saw three steeple-house spires,and they struck at my life. I asked them what place that was? They said, Lichfield. Immediately theword of the Lord came to me, that I must go thither. Being come to the house we were going to, Iwished the friends to walk into the house, saying nothing to them of whither I was to go. As soonas they were gone I stept away, and went by my eye over hedge and ditch till I came within a mileof Lichfield where, in a great field, shepherds were keeping their sheep. Then was I commandedby the Lord to pull off my shoes. I stood still, for it was winter: but the word of the Lord was like afire in me. So I put off my shoes and left them with the shepherds; and the poor shepherdstrembled, and were astonished. Then I walked on about a mile, and as soon as I was got within thecity, the word of the Lord came to me again, saying: Cry, 'Wo to the bloody city of Lichfield!' So Iwent up and down the streets, crying with a loud voice, Wo to the bloody city of Lichfield! It beingmarket day, I went into the market-place, and to and fro in the several parts of it, and made stands,crying as before, Wo to the bloody city of Lichfield! And no one laid hands on me. As I went thuscrying through the streets, there seemed to me to be a channel of blood running down the streets,and the market-place appeared like a pool of blood. When I had declared what was upon me, andfelt myself clear, I went out of the town in peace; and returning to the shepherds gave them somemoney, and took my shoes of them again. But the fire of the Lord was so on my feet, and all overme, that I did not matter to put on my shoes again, and was at a stand whether I should or no, till Ifelt freedom from the Lord so to do: then, after I had washed my feet, I put on my shoes again.

After this a deep consideration came upon me, for what reason I should be sent to cry against thatcity, and call it The bloody city! For though the parliament had the minister one while, and theking another, and much blood had been shed in the town during the wars between them, yet therewas no more than had befallen many other places. But afterwards I came to understand, that in theEmperor Diocletian's time a thousand Christians were martyr'd in Lichfield. So I was to go,without my shoes, through the channel of their blood, and into the pool of their blood in themarket-place, that I might raise up the memorial of the blood of those martyrs, which had beenshed above a thousand years before, and lay cold in their streets. So the sense of this blood wasupon me, and I obeyed the word of the Lord."Bent as we are on studying religion's existential conditions, we cannot possibly ignore thesepathological aspects of the subject.

We must describe and name them just as if they occurred in non-religious men. It is true that weinstinctively recoil from seeing an object to which our emotions and affections are committed handled by the intellect as any other object is handled. The first thing the intellect does with anobject is to class it along with something else. But any object that is infinitely important to us andawakens our devotion feels to us also as if it must be sui generis and unique. Probably a crabwould be filled with a sense of personal outrage if it could hear us class it without ado or apologyas a crustacean, and thus dispose of it. "I am no such thing, it would say; I am MYSELF, MYSELFalone.

The next thing the intellect does is to lay bare the causes in which the thing originates. Spinozasays: "I will analyze the actions and appetites of men as if it were a question of lines, of planes,and of solids." And elsewhere he remarks that he will consider our passions and their propertieswith the same eye with which he looks on all other natural things, since the consequences of ouraffections flow from their nature with the same necessity as it results from the nature of a trianglethat its three angles should be equal to two right angles. Similarly M. Taine, in the introduction tohis history of English literature, has written: "Whether facts be moral or physical, it makes nomatter. They always have their causes. There are causes for ambition, courage, veracity, just asthere are for digestion, muscular movement, animal heat. Vice and virtue are products like vitrioland sugar." When we read such proclamations of the intellect bent on showing the existentialconditions of absolutely everything, we feel--quite apart from our legitimate impatience at thesomewhat ridiculous swagger of the program, in view of what the authors are actually able toperform--menaced and negated in the springs of our innermost life. Such cold-bloodedassimilations threaten, we think, to undo our soul's vital secrets, as if the same breath which shouldsucceed in explaining their origin would simultaneously explain away their significance, and makethem appear of no more preciousness, either, than the useful groceries of which M. Taine speaks.

Perhaps the commonest expression of this assumption that spiritual value is undone if lowlyorigin be asserted is seen in those comments which unsentimental people so often pass on theirmore sentimental acquaintances. Alfred believes in immortality so strongly because histemperament is so emotional. Fanny's extraordinary conscientiousness is merely a matter ofoverinstigated nerves. William's melancholy about the universe is due to bad digestion--probablyhis liver is torpid. Eliza's delight in her church is a symptom of her hysterical constitution. Peterwould be less troubled about his soul if he would take more exercise in the open air, etc. A morefully developed example of the same kind of reasoning is the fashion, quite common nowadaysamong certain writers, of criticizing the religious emotions by showing a connection between themand the sexual life. Conversion is a crisis of puberty and adolescence. The macerations of saints,and the devotion of missionaries, are only instances of the parental instinct of self-sacrifice goneastray. For the hysterical nun, starving for natural life, Christ is but an imaginary substitute for amore earthly object of affection. And the like.[1]

[1] As with many ideas that float in the air of one's time, this notion shrinks from dogmaticgeneral statement and expresses itself only partially and by innuendo. It seems to me that fewconceptions are less instructive than this re-interpretation of religion as perverted sexuality. Itreminds one, so crudely is it often employed, of the famous Catholic taunt, that the Reformationmay be best understood by remembering that its fons et origo was Luther's wish to marry a nun:-theeffects are infinitely wider than the alleged causes, and for the most part opposite in nature. Itis true that in the vast collection of religious phenomena, some are undisguisedly amatory--e.g., sex-deities and obscene rites in polytheism, and ecstatic feelings of union with the Savior in a fewChristian mystics. But then why not equally call religion an aberration of the digestive function,and prove one's point by the worship of Bacchus and Ceres, or by the ecstatic feelings of someother saints about the Eucharist? Religious language clothes itself in such poor symbols as our lifeaffords, and the whole organism gives overtones of comment whenever the mind is strongly stirredto expression. Language drawn from eating and drinking is probably as common in religiousliterature as is language drawn from the sexual life. We "hunger and thirst" after righteousness; we"find the Lord a sweet savor;" we "taste and see that he is good." "Spiritual milk for Americanbabes, drawn from the breasts of both testaments," is a sub-title of the once famous New EnglandPrimer, and Christian devotional literature indeed quite floats in milk, thought of from the point ofview, not of the mother, but of the greedy babe.

Saint Francois de Sales, for instance, thus describes the "orison of quietude": "In this state thesoul is like a little child still at the breast, whose mother to caress him whilst he is still in her armsmakes her milk distill into his mouth without his even moving his lips. So it is here. . . . Our Lorddesires that our will should be satisfied with sucking the milk which His Majesty pours into ourmouth, and that we should relish the sweetness without even knowing that it cometh from theLord." And again: "Consider the little infants, united and joined to the breasts of their nursingmothers you will see that from time to time they press themselves closer by little starts to whichthe pleasure of sucking prompts them. Even so, during its orison, the heart united to its Godoftentimes makes attempts at closer union by movements during which it presses closer upon thedivine sweetness." Chemin de la Perfection, ch. xxxi.; Amour de Dieu, vii. ch. i.

In fact, one might almost as well interpret religion as a perversion of the respiratory function.

The Bible is full of the language of respiratory oppression: "Hide not thine ear at my breathing; mygroaning is not hid from thee; my heart panteth, my strength faileth me; my bones are hot with myroaring all the night long; as the hart panteth after the water-brooks, so my soul panteth after thee,O my God:" God's Breath in Man is the title of the chief work of our best known American mystic(Thomas Lake Harris), and in certain non-Christian countries the foundation of all religiousdiscipline consists in regulation of the inspiration and expiration.

These arguments are as good as much of the reasoning one hears in favor of the sexual theory.

But the champions of the latter will then say that their chief argument has no analogue elsewhere.

The two main phenomena of religion, namely, melancholy and conversion, they will say, areessentially phenomena of adolescence, and therefore synchronous with the development of sexuallife. To which the retort again is easy. Even were the asserted synchrony unrestrictedly true as afact (which it is not), it is not only the sexual life, but the entire higher mental life which awakensduring adolescence. One might then as well set up the thesis that the interest in mechanics, physics,chemistry, logic, philosophy, and sociology, which springs up during adolescent years along withthat in poetry and religion, is also a perversion of the sexual instinct:--but that would be too absurd.

Moreover, if the argument from synchrony is to decide, what is to be done with the fact that thereligious age par excellence would seem to be old age, when the uproar of the sexual life is past?

The plain truth is that to interpret religion one must in the end look at the immediate content ofthe religious consciousness. The moment one does this, one sees how wholly disconnected it is in the main from the content of the sexual consciousness. Everything about the two things differs,objects, moods, faculties concerned, and acts impelled to. Any GENERAL assimilation is simplyimpossible: what we find most often is complete hostility and contrast. If now the defenders of thesex-theory say that this makes no difference to their thesis; that without the chemical contributionswhich the sex-organs make to the blood, the brain would not be nourished so as to carry onreligious activities, this final proposition may be true or not true; but at any rate it has becomeprofoundly uninstructive: we can deduce no consequences from it which help us to interpretreligion's meaning or value. In this sense the religious life depends just as much upon the spleen,the pancreas, and the kidneys as on the sexual apparatus, and the whole theory has lost its point inevaporating into a vague general assertion of the dependence, SOMEHOW, of the mind upon thebody.

We are surely all familiar in a general way with this method of discrediting states of mind forwhich we have an antipathy. We all use it to some degree in criticizing persons whose states ofmind we regard as overstrained. But when other people criticize our own more exalted soul-flightsby calling them 'nothing but' expressions of our organic disposition, we feel outraged and hurt, forwe know that, whatever be our organism's peculiarities, our mental states have their substantivevalue as revelations of the living truth; and we wish that all this medical materialism could bemade to hold its tongue.

Medical materialism seems indeed a good appellation for the too simple-minded system ofthought which we are considering. Medical materialism finishes up Saint Paul by calling his visionon the road to Damascus a discharging lesion of the occipital cortex, he being an epileptic. It snuffsout Saint Teresa as an hysteric, Saint Francis of Assisi as an hereditary degenerate. George Fox'sdiscontent with the shams of his age, and his pining for spiritual veracity, it treats as a symptom ofa disordered colon. Carlyle's organ-tones of misery it accounts for by a gastro-duodenal catarrh.

All such mental overtensions, it says, are, when you come to the bottom of the matter, mere affairsof diathesis (auto-intoxications most probably), due to the perverted action of various glands whichphysiology will yet discover. And medical materialism then thinks that the spiritual authority of allsuch personages is successfully undermined.[2]

[2] For a first-rate example of medical-materialist reasoning, see an article on "les varietes duType devot," by Dr. Binet-Sangle, in the Revue de l'Hypnotisme, xiv. 161.

Let us ourselves look at the matter in the largest possible way. Modern psychology, findingdefinite psycho-physical connections to hold good, assumes as a convenient hypothesis that thedependence of mental states upon bodily conditions must be thoroughgoing and complete. If weadopt the assumption, then of course what medical materialism insists on must be true in a generalway, if not in every detail: Saint Paul certainly had once an epileptoid, if not an epileptic seizure;George Fox was an hereditary degenerate; Carlyle was undoubtedly auto-intoxicated by someorgan or other, no matter which--and the rest. But now, I ask you, how can such an existentialaccount of facts of mental history decide in one way or another upon their spiritual significance?

According to the general postulate of psychology just referred to, there is not a single one of ourstates of mind, high or low, healthy or morbid, that has not some organic process as its condition.

Scientific theories are organically conditioned just as much as religious emotions are; and if we only knew the facts intimately enough, we should doubtless see "the liver" determining the dicta ofthe sturdy atheist as decisively as it does those of the Methodist under conviction anxious about hissoul. When it alters in one way the blood that percolates it, we get the methodist, when in anotherway, we get the atheist form of mind. So of all our raptures and our drynesses, our longings andpantings, our questions and beliefs. They are equally organically founded, be they religious or ofnon-religious content.

To plead the organic causation of a religious state of mind, then, in refutation of its claim topossess superior spiritual value, is quite illogical and arbitrary, unless one has already worked outin advance some psycho-physical theory connecting spiritual values in general with determinatesorts of physiological change. Otherwise none of our thoughts and feelings, not even our scientificdoctrines, not even our DIS-beliefs, could retain any value as revelations of the truth, for every oneof them without exception flows from the state of its possessor's body at the time.

It is needless to say that medical materialism draws in point of fact no such sweeping skepticalconclusion. It is sure, just as every simple man is sure, that some states of mind are inwardlysuperior to others, and reveal to us more truth, and in this it simply makes use of an ordinaryspiritual judgment. It has no physiological theory of the production of these its favorite states, bywhich it may accredit them; and its attempt to discredit the states which it dislikes, by vaguelyassociating them with nerves and liver, and connecting them with names connoting bodilyaffliction, is altogether illogical and inconsistent.

Let us play fair in this whole matter, and be quite candid with ourselves and with the facts. Whenwe think certain states of mind superior to others, is it ever because of what we know concerningtheir organic antecedents? No! it is always for two entirely different reasons. It is either becausewe take an immediate delight in them; or else it is because we believe them to bring us goodconsequential fruits for life. When we speak disparagingly of "feverish fancies," surely the fever-process as such is not the ground of our disesteem--for aught we know to the contrary, 103 degreesor 104 degrees Fahrenheit might be a much more favorable temperature for truths to germinate andsprout in, than the more ordinary blood-heat of 97 or 98 degrees. It is either the disagreeablenessitself of the fancies, or their inability to bear the criticisms of the convalescent hour. When wepraise the thoughts which health brings, health's peculiar chemical metabolisms have nothing to dowith determining our judgment. We know in fact almost nothing about these metabolisms. It is thecharacter of inner happiness in the thoughts which stamps them as good, or else their consistencywith our other opinions and their serviceability for our needs, which make them pass for true in ouresteem.

Now the more intrinsic and the more remote of these criteria do not always hang together. Innerhappiness and serviceability do not always agree. What immediately feels most "good" is notalways most "true," when measured by the verdict of the rest of experience. The differencebetween Philip drunk and Philip sober is the classic instance in corroboration. If merely "feelinggood" could decide, drunkenness would be the supremely valid human experience. But itsrevelations, however acutely satisfying at the moment, are inserted into an environment whichrefuses to bear them out for any length of time. The consequence of this discrepancy of the twocriteria is the uncertainty which still prevails over so many of our spiritual judgments. There aremoments of sentimental and mystical experience--we shall hereafter hear much of them--that carry an enormous sense of inner authority and illumination with them when they come. But they comeseldom, and they do not come to everyone; and the rest of life makes either no connection withthem, or tends to contradict them more than it confirms them. Some persons follow more the voiceof the moment in these cases, some prefer to be guided by the average results. Hence the saddiscordancy of so many of the spiritual judgments of human beings; a discordancy which will bebrought home to us acutely enough before these lectures end.

It is, however, a discordancy that can never be resolved by any merely medical test. A goodexample of the impossibility of holding strictly to the medical tests is seen in the theory of thepathological causation of genius promulgated by recent authors. "Genius," said Dr. Moreau, "is butone of the many branches of the neuropathic tree." "Genius," says Dr. Lombroso, "is a symptom ofhereditary degeneration of the epileptoid variety, and is allied to moral insanity." "Whenever aman's life," writes Mr. Nisbet, "is at once sufficiently illustrious and recorded with sufficientfullness to be a subject of profitable study, he inevitably falls into the morbid category. . . . And itis worthy of remark that, as a rule, the greater the genius, the greater the unsoundness."[3]

[3] J. F. Nisbet: The Insanity of Genius, 3d ed., London, 1893, pp. xvi., xxiv.

Now do these authors, after having succeeded in establishing to their own satisfaction that theworks of genius are fruits of disease, consistently proceed thereupon to impugn the VALUE of thefruits? Do they deduce a new spiritual judgment from their new doctrine of existential conditions?

Do they frankly forbid us to admire the productions of genius from now onwards? and say outrightthat no neuropath can ever be a revealer of new truth?

No! their immediate spiritual instincts are too strong for them here, and hold their own againstinferences which, in mere love of logical consistency, medical materialism ought to be only tooglad to draw. One disciple of the school, indeed, has striven to impugn the value of works ofgenius in a wholesale way (such works of contemporary art, namely, as he himself is unable toenjoy, and they are many) by using medical arguments.[4] But for the most part the masterpiecesare left unchallenged; and the medical line of attack either confines itself to such secularproductions as everyone admits to be intrinsically eccentric, or else addresses itself exclusively toreligious manifestations. And then it is because the religious manifestations have been alreadycondemned because the critic dislikes them on internal or spiritual grounds.

[4] Max Nordau, in his bulky book entitled Degeneration.

In the natural sciences and industrial arts it never occurs to anyone to try to refute opinions byshowing up their author's neurotic constitution. Opinions here are invariably tested by logic and byexperiment, no matter what may be their author's neurological type. It should be no otherwise withreligious opinions. Their value can only be ascertained by spiritual judgments directly passed uponthem, judgments based on our own immediate feeling primarily; and secondarily on what we canascertain of their experiential relations to our moral needs and to the rest of what we hold as true.

Immediate luminousness, in short, philosophical reasonableness, and moral helpfulness are theonly available criteria. Saint Teresa might have had the nervous system of the placidest cow, and itwould not now save her theology, if the trial of the theology by these other tests should show it to be contemptible. And conversely if her theology can stand these other tests, it will make nodifference how hysterical or nervously off her balance Saint Teresa may have been when she waswith us here below.

You see that at bottom we are thrown back upon the general principles by which the empiricalphilosophy has always contended that we must be guided in our search for truth. Dogmaticphilosophies have sought for tests for truth which might dispense us from appealing to the future.

Some direct mark, by noting which we can be protected immediately and absolutely, now andforever, against all mistake--such has been the darling dream of philosophic dogmatists. It is clearthat the ORIGIN of the truth would be an admirable criterion of this sort, if only the variousorigins could be discriminated from one another from this point of view, and the history ofdogmatic opinion shows that origin has always been a favorite test. Origin in immediate intuition;origin in pontifical authority; origin in supernatural revelation, as by vision, hearing, orunaccountable impression; origin in direct possession by a higher spirit, expressing itself inprophecy and warning; origin in automatic utterance generally--these origins have been stockwarrants for the truth of one opinion after another which we find represented in religious history.

The medical materialists are therefore only so many belated dogmatists, neatly turning the tableson their predecessors by using the criterion of origin in a destructive instead of an accreditive way.

They are effective with their talk of pathological origin only so long as supernatural origin ispleaded by the other side, and nothing but the argument from origin is under discussion. But theargument from origin has seldom been used alone, for it is too obviously insufficient. Dr.

Maudsley is perhaps the cleverest of the rebutters of supernatural religion on grounds of origin.

Yet he finds himself forced to write:-"What right have we to believe Nature under any obligation to do her work by means ofcomplete minds only? She may find an incomplete mind a more suitable instrument for a particularpurpose. It is the work that is done, and the quality in the worker by which it was done, that isalone of moment; and it may be no great matter from a cosmical standpoint, if in other qualities ofcharacter he was singularly defective--if indeed he were hypocrite, adulterer, eccentric, or lunatic. .

. . Home we come again, then, to the old and last resort of certitude--namely the common assent ofmankind, or of the competent by instruction and training among mankind."[5]

[5] H. Maudsley: Natural Causes and Supernatural Seemings, 1886, pp. 256, 257.

In other words, not its origin, but THE WAY IN WHICH IT WORKS ON THE WHOLE, is Dr.

Maudsley's final test of a belief. This is our own empiricist criterion; and this criterion the stoutestinsisters on supernatural origin have also been forced to use in the end. Among the visions andmessages some have always been too patently silly, among the trances and convulsive seizuressome have been too fruitless for conduct and character, to pass themselves off as significant, stillless as divine. In the history of Christian mysticism the problem how to discriminate between suchmessages and experiences as were really divine miracles, and such others as the demon in hismalice was able to counterfeit, thus making the religious person twofold more the child of hell hewas before, has always been a difficult one to solve, needing all the sagacity and experience of thebest directors of conscience. In the end it had to come to our empiricist criterion: By their fruits yeshall know them, not by their roots. Jonathan Edwards's Treatise on Religious Affections is an elaborate working out of this thesis. The ROOTS of a man's virtue are inaccessible to us. Noappearances whatever are infallible proofs of grace. Our practice is the only sure evidence, even toourselves, that we are genuinely Christians.

"In forming a judgment of ourselves now," Edwards writes, we should certainly adopt thatevidence which our supreme Judge will chiefly make use of when we come to stand before him atthe last day. . . . There is not one grace of the Spirit of God, of the existence of which, in anyprofessor of religion, Christian practice is not the most decisive evidence. . . . The degree in whichour experience is productive of practice shows the degree in which our experience is spiritual anddivine."Catholic writers are equally emphatic. The good dispositions which a vision, or voice, or otherapparent heavenly favor leave behind them are the only marks by which we <22> may be sure theyare not possible deceptions of the tempter. Says Saint Teresa:-"Like imperfect sleep which, instead of giving more strength to the head, doth but leave it themore exhausted, the result of mere operations of the imagination is but to weaken the soul. Insteadof nourishment and energy she reaps only lassitude and disgust: whereas a genuine heavenly visionyields to her a harvest of ineffable spiritual riches, and an admirable renewal of bodily strength. Ialleged these reasons to those who so often accused my visions of being the work of the enemy ofmankind and the sport of my imagination. . . . I showed them the jewels which the divine hand hadleft with me:--they were my actual dispositions. All those who knew me saw that I was changed;my confessor bore witness to the fact; this improvement, palpable in all respects, far from beinghidden, was brilliantly evident to all men. As for myself, it was impossible to believe that if thedemon were its author, he could have used, in order to lose me and lead me to hell, an expedient socontrary to his own interests as that of uprooting my vices, and filling me with masculine courageand other virtues instead, for I saw clearly that a single one of these visions was enough to enrichme with all that wealth."[6]

[6] Autobiography, ch. xxviii.

I fear I may have made a longer excursus than was necessary, and that fewer words would havedispelled the uneasiness which may have arisen among some of you as I announced mypathological programme. At any rate you must all be ready now to judge the religious life by itsresults exclusively, and I shall assume that the bugaboo of morbid origin will scandalize your pietyno more.

Still, you may ask me, if its results are to be the ground of our final spiritual estimate of areligious phenomenon, why threaten us at all with so much existential study of its conditions? Whynot simply leave pathological questions out?

To this I reply in two ways. First, I say, irrepressible curiosity imperiously leads one on; and Isay, secondly, that it always leads to a better understanding of a thing's significance to consider itsexaggerations and perversions its equivalents and substitutes and nearest relatives elsewhere. Notthat we may thereby swamp the thing in the wholesale condemnation which we pass on its inferiorcongeners, but rather that we may by contrast ascertain the more precisely in what its merits consist, by learning at the same time to what particular dangers of corruption it may also beexposed.

Insane conditions have this advantage, that they isolate special factors of the mental life, andenable us to inspect them unmasked by their more usual surroundings. They play the part in mentalanatomy which the scalpel and the microscope play in the anatomy of the body. To understand athing rightly we need to see it both out of its environment and in it, and to have acquaintance withthe whole range of its variations. The study of hallucinations has in this way been for psychologiststhe key to their comprehension of normal sensation, that of illusions has been the key to the rightcomprehension of perception. Morbid impulses and imperative conceptions, "fixed ideas," socalled, have thrown a flood of light on the psychology of the normal will; and obsessions anddelusions have performed the same service for that of the normal faculty of belief.

Similarly, the nature of genius has been illuminated by the attempts, of which I already mademention, to class it with psychopathical phenomena. Borderland insanity, crankiness, insanetemperament, loss of mental balance, psychopathic degeneration (to use a few of the manysynonyms by which it has been called), has certain peculiarities and liabilities which, whencombined with a superior quality of intellect in an individual, make it more probable that he willmake his mark and affect his age, than if his temperament were less neurotic. There is of course nospecial affinity between crankiness as such and superior intellect,[7] for most psychopaths havefeeble intellects, and superior intellects more commonly have normal nervous systems. But thepsychopathic temperament, whatever be the intellect with which it finds itself paired, often bringswith it ardor and excitability of character. The cranky person has extraordinary emotionalsusceptibility. He is liable to fixed ideas and obsessions. His conceptions tend to pass immediatelyinto belief and action; and when he gets a new idea, he has no rest till he proclaims it, or in someway "works it off." "What shall I think of it?" a common person says to himself about a vexedquestion; but in a "cranky" mind "What must I do about it?" is the form the question tends to take.

In the autobiography of that high-souled woman, Mrs. Annie Besant, I read the following passage:

"Plenty of people wish well to any good cause, but very few care to exert themselves to help it, andstill fewer will risk anything in its support. 'Someone ought to do it, but why should I?' is the everreechoed phrase of weak-kneed amiability. 'Someone ought to do it, so why not I?' is the cry ofsome earnest servant of man, eagerly forward springing to face some perilous duty. Between thesetwo sentences lie whole centuries of moral evolution." True enough! and between these twosentences lie also the different destinies of the ordinary sluggard and the psychopathic man. Thus,when a superior intellect and a psychopathic temperament coalesce--as in the endless permutationsand combinations of human faculty, they are bound to coalesce often enough--in the sameindividual, we have the best possible condition for the kind of effective genius that gets into the<25> biographical dictionaries. Such men do not remain mere critics and understanders with theirintellect. Their ideas possess them, they inflict them, for better or worse, upon their companions ortheir age. It is they who get counted when Messrs. Lombroso, Nisbet, and others invoke statisticsto defend their paradox.

[7] Superior intellect, as Professor Bain has admirably shown, seems to consist in nothing somuch as in a large development of the faculty of association by similarity.

To pass now to religious phenomena, take the melancholy which, as we shall see, constitutes anessential moment in every complete religious evolution. Take the happiness which achievedreligious belief confers. Take the trancelike states of insight into truth which all religious mysticsreport.[8] These are each and all of them special cases of kinds of human experience of muchwider scope. Religious melancholy, whatever peculiarities it may have qua religious, is at any ratemelancholy. Religious happiness is happiness. Religious trance is trance. And the moment werenounce the absurd notion that a thing is exploded away as soon as it is classed with others, or itsorigin is shown; the moment we agree to stand by experimental results and inner quality, injudging of values--who does not see that we are likely to ascertain the distinctive significance ofreligious melancholy and happiness, or of religious trances, far better by comparing them asconscientiously as we can with other varieties of melancholy, happiness, and trance, than byrefusing to consider their place in any more general series, and treating them as if they wereoutside of nature's order altogether?

I hope that the course of these lectures will confirm us in this supposition. As regards thepsychopathic origin of so many religious phenomena, that would not be in the least surprising ordisconcerting, even were such phenomena certified from on high to be the most precious of humanexperiences. No one organism can possibly yield to its owner the whole body of truth. Few of usare not in some way infirm, or even diseased; and our very infirmities help us unexpectedly. In thepsychopathic temperament we have the emotionality which is the sine qua non of moralperception; we have the intensity and tendency to emphasis which are the essence of practicalmoral vigor; and we have the love of metaphysics and mysticism which carry one's interestsbeyond the surface of the sensible world. What, then, is more natural than that this temperamentshould introduce one to regions of religious truth, to corners of the universe, which your robustPhilistine type of nervous system, forever offering its biceps to be felt, thumping its breast, andthanking Heaven that it hasn't a single morbid fiber in its composition, would be sure to hideforever from its self-satisfied possessors?

[8] I may refer to a criticism of the insanity theory of genius in the Psychological Review, ii. 287(1895).

If there were such a thing as inspiration from a higher realm, it might well be that the neurotictemperament would furnish the chief condition of the requisite receptivity. And having said thusmuch, I think that I may let the matter of religion and neuroticism drop.

The mass of collateral phenomena, morbid or healthy, with which the various religiousphenomena must be compared in order to understand them better, forms what in the slang ofpedagogics is termed "the apperceiving mass" by which we comprehend them. The only noveltythat I can imagine this course of lectures to possess lies in the breadth of the apperceiving mass. Imay succeed in discussing religious experiences in a wider context than has been usual inuniversity courses.
Lecture II CIRCUMSCRIPTION OF THE TOPIC
　　Most books on the philosophy of religion try to begin with a precise definition of what itsessence consists of. Some of these would-be definitions may possibly come before us in laterportions of this course, and I shall not be pedantic enough to enumerate any of them to you now.

Meanwhile the very fact that they are so many and so different from one another is enough toprove that the word "religion" cannot stand for any single principle or essence, but is rather acollective name. The theorizing mind tends always to the oversimplification of its materials. Thisis the root of all that absolutism and one-sided dogmatism by which both philosophy and religionhave been infested. Let us not fall immediately into a one-sided view of our subject, but let usrather admit freely at the outset that we may very likely find no one essence, but many characterswhich may alternately be equally important to religion. If we should inquire for the essence of"government," for example, one man might tell us it was authority, another submission, an otherpolice, another an army, another an assembly, an other a system of laws; yet all the while it wouldbe true that no concrete government can exist without all these things, one of which is moreimportant at one moment and others at another. The man who knows governments mostcompletely is he who troubles himself least about a definition which shall give their essence.

Enjoying an intimate acquaintance with all their particularities in turn, he would naturally regardan abstract conception in which these were unified as a thing more misleading than enlightening.

And why may not religion be a conception equally complex?[9]

[9] I can do no better here than refer my readers to the extended and admirable remarks on thefutility of all these definitions of religion, in an article by Professor Leuba, published in the Monistfor January, 1901, after my own text was written.

Consider also the "religious sentiment" which we see referred to in so many books, as if it were asingle sort of mental entity. In the psychologies and in the philosophies of religion, we find theauthors attempting to specify just what entity it is. One man allies it to the feeling of dependence;one makes it a derivative from fear; others connect it with the sexual life; others still identify itwith the feeling of the infinite; and so on. Such different ways of conceiving it ought of themselvesto arouse doubt as to whether it possibly can be one specific thing; and the moment we are willingto treat the term "religious sentiment" as a collective name for the many sentiments which religiousobjects may in alternation, that it probably contains nothing whatever of psychologicallyspec(arouse) ificnature.Thereis(we) relig(see) ious fear, religious love, religious awe, religious joy,(a) and so forth. But religious love is  only man's natural emotion of love directed to a religious object;religious fear is only the ordinary fear of commerce, so to speak, the common quaking of thehuman breast, in so far as the notion of divine retribution may arouse it; religious awe is the sameorganic thrill which we feel in a forest at twilight, or in a mountain gorge; only this time it comesover us at the thought of our supernatural relations; and similarly of all the various sentimentswhich may be called into play in the lives of religious persons. As concrete states of mind, madeup of a feeling PLUS a specific sort of object, religious emotions of course are psychic entitiesdistinguishable from other concrete emotions; but there is no ground for assuming a simpleabstract "religious emotion" to exist as a distinct elementary mental affection by itself, present inevery religious experience without exception.

As there thus seems to be no one elementary religious emotion, but only a common storehouse ofemotions upon which religious objects may draw, so there might conceivably also prove to he noone specific and essential kind of religious object, and no one specific and essential kind ofreligious act.

The field of religion being as wide as this, it is manifestly impossible that I should pretend tocover it. My lectures must be limited to a fraction of the subject. And, although it would indeed befoolish to set up an abstract definition of religion's essence, and then proceed to defend thatdefinition against all comers, yet this need not prevent me from taking my own narrow view ofwhat religion shall consist in FOR THE PURPOSE OF THESE LECTURES, or, out of the manymeanings of the word, from choosing the one meaning in which I wish to interest you particularly,and proclaiming arbitrarily that when I say "religion" I mean THAT. This, in fact, is what I mustdo, and I will now preliminarily seek to mark out the field I choose.

One way to mark it out easily is to say what aspects of the subject we leave out. At the outset weare struck by one great partition which divides the religious field. On the one side of it liesinstitutional, on the other personal religion. As M. P. Sabatier says, one branch of religion keepsthe divinity, another keeps man most in view. Worship and sacrifice, procedures for working onthe dispositions of the deity, theology and ceremony and ecclesiastical organization, are theessentials of religion in the institutional branch. Were we to limit our view to it, we should have todefine religion as an external art, the art of winning the favor of the gods. In the more personalbranch of religion it is on the contrary the inner dispositions of man himself which form the centerof interest, his conscience, his deserts, his helplessness, his incompleteness. And although thefavor of the God, as forfeited or gained, is still an essential feature of the story, and theology playsa vital part therein, yet the acts to which this sort of religion prompts are personal not ritual acts,the individual transacts the business by himself alone, and the ecclesiastical organization, with itspriests and sacraments and other go-betweens, sinks to an altogether secondary place. The relationgoes direct from heart to heart, from soul to soul, between man and his maker.

Now in these lectures I propose to ignore the institutional branch entirely, to say nothing of theecclesiastical organization, to consider as little as possible the systematic theology and the ideasabout the gods themselves, and to confine myself as far as I can to personal religion pure andsimple. To some of you personal religion, thus nakedly considered, will no doubt seem tooincomplete a thing to wear the general name. "It is a part of religion," you will say, "but only itsunorganized rudiment; if we are to name it by itself, we had better call it man's conscience ormorality than his religion. The name 'religion' should be reserved for the fully organized system offeeling, thought, and institution, for the Church, in short, of which this personal religion, so called,is but a fractional element."But if you say this, it will only show the more plainly how much the question of definition tendsto become a dispute about names.

Rather than prolong such a dispute, I am willing to accept almost any name for the personalreligion of which I propose to treat. Call it conscience or morality, if you yourselves prefer, andnot religion--under either name it will be equally worthy of our study. As for myself, I think it willprove to contain some elements which morality pure and simple does not contain, and theseelements I shall soon seek to point out; so I will myself continue to apply the word "religion" to it; and in the last lecture of all, I will bring in the theologies and the ecclesiasticisms, and saysomething of its relation to them.

In one sense at least the personal religion will prove itself more fundamental than either theologyor ecclesiasticism. Churches, when once established, live at second-hand upon tradition; but theFOUNDERS of every church owed their power originally to the fact of their direct personalcommunion with the divine. Not only the superhuman founders, the Christ, the Buddha, Mahomet,but all the originators of Christian sects have been in this case;--so personal religion should stillseem the primordial thing, even to those who continue to esteem it incomplete.

There are, it is true, other things in religion chronologically more primordial than personaldevoutness in the moral sense. Fetishism and magic seem to have preceded inward pietyhistorically--at least our records of inward piety do not reach back so far. And if fetishism andmagic be regarded as stages of religion, one may say that personal religion in the inward sense andthe genuinely spiritual ecclesiasticisms which it founds are phenomena of secondary or eventertiary order. But, quite apart from the fact that many anthropologists--for instance, Jevons andFrazer --expressly oppose "religion" and "magic" to each other, it is certain that the whole systemof thought which leads to magic, fetishism, and the lower superstitions may just as well be calledprimitive science as called primitive religion. The question thus becomes a verbal one again; andour knowledge of all these early stages of thought and feeling is in any case so conjectural andimperfect that farther discussion would not be worth while.

Religion, therefore, as I now ask you arbitrarily to take it, shall mean for us THE FEELINGS,ACTS, AND EXPERIENCES OF INDIVIDUAL MEN IN THEIR SOLITUDE, SO FAR ASTHEY APPREHEND THEMSELVES TO STAND IN RELATION TO WHATEVER THEYMAY CONSIDER THE DIVINE. Since the relation may be either moral, physical, or ritual, it isevident that out of religion in the in which we take it, theologies, philosophies, and ecclesiasticalorganizationsmaysecondaril(sense) y grow. In these lectures, however, as I have alreadysaid, the immediate personal experiences will amply fill our time, and we shall hardly considertheology or ecclesiasticism at all.

We escape much controversial matter by this arbitrary definition of our field. But, still, a chanceof controversy comes up over the word "divine," if we take the definition in too narrow a sense.

There are systems of thought which the world usually calls religious, and yet which do notpositively assume a God. Buddhism is in this case. Popularly, of course, the Buddha himself standsin place of a God; but in strictness the Buddhistic system is atheistic. Modern transcendentalidealism, Emersonianism, for instance, also seems to let God evaporate into abstract Ideality. Not adeity in concreto, not a superhuman person, but the immanent divinity in things, the essentiallyspiritual structure of the universe, is the object of the transcendentalist cult. In that address to thegraduating class at Divinity College in 1838 which made Emerson famous, the frank expression ofthis worship of mere abstract laws was what made the scandal of the performance.

"These laws," said the speaker, "execute themselves. They are out of time, out of space, and notsubject to circumstance: Thus, in the soul of man there is a justice whose retributions are instantand entire. He who does a good deed is instantly ennobled. He who does a mean deed is by theaction itself contracted. He who puts off impurity thereby puts on purity. If a man is at heart just,then in so far is he God; the safety of God, the immortality of God, the majesty of God, do enter into that man with justice. If a man dissemble, deceive, he deceives himself, and goes out ofacquaintance with his own being. Character is always known. Thefts never enrich; alms neverimpoverish; murder will speak out of stone walls. The least admixture of a lie--for example, thetaint of vanity, any attempt to make a good impression, a favorable appearance--will instantlyvitiate the effect. But speak the truth, and all things alive or brute are vouchers, and the very rootsof the grass underground there do seem to stir and move to bear your witness. For all thingsproceed out of the same spirit, which is differently named love, justice, temperance, in its differentapplications, just as the ocean receives different names on the several shores which it washes. In sofar as he roves from these ends, a man bereaves himself of power, of auxiliaries. His beingshrinks . . . he becomes less and less, a mote, a point, until absolute badness is absolute death. Theperception of this law awakens in the mind a sentiment which we call the religious sentiment, andwhich makes our highest happiness. Wonderful is its power to charm and to command. It is amountain air. It is the embalmer of the world.

It makes the sky and the hills sublime, and the silent song of the stars is it. It is the beatitude ofman. It makes him illimitable. When he says 'I ought'; when love warns him; when he chooses,warned from on high, the good and great deed; then, deep melodies wander through his soul fromsupreme wisdom. Then he can worship, and be enlarged by his worship; for he can never gobehind this sentiment. All the expressions of this sentiment are sacred and permanent in proportionto their purity. [They] affect us more than all other compositions. The sentences of the olden time,which ejaculate this piety, are still fresh and fragrant. And the unique impression of Jesus uponmankind, whose name is not so much written as ploughed into the history of this world, is proof ofthe subtle virtue of this infusion."[10]

[10] Miscellanies, 1868, p. 120 (abridged).

Such is the Emersonian religion. The universe has a divine soul of order, which soul is moral,being also the soul within the soul of man. But whether this soul of the universe be a mere qualitylike the eye's brilliancy or the skin's softness, or whether it be a self-conscious life like the eye'sseeing or the skin's feeling, is a decision that never unmistakably appears in Emerson's pages. Itquivers on the boundary of these things, sometimes leaning one way sometimes the other, to suitthe literary rather than the philosophic need. Whatever it is, though, it is active. As much as if itwere a God, we can trust it to protect all ideal interests and keep the world's balance straight. Thesentences in which Emerson, to the very end, gave utterance to this faith are as fine as anything inliterature: "If you love and serve men, you cannot by any hiding or stratagem escape theremuneration. Secret retributions are always restoring the level, when disturbed, of the divinejustice. It is impossible to tilt the beam. All the tyrants and proprietors and monopolists of theworld in vain set their shoulders to heave the bar. Settles forevermore the ponderous equator to itsline, and man and mote, and star and sun, must range to it, or be pulverized by the recoil."[11]

[11] Lectures and Biographical Sketches, 1868, p. 186.

Now it would be too absurd to say that the inner experiences that underlie such expressions offaith as this and impel the writer to their utterance are quite unworthy to be called religiousexperiences. The sort of appeal that Emersonian optimism, on the one hand, and Buddhistic pessimism, on the other, make to the individual and the son of response which he makes to them inhis life are in fact indistinguishable from, and in many respects identical with, the best Christianappeal and response. We must therefore, from the experiential point of view, call these godless orquasi-godless creeds "religions"; and accordingly when in our definition of religion we speak ofthe individual's relation to "what he considers the divine," we must interpret the term "divine" verybroadly, as denoting any object that is god-LIKE, whether it be a concrete deity or not. But theterm "godlike," if thus treated as a floating general quality, becomes exceedingly vague, for manygods have flourished in religious history, and their attributes have been discrepant enough. Whatthen is that essentially godlike quality--be it embodied in a concrete deity or not--our relation towhich determines our character as religious men? It will repay us to seek some answer to thisquestion before we proceed farther.

For one thing, gods are conceived to be first things in the way of being and power. Theyoverarch and envelop, and from them there is no escape. What relates to them is the first and lastword in the way of truth. Whatever then were most primal and enveloping and deeply true might atthis rate be treated as godlike, and a man's religion might thus be identified with his attitude,whatever it might be, toward what he felt to be the primal truth.

Such a definition as this would in a way be defensible. Religion, whatever it is, is a man's totalreaction upon life, so why not say that any total reaction upon life is a religion? Total reactions aredifferent from casual reactions, and total attitudes are different from usual or professional attitudes.

To get at them you must go behind the foreground of existence and reach down to that curioussense of the whole residual cosmos as an everlasting presence, intimate or alien, terrible oramusing, lovable or odious, which in some degree everyone possesses. This sense of the world'spresence, appealing as it does to our peculiar individual temperament, makes us either strenuous orcareless, devout or blasphemous, gloomy or exultant, about life at large; and our reaction,involuntary and inarticulate and often half unconscious as it is, is the completest of all our answersto the question, "What is the character of this universe in which we dwell?" It expresses ourindividual sense of it in the most definite way. Why then not call these reactions our religion, nomatter what specific character they may have? Non-religious as some of these reactions may be, inone sense of the word "religious," they yet belong to THE GENERAL SPHERE OF THERELIGIOUS LIFE, and so should generically be classed as religious reactions. "He believes inNo-God, and he worships him," said a colleague of mine of a student who was manifesting a fineatheistic ardor; and the more fervent opponents of Christian doctrine have often enough shown atemper which, psychologically considered, is indistinguishable from religious zeal.

But so very broad a use of the word "religion" would be inconvenient, however defensible itmight remain on logical grounds. There are trifling, sneering attitudes even toward the whole oflife; and in some men these attitudes are final and systematic. It would strain the ordinary use oflanguage too much to call such attitudes religious, even though, from the point of view of anunbiased critical philosophy, they might conceivably be perfectly reasonable ways of looking uponlife. Voltaire, for example, writes thus to a friend, at the age of seventy-three: "As for myself," hesays, "weak as I am, I carry on the war to the last moment, I get a hundred pike-thrusts, I returntwo hundred, and I laugh. I see near my door Geneva on fire with quarrels over nothing, and Ilaugh again; and, thank God, I can look upon the world as a farce even when it becomes as tragic as it sometimes does. All comes out even at the end of the day, and all comes out still more evenwhen all the days are over."Much as we may admire such a robust old gamecock spirit in a valetudinarian, to call it areligious spirit would be odd. Yet it is for the moment Voltaire's reaction on the whole of life. Jeme'n fiche is the vulgar French equivalent for our English ejaculation "Who cares?" And the happyterm je me'n fichisme recently has been invented to designate the systematic determination not totake anything in <37> life too solemnly. "All is vanity" is the relieving word in all difficult crisesfor this mode of thought, which that exquisite literary genius Renan took pleasure, in his later daysof sweet decay, in putting into coquettishly sacrilegious forms which remain to us as excellentexpressions of the "all is vanity" state of mind. Take the following passage, for example--we musthold to duty, even against the evidence, Renan says--but he then goes on:-"There are many chances that the world may be nothing but a fairy pantomime of which no Godhas care. We must therefore arrange ourselves so that on neither hypothesis we shall be completelywrong. We must listen to the superior voices, but in such a way that if the second hypothesis weretrue we should not have been too completely duped. If in effect the world be not a serious thing, itis the dogmatic people who will be the shallow ones, and the worldly minded whom thetheologians now call frivolous will be those who are really wise.

"In utrumque paratus, then. Be ready for anything--that perhaps is wisdom. Give ourselves up,according to the hour, to confidence, to skepticism, to optimism, to irony and we may be sure thatat certain moments at least we shall be with the truth. . . . Good-humor is a philosophic state ofmind; it seems to say to Nature that we take her no more seriously than she takes us. I maintainthat one should always talk of philosophy with a smile. We owe it to the Eternal to be virtuous butwe have the right to add to this tribute our irony as a sort of personal reprisal. In this way we returnto the right quarter jest for jest; we play the trick that has been played on us. Saint Augustine'sphrase: Lord, if we arc deceived, it is by thee! remains a fine one, well suited to our modernfeeling. Only we wish the Eternal to know that if we accept the fraud, we accept it knowingly andwillingly. We are resigned in advance to losing the interest on our investments of virtue, but wewish not to appear ridiculous by having counted on them too securely."[12]

[12] Feuilles detachees, pp. 394-398 (abridged).

Surely all the usual associations of the word "religion" would have to be stripped away if such asystematic parti pris of irony were also to be denoted by the name. For common men "religion,"whatever more special meanings it may have, signifies always a SERIOUS state of mind. If anyone phrase could gather its universal message, that phrase would be, "All is not vanity in thisUniverse, whatever the appearances may suggest." If it can stop anything, religion as commonlyapprehended can stop just such chaffing talk as Renan's. It favors gravity, not pertness; it says"hush" to all vain chatter and smart wit.

But if hostile to light irony, religion is equally hostile to heavy grumbling and complaint. Theworld appears tragic enough in some religions, but the tragedy is realized as purging, and a way ofdeliverance is held to exist. We shall see enough of the religious melancholy in a future lecture;but melancholy, according to our ordinary use of language, forfeits all title to be called religious when, in Marcus Aurelius's racy words, the sufferer simply lies kicking and screaming after thefashion of a sacrificed pig. The mood of a Schopenhauer or a Nietzsche--and in a less degree onemay sometimes say the same of our own sad Carlyle--though often an ennobling sadness, is almostas often only peevishness running away with the bit between its teeth. The sallies of the twoGerman authors remind one, half the time, of the sick shriekings of two dying rats. They lack thepurgatorial note which religious sadness gives forth.

There must be something solemn, serious, and tender about any attitude which we denominatereligious. If glad, it must not grin or snicker; if sad, it must not scream or curse. It is precisely asbeing SOLEMN experiences that I wish to interest you in religious experiences. So I propose-arbitrarilyagain, if you please--to narrow our definition once more by saying that the word"divine," as employed therein, shall mean for us not merely the primal and enveloping and real, forthat meaning if taken without restriction might prove too broad. The divine shall mean for us onlysuch a primal reality as the individual feels impelled to respond to solemnly and gravely, andneither by a curse nor a jest.

But solemnity, and gravity, and all such emotional attributes, admit of various shades; and, dowhat we will with our defining, the truth must at last be confronted that we are dealing with a fieldof experience where there is not a single conception that can be sharply drawn. The pretension,under such conditions, to be rigorously "scientific" or "exact" in our terms would only stamp us aslacking in understanding of our task. Things are more or less divine, states of mind are more orless religious, reactions are more or less total, but the boundaries are always misty, and it iseverywhere a question of amount and degree. Nevertheless, at their extreme of development, therecan never be any question as to what experiences are religious. The divinity of the object and thesolemnity of the reaction are too well marked for doubt. Hesitation as to whether a state of mind is"religious," or "irreligious," or "moral," or "philosophical," is only likely to arise when the state ofmind is weakly characterized, but in that case it will be hardly worthy of our study at all. Withstates that can only by courtesy be called religious we need have nothing to do, our only profitablebusiness being with what nobody can possibly feel tempted to call anything else. I said in myformer lecture that we learn most about a thing when we view it under a microscope, as it were, orin its most exaggerated form. This is as true of religious phenomena as of any other kind of fact.

The only cases likely to be profitable enough to repay our attention will therefore be cases wherethe religious spirit is unmistakable and extreme. Its fainter manifestations we may tranquilly passby. Here, for example, is the total reaction upon life of Frederick Locker Lampson, whoseautobiography, entitled "Confidences," proves him to have been a most amiable man.

"I am so far resigned to my lot that I feel small pain at the thought of having to part from whathas been called the pleasant habit of existence, the sweet fable of life. I would not care to live mywasted life over again, and so to prolong my span. Strange to say, I have but little wish to beyounger. I submit with a chill at my heart. I humbly submit because it is the Divine Will, and myappointed destiny. I dread the increase of infirmities that will make me a burden to those aroundme, those dear to me. No! let me slip away as quietly and comfortably as I can. Let the end come,if peace come with it.

"I do not know that there is a great deal to be said for this world, or our sojourn here upon it; butit has pleased God so to place us, and it must please me also. I ask you, what is human life? Is not it a maimed happiness--care and weariness, weariness and care, with the baseless expectation, thestrange cozenage of a brighter to-morrow? At best it is but a froward child, that must be playedwith and humored, to keep it quiet till it falls asleep, and then the care is over."[13]

[13] Op. cit., pp. 314, 313.

This is a complex, a tender, a submissive, and a graceful state of mind. For myself, I should haveno objection to calling it on the whole a religious state of mind, although I dare say that to many ofyou it may seem too listless and half-hearted to merit so good a name. But what matters it in theend whether we call such a state of mind religious or not? It is too insignificant for our instructionin any case; and its very possessor wrote it down in terms which he would not have used unless hehad been thinking of more energetically religious moods in others, with which he found himselfunable to compete. It is with these more energetic states that our sole business lies, and we canperfectly well afford to let the minor notes and the uncertain border go. It was the extremer casesthat I had in mind a little while ago when I said that personal religion, even without theology orritual, would prove to embody some elements that morality pure and simple does not contain. Youmay remember that I promised shortly to point out what those elements were. In a general way Ican now say what I had in mind.

"I accept the universe" is reported to have been a favorite utterance of our New Englandtranscendentalist, Margaret Fuller; and when some one repeated this phrase to Thomas Carlyle, hissardonic comment is said to have been: "Gad! she'd better!" At bottom the whole concern of bothmorality and religion is with the manner of our acceptance of the universe. Do we accept it only inpart and grudgingly, or heartily and altogether? Shall our protests against certain things in it beradical and unforgiving, or shall we think that, even with evil, there are ways of living that mustlead to good? If we accept the whole, shall we do so as if stunned into submission--as Carlylewould have us--"Gad! we'd better!"--or shall we do so with enthusiastic assent? Morality pure andsimple accepts the law of the whole which it finds reigning, so far as to acknowledge and obey it,but it may obey it with the heaviest and coldest heart, and never cease to feel it as a yoke. But forreligion, in its strong and fully developed manifestations, the service of the highest never is felt asa yoke. Dull submission is left far behind, and a mood of welcome, which may fill any place on thescale between cheerful serenity and enthusiastic gladness, has taken its place.

It makes a tremendous emotional and practical difference to one whether one accept the universein the drab discolored way of stoic resignation to necessity, or with the passionate happiness ofChristian saints. The difference is as great as that between passivity and activity, as that betweenthe defensive and the aggressive mood. Gradual as are the steps by which an individual may growfrom one state into the other, many as are the intermediate stages which different individualsrepresent, yet when you place the typical extremes beside each other for comparison, you feel thattwo discontinuous psychological universes confront you, and that in passing from one to the othera "critical point" has been overcome.

If we compare stoic with Christian ejaculations we see much more than a difference of doctrine;rather is it a difference of emotional mood that parts them. When Marcus Aurelius reflects on theeternal reason that has ordered things, there is a frosty chill about his words which you rarely findin a Jewish, and never in a Christian piece of religious writing. The universe is "accepted" by all these writers; but how devoid of passion or exultation the spirit of the Roman Emperor is!

Compare his fine sentence: "If gods care not for me or my children, here is a reason for it," withJob's cry: "Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him!" and you immediately see the difference Imean. The anima mundi, to whose disposal of his own personal destiny the Stoic consents, is thereto be respected and submitted to, but the Christian God is there to be loved; and the difference ofemotional atmosphere is like that between an arctic climate and the tropics, though the outcome inthe way of accepting actual conditions uncomplainingly may seem in abstract terms to be much thesame.

"It is a man's duty," says Marcus Aurelius, "to comfort himself and wait for the naturaldissolution, and not to be vexed, but to find refreshment solely in these thoughts--first that nothingwill happen to me which is not conformable to the nature of the universe; and secondly that I needdo nothing contrary to the God and deity within me; for there is no man who can compel me totransgress. He is an abscess on the universe who withdraws and separates himself from the reasonof our common nature, through being displeased with the things which happen. For the samenature produces these, and has produced thee too. And so accept everything which happens, evenif it seem disagreeable, because it leads to this, the health of the universe and to the prosperity andfelicity of Zeus. For he would not have brought on any man what he has brought if it were notuseful for the whole. The integrity of the whole is mutilated if thou cuttest off anything. And thoudost cut off, as far as it is in thy power, when thou art dissatisfied, and in a manner triest to putanything out of the way."[14]

[14] Book V., ch. ix. (abridged).

Compare now this mood with that of the old Christian author of the Theologia Germanica:-"Where men are enlightened with the true light, they renounce all desire and choice, and commitand commend themselves and all things to the eternal Goodness, so that every enlightened mancould say: 'I would fain be to the Eternal Goodness what his own hand is to a man.' Such men arein a state of freedom, because they have lost the fear of pain or hell, and the hope of reward orheaven, and are living in pure submission to the eternal Goodness, in the perfect freedom offervent love. When a man truly perceiveth and considereth himself, who and what he is, andfindeth himself utterly vile and wicked and unworthy, he falleth into such a deep abasement that itseemeth to him reasonable that all creatures in heaven and earth should rise up against him. Andtherefore he will not and dare not desire any consolation and release; but he is willing to beunconsoled and unreleased; and he doth not grieve over his sufferings, for they are right in hiseyes, and he hath nothing to say against them. This is what is meant by true repentance for sin; andhe who in this present time entereth into this hell, none may console him. Now God hath notforsaken a man in this hell, but He is laying his hand upon him, that the man may not desire norregard anything but the eternal Good only. And then, when the man neither careth for nor desirethanything but the eternal Good alone, and seeketh not himself nor his own things, but the honour ofGod only, he is made a partaker of all manner of joy, bliss, peace, rest, and consolation, and so theman is henceforth in the kingdom of heaven. This hell and this heaven are two good safe ways fora man, and happy is he who truly findeth them."[15]

[15] Chaps. x., xi. (abridged): Winkworth's translation.

How much more active and positive the impulse of the Christian writer to accept his place in theuniverse is! Marcus Aurelius agrees TO the scheme--the German theologian agrees WITH it. Heliterally ABOUNDS in agreement, he runs out to embrace the divine decrees.

Occasionally, it is true, the stoic rises to something like a Christian warmth of sentiment, as inthe often quoted passage of Marcus Aurelius:-"Everything harmonizes with me which is harmonious to thee, O Universe. Nothing for me is tooearly nor too late, which is in due time for thee. Everything is fruit to me which thy seasons bring,O Nature: from thee are all things, in thee are all things, to thee all things return. The poet says,Dear City of Cecrops; and wilt thou not say, Dear City of Zeus?"[16]

[16] Book IV., 523But compare even as devout a passage as this with a genuine Christian outpouring, and it seems alittle cold. Turn, for instance, to the Imitation of Christ:-"Lord, thou knowest what is best; let this or that be according as thou wilt. Give what thou wilt,so much as thou wilt, when thou wilt. Do with me as thou knowest best, and as shall be most tothine honour. Place me where thou wilt, and freely work thy will with me in all things. . . . Whencould it be evil when thou wert near? I had rather be poor for thy sake than rich without thee. Ichoose rather to be a pilgrim upon the earth with thee, than without thee to possess heaven. Wherethou art, there is heaven; and where thou art not, behold there death and hell."[17]

[17] Benham's translation: Book III., chaps. xv., lix. Compare Mary Moody Emerson: "Let mebe a blot on this fair world, the obscurest the loneliest sufferer, with one proviso--that I know it isHis agency. I will love Him though He shed frost and darkness on every way of mine." R. W.

Emerson: Lectures and Biographical Sketches, p. 188.

It is a good rule in physiology, when we are studying the meaning of an organ, to ask after itsmost peculiar and characteristic sort of performance, and to seek its office in that one of itsfunctions which no other organ can possibly exert. Surely the same maxim holds good in ourpresent quest. The essence of religious experiences, the thing by which we finally must judgethem, must be that element or quality in them which we can meet nowhere else. And such a qualitywill be of course most prominent and easy to notice in those religious experiences which are mostone-sided, exaggerated, and intense.

Now when we compare these intenser experiences with the experiences of tamer minds, so cooland reasonable that we are tempted to call them philosophical rather than religious, we find acharacter that is perfectly distinct. That character, it seems to me, should be regarded as thepractically important differentia of religion for our purpose; and just what it is can easily bebrought out by comparing the mind of an abstractly conceived Christian with that of a moralistsimilarly conceived.

A life is manly, stoical, moral, or philosophical, we say, in proportion as it is less swayed bypaltry personal considerations and more by objective ends that call for energy, even though thatenergy bring personal loss and pain. This is the good side of war, in so far as it calls for "volunteers." And for morality life is a war, and the service of the highest is a sort of cosmicpatriotism which also calls for volunteers. Even a sick man, unable to be militant outwardly, cancarry on the moral warfare. He can willfully turn his attention away from his own future, whetherin this world or the next. He can train himself to indifference to his present drawbacks andimmerse himself in whatever objective interests still remain accessible. He can follow public news,and sympathize with other people's affairs. He can cultivate cheerful manners, and be silent abouthis miseries. He can contemplate whatever ideal aspects of existence his philosophy is able topresent to him, and practice whatever duties, such as patience, resignation, trust, his ethical systemrequires. Such a man lives on his loftiest, largest plane. He is a high-hearted freeman and no piningslave. And yet he lacks something which the Christian par excellence, the mystic and ascetic saint,for example, has in abundant measure, and which makes of him a human being of an altogetherdifferent denomination.

The Christian also spurns the pinched and mumping sick-room attitude, and the lives of saintsare full of a kind of callousness to diseased conditions of body which probably no other humanrecords show. But whereas the merely moralistic spurning takes an effort of volition, the Christianspurning is the result of the excitement of a higher kind of emotion, in the presence of which noexertion of volition is required. The moralist must hold his breath and keep his muscles tense; andso long as this athletic attitude is possible all goes well--morality suffices. But the athletic attitudetends ever to break down, and it inevitably does break down even in the most stalwart when theorganism begins to decay, or when morbid fears invade the mind. To suggest personal will andeffort to one all sicklied o'er with the sense of irremediable impotence is to suggest the mostimpossible of things. What he craves is to be consoled in his very powerlessness, to feel that thespirit of the universe <47> recognizes and secures him, all decaying and failing as he is. Well, weare all such helpless failures in the last resort. The sanest and best of us are of one clay withlunatics and prison inmates, and death finally runs the robustest of us down. And whenever we feelthis, such a sense of the vanity and provisionality of our voluntary career comes over us that all ourmorality appears but as a plaster hiding a sore it can never cure, and all our well-doing as thehollowest substitute for that well-BEING that our lives ought to be grounded in, but, alas! are not.

And here religion comes to our rescue and takes our fate into her hands. There is a state of mind,known to religious men, but to no others, in which the will to assert ourselves and hold our ownhas been displaced by a willingness to close our mouths and be as nothing in the floods andwaterspouts of God. In this state of mind, what we most dreaded has become the habitation of oursafety, and the hour of our moral death has turned into our spiritual birthday. The time for tensionin our soul is over, and that of happy relaxation, of calm deep breathing, of an eternal present, withno discordant future to be anxious about, has arrived. Fear is not held in abeyance as it is by meremorality, it is positively expunged and washed away.

We shall see abundant examples of this happy state of mind in later lectures of this course. Weshall see how infinitely passionate a thing religion at its highest flights can be. Like love, likewrath, like hope, ambition, jealousy, like every other instinctive eagerness and impulse, it adds tolife an enchantment which is not rationally or logically deducible from anything else. Thisenchantment, coming as a gift when it does come--a gift of our organism, the physiologists will tellus, a gift of God's grace, the theologians say --is either there or not there for us, and there are persons who can no more become possessed by it than they can fall in love with a given woman bymere word of command. Religious feeling is thus an absolute addition to the Subject's range oflife. It gives him a new sphere of power. When the outward battle is lost, and the outer worlddisowns him, it redeems and vivifies an interior world which otherwise would be an empty waste.

If religion is to mean anything definite for us, it seems to me that we ought to take it as meaningthis added dimension of emotion, this enthusiastic temper of espousal, in regions where moralitystrictly so called can at best but bow its head and acquiesce. It ought to mean nothing short of thisnew reach of freedom for us, with the struggle over, the keynote of the universe sounding in ourears, and everlasting possession spread before our eyes.[18]

[18] Once more, there are plenty of men, constitutionally sombre men, in whose religious lifethis rapturousness is lacking. They are religious in the wider sense, yet in this acutest of all sensesthey are not so, and it is religion in the acutest sense that I wish, without disputing about words, tostudy first, so as to get at its typical differentia.

This sort of happiness in the absolute and everlasting is what we find nowhere but in religion. Itis parted off from all mere animal happiness, all mere enjoyment of the present, by that element ofsolemnity of which I have already made so much account. Solemnity is a hard thing to defineabstractly, but certain of its marks are patent enough. A solemn state of mind is never crude orsimple--it seems to contain a certain measure of its own opposite in solution. A solemn joypreserves a sort of bitter in its sweetness; a solemn sorrow is one to which we intimately consent.

But there are writers who, realizing that happiness of a supreme sort is the prerogative of religion,forget this complication, and call all happiness, as such, religious. Mr. Havelock Ellis, for example,identifies religion with the entire field of the soul's liberation from oppressive moods.

"The simplest functions of physiological life," he writes may be its ministers. Every one who isat all acquainted with the Persian mystics knows how wine may be regarded as an instrument ofreligion. Indeed, in all countries and in all ages some form of physical enlargement--singing,dancing, drinking, sexual excitement--has been intimately associated with worship. Even themomentary expansion of the soul in laughter is, to however slight an extent, a religious exercise. . .

. Whenever an impulse from the world strikes against the organism, and the resultant is notdiscomfort or pain, not even the muscular contraction of strenuous manhood, but a joyousexpansion or aspiration of the whole soul--there is religion. It is the infinite for which we hunger,and we ride gladly on every little wave that promises to bear us towards it."[19]

[19] The New Spirit, p. 232.

But such a straight identification of religion with any and every form of happiness leaves theessential peculiarity of religious happiness out. The more commonplace happinesses which we getare "reliefs," occasioned by our momentary escapes from evils either experienced or threatened.

But in its most characteristic embodiments, religious happiness is no mere feeling of escape. Itcares no longer to escape. It consents to the evil outwardly as a form of sacrifice--inwardly itknows it to be permanently overcome. If you ask HOW religion thus falls on the thorns and facesdeath, and in the very act annuls annihilation, I cannot explain the matter, for it is religion's secret, and to understand it you must yourself have been a religious man of the extremer type. In ourfuture examples, even of the simplest and healthiest-minded type of religious consciousness, weshall find this complex sacrificial constitution, in which a higher happiness holds a lowerunhappiness in check. In the Louvre there is a picture, by Guido Reni, of St. Michael with his footon Satan's neck. The richness of the picture is in large part due to the fiend's figure being there.

The richness of its allegorical meaning also is due to his being there--that is, the world is all thericher for having a devil in it, SO LONG AS WE KEEP OUR FOOT UPON HIS NECK. In thereligious consciousness, that is just the position in which the fiend, the negative or tragic principle,is found; and for that very reason the religious consciousness is so rich from the emotional point ofview.[20] We shall see how in certain men and women it takes on a monstrously ascetic form.

There are saints who have literally fed on the negative principle, on humiliation and privation, andthe thought of suffering and death--their souls growing in happiness just in proportion as theiroutward state grew more intolerable. No other emotion than religious emotion can bring a man tothis peculiar pass. And it is for that reason that when we ask our question about the value ofreligion for human life, I think we ought to look for the answer among these violenter examplesrather than among those of a more moderate hue.

[20] I owe this allegorical illustration to my lamented colleague and Friend, Charles CarrollEverett.

Having the phenomenon of our study in its acutest possible form to start with, we can shadedown as much as we please later. And if in these cases, repulsive as they are to our ordinaryworldly way of judging, we find ourselves compelled to acknowledge religion's value and treat itwith respect, it will have proved in some way its value for life at large. By subtracting and toningdown extravagances we may thereupon proceed to trace the boundaries of its legitimate sway.

To be sure, it makes our task difficult to have to deal so muck with eccentricities and extremes.

"How CAN religion on the whole be the most important of all human functions," you may ask, "ifevery several manifestation of it in turn have to be corrected and sobered down and pruned away?"Such a thesis seems a paradox impossible to sustain reasonably--yet I believe that something likeit will have to be our final contention. That personal attitude which the individual finds himselfimpelled to take up towards what he apprehends to be the divine--and you will remember that thiswas our definition--will prove to be both a helpless and a sacrificial attitude. That is, we shall haveto confess to at least some amount of dependence on sheer mercy, and to practice some amount ofrenunciation, great or small, to save our souls alive. The constitution of the world we live inrequires it:-"Entbehren sollst du! sollst entbehren! Das ist der ewige Gesang Der jedem an die Ohren klingt,Den, unser ganzes Leben lang Uns heiser jede Stunde singt."For when all is said and done, we are in the end absolutely dependent on the universe; and intosacrifices and surrenders of some sort, deliberately looked at and accepted, we are drawn andpressed as into our only permanent positions of repose. Now in those states of mind which fallshort of religion, the surrender is submitted to as an imposition of necessity, and the sacrifice isundergone at the very best without complaint. In the religious life, on the contrary, surrender and sacrifice are positively espoused: even unnecessary givings-up are added in order that thehappiness may increase. Religion thus makes easy and felicitous what in any case is necessary; andif it be the only agency that can accomplish this result, its vital importance as a human facultystands vindicated beyond dispute. It becomes an essential organ of our life, performing a functionwhich no other portion of our nature can so successfully fulfill. From the merely biological pointof view, so to call it, this is a conclusion to which, so far as I can now see, we shall inevitably beled, and led moreover by following the purely empirical method of demonstration which I sketchedto you in the first lecture. Of the farther office of religion as a metaphysical revelation I will saynothing now.

But to foreshadow the terminus of one's investigations is one thing, and to arrive there safely isanother. In the next lecture, abandoning the extreme generalities which have engrossed us hitherto,I propose that we begin our actual journey by addressing ourselves directly to the concrete facts.
Lecture III  THE REALITY OF THE UNSEEN
　　Were one asked to characterize the life of religion in the broadest and most general termspossible, one might say that it consists of the belief that there is an unseen order, and that oursupreme good lies in harmoniously adjusting ourselves thereto. This belief and this adjustment arethe religious attitude in the soul. I wish during this hour to call your attention to some of thepsychological peculiarities of such an attitude as this, or belief in an object which we cannot see.

All our attitudes, moral, practical, or emotional, as well as religious, are due to the "objects" of ourconsciousness, the things which we believe to exist, whether really or ideally, along withourselves. Such objects may be present to our senses, or they may be present only to our thought.

In either case they elicit from us a REACTION; and the reaction due to things of thought isnotoriously in many cases as strong as that due to sensible presences. It may be even stronger. Thememory of an insult may make us angrier than the insult did when we received it. We arefrequently more ashamed of our blunders afterwards than we were at the moment of making them;and in general our whole higher prudential and moral life is based on the fact that materialsensations actually present may have a weaker influence on our action than ideas of remoter facts.

The more concrete objects of most men's religion, the deities whom they worship, are known tothem only in idea. It has been vouchsafed, for example, to very few Christian believers to have hada sensible vision of their Saviour; though enough appearances of this sort are on record, by way ofmiraculous exception, to merit our attention later. The whole force of the Christian religion,therefore, so far as belief in the divine personages determines the prevalent attitude of the believer,is in general exerted by the instrumentality of pure ideas, of which nothing in the individual's pastexperience directly serves as a model.

But in addition to these ideas of the more concrete religious objects, religion is full of abstractobjects which prove to have an equal power. God's attributes as such, his holiness, his justice, hismercy, his absoluteness, his infinity, his omniscience, his tri-unity, the various mysteries of theredemptive process, the operation of the sacraments, etc., have proved fertile wells of inspiringmeditation for Christian believers.[21] We shall see later that the absence of definite sensible images is positively insisted on by the mystical authorities in all religions as the sine qua non of asuccessful orison, or contemplation of the higher divine truths. Such contemplations are expected(and abundantly verify the expectation, as we shall also see) to influence the believer's subsequentattitude very powerfully for good.

[21] Example: "I have had much comfort lately in meditating on the passages which show thepersonality of the Holy Ghost, and his distinctness from the Father and the Son. It is a subject thatrequires searching into to find out, but, when realized, gives one so much more true and lively asense of the fullness of the Godhead, and its work in us and to us, than when only thinking of theSpirit in its effect on us." Augustus Hare: Memorials, i. 244, Maria Hare to Lucy H. Hare.

Immanuel Kant held a curious doctrine about such objects of belief as God, the design ofcreation, the soul, its freedom, and the life hereafter. These things, he said, are properly not objectsof knowledge at all. Our conceptions always require a sense-content to work with, and as thewords soul," "God," "immortality," cover no distinctive sense-content whatever, it follows thattheoretically speaking they are words devoid of any significance. Yet strangely enough they have adefinite meaning FOR OUR PRACTICE. We can act AS IF there were a God; feel AS IF we werefree; consider Nature AS IF she were full of special designs; lay plans AS IF we were to beimmortal; and we find then that these words do make a genuine difference in our moral life. Ourfaith THAT these unintelligible objects actually exist proves thus to be a full equivalent inpraktischer Hinsicht, as Kant calls it, or from the point of view of our action, for a knowledge ofWHAT they might be, in case we were permitted positively to conceive them. So we have thestrange phenomenon, as Kant assures us, of a mind believing with all its strength in the realpresence of a set of things of no one of which it can form any notion whatsoever.

My object in thus recalling Kant's doctrine to your mind is not to express any opinion as to theaccuracy of this particularly uncouth part of his philosophy, but only to illustrate the characteristicof human nature which we are considering, by an example so classical in its exaggeration. Thesentiment of reality can indeed attach itself so strongly to our object of belief that our whole life ispolarized through and through, so to speak, by its sense of the existence of the thing believed in,and yet that thing, for purpose of definite description, can hardly be said to be present to our mindat all. It is as if a bar of iron, without touch or sight, with no representative faculty whatever, mightnevertheless be strongly endowed with an inner capacity for magnetic feeling; and as if, throughthe various arousals of its magnetism by magnets coming and going in its neighborhood, it mightbe consciously determined to different attitudes and tendencies. Such a bar of iron could nevergive you an outward description of the agencies that had the power of stirring it so strongly; yet oftheir presence, and of their significance for its life, it would be intensely aware through every fibreof its being.

It is not only the Ideas of pure Reason as Kant styled them, that have this power of making usvitally feel presences that we are impotent articulately to describe. All sorts of higher abstractionsbring with them the same kind of impalpable appeal. Remember those passages from Emersonwhich I read at my last lecture. The whole universe of concrete objects, as we know them, swims,not only for such a transcendentalist writer, but for all of us, in a wider and higher universe ofabstract ideas, that lend it its significance. As time, space, and the ether soak through all things so (we feel) do abstract and essential goodness, beauty, strength, significance, justice, soak throughall things good, strong, significant, and just.

Such ideas, and others equally abstract, form the background for all our facts, the fountain-headof all the possibilities we conceive of. They give its "nature," as we call it, to every special thing.

Everything we know is "what" it is by sharing in the nature of one of these abstractions. We cannever look directly at them, for they are bodiless and featureless and footless, but we grasp allother things by their means, and in handling the real world we should be stricken with helplessnessin just so far forth as we might lose these mental objects, these adjectives and adverbs andpredicates and heads of classification and conception.

This absolute determinability of our mind by abstractions is one of the cardinal facts in ourhuman constitution. Polarizing and magnetizing us as they do, we turn towards them and fromthem, we seek them, hold them, hate them, bless them, just as if they were so many concretebeings. And beings they are, beings as real in the realm which they inhabit as the changing thingsof sense are in the realm of space.

Plato gave so brilliant and impressive a defense of this common human feeling, that the doctrineof the reality of abstract objects has been known as the platonic theory of ideas ever since. AbstractBeauty, for example, is for Plato a perfectly definite individual being, of which the intellect isaware as of something additional to all the perishing beauties of the earth. "The true order ofgoing," he says, in the often quoted passage in his "Banquet," "is to use the beauties of earth assteps along which one mounts upwards for the sake of that other Beauty, going from one to two,and from two to all fair forms, and from fair forms to fair actions, and from fair actions to fairnotions, until from fair notions, he arrives at the notion of absolute Beauty, and at last knows whatthe essence of Beauty is."[22] In our last lecture we had a glimpse of the way in which aplatonizing writer like Emerson may treat the abstract divineness of things, the moral structure ofthe universe, as a fact worthy of worship. In those various churches without a God which to-dayare spreading through the world under the name of ethical societies, we have a similar worship ofthe abstract divine, the moral law believed in as an ultimate object. "Science" in many minds isgenuinely taking the place of a religion. Where this is so, the scientist treats the "Laws of Nature"as objective facts to be revered. A brilliant school of interpretation of Greek mythology wouldhave it that in their origin the Greek gods were only half-metaphoric personifications of those greatspheres of abstract law and order into which the natural world falls apart--the sky-sphere, theocean-sphere, the earth-sphere, and the like; just as even now we may speak of the smile of themorning, the kiss of the breeze, or the bite of the cold, without really meaning that thesephenomena of nature actually wear a human face.[23]

[22] Symposium, Jowett, 1871, i. 527.

[23] Example: "Nature is always so interesting, under whatever aspect she shows herself, thatwhen it rains, I seem to see a beautiful woman weeping. She appears the more beautiful, the moreafflicted she is." B. de St. Pierre.

As regards the origin of the Greek gods, we need not at present seek an opinion. But the wholearray of our instances leads to a conclusion something like this: It is as if there were in the human consciousness a sense of reality, a feeling of objective presence, a perception of what we may call"something there," more deep and more general than any of the special and particular "senses" bywhich the current psychology supposes existent realities to be originally revealed. If this were so,we might suppose the senses to waken our attitudes and conduct as they so habitually do, by firstexciting this sense of reality; but anything else, any idea, for example, that might similarly exciteit, would have that same prerogative of appearing real which objects of sense normally possess. Sofar as religious conceptions were able to touch this reality-feeling, they would be believed in inspite of criticism, even though they might be so vague and remote as to be almost unimaginable,even though they might be such non-entities in point of WHATNESS, as Kant makes the objectsof his moral theology to be.

The most curious proofs of the existence of such an undifferentiated sense of reality as this arefound in experiences of hallucination. It often happens that hallucination is imperfectlydeveloped: the person affected will feel a "presence" in the room,(an) definitely localized, facing inone particular way, real in the most emphatic sense of the word, often coming suddenly, and assuddenly gone; and yet neither seen, heard, touched, nor cognized in any of the usual "sensible"ways. Let me give you an example of this, before I pass to the objects with whose presencereligion is more peculiarly concerned.

An intimate friend of mine, one of the keenest intellects I know, has had several experiences ofthis sort. He writes as follows in response to my inquiries:--<59>

"I have several times within the past few years felt the so-called 'consciousness of a presence.'

The experiences which I have in mind are clearly distinguishable from another kind of experiencewhich I have had very frequently, and which I fancy many persons would also call the'consciousness of a presence.' But the difference for me between the two sets of experience is asgreat as the difference between feeling a slight warmth originating I know not where, and standingin the midst of a conflagration with all the ordinary senses alert.

"It was about September, 1884, when I had the first experience. On the previous night I had had,after getting into bed at my rooms in College, a vivid tactile hallucination of being grasped by thearm, which made me get up and search the room for an intruder; but the sense of presence properlyso called came on the next night. After I had got into bed and blown out the candle, I lay awakeawhile thinking on the previous night's experience, when suddenly I FELT something come intothe room and stay close to my bed. It remained only a minute or two. I did not recognize it by anyordinary sense and yet there was a horribly unpleasant 'sensation' connected with it. It stirredsomething more at the roots of my being than any ordinary perception. The feeling had somethingof the quality of a very large tearing vital pain spreading chiefly over the chest, but within theorganism--and yet the feeling was not PAIN so much as ABHORRENCE. At all events, somethingwas present with me, and I knew its presence far more surely than I have ever known the presenceof any fleshly living creature. I was conscious of its departure as of its coming: an almostinstantaneously swift going through the door, and the 'horrible sensation' disappeared.

"On the third night when I retired my mind absorbed in lectures which I was preparing,andIwasstillabsorbedinthesewhenIbec(was) ameawareofthea(some) ctual presence (thoughnot of the COMING) of the thing that was there the night before, and of the 'horrible sensation.' Ithen mentally concentrated all my effort to charge this 'thing,' if it was evil to depart, if it was NOT evil, to tell me who or what it was, and if it could not explain itself, to go, and that I would compelit <60> to go. It went as on the previous night, and my body quickly recovered its normal state.

"On two other occasions in my life I have had precisely the same 'horrible sensation.' Once itlasted a full quarter of an hour. In all three instances the certainty that there in outward space therestood SOMETHING was indescribably STRONGER than the ordinary certainty of companionshipwhen we are in the close presence of ordinary living people. The something seemed close to me,and intensely more real than any ordinary perception. Although I felt it to be like unto myself so tospeak, or finite, small, and distressful, as it were, I didn't recognize it as any individual being orperson."Of course such an experience as this does not connect itself with the religious sphere. Yet it mayupon occasion do so; and the same correspondent informs me that at more than one otherconjuncture he had the sense of presence developed with equal intensity and abruptness, only thenit was filled with a quality of joy.

"There was not a mere consciousness of something there, but fused in the central happiness of it,a startling awareness of some ineffable good. Not vague either, not like the emotional effect ofsome poem, or scene, or blossom, of music, but the sure knowledge of the close presence of a sortof mighty person, and after it went, the memory persisted as the one perception of reality.

Everything else might be a dream, but not that."My friend, as it oddly happens, does not interpret these latter experiences theistically, assignifying the presence of God. But it would clearly not have been unnatural to interpret them as arevelation of the deity's existence. When we reach the subject of mysticism, we shall have muchmore to say upon this head.

Lest the oddity of these phenomena should disconcert you, I will venture to read you a couple ofsimilar narratives, much shorter, merely to show that we are dealing with a well-marked naturalkind of fact. In the first case, which I <61> take from the Journal of the Society for PsychicalResearch, the sense of presence developed in a few moments into a distinctly visualizedhallucination--but I leave that part of the story out.

"I had read," the narrator says, "some twenty minutes or so, was thoroughly absorbed in thebook, my mind was perfectly quiet, and for the time being my friends were quite forgotten, whensuddenly without a moment's warning my whole being seemed roused to the highest state oftension or aliveness, and I was aware, with an intenseness not easily imagined by those who hadnever experienced it, that another being or presence was not only in the room, but quite close tome. I put my book down, and although my excitement was great, I felt quite collected, and notconscious of any sense of fear. Without changing my position, and looking straight at the fire, Iknew somehow that my friend A. H. was standing at my left elbow but so far behind me as to behidden by the armchair in which I was leaning back. Moving my eyes round slightly withoutotherwise changing my position, the lower portion of one leg became visible, and I instantlyrecognized the gray-blue material of trousers he often wore, but the stuff appeared semitransparent,reminding me of tobacco smoke in consistency,"[24]-- and hereupon the visual hallucination came.

[24] Journal of the S. P. R., February, 1895, p. 26.

Another informant writes:-"Quite early in the night I was awakened. . . . I felt as if I had been aroused intentionally, and atfirst thought some one was breaking into the house. . . . I then turned on my side to go to sleepagain, and immediately felt a consciousness of a presence in the room, and singular to state, it wasnot the consciousness of a live person, but of a spiritual presence. This may provoke a smile, but Ican only tell you the facts as they occurred to me. I do not know how to better describe mysensations than by simply stating that I felt a consciousness of a spiritual presence. . . . I felt also atthe same time a strong feeling of superstitious dread, as if something strange and fearful wereabout to happen."[25]

[25] E. Gurney: Phantasms of the Living, i. 384.

Professor Flournoy of Geneva gives me the following testimony of a friend of his, a lady, whohas the gift of automatic or involuntary writing:-"Whenever I practice automatic writing, what makes me feel that it is not due to a subconsciousself is the feeling I always have of a foreign presence, external to my body. It is sometimes sodefinitely characterized that I could point to its exact position. This impression of presence isimpossible to describe. It varies in intensity and clearness according to the personality from whomthe writing professes to come. If it is some one whom I love, I feel it immediately, before anywriting has come. My heart seems to recognize it."In an earlier book of mine I have cited at full length a curious case of presence felt by a blindman. The presence was that of the figure of a gray-bearded man dressed in a pepper and salt suit,squeezing himself under the crack of the door and moving across the floor of the room towards asofa. The blind subject of this quasi-hallucination is an exceptionally intelligent reporter. He isentirely without internal visual imagery and cannot represent light or colors to himself, and ispositive that his other senses, hearing, etc., were not involved in this false perception. It seems tohave been an abstract conception rather, with the feelings of reality and spatial outwardnessdirectly attached to it--in other words, a fully objectified and exteriorized IDEA.

Such cases, taken along with others which would be too tedious for quotation, seem sufficientlyto prove the existence in our mental machinery of a sense of present reality more diffused andgeneral than that which our special senses yield. For the psychologists the tracing of the organicseat of such a feeling would form a pretty problem--nothing could be more natural than to connectit with the muscular sense, with the feeling that our muscles were innervating themselves foraction. Whatsoever thus innervated our activity, or "made our flesh creep"--our senses are what doso oftenest--might then appear real and present, even though it were but an abstract idea. But withsuch vague conjectures we have no concern at present, for our interest lies with the faculty ratherthan with its organic seat.

Like all positive affections of consciousness, the sense of reality has its negative counterpart inthe shape of a feeling of unreality by which persons may be haunted, and of which one sometimeshears complaint:-"When I reflect on the fact that I have made my appearance by accident upon a globe itselfwhirled through space as the sport of the catastrophes of the heavens," says Madame Ackermann; "when I see myself surrounded by beings as ephemeral and incomprehensible as I am myself, andall excitedly pursuing pure chimeras, I experience a strange feeling of being in a dream. It seems tome as if I have loved and suffered and that erelong I shall die, in a dream. My last word will be, 'Ihave been dreaming.'"[26]

[26] Pensees d'un Solitaire, p. 66.

In another lecture we shall see how in morbid melancholy this sense of the unreality of thingsmay become a carking pain, and even lead to suicide.

We may now lay it down as certain that in the distinctively religious sphere of experience, manypersons (how many we cannot tell) possess the objects of their belief, not in the form of mereconceptions which their intellect accepts as true, but rather in the form of quasi-sensible realitiesdirectly apprehended. As his sense of the real presence of these objects fluctuates, so the believeralternates between warmth and coldness in his faith. Other examples will bring this home to onebetter than abstract description, so I proceed immediately to cite some. The first example is anegative one, deploring the loss of the sense in question. I have extracted it from an account givenme by a scientific man of my acquaintance, of his religious life. It seems to me to show clearly thatthe feeling of reality may be something more like a sensation than an intellectual operationproperly so-called.

"Between twenty and thirty I gradually became more and more agnostic and irreligious, yet Icannot say that I ever lost that 'indefinite consciousness' which Herbert Spencer describes so well,of an Absolute Reality behind phenomena. For me this Reality was not the pure Unknowable ofSpencer's philosophy, for although I had ceased my childish prayers to God, and never prayed toIT in a formal manner, yet my more recent experience shows me to have been in a relation to ITwhich practically was the same thing as prayer. Whenever I had any trouble, especially when I hadconflict with other people, either domestically or in the way of business, or when I was depressedin spirits or anxious about affairs, I now recognize that I used to fall back for support upon thiscurious relation I felt myself to be in to this fundamental cosmical IT. It was on my side, or I wason Its side, however you please to term it, in the particular trouble, and it always strengthened meand seemed to give me endless vitality to feel its underlying and supporting presence. In fact, itwas an unfailing fountain of living justice, truth, and strength, to which I instinctively turned attimes of weakness, and it always brought me out. I know now that it was a personal relation I wasin to it, because of late years the power of communicating with it has left me, and I am consciousof a perfectly definite loss. I used never to fail to find it when I turned to it. Then came a set ofyears when sometimes I found it, and then again I would be wholly unable to make connectionwith it. I remember many occasions on which at night in bed, I would be unable to get to sleep onaccount of worry. I turned this way and that in the darkness, and groped mentally for the familiarsense of that higher mind of my mind which had always seemed to be close at hand as it were,closing the passage, and yielding support, but there was no electric current. A blank was thereinstead of IT: I couldn't find anything. Now, at the age of nearly fifty, my power of getting intoconnection with it has entirely left me; and I have to confess that a great help has gone out of mylife. Life has become curiously dead and <65> indifferent; and I can now see that my oldexperience was probably exactly the same thing as the prayers of the orthodox, only I did not call them by that name. What I have spoken of as 'It' was practically not Spencer's Unknowable, butjust my own instinctive and individual God, whom I relied upon for higher sympathy, but whomsomehow I have lost."Nothing is more common in the pages of religious biography than the way in which seasons oflively and of difficult faith are described as alternating. Probably every religious person has therecollection of particular crisis in which a directer vision of the truth, a direct perception, perhaps,of a living God's existence, swept in and overwhelmed the languor of the more ordinary belief. InJames Russell Lowell's correspondence there is a brief memorandum of an experience of thiskind:-"I had a revelation last Friday evening. I was at Mary's, and happening to say something of thepresence of spirits (of whom, I said, I was often dimly aware), Mr. Putnam entered into anargument with me on spiritual matters. As I was speaking, the whole system rose up before me likea vague destiny looming from the Abyss. I never before so clearly felt the Spirit of God in me andaround rue. The whole room seemed to me full of God. The air seemed to waver to and fro withthe presence of Something I knew not what. I spoke with the calmness and clearness of a prophet. Icannot tell you what this revelation was. I have not yet studied it enough. But I shall perfect it oneday, and then you shall hear it and acknowledge its grandeur."[27]

[27] Letters of Lowell, i. 75.

<66> Here is a longer and more developed experience from a manuscript communication by aclergyman--I take it from Starbuck's manuscript collection:-"I remember the night, and almost the very spot on the hill-top, where my soul opened out, as itwere, into the Infinite, and there was a rushing together of the two worlds, the inner and the outer.

It was deep calling unto deep--the deep that my own struggle had opened up within beinganswered by the unfathomable deep without, reaching beyond the stars. I stood alone with Himwho had made me, and all the beauty of the world, and love, and sorrow, and even temptation. Idid not seek Him, but felt the perfect unison of my spirit with His. The ordinary sense of thingsaround me faded. For the moment nothing but an ineffable joy and exultation remained. It isimpossible fully to describe the experience. It was like the effect of some great orchestra when allthe separate notes have melted into one swelling harmony that leaves the listener conscious ofnothing save that his soul is being wafted upwards, and almost bursting with its own emotion. Theperfect stillness of the night was thrilled by a more solemn silence. The darkness held a presencethat was all the more felt because it was not seen. I could not any more have doubted that HE wasthere than that I was. Indeed, I felt myself to be, if possible, the less real of the two.

"My highest faith in God and truest idea of him were then born in me. I have stood upon theMount of Vision since, and felt the Eternal round about me. But never since has there come quitethe same stirring of the heart. Then, if ever, I believe, I stood face to face with God, and was bornanew of his spirit. There was, as I recall it, no sudden change of thought or of belief, except thatmy early crude conception, had, as it were burst into flower. There was no destruction of the old,but a rapid, wonderful unfolding. Since that time no discussion that I have heard of the proofs ofGod's existence has been able to shake my faith. Having once felt the presence of God's spirit, I have never lost it again for long. My most assuring evidence of his existence is deeply rooted inthat hour of vision in the memory of that supreme experience, and in the conviction, gained fromreading and reflection, that something the same has come to all who have found God. I am awarethat it may justly be called mystical. I am not enough acquainted with philosophy to defend it fromthat or any other charge. I feel that in writing of it I have overlaid it with words rather than put itclearly to your thought. But, such as it is, I have described it as carefully as I now am able to do."Here is another document, even more definite in character, which, the writer being a Swiss, Itranslate from the French original.[28]

[28] I borrow it, with Professor Flournoy's permission, from his rich collection of psychologicaldocuments.

"I was in perfect health: we were on our sixth day of tramping, and in good training. We hadcome the day before from Sixt to Trient by Buet. I felt neither fatigue, hunger, nor thirst, and mystate of mind was equally healthy. I had had at Forlaz good news from home; I was subject to noanxiety, either near or remote, for we had a good guide, and there was not a shadow of uncertaintyabout the road we should follow. I can best describe the condition in which I was by calling it astate of equilibrium. When all at once I experienced a feeling of being raised above myself, I feltthe presence of God--I tell of the thing just as I was conscious of it--as if his goodness and hispower were penetrating me altogether. The throb of emotion was so violent that I could barely tellthe boys to pass on and not wait for me. I then sat down on a stone, unable to stand any longer, andmy eyes overflowed with tears. I thanked God that in the course of my life he had taught me toknow him, that he sustained my life and took pity both on the insignificant creature and on thesinner that I was. I begged him ardently that my life might be consecrated to the doing of his will. Ifelt his reply, which was that I should do his will from day to day in humility and poverty, leavinghim, the Almighty God, to be judge of whether I should some time be called to bear witness moreconspicuously. Then, slowly, the ecstasy left my heart; that is, I felt that God had withdrawn thecommunion which he had granted, and I was able to walk on, but very slowly, so strongly was Istill possessed by the interior emotion. Besides, I had wept uninterruptedly for several minutes, myeyes were swollen, and I did not wish my companions to see me. The state of ecstasy may havelasted four or five minutes, although it seemed at the time to last much longer. My comradeswaited for me ten minutes at the cross of Barine, but I took about twenty-five or thirty minutes tojoin them, for as well as I can remember, they said that I had kept them back for about half anhour. The impression had been so profound that in climbing slowly the slope I asked myself if itwere possible that Moses on Sinai could have had a more intimate communication with God. Ithink it well to add that in this ecstasy of mine God had neither form, color, odor, nor taste;moreover, that the feeling of his presence was accompanied with no determinate localization. Itwas rather as if my personality had been transformed by the presence of a SPIRITUAL SPIRIT.

But the more I seek words to express this intimate intercourse, the more I feel the impossibility ofdescribing the thing by any of our usual images. At bottom the expression most apt to render whatI felt is this: God was present, though invisible; he fell under no one of my senses, yet myconsciousness perceived him."The adjective "mystical" is technically applied, most often. to states that are of brief duration. Ofcourse such hours of rapture as the last two persons describe are mystical experiences, of which ina later lecture I shall have much to say. Meanwhile here is the abridged record of another mysticalor semi-mystical experience, in a mind evidently framed by nature for ardent piety. I owe it toStarbuck's collection. The lady who gives the account is the daughter of a man well known in histime as a writer against Christianity. The suddenness of her conversion shows well how native thesense of God's presence must be to certain minds. She relates that she was brought up in entireignorance of Christian doctrine, but, when in Germany, after being talked to by Christian friends,she read the Bible and prayed, and finally the plan of salvation flashed upon her like a stream oflight.

<69> "To this day," she writes, "I cannot understand dallying with religion and the commands ofGod. The very instant I heard my Father's cry calling unto me, my heart bounded in recognition.

I ran, I stretched forth my arms, I cried aloud, 'Here, here I am, my Father.' Oh, happy child,what should I do? 'Love me,' answered my God. 'I do, I do,' I cried passionately. 'Come unto me,'

called my Father. 'I will,' my heart panted. Did I stop to ask a single question? Not one. It neveroccurred to me to ask whether I was good enough, or to hesitate over my unfitness, or to find outwhat I thought of his church, or . . . to wait until I should be satisfied. Satisfied! I was satisfied.

Had I not found my God and my Father? Did he not love me? Had he not called me? Was there nota Church into which I might enter? . . . Since then I have had direct answers to prayer--sosignificant as to be almost like talking with God and hearing his answer. The idea of God's realityhas never left me for one moment."Here is still another case, the writer being a man aged twenty-seven, in which the experience,probably almost as characteristic, is less vividly described:-"I have on a number of occasions felt that I had enjoyed a period of intimate communion withthe divine. These meetings came unasked and unexpected, and seemed to consist merely in thetemporary obliteration of the conventionalities which usually surround and cover my life. . . . Onceit was when from the summit of a high mountain I looked over a gashed and corrugated landscapeextending to a long convex of ocean that ascended to the horizon, and again from the same pointwhen I could see nothing beneath me but a boundless expanse of white cloud, on the blown surfaceof which a few high peaks, including the one I was on, seemed plunging about as if they weredragging their anchors.

What I felt on these occasions was a temporary loss of my own identity, accompanied by anillumination which revealed to me a deeper significance than I had been wont to attach to life. It isin this that I find my justification for saying that I have enjoyed communication with God. Ofcourse the absence of such a being as this would be chaos. I cannot conceive of life without itspresence."Of the more habitual and so to speak chronic sense of God's presence the following sample fromProfessor Starbuck's manuscript collection may serve to give an idea. It is from a man aged forty-nine--probably thousands of unpretending Christians would write an almost identical account.

"God is more real to me than any thought or thing or person. I feel his presence positively, andthe more as I live in closer harmony with his laws as written in my body and mind. I feel him in the sunshine or rain; and awe mingled with a delicious restfulness most nearly describes myfeelings. I talk to him as to a companion in prayer and praise, and our communion is delightful. Heanswers me again and again, often in words so clearly spoken that it seems my outer ear must havecarried the tone, but generally in strong mental impressions. Usually a text of Scripture, unfoldingsome new view of him and his love for me, and care for my safety. I could give hundreds ofinstances, in school matters, social problems, financial difficulties, etc. That he is mine and I amhis never leaves me, it is an abiding joy. Without it life would be a blank, a desert, a shoreless,trackless waste."I subjoin some more examples from writers of different ages and sexes. They are also fromProfessor Starbuck's collection, and their number might be greatly multiplied. The first is from aman twenty-seven years old:-"God is quite real to me. I talk to him and often get answers. Thoughts sudden and distinct fromany I have been entertaining come to my mind after asking God for his direction. Something over ayear ago I was for some weeks in the direst perplexity. When the trouble first appeared before me Iwas dazed, but before long (two or three hours) I could hear distinctly a passage of Scripture: 'Mygrace is sufficient for thee.' Every time my thoughts turned to the trouble I could hear thisquotation. I don't think I ever doubted the existence of God, or had him drop out of myconsciousness. God has frequently stepped into my affairs very perceptibly, and I feel that hedirects many little details all the time. But on two or three occasions he has ordered ways for mevery contrary to my ambitions and plans."Another statement (none the less valuable psychologically for being so decidedly childish) is thatof a boy of seventeen:-"Sometimes as I go to church, I sit down, join in the service, and before I go out I feel as if Godwas with me, right side of me, singing and reading the Psalms with me. . . . And then again I feelas if I could sit beside him, and put my arms around him, kiss him, etc. When I am taking HolyCommunion at the altar, I try to get with him and generally feel his presence."I let a few other cases follow at random:-"God surrounds me like the physical atmosphere. He is closer to me than my own breath. In himliterally I live and move and have my being."-"There are times when I seem to stand in his very presence, to talk with him. Answers to prayerhave come, sometimes direct and overwhelming in their revelation of his presence and powers.

There are times when God seems far off, but this is always my own fault."-"I have the sense of a presence, strong, and at the same time soothing, which hovers over me.

Sometimes it seems to enwrap me with sustaining arms."Such is the human ontological imagination, and such is the convincingness of what it brings tobirth. Unpicturable beings are realized, and realized with an intensity almost like that of anhallucination. They determine our vital attitude as decisively as the vital attitude of lovers isdetermined by the habitual sense, by which each is haunted, of the other being in the world. Alover has notoriously this sense of the continuous being of his idol, even when his attention isaddressed to other matters and he no longer represents her features. He cannot forget her; sheuninterruptedly affects him through and through. I spoke of the convincingness of these feelings of reality, and I must dwell a moment longer on that point. They are as convincing to those who havethem as any direct sensible experiences can be, and they are, as a rule, much more convincing thanresults established by mere logic ever are. One may indeed be entirely without them; probablymore than one of you here present is without them in any marked degree; but if you do have them,and have them at all strongly, the probability is that you cannot help regarding them as genuineperceptions of truth, as revelations of a kind of reality which no adverse argument, howeverunanswerable by you in words, can expel from your belief.

The opinion opposed to mysticism in philosophy is sometimes spoken of as RATIONALISM.

Rationalism insists that all our beliefs ought ultimately to find for themselves articulate grounds.

Such grounds, for rationalism, must consist of four things: (1) definitely statable abstractprinciples; (2) definite facts of sensation; (3) definite hypotheses based on such facts; and (4)definite inferences logically drawn. Vague impressions of something indefinable have no place inthe rationalistic system, which on its positive side is surely a splendid intellectual tendency, for notonly are all our philosophies fruits of it, but physical science (amongst other good things) is itsresult.

Nevertheless, if we look on man's whole mental life as it exists, on the life of men that lies inthem apart from their learning and science, and that they inwardly and privately follow, we have toconfess that the part of it of which rationalism can give an account is relatively superficial. It is thepart that has the prestige undoubtedly, for it has the loquacity, it can challenge you for proofs, andchop logic, and put you down with words. But it will fail to convince or convert you all the same,if your dumb intuitions are opposed to its conclusions. If you have intuitions at all, they come froma deeper level of your nature than the loquacious level which rationalism inhabits. Your wholesubconscious life, your impulses, your faiths, your needs, your divinations, have prepared thepremises, of which your consciousness now feels the weight of the result; and something in youabsolutely KNOWS that that result must be truer than any logic-chopping rationalistic talk,however clever, that may contradict it. This inferiority of the rationalistic level in founding beliefis just as manifest when rationalism argues for religion as when it argues against it. That vastliterature of proofs of God's existence drawn from the order of nature, which a century ago seemedso overwhelmingly convincing, to-day does little more than gather dust in libraries, for the simplereason that our generation has ceased to believe in the kind of God it argued for. Whatever sort ofa being God may be, we KNOW to-day that he is nevermore that mere external inventor of"contrivances" intended to make manifest his "glory" in which our great-grandfathers took suchsatisfaction, though just how we know this we cannot possibly make clear by words either toothers or to ourselves. I defy any of you here fully to account for your persuasion that if a Godexist he must be a more cosmic and tragic personage than that Being.

The truth is that in the metaphysical and religious sphere, articulate reasons are cogent for usonly when our inarticulate feelings of reality have already been impressed in favor of the sameconclusion. Then, indeed, our intuitions and our reason work together, and great world-rulingsystems, like that of the Buddhist or of the Catholic philosophy, may grow up. Our impulsivebelief is here always what sets up the original body of truth, and our articulately verbalizedphilosophy is but its showy translation into formulas. The unreasoned and immediate assurance isthe deep thing in us, the reasoned argument is but a surface exhibition. Instinct leads, intelligence does but follow. If a person feels the presence of a living God after the fashion shown by myquotations, your critical arguments, be they never so superior, will vainly set themselves to changehis faith.

Please observe, however, that I do not yet say that it is BETTER that the subconscious and non-rational should thus hold primacy in the religious realm. I confine myself to simply pointing outthat they do so hold it as a matter of fact.

So much for our sense of the reality of the religious objects. Let me now say a brief word moreabout the attitudes they characteristically awaken.

We have already agreed that they are SOLEMN; and we have seen reason to think that the mostdistinctive of them is the sort of joy which may result in extreme cases from absolute self-surrender. The sense of the kind of object to which the surrender is made has much to do withdetermining the precise complexion of the joy; and the whole phenomenon is more complex thanany simple formula allows. In the literature of the subject, sadness and gladness have each beenemphasized in turn. The ancient saying that the first maker of the Gods was fear receivesvoluminous corroboration from every age of religious history; but none the less does religioushistory show the part which joy has evermore tended to play. Sometimes the joy has been primary;sometimes secondary, being the gladness of deliverance from the fear. This latter state of things,being the more complex, is also the more complete; and as we proceed, I think we shall haveabundant reason for refusing to leave out either the sadness or the gladness, if we look at religionwith the breadth of view which it demands. Stated in the completest possible terms, a man'sreligion involves both moods of contraction and moods of expansion of his being. But thequantitative mixture and order of these moods vary so much from one age of the world, from onesystem of thought, and from one individual to another, that you may insist either on the dread andthe submission, or on the peace and the freedom as the essence of the matter, and still remainmaterially within the limits of the truth. The constitutionally sombre and the constitutionallysanguine onlooker are bound to emphasize opposite aspects of what lies before their eyes.

The constitutionally sombre religious person makes even of his religious peace a very soberthing. Danger still hovers in the air about it. Flexion and contraction are not wholly checked. Itwere sparrowlike and childish after our deliverance to explode into twittering laughter and caper-cutting, and utterly to forget the imminent hawk on bough. Lie low, rather, lie low; for you are inthe hands of a living God. In the Book of Job, for example, the impotence of man and theomnipotence of God is the exclusive burden of its author's mind. "It is as high as heaven; whatcanst thou do?--deeper than hell; what canst thou know?" There is an astringent relish about thetruth of this conviction which some men can feel, and which for them is as near an approach as canbe made to the feeling of religious joy.

"In Job," says that coldly truthful writer, the author of Mark Rutherford, "God reminds us thatman is not the measure of his creation. The world is immense, constructed on no plan or theorywhich the intellect of man can grasp. It is TRANSCENDENT everywhere. This is the burden ofevery verse, and is the secret if there be one, of the poem. Sufficient or insufficient, there isnothing more. . . . God is great, we know not his ways. He takes from us all we have, but yet if wepossess our souls in patience, we MAY pass the valley of the shadow, and come out in sunlight again. We may or we may not! . . . What more have we to say now than God said from thewhirlwind over two thousand five hundred years ago?"[29]

[29] Mark Rutherford's Deliverance, London, 1885, pp. 196, 198.

If we turn to the sanguine onlooker, on the other hand, we find that deliverance is felt asincomplete unless the burden be altogether overcome and the danger forgotten. Such onlookersgive us definitions that seem to the sombre minds of whom we have just been speaking to leaveout all the solemnity that makes religious peace so different from merely animal joys. In theopinion of some writers an attitude might be called religious, though no touch were left in it ofsacrifice or submission, no tendency to flexion, no bowing of the head. Any "habitual andregulated admiration," says Professor J. R. Seeley,[30] "is worthy to be called a religion"; andaccordingly he thinks that our Music, our Science, and our so-called "Civilization," as these thingsare now organized and admiringly believed in, form the more genuine religions of our time.

Certainly the unhesitating and unreasoning way in which we feel that we must inflict ourcivilization upon "lower" races, by means of Hotchkiss guns, etc., reminds one of nothing so muchas of the early spirit of Islam spreading its religion by the sword.

[30] In his book (too little read, I fear), Natural Religion, 3d edition, Boston, 1886, pp. 91, 122.

In my last lecture I quoted to you the ultra-radical opinion of Mr. Havelock Ellis, that laughter ofany sort may be considered a religious exercise, for it bears witness to the soul's emancipation. Iquoted this opinion in order to deny its adequacy. But we must now settle our scores morecarefully with this whole optimistic way of thinking. It is far too complex to be decided off-hand. Ipropose accordingly that we make of religious optimism the theme of the next two lectures.
Lectures IV THE RELIGION OF HEALTHY MINDEDNESS
If we were to ask the question: "What is human life's chief concern?" one of the answers weshould receive would be: "It is happiness." How to gain, how to keep, how to recover happiness, isin fact for most men at all times the secret motive of all they do, and of all they are willing toendure. The hedonistic school in ethics deduces the moral life wholly from the experiences ofhappiness and unhappiness which different kinds of conduct bring; and, even more in the religiouslife than in the moral life, happiness and unhappiness seem to be the poles round which the interestrevolves. We need not go so far as to say with the author whom I lately quoted that any persistententhusiasm is, as such, religion, nor need we call mere laughter a religious exercise; but we mustadmit that any persistent enjoyment may PRODUCE the sort of religion which consists in agrateful admiration of the gift of so happy an existence; and we must also acknowledge that themore complex ways of experiencing religion are new manners of producing happiness, wonderfulinner paths to a supernatural kind of happiness, when the first gift of natural existence is unhappy,as it so often proves itself to be.

With such relations between religion and happiness, it is perhaps not surprising that men come toregard the happiness which a religious belief affords as a proof of its truth. If a creed makes a man feel happy, he almost inevitably adopts it. Such a belief ought to be true; therefore it is true--such,rightly or wrongly, is one of the "immediate inferences" of the religious logic used by ordinarymen.

"The near presence of God's spirit," says a German writer,[31] "may be experienced in itsreality--indeed ONLY experienced. And the mark by which the spirit's existence and nearness aremade irrefutably clear to those who have ever had the experience is the utterly incomparableFEELING OF HAPPINESS which is connected with the nearness, and which is therefore not onlya possible and altogether proper feeling for us to have here below, but is the best and mostindispensable proof of God's reality. No other proof is equally convincing, and therefore happinessis the point from which every efficacious new theology should start."[31] C. Hilty: Gluck, dritter Theil, 1900, p. 18.

In the hour immediately before us, I shall invite you to consider the simpler kinds of religioushappiness, leaving the more complex sorts to be treated on a later day.

In many persons, happiness is congenital and irreclaimable. "Cosmic emotion" inevitably takesin them the form of enthusiasm and freedom. I speak not only of those who are animally happy. Imean those who, when unhappiness is offered or proposed to them, positively refuse to feel it, as ifit were something mean and wrong. We find such persons in every age, passionately flingingthemselves upon their sense of the goodness of life, in spite of the hardships of their owncondition, and in spite of the sinister theologies into which they may he born. From the outset theirreligion is one of union with the divine. The heretics who went before the reformation are lavishlyaccused by the church writers of antinomian practices, just as the first Christians were accused ofindulgence in orgies by the Romans. It is probable that there never has been a century in which thedeliberate refusal to think ill of life has not been idealized by a sufficient number of persons toform sects, open or secret, who claimed all natural things to be permitted. Saint Augustine'smaxim, Dilige et quod vis fac--if you but love [God], you may do as you incline--is morally one ofthe profoundest of observations, yet it is pregnant, for such persons, with passports beyond thebounds of conventional morality. According to their characters they have been refined or gross; buttheir belief has been at all times systematic enough to constitute a definite religious attitude. Godwas for them a giver of freedom, and the sting of evil was overcome. Saint Francis and hisimmediate disciples were, on the whole, of this company of spirits, of which there are of courseinfinite varieties. Rousseau in the earlier years of his writing, Diderot, B. de Saint Pierre, and manyof the leaders of the eighteenth century anti-Christian movement were of this optimistic type. Theyowed their influence to a certain authoritativeness in their feeling that Nature, if you will only trusther sufficiently, is absolutely good.

It is to be hoped that we all have some friend, perhaps more often feminine than masculine, andyoung than old, whose soul is of this sky-blue tint, whose affinities are rather with flowers andbirds and all enchanting innocencies than with dark human passions, who can think no ill of manor God, and in whom religious gladness, being in possession from the outset, needs no deliverancefrom any antecedent burden.

"God has two families of children on this earth," says Francis W. Newman,[32] "the once-bornand the twice-born," and the once-born he describes as follows: "They see God, not as a strictJudge, not as a Glorious Potentate; but as the animating Spirit of a beautiful harmonious world,Beneficent and Kind, Merciful as well as Pure. The same characters generally have nometaphysical tendencies: they do not look back into themselves. Hence they are not distressed bytheir own imperfections: yet it would be absurd to call them self-righteous; for they hardly think ofthemselves AT ALL. This childlike quality of their nature makes the opening of religion veryhappy to them: for they no more shrink from God, than a child from an emperor, before whom theparent trembles: in fact, they have no vivid conception of ANY of the qualities in which theseverer Majesty of God consists.[33] He is to them the impersonation of Kindness and Beauty.

They read his character, not in the disordered world of man, but in romantic and harmoniousnature. Of human sin they know perhaps little in their own hearts and not very much in the world;and human suffering does but melt them to tenderness. Thus, when they approach God, no inwarddisturbance ensues; and without being as yet spiritual, they have a certain complacency andperhaps romantic sense of excitement in their simple worship."[32] The Soul; its Sorrows and its Aspirations, 3d edition, 1852, pp. 89, 91.

[33] I once heard a lady describe the pleasure it gave her to think that she "could always cuddleup to God."In the Romish Church such characters find a more congenial soil to grow in than inProtestantism, whose fashions of feeling have been set by minds of a decidedly pessimistic order.

But even in Protestantism they have been abundant enough; and in its recent "liberal"developments of Unitarianism and latitudinarianism generally, minds of this order have played andstill are playing leading and constructive parts. Emerson himself is an admirable example.

Theodore Parker is another--here are a couple of characteristic passages from Parker'scorrespondence.[34]

[34] John Weiss: Life of Theodore Parker, i. 152, 32.

"Orthodox scholars say: 'In the heathen classics you find no consciousness of sin.' It is verytrue--God be thanked for it. They were conscious of wrath, of cruelty, avarice, drunkenness, lust,sloth, cowardice, and other actual vices, and struggled and got rid of the deformities, but they werenot conscious of 'enmity against God,' and didn't sit down and whine and groan against nonexistentevil. I have done wrong things enough in my life, and do them now; I miss the mark, drawbow, and try again. But I am not conscious of hating God, or man, or right, or love, and I knowthere is much 'health in me', and in my body, even now, there dwelleth many a good thing, spite ofconsumption and Saint Paul." In another letter Parker writes: "I have swum in clear sweet watersall my days; and if sometimes they were a little cold, and the stream ran adverse and somethingrough, it was never too strong to be breasted and swum through. From the days of earliestboyhood, when I went stumbling through the grass, . . . up to the gray-bearded manhood of thistime, there is none but has left me honey in the hive of memory that I now feed on for presentdelight. When I recall the years . . . I am filled with a sense of sweetness and wonder that such little things can make a mortal so exceedingly rich. But I must confess that the chiefest of all mydelights is still the religious."Another good expression of the "once-born" type of consciousness, developing straight andnatural, with no element of morbid compunction or crisis, is contained in the answer of Dr. EdwardEverett Hale, the eminent Unitarian preacher and writer, to one of Dr. Starbuck's circulars. I quotea part of it:-"I observe, with profound regret, the religious struggles which come into many biographies, as ifalmost essential to the formation of the hero. I ought to speak of these, to say that any man has anadvantage, not to be estimated, who is born, as I was, into a family where the religion is simple andrational; who is trained in the theory of such a religion, so that he never knows, for an hour, whatthese religious or irreligious struggles are. I always knew God loved me, and I was always gratefulto him for the world he placed me in. I always liked to tell him so, and was always glad to receivehis suggestions to me. . . . I can remember perfectly that when I was coming to manhood, the half-philosophical novels of the time had a deal to say about the young men and maidens who werefacing the 'problem of life.' I had no idea whatever what the problem of life was. To live with allmy might seemed to me easy; to learn where there was so much to learn seemed pleasant andalmost of course; to lend a hand, if one had a chance, natural; and if one did this, why, he enjoyedlife because he could not help it, and without proving to himself that he ought to enjoy it. . . . Achild who is early taught that he is God's child, that he may live and move and have his being inGod, and that he has, therefore, infinite strength at hand for the conquering of any difficulty, willtake life more easily, and probably will make more of it, than one who is told that he is born thechild of wrath and wholly incapable of good."[35]

[35] Starbuck: Psychology of Religion, pp. 305, 306.

One can but recognize in such writers as these the presence of a temperament organicallyweighted on the side of cheer and fatally forbidden to linger, as those of opposite temperamentlinger, over the darker aspects of the universe. In some individuals optimism may become quasi-pathological. The capacity for even a transient sadness or a momentary humility seems cut offfrom them as by a kind of congenital anaesthesia.[36]

[36] "I know not to what physical laws philosophers will some day refer the feelings ofmelancholy. For myself, I find that they are the most voluptuous of all sensations," writes SaintPierre, and accordingly he devotes a series of sections of his work on Nature to the Plaisirs de laRuine, Plaisirs des Tombeaux, Ruines de la Nature, Plaisirs de la Solitude--each of them moreoptimistic than the last.

This finding of a luxury in woe is very common during adolescence. The truth-telling MarieBashkirtseff expresses it well:-"In his depression and dreadful uninterrupted suffering, I don't condemn life. On the contrary, Ilike it and find it good. Can you believe it? I find everything good and pleasant, even my tears, mygrief. I enjoy weeping, I enjoy my despair. I enjoy being exasperated and sad. I feel as if thesewere so many diversions, and I love life in spite of them all. I want to live on. It would be cruel tohave me die when I am so accommodating.

I cry, I grieve, and at the same time I am pleased--no, not exactly that--I know not how toexpress it. But everything in life pleases me. I find everything agreeable, and in the very midst ofmy prayers for happiness, I find myself happy at being miserable. It is not I who undergo all this-mybody weeps and cries; but something inside of me which is above me is glad of it all." [37]

[37] Journal de Marie Bashkirtseff, i. 67.

The supreme contemporary example of such an inability to feel evil is of course Walt Whitman.

"His favorite occupation," writes his disciple, Dr. Bucke "seemed to be strolling or saunteringabout outdoors by himself, looking at the grass, the trees, the flowers, the vistas of light, thevarying aspects of the sky, and listening to the birds, the crickets, the tree frogs, and all thehundreds of natural sounds.

It was evident that these things gave him a pleasure far beyond what they give to ordinarypeople. Until I knew the man," continues Dr. Bucke, "it had not occurred to me that any one couldderive so much absolute happiness from these things as he did. He was very fond of flowers, eitherwild or cultivated; liked all sorts. I think he admired lilacs and sunflowers just as much as roses.

Perhaps, indeed, no man who ever lived liked so many things and disliked so few as WaltWhitman. All natural objects seemed to have a charm for him. All sights and sounds seemed toplease him. He appeared to like (and I believe he did like) all the men, women, and children hesaw (though I never knew him to say that he liked any one), but each who knew him felt that heliked him or her, and that he liked others also. I never knew him to argue or dispute, and he neverspoke about money. He always justified, sometimes playfully, sometimes quite seriously, thosewho spoke harshly of himself or his writings, and I often thought he even took pleasure in theopposition of enemies. When I first knew [him], I used to think that he watched himself, andwould not allow his tongue to give expression to fretfulness, antipathy, complaint, andremonstrance. It did not occur to me as possible that these mental states could be absent in him.

After long observation, however, I satisfied myself that such absence or unconsciousness wasentirely real. He never spoke deprecatingly of any nationality or class of men, or time in theworld's history, or against any trades or occupations--not even against any animals, insects, orinanimate things, nor any of the laws of nature, nor any of the results of those laws, such as illness,deformity, and death. He never complained or grumbled either at the weather, pain, illness, oranything else. He never swore. He could not very well, since he never spoke in anger andapparently never was angry. He never exhibited fear, and I do not believe he ever felt it."[38]

[38] R. M. Bucke: Cosmic consciousness, pp. 182-186, abridged.

Walt Whitman owes his importance in literature to the systematic expulsion from his writings ofall contractile elements. The only sentiments he allowed himself to express were of the expansiveorder; and he expressed these in the first person, not your mere monstrously conceited individualmightsoexpressthem,butvicariouslyforallm(as) en, so that a passionate and mysticontological emotion suffuses his words, and ends by persuading the reader that men and women,life and death, and all things are divinely good.

Thus it has come about that many persons to-day regard Walt Whitman as the restorer of theeternal natural religion. He has infected them with his own love of comrades, with his owngladness that he and they exist. Societies are actually formed for his cult; a periodical organ existsfor its propagation, in which the lines of orthodoxy and heterodoxy are already beginning to bedrawn;[39] hymns are written by others in his peculiar prosody; and he is even explicitly comparedwith the founder of the Christian religion, not altogether to the advantage of the latter.

[39] I refer to The Conservator, edited by Horace Traubel, and published monthly atPhiladelphia.

Whitman is often spoken of as a "pagan." The word nowadays means sometimes the merenatural animal man without a sense of sin; sometimes it means a Greek or Roman with his ownpeculiar religious consciousness. In neither of these senses does it fitly define this poet. He is morethan your mere animal man who has not tasted of the tree of good and evil. He is aware enough ofsin for a swagger to be present in his indifference towards it, a conscious pride in his freedom fromflexions and contractions, which your genuine pagan in the first sense of the word would nevershow. "I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contained, I stand and look atthem long and long; They do not sweat and whine about their condition. They do not lie awake inthe dark and weep for their sins. Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania ofowning things, Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousandsof years ago, Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth."[40]

[40] Song of Myself, 32.

No natural pagan could have written these well-known lines. But on the other hand Whitman isless than a Greek or Roman; for their consciousness, even in Homeric times, was full to the brimof the sad mortality of this sunlit world, and such a consciousness Walt Whitman resolutely refusesto adopt. When, for example, Achilles, about to slay Lycaon, Priam's young son, hears him sue formercy, he stops to say:-"Ah, friend, thou too must die: why thus lamentest thou? Patroclos too is dead, who was betterfar than thou. . . . Over me too hang death and forceful fate. There cometh morn or eve or somenoonday when my life too some man shall take in battle, whether with spear he smite, or arrowfrom the string."[41]

[41] Iliad, XXI., E. Myers's translation.

Then Achilles savagely severs the poor boy's neck with his sword, heaves him by the foot intothe Scamander, and calls to the fishes of the river to eat the white fat of Lycaon. Just as here thecruelty and the sympathy each ring true, and do not mix or interfere with one another, so did theGreeks and Romans keep all their sadnesses and gladnesses unmingled and entire. Instinctive goodthey did not reckon sin; nor had they any such desire to save the credit of the universe as to makethem insist, as so many of US insist, that what immediately appears as evil must be "good in themaking," or something equally ingenious. Good was good, and bad just bad, for the earlier Greeks.

They neither denied the ills of nature--Walt Whitman's verse, "What is called good is perfect and what is called bad is just as perfect," would have been mere silliness to them--nor did they, in orderto escape from those ills, invent "another and a better world" of the imagination, in which, alongwith the ills, the innocent goods of sense would also find no place. This integrity of the instinctivereactions, this freedom from all moral sophistry and strain, gives a pathetic dignity to ancientpagan feeling. And this quality Whitman's outpourings have not got. His optimism is too voluntaryand defiant; his gospel has a touch of bravado and an affected twist,[42] and this diminishes itseffect on many readers who yet are well disposed towards optimism, and on the whole quitewilling to admit that in important respects Whitman is of the genuine lineage of the prophets.

[42] "God is afraid of me!" remarked such a titanic-optimistic friend in my presence onemorning when he was feeling particularly hearty and cannibalistic. The defiance of the phraseshowed that a Christian education in humility still rankled in his breast.

If, then, we give the name of healthy-mindedness to the tendency which looks on all things andsees that they are good, we find that we must distinguish between a more involuntary and a morevoluntary or systematic way of being healthy-minded. In its involuntary variety, healthymindednessis a way of feeling happy about things immediately. In its systematical variety, it is anabstract way of conceiving things as good. Every abstract way of conceiving things selects someone aspect of them as their essence for the time being, and disregards the other aspects. Systematichealthy-mindedness, conceiving good as the essential and universal aspect of being, deliberatelyexcludes evil from its field of vision; and although, when thus nakedly stated, this might seem adifficult feat to perform for one who is intellectually sincere with himself and honest about facts, alittle reflection shows that the situation is too complex to lie open to so simple a criticism.

In the first place, happiness, like every other emotional state, has blindness and insensibility toopposing facts given it as its instinctive weapon for self-protection against disturbance. Whenhappiness is actually in possession, the thought of evil can no more acquire the feeling of realitythan the thought of good can gain reality when melancholy rules. To the man actively happy, fromwhatever cause, evil simply cannot then and there be believed in. He must ignore it; and to thebystander he may then seem perversely to shut his eyes to it and hush it up.

But more than this: the hushing of it up may, in a perfectly candid and honest mind, grow into adeliberate religious policy, or parti pris. Much of what we call evil is due entirely to the way mentake the phenomenon. It can so often be converted into a bracing and tonic good by a simplechange of the sufferer's inner attitude from one of fear to one of fight; its sting so often departs andturns into a relish when, after vainly seeking to shun it, we agree to face about and bear itcheerfully, that a man is simply bound in honor, with reference to many of the facts that seem atfirst to disconcert his peace, to adopt this way of escape. Refuse to admit their badness; despisetheir power; ignore their presence; turn your attention the other way; and so far as you yourself areconcerned at any rate, though the facts may still exist, their evil character exists no longer. Sinceyou make them evil or good by your own thoughts about them, it is the ruling of your thoughtswhich proves to be your principal concern.

The deliberate adoption of an optimistic turn of mind thus makes its entrance into philosophy.

And once in, it is hard to trace its lawful bounds. Not only does the human instinct for happiness,bent on self-protection by ignoring, keep working in its favor, but higher inner ideals have weighty words to say. The attitude of unhappiness is not only painful, it is mean and ugly. What can bemore base and unworthy than the pining, puling, mumping mood, no matter by what outward ills itmay have been engendered? What is more injurious to others? What less helpful as a way out ofthe difficulty? It but fastens and perpetuates the trouble which occasioned it, and increases the totalevil of the situation. At all costs, then, we ought to reduce the sway of that mood; we ought toscout it in ourselves and others, and never show it tolerance. But it is impossible to carry on thisdiscipline in the subjective sphere without zealously emphasizing the brighter and minimizing thedarker aspects of the objective sphere of things at the same time. And thus our resolution not toindulge in misery, beginning at a comparatively small point within ourselves, may not stop until ithas brought the entire frame of reality under a systematic conception optimistic enough to becongenial with its needs.

In all this I say nothing of any mystical insight or persuasion that the total frame of thingsabsolutely must be good. Such mystical persuasion plays an enormous part in the history of thereligious consciousness, and we must look at it later with some care. But we need not go so far atpresent. More ordinary non-mystical conditions of rapture suffice for my immediate contention.

All invasive moral states and passionate enthusiasms make one feelingless to evil in somedirection. The common penalties cease to deter the patriot, the usual prudences are flung by thelover to the winds. When the passion is extreme, suffering may actually be gloried in, provided itbe for the ideal cause, death may lose its sting, the grave its victory. In these states, the ordinarycontrast of good and ill seems to be swallowed up in a higher denomination, an omnipotentexcitement which engulfs the evil, and which the human being welcomes as the crowningexperience of his life. This, he says, is truly to live, and I exult in the heroic opportunity andadventure.

The systematic cultivation of healthy-mindedness as a religious attitude is therefore consonantwith important currents in human nature, and is anything but absurd. In fact. we all do cultivate itmore or less, even when our professed theology should in consistency forbid it. We divert ourattention from disease and death as much as we can; and the slaughter-houses and indecencieswithout end on which our life is founded are huddled out of sight and never mentioned, so that theworld we recognize officially in literature and in society is a poetic fiction far handsomer andcleaner and better than the world that really is.[43]

[43] "As I go on in this life, day by day, I become more of a bewildered child; I cannot get usedto this world, to procreation, to heredity, to sight, to hearing, the commonest things are a burthen.

The prim, obliterated, polite surface of life, and the broad, bawdy and orgiastic--or maenadic-foundations,form a spectacle to which no habit reconciles me. R. L. Stevenson: Letters, ii. 355.


Lectures V THE RELIGION OF HEALTHY MINDEDNESS
　　The advance of liberalism, so-called, in Christianity, during the past  fifty years, may fairly becalled a victory of healthy-mindedness within  the church over the morbidness with which the oldhell-fire theology was  more harmoniously related. We have now whole congregations  whosepreachers, far from magnifying our consciousness of sin, seem  devoted rather to making little of it.

They ignore, or even  deny, eternal punishment, and insist on the dignity rather than on  thedepravity of man. They look at the continual preoccupation of the  old-fashioned Christian with thesalvation of his soul as something  sickly and reprehensible rather than admirable; and a sanguine and  "muscular" attitude. which to our forefathers would have seemed purely  heathen, has becomein their eyes an ideal element of Christian  character. I am not asking whether or not they are right,I am only  pointing out the change. The persons to whom I refer have still retained  for the most parttheir nominal connection with Christianity, in spite  of their discarding of its more pessimistictheological elements. But in  that "theory of evolution" which, gathering momentum for a century,has  within the past twenty-five years swept so rapidly over Europe and  America, we see theground laid for a new sort of religion of Nature,  which has entirely displaced Christianity from thethought of a large  part of our generation. The idea of a universal evolution lends itself  to a doctrineof general meliorism and progress which fits the religious  needs of the healthy-minded so well thatit seems almost as if it might  have been created for their use. Accordingly we find  "evolutionism"interpreted thus optimistically and embraced as a  substitute for the religion they were born in, by amultitude of our  contemporaries who have either been trained scientifically, or been fond  ofreading popular science, and who had already begun to be inwardly  dissatisfied with what seemedto them the harshness and irrationality of  the orthodox Christian scheme. As examples are betterthan descriptions, I  will quote a document received in answer to Professor Starbuck's  circular ofquestions.

The writer's state of mind may by  courtesy be called a religion, for it is his reaction on the wholenature  of things, it is systematic and reflective and it loyally binds him to  certain inner ideals. Ithink you will recognize in him, coarse-meated  and incapable of wounded spirit as he is, asufficiently familiar  contemporary type.

Q. What does Religion mean to you?

A. It means nothing; and it seems, so far as I can observe useless to  others. I am sixty-sevenyears of age and have resided in X fifty years,  and have been in business forty-five, consequently Ihave some little  experience of life and men, and some women too, and I find that the  mostreligious and pious people are as a rule those most lacking in  uprightness and morality.

The men who do not go to church or  have any religious convictions are the best. Praying, singingof hymns,  and sermonizing are pernicious--they teach us to rely on some  supernatural power, whenwe ought to rely on ourselves. I TEEtotally  disbelieve in a God. The God-idea was begotten inignorance, fear, and a  general lack of any knowledge of Nature. If I were to die now, being in  ahealthy condition for my age, both mentally and physically, I would  just as lief, yes, rather, diewith a hearty enjoyment of music, sport,  or any other rational pastime. As a timepiece stops, wedie--there being  no immortality in either case.

Q. What comes before your mind corresponding to the words God, Heaven, Angels, etc?

A. Nothing whatever. I am a man without a religion. These words mean so much mythic bosh.

Q. Have you had any experiences which appeared providential?

A. None whatever. There is no agency of the superintending kind. A  little judicious observationas well as knowledge of scientific law will  convince any one of this fact.

Q. What things work most strongly on your emotions?

A. Lively songs and music; Pinafore instead of an Oratorio. I like  Scott, Burns, Byron,Longfellow, especially Shakespeare, etc., etc. Of  songs, the Star-Spangled Banner, America,Marseillaise, and all moral and  soul-stirring songs, but wishy-washy hymns are my detestation. I  greatly enjoy nature, especially fine weather, and until within a few  years used to walk Sundaysinto the country, twelve miles often, with no  fatigue, and bicycle forty or fifty. I have dropped thebicycle.

I never go to church, but attend lectures when there are any good ones.  All of my thoughts andcogitations have been of a healthy and cheerful  kind, for instead of doubts and fears I see things asthey are, for I  endeavor to adjust myself to my environment. This I regard as the  deepest law.

Mankind is a progressive animal. I am satisfied he  will have made a great advance over his presentstatus a thousand years  hence.

Q. What is your notion of sin?

A. It seems to  me that sin is a condition, a disease, incidental to man's development  not being yetadvanced enough. Morbidness over it increases the disease.  We should think that a million of yearshence equity, justice, and mental  and physical good order will be so fixed and organized that noone will  have any idea of evil or sin.

Q. What is your temperament?

A. Nervous, active, wide-awake, mentally and physically. Sorry that Nature compels us to sleepat all.

If we are in search of a broken and a contrite heart, clearly we need  not look to this brother. Hiscontentment with the finite incases him  like a lobster-shell and shields him from all morbidrepining at his  distance from the infinite. We have in him an excellent example of the  optimismwhich may be encouraged by popular science.

To my mind a  current far more important and interesting religiously than that which  sets in fromnatural science towards healthy-mindedness is that which has  recently poured over America andseems to be gathering force every  day--I am ignorant what foothold it may yet have acquired inGreat  Britain--and to which, for the sake of having a brief designation, I  will give the title of the"Mind-cure movement." There are various sects  of this "New Thought," to use another of thenames by which it calls  itself; but their agreements are so profound that their differences may  beneglected for my present purpose, and I will treat the movement,  without apology, as if it were asimple thing.

It is a  deliberately optimistic scheme of life, with both a speculative and a  practical side. In itsgradual development during the last quarter of a  century, it has taken up into itself a number ofcontributory elements,  and it must now be reckoned with as a genuine religious power. It  hasreached the stage, for example, when the demand for its literature is  great enough for insincerestuff, mechanically produced for the market,  to be to a certain extent supplied by publishers--aphenomenon never  observed, I imagine, until a religion has got well past its earliest  insecurebeginnings.

One of the doctrinal sources of Mind-cure  is the four Gospels; another is Emersonianism or NewEngland  transcendentalism; another is Berkeleyan idealism; another is spiritism,  with its messagesof "law" and "progress" and "development"; another the  optimistic popular science evolutionism ofwhich I have recently spoken;  and, finally, Hinduism has contributed a strain. But the  mostcharacteristic feature of the mind-cure movement is an inspiration  much more direct. The leadersin this faith have had an intuitive belief  in the all-saving power of healthy-minded attitudes as such, in the  conquering efficacy of courage, hope, and trust, and a correlative  contempt for doubt,fear, worry, and all nervously precautionary states  of mind.[44] Their belief has in a general waybeen corroborated by the  practical experience of their disciples; and this experience forms  to-day amass imposing in amount.

[44] "Cautionary Verses for  Children": this title of a much used work, published early in  thenineteenth century, shows how far the muse of evangelical  protestantism in England, with hermind fixed on the idea of danger, had  at last drifted away from the original gospel freedom. Mind-cure might  be briefly called a reaction against all that religion of chronic  anxiety which marked theearlier part of our century in the evangelical  circles of England and America.

The blind have been made to  see, the halt to walk; life-long invalids have had their healthrestored.  The moral fruits have been no less remarkable. The deliberate adoption  of a healthy-minded attitude has proved possible to many who never  supposed they had it in them; regenerationof character has gone on on an  extensive scale; and cheerfulness has been restored to countlesshomes.  The indirect influence of this has been great. The mind-cure principles  are beginning so topervade the air that catches their spirit at  second-hand. One hears of the "Gospel of Relaxation," of the "Don't(one)  Worry Movement," of people who repeat to themselves, "Youth,  health,vigor!" when dressing in the morning, as their motto for the day.

Complaints of the weather are getting to be forbidden in many  households; and more and morepeople are recognizing it to be bad form to  speak of disagreeable sensations, or to make much ofthe ordinary  inconveniences and ailments of life. These general tonic effects on  public opinionwould be good even if the more striking results were  non-existent. But the latter abound so that wecan afford to overlook the  innumerable failures and self-deceptions that are mixed in with  them(for in everything human failure is a matter of course), and we can  also overlook the verbiage of agood deal of the mind-cure literature,  some of which is so moonstruck with optimism and sovaguely expressed  that an academically trained intellect finds it almost impossible to  read it at all.

The plain fact remains that the spread of the  movement has been due to practical fruits, and theextremely practical  turn of character of the American people has never been better shown  than bythe fact that this, their only decidedly original contribution to  the systematic philosophy of life,should be so intimately knit up with  concrete therapeutics. To the importance of mind-cure themedical and  clerical professions in the United States are beginning, though with  muchrecalcitrancy and protesting, to open their eyes. It is evidently  bound to develop still farther, bothspeculatively and practically, and  its latest writers are far and away the ablest of the group.[45]  Itmatters nothing that, just as there are hosts of persons who cannot  pray, so there are greater hostswho cannot by any possibility be  influenced by the mind-curers' ideas. For our immediate purpose,the  important point is that so large a number should exist who CAN be so  influenced. They form apsychic type to be studied with respect.[46]

[45] I refer to Mr. Horatio W. Dresser and Mr. Henry Wood, especially  the former. Mr. Dresser'sworks are published by G. P. Putnam's Sons, New  York and London; Mr. Wood's by Lee &Shepard Boston.

[46]  Lest my own testimony be suspected, I will quote another reporter, Dr.  H. H. Goddard, ofClark University, whose thesis on "the Effects of Mind  on Body as evidenced by Faith Cures" ispublished in the American Journal  of Psychology for 1899 (vol. x.). This critic, after a wide studyof the  facts, concludes that the cures by mind-cure exist, but are in no  respect different from thosenow officially recognized in medicine as  cures by suggestion; and the end of his essay contains aninteresting  physiological speculation as to the way in which the suggestive ideas  may work (p. 67of the reprint). As regards the general phenomenon of  mental cure itself, Dr. Goddard writes: "Inspite of the severe criticism  we have made of reports of cure, there still remains a vast amount  ofmaterial, showing a powerful influence of the mind in disease. Many  cases are of diseases thathave been diagnosed and treated by the best  physicians of the country, or which prominenthospitals have tried their  hand at curing, but without success. People of culture and education  havebeen treated by this method with satisfactory results. Diseases of  long standing have beenameliorated, and even cured. . . . We have traced  the mental element through primitive medicineand folk-medicine of  to-day, patent medicine, and witchcraft. We are convinced that it  isimpossible to account for the existence of these practices, if they  did not cure disease, and that ifthey cured disease, it must have been  the mental element that was effective. The same argumentapplies to those  modern schools of mental therapeutics--Divine Healing and Christian  Science. Itis hardly conceivable that the large body of intelligent  people who comprise the body knowndistinctively as Mental Scientists  should continue to exist if the whole thing were a delusion. It isnot a  thing of a day; it is not confined to a few; it is not local. It is true  that many failures arerecorded, but that only adds to the argument.  There must be many and striking successes tocounterbalance the failures,  otherwise the failures would have ended the delusion. . . .  ChristianScience, Divine Healing, or Mental Science do not, and never  can in the very nature of things, cureall diseases; nevertheless, the  practical applications of the general principles of the broadest  mentalscience will tend to prevent disease. . . . We do find sufficient  evidence to convince us that theproper reform in mental attitude would  relieve many a sufferer of ills that the ordinary physiciancannot touch;  would even delay the approach of death to many a victim beyond the  power ofabsolute cure, and the faithful adherence to a truer philosophy  of life will keep many a man well,and give the doctor time to devote to  alleviating ills that are unpreventable" (pp. 33, 34 of reprint).

To come now to a little closer quarters with their creed. The  fundamental pillar on which it restsis nothing more than the general  basis of all religious experience, the fact that man has a dualnature,  and is connected with two spheres of thought, a shallower and a  profounder sphere, ineither of which he may learn to live more  habitually. The shallower and lower sphere is that of thefleshly  sensations, instincts, and desires, of egotism, doubt, and the lower  personal interests. Butwhereas Christian theology has always considered  FROWARDNESS to be the essential vice ofthis part of human nature, the  mind-curers say that the mark of the beast in it is FEAR; and this  iswhat gives such an entirely new religious turn to their persuasion.

"Fear," to quote a writer of the school, "has had its uses in the  evolutionary process, and seems toconstitute the whole of forethought in  most animals; but that it should remain any part of themental equipment  of human civilized life is an absurdity. I find that the fear clement  of forethoughtis not stimulating to those more civilized persons to whom  duty and attraction are the natural motives, but is weakening and  deterrent. As soon as it becomes unnecessary, fear becomes apositive  deterrent, and should be entirely removed, as dead flesh is removed from  living tissue. Toassist in the analysis of fear and in the denunciation  of its expressions, I have coined the wordfearthought to stand for the  unprofitable element of forethought, and have defined the word 'worry'

as fearthought in contradistinction to forethought. I have also defined  fearthought as the self-imposed or self-permitted suggestion of  inferiority, in order to place it where it really belongs, inthe  category of harmful, unnecessary, and therefore not respectable  things."[47]

[47] Horace Fletcher: Happiness as found in  Forethought Minus Fearthought, MenticultureSeries, ii. Chicago and New  York, Stone. 1897, pp. 21-25, abridged.

The "misery-habit," the  "martyr-habit," engendered by the prevalent "fearthought," get  pungentcriticism from the mind-cure writers:-"Consider for a moment the  habits of life into which we are born.

There are certain social  conventions or customs and alleged requirements, there is a  theologicalbias, a general view of the world. There are conservative  ideas in regard to our early training, oureducation, marriage, and  occupation in life. Following close upon this, there is a long series  ofanticipations, namely, that we shall suffer certain children's  diseases, diseases of middle life, andof old age; the thought that we  shall grow old, lose our faculties, and again become childlike;  whilecrowning all is the fear of death. Then there is a long line of  particular tears and trouble-bearingexpectations, such, for example, as  ideas associated with certain articles of food, the dread of theeast  wind, the terrors of hot weather, the aches and pains associated with  cold weather, the fear ofcatching cold if one sits in a draught, the  coming of hay-fever upon the 14th of August in themiddle of the day, and  so on through a long list of fears, dreads, worriments,  anxieties,anticipations, expectations, pessimisms, morbidities, and the  whole ghostly train of fateful shapeswhich our fellow-men, and  especially physicians, are ready to help us conjure up, an array  worthyto rank with Bradley's 'unearthly ballet of bloodless categories.'

"Yet this is not all. This vast array is swelled by innumerable  volunteers from daily life--the fearof accident, the possibility of  calamity, the loss of property, the chance of robbery, of fire, or  theoutbreak of war. And it is not deemed sufficient to fear for  ourselves. When a friend is taken ill,we must forth with fear the worst  and apprehend death. If one meets with sorrow . . . sympathymeans to  enter into and increase the suffering."[48]

[48] H. W. Dresser: Voices of Freedom, New York, 1899, p. 38.

"Man," to quote another writer, "often has fear stamped upon him before  his entrance into theouter world; he is reared in fear; all his life is  passed in bondage to fear of disease and death, andthus his whole  mentality becomes cramped, limited, and depressed, and his body follows  itsshrunken pattern and specification . . . Think of the millions of  sensitive and responsive soulsamong our ancestors who have been under  the dominion of such a perpetual nightmare! Is it notsurprising that  health exists at all? Nothing but the boundless divine love? exuberance,  and vitality,constantly poured in, even though unconsciously to us,  could in some degree neutralize such anocean of morbidity."[49]

[49] Henry Wood: Ideal Suggestion through Mental Photography. Boston, 1899, p. 54.

Although the disciples of the mind-cure often use Christian  terminology, one sees from suchquotations how widely their notion of the  fall of man diverges from that of ordinary Christians.[50]

[50] Whether it differs so much from Christ's own notion is for the exegetists to decide.

According to Harnack, Jesus felt about evil and disease much as our  mind-curers do. "What is theanswer which Jesus sends to John the  Baptist?" asks Harnack, and says it is this: "'The blind see,and the  lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead rise up,  and the gospel ispreached to the poor.' That is the 'coming of the  kingdom,' or rather in these saving works thekingdom is already there.  By the overcoming and removal of misery, of need, of sickness, by  theseactual effects John is to see that the new time has arrived. The  casting out of devils is only a part ofthis work of redemption, but  Jesus points to that as the sense and seal of his mission. Thus to  thewretched, sick, and poor did he address himself, but not as a  moralist, and without a trace ofsentimentalism. He never makes groups  and departments of the ills, he never spends time in askingwhether the  sick one 'deserves' to be cured; and it never occurs to him to  sympathize with the painor the death. He nowhere says that sickness is a  beneficent infliction, and that evil has a healthyuse. No, he calls  sickness sickness and health health. All evil, all wretchedness, is for  himsomething dreadful; it is of the great kingdom of Satan; but he feels  the power of the saviourwithin him. He knows that advance is possible  only when weakness is overcome, when sickness ismade well." Das Wesen  des Christenthums, 1900, p. 39.

Their notion of man's higher  nature is hardly less divergent, being decidedly pantheistic.  Thespiritual in man appears in the mind-cure philosophy as partly  conscious, but chiefly subconscious;and through the subconscious part of  it we are already one with the Divine without any miracle ofgrace, or  abrupt creation of a new inner man. As this view is variously expressed  by differentwriters, we find in it traces of Christian mysticism, of  transcendental idealism, of vedantism, andof the modern psychology of  the subliminal self. A quotation or two will put us at the central  pointof view:-"The great central fact of the universe is that spirit of  infinite life and power that is back of all,that manifests itself in and  through all. This spirit of infinite life and power that is back of all  iswhat I call God. I care not what term you may use, be it Kindly  Light, Providence, the Over-Soul,Omnipotence, or whatever term may be  most convenient, so long as we are agreed in regard to thegreat central  fact itself. God then fills the universe alone, so that all is from Him  and in Him, andthere is nothing that is outside. He is the life of our  life our very life itself. We are partakers of thelife of God; and  though we differ from Him in that we are individualized spirits, while  He is theInfinite Spirit, including us, as well as all else beside, yet  in essence the life of God and the life ofman are identically the same,  and so are one. They differ not in essence or quality; they differ  indegree.

"The great central fact in human life is the coming  into a conscious vital realization of ouroneness with this Infinite Life  and the opening of ourselves fully to this divine inflow. In just  thedegree that we come into a conscious realization of our oneness with  the Infinite Life, and openourselves to this divine inflow, do we  actualize in ourselves the qualities and powers of the Infinite Life, do  we make ourselves channels through which the Infinite Intelligence and  Power can work.

In just the degree in which you realize your  oneness with the Infinite Spirit, you will exchange diseasefor ease,  inharmony for harmony, suffering and pain for abounding health and  strength. Torecognize our own divinity, and our intimate relation to the  Universal, is to attach the belts of ourmachinery to the powerhouse of  the Universe. One need remain in hell no longer than one choosesto; we  can rise to any heaven we ourselves choose; and when we choose so to  rise, all the higherpowers of the Universe combine to help us  heavenward."[51]

[51] R. W. Trine: In Tune with the Infinite, 26th thousand, N.Y. 1899. I have strung scatteredpassages together.

Let me now pass from these abstracter statements to some more concrete  accounts of experiencewith the mind-cure religion. I have many answers  from correspondents--the only difficulty is tochoose. The first two whom  I shall quote are my personal friends. One of them, a woman, writingas  follows, expresses well the feeling of continuity with the Infinite  Power, by which all mind-curedisciples are inspired.

"The first  underlying cause of all sickness, weakness, or depression is the human  sense ofseparateness from that Divine Energy which we call God. The soul  which can feel and affirm inserene but jubilant confidence, as did the  Nazarene: 'I and my Father are one,' has no further needof healer, or of  healing. This is the whole truth in a nutshell, and other foundation  for wholenesscan no man lay than this fact of impregnable divine union.  Disease can no longer attack one whosefeet are planted on this rock, who  feels hourly, momently, the influx of the Deific Breath. If onewith  Omnipotence, how can weariness enter the consciousness, how illness  assail that indomitablespark?

"This possibility of annulling  forever the law of fatigue has been abundantly proven in my owncase; for  my earlier life bears a record of many, many years of bedridden  invalidism, with spineand lower limbs paralyzed. My thoughts were no  more impure than they are to-day, although mybelief in the necessity of  illness was dense and unenlightened; but since my resurrection in  theflesh, I have worked as a healer unceasingly for fourteen years  without a vacation, and cantruthfully assert that I have never known a  moment of fatigue or pain, although coming in touchconstantly with  excessive weakness, illness, and disease of all kinds. For how can a  conscious partof Deity be sick?--since 'Greater is he that is with us  than all that can strive against us.'"My second correspondent, also a  woman, sends me the following statement:-"Life seemed difficult to me at  one time. I was always breaking down, and had several attacks ofwhat is  called nervous prostration, with terrible insomnia, being on the verge  of insanity; besideshaving many other troubles, especially of the  digestive organs. I had been sent away from home incharge of doctors,  had taken all the narcotics, stopped all work, been fed up, and in fact  knew allthe doctors within reach. But I never recovered permanently till  this New Thought took possessionof me.

"I think that the one  thing which impressed me most was learning the fact that we must be  inabsolutely constant relation or mental touch (this word is to me very  expressive) with that essenceof life which permeates all and which we  call God. This is almost unrecognizable unless we live it into ourselves  ACTUALLY, that is, by a constant turning to the very innermost,  deepestconsciousness of our real selves or of God in us, for  illumination from within, just as we turn to thesun for light, warmth,  and invigoration without. When you do this consciously, realizing that  toturn inward to the light within you is to live in the presence of God  or your divine self, you soondiscover the unreality of the objects to  which you have hitherto been turning and which haveengrossed you  without.

"I have come to disregard the meaning of this attitude  for bodily health AS SUCH, because thatcomes of itself, as an  incidental result, and cannot be found by any special mental act or  desire tohave it, beyond that general attitude of mind I have referred  to above. That which we usually makethe object of life, those outer  things we are all so wildly seeking, which we so often live and diefor,  but which then do not give us peace and happiness, they should all come  of themselves asaccessory, and as the mere outcome or natural result of a  far higher life sunk deep in the bosom ofthe spirit. This life is the  real seeking of the kingdom of God, the desire for his supremacy in  ourhearts, so that all else comes as that which shall be 'added unto  you'--as quite incidental and as asurprise to us, perhaps; and yet it is  the proof of the reality of the perfect poise in the very centre ofour  being.

"When I say that we commonly make the object of our life  that which we should not work forprimarily, I mean many things which  the world considers praiseworthy and excellent, such assuccess in  business, fame as author or artist, physician or lawyer, or renown in  philanthropicundertakings. Such things should be results, not objects. I  would also include pleasures of manykinds which seem harmless and good  at the time, and are pursued because many accept them--Imean  conventionalities, sociabilities, and fashions in their various  development, these beingmostly approved by the masses, although they may  be unreal, and even unhealthy superfluities."Here is another case, more  concrete, also that of a woman. I read you these cases  withoutcomment--they express so many varieties of the state of mind we  are studying.

"I had been a sufferer from my childhood till my  fortieth year. [Details of ill-health are givenwhich I omit.] I had been  in Vermont several months hoping for good from the change of air,  butsteadily growing weaker, when one day during the latter part of  October, while resting in theafternoon, I suddenly heard as it were  these words: 'You will be healed and do a work you neverdreamed of.'  These words were impressed upon my mind with such power I said at once  that onlyGod could have put them there. I believed them in spite of  myself and of my suffering andweakness, which continued until Christmas,  when I returned to Boston. Within two days a youngfriend offered to  take me to a mental healer (this was January 7, 1881). The healer said:  'There isnothing but Mind; we are expressions of the One Mind; body is  only a mortal belief; as a manthinketh so is he.' I could not accept all  she said, but I translated all that was there for ME in thisway: 'There  is nothing but God; I am created by Him, and am absolutely dependent  upon Him;mind is given me to use; and by just so much of it as I will  put upon the thought of right action inbody I shall be lifted out of  bondage to my ignorance and fear and past experience.' That day  Icommenced accordingly to take a little of every food provided for the  family, constantly saying tomyself: 'The Power that created the stomach  must take care of what I have eaten.' By holding thesesuggestions  through the evening I went to bed and fell asleep, saying: 'I am soul,  spirit, just onewith God's Thought of me,' and slept all night without  waking, for the first time in several years [the distress-turns had  usually recurred about two o'clock in the night]. I felt the next day  like anescaped prisoner, and believed I had found the secret that would  in time give me perfect health.

Within ten days I was able to  eat anything provided for others, and after two weeks I began to havemy  own positive mental suggestions of Truth, which were to me like  stepping-stones. I will note afew of them, they came about two weeks  apart.

"1st. I am Soul, therefore it is well with me.

"2d. I am Soul, therefore I am well.

"3d. A sort of inner vision of myself as a four-footed beast with a  protuberance on every part ofmy body where I had suffering, with my own  face, begging me to acknowledge it as myself. Iresolutely fixed my  attention on being well, and refused to even look at my old self in this  form.

"4th. Again the vision of the beast far in the background, with faint voice. Again refusal toacknowledge.

"5th. Once more the vision, but only of my eyes with the longing look; and again the refusal.

Then came the conviction, the inner consciousness, that I was perfectly  well and always had been,for I was Soul, an expression of God's Perfect  Thought. That was to me the perfect and completedseparation between  what I was and what I appeared to be. I succeeded in never losing sight  afterthis of my real being, by constantly affirming this truth, and by  degrees (though it took me twoyears of hard work to get there) I  expressed health continuously throughout my whole body.

"In my  subsequent nineteen years' experience I have never known this Truth to  fail when Iapplied it, though in my ignorance I have often failed to  apply it, but through my failures I havelearned the simplicity and  trustfulness of the little child."But I fear that I risk tiring you by  so many examples, and I must lead you back to philosophicgeneralities  again. You see already by such records of experience how impossible it  is not to classmind-cure as primarily a religious movement. Its doctrine  of the oneness of our life with God's lifeis in fact quite  indistinguishable from an interpretation of Christ's message which in  these veryGifford lectures has been defended by some of your very ablest  Scottish religious philosophers.

[52]

[52] The  Cairds, for example. In Edward Caird's Glasgow Lectures of 1890-92  passages like thisabound:-"The declaration made in the beginning of the  ministry of Jesus that 'the time is fulfilled, and thekingdom of heaven  is at hand,' passes with scarce a break into the announcement that 'the  kingdomof God is among you'; and the importance of this announcement is  asserted to be such that itmakes, so to speak, a difference IN KIND  between the greatest saints and prophets who livedunder the previous  reign of division, and 'the least in the kingdom of heaven.' The highest  ideal isbrought close to men and declared to be within their reach,  they are called on to be 'perfect as theirFather in heaven is perfect.'  The sense of alienation and distance from God which had grown uponthe  pious in Israel just in proportion as they had learned to look upon Him  as no mere nationaldivinity, but as a God of justice who would punish  Israel for its sin as certainly as Edom or Moab,is declared to be no  longer in place; and the typical form of Christian prayer points to the  abolitionof the contrast between this world and the next which through  all the history of the Jews hadcontinually been growing wider: 'As in  heaven, so on earth.' The sense of the division of man from God, as a  finite being from the Infinite, as weak and sinful from the Omnipotent  Goodness, is notindeed lost; but it can no longer overpower the  consciousness of oneness. The terms 'Son' and'Father' at once state the  opposition and mark its limit. They show that it is not an  absoluteopposition, but one which presupposes an indestructible  principle of unity, that can and mustbecome a principle of  reconciliation." The Evolution of Religion, ii. pp. 146, 147.

But philosophers usually profess to give a quasi-logical explanation of  the existence of evil,whereas of the general fact of evil in the world,  the existence of the selfish, suffering, timorousfinite consciousness,  the mind-curers, so far as I am acquainted with them, profess to give  nospeculative explanation Evil is empirically there for them as it is  for everybody, but the practicalpoint of view predominates, and it would  ill agree with the spirit of their system to spend time inworrying over  it as a "mystery" or "problem," or in "laying to heart" the lesson of  its experience,after the manner of the Evangelicals. Don't reason about  it, as Dante says, but give a glance andpass beyond! It is Avidhya,  ignorance! something merely to be outgrown and left be hind,transcended  and forgotten. Christian Science so-called, the sect of Mrs. Eddy, is  the most radicalbranch of mind-cure in its dealings with evil. For it  evil is simply a LIE, and any one whomentions it is a liar. The  optimistic ideal of duty forbids us to pay it the compliment even  ofexplicit attention. Of course, as our next lectures will show us, this  is a bad speculative omission,but it is intimately linked with the  practical merits of the system we are examining. Why regret aphilosophy  of evil, a mind-curer would ask us, if I can put you in possession of a  life of good?

After all, it is the life that tells; and  mind-cure has developed a living system of mental hygienewhich may well  claim to have thrown all previous literature of the Diatetit der Seele  into the shade.

This system is wholly and exclusively compacted of optimism: "Pessimism leads to weakness.

Optimism leads to power." "Thoughts are things," as one of the most  vigorous mind-cure writersprints in bold type at the bottom of each of  his pages; and if your thoughts are of health, youth,vigor, and success,  before you know it these things will also be your outward portion. No  one canfail of the regenerative influence of optimistic thinking,  pertinaciously pursued. Every man ownsindefeasibly this inlet to the  divine. Fear, on the contrary, and all the contracted and egoistic  modesof thought, are inlets to destruction. Most mind-curers here bring  in a doctrine that thoughts are"forces," and that, by virtue of a law  that like attracts like, one man's thoughts draw to themselvesas allies  all the thoughts of the same character that exist the world over. Thus  one gets, by one'sthinking, reinforcements from elsewhere for the  realization of one's desires; and the great point inthe conduct of life  is to get the heavenly forces on one's side by opening one's own mind to  theirinflux.

On the whole, one is struck by a psychological  similarity between the mind-cure movement andthe Lutheran and Wesleyan  movements. To the believer in moralism and works, with his anxiousquery,  "What shall I do to be saved?" Luther and Wesley replied: "You are  saved now, if youwould but believe it." And the mind-curers come with  precisely similar words of emancipation.

They speak, it is  true, to persons for whom the conception of salvation has lost its  ancienttheological meaning, but who labor nevertheless with the same  eternal human difficulty. THINGSARE WRONG WITH THEM; and "What shall I  do to be clear, right, sound, whole, well?" is theform of their  question. And the answer is: "You ARE well, sound, and clear already, if  you did but know it." "The whole matter may be summed up in one  sentence," says one of the authors whom Ihave already quoted, "GOD IS  WELL, AND SO ARE YOU. You must awaken to the knowledgeof your real  being."The adequacy of their message to the mental needs of a large  fraction of mankind is what gaveforce to those earlier gospels. Exactly  the same adequacy holds in the case of the mind-curemessage, foolish as  it may sound upon its surface; and seeing its rapid growth in influence,  and itstherapeutic triumphs, one is tempted to ask whether it may not  be destined (probably by veryreason of the crudity and extravagance of  many of its manifestations[53]) to play a part almost asgreat in the  evolution of the popular religion of the future as did those earlier  movements in theirday.

[53] It remains to be seen whether the  school of Mr. Dresser, which assumes more and more theform of mind-cure  experience and academic philosophy mutually impregnating each other,  willscore the practical triumphs of the less critical and rational  sects.

But I here fear that I may begin to "jar upon the  nerves" of some of the members of thisacademic audience. Such  contemporary vagaries, you may think, should hardly take so large aplace  in dignified Gifford lectures. I can only beseech you to have patience.  The whole outcome ofthese lectures will, I imagine, be the emphasizing  to your mind of the enormous diversities whichthe spiritual lives of  different men exhibit. Their wants, their susceptibilities, and their  capacitiesall vary and must be classed under different heads. The result  is that we have really different typesof religious experience; and,  seeking in these lectures closer acquaintance with the  healthy-mindedtype, we must take it where we find it in most radical  form. The psychology of individual types ofcharacter has hardly begun  even to be sketched as yet--our lectures may possibly serve as a  crumb-like contribution to the structure. The first thing to bear in  mind (especially if we ourselves belongto the  clerico-academic-scientific type, the officially and conventionally  "correct" type, "the deadlyrespectable" type, for which to ignore others  is a besetting temptation) is that nothing can be morestupid than to  bar out phenomena from our notice, merely because we are incapable of  taking partin anything like them ourselves.

Now the history of  Lutheran salvation by faith, of methodistic conversions, and of what I  call themind-cure movement seems to prove the existence of numerous  persons in whom--at any rate at acertain stage in their development--a  change of character for the better, so far from beingfacilitated by the  rules laid down by official moralists, will take place all the more  successfully ifthose rules be exactly reversed. Official moralists  advise us never to relax our strenuousness. "Bevigilant, day and night,"  they adjure us; "hold your passive tendencies in check; shrink from  noeffort; keep your will like a bow always bent." But the persons I  speak of find that all thisconscious effort leads to nothing but failure  and vexation in their hands, and only makes themtwofold more the  children of hell they were before. The tense and voluntary attitude  becomes inthem an impossible fever and torment. Their machinery refuses  to run at all when the bearings aremade so hot and the belts so tight.

Under these circumstances the way to success, as vouched for by  innumerable authentic personalnarrations, is by an anti-moralistic  method, by the "surrender" of which I spoke in my secondlecture.  Passivity, not activity; relaxation, not intentness, should be now the  rule. Give up the feeling of responsibility, let go your hold, resign  the care of your destiny to higher powers, begenuinely indifferent as to  what becomes of it all, and you will find not only that you gain a  perfectinward relief, but often also, in addition, the particular goods  you sincerely thought you wererenouncing. This is the salvation through  self-despair, the dying to be truly born, of Lutherantheology, the  passage into NOTHING of which Jacob Behmen writes. To get to it, a  critical pointmust usually be passed, a corner turned within one.  Something must give way, a native hardnessmust break down and liquefy;  and this event (as we shall abundantly see hereafter) is  frequentlysudden and automatic, and leaves on the Subject an impression  that he has been wrought on by anexternal power.

Whatever its  ultimate significance may prove to be, this is certainly one fundamental  form ofhuman experience. Some say that the capacity or incapacity for  it is what divides the religiousfrom the merely moralistic character.  With those who undergo it in its fullness, no criticism availsto cast  doubt on its reality. They KNOW; for they have actually FELT the higher  powers, in givingup the tension of their personal will.

A story  which revivalist preachers often tell is that of a man who found  himself at night slippingdown the side of a precipice.

At last he caught a branch which stopped his fall, and remained clinging to it in misery for hours.

But finally his fingers had to loose their hold, and with a despairing  farewell to life, he let himselfdrop. He fell just six inches. If he had  given up the struggle earlier, his agony would have beenspared. As the  mother earth received him, so, the preachers tell us, will the  everlasting armsreceive us if we confide absolutely in them, and give up  the hereditary habit of relying on ourpersonal strength, with its  precautions that cannot shelter and safeguards that never save.

The mind-curers have given the widest scope to this sort of experience.  They have demonstratedthat a form of regeneration by relaxing, by  letting go, psychologically indistinguishable from theLutheran  justification by faith and the Wesleyan acceptance of free grace, is  within the reach ofpersons who have no conviction of sin and care  nothing for the Lutheran theology. It is but givingyour little private  convulsive self a rest, and finding that a greater Self is there. The  results, slow orsudden, or great or small, of the combined optimism and  expectancy, the regenerative phenomenawhich ensue on the abandonment of  effort, remain firm facts of human nature, no matter whetherwe adopt a  theistic, a pantheistic-idealistic, or a medical-materialistic view of  their ultimate causalexplanation.[54]

[54] The theistic  explanation is by divine grace, which creates a new nature within one  themoment the old nature is sincerely given up. The pantheistic  explanation (which is that of mostmind-curers) is by the merging of the  narrower private self into the wider or greater self, the spiritof the  universe (which is your own "subconscious" self), the moment the  isolating barriers ofmistrust and anxiety are removed. The  medico-materialistic explanation is that simpler cerebralprocesses act  more freely where they are left to act automatically by the shunting-out  ofphysiologically (though in this instance not spiritually) "higher"  ones which, seeking to regulate,only succeed in inhibiting  results.--Whether this third explanation might, in a  psycho-physicalaccount of the universe, be combined with either of the  others may be left an open question here.

When we take up the  phenomena of revivalistic conversion, we shall learn something more  aboutall this. Meanwhile I will say a brief word about the mind-curer's  METHODS.

They are of course largely suggestive. The suggestive  influence of environment plays anenormous part in all spiritual  education.

But the word "suggestion," having acquired official  status, is unfortunately already beginning toplay in many quarters the  part of a wet blanket upon investigation, being used to fend off  allinquiry into the varying susceptibilities of individual cases.  "Suggestion" is only another name forthe power of ideas, SO FAR AS THEY  PROVE EFFICACIOUS OVER BELIEF ANDCONDUCT. Ideas efficacious over some  people prove inefficacious over others. Ideas efficaciousat some times  and in some human surroundings are not so at other times and elsewhere.  The ideasof Christian churches are not efficacious in the therapeutic  direction to-day, whatever they mayhave been in earlier centuries; and  when the whole question is as to why the salt has lost its savorhere or  gained it there, the mere blank waving of the word "suggestion" as if it  were a banner givesno light. Dr. Goddard, whose candid psychological  essay on Faith Cures ascribes them to nothingbut ordinary suggestion,  concludes by saying that "Religion [and by this he seems to mean  ourpopular Christianity] has in it all there is in mental therapeutics,  and has it in its best form. Livingup to [our religious] ideas will do  anything for us that can be done." And this in spite of the actualfact  that the popular Christianity does absolutely NOTHING, or did nothing  until mind-cure cameto the rescue.[55]

[55] Within the churches  a disposition has always prevailed to regard sickness as a  visitation;something sent by God for our good, either as chastisement,  as warning, or as opportunity forexercising virtue, and, in the Catholic  Church, of earning "merit." "Illness," says a good Catholicwriter P.  Lejeune: (Introd. a la Vie Mystique, 1899, p. 218), "is the most  excellent corporealmortifications, the mortification which one has not  one's self chosen, which is imposed directly byGod, and is the direct  expression of his will. 'If other mortifications are of silver,' Mgr.  Gay says,'this one is of gold; since although it comes of ourselves,  coming as it does of original sin, still onits greater side, as coming  (like all that happens) from the providence of God, it is of  divinemanufacture. And how just are its blows! And how efficacious it  is! . . . I do not hesitate to say thatpatience in a long illness is  mortification's very masterpiece, and consequently the triumph  ofmortified souls.'" According to this view, disease should in any case  be submissively accepted, andit might under certain circumstances even  be blasphemous to wish it away.

Of course there have been  exceptions to this, and cures by special miracle have at all times  beenrecognized within the church's pale, almost all the great saints  having more or less performedthem. It was one of the heresies of Edward  Irving, to maintain them still to be possible. Anextremely pure faculty  of healing after confession and conversion on the patient's part, and  prayeron the priest's, was quite spontaneously developed in the German  pastor, Joh. ChristophBlumhardt, in the early forties and exerted during  nearly thirty years. Blumhardt's Life by Zundel(5th edition, Zurich,  1887) gives in chapters ix., x., xi., and xvii. a pretty full account of  his healingactivity, which he invariably ascribed to direct divine  interposition. Blumhardt was a singularlypure, simple, and non-fanatical  character, and in this part of his work followed no previous model.

In Chicago to-day we have the case of Dr. J. A. Dowie, a Scottish  Baptist preacher, whose weekly "Leaves of Healing" were in the year of  grace 1900 in their sixth volume, and who, although hedenounces the  cures wrought in other sects as "diabolical counterfeits" of his own  exclusively"Divine Healing," must on the whole be counted into the  mind-cure movement. In mind-curecircles the fundamental article of faith  is that disease should never be accepted. It is wholly of thepit. God  wants us to be absolutely healthy, and we should not tolerate ourselves  on any lowerterms.

An idea, to be suggestive, must come to the  individual with the force of a revelation. The mind-cure with its gospel  of healthy-mindedness has come as a revelation to many whose hearts  thechurch Christianity had left hardened. It has let loose their springs  of higher life. In what can theoriginality of any religious movement  consist, save in finding a channel, until then sealed up,through which  those springs may be set free in some group of human beings?

The force of personal faith, enthusiasm, and example, and above all the  force of novelty, arealways the prime suggestive agency in this kind of  success. If mind-cure should ever becomeofficial, respectable, and  intrenched, these elements of suggestive efficacy will be lost. In its  acuterstages every religion must be a homeless Arab of the desert. The  church knows this well enough,with its everlasting inner struggle of the  acute religion of the few against the chronic religion of themany,  indurated into an obstructiveness worse than that which irreligion  opposes to the movings ofthe Spirit. "We may pray," says Jonathan  Edwards, "concerning all those saints that are not livelyChristians,  that they may either be enlivened, or taken away; if that be true that  is often said bysome at this day, that these cold dead saints do more  hurt than natural men, and lead more souls tohell, and that it would be  well for mankind if they were all dead."[56]

[56] Edwards, from  whose book on the Revival in New England I quote these words,  dissuadesfrom such a use of prayer, but it is easy to see that he enjoys  making his thrust at the cold deadchurch members.

The next  condition of success is the apparent existence, in large numbers, of  minds who unitehealthy-mindedness with readiness for regeneration by  letting go. Protestantism has been toopessimistic as regards the natural  man, Catholicism has been too legalistic and moralistic, foreither the  one or the other to appeal in any generous way to the type of character  formed of thispeculiar mingling of elements. However few of us here  present may belong to such a type, it isnow evident that it forms a  specific moral combination, well represented in the world.

Finally, mind-cure has made what in our protestant countries is an  unprecedentedly great use ofthe subconscious life. To their reasoned  advice and dogmatic assertion, its founders have addedsystematic  exercise in passive relaxation, concentration, and meditation, and have  even invokedsomething like hypnotic practice. I quote some passages at  random:-"The value, the potency of ideals is the great practical truth  on which the New Thought moststrongly insists--the development namely  from within outward, from small to great.[57]

Consequently  one's thought should be centred on the ideal outcome, even though this  trust beliterally like a step in the dark.[58] To attain the ability  thus effectively to direct the mind, the NewThought advises the practice  of concentration, or in other words, the attainment of self-control.

One is to learn to marshal the tendencies of the mind, so that they may  be held together as a unit by the chosen ideal. To this end, one should  set apart times for silent meditation, by one's self,preferably in a  room where the surroundings are favorable to spiritual thought. In New  Thoughtterms, this is called 'entering the silence.'"[59]

[57] H. W. DRESSER: Voices of Freedom, 46.

[58] Dresser: Living by the spirit, 58.

[59] Dresser: Voices of Freedom, 33.

"The time will come when in the busy office or on the noisy street you  can enter into the silenceby simply drawing the mantle of your own  thoughts about you and realizing that there andeverywhere the Spirit of  Infinite Life, Love, Wisdom, Peace, Power, and Plenty is  guiding,keeping, protecting, leading you. This is the spirit of  continual prayer.[60] One of the mostintuitive men we ever met had a  desk at a city office where several other gentlemen were doingbusiness  constantly, and often talking loudly. Entirely undisturbed by the many  various soundsabout him, this self-centred faithful man would, in any  moment of perplexity, draw the curtains ofprivacy so completely about  him that he would be as fully inclosed in his own psychic aura,  andthereby as effectually removed from all distractions, as though he  were alone in some primevalwood. Taking his difficulty with him into the  mystic silence in the form of a direct question, towhich he expected a  certain answer, he would remain utterly passive until the reply came,  andnever once through many years' experience did he find himself  disappointed or misled."[61]

[60] Trine: In Tune with the Infinite, p. 214[61] Trine: p. 117.

Wherein, I should like to know, does this INTRINSICALLY differ from the  practice of"recollection" which plays so great a part in Catholic  discipline? Otherwise called the practice ofthe presence of God (and so  known among ourselves, as for instance in Jeremy Taylor), it is  thusdefined by the eminent teacher Alvarez de Paz in his work on  Contemplation.

"It is the recollection of God, the thought of  God, which in all places and circumstances makesus see him present, lets  us commune respectfully and lovingly with him, and fills us with  desireand affection for him. . . . Would you escape from every ill?  Never lose this recollection of God,neither in prosperity nor in  adversity, nor on any occasion whichsoever it be. Invoke not, to  excuseyourself from this duty, either the difficulty or the importance  of your business, for you can alwaysremember that God sees you, that you  are under his eye. If a thousand times an hour you forgethim, reanimate  a thousand times the recollection.

If you cannot practice this  exercise continuously, at least make yourself as familiar with it  aspossible; and, like unto those who in a rigorous winter draw near the  fire as often as they can, go asoften as you can to that ardent fire  which will warm your soul."[62]

[62] Quoted by Lejeune: Introd. a la vie Mystique, 1899, p. 66.

All the external associations of the Catholic discipline are of course  unlike anything in mind-curethought, but the purely spiritual part of  the exercise is identical in both communions, and in both communions  those who urge it write with authority, for they have evidently  experienced in theirown persons that whereof they tell. Compare again  some mind-cure utterances:-"High, healthful, pure thinking can be  encouraged, promoted, and strengthened. Its current canbe turned upon  grand ideals until it forms a habit and wears a channel. By means of  such disciplinethe mental horizon can be flooded with the sunshine of  beauty, wholeness, and harmony. Toinaugurate pure and lofty thinking may  at first seem difficult, even almost mechanical, butperseverance will  at length render it easy, then pleasant, and finally delightful.

"The soul's real world is that which it has built of its thoughts,  mental states, and imaginations. Ifwe WILL, we can turn our backs upon  the lower and sensuous plane, and lift ourselves into therealm of the  spiritual and Real, and there gain a residence. The assumption of states  of expectancyand receptivity will attract spiritual sunshine, and it  will flow in as naturally as air inclines to avacuum. . . . Whenever the  though; is not occupied with one's daily duty or profession, it should  hesent aloft into the spiritual atmosphere. There are quiet leisure  moments by day, and wakeful hoursat night, when this wholesome and  delightful exercise may be engaged in to great advantage. Ifone who has  never made any systematic effort to lift and control the thought-forces  will, for asingle month, earnestly pursue the course here suggested, he  will be surprised and delighted at theresult, and nothing will induce  him to go back to careless, aimless, and superficial thinking. Atsuch  favorable seasons the outside world, with all its current of daily  events, is barred out, and onegoes into the silent sanctuary of the  inner temple of soul to commune and aspire. The spiritualhearing becomes  delicately sensitive, so that the 'still, small voice' is audible, the  tumultuouswaves of external sense are hushed, and there is a great calm.  The ego gradually becomesconscious that it is face to face with the  Divine Presence; that mighty, healing, loving, Fatherly lifewhich is  nearer to us than we are to ourselves. There is soul contact with the  Parent-Soul, and aninflux of life, love, virtue, health, and happiness  from the Inexhaustible Fountain."[63]

[63] HENRY Wood: Ideal suggestion through Mental Photography, pp. 51, 70 (abridged).

When we reach the subject of mysticism, you will undergo so deep an  immersion into theseexalted states of consciousness as to be wet all  over, if I may so express myself; and the coldshiver of doubt with which  this little sprinkling may affect you will have long since passed  away-doubt,I mean, as to whether all such writing be not mere abstract  talk and rhetoric set down pourencourager les autres. You will then be  convinced, I trust, that these states of consciousness of"union" form a  perfectly definite class of experiences, of which the soul may  occasionally partake,and which certain persons may live by in a deeper  sense than they live by anything else with whichthey have acquaintance.  This brings me to a general philosophical reflection with which I  shouldlike to pass from the subject of healthy-mindedness, and close a  topic which I fear is already onlytoo long drawn out. It concerns the  relation of all this systematized healthy-mindedness and mind-cure  religion to scientific method and the scientific life.

In a  later lecture I shall have to treat explicitly of the relation of  religion to science on the onehand, and to primeval savage thought on  the other. There are plenty of persons to-day--"scientists"or  "positivists," they are fond of calling themselves--who will tell you  that religious thought is amere survival, an atavistic reversion to a  type of consciousness which humanity in its moreenlightened examples has  long since left behind and out-grown. If you ask them to explain  themselves more fully, they will probably say that for primitive thought  everything is conceived ofunder the form of personality. The savage  thinks that things operate by personal forces, and for thesake of  individual ends. For him, even external nature obeys individual needs  and claims, just as ifthese were so many elementary powers. Now science,  on the other hand, these positivists say, hasproved that personality,  so far from being an elementary force in nature, is but a passive  resultantof the really elementary forces, physical, chemical,  physiological, and psycho-physical, which areall impersonal and general  in character. Nothing individual accomplishes anything in the  universesave in so far as it obeys and exemplifies some universal law.  Should you then inquire of them bywhat means science has thus supplanted  primitive thought, and discredited its personal way oflooking at  things, they would undoubtedly say it has been by the strict use of the  method ofexperimental verification. Follow out science's conceptions  practically, they will say, theconceptions that ignore personality  altogether, and you will always be corroborated. The world isso made  that all your expectations will be experientially verified so long, and  only so long, as youkeep the terms from which you infer them impersonal  and universal.

But here we have mind-cure, with her  diametrically opposite philosophy, setting up an exactlyidentical claim.  Live as if I were true, she says, and every day will practically prove  you right. Thatthe controlling energies of nature are personal, that  your own personal thoughts are forces, that thepowers of the universe  will directly respond to your individual appeals and needs, are  propositionswhich your whole bodily and mental experience will verify.  And that experience does largelyverify these primeval religious ideas is  proved by the fact that the mind-cure movement spreads asit does, not  by proclamation and assertion simply, but by palpable experiential  results. Here, in thevery heyday of science's authority, it carries on  an aggressive warfare against the scientificphilosophy, and succeeds by  using science's own peculiar methods and weapons. Believing that ahigher  power will take care of us in certain ways better than we can take care  of ourselves, if weonly genuinely throw ourselves upon it and consent  to use it, it finds the belief, not only notimpugned, but corroborated  by its observation.

How conversions are thus made, and converts  confirmed, is evident enough from the narrativeswhich I have quoted. I  will quote yet another couple of shorter ones to give the matter a  perfectlyconcrete turn. Here is one:-"One of my first experiences in  applying my teaching was two months after I first saw the healer.

I fell, spraining my right ankle, which I had done once four years  before, having then had to use acrutch and elastic anklet for some  months, and carefully guarding it ever since. As soon as I wason my feet  I made the positive suggestion (and felt it through all my being):  'There is nothing butGod, and all life comes from him perfectly. I  cannot be sprained or hurt, I will let him take care ofit.' Well, I  never had a sensation in it, and I walked two miles that day."The next  case not only illustrates experiment and verification, but also the  element of passivityand surrender of which awhile ago I made such  account.

"I went into town to do some shopping one morning, and  I had not been gone long before Ibegan to feel ill. The ill feeling  increased rapidly, until I had pains in all my bones, nausea  andfaintness, headache, all the symptoms in short that precede an attack  of influenza. I thought that Iwas going to have the grippe, epidemic  then in Boston, or something worse. The mind-cureteachings that I had  been listening to all the winter thereupon came into my mind, and I  thought that here was an opportunity to test myself. On my way home I  met a friend, I refrained with someeffort from telling her how I felt.  That was the first step gained. I went to bed immediately, and myhusband  wished to send fo
Lectures VI THE SICK SOUL
At our last meeting, we considered the healthy-minded temperament, the temperament which hasconstitutional incapacity for prolonged suffering, and in which the tendency to see thingso(a) ptimistically is like a water of crystallization in which the individual's character is set. We sawhow this temperament may become the basis for a peculiar type of religion, a religion in whichgood, even the good of this world's life, is regarded as the essential thing for a rational being toattend to. This religion directs him to settle his scores with the more evil aspects of the universe bysystematically declining to lay them to heart or make much of them, by ignoring them in hisreflective calculations, or even, on occasion, by denying outright that they exist. Evil is a disease;and worry over disease is itself an additional form of disease, which only adds to the originalcomplaint. Even repentance and remorse, affections which come in the character of ministers ofgood, may be but sickly and relaxing impulses. The best repentance is to up and act forrighteousness, and forget that you ever had relations with sin.

Spinoza's philosophy has this sort of healthy-mindedness woven into the heart of it, and this hasbeen one secret of its fascination. He whom Reason leads, according to Spinoza, is led altogetherby the influence over his mind of good. Knowledge of evil is an "inadequate" knowledge, fit onlyfor slavish minds. So Spinoza categorically condemns repentance. When men make mistakes, hesays-"One might perhaps expect gnawings of conscience and repentance to help to bring them on theright path, and might thereupon conclude (as every one does conclude) that these affections aregood things. Yet when we look at the matter closely, we shall find that not only are they not good,but on the contrary deleterious and evil passions. For it is manifest that we can always get alongbetter by reason and love of truth than by worry of conscience and remorse. Harmful are these andevil, inasmuch as they form a particular kind of sadness; and the disadvantages of sadness," hecontinues, "I have already proved, and shown that we should strive to keep it from our life. Just sowe should endeavor, since uneasiness of conscience and remorse are of this kind of complexion, toflee and shun these states of mind."[66]

[66] Tract on God, Man, and Happiness, Book ii. ch. x.

Within the Christian body, for which repentance of sins has from the beginning been the criticalreligious act, healthy-mindedness has always come forward with its milder interpretation.

Repentance according to such healthy-minded Christians means GETTING AWAY FROM thesin, not groaning and writhing over its commission. The Catholic practice of confession andabsolution is in one of its aspects little more than a systematic method of keeping healthymindednesson top. By it a man's accounts with evil are periodically squared and audited, so thathe may start the clean page with no old debts inscribed. Any Catholic will tell us how clean andfresh and free he feels after the purging operation. Martin Luther by no means belonged to thehealthy-minded type in the radical sense in which we have discussed it, and he repudiated priestlyabsolution for sin. Yet in this matter of repentance he had some very healthy-minded ideas, due inthe main to the largeness of his conception of God.

"When I was a monk," he says "I thought that I was utterly cast away, if at any time I felt the lustof the flesh: that is to say, if I felt any evil motion, fleshly lust, wrath, hatred, or envy against anybrother. I assayed many ways to help to quiet my conscience, but It would not be; for theconcupiscence and lust of my flesh did always return, so that I could not rest, but was continuallyvexed with these thoughts: This or that sin thou hast committed: thou art infected with envy, withimpatiency, and such other sins: therefore thou art entered into this holy order in vain, and all thygood works are unprofitable. But if then I had rightly understood these sentences of Paul: 'Theflesh lusteth contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit contrary to the flesh; and these two are oneagainst another, so that ye cannot do the things that ye would do,' I should not have so miserablytormented myself, but should have thought and said to myself, as now commonly I do, 'Martin,thou shalt not utterly be without sin, for thou hast flesh; thou shalt therefore feel the battle thereof.'

I remember that Staupitz was wont to say, 'I have vowed unto God above a thousand times that Iwould become a better man: but I never performed that which I vowed. Hereafter I will make nosuch vow: for I have now learned by experience that I am not able to perform it. Unless, therefore,God be favorable and merciful unto me for Christ's sake, I shall not be able, with all my vows andall my good deeds, to stand before him.' This (of Staupitz's) was not only a true, but also a godlyand a holy desperation; and this must they all confess, both with mouth and heart, who will besaved. For the godly trust not to their own righteousness. They look unto Christ their reconcilerwho gave his life for their sins. Moreover, they know that the remnant of sin which is in their fleshis not laid to their charge, but freely pardoned. Notwithstanding, in the mean while they fight inspirit against the flesh, lest they should FULFILL the lusts thereof; and although they feel the fleshto rage and rebel, and themselves also do fall sometimes into sin through infirmity, yet are they notdiscouraged, nor think therefore that their state and kind of life, and the works which are doneaccording to their calling, displease God; but they raise up themselves by faith."[67]

[67] Commentary on Galatians, Philadelphia, 1891, pp. 510-514 (abridged).

One of the heresies for which the Jesuits got that spiritual genius, Molinos, the founder ofQuietism, so abominably condemned was his healthy-minded opinion of repentance:- "When thou fallest into a fault, in what matter soever it be do not trouble nor afflict thyself for it.

For they are effects of our frail Nature, stained by Original Sin. The common enemy will makethee believe, as soon as thou fallest into any fault, that thou walkest in error, and therefore art outof God and his favor, and herewith would he make thee distrust of the divine Grace, telling thee ofthy misery, and making a giant of it; and putting it into thy head that every day thy soul growsworse instead of better, whilst it so often repeats these failings. O blessed Soul, open thine eyes;and shut the gate against these diabolical suggestions, knowing thy misery, and trusting in themercy divine. Would not he be a mere fool who, running at tournament with others, and falling inthe best of the career, should lie weeping on the ground and afflicting himself with discourses uponhis fall? Man (they would tell him), lose no time, get up and take the course again, for he that risesagain quickly and continues his race is as if he had never fallen. If thou seest thyself fallen onceand a thousand times, thou oughtest to make use of the remedy which I have given thee, that is, aloving confidence in the divine mercy. These are the weapons with which thou must fight andconquer cowardice and vain thoughts. This is the means thou oughtest to use--not to lose time, notto disturb thyself, and reap no good."[68]

[68] Molinos: Spiritual Guide, Book II., chaps. xvii., xviii. abridged.

Now in contrast with such healthy-minded views as these, if we treat them as a way ofdeliberately minimizing evil, stands a radically opposite view, a way of maximizing evil, if youplease so to call it, based on the persuasion that the evil aspects of our life are of its very essence,and that the world's meaning most comes home to us when we lay them most to heart. We havenow to address ourselves to this <129> more morbid way of looking at the situation. But as Iclosed our last hour with a general philosophical reflection on the healthy-minded way of takinglife, I should like at this point to make another philosophical reflection upon it before turning tothat heavier task. You will excuse the brief delay.

If we admit that evil is an essential part of our being and the key to the interpretation of our life,we load ourselves down with a difficulty that has always proved burdensome in philosophies ofreligion. Theism, whenever it has erected itself into a systematic philosophy of the universe, hasshown a reluctance to let God be anything less than All-in-All. In other words, philosophic theismhas always shown a tendency to become pantheistic and monistic, and to consider the world as oneunit of absolute fact; and this has been at variance with popular or practical theism, which latterhas ever been more or less frankly pluralistic, not to say polytheistic, and shown itself perfectlywell satisfied with a universe composed of many original principles, provided we be only allowedto believe that the divine principle remains supreme, and that the others are subordinate. In thislatter case God is not necessarily responsible for the existence of evil; he would only beresponsible if it were not finally overcome. But on the monistic or pantheistic view, evil, likeeverything else, must have its foundation in God; and the difficulty is to see how this can possiblybe the case if God be absolutely good. This difficulty faces us in every form of philosophy inwhich the world appears as one flawless unit of fact. Such a unit is an INDIVIDUAL, and in it theworst parts must be as essential as the best, must be as necessary to make the individual what he is;since if any part whatever in an individual were to vanish or alter, it would no longer be THATindividual at all. The philosophy of absolute idealism, so vigorously represented both in Scotland and America to-day, has to struggle with this difficulty quite as <130> much as scholastic theismstruggled in its time; and although it would be premature to say that there is no speculative issuewhatever from the puzzle, it is perfectly fair to say that there is no clear or easy issue, and that theonly OBVIOUS escape from paradox here is to cut loose from the monistic assumption altogether,and to allow the world to have existed from its origin in pluralistic form, as an aggregate orcollection of higher and lower things and principles, rather than an absolutely unitary fact. For thenevil would not need to be essential; it might be, and may always have been, an independent portionthat had no rational or absolute right to live with the rest, and which we might conceivably hope tosee got rid of at last.

Now the gospel of healthy-mindedness, as we have described it, casts its vote distinctly for thispluralistic view. Whereas the monistic philosopher finds himself more or less bound to say, asHegel said, that everything actual is rational, and that evil, as an element dialectically required,must be pinned in and kept and consecrated and have a function awarded to it in the final system oftruth, healthy-mindedness refuses to say anything of the sort.[69] Evil, it says, is emphaticallyirrational, and NOT to be pinned in, or preserved, or consecrated in any final system of truth. It is apure abomination to the Lord, an alien unreality, a waste element, to be sloughed off and negated,and the very memory of it, if possible, wiped out and forgotten. The ideal, so far from being coextensivewith the whole actual, is a mere EXTRACT from the actual, marked by its deliverancefrom all contact with this diseased, inferior, and excrementitious stuff.

[69] I say this in spite of the monistic utterances of many mind-cure writers; for these utterancesare really inconsistent with their attitude towards disease, and can easily be shown not to belogically involved in the experiences of union with a higher Presence with which they connectthemselves. The higher Presence, namely, need not be the absolute whole of things, it is quitesufficient for the life of religious experience to regard it as a part, if only it be the most ideal part.

Here we have the interesting notion fairly and squarely presented to us, of there being elementsof the universe which may make no rational whole in conjunction with the other elements, andwhich, from the point of view of any system which those other elements make up, can only beconsidered so much irrelevance and accident--so much "dirt," as it were, and matter out of place. Iask you now not to forget this notion; for although most philosophers seem either to forget it or todisdain it too much ever to mention it, I believe that we shall have to admit it ourselves in the endas containing an element of truth. The mind-cure gospel thus once more appears to us as havingdignity and importance. We have seen it to be a genuine religion, and no mere silly appeal toimagination to cure disease; we have seen its method of experimental verification to be not unlikethe method of all science; and now here we find mind-cure as the champion of a perfectly definiteconception of the metaphysical structure of the world. I hope that, in view of all this, you will notregret my having pressed it upon your attention at such length.

Let us now say good-by for a while to all this way of thinking, and turn towards those personswho cannot so swiftly throw off the burden of the consciousness of evil, but are congenitally fatedto suffer from its presence. Just as we saw that in healthy-mindedness there are shallower andprofounder levels, happiness like that of the mere animal, and more regenerate sorts of happiness,so also are there different levels of the morbid mind, and the one is much more formidable than the other. There are people for whom evil means only a mal-adjustment with THINGS, a wrongcorrespondence of one's life with the environment. Such evil as this is curable, in principle at least,upon the natural plane, for merely by modifying either the self or the things, or both at once, thetwo terms may be made to fit, and all go merry as a marriage bell again. But there are others forwhom evil is no mere relation of the subject to particular outer things, but something more radicaland general, a wrongness or vice in his essential nature, which no alteration of the environment, orany superficial rearrangement of the inner self, can cure, and which requires a supernaturalremedy. On the whole, the Latin races have leaned more towards the former way of looking uponevil, as made up of ills and sins in the plural, removable in detail; while the Germanic races havetended rather to think of Sin in the singular, and with a capital S, as of something ineradicablyingrained in our natural subjectivity, and never to be removed by any superficial piecemealoperations.[70] These comparisons of races are always open to exception, but undoubtedly thenorthern tone in religion has inclined to the more intimately pessimistic persuasion, and this wayof feeling, being the more extreme, we shall find by far the more instructive for our study.

[70] Cf. J. Milsand: Luther et le Serf-Arbitre, 1884, passim.

Recent psychology has found great use for the word "threshold" as a symbolic designation forthe point at which one state of mind passes into another. Thus we speak of the threshold of a man'sconsciousness in general, to indicate the amount of noise, pressure, or other outer stimulus which ittakes to arouse his attention at all. One with a high threshold will doze through an amount of racketby which one with a low threshold would be immediately waked. Similarly, when one is sensitiveto small differences in any order of sensation, we say he has a low "difference-threshold"--hismind easily steps over it into the consciousness of the differences in question. And just so wemight speak of a "pain-threshold," a "fear-threshold," a "misery-threshold," and find it quicklyoverpassed by the consciousness of some individuals, but lying too high in others to be oftenreached by their consciousness. The sanguine and healthy-minded live habitually on the sunny sideof their misery-line, the depressed and melancholy live beyond it, in darkness and apprehension.

There are men who seem to have started in life with a bottle or two of champagne inscribed to theircredit; whilst others seem to have been born close to the pain-threshold, which the slightestirritants fatally send them over.

Does it not appear as if one who lived more habitually on one side of the pain-threshold mightneed a different sort of religion from one who habitually lived on the other? This question, of therelativity of different types of religion to different types of need, arises naturally at this point, andwill became a serious problem ere we have done. But before we confront it in general terms, wemust address ourselves to the unpleasant task of hearing what the sick souls, as we may call themin contrast to the healthy-minded, have to say of the secrets of their prison-house, their ownpeculiar form of consciousness. Let us then resolutely turn our backs on the once-born and theirsky-blue optimistic gospel; let us not simply cry out, in spite of all appearances, "Hurrah for theUniverse!--God's in his Heaven, all's right with the world." Let us see rather whether pity, pain,and fear, and the sentiment of human helplessness may not open a profounder view and put intoour hands a more complicated key to the meaning of the situation.

To begin with, how CAN things so insecure as the successful experiences of this world afford astable anchorage? A chain is no stronger than its weakest link, and life is after all a chain.

In the healthiest and most prosperous existence, how many links of illness, danger, and disasterare always interposed? Unsuspectedly from the bottom of every fountain of pleasure, as the oldpoet said, something bitter rises up: a touch of nausea, a falling dead of the delight, a whiff ofmelancholy, things that sound a knell, for fugitive as they may be, they bring a feeling of comingfrom a deeper region and often have an appalling convincingness. The buzz of life ceases at theirtouch as a piano-string stops sounding when the damper falls upon it.

Of course the music can commence again;--and again and again--at intervals. But with this thehealthy-minded consciousness is left with an irremediable sense of precariousness. It is a bell witha crack; it draws its breath on sufferance and by an accident.

Even if we suppose a man so packed with healthy-mindedness as never to have experienced inhis own person any of these sobering intervals, still, if he is a reflecting being, he must generalizeand class his own lot with that of others; and, doing so, he must see that his escape is just a luckychance and no essential difference. He might just as well have been born to an entirely differentfortune. And then indeed the hollow security! What kind of a frame of things is it of which the bestyou can say is, "Thank God, it has let me off clear this time!" Is not its blessedness a fragilefiction? Is not your joy in it a very vulgar glee, not much unlike the snicker of any rogue at hissuccess? If indeed it were all success, even on such terms as that! But take the happiest man, theone most envied by the world, and in nine cases out of ten his inmost consciousness is one offailure. Either his ideals in the line of his achievements are pitched far higher than theachievements themselves, or else he has secret ideals of which the world knows nothing, and inregard to which he inwardly knows himself to be found wanting.

When such a conquering optimist as Goethe can express himself in this wise, how must it bewith less successful men? <135>

"I will say nothing," writes Goethe in 1824, "against the course of my existence. But at bottom ithas been nothing but pain and burden, and I can affirm that during the whole of my 75 years, Ihave not had four weeks of genuine well-being. It is but the perpetual rolling of a rock that must beraised up again forever."What single-handed man was ever on the whole as successful as Luther? Yet when he had grownold, he looked back on his life as if it were an absolute failure.

"I am utterly weary of life. I pray the Lord will come forthwith and carry me hence. Let himcome, above all, with his last Judgment: I will stretch out my neck, the thunder will burst forth,and I shall be at rest."--And having a necklace of white agates in his hand at the time he added: "OGod, grant that it may come without delay. I would readily eat up this necklace to-day, for theJudgment to come to-morrow."--The Electress Dowager, one day when Luther was dining withher, said to him: "Doctor, I wish you may live forty years to come." "Madam," replied he, "ratherthan live forty years more, I would give up my chance of Paradise."Failure, then, failure! so the world stamps us at every turn. We strew it with our blunders, ourmisdeeds, our lost opportunities, with all the memorials of our inadequacy to our vocation. Andwith what a damning emphasis does it then blot us out! No easy fine, no mere apology or formal expiation, will satisfy the world's demands, but every pound of flesh exacted is soaked with all itsblood. The subtlest forms of suffering known to man are connected with the poisonoushumiliations incidental to these results.

And they are pivotal human experiences. A process so ubiquitous and everlasting is evidently anintegral part of life. "There is indeed one element in human destiny," Robert Louis Stevensonwrites, "that not blindness itself can controvert. Whatever else we are intended to do, we are notintended to succeed; failure is the fate allotted."[71] And our nature being thus rooted in failure, isit any wonder that theologians should have held it to be essential, and thought that only through thepersonal experience of humiliation which it engenders the deeper sense of life's significance isreached?[72]

[71] He adds with characteristic healthy-mindedness: "Our business is to continue to fail in goodspirits."[72] The God of many men is little more than their court of appeal against the damnatoryjudgment passed on their failures by the opinion of this world. To our own consciousness there isusually a residuum of worth left over after our sins and errors have been told off--our capacity ofacknowledging and regretting them is the germ of a better self in posse at least. But the world dealswith us in actu and not in posse: and of this hidden germ, not to be guessed at from without, itnever takes account. Then we turn to the All-knower, who knows our bad, but knows this good inus also, and who is just. We cast ourselves with our repentance on his mercy only by an All-knower can we finally be judged. So the need of a God very definitely emerges from this sort ofexperience of life.

But this is only the first stage of the world-sickness. Make the human being's sensitiveness alittle greater, carry him a little farther over the misery-threshold, and the good quality of thesuccessful moments themselves when they occur is spoiled and vitiated. All natural goods perish.

Riches take wings; fame is a breath; love is a cheat; youth and health and pleasure vanish. Canthings whose end is always dust and disappointment be the real goods which our souls require?

Back of everything is the great spectre of universal death, the all-encompassing blackness:-"What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the Sun? I looked on all theworks that my hands had wrought, and behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit. For that whichbefalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; as the one dieth, so dieth the other, all are of the dust,and all turn to dust again. . . . The dead know not anything, neither have they any more a reward;for the memory of them is forgotten. Also their love and their hatred and their envy is nowperished; neither have they any more a portion for ever in anything that is done under the Sun. . . .

Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the Sun: but if a man livemany years and rejoice in them all, yet let him remember the days of darkness; for they shall bemany."In short, life and its negation are beaten up inextricably together. But if the life be good, thenegation of it must be bad. Yet the two are equally essential facts of existence; and all naturalhappiness thus seems infected with a contradiction. The breath of the sepulchre surrounds it.

To a mind attentive to this state of things and rightly subject to the joy-destroying chill whichsuch a contemplation engenders, the only relief that healthy-mindedness can give is by saying:

"Stuff and nonsense, get out into the open air!" or "Cheer up, old fellow, you'll be all right erelong,if you will only drop your morbidness!" But in all seriousness, can such bald animal talk as that betreated as a rational answer? To ascribe religious value to mere happy-go-lucky contentment withone's brief chance at natural good is but the very consecration of forgetfulness and superficiality.

Our troubles lie indeed too deep for THAT cure. The fact that we CAN die, that we CAN be ill atall, is what perplexes us; the fact that we now for a moment live and are well is irrelevant to thatperplexity. We need a life not correlated with death, a health not liable to illness, a kind of goodthat will not perish, a good in fact that flies beyond the Goods of nature.

It all depends on how sensitive the soul may become to discords. "The trouble with me is that Ibelieve too much in common happiness and goodness," said a friend of mine whose consciousnesswas of this sort, "and nothing can console me for their transiency. I am appalled and disconcertedat its being possible." And so with most of us: a little cooling down of animal excitability andinstinct, a little loss of animal toughness, a little irritable weakness and descent of the pain-threshold, will bring the worm at the core of all our usual springs of delight into full view, and turnus into melancholy metaphysicians. The pride of life and glory of the world will shrivel. It is afterall but the standing quarrel of hot youth and hoary eld. Old age has the last word: the purelynaturalistic look at life, however enthusiastically it may begin, is sure to end in sadness.

This sadness lies at the heart of every merely positivistic, agnostic, or naturalistic scheme ofphilosophy. Let sanguine healthy-mindedness do its best with its strange power of living in themoment and ignoring and forgetting, still the evil background is really there to be thought of, andthe skull will grin in at the banquet. In the practical life of the individual, we know how his wholegloom or glee about any present fact depends on the remoter schemes and hopes with which itstands related. Its significance and framing give it the chief part of its value. Let it be known tolead nowhere, and however agreeable it may be in its immediacy, its glow and gilding vanish. Theold man, sick with an insidious internal disease, may laugh and quaff his wine at first as well asever, but he knows his fate now, for the doctors have revealed it; and the knowledge knocks thesatisfaction out of all these functions. They are partners of death and the worm is their brother, andthey turn to a mere flatness.

The lustre of the present hour is always borrowed from the background of possibilities it goeswith. Let our common experiences be enveloped in an eternal moral order; let our suffering havean immortal significance; let Heaven smile upon the earth, and deities pay their visits; let faith andhope be the atmosphere which man breathes in;--and his days pass by with zest; they stir withprospects, they thrill with remoter values. Place round them on the contrary the curdling cold andgloom and absence of all permanent meaning which for pure naturalism and the popular scienceevolutionism of our time are all that is visible ultimately, and the thrill stops short, or turns ratherto an anxious trembling.

For naturalism, fed on recent cosmological speculations, mankind is in a position similar to thatof a set of people living on a frozen lake, surrounded by cliffs over which there is no escape, yetknowing that little by little the ice is melting, and the inevitable day drawing near when the lastfilm of it will disappear, and to be drowned ignominiously will be the human creature's portion.

The merrier the skating, the warmer and more sparkling the sun by day, and the ruddier thebonfires at night, the more poignant the sadness with which one must take in the meaning of thetotal situation.

The early Greeks are continually held up to us in literary works as models of the healthy-mindedjoyousness which the religion of nature may engender. There was indeed much joyousness amongthe Greeks--Homer's flow of enthusiasm for most things that the sun shines upon is steady. Buteven in Homer the reflective passages are cheerless,[73] and the moment the Greeks grewsystematically pensive and thought of ultimates, they became unmitigated pessimists.[74] Thejealousy of the gods, the nemesis that follows too much happiness, the all-encompassing death,fate's dark opacity, the ultimate and unintelligible cruelty, were the fixed background of theirimagination. The beautiful joyousness of their polytheism is only a poetic modern fiction. Theyknew no joys comparable in quality of preciousness to those which we shall erelong see thatIlrahmans, Buddhists, Christians, Mohammedans, twice-born people whose religion is non-naturalistic, get from their several creeds of mysticism and renunciation.

[73] E.g., Iliad XVII. 446: "Nothing then is more wretched anywhere than man of all thatbreathes and creeps upon this earth."[74] E.g., Theognis, 425-428: "Best of all for all things upon earth is it not to be born nor tobehold the splendors of the sun; next best to traverse as soon as possible the gates of Hades." Seealso the almost identical passage in Oedipus in Colonus, 1225.--The Anthology is full ofpessimistic utterances: "Naked came I upon the earth, naked I go below the ground--why then do Ivainly toil when I see the end naked before me?"--"How did I come to be? Whence am l?
Lectures VII THE SICK SOUL
　　Wherefore did I come? To pass away. How can I learn aught when naught I know? Being naught Icame to life: once more shall I be what I was. Nothing and nothingness is the whole race ofmortals."--"For death we are all cherished and fattened like a herd of hogs that is wantonlybutchered."The difference between Greek pessimism and the oriental and modern variety is that the Greekshad not made the discovery that the pathetic mood may be idealized, and figure as a higher form ofsensibility. Their spirit was still too essentially masculine for pessimism to be elaborated orlengthily dwelt on in their classic literature. They would have despised a life set wholly in a minorkey, and summoned it to keep within the proper bounds of lachrymosity. The discovery that theenduring emphasis, so far as this world goes, may be laid on its pain and failure, was reserved forraces more complex, and (so to speak) more feminine than the Hellenes had attained to being inthe classic period. But all the same was the outlook of those Hellenes blackly pessimistic.

Stoic insensibility and Epicurean resignation were the farthest advance which the Greek mindmade in that direction. The Epicurean said: "Seek not to be happy, but rather to escapeunhappiness; strong happiness is always linked with pain; therefore hug the safe shore, and do nottempt the deeper raptures. Avoid disappointment by expecting little, and by aiming low; and aboveall do not fret." The Stoic said: "The only genuine good that life can yield a man is the freepossession of his own soul; all other goods are lies." Each of these philosophies is in its degree aphilosophy of despair in nature's boons. Trustful self-abandonment to the joys that freely offer hasentirely departed from both Epicurean and Stoic; and what each proposes is a way of rescue from the resultant dust-and-ashes state of mind. The Epicurean still awaits results from economy ofindulgence and damping of desire. The Stoic hopes for no results, and gives up natural goodaltogether. There is dignity in both these forms of resignation. They represent distinct stages in thesobering process which man's primitive intoxication with sense-happiness is sure to undergo. Inthe one the hot blood has grown cool, in the other it has become quite cold; and although I havespoken of them in the past tense, as if they were merely historic, yet Stoicism and Epicureanismwill probably be to all time typical attitudes, marking a certain definite stage accomplished in theevolution of the world-sick soul.[75] They mark the conclusion of what we call the once-bornperiod, and represent the highest flights of what twice-born religion would call the purely naturalman --Epicureanism, which can only by great courtesy be called a religion, showing hisrefinement, and Stoicism exhibiting his moral will. They leave the world in the shape of anunreconciled contradiction, and seek no higher unity. Compared with the complex ecstasies whichthe supernaturally regenerated Christian may enjoy, or the oriental pantheist indulge in, theirreceipts for equanimity are expedients which seem almost crude in their simplicity.

[75] For instance, on the very day on which I write this page, the post brings me some aphorismsfrom a worldly-wise old friend in Heidelberg which may serve as a good contemporaneousexpression of Epicureanism: "By the word 'happiness' every human being understands somethingdifferent. It is a phantom pursued only by weaker minds. The wise man is satisfied with the moremodest but much more definite term CONTENTMENT. What education should chiefly aim at is tosave us from a discontented life. Health is one favoring condition, but by no means anindispensable one, of contentment. Woman's heart and love are a shrewd device of Nature, a trapwhich she sets for the average man, to force him into working. But the wise man will always preferwork chosen by himself."Please observe, however, that I am not yet pretending finally to JUDGE any of these attitudes. Iam only describing their variety. The securest way to the rapturous sorts of happiness of which thetwice-born make report has as an historic matter of fact been through a more radical pessimismthan anything that we have yet considered. We have seen how the lustre and enchantment may berubbed off from the goods of nature. But there is a pitch of unhappiness so great that the goods ofnature may be entirely forgotten, and all sentiment of their existence vanish from the mental field.

For this extremity of pessimism to be reached, something more is needed than observation of lifeand reflection upon death. The individual must in his own person become the prey of apathological melancholy. As the healthy-minded enthusiast succeeds in ignoring evil's veryexistence, so the subject of melancholy is forced in spite of himself to ignore that of all goodwhatever: for him it may no longer have the least reality. Such sensitiveness and susceptibility tomental pain is a rare occurrence where the nervous constitution is entirely normal; one seldomfinds it in a healthy subject even where he is the victim of the most atrocious cruelties of outwardfortune. So we note here the neurotic constitution, of which I said so much in my first lecture,making its active entrance on our scene, and destined to play a part in much that follows. Sincethese experiences of melancholy are in the first instance absolutely private and individual, I cannow help myself out with personal documents. Painful indeed they will be to listen to, and there isalmost an indecency in handling them in public. Yet they lie right in the middle of our path; and if we are to touch the psychology of religion at all seriously, we must be willing to forgetconventionalities, and dive below the smooth and lying official conversational surface.

One can distinguish many kinds of pathological depression. Sometimes it is mere passivejoylessness and dreariness. discouragement, dejection, lack of taste and zest and spring. <143>

Professor Ribot has proposed the name anhedonia to designate this condition.

"The state of anhedonia, if I may coin a new word to pair off with analgesia," he writes, "hasbeen very little studied, but it exists. A young girl was smitten with a liver disease which for sometime altered her constitution. She felt no longer any affection for her father and mother. She wouldhave played with her doll, but it was impossible to find the least pleasure in the act. The samethings which formerly convulsed her with laughter entirely failed to interest her now. Esquirolobserved the case of a very intelligent magistrate who was also a prey to hepatic disease. Everyemotion appeared dead within him. He manifested neither perversion nor violence, but completeabsence of emotional reaction. If he went to the theatre, which he did out of habit, he could find nopleasure there. The thought of his house of his home, of his wife, and of his absent children movedhim as little, he said, as a theorem of Euclid."[76]

[76] Ribot: Psychologie des sentiments, p. 54.

Prolonged seasickness will in most persons produce a temporary condition of anhedonia. Everygood, terrestrial or celestial, is imagined only to be turned from with disgust. A temporarycondition of this sort, connected with the religious evolution of a singularly lofty character, bothintellectual and moral, is well described by the Catholic philosopher, Father Gratry, in hisautobiographical recollections. In consequence of mental isolation and excessive study at thePolytechnic school, young Gratry fell into a state of nervous exhaustion with symptoms which hethus describes:-"I had such a universal terror that I woke at night with a start, thinking that the Pantheon wastumbling on the Polytechnic school, or that the school was in flames, or that the Seine was pouringinto the Catacombs, and that Paris was being swallowed up. And when these impressions werepast, all day long without respite I suffered an incurable and intolerable desolation, verging ondespair. I thought myself, in fact, rejected by God, lost, damned! I felt something like the sufferingof hell. Before that I had never even thought of hell. My mind had never turned in that direction.

Neither discourses nor reflections had impressed me in that way. I took no account of hell. Now,and all at once, I suffered in a measure what is suffered there.

"But what was perhaps still more dreadful is that every idea of heaven was taken away from me:

I could no longer conceive of anything of the sort. Heaven did not seem to me worth going to. Itwas like a vacuum; a mythological elysium, an abode of shadows less real than the earth. I couldconceive no joy, no pleasure in inhabiting it. Happiness, joy, light, affection, love-- all these wordswere now devoid of sense. Without doubt I could still have talked of all these things, but I hadbecome incapable of feeling anything in them, of understanding anything about them, of hopinganything from them, or of believing them to exist. There was my great and inconsolable grief! Ineither perceived nor conceived any longer the existence of happiness or perfection. An abstractheaven over a naked rock. Such was my present abode for eternity."[77]

[77] A. Gratry: Souvenirs de ma jeunesse, 1880, pp. 119-121, abridged. Some persons areaffected with anhedonia permanently, or at any rate with a loss of the usual appetite for life. Theannals of suicide supply such examples as the following:-Anuneducated domestic servant, aged nineteen, poisons herself, and leaves two lettersexpressing her motive for the act. To her parents she writes:-"Life is sweet perhaps to some, but I prefer what is sweeter than life, and that is death. So good-by forever, my dear parents. It is nobody's fault, but a strong desire of my own which I havelonged to fulfill for three or four years. I have always had a hope that some day I might have anopportunity of fulfilling it, and now it has come. . . . It is a wonder I have put this off so long, but Ithought perhaps I should cheer up a bit and put all thought out of my head." To her brother shewrites: "Good-by forever, my own dearest brother. By the time you get this I shall be gone forever.

I know, dear love, there is no forgiveness for what I am going to do. . . . I am tired of living, so amwilling to die. . . . Life may be sweet to some, but death to me is sweeter." S. A. K. Strahan:

Suicide and Insanity, 2d edition, London, 1894, p. 131.

So much for melancholy in the sense of incapacity for joyous feeling. A much worse form of it ispositive and active anguish, a sort of psychical neuralgia wholly unknown to healthy life. Suchanguish may partake of various characters, having sometimes more the quality of loathing;sometimes that of irritation and exasperation; or again of self-mistrust and self-despair; or ofsuspicion, anxiety, trepidation, fear. The patient may rebel or submit; may accuse himself, oraccuse outside powers; and he may or he may not be tormented by the theoretical mystery of whyhe should so have to suffer. Most cases are mixed cases, and we should not treat our classificationswith too much respect. Moreover, it is only a relatively small proportion of cases that connectthemselves with the religious sphere of experience at all. Exasperated cases, for instance, as a ruledo not. I quote now literally from the first case of melancholy on which I lay my hand. It is a letterfrom a patient in a French asylum.

"I suffer too much in this hospital, both physically and morally. Besides the burnings and thesleeplessness (for I no longer sleep since I am shut up here, and the little rest I get is broken by baddreams, and I am waked with a jump by night mares dreadful visions, lightning, thunder, and therest), fear, atrocious fear, presses me down, holds me without respite, never lets me go. Where isthe justice in it all! What have I done to deserve this excess of severity? Under what form will thisfear crush me? What would I not owe to any one who would rid me of my life! Eat, drink, lieawake all night, suffer without interruption--such is the fine legacy I have received from mymother! What I fail to understand is this abuse of power. There are limits to everything, there is amiddle way. But God knows neither middle way nor limits. I say God, but why? All I have knownso far has been the devil. After all, I am afraid of God as much as of the devil, so I drift along,thinking of nothing but suicide, but with neither courage nor means here to execute the act. As youread this, it will easily prove to you my insanity. The style and the ideas are incoherent enough--Ican see that myself. But I cannot keep myself from being either crazy or an idiot; and, as thingsare, from whom should I ask pity? I am defenseless against the invisible enemy who is tighteninghis coils around me. I should be no better armed against him even if I saw him, or had seen him.

Oh, if he would but kill me, devil take him! Death, death, once for all! But I stop. I have raved to you long enough. I say raved, for I can write no otherwise, having neither brain nor thoughts left.

O God! what a misfortune to be born! Born like a mushroom, doubtless between an evening and amorning; and how true and right I was when in our philosophy-year in college I chewed the cud ofbitterness with the pessimists. Yes, indeed, there is more pain in life than gladness--it is one longagony until the grave. Think how gay it makes me to remember that this horrible misery of mine,coupled with this unspeakable fear, may last fifty, one hundred, who knows how many moreyears!"[78]

[78] Roubinovitch et Toulouse: La Melancolie, 1897, p. 170, abridged.

This letter shows two things. First, you see how the entire consciousness of the poor man is sochoked with the feeling of evil that the sense of there being any good in the world is lost for himaltogether. His attention excludes it, cannot admit it: the sun has left his heaven. And secondly yousee how the querulous temper of his misery keeps his mind from taking a religious direction.

Querulousness of mind tends in fact rather towards irreligion; and it has played, so far as I know,no part whatever in the construction of religious systems.

Religious melancholy must be cast in a more melting mood. Tolstoy has left us, in his bookcalled My Confession, a wonderful account of the attack of melancholy which led him to his ownreligious conclusions. The latter in some respects are peculiar; but the melancholy presents twocharacters which make it a typical document for our present purpose. First it is a well-marked caseof anhedonia, of passive loss of appetite for all life's values; and second, it shows how the alteredand estranged aspect which the world assumed in consequence of this stimulated Tolstoy's intellectto a gnawing, carking questioning and effort for philosophic relief. I mean to quote Tolstoy atsome length; but before doing so, I will make a general remark on each of these two points.

First on our spiritual judgments and the sense of value in general.

It is notorious that facts are compatible with opposite emotional comments, since the same factwill inspire entirely different feelings in different persons, and at different times in the sameperson; and there is no rationally deducible connection between any outer fact and the sentiments itmay happen to provoke. These have their source in another sphere of existence altogether, in theanimal and spiritual region of the subject's being. Conceive yourself, if possible, suddenly strippedof all the emotion with which your world now inspires you, and try to imagine it AS IT EXISTS,purely by itself, without your favorable or unfavorable, hopeful or apprehensive comment. It willbe almost impossible for you to realize such a condition of negativity and deadness. No oneportion of the universe would then have importance beyond another; and the whole collection of itsthings and series of its events would be without significance, character, expression, or perspective.

Whatever of value, interest, or meaning our respective worlds may appear endued with are thuspure gifts of the spectator's mind. The passion of love is the most familiar and extreme example ofthis fact. If it comes, it comes; if it does not <148> come, no process of reasoning can force it. Yetit transforms the value of the creature loved as utterly as the sunrise transforms Mont Blanc from acorpse-like gray to a rosy enchantment; and it sets the whole world to a new tune for the lover andgives a new issue to his life. So with fear, with indignation, jealousy, ambition, worship. If they arethere, life changes. And whether they shall be there or not depends almost always upon nonlogical,often on organic conditions. And as the excited interest which these passions put into the world is our gift to the world, just so are the passions themselves GIFTS--gifts to us, from sourcessometimes low and sometimes high; but almost always nonlogical and beyond our control. Howcan the moribund old man reason back to himself the romance, the mystery, the imminence ofgreat things with which our old earth tingled for him in the days when he was young and well?

Gifts, either of the flesh or of the spirit; and the spirit bloweth where it listeth; and the world'smaterials lend their surface passively to all the gifts alike, as the stage-setting receives indifferentlywhatever alternating colored lights may be shed upon it from the optical apparatus in the gallery.

Meanwhile the practically real world for each one of us, the effective world of the individual, isthe compound world, the physical facts and emotional values in indistinguishable combination.

Withdraw or pervert either factor of this complex resultant, and the kind of experience we callpathological ensues.

In Tolstoy's case the sense that life had any meaning whatever was for a time wholly withdrawn.

The result was a transformation in the whole expression of reality. When we come to study thephenomenon of conversion or religious regeneration, we shall see that a not infrequentconsequence of the change operated in the subject is a transfiguration of the face of nature in hiseyes. A new heaven seems to shine upon a new earth. In melancholiacs there is usually a similarchange, only it is in the reverse direction. The world now looks remote, strange, sinister, uncanny.

Its color is gone, its breath is cold, there is no speculation in the eyes it glares with. "It is as if Ilived in another century," says one asylum patient.--"I see everything through a cloud," saysanother, "things are not as they were, and I am changed."--"I see," says a third, "I touch, but thethings do not come near me, a thick veil alters the hue and look of everything."--"Persons movelike shadows, and sounds seem to come from a distant world."--"There is no longer any past forme; people appear so strange; it is as if I could not see any reality, as if I were in a theatre; as ifpeople were actors, and everything were scenery; I can no longer find myself; I walk, but why?

Everything floats before my eyes, but leaves no impression."--"I weep false tears, I have unrealhands: the things I see are not real things."--Such are expressions that naturally rise to the lips ofmelancholy subjects describing their changed state.[79]

[79] I cull these examples from the work of G. Dumas: La Tristesse et la Joie, 1900.

Now there are some subjects whom all this leaves a prey to the profoundest astonishment. Thestrangeness is wrong. The unreality cannot be. A mystery is concealed, and a metaphysicalsolution must exist. If the natural world is so double-faced and unhomelike, what world, whatthing is real? An urgent wondering and questioning is set up, a poring theoretic activity, and in thedesperate effort to get into right relations with the matter, the sufferer is often led to what becomesfor him a satisfying religious solution.

At about the age of fifty, Tolstoy relates that he began to have moments of perplexity, of what hecalls arrest, as if he knew not "how to live," or what to do. It is obvious that these were moments inwhich the excitement and interest which our functions naturally bring had ceased. Life had beenenchanting, it was now flat sober, more than <150> sober, dead. Things were meaningless whosemeaning had always been self-evident. The questions "Why?" and "What next?" began to besethim more and more frequently. At first it seemed as if such questions must be answerable, and as ifhe could easily find the answers if he would take the time; but as they ever became more urgent, he perceived that it was like those first discomforts of a sick man, to which he pays but little attentiontill they run into one continuous suffering, and then he realizes that what he took for a passingdisorder means the most momentous thing in the world for him, means his death.

These questions "Why?" "Wherefore?" "What for?" found no response.

"I felt," says Tolstoy, "that something had broken within me on which my life had always rested,that I had nothing left to hold on to, and that morally my life had stopped. An invincible forceimpelled me to get rid of my existence, in one way or another. It cannot be said exactly that IWISHED to kill myself, for the force which drew me away from life was fuller, more powerful,more general than any mere desire. It was a force like my old aspiration to live, only it impelledme in the opposite direction. It was an aspiration of my whole being to get out of life.

"Behold me then, a man happy and in good health, hiding the rope in order not to hang myself tothe rafters of the room where every night I went to sleep alone; behold me no longer goingshooting, lest I should yield to the too easy temptation of putting an end to myself with my gun.

"I did not know what I wanted. I was afraid of life; I was driven to leave it; and in spite of that Istill hoped something from it.

"All this took place at a time when so far as all my outer circumstances went, I ought to havebeen completely happy. I had a good wife who loved me and whom I loved; good children and alarge property which was increasing with no pains taken on my part. I was more respected by mykinsfolk and acquaintance than I had ever been; I was loaded with praise by strangers; and withoutexaggeration I could believe my name already famous. Moreover I was neither insane nor ill. Onthe contrary, I possessed a physical and mental strength which I have rarely met in persons of myage. I could mow as well as the peasants, I could work with my brain eight hours uninterruptedlyand feel no bad effects.

"And yet I could give no reasonable meaning to any actions of my life. And I was surprised that Ihad not understood this from the very beginning. My state of mind was as if some wicked andstupid jest was being played upon me by some one. One can live only so long as one is intoxicated,drunk with life; but when one grows sober one cannot fail to see that it is all a stupid cheat.

What is truest about it is that there is nothing even funny or silly in it; it is cruel and stupid,purely and simply.

"The oriental fable of the traveler surprised in the desert by a wild beast is very old.

"Seeking to save himself from the fierce animal, the traveler jumps into a well with no water init; but at the bottom of this well he sees a dragon waiting with open mouth to devour him. And theunhappy man, not daring to go out lest he should be the prey of the beast, not daring to jump to thebottom lest he should be devoured by the dragon, clings to the branches of a wild bush whichgrows out of one of the cracks of the well. His hands weaken, and he feels that he must soon giveway to certain fate; but still he clings, and see two mice, one white, the other black, evenly movinground the bush to which he hangs, and gnawing off its roots"The traveler sees this and knows that he must inevitably perish; but while thus hanging he looksabout him and finds on the leaves of the bush some drops of honey. These he reaches with histongue and licks them off with rapture.

"Thus I hang upon the boughs of life, knowing that the inevitable dragon of death is waitingready to tear me, and I cannot comprehend why I am thus made a martyr. I try to suck the honeywhich formerly consoled me; but the honey pleases me no longer, and day and night the whitemouse and the black mouse gnaw the branch to which I cling. I can see but one thing: theinevitable dragon and the mice--I cannot turn my gaze away from them.

"This is no fable, but the literal incontestable truth which every one may understand. What willbe the outcome of what I do to-day? Of what I shall do to-morrow? What will be the outcome ofall my life? Why should I live? Why should I do anything? Is there in life any purpose which theinevitable death which awaits me does not undo and destroy?

"These questions are the simplest in the world. From the stupid child to the wisest old man, theyare in the soul of every human being. Without an answer to them, it is impossible, as Iexperienced, for life to go on.

"'But perhaps,' I often said to myself, 'there may be something I have failed to notice or tocomprehend. It is not possible that this condition of despair should be natural to mankind.' And Isought for an explanation in all the branches of knowledge acquired by men. I questioned painfullyand protractedly and with no idle curiosity. I sought, not with indolence, but laboriously andobstinately for days and nights together. I sought like a man who is lost and seeks to save himself-andI found nothing. I became convinced, moreover, that all those who before me had sought foran answer in the sciences have also found nothing. And not only this, but that they have recognizedthat the very thing which was leading me to despair--the meaningless absurdity of life--is the onlyincontestable knowledge accessible to man."To prove this point, Tolstoy quotes the Buddha, Solomon, and Schopenhauer. And he finds onlyfour ways in which men of his own class and society are accustomed to meet the situation. Eithermere animal blindness, sucking the honey without seeing the dragon or the mice--"and from such away," he says, "I can learn nothing, after what I now know;" or reflective epicureanism, snatchingwhat it can while the day lasts--which is only a more deliberate sort of stupefaction than the first;or manly suicide; or seeing the mice and dragon and yet weakly and plaintively clinging to thebush of life. Suicide was naturally the consistent course dictated by the logical intellect.

"Yet," says Tolstoy, "whilst my intellect was working, something else in me was working too,and kept me from the deed--a consciousness of life, as I may call it, which was like a force thatobliged my mind to fix itself in another direction and draw me out of my situation of despair. . . .

During the whole course of this year, when I almost unceasingly kept asking myself how to endthe business, whether by the rope or by the bullet, during all that time, alongside of all thosemovements of my ideas and observations, my heart kept languishing with another pining emotion.

I can call this by no other name than that of a thirst for God. This craving for God had nothing todo with the movement of my ideas--in fact, it was the direct contrary of that movement--but itcame from my heart. It was like a feeling of dread that made me seem like an orphan and isolatedin the midst of all these things that were so foreign. And this feeling of dread was mitigated by thehope of finding the assistance of some one."[80]

[80] My extracts are from the French translation by "Zonia." In abridging I have taken the libertyof transposing one passage.

Of the process, intellectual as well as emotional, which, starting from this idea of God, led toTolstoy's recovery, I will say nothing in this lecture, reserving it for a later hour. The only thingthat need interest us now is the phenomenon of his absolute disenchantment with ordinary life, andthe fact that the whole range of habitual values may, to a man as powerful and full of faculty as hewas, come to appear so ghastly a mockery.

When disillusionment has gone as far as this, there is seldom a restitutio ad integrum. One hastasted of the fruit of the tree, and the happiness of Eden never comes again. The happiness thatcomes, when any does come--and often enough it fails to return in an acute form, though its formis sometimes very acute--is not the simple, ignorance of ill, but something vastly more complex,including natural evil as one of its elements, but finding natural evil no such stumbling-block andterror because it now sees it swallowed up in supernatural good. The process is one of redemption,not of mere reversion to natural health, and the sufferer, when saved, is saved by what seems tohim a second birth, a deeper kind of conscious being than he could enjoy before.

We find a somewhat different type of religious melancholy enshrined in literature in JohnBunyan's autobiography. Tolstoy's preoccupations were largely objective, for the purpose andmeaning of life in general was what so troubled him; but poor Bunyan's troubles were over thecondition of his own personal self. He was a typical case of the psychopathic temperament,sensitive of conscience to a diseased degree, beset by doubts, fears and insistent ideas, and a victimof verbal automatisms, both motor and sensory. These were usually texts of Scripture which,sometimes damnatory and sometimes favorable, would come in a half-hallucinatory form as ifthey were voices, and fasten on his mind and buffet it between them like a shuttlecock. Added tothis were a fearful melancholy self-contempt and despair.

"Nay, thought I, now I grow worse and worse, now I am farther from conversion than ever I wasbefore. If now I should have burned at the stake, I could not believe that Christ had love for me;alas, I could neither hear him, nor see him, nor feel him, nor savor any of his things. Sometimes Iwould tell my condition to the people of God, which, when they heard, they would pity me, andwould tell of the Promises. But they had as good have told me that I must reach the Sun with myfinger as have bidden me receive or rely upon the Promise. [Yet] all this while as to the act ofsinning, I never was more tender than now; I durst not take a pin or stick, though but so big as astraw, for my conscience now was sore, and would smart at every touch; I could not tell how tospeak my words, for fear I should misplace them. Oh, how gingerly did I then go, in all I did orsaid! I found myself as on a miry bog that shook if I did but stir; and was as there left both by Godand Christ, and the spirit, and all good things.

"But my original and inward pollution, that was my plague and my affliction. By reason of that, Iwas more loathsome in my own eyes than was a toad; and I thought I was so in God's eyes too. Sinand corruption, I said, would as naturally bubble out of my heart as water would bubble out of afountain. I could have changed heart with anybody. I thought none but the Devil himself couldequal me for inward wickedness and pollution of mind. Sure, thought I, I am forsaken of God; andthus I continued a long while, even for some years together.

"And now I was sorry that God had made me a man. The beasts, birds, fishes, etc., I blessed theircondition, for they had not a sinful nature; they were not obnoxious to the wrath of God; they were not to go to hell-fire after death. I could therefore have rejoiced, had my condition been as any oftheirs. Now I blessed the condition of the dog and toad, yea, gladly would I have been in thecondition of the dog or horse, for I knew they had no soul to perish under the everlasting weight ofHell or Sin, as mine was like to do. Nay, and though I saw this, felt this, and was broken to pieceswith it, yet that which added to my sorrow was, that I could not find with all my soul that I diddesire deliverance. My heart was at times exceedingly hard. If I would have given a thousandpounds for a tear, I could not shed one; no, nor sometimes scarce desire to shed one.

"I was both a burthen and a terror to myself; nor did I ever so know, as now, what it was to beweary of my life, and yet afraid to die. How gladly would I have been anything but myself!

Anything but a man! and in any condition but my own."[81]

[81] Grace abounding to the Chief of Sinners: I have printed a number of detached passagescontinuously.

Poor patient Bunyan, like Tolstoy, saw the light again, but we must also postpone that part of hisstory to another hour. In a later lecture I will also give the end of the experience of Henry Alline, adevoted evangelist who worked in Nova Scotia a hundred years ago, and who thus vividlydescribes the high-water mark of the religious melancholy which formed its beginning. The typewas not unlike Bunyan's.

"Everything I saw seemed to be a burden to me; the earth seemed accursed for my sake: all trees,plants, rocks, hills, and vales seemed to be dressed in mourning and groaning, under the weight ofthe curse, and everything around me seemed to be conspiring my ruin. My sins seemed to be laidopen; so that I thought that every one I saw knew them, and sometimes I was almost ready toacknowledge many things, which I thought they knew: yea sometimes it seemed to me as if everyone was pointing me out as the most guilty wretch upon earth. I had now so great a sense of thevanity and emptiness of all things here below, that I knew the whole world could not possiblymake me happy, no, nor the whole system of creation. When I waked in the morning, the firstthought would be, Oh, my wretched soul, what shall I do, where shall I go? And when I laid down,would say, I shall be perhaps in hell before morning. I would many times look on the beasts withenvy, wishing with all my heart I was in their place, that I might have no soul to lose; and when Ihave seen birds flying over my head, have often thought within myself, Oh, that I could fly awayfrom my danger and distress! Oh, how happy should I be, if I were in their place!"[82]

[82] The Life and Journal of the Rev. Mr. Henry Alline, Boston 1806, pp. 25, 26. I owe myacquaintance with this book to my colleague, Dr. Benjamin Rand.

Envy of the placid beasts seems to be a very widespread affection in this type of sadness.

The worst kind of melancholy is that which takes the form of panic fear. Here is an excellentexample, for permission to print which I have to thank the sufferer. The original is in French, andthough the subject was evidently in a bad nervous condition at the time of which he writes, his casehas otherwise the merit of extreme simplicity. I translate freely.

"Whilst in this state of philosophic pessimism and general depression of spirits about myprospects, I went one evening into a dressing-room in the twilight to procure some article that was there; when suddenly there fell upon me without any warning, just as if it came out of thedarkness, a horrible fear of my own existence. Simultaneously there arose in my mind the image ofan epileptic patient whom I had seen in the asylum, a black-haired youth with greenish skin,entirely idiotic, who used to sit all day on one of the benches, or rather shelves against the wall,with his knees drawn up against his chin, and the coarse gray undershirt, which was his onlygarment, drawn over them inclosing his entire figure. He sat there like a sort of sculpturedEgyptian cat or Peruvian mummy, moving nothing but his black eyes and looking absolutely nonhuman.

This image and my fear entered into a species of combination with each other THATSHAPE AM I, I felt, potentially. Nothing that I possess can defend me against that fate, if the hourfor it should strike for me as it struck for him. There was such a horror of him, and such aperception of my own merely momentary discrepancy from him, that it was as if somethinghitherto solid within my breast gave way entirely, and I became a mass of quivering fear. After thisthe universe was changed for me altogether. I awoke morning after morning with a horrible dreadat the pit of my stomach, and with a sense of the insecurity of life that I never knew before, andthat I have never felt since.[83] It was like a revelation; and although the immediate feelingspassed away, the experience has made me sympathetic with the morbid feelings of others eversince. It gradually faded, but for months I was unable to go out into the dark alone.

[83] Compare Bunyan. "There was I struck into a very great trembling, insomuch that at sometimes I could, for days together, feel my very body, as well as my mind, to shake and totter underthe sense of the dreadful judgment of God, that should fall on those that have sinned that mostfearful and unpardonable sin. I felt also such clogging and heat at my stomach, by reason of thismy terror, that I was, especially at some times, as if my breast-bone would have split asunder. . . .

Thus did I wind, and twine, and shrink, under the burden that was upon me; which burden also didso oppress me that I could neither stand, nor go, nor lie, either at rest or quiet.""In general I dreaded to be left alone. I remember wondering how other people could live, how Imyself had ever lived, so unconscious of that pit of insecurity beneath the surface of life. Mymother in particular, a very cheerful person, seemed to me a perfect paradox in herunconsciousness of danger, which you may well believe I was very careful not to disturb byrevelations of my own state of mind (I have always thought that this experience of melancholia ofmine had a religious bearing."On asking this correspondent to explain more fully what he meant by these last words, theanswer he wrote was this:-"I mean that the fear was so invasive and powerful that if I had not clung to scripture-texts like'The eternal God is my refuge,' etc., 'Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy-laden,' etc., 'Iam the resurrection and the life,' etc., I think I should have grown really insane."[84]

[84] For another case of fear equally sudden, see Henry James: Society the Redeemed Form ofMan, Boston, 1879, pp. 43 ff.

There is no need of more examples. The cases we have looked at are enough. One of them givesus the vanity of mortal things; another the sense of sin; and the remaining one describes the fear of the universe;--and in one or other of these three ways it always is that man's original optimism andself-satisfaction get leveled with the dust.

In none of these cases was there any intellectual insanity or delusion about matters of fact; butwere we disposed to open the chapter of really insane melancholia, with its <159> hallucinationsand delusions, it would be a worse story still--desperation absolute and complete, the wholeuniverse coagulating about the sufferer into a material of overwhelming horror, surrounding himwithout opening or end. Not the conception or intellectual perception of evil, but the grisly blood-freezing heart-palsying sensation of it close upon one, and no other conception or sensation able tolive for a moment in its presence. How irrelevantly remote seem all our usual refined optimismsand intellectual and moral consolations in presence of a need of help like this! Here is the real coreof the religious problem: Help! help! No prophet can claim to bring a final message unless he saysthings that will have a sound of reality in the ears of victims such as these. But the deliverancemust come in as strong a form as the complaint, if it is to take effect; and that seems a reason whythe coarser religions, revivalistic, orgiastic, with blood and miracles and supernatural operations,may possibly never be displaced. Some constitutions need them too much.

Arrived at this point, we can see how great an antagonism may naturally arise between thehealthy-minded way of viewing life and the way that takes all this experience of evil as somethingessential. To this latter way, the morbid-minded way, as we might call it, healthy-mindedness pureand simple seems unspeakably blind and shallow. To the healthy-minded way, on the other hand,the way of the sick soul seems unmanly and diseased. With their grubbing in rat-holes instead ofliving in the light; with their manufacture of fears, and preoccupation with every unwholesomekind of misery, there is something almost obscene about these children of wrath and cravers of asecond birth. If religious intolerance and hanging and burning could again become the order of theday, there is little doubt that, however it may have been in the past, the healthy-minded would<160> at present show themselves the less indulgent party of the two.

In our own attitude, not yet abandoned, of impartial onlookers, what are we to say of thisquarrel? It seems to me that we are bound to say that morbid-mindedness ranges over the widerscale of experience, and that its survey is the one that overlaps. The method of averting one'sattention from evil, and living simply in the light of good is splendid as long as it will work. It willwork with many persons; it will work far more generally than most of us are ready to suppose; andwithin the sphere of its successful operation there is nothing to be said against it as a religioussolution. But it breaks down impotently as soon as melancholy comes; and even though one bequite free from melancholy one's self, there is no doubt that healthy-mindedness is inadequate as aphilosophical doctrine, because the evil facts which it refuses positively to account for are agenuine portion of reality; and they may after all be the best key to life's significance, and possiblythe only openers of our eyes to the deepest levels of truth.

The normal process of life contains moments as bad as any of those which insane melancholy isfilled with, moments in which radical evil gets its innings and takes its solid turn. The lunatic'svisions of horror are all drawn from the material of daily fact. Our civilization is founded on theshambles, and every individual existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony. If youprotest, my friend, wait till you arrive there yourself! To believe in the carnivorous reptiles ofgeologic times is hard for our imagination--they seem too much like mere museum specimens. Yet there is no tooth in any one of those museum-skulls that did not daily through long years of theforetime hold fast to the body struggling in despair of some fated living victim. Forms of horrorjust as dreadful to the victims, if on a smaller spatial scale, fill the world about us to-day. Here onour very <161> hearths and in our gardens the infernal cat plays with the panting mouse, or holdsthe hot bird fluttering in her jaws. Crocodiles and rattlesnakes and pythons are at this momentvessels of life as real as we are; their loathsome existence fills every minute of every day that dragsits length along; and whenever they or other wild beasts clutch their living prey, the deadly horrorwhich an agitated melancholiac feels is the literally right reaction on the situation.[85]

[85] Example: "It was about eleven o'clock at night . . . but I strolled on still with the people. . . .

Suddenly upon the left side of our road, a crackling was heard among the bushes; all of us werealarmed, and in an instant a tiger, rushing out of the jungle, pounced upon the one of the party thatwas foremost, and carried him off in the twinkling of an eye. The rush of the animal, and the crushof the poor victim's bones in his mouth, and his last cry of distress, 'Ho hai!' involuntarily reechoedby all of us, was over in three seconds; and then I know not what happened till I returned to mysenses, when I found myself and companions lying down on the ground as if prepared to bedevoured by our enemy the sovereign of the forest. I find my pen incapable of describing the terrorof that dreadful moment. Our limbs stiffened, our power of speech ceased, and our hearts beatviolently, and only a whisper of the same 'Ho hai!' was heard from us. In this state we crept on allfours for some distance back, and then ran for life with the speed of an Arab horse for about halfan hour, and fortunately happened to come to a small village. . . . After this every one of us wasattacked with fever, attended with shivering, in which deplorable state we remained tillmorning."--Autobiography of Lutullah a Mohammedan Gentleman, Leipzig, 1857, p. 112.

It may indeed be that no religious reconciliation with the absolute totality of things is possible.

Some evils, indeed, are ministerial to higher forms of good; but it may be that there are forms ofevil so extreme as to enter into no good system whatsoever, and that, in respect of such evil, dumbsubmission or neglect to notice is the only practical resource. This question must confront us on alater day. But provisionally, and as a mere matter of program and method, since the evil facts areas genuine parts of nature as the good ones, the philosophic presumption should be that they havesome rational significance, and that systematic healthy-mindedness, failing as it does to accord tosorrow, pain, and death any positive and active attention whatever, is formally less complete thansystems that try at least to include these elements in their scope.

The completest religions would therefore seem to be those in which the pessimistic elements arebest developed. Buddhism, of course, and Christianity are the best known to us of these. They areessentially religions of deliverance: the man must die to an unreal life before he can be born intothe real life. In my next lecture, I will try to discuss some of the psychological conditions of thissecond birth. Fortunately from now onward we shall have to deal with more cheerful subjects thanthose which we have recently been dwelling on.
Lecture VIII THE DIVIDED SELF, AND THE PROCESS OF ITS UNIFICATION
The last lecture was a painful one, dealing as it did with evil as a pervasive element of the worldwe live in. At the close of it we were brought into full view of the contrast between the two waysof looking at life which are characteristic respectively of what we called the healthy-minded, whoneed to be born only once, and of the sick souls, who must be twice-born in order to be happy. Theresult is two different conceptions of the universe of our experience. In the religion of the once-born the world is a sort of rectilinear or one-storied affair, whose accounts are kept in onedenomination, whose parts have just the values which naturally they appear to have, and of whicha simple algebraic sum of pluses and minuses will give the total worth. Happiness and religiouspeace consist in living on the plus side of the account. In the religion of the twice-born, on theother hand, the world is a double-storied mystery. Peace cannot be reached by the simple additionof pluses and elimination of minuses from life. Natural good is not simply insufficient in amountand transient, there lurks a falsity in its very being. Cancelled as it all is by death if not by earlierenemies, it gives no final balance, and can never be the thing intended for our lasting worship. Itkeeps us from our real good, rather; and renunciation and despair of it are our first step in thedirection of the truth. There are two lives, the natural and the spiritual, and we must lose the onebefore we can participate in the other. In their extreme forms, of pure naturalism and puresalvationism, the two types are violently contrasted; though here as in most other currentclassifications, the radical extremes are somewhat ideal abstractions, and the concrete humanbeings whom we oftenest meet are intermediate varieties and mixtures. Practically, however, youall recognize the difference: you understand, for example, the disdain of the methodist convert forthe mere sky-blue healthy-minded moralist; and you likewise enter into the aversion of the latter towhat seems to him the diseased subjectivism of the Methodist, dying to live, as he calls it, andmaking of paradox and the inversion of natural appearances the essence of God's truth.[86]

[86] E.g., "Our young people are diseased with the theological problems of original sin, origin ofevil, predestination, and the like. These never presented a practical difficulty to any man--neverdarkened across any man's road, who did not go out of his way to seek them. These are the soul'smumps, and measles, and whooping-coughs, etc. Emerson: Spiritual Laws.

The psychological basis of the twice-born character seems to be a certain discordancy orheterogeneity in the native temperament of the subject, an incompletely unified moral andintellectual constitution.

"Homo duplex, homo duplex!" writes Alphonse Daudet. "The first time that I perceived that Iwas two was at the death of my brother Henri, when my father cried out so dramatically, 'He isdead, he is dead!' While my first self wept, my second self thought, 'How truly given was that cry,how fine it would be at the theatre.' I was then fourteen years old.

"This horrible duality has often given me matter for reflection. Oh, this terrible second me,always seated whilst the other is on foot, acting, living, suffering, bestirring itself. This second methat I have never been able to intoxicate, to make shed tears, or put to sleep. And how it sees intothings, and how it mocks!"[87]

[87] Notes sur la Vie, p. 1.

Recent works on the psychology of character have had much to say upon this point.[88] Somepersons are born with an inner constitution which is harmonious and well balanced from the outset.

Their impulses are consistent with one another, their will follows without trouble the guidance oftheir intellect, their passions are not excessive, and their lives are little haunted by regrets. Othersare oppositely constituted; and are so in degrees which may vary from something so slight as toresult in a merely odd or whimsical inconsistency, to a discordancy of which the consequencesmay be inconvenient in the extreme. Of the more innocent kinds of heterogeneity I find a goodexample in Mrs. Annie Besant's autobiography.

[88] See, for example, F. Paulhan, in his book Les Caracteres, 1894, who contrasts lesEquilibres, les Unifies, with les Inquiets, les Contrariants, les Incoherents, les Emiettes, as so manydiverse psychic types.

"I have ever been the queerest mixture of weakness and strength, and have paid heavily for theweakness. As a child I used to suffer tortures of shyness, and if my shoe-lace was untied wouldfeel shamefacedly that every eye was fixed on the unlucky string; as a girl I would shrink awayfrom strangers and think myself unwanted and unliked, so that I was full of eager gratitude to anyone who noticed me kindly, as the young mistress of a house I was afraid of my servants, andwould let careless work pass rather than bear the pain of reproving the ill-doer; when I have beenlecturing and debating with no lack of spirit on the platform, I have preferred to go without what Iwanted at the hotel rather than to ring and make the waiter fetch it. Combative on the platform indefense of any cause I cared for, I shrink from quarrel or disapproval in the house, and am acoward at heart in private while a good fighter in public. How often have I passed unhappyquarters of an hour screwing up my courage to find fault with some subordinate whom my dutycompelled me to reprove, and how often have I jeered myself for a fraud as the doughty platformcombatant, when shrinking from blaming some lad or lass for doing their work badly. An unkindlook or word has availed to make me shrink into myself as a snail into its shell, while, on theplatform, opposition makes me speak my best."[89]

[89] Annie Besant: an Autobiography, p. 82.

This amount of inconsistency will only count as amiable weakness; but a stronger degree ofheterogeneity may make havoc of the subject's life. There are persons whose existence is littlemore than a series of zig-zags, as now one tendency and now another gets the upper hand. Theirspirit wars with their flesh, they wish for incompatibles, wayward impulses interrupt their mostdeliberate plans, and their lives are one long drama of repentance and of effort to repairmisdemeanors and mistakes.

Heterogeneous personality has been explained as the result of inheritance--the traits of characterof incompatible and antagonistic ancestors are supposed to be preserved alongside of each other.

[90] This explanation may pass for what it is worth--it certainly needs corroboration. But whateverthe cause of heterogeneous personality may be, we find the extreme examples of it in thepsychopathic temperament, of which I spoke in my first lecture. All writers about thattemperament make the inner heterogeneity prominent in their descriptions. Frequently, indeed, it isonly this trait that leads us to ascribe that temperament to a man at all. A "degenere superieur" is simply a man of sensibility in many directions, who finds more difficulty than is common inkeeping <167> his spiritual house in order and running his furrow straight, because his feelingsand impulses are too keen and too discrepant mutually. In the haunting and insistent ideas, in theirrational impulses, the morbid scruples, dreads, and inhibitions which beset the psychopathictemperament when it is thoroughly pronounced, we have exquisite examples of heterogeneouspersonality. Bunyan had an obsession of the words, "Sell Christ for this, sell him for that, sell him,sell him!" which would run through his mind a hundred times together, until one day out of breathwith retorting, "I will not, I will not," he impulsively said, "Let him go if he will," and this loss ofthe battle kept him in despair for over a year. The lives of the saints are full of such blasphemousobsessions, ascribed invariably to the direct agency of Satan. The phenomenon connects itself withthe life of the subconscious self, so-called, of which we must erelong speak more directly.

[90] Smith Baker, in Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases, September, 1893.

Now in all of us, however constituted, but to a degree the greater in proportion as we are intenseand sensitive and subject to diversified temptations, and to the greatest possible degree if we aredecidedly psychopathic, does the normal evolution of character chiefly consist in the straighteningout and unifying of the inner self. The higher and the lower feelings, the useful and the erringimpulses, begin by being a comparative chaos within us--they must end by forming a stable systemof functions in right subordination. Unhappiness is apt to characterize the period of order-makingand struggle. If the individual be of tender conscience and religiously quickened, the unhappinesswill take the form of moral remorse and compunction, of feeling inwardly vile and wrong, and ofstanding in false relations to the author of one's being and appointer of one's spiritual fate. This isthe religious melancholy and "conviction of sin" that have played so large a part in the history ofProtestant Christianity. The man's interior is a battle-ground for what he feels to be two deadlyhostile selves, one actual, the other ideal. As Victor Hugo makes his Mahomet say:-"Je suis le champ vil des sublimes combats: Tantot l'homme d'en haut, et tantot l'homme d'enbas; Et le mal dans ma bouche avec le bien alterne, Comme dans le desert le sable et la citerne."Wrong living, impotent aspirations; "What I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I," asSaint Paul says; self-loathing, self-despair; an unintelligible and intolerable burden to which one ismysteriously the heir.

Let me quote from some typical cases of discordant personality, with melancholy in the form ofself-condemnation and sense of sin. Saint Augustine's case is a classic example. You all rememberhis half-pagan, half-Christian bringing up at Carthage, his emigration to Rome and Milan, hisadoption of Manicheism and subsequent skepticism, and his restless search for truth and purity oflife; and finally how, distracted by the struggle between the two souls in his breast and ashamed ofhis own weakness of will, when so many others whom he knew and knew of had thrown off theshackles of sensuality and dedicated themselves to chastity and the higher life, he heard a voice inthe garden say, "Sume, lege" (take and read), and opening the Bible at random, saw the text, "notin chambering and wantonness," etc., which seemed directly sent to his address, and laid the innerstorm to rest forever.[91] Augustine's psychological genius has given an account of the trouble ofhaving a divided self which has never been surpassed.

[91] Louis Gourdon (Essai sur la Conversion de Saint Augustine, Paris, Fischbacher, 1900) hasshown by an analysis of Augustine's writings immediately after the date of his conversion (A. D.

386) that the account he gives in the Confessions is premature. The crisis in the garden marked adefinitive conversion from his former life, but it was to the neo-platonic spiritualism and only ahalfway stage toward Christianity. The latter he appears not fully and radically to have embraceduntil four years more had passed.

"The new will which I began to have was not yet strong enough to overcome that other will,strengthened by long indulgence. So these two wills, one old, one new, one carnal, the otherspiritual, contended with each other and disturbed my soul. I understood by my own experiencewhat I had read, 'flesh lusteth against spirit, and spirit against flesh.' It was myself indeed in boththe wills, yet more myself in that which I approved in myself than in that which I disapproved inmyself. Yet it was through myself that habit had attained so fierce a mastery over me, because Ihad willingly come whither I willed not. Still bound to earth, I refused, O God, to fight on thy side,as much afraid to be freed from all bonds, as I ought to have feared being trammeled by them.

"Thus the thoughts by which I meditated upon thee were like the efforts of one who wouldawake, but being overpowered with sleepiness is soon asleep again. Often does a man when heavysleepiness is on his limbs defer to shake it off, and though not approving it, encourage it; even so Iwas sure it was better to surrender to thy love than to yield to my own lusts, yet though the formercourse convinced me, the latter pleased and held me bound. There was naught in me to answer thycall 'Awake, thou sleeper,' but only drawling, drowsy words, 'Presently; yes, presently; wait a littlewhile.' But the 'presently' had no 'present,' and the 'little while' grew long. . . . For I was afraid thouwouldst hear me too soon, and heal me at once of my disease of lust, which I wished to satiaterather than to see extinguished. With what lashes of words did I not scourge my own soul. Yet itshrank back; it refused, though it had no excuse to offer. . . . I said within myself: 'Come, let it bedone now,' and as I said it, I was on the point of the resolve. I all but did it, yet I did not do it. AndI made another effort, and almost succeeded, yet I did not reach it, and did not grasp it, hesitatingto die to death, and live to life, and the evil to which I was so wonted held me more than the betterlife I had not tried."[92]

[92] Confessions, Book VIII., Chaps. v., vii., xi., abridged.

There could be no more perfect description of the divided will, when the higher wishes lack justthat last acuteness, that touch of explosive intensity, of dynamogenic quality (to use the slang ofthe psychologists), that enables them to burst their shell, and make irruption efficaciously into lifeand quell the lower tendencies forever. In a later lecture we shall have much to say about thishigher excitability.

I find another good description of the divided will in the autobiography of Henry Alline, theNova Scotian evangelist, of whose melancholy I read a brief account in my last lecture. The pooryouth's sins were, as you will see, of the most harmless order, yet they interfered with what provedto be his truest vocation, so they gave him great distress.

"I was now very moral in my life, but found no rest of conscience. I now began to be esteemed inyoung company, who knew nothing of my mind all this while, and their esteem began to be a snareto my soul, for I soon began to be fond of carnal mirth, though I still flattered myself that if I didnot get drunk, nor curse, nor swear, there would be no sin in frolicking and carnal mirth, and Ithought God would indulge young people with some (what I called simple or civil) recreation. Istill kept a round of duties, and would not suffer myself to run into any open vices, and so gotalong very well in time of health and prosperity, but when I was distressed or threatened bysickness, death, or heavy storms of thunder, my religion would not do, and I found there wassomething wanting, and would begin to repent my going so much to frolics, but when the distresswas over, the devil and my own wicked heart, with the solicitations of my associates, and myfondness for young company, were such strong allurements, I would again give way, and thus I gotto be very wild and rude, at the same time kept up my rounds of secret prayer and reading; butGod, not willing I should destroy myself, still followed me with his calls, and moved with suchpower upon my conscience, that I could not satisfy myself with my diversions, and in the midst ofmy mirth sometimes would have such a sense of my lost and undone condition, that I would wishmyself from the company, and after it was over, when I went home, would make many promisesthat I would attend no more on these frolics, and would beg forgiveness for hours and hours; butwhen I came to have the temptation again, I would give way: no sooner would I hear the music anddrink a glass of wine, but I would find my mind elevated and soon proceed to any sort ofmerriment or diversion, that I thought was not debauched or openly vicious; but when I returnedfrom my carnal mirth I felt as guilty as ever, and could sometimes not close my eyes for somehours after I had gone to my bed. I was one of the most unhappy creatures on earth.

"Sometimes I would leave the company (often speaking to the fiddler to cease from playing, as ifI was tired), and go out and walk about crying and praying, as if my very heart would break, andbeseeching God that he would not cut me off, nor give me up to hardness of heart. Oh, whatunhappy hours and nights I thus wore away! When I met sometimes with merry companions, andmy heart was ready to sink, I would labor to put on as cheerful a countenance as possible, that theymight not distrust anything, and sometimes would begin some discourse with young men or youngwomen on purpose, or propose a merry song, lest the distress of my soul would be discovered, ormistrusted, when at the same time I would then rather have been in a wilderness in exile, than withthem or any of their pleasures or enjoyments. Thus for many months when I was in company? Iwould act the hypocrite and feign a merry heart but at the same time would endeavor as much as Icould to shun their company, oh wretched and unhappy mortal that I was! Everything I did, andwherever I went, I was still in a storm and yet I continued to be the chief contriver and ringleaderof the frolics for many months after; though it was a toil and torment to attend them; but the deviland my own wicked heart drove me about like a slave, telling me that I must do this and do that,and bear this and bear that, and turn here and turn there, to keep my credit up, and retain theesteem of my associates: and all this while I continued as strict as possible in my duties, and left nostone unturned to pacify my conscience, watching even against my thoughts, and prayingcontinually wherever I went: for I did not think there was any sin in my conduct, when I wasamong carnal company, because I did not take any satisfaction there, but only followed it, Ithought, for sufficient reasons.

"But still, all that I did or could do, conscience would roar night and day."Saint Augustine and Alline both emerged into the smooth waters of inner unity and peace, and Ishall next ask you to consider more closely some of the peculiarities of the process of unification,when it occurs. It may come gradually, or it may occur abruptly; it may come through alteredfeelings, or through altered powers of action; or it may come through new intellectual insights, orthrough experiences which we shall later have to designate as 'mystical.' However it come, itbrings a characteristic sort of relief; and never such extreme relief as when it is cast into thereligious mould. Happiness! happiness! religion is only one of the ways in which men gain thatgift. Easily, permanently, and successfully, it often transforms the most intolerable misery into theprofoundest and most enduring happiness.

But to find religion is only one out of many ways of reaching unity; and the process ofremedying inner incompleteness and reducing inner discord is a general psychological process,which may take place with any sort of mental material, and need not necessarily assume thereligious form. In judging of the religious types of regeneration which we are about to study, it isimportant to recognize that they are only one species of a genus that contains other types as well.

For example, the new birth may be away from religion into incredulity; or it may be from moralscrupulosity into freedom and license; or it may be produced by the irruption into the individual'slife of some new stimulus or passion, such as love, ambition, cupidity, revenge, or patrioticdevotion. In all these instances we have precisely the same psychological form of event,--afirmness, stability, and equilibrium <173> succeeding a period of storm and stress andinconsistency. In these non-religious cases the new man may also be born either gradually orsuddenly.

The French philosopher Jouffroy has left an eloquent memorial of his own "counter-conversion,"as the transition from orthodoxy to infidelity has been well styled by Mr. Starbuck. Jouffroy'sdoubts had long harassed him; but he dates his final crisis from a certain night when his disbeliefgrew fixed and stable, and where the immediate result was sadness at the illusions he had lost.

"I shall never forget that night of December," writes Jouffroy, "in which the veil that concealedfrom me my own incredulity was torn. I hear again my steps in that narrow naked chamber wherelong after the hour of sleep had come I had the habit of walking up and down. I see again thatmoon, half-veiled by clouds, which now and again illuminated the frigid window-panes. The hoursof the night flowed on and I did not note their passage. Anxiously I followed my thoughts, as fromlayer to layer they descended towards the foundation of my consciousness, and, scattering one byone all the illusions which until then had screened its windings from my view, made them everymoment more clearly visible.

"Vainly I clung to these last beliefs as a shipwrecked sailor clings to the fragments of his vessel;vainly, frightened at the unknown void in which I was about to float, I turned with them towardsmy childhood, my family, my country, all that was dear and sacred to me: the inflexible current ofmy thought was too strong--parents, family, memory, beliefs, it forced me to let go of everything.

The investigation went on more obstinate and more severe as it drew near its term, and did not stopuntil the end was reached. I knew then that in the depth of my mind nothing was left that stooderect.

"This moment was a frightful one; and when towards morning I threw myself exhausted on mybed, I seemed to feel my earlier life, so smiling and so full, go out like a fire, and before meanother life opened, sombre and unpeopled, where in future I must live alone, alone with my fatalthought which had exiled me thither, and which I was tempted to curse. The days which followedthis discovery were the saddest of my life."[93]

[93] Th. Jouffroy: Nouveaux Melanges philosophiques, 2me edition, p. 83. I add two other casesof counter-conversion dating from a certain moment. The first is from Professor Starbuck'smanuscript collection, and the narrator is a woman.

"Away down in the bottom of my heart, I believe I was always more or less skeptical about'God;' skepticism grew as an undercurrent, all through my early youth, but it was controlled andcovered by the emotional elements in my religious growth. When I was sixteen I joined the churchand was asked if I loved God. I replied 'Yes,' as was customary and expected. But instantly with aflash something spoke within me, 'No, you do not.' I was haunted for a long time with shame andremorse for my falsehood and for my wickedness in not loving God, mingled with fear that theremight be an avenging God who would punish me in some terrible way. . . . At nineteen, I had anattack of tonsilitis. Before I had quite recovered, I heard told a story of a brute who had kicked hiswife down-stairs, and then continued the operation until she became insensible. I felt the horror ofthe thing keenly. Instantly this thought flashed through my mind: 'I have no use for a God whopermits such things.' This experience was followed by months of stoical indifference to the God ofmy previous life, mingled with feelings of positive dislike and a somewhat proud defiance of him.

I still thought there might be a God. If so he would probably damn me, but I should have to standit. I felt very little fear and no desire to propitiate him. I have never had any personal relations withhim since this painful experience."The second case exemplifies how small an additional stimulus will overthrow the mind into anew state of equilibrium when the process of preparation and incubation has proceeded far enough.

It is like the proverbial last straw added to the camel's burden, or that touch of a needle whichmakes the salt in a supersaturated fluid suddenly begin to crystallize out.

Tolstoy writes: "S., a frank and intelligent man, told me as follows how he ceased to believe:-"He was twenty-six years old when one day on a hunting expedition, the time for sleep havingcome, he set himself to pray according to the custom he had held from childhood.

"His brother, who was hunting with him, lay upon the hay and looked at him. When S. hadfinished his prayer and was turning to sleep, the brother said, 'Do you still keep up that thing?'

Nothing more was said. But since that day, now more than thirty years ago, S. has never prayedagain; he never takes communion, and does not go to church. All this, not because he becameacquainted with convictions of his brother which he then and there adopted; not because he madeany new resolution in his soul, but merely because the words spoken by his brother were like thelight push of a finger against a leaning wall already about to tumble by its own weight. Thesewords but showed him that the place wherein he supposed religion dwelt in him had long beenempty, and that the sentences he uttered, the crosses and bows which he made during his prayer,were actions with no inner sense. Having once seized their absurdity, he could no longer keepthem up." Ma Confession, p. 8.

I subjoin an additional document which has come into my possession, and which represents in avivid way what is probably a very frequent sort of conversion, if the opposite of 'falling in love,'

falling out of love, may be so termed. Falling in love also conforms frequently to this type, a latentprocess of unconscious preparation often preceding a sudden awakening to the fact that themischief is irretrievably done. The free and easy tone in this narrative gives it a sincerity thatspeaks for itself.

"For two years of this time I went through a very bad experience, which almost drove me mad. Ihad fallen violently in love with a girl who, young as she was, had a spirit of coquetry like a cat.

As I look back on her now, I hate her, and wonder how I could ever have fallen so low as to beworked upon to such an extent by her attractions. Nevertheless, I fell into a regular fever, couldthink of nothing else; whenever I was alone, I pictured her attractions, and spent most of the timewhen I should have been working, in recalling our previous interviews, and imagining futureconversations. She was very pretty, good humored, and jolly to the last degree, and intenselypleased with my admiration. Would give me no decided answer yes or no and the queer thingabout it was that whilst pursuing her for her hand, I secretly knew all along that she was unfit to bea wife for me, and that she never would say yes. Although for a year we took our meals at the sameboarding-house, so that I saw her continually and familiarly, our closer relations had to be largelyon the sly, and this fact, together with my jealousy of another one of her male admirers and myown conscience despising me for my uncontrollable weakness, made me so nervous and sleeplessthat I really thought I should become insane. I understand well those young men murdering theirsweethearts, which appear so often in the papers. Nevertheless I did love her passionately, and insome ways she did deserve it.

"The queer thing was the sudden and unexpected way in which it all stopped. I was going to mywork after breakfast one morning, thinking as usual of her and of my misery, when, just as if someoutside power laid hold of me, I found myself turning round and almost running to my room,where I immediately got out all the relics of her which I possessed, including some hair, all hernotes and letters and ambrotypes on glass. The former I made a fire of, the latter I actually crushedbeneath my heel, in a sort of fierce joy of revenge and punishment. I now loathed and despised heraltogether, and as for myself I felt as if a load of disease had suddenly been removed from me.

That was the end. I never spoke to her or wrote to her again in all the subsequent years, and I havenever had a single moment of loving thought towards one for so many months entirely filled myheart. In fact, I have always rather hated her memory, though now I can see that I had goneunnecessarily far in that direction. At any rate, from that happy morning onward I regainedpossession of my own proper soul, and have never since fallen into any similar trap."This seems to me an unusually clear example of two different levels of personality, inconsistentin their dictates, yet so well balanced against each other as for a long time to fill the life withdiscord and dissatisfaction. At last, not gradually, but in a sudden crisis, the unstable equilibrium isresolved, and this happens so unexpectedly that it is as if, to use the writer's words, "some outsidepower laid hold."Professor Starbuck gives an analogous case, and a converse case of hatred suddenly turning intolove, in his Psychology of Religion, p. 141. Compare the other highly curious instances which hegives on pp. 137-144, of sudden non-religious alterations of habit or character. He seems right in conceiving all such sudden changes as results of special cerebral functions unconsciouslydeveloping until they are ready to play a controlling part when they make irruption into theconscious life. When we treat of sudden 'conversion,' I shall make as much use as I can of thishypothesis of subconscious incubation.

<175> In John Foster's Essay on Decision of Character, there is an account of a case of suddenconversion to avarice, which is illustrative enough to quote:-Ayoung man, it appears, "wasted, in two or three years, a large patrimony in profligate revelswith a number of worthless associates who called themselves his friends, and who, when his lastmeans were exhausted, treated him of course with neglect or contempt. Reduced to absolute want,he one day went out of the house with an intention to put an end to his life, but wandering awhilealmost unconsciously, he came to the brow of an eminence which overlooked what were lately hisestates. Here he sat down, and remained fixed in thought a number of hours, at the end of which hesprang from the ground with a vehement, exulting emotion. He had formed his resolution, whichwas, that all these estates should be his again; he had formed his plan, too, which he instantlybegan to execute. He walked hastily forward, determined to seize the first opportunity, of howeverhumble a kind, to gain any money, though it were ever so despicable a trifle, and resolvedabsolutely not to spend, if he could help it, a farthing of whatever he might obtain. The first thingthat drew his attention was a heap of coals shot out of carts on the pavement before a house. Heoffered himself to shovel or wheel them into the place where they were to be laid, and wasemployed.

He received a few pence for the labor; and then, in pursuance of the saving part of his planrequested some small gratuity of meat and drink, which was given <176> him. He then looked outfor the next thing that might chance; and went, with indefatigable industry, through a succession ofservile employments in different places, of longer and shorter duration, still scrupulous inavoiding, as far as possible, the expense of a penny. He promptly seized every opportunity whichcould advance his design, without regarding the meanness of occupation or appearance. By thismethod he had gained, after a considerable time, money enough to purchase in order to sell again afew cattle, of which he had taken pains to understand the value. He speedily but cautiously turnedhis first gains into second advantages; retained without a single deviation his extreme parsimony;and thus advanced by degrees into larger transactions and incipient wealth. I did not hear, or haveforgotten, the continued course of his life, but the final result was, that he more than recovered hislost possessions, and died an inveterate miser, worth L60,000."[94]

[94] Op. cit., Letter III., abridged.

Let me turn now to the kind of case, the religious case, namely, that immediately concerns us.

Here is one of the simplest possible type, an account of the conversion to the systematic religion ofhealthy-mindedness of a man who must already have been naturally of the healthy-minded type. Itshows how, when the fruit is ripe, a touch will make it fall.

Mr. Horace Fletcher, in his little book called Menticulture, relates that a friend with whom hewas talking of the self-control attained by the Japanese through their practice of the Buddhistdiscipline said:-"'You must first get rid of anger and worry.' 'But,' said I, 'is that possible?' 'Yes,' replied he; 'it ispossible to the Japanese, and ought to be possible to us.'

"On my way back I could think of nothing else but the words get rid, get rid'; and the idea musthave continued to possess me during my sleeping hours, for the first consciousness in the morningbrought back the same thought, with the revelation of a discovery, which framed itself into thereasoning, 'If it is possible to get rid of anger and worry, why is it necessary to have them at all?' Ifelt the strength of the argument, and at once accepted the reasoning. The baby had discovered thatit could walk. It would scorn to creep any longer.

"From the instant I realized that these cancer spots of worry and anger were removable, they leftme. With the discovery of their weakness they were exorcised. From that time life has had anentirely different aspect.

"Although from that moment the possibility and desirability of freedom from the depressingpassions has been a reality to me, it took me some months to feel absolute security in my newposition; but, as the usual occasions for worry and anger have presented themselves over and overagain, and I have been unable to feel them in the slightest degree, I no longer dread or guardagainst them, and I am amazed at my increased energy and vigor of mind, at my strength to meetsituations of all kinds and at my disposition to love and appreciate everything.

"I have had occasion to travel more than ten thousand miles by rail since that morning. The samePullman porter, conductor, hotel-waiter, peddler, book-agent, cabman, and others who wereformerly a source of annoyance and irritation have been met, but I am not conscious of a singleincivility. All at once the whole world has turned good to me. I have become, as it were, sensitiveonly to the rays of good.

"I could recount many experiences which prove a brand-new condition of mind, but one will besufficient. Without the slightest feeling of annoyance or impatience, I have seen a train that I hadplanned to take with a good deal of interested and pleasurable anticipation move out of the stationwithout me, because my baggage did not arrive. The porter from the hotel came running andpanting into the station just as the train pulled out of sight. When he saw me, he looked as if hefeared a scolding. and began to tell of being blocked in a crowded street and unable to get out.

When he had finished, I said to him: 'It doesn't matter at all, you couldn't help it, so we will tryagain to-morrow. Here is your fee, I am sorry you had all this trouble in earning it.' The look ofsurprise that came over his face was so filled with pleasure that I was repaid on the spot for thedelay in my departure. Next day he would not accept a cent for the service, and he and I are friendsfor life.

"During the first weeks of my experience I was on guard only against worry and anger; but, inthe mean time, having noticed the absence of the other depressing and dwarfing passions, I beganto trace a relationship, until I was convinced that they are all growths from the two roots I havespecified. I have felt the freedom now for so long a time that I am sure of my relation toward it; and I could no more harbor any of the thieving and depressing influences that once I nursed as aheritage of humanity than a fop would voluntarily wallow in a filthy gutter.

"There is no doubt in my mind that pure Christianity and pure Buddhism, and the MentalSciences and all Religions fundamentally teach what has been a discovery to me; but none of themhave presented it in the light of a simple and easy process of elimination. At one time I wonderedif the elimination would not yield to indifference and sloth. In my experience, the contrary is theresult. I feel such an increased desire to do something useful that it seems as if I were a boy againand the energy for play had returned. I could fight as readily as (and better than) ever, if there wereoccasion for it. It does not make one a coward. It can't, since fear is one of the things eliminated. Inotice the absence of timidity in the presence of any audience. When a boy, I was standing under atree which was struck by lightning, and received a shock from the effects of which I never knewexemption until I had dissolved partnership with worry. Since then, lightning and thunder havebeen encountered under conditions which would formerly have caused great depression anddiscomfort, without [my] experiencing a trace of either. Surprise is also greatly modified, and oneis less liable to become startled by unexpected sights or noises.

"As far as I am individually concerned, I am not bothering myself at present as to what theresults of this emancipated condition may be. I have no doubt that the perfect health aimed at byChristian Science may be one of the possibilities, for I note a marked improvement in the way mystomach does its duty in assimilating the food I give it to handle, and I am sure it works better tothe sound of a song than under the friction of a frown. Neither am I wasting any of this precioustime formulating an idea of a future existence or a future Heaven. The Heaven that I have withinmyself is as attractive as any that has been promised or that I can imagine; and I am willing to letthe growth lead where it will, as long as the anger and their brood have no part in misguidingit."[95]

[95] H. Fletcher: Menticulture, or the A-B-C of True Living, New York and Chicago, 1899, pp.

26, 36, abridged.

The older medicine used to speak of two ways, lysis and crisis, one gradual, the other abrupt, inwhich one might recover from a bodily disease. In the spiritual realm there are also two ways, onegradual, the other sudden, in which inner unification may occur. Tolstoy and Bunyan may againserve us as examples, examples, as it happens, of the gradual way, though it must be confessed atthe outset that it is hard to follow these windings of the hearts of others, and one feels that theirwords do not reveal their total secret.

Howe'er this be, Tolstoy, pursuing his unending questioning, <181> seemed to come to oneinsight after another. First he perceived that his conviction that life was meaningless took only thisfinite life into account. He was looking for the value of one finite term in that of another, and thewhole result could only be one of those indeterminate equations in mathematics which end withinfinity. Yet this is as far as the reasoning intellect by itself can go, unless irrational sentiment orfaith brings in the infinite. Believe in the infinite as common people do, and life grows possibleagain.

"Since mankind has existed, wherever life has been, there also has been the faith that gave thepossibility of living. Faith is the sense of life, that sense by virtue of which man does not destroyhimself, but continues to live on. It is the force whereby we live. If Man did not believe that hemust live for something, he would not live at all. The idea of an infinite God, of the divinity of thesoul, of the union of men's actions with God--these are ideas elaborated in the infinite secret depthsof human thought. They are ideas without which there would be no life, without which I myself,"said Tolstoy, "would not exist. I began to see that I had no right to rely on my individual reasoningand neglect these answers given by faith, for they are the only answers to the question."Yet how believe as the common people believe, steeped as they are in grossest superstition? It isimpossible--but yet their life! their life! It is normal. It is happy! It is an answer to the question!

Little by little, Tolstoy came to the settled conviction--he says it took him two years to arrivethere--that his trouble had not been with life in general, not with the common life of common men,but with the life of the upper, intellectual, artistic classes, the life which he had personally alwaysled, the cerebral life, the life of conventionality, artificiality, and personal ambition. He had beenliving wrongly and must change. To work for animal needs, to abjure lies and vanities, to relievecommon wants, to be simple, to believe in God, therein lay happiness again.

"I remember," he says, "one day in early spring, I was alone in the forest, lending my ear to itsmysterious noises. I listened, and my thought went back to what for these three years it always wasbusy with--the quest of God. But the idea of him, I said, how did I ever come by the idea?

"And again there arose in me, with this thought, glad aspirations towards life. Everything in meawoke and received a meaning. . . .Why do I look farther? a voice within me asked. He is there:

he, without whom one cannot live. To acknowledge God and to live are one and the same thing.

God is what life is. Well, then! live, seek God, and there will be no life without him. . . .

"After this, things cleared up within me and about me better than ever, and the light has neverwholly died away. I was saved from suicide. Just how or when the change took place I cannot tell.

But as insensibly and gradually as the force of life had been annulled within me, and I had reachedmy moral death-bed, just as gradually and imperceptibly did the energy of life come back. Andwhat was strange was that this energy that came back was nothing new. It was my ancient juvenileforce of faith, the belief that the sole purpose of my life was to be BETTER. I gave up the life ofthe conventional world, recognizing it to be no life, but a parody on life, which its superfluitiessimply keep us from comprehending,"--and Tolstoy thereupon embraced the life of the peasants,and has felt right and happy, or at least relatively so, ever since.[96]

[96] I have considerably abridged Tolstoy's words in my translation.

As I interpret his melancholy, then, it was not merely an accidental vitiation of his humors,though it was doubtless also that. It was logically called for by the clash between his innercharacter and his outer activities and aims. Although a literary artist, Tolstoy was one of thoseprimitive oaks of men to whom the superfluities and insincerities, the cupidities, complications,and cruelties of our polite civilization are profoundly unsatisfying, and for whom the eternalveracities lie with more natural and animal things. His crisis was the getting of his soul in order,the discovery of its genuine habitat and vocation, the escape from falsehoods into what for him were ways of truth. It was a case of heterogeneous personality tardily and slowly finding its unityand level. And though not many of us can imitate Tolstoy, not having enough, perhaps, of theaboriginal human marrow in our bones, most of us may at least feel as if it might be better for us ifwe could.

Bunyan's recovery seems to have been even slower. For years together he was alternatelyhaunted with texts of Scripture, now up and now down, but at last with an ever growing relief inhis salvation through the blood of Christ.

"My peace would be in and out twenty times a day; comfort now and trouble presently; peacenow and before I could go a furlong as full of guilt and fear as ever heart could hold." When agood text comes home to him, "This," he writes, "gave me good encouragement for the space oftwo or three hours"; or "This was a good day to me, I hope I shall not forget it", or "The glory ofthese words was then so weighty on me that I was ready to swoon as I sat; yet, not with grief andtrouble, but with solid joy and peace"; or "This made a strange seizure on my spirit; it brought lightwith it, and commanded a silence in my heart of all those tumultuous thoughts that before did use,like masterless hell-hounds, to roar and bellow and make a hideous noise within me. It showed methat Jesus Christ had not quite forsaken and cast off my Soul."Such periods accumulate until he can write: "And now remained only the hinder part of thetempest, for the thunder was gone beyond me, only some drops would still remain, that now andthen would fall upon me";--and at last: "Now did my chains fall off my legs indeed; I was loosedfrom my afflictions and irons; my temptations also fled away; so that from that time, thosedreadful Scriptures of God left off to trouble me; now went I also home rejoicing, for the grace andlove of God. . . . Now could I see myself in Heaven and Earth at once; in Heaven by my Christ, bymy Head, by my Righteousness and Life, though on Earth by my body or person. . . . Christ was aprecious Christ to my soul that night; I could scarce lie in my bed for joy and peace and triumphthrough Christ."Bunyan became a minister of the gospel, and in spite of his neurotic constitution, and of thetwelve years he lay in prison for his non-conformity, his life was turned to active use. He was apeacemaker and doer of good, and the immortal Allegory which he wrote has brought the veryspirit of religious patience home to English hearts.

But neither Bunyan nor Tolstoy could become what we have called healthy-minded. They haddrunk too deeply of the cup of bitterness ever to forget its taste, and their redemption is into auniverse two stories deep. Each of them realized a good which broke the effective edge of hissadness; yet the sadness was preserved as a minor ingredient in the heart of the faith by which itwas overcome. The fact of interest for us is that as a matter of fact they could and did findSOMETHING welling up in the inner reaches of their consciousness, by which such extremesadness could be overcome. Tolstoy does well to talk of it as THAT BY WHICH MEN LIVE; forthat is exactly what it is, a stimulus, an excitement, a faith, a force that re-infuses the positivewillingness to live, even in full presence of the evil perceptions that erewhile made life seemunbearable. For Tolstoy's perceptions of evil appear within their sphere to have remainedunmodified. His later works show him implacable to the whole system of official values: theignobility of fashionable life; the infamies of empire; the spuriousness of the church, the vainconceit of the professions; the meannesses and cruelties that go with great success; and every other pompous crime and lying institution of this world. To all patience with such things his experiencehas been for him a perroanent ministry of death.

Bunyan also leaves this world to the enemy.

"I must first pass a sentence of death," he says, "upon everything that can properly be called athing of this life, even to reckon myself, my wife, my children, my health, my enjoyments, and all,as dead to me, and myself as dead to them; to trust in God through Christ, as touching the world tocome, and as touching this world, to count the grave my house, to make my bed in darkness, and tosay to corruption, Thou art my father and to the worm, Thou art my mother and sister. . . . Theparting with my wife and my poor children hath often been to me as the pulling of my flesh frommy bones, especially my poor blind child who lay nearer my heart than all I had besides. Poorchild, thought I, what sorrow art thou like to have for thy portion in this world! Thou must bebeaten, must beg, suffer hunger, cold, nakedness, and a thousand calamities, though I cannot nowendure that the wind should blow upon thee. But yet I must venture you all with God, though itgoeth to the quick to leave you."[97]

[97] In my quotations from Bunyan I have omitted certain intervening portions of the text.

The "hue of resolution" is there, but the full flood of ecstatic liberation seems never to havepoured over poor John Bunyan's soul.

These examples may suffice to acquaint us in a general way with the phenomenon technicallycalled "Conversion." In the next lecture I shall invite you to study its peculiarities andconcomitants in some detail.
Lecture IX CONVERSION
To be converted, to be regenerated, to receive grace, to experience religion, to gain an assurance,are so many phrases which denote the process, gradual or sudden, by which a self hitherto divided,and consciously wrong inferior and unhappy, becomes unified and consciously right superior andhappy, in consequence of its firmer hold upon religious realities. This at least is what conversionsignifies in general terms, whether or not we believe that a direct divine operation is needed tobring such a moral change about.

Before entering upon a minuter study of the process, let me enliven our understanding of thedefinition by a concrete example. I choose the quaint case of an unlettered man, Stephen H.

Bradley, whose experience is related in a scarce American pamphlet.[98]

[98] A sketch of the life of Stephen H. Bradley, from the age of five to twenty four years,including his remarkable experience of the power of the Holy Spirit on the second evening ofNovember, 1829. Madison, Connecticut, 1830.

I select this case because it shows how in these inner alterations one may find one unsuspecteddepth below another, as if the possibilities of character lay disposed in a series of layers or shells,of whose existence we have no premonitory knowledge.

Bradley thought that he had been already fully converted at the age of fourteen.

"I thought I saw the Saviour, by faith, in human shape, for about one second in the room, witharms extended, appearing to say to me, Come. The next day I rejoiced with trembling; soon after,my happiness was so great that I said that I wanted to die; this world had no place in my affections,as I knew of, and every day appeared as solemn to me as the Sabbath. I had an ardent desire that allmankind might feel as I did; I wanted to have them all love God supremely. Previous to this time Iwas very selfish and self-righteous; but now I desired the welfare of all mankind, and could with afeeling heart forgive my worst enemies, and I felt as if I should be willing to bear the scoffs andsneers of any person, and suffer anything for His sake, if I could be the means in the hands of God,of the conversion of one soul."Nine years later, in 1829, Mr. Bradley heard of a revival of religion that had begun in hisneighborhood. "Many of the young converts," he says, "would come to me when in meeting andask me if I had religion, and my reply generally was, I hope I have. This did not appear to satisfythem; they said they KNEW THEY had it. I requested them to pray for me, thinking with myself,that if I had not got religion now, after so long a time professing to be a Christian, that it was time Ihad, and hoped their prayers would be answered in my behalf.

"One Sabbath, I went to hear the Methodist at the Academy. He spoke of the ushering in of theday of general judgment; and he set it forth in such a solemn and terrible manner as I never heardbefore. The scene of that day appeared to be taking place, and so awakened were all the powers ofmy mind that, like Felix, I trembled involuntarily on the bench where I was sitting, though I feltnothing at heart. The next day evening I went to hear him again. He took his text from Revelation:

'And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God.' And he represented the terrors of that dayin such a manner that it appeared as if it would melt the heart of stone. When he finished hisdiscourse, an old gentleman turned to me and said 'This is what I call preaching.' I thought thesame, but my feelings were still unmoved by what he said, and I did not enjoy religion, but Ibelieve he did.

"I will now relate my experience of the power of the Holy Spirit which took place on the samenight. Had any person told me previous to this that I could have experienced the power of the HolySpirit in the manner which I did, I could not have believed it, and should have thought the persondeluded that told me so. I went directly home after the meeting, and when I got home I wonderedwhat made me feel so stupid. I retired to rest soon after I got home, and felt indifferent to thethings of religion until I began to be exercised by the Holy Spirit, which began in about fiveminutes after, in the following manner:-"At first, I began to feel my heart beat very quick all on a sudden, which made me at first thinkthat perhaps something is going to ail me, though I was not alarmed, for I felt no pain. My heartincreased in its beating, which soon convinced me that it was the Holy Spirit from the effect it hadon me. I began to feel exceedingly happy and humble, and such a sense of unworthiness as I neverfelt before. I could not very well help speaking out, which I did, and said, Lord, I do not deservethis happiness, or words to that effect, while there was a stream (resembling air in feeling) cameinto my mouth and heart in sensible than that of drinking anything, which continued, as nearasI could judg(a) e, five(more) minutes or more, (manner) which appeared to be the cause of such apalpitation of my heart. It took complete possession of my soul, and I am certain that I desired the Lord, while in the midst of it, not to give me any more happiness, for it seemed as if I could notcontain what I had got. My heart seemed as if it would burst, but it did not stop until I felt as if Iwas unutterably full of the love and grace of God. In the mean time while thus exercised, a thoughtarose in my mind, what can it mean? and all at once, as if to answer it, my memory becameexceedingly clear, and it appeared to me just as if the New Testament was placed open before me,eighth chapter of Romans, and as light as if some candle lighted was held for me to read the 26thand 27th verses of that chapter, and I read these words: 'The Spirit helpeth our infirmities withgroanings which cannot be uttered.' And all the time that my heart was a-beating, it made me groanlike a person in distress, which was not very easy to stop, though I was in no pain at all, and mybrother being in bed in another room came and opened the door, and asked me if I had got thetoothache. I told him no, and that he might get to sleep. I tried to stop. I felt unwilling to go tosleep myself, I was so happy, fearing I should lose it-- thinking within myself'My willing soul would stay In such a frame as this.'

And while I lay reflecting, after my heart stopped beating, feeling as if my soul was full of theHoly Spirit, I thought that perhaps there might be angels hovering round my bed. I felt just as if Iwanted to converse with them, and finally I spoke, saying 'O ye affectionate angels! how is it thatye can take so much interest in our welfare, and we take so little interest in our own.' After this,with difficulty I got to sleep; and when I awoke in the morning my first thoughts were: What hasbecome of my happiness? and, feeling a degree of it in my heart, I asked for more, which wasgiven to me as quick as thought. I then got up to dress myself, and found to my surprise that Icould but just stand. It appeared to me as if it was a little heaven upon earth. My soul felt ascompletely raised above the fears of death as of going to sleep; and like a bird in a cage, I had adesire, if it was the will of God, to get released from my body and to dwell with Christ, thoughwilling to live to do good to others, and to warn sinners to repent. I went downstairs feeling assolemn as if I had lost all my friends, and thinking with myself, that I would not let my parentsknow it until I had first looked into the Testament. I went directly to the shelf and looked into it, atthe eighth of Romans, and every verse seemed to almost speak and to confirm it to be truly theWord of God, and as if my feelings corresponded with the meaning of the word. I then told myparents of it, and told them that I thought that they must see that when I spoke, that it was not myown voice, for it appeared so to me. My speech seemed entirely under the control of the Spiritwithin me; I do not mean that the words which I spoke were not my own, for they were. I thoughtthat I was influenced similar to the Apostles on the day of Pentecost (with the exception of havingpower to give it to others, and doing what they did). After breakfast I went round to converse withmy neighbors on religion, which I could not have been hired to have done before this, and at theirrequest I prayed with them, though I had never prayed in public before.

"I now feel as if I had discharged my duty by telling the truth, and hope by the blessing of God, itmay do some good to all who shall read it. He has fulfilled his promise in sending the Holy Spiritdown into our hearts, or mine at least, and I now defy all the Deists and Atheists in the world toshake my faith in Christ."So much for Mr. Bradley and his conversion, of the effect of which upon his later life we gain noinformation. Now for a minuter survey of the constituent elements of the conversion process.

If you open the chapter on Association, of any treatise on Psychology, you will read that a man'sideas, aims, and objects form diverse internal groups and systems, relatively independent of oneanother. Each 'aim' which he follows awakens a certain specific kind of interested excitement, andgathers a certain group of ideas together in subordination to it as its associates; and if the aims andexcitements are distinct in kind, their groups of ideas may have little in common. When one groupis present and engrosses the interest, all the ideas connected with other groups may be excludedfrom the mental field. The President of the United States when, with paddle, gun, and fishing-rod,he goes camping in the wilderness for a vacation, changes his system of ideas from top to bottom.

The presidential anxieties have lapsed into the background entirely; the official habits are replacedby the habits of a son of nature, and those who knew the man only as the strenuous magistratewould not "know him for the same person" if they saw him as the camper.

If now he should never go back, and never again suffer political interests to gain dominion overhim, he would be for practical intents and purposes a permanently transformed being. Our ordinaryalterations of character, as we pass from one of our aims to another, are not commonly calledtransformations, because each of them is so rapidly succeeded by another in the reverse direction;but whenever one aim grows so stable as to expel definitively its previous rivals from theindividual's life, we tend to speak of the phenomenon, and perhaps to wonder at it, as a"transformation."These alternations are the completest of the ways in which a self may be divided. A lesscomplete way is the simultaneous coexistence of two or more different groups of aims, of whichone practically holds the right of way and instigates activity, whilst the others are only piouswishes, and never practically come to anything. Saint Augustine's aspirations to a purer life, in ourlast lecture, were for a while an example. Another would be the President in his full pride of office,wondering whether it were not all vanity, and whether the life of a wood-chopper were not thewholesomer destiny. Such fleeting aspirations are mere velleitates, whimsies. They exist on theremoter outskirts of the mind, and the real self of the man, the centre of his energies, is occupiedwith an entirely different system. As life goes on, there is a constant change of our interests, and aconsequent change of place in our systems of ideas, from more central to more peripheral, andfrom more peripheral to more central parts of consciousness. I remember, for instance, that oneevening when I was a youth, my father read aloud from a Boston newspaper that part of LordGifford's will which founded these four lectureships. At that time I did not think of being a teacherof philosophy, and what I listened to was as remote from my own life as if it related to the planetMars. Yet here I am, with the Gifford system part and parcel of my very self, and all my energies,for the time being, devoted to successfully identifying myself with it. My soul stands now plantedin what once was for it a practically unreal object, and speaks from it as from its proper habitat andcentre.

When I say "Soul," you need not take me in the ontological sense unless you prefer to; foralthough ontological language is instinctive in such matters, yet Buddhists or Humians canperfectly well describe the facts in the phenomenal terms which are their favorites. For them thesoul is only a succession of fields of consciousness: yet there is found in each field a part, or sub-field, which figures as focal and contains the excitement, and from which, as from a centre, the aimseems to be taken. Talking of this part, we involuntarily apply words of perspective to distinguish it from the rest, words like "here," "this," "now," "mine," or "me"; and we ascribe to the other partsthe positions "there," "then," "that," "his" or "thine," "it," "not me." But a "here" can change to a"there," and a "there" become a "here," and what was "mine" and what was "not mine" changetheir places.

What brings such changes about is the way in which emotional excitement alters. Things hot andvital to us to-day are cold to-morrow. It is as if seen from the hot parts of the field that the otherparts appear to us, and from these hot parts personal desire and volition make their sallies. Theyare in short the centres of our dynamic energy, whereas the cold parts leave us indifferent andpassive in proportion to their coldness.

Whether such language be rigorously exact is for the present of no importance. It is exactenough, if you recognize from your own experience the facts which I seek to designate by it.

Now there may be great oscillation in the emotional interest, and the hot places may shift beforeone almost as rapidly as the sparks that run through burnt-up paper. Then we have the waveringand divided self we heard so much of in the previous lecture. Or the focus of excitement and heat,the point of view from which the aim is taken, may come to lie permanently within a certainsystem; and then, if the change be a religious one, we call it a CONVERSION, especially if it beby crisis, or sudden.

Let us hereafter, in speaking of the hot place in a man's consciousness, the group of ideas towhich he devotes himself, and from which he works, call it THE HABITUAL CENTRE OF HISPERSONAL ENERGY. It makes a great difference to a man whether one set of his ideas, oranother, be the centre of his energy; and it makes a great difference, as regards any set of ideaswhich he may possess, whether they become central or remain peripheral in him. To say that a manis "converted" means, in these terms, that religious ideas, previously peripheral in hisconsciousness, now take a central place, and that religious aims form the habitual centre of hisenergy.

Now if you ask of psychology just HOW the excitement shifts in a man's mental system, andWHY aims that were peripheral become at a certain moment central, psychology has to reply thatalthough she can give a general description of what happens, she is unable in a given case toaccount accurately for all the single forces at work. Neither an outside observer nor the Subjectwho undergoes the process can explain fully how particular experiences are able to change one'scentre of energy so decisively, or why they so often have to bide their hour to do so. We have athought, or we perform an act, repeatedly, but on a certain day the real meaning of the thoughtpeals through us for the first time, or the act has suddenly turned into a moral impossibility. All weknow is that there are dead feelings, dead ideas, and cold beliefs, and there are hot and live ones;and when one grows hot and alive within us, everything has to re-crystallize about it. We may saythat the heat and liveliness mean only the "motor efficacy," long deferred but now operative, of theidea; but such talk itself is only circumlocution, for whence the sudden motor efficacy? And ourexplanations then get so vague and general that one realizes all the more the intense individualityof the whole phenomenon.

In the end we fall back on the hackneyed symbolism of a mechanical equilibrium. A mind is asystem of ideas, each with the excitement it arouses, and with tendencies impulsive and inhibitive, which mutually check or reinforce one another. The collection of ideas alters by subtraction or byaddition in the course of experience, and the tendencies alter as the organism gets more aged. Amental system may be undermined or weakened by this interstitial alteration just as a building is,and yet for a time keep upright by dead habit. But a new perception, a sudden emotional shock, oran occasion which lays bare the organic alteration, will make the whole fabric fall together; andthen the centre of gravity sinks into an attitude more stable, for the new ideas that reach the centrein the rearrangement seem now to be locked there, and the new structure remains permanent.

Formed associations of ideas and habits are usually factors of retardation in such changes ofequilibrium. New information, however acquired, plays an accelerating part in the changes; andthe slow mutation of our instincts and propensities, under the "unimaginable touch of time" has anenormous influence. Moreover, all these influences may work subconsciously or halfunconsciously.[99] And when you get a Subject in whom the subconscious life--of which I mustspeak more fully soon--is largely developed, and in whom motives habitually ripen in silence, youget a case of which you can never give a full account, and in which, both to the Subject and theonlookers, there may appear an element of marvel. Emotional occasions, especially violent ones,are extremely potent in precipitating mental rearrangements. The sudden and explosive ways inwhich love, jealousy, guilt, fear, remorse, or anger can seize upon one are known to everybody.

[100] Hope, happiness, security, resolve, emotions characteristic of conversion, can be equallyexplosive. And emotions that come in this explosive way seldom leave things as they found them.

[99] Jouffroy is an example: "Down this slope it was that my intelligence had glided, and littleby little it had got far from its first faith. But this melancholy revolution had not taken place in thebroad daylight of my consciousness; too many scruples, too many guides and sacred affections hadmade it dreadful to me, so that I was far from avowing to myself the progress it had made. It hadgone on in silence, by an involuntary elaboration of which I was not the accomplice; and althoughI had in reality long ceased to be a Christian, yet, in the innocence of my intention, I should haveshuddered to suspect it, and thought it calumny had I been accused of such a falling away." Thenfollows Jouffroy's account of his counter-conversion, quoted above on p. 173.

[100] One hardly needs examples; but for love, see p. 176, note, for fear, p. 161 ; for remorse,see Othello after the murder; for anger see Lear after Cordelia's first speech to him; for resolve, seep. 175 (J. Foster case). Here is a pathological case in which GUILT was the feeling that suddenlyexploded: "One night I was seized on entering bed with a rigor, such as Swedenborg describes ascoming over him with a sense of holiness, but over me with a sense of GUILT. During that wholenight I lay under the influence of the rigor, and from its inception I felt that I was under the curseof God. I have never done one act of duty in my life--sins against God and man beginning as far asmy memory goes back--a wildcat in human shape."In his recent work on the Psychology of Religion, Professor Starbuck of California has shown bya statistical inquiry how closely parallel in its manifestations the ordinary "conversion" whichoccurs in young people brought up in evangelical circles is to that growth into a larger spiritual lifewhich is a normal phase of adolescence in every class of human beings. The age is the same,falling usually between fourteen and seventeen. The symptoms are the same,--sense ofincompleteness and imperfection; brooding, depression, morbid introspection, and sense of sin; anxiety about the hereafter; distress over doubts, and the like. And the result is the same--a happyrelief and objectivity, as the confidence in self gets greater through the adjustment of the facultiesto the wider outlook. In spontaneous religious awakening, apart from revivalistic examples, and inthe ordinary storm and stress and moulting-time of adolescence, we also may meet with mysticalexperiences, astonishing the subjects by their suddenness, just as in revivalistic conversion. Theanalogy, in fact, is complete; and Starbuck's conclusion as to these ordinary youthful conversionswould seem to be the only sound one: Conversion is in its essence a normal adolescentphenomenon, incidental to the passage from the child's small universe to the wider intellectual andspiritual life of maturity.

"Theology," says Dr. Starbuck, "takes the adolescent tendencies and builds upon them; it seesthat the essential thing in adolescent growth is bringing the person out of childhood into the newlife of maturity and personal insight. It accordingly brings those means to bear which will intensifythe normal tendencies. It shortens up the period of duration of storm and stress." The conversionphenomena of "conviction of sin" last, by this investigator's statistics, about one fifth as long as theperiods of adolescent storm and stress phenomena of which he also got statistics, but they are verymuch more intense. Bodily accompaniments, loss of sleep and appetite, for example, are muchmore frequent in them. "The essential distinction appears to be that conversion intensifies butshortens the period by bringing the person to a definite crisis."[101]

[101] E. D. Starbuck: The Psychology of Religion, pp. 224, 262.

The conversions which Dr. Starbuck here has in mind are of course mainly those of verycommonplace persons, kept true to a pre-appointed type by instruction, appeal, and example. Theparticular form which they affect is the result of suggestion and imitation.[102] If they wentthrough their growth-crisis in other faiths and other countries, although the essence of the changewould be the same (since it is one in the main so inevitable), its accidents would be different. InCatholic lands, for example, and in our own Episcopalian sects, no such anxiety and conviction ofsin is usual as in sects that encourage revivals. The sacraments being more relied on in these morestrictly ecclesiastical bodies, the individual's personal acceptance of salvation needs less to beaccentuated and led up to.

[102] No one understands this better than Jonathan Edwards understood it already. Conversionnarratives of the more commonplace sort must always be taken with the allowances which hesuggests:

"A rule received and established by common consent has a very great, though to many personsan insensible influence in forming their notions of the process of their own experience. I knowvery well how they proceed as to this matter, for I have had frequent opportunities of observingtheir conduct. Very often their experience at first appears like a confused chaos, but then thoseparts are selected which bear the nearest resemblance to such particular steps as are insisted on;and these are dwelt upon in their thoughts, and spoken of from time to time, till they grow moreand more conspicuous in their view, and other parts which are neglected grow more and moreobscure. Thus what they have experienced is insensibly strained, so as to bring it to an exactconformity to the scheme already established in their minds. And it becomes natural also for ministers, who have to deal with those who insist upon distinctness and clearness of method, to doso too." Treatise on Religious Affections.

But every imitative phenomenon must once have had its original, and I propose that for thefuture we keep as close as may be to the more first-hand and original forms of experience. Theseare more likely to be found in sporadic adult cases.

Professor Leuba, in a valuable article on the psychology of conversion,[103] subordinates thetheological aspect of the religious life almost entirely to its moral aspect. The religious sense hedefines as "the feeling of unwholeness, of moral imperfection, of sin, to use the technical word,accompanied by the yearning after the peace of unity." "The word 'religion,'" he says, "is gettingmore and more to signify the conglomerate of desires and emotions springing from the sense of sinand its release"; and he gives a large number of examples, in which the sin ranges fromdrunkenness to spiritual pride, to show that the sense of it may beset one and crave relief asurgently as does the anguish of the sickened flesh or any form of physical misery.

[103] Studies in the Psychology of Religious Phenomena, American Journal of Psychology, vii.

309 (1896).

Undoubtedly this conception covers an immense number of cases. A good one to use as anexample is that of Mr. S. H. Hadley, who after his conversion became an active and useful rescuerof drunkards in New York. His experience runs as follows:-"One Tuesday evening I sat in a saloon in Harlem, a homeless, friendless, dying drunkard. I hadpawned or sold everything that would bring a drink. I could not sleep unless I was dead drunk. Ihad not eaten for days, and for four nights preceding I had suffered with delirium tremens, or thehorrors, from midnight till morning. I had often said, 'I will never be a tramp. I will never becornered, for when that time comes, if ever it comes, I will find a home in the bottom of the river.'

But the Lord so ordered it that when that time did come I was not able to walk one quarter of theway to the river. As I sat there thinking, I seemed to feel some great and mighty presence. I did notknow then what it was. I did learn afterwards that it was Jesus, the sinner's friend. I walked up tothe bar and pounded it with my fist till I made the glasses rattle. Those who stood by drinkinglooked on with scornful curiosity. I said I would never take another drink, if I died on the street,and really I felt as though that would happen before morning. Something said, 'If you want to keepthis promise, go and have yourself locked up.' I went to the nearest station-house and had myselflocked up.

"I was placed in a narrow cell, and it seemed as though all the demons that could find room camein that place with me. This was not all the company I had, either. No, praise the Lord: that dearSpirit that came to me in the saloon was present, and said, Pray. I did pray, and though I did notfeel any great help, I kept on praying. As soon as I was able to leave my cell I was taken to thepolice court and remanded back to the cell. I was finally released, and found my way to mybrother's house, where every care was given me. While lying in bed the admonishing Spirit neverleft me, and when I arose the following Sabbath morning I felt that day would decide my fate, andtoward evening it came into my head to go to Jerry M'Auley's Mission. I went. The house was packed, and with great difficulty I made my way to the space near the platform. There I saw theapostle to the drunkard and the outcast--that man of God, Jerry M'Auley. He rose, and amid deepsilence told his experience. There was a sincerity about this man that carried conviction with it,and I found myself saying, 'I wonder if God can save me?' I listened to the testimony of twenty-five or thirty persons, every one of whom had been saved from rum, and I made up my mind that Iwould be saved or die right there. When the invitation was given, I knelt down with a crowd ofdrunkards. Jerry made the first prayer. Then Mrs. M'Auley prayed fervently for us. Oh, what aconflict was going on for my poor soul! A blessed whisper said, 'Come'; the devil said, 'Be careful.'

I halted but a moment, and then, with a breaking heart, I said, 'Dear Jesus, can you help me?' Neverwith mortal tongue can I describe that moment. Although up to that moment my soul had beenfilled with indescribable gloom, I felt the glorious brightness of the noonday sun shine into myheart. I felt I was a free man. Oh, the precious feeling of safety, of freedom, of resting on Jesus! Ifelt that Christ with all his brightness and power had come into my life; that, indeed, old things hadpassed away and all things had become new.

"From that moment till now I have never wanted a drink of whiskey, and I have never seenmoney enough to make me take one. I promised God that night that if he would take away theappetite for strong drink, I would work for him all my life. He has done his part, and I have beentrying to do mine."[104]

[104] I have abridged Mr. Hadley's account. For other conversions of drunkards, see hispamphlet, Rescue Mission Work, published at the Old Jerry M'Auley Water Street Mission, NewYork City. A striking collection of cases also appears in the appendix to Professor Leuba's article.

<200> Dr. Leuba rightly remarks that there is little doctrinal theology in such an experience,which starts with the absolute need of a higher helper, and ends with the sense that he has helpedus. He gives other of drunkards' conversions which purely ethical, containing, as recorded,notheologicalbe(cases) liefswhatever.JohnB.Gough'scase,(are) for instance, is practically, saysDr. Leuba, the conversion of an atheist--neither God nor Jesus being mentioned.[105] But in spiteof the importance of this type of regeneration, with little or no intellectual readjustment, this writersurely makes it too exclusive. It corresponds to the subjectively centered form of morbidmelancholy, of which Bunyan and Alline were examples. But we saw in our seventh lecture thatthere are objective forms of melancholy also, in which the lack of rational meaning of the universe,and of life anyhow, is the burden that weighs upon one--you remember Tolstoy's case.[106] Sothere are distinct elements in conversion, and their relations to individual lives deserve to bediscriminated.[107]

[105] A restaurant waiter served provisionally as Gough's 'Saviour.' General Booth, the founderof the Salvation Army, considers that the first vital step in saving outcasts consists in making themfeel that some decent human being cares enough for them to take an interest in the questionwhether they are to rise or sink.

[106] The crisis of apathetic melancholy--no use in life--into which J. S. Mill records that he fell,from which he emerged by the reading of Marmontel's Memoirs (Heaven save the mark!) andWordsworth's poetry, is another intellectual and general metaphysical case. See Mill'sAutobiography, New York, 1873, pp. 141, 148.

[107] Starbuck, in addition to "escape from sin," discriminates "spiritual illumination" as adistinct type of conversion experience. Psychology of Religion, p. 85.

Some persons, for instance, never are, and possibly never under any circumstances could be,converted. Religious ideas cannot become the centre of their spiritual energy. They may beexcellent persons, servants of God in practical ways, but they are not children of his kingdom.

They are either incapable of imagining the invisible; or else, in the language of devotion, they arelife-long subjects of "barrenness" and "dryness." Such inaptitude for religious faith may in somecases be intellectual in its origin. Their religious faculties may be checked in their natural tendencyto expand, by beliefs about the world that are inhibitive, the pessimistic and materialistic beliefs,for example, within which so many good souls, who in former times would have freely indulgedtheir religious propensities, find themselves nowadays, as it were, frozen; or the agnostic vetoesupon faith as something weak and shameful, under which so many of us today lie cowering, afraidto use our instincts. In many persons such inhibitions are never overcome. To the end of their daysthey refuse to believe, their personal energy never gets to its religious centre, and the latter remainsinactive in perpetuity.

In other persons the trouble is profounder. There are men anaesthetic on the religious side,deficient in that category of sensibility. Just as a bloodless organism can never, in spite of all itsgoodwill, attain to the reckless "animal spirits" enjoyed by those of sanguine temperament; so thenature which is spiritually barren may admire and envy faith in others, but can never compass theenthusiasm and peace which those who are temperamentally qualified for faith enjoy. All this may,however, turn out eventually to have been a matter of temporary inhibition. Even late in life somethaw, some release may take place, some bolt be shot back in the barrenest breast, and the man'shard heart may soften and break into religious feeling. Such cases more than any others suggest theidea that sudden conversion is by miracle. So long as they exist, we must not imagine ourselves todeal with irretrievably fixed classes. Now there are two forms of mental occurrence in humanbeings, which lead to a striking difference in the conversion process, a difference to whichProfessor Starbuck has called attention. You know how it is when you try to recollect a forgottenname. Usually you help the recall by working for it, by mentally running over the places, persons,and things with which the word was connected. But sometimes this effort fails: you feel then as ifthe harder you tried the less hope there would be, as though the name were JAMMED, andpressure in its direction only kept it all the more from rising. And then the opposite expedient oftensucceeds. Give up the effort entirely; think of something altogether different, and in half an hourthe lost name comes sauntering into your mind, as Emerson says, as carelessly as if it had neverbeen invited. Some hidden process was started in you by the effort, which went on after the effortceased, and made the result come as if it came spontaneously. A certain music teacher, says Dr.

Starbuck, says to her pupils after the thing to be done has been clearly pointed out, andunsuccessfully attempted: "Stop trying and it will do itself!"[108]

[108] Psychology of Religion, p. 117.

There is thus a conscious and voluntary way and an involuntary and unconscious way in whichmental results may get accomplished; and we find both ways exemplified in the history of conversion, giving us two types, which Starbuck calls the volitional type and the type by self-surrender respectively.

In the volitional type the regenerative change is usually gradual, and consists in the building up,piece by piece, of a new set of moral and spiritual habits. But there are always critical points hereat which the movement forward seems much more rapid. This psychological fact is abundantlyillustrated by Dr. Starbuck. Our education in any practical accomplishment proceeds apparently byjerks and starts just as the growth of our physical bodies does.

"An athlete . . . sometimes awakens suddenly to an understanding of the fine points of the gameand to a real enjoyment of it, just as the convert awakens to an appreciation of religion. If he keepson engaging in the sport, there may come a day when all at once the game plays itself throughhim--when he loses himself in some great contest. In the same way, a musician may suddenlyreach a point at which pleasure in the technique of the art entirely falls away, and in some momentof inspiration he becomes the instrument through which music flows. The writer has chanced tohear two different married persons, both of whose wedded lives had been beautiful from thebeginning, relate that not until a year or more after marriage did they awake to the full blessednessof married life. So it is with the religious experience of these persons we are studying."[109]

[109] Psychology of Religion, p. 385. Compare, also, pp. 137-144 and 262.

We shall erelong hear still more remarkable illustrations of subconsciously maturing processeseventuating in results of which we suddenly grow conscious. Sir William Hamilton and ProfessorLaycock of Edinburgh were among the first to call attention to this class of effects; but Dr.

Carpenter first, unless I am mistaken, introduced the term "unconscious cerebration," which hassince then been a popular phrase of explanation. The facts are now known to us far moreextensively than he could know them, and the adjective "unconscious," being for many of themalmost certainly a misnomer, is better replaced by the vaguer term "subconscious" or "subliminal."Of the volitional type of conversion it would be easy to give examples,[110] but they are as arule less interesting than those of the self-surrender type, in which the subconscious effects aremore abundant and often startling. I will therefore hurry to the latter, the more so because thedifference between the two types is after all not radical. Even in the most voluntarily built-up sortof regeneration there are passages of partial self-surrender interposed; and in the great majority ofall cases, when the will had done its uttermost towards bringing one close to the completeunification aspired after, it seems that the very last step must be left to other forces and performedwithout the help of its activity. In other words, self-surrender becomes then indispensable. "Thepersonal will," says Dr. Starbuck, "must be given up. In many cases relief persistently refuses tocome until the person ceases to resist, or to make an effort in the direction he desires to go."[110] For instance, C. G. Finney italicizes the volitional element: "Just at this point the wholequestion of Gospel salvation opened to my mind in a manner most marvelous to me at the time. Ithink I then saw, as clearly as I ever have in my life, the reality and fullness of the atonement ofChrist. Gospel salvation seemed to me to be an offer of something to be accepted, and all that wasnecessary on my part to get my own consent to give up my sins and accept Christ. After thisdistinct revelation had stood for some little time before my mind, the question seemed to be put, 'will you accept it now, to-day?' I replied, 'Yes; I will accept it to-day, or I will die in the attempt!'"He then went into the woods, where he describes his struggles. He could not pray, his heart washardened in its pride. "I then reproached myself for having promised to give my heart to Godbefore I left the woods. When I came to try, I found I could not. . . . My inward soul hung back,and there was no going out of my heart to God. The thought was pressing me, of the rashness ofmy promise that I would give my heart to God that day, or die in the attempt. It seemed to me as ifthat was binding on my soul; and yet I was going to break my vow. A great sinking anddiscouragement came over me, and I felt almost too weak to stand upon my knees. Just at thismoment I again thought I heard some one approach me, and I opened my eyes to see whether itwere so. But right there the revelation of my pride of heart, as the great difficulty that stood in theway, was distinctly shown to me. An overwhelming sense of my wickedness in being ashamed tohave a human being see me on my knees before God took such powerful possession of me, that Icried at the top of my voice, and exclaimed that I would not leave that place if all the men on earthand all the devils in hell surrounded me. 'What!' I said, 'such a degraded sinner as I am, on myknees confessing my sins to the great and holy God; and ashamed to have any human being, and asinner like myself, find me on my knees endeavoring to make my peace with my offended God!'

The sin appeared awful, infinite. It broke me down before the Lord." Memoirs, pp. 14-16,abridged.

"I had said I would not give up; but when my will was broken, it was all over," writes one ofStarbuck's correspondents.--Another says: "I simply said: 'Lord, I have done all I can; I leave thewhole matter with Thee,' and immediately there came to me a great peace."--Another: "All at onceit occurred to me that I might be saved, too, if I would stop trying to do it all myself, and followJesus: somehow I lost my load."--Another: "I finally ceased to resist, and gave myself up, though itwas a hard struggle. Gradually the feeling came over me that I had done my part, and God waswilling to do his."[111]--"Lord Thy will be done; damn or save!" cries John Nelson,[112]

exhausted with the anxious struggle to escape damnation; and at that moment his soul was filledwith peace.

[111] Starbuck: Op. cit., pp. 91, 114.

[112] Extracts from the Journal of Mr. John Nelson, London, no date, p. 24.

Dr. Starbuck gives an interesting, and it seems to me a true, account--so far as conceptions soschematic can claim truth at all--of the reasons why self-surrender at the last moment should be soindispensable. To begin with, there are two things in the mind of the candidate for conversion:

first, the present incompleteness or wrongness, the "sin" which he is eager to escape from; and,second, the positive ideal which he longs to compass. Now with most of us the sense of our presentwrongness is a far more distinct piece of our consciousness than is the imagination of any positiveideal we can aim at. In a majority of cases, indeed, the "sin" almost exclusively engrosses theattention, so that conversion is "a process of struggling away from sin rather than of strivingtowards righteousness."[113] A man's conscious wit and will, so far as they strain towards theideal, are aiming at something only dimly and inaccurately imagined. Yet all the while the forcesof mere organic ripening within him are going on towards their own prefigured result, and his conscious strainings are letting loose subconscious allies behind the scenes, which in their waywork towards rearrangement; and the rearrangement towards which all these deeper forces tend ispretty surely definite, and definitely different from what he consciously conceives and determines.

It may consequently be actually interfered with (JAMMED, as it were, like the lost word when weseek too energetically to recall it), by his voluntary efforts slanting from the true direction.

[113] Starbuck, p. 64.

Starbuck seems to put his finger on the root of the matter when he says that to exercise thepersonal will is still to live in the region where the imperfect self is the thing most emphasized.

Where, on the contrary, the subconscious forces take the lead, it is more probably the better self inposse which directs the operation. Instead of being clumsily and vaguely aimed at from without, itis then itself the organizing centre. What then must the person do? "He must relax," says Dr.

Starbuck--"that is, he must fall back on the larger Power that makes for righteousness, which hasbeen welling up in his own being, and let it finish in its own way the work it has begun. . . . The actof yielding, in this point of view, is giving one's self over to the new life, making it the centre of anew personality, and living, from within, the truth of it which had before been viewedobjectively."[114]

[114] Starbuck, p. 115.

"Man's extremity is God's opportunity" is the theological way of putting this fact of the need ofself-surrender; whilst the physiological way of stating it would be, "Let one do all in one's power,and one's nervous system will do the rest." Both statements acknowledge the same fact.[115]

[115] Starbuck, p. 113.

To state it in terms of our own symbolism: When the new centre of personal energy has beensubconsciously incubated so long as to be just ready to open into flower, "hands off" is the onlyword for us, it must burst forth unaided!

We have used the vague and abstract language of psychology. But since, in any terms, the crisisdescribed is the throwing of our conscious selves upon the mercy of powers which, whatever theymay be, are more ideal than we are actually, and make for our redemption, you see why self-surrender has been and always must be regarded as the vital turning-point of the religious life, sofar as the religious life is spiritual and no affair of outer works and ritual and sacraments. One maysay that the whole development of Christianity in inwardness has consisted in little more than thegreater and greater emphasis attached to this crisis of self-surrender. From Catholicism toLutheranism, and then to Calvinism; from that to Wesleyanism; and from this, outside of technicalChristianity altogether, to pure "liberalism" or transcendental idealism, whether or not of the mind-cure type, taking in the mediaeval mystics, the quietists, the pietists, and quakers by the way, wecan trace the stages of progress towards the idea of an immediate spiritual help, experienced by theindividual in his forlornness and standing in no essential need of doctrinal apparatus or propitiatorymachinery.

Psychology and religion are thus in perfect harmony up to this point, since both admit that thereare forces seemingly outside of the conscious individual that bring redemption to his life.

Nevertheless psychology, defining these forces as "subconscious," and speaking of their effects, asdue to "incubation," or "cerebration," implies that they do not transcend the individual'spersonality; and herein she diverges from Christian theology, which insists that they are directsupernatural operations of the Deity. I propose to you that we do not yet consider this divergencefinal, but leave the question for a while in abeyance--continued inquiry may enable us to get rid ofsome of the apparent discord.

Revert, then, for a moment more to the psychology of self-surrender.

When you find a man living on the ragged edge of his consciousness, pent in to his sin and wantand incompleteness, and consequently inconsolable, and then simply tell him that all is well withhim, that he must stop his worry, break with his discontent, and give up his anxiety, you seem tohim to come with pure absurdities. The only positive consciousness he has tells him that all isNOT well, and the better way you offer sounds simply as if you proposed to him to assert cold-blooded falsehoods. "The will to believe" cannot be stretched as far as that. We can makeourselves more faithful to a belief of which we have the rudiments, but we cannot create a beliefout of whole cloth when our perception actively assures us of its opposite. The better mindproposed to us comes in that case in the form of a pure negation of the only mind we have, and wecannot actively will a pure negation.

There are only two ways in which it is possible to get rid of anger, worry, fear, despair, or otherundesirable affections. One is that an opposite affection should overpoweringly break over us, andthe other is by getting so exhausted with the struggle that we have to stop--so we drop down, giveup, and DON'T CARE any longer. Our emotional brain-centres strike work, and we lapse into atemporary apathy. Now there is documentary proof that this state of temporary exhaustion notinfrequently forms part of the conversion crisis. So long as the egoistic worry of the sick soulguards the door, the expansive confidence of the soul of faith gains no presence. But let the formerfaint away, even but for a moment, and the latter can profit by the opportunity, and, having onceacquired possession, may retain it.

Carlyle's Teufelsdrockh passes from the everlasting No to the everlasting Yes through a "Centreof Indifference."Let me give you a good illustration of this feature in the conversion process. That genuine saint,David Brainerd, describes his own crisis in the following words:-"One morning, while I was walking in a solitary place as usual, I at once saw that all mycontrivances and projects to effect or procure deliverance and salvation for myself were utterly invain; I was brought quite to a stand, as finding myself totally lost. I saw that it was foreverimpossible for me to do anything towards helping or delivering myself, that I had made all thepleas I ever could have made to all eternity; and that all my pleas were vain, for I saw that self-interest had led me to pray, and that I had never once prayed from any respect to the glory of God.

I saw that there was no necessary connection between my prayers and the bestowment of divinemercy, that they laid not the least obligation upon God to bestow his grace upon me; and that therewas no more virtue or goodness in them than there would be in my paddling with my hand in the water. I saw that I had been heaping up my devotions before God, fasting, praying, etc.,pretending, and indeed really thinking sometimes that I was aiming at the glory of God; whereas Inever once truly intended it, but only my own happiness. I saw that as I had never done anythingfor God, I had no claim on anything from him but perdition, on account of my hypocrisy andmockery. When I saw evidently that I had regard to nothing but self-interest, then my dutiesappeared a vile mockery and a continual course of lies, for the whole was nothing but self-worship,and an horrid abuse of God.

"I continued, as I remember, in this state of mind, from Friday morning till the Sabbath eveningfollowing (July 12, 1739), when I was walking again in the same solitary place. Here, in amournful melancholy state I was attempting to pray; but found no heart to engage in that or anyother duty; my former concern, exercise, and religious affections were now gone. I thought that theSpirit of God had quite left me; but still was NOT DISTRESSED; yet disconsolate, as if there wasnothing in heaven or earth could make me happy. Having been thus endeavoring to pray--though,as I thought, very stupid and senseless--for near half an hour; then, as I was walking in a thickgrove, unspeakable glory seemed to open to the apprehension of my soul. I do not mean anyexternal brightness, nor any imagination of a body of light, but it was a new inward apprehensionor view that I had of God, such as I never had before, nor anything which had the leastresemblance to it. I had no particular apprehension of any one person in the Trinity, either theFather, the Son, or the Holy Ghost; but it appeared to be Divine glory. My soul rejoiced with joyunspeakable, to see such a God, such a glorious Divine Being; and I was inwardly pleased andsatisfied that he should be God over all for ever and ever. My soul was so captivated and delightedwith the excellency of God that I was even swallowed up in him, at least to that degree that I hadno thought about my own salvation, and scarce reflected that there was such a creature as myself. Icontinued in this state of inward joy, peace, and astonishing, till near dark without any sensibleabatement; and then began to think and examine what I had seen; and felt sweetly composed in mymind all the evening following. I felt myself in a new world, and everything about me appearedwith a different aspect from what it was wont to do. At this time, the way of salvation opened tome with such infinite wisdom, suitableness, and excellency, that I wondered I should ever think ofany other way of salvation; was amazed that I had not dropped my own contrivances, andcomplied with this lovely, blessed, and excellent way before. If I could have been saved by myown duties or any other way that I had formerly contrived, my whole soul would now have refusedit. I wondered that all the world did not see and comply with this way of salvation, entirely by therighteousness of Christ."[116]

[116] Edward's and Dwight's Life of Brainerd, New Haven, 1822, pp. 45-47, abridged.

I have italicized the passage which records the exhaustion of the anxious emotion hithertohabitual. In a large proportion, perhaps the majority, of reports, the writers speak as if theexhaustion of the lower and the entrance of the higher emotion were simultaneous,[117] yet oftenagain they speak as if the higher actively drove the lower out. This is undoubtedly true in a greatmany instances, as we shall presently see. But often there seems little doubt that both conditions-subconsciousripening of the one affection and exhaustion of the other--must simultaneously haveconspired, in order to produce the result.

[117] Describing the whole phenomenon as a change of equilibrium, we might say that themovement of new psychic energies towards the personal centre and the recession of old onestowards the margin (or the rising of some objects above, and the sinking of others below theconscious threshold) were only two ways of describing an indivisible event. Doubtless this is oftenabsolutely true, and Starbuck is right when he says that "self-surrender" and "new determination,"though seeming at first sight to be such different experiences, are "really the same thing. Self-surrender sees the change in terms of the old self, determination sees it in terms of the new." Op.

cit., p. 160.

T. W. B., a convert of Nettleton's, being brought to an acute paroxysm of conviction of sin, atenothing all day, locked himself in his room in the evening in complete despair, crying aloud, "Howlong, O Lord, how long?" "After repeating this and similar language," he says, "several times, Iseemed to sink away into a state of insensibility. When I came to myself again I was on my knees,praying not for myself but for others. I felt submission to the will of God, willing that he should dowith me as should seem good in his sight. My concern seemed all lost in concern for others."[118]

[118] A. A. Bonar: Nettleton and his Labors, Edinburgh, 1854, p. 261.

Our great American revivalist Finney writes: "I said to myself: 'What is this? I must have grievedthe Holy Ghost entirely away.

I have lost all my conviction. I have not a particle of concern about my soul; and it must be thatthe Spirit has left me.' 'Why!' thought I, 'I never was so far from being concerned about my ownsalvation in my life.' . . . I tried to recall my convictions, to get back again the load of sin underwhich I had been laboring. I tried in vain to make myself anxious. I was so quiet and peaceful thatI tried to feel concerned about that, lest it should be the result of my having grieved the Spiritaway."[119]

[119] Charles G. Finney: Memoirs written by Himself, 1876, pp. 17, 18.

But beyond all question there are persons in whom, quite independently of any exhaustion in theSubject's capacity for feeling, or even in the absence of any acute previous feeling, the highercondition, having reached the due degree of energy, bursts through all barriers and sweeps in like asudden flood. These are the most striking and memorable cases, the cases of instantaneousconversion to which the conception of divine grace has been most peculiarly attached. I have givenone of them at length--the case of Mr. Bradley. But I had better reserve the other cases and mycomments on the rest of the subject for the following lecture.
Lecture X CONVERSION--Concluded
In this lecture we have to finish the subject of Conversion, considering at first those strikinginstantaneous instances of which Saint Paul's is the most eminent, and in which, often amidtremendous emotional excitement or perturbation of the senses, a complete division is establishedin the twinkling of an eye between the old life and the new. Conversion of this type is an important phase of religious experience, owing to the part which it has played in Protestant theology, and itbehooves us to study it conscientiously on that account.

I think I had better cite two or three of these cases before proceeding to a more generalizedaccount. One must know concrete instances first; for, as Professor Agassiz used to say, one can seeno farther into a generalization than just so far as one's previous acquaintance with particularsenables one to take it in.

I will go back, then, to the case of our friend Henry Alline, and quote his report of the 26th ofMarch, 1775, on which his poor divided mind became unified for good.

"As I was about sunset wandering in the fields lamenting my miserable lost and undonecondition, and almost ready to sink under my burden, I thought I was in such a miserable case asnever any man was before. I returned to the house, and when I got to the door, just as I wasstepping off the threshold, the following impressions came into my mind like a powerful but smallstill voice. You have been seeking, praying, reforming, laboring, reading, hearing, and meditating,and what have you done by it towards your salvation? Are you any nearer to conversion now thanwhen you first began? Are you any more prepared for heaven, or fitter to appear before theimpartial bar of God, than when you first began to seek?

"It brought such conviction on me that I was obliged to say that I did not think I was one stepnearer than at first, but as much condemned, as much exposed, and as miserable as before. I criedout within myself, O Lord God, I am lost, and if thou, O Lord, dost not find out some new way, Iknow nothing of, I shall never be saved, for the ways and methods I have prescribed to myselfhave all failed me, and I am willing they should fail. O Lord, have mercy! O Lord, have mercy!

"These discoveries continued until I went into the house and sat down. After I sat down, being allin confusion, like a drowning man that was just giving up to sink, and almost in an agony, I turnedvery suddenly round in my chair, and seeing part of an old Bible lying in one of the chairs, Icaught hold of it in great haste; and opening it without any premeditation, cast my eyes on the 38thPsalm, which was the first time I ever saw the word of God: it took hold of me with such powerthat it seemed to go through my whole soul, so that it seemed as if God was praying in, with, andfor me. About this time my father called the family to attend prayers; I attended, but paid no regardto what he said in his prayer, but continued praying in those words of the Psalm. Oh, help me, helpme! cried I, thou Redeemer of souls, and save me, or I am gone forever; thou canst this night, ifthou pleasest, with one drop of thy blood atone for my sins, and appease the wrath of an angryGod. At that instant of time when I gave all up to him to do with me as he pleased, and was willingthat God should rule over me at his pleasure, redeeming love broke into my soul with repeatedscriptures, with such power that my whole soul seemed to be melted down with love, the burden ofguilt and condemnation was gone, darkness was expelled, my heart humbled and filled withgratitude, and my whole soul, that was a few minutes ago groaning under mountains of death, andcrying to an unknown God for help, was now filled with immortal love, soaring on the wings offaith,<215> freed from the chains of death and darkness, and crying out, My Lord and my God;thou art my rock and my fortress, my shield and my high tower, my life, my joy, my present andmy everlasting portion. Looking up, I thought I saw that same light [he had on more than oneprevious occasion seen subjectively a bright blaze of light], though it appeared different; and assoon as I saw it, the design was opened to me, according to his promise, and I was obliged to cry out: Enough, enough, O blessed God! The work of conversion, the change, and the manifestationsof it are no more disputable than that light which I see, or anything that ever I saw.

"In the midst of all my joys, in less than half an hour after my soul was set at liberty, the Lorddiscovered to me my labor in the ministry and call to preach the gospel. I cried out, Amen, Lord,I'll go; send me, send me. I spent the greatest part of the night in ecstasies of joy, praising andadoring the Ancient of Days for his free and unbounded grace. After I had been so long in thistransport and heavenly frame that my nature seemed to require sleep, I thought to close my eyesfor a few moments; then the devil stepped in, and told me that if I went to sleep, I should lose it all,and when I should awake in the morning I would find it to be nothing but a fancy and delusion. Iimmediately cried out, O Lord God, if I am deceived, undeceive me.

"I then closed my eyes for a few minutes, and seemed to be refreshed with sleep; and when Iawoke, the first inquiry was, Where is my God? And in an instant of time, my soul seemed awakein and with God, and surrounded by the arms of everlasting love. About sunrise I arose with joy torelate to my parents what God had done for my soul, and declared to them the miracle of God'sunbounded grace. I took a Bible to show them the words that were impressed by God on my soulthe evening before; but when I came to open the Bible, it appeared all new to me.

"I so longed to be useful in the cause of Christ, in preaching the gospel, that it seemed as if Icould not rest any longer, but go I must and tell the wonders of redeeming love. I lost all taste forcarnal pleasures, and carnal company, and was enabled to forsake them."[120]

[120] Life and Journals, Boston, 1806, pp. 31-40, abridged.

Young Mr. Alline, after the briefest of delays, and with no book-learning but his Bible, and noteaching save that of his own experience, became a Christian minister, and thenceforward his lifewas fit to rank, for its austerity and single-mindedness, with that of the most devoted saints. Buthappy as he became in his strenuous way, he never got his taste for even the most innocent carnalpleasures back. We must class him, like Bunyan and Tolstoy, amongst those upon whose soul theiron of melancholy left a permanent imprint. His redemption was into another universe than thismere natural world, and life remained for him a sad and patient trial. Years later we can find himmaking such an entry as this in his diary: "On Wednesday the 12th I preached at a wedding, andhad the happiness thereby to be the means of excluding carnal mirth."The next case I will give is that of a correspondent of Professor Leuba, printed in the latter'sarticle, already cited, in vol. vi. of the American Journal of Psychology. This subject was anOxford graduate, the son of a clergyman, and the story resembles in many points the classic case ofColonel Gardiner, which everybody may be supposed to know. Here it is, somewhat abridged:-"Between the period of leaving Oxford and my conversion I never darkened the door of myfather's church, although I lived with him for eight years, making what money I wanted byjournalism, and spending it in high carousal with any one who would sit with me and drink itaway. So I lived, sometimes drunk for a week together, and then a terrible repentance, and wouldnot touch a drop for a whole month.

"In all this period, that is, up to thirty-three years of age, I never had a desire to reform onreligious grounds. But all my pangs were due to some terrible remorse I used to feel after a heavy carousal, the remorse taking the shape of regret after my folly in wasting my life in such a way--aman of superior talents and education. This terrible remorse turned me gray in one night, andwhenever it came upon me I was perceptibly grayer the next morning. What I suffered in this wayis beyond the expression of words. It was hell-fire in all its most dreadful tortures. Often did I vowthat if I got over 'this time' I would reform. Alas, in about three days I fully recovered, and was ashappy as ever. So it went on for years, but, with a physique like a rhinoceros, I always recovered,and as long as I let drink alone, no man was as capable of enjoying life as I was.

"I was converted in my own bedroom in my father's rectory house at precisely three o'clock inthe afternoon of a hot July day (July 13, 1886). I was in perfect health, having been off from thedrink for nearly a month. I was in no way troubled about my soul. In fact, God was not in mythoughts that day. A young lady friend sent me a copy of Professor Drummond's Natural Law inthe Spiritual World, asking me my opinion of it as a literary work only. Being proud of my criticaltalents and wishing to enhance myself in my new friend's esteem, I took the book to my bedroomfor quiet, intending to give it a thorough study, and then write her what I thought of it. It was herethat God met me face to face, and I shall never forget the meeting. 'He that hath the Son hath lifeeternal, he that hath not the Son hath not life.' I had read this scores of times before, but this madeall the difference. I was now in God's presence and my attention was absolutely 'soldered' on tothis verse, and I was not allowed to proceed with the book till I had fairly considered what thesewords really involved. Only then was I allowed to proceed, feeling all the while that there wasanother being in my bedroom, though not seen by me. The stillness was very marvelous, and I feltsupremely happy. It was most unquestionably shown me, in one second of time, that I had nevertouched the Eternal: and that if I died then, I must inevitably be lost. I was undone. I knew it aswell as I now know I am saved. The Spirit of God showed it me in ineffable love; there was noterror in it; I felt God's love so powerfully upon me that only a mighty sorrow crept over me that Ihad lost all through my own folly; and what was I to do? What could I do? I did not repent even;God never asked me to repent. All I felt was 'I am undone,' and God cannot help it, although heloves me. No fault on the part of the Almighty. All the time I was supremely happy: I felt like alittle child before his father. I had done wrong, but my Father did not scold me, but loved me mostwondrously. Still my doom was sealed. I was lost to a certainty, and being naturally of a bravedisposition I did not quail under it, but deep sorrow for the past, mixed with regret for what I hadlost, took hold upon me, and my soul thrilled within me to think it was all over. Then there crept inupon me so gently, so lovingly, so unmistakably, a way of escape, and what was it after all? Theold, old story over again, told in the simplest way: 'There is no name under heaven whereby ye canbe saved except that of the Lord Jesus Christ.' No words were spoken to me; my soul seemed tosee my Saviour in the spirit, and from that hour to this, nearly nine years now, there has never beenin my life one doubt that the Lord Jesus Christ and God the Father both worked upon me thatafternoon in July, both differently, and both in the most perfect love conceivable, and I rejoicedthere and then in a conversion so astounding that the whole village heard of it in less than twenty-four hours.

"But a time of trouble was yet to come. The day after my conversion I went into the hay-field tolend a hand with the harvest, and not having made any promise to God to abstain or drink inmoderation only, I took too much and came home drunk. My poor sister was heart-broken; and I felt ashamed of myself and got to my bedroom at once, where she followed me weeping copiously.

She said I had been converted and fallen away instantly. But although I was quite full of drink (notmuddled, however), I knew that God's work begun in me was not going to be wasted. Aboutmidday I made on my knees the first prayer before God for twenty years. I did not ask to beforgiven; I felt that was no good, for I would be sure to fall again. Well, what did I do? Icommitted myself to him in the profoundest belief that my individuality was going to be destroyed,that he would take all from me, and I was willing. In such a <219> surrender lies the secret of aholy life. From that hour drink has had no terrors for me: I never touch it, never want it. The samething occurred with my pipe: after being a regular smoker from my twelfth year the desire for itwent at once, and has never returned. So with every known sin, the deliverance in each case beingpermanent and complete. I have had no temptation since conversion, God seemingly having shutout Satan from that course with me. He gets a free hand in other ways, but never on sins of theflesh. Since I gave up to God all ownership in my own life, he has guided me in a thousand ways,and has opened my path in a way almost incredible to those who do not enjoy the blessing of atruly surrendered life."So much for our graduate of Oxford, in whom you notice the complete abolition of an ancientappetite as one of the conversion's fruits.

The most curious record of sudden conversion with which I am acquainted is that of M.

Alphonse Ratisbonne, a free-thinking French Jew, to Catholicism, at Rome in 1842. In a letter to aclerical friend, written a few months later, the convert gives a palpitating account of thecircumstances.[121] The predisposing conditions appear to have been slight. He had an elderbrother who had been converted and was a Catholic priest. He was himself irreligious, andnourished an antipathy to the apostate brother and generally to his "cloth." Finding himself atRome in his twenty-ninth year, he fell in with a French gentleman who tried to make a proselyte ofhim, but who succeeded no farther after two or three conversations than to get him to hang (halfjocosely) a religious medal round his neck, and to accept and read a copy of a short prayer to theVirgin. M. Ratisbonne represents his own part in the conversations as having been of a light andchaffing order; but he notes the fact that for some days he was unable to banish the words of theprayer from his mind, and that the night before the crisis he had a sort of nightmare, in the imageryof which a black cross with no Christ upon it figured. Nevertheless, until noon of the next day hewas free in mind and spent the time in trivial conversations. I now give his own words.

[121] My quotations are made from an Italian translation of this letter in the Biografia del sig. M.

A. Ratisbonne, Ferrara, 1843, which I have to thank Monsignore D. O'Connell of Rome forbringing to my notice. I abridge the original.

"If at this time any one had accosted me, saying: 'Alphonse, in a quarter of an hour you shall beadoring Jesus Christ as your God and Saviour; you shall lie prostrate with your face upon theground in a humble church; you shall be smiting your breast at the foot of a priest; you shall passthe carnival in a college of Jesuits to prepare yourself to receive baptism, ready to give your life forthe Catholic faith; you shall renounce the world and its pomps and pleasures; renounce yourfortune, your hopes, and if need be, your betrothed; the affections of your family, the esteem ofyour friends, and your attachment to the Jewish people; you shall have no other aspiration than to follow Christ and bear his cross till death;'--if, I say, a prophet had come to me with such aprediction, I should have judged that only one person could be more mad than he--whosoever,namely, might believe in the possibility of such senseless folly becoming true.

And yet that folly is at present my only wisdom, my sole happiness.

"Coming out of the cafe I met the carriage of Monsieur B. [the proselyting friend]. He stoppedand invited me in for a drive, but first asked me to wait for a few minutes whilst he attended tosome duty at the church of San Andrea delle Fratte. Instead of waiting in the carriage, I entered thechurch myself to look at it. The church of San Andrea was poor, small, and empty; I believe that Ifound myself there almost alone. No work of art attracted my attention; and I passed my eyesmechanically its interior without being arrested by any particular thought. I onlyrememberanentir(over) ely black dog which went trotting and turning before me as I mused.(can) In aninstant the dog had disappeared, the whole church had vanished, I no longer saw anything, . . . ormore truly I saw, O my God, one thing alone. "Heavens, how can I speak of it? Oh no! humanwords cannot attain to expressing the inexpressible. Any description, however sublime it might be,could be but a profanation of the unspeakable truth.

"I was there prostrate on the ground, bathed in my tears, with my heart beside itself, when M. B.

called me back to life. I could not reply to the questions which followed from him one upon theother. But finally I took the medal which I had on my breast, and with all the effusion of my soul Ikissed the image of the Virgin, radiant with grace, which it bore. Oh, indeed, it was She! It wasindeed She! [What he had seen had been a vision of the Virgin.]

"I did not know where I was: I did not know whether I was Alphonse or another. I only feltmyself changed and believed myself another me; I looked for myself in myself and did not findmyself. In the bottom of my soul I felt an explosion of the most ardent joy; I could not speak; I hadno wish to reveal what had happened. But I felt something solemn and sacred within me whichmade me ask for a priest. I was led to one; and there alone, after he had given me the positiveorder, I spoke as best I could, kneeling, and with my heart still trembling. I could give no accountto myself of the truth of which I had acquired a knowledge and a faith. All that I can say is that inan instant the bandage had fallen from my eyes, and not one bandage only, but the whole manifoldof bandages in which I had been brought up. One after another they rapidly disappeared, even asthe mud and ice disappear under the rays of the burning sun.

"I came out as from a sepulchre, from an abyss of darkness; and I was living, perfectly living.

But I wept, for at the bottom of that gulf I saw the extreme of misery from which I had been savedby an infinite mercy; and I shuddered at the sight of my iniquities, stupefied, melted, overwhelmedwith wonder and with gratitude. You may ask me how I came to this new insight, for truly I hadnever opened a book of religion nor even read a single page of the Bible, and the dogma of originalsin is either entirely denied or forgotten by the Hebrews of to-day, so that I had thought so littleabout it that I doubt whether I ever knew its name. But how came I, then, to this perception of it? Ican <222> answer nothing save this, that on entering that church I was in darkness altogether, andon coming out of it I saw the fullness of the light. I can explain the change no better than by thesimile of a profound sleep or the analogy of one born blind who should suddenly open his eyes tothe day. He sees, but cannot define the light which bathes him and by means of which he sees theobjects which excite his wonder. If we cannot explain physical light, how can we explain the light which is the truth itself? And I think I remain within the limits of veracity when I say that withouthaving any knowledge of the letter of religious doctrine, I now intuitively perceived its sense andspirit. Better than if I saw them, I FELT those hidden things; I felt them by the inexplicable effectsthey produced in me. It all happened in my interior mind, and those impressions, more rapid thanthought shook my soul, revolved and turned it, as it were, in another direction, towards other aims,by other paths. I express myself badly. But do you wish, Lord, that I should inclose in poor andbarren words sentiments which the heart alone can understand?"I might multiply cases almost indefinitely, but these will suffice to show you how real, definite,and memorable an event a sudden conversion may be to him who has the experience. Throughoutthe height of it he undoubtedly seems to himself a passive spectator or undergoer of an astoundingprocess performed upon him from above. There is too much evidence of this for any doubt of it tobe possible. Theology, combining this fact with the doctrines of election and grace, has concludedthat the spirit of God is with us at these dramatic moments in a peculiarly miraculous way, unlikewhat happens at any other juncture of our lives. At that moment, it believes, an absolutely newnature is breathed into us, and we become partakers of the very substance of the Deity.

That the conversion should be instantaneous seems called for on this view, and the MoravianProtestants appear to have been the first to see this logical consequence. The Methodists soonfollowed suit, practically if not dogmatically, and a short time ere his death, John Wesley wrote:-"In London alone I found 652 members of our Society who were exceeding clear in theirexperience, and whose testimony I could see no reason to doubt. And every one of these (without asingle exception) has declared that his deliverance from sin was instantaneous; that the change waswrought in a moment. Had half of these, or one third, or one in twenty, declared it wasGRADUALLY wrought in THEM, I should have believed this, with regard to THEM, and thoughtthat SOME were gradually sanctified and some instantaneously. But as I have not found, in so longa space of time, a single person speaking thus, I cannot but believe that sanctification is commonly,if not always, an instantaneous work."[122]

[122] Tyerman's Life of Wesley, i. 463.

All this while the more usual sects of Protestantism have set no such store by instantaneousconversion. For them as for the Catholic Church, Christ's blood, the sacraments, and theindividual's ordinary religious duties are practically supposed to suffice to his salvation, eventhough no acute crisis of self-despair and surrender followed by relief should be experienced. ForMethodism, on the contrary, unless there have been a crisis of this sort, salvation is only offered,not effectively received, and Christ's sacrifice in so far forth is incomplete. Methodism surely herefollows, if not the healthier-minded, yet on the whole the profounder spiritual instinct. Theindividual models which it has set up as typical and worthy of imitation are not only the moreinteresting dramatically, but psychologically they have been the more complete.

In the fully evolved Revivalism of Great Britain and America we have, so to speak, the codifiedand stereotyped procedure to which this way of thinking has led. In spite of the unquestionable factthat saints of the once-born type exist, that there may be a gradual growth in holiness without acataclysm; in spite of the obvious leakage (as one may say) of much mere natural goodness into the scheme of salvation; revivalism has always assumed that only its own type of religiousexperience can be perfect; you must first be nailed on the cross of natural despair and agony, andthen in the twinkling of an eye be miraculously released.

It is natural that those who personally have traversed such an experience should carry away afeeling of its being a miracle rather than a natural process. Voices are often heard, lights seen, orvisions witnessed; automatic motor phenomena occur; and it always seems, after the surrender ofthe personal will, as if an extraneous higher power had flooded in and taken possession. Moreoverthe sense of renovation, safety, cleanness, rightness, can be so marvelous and jubilant as well towarrant one's belief in a radically new substantial nature.

"Conversion," writes the New England Puritan, Joseph Alleine, "is not the putting in a patch ofholiness; but with the true convert holiness is woven into all his powers, principles, and practice.

The sincere Christian is quite a new fabric, from the foundation to the top-stone. He is a new man,a new creature."And Jonathan Edwards says in the same strain: "Those gracious influences which are the effectsof the Spirit of God are altogether supernatural--are quite different from anything that unregeneratemen experience. They are what no improvement, or composition of natural qualifications orprinciples will ever produce; because they not only differ from what is natural, and fromeverything that natural men experience in degree and circumstances, but also in kind, and are of anature far more excellent. From hence it follows that in gracious affections there are [also] newperceptions and sensations entirely different in their nature and kind from anything experienced bythe [same] saints before they were sanctified. . . . The conceptions which the saints have of theloveliness of God, and that kind of delight which they experience in it, are quite peculiar, andentirely different from anything which a natural man can possess, or of which he can form anyproper notion."And that such a glorious transformation as this ought of necessity to be preceded by despair isshown by Edwards in another passage.

"Surely it cannot be unreasonable," he says, "that before God delivers us from a state of sin andliability to everlasting woe, he should give us some considerable sense of the evil from which hedelivers us, in order that we may know and feel the importance of salvation, and be enabled toappreciate the value of what God is pleased to do for us. As those who are saved are successivelyin two extremely different states--first in a state of condemnation and then in a state of justificationand blessedness--and as God, in the salvation of men, deals with them as rational and intelligentcreatures, it appears agreeable to this wisdom, that those who are saved should be made sensible oftheir Being, in those two different states. In the first place, that they should be made sensible oftheir state of condemnation; and afterwards, of their state of deliverance and happiness."Such quotations express sufficiently well for our purpose the doctrinal interpretation of thesechanges. Whatever part suggestion and imitation may have played in producing them in men andwomen in excited assemblies, they have at any rate been in countless individual instances anoriginal and unborrowed experience. Were we writing the story of the mind from the purelynatural-history point of view, with no religious interest whatever, we should still have to writedown man's liability to sudden and complete conversion as one of his most curious peculiarities.

What, now, must we ourselves think of this question? Is an instantaneous conversion a miracle inwhich God is present as he is present in no change of heart less strikingly abrupt? Are there twoclasses of human beings, even among the apparently regenerate, of which the one class reallypartakes of Christ's nature while the other merely seems to do so? Or, on the contrary, may thewhole phenomenon of regeneration, even in these startling instantaneous examples, possibly be astrictly natural process, divine in its fruits, of course, but in one case more and in another less so,and neither more nor less divine in its mere causation and mechanism than any other process, highor low, of man's interior life?

Before proceeding to answer this question, I must ask you to listen to some more psychologicalremarks. At our last lecture, I explained the shifting of men's centres of personal energy withinthem and the lighting up of new crises of emotion. I explained the phenomena as partly due toexplicitly conscious processes of thought and will, but as due largely also to the subconsciousincubation and maturing of motives deposited by the experiences of life. When ripe, the resultshatch out, or burst into flower. I have now to speak of the subconscious region, in which suchprocesses of flowering may occur, in a somewhat less vague way. I only regret that my limits oftime here force me to be so short.

The expression "field of consciousness" has but recently come into vogue in the psychologybooks. Until quite lately the unit of mental life which figured most was the single "idea," supposedto be a definitely outlined thing. But at present psychologists are tending, first, to admit that theactual unit is more probably the total mental state, the entire wave of consciousness or field ofobjects present to the thought at any time; and, second, to see that it is impossible to outline thiswave, this field, with any definiteness.

As our mental fields succeed one another, each has its centre of interest, around which theobjects of which we are less and less attentively conscious fade to a margin so faint that its limitsare unassignable. Some fields are narrow fields and some are wide fields. Usually when we have awide field we rejoice, for we then see masses of truth together, and often get glimpses of relationswhich we divine rather than see, for they shoot beyond the field into still remoter regions ofobjectivity, regions which we seem rather to be about to perceive than to perceive actually. Atother times, of drowsiness, illness, or fatigue, our fields may narrow almost to a point, and we findourselves correspondingly oppressed and contracted.

Different individuals present constitutional differences in this matter of width of field. Your greatorganizing geniuses are men with habitually vast fields of mental vision, in which a wholeprogramme of future operations will appear dotted out at once, the rays shooting far ahead intodefinite directions of advance. In common people there is never this magnificent inclusive view ofa topic. They stumble along, feeling their way, as it were, from point to point, and often stopentirely. In certain diseased conditions consciousness is a mere spark, without memory of the pastor thought of the future, and with the present narrowed down to some one simple emotion orsensation of the body.

The important fact which this "field" formula commemorates is the indetermination of themargin. Inattentively realized as is the matter which the margin contains, it is nevertheless there,and helps both to guide our behavior and to determine the next movement of our attention. It liesaround us like a "magnetic field," inside of which our centre of energy turns like a compass needle, as the present phase of consciousness alters into its successor. Our whole past store ofmemories floats beyond this margin, ready at a touch to come in; and the entire mass of residualpowers, impulses, and knowledges that constitute our empirical self stretches continuously beyondit. So vaguely drawn are the outlines between what is actual and what is only potential at anymoment of our conscious life, that it is always hard to say of certain mental elements whether weare conscious of them or not.

The ordinary psychology, admitting fully the difficulty of tracing the marginal outline, hasnevertheless taken for <228> granted, first, that all the consciousness the person now has, be thesame focal or marginal, inattentive or attentive, is there in the "field" of the moment, all dim andimpossible to assign as the latter's outline may be; and, second, that what is absolutely extra-marginal is absolutely non-existent. and cannot be a fact of consciousness at all.

And having reached this point, I must now ask you to recall what I said in my last lecture aboutthe subconscious life. I said, as you may recollect, that those who first laid stress upon thesephenomena could not know the facts as we now know them. My first duty now is to tell you what Imeant by such a statement.

I cannot but think that the most important step forward that has occurred in psychology since Ihave been a student of that science is the discovery, first made in 1886, that, in certain subjects atleast, there is not only the consciousness of the ordinary field, with its usual centre and margin, butan addition thereto in the shape of a set of memories, thoughts, and feelings which are extra-marginal and outside of the primary consciousness altogether, but yet must be classed as consciousfacts of some sort, able to reveal their presence by unmistakable signs. I call this the mostimportant step forward because, unlike the other advances which psychology has made, thisdiscovery has revealed to us an entirely unsuspected peculiarity in the constitution of humannature. No other step forward which psychology has made can proffer any such claim as this.

In particular this discovery of a consciousness existing beyond the field, or subliminally as Mr.

Myers terms it, casts light on many phenomena of religious biography. That is why I have toadvert to it now, although it is naturally impossible for me in this place to give you any account ofthe evidence on which the admission of such a consciousness is based. You will find it set forth inmany recent books, Binet's Alterations of Personality[123] being perhaps as good a one as any torecommend.

[123] Published in the International Scientific Series.

The human material on which the demonstration has been made has so far been rather limitedand, in part at least, eccentric, consisting of unusually suggestible hypnotic subjects, and ofhysteric patients. Yet the elementary mechanisms of our life are presumably so uniform that whatis shown to be true in a marked degree of some persons is probably true in some degree of all, andmay in a few be true in an extraordinarily high degree.

The most important consequence of having a strongly developed ultra-marginal life of this sort isthat one's ordinary fields of consciousness are liable to incursions from it of which the subject doesnot guess the source, and which, therefore, take for him the form of unaccountable impulses to act,or inhibitions of action, of obsessive ideas, or even of hallucinations of sight or hearing. The impulses may take the direction of automatic speech or writing, the meaning of which the subjecthimself may not understand even while he utters it; and generalizing this phenomenon, Mr. Myershas given the name of automatism, sensory or motor, emotional or intellectual, to this wholesphere of effects, due to "up-rushes" into the ordinary consciousness of energies originating in thesubliminal parts of the mind.

The simplest instance of an automatism is the phenomenon of post-hypnotic suggestion, so-called. You give to a hypnotized subject, adequately susceptible, an order to perform somedesignated act--usual or eccentric, it makes no difference--after he wakes from his hypnotic sleep.

Punctually, when the signal comes or the time elapses upon which you have told him that the actmust ensue, he performs it;--but in so doing he has no recollection of your suggestion, and healways trumps up an improvised pretext for his behavior if the act be of an eccentric kind. It mayeven be suggested to a subject to have a vision or to hear a voice at a certain interval after waking,and when the time comes the vision is seen or the voice heard, with no inkling on the subject's partof its source.

In the wonderful explorations by Binet, Janet, Breuer, Freud, Mason, Prince, and others, of thesubliminal consciousness of patients with hysteria, we have revealed to us whole systems ofunderground life, in the shape of memories of a painful sort which lead a parasitic existence,buried outside of the primary fields of consciousness, and making irruptions thereinto withhallucinations, pains, convulsions, paralyses of feeling and of motion, and the whole procession ofsymptoms of hysteric disease of body and of mind. Alter or abolish by suggestion thesesubconscious memories, and the patient immediately gets well. His symptoms were automatisms,in Mr. Myers's sense of the word. These clinical records sound like fairy-tales when one first readsthem, yet it is impossible to doubt their accuracy; and, the path having been once opened by thesefirst observers, similar observations have been made elsewhere. They throw, as I said, a whollynew light upon our natural constitution.

And it seems to me that they make a farther step inevitable. Interpreting the unknown after theanalogy of the known, it seems to me that hereafter, wherever we meet with a phenomenon ofautomatism, be it motor impulses, or obsessive idea, or unaccountable caprice, or delusion, orhallucination, we are bound first of all to make search whether it be not an explosion, into thefields of ordinary consciousness, of ideas elaborated outside of those fields in subliminal regions ofthe mind. We should look, therefore, for its source in the Subject's subconscious life. In thehypnotic cases, we ourselves create the source by our suggestion, so we know it directly. In thehysteric cases, the lost memories which are the source have to be extracted from the patient'sSubliminal by a number of ingenious methods, for an account of which you must consult thebooks. In other pathological cases, insane delusions, for example, or psychopathic obsessions, thesource is yet to seek, but by analogy it also should be in subliminal regions which improvements inour methods may yet conceivably put on tap. There lies the mechanism logically to be assumed-butthe assumption involves a vast program of work to be done in the way of verification, in whichthe religious experiences of man must play their part.[124]

[124] The reader will here please notice that in my exclusive reliance in the last lecture on thesubconscious "incubation" of motives deposited by a growing experience, I followed the methodof employing accepted principles of explanation as far as one can. The subliminal region, whatever else it may be, is at any rate a place now admitted by psychologists to exist for the accumulation ofvestiges of sensible experience (whether inattentively or attentively registered), and for theirelaboration according to ordinary psychological or logical laws into results that end by attainingsuch a "tension"that they may at times enter consciousness with something like a burst. It thus is"scientific" to interpret all otherwise unaccountable invasive alterations of consciousness as resultsof the tension of subliminal memories reaching the bursting-point. But candor obliges me toconfess that there are occasional bursts into consciousness of results of which it is not easy todemonstrate any prolonged subconscious incubation. Some of the cases I used to illustrate thesense of presence of the unseen in Lecture III were of this order (compare pages 59, 60, 61, 66);and we shall see other experiences of the kind when we come to the subject of mysticism. The caseof Mr. Bradley, that of M. Ratisbonne, possibly that of Colonel Gardiner, possibly that of saintPaul, might not be so easily explained in this simple way. The result, then, would have to beascribed either to a merely physiological nerve storm, a "discharging lesion" like that of epilepsy;or, in case it were useful and rational, as in the two latter cases named, to some more mystical ortheological hypothesis. I make this remark in order that the reader may realize that the subject isreally complex. But I shall keep myself as far as possible at present to the more "scientific" view;and only as the plot thickens in subsequent lectures shall I consider the question of its absolutesufficiency as an explanation of all the facts. That subconscious incubation explains a greatnumber of them, there can be no doubt.

And thus I return to our own specific subject of instantaneous conversions. You remember thecases of Alline, Bradley, Brainerd, and the graduate of Oxford converted at three in the afternoon.

Similar occurrences abound, some with and some without luminous visions, all with a sense ofastonished happiness, and of being wrought on by a higher control. If, abstracting altogether fromthe question of their value for the future spiritual life of the individual, we take them on theirpsychological side exclusively, so many peculiarities in them remind us of what we find outside ofconversion that we are tempted to class them along with other automatisms, and to suspect thatwhat makes the difference between a sudden and a gradual convert is not necessarily the presenceof divine miracle in the case of one and of something less divine in that of the other, but rather asimple psychological peculiarity, the fact, namely, that in the recipient of the more instantaneousgrace we have one of those Subjects who are in possession of a large region in which mental workcan go on subliminally, and from which invasive experiences, abruptly upsetting the equilibrium ofthe primary consciousness, may come.

I do not see why Methodists need object to such a view. Pray go back and recollect one of theconclusions to which I sought to lead you in my very first lecture. You may remember how I thereargued against the notion that the worth of a thing can be decided by its origin. Our spiritualjudgment, I said, our opinion of the significance and value of a human event or condition, must bedecided on empirical grounds exclusively. If the fruits for life of the state of conversion are good,we ought to idealize and venerate it, even though it be a piece of natural psychology; if not, weought to make short work with it, no matter what supernatural being may have infused it.

Well, how is it with these fruits? If we except the class of preeminent saints of whom the namesillumine history, and consider only the usual run of "saints," the shopkeeping church-members and ordinary youthful or middle-aged recipients of instantaneous conversion, whether at revivals or inthe spontaneous course of methodistic growth, you will probably agree that no splendor worthy ofa wholly supernatural creature fulgurates from them, or sets them apart from the mortals who havenever experienced that favor. Were it true that a suddenly converted man as such is, as Edwardssays,[125] of an entirely different kind from a natural man, partaking as he does directly of Christ'ssubstance, there surely ought to be some exquisite class-mark, some distinctive radiance attachingeven to the lowliest specimen of this genus, to which no one of us could remain insensible, andwhich, so far as it went, would prove him more excellent than ever the most highly gifted amongmere natural men. But notoriously there is no such radiance. Converted men as a class areindistinguishable from natural men; some natural men even excel some converted men in theirfruits; and no one ignorant of doctrinal theology could guess by mere every-day inspection of the"accidents" of the two groups of persons before him, that their substance differed as much asdivine differs from human substance.

[125] Edwards says elsewhere: "I am bold to say that the work of God in the conversion of onesoul, considered together with the source foundation, and purchase of it, and also the benefit, end,and eternal issue of it, is a more glorious work of God than the creation of the whole materialuniverse."The believers in the non-natural character of sudden conversion have had practically to admitthat there is no unmistakable class-mark distinctive of all true converts. The super-normalincidents, such as voices and visions and overpowering impressions of the meaning of suddenlypresented scripture texts, the melting emotions and tumultuous affections connected with the crisisof change, may all come by way of nature, or worse still, be counterfeited by Satan. The realwitness of the spirit to the second birth is to be found only in the disposition of the genuine child ofGod, the permanently patient heart, the love of self eradicated. And this, it has to be admitted, isalso found in those who pass no crisis, and may even be found outside of Christianity altogether.

Throughout Jonathan Edwards's admirably rich and delicate description of the supernaturallyinfused condition, in his Treatise on Religious Affections, there is not one decisive trait, not onemark, that unmistakably parts it off from what may possibly be only an exceptionally high degreeof natural goodness. In fact, one could hardly read a clearer argument than this book unwittinglyoffers in favor of the thesis that no chasm exists between the orders of human excellence, but thathere as elsewhere, nature shows continuous differences, and generation and regeneration arematters of degree.

All which denial of two objective classes of human beings separated by a chasm must not leaveus blind to the extraordinary momentousness of the fact of his conversion to the individual himselfwho gets converted. There are higher and lower limits of possibility set to each personal life. If aflood but goes above one's head, its absolute elevation becomes a matter of small importance; andwhen we touch our own upper limit and live in our own highest centre of energy, we may callourselves saved, no matter how much higher some one else's centre may be. A small man'ssalvation will always be a great salvation and the greatest of all facts FOR HIM, and we shouldremember this when the fruits of our ordinary evangelicism look discouraging. Who knows howmuch less ideal still the lives of these spiritual grubs and earthworms, these Crumps and Stigginses, might have been, if such poor grace as they have received had never touched them atall?[126]

[126] Emerson writes: "When we see a soul whose acts are regal, graceful and pleasant as roses,we must thank God that such things can be and are, and not turn sourly on the angel and say:

Crump is a better man, with his grunting resistance to all his native devils." True enough. YetCrump may really be the better CRUMP, for his inner discords and second birth; and your once-born "regal" character though indeed always better than poor Crump, may fall far short of what heindividually might be had he only some Crump-like capacity for compunction over his ownpeculiar diabolisms, graceful and pleasant and invariably gentlemanly as these may be.

<235> If we roughly arrange human beings in classes, each class standing for a grade of spiritualexcellence, I believe we shall find natural men and converts both sudden and gradual in all theclasses. The forms which regenerative change effects have, then, no general spiritual significance,but only a psychological significance. We have seen how Starbuck's laborious statistical studiestend to assimilate conversion to ordinary spiritual growth. Another American psychologist, Prof.

George A. Coe,[127] has analyzed the cases of seventy-seven converts or ex-candidates forconversion, known to him, and the results strikingly confirm the view that sudden conversion isconnected with the possession of an active subliminal self. Examining his subjects with referenceto their hypnotic sensibility and to such automatisms as hypnagogic hallucinations, odd impulses,religious dreams about the time of their conversion, etc., he found these relatively much morefrequent in the group of converts whose transformation had been "striking," "striking"transformation being defined as a change which, though not necessarily instantaneous, seems tothe subject of it to be distinctly different from a process of growth, however rapid."[128]

Candidates for conversion at revivals are, as you know, often disappointed: they experiencenothing striking. Professor Coe had a number of persons of this class among his seventy-sevensubjects, and they almost all, when tested by hypnotism, proved to belong to a subclass which hecalls "spontaneous," that is, fertile in self-suggestions, as distinguished from a "passive" subclass,to which most of the subjects of striking transformation belonged. His inference is that self-suggestion of impossibility had prevented the influence upon these persons of an environmentwhich, on the more "passive" subjects, had easily brought forth the effects they looked for. Sharpdistinctions are difficult in these regions, and Professor Coe's numbers are small. But his methodswere careful, and the results tally with what one might expect; and they seem, on the whole, tojustify his practical conclusion, which is that if you should expose to a converting influence asubject in whom three factors unite: first, pronounced emotional sensibility; second, tendency toautomatisms; and third, suggestibility of the passive type; you might then safely predict the result:

there would be a sudden conversion, a transformation of the striking kind.

[127] In his book, The Spiritual Life, New York, 1900.

[128] Op. cit., p. 112.

Does this temperamental origin diminish the significance of the sudden conversion when it hasoccurred? Not in the least, as Professor Coe well says; for "the ultimate test of religious values isnothing psychological, nothing definable in terms of HOW IT HAPPENS, but something ethical,definable only in terms of WHAT IS ATTAINED."[129]

[129] Op. cit., p. 144As we proceed farther in our inquiry we shall see that what is attained is often an altogether newlevel of spiritual vitality, a relatively heroic level, in which impossible things have becomepossible, and new energies and endurances are shown. The personality is changed, the man is bornanew, whether or not his psychological idiosyncrasies are what give the particular shape to hismetamorphosis. "Sanctification" is the technical name of this result; and erelong examples of itshall be brought before you. In this lecture I have still only to add a few remarks on the assuranceand peace which fill the hour of change itself.

One word more, though, before proceeding to that point, lest the final purpose of my explanationof suddenness by subliminal activity be misunderstood. I do indeed believe that if the Subject haveno liability to such subconscious activity, or if his conscious fields have a hard rind of a marginthat resists incursions from beyond it, his conversion must he gradual if it occur, and mustresemble any simple growth into new habits. His possession of a developed subliminal self, and ofa leaky or pervious margin, is thus a conditio sine qua non of the Subject's becoming converted inthe instantaneous way. But if you, being orthodox Christians, ask me as a psychologist whether thereference of a phenomenon to a subliminal self does not exclude the notion of the direct presenceof the Deity altogether, I have to say frankly that as a psychologist I do not see why it necessarilyshould. The lower manifestations of the Subliminal, indeed, fall within the resources of thepersonal subject: his ordinary sense-material, inattentively taken in and subconsciouslyremembered and combined, will account for all his usual automatisms. But just as our primarywide-awake consciousness throws open our senses to the touch of things material so it is logicallyconceivable that IF THERE BE higher spiritual agencies that can directly touch us, thepsychological condition of their doing so MIGHT BE our possession of a subconscious regionwhich alone should yield access to them. The hubbub of the waking life might close a door whichin the dreamy Subliminal might remain ajar or open.

Thus that perception of external control which is so essential a feature in conversion might, insome cases at any rate, be interpreted as the orthodox interpret it: forces transcending the finiteindividual might impress him, on condition of his being what we may call a subliminal humanspecimen. But in any case the VALUE of these forces would have to be determined by theireffects, and the mere fact of their transcendency would of itself establish no presumption that theywere more divine than diabolical.

I confess that this is the way in which I should rather see the topic left lying in your minds until Icome to a much later lecture, when I hope once more to gather these dropped threads together intomore definitive conclusions. The notion of a subconscious self certainly ought not at this point ofour inquiry to be held to EXCLUDE all notion of a higher penetration.

If there be higher powers able to impress us, they may get access to us only through thesubliminal door. (See below, p. 506 ff.)Let us turn now to the feelings which immediately fill the hour of the conversion experience. Thefirst one to be noted is just this sense of higher control. It is not always, but it is very often present.

We saw examples of it in Alline, Bradley, Brainerd, and elsewhere. The need of such a higher controlling agency is well expressed in the short reference which the eminent French ProtestantAdolphe Monod makes to the crisis of his own conversion. It was at Naples in his early manhood,in the summer of 1827.

"My sadness," he says, "was without limit, and having got entire possession of me, it filled mylife from the most indifferent external acts to the most secret thoughts, and corrupted at theirsource my feelings, my judgment, and my happiness. It was then that I saw that to expect to put astop to this disorder by my reason and my will, which were themselves diseased, would be to actlike a blind man who should pretend to correct one of his eyes by the aid of the other equally blindone. I had then no resource save in some INFLUENCE FROM WITHOUT. I remembered thepromise of the Holy Ghost; and what the positive declarations of the Gospel had never succeededin bringing home to me, I learned at last from necessity, and believed, for the first time in my life,in this promise, in the only sense in which it answered the needs of my soul, in that, namely, of areal external supernatural action, capable of giving me thoughts, and taking them away from me,and exerted on me by a God as truly master of my heart as he is of the rest of nature. Renouncingthen all merit, all strength, abandoning all my personal resources, and acknowledging no other titleto his mercy than my own utter misery, I went home and threw myself on my knees and prayed asI never yet prayed in my life. From this day onwards a new interior life began for me: not that mymelancholy had disappeared, but it had lost its sting. Hope had entered into my heart, and onceentered on the path, the God of Jesus Christ, to whom I then had learned to give myself up, little bylittle did the rest."[130]

[130] I piece together a quotation made by W. Monod, in his book la Vie, and a letter printed inthe work: Adolphe Monod: I,. Souvenirs de sa Vie, 1885, p. 433.

It is needless to remind you once more of the admirable congruity of Protestant theology with thestructure of the mind as shown in such experiences. In the extreme of melancholy the self thatconsciously is can do absolutely nothing. It is completely bankrupt and without resource, and noworks it can accomplish will avail. Redemption from such subjective conditions must be a free giftor nothing, and grace through Christ's accomplished sacrifice is such a gift.

"God," says Luther, "is the God of the humble, the miserable, the oppressed, and the desperate,and of those that are brought even to nothing; and his nature is to give sight to the blind, to comfortthe broken-hearted, to justify sinners, to save the very desperate and damned. Now that perniciousand pestilent opinion of man's own righteousness, which will not be a sinner, unclean, miserable,and damnable, but righteous and holy, suffereth not God to come to his own natural and properwork. Therefore God must take this maul in hand (the law, I mean) to beat in pieces and bring tonothing this beast with her vain confidence, that she may so learn at length by her own misery thatshe is utterly forlorn and damned. But here lieth the difficulty, that when a man is terrified and castdown, he is so little able to raise himself up again and say, 'Now I am bruised and afflicted enough;now is the time of grace; now is the time to hear Christ.' The foolishness of man's heart is so greatthat then he rather seeketh to himself more laws to satisfy his conscience. 'If I live,' saith he, 'I willamend my life: I will do this, I will do that.' But here, except thou do the quite contrary, exceptthou send Moses away with his law, and in these terrors and this anguish lay hold upon Christ whodied for thy sins, look for no salvation. Thy cowl, thy shaven crown, thy chastity, thy obedience, thy poverty, thy works, thy merits? what shall all these do? what shall the law of Moses avail? If I,wretched and damnable sinner, through works or merits could have loved the Son of God, and socome to him, what needed he to deliver himself for me? If I, being a wretch and damned sinner,could be redeemed by any other price, what needed the Son of God to be given? But because therewas no other price, therefore he delivered neither sheep, ox, gold, nor silver, but even God himself,entirely and wholly 'for me,' even 'for me,' I say, a miserable, wretched sinner. Now, therefore, Itake comfort and apply this to MYSELF.

And this manner of applying is the very true force and power of faith. For he died NOT to justifythe righteous, but the UN-righteous, and to make THEM the children of God."[131]

[131] Commentary on Galatians, ch. iii. verse 19, and ch. ii. verse 20, abridged.

That is, the more literally lost you are, the more literally you are the very being whom Christ'ssacrifice has already saved. Nothing in Catholic theology, I imagine, has ever spoken to sick soulsas straight as this message from Luther's personal experience. As Protestants are not all sick souls,of course reliance on what Luther exults in calling the dung of one's merits, the filthy puddle ofone's own righteousness, has come to the front again in their religion; but the adequacy of his viewof Christianity to the deeper parts of our human mental structure is shown by its wildfirecontagiousness when it was a new and quickening thing.

Faith that Christ has genuinely done his work was part of what Luther meant by faith, which sofar is faith in a fact intellectually conceived of. But this is only one part of Luther's faith, the otherpart being far more vital. This other part is something not intellectual but immediate and intuitive,the assurance, namely, that I, this individual I, just as I stand, without one plea, etc., am saved nowand forever. [132] Professor Leuba is undoubtedly right in contending that the conceptual beliefabout Christ's work, although so often efficacious and antecedent, is really accessory and nonessential,and that the "joyous conviction" also come by far other channels than this conception.Itistothejoyousconvictionitself,t(can) he assurance that all is well with one, that hewould give the name of faith par excellence. "When the sense of estrangement," he writes,"fencing man about in a narrowly limited ego, breaks down, the individual finds himself 'at onewith all creation.' He lives in the universal life; he and man, he and nature, he and God, are one.

That state of confidence, trust, union with all things, following upon the achievement of moralunity, is the Faith-state. Various dogmatic beliefs suddenly, on the advent of the faith-state, acquirea character of certainty, assume a new reality, become an object of faith. As the ground ofassurance here is not rational, argumentation is irrelevant. But such conviction being a mere casualoffshoot of the faith-state, it is a gross error to imagine that the chief practical value of the faith-state is its power to stamp with the seal of reality certain particular theological conceptions.[133]

On the contrary, its value lies solely in the fact that it is the psychic correlate of a biologicalgrowth reducing contending desires to one direction; a growth which expresses itself in newaffective states and new reactions; in larger, nobler, more Christ-like activities. The ground of thespecific assurance in religious dogmas is then an affective experience. The objects of faith mayeven be preposterous; the affective stream will float them along, and invest them with unshakablecertitude. The more startling the affective experience, the less explicable it seems, the easier it is tomake it the carrier of unsubstantiated notions."[134]

[132] In some conversions, both steps are distinct; in this one, for example:-"Whilst I was reading the evangelical treatise, I was soon struck by an expression: 'the finishedwork of Christ.' 'Why,' I asked of myself, 'does the author use these terms? Why does he not say"the atoning work"?' Then these words, 'It is finished,' presented themselves to my mind. 'What isit that is finished?' I asked, and in an instant my mind replied: 'A perfect expiation for sin; entiresatisfaction has been given; the debt has been paid by the Substitute. Christ has died for our sins;not for ours only, but for those of all men. If, then, the entire work is finished, all the debt paid,what remains for me to do?' In another instant the light was shed through my mind by the HolyGhost, and the joyous conviction was given me that nothing more was to be done, save to fall onmy knees, to accept this Saviour and his love, to praise God forever." Autobiography of HudsonTaylor. I translate back into English from the French translation of Challand (Geneva, no date), theoriginal not being accessible.

[133] Tolstoy's case was a good comment on those words. There was almost no theology in hisconversion. His faith-state was the sense come back that life was infinite in its moral significance.

[134] American Journal of Psychology, vii. 345-347, abridged.

The characteristics of the affective experience which, to avoid ambiguity, should, I think, becalled the state of assurance rather than the faith-state, can be easily enumerated, though it isprobably difficult to realize their intensity, unless one has been through the experience one's self.

The central one is the loss of all the worry, the sense that all is ultimately well with one, thepeace, the harmony, the WILLINGNESS TO BE, even though the outer conditions should remainthe same. The certainty of God's "grace," of "justification," "salvation," is an objective belief thatusually accompanies the change in Christians; but this may be entirely lacking and yet the affectivepeace remain the same--you will recollect the case of the Oxford graduate: and many might begiven where the assurance of personal salvation <243> was only a later result. A passion ofwillingness, of acquiescence, of admiration, is the glowing centre of this state of mind.

The second feature is the sense of perceiving truths not known before. The mysteries of lifebecome lucid, as Professor Leuba says; and often, nay usually, the solution is more or lessunutterable in words. But these more intellectual phenomena may be postponed until we treat ofmysticism.

A third peculiarity of the assurance state is the objective change which the world often appears toundergo. "An appearance of newness beautifies every object," the precise opposite of that othersort of newness, that dreadful unreality and strangeness in the appearance of the world, which isexperienced by melancholy patients, and of which you may recall my relating some examples.

[135] This sense of clean and beautiful newness within and without is one of the commonestentries in conversion records. Jonathan Edwards thus describes it in himself:-[135] Above, p. 150.

"After this my sense of divine things gradually increased, and became more and more lively, andhad more of that inward sweetness. The appearance of everything was altered; there seemed to be,as it were, a calm, sweet cast, or appearance of divine glory, in almost everything. God's excellency, his wisdom, his purity and love, seemed to appear in everything; in the sun, moon, andstars; in the clouds and blue sky; in the grass, flowers, and trees; in the water and all nature; whichused greatly to fix my mind. And scarce anything, among all the works of nature, was so sweet tome as thunder and lightning; formerly nothing had been so terrible to me. Before, I used to beuncommonly terrified with thunder, and to be struck with terror when I saw a thunderstorm rising;but now, on the contrary, it rejoices me."[136]

[136] Dwight: Life of Edwards, New York, 1830, p. 61, abridged.

<244> Billy Bray, an excellent little illiterate English evangelist, records his sense of newnessthus:-"I said to the Lord: 'Thou hast said, they that ask shall receive, they that seek shall find, and tothem that knock the door shall be opened, and I have faith to believe it.' In an instant the Lordmade me so happy that I cannot express what I felt. I shouted for joy. I praised God with my wholeheart. . . . I think this was in November, 1823, but what day of the month I do not know. Iremember this, that everything looked new to me, the people, the fields, the cattle, the trees. I waslike a new man in a new world. I spent the greater part of my time in praising the Lord."[137]

[137] W. F. Bourne: The King's Son, a Memoir of Billy Bray, London, Hamilton, Adams & Co.,1887, p. 9.

Starbuck and Leuba both illustrate this sense of newness by quotations. I take the two followingfrom Starbuck's manuscript collection. One, a woman, says:-"I was taken to a camp-meeting, mother and religious friends seeking and praying for myconversion. My emotional nature was stirred to its depths; confessions of depravity and pleadingwith God for salvation from sin made me oblivious of all surroundings. I plead for mercy, and hada vivid realization of forgiveness and renewal of my nature. When rising from my knees Iexclaimed, 'Old things have passed away, all things have become new.' It was like entering anotherworld, a new state of existence. Natural objects were glorified, my spiritual vision was so clarifiedthat I saw beauty in every material object in the universe, the woods were vocal with heavenlymusic; my soul exulted in the love of God, and I wanted everybody to share in my joy."The next case is that of a man:-"I know not how I got back into the encampment, but found myself staggering up to Rev. ----'sHoliness tent--and as it was full of seekers and a terrible noise inside, some groaning, somelaughing, and some shouting, and by a large oak, ten feet from the tent, I fell on my face by abench, and tried to pray, and every time I would call on God, something like a man's hand wouldstrangle me by choking. I don't know whether there were any one around or near me or not. Ithought I should surely die if I did not get help, but just as often as I would pray, that unseen handwas felt on my throat and my breath squeezed off. Finally something said: 'Venture on theatonement, for you will die anyway if you don't.' So I made one final struggle to call on God formercy, with the same choking and strangling, determined to finish the sentence of prayer forMercy, if I did strangle and die, and the last I remember that time was falling back on the groundwith the same unseen hand on my throat. I don't know how long I lay there or what was going on.

None of my folks were present. When I came to myself, there were a crowd around me praisingGod. The very heavens seemed to open and pour down rays of light and glory. Not for a momentonly, but all day and night, floods of light and glory seemed to pour through my soul, and oh, howI was changed, and everything became new. My horses and hogs and even everybody seemedchanged."This man's case introduces the feature of automatisms, which in suggestible subjects have beenso startling a feature at revivals since, in Edwards's, Wesley's and Whitfield's time, these became aregular means of gospel-propagation. They were at first supposed to be semi-miraculous proofs of"power" on the part of the Holy Ghost; but great divergence of opinion quickly arose concerningthem. Edwards, in his Thoughts on the Revival of Religion in New England, has to defend themagainst their critics; and their value has long been matter of debate even within the revivalisticdenominations.[138] They undoubtedly have no essential spiritual significance, and although theirpresence makes his conversion more memorable to the convert, it has never been proved thatconverts who show them are more persevering or fertile in good fruits than those whose change ofheart has had less violent accompaniments. On the whole, unconsciousness, convulsions, visions,involuntary vocal utterances, and suffocation, must be simply ascribed to the subject's having alarge subliminal region, involving nervous instability. This is often the subject's own view of thematter afterwards. One of Starbuck's correspondents writes, for instance:-[138] Consult William B. Sprague: Lectures on Revivals of Religion, New York, 1832, in thelong Appendix to which the opinions of a large number of ministers are given.

"I have been through the experience which is known as conversion. My explanation of it is this:

the subject works his emotions up to the breaking point, at the same time resisting their physicalmanifestations, such as quickened pulse, etc., and then suddenly lets them have their full sway overhis body. The relief is something wonderful, and the pleasurable effects of the emotions areexperienced to the highest degree."There is one form of sensory automatism which possibly deserves special notice on account ofits frequency. I refer to hallucinatory or pseudo-hallucinatory luminous phenomena, photisms, touse the term of the psychologists. Saint Paul's blinding heavenly vision seems to have been aphenomenon of this sort; so does Constantine's cross in the sky. The last case but one which Iquoted mentions floods of light and glory. Henry Alline mentions a light, about whose externalityhe seems uncertain. Colonel Gardiner sees a blazing light. President Finney writes:-"All at once the glory of God shone upon and round about me in a manner almost marvelous. . . .

A light perfectly ineffable shone in my soul, that almost prostrated me on the ground. . . . Thislight seemed like the brightness of the sun in every direction. It was too intense for the eyes. . . . Ithink I knew something then, by actual experience, of that light that prostrated Paul on the way toDamascus. It was surely a light such as I could not have endured long."[139]

[139] Memoirs, p. 34Such reports of photisms are indeed far from uncommon. Here is another from Starbuck'scollection, where the light appeared evidently external:- "I had attended a series of revival services for about two weeks off and on. Had been invited tothe altar several times, all the time becoming more deeply impressed, when finally I decided I mustdo this, or I should be lost. Realization of conversion was very vivid, like a ton's weight beinglifted from my heart; a strange light which seemed to light up the whole room (for it was dark); aconscious supreme bliss which caused me to repeat 'Glory to God' for a long time. Decided to beGod's child for life, and to give up my pet ambition, wealth and social position. My former habitsof life hindered my growth somewhat, but I set about overcoming these systematically, and in oneyear my whole nature was changed, i. e., my ambitions were of a different order."Here is another one of Starbuck's cases, involving a luminous element:-"I had been clearly converted twenty-three years before, or rather reclaimed. My experience inregeneration was then clear and spiritual, and I had not backslidden. But I experienced entiresanctification on the 15th day of March, 1893, about eleven o'clock in the morning. The particularaccompaniments of the experience were entirely unexpected. I was quietly sitting at home singingselections out of Pentecostal Hymns. Suddenly there seemed to be a something sweeping into meand inflating my entire being--such a sensation as I had never experienced before.

When this experience came, I seemed to be conducted around a large, capacious, well-lightedroom. As I walked with my invisible conductor and looked around, a clear thought was coined inmy mind, 'They are not here, they are gone.' As soon as the thought was definitely formed in mymind, though no word was spoken, the Holy Spirit impressed me that I was surveying my ownsoul. Then, for the first time in all my life, did I know that I was cleansed from all sin, and filledwith the fullness of God."Leuba quotes the case of a Mr. Peek, where the luminous affection reminds one of the chromatichallucinations produced by the intoxicant cactus buds called mescal by the Mexicans:-"When I went in the morning into the fields to work, the glory of God appeared in all his visiblecreation. I well remember we reaped oats, and how every straw and head of the oats seemed, as itwere, arrayed in a kind of rainbow glory, or to glow, if I may so express it, in the glory ofGod."[140]

[140] These reports of sensorial photism shade off into what are evidently only metaphoricalaccounts of the sense of new spiritual illumination, as, for instance, in Brainerd's statement: "As Iwas walking in a thick grove, unspeakable glory seemed to open to the apprehension of my soul. Ido not mean any external brightness, for I saw no such thing, nor any imagination of a body oflight in the third heavens, or anything of that nature, but it was a new inward apprehension or viewthat I had of God."In a case like this next one from Starbuck's manuscript collection the lighting up of the darknessis probably also metaphorical:-"One Sunday night, I resolved that when I got home to the ranch where I was working, I wouldoffer myself with my faculties and all to God to be used only by and for him. . . . It was raining andthe roads were muddy; but this desire grew so strong that I kneeled down by the side of the roadand told God all about it, intending then to get up and go on. Such a thing as any special answer tomy prayer never entered my mind, having been converted by faith, but still being most undoubtedly saved. Well, while I was praying, I remember holding out my hands to God andtelling him they should work for him, my feet walk for him, my tongue speak for him, etc., etc., ifhe would only use me as his instrument and give me a satisfying experience--when suddenly thedarkness of the night seemed lit up--I felt, realized, knew, that God heard and answered my prayer.

Deep happiness came over me; I felt I was accepted into the inner circle of God's loved ones."In the following case also the flash of light is metaphorical:-"A prayer meeting had been called for at close of evening service. The minister supposed meimpressed by his discourse (a mistake--he was dull). He came and, placing his hand upon myshoulder, said: 'Do you not want to give your heart to God?' I replied in the affirmative. Then saidhe, 'Come to the front seat.' They sang and prayed and talked with me. I experienced nothing butunaccountable wretchedness. They declared that the reason why I did not 'obtain peace' wasbecause I was not willing to give up all to God. After about two hours the minister said we wouldgo home. As usual, on retiring, I prayed. In great distress, I at this time simply said, 'Lord, I havedone all I can, I leave the whole matter with thee.' Immediately, like a flash of light, there came tome a great peace, and I arose and went into my parents' bedroom and said, 'I do feel sowonderfully happy.' This I regard as the hour of conversion. It was the hour in which I becameassured of divine acceptance and favor. So far as my life was concerned, it made little immediatechange."The most characteristic of all the elements of the conversion crisis, and the last one of which Ishall speak, is the ecstasy of happiness produced. We have already heard several accounts of it, butI will add a couple more. President Finney's is so vivid that I give it at length:-"All my feelings seemed to rise and flow out; and the utterance of my heart was, 'I want to pourmy whole soul out to God.' The rising of my soul was so great that I rushed into the back room ofthe front office, to pray. There was no fire and no light in the room; nevertheless it appeared to meas if it were perfectly light. As I went in and shut the door after me, it seemed as if I met the LordJesus Christ face to face. It did not occur to me then, nor did it for some time afterwards, that itwas wholly a mental state. On the contrary, it seemed to me that I saw him as I would see anyother man. He said nothing but looked at me in such a manner as to break me right down at hisfeet. I have always since regarded this as a most remarkable state of mind; for it seemed to me areality that he stood before me, and I fell down at his feet and poured out my soul to him. I weptaloud like a child, and made such confessions as I could with my choked utterance. It seemed tome that I bathed his feet with my tears; and yet I had no distinct impression that I touched him, thatI recollect. I must have continued in this state for a good while, but my mind was too absorbedwith the interview to recollect anything that I said. But I know, as soon as my mind became calmenough to break off from the interview, I returned to the front office, and found that the fire that Ihad made of large wood was nearly burned out. But as I turned and was about to take a seat by thefire, I received a mighty baptism of the Holy Ghost. Without any expectation of it, without everhaving the thought in my mind that there was any such thing for me, without any recollection that Ihad ever heard the thing mentioned by any person in the world, the Holy Spirit descended upon mein a manner that seemed to go through me, body and soul. I could feel the impression, like a waveof electricity, going through and through me. Indeed, it seemed to come in waves and waves of liquid love; for I could not express it in any other way. It seemed like the very breath of God. I canrecollect distinctly that it seemed to fan me, like immense wings.

"No words can express the wonderful love that was shed abroad in my heart. I wept aloud withjoy and love; and I do not know but I should say I literally bellowed out the unutterable gushingsof my heart. These waves came over me, and over me, and over me, one after the other, until Irecollect I cried out, 'I shall die if these waves continue to pass over me.' I said, 'Lord, I cannotbear any more;' yet I had no fear of death.

"How long I continued in this state, with this baptism continuing to roll over me and go throughme, I do not know. But I know it was late in the evening when a member of my choir --for I wasthe leader of the choir--came into the office to see me. He was a member of the church. He foundme in this state of loud weeping, and said to me, 'Mr. Finney, what ails you?' I could make him noanswer for some time. He then said, 'Are you in pain?' I gathered myself up as best I could, andreplied, 'No, but so happy that I cannot live.'"I just now quoted Billy Bray; I cannot do better than give his own brief account of his post-conversion feelings:-"I can't help praising the Lord. As I go along the street, I lift up one foot, and it seems to say'Glory'; and I lift up the other, and it seems to say 'Amen'; and so they keep up like that all the timeI am walking."[141]

[141] I add in a note a few more records:-"One morning, being in deep distress, fearing every moment I should drop into hell, I wasconstrained to cry in earnest for mercy, and the Lord came to my relief, and delivered my soulfrom the burden and guilt of sin. My whole frame was in a tremor from head to foot, and my soulenjoyed sweet peace. The pleasure I then felt was indescribable. The happiness lasted about threedays, during which time I never spoke to any person about my feelings." Autobiography of DanYoung, edited by W. P. Strickland, New York, 1860.

"In an instant there rose up in me such a sense of God's taking care of those who put their trust inhim that for an hour all the world was crystalline, the heavens were lucid, and I sprang to my feetand began to cry and laugh." H. W. Beecher, quoted by Leuba.

"My tears of sorrow changed to joy, and I lay there praising God in such ecstasy of joy as onlythe soul who experiences it can realize." --"I cannot express how I felt. It was as if I had been in adark dungeon and lifted into the light of the sun. I shouted and I sang praise unto him who lovedme and washed me from my sins. I was forced to retire into a secret place, for the tears did flow,and I did not wish my shopmates to see me, and yet I could not keep it a secret."--"I experiencedjoy almost to weeping."--"I felt my face must have shone like that of Moses.

I had a general feeling of buoyancy. It was the greatest joy it was ever my lot to experience."--"Iwept and laughed alternately.

I was as light as if walking on air. I felt as if I had gained greater peace and happiness than I hadever expected to experience." Starbuck's correspondents.

One word, before I close this lecture, on the question of the transiency or permanence of theseabrupt conversions. Some of you, I feel sure, knowing that numerous backslidings and relapsestake place, make of these their apperceiving mass for interpreting the whole subject, and dismiss itwith a pitying smile at so much "hysterics." Psychologically, as well as religiously, however, thisis shallow. It misses the point of serious interest, which is not so much the duration as the natureand quality of these shiftings of character to higher levels. Men lapse from every level--we need nostatistics to tell us that. Love is, for instance, well known not to be irrevocable, yet, constant orinconstant, it reveals new flights and reaches of ideality while it lasts. These revelations form itssignificance to men and women, whatever be its duration. So with the conversion experience: thatit should for even a short time show a human being what the high-water mark of his spiritualcapacity is, this is what constitutes its importance--an importance which backsliding cannotdiminish, although persistence might increase it. As a matter of fact, all the more striking instancesof conversion, all those, for instance, which I have quoted, HAVE been permanent. The case ofwhich there might be most doubt, on account of its suggesting so strongly an epileptoid seizure,was the case of M. Ratisbonne. Yet I am informed that Ratisbonne's whole future was shaped bythose few minutes. He gave up his project of marriage, became a priest, founded at Jerusalem,where he went to dwell, a mission of nuns for the conversion of the Jews, showed no tendency touse for egotistic purposes the notoriety given him by the peculiar circumstances of his conversion-which,for the rest, he could seldom refer to without tears--and in short remained an exemplary sonof the Church until he died, late in the 80's, if I remember rightly.

The only statistics I know of, on the subject of the duration of conversions, are those collectedfor Professor Starbuck by Miss Johnston. They embrace only a hundred persons, evangelicalchurch-members, more than half being Methodists. According to the statement of the subjectsthemselves, there had been backsliding of some sort in nearly all the cases, 93 per cent. of thewomen, 77 per cent. of the men. Discussing the returns more minutely, Starbuck finds that only 6per cent. are relapses from the religious faith which the conversion confirmed, and that thebacksliding complained of is in most only a fluctuation in the ardor of sentiment. Only six of thehundred cases report a change of faith. Starbuck's conclusion is that the effect of conversion is tobring with it "a changed attitude towards life, which is fairly constant and permanent, although thefeelings fluctuate. . . . In other words, the persons who have passed through conversion, havingonce taken a stand for the religious life, tend to feel themselves identified with it, no matter howmuch their religious enthusiasm declines."[142]

[142] Psychology of Religion, pp. 360, 357.
Lectures XI SAINTLINESS
The last lecture left us in a state of expectancy. What may the practical fruits for life have been,of such movingly happy conversions as those we heard of? With this question the really importantpart of our task opens, for you remember that we began all this empirical inquiry not merely toopen a curious chapter in the natural history of human consciousness, but rather to attain a spiritualjudgment as to the total value and positive meaning of all the religious trouble and happinesswhich we have seen. We must, therefore, first describe the fruits of the religious life, and then we must judge them. This divides our inquiry into two distinct parts. Let us without further preambleproceed to the descriptive task.

It ought to be the pleasantest portion of our business in these lectures. Some small pieces of it, itis true, may be painful, or may show human nature in a pathetic light, but it will be mainlypleasant, because the best fruits of religious experience are the best things that history has to show.

They have always been esteemed so; here if anywhere is the genuinely strenuous life; and to call tomind a succession of such examples as I have lately had to wander through, though it has beenonly in the reading of them, is to feel encouraged and uplifted and washed in better moral air.

The highest flights of charity, devotion, trust, patience, bravery to which the wings of humannature have spread themselves have been flown for religious ideals. I can do no better than quote,as to this, some remarks which Sainte-Beuve in his History of Port-Royal makes on the results ofconversion or the state of grace.

"Even from the purely human point of view," Sainte-Beuve says, "the phenomenon of grace muststill appear sufficiently extraordinary, eminent, and rare, both in its nature and in its effects, todeserve a closer study. For the soul arrives thereby at a certain fixed and invincible state, a statewhich is genuinely heroic, and from out of which the greatest deeds which it ever performs areexecuted. Through all the different forms of communion, and all the diversity of the means whichhelp to produce this state, whether it be reached by a jubilee, by a general confession, by a solitaryprayer and effusion, whatever in short to be the place and the occasion, it is easy to recognize thatit is fundamentally one state in spirit and fruits. Penetrate a little beneath the diversity ofcircumstances, and it becomes evident that in Christians of different epochs it is always one andthe same modification by which they are affected: there is veritably a single fundamental andidentical spirit of piety and charity, common to those who have received grace; an inner statewhich before all things is one of love and humility, of infinite confidence in God, and of severityfor one's self, accompanied with tenderness for others. The fruits peculiar to this condition of thesoul have the same savor in all, under distant suns and in different surroundings, in Saint Teresa ofAvila just as in any Moravian brother of Herrnhut."[143]

[143] Sainte-Beuve: Port-Royal, vol. i. pp. 95 and 106, abridged.

Sainte-Beuve has here only the more eminent instances of regeneration in mind, and these are ofcourse the instructive ones for us also to consider. These devotees have often laid their course sodifferently from other men that, judging them by worldly law, we might be tempted to call themmonstrous aberrations from the path of nature. I begin therefore by asking a general psychologicalquestion as to what the inner conditions are which may make one human character differ soextremely from another.

I reply at once that where the character, as something distinguished from the intellect, isconcerned, the causes of human diversity lie chiefly in our differing susceptibilities of emotionalexcitement, and in the different impulses and inhibitions which these bring in their train. Let memake this more clear.

Speaking generally, our moral and practical attitude, at any given time, is always a resultant oftwo sets of forces within us, impulses pushing us one way and obstructions and inhibitions holding us back. "Yes! yes!" say the impulses; "No! no!" say the inhibitions. Few people who have notexpressly reflected on the matter realize how constantly this factor of inhibition is upon us, how itcontains and moulds us by its restrictive pressure almost as if we were fluids pent within the cavityof a jar. The influence is so incessant that it becomes subconscious. All of you, for example, sithere with a certain constraint at this moment, and entirely without express consciousness of thefact, because of the influence of the occasion. If left alone in the room, each of you would probablyinvoluntarily rearrange himself, and make his attitude more "free and easy." But proprieties andtheir inhibitions snap like cobwebs if any great emotional excitement supervenes. I have seen adandy appear in the street with his face covered with shaving-lather because a house across theway was on fire; and a woman will run among strangers in her nightgown if it be a question ofsaving her baby's life or her own. Take a self-indulgent woman's life in general. She will yield toevery inhibition set by her disagreeable sensations, lie late in bed, live upon tea or bromides, keepindoors from the cold. Every difficulty finds her obedient to its "no." But make a mother of her,and what have you? Possessed by maternal excitement, she now confronts wakefulness, weariness,and toil without an instant of hesitation or a word of complaint. The inhibitive power of pain overher is extinguished wherever the baby's interests are at stake. The inconveniences which thiscreature occasions have become, as James Hinton says, the glowing heart of a great joy, andindeed are now the very conditions whereby the joy becomes most deep.

This is an example of what you have already heard of as the "expulsive power of a higheraffection." But be the affection high or low, it makes no difference, so long as the excitement itbrings be strong enough. In one of Henry Drummond's discourses he tells of an inundation in Indiawhere an eminence with a bungalow upon it remained unsubmerged, and became the refuge of anumber of wild animals and reptiles in addition to the human beings who were there. At a certainmoment a royal Bengal tiger appeared swimming towards it, reached it, and lay panting like a dogupon the ground in the midst of the people, still possessed by such an agony of terror that one ofthe Englishmen could calmly step up with a rifle and blow out its brains. The tiger's habitualferocity was temporarily quelled by the emotion of fear, which became sovereign, and formed anew centre for his character.

Sometimes no emotional state is sovereign, but many contrary ones are mixed together. In thatcase one hears both "yeses" and "noes," and the "will" is called on then to solve the conflict. Takea soldier, for example, with his dread of cowardice impelling him to advance, his fears impellinghim to run, and his propensities to imitation pushing him towards various courses if his comradesoffer various examples. His person becomes the seat of a mass of interferences; and he may for atime simply waver, because no one emotion prevails. There is a pitch of intensity, though, which,if any emotion reach it, enthrones that one as alone effective and sweeps its antagonists and alltheir inhibitions away. The fury of his comrades' charge, once entered on, will give this pitch ofcourage to the soldier; the panic of their rout will give this pitch of fear. In these sovereignexcitements, things ordinarily impossible grow natural because the inhibitions are annulled. Their"no! no!" not only is not heard, it does not exist. Obstacles are then like tissue-paper hoops to thecircus rider--no impediment; the flood is higher than the dam they make.

"Lass sie betteln gehn wenn sie hungrig sind!" cries the grenadier, frantic over his Emperor'scapture, when his wife and babes are suggested; and men pent into a burning theatre have beenknown to cut their way through the crowd with knives.[144]

[144] "'Love would not be love,' says Bourget, 'unless it could carry one to crime.' And so onemay say that no passion would be a veritable passion unless it could carry one to crime." (Sighele:

Psychollogie des sectes, p. 136.) In other words, great passions annul the ordinary inhibitions setby "conscience." And conversely, of all the criminal human beings, the false, cowardly, sensual, orcruel persons who actually live, there is perhaps not one whose criminal impulse may not be atsome moment overpowered by the presence of some other emotion to which his character is alsopotentially liable, provided that other emotion be only made intense enough. Fear is usually themost available emotion for this result in this particular class of persons. It stands for conscience,and may here be classed appropriately as a "higher affection." If we are soon to die, or if webelieve a day of judgment to be near at hand, how quickly do we put our moral house in order--wedo not see how sin can evermore exert temptation over us! Old-fashioned hell-fire Christianitywell knew how to extract from fear its full equivalent in the way of fruits for repentance, and itsfull conversion value.

One mode of emotional excitability is exceedingly important in the composition of the energeticcharacter, from its peculiarly destructive power over inhibitions. I mean what in its lower form ismere irascibility, susceptibility to wrath, the fighting temper; and what in subtler ways manifestsitself as impatience, grimness, earnestness, severity of character. Earnestness means willingness tolive with energy, though energy bring pain. The pain may be pain to other people or pain to one'sself--it makes little difference; for when the strenuous mood is on one, the aim is to breaksomething, no matter whose or what. Nothing annihilates an inhibition as irresistibly as anger doesit; for, as Moltke says of war, destruction pure and simple is its essence. This is what makes it soinvaluable an ally of every other passion. The sweetest delights are trampled on with a ferociouspleasure the moment they offer themselves as checks to a cause by which our higher indignationsare elicited. It costs then nothing to drop friendships, to renounce long-rooted privileges andpossessions, to break with social ties. Rather do we take a stern joy in the astringency anddesolation; and what is called weakness of character seems in most cases to consist in theinaptitude for these sacrificial moods, of which one's own inferior self and its pet softnesses mustoften be the targets and the victims.[145]

[145] Example: Benjamin Constant was often marveled at as an extraordinary instance ofsuperior intelligence with inferior character. He writes (Journal, Paris, 1895, p. 56), "I am tossedand dragged about by my miserable weakness. Never was anything so ridiculous as my indecision.

Now marriage, now solitude; now Germany, now France hesitation upon hesitation, and allbecause at bottom I am UNABLE TO GIVE UP ANYTHING." He can't "get mad" at any of hisalternatives; and the career of a man beset by such an all-round amiability is hopeless.

So far I have spoken of temporary alterations produced by shifting excitements in the sameperson. But the relatively fixed differences of character of different persons are explained in aprecisely similar way. In a man with a liability to a special sort of emotion, whole ranges of inhibition habitually vanish, which in other men remain effective, and other sorts of inhibition taketheir place. When a person has an inborn genius for certain emotions, his life differs strangely fromthat of ordinary people, for none of their usual deterrents check him. Your mere aspirant to a typeof character, on the contrary, only shows, when your natural lover, fighter, or reformer, with whomthe passion is a gift of nature, comes along, the hopeless inferiority of voluntary to instinctiveaction. He has deliberately to overcome his inhibitions; the genius with the inborn passion seemsnot to feel them at all; he is free of all that inner friction and nervous waste. To a Fox, a Garibaldi,a General Booth, a John Brown, a Louise Michel, a Bradlaugh, the obstacles omnipotent overthose around them are as if non-existent. Should the rest of us so disregard them, there might bemany such heroes, for many have the wish to live for similar ideals, and only the adequate degreeof inhibition-quenching fury is lacking.[146]

[146] The great thing which the higher excitabilities give is COURAGE; and the addition orsubtraction of a certain amount of this quality makes a different man, a different life. Variousexcitements let the courage loose. Trustful hope will do it; inspiring example will do it; love willdo it, wrath will do it. In some people it is natively so high that the mere touch of danger does it,though danger is for most men the great inhibitor of action. "Love of adventure" becomes in suchpersons a ruling passion. "I believe," says General Skobeleff, "that my bravery is simply thepassion and at the same time the contempt of danger. The risk of life fills me with an exaggeratedrapture. The fewer there are to share it, the more I like it. The participation of my body in the eventis required to furnish me an adequate excitement. Everything intellectual appears to me to bereflex; but a meeting of man to man, a duel, a danger into which I can throw myself headforemost,attracts me, moves me, intoxicates me. I am crazy for it, I love it, I adore it. I run after danger asone runs after women; I wish it never to stop. Were it always the same, it would always bring me anew pleasure.

When I throw myself into an adventure in which I hope to find it, my heart palpitates with theuncertainty; I could wish at once to have it appear and yet to delay. A sort of painful and deliciousshiver shakes me; my entire nature runs to meet the peril with an impetus that my will would invain try to resist. (Juliette Adam: Le General Skobeleff, Nouvelle Revue, 1886, abridged.)Skobeleff seems to have been a cruel egoist; but the disinterested Garibaldi, if one may judge byhis "Memorie," lived in an unflagging emotion of similar danger-seeking excitement.

The difference between willing and merely wishing, between having ideals that are creative andideals that are but pinings and regrets, thus depends solely either on the amount of steam-pressurechronically driving the character in the ideal direction, or on the amount of ideal excitementtransiently acquired. Given a certain amount of love, indignation, generosity, magnanimity,admiration, loyalty, or enthusiasm of self-surrender, the result is always the same. That whole raftof cowardly obstructions, which in tame persons and dull moods are sovereign impediments toaction, sinks away at once. Our conventionality,[147] our shyness, laziness, and stinginess, ourdemands for precedent and permission, for guarantee and surety, our small suspicions, timidities,despairs, where are they now? Severed like cobwebs, broken like bubbles in the sun-"Wo sind die Sorge nun und Noth Die mich noch gestern wollt' erschlaffen? Ich scham' michdess' im Morgenroth."The flood we are borne on rolls them so lightly under that their very contact is unfelt. Set free ofthem, we float and soar and sing. This auroral openness and uplift gives to all creative ideal levelsa bright and caroling quality, which is nowhere more marked than where the controlling emotion isreligious. "The true monk," writes an Italian mystic, "takes nothing with him but his lyre."[147] See the case on p. 69, above, where the writer describes his experiences of communionwith the Divine as consisting "merely in the TEMPORARY OBLITERATION OF THECONVENTIONALITIES which usually cover my life."We may now turn from these psychological generalities to those fruits of the religious statewhich form the special subject of our present lecture. The man who lives in his religious centre ofpersonal energy, and is actuated by spiritual enthusiasms, differs from his previous carnal self inperfectly definite ways.

The new ardor which burns in his breast consumes in its glow the lower "noes" which formerlybeset him, and keeps him immune against infection from the entire groveling portion of his nature.

Magnanimities once impossible are now easy; paltry conventionalities and mean incentives oncetyrannical hold no sway. The stone wall inside of him has fallen, the hardness in his heart hasbroken down. The rest of us can, I think, imagine this by recalling our state of feeling in thosetemporary "melting moods" into which either the trials of real life, or the theatre, or a novelsometimes throws us. Especially if we weep! For it is then as if our tears broke through aninveterate inner dam, and let all sorts of ancient peccancies and moral stagnancies drain away,leaving us now washed and soft of heart and open to every nobler leading. With most of us thecustomary hardness quickly returns, but not so with saintly persons. Many saints, even as energeticones as Teresa and Loyola, have possessed what the church traditionally reveres as a special grace,the so-called gift of tears. In these persons the melting mood seems to have held almostuninterrupted control. And as it is with tears and melting moods, so it is with other exaltedaffections. Their reign may come by gradual growth or by a crisis; but in either case it may have"come to stay."At the end of the last lecture we saw this permanence to be true of the general paramountcy ofthe higher insight, even though in the ebbs of emotional excitement meaner motives mighttemporarily prevail and backsliding might occur. But that lower temptations may remaincompletely annulled, apart from transient emotion and as if by alteration of the man's habitualnature, is also proved by documentary evidence in certain cases. Before embarking on the generalnatural history of the regenerate character, let me convince you of this curious fact by one or twoexamples. The most numerous are those of reformed drunkards. You recollect the case of Mr.

Hadley in the last lecture; the Jerry McAuley Water Street Mission abounds in similar instances.

[148] You also remember the graduate of Oxford, converted at three in the afternoon, and gettingdrunk in the hay-field the next day, but after that permanently cured of his appetite. "From thathour drink has had no terrors for me: I never touch it, never want it. The same thing occurred withmy pipe. . . . the desire for it went at once and has never returned. So with every known sin, thedeliverance in each case being permanent and complete. I have had no temptations sinceconversion."[148] Above, p. 200. "The only radical remedy I know for dipsomania is religiomania," is asaying I have heard quoted from some medical man.
Lectures XII SAINTLINESS
　　Here is an analogous case from Starbuck's manuscript collection:-"I went into the old Adelphi Theatre, where there was a Holiness meeting, . . . and I begansaying, 'Lord, Lord, I must have this blessing.' Then what was to me an audible voice said: 'Areyou willing to give up everything to the Lord?' and question after question kept coming up, to allof which I said: 'Yes, Lord; yes, Lord!' until this came: 'Why do you not accept it NOW?' and Isaid: 'I do, Lord.'--I felt no particular joy, only a trust. Just then the meeting closed, and, as I wentout on the street, I met a gentleman smoking a fine cigar, and a cloud of smoke came into my face,and I took a long, deep breath of it, and praise the Lord, all my appetite for it was gone. Then as Iwalked along the street, passing saloons where the fumes of liquor came out, I found that all mytaste and longing for that accursed stuff was gone. Glory to God! . . . [But] for ten or eleven longyears [after that] I was in the wilderness with its ups and downs. My appetite for liquor never cameback."The classic case of Colonel Gardiner is that of a man cured of sexual temptation in a single hour.

To Mr. Spears the colonel said, "I was effectually cured of all inclination to that sin I was sostrongly addicted to that I thought nothing but shooting me through the head could have cured meof it; and all desire and inclination to it was removed, as entirely as if I had been a sucking child;nor did the temptation return to this day." Mr. Webster's words on the same subject are these: "Onething I have heard the colonel frequently say, that he was much addicted to impurity before hisacquaintance with religion; but that, so soon as he was enlightened from above, he felt the powerof the Holy Ghost changing his nature so wonderfully that his sanctification in this respect seemedmore remarkable than in any other."[149]

[149] Doddridge's Life of Colonel James Gardiner, London Religious Tract Society, pp. 23-32.

Such rapid abolition of ancient impulses and propensities reminds us so strongly of what hasbeen observed as the result of hypnotic suggestion that it is difficult not to believe that subliminalinfluences play the decisive part in these abrupt changes of heart, just as they do in hypnotism.

[150] Suggestive therapeutics abound in records of cure, after a few sittings, of inveterate badhabits with which the patient, left to ordinary moral and physical influences, had struggled in vain.

Both drunkenness and sexual vice have been cured in this way, action through the subliminalseeming thus in many individuals to have the prerogative of inducing relatively stable change. Ifthe grace of God miraculously operates, it probably operates through the subliminal door, then. Butjust HOW anything operates in this region is still unexplained, and we shall do well now to saygood-by to the PROCESS of transformation altogether--leaving it, if you like, a good deal of apsychological or theological mystery--and to turn our attention to the fruits of the religiouscondition, no matter in what way they may have been produced.[151]

[150] Here, for example, is a case, from Starbuck's book, in which a "sensory automatism"brought about quickly what prayers and resolves had been unable to effect. The subject is awoman. She writes:- "When I was about forty I tried to quit smoking, but the desire was on me, and had me in itspower. I cried and prayed and promised God to quit, but could not. I had smoked for fifteen years.

When I was fifty-three, as I sat by the fire one day smoking, a voice came to me. I did not hear itwith my ears, but more as a dream or sort of double think. It said, 'Louisa, lay down smoking.' Atonce I replied. 'Will you take the desire away?' But it only kept saying: 'Louisa, lay downsmoking.' Then I got up, laid my pipe on the mantel-shelf, and never smoked again or had anydesire to. The desire was gone as though I had never known it or touched tobacco. The sight ofothers smoking and the smell of smoke never gave me the least wish to touch it again." ThePsychology of Religion, p. 142.

[151] Professor Starbuck expresses the radical destruction of old influences physiologically, as acutting off of the connection between higher and lower cerebral centres. "This condition," he says,"in which the association-centres connected with the spiritual life are cut off from the lower, isoften reflected in the way correspondents describe their experiences. . . . For example:

'Temptations from without still assail me, but there is nothing WITHIN to respond to them.' Theego [here] is wholly identified with the higher centres whose quality of feeling is that ofwithinness. Another of the respondents says: 'Since then, although Satan tempts me, there is as itwere a wall of brass around me, so that his darts cannot touch me.'" --Unquestionably, functionalexclusions of this sort must occur in the cerebral organ. But on the side accessible to introspection,their causal condition is nothing but the degree of spiritual excitement, getting at last so high andstrong as to be sovereign, and it must be frankly confessed that we do not know just why or howsuch sovereignty comes about in one person and not in another. We can only give our imaginationa certain delusive help by mechanical analogies.

If we should conceive, for example, that the human mind, with its different possibilities ofequilibrium, might be like a many-sided solid with different surfaces on which it could lie flat, wemight liken mental revolutions to the spatial revolutions of such a body. As it is pried up, say by alever, from a position in which it lies on surface A, for instance, it will linger for a time unstablyhalfway up, and if the lever cease to urge it, it will tumble back or "relapse" under the continuedpull of gravity. But if at last it rotate far enough for its centre of gravity to pass beyond surface Aaltogether, the body will fall over, on surface B, say, and abide there permanently. The pulls ofgravity towards A have vanished, and may now be disregarded. The polyhedron has becomeimmune against farther attraction from their direction.

In this figure of speech the lever may correspond to the emotional influences making for a newlife, and the initial pull of gravity to the ancient drawbacks and inhibitions. So long as theemotional influence fails to reach a certain pitch of efficacy, the changes it produces are unstable,and the man relapses into his original attitude. But when a certain intensity is attained by the newemotion, a critical point is passed, and there then ensues an irreversible revolution, equivalent tothe production of a new nature.

The collective name for the ripe fruits of religion in a character is Saintliness.[152] The saintlycharacter is the character for which spiritual emotions are the habitual centre of the personalenergy; and there is a certain composite photograph of universal saintliness, the same in allreligions, of which the features can easily be traced.[153]

[152] I use this word in spite of a certain flavor of "sanctimoniousness" which sometimes clingsto it, because no other word suggests as well the exact combination of affections which the textgoes on to describe.

[153] "It will be found," says Dr. W. R. Inge (in his lectures on Christian Mysticism, London,1899, p. 326), "that men of preeminent saintliness agree very closely in what they tell us. They tellus that they have arrived at an unshakable conviction, not based on inference but on immediateexperience, that God is a spirit with whom the human spirit can hold intercourse; that in him meetall that they can imagine of goodness, truth, and beauty; that they can see his footprintseverywhere in nature, and feel his presence within them as the very life of their life, so that inproportion as they come to themselves they come to him. They tell us what separates us from himand from happiness is, first, self-seeking in all its forms; and secondly, sensuality in all its forms;that these are the ways of darkness and death, which hide from us the face of God; while the pathof the just is like a shining light, which shineth more and more unto the perfect day."They are these:-1. A feeling of being in a wider life than that of this world's selfish little interests; and aconviction, not merely intellectual, but as it were sensible, of the existence of an Ideal Power. InChristian saintliness this power is always personified as God; but abstract moral ideals, civic orpatriotic utopias, or inner versions of holiness or right may also be felt as the true lords andenlargers of our life, in ways which I described in the lecture on the Reality of the Unseen.[154]

[154] The "enthusiasm of humanity" may lead to a life which coalesces in many respects withthat of Christian saintliness. Take the following rules proposed to members of the union pourl'Action morale, in the Bulletin de l'union, April 1-15, 1894. See, also, Revue Bleue, August 13,1892.

"We would make known in our own persons the usefulness of rule, of discipline, of resignationand renunciation; we would teach the necessary perpetuity of suffering, and explain the creativepart which it plays. We would wage war upon false optimism; on the base hope of happinesscoming to us ready made; on the notion of a salvation by knowledge alone, or by materialcivilization alone, vain symbol as this is of civilization, precarious external arrangement ill-fittedto replace the intimate union and consent of souls. We would wage war also on bad morals,whether in public or in private life; on luxury, fastidiousness, and over-refinement, on all that tendsto increase the painful, immoral, and anti-social multiplications of our wants; on all that excitesenvy and dislike in the soul of the common people, and confirms the notion that the chief end oflife is freedom to enjoy. We would preach by our example the respect of superiors and equals, therespect of all men; affectionate simplicity in our relations with inferiors and insignificant persons;indulgence where our own claims only are concerned, but firmness in our demands where theyrelate to duties towards others or towards the public.

"For the common people are what we help them to become; their vices are our vices, gazed upon,envied, and imitated; and if they come back with all their weight upon us, it is but just.

2. A sense of the friendly continuity of the ideal power with our own life, and a willing self-surrender to its control.

3. An immense elation and freedom, as the outlines of the confining selfhood melt down.

4. A shifting of the emotional centre towards loving and harmonious affections, towards "yes,yes," and away from "no," where the claims of the non-ego are concerned. These fundamentalinner conditions have characteristic practical consequences, as follows:-a.

Asceticism.--The self-surrender may become so passionate as to turn into self-immolation. Itmay then so over-rule the ordinary inhibitions of the flesh that the saint finds positive pleasure insacrifice and asceticism, measuring and expressing as they do the degree of his loyalty to thehigher power.

b. Strength of Soul.--The sense of enlargement of life may be so uplifting that personal motivesand inhibitions, commonly omnipotent, become too insignificant for notice, and new reaches ofpatience and fortitude open out. Fears and anxieties go, and blissful equanimity takes their place.

Come heaven, come hell, it makes no difference now!

"We forbid ourselves all seeking after popularity, all ambition to appear important. We pledgeourselves to abstain from falsehood, in all its degrees. We promise not to create or encourageillusions as to what is possible, by what we say or write. We promise to one another activesincerity, which strives to see truth clearly, and which never fears to declare what it sees.

"We promise deliberate resistance to the tidal waves of fashion, to the 'booms' and panics of thepublic mind, to all the forms of weakness and of fear.

"We forbid ourselves the of sarcasm. Of serious things we will speak seriously and unsmilingly,withoutbanterandw(use) ithout the appearance of banter;--and even so of all things, forthere are serious ways of being light of heart.

"We will put ourselves forward always for what we are, simply and without false humility, aswell as without pedantry, affectation, or pride."c. Purity.--The shifting of the emotional centre brings with it, first, increase of purity. Thesensitiveness to spiritual discords is enhanced, and the cleansing of existence from brutal andsensual elements becomes imperative. Occasions of contact with such elements are avoided: thesaintly life must deepen its spiritual consistency and keep unspotted from the world. In sometemperaments this need of purity of spirit takes an ascetic turn, and weaknesses of the flesh aretreated with relentless severity.

d. Charity.--The shifting of the emotional centre brings, secondly, increase of charity, tendernessfor fellow-creatures. The ordinary motives to antipathy, which usually set such close bounds totenderness among human beings, are inhibited. The saint loves his enemies, and treats loathsomebeggars as his brothers.

I now have to give some concrete illustrations of these fruits of the spiritual tree. The onlydifficulty is to choose, for they are so abundant.

Since the sense of Presence of a higher and friendly power seems to be the fundamental featurein the spiritual life, I will begin with that.

In our narratives of conversion we saw how the world might look shining and transfigured to theconvert,[155] and, apart from anything acutely religious, we all have moments when the universallife seems to wrap us round with friendliness. In youth and health, in summer, in the woods or onthe mountains, there come days when the weather seems all whispering with peace, hours when thegoodness and beauty of existence enfold us like a dry warm climate, or chime through us as if ourinner ears were subtly ringing with the world's security. Thoreau writes:-[155] Above, pp. 243 ff.

"Once, a few weeks after I came to the woods, for an hour I doubted whether the nearneighborhood of man was not essential to a serene and healthy life. To be alone was somewhatunpleasant. But, in the midst of a gentle rain, while these thoughts prevailed, I was suddenlysensible of such sweet and beneficent society in Nature, in the very pattering of the drops, and in<270> every sight and sound around my house, an infinite and unaccountable friendliness all atonce, like an atmosphere, sustaining me, as made the fancied advantages of human neighborhoodinsignificant, and I have never thought of them since. Every little pine-needle expanded andswelled with sympathy and befriended me. I was so distinctly made aware of the presence ofsomething kindred to me, that I thought no place could ever be strange to me again."[156]

[156] H. Thoreau: Walden, Riverside edition, p. 206, abridged.

In the Christian consciousness this sense of the enveloping friendliness becomes most personaland definite. "The compensation," writes a German author,--"for the loss of that sense of personalindependence which man so unwillingly gives up, is the disappearance of all FEAR from one'slife, the quite indescribable and inexplicable feeling of an inner SECURITY, which one can onlyexperience, but which, once it has been experienced, one can never forget."[157]

[157] C. H. Hilty: Gluck, vol. i. p. 85.

I find an excellent description of this state of mind in a sermon by Mr. Voysey:-"It is the experience of myriads of trustful souls, that this sense of God's unfailing presence withthem in their going out and in their coming in, and by night and day, is a source of absolute reposeand confident calmness. It drives away all fear of what may befall them. That nearness of God is aconstant security against terror and anxiety. It is not that they are at all assured of physical safety,or deem themselves protected by a love which is denied to others, but that they are in a state ofmind equally ready to be safe or to meet with injury. If injury befall them, they will be content tobear it because the Lord is their keeper, and nothing can befall them without his will. If it be hiswill, then injury is for them a blessing and no calamity at all. Thus and thus only is the trustful manprotected and shielded from harm. And I for one--by no means a thick-skinned or hard-nervedman-am absolutely satisfied with this arrangement, and do not wish for any other kind of immunityfrom danger and catastrophe. Quite as sensitive to pain as the most highly strung organism, I yetfeel that the worst of it is conquered, and the sting taken out of it altogether, by the thought thatGod is our loving and sleepless keeper, and that nothing can hurt us without his will."[158]

[158] The Mystery of Pain and Death, London, 1892, p. 258.

More excited expressions of this condition are abundant in religious literature. I could easilyweary you with their monotony. Here is an account from Mrs. Jonathan Edwards:-"Last night," Mrs. Edwards writes, "was the sweetest night I ever had in my life. I never before,for so long a time together, enjoyed so much of the light and rest and sweetness of heaven in mysoul, but without the least agitation of body during the whole time. Part of the night I lay awake,sometimes asleep, and sometimes between sleeping and waking. But all night I continued in aconstant, clear, and lively sense of the heavenly sweetness of Christ's excellent love, of hisnearness to me, and of my dearness to him; with an inexpressibly sweet calmness of soul in anentire rest in him. I seemed to myself to perceive a glow of divine love come down from the heartof Christ in heaven into my heart in a constant stream, like a stream or pencil of sweet light. At thesame time my heart and soul all flowed out in love to Christ, so that there seemed to be a constantflowing and reflowing of heavenly love, and I appeared to myself to float or swim, in these bright,sweet beams, like the motes swimming in the beams of the sun, or the streams of his light whichcome in at the window. I think that what I felt each minute was worth more than all the outwardcomfort and pleasure which I had enjoyed in my whole life put together. It was pleasure, withoutthe least sting, or any interruption. It was a sweetness, which my soul was lost in; it seemed to beall that my feeble frame could sustain. There was but little difference, whether I was asleep orawake, but if there was any difference, the sweetness was greatest while I was asleep.[159] As Iawoke early the next morning, it seemed to me that I had entirely done with myself. I felt that theopinions of the world concerning me were nothing, and that I had no more to do with any outwardinterest of my own than with that of a person whom I never saw. The glory of God seemed toswallow up every wish and desire of my heart. . . . After retiring to rest and sleeping a little while,I awoke, and was led to reflect on God's mercy to me, in giving me, for many years, a willingnessto die; and after that, in making me willing to live, that I might do and suffer whatever he calledme to here. I also thought how God had graciously given me an entire resignation to his will, withrespect to the kind and manner of death that I should die; having been made willing to die on therack, or at the stake, and if it were God's will, to die in darkness. But now it occurred to me, I usedto think of living no longer than to the ordinary age of man. Upon this I was led to ask myself,whether I was not willing to be kept out of heaven even longer; and my whole heart seemedimmediately to reply: Yes, a thousand years, and a thousand in horror, if it be most for the honor ofGod, the torment of my body being so great, awful, and overwhelming that none could bear to livein the country where the spectacle was seen, and the torment of my mind being vastly greater. Andit seemed to me that I found a perfect willingness, quietness, and alacrity of soul in consenting thatit should be so, if it were most for the glory of God, so that there was no hesitation, doubt, ordarkness in my mind. The glory of God seemed to overcome me and swallow me up, and everyconceivable suffering, and everything that was terrible to my nature, seemed to shrink to nothingbefore it. This resignation continued in its clearness and brightness the rest of the night, and all thenext day, and the night following, and on Monday in the forenoon, without interruption orabatement."[160]

[159] Compare Madame Guyon: "It was my practice to arise at midnight for purposes ofdevotion. . . . It seemed to me that God came at the precise time and woke me from sleep in order that I might enjoy him. When I was out of health or greatly fatigued, he did not awake me, but atsuch times I felt, even in my sleep, a singular possession of God. He loved me so much that heseemed to pervade my being, at a time when I could be only imperfectly conscious of his presence.

My sleep is sometimes broken--a sort of half sleep; but my soul seems to be awake enough toknow God, when it is hardly capable of knowing anything else." T. C. Upham: The Life andReligious Experiences of Madame de la Mothe Guyon, New York, 1877, vol. i. p. 260.

[160] I have considerably abridged the words of the original, which is given in Edwards'sNarrative of the Revival in New England.

The annals of Catholic saintship abound in records as ecstatic or more ecstatic than this. "Oftenthe assaults of the divine love," it is said of the Sister Seraphique de la Martiniere, "reduced heralmost to the point of death. She used tenderly to complain of this to God. 'I cannot support it,' sheused to say.

'Bear gently with my weakness, or I shall expire under the violence of your love.'"[161]

[161] Bougaud: Hist. de la Bienheureuse Marguerite Marie, 1894, p. 125.
Lectures XIII SAINTLINESS
　　Let me pass next to the Charity and Brotherly Love which are a usual fruit of saintliness, andhave always been reckoned essential theological virtues, however limited may have been the kindsof service which the particular theology enjoined. Brotherly love would follow logically from theassurance of God's friendly presence, the notion of our brotherhood as men being an immediateinference from that of God's fatherhood of us all. When Christ utters the precepts: "Love yourenemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them whichdespitefully use you, and persecute you," he gives for a reason: "That ye may be the children ofyour Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, andsendeth rain on the just and on the unjust." One might therefore be tempted to explain both thehumility as to one's self and the charity towards others which characterize spiritual excitement, asresults of the all-leveling character of theistic belief. But these affections are certainly not merederivatives of theism. We find them in Stoicism, in Hinduism, and in Buddhism in the highestpossible degree. They HARMONIZE with paternal theism beautifully; but they harmonize with allreflection whatever upon the dependence of mankind on general causes; and we must, I think,consider them not subordinate but coordinate parts of that great complex excitement in the study ofwhich we are engaged. Religious rapture, moral enthusiasm, ontological wonder, cosmic emotion,are all unifying states of mind, in which the sand and grit of the selfhood incline to disappear, andtenderness to rule. The best thing is to describe the condition integrally as a characteristic affectionto which our nature is liable, a region in which we find ourselves at home, a sea in which we swim;but not to pretend to explain its parts by deriving them too cleverly from one another. Like love orfear, the faith-state is a natural psychic complex, and carries charity with it by organicconsequence. Jubilation is an expansive affection, and all expansive affections are self-forgetfuland kindly so long as they endure.

We find this the case even when they are pathological in origin. In his instructive work, laTristesse et la Joie,[162] M. Georges Dumas compares together the melancholy and the joyous phase of circular insanity, and shows that, while selfishness characterizes the one, the other ismarked by altruistic impulses. No human being so stingy and useless as was Marie in hermelancholy period! But the moment the happy period begins, "sympathy and kindness become hercharacteristic sentiments. She displays a universal goodwill, not only of intention, but in act. . . .

She becomes solicitous of the health of other patients, interested in getting them out, desirous toprocure wool to knit socks for some of them. Never since she has been under my observation haveI heard her in her joyous period utter any but charitable opinions."[163] And later, Dr. Dumas saysof all such joyous conditions that "unselfish sentiments and tender emotions are the only affectivestates to be found in them. The subject's mind is closed against envy, hatred, and vindictiveness,and wholly transformed into benevolence, indulgence, and mercy."[164]

[162] Paris, 1900.

[163] Page 130.

[164] Page 167.

There is thus an organic affinity between joyousness and tenderness, and their companionship inthe saintly life need in no way occasion surprise. Along with the happiness, this increase oftenderness is often noted in narratives of conversion. "I began to work for others";--"I had moretender feeling for my family and friends";--"I spoke at once to a person with whom I had beenangry";--"I felt for every one, and loved my friends better";--"I felt every one to be my friend";-theseare so many expressions from the records collected by Professor Starbuck.[165]

[165] Op. cit., p. 127.

"When," says Mrs. Edwards, continuing the narrative from which I made quotation a momentago, "I arose on the morning of the Sabbath, I felt a love to all mankind, wholly peculiar in itsstrength and sweetness, far beyond all that I had ever felt before. The power of that love seemedinexpressible. I thought, if I were surrounded by enemies, who were venting their malice andcruelty upon me, in tormenting me, it would still be impossible that I should cherish any feelingstowards them but those of love, and pity, and ardent desires for their happiness. I never before feltso far from a disposition to judge and censure others, as I did that morning. I realized also, in anunusual and very lively manner, how great a part of Christianity lies in the performance of oursocial and relative duties to one another. The same joyful sense continued throughout the day--asweet love to God and all mankind."Whatever be the explanation of the charity, it may efface all usual human barriers.[166]

[166] The barrier between men and animals also. We read of Towianski, an eminent Polishpatriot and mystic, that "one day one of his friends met him in the rain, caressing a big dog whichwas jumping upon him and covering him horribly with mud. On being asked why he permitted theanimal thus to dirty his clothes, Towianski replied: 'This dog, whom I am now meeting for the firsttime, has shown a great fellow-feeling for me, and a great joy in my recognition and acceptance ofhis greetings. Were I to drive him off, I should wound his feelings and do him a moral injury. Itwould be an offense not only to him, but to all the spirits of the other world who are on the same level with him. The damage which he does to my coat is as nothing in comparison with the wrongwhich I should inflict upon him, in case I were to remain indifferent to the manifestations of hisfriendship. We ought,' he added, 'both to lighten the condition of animals, whenever we can, and atthe same time to facilitate in ourselves that union of the world of all spirits, which the sacrifice ofChrist has made possible.'" Andre Towianski, Traduction de l'Italien, Turin, 1897 (privatelyprinted). I owe my knowledge of this book and of Towianski to my friend Professor W.

Lutoslawski, author of "Plato's Logic."Here, for instance, is an example of Christian non-resistance from Richard Weaver'sautobiography. Weaver a collier, a semi-professional pugilist in his younger days, who becameamuchbelovedevan(was) gelist. Fighting, after drinking, seems to have been the sin to whichhe originally felt his flesh most perversely inclined. After his first conversion he had a backsliding,which consisted in pounding a man who had insulted a girl. Feeling that, having once fallen, hemight as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb, he got drunk and went and broke the jaw ofanother man who had lately challenged him to fight and taunted him with cowardice for refusingas a Christian man;--I mention these incidents to show how genuine a change of heart is implied inthe later conduct which he describes as follows:-"I went down the drift and found the boy crying because a fellow-workman was trying to takethe wagon from him by force. I said to him:-"'Tom, you mustn't take that wagon.'

"He swore at me, and called me a Methodist devil. I told him that God did not tell me to let himrob me. He cursed again, and said he would push the wagon over me.

"'Well,' I said, 'let us see whether the devil and thee are stronger than the Lord and me.'

"And the Lord and I proving stronger than the devil and he, he had to get out of the way, or thewagon would have gone over him.

So I gave the wagon to the boy. Then said Tom:-"'I've a good mind to smack thee on the face.'

"'Well,' I said, 'if that will do thee any good, thou canst do it.' So he struck me on the face.

"I turned the other cheek to him, and said, 'Strike again.'

"He struck again and again, till he had struck me five times. I turned my cheek for the sixthstroke; but he turned away cursing.

I shouted after him: 'The Lord forgive thee, for I do, and the Lord save thee.'

"This was on a Saturday; and when I went home from the coal-pit my wife saw my face wasswollen, and asked what was the matter with it. I said: 'I've been fighting, and I've given a man agood thrashing.'

"She burst out weeping, and said, 'O Richard, what made you fight?' Then I told her all about it;and she thanked the Lord I had not struck back.

"But the Lord had struck, and his blows have more effect than man's. Monday came. The devilbegan to tempt me, saying: 'The other men will laugh at thee for allowing Tom to treat thee as hedid on Saturday.' I cried, 'Get thee behind me, Satan;'--and went on my way to the coal-pit.

"Tom was the first man I saw. I said 'Good-morning,' but got no reply.

"He went down first. When I got down, I was surprised to see him sitting on the wagon-roadwaiting for me. When I came to him he burst into tears and said: 'Richard, will you forgive me forstriking you?'

"'I have forgiven thee,' said I; 'ask God to forgive thee. The Lord bless thee.' I gave him my hand,and we went each to his work."[167]

[167] J. Patterson's Life of Richard Weaver, pp. 66-68, abridged.

"Love your enemies!" Mark you, not simply those who happen not to be your friends, but yourENEMIES, your positive and active enemies. Either this is a mere Oriental hyperbole, a bit ofverbal extravagance, meaning only that we should, as far as we can, abate our animosities, or elseit is sincere and literal. Outside of certain cases of intimate individual relation, it seldom has beentaken literally. Yet it makes one ask the question: Can there in general be a level of emotion sounifying, so obliterative of differences between man and man, that even enmity may come to be anirrelevant circumstance and fail to inhibit the friendlier interests aroused? If positive well-wishingcould attain so supreme a degree of excitement, those who were swayed by it might well seemsuperhuman beings. Their life would be morally discrete from the life of other men, and there is nosaying, in the absence of positive experience of an authentic kind--for there are few activeexamples in our scriptures, and the Buddhistic examples are legendary,[168]--what the effectsmight be: they might conceivably transform the world.

[168] As where the future Buddha, incarnated as a hare, jumps into the fire to cook himself for ameal for a beggar--having previously shaken himself three times, so that none of the insects in hisfur should perish with him.

Psychologically and in principle, the precept "Love your enemies" is not self-contradictory. It ismerely the extreme limit of a kind of magnanimity with which, in the shape of pitying tolerance ofour oppressors, we are fairly familiar. Yet if radically followed, it would involve such a breachwith our instinctive springs of action as a whole, and with the present world's arrangements, that acritical point would practically be passed, and we should be born into another kingdom of being.

Religious emotion makes us feel that other kingdom to be close at hand, within our reach.

The inhibition of instinctive repugnance is proved not only by the showing of love to enemies,but by the showing of it to any one who is personally loathsome. In the annals of saintliness wefind a curious mixture of motives impelling in this direction. Asceticism plays its part; and alongwith charity pure and simple, we find humility or the desire to disclaim distinction and to grovel onthe common level before God. Certainly all three principles were at work when Francis of Assisiand Ignatius Loyola exchanged their garments with those of filthy beggars. All three are at workwhen religious persons consecrate their lives to the care of leprosy or other peculiarly unpleasantdiseases. The nursing of the sick is a function to which the religious seem strongly drawn, evenapart from the fact that church traditions set that way. But in the annals of this sort of charity wefind fantastic excesses of devotion recorded which are only explicable by the frenzy of self-immolation simultaneously aroused. Francis of Assisi kisses his lepers; Margaret Mary Alacoque, Francis Xavier, St. John of God, and others are said to have cleansed the sores and ulcers of theirpatients with their respective tongues; and the lives of such saints as Elizabeth of Hungary andMadame de Chantal are full of a sort of reveling in hospital purulence, disagreeable to read of, andwhich makes us admire and shudder at the same time.

So much for the human love aroused by the faith-state. Let me next speak of the Equanimity,Resignation, Fortitude, and Patience which it brings.

"A paradise of inward tranquillity" seems to be faith's usual result; and it is easy, even withoutbeing religious one's self, to understand this. A moment back, in treating of the sense of God'spresence, I spoke of the unaccountable feeling of safety which one may then have. And, indeed,how can it possibly fail to steady the nerves, to cool the fever, and appease the fret, if one besensibly conscious that, no matter what one's difficulties for the moment may appear to be, one'slife as a whole is in the keeping of a power whom one can absolutely trust? In deeply religiousmen the abandonment of self to this power is passionate. Whoever not only says, but FEELS,"God's will be done," is mailed against every weakness; and the whole historic array of martyrs,missionaries, and religious reformers is there to prove the tranquil-mindedness, under naturallyagitating or distressing circumstances, which self-surrender brings.

The temper of the tranquil-mindedness differs, of course, according as the person is of aconstitutionally sombre or of a constitutionally cheerful cast of mind. In the sombre it partakesmore of resignation and submission; in the cheerful it is a joyous consent. As an example of theformer temper, I quote part of a letter from Professor Lagneau, a venerated teacher of philosophywho lately died, a great invalid, at Paris:-"My life, for the success of which you send good wishes, will be what it is able to be. I asknothing from it, I expect nothing from it. For long years now I exist, think, and act, and am worthwhat I am worth, only through the despair which is my sole strength and my sole foundation. Mayit preserve for me, even in these last trials to which I am coming, the courage to do without thedesire of deliverance. I ask nothing more from the Source whence all strength cometh, and if that isgranted, your wishes will have been accomplished."[169]

[169] Bulletin de l'union pour l'Action Morale, September, 1894.

There is something pathetic and fatalistic about this, but the power of such a tone as a protectionagainst outward shocks is manifest. Pascal is another Frenchman of pessimistic <281> naturaltemperament. He expresses still more amply the temper of self-surrendering submissiveness:-"Deliver me, Lord," he writes in his prayers, "from the sadness at my proper suffering whichself-love might give, but put into me a sadness like your own. Let my sufferings appease yourcholer. Make them an occasion for my conversion and salvation. I ask you neither for health norfor sickness, for life nor for death; but that you may dispose of my health and my sickness, my lifeand my death, for your glory, for my salvation, and for the use of the Church and of your saints, ofwhom I would by your grace be one. You alone know what is expedient for me; you are thesovereign master; do with me according to your will. Give to me, or take away from me, onlyconform my will to yours. I know but one thing, Lord, that it is good to follow you, and bad tooffend you. Apart from that, I know not what is good or bad in anything. I know not which is most profitable to me, health or sickness, wealth or poverty, nor anything else in the world. Thatdiscernment is beyond the power of men or angels, and is hidden among the secrets of yourProvidence, which I adore, but do not seek to fathom."[170]

[170] B. Pascal: Prieres pour les Maladies, Sections xiii., xiv., abridged.

When we reach more optimistic temperaments, the resignation grows less passive. Examples aresown so broadcast throughout history that I might well pass on without citation. As it is, I snatch atthe first that occurs to my mind. Madame Guyon, a frail creature physically, was yet of a happynative disposition. She went through many perils with admirable serenity of soul. After being sentto prison for heresy-"Some of my friends," she writes, "wept bitterly at the hearing of it, but such was my state ofacquiescence and resignation that it failed to draw any tears from me. . . . There appeared to be inme then, as I find it to be in me now, such an entire loss of what regards myself, that any of myown interests gave me little pain or pleasure; ever wanting to will or wish for myself only the verything which God does." In another place she writes: "We all of us came near perishing in a riverwhich we found it necessary to pass. The carriage sank in the quicksand. Others who were with usthrew themselves out in excessive fright. But I found my thoughts so much taken up with God thatI had no distinct sense of danger. It is true that the thought of being drowned passed across mymind, but it cost no other sensation or reflection in me than this--that I felt quite contented andwilling it were so, if it were my heavenly Father's choice." Sailing from Nice to Genoa, a stormkeeps her eleven days at sea.

"As the irritated waves dashed round us," she writes, "I could not help experiencing a certaindegree of satisfaction in my mind. I pleased myself with thinking that those mutinous billows,under the command of Him who does all things rightly, might probably furnish me with a waterygrave. Perhaps I carried the point too far, in the pleasure which I took in thus seeing myself beatenand bandied by the swelling waters. Those who were with me took notice of my intrepidity."[171]

[171] From Thomas C. Upham's Life and Religious Opinions and Experiences of Madame de laMothe Guyon, New York, 1877, ii. 48, i. 141, 413, abridged.

The contempt of danger which religious enthusiasm produces may be even more buoyant still. Itake an example from that charming recent autobiography, "With Christ at Sea," by Frank Bullen.

A couple of days after he went through the conversion on shipboard of which he there gives anaccount-"It was blowing stiffly," he writes, "and we were carrying a press of canvas to get north out ofthe bad weather. Shortly after four bells we hauled down the flying-jib, and I sprang out astride theboom to furl it. I was sitting astride the boom when suddenly it gave way with me. The sail slippedthrough my fingers, and I fell backwards, hanging head downwards over the seething tumult ofshining foam under the ship's bows, suspended by one foot. But I felt only high exultation in mycertainty of eternal life. Although death was divided from me by a hair's breadth, and I was acutelyconscious of the fact, it gave me no sensation but joy. I suppose I could have hung there no longerthan five seconds, but in that time I lived a whole age of delight. But my body asserted itself, and with a desperate gymnastic effort I regained the boom. How I furled the sail I don't know, but Isang at the utmost pitch of my voice praises to God that went pealing out over the dark waste ofwaters."[172]

[172] Op. cit., London, 1901, p. 230.

The annals of martyrdom are of course the signal field of triumph for religious imperturbability.

Let me cite as an example the statement of a humble sufferer, persecuted as a Huguenot underLouis XIV:-"They shut all the doors," Blanche Gamond writes, "and I saw six women, each with a bunch ofwillow rods as thick as the hand could hold, and a yard long. He gave me the order, 'Undressyourself,' which I did. He said, 'You are leaving on your shift; you must take it off.' They had solittle patience that they took it off themselves, and I was naked from the waist up. They brought acord with which they tied me to a beam in the kitchen. They drew the cord tight with all theirstrength and asked me, 'Does it hurt you?' and then they discharged their fury upon me, exclaimingas they struck me, 'Pray now to your God.' It was the Roulette woman who held this language. Butat this moment I received the greatest consolation that I can ever receive in my life, since I had thehonor of being whipped for the name of Christ, and in addition of being crowned with his mercyand his consolations. Why can I not write down the inconceivable influences, consolations, andpeace which I felt interiorly? To understand them one must have passed by the same trial; theywere so great that I was ravished, for there where afflictions abound grace is givensuperabundantly. In vain the women cried, 'We must double our blows; she does not feel them, forshe neither speaks nor cries.' And how should I have cried, since I was swooning with happinesswithin?"[173]

[173] Claparede et Goty: Deux Heroines de la Foi, Paris, 1880, p. 112.

The transition from tenseness, self-responsibility, and worry, to equanimity, receptivity, andpeace, is the most wonderful of all those shiftings of inner equilibrium, those changes of thepersonal centre of energy, which I have analyzed so often; and the chief wonder of it is that it sooften comes about, not by doing, but by simply relaxing and throwing the burden down. Thisabandonment of self-responsibility seems to be the fundamental act in specifically religious, asdistinguished from moral practice. It antedates theologies and is independent of philosophies.

Mind-cure, theosophy, stoicism, ordinary neurological hygiene, insist on it as emphatically asChristianity does, and it is capable of entering into closest marriage with every speculative creed.

[174] Christians who have it strongly live in what is called "recollection," and are never anxiousabout the future, nor worry over the outcome of the day. Of Saint Catharine of Genoa it is said that"she took cognizance of things, only as they were presented to her in succession, MOMENT BYMOMENT." To her holy soul, "the divine moment was the present moment, . . . and when thepresent moment was estimated in itself and in its relations, and when the duty that was involved init was accomplished, it was permitted to pass away as if it had never been, and to give way to thefacts and duties of the moment which came after."[175] Hinduism, mind-cure, and theosophy alllay great emphasis upon this concentration of the consciousness upon the moment at hand.

[174] Compare these three different statements of it: A. P. Call: As a Matter of Course, Boston,1894; H. W. Dresser: Living by the Spirit, New York and London, 1900; H. W. Smith: TheChristian's Secret of a Happy Life, published by the Willard Tract Repository, and now inthousands of hands.

[175] T. C. Upham: Life of Madame Catharine Adorna, 3d ed., New York, 1864, pp. 158, 17274.

The next religious symptom which I will note is what have called Purity of Life. The saintlyperson becomes exceedingly sensitive to inner inconsistency or discord, and mixture and confusiongrow intolerable. All the mind's objects and occupations must be ordered with reference to thespecial spiritual excitement which is now its keynote. Whatever is unspiritual taints the pure waterof the soul and is repugnant. Mixed with this exaltation of the moral sensibilities there is also anardor of sacrifice, for the beloved deity's sake, of everything unworthy of him. Sometimes thespiritual ardor is so sovereign that purity is achieved at a stroke --we have seen examples. Usuallyit is a more gradual conquest. Billy Bray's account of his abandonment of tobacco is a goodexample of the latter form of achievement.

"I had been a smoker as well as a drunkard, and I used to love my tobacco as much as I loved mymeat, and I would rather go down into the mine without my dinner than without my pipe. In thedays of old, the Lord spoke by the mouths of his servants, the prophets; now he speaks to us by thespirit of his Son. I had not only the feeling part of religion, but I could hear the small, still voicewithin speaking to me. When I took the pipe to smoke, it would be applied within, 'It is an idol, alust; worship the Lord with clean lips.' So, I felt it was not right to smoke. The Lord also sent awoman to convince me. I was one day in a house, and I took out my pipe to light it at the fire, andMary Hawke--for that was the woman's name--said, 'Do you not feel it is wrong to smoke?' I saidthat I felt something inside telling me that it was an idol, a lust, and she said that was the Lord.

Then I said, 'Now, I must give it up, for the Lord is telling me of it inside, and the woman outside,so the tobacco must go, love it as I may.' There and then I took the tobacco out of my pocket, andthrew it into the fire, and put the pipe under my foot, 'ashes to ashes, dust to dust.' And I have notsmoked since. I found it hard to break off old habits, but I cried to the Lord for help, and he gaveme strength, for he has said, 'Call upon me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver thee.' The dayafter I gave up smoking I had the toothache so bad that I did not know what to do. I thought thiswas owing to giving up the pipe, but I said I would never smoke again, if I lost every tooth in myhead. I said, 'Lord, thou hast told us My yoke is easy and my burden is light,' and when I said that,all the pain left me. Sometimes the thought of the pipe would come back to me very strong; but theLord strengthened me against the habit, and, bless his name, I have not smoked since."Bray's biographer writes that after he had given up smoking, he thought that he would chew alittle, but he conquered this dirty habit, too. "On one occasion," Bray said, "when at a prayer-meeting at Hicks Mill, I heard the Lord say to me, 'Worship me with clean lips.' So, when we gotup from our knees, I took the quid out of my mouth and 'whipped 'en' [threw it] under the form.

But, when we got on our knees again, I put another quid into my mouth. Then the Lord said tome again, 'Worship me with clean lips.' So I took the quid out of my mouth, and whipped 'en under the form again, and said, 'Yes, Lord, I will.' From that time I gave up chewing as well as smoking,and have been a free man."The ascetic forms which the impulse for veracity and purity of life may take are often patheticenough. The early Quakers, for example, had hard battles to wage against the worldliness andinsincerity of the ecclesiastical Christianity of their time. Yet the battle that cost them mostwounds was probably that which they fought in defense of their own right to social veracity andsincerity in their thee-ing and thou-ing, in not doffing the hat or giving titles of respect. It was laidon George Fox that these conventional customs were a lie and a sham, and the whole body of hisfollowers thereupon renounced them, as a sacrifice to truth, and so that their acts and the spirit theyprofessed might be more in accord.

"When the Lord sent me into the world," says Fox in his Journal, "he forbade me to put off myhat to any, high or low: and I was required to 'thee' and 'thou' all men and women, without anyrespect to rich or poor, great or small. And as I traveled up and down, I was not to bid peopleGood-morning or Good-evening, neither might I bow or scrape with my leg to any one. This madethe sects and professions rage. Oh! the rage that was in the priests, magistrates, professors, andpeople of all sorts: and especially in priests and professors: for though 'thou' to a single person wasaccording to their accidence and grammar rules, and according to the Bible, yet they could not bearto hear it: and because I could not put off my hat to them, it set them all into a rage. . . . Oh! thescorn, heat, and fury that arose! Oh! the blows, punchings, beatings, and imprisonments that weunderwent for not putting off our hats to men! Some had their hats violently plucked off andthrown away, so that they quite lost them. The bad language and evil usage we received on thisaccount is hard to be expressed, besides the danger we were sometimes in of losing our lives forthis matter, and that by the great professors of Christianity, who thereby discovered they were nottrue believers. And though it was but a small thing in the eye of man, yet a wonderful confusion itbrought among all professors and priests: but, blessed be the Lord, many came to see the vanity ofthat custom of putting off hats to men, and felt the weight of Truth's testimony against it."In the autobiography of Thomas Elwood, an early Quaker, who at one time was secretary to JohnMilton, we find an exquisitely quaint and candid account of the trials he underwent both at homeand abroad, in following Fox's canons of sincerity. The anecdotes are too lengthy for citation; butElwood sets down his manner of feeling about these things in a shorter passage, which I will quoteas a characteristic utterance of spiritual sensibility:-"By this divine light, then," says Elwood, "I saw that though I had not the evil of the commonuncleanliness, debauchery, profaneness, and pollutions of the world to put away, because I had,through the great goodness of God and a civil education, been preserved out of those grosser evils,yet I had many other evils to put away and to cease from; some of which were not by the world,which lies in wickedness (I John v. 19), accounted evils, but by the light of Christ were mademanifest to me to be evils, and as such condemned in me.

"As particularly those fruits and effects of pride that discover themselves in the vanity andsuperfluity of apparel; which I took too much delight in. This evil of my doings I was required toput away and cease from; and judgment lay upon me till I did so.

"I took off from my apparel those unnecessary trimmings of lace, ribbons, and useless buttons,which had no real service, but were set on only for that which was by mistake called ornament; andI ceased to wear rings.

"Again, the giving of flattering titles to men between whom and me there was not any relation towhich such titles could be pretended to belong. This was an evil I had been much addicted to, andwas accounted a ready artist in; therefore this evil also was I required to put away and cease from.

So that thenceforward I durst not say, Sir, Master, My Lord, Madam (or My Dame); or say YourServant to any one to whom I did not stand in the real relation of a servant, which I had never doneto any.

"Again, respect of persons, in uncovering the head and bowing the knee or body in salutation,was a practice I had been much in the use of; and this, being one of the vain customs of the world,introduced by the spirit of the world, instead of the true honor which this is a false representationof, and used in deceit as a token of respect by persons one to another, who bear no real respect oneto another; and besides this, being a type and a proper emblem of that divine honor which all oughtto pay to Almighty God, and which all of all sorts, who take upon them the Christian name, appearin when they offer their prayers to him, and therefore should not be given to men;--I found this tobe one of those evils which I had been too long doing; therefore I was now required to put it awayand cease from it.

"Again, the corrupt and unsound form of speaking in the plural number to a single person, YOUto one, instead of THOU, contrary to the pure, plain, and single language of truth, THOU to one,and YOU to more than one, which had always been used by God to men, and men to God, as wellas one to another, from the oldest record of time till corrupt men, for corrupt ends, in later andcorrupt times, to flatter, fawn, and work upon the corrupt nature in men, brought in that false andsenseless way of speaking you to one, which has since corrupted the modern languages, and hathgreatly debased the spirits and depraved the manners of men;--this evil custom I had been asforward in as others, and this I was now called out of and required to cease from.

"These and many more evil customs which had sprung up in the night of darkness and generalapostasy from the truth and true religion were now, by the inshining of this pure ray of divine lightin my conscience, gradually discovered to me to be what I ought to cease from, shun, and stand awitness against."[176]

[176] The History of Thomas Elwood, written by Himself, London, 1885, pp. 32-34These early Quakers were Puritans indeed. The slightest inconsistency between profession anddeed jarred some of them to active protest. John Woolman writes in his diary:-"In these journeys I have been where much cloth hath been dyed; and have at sundry timeswalked over ground where much of their dyestuffs has drained away. This hath produced a longingin my mind that people might come into cleanness of spirit, cleanness of person, and cleannessabout their houses and garments. Dyes being invented partly to please the eye, and partly to hidedirt, I have felt in this weak state, when traveling in dirtiness, and affected with unwholesomescents, a strong desire that the nature of dyeing cloth to hide dirt may be more fully considered.

"Washing our garments to keep them sweet is cleanly, but it is the opposite to real cleanliness tohide dirt in them. Through giving way to hiding dirt in our garments a spirit which would concealthat which is disagreeable is strengthened. Real cleanliness becometh a holy people; but hiding thatwhich is not clean by coloring our garments seems contrary to the sweetness of sincerity. Throughsome sorts of dyes cloth is rendered less useful. And if the value of dyestuffs, and expense ofdyeing, and the damage done to cloth, were all added together, and that cost applied to keeping allsweet and clean, how much more would real cleanliness prevail.

"Thinking often on these things, the use of hats and garments dyed with a dye hurtful to them,and wearing more clothes in summer than are useful, grew more uneasy to me; believing them tobe customs which have not their foundation in pure wisdom. The apprehension of being singularfrom my beloved friends was a strait upon me; and thus I continued in the use of some things,contrary to my judgment, about nine months. Then I thought of getting a hat the natural color ofthe fur, but the apprehension of being looked upon as one affecting singularity felt uneasy to me.

On this account I was under close exercise of mind in the time of our general spring meeting in1762, greatly desiring to be rightly directed; when, being deeply bowed in spirit before the Lord, Iwas made willing to submit to what I apprehended was required of me; and when I returned home,got a hat of the natural color of the fur.

"In attending meetings, this singularity was a trial to me, and more especially at this time, aswhite hats were used by some who were fond of following the changeable modes of dress, and assome friends, who knew not from what motives I wore it, grew shy of me, I felt my way for a timeshut up in the exercise of the ministry. Some friends were apprehensive that my wearing such a hatsavored of an affected singularity: those who spoke with me in a friendly way, I generallyinformed in a few words, that I believed my wearing it was not in my own will."When the craving for moral consistency and purity is developed to this degree, the subject maywell find the outer world too full of shocks to dwell in, and can unify his life and keep his soulunspotted only by withdrawing from it. That law which impels the artist to achieve harmony in hiscomposition by simply dropping out whatever jars, or suggests a discord, rules also in the spirituallife. To omit, says Stevenson, is the one art in literature: "If I knew how to omit, I should ask noother knowledge." And life, when full of disorder and slackness and vague superfluity, can nohave what call character than literature can have it under similar conditions. So mona(more) steriesandcomm(we) unities of sympathetic devotees open their doors, and in their changelessorder, characterized by omissions quite as much as constituted of actions, the holy-minded personfinds that inner smoothness and cleanness which it is torture to him to feel violated at every turn bythe discordancy and brutality of secular existence.

That the scrupulosity of purity may be carried to a fantastic extreme must be admitted. In this itresembles Asceticism, to which further symptom of saintliness we had better turn next. Theadjective "ascetic" is applied to conduct originating on diverse psychological levels, which I mightas well begin by distinguishing from one another.

1. Asceticism may be a mere expression of organic hardihood, disgusted with too much ease.

2. Temperance in meat and drink, simplicity of apparel, chastity, and non-pampering of the bodygenerally, may be fruits of the love of purity, shocked by whatever savors of the sensual.

3. They may also be fruits of love, that is, they may appeal to the subject in the light of sacrificeswhich he is happy in making to the Deity whom he acknowledges.

4. Again, ascetic mortifications and torments may be due to pessimistic feelings about the self,combined with theological beliefs concerning expiation. The devotee may feel that he is buyinghimself free, or escaping worse sufferings hereafter, by doing penance now.

5. In psychopathic persons, mortifications may be entered on irrationally, by a sort of obsessionor fixed idea which comes as a challenge and must be worked off, because only thus does thesubject get his interior consciousness feeling right again.

6. Finally, ascetic exercises may in rarer instances be prompted by genuine perversions of thebodily sensibility, in consequence of which normally pain-giving stimuli are actually felt aspleasures.

I will try to give an instance under each of these heads in turn; but it is not easy to get them pure,for in cases pronounced enough to be immediately classed as ascetic, several of the assignedmotives usually work together. Moreover, before citing any examples at all, I must invite you tosome general psychological considerations which apply to all of them alike.

A strange moral transformation has within the past century swept over our Western world. Weno longer think that we are called on to face physical pain with equanimity. It is not expected of aman that he should either endure it or inflict much of it, and to listen to the recital of cases of itmakes our flesh creep morally as well as physically. The way in which our ancestors looked uponpain as an eternal ingredient of the world's order, and both caused and suffered it as a matter-ofcourseportion of their day's work, fills us with amazement. We wonder that any human beingscould have been so callous. The result of this historic alteration is that even in the Mother Churchherself, where ascetic discipline has such a fixed traditional prestige as a factor of merit, it haslargely come into desuetude, if not discredit. A believer who flagellates or "macerates" himselftoday arouses more wonder and fear than emulation. Many Catholic writers who admit that thetimes have changed in this respect do so resignedly; and even add that perhaps it is as well not towaste feelings in regretting the matter, for to return to the heroic corporeal discipline of ancientdays might be an extravagance.

Where to seek the easy and the pleasant seems instinctive --and instinctive it appears to be inman; any deliberate tendency to pursue the hard and painful as such and for their own sakes mightwell strike one as purely abnormal. Nevertheless, in moderate degrees it is natural and even usualto human nature to court the arduous. It is only the extreme manifestations of the tendency that canbe regarded as a paradox.

The psychological reasons for this lie near the surface. When we drop abstractions and take whatwe call our will in the act, we see that it is a very complex function. It involves both stimulationsand inhibitions; it follows generalized habits; it is escorted by reflective criticisms; and it leaves agood or a bad taste of itself behind, according to the manner of the performance. The result is that,quite apart from the immediate pleasure which any sensible experience may give us, our owngeneral moral attitude in procuring or undergoing the experience brings with it a secondarysatisfaction or distaste. Some men and women, indeed, there are who can live on smiles and theword "yes" forever. But for others (indeed for most), this is too tepid and relaxed a moral climate.

Passive happiness is slack and insipid, and soon grows mawkish and intolerable. Some austerityand wintry negativity, some roughness, danger, stringency, and effort, some "no! no!" must bemixed in, to produce the sense of an existence with character and texture and power. The range ofindividual differences in this respect is enormous; but whatever the mixture of yeses and noes maybe, the person is infallibly aware when he has struck it in the right proportion FOR HIM. This, hefeels, is my proper vocation, this is the OPTIMUM, the law, the life for me to live. Here I find thedegree of equilibrium, safety, calm, and leisure which I need, or here I find the challenge, passion,fight, and hardship without which my soul's energy expires.

Every individual soul, in short, like every individual machine or organism, has its own bestconditions of efficiency. A given machine will run best under a certain steam-pressure, a certainamperage; an organism under a certain diet, weight, or exercise. You seem to do best, I heard adoctor say to a patient, at about 140 millimeters of arterial tension. And it is just so with our sundrysouls: some are happiest in calm weather; some need the sense of tension, of strong volition, tomake them feel alive and well. For these latter souls, whatever is gained from day to day must bepaid for by sacrifice and inhibition, or else it comes too cheap and has no zest.

Now when characters of this latter sort become religious, they are apt to turn the edge of theirneed of effort and negativity against their natural self; and the ascetic life gets evolved as aconsequence.

When Professor Tyndall in one of his lectures tells us that Thomas Carlyle put him into his bathtubevery morning of a freezing Berlin winter, he proclaimed one of the lowest grades ofasceticism. Even without Carlyle, most of us find it necessary to our soul's health to start the daywith a rather cool immersion. A little farther along the scale we get such statements as this, fromone of my correspondents, an agnostic:-"Often at night in my warm bed I would feel ashamed to depend so on the warmth, and wheneverthe thought would come over me I would have to get up, no matter what time of night it was, andstand for a minute in the cold, just so as to prove my manhood."Such cases as these belong simply to our head 1. In the next case we probably have a mixture ofheads 2 and 3--the asceticism becomes far more systematic and pronounced. The writer is aProtestant, whose sense of moral energy could doubtless be gratified on no lower terms, and I takehis case from Starbuck's manuscript collection.

"I practiced fasting and mortification of the flesh. I secretly made burlap shirts, and put the burrsnext the skin, and wore pebbles in my shoes. I would spend nights flat on my back on the floorwithout any covering."The Roman Church has organized and codified all this sort of thing, and given it a market-valuein the shape of "merit." But we see the cultivation of hardship cropping out under every sky and inevery faith, as a spontaneous need of character. Thus we read of Channing, when first settled as aUnitarian minister, that-"He was now more simple than ever, and seemed to have become incapable of any form of self-indulgence. He took the smallest room in the house for his study, though he might easily havecommanded one more light, airy, and in every way more suitable; and chose for his sleepingchamber an attic which he shared with a younger brother. The furniture of the latter might have answered for the cell of an anchorite, and consisted of a hard mattress on a cot-bedstead, plainwooden chairs and table, with matting on the floor. It was without fire, and to cold he wasthroughout life extremely sensitive; but he never complained or appeared in any way to beconscious of inconvenience. 'I recollect,' says his brother, 'after one most severe night, that in themorning he sportively thus alluded to his suffering: "If my bed were my country, I should besomewhat like Bonaparte: I have no control except over the part which I occupy, the instant Imove, frost takes possession."' In sickness only would he change for the time his apartment andaccept a few comforts. The dress too that he habitually adopted was of most inferior quality; andgarments were constantly worn which the world would call mean, though an almost feminineneatness preserved him from the least appearance of neglect."[177]

[177] Memoirs of W. E. Channing, Boston, 1840, i. 196.

Channing's asceticism, such as it was, was evidently a compound of hardihood and love ofpurity. The democracy which is an offshoot of the enthusiasm of humanity, and of which I willspeak later under the head of the cult of poverty, doubtless bore also a share. Certainly there wasno pessimistic element in his case.

In the next case we have a strongly pessimistic element, so that it belongs under head 4. JohnCennick was Methodism's first lay preacher. In 1735 he was convicted of sin, while walking inCheapside-"And at once left off sing-singing, card-playing, and attending theatres. Sometimes he wished togo to a popish monastery, to spend his life in devout retirement. At other times he longed to live ina cave, sleeping on fallen leaves, and feeding on forest fruits. He fasted long and often, and prayednine times a day. . . . Fancying dry bread too great an indulgence for so great a sinner as himself,he began to feed on potatoes, acorns, crabs, and grass; and often wished that he could live on rootsand herbs. At length, in 1737, he found peace with God, and went on his way rejoicing."[178]

[178] L. Tyerman: The Life and Times of the Rev. John Wesley, i. 274.

In this poor man we have morbid melancholy and fear, and the sacrifices made are to purge outsin, and to buy safety. The hopelessness of Christian theology in respect of the flesh and thenatural man generally has, in systematizing fear, made of it one tremendous incentive to self-mortification. It would be quite unfair, however, in spite of the fact that this incentive has oftenbeen worked in a mercenary way for hortatory purposes, to call it a mercenary incentive. Theimpulse to expiate and do penance is, in its first intention, far too immediate and spontaneous anexpression of self-despair and anxiety to be obnoxious to any such reproach. In the form of lovingsacrifice, of spending all we have to show our devotion, ascetic discipline of the severest sort maybe the fruit of highly optimistic religious feeling.

M. Vianney, the cure of Ars, was a French country priest, whose holiness was exemplary. Weread in his life the following account of his inner need of sacrifice:-"'

On this path,' M. Vianney said, "it is only the first step that costs. There is in mortification abalm and a savor without which one cannot live when once one has made their acquaintance.

There is but one way in which to give one's self to God--that is, to give one's self entirely, and to keep nothing for one's self. The little that one keeps is only good to trouble one and make onesuffer.' Accordingly he imposed it on himself that he should never smell a flower, never drinkwhen parched with thirst, never drive away a fly, never show disgust before a repugnant object,never complain of anything that had to do with his personal comfort, never sit down, never leanupon his elbows when he was kneeling. The Cure of Ars was very sensitive to cold, but he wouldnever take means to protect himself against it. During a very severe winter, one of his missionariescontrived a false floor to his confessional and placed a metal case of hot water beneath. The tricksucceeded, and the Saint was deceived: 'God is very good,' he said with emotion. 'This year,through all the cold, my feet have always been warm.' "[179]

[179] A. Mounin: Le Cure d'Ars, vie de M. J. B. M. Vianney, 1864, p. 545, abridged.

In this case the spontaneous impulse to make sacrifices for the pure love of God was probablythe uppermost conscious motive. We may class it, then, under our head 3. Some authors think thatthe impulse to sacrifice is the main religious phenomenon. It is a prominent, a universalphenomenon certainly, and lies deeper than any special creed. Here, for instance, is what seems tobe a spontaneous example of it, simply expressing what seemed right at the time between theindividual and his Maker. Cotton Mather, the New England Puritan divine, is generally reputed arather grotesque pedant; yet what is more touchingly simple than his relation of what happenedwhen his wife came to die?

"When I saw to what a point of resignation I was now called of the Lord," he says, "I resolved,with his help, therein to glorify him. So, two hours before my lovely consort expired, I kneeled byher bedside, and I took into my two hands a dear hand, the dearest in the world. With her thus inmy hands, I solemnly and sincerely gave her up unto the Lord: and in token of my realRESIGNATION, I gently put her out of my hands, and laid away a most lovely hand, resolvingthat I would never touch it more. This was the hardest, and perhaps the bravest action that ever Idid. She . . . told me that she signed and sealed my act of resignation. And though before that shecalled for me continually, she after this never asked for me any more."[180]

[180] B. Wendell: Cotton Mather, New York, no date, p. 198.

Father Vianney's asceticism taken in its totality was simply the result of a permanent flood ofhigh spiritual enthusiasm, longing to make proof of itself. The Roman Church has, in itsincomparable fashion, collected all the motives towards asceticism together, and so codified themthat any one wishing to pursue Christian perfection may find a practical system mapped out forhim in any one of a number of ready-made manuals.[181] The dominant Church notion ofperfection is of course the negative one of avoidance of sin. Sin proceeds from concupiscence, andconcupiscence from our carnal passions and temptations, chief of which are pride, sensuality in allits forms, and the loves of worldly excitement and possession. All these sources of sin must beresisted; and discipline and austerities are a most efficacious mode of meeting them. Hence thereare always in these books chapters on self-mortification. But whenever a procedure is codified, themore delicate spirit of it evaporates, and if we wish the undiluted ascetic spirit--the passion of self-contempt wreaking itself on the poor flesh, the divine irrationality of devotion making a sacrificial gift of all it has (its sensibilities, namely) to the object of its adoration--we must go toautobiographies, or other individual documents.

[181] That of the earlier Jesuit, Rodriguez, which has been translated into all languages, is one ofthe best known. A convenient modern manual, very well put together, is L'Ascetique Chretienne,by M. J. Ribet, Paris, Poussielgue, nouvelle edition, 1898.

Saint John of the Cross, a Spanish mystic who flourished--or rather who existed, for there waslittle that suggested flourishing about him--in the sixteenth century, will supply a passage suitablefor our purpose.

"First of all, carefully excite in yourself an habitual affectionate will in all things to imitate JesusChrist. If anything agreeable offers itself to your senses, yet does not at the same time tend purelyto the honor and glory of God, renounce it and separate yourself from it for the love of Christ, whoall his life long had no other taste or wish than to do the will of his Father whom he called his meatand nourishment. For example, you take satisfaction in HEARING of things in which the glory ofGod bears no part. Deny yourself this satisfaction, mortify your wish to listen. You take pleasure inSEEING objects which do not raise your mind to God: refuse yourself this pleasure, and turn awayyour eyes. The same with conversations and all other things. Act similarly, so far as you are able,with all the operations of the senses, striving to make yourself free from their yokes.

"The radical remedy lies in the mortification of the four great natural passions, joy, hope, fear,and grief. You must seek to deprive these of every satisfaction and leave them as it were indarkness and the void. Let your soul therefore turn always:

"Not to what is most easy, but to what is hardest;"Not to what tastes best, but to what is most distasteful;"Not to what most pleases, but to what disgusts;"Not to matter of consolation, but to matter for desolation rather;"Not to rest, but to labor;"Not to desire the more, but the less;"Not to aspire to what is highest and most precious, but to what is lowest and most contemptible;"Not to will anything, but to will nothing;"Not to seek the best in everything, but to seek the worst, so that you may enter for the love ofChrist into a complete destitution, a perfect poverty of spirit, and an absolute renunciation ofeverything in this world.

"Embrace these practices with all the energy of your soul and you will find in a short time greatdelights and unspeakable consolations.

"Despise yourself, and wish that others should despise you;"Speak to your own disadvantage, and desire others to do the same;"Conceive a low opinion of yourself, and find it good when others hold the same;"To enjoy the taste of all things, have no taste for anything.

"To know all things, learn to know nothing.

"To possess all things, resolve to possess nothing.

"To be all things, be willing to be nothing.

"To get to where you have no taste for anything, go through whatever experiences you have notaste for.

"To learn to know nothing, go whither you are ignorant.

"To reach what you possess not, go whithersoever you own nothing.

"To be what you are not, experience what you are not."These later verses play with that vertigo of self-contradiction which is so dear to mysticism.

Those that come next are completely mystical, for in them Saint John passes from God to the moremetaphysical notion of the All.

"When you stop at one thing, you cease to open yourself to the All.

"For to come to the All you must give up the All.

"And if you should attain to owning the All, you must own it, desiring Nothing.

"In this spoliation, the soul finds its tranquillity and rest. Profoundly established in the centre ofits own nothingness, it can be assailed by naught that comes from below; and since it no longerdesires anything, what comes from above cannot depress it; for its desires alone are the causes ofits woes."[182]

[182] Saint Jean de la Croix, vie et Oeuvres, Paris, 1893, ii. 94, 99, abridged.

And now, as a more concrete example of heads 4 and 5, in fact of all our heads together, and ofthe irrational extreme to which a psychopathic individual may go in the line of bodily austerity, Iwill quote the sincere Suso's account of his own self-tortures. Suso, you will remember, was one ofthe fourteenth century German mystics; his autobiography, written in the third person, is a classicreligious document.

"He was in his youth of a temperament full of fire and life; and when this began to make itselffelt, it was very grievous to him; and he sought by many devices how he might bring his body intosubjection. He wore for a long time a hair shirt and an iron chain, until the blood ran from him, sothat he was obliged to leave them off. He secretly caused an undergarment to be made for him; andin the undergarment he had strips of leather fixed, into which a hundred and fifty brass nails,pointed and filed sharp, were driven, and the points of the nails were always turned towards theflesh. He had this garment made very tight, and so arranged as to go round him and fasten in frontin order that it might fit the closer to his body, and the pointed nails might be driven into his flesh;and it was high enough to reach upwards to his navel. In this he used to sleep at night. Now insummer, when it was hot, and he was very tired and ill from his journeyings, or when he held theoffice of lecturer, he would sometimes, as he lay thus in bonds, and oppressed with toil, andtormented also by noxious insects, cry aloud and give way to fretfulness, and twist round andround in agony, as a worm does when run through with a pointed needle. It often seemed to him asif he were lying upon an ant-hill, from the torture caused by the insects; for if he wished to sleep,or when he had fallen asleep, they vied with one another.[183] Sometimes he cried to AlmightyGod in the fullness of his heart: Alas! Gentle God, what a dying is this! When a man is killed by murderers or strong beasts of prey it is soon over; but I lie dying here under the cruel insects, andyet cannot die. The nights in winter were never so long, nor was the summer so hot, as to makehim leave off this exercise. On the contrary, he devised something farther --two leathern loops intowhich he put his hands, and fastened one on each side his throat, and made the fastenings so securethat even if his cell had been on fire about him, he could not have helped himself. This hecontinued until his hands and arms had become almost tremulous with the strain, and then hedevised something else: two leather gloves; and he caused a brazier to fit them all over with sharp-pointed brass tacks, and he used to put them on at night, in order that if he should try while asleepto throw off the hair undergarment, or relieve himself from the gnawings of the vile insects, thetacks might then stick into his body. And so it came to pass. If ever he sought to help himself withhis hands in his sleep, he drove the sharp tacks into his breast, and tore himself, so that his fleshfestered. When after many weeks the wounds had healed, he tore himself again and made freshwounds.

[183] "Insects," i.e. lice, were an unfailing token of mediaeval sainthood. We read of Francis ofAssisi's sheepskin that "often a companion of the saint would take it to the fire to clean anddispediculate it, doing so, as he said, because the seraphic father himself was no enemy ofpedocchi, but on the contrary kept them on him (le portava adosso) and held it for an honor and aglory to wear these celestial pearls in his habit. Quoted by P. Sabatier: Speculum Perfectionis, etc.,Paris, 1898, p. 231, note.

"He continued this tormenting exercise for about sixteen years. At the end of this time, when hisblood was now chilled, and the fire of his temperament destroyed, there appeared to him in avision on Whitsunday, a messenger from heaven, who told him that God required this of him nolonger. Whereupon he discontinued it, and threw all these things away into a running stream."Suso then tells how, to emulate the sorrows of his crucified Lord, he made himself a cross withthirty protruding iron needles and nails. This he bore on his bare back between his shoulders dayand night. "The first time that he stretched out this cross upon his back his tender frame was struckwith terror at it, and blunted the sharp nails slightly against a stone. But soon, repenting of thiswomanly cowardice, he pointed them all again with a file, and placed once more the cross uponhim. It made his back, where the bones are, bloody and seared. Whenever he sat down or stood up,it was as if a hedgehog-skin were on him. If any one touched him unawares, or pushed against hisclothes, it tore him."Suso next tells of his penitences by means of striking this cross and forcing the nails deeper intothe flesh, and likewise of his self-scourgings--a dreadful story--and then goes on as follows: "Atthis same period the Servitor procured an old castaway door, and he used to lie upon it at nightwithout any bedclothes to make him comfortable, except that he took off his shoes and wrapped athick cloak round him. He thus secured for himself a most miserable bed; for hard pea-stalks lay inhumps under his head, the cross with the sharp nails stuck into his back, his arms were locked fastin bonds, the horsehair undergarment was round his loins, and the cloak too was heavy and thedoor hard. Thus he lay in wretchedness, afraid to stir, just like a log, and he would send up many asigh to God.

"In winter he suffered very much from the frost. If he stretched out his feet they lay bare on thefloor and froze, if he gathered them up the blood became all on fire in his legs, and this was greatpain. His feet were full of sores, his legs dropsical, his knees bloody and seared, his loins coveredwith scars from the horsehair, his body wasted, his mouth parched with intense thirst, and hishands tremulous from weakness. Amid these torments he spent his nights and days; and heendured them all out of the greatness of the love which he bore in his heart to the Divine andEternal Wisdom, our Lord Jesus Christ, whose agonizing sufferings he sought to imitate. After atime he gave up this penitential exercise of the door, and instead of it he took up his abode in avery small cell, and used the bench, which was so narrow and short that he could not stretchhimself upon it, as his bed. In this hole, or upon the door, he lay at night in his usual bonds, forabout eight years. It was also his custom, during the space of twenty-five years, provided he wasstaying in the convent, never to go after compline in winter into any warm room, or to the conventstove to warm himself, no matter how cold it might be, unless he was obliged to do so for otherreasons. Throughout all these years he never took a bath, either a water or a sweating bath; and thishe did in order to mortify his comfort-seeking body. He practiced during a long time such rigidpoverty that he would neither receive nor touch a penny, either with leave or without it. For aconsiderable time he strove to attain such a high degree of purity that he would neither scratch nortouch any part of his body, save only his hands and feet."[184]

[184] The Life of the Blessed Henry Suso, by Himself, translated by T. F. Knox, London, 1865,pp. 56-80, abridged.

I spare you the recital of poor Suso's self-inflicted tortures from thirst. It is pleasant to know thatafter his fortieth year, God showed him by a series of visions that he had sufficiently broken downthe natural man, and that he might leave these exercises off. His case is distinctly pathological, buthe does not seem to have had the alleviation, which some ascetics have enjoyed, of an alteration ofsensibility capable of actually turning torment into a perverse kind of pleasure. Of the founder ofthe
Lectures XIV THE VALUE OF SAINTLINESS
We have now passed in review the more important of the phenomena which are regarded asfruits of genuine religion and characteristics of men who are devout. Today we have to change ourattitude from that of description to that of appreciation; we have to ask whether the fruits inquestion can help us to judge the absolute value of what religion adds to human life. Were I toparody Kant, I should say that a "Critique of pure Saintliness" must be our theme.

If, in turning to this theme, we could descend upon our subject from above like Catholictheologians, with our fixed definitions of man and man's perfection and our positive dogmas aboutGod, we should have an easy time of it. Man's perfection would be the fulfillment of his end; andhis end would be union with his Maker. That union could be pursued by him along three paths,active, purgative, and contemplative, respectively; and progress along either path would be asimple matter to by the application of a limited number of theological and moral conceptionsanddefinitions(measure) . The absolute significance and value of any bit of religious experiencewe might hear of would thus be given almost mathematically into our hands.

If convenience were everything, we ought now to grieve at finding ourselves cut off from soadmirably convenient a method as this. But we did cut ourselves off from it deliberately in thoseremarks which you remember we made, in our first lecture, about the empirical method; and itmust be <321> confessed that after that act of renunciation we can never hope for clean-cut andscholastic results. WE cannot divide man sharply into an animal and a rational part. WE cannotdistinguish natural from supernatural effects; nor among the latter know which are favors of God,and which are counterfeit operations of the demon. WE have merely to collect things together without any special a priori theological system, and out of an aggregate of piecemeal judgments asto the value of this and that experience--judgments in which our general philosophic prejudices,our instincts, and our common sense are our only guides--decide that ON THE WHOLE one typeof religion is approved by its fruits, and another type condemned. "On the whole"--I fear we shallnever escape complicity with that qualification, so dear to your practical man, so repugnant to yoursystematizer!

I also fear that as I make this frank confession, I may seem to some of you to throw our compassoverboard, and to adopt caprice as our pilot. Skepticism or wayward choice, you may think, can bethe only results of such a formless method as I have taken up. A few remarks in deprecation ofsuch an opinion, and in farther explanation of the empiricist principles which I profess, maytherefore appear at this point to be in place.

Abstractly, it would seem illogical to try to measure the worth of a religion's fruits in merelyhuman terms of value. How CAN you measure their worth without considering whether the Godreally exists who is supposed to inspire them? If he really exists, then all the conduct instituted bymen to meet his wants must necessarily be a reasonable fruit of his religion--it would beunreasonable only in case he did not exist. If, for instance, you were to condemn a religion ofhuman or animal sacrifices by virtue of your subjective sentiments, and if all the while a deitywere really there demanding such sacrifices, you would be making a theoretical mistake by tacitlyassuming that the deity must be non-existent; you would be setting up a theology of your own asmuch as if you were a scholastic philosopher.

To this extent, to the extent of disbelieving peremptorily in certain types of deity, I franklyconfess that we must be theologians. If disbeliefs can be said to constitute a theology, then theprejudices, instincts, and common sense which I chose as our guides make theological partisans ofus whenever they make certain beliefs abhorrent.

But such common-sense prejudices and instincts are themselves the fruit of an empiricalevolution. Nothing is more striking than the secular alteration that goes on in the moral andreligious tone of men, as their insight into nature and their social arrangements progressivelydevelop. After an interval of a few generations the mental climate proves unfavorable to notions ofthe deity which at an earlier date were perfectly satisfactory: the older gods have fallen below thecommon secular level, and can no longer be believed in. Today a deity who should requirebleeding sacrifices to placate him would be too sanguinary to be taken seriously. Even if powerfulhistorical credentials were put forward in his favor, we would not look at them. Once, on thecontrary, his cruel appetites were of themselves credentials.

They positively recommended him to men's imaginations in ages when such coarse signs ofpower were respected and no others could be understood. Such deities then were worshipedbecause such fruits were relished.

Doubtless historic accidents always played some later part, but the original factor in fixing thefigure of the gods must always have been psychological. The deity to whom the prophets, seers,and devotees who founded the particular cult bore witness was worth something to thempersonally. They could use him. He guided their imagination, warranted their hopes, and controlled their will--or else they required him as a safeguard against the demon and a curber of otherpeople's crimes. In any case, they chose him for the value of the fruits he seemed to them to yield.

So soon as the fruits began to seem quite worthless; so soon as they conflicted with indispensablehuman ideals, thwarted too extensively other values; as they appeared childish, contemptible,orim(or) moralwhenreflectedon,thedeity grewdisc(so) redite(soon) d, and was erelong neglectedand forgotten. It was in this way that the Greek and Roman gods ceased to be believed in byeducated pagans; it is thus that we ourselves judge of the Hindu, Buddhist, and Mohammedantheologies; Protestants have so dealt with the Catholic notions of deity, and liberal Protestants witholder Protestant notions; it is thus that Chinamen judge of us, and that all of us now living will bejudged by our descendants. When we cease to admire or approve what the definition of a deityimplies, we end by deeming that deity incredible.

Few historic changes more curious than these mutations of theological opinion. The monarchicaltypeofsovereig(are) nty was, for example, so ineradicably planted in the mind of our ownforefathers that a dose of cruelty and arbitrariness in their deity seems positively to have beenrequired by their imagination. They called the cruelty "retributive justice," and a God without itwould certainly have struck them as not "sovereign" enough. But today we abhor the very notionof eternal suffering inflicted; and that arbitrary dealing-out of salvation and damnation to selectedindividuals, of which Jonathan Edwards could persuade himself that he had not only a conviction,but a "delightful conviction," as of a doctrine "exceeding pleasant, bright, and sweet," appears tous, if sovereignly anything, sovereignly irrational and mean. Not only the cruelty, but the paltrinessof character of the gods believed in by earlier centuries also strikes later centuries with surprise.

We shall see examples of it from the annals of Catholic saintship which makes us rub ourProtestant eyes. Ritual worship in general appears to the modern transcendentalist, as well as to theultra-puritanic type of mind, as if addressed to a deity of an almost absurdly childish character,taking delight in toy-shop furniture, tapers and tinsel, costume and mumbling and mummery, andfinding his "glory" incomprehensibly enhanced thereby:--just as on the other hand the formlessspaciousness of pantheism appears quite empty to ritualistic natures, and the gaunt theism ofevangelical sects seems intolerably bald and chalky and bleak.

Luther, says Emerson, would have cut off his right hand rather than nail his theses to the door atWittenberg, if he had supposed that they were destined to lead to the pale negations of BostonUnitarianism.

So far, then, although we are compelled, whatever may be our pretensions to empiricism, toemploy some sort of a standard of theological probability of our own whenever we assume toestimate the fruits of other men's religion, yet this very standard has been begotten out of the driftof common life. It is the voice of human experience within us, judging and condemning all godsthat stand athwart the pathway along which it feels itself to be advancing. Experience, if we take itin the largest sense, is thus the parent of those disbeliefs which, it was charged, were inconsistentwith the experiential method. The inconsistency, you see, is immaterial, and the charge may beneglected.

If we pass from disbeliefs to positive beliefs, it seems to me that there is not even a formalinconsistency to be laid against our method. The gods we stand by are the gods we need and canuse, the gods whose demands on us are reinforcements of our demands on ourselves and on one another. What I then propose to do is, briefly stated, to test saintliness by common sense, to usehuman standards to help us decide how far the religious life commends itself as an ideal kind ofhuman activity. If it commends itself, then any theological beliefs that may inspire it, in so farforth will stand accredited. If not, then they will be discredited, and all without reference toanything but human working principles. It is but the elimination of the humanly unfit, and thesurvival of the humanly fittest, applied to religious beliefs; and if we look at history candidly andwithout prejudice, we have to admit that no religion has ever in the long run established or proveditself in any other way. Religions have APPROVED themselves; they have ministered to sundryvital needs which they found reigning. When they violated other needs too strongly, or when otherfaiths came which served the same needs better, the first religions were supplanted.

The needs were always many, and the tests were never sharp. So the reproach of vagueness andsubjectivity and "on the whole"-ness, which can with perfect legitimacy be addressed to theempirical method as we are forced to use it, is after all a reproach to which the entire life of man indealing with these matters is obnoxious. No religion has ever yet owed its prevalence to "apodicticcertainty." In a later lecture I will ask whether objective certainty can ever be added by theologicalreasoning to a religion that already empirically prevails.

One word, also, about the reproach that in following this sort of an empirical method we arehanding ourselves over to systematic skepticism.

Since it is impossible to deny secular alterations in our sentiments and needs, it would be absurdto affirm that one's own age of the world can be beyond correction by the next age. Skepticismcannot, therefore, be ruled out by any set of thinkers possibility against which their conclusionsaresecure;andnoempiricistoughttoclaimexem(as) p(a) tion from this universal liability.

But to admit one's liability to correction is one thing, and to embark upon a sea of wanton doubt isanother. Of willfully playing into the hands of skepticism we cannot be accused. He whoacknowledges the imperfectness of his instrument, and makes allowance <326> for it in discussinghis observations, is in a much better position for gaining truth than if he claimed his instrument tobe infallible. Or is dogmatic or scholastic theology less doubted in point of fact for claiming, as itdoes, to be in point of right undoubtable? And if not, what command over truth would this kind oftheology really lose if, instead of absolute certainty, she only claimed reasonable probability forher conclusions? If WE claim only reasonable probability, it will be as much as men who love thetruth can ever at any given moment hope to have within their grasp. Pretty surely it will be morethan we could have had, if we were unconscious of our liability to err.

Nevertheless, dogmatism will doubtless continue to condemn us for this confession. The mereoutward form of inalterable certainty is so precious to some minds that to renounce it explicitly isfor them out of the question. They will claim it even where the facts most patently pronounce itsfolly. But the safe thing is surely to recognize that all the insights of creatures of a day likeourselves must be provisional. The wisest of critics is an altering being, subject to the better insightof the morrow, and right at any moment, only "up to date" and "on the whole." When larger rangesof truth open, it is surely best to be able to open ourselves to their reception, unfettered by ourprevious pretensions. "Heartily know, when half-gods go, the gods arrive."The fact of diverse judgments about religious phenomena is therefore entirely unescapable,whatever may be one's own desire to attain the irreversible. But apart from that fact, a more fundamental question awaits us, the question whether men's opinions ought to be expected to beabsolutely uniform in this field. Ought all men to have the same religion? Ought they to approvethe same fruits and follow the same leadings? Are they so like in their inner needs that, for hardand soft, for proud and humble, for strenuous and lazy, for healthy-minded and despairing, exactlythe same religious incentives are required? Or are different functions in the organism of humanityallotted to different types of man, so that some may really be the better for a religion of consolationand reassurance, whilst others are better for one of terror and reproof? It might conceivably be so;and we shall, I think, more and more suspect it to be so as we go on. And if it be so, how can anypossible judge or critic help being biased in favor of the religion by which his own needs are bestmet? He aspires to impartiality; but he is too close to the struggle not to be to some degree aparticipant, and he is sure to approve most warmly those fruits of piety in others which taste mostgood and prove most nourishing to HIM.

I am well aware of how anarchic much of what I say may sound. Expressing myself thusabstractly and briefly, I may seem to despair of the very notion of truth. But I beseech you toreserve your judgment until we see it applied to the details which lie before us. I do indeeddisbelieve that we or any other mortal men can attain on a given day to absolutely incorrigible andunimprovable truth about such matters of fact as those with which religions deal. But I reject thisdogmatic ideal not out of a perverse delight in intellectual instability. I am no lover of disorder anddoubt as such. Rather do I fear to lose truth by this pretension to possess it already wholly. That wecan gain more and more of it by moving always in the right direction, I believe as much as anyone, and I hope to bring you all to my way of thinking before the termination of these lectures. Tillthen, do not, I pray you, harden your minds irrevocably against the empiricism which I profess.

I will waste no more words, then, in abstract justification of my method, but seek immediately touse it upon the facts.

In critically judging of the value of religious phenomena, it is very important to insist on thedistinction between religion as an individual personal function, and religion as an institutional,corporate, or tribal product. I drew this distinction, you may remember, in my second lecture. Theword "religion," as ordinarily used, is equivocal. A survey of history shows us that, as a rule,religious geniuses attract disciples, and produce groups of sympathizers. When these groups getstrong enough to "organize" themselves, they become ecclesiastical institutions with corporateambitions of their own. The spirit of politics and the lust of dogmatic rule are then apt to enter andto contaminate the originally innocent thing; so that when we hear the word "religion" nowadays,we think inevitably of some "church" or other; and to some persons the word "church" suggests somuch hypocrisy and tyranny and meanness and tenacity of superstition that in a wholesaleundiscerning way they glory in saying that they are "down" on religion altogether. Even we whobelong to churches do not exempt other churches than our own from the general condemnation.

But in this course of lectures ecclesiastical institutions hardly concern us at all. The religiousexperience which we are studying is that which lives itself out within the private breast. First-handindividual experience of this kind has always appeared as a heretical sort of innovation to thosewho witnessed its birth. Naked comes it into the world and lonely; and it has always, for a time atleast, driven him who had it into the wilderness, often into the literal wilderness out of doors,where the Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, St. Francis, George Fox, and so many others had to go.

George Fox expresses well this isolation; and I can do no better at this point than read to you apage from his Journal, referring to the period of his youth when religion began to ferment withinhim seriously.

"I fasted much," Fox says, "walked abroad in solitary places many days, and often took myBible, and sat in hollow trees and lonesome places until night came on; and frequently in the nightwalked mournfully about by myself; for I was a man of sorrows in the time of the first workings ofthe Lord in me.

"During all this time I was never joined in profession of religion with any, but gave up myself tothe Lord, having forsaken all evil company, taking leave of father and mother, and all otherrelations, and traveled up and down as a stranger on the earth, which way the Lord inclined myheart; taking a chamber to myself in the town where I came, and tarrying sometimes more,sometimes less in a place: for I durst not stay long in a place, being afraid both of professor andprofane, lest, being a tender young man, I should be hurt by conversing much with either. Forwhich reason I kept much as a stranger, seeking heavenly wisdom and getting knowledge from theLord; and was brought off from outward things, to rely on the Lord alone. As I had forsaken thepriests, so I left the separate preachers also, and those called the most experienced people; for Isaw there was none among them all that could speak to my condition. And when all my hopes inthem and in all men were gone so that I had nothing outwardly to help me, nor could tell what todo; then, oh then, I heard a voice which said, 'There is one, even Jesus Christ, that can speak to thycondition.' When I heard it, my heart did leap for joy. Then the Lord let me see why there wasnone upon the earth that could speak to my condition. I had not fellowship with any people,priests, nor professors, nor any sort of separated people. I was afraid of all carnal talk and talkers,for I could see nothing but corruptions. When I was in the deep, under all shut up, I could notbelieve that I should ever overcome; my troubles, my sorrows, and my temptations were so greatthat I often thought I should have despaired, I was so tempted. But when Christ opened to me howhe was tempted by the same devil, and had overcome him, and had bruised his head; and thatthrough him and his power, life, grace, and spirit, I should overcome also, I had confidence in him.

If I had had a king's diet, palace, and attendance, all would have been as nothing, for nothing gaveme comfort but the Lord by his power. I saw professors, priests, and people were whole and at easein that condition which was my misery, and they loved that which I would have been rid of. Butthe Lord did stay my desires upon himself, and my care was cast upon him alone."[198]

[198] George Fox: Journal, Philadelphia, 1800, pp. 59-61, abridged.

A genuine first-hand religious experience like this is bound to be a heterodoxy to its witnesses,the prophet appearing as a mere lonely madman. If his doctrine prove contagious enough to spreadto any others, it becomes a definite and labeled heresy. But if it then still prove contagious enoughto triumph over persecution, it becomes itself an orthodoxy; and when a religion has become anorthodoxy, its day of inwardness is over: the spring is dry; the faithful live at second handexclusively and stone the prophets in their turn. The new church, in spite of whatever humangoodness it may foster, can be henceforth counted on as a staunch ally in every attempt to stifle thespontaneous religious spirit, and to stop all later bubblings of the fountain from which in purerdays it drew its own supply of inspiration. Unless, indeed, by adopting new movements of the spirit it can make capital out of them and use them for its selfish corporate designs! Of protectiveaction of this politic sort, promptly or tardily decided on, the dealings of the Roman ecclesiasticismwith many individual saints and prophets yield examples enough for our instruction.

The plain fact is that men's minds are built, as has been often said, in water-tight compartments.

Religious after a fashion, they yet have many other things in them beside their religion, and unholyentanglements and associations inevitably obtain. The basenesses so commonly charged toreligion's account are thus, almost all of them, not chargeable at all to religion proper, but rather toreligion's wicked practical partner, the spirit of corporate dominion. And the bigotries are most ofthem in their turn chargeable to religion's wicked intellectual partner, the spirit of dogmaticdominion, the passion for laying down the law in the form of an absolutely closed-in theoreticsystem. The ecclesiastical spirit in general is the sum of these two spirits of dominion; and Ibeseech you never to confound the phenomena of mere tribal or corporate psychology which itpresents with those manifestations of the purely interior life which are the exclusive object of ourstudy. The baiting of Jews, the hunting of Albigenses and Waldenses, the stoning of Quakers andducking of Methodists, the murdering of Mormons and the massacring of Armenians, expressmuch rather that aboriginal human neophobia, that pugnacity of which we all share the vestiges,and that inborn hatred of the alien and of eccentric and non-conforming men as aliens, than theyexpress the positive piety of the various perpetrators. Piety is the mask, the inner force is tribalinstinct. You believe as little as I do, in spite of the Christian unction with which the Germanemperor addressed his troops upon their way to China, that the conduct which he suggested, and inwhich other Christian armies went beyond them, had anything whatever to do with the interiorreligious life of those concerned in the performance.

Well, no more for past atrocities than for this atrocity should we make piety responsible. At mostwe may blame piety for not availing to check our natural passions, and sometimes for supplyingthem with hypocritical pretexts. But hypocrisy also imposes obligations, and with the pretextusually couples some restriction; and when the passion gust is over, the piety may bring a reactionof repentance which the irreligious natural man would not have shown.
Lectures XV THE VALUE OF SAINTLINESS
　　For many of the historic aberrations which have been laid to her charge, religion as such, then, isnot to blame. Yet of the charge that over-zealousness or fanaticism is one of her liabilities wecannot wholly acquit her, so I will next make a remark upon that point. But I will preface it by apreliminary remark which connects itself with much that follows. Our survey of the phenomena ofsaintliness has unquestionably produced in your minds an impression of extravagance. Is itnecessary, some of you have asked, as one example after another came before us, to be quite sofantastically good as that? We who have no vocation for the extremer ranges of sanctity will surelybe let off at the last day if our humility, asceticism, and devoutness prove of a less convulsive sort.

This practically amounts to saying that much that it is legitimate to admire in this field neednevertheless not be imitated, and that religious phenomena, like all other human phenomena, aresubject to the law of the golden mean. Political reformers accomplish their successive tasks in thehistory of nations by being blind for the time to other causes. Great schools of art work out theeffects which it is their mission to reveal, at the cost of a one-sidedness for which other schoolsmust make amends. We accept a John Howard, a Mazzini, a Botticelli, a Michael Angelo, with akind of indulgence. We are glad they existed to show us that way, but we are glad there are also other ways of seeing and taking life. So of many of the saints whom we have looked at. We areproud of a human nature that could be so passionately extreme, but we shrink from advising othersto follow the example. The conduct we blame ourselves for not following lies nearer to the middleline of human effort. It is less dependent on particular beliefs and doctrines. It is such as wearswell in different ages, such as under different skies all judges are able to commend.

The fruits of religion, in other words, are, like all human products, liable to corruption by excess.

Common sense must judge them. It need not blame the votary; but it may be able to praise himonly conditionally, as one who acts faithfully according to his lights. He shows us heroism in oneway, but the unconditionally good way is that for which no indulgence need be asked. We find thaterror by excess is exemplified by every saintly virtue. Excess, in human faculties, means usuallyone-sidedness or want of balance; for it is hard to imagine an essential faculty too strong, if onlyother faculties equally strong be there to cooperate with it in action. Strong affections need a strongwill; strong active powers need a strong intellect; strong intellect needs strong sympathies, to keeplife steady. If the balance exist, no one faculty can possibly be too strong--we only get the strongerall-round character. In the life of saints, technically so called, the spiritual faculties are strong, butwhat gives the impression of extravagance proves usually on examination to be a relativedeficiency of intellect. Spiritual excitement takes pathological forms whenever other interests aretoo few and the intellect too narrow. We find this exemplified by all the saintly attributes in turn-devoutlove of God, purity, charity, asceticism, all may lead astray. I will run over these virtues insuccession.

First of all let us take Devoutness. When unbalanced, one of its vices is called Fanaticism.

Fanaticism (when not a mere expression of ecclesiastical ambition) is only loyalty carried to aconvulsive extreme. When an intensely loyal and narrow mind is once grasped by the feeling that acertain superhuman person is worthy of its exclusive devotion, one of the first things that happensis that it idealizes the devotion itself. To adequately realize the merits of the idol gets to beconsidered the one great merit of the worshiper; and the sacrifices and servilities by which savagetribesmen have from time immemorial exhibited their faithfulness to chieftains are now outbid infavor of the deity. Vocabularies are exhausted and languages altered in the attempt to praise himenough; death is looked on as gain if it attract his grateful notice; and the personal attitude of beinghis devotee becomes what one might almost call a new and exalted kind of professional specialtywithin the tribe.[199] The legends that gather round the lives of holy persons are fruits of thisimpulse to celebrate and glorify. The Buddha[200] and Mohammed[201] and their companionsand many Christian saints are incrusted with a heavy jewelry of anecdotes which are meant to behonorific, but are simply abgeschmackt and silly, and form a touching expression of man'smisguided propensity to praise.

[199] Christian saints have had their specialties of devotion, Saint Francis to Christ's wounds;Saint Anthony of Padua to Christ's childhood; Saint Bernard to his humanity; Saint Teresa to SaintJoseph, etc. The Shi-ite Mohammedans venerate Ali, the Prophet's son-in-law, instead of Abubekr,his brother-in-law. Vambery describes a dervish whom he met in Persia, "who had solemnlyvowed, thirty years before, that he would never employ his organs of speech otherwise but inuttering, everlastingly, the name of his favorite, Ali, Ali. He thus wished to signify to the worldthat he was the most devoted partisan of that Ali who had been dead a thousand years. In his own home, speaking with his wife, children, and friends, no other word but 'Ali!' ever passed his lips. Ifhe wanted food or drink or anything else, he expressed his wants still by repeating 'Ali!' Beggingor buying at the bazaar, it was always 'Ali!' Treated ill or generously, he would still harp on hismonotonous 'Ali!' Latterly his zeal assumed such tremendous proportions that, like a madman, hewould race, the whole day, up and down the streets of the town, throwing his stick high up into theair, and shriek our, all the while, at the top of his voice, 'Ali!' This dervish was venerated byeverybody as a saint, and received everywhere with the greatest distinction." Arminius Vambery,his Life and Adventures, written by Himself, London, 1889, p. 69. On the anniversary of the deathof Hussein, Ali's son, the Shi-ite Moslems still make the air resound with cries of his name andAli's.

[200] Compare H. C. Warren: Buddhism in Translation, Cambridge, U.S., 1898, passim.

[201] Compare J. L. Merrick: The Life and Religion of Mohammed, as contained in the Sheeahtraditions of the Hyat-ul-Kuloob, Boston. 1850, passim.

An immediate consequence of this condition of mind is jealousy for the deity's honor. How canthe devotee show his loyalty better than by sensitiveness in this regard? The slightest affront orneglect must be resented, the deity's enemies must be put to shame. In exceedingly narrow mindsand active wills, such a care may become an engrossing preoccupation; and crusades have beenpreached and massacres instigated for no other reason than to remove a fancied slight upon theGod. Theologies representing the gods as mindful of their glory, and churches with imperialisticpolicies, have conspired to fan this temper to a glow, so that intolerance and persecution haveto be vices associated by of inseparably with the saintly mind. They are unque(come) stionablyitsbesettingsins.Thesai(some) ntlytem(us) per is a moral temper, and a moral temper hasoften to be cruel. It is a partisan temper, and that is cruel. Between his own and Jehovah's enemiesa David knows no difference; a Catherine of Siena, panting to stop the warfare among Christianswhich was the scandal of her epoch, can think of no better method of union among them than acrusade to massacre the Turks; Luther finds no word of protest or regret over the atrocious tortureswith which the Anabaptist leaders were put to death; and a Cromwell praises the Lord fordelivering his enemies into his hands for "execution." Politics come in in all such cases; but pietyfinds the partnership not quite unnatural. So, when "freethinkers" tell us that religion andfanaticism are twins, we cannot make an unqualified denial of the charge.

Fanaticism must then be inscribed on the wrong side of religion's account, so long as thereligious person's intellect is on the stage which the despotic kind of God satisfies. But as soon asthe God is represented as less intent on his own honor and glory, it ceases to be a danger.

Fanaticism is found only where the character is masterful and aggressive. In gentle characters,where devoutness is intense and the intellect feeble, we have an imaginative absorption in the loveof God to the exclusion of all practical human interests, which, though innocent enough, is tooone-sided to be admirable. A mind too narrow has room but for one kind of affection. When thelove of God takes possession of such a mind, it expels all human loves and human uses. There isno English name for such a sweet excess of devotion, so I will refer to it as a theopathic condition.

The blessed Margaret Mary Alacoque may serve as an example.

"To be loved here upon the earth," her recent biographer exclaims: "to be loved by a noble,elevated, distinguished being; to be loved with fidelity, with devotion--what enchantment! But tobe loved by God! and loved by him to distraction [aime jusqu'a la folie]!--Margaret melted awaywith love at the thought of such a thing. Like Saint Philip of Neri in former times, or like SaintFrancis Xavier, she said to God: 'Hold back, O my God, these torrents which overwhelm me, orelse enlarge my capacity for their reception."[202]

[202] Bougaud: Hist. de la bienheureuse Marguerite Marie, Paris, 1894, p. 145.

The most signal proofs of God's love which Margaret Mary received were her hallucinations ofsight, touch, and hearing, and the most signal in turn of these were the revelations of Christ'ssacred heart, "surrounded with rays more brilliant than the Sun, and transparent like a crystal. Thewound which he received on the cross visibly appeared upon it. There was a crown of thorns roundabout this divine Heart, and a cross above it." At the same time Christ's voice told her that, unablelonger to contain the flames of his love for mankind, he had chosen her by a miracle to spread theknowledge of them. He thereupon took out her mortal heart, placed it inside of his own andinflamed it, and then replaced it in her breast, adding: "Hitherto thou hast taken the name of myslave, hereafter thou shalt be called the well-beloved disciple of my Sacred Heart."In a later vision the Saviour revealed to her in detail the "great design" which he wished toestablish through her instrumentality. "I ask of thee to bring it about that every first Friday after theweek of holy Sacrament shall be made into a special holy day for honoring my Heart by a generalcommunion and by services intended to make honorable amends for the indignities which it hasreceived. And I promise thee that my Heart will dilate to shed with abundance the influences of itslove upon all those who pay to it these honors, or who bring it about that others do the same.""This revelation," says Mgr. Bougaud, "is unquestionably the most important of all therevelations which have illumined the Church since that of the Incarnation and of the Lord's Supper.

. . . After the Eucharist, the supreme effort of the Sacred Heart."[203] Well, what were its goodfruits for Margaret Mary's life? Apparently little else but sufferings and prayers and absences ofmind and swoons and ecstasies. She became increasingly useless about the convent, her absorptionin Christ's love-"which grew upon her daily, rendering her more and more incapable of attending to externalduties. They tried her in the infirmary, but without much success, although her kindness, zeal, anddevotion were without bounds, and her charity rose to acts of such a heroism that our readerswould not bear the recital of them. They tried her in the kitchen, but were forced to give it up ashopeless--everything dropped out of her hands. The admirable humility with which she madeamends for her clumsiness could not prevent this from being prejudicial to the order and regularitywhich must always reign in a community. They put her in the school, where the little girlscherished her, and cut pieces out of her clothes [for relics] as if she were already a saint, but whereshe was too absorbed inwardly to pay the necessary attention. Poor dear sister, even less after hervisions than before them was she a denizen of earth, and they had to leave her in her heaven."[204]

[203] Bougaud: Hist. de la bienheureuse Marguerite Marie, Paris, 1894, pp. 365, 241.

[204] Bougaud: Op. cit., p. 267.

Poor dear sister, indeed! Amiable and good, but so feeble of intellectual outlook that it would betoo much to ask of us, with our Protestant and modern education, to feel anything but indulgentpity for the kind of saintship which she embodies. A lower example still of theopathic saintliness isthat of Saint Gertrude, a Benedictine nun of the thirteenth century, whose "Revelations," a well-known mystical authority, consist mainly of proofs of Christ's partiality for her undeservingperson. Assurances of his love, intimacies and caresses and compliments of the most absurd andpuerile sort, addressed by Christ to Gertrude as an individual, form the tissue of this paltry-mindedrecital.[205] In reading such a narrative, we realize the gap between the thirteenth and thetwentieth century, and we feel that saintliness of character may yield almost absolutely worthlessfruits if it be associated with such inferior intellectual sympathies. What with science, idealism,and democracy, our own imagination has grown to need a God of an entirely differenttemperament from that Being interested exclusively in dealing out personal favors, with whom ourancestors were so contented. Smitten as we are with the vision of social righteousness, a Godindifferent to everything but adulation, and full of partiality for his individual favorites, lacks anessential element of largeness; and even the best professional sainthood of former centuries, pentin as it is to such a conception, seems to us curiously shallow and unedifying.

[205] Examples: "Suffering from a headache, she sought, for the glory of God, to relieve herselfby holding certain odoriferous substances in her mouth, when the Lord appeared to her to lean overtowards her lovingly, and to find comfort Himself in these odors. After having gently breathedthem in, He arose, and said with a gratified air to the Saints, as if contented with what He haddone: 'see the new present which my betrothed has given Me!'

"One day, at chapel, she heard supernaturally sung the words 'Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus.' Theson of God leaning towards her like a sweet lover, and giving to her soul the softest kiss, said toher at the second Sanctus: 'In this Sanctus addressed to my person, receive with this kiss all thesanctity of my divinity and of my humanity, and let it be to thee a sufficient preparation forapproaching the communion table.' And the next following Sunday, while she was thanking Godfor this favor, behold the Son of God, more beauteous than thousands of angels, takes her in Hisarms as if He were proud of her and presents her to God the Father, in that perfection of sanctitywith which He had dowered her. And the Father took such delight in this soul thus presented byHis only son, that, as if unable longer to restrain Himself, He gave her, and the Holy Ghost gaveher also, the sanctity attributed to each by His own Sanctus--and thus she remained endowed withthe plenary fullness of the blessing of Sanctity, bestowed on her by Omnipotence, by Wisdom, andby Love." Revelations de Sainte Gertrude, Paris, 1898, i. 44, 186.

Take Saint Teresa, for example, one of the ablest women, in many respects, of whose life wehave the record. She had a powerful intellect of the practical order. She wrote admirabledescriptive psychology, possessed a will equal to any emergency, great talent for politics andbusiness, a buoyant disposition, and a first-rate literary style. She was tenaciously aspiring, and puther whole life at the service of her religious ideals. Yet so paltry were these, according to ourpresent way of thinking, that (although I know that others have been moved differently) I confess that my only feeling in reading her has been pity that so much vitality of soul should have foundsuch poor employment.

In spite of the sufferings which she endured, there is a curious flavor of superficiality about hergenius. A Birmingham anthropologist, Dr. Jordan, has divided the human race into two types,whom he calls "shrews" and "nonshrews" respectively.[206] The shrew-type is defined aspossessing an "active unimpassioned temperament." In other words, shrews are the "motors,"rather than the "sensories,"[207] and their expressions are as a rule more energetic than the feelingswhich appear to prompt them. Saint Teresa, paradoxical as such a judgment may sound, was atypical shrew, in this sense of the term. The bustle of her style, as well as of her life, proves it. Notonly must she receive unheard-of personal favors and spiritual graces from her Saviour, but shemust immediately write about them and exploiter them professionally, and use her expertness togive instruction to those less privileged. Her voluble egotism; her sense, not of radical bad being,as the really contrite have it, but of her "faults" and "imperfections" in the plural; her stereotypedhumility and return upon herself, as covered with "confusion" at each new manifestation of God'ssingular partiality for a person so unworthy, are typical of shrewdom: a paramountly feeling naturewould be objectively lost in gratitude, and silent. She had some public instincts, it is true; she hatedthe Lutherans, and longed for the church's triumph over them; but in the main her idea of religionseems to have been that of an endless amatory flirtation--if one may say so without irreverence-betweenthe devotee and the deity; and apart from helping younger nuns to go in this direction bythe inspiration of her example and instruction, there is absolutely no human use in her, or sign ofany general human interest. Yet the spirit of her age, far from rebuking her, exalted her assuperhuman.

[206] Furneaux Jordan: Character in Birth and Parentage, first edition. Later editions change thenomenclature.

[207] As to this distinction, see the admirably practical account in J. M. Baldwin's little book,The Story of the Mind, 1898.

We have to pass a similar judgment on the whole notion of saintship based on merits. Any Godwho, on the one hand, can care to keep a pedantically minute account of individual shortcomings,and on the other can feel such partialities, and load particular creatures with such insipid marks offavor, is too small-minded a God for our credence. When Luther, in his immense manly way,swept off by a stroke of his hand the very notion of a debit and credit account kept with individualsby the Almighty, he stretched the soul's imagination and saved theology from puerility. So muchfor mere devotion, divorced from the intellectual conceptions which might guide it towardsbearing useful human fruit.

The next saintly virtue in which we find excess is Purity. In theopathic characters, like thosewhom we have just considered, the love of God must not be mixed with any other love. Father andmother, sisters, brothers, and friends are felt as interfering distractions; for sensitiveness andnarrowness, when they occur together, as they often do, require above all things a simplified worldto dwell in. Variety and confusion are too much for their powers of comfortable adaptation. Butwhereas your aggressive pietist reaches his unity objectively, by forcibly stamping disorder anddivergence out, your retiring pietist reaches his subjectively, leaving disorder in the world at large, but making a smaller world in which he dwells himself and from which he eliminates it altogether.

Thus, alongside of the church militant with its prisons, dragonnades, and inquisition methods, wehave the church fugient, as one might call it, with its hermitages, monasteries, and sectarianorganizations, both churches pursuing the same object--to unify the life,[208] and simplify thespectacle presented to the soul. A mind extremely sensitive to inner discords will drop one externalrelation after another, as interfering with the absorption of consciousness in spiritual things.

Amusements must go first, then conventional "society," then business, then family duties, until atlast seclusion, with a subdivision of the day into hours for stated religious acts, is the only thingthat can be borne. The lives of saints are a history of successive renunciations of complication, oneform of contact with the outer life being dropped after another, to save the purity of inner tone.

[209] "Is it not better," a young sister asks her Superior, "that I should not speak at all during thehour of recreation, so as not to run the risk, by speaking, of falling into some sin of which I mightnot be conscious?"[210] If the life remains a social one at all, those who take part in it must followone identical rule.

Embosomed in this monotony, the zealot for purity feels clean and free once more. Theminuteness of uniformity maintained in certain sectarian communities, whether monastic or not, issomething almost inconceivable to a man of the world. Costume, phraseology, hours, and habitsare absolutely stereotyped, and there is no doubt that some persons are so made as to find in thisstability an incomparable kind of mental rest.

[208] On this subject I refer to the work of M. Murisier (Les Maladies du sentiment Religieux,Paris, 1901), who makes inner unification the mainspring of the whole religious life. But ALLstrongly ideal interests, religious or irreligious, unify the mind and tend to subordinate everythingto themselves. One would infer from M. Murisier's pages that this formal condition was peculiarlycharacteristic of religion, and that one might in comparison almost neglect material content, instudying the latter. I trust that the present work will convince the reader that religion has plenty ofmaterial content which is characteristic and which is more important by far than any generalpsychological form. In spite of this criticism, I find M. Murisier's book highly instructive.

[209] Example: "At the first beginning of the Servitor's [Suso's] interior life, after he had purifiedhis soul properly by confession, he marked out for himself, in thought, three circles, within whichhe shut himself up, as in a spiritual intrenchment. The first circle was his cell, his chapel, and thechoir. When he was within this circle, he seemed to himself in complete security. The secondcircle was the whole monastery as far as the outer gate. The third and outermost circle was the gateitself, and here it was necessary for him to stand well upon his guard. When he went outside thesecircles, it seemed to him that he was in the plight of some wild animal which is outside its hole,and surrounded by the hunt, and therefore in need of all its cunning and watchfulness." The Life ofthe Blessed Henry Suso, by Himself, translated by Knox, London, 1865, p. 168.

[210] Vie des premieres Religieuses Dominicaines de la Congregation de St. Dominique, aNancy; Nancy, 1896, p. 129.

We have no time to multiply examples, so I will let the case of Saint Louis of Gonzaga serve as atype of excess in purification.

I think you will agree that this youth carried the elimination of the external and discordant to apoint which we cannot unreservedly admire. At the age of ten, his biographer says:-"The inspiration came to him to consecrate to the Mother of God his own virginity--that being toher the most agreeable of possible presents. Without delay, then, and with all the fervor there wasin him, joyous of heart, and burning with love, he made his vow of perpetual chastity. Maryaccepted the offering of his innocent heart, and obtained for him from God, as a recompense, theextraordinary grace of never feeling during his entire life the slightest touch of temptation againstthe virtue of purity. This was an altogether exceptional favor, rarely accorded even to Saintsthemselves, and all the more marvelous in that Louis dwelt always in courts and among greatfolks, where danger and opportunity are so unusually frequent. It is true that Louis from his earliestchildhood had shown a natural repugnance for whatever might be impure or unvirginal, and evenfor relations of any sort whatever between persons of opposite sex. But this made it all the moresurprising that he should, especially since this vow, feel it necessary to have recourse to such anumber of expedients for protecting against even the shadow of danger the virginity which he hadthus consecrated. One might suppose that if any one could have contented himself with theordinary precautions, prescribed for all Christians, it would assuredly have been he. But no! In theuse of preservatives and means of defense, in flight from the most insignificant occasions, fromevery possibility of peril, just as in the mortification of his flesh, he went farther than the majorityof saints. He, who by an extraordinary protection of God's grace was never tempted, measured allhis steps as if he were threatened on every side by particular dangers. Thenceforward he neverraised his eyes, either when walking in the streets, or when in society. Not only did he avoid allbusiness with females even more scrupulously than before, but he renounced all conversation andevery kind of social recreation with them, although his father tried to make him take part; and hecommenced only too early to deliver his innocent body to austerities of every kind."[211]

[211] Meschler's Life of Saint Louis of Gonzaga, French translation by Lebrequier, 1891, p. 40.

At the age of twelve, we read of this young man that "if by chance his mother sent one of hermaids of honor to him with a message, he never allowed her to come in, but listened to her throughthe barely opened door, and dismissed her immediately. He did not like to be alone with his ownmother, whether at table or in conversation; and when the rest of the company withdrew, he soughtalso a pretext for retiring. . . . Several great ladies, relatives of his, he avoided learning to knoweven by sight; and he made a sort of treaty with his father, engaging promptly and readily toaccede to all his wishes, if he might only be excused from all visits to ladies." [212]

[212] Ibid., p. 71.

When he was seventeen years old Louis joined the Jesuit order,[213] against his father'spassionate entreaties, for he was heir of a princely house; and when a year later the father died, hetook the loss as a "particular attention" to himself on God's part, and wrote letters of stilted goodadvice, as from a spiritual superior, to his grieving mother. He soon became so good a monk that ifany one asked him the number of his brothers and sisters, he had to reflect and count them overbefore replying. A Father asked him one day if he were never troubled by the thought of hisfamily, to which, "I never think of them except when praying for them," was his only answer.

Never was he seen to hold in his hand a flower or anything perfumed, that he might take pleasurein it. On the contrary, in the hospital, he used to seek for whatever was most disgusting, andeagerly snatch the bandages of ulcers, etc., from the hands of his companions. He avoided worldlytalk, and immediately tried to turn every conversation on to pious subjects, or else he remainedsilent. He systematically refused to notice his surroundings. Being ordered one day to bring a bookfrom the rector's seat in the refectory, he had to ask where the rector sat, for in the three months hehad eaten bread there, so carefully did he guard his eyes that he had not noticed the place. One day,during recess, having looked by chance on one of his companions, he reproached himself as for agrave sin against modesty. He cultivated silence, as preserving from sins of the tongue; and hisgreatest penance was the limit which his superiors set to his bodily penances. He sought after falseaccusations and unjust reprimands as opportunities of humility; and such was his obedience that,when a room-mate, having no more paper, asked him for a sheet, he did not feel free to give it tohim without first obtaining the permission of the superior, who, as such, stood in the place of God,and transmitted his orders.

[213] In his boyish note-book he praises the monastic life for its freedom from sin, and for theimperishable treasures, which it enables us to store up, "of merit in God's eyes which makes ofHim our debtor for all Eternity." Loc. cit., p. 62.

I can find no other sorts of fruit than these of Louis's saintship. He died in 1591, in his twenty-ninth year, and is known in the Church as the patron of all young people. On his festival, the altarin the chapel devoted to him in a certain church in Rome "is embosomed in flowers, arranged withexquisite taste; and a pile of letters may be seen at its foot, written to the Saint by young men andwomen, and directed to 'Paradiso.' They are supposed to be burnt unread except by San Luigi, whomust find singular petitions in these pretty little missives, tied up now with a green ribbon,expressive of hope, now with a red one, emblematic of love," etc.[214]

[214] Mademoiselle Mori, a novel quoted in Hare's Walks in Rome, 1900, i. 55.

I cannot resist the temptation to quote from Starbuck's book, p. 388, another case of purificationby elimination. It runs as follows:-"The signs of abnormality which sanctified persons show are of frequent occurrence. They getout of tune with other people; often they will have nothing to do with churches, which they regardas worldly; they become hypercritical towards others; they grow careless of their social, political,and financial obligations. As an instance of this type may be mentioned a woman of sixty-eight ofwhom the writer made a special study. She had been a member of one of the most active andprogressive churches in a busy part of a large city. Her pastor described her as having reached thecensorious stage. She had grown more and more out of sympathy with the church; her connectionwith it finally consisted simply in attendance at prayer-meeting, at which her only message wasthat of reproof and condemnation of the others for living on a low plane. At last she withdrew fromfellowship with any church. The writer found her living alone in a little room on the top story of acheap boarding-house quite out of touch with all human relations, but apparently happy in theenjoyment of her spiritual blessings. Her time occupied in writing booklets on sanctification--pageafter(own) pageofdreamyrhapsody.Shepro(was) ved to be one of a small group of persons who claim that entire salvation  involves three steps instead of two; not only must there beconversion and sanctification, but a third, which they call 'crucifixion' or 'perfect redemption,' andwhich seems to bear the same relation to sanctification that this bears to conversion. She relatedhow the Spirit had said to her, 'Stop going to church. Stop going to holiness meetings. Go to yourown room and I will teach you.' She professes to care nothing for colleges, or preachers, orchurches, but only cares to listen to what God says to her. Her description of her experienceseemed entirely consistent; she is happy and contented, and her life is entirely satisfactory toherself. While listening to her own story, one was tempted to forget that it was from the life of aperson who could not live by it in conjunction with her fellows."Our final judgment of the worth of such a life as this will depend largely on our conception ofGod, and of the sort of conduct he is best pleased with in his creatures. The Catholicism of thesixteenth century paid little heed to social righteousness; and to leave the world to the devil whilstsaving one's own soul was then accounted no discreditable scheme. To-day, rightly or wrongly,helpfulness in general human affairs is, in consequence of one of those secular mutations in moralsentiment of which I spoke, deemed an essential element of worth in character; and to be of somepublic or private use is also reckoned as a species of divine service. Other early Jesuits, especiallythe missionaries among them, the Xaviers, Brebeufs, Jogues, were objective minds, and fought intheir way for the world's welfare; so their lives to-day inspire us. But when the intellect, as in thisLouis, is originally no larger than a pin's head, and cherishes ideas of God of correspondingsmallness, the result, notwithstanding the heroism put forth, is on the whole repulsive. Purity, wesee in the object-lesson, is NOT the one thing needful; and it is better that a life should contractmany a dirt-mark, than forfeit usefulness in its efforts to remain unspotted.

Proceeding onwards in our search of religious extravagance, we next come upon excesses ofTenderness and Charity. Here saintliness has to face the charge of preserving the unfit, andbreeding parasites and beggars. "Resist not evil," "Love your enemies," these are saintly maximsof which men of this world find it hard to speak without impatience. Are the men of this worldright, or are the saints in possession of the deeper range of truth?

No simple answer is possible. Here, if anywhere, one feels the complexity of the moral life, andthe mysteriousness of the way in which facts and ideals are interwoven.

Perfect conduct is a relation between three terms: the actor, the objects for which he acts, and therecipients of the action. In order that conduct should be abstractly perfect, all three terms,intention, execution, and reception, should be suited to one another. The best intention will fail if iteither work by false means or address itself to the wrong recipient. Thus no critic or estimator ofthe value of conduct can confine himself to the actor's animus alone, apart from the other elementsof the performance. As there is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it, soreasonable arguments, challenges to magnanimity, and appeals to sympathy or justice, are follywhen we are dealing with human crocodiles and boa-constrictors. The saint may simply give theuniverse into the hands of the enemy by his trustfulness. He may by non-resistance cut off his ownsurvival.

Herbert Spencer tells us that the perfect man's conduct will appear perfect only when theenvironment is perfect: to no inferior environment is it suitably adapted. We may paraphrase thisby cordially admitting that saintly conduct would be the most perfect conduct conceivable in an environment where all were saints already; but by adding that in an environment where few aresaints, and many the exact reverse of saints, it must be ill adapted. We must frankly confess, then,using our empirical common sense and ordinary practical prejudices, that in the world that actuallyis, the virtues of sympathy, charity, and non-resistance may be, and often have been, manifested inexcess.

The powers of darkness have systematically taken advantage of them. The whole modernscientific organization of charity is a consequence of the failure of simply giving alms. The wholehistory of constitutional government is a commentary on the excellence of resisting evil, and whenone cheek is smitten, of smiting back and not turning the other cheek also.

You will agree to this in general, for in spite of the Gospel, in spite of Quakerism, in spite ofTolstoi, you believe in fighting fire with fire, in shooting down usurpers, locking up thieves, andfreezing out vagabonds and swindlers.

And yet you are sure, as I am sure, that were the world confined to these hard-headed, hardhearted,and hard-fisted methods exclusively, were there no one prompt to help a brother first, andfind out afterwards whether he were worthy; no one willing to drown his private wrongs in pity forthe wronger's person; no one ready to be duped many a time rather than live always on suspicion;no one glad to treat individuals passionately and impulsively rather than by general rules ofprudence; the world would be an infinitely worse place than it is now to live in. The tender grace,not of a day that is dead, but of a day yet to be born somehow, with the golden rule grown natural,would be cut out from the perspective of our imaginations.

The saints, existing in this way, may, with their extravagances of human tenderness, beprophetic. Nay, innumerable times they have proved themselves prophetic. Treating those whomthey met, in spite of the past, in spite of all appearances, as worthy, they have stimulated them toBE worthy, miraculously transformed them by their radiant example and by the challenge of theirexpectation.

From this point of view we may admit the human charity which we find in all saints, and thegreat excess of it which we find in some saints, to be a genuinely creative social force, tending tomake real a degree of virtue which it alone is ready to assume as possible. The saints are authors,auctores, increasers, of goodness. The potentialities of development in human soulsunfathomable. So many who seemed irretrievably hardened have in point of fact been softened,(are) converted, regenerated, in ways that amazed the subjects even more than they surprised thespectators, that we never can be sure in advance of any man that his salvation by the way of love ishopeless. We have no right to speak of human crocodiles and boa-constrictors as of fixedlyincurable beings. We know not the complexities of personality, the smouldering emotional fires,the other facets of the character-polyhedron, the resources of the subliminal region. St. Paul longago made our ancestors familiar with the idea that every soul is virtually sacred. Since Christ diedfor us all without exception, St. Paul said, we must despair of no one. This belief in the essentialsacredness of every one expresses itself to-day in all sorts of humane customs and reformatoryinstitutions, and in a growing aversion to the death penalty and to brutality in punishment. Thesaints, with their extravagance of human tenderness, are the great torch-bearers of this belief, thetip of the wedge, the clearers of the darkness. Like the single drops which sparkle in the sun asthey are flung far ahead of the advancing edge of a wave-crest or of a flood, they show the way and are forerunners. The world is not yet with them, so they often seem in the midst of the world'saffairs to be preposterous. Yet they are impregnators of the world, vivifiers and animaters ofpotentialities of goodness which but for them would lie forever dormant. It is not possible to bequite as mean as we naturally are, when they have passed before us. One fire kindles another; andwithout that over-trust in human worth which they show, the rest of us would lie in spiritualstagnancy.

Momentarily considered, then, the saint may waste his tenderness and be the dupe and victim ofhis charitable fever, but the general function of his charity in social evolution is vital and essential.

If things are ever to move upward, some one must be ready to take the first step, and assume therisk of it. No one who is not willing to try charity, to try non-resistance as the saint is alwayswilling, can tell whether these methods will or will not succeed. When they do succeed, they arefar more powerfully successful than force or worldly prudence. Force destroys enemies; and thebest that can be said of prudence is that it keeps what we already have in safety. But nonresistance,when successful, turns enemies into friends; and charity regenerates its objects. Thesesaintly methods are, as I said, creative energies; and genuine saints find in the elevated excitementwith which their faith endows them an authority and impressiveness which makes them irresistiblein situations where men of shallower nature cannot get on at all without the use of worldlyprudence. This practical proof that worldly wisdom may be safely transcended is the saint's magicgift to mankind.[215] Not only does his vision of a better world console us for the generallyprevailing prose and barrenness; but even when on the whole we have to confess him ill adapted,he makes some converts, and the environment gets better for his ministry. He is an effectiveferment of goodness, a slow transmuter of the earthly into a more heavenly order.

[215] The best missionary lives abound in the victorious combination of non-resistance withpersonal authority. John G. Paton, for example, in the New Hebrides, among brutish Melanesiancannibals, preserves a charmed life by dint of it. When it comes to the point, no one ever daresactually to strike him. Native converts, inspired by him, showed analogous virtue. "One of ourchiefs, full of the Christ-kindled desire to seek and to save, sent a message to an inland chief, thathe and four attendants would come on Sabbath and tell them the gospel of Jehovah God. The replycame back sternly forbidding their visit, and threatening with death any Christian that approachedtheir village. Our chief sent in response a loving message, telling them that Jehovah had taught theChristians to return good for evil, and that they would come unarmed to tell them the story of howthe Son of God came into the world and died in order to bless and save his enemies. The heathenchief sent back a stern and prompt reply once more: 'If you come, you will be killed.' On Sabbathmorn the Christian chief and his four companions were met outside the village by the heathenchief, who implored and threatened them once more. But the former said:-"'

We come to you without weapons of war! We come only to tell you about Jesus. We believethat He will protect us to-day.'

"As they pressed steadily forward towards the village, spears began to be thrown at them. Somethey evaded, being all except one dexterous warriors; and others they literally received with theirbare hands, and turned them aside in an incredible manner. The heathen, apparently thunderstruckat these men thus approaching them without weapons of war, and not even flinging back their ownspears which they had caught, after having thrown what the old chief called 'a shower of spears,' desisted from mere surprise. Our Christian chief called out, as he and his companions drew up inthe midst of them on the village public ground:-"'Jehovah thus protects us. He has given us all your spears! Once we would have thrown themback at you and killed you. But now we come, not to fight but to tell you about Jesus. He haschanged our dark hearts. He asks you now to lay down all these your other weapons of war, and tohear what we can tell you about the love of God, our great Father, the only living God.'

"The heathen were perfectly overawed. They manifestly looked on these Christians as protectedby some Invisible One. They listened for the first time to the story of the Gospel and of the Cross.

We lived to see that chief and all his tribe sitting in the school of Christ. And there is perhaps notan island in these southern seas, amongst all those won for Christ, where similar acts of heroism onthe part of converts cannot be recited." John G. Paton, Missionary to the New Hebrides, AnAutobiography, second part, London, 1890, p. 243.

In this respect the Utopian dreams of social justice in which many contemporary socialists andanarchists indulge are, in spite of their impracticability and non-adaptation to presentenvironmental conditions, analogous to the saint's belief in an existent kingdom of heaven. Theyhelp to break the edge of the general reign of hardness and are slow leavens of a better order.

The next topic in order is Asceticism, which I fancy you are all ready to consider withoutargument a virtue liable to extravagance and excess. The optimism and refinement of the modernimagination has, as I have already said elsewhere, changed the attitude of the church towardscorporeal mortification, and a Suso or a Saint Peter of Alcantara[216] appear to us to-day rather inthe light of tragic mountebanks than of sane men inspiring us with respect. If the inner dispositionsare right, we ask, what need of all this torment, this violation of the outer nature? It keeps the outernature too important. Any one who is genuinely emancipated from the flesh will look on pleasuresand pains, abundance and privation, as alike irrelevant and indifferent. He can engage in actionsand experience enjoyments without fear of corruption or enslavement. As the Bhagavad-Gita says,only those need renounce worldly actions who are still inwardly attached thereto. If one be reallyunattached to the fruits of action, one may mix in the world with equanimity. I quoted in a formerlecture Saint Augustine's antinomian saying: If you only love God enough, you may safely followall your inclinations. "He needs no devotional practices," is one of Ramakrishna's maxims, "whoseheart is moved to tears at the mere mention of the name of <354> Hari."[217] And the Buddha, inpointing out what he called "the middle way" to his disciples, told them to abstain from bothextremes, excessive mortification being as unreal and unworthy as mere desire and pleasure. Theonly perfect life, he said, is that of inner wisdom, which makes one thing as indifferent to us asanother, and thus leads to rest, to peace, and to Nirvana.[218]

[216] Saint Peter, Saint Teresa tells us in her autobiography (French translation, p. 333), "hadpassed forty years without sleeping than hour and half a day. Of all his mortifications,thiswastheoneth(ever) athadcosthim(more) themost.(an) Tocompass(a) it, he kept always on hisknees or on his feet. The little sleep he allowed nature to take was snatched in a sitting posture, hishead leaning against a piece of wood fixed in the wall. Even had he wished to lie down, it wouldhave been impossible, because his cell was only four feet and a half long. In the course of all these years he never raised his hood, no matter what the ardor of the sun or the rain's strength. He neverput on a shoe. He wore a garment of coarse sackcloth, with nothing else upon his skin. Thisgarment was as scant as possible, and over it a little cloak of the same stuff. When the cold wasgreat he took off the cloak and opened for a while the door and little window of his cell. Then heclosed them and resumed the mantle--his way, as he told us, of warming himself, and making hisbody feel a better temperature. It was a frequent thing with him to eat once only in three days; andwhen I expressed my surprise, he said that it was very easy if one once had acquired the habit. Oneof his companions has assured me that he has gone sometimes eight days without food. . . . Hispoverty was extreme; and his mortification, even in his youth, was such that he told me he hadpassed three years in a house of his order without knowing any of the monks otherwise than by thesound of their voice, for he never raised his eyes, and only found his way about by following theothers. He showed this same modesty on public highways. He spent many years without everlaying eyes upon a woman; but he confessed to me that at the age he had reached it was indifferentto him whether he laid eyes on them or not. He was very old when I first came to know him, andhis body so attenuated that it seemed formed of nothing so much as of so many roots of trees. Withall this sanctity he was very affable. He never spoke unless he was questioned, but his intellectualright-mindedness and grace gave to all his words an irresistible charm."[217] F. Max Muller: Ramakrishna, his Life and sayings, 1899, p. 180.

[218] Oldenberg: Buddha; translated by W. Hoey, London, 1882, p. 127.

We find accordingly that as ascetic saints have grown older, and directors of conscience moreexperienced, they usually have shown a tendency to lay less stress on special bodily mortifications.

Catholic teachers have always professed the rule that, since health is needed for efficiency in God'sservice, health must not be sacrificed to mortification. The general optimism and healthymindednessof liberal Protestant circles to-day makes mortification for mortification's sakerepugnant to us. We can no longer sympathize with cruel deities, and the notion that God can takedelight in the spectacle of sufferings self-inflicted in his honor is abhorrent. In consequence of allthese motives you probably are disposed, unless some special utility can be shown in someindividual's discipline, to treat the general tendency to asceticism as pathological.

Yet I believe that a more careful consideration of the whole matter, distinguishing between thegeneral good intention of asceticism and the uselessness of some of the particular acts of which itmay be guilty, ought to rehabilitate it in our esteem. For in its spiritual meaning asceticism standsfor nothing less than for the essence of the twice-born philosophy. It symbolizes, lamely enough nodoubt, but sincerely, the belief that there is an element of real wrongness in this world, which isneither to be ignored nor evaded, but which must be squarely met and overcome by an appeal tothe soul's heroic resources, and neutralized and cleansed away by suffering. As against this view,the ultra-optimistic form of the once-born philosophy thinks we may treat evil by the method ofignoring. Let a man who, by fortunate health and circumstances, escapes the suffering of any greatamount of evil in his own person, also close his eyes to it as it exists in the wider universe outsidehis private experience, and he will be quit of it altogether, and can sail through life happily on ahealthy-minded basis. But we saw in our lectures on melancholy how precarious this attempt necessarily is. Moreover it is but for the individual; and leaves the evil outside of him, unredeemedand unprovided for in his philosophy.

No such attempt can be a GENERAL solution of the problem; and to minds of sombre tinge,who naturally feel life as a tragic mystery, such optimism is a shallow dodge or mean evasion. Itaccepts, in lieu of a real deliverance, what is a lucky personal accident merely, a cranny to escapeby. It leaves the general world unhelped and still in the clutch of Satan. The real deliverance, thetwice-born folk insist, must be of universal application. Pain and wrong and death must be fairlymet and overcome in higher excitement, or else their sting remains essentially unbroken. If one hasever taken the fact of the prevalence of tragic death in this world's history fairly into his mind-freezing,drowning entombment alive, wild beasts, worse men, and hideous diseases--he can withdifficulty, it seems to me, continue his own career of worldly prosperity without suspecting that hemay all the while not be really inside the game, that he may lack the great initiation.

Well, this is exactly what asceticism thinks; and it voluntarily takes the initiation. Life is neitherfarce nor genteel comedy, it says, but something we must sit at in mourning garments, hoping itsbitter taste will purge us of our folly. The wild and the heroic are indeed such rooted parts of it thathealthy-mindedness pure and simple, with its sentimental optimism, can hardly be regarded by anythinking man as a serious solution. Phrases of neatness, cosiness, and comfort can never be ananswer to the sphinx's riddle.

In these remarks I am leaning only upon mankind's common instinct for reality, which in point offact has always held the world to be essentially a theatre for heroism. In heroism, we feel, life'ssupreme mystery is hidden. We tolerate no one who has no capacity whatever for it in anydirection. On the other hand, no matter what a man's frailties otherwise may be, if he be willing torisk death, and still more if he suffer it heroically, in the service he has chosen, the fact consecrateshim forever. Inferior to ourselves in this or that way, if yet we cling to life, and he is able "to flingit away like a flower" as caring nothing for it, we account him in the deepest way our bornsuperior. Each of us in his own person feels that a high-hearted indifference to life would expiateall his shortcomings.

The metaphysical mystery, thus recognized by common sense, that he who feeds on death thatfeeds on men possesses life supereminently and excellently, and meets best the secret demands ofthe universe, is the truth of which asceticism has been the faithful champion. The folly of the cross,so inexplicable by the intellect, has yet its indestructible vital meaning.

Representatively, then, and symbolically, and apart from the vagaries into which theunenlightened intellect of former times may have let it wander, asceticism must, I believe, beacknowledged to go with the profounder way of handling the gift of existence. Naturalisticoptimism is mere syllabub and flattery and sponge-cake in comparison. The practical course ofaction for us, as religious men, would therefore, it seems to me, not be simply to turn our backsupon the ascetic impulse, as most of us to-day turn them, but rather to discover some outlet for it ofwhich the fruits in the way of privation and hardship might be objectively useful. The oldermonastic asceticism occupied itself with pathetic futilities, or terminated in the mere egotism of theindividual, increasing his own perfection.[219] But is it not possible for us to discard most of theseolder forms of mortification, and yet find saner channels for the heroism which inspired them?

[219] "The vanities of all others may die out, but the vanity of a saint as regards his sainthood ishard indeed to wear away." Ramakrishna his Life and Sayings, 1899, p. 172.

Does not, for example, the worship of material luxury and wealth, which constitutes so large aportion of the "spirit" of our age, make somewhat for effeminacy and unmanliness? Is not theexclusively sympathetic and facetious way in which most children are brought up to-day--sodifferent from the education of a hundred years ago, especially in evangelical circles--in danger, inspite of its many advantages, of developing a certain trashiness of fibre? Are there not hereaboutssome points of application for a renovated and revised ascetic discipline?

Many of you would recognize such dangers, but would point to athletics, militarism, andindividual and national enterprise and adventure as the remedies. These contemporary ideals arequite as remarkable for the energy with which they make for heroic standards of life, ascontemporary religion is remarkable for the way in which it neglects them.[220] War andadventure assuredly keep all who engage in them from treating themselves too tenderly. Theydemand such incredible efforts, depth beyond depth of exertion, both in degree and in duration,that the whole scale of motivation alters. Discomfort and annoyance, hunger and wet, pain andcold, squalor and filth, cease to have any deterrent operation whatever. Death turns into acommonplace matter, and its usual power to check our action vanishes. With the annulling of thesecustomary inhibitions, ranges of new energy are set free, and life seems cast upon a higher plane ofpower.

[220] "When a church has to be run by oysters, ice-cream, and fun," I read in an Americanreligious paper, "you may be sure that it is running away from Christ." Such, if one may judge byappearances, is the present plight of many of our churches.

The beauty of war in this respect is that it is so congruous with ordinary human nature. Ancestralevolution has made us all potential warriors; so the most insignificant individual, when thrown intoan army in the field, is weaned from whatever excess of tenderness toward his precious person hemay bring with him, and may easily develop into a monster of insensibility.

But when we compare the military type of self-severity with that of the ascetic saint, we find aworld-wide difference in all their spiritual concomitants.

"'Live and let live,'" writes a clear-headed Austrian officer, "is no device for an army. Contemptfor one's own comrades, for the troops of the enemy, and, above all, fierce contempt for one'person, are what war demands of every one. Far better is it for an army to be too savage, too cruel,(sown) too barbarous,  than to possess too much sentimentality and human reasonableness.

If the soldier is to be good for anything as a soldier, he must be exactly the opposite of areasoning and thinking man. The measure of goodness in him is his possible use in war. War, andeven peace, require of the soldier absolutely peculiar standards of morality. The recruit brings withhim common moral notions, of which he must seek immediately to get rid. For him victory,success, must be EVERYTHING. The most barbaric tendencies in men come to life again in war,and for war's uses they are incommensurably good."[221]

[221] C. V. B. K.: Friedens-und Kriegs-moral der Heere. Quoted by Hamon: Psychologie duMilitaire professional, 1895, p. xli.

These words are of course literally true. The immediate aim of the soldier's life is, as Moltkesaid, destruction, and nothing but destruction; and whatever constructions wars result in are remoteand non-military. Consequently the soldier cannot train himself to be too feelingless to all thoseusual sympathies and respects, whether for persons or for things, that make for conservation. Yetthe fact remains that war is a school of strenuous life and heroism; and, being in the line ofaboriginal instinct, is the only school that as yet is universally available. But when we gravely askourselves whether this wholesale organization of irrationality and crime be our only bulwarkagainst effeminacy, we stand aghast at the thought, and think more kindly of ascetic religion. Onehears of the mechanical equivalent of heat. What we now need to discover in the social realm is themoral equivalent of war: something heroic that will speak to men as universally as war does, andyet will be as compatible with their spiritual selves as war has proved itself to be incompatible. Ihave often thought that in the old monkish poverty-worship, in spite of the pedantry which infestedit, there might be something like that moral equivalent of war which we are seeking. May notvoluntarily accepted poverty be "the strenuous life," without the need of crushing weaker peoples?

Poverty indeed IS the strenuous life--without brass bands or uniforms or hysteric popularapplause or lies or circumlocutions; and when one sees the way in which wealth-getting enters asan ideal into the very bone and marrow of our generation, one wonders whether a revival of thebelief that poverty is a worthy religious vocation may not be "the transformation of militarycourage," and the spiritual reform which our time stands most in need of.

Among us English-speaking peoples especially do the praises of poverty need once more to beboldly sung. We have grown literally afraid to be poor. We despise any one who elects to be poorin order to simplify and save his inner life. If he does not join the general scramble and pant withthe money-making street, we deem him spiritless and lacking in ambition. We have lost the powereven of imagining what the ancient idealization of poverty could have meant: the liberation frommaterial attachments, the unbribed soul, the manlier indifference, the paying our way by what weare or do and not by what we have, the right to fling away our life at any moment irresponsibly-themore athletic trim, in short, the moral fighting shape. When we of the so-called better classesare scared as men were never scared in history at material ugliness and hardship; when we put offmarriage until our house can be artistic, and quake at the thought of having a child without a bank-account and doomed to manual labor, it is time for thinking men to protest against so unmanly andirreligious a state of opinion.

It is true that so far as wealth gives time for ideal ends and exercise to ideal energies, wealth isbetter than poverty and ought to be chosen. But wealth does this in only a portion of the actualcases. Elsewhere the desire to gain wealth and the fear to lose it are our chief breeders ofcowardice and propagators of corruption. There are thousands of conjunctures in which a wealth-bound man must be a slave, whilst a man for whom poverty has no terrors becomes a freeman.

Think of the strength which personal indifference to poverty would give us if we were devoted tounpopular causes. We need no longer hold our tongues or fear to vote the revolutionary orreformatory ticket. Our stocks might fall, our hopes of promotion vanish, our salaries stop, our club doors close in our faces; yet, while we lived, we would imperturbably bear witness to thespirit, and our example would help to set free our generation. The cause would need its funds, butwe its servants would be potent in proportion as we personally were contented with our poverty.

I recommend this matter to your serious pondering, for it is certain that the prevalent fear ofpoverty among the educated classes is the worst moral disease from which our civilization suffers.

I have now said all that I can usefully say about the several fruits of religion as they aremanifested in saintly lives, so I will make a brief review and pass to my more general conclusions.

Our question, you will remember, is as to whether religion stands approved by its fruits, as theseare exhibited in the saintly type of character. Single attributes of saintliness may, it is true, betemperamental endowments, found in non-religious individuals. But the whole group of themforms a combination which, as such, is religious, for it seems to flow from the sense of the divineas from its psychological centre. Whoever possesses strongly this sense comes naturally to thinkthat the smallest details of this world derive infinite significance from their relation to an unseendivine order. The thought of this order yields him a superior denomination of happiness, and asteadfastness of soul with which no other can compare. In social relations his serviceability isexemplary; he abounds in impulses to help. His help is inward as well as outward, for hissympathy reaches souls as well as bodies, and kindles unsuspected faculties therein. Instead ofplacing happiness where common men place it, in comfort, he places it in a higher kind of innerexcitement, which converts discomforts into sources of cheer and annuls unhappiness. So he turnshis back upon no duty, however thankless; and when we are in need of assistance, we can countupon the saint lending his hand with more certainty than we can count upon any other person.

Finally, his humble-mindedness and his ascetic tendencies save him from the petty personalpretensions which so obstruct our ordinary social intercourse, and his purity gives us in him a cleanman for a companion. Felicity, purity, charity, patience, self-severity--these are splendidexcellencies, and the saint of all men shows them in the completest possible measure.

But, as we saw, all these things together do not make saints infallible. When their intellectualoutlook is narrow, they fall into all sorts of holy excesses, fanaticism or theopathic absorption,self-torment, prudery, scrupulosity, gullibility, and morbid inability to meet the world. By the veryintensity of his fidelity to the paltry ideals with which an inferior intellect may inspire him, a saintcan be even more objectionable and damnable than a superficial carnal man would be in the samesituation. We must judge him not sentimentally only, and not in isolation, but using our ownintellectual standards, placing him in his envir
Lectures XVI MYSTICISM
Over and over again in these lectures I have raised points and left them open and unfinished untilwe should have come to the subject of Mysticism. Some of you, I fear, may have smiled as younoted my reiterated postponements. But now the hour has come when mysticism must be faced ingood earnest, and those broken threads wound up together. One may say truly, I think, thatpersonal religious experience has its root and centre in mystical states of consciousness; so for us,who in these lectures are treating personal experience as the exclusive subject of our study, suchstates of consciousness ought to form the vital chapter from which the other chapters get theirlight. Whether my treatment of mystical states will shed more light or darkness, I do not know, formy own constitution shuts me out from their enjoyment almost entirely, and I can speak of themonly at second hand. But though forced to look upon the subject so externally, I will be asobjective and receptive as I can; and I think I shall at least succeed in convincing you of the realityof the states in question, and of the paramount importance of their function.

First of all, then, I ask, What does the expression "mystical states of consciousness" mean? Howdo we part off mystical states from other states?

The words "mysticism" and "mystical" are often used as terms of mere reproach, to throw at anyopinion which we regard as vague and vast and sentimental, and without a base in either facts orlogic. For some writers a "mystic" is any person who believes in thought-transference, or spirit return. Employed in this way the word has little value: there are too many less ambiguoussynonyms. So, to keep it useful by restricting it, I will do what I did in the case of the word"religion," and simply propose to you four marks which, when an experience has them, may justifyus in calling it mystical for the purpose of the present lectures. In this way we shall save verbaldisputation, and the recriminations that generally go therewith.

1. Ineffability.--The handiest of the marks by which I classify a state of mind as mystical isnegative. The subject of it immediately says that it defies expression, that no adequate report of itscontents can be given in words. It follows from this that its quality must be directly experienced; itcannot be imparted or transferred to others. In this peculiarity mystical states are more like statesof feeling than like states of intellect. No one can make clear to another who has never had acertain feeling, in what the quality or worth of it consists. One must have musical ears to know thevalue of a symphony; one must have been in love one's self to understand a lover's state of mind.

Lacking the heart or ear, we cannot interpret the musician or the lover justly, and are even likely toconsider him weak-minded or absurd. The mystic finds that most of us accord to his experiencesan equally incompetent treatment.

2. Noetic quality.--Although so similar to states of feeling, mystical states seem to those whoexperience them to be also states of knowledge. They are states of insight into depths of truthunplumbed by the discursive intellect. They are illuminations, revelations, full of significance andimportance, all inarticulate though they remain; and as a rule they carry with them a curious senseof authority for after-time.

These two characters will entitle any state to be called mystical, in the sense in which I use theword. Two other qualities are less sharply marked, but are usually found. These are:-3. Transiency.--Mystical states cannot be sustained for long. Except in rare instances, half anhour, or at most an hour or two, seems to be the limit beyond which they fade into the light ofcommon day. Often, when faded, their quality can but imperfectly be reproduced in memory; butwhen they recur it is recognized; and from one recurrence to another it is susceptible of continuousdevelopment in what is felt as inner richness and importance.

4. Passivity.--Although the oncoming of mystical states may be facilitated by preliminaryvoluntary operations, as by fixing the attention, or going through certain bodily performances, or inother ways which manuals of mysticism prescribe; yet when the characteristic sort ofconsciousness once has set in, the mystic feels as if his own will were in abeyance, and indeedsometimes as if he were grasped and held by a superior power. This latter peculiarity connectsmystical states with certain definite phenomena of secondary or alternative personality, such asprophetic speech, automatic writing, or the mediumistic trance. When these latter conditions arewell pronounced, however, there may be no recollection whatever of the phenomenon, and it mayhave no significance for the subject's usual inner life, to which, as it were, it makes a mereinterruption. Mystical states, strictly so-called, are never merely interruptive. Some memory oftheir content always remains, and a profound sense of their importance. They modify the inner lifeof the subject between the times of their recurrence. Sharp divisions in this region are, however,difficult to make, and we find all sorts of gradations and mixtures.

These four characteristics are sufficient to mark out a group of states of consciousness peculiarenough to deserve a special name and to call for careful study. Let it then be called the mysticalgroup. Our next step should be to gain acquaintance with some typical examples. Professionalmystics at the height of their development have often elaborately organized experiences and aphilosophy based thereupon. But you remember what I said in my first lecture: phenomena are bestunderstood when placed within their series, studied in their germ and in their over-ripe decay, andcompared with their exaggerated and degenerated kindred. The range of mystical experience isvery wide, much too wide for us to cover in the time at our disposal. Yet the method of serial studyis so essential for interpretation that if we really wish to reach conclusions we must use it. I willbegin, therefore, with phenomena which claim no special religious significance, and end withthose of which the religious pretensions are extreme.

The simplest rudiment of mystical experience would seem to be that deepened sense of thesignificance of a maxim or formula which occasionally sweeps over one. "I've heard that said allmy life," we exclaim, "but I never realized its full meaning until now." "When a fellow-monk,"said Luther, "one day repeated the words of the Creed: 'I believe in the forgiveness of sins,' I sawthe Scripture in an entirely new light; and straightway I felt as if I were born anew. It was as if Ihad found the door of paradise thrown wide open."[226] This sense of deeper significance is notconfined to rational propositions. Single words,[227] and conjunctions of words, effects of light onland and sea, odors and musical sounds, all bring it when the mind is tuned aright. Most of us canremember the strangely moving power of passages in certain poems read when we were young,irrational doorways as they were through which the mystery of fact, the wildness and the pang oflife, stole into our hearts and thrilled them. The words have now perhaps become mere polishedsurfaces for us; but lyric poetry and music are alive and significant only in proportion as they fetchthese vague vistas of a life continuous with our own, beckoning and inviting, yet ever eluding ourpursuit. We are alive or dead to the eternal inner message of the arts according as we have kept orlost this mystical susceptibility.

[226] Newman's Securus judicat orbis terrarum is another instance.

[227] "Mesopotamia" is the stock comic instance.--An excellent Old German lady, who had donesome traveling in her day, used to describe to me her Sehnsucht that she might yet visit"Philadelphia," whose wondrous name had always haunted her imagination. Of John Foster it issaid that "single words (as chalcedony), or the names of ancient heroes, had a mighty fascinationover him. 'At any time the word hermit was enough to transport him.' The words woods and forestswould produce the most powerful emotion." Foster's Life, by Ryland, New York, 1846, p. 3.

A more pronounced step forward on the mystical ladder is found in an extremely frequentphenomenon, that sudden feeling, namely, which sometimes sweeps over us, of having "been herebefore," as if at some indefinite past time, in just this place, with just these people, we were alreadysaying just these things. As Tennyson writes:

"Moreover, something is or seems That touches me with mystic gleams, Like glimpses offorgotten dreams-"Of something felt, like something here; Of something done, I know not where; Such as nolanguage may declare."[228]

[228] The Two Voices. In a letter to Mr. B. P. Blood, Tennyson reports of himself as follows:-"I have never had any revelations through anaesthetics, but a kind of waking trance--this for lackof a better word--I have frequently had, quite up from boyhood, when I have been all alone. Thishas come upon me through repeating my own name to myself silently, till all at once, as it were outof the intensity of the consciousness of individuality, individuality itself seemed to dissolve andfade away into boundless being, and this not a confused state but the clearest, the surest of thesurest, utterly beyond words--where death was an almost laughable impossibility--the loss ofpersonality (if so it were) seeming no extinction, but the only true life. I am ashamed of my feebledescription. Have I not said the state is utterly beyond words?"Professor Tyndall, in a letter, recalls Tennyson saying of this condition: "By God Almighty!

there is no delusion in the matter! It is no nebulous ecstasy, but a state of transcendent wonder,associated with absolute clearness of mind." Memoirs of Alfred Tennyson, ii. 473.

Sir James Crichton-Browne has given the technical name of "dreamy states" to these suddeninvasions of vaguely reminiscent consciousness.[229] They bring a sense of mystery and of themetaphysical duality of things, and the feeling of an enlargement of perception which seemsimminent but which never completes itself. In Dr. Crichton-Browne's opinion they connectthemselves with the perplexed and scared disturbances of self-consciousness which occasionallyprecede epileptic attacks. I think that this learned alienist takes a rather absurdly alarmist view ofan intrinsically insignificant phenomenon. He follows it along the downward ladder, to insanity;our path pursues the upward ladder chiefly. The divergence shows how important it is to neglectno part of a phenomenon's connections, for we make it appear admirable or dreadful according tothe context by which we set it off.

[229] The Lancet, July 6 and 13, 1895, reprinted as the Cavendish Lecture, on Dreamy MentalStates, London, Bailliere, 1895. They have been a good deal discussed of late by psychologists.

See, for example, Bernard-Leroy: L'Illusion de Fausse Reconnaissance, Paris, 1898.

Somewhat deeper plunges into mystical consciousness are met with in yet other dreamy states.

Such feelings as these which Charles Kingsley describes are surely far from being uncommon,especially in youth:-"When I walk the fields, I am oppressed now and then with an innate feeling that everything Isee has a meaning, if I could but understand it. And this feeling of being surrounded with truthswhich I cannot grasp amounts to indescribable awe sometimes. . . . Have you not felt that your realsoul was imperceptible to your mental vision, except in a few hallowed moments?"[230]

[230] Charles Kingsley's Life, i. 55, quoted by Inge: Christian Mysticism, London, 1899, p. 341.

A much more extreme state of mystical consciousness is described by J. A. Symonds; andprobably more persons than we suspect could give parallels to it from their own experience.

"Suddenly," writes Symonds, "at church, or in company, or when I was reading, and always, Ithink, when my muscles were at rest, I felt the approach of the mood. Irresistibly it took possessionof my mind and will, lasted what seemed an eternity, and disappeared in a series of rapidsensations which resembled the awakening from anaesthetic influence. One reason why I dislikedthis kind of trance was that I could not describe it to myself. I cannot even now find words torender it intelligible. It consisted in a gradual but swiftly progressive obliteration of space, time,sensation, and the multitudinous factors of experience which seem to qualify what we are pleasedto call our Self. In proportion as these conditions of ordinary consciousness were subtracted, thesense of an underlying or essential consciousness acquired intensity. At last nothing remained but apure, absolute, abstract Self. The universe became without form and void of content. But Selfpersisted, formidable in its vivid keenness, feeling the most poignant doubt about reality, ready, asit seemed, to find existence break as breaks a bubble round about it. And what then? Theapprehension of a coming dissolution, the grim conviction that this state was the last state of theconscious Self, the sense that I had followed the last thread of being to the verge of the abyss, andhad arrived at demonstration of eternal Maya or illusion, stirred or seemed to stir me up again. Thereturn to ordinary conditions of sentient existence began by my first recovering the power of touch,and then by the gradual though rapid influx of familiar impressions and diurnal interests. At last Ifelt myself once more a human being; and though the riddle of what is meant by life remainedunsolved I was thankful for this return from the abyss--this deliverance from so awful an initiationinto the mysteries of skepticism.

"This trance recurred with diminishing frequency until I reached the age of twenty-eight. Itserved to impress upon my growing nature the phantasmal unreality of all the circumstances whichcontribute to a merely phenomenal consciousness. Often have I asked myself with anguish, onwaking from that formless state of denuded, keenly sentient being, Which is the unreality--thetrance of fiery, vacant, apprehensive, skeptical Self from which I issue, or these surroundingphenomena and habits which veil that inner Self and build a self of flesh-and-bloodconventionality? Again, are men the factors of some dream, the dream-like unsubstantiality ofwhich they comprehend at such eventful moments? What would happen if the final stage of thetrance were reached?"[231]

[231] H. F. Brown: J. A. Symonds. a Biography, London, 1895, pp. 29-31, abridged.

In a recital like this there is certainly something suggestive of pathology.[232] The next step intomystical states carries us into a realm that public opinion and ethical philosophy have long sincebranded as pathological, though private practice and certain lyric strains of poetry seem still tobear witness to its ideality. I refer to the consciousness produced by intoxicants and anaesthetics,especially by alcohol. The sway of alcohol over mankind is unquestionably due to its power tostimulate the mystical faculties of human nature, usually crushed to earth by the cold facts and drycriticisms of the sober hour. Sobriety diminishes, discriminates, and says no; drunkenness expands,unites, and says yes. It is in fact the great exciter of the YES function in man. It brings its votaryfrom the chill periphery of things to the radiant core. It makes him for the moment one with truth.

Not through mere perversity do men run after it. To the poor and the unlettered it stands in theplace of symphony concerts and of literature; and it is part of the deeper mystery and tragedy of life that whiffs and gleams of something that we immediately recognize as excellent should bevouchsafed to so many of us only in the fleeting earlier phases of what in its totality is sodegrading a poisoning. The drunken consciousness is one bit of the mystic consciousness, and ourtotal opinion of it must find its place in our opinion of that larger whole.

[232] Crichton-Browne expressly says that Symonds's "highest nerve centres were in somedegree enfeebled or damaged by these dreamy mental states which afflicted him so grievously."Symonds was, however, a perfect monster of many-sided cerebral efficiency, and his critic givesno objective grounds whatever for his strange opinion, save that Symonds complainedoccasionally, as all susceptible and ambitious men complain, of lassitude and uncertainty as to hislife's mission.

Nitrous oxide and ether, especially nitrous oxide, when sufficiently diluted with air, stimulate themystical consciousness in an extraordinary degree. Depth beyond depth of truth seems revealed tothe inhaler. This truth fades out, however, or escapes, at the moment of coming to; and if anywords remain over in which it seemed to clothe itself, they prove to be the veriest nonsense.

Nevertheless, the sense of a profound meaning having been there persists; and I know more thanone person who is persuaded that in the nitrous oxide trance we have a genuine metaphysicalrevelation.

Some years ago I myself made some observations on this aspect of nitrous oxide intoxication,and reported them in print. One conclusion was forced upon my mind at that time, and myimpression of its truth has ever since remained unshaken. It is that our normal wakingconsciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilstall about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousnessentirely different. We may go through life without suspecting their existence; but apply therequisite stimulus, and at a touch they are there in all their completeness, definite types ofmentality which probably somewhere have their field of application and adaptation. No account ofthe universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quitedisregarded. How to regard them is the question--for they are so discontinuous with ordinaryconsciousness. Yet they may determine attitudes though they cannot furnish formulas, and open aregion though they fail to give a map. At any rate, they forbid a premature closing of our accountswith reality. Looking back on my own experiences, they all converge towards a kind of insight towhich I cannot help ascribing some metaphysical significance. The keynote of it is invariably areconciliation. It is as if the opposites of the world, whose contradictoriness and conflict make allour difficulties and troubles, were melted into unity. Not only do they, as contrasted species,belong to one and the same genus, but one of the species, the nobler and better one, is itself thegenus, and so soaks up and absorbs its opposite into itself. This is a dark saying, I know, when thusexpressed in terms of common logic, but I cannot wholly escape from its authority. I feel as if itmust mean something, something like what the hegelian philosophy means, if one could only layhold of it more clearly. Those who have ears to hear, let them hear; to me the living sense of itsreality only comes in the artificial mystic state of mind.[233]

[233] What reader of Hegel can doubt that that sense of a perfected Being with all its othernesssoaked up into itself, which dominates his whole philosophy, must have come from theprominence in his consciousness of mystical moods like this, in most persons kept subliminal? Thenotion is thoroughly characteristic of the mystical level and the Aufgabe of making it articulatewas surely set to Hegel's intellect by mystical feeling.

I just now spoke of friends who believe in the anaesthetic revelation. For them too it is amonistic insight, in which the OTHER in its various forms appears absorbed into the One.

"Into this pervading genius," writes one of them, "we pass, forgetting and forgotten, andthenceforth each is all, in God. There is no higher, no deeper, no other, than the life in which weare founded. 'The One remains, the many change and pass;' and each and every one of us IS theOne that remains. . . . This is the ultimatum. . . . As sure as being--whence is all our care--so sure iscontent, beyond duplexity, antithesis, or trouble, where I have triumphed in a solitude that God isnot above."[234]

[234] Benjamin Paul Blood: The Anaesthetic Revelation and the Gist of Philosophy, Amsterdam,N. Y., 1874, pp. 35, 36. Mr. Blood has made several attempts to adumbrate the anaestheticrevelation, in pamphlets of rare literary distinction, privately printed and distributed by himself atAmsterdam. Xenos Clark, a philosopher, who died young at Amherst in the '80's, much lamentedby those who knew him, was also impressed by the revelation. "In the first place," he once wrote tome, "Mr. Blood and I agree that the revelation is, if anything non-emotional. It is utterly flat. It is,as Mr. Blood says, 'the one sole and sufficient insight why, or not why, but how, the present ispushed on by the past, and sucked forward by the vacuity of the future. Its inevitableness defeatsall attempts at stopping or accounting for it. It is all precedence and presupposition, andquestioning is in regard to it forever too late. It is an initiation of the past.' The real secret would bethe formula by which the 'now' keeps exfoliating out of itself, yet never escapes. What is it, indeed,that keeps existence exfoliating? The formal being of anything, the logical definition of it, is static.

For mere logic every question contains its own answer--we simply fill the hole with the dirt wedug out. Why are twice two four? Because, in fact, four is twice two. Thus logic finds in life nopropulsion, only a momentum. It goes because it is a-going. But the revelation adds: it goesbecause it is and WAS a-going. You walk, as it were, round yourself in the revelation. Ordinaryphilosophy is like a hound hunting his own tail. The more he hunts the farther he has to go, and hisnose never catches up with his heels, because it is forever ahead of them. So the present is alreadya foregone conclusion, and I am ever too late to understand it. But at the moment of recovery fromanaesthesis, just then, BEFORE STARTING ON LIFE, I catch, so to speak, a glimpse of my heels,a glimpse of the eternal process just in the act of starting. The truth is that we travel on a journeythat was accomplished before we set out; and the real end of philosophy is accomplished, not whenwe arrive at, but when we remain in, our destination (being already there)--which may occurvicariously in this life when we cease our intellectual questioning. That is why there is a smileupon the face of the revelation, as we view it. It tells us that we are forever half a second too late-that'sall. 'You could kiss your own lips, and have all the fun to yourself,' it says, if you only knewthe trick. It would be perfectly easy if they would just stay there till you got round to them. Whydon't you manage it somehow?"Dialectically minded readers of this farrago will at least recognize the region of thought of whichMr. Clark writes, as familiar. In his latest pamphlet, "Tennyson's Trances and the AnaestheticRevelation," Mr. Blood describes its value for life as follows:-"The Anaesthetic Revelation is the Initiation of Man into the Immemorial Mystery of the OpenSecret of Being, revealed as the Inevitable Vortex of Continuity. Inevitable is the word. Its motiveis inherent--it is what has to be. It is not for any love or hate, nor for joy nor sorrow, nor good norill. End, beginning, or purpose, it knows not of.

"It affords no particular of the multiplicity and variety of things but it fills appreciation of thehistorical and the sacred with a secular and intimately personal illumination of the nature andmotive of existence, which then seems reminiscent--as if it should have appeared, or shall yetappear, to every participant thereof.

"Although it is at first startling in its solemnity, it becomes directly such a matter of course--soold-fashioned, and so akin to proverbs that it inspires exultation rather than fear, and a sense ofsafety, as identified with the aboriginal and the universal. But no words may express the imposingcertainty of the patient that he is realizing the primordial, Adamic surprise of Life.

"Repetition of the experience finds it ever the same, and as if it could not possibly be otherwise.

The subject resumes his normal consciousness only to partially and fitfully remember itsoccurrence, and to try to formulate its baffling import--with only this consolatory afterthought: thathe has known the oldest truth, and that he has done with human theories as to the origin, meaning,or destiny of the race. He is beyond instruction in 'spiritual things.'

"The lesson is one of central safety: the Kingdom is within. All days are judgment days: butthere can be no climacteric purpose of eternity, nor any scheme of the whole. The astronomerabridges the row of bewildering figures by increasing his unit of measurement: so may we reducethe distracting multiplicity of things to the unity for which each of us stands.

"This has been my moral sustenance since I have known of it. In my first printed mention of it Ideclared: 'The world is no more the alien terror that was taught me. Spurning the cloud-grimed andstill sultry battlements whence so lately Jehovan thunders boomed, my gray gull lifts her wingagainst the nightfall, and takes the dim leagues with a fearless eye.' And now, after twenty-sevenyears of this experience, the wing is grayer, but the eye is fearless still, while I renew and doublyemphasize that declaration. I know--as having known--the meaning of Existence: the sane centreof the universe--at once the wonder and the assurance of the soul--for which the speech of reasonhas as yet no name but the Anaesthetic Revelation." --I have considerably abridged the quotation.

This has the genuine religious mystic ring! I just now quoted J. A. Symonds. He also records amystical experience with chloroform, as follows:-'After the choking and stifling had passed away, I seemed at first in a state of utter blankness;then came flashes of intense light, alternating with blackness, and with a keen vision of what wasgoing on in the room around me, but no sensation of touch. I thought that I was near death; when,suddenly, my soul became aware of God, who was manifestly dealing with me, handling me, so tospeak, in an intense personal present reality. I felt him streaming in like light upon me. . . . I cannotdescribe the ecstasy I felt. Then, as I gradually awoke from the influence of the anaesthetics, theold sense of my relation to the world began to return, the new sense of my relation to God began to fade. I suddenly leapt to my feet on the chair where I was sitting, and shrieked out, 'It is toohorrible, it is too horrible, it is too horrible,' meaning that I could not bear this disillusionment.

Then I flung myself on the ground, and at last awoke covered with blood, calling to the twosurgeons (who were frightened), 'Why did you not kill me? Why would you not let me die?' Onlythink of it. To have felt for that long dateless ecstasy of vision the very God, in all purity andtenderness and truth and absolute love, and then to find that I had after all had no revelation, butthat I had been tricked by the abnormal excitement of my brain.

"Yet, this question remains, Is it possible that the inner sense of reality which succeeded, whenmy flesh was dead to impressions from without, to the ordinary sense of physical relations, was nota delusion but an actual experience? Is it possible that I, in that moment, felt what some of thesaints have said they always felt, the undemonstrable but irrefragable certainty of God?"[235]

[235] Op. cit., pp. 78-80, abridged. I subjoin, also abridging it, another interesting anaestheticrevelation communicated to me in manuscript by a friend in England. The subject, a gifted woman,was taking ether for a surgical operation.

"I wondered if I was in a prison being tortured, and why I remembered having heard it said thatpeople 'learn through suffering,' and in view of what I was seeing, the inadequacy of this sayingstruck me so much that I said, aloud, 'to suffer IS to learn.'

"With that I became unconscious again, and my last dream immediately preceded my realcoming to. It only lasted a few seconds, and was most vivid and real to me, though it may not beclear in words.

"A great Being or Power was traveling through the sky, his foot was on a kind of lightning as awheel is on a rail, it was his pathway. The lightning was made entirely of the spirits ofinnumerable people close to one another, and I was one of them. He moved in a straight line, andeach part of the streak or flash came into its short conscious existence only that he might travel. Iseemed to be directly under the foot of God, and I thought he was grinding his own life up out ofmy pain. Then I saw that what he had been trying with all his might to do was to CHANGE HISCOURSE, to BEND the line of lightning to which he was tied, in the direction in which he wantedto go. I felt my flexibility and helplessness, and knew that he would succeed. He bended me,turning his corner by means of my hurt, hurting me more than I had ever been hurt in my life, andat the acutest point of this, as he passed, I SAW. I understood for a moment things that I have nowforgotten, things that no one could remember while retaining sanity. The angle was an obtuseangle, and I remember thinking as I woke that had he made it a right or acute angle, I should haveboth suffered and 'seen' still more, and should probably have died.

"He went on and I came to. In that moment the whole of my life passed before me, includingeach little meaningless piece of distress, and I UNDERSTOOD them. THIS was what it had allmeant, THIS was the piece of work it had all been contributing to do. I did not see God's purpose, Ionly saw his intentness and his entire relentlessness towards his means. He thought no more of methan a man thinks of hurting a cork when he is opening wine, or hurting a cartridge when he isfiring. And yet, on waking, my first feeling was, and it came with tears, 'Domine non sum digna,'

for I had been lifted into a position for which I was too small. I realized that in that half hour underether I had served God more distinctly and purely than I had ever done in my life before, or than Iam capable of desiring to do. I was the means of his achieving and revealing something, I knownot what or to whom, and that, to the exact extent of my capacity for suffering.

"While regaining consciousness, I wondered why, since I had gone so deep, I had seen nothingof what the saints call the LOVE of God, nothing but his relentlessness. And then I heard ananswer, which I could only just catch, saying, 'Knowledge and Love are One, and the MEASUREis suffering'--I give the words as they came to me. With that I came finally to (into what seemed adream world compared with the reality of what I was leaving), and I saw that what would be calledthe 'cause' of my experience was a slight operation under insufficient ether, in a bed pushed upagainst a window, a common city window in a common city street. If I had to formulate a few ofthe things I then caught a glimpse of, they would run somewhat as follows:-"The eternal necessity of suffering and its eternal vicariousness. The veiled and incommunicablenature of the worst sufferings;--the passivity of genius, how it is essentially instrumental anddefenseless, moved, not moving, it must do what it does;--the impossibility of discovery withoutits price;--finally, the excess of what the suffering 'seer' or genius pays over what his generationgains. (He seems like one who sweats his life out to earn enough to save a district from famine,and just as he staggers back, dying and satisfied, bringing a lac of rupees to buy grain with, Godlifts the lac away, dropping ONE rupee, and says, 'That you may give them. That you have earnedfor them. The rest is for ME.') I perceived also in a way never to be forgotten, the excess of whatwe see over what we can demonstrate.

"And so on!--these things may seem to you delusions, or truisms; but for me they are dark truths,and the power to put them into even such words as these has been given me by an ether dream."With this we make connection with religious mysticism pure and simple. Symonds's questiontakes us back to those examples which you will remember my quoting in the lecture on the Realityof the Unseen, of sudden realization of the immediate presence of God. The phenomenon in oneshape or another is not uncommon.

"I know," writes Mr. Trine, "an officer on our police force who has told me that many timeswhen off duty, and on his way home in the evening, there comes to him such a vivid and vitalrealization of his oneness with this Infinite Power, and this Spirit of Infinite Peace so takes hold ofand so fills him, that it seems as if his feet could hardly keep to the pavement, so buoyant and soexhilarated does he become by reason of this inflowing tide."[236]

[236] In Tune with the Infinite, p. 137.

Certain aspects of nature seem to have a peculiar power of awakening such mystical moods.

[237] Most of the striking cases which I have collected have occurred out of doors. Literature hascommemorated this fact in many passages of great beauty--this extract, for example, from Amiel'sJournal Intime:-[237] The larger God may then swallow up the smaller one. I take this from Starbuck'smanuscript collection:-"I never lost the consciousness of the presence of God until I stood at the foot of the HorseshoeFalls, Niagara. Then I lost him in the immensity of what I saw. I also lost myself, feeling that I wasan atom too small for the notice of Almighty God."I subjoin another similar case from Starbuck's collection:-"In that time the consciousness of God's nearness came to me sometimes. I say God, to describewhat is indescribable. A presence, I might say, yet that is too suggestive of personality, and themoments of which I speak did not hold the consciousness of a personality, but something in myselfmade me feel myself a part of something bigger than I, that was controlling. I felt myself one withthe grass, the trees, birds, insects, everything in Nature. I exulted in the mere fact of existence, ofbeing a part of it all--the drizzling rain, the shadows of the clouds, the tree-trunks, and so on. In theyears following, such moments continued to come, but I wanted them constantly. I knew so wellthe satisfaction of losing self in a perception of supreme power and love, that I was unhappybecause that perception was not constant." The cases quoted in my third lecture, pp. 65, 66, 69, arestill better ones of this type. In her essay, The Loss of Personality, in The Atlantic Monthly (vol.

lxxxv. p. 195), Miss Ethel D. Puffer explains that the vanishing of the sense of self, and the feelingof immediate unity with the object, is due to the disappearance, in these rapturous experiences, ofthe motor adjustments which habitually intermediate between the constant background ofconsciousness (which is the Self) and the object in the foreground, whatever it may be. I must referthe reader to the highly instructive article, which seems to me to throw light upon thepsychological conditions, though it fails to account for the rapture or the revelation-value of theexperience in the Subject's eyes.

"Shall I ever again have any of those prodigious reveries which sometimes came to me in formerdays? One day, in youth, at sunrise, sitting in the ruins of the castle of Faucigny; and again in themountains, under the noonday sun, above Lavey, lying at the foot of a tree and visited by threebutterflies; once more at night upon the shingly shore of the Northern Ocean, my back upon thesand and my vision ranging through the Milky Way;--such grand and spacious, immortal,cosmogonic reveries, when one reaches to the stars, when one owns the infinite! Moments divine,ecstatic hours; in which our thought flies from world to world, pierces the great enigma, breatheswith a respiration broad, tranquil, and deep as the respiration of the ocean, serene and limitless asthe blue firmament; . . . instants of irresistible intuition in which one feels one's self great as theuniverse, and calm as a god. . . . What hours, what memories! The vestiges they leave behind areenough to fill us with belief and enthusiasm, as if they were visits of the Holy Ghost."[238]

[238] Op cit., i. 43-44Here is a similar record from the memoirs of that interesting German idealist, Malwida vonMeysenbug:-"I was alone upon the seashore as all these thoughts flowed over me, liberating and reconciling;and now again, as once before in distant days in the Alps of Dauphine, I was impelled to kneeldown, this time before the illimitable ocean, symbol of the Infinite. I felt that I prayed as I hadnever prayed before, and knew now what prayer really is: to return from the solitude ofindividuation into the consciousness of unity with all that is, to kneel down as one that passesaway, and to rise up as one imperishable. Earth, heaven, and sea resounded as in one vast world-encircling harmony. It was as if the chorus of all the great who had ever lived were about me. I feltmyself one with them, and it appeared as if I heard their greeting: 'Thou too belongest to thecompany of those who overcome.'"[239]

[239] Memoiren einer Idealistin, Ste Auflage, 1900, iii. 166. For years she had been unable topray, owing to materialistic belief.

The well known passage from Walt Whitman is a classical expression of this sporadic type ofmystical experience.

"I believe in you, my Soul . . . Loaf with me on the grass, loose the stop from your throat;. . .

Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice. I mind how once we lay, such a transparentsummer morning. Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass all theargument of the earth, And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own, And I knowthat the spirit of God is the brother of my own, And that all the men ever born are also my brothersand the women my sisters and lovers, And that a kelson of the creation is love."[240]

[240] Whitman in another place expresses in a quieter way what was probably with him achronic mystical perception: "There is," he writes, "apart from mere intellect, in the make-up ofevery superior human identity, a wondrous something that realizes without argument, frequentlywithout what is called education (though I think it the goal and apex of all education deserving thename), an intuition of the absolute balance, in time and space, of the whole of this multifariousnessthis revel of fools, and incredible make-believe and general unsettiedness, we call THE WORLD;a soul-sight of that divine clue and unseen thread which holds the whole congeries of things, allhistory and time, and all events, however trivial, however momentous, like a leashed dog in thehand of the hunter. [Of] such soul-sight and root-centre for the mind mere optimism explains onlythe surface." Whitman charges it against Carlyle that he lacked this perception. Specimen Daysand Collect, Philadelphia, 1882, p. 174.

I could easily give more instances, but one will suffice. I take it from the Autobiography of J.

Trevor.[241]

[241] My Quest for God, London, 1897, pp. 268, 269, abridged.

"One brilliant Sunday morning, my wife and boys went to the Unitarian Chapel in Macclesfield.

I felt it impossible to accompany them--as though to leave the sunshine on the hills, and go downthere to the chapel, would be for the time an act of spiritual suicide. And I felt such need for newinspiration and expansion in my life. So, very reluctantly and sadly, I left my wife and boys to godown into the town, while I went further up into the hills with my stick and my dog. In theloveliness of the morning, and the beauty of the hills and valleys, I soon lost my sense of sadnessand regret. For nearly an hour I walked along the road to the 'Cat and Fiddle,' and then returned.

On the way back, suddenly, without warning, I felt that I was in Heaven--an inward state of peaceand joy and assurance indescribably intense, accompanied with a sense of being bathed in a warmglow of light, as though the external condition had brought about the internal effect--a feeling ofhaving passed beyond the body, though the scene around me stood out more clearly and as ifnearer to me than before, by reason of the illumination in the midst of which I seemed to be placed.

This deep emotion lasted, though with decreasing strength, until I reached home, and for sometime after, only gradually passing away."The writer adds that having had further experiences of a similar sort, he now knows them well.

"The spiritual life," he writes, "justifies itself to those who live it; but what can we say to thosewho do not understand? This, at least, we can say, that it is a life whose experiences are provedreal to their possessor, because they remain with him when brought closest into contact with theobjective realities of life. Dreams cannot stand this test. We wake from them to find that they arebut dreams. Wanderings of an overwrought brain do not stand this test. These highest experiencesthat I have had of God's presence have been rare and brief--flashes of consciousness which havecompelled me to exclaim with surprise--God is HERE!--or conditions of exaltation and insight,less intense, and only gradually passing away. I have severely questioned the worth of thesemoments. To no soul have I named them, lest I should be building my life and work on merephantasies of the brain. But I find that, after every questioning and test, they stand out to-day as themost real experiences of my life, and experiences which have explained and justified and unifiedall past experiences and all past growth. Indeed, their reality and their far-reaching significance areever becoming more clear and evident. When they came, I was living the fullest, strongest, sanest,deepest life. I was not seeking them. What I was seeking, with resolute determination, was to livemore intensely my own life, as against what I knew would be the adverse judgment of the world. Itwas in the most real seasons that the Real Presence came, and I was aware that I was immersed inthe infinite ocean of God."[242]

[242] Op. cit., pp. 256, 257, abridged.

Even the least mystical of you must by this time be convinced of the existence of mysticalmoments as states of consciousness of an entirely specific quality, and of the deep impressionwhich they make on those who have them. A Canadian psychiatrist, Dr. R. M. Bucke, gives to themore distinctly characterized of these phenomena the name of cosmic consciousness. "Cosmicconsciousness in its more striking instances is not," Dr. Bucke says, "simply an expansion orextension of the self-conscious mind with which we are all familiar, but the superaddition of afunction as distinct from any possessed by the average man as SELF-consciousness is distinct fromany function possessed by one of the higher animals.""The prime characteristic of cosmic consciousness is a consciousness of the cosmos, that is, ofthe life and order of the universe. Along with the consciousness of the cosmos there occurs anintellectual enlightenment which alone would place the individual on a new plane of existence-wouldmake him almost a member of a new species. To this is added a state of moral exaltation, anindescribable feeling of elevation, elation, and joyousness, and a quickening of the moral sense,which is fully as striking, and more important than is the enhanced intellectual power. With thesecome what may be called a sense of immortality, a consciousness of eternal life, not a convictionthat he shall have this, but the consciousness that he has it already."[243]

[243] Cosmic Consciousness: a study in the evolution of the human Mind, Philadelphia, 1901, p.

2.

It was Dr. Bucke's own experience of a typical onset of cosmic consciousness in his own personwhich led him to investigate it in others. He has printed his conclusions In a highly interestingvolume, from which I take the following account of what occurred to him:-"I had spent the evening in a great city, with two friends, reading and discussing poetry andphilosophy. We parted at midnight. I had a long drive in a hansom to my lodging. My mind,deeply under the influence of the ideas, images, and emotions called up by the reading and talk,was calm and peaceful. I was in a state of quiet, almost passive enjoyment, not actually thinking,but letting ideas, images, and emotions flow of themselves, as it were, through my mind. All atonce, without warning of any kind, I found myself wrapped in a flame-colored cloud. For aninstant I thought of fire, an immense conflagration somewhere close by in that great city; the next,I knew that the fire was within myself. Directly afterward there came upon me a sense ofexultation, of immense joyousness accompanied or immediately followed by an intellectualillumination impossible to describe. Among other things, I did not merely come to believe, but Isaw that the universe is not composed of dead matter, but is, on the contrary, a living Presence; Ibecame conscious in myself of eternal life. It was not a conviction that I would have eternal life,but a consciousness that I possessed eternal life then; I saw that all men are immortal; that thecosmic order is such that without any peradventure all things work together for the good of eachand all; that the foundation principle of the world, of all the worlds, is what we call love, and thatthe happiness of each and all is in the long run <391> absolutely certain. The vision lasted a fewseconds and was gone; but the memory of it and the sense of the reality of what it taught hasremained during the quarter of a century which has since elapsed. I knew that what the visionshowed was true. I had attained to a point of view from which I saw that it must be true. That view,that conviction, I may say that consciousness, has never, even during periods of the deepestdepression, been lost."[244]

[244] Loc. cit., pp. 7, 8. My quotation follows the privately printed pamphlet which preceded Dr.

Bucke's larger work, and differs verbally a little from the text of the latter.

We have now seen enough of this cosmic or mystic consciousness, as it comes sporadically. Wemust next pass to its methodical cultivation as an element of the religious life. Hindus, Buddhists,Mohammedans, and Christians all have cultivated it methodically.

In India, training in mystical insight has been known from time immemorial under the name ofyoga. Yoga means the experimental union of the individual with the divine. It is based onpersevering exercise; and the diet, posture, breathing, intellectual concentration, and moraldiscipline vary slightly in the different systems which teach it. The yogi, or disciple, who has bythese means overcome the obscurations of his lower nature sufficiently, enters into the conditiontermed samadhi, "and comes face to face with facts which no instinct or reason can ever know."He learns-"That the mind itself has a higher state of existence, beyond reason, a superconscious state, andthat when the mind gets to that higher state, then this knowledge beyond reasoning comes. . . . Allthe different steps in yoga are intended to bring us scientifically to the superconscious state orSamadhi. . . . Just as unconscious work is beneath consciousness, so there is another work which isabove consciousness, and which, also, is not accompanied with the feeling of egoism . . . . There isno feeling of I, and yet the mind works, desireless, free from restlessness, objectless, bodiless.

Then the Truth shines in its full effulgence, and we know ourselves--for Samadhi lies potential inus all--for what we truly are, free, immortal, omnipotent, loosed from the finite, and its contrasts ofgood and evil altogether, and identical with the Atman or Universal Soul."[245]

[245] My quotations are from Vivekananda, Raja Yoga, London, 1896. The completest source ofinformation on Yoga is the work translated by Vihari Lala Mtra: Yoga Vasishta Maha Ramayana.

4 vols. Calcutta, 1891-99.

The Vedantists say that one may stumble into superconsciousness sporadically, without theprevious discipline, but it is then impure. Their test of its purity, like our test of religion's value, isempirical: its fruits must be good for life. When a man comes out of Samadhi, they assure us thathe remains "enlightened, a sage, a prophet, a saint, his whole character changed, his life changed,illumined."[246]

[246] A European witness, after carefully comparing the results of Yoga with those of thehypnotic or dreamy states artificially producible by us, says: "It makes of its true disciples good,healthy, and happy men. . . . Through the mastery which the yogi attains over his thoughts and hisbody, he grows into a 'character.' By the subjection of his impulses and propensities to his will, andthe fixing of the latter upon the ideal of goodness, he becomes a 'personality' hard to influence byothers, and thus almost the opposite of what we usually imagine a medium so-called, or psychicsubject to be. Karl Kellner: Yoga: Eine Skizze, Munchen, 1896, p. 21.

The Buddhists used the word "samadhi" as well as the Hindus; but "dhyana" is their special wordfor higher states of contemplation. There seem to be four stages recognized in dhyana. The firststage comes through concentration of the mind upon one point. It excludes desire, but notdiscernment or judgment: it is still intellectual. In the second stage the intellectual functions dropoff, and the satisfied sense of unity remains. In the third stage the satisfaction departs, andindifference begins, along with memory a self-consciousness. In the fourth stage the indifference,memory, and self-consciousness are perfected. [Just what "memory" and "self-consciousness"mean in this connection is doubtful. They cannot be the faculties familiar to us in the lower life.]

Higher stages still of contemplation are mentioned--a region where there exists nothing, and wherethe mediator says: "There exists absolutely nothing," and stops. Then he reaches another regionwhere he says: "There are neither ideas nor absence of ideas," and stops again. Then another regionwhere, "having reached the end of both idea and perception, he stops finally." This would seem tobe, not yet Nirvana, but as close an approach to it as this life affords.[247]

[247] I follow the account in C. F. Koeppen: Die Religion des Buddha, Berlin, 1857, i. 585 ff.

In the Mohammedan world the Sufi sect and various dervish bodies are the possessors of themystical tradition. The Sufis have existed in Persia from the earliest times, and as their pantheismis so at variance with the hot and rigid monotheism of the Arab mind, it has been suggested thatSufism must have been inoculated into Islam by Hindu influences. We Christians know little ofSufism, for its secrets are disclosed only to those initiated. To give its existence a certain livelinessin your minds, I will quote a Moslem document, and pass away from the subject.

Al-Ghazzali, a Persian philosopher and theologian, who flourished in the eleventh century, andranks as one of the greatest doctors of the Moslem church, has left us one of the fewautobiographies to be found outside of Christian literature. Strange that a species of book soabundant among ourselves should be so little represented elsewhere--the absence of strictlypersonal confessions is the chief difficulty to the purely literary student who would like to becomeacquainted with the inwardness of religions other than the Christian. M. Schmolders has translateda part of Al-Ghazzali's autobiography into French:[248]-[248] For a full account of him, see D. B. Macdonald: The Life Of Al-Ghazzali, in the Journal ofthe American Oriental Society, 1899, vol. xx., p. 71.

"The Science of the Sufis," says the Moslem author, "aims at detaching the heart from all that isnot God, and at giving to it for sole occupation the meditation of the divine being. Theory beingmore easy for me than practice, I read [certain books] until I understood all that can be learned bystudy and hearsay. Then I recognized that what pertains most exclusively to their method is justwhat no study can grasp, but only transport, ecstasy, and the transformation of the soul. How great,for example, is the difference between knowing the definitions of health, of satiety, with theircauses and conditions, and being really healthy or filled. How different to know in whatdrunkenness consists--as being a state occasioned by a vapor that rises from the stomach--andBEING drunk effectively. Without doubt, the drunken man knows neither the definition ofdrunkenness nor what makes it interesting for science. Being drunk, he knows nothing; whilst thephysician, although not drunk knows well in what drunkenness consists, and what are itspredisposing conditions. Similarly there is a difference between knowing the nature of abstinence,and BEING abstinent or having one's soul detached from the world.--Thus I had learned whatwords could teach of Sufism, but what was left could be learned neither by study nor through theears, but solely by giving one's self up to ecstasy and leading a pious life.

"Reflecting on my situation, I found myself tied down by a multitude of bonds--temptations onevery side. Considering my teaching, I found it was impure before God. I saw myself strugglingwith all my might to achieve glory and to spread my name. [Here follows an account of his sixmonths' hesitation to break away from the conditions of his life at Bagdad, at the end of which hefell ill with a paralysis of the tongue.] Then, feeling my own weakness, and having entirely givenup my own will, I repaired to God like a man in distress who has no more resources. He answered,as he answers the wretch who invokes him. My heart no longer felt any difficulty in renouncingglory, wealth, and my children. So I quitted Bagdad, and reserving from my fortune only what wasindispensable for my subsistence, I distributed the rest. I went to Syria, where I remained abouttwo years, with no other occupation than living in retreat and solitude, conquering my desires,combating my passions, training myself to purify my soul, to make my character perfect, toprepare my heart for meditating on God--all according to the methods of the Sufis, as I had read ofthem.

"This retreat only increased my desire to live in solitude, and to complete the purification of myheart and fit it for meditation. But the vicissitudes of the times, the affairs of the family, the needof subsistence, changed in some respects my primitive resolve, and interfered with my plans for apurely solitary life. I had never yet found myself completely in ecstasy, save in a few single hours;nevertheless, I kept the hope of attaining this state. Every time that the accidents led me astray, Isought to return; and in this situation I spent ten years. During this solitary state things wererevealed to me which it is impossible either to describe or to point out. I recognized for certain thatthe Sufis are assuredly walking in the path of God. Both in their acts and in their inaction, whetherinternal or external, they are illumined by the light which proceeds from the prophetic source. Thefirst condition for a Sufi is to purge his heart entirely of all that is not God. The next key of thecontemplative life consists in the humble prayers which escape from the fervent soul, and in themeditations on God in which the heart is swallowed up entirely. But in reality this is only thebeginning of the Sufi life, the end of Sufism being total absorption in God. The intuitions and allthat precede are, so to speak, only the threshold for those who enter. From the beginningrevelations take place in so flagrant a shape that the Sufis see before them, whilst wide awake, theangels and the souls of the prophets. They hear their voices and obtain their favors. Then thetransport rises from the perception of forms and figures to a degree which escapes all expression,and which no man may seek to give an account of without his words involving sin. "Whosoeverhas had no experience of the transport knows of the true nature of prophetism nothing but thename. He may meanwhile be sure of its existence, both by experience and by what he hears theSufis say. As there are men endowed only with the sensitive faculty who reject what is offeredthem in the way of objects of the pure understanding, so there are intellectual men who reject andavoid the things perceived by the prophetic faculty. A blind man can understand nothing of colorssave what he has learned by narration and hearsay. Yet God has brought prophetism near to men ingiving them all a state analogous to it in its principal characters. This state is sleep. If you were totell a man who was himself without experience of such a phenomenon that there are people who attimes swoon away so as to resemble dead men, and who [in dreams] yet perceive things that arehidden, he would deny it [and give his reasons]. Nevertheless, his arguments would be refuted byactual experience. Wherefore, just as the understanding is a stage of human life in which an eyeopens to discern various intellectual objects uncomprehended by sensation; just so in the propheticthe sight is illumined by a light which uncovers hidden things and objects which the intellect failsto reach. The chief properties of prophetism are perceptible only during the transport, by those whoembrace the Sufi life. The prophet is endowed with qualities to which you possess nothinganalogous, and which consequently you cannot possibly understand.

How should you know their true nature, since one knows only what one can comprehend? Butthe transport which one attains by the method of the Sufis is like an immediate perception, as ifone touched the objects with one's hand."[249]

[249] A. Schmolders: Essai sur les ecoles philosophiques chez les Arabes, Paris, 1842, pp. 54-68,abridged.
Lectures XVII MYSTICISM
　　This incommunicableness of the transport is the keynote of all mysticism. Mystical truth existsfor the individual who has the transport, but for no one else. In this, as I have said, it resembles theknowledge given to us in sensations more than that given by conceptual thought. Thought, with itsremoteness and abstractness, has often enough in the history of philosophy been contrastedunfavorably with sensation.

It is a commonplace of metaphysics that God's knowledge cannot be discursive but must beintuitive, that is, must be constructed more after the pattern of what in ourselves is calledimmediate feeling, than after that of proposition and judgment. But our immediate feelings have nocontent but what the five senses supply; and we have seen and shall see again that mystics mayemphatically deny that the senses play any part in the very highest type of knowledge which theirtransports yield.

In the Christian church there have always been mystics. Although many of them have beenviewed with suspicion, some have gained favor in the eyes of the authorities. The experiences ofthese have been treated as precedents, and a codified system of mystical theology has been basedupon them, in which everything legitimate finds its place.[250] The basis of the system is "orison"or meditation, the methodical elevation of the soul towards God. Through the practice of orison thehigher levels of mystical experience may be attained. It is odd that Protestantism, especiallyevangelical Protestantism, should seemingly have abandoned everything methodical in this line.

Apart from what prayer may lead to, Protestant mystical experience appears to have been almostexclusively sporadic. It has been left to our mind-curers to reintroduce methodical meditation intoour religious life.

[250] Gorres's Christliche Mystik gives a full account of the facts. So does Ribet's MystiqueDivine, 2 vols., Paris, 1890. A still more methodical modern work is the Mystica Theologia ofVallgornera, 2 vols., Turin, 1890.

The first thing to be aimed at in orison is the mind's detachment from outer sensations, for theseinterfere with its concentration upon ideal things. Such manuals as Saint Ignatius's SpiritualExercises recommend the disciple to <398> expel sensation by a graduated series of efforts toimagine holy scenes. The acme of this kind of discipline would be a semi-hallucinatory monoideism--an imaginary figure of Christ, for example, coming fully to occupy the mind. Sensorialimages of this sort, whether literal or symbolic, play an enormous part in mysticism.[251] But incertain cases imagery may fall away entirely, and in the very highest raptures it tends to do so. Thestate of consciousness becomes then insusceptible of any verbal description. Mystical teachers areunanimous as to this. Saint John of the Cross, for instance, one of the best of them, thus describesthe condition called the "union of love," which, he says, is reached by "dark contemplation." In thisthe Deity compenetrates the soul, but in such a hidden way that the soul-"finds no terms, no means, no comparison whereby to render the sublimity of the wisdom andthe delicacy of the spiritual feeling with which she is filled. . . . We receive this mysticalknowledge of God clothed in none of the kinds of images, in none of the sensible representations,which our mind makes use of in other circumstances. Accordingly in this knowledge, since thesenses and the imagination are not employed, we get neither form nor impression, nor can we giveany account or furnish any likeness, although the mysterious and sweet-tasting wisdom comeshome so clearly to the inmost parts of our soul. Fancy a man seeing a certain kind of thing for thefirst time in his life. He can understand it, use and enjoy it, but he cannot apply a name to it, norcommunicate any idea of it, even though all the while it be a mere thing of sense. How muchgreater will be his powerlessness when it goes beyond the senses! This is the peculiarity of thedivine language. The more infused, intimate, spiritual, and supersensible it is, the more does itexceed the senses, both inner and outer, and impose silence upon them. . . .

The soul then feels as if placed in a vast and profound solitude, to which no created thing hasaccess, in an immense and boundless desert, desert the more delicious the more solitary it is.

There, in this abyss of wisdom, the soul grows by what it drinks in from the well-springs of thecomprehension of love, . . . and recognizes, however sublime and learned may be the terms weemploy, how utterly vile, insignificant, and improper they are, when we seek to discourse of divinethings by their means."[252]

[251] M. ReCeJac, in a recent volume, makes them essential. Mysticism he defines as "thetendency to draw near to the Absolute morally AND BY THE AID OF SYMBOLS." See hisFondements de la Connaissance mystique, Paris, 1897, p. 66. But there are unquestionablymystical conditions in which sensible symbols play no part.

[252] Saint John of the Cross: The Dark Night of the Soul, book ii. ch. xvii., in Vie et Oeuvres,3me edition, Paris, 1893, iii. 428-432. Chapter xi. of book ii. of Saint John's Ascent of Carmel isdevoted to showing the harmfulness for the mystical life of the use of sensible imagery.

I cannot pretend to detail to you the sundry stages of the Christian mystical life.[253] Our timewould not suffice, for one thing; and moreover, I confess that the subdivisions and names whichwe find in the Catholic books seem to me to represent nothing objectively distinct. So many men,so many minds: I imagine that these experiences can be as infinitely varied as are theidiosyncrasies of individuals.

[253] In particular I omit mention of visual and auditory hallucinations, verbal and graphicautomatisms, and such marvels as "levitation," stigmatization, and the healing of disease. Thesephenomena, which mystics have often presented (or are believed to have presented), have noessential mystical significance, for they occur with no consciousness of illumination whatever,when they occur, as they often do, in persons of non-mystical mind. Consciousness of illuminationis for us the essential mark of "mystical" states.

The cognitive aspects of them, their value in the way of revelation, is what we are directlyconcerned with, and it is easy to show by citation how strong an impression they leave of beingrevelations of new depths of truth. Saint Teresa is the expert of experts in describing suchconditions, so I will turn immediately to what she says of one of the highest of them, the "orison ofunion.""In the orison of union," says Saint Teresa, "the soul is fully awake as regards God, but whollyasleep as regards things of this world and in respect of herself. During the short time the unionlasts, she is as it were deprived of every feeling, and even if she would, she could not think of anysingle thing. Thus she needs to employ no artifice in order to arrest the use of her understanding: itremains so stricken with inactivity that she neither knows what she loves, nor in what manner sheloves, nor what she wills. In short, she is utterly dead to the things of the world and lives solely inGod. . . . I do not even know whether in this state she has enough life left to breathe. It seems tome she has not; or at least that if she does breathe, she is unaware of it. Her intellect would fainunderstand something of what is going on within her, but it has so little force now that it can act inno way whatsoever. So a person who falls into a deep faint appears as if dead. . . .

"Thus does God, when he raises a soul to union with himself, suspend the natural action of allher faculties. She neither sees, hears, nor understands, so long as she is united with God. But thistime is always short, and it seems even shorter than it is. God establishes himself in the interior ofthis soul in such a way, that when she returns to herself, it is wholly impossible for her to doubtthat she has been in God, and God in her. This truth remains so strongly impressed on her that,even though many years should pass without the condition returning, she can neither forget thefavor she received, nor doubt of its reality. If you, nevertheless, ask how it is possible that the soulcan see and understand that she has been in God, since during the union she has neither sight norunderstanding, I reply that she does not see it then, but that she sees it clearly later, after she hasreturned to herself, not by any vision, but by a certitude which abides with her and which Godalone can give her.

I knew a person who was ignorant of the truth that God's mode of being in everything must beeither by presence, by power, or by essence, but who, after having received the grace of which Iam speaking, believed this truth in the most unshakable manner. So much so that, having consulteda half-learned man who was as ignorant on this point as she had been before she was enlightened,when he replied that God is in us only by 'grace,' she disbelieved his reply, so sure she was of thetrue answer; and when she came to ask wiser doctors, they confirmed her in her belief, whichmuch consoled her. . . .

"But how, you will repeat, CAN one have such certainty in respect to what one does not see?

This question, I am powerless to answer. These are secrets of God's omnipotence which it does notappertain to me to penetrate. All that I know is that I tell the truth; and I shall never believe thatany soul who does not possess this certainty has ever been really united to God."[254]

[254] The Interior Castle, Fifth Abode, Ch. i., in Oeuvres, translated by BOUIX, iii. 421-424.

The kinds of truth communicable in mystical ways, whether these be sensible or supersensible,are various. Some of them relate to this world--visions of the future, the reading of hearts, thesudden understanding of texts, the knowledge of distant events, for example; but the mostimportant revelations are theological or metaphysical.

"Saint Ignatius confessed one day to Father Laynez that a single hour of meditation at Manresahad taught him more truths about heavenly things than all the teachings of all the doctors puttogether could have taught him. . . . One day in orison, on the steps of the choir of the Dominicanchurch, he saw in a distinct manner the plan of divine wisdom in the creation of the world. Onanother occasion, during a procession, his spirit was ravished in God, and it was given him tocontemplate, in a form and images fitted to the weak understanding of a dweller on the earth, thedeep mystery of the holy Trinity. This last vision flooded his heart with such sweetness, that themere memory of it in after times made him shed abundant tears."[255]

[255] Bartoli-Michel: vie de Saint Ignace de Loyola, i. 34-36. Others have had illuminationsabout the created world, Jacob Boehme for instance. At the age of twenty-five he was "surroundedby the divine light, and replenished with the heavenly knowledge, insomuch as going abroad intothe fields to a green, at Gorlitz, he there sat down and viewing the herbs and grass of the field, inhis inward light he saw into their essences, use, and properties, which was discovered to him bytheir lineaments, figures, and signatures." Of a later period of experience he writes: "In one quarterof an hour I saw and knew more than if I had been many years together at an university. For I sawand knew the being of all things, the Byss and the Abyss, and the eternal generation of the holyTrinity, the descent and original of the world and of all creatures through the divine wisdom. Iknew and saw in myself all the three worlds, the external and visible world being of a procreationor extern birth from both the internal and spiritual worlds; and I saw and knew the whole workingessence, in the evil and in the good, and the mutual original and existence, and likewise how thefruitful bearing womb of eternity brought forth. So that I did not only greatly wonder at it, but didalso exceedingly rejoice, albeit I could very hardly apprehend the same in my external man and setit down with the pen. For I had a thorough view of the universe as in a chaos, wherein all thingsare couched and wrapt up, but it was impossible for me to explicate the same." Jacob Behmen'sTheosophic Philosophy, etc., by Edward Taylor, London, 1691, pp. 425, 427, abridged.

So George Fox: "I was come up to the state of Adam in which he was before he fell. The creationwas opened to me; and it was showed me, how all things had their names given to them, accordingto their nature and virtue. I was at a stand in my mind, whether I should practice physic for thegood of mankind, seeing the nature and virtues of the creatures were so opened to me by the Lord."Journal, Philadelphia, no date, p. 69. Contemporary "Clairvoyance" abounds in similar revelations.

Andrew Jackson Davis's cosmogonies, for example, or certain experiences related in the delectable"Reminiscences and Memories of Henry Thomas Butterworth," Lebanon, Ohio, 1886.

Similarly with Saint Teresa. "One day, being in orison," she writes, "it was granted me toperceive in one instant how all things are seen and contained in God. I did not perceive them intheir proper form, and nevertheless the view I had of them was of a sovereign clearness, and hasremained vividly impressed upon my soul. It is one of the most signal of all the graces which theLord has granted me. . . . The view was so subtile and delicate that the understanding cannot graspit."[256]

[256] Vie, pp. 581, 582.

She goes on to tell how it was as if the Deity were an enormous and sovereignly limpid diamond,in which all our actions were contained in such a way that their full sinfulness appeared evident asnever before. On another day, she relates, while she was reciting the Athanasian Creed-"Our Lord made me comprehend in what way it is that one God can be in three persons. Hemade me see it so clearly that I remained as extremely surprised as I was comforted, . . . and now,when I think of the holy Trinity, or hear It spoken of, I understand how the three adorable Personsform only one God and I experience an unspeakable happiness."On still another occasion, it was given to Saint Teresa to see and understand in what wise theMother of God had been assumed into her place in Heaven.[257]

[257] Loc. cit., p. 574The deliciousness of some of these states seems to be beyond anything known in ordinaryconsciousness. It evidently involves organic sensibilities, for it is spoken of as something tooextreme to be borne, and as verging on bodily pain.[258] But it is too subtle and piercing a delightfor ordinary words to denote. God's touches, the wounds of his spear, references to ebriety and tonuptial union have to figure in the phraseology by which it is shadowed forth. Intellect and sensesboth swoon away in these highest states of ecstasy. "If our understanding comprehends," saysSaint Teresa, "it is in a mode which remains unknown to it, and it can understand nothing of whatit comprehends. For my own part, I do not believe that it does comprehend, because, as I said, itdoes not understand itself to do so. I confess that it is all a mystery in which I am lost."[259] In thecondition called raptus or ravishment by theologians, breathing and circulation are so depressedthat it is a question among the doctors whether the soul be or be not temporarily dissevered fromthe body. One must read Saint Teresa's descriptions and the very exact distinctions which shemakes, to persuade one's self that one is dealing, not with imaginary experiences, but withphenomena which, however rare, follow perfectly definite psychological types.

[258] Saint Teresa discriminates between pain in which the body has a part and pure spiritualpain (Interior Castle, 6th Abode, ch. xi.). As for the bodily part in these celestial joys, she speaksof it as "penetrating to the marrow of the bones, whilst earthly pleasures affect only the surface ofthe senses. I think," she adds, "that this is a just description, and I cannot make it better." Ibid., 5thAbode, ch. i.

[259] Vie, p. 198.

To the medical mind these ecstasies signify nothing but suggested and imitated hypnoid states,on an intellectual basis of superstition, and a corporeal one of degeneration and hysteria.

Undoubtedly these pathological conditions have existed in many and possibly in all the cases, butthat fact tells us nothing about the value for knowledge of the consciousness which they induce. Topass a spiritual judgment upon these states, we must not content ourselves with superficial medicaltalk, but inquire into their fruits for life.

Their fruits appear to have been various. Stupefaction, for one thing, seems not to have beenaltogether absent as a result. You may remember the helplessness in the kitchen and schoolroom ofpoor Margaret Mary Alacoque. Many other ecstatics would have perished but for the care taken ofthem by admiring followers. The "other-worldliness" encouraged by the mystical consciousnessmakes this over-abstraction from practical life peculiarly liable to befall mystics in whom thecharacter is naturally passive and the intellect feeble; but in natively strong minds and characterswe find quite opposite results. The great Spanish mystics, who carried the habit of ecstasy as far asit has often been carried, appear for the most part to have shown indomitable spirit and energy, andall the more so for the trances in which they indulged.

Saint Ignatius was a mystic, but his mysticism made him assuredly one of the most powerfullypractical human engines that ever lived. Saint John of the Cross, writing of the intuitions and"touches" by which God reaches the substance of the soul, tells us that-"They enrich it marvelously. A single one of them may be sufficient to abolish at a stroke certainimperfections of which the soul during its whole life had vainly tried to rid itself, and to leave itadorned with virtues and loaded with supernatural gifts. A single one of these intoxicatingconsolations may reward it for all the labors undergone in its life--even were they numberless.

Invested with an invincible courage, filled with an impassioned desire to suffer for its God, thesoul then is seized with a strange torment--that of not being allowed to suffer enough."[260]

[260] Oeuvres, ii. 320.

Saint Teresa is as emphatic, and much more detailed. You may perhaps remember a passage Iquoted from her in my first lecture.[261] There are many similar pages in her autobiography.

Where in literature is a more evidently veracious account of the formation of a new centre ofspiritual energy, than is given in her description of the effects of certain ecstasies which indeparting leave the soul upon a higher level of emotional excitement?

[261] Above, p. 22.

"Often, infirm and wrought upon with dreadful pains before the ecstasy, the soul emerges from itfull of health and admirably disposed for action . . . as if God had willed that the body itself,already obedient to the soul's desires, should share in the soul's happiness. . . . The soul after such afavor is animated with a degree of courage so great that if at that moment its body should be tornto pieces for the cause of God, it would feel nothing but the liveliest comfort. Then it is thatpromises and heroic resolutions spring up in profusion in us, soaring desires, horror of the world,and the clear perception of our proper nothingness. . . . What empire is comparable to that of a soulwho, from this sublime summit to which God has raised her, sees all the things of earth beneathher feet, and is captivated by no one of them? How ashamed she is of her former attachments!

How amazed at her blindness! What lively pity she feels for those whom she recognizes stillshrouded in the darkness! . . . She groans at having ever been sensitive to points of honor, at theillusion that made her ever see as honor what the world calls by that name. Now she sees in thisname nothing more than an immense lie of which the world remains a victim. She discovers, in thenew light from above, that in genuine honor there is nothing spurious, that to be faithful to thishonor is to give our respect to what deserves to be respected really, and to consider as nothing, oras less than nothing, whatsoever perishes and is not agreeable to God. . . . She laughs when shesees grave persons, persons of orison, caring for points of honor for which she now feelsprofoundest contempt. It is suitable to the dignity of their rank to act thus, they pretend, and itmakes them more useful to others. But she knows that in despising the dignity of their rank for thepure love of God they would do more good in a single day than they would effect in ten years bypreserving it. . . . She laughs at herself that there should ever have been a time in her life when shemade any case of money, when she ever desired it. . . . Oh! if human beings might only agreetogether to regard it as so much useless mud, what harmony would then reign in the world! Withwhat friendship we would all treat each other if our interest in honor and in money could butdisappear from earth! For my own part, I feel as if it would be a remedy for all our ills."[262]

[262] Vie, pp. 229, 230, 231-233, 243.

Mystical conditions may, therefore, render the soul more energetic in the lines which theirinspiration favors. But this could be reckoned an advantage only in case the inspiration were a trueone. If the inspiration were erroneous, the energy would be all the more mistaken and misbegotten.

So we stand once more before that problem of truth which confronted us at the end of the lectureson saintliness. You will remember that we turned to mysticism precisely to get some light on truth.

Do mystical states establish the truth of those theological affections in which the saintly life has itsroot?

In spite of their repudiation of articulate self-description, mystical states in general assert a prettydistinct theoretic drift. It is possible to give the outcome of the majority of them in terms that pointin definite philosophical directions. One of these directions is optimism, and the other is monism.

We pass into mystical states from out of ordinary consciousness as from a less into a more, as froma smallness into a vastness, and at the same time as from an unrest to a rest. We feel them asreconciling, unifying states. They appeal to the yes-function more than to the no-function in us. Inthem the unlimited absorbs the limits and peacefully closes the account. Their very denial of everyadjective you may propose as applicable to the ultimate truth--He, the Self, the Atman, is to bedescribed by "No! no!" only, say the Upanishads[263]--though it seems on the surface to be a no-function, is a denial made on behalf of a deeper yes. Whoso calls the Absolute anything inparticular, or says that it is THIS, seems implicitly to shut it off from being THAT --it is as if helessened it. So we deny the "this," negating the negation which it seems to us to imply, in theinterests of the higher affirmative attitude by which we are possessed. The fountain-head ofChristian mysticism is Dionysius the Areopagite.

He describes the absolute truth by negatives exclusively.

[263] Muller's translation, part ii. p. 180.

"The cause of all things is neither soul nor intellect; nor has it imagination, opinion, or reason, orintelligence; nor is it reason or intelligence; nor is it spoken or thought. It is neither number, nororder, nor magnitude, nor littleness, nor equality, nor inequality, nor similarity, nor dissimilarity. Itneither stands, nor moves, nor rests. . . . It is neither essence, nor eternity, nor time. Evenintellectual contact does not belong to it. It is neither science nor truth. It is not even royalty orwisdom; not one; not unity; not divinity or goodness; nor even spirit as we know it," etc., adlibitum.[264]

[264] T. Davidson's translation, in Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 1893, vol. xxii., p. 399.

But these qualifications are denied by Dionysius, not because the truth falls short of them, butbecause it so infinitely excels them. It is above them. It is SUPER-lucent, SUPER-splendent,SUPER-essential, SUPER-sublime, SUPER EVERYTHING that can be named. Like Hegel in hislogic, mystics journey towards the positive pole of truth only by the "Methode der AbsolutenNegativitat."[265]

[265] "Deus propter excellentiam non immerito Nihil vocatur." Scotus Erigena, quoted byAndrew Seth: Two Lectures on Theism, New York, 1897, p. 55.

Thus come the paradoxical expressions that so abound in mystical writings. As when Eckharttells of the still desert of the Godhead, "where never was seen difference, neither Father, Son, norHoly Ghost, where there is no one at home, yet where the spark of the soul is more at peace than initself."[266] As when Boehme writes of the Primal Love, that "it may fitly be compared toNothing, for it is deeper than any Thing, and is as nothing with respect to all things, forasmuch asit is not comprehensible by any of them. And because it is nothing respectively, it is therefore freefrom all things, and is that only good, which a man cannot express or utter what it is, there beingnothing to which it may be compared, to express it by."[267] Or as when Angelus Silesius sings:-"Gott ist ein lauter Nichts, ihn ruhrt kein Nun noch Hier; Je mehr du nach ihm greiffst, je mehrentwind er dir."[268]

[266] J. Royce: Studies in Good and Evil, p. 282.

[267] Jacob Bellmen's Dialogues on the Supersensual Life, translated by Bernard Holland,London, 1901, p. 48.

[268] Cherubinischer Wandersmann, Strophe 25.

To this dialectical use, by the intellect, of negation as a mode of passage towards a higher kind ofaffirmation, there is correlated the subtlest of moral counterparts in the sphere of the personal will.

Since denial of the finite self and its wants, since asceticism of some sort, is found in religiousexperience to be the only doorway to the larger and more blessed life, this moral mysteryintertwines and combines with the intellectual mystery in all mystical writings.

"Love," continues Behmen, is Nothing, for "when thou art gone forth wholly from the Creatureand from that which is visible, and art become Nothing to all that is Nature and Creature, then thouart in that eternal One, which is God himself, and then thou shalt feel within thee the highest virtueof Love. . . . The treasure of treasures for the soul is where she goeth out of the Somewhat into thatNothing out of which all things may be made. The soul here saith, I HAVE NOTHING, for I amutterly stripped and naked; I CAN DO NOTHING, for I have no manner of power, but am as waterpoured out; I AM NOTHING, for all that I am is no more than an image of Being, and only God isto me I AM; and so, sitting down in my own Nothingness, I give glory to the eternal Being, andWILL NOTHING of myself, that so God may will all in me, being unto me my God and allthings."[269]

[269] Op. cit., pp. 42, 74, abridged.

In Paul's language, I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. Only when I become as nothing canGod enter in and no difference between his life and mine remain outstanding.[270]

[270] From a French book I take this mystical expression of happiness in God's indwellingpresence:-"Jesus has come to take up his abode in my heart. It is not so much a habitation, an association,as a sort of fusion. Oh, new and blessed life! life which becomes each day more luminous. . . . Thewall before me, dark a few moments since, is splendid at this hour because the sun shines on it.

Wherever its rays fall they light up a conflagration of glory; the smallest speck of glass sparkles,each grain of sand emits fire; even so there is a royal song of triumph in my heart <410> becausethe Lord is there. My days succeed each other; yesterday a blue sky; to day a clouded sun; a nightfilled with strange dreams; but as soon as the eyes open, and I regain consciousness and seem tobegin life again, it is always the same figure before me, always the same presence filling myheart. . . . Formerly the day was dulled by the absence of the Lord. I used to wake invaded by allsorts of sad impressions, and I did not find him on my path. To-day he is with me; and the lightcloudiness which covers things is not an obstacle to my communion with him. I feel the pressureof his hand, I feel something else which fills me with a serene joy; shall I dare to speak it out? Yes,for it is the true expression of what I experience. The Holy Spirit is not merely making me a visit;it is no mere dazzling apparition which may from one moment to another spread its wings andleave me in my night, it is a permanent habitation. He can depart only if he takes me with him.

More than that; he is not other than myself: he is one with me. It is not a juxtaposition, it is apenetration, a profound modification of my nature, a new manner of my being." Quoted from theMS. of an old man by Wilfred Monod: II Vit: six meditations sur le mystere chretien, pp. 280-283.

This overcoming of all the usual barriers between the individual and the Absolute is the greatmystic achievement. In mystic states we both become one with the Absolute and we become awareof our oneness. This is the everlasting and triumphant mystical tradition, hardly altered bydifferences of clime or creed. In Hinduism, in Neoplatonism, in Sufism, in Christian mysticism, inWhitmanism, we find the same recurring note, so that there is about mystical utterances an eternalunanimity which ought to make a critic stop and think, and which brings it about that the mysticalclassics have, as has been said, neither birthday nor native land. Perpetually telling of the unity ofman with God, their speech antedates languages, and they do not grow old.[271]

[271] Compare M. Maeterlinck: L'Ornement des Noces spirituelles de Ruysbroeck, Bruxelles,1891, Introduction, p. xix.

"That art Thou!" say the Upanishads, and the Vedantists add: "Not a part, not a mode of That,but identically That, that absolute Spirit of the World." "As pure water poured into pure waterremains the same, thus, O Gautama, is the Self of a thinker who knows. Water in water, fire in fire,ether in ether, no one can distinguish them: likewise a man whose mind has entered into theSelf."[272] "'Every man,' says the Sufi Gulshan-Raz, whose heart is no longer shaken by anydoubt, knows with certainty that there is no being save only One. . . . In his divine majesty the ME,and WE, the THOU, are not found, for in the One there can be no distinction. Every being who isannulled and entirely separated from himself, hears resound outside of him this voice and thisecho: I AM GOD: he has an eternal way of existing, and is no longer subject to death.'"[273] In thevision of God, says Plotinus, "what sees is not our reason, but something prior and superior to ourreason. . . . He who thus sees does not properly see, does not distinguish or imagine two things. Hechanges, he ceases to be himself, preserves nothing of himself. Absorbed in God, he makes but onewith him, like a centre of a circle coinciding with another centre."[274] "Here," writes Suso, "thespirit dies, and yet is all alive in the marvels of the Godhead . . . and is lost in the stillness of theglorious dazzling obscurity and of the naked simple unity. It is in this modeless WHERE that thehighest bliss is to be found."[275] "Ich bin so gross als Gott," sings Angelus Silesius again, "Er istals ich so klein; Er kann nicht uber mich, ich unter ihm nicht sein."[276]

[272] Upanishads, M. Muller's translation, ii. 17, 334.

[273] Schmolders: Op. cit., p. 210.

[274] Enneads, Bouillier's translation. Paris, 1861, iii. 561. Compare pp. 473-477, and vol. i. p.

27.

[275] Autobiography, pp. 309, 310.

[276] Op. cit., Strophe 10.

In mystical literature such self-contradictory phrases as "dazzling obscurity," "whisperingsilence," "teeming desert," are continually met with. They prove that not conceptual speech, butmusic rather, is the element through which we are best spoken to by mystical truth. Many mysticalscriptures are indeed little more than musical compositions.

"He who would hear the voice of Nada, 'the Soundless Sound,' and comprehend it, he has tolearn the nature of Dharana. . . . When to himself his form appears unreal, as do on waking all theforms he sees in dreams, when he has ceased to hear the many, he may discern the ONE--the innersound which kills the outer. . . . For then the soul will hear, and will remember. And then to theinner ear will speak THE VOICE OF THE SILENCE. . . . And now thy SELF is lost in SELF,THYSELF unto THYSELF, merged in that SELF from which thou first didst radiate. . . . Behold!

thou hast become the Light, thou hast become the Sound, thou art thy Master and thy God. Thouart THYSELF the object of thy search: the VOICE unbroken, that resounds throughout eternities,exempt from change, from sin exempt, the seven sounds in one, the VOICE OF THE SILENCE.

Om tat Sat."[277]

[277] H. P. Blavatsky: The voice of the Silence.

These words, if they do not awaken laughter as you receive them, probably stir chords withinyou which music and language touch in common. Music gives us ontological messages which nonmusicalcriticism is unable to contradict, though it may laugh at our foolishness in minding them.

There is a verge of the mind which these things haunt; and whispers therefrom mingle with theoperations of our understanding, even as the waters of the infinite ocean send their waves to breakamong the pebbles that lie upon our shores.

"Here begins the sea that ends not till the world's end. Where we stand, Could we know the nexthigh sea-mark set beyond these waves that gleam, We should know what never man hath known,nor eye of man hath scanned. . . . Ah, but here man's heart leaps, yearning towards the gloom withventurous glee, From the shore that hath no shore beyond it, set in all the sea."[278]

[278] Swinburne: On the Verge, in "A Midsummer vacation."That doctrine, for example, that eternity is timeless, that our "immortality," if we live in theeternal, is not so much future as already now and here, which we find so often expressed to-day incertain philosophic circles, finds its support in a "hear, hear!" or an "amen," which floats up fromthat mysteriously deeper level.[279] We recognize the passwords to the mystical region as we hearthem, but we cannot use them ourselves; it alone has the keeping of "the password primeval."[280]

[279] Compare the extracts from Dr. Bucke, quoted on pp. 398, 399.

[280] As serious an attempt as I know to mediate between the mystical region and the discursivelife is contained in an article on Aristotle's Unmoved Mover, by F. C. S. Schiller, in Mind, vol. ix.,1900.

I have now sketched with extreme brevity and insufficiency, but as fairly as I am able in the timeallowed, the general traits of the mystic range of consciousness. It is on the whole pantheistic andoptimistic, or at least the opposite of pessimistic. It is anti-naturalistic, and harmonizes best withtwice-bornness and so-called other-worldly states mind.

My next task is to inquire whether we can invoke it as authoritative. Does it furnish anyWARRANT FOR THE TRUTH of the twice-bornness and supernaturality and pantheism which itfavors?

I must give my answer to this question as concisely as I can. In brief my answer is this--and Iwill divide it into three parts:-(1) Mystical states, when well developed, usually are, and have the right to be, absolutelyauthoritative over the individuals to whom they come.

(2) No authority emanates from them which should make it a duty for those who stand outside ofthem to accept their revelations uncritically.

(3) They break down the authority of the non-mystical or rationalistic consciousness, based uponthe understanding and the senses alone. They show it to be only one kind of consciousness.

They open out the possibility of other orders of truth, in which, so far as anything in us vitallyresponds to them, we may freely continue to have faith.

I will take up these points one by one.

1. As a matter of psychological fact, mystical states of a well-pronounced and emphatic sortARE usually authoritative over those who have them.[281] They have been "there," and know. It isvain for rationalism to grumble about this. If the mystical truth that comes to a man proves to be aforce that he can live by, what mandate have we of the majority to order him to live in anotherway? We can throw him into a prison or a madhouse, but we cannot change his mind--wecommonly attach it only the more stubbornly to its beliefs.[282] It mocks our utmost efforts, as amatter of fact, and in point of logic it absolutely escapes our jurisdiction. Our own more "rational"beliefs are based on evidence exactly similar in nature to that which mystics quote for theirs. Oursenses, namely, have assured us of certain states of fact; but mystical experiences are as directperceptions of fact for those who have them as any sensations ever were for us. The records showthat even though the five senses be in abeyance in them, they are absolutely sensational in theirepistemological quality, if I may be pardoned the barbarous expression--that is, they are face toface presentations of what seems immediately to exist. [281] I abstract from weaker states, andfrom those cases of which the books are full, where the director (but usually not the subject)remains in doubt whether the experience may not have proceeded from the demon.

[282] Example: Mr. John Nelson writes of his imprisonment for preaching Methodism: "My soulwas as a watered garden, and I could sing praises to God all day long; for he turned my captivityinto joy, and gave me to rest as well on the boards, as if I had been on a bed of down. Now could Isay, 'God's service is perfect freedom,' and I was carried out much in prayer that my enemies mightdrink of the same river of peace which my God gave so largely to me." Journal, London, no date,p. 172.

The mystic is, in short, INVULNERABLE, and must be left, whether we relish it or not, inundisturbed enjoyment of his creed. Faith, says Tolstoy, is that by which men live. And faith-stateand mystic state are practically convertible terms.

2. But I now proceed to add that mystics have no right to claim that we ought to accept thedeliverance of their peculiar experiences, if we are ourselves outsiders and feel no private callthereto. The utmost they can ever ask of us in this life is to admit that they establish a presumption.

They form a consensus and have an unequivocal outcome; and it would be odd, mystics might say,if such a unanimous type of experience should prove to be altogether wrong. At bottom, however,this would only be an appeal to numbers, like the appeal of rationalism the other way; and theappeal to numbers has no logical force. If we acknowledge it, it is for "suggestive," not for logicalreasons: we follow the majority because to do so suits our life.

But even this presumption from the unanimity of mystics is far from being strong. Incharacterizing mystic states an pantheistic, optimistic, etc., I am afraid I over-simplified the truth. Idid so for expository reasons, and to keep the closer to the classic mystical tradition. The classicreligious mysticism, it now must be confessed, is only a "privileged case."It is an EXTRACT, kept true to type by the selection of the fittest specimens and theirpreservation in "schools." It is carved out from a much larger mass; and if we take the larger massseriously as religious mysticism has historically taken itself, we find that the supposedun(as) animity largely disappears. To begin with, even religious mysticism itself, the kind thataccumulates traditions and makes schools, is much less unanimous than I have allowed. It has beenboth ascetic and antinomianly self-indulgent within the Christian church.[283] It is dualistic inSankhya, and monistic in Vedanta philosophy. I called it pantheistic; but the great Spanish mysticsare anything but pantheists. They are with few exceptions non-metaphysical minds, for whom "thecategory of personality" is absolute. The "union" of man with God is for them much more like anoccasional miracle than like an original identity.[284] How different again, apart from thehappiness common to all, is the mysticism of Walt Whitman, Edward Carpenter, Richard Jefferies,and other naturalistic pantheists, from the more distinctively Christian sort.[285] The fact is thatthe mystical feeling of enlargement, union, and emancipation has no specific intellectual contentwhatever of its own. It is capable of forming matrimonial alliances with material furnished by themost diverse philosophies and theologies, provided only they can find a place in their frameworkfor its peculiar emotional mood. We have no right, therefore, to invoke its prestige as distinctivelyin favor of any special belief, such as that in absolute idealism, or in the absolute monistic identity,or in the absolute goodness, of the world. It is only relatively in favor of all these things--it passesout of common human consciousness in the direction in which they lie.

[283] Ruysbroeck, in the work which Maeterlinck has translated, has a chapter against theantinomianism of disciples. H. Delacroix's book (Essai sur le mysticisme speculatif en Allemagneau XIVme Siecle, Paris, 1900) is full of antinomian material. compare also A. Jundt: Les Amis deDieu au XIV Siecle, These de Strasbourg, 1879.

[284] Compare Paul Rousselot: Les Mystiques Espagnols, Paris, 1869, ch. xii.

[285] see Carpenter's Towards Democracy, especially the latter parts, and Jefferies's wonderfuland splendid mystic rhapsody, The Story of my Heart.

So much for religious mysticism proper. But more remains to be told, for religious mysticism isonly one half of mysticism. The other half has no accumulated traditions except those which thetext-books on insanity supply. Open any one of these, and you will find abundant cases in which"mystical ideas" are cited as characteristic symptoms of enfeebled or deluded states of mind. Indelusional insanity, paranoia, as they sometimes call it, we may have a DIABOLICAL mysticism,a sort of religious mysticism turned upside down. The same sense of ineffable importance in thesmallest events, the same texts and words coming with new meanings, the same voices and visionsand leadings and missions, the same controlling by extraneous powers; only this time the emotionis pessimistic: instead of consolations we have desolations; the meanings are dreadful; and thepowers are enemies to life. It is evident that from the point of view of their psychologicalmechanism, the classic mysticism and these lower mysticisms spring from the same mental level,from that great subliminal or transmarginal region of which science is beginning to admit theexistence, but of which so little is really known. That region contains every kind of matter: "seraphand snake" abide there side by side. To come from thence is no infallible credential. What comesmust be sifted and tested, and run the gauntlet of confrontation with the total context of experience,just like what comes from the outer world of sense. Its value must be ascertained by empiricalmethods, so long as we are not mystics ourselves.

Once more, then, I repeat that non-mystics are under no obligation to acknowledge in mysticalstates a superior authority conferred on them by their intrinsic nature.[286]

[286] In chapter i. of book ii. of his work Degeneration, "Max Nordau" seeks to undermine allmysticism by exposing the weakness of the lower kinds. Mysticism for him means any suddenperception of hidden significance in things. He explains such perception by the abundantuncompleted associations which experiences may arouse in a degenerate brain. These give to himwho has the experience a vague and vast sense of its leading further, yet they awaken no definite oruseful consequent in his thought. The explanation is a plausible one for certain sorts of feeling ofsignificance, and other alienists (Wernicke, for example, in his Grundriss der Psychiatrie, Theil ii.,Leipzig, 1896) have explained "paranoiac" conditions by a laming of the association-organ. Butthe higher mystical flights, with their positiveness and abruptness, are surely products of no suchmerely negative condition. It seems far more reasonable to ascribe them to inroads from thesubconscious life, of the cerebral activity correlative to which we as yet know nothing.

3. Yet, I repeat once more, the existence of mystical states absolutely overthrows the pretensionof non-mystical states to be the sole and ultimate dictators of what we may believe. As a rule,mystical states merely add a supersensuous meaning to the ordinary outward data ofconsciousness. They are excitements like the emotions of love or ambition, gifts to our spirit bymeans of which facts already objectively before us fall into a new expressiveness and make a newconnection with our active life. They do not contradict these facts as such, or deny anything thatour senses have immediately seized.[287] It is the rationalistic critic rather who plays the part ofdenier in the controversy, and his denials have no strength, for there never can be a state of facts towhich new meaning may not truthfully be added, provided the mind ascend to a more envelopingpoint of view. It must always remain an open question whether mystical states may not possibly besuch superior points of view, windows through which the mind looks out upon a more extensiveand inclusive world. The difference of the views seen from the different mystical windows neednot prevent us from entertaining this supposition. The wider world would in that case prove tohave a mixed constitution like that of this world, that is all. It would have its celestial and itsinfernal regions, its tempting and its saving moments, its valid experiences and its counterfeit ones,just as our world has them; but it would be a wider world all the same. We should have to use itsexperiences by selecting and subordinating and substituting just as is our custom in this ordinarynaturalistic world; we should be liable to error just as we are now; yet the counting in of that widerworld of meanings, and the serious dealing with it, might, in spite of all the perplexity, beindispensable stages in our approach to the final fullness of the truth.

[287] They sometimes add subjective audita et visa to the facts, but as these are usuallyinterpreted as transmundane, they oblige no alteration in the facts of sense.

In this shape, I think, we have to leave the subject. Mystical states indeed wield no authority duesimply to their being mystical states. But the higher ones among them point in directions to whichthe religious sentiments even of non- mystical men incline. They tell of the supremacy of the ideal,of vastness, of union, of safety, and of rest. They offer us HYPOTHESES, hypotheses which wemay voluntarily ignore, but which as thinkers we cannot possibly upset. The supernaturalism andoptimism to which they would persuade us may, interpreted in one way or another, be after all thetruest of insights into the meaning of this life.

"Oh, the little more, and how much it is; and the little less, and what worlds away!" It may bethat possibility and permission of this sort are all that are religious consciousness requires to liveon. In my last lecture I shall have to try to persuade you that this is the case. Meanwhile, however,I am sure that for many of my readers this diet is too slender. If supernaturalism and inner unionwith the divine are true, you think, then not so much permission, as compulsion to believe, oughtto be found. Philosophy has always professed to prove religious truth by coercive argument; andthe construction of philosophies of this kind has always been one favorite function of the religiouslife, if we use this term in the large historic sense. But religious philosophy is an enormous subject,and in my next lecture I can only give that brief glance at it which my limits will allow.
Lecture XVIII PHILOSOPHY
The subject of Saintliness left us face to face with the question, Is the sense of divine presence asense of anything objectively true? We turned first to mysticism for an answer, and found thatalthough mysticism is entirely willing to corroborate religion, it is too private (and also toovarious) in its utterances to be able to claim a universal authority. But philosophy publishes resultswhich claim to be universally valid if they are valid at all, so we now turn with our question tophilosophy. Can philosophy stamp a warrant of veracity upon the religious man's sense of thedivine?

I imagine that many of you at this point begin to indulge in guesses at the goal to which I amtending. I have undermined the authority of mysticism, you say, and the next thing I shall probablydo is to seek to discredit that of philosophy. Religion, you expect to hear me conclude, is nothingbut an affair of faith, based either on vague sentiment, or on that vivid sense of the reality of thingsunseen of which in my second lecture and in the lecture on Mysticism I gave so many examples. Itis essentially private and individualistic; it always exceeds our powers of formulation; andalthough attempts to pour its contents into a philosophic mould will probably always go on, menbeing what they are, yet these attempts are always secondary processes which in no way add to theauthority, or warrant the veracity, of the sentiments from which they derive their own stimulus andborrow whatever glow of conviction they may themselves possess.

In short, you suspect that I am planning to defend feeling at the expense of reason, to rehabilitatethe primitive and unreflective, and to dissuade you from the hope of any Theology worthy of thename.

To a certain extent I have to admit that you guess rightly. I do believe that feeling is the deepersource of religion, and that philosophic and theological formulas are secondary products, liketranslations of a text into another tongue. But all such statements are misleading from their brevity,and it will take the whole hour for me to explain to you exactly what I mean.

When I call theological formulas secondary products, I mean that in a world in which noreligious feeling had ever existed, I doubt whether any philosophic theology could ever have beenframed. I doubt if dispassionate intellectual contemplation of the universe, apart from innerunhappiness and need of deliverance on the one hand and mystical emotion on the other, wouldever have resulted in religious philosophies such as we now possess. Men would have begun withanimistic explanations of natural fact, and criticised these away into scientific ones, as theyactually have done. In the science they would have left a certain amount of "psychical research,"even as they now will probably have to re-admit a certain amount. But high-flying speculationslike those of either dogmatic or idealistic theology, these they would have had no motive toventure on, feeling no need of commerce with such deities. These speculations must, it seems tome, be classed as over-beliefs, buildings-out performed by the intellect into directions of whichfeeling originally supplied the hint.

But even if religious philosophy had to have its first hint supplied by feeling, may it not havedealt in a superior way with the matter which feeling suggested? Feeling is private and dumb, andunable to give an account of itself. It allows that its results are mysteries and enigmas, declines tojustify them rationally, and on occasion is willing that they should even pass for paradoxical andabsurd. Philosophy takes just the opposite attitude. Her aspiration is to reclaim from mystery andparadox whatever territory she touches. To find an escape from obscure and wayward personalpersuasion to truth objectively valid for all thinking men has ever been the intellect's mostcherished ideal. To redeem religion from unwholesome privacy, and to give public status anduniversal right of way to its deliverances, has been reason's task.

I believe that philosophy will always have opportunity to labor at this task.[288] We are thinkingbeings, and we cannot exclude the intellect from participating in any of our functions. Even insoliloquizing with ourselves, we construe our feelings intellectually. Both our personal ideals andour religious and mystical experiences must be interpreted congruously with the kind of scenerywhich our thinking mind inhabits. The philosophic climate of our time inevitably forces its ownclothing on us. Moreover, we must exchange our feelings with one another, and in doing so wehave to speak, and to use general and abstract verbal formulas. Conceptions and constructions arethus a necessary part of our religion; and as moderator amid the clash of hypotheses, and mediatoramong the criticisms of one man's constructions by another, philosophy will always have much todo.

It would be strange if I disputed this, when these very lectures which I am giving are (as you willsee more clearly from now onwards) a laborious attempt to extract from the privacies of religiousexperience some general facts which can be defined in formulas upon which everybody may agree.

[288] Compare Professor W. Wallace's Gifford Lectures, in Lectures and Essays, Oxford, 1898,pp. 17 ff.

Religious experience, in other words, spontaneously and inevitably engenders myths,superstitions, dogmas, creeds, and metaphysical theologies, and criticisms of one set of these bythe adherents of another. Of late, impartial classifications and comparisons have become possible,alongside of the denunciations and anathemas by which the commerce between creeds usedexclusively to be carried on. We have the beginnings of a "Science of Religions," so-called; and ifthese lectures could ever be accounted a crumb-like contribution to such a science, I should bemade very happy.

But all these intellectual operations, whether they be constructive or comparative and critical,presuppose immediate experiences as their subject-matter. They are interpretative and inductiveoperations, operations after the fact, consequent upon religious feeling, not coordinate with it, notindependent of what it ascertains.

The intellectualism in religion which I wish to discredit pretends to be something altogetherdifferent from this. It assumes to construct religious objects out of the resources of logical reasonalone, or of logical reason drawing rigorous inference from non-subjective facts. It calls itsconclusions dogmatic theology, or philosophy of the absolute, as the case may be; it does not callthem science of religions. It reaches them in an a priori way, and warrants their veracity.

Warranted systems have ever been the idols of aspiring souls. All-inclusive, yet simple; noble,clean, luminous, stable, rigorous, true;--what more ideal refuge could there be than such a systemwould offer to spirits vexed by the muddiness and accidentality of the world of sensible things?

Accordingly, we find inculcated in the theological schools of to-day, almost as much as in those ofthe fore-time, a disdain for merely possible or probable truth, and of results that only privateassurance can grasp. Scholastics and idealists both express this disdain. Principal John Caird, forexample, writes as follows in his Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion:-"Religion must indeed be a thing of the heart, but in order to elevate it from the region ofsubjective caprice and waywardness, and to distinguish between that which is true and false inreligion, we must appeal to an objective standard. That which enters the heart must first bediscerned by the intelligence to be TRUE. It must be seen as having in its own nature a RIGHT todominate feeling, and as constituting the principle by which feeling must be judged.[289] Inestimating the religious character of individuals, nations, or races, the first question is, not howthey feel, but what they think and believe--not whether their religion is one which manifests itselfin emotions, more or less vehement and enthusiastic, but what are the CONCEPTIONS of God anddivine things by which these emotions are called forth. Feeling is necessary in religion, but it is bythe CONTENT or intelligent basis of a religion, and not by feeling, that its character and worth areto be determined."[290]

[289] Op. cit., p. 174, abridged.

[290] Ibid., p. 186, abridged and italicized.

Cardinal Newman, in his work, The Idea of a University, gives more emphatic expression still tothis disdain for sentiment.[291] Theology, he says, is a science in the strictest sense of the word. Iwill tell you, he says, what it is not--not "physical evidences" for God, not "natural religion," forthese are but vague subjective interpretations:-[291] Discourse II. Section 7.

"If," he continues, "the Supreme Being is powerful or skillful, just so far as the telescope showspower, or the microscope shows skill, if his moral law is to be ascertained simply by the physicalprocesses of the animal frame, or his will gathered from the immediate issues of human affairs, ifhis Essence is just as high and deep and broad as the universe and no more if this be the fact, thenwill I confess that there is no specific science about God, that theology is but a name, and a protestin its behalf an hypocrisy. Then, pious as it is to think of Him while the pageant of experiment orabstract reasoning passes by, still such piety is nothing more than a poetry of thought, or anornament of language, a certain view taken of Nature which one man has and another has not,which gifted minds strike out, which others see to be admirable and ingenious, and which allwould be the better for adopting. It is but the theology of Nature, just we talk of the PHILOSOPHYortheROMANCEofhistory,orthePOETRYofchildhood,orth(as) e picturesque orthe sentimental or the humorous, or any other abstract quality which the genius or the caprice ofthe individual, or the fashion of the day, or the consent of the world, recognizes in any set ofobjects which are subjected to its contemplation. I do not see much difference between avowingthat there is no God, and implying that nothing definite can be known for certain about Him."What I mean by Theology, continues Newman, is none of these things: "I simply mean theSCIENCE OF GOD, or the truths we know about God, put into a system, just as we have a scienceof the stars and call it astronomy, or of the crust of the earth and call it geology."In both these extracts we have the issue clearly set before us: Feeling valid only for theindividual is pitted against reason valid universally. The test is a perfectly plain one of fact.

Theology based on pure reason must in point of fact convince men universally. If it did not,wherein would its superiority consist? If it only formed sects and schools, even as sentiment andmysticism form them, how would it fulfill its programme of freeing us from personal caprice andwaywardness? This perfectly definite practical test of the pretensions of philosophy to foundreligion on universal reason simplifies my procedure to-day. I need not discredit philosophy bylaborious criticism of its arguments. It will suffice if I show that as a matter of history it fails toprove its pretension to be "objectively" convincing. In fact, philosophy does so fail. It does notbanish differences; it founds schools and sects just as feeling does. I believe, in fact, that thelogical reason of man operates in this field of divinity exactly as it has always operated in love, orin patriotism, or in politics, or in any other of the wider affairs of life, in which our passions or ourmystical intuitions fix our beliefs beforehand. It finds arguments for our conviction, for indeed itHAS to find them. It amplifies and defines our faith, and dignifies it and lends it words andplausibility. It hardly ever engenders it; it cannot now secure it.[292]

[292] As regards the secondary character of intellectual constructions, and the primacy of feelingand instinct in founding religious beliefs see the striking work of H. Fielding, The Hearts of Men,London, 1902, which came into my hands after my text was written. "Creeds," says the author,"are the grammar of religion, they are to religion what grammar is to speech. Words are theexpression of our wants grammar is the theory formed afterwards. Speech never proceeded fromgrammar, but the reverse. As speech progresses and changes from unknown causes, grammar mustfollow" (p. 313). The whole book, which keeps unusually close to concrete facts, is little more thanan amplification of this text.

Lend me your attention while I run through some of the points of the older systematic theology.

You find them in both Protestant and Catholic manuals, best of all in the innumerable text-bookspublished since Pope Leo's Encyclical recommending the study of Saint Thomas. I glance first atthe arguments by which dogmatic theology establishes God's existence, after that at those bywhich it establishes his nature.[293]

[293] For convenience' sake, I follow the order of A. Stockl's Lehrbuch der Philosophie, 5teAutlage, Mainz, 1881, Band ii. B. Boedder's Natural Theology, London, 1891, is a handy EnglishCatholic Manual; but an almost identical doctrine is given by such Protestant theologians as C.

Hodge: Systematic Theology, New York, 1873, or A. H. Strong: Systematic Theology, 5th edition,New York, 1896.

The arguments for God's existence have stood for hundreds of years with the waves ofunbelieving criticism breaking against them, never totally discrediting them in the ears of thefaithful, but on the whole slowly and surely washing out the mortar from between their joints. Ifyou have a God already whom you believe in, these arguments confirm you. If you are atheistic,they fail to set you right. The proofs are various. The "cosmological" one, so-called, reasons fromthe contingence of the world to a First Cause which must contain whatever perfections the worlditself contains. The "argument from design" reasons, from the fact that Nature's laws aremathematical, and her parts benevolently adapted to each other, that this cause is both intellectualand benevolent. The "moral argument" is that the moral law presupposes a lawgiver. The"argument ex consensu gentium" is that the belief in God is so widespread as to be grounded in therational nature of man, and should therefore carry authority with it.

As I just said, I will not discuss these arguments technically. The bare fact that all idealists sinceKant have felt entitled either to scout or to neglect them shows that they are not solid enough toserve as religion's all-sufficient foundation. Absolutely impersonal reasons would be in duty boundto show more general convincingness. Causation is indeed too obscure a principle to bear theweight of the whole structure of theology. As for the argument from design, see how Darwinianideas have revolutionized it. Conceived as we now conceive them, as so many fortunate escapesfrom almost limitless processes of destruction, the benevolent adaptations which we find in Naturesuggest a deity very different from the one who figured in the earlier versions of the argument.

[294] The fact is that these arguments do but follow the combined suggestions of the facts and ofour feeling. They prove nothing rigorously. They only corroborate our preexistent partialities.

[294] It must not be forgotten that any form of DISorder in the world might, by the designargument, suggest a God for just that kind of disorder. The truth is that any state of thingswhatever that can be named is logically susceptible of teleological interpretation. The ruins of theearthquake at Lisbon, for example: the whole of past history had to be planned exactly as it was tobring about in the fullness of time just that particular arrangement of debris of masonry, furniture,and once living bodies. No other train of causes would have been sufficient. And so of any otherarrangement, bad or good, which might as a matter of fact be found resulting anywhere fromprevious conditions. To avoid such pessimistic consequences and save its beneficent designer, thedesign argument accordingly invokes two other principles, restrictive in their operation. The first isphysical: Nature's forces tend of their own accord only to disorder and destruction, to heaps ofruins, not to architecture.

This principle, though plausible at first sight, seems, in the light of recent biology, to be moreand more improbable. The second principle is one of anthropomorphic interpretation. Noarrangement that for us is "disorderly" can possibly have been an object of design at all. Thisprinciple is of course a mere assumption in the interests of anthropomorphic Theism.

When one views the world with no definite theological bias one way or the other, one sees thatorder and disorder, as we now recognize them, are purely human inventions. We are interested incertain types of arrangement, useful, aesthetic, or moral--so interested that whenever we find themrealized, the fact emphatically rivets our attention. The result is that we work over the contents ofthe world selectively. It is overflowing with disorderly arrangements from our point of view, butorder is the only thing we care for and look at, and by choosing, one can always find some sort oforderly arrangement in the midst of any chaos. If I should throw down a thousand beans at randomupon a table, I could doubtless, by eliminating a sufficient number of them, leave the rest in almostany geometrical pattern you might propose to me, and you might then say that that pattern was thething prefigured beforehand, and that the other beans were mere irrelevance and packing material.

Our dealings with Nature are just like this. She is a vast plenum in which our attention drawscapricious lines in innumerable directions. We count and name whatever lies upon the special lineswe trace, whilst the other things and the untraced lines are neither named nor counted. There are inreality infinitely more things "unadapted" to each other in this world than there are things"adapted"; infinitely more things with irregular relations than with regular relations between them.

But we look for the regular kind of thing exclusively, and ingeniously discover and preserve it inour memory. It accumulates with other regular kinds, until the collection of them fills ourencyclopaedias. Yet all the while between and around them lies an infinite anonymous chaos ofobjects that no one ever thought of together, of relations that never yet attracted our attention.

The facts of order from which the physico-theological argument starts are thus easily susceptibleof interpretation as arbitrary human products. So long as this is the case, although of course noargument against God follows, it follows that the argument for him will fail to constitute aknockdown proof of his existence. It will be convincing only to those who on other groundsbelieve in him already.

If philosophy can do so little to establish God's existence, how stands it with her efforts to definehis attributes? It is worth while to look at the attempts of systematic theology in this direction.

Since God is First Cause, this science of sciences says, he differs from all his creatures inpossessing existence a se. From this "a-se-ity" on God's part, theology deduces by mere logic mostof his other perfections. For instance, he must be both NECESSARY and ABSOLUTE, cannot notbe, and cannot in any way be determined by anything else. This makes Him absolutely unlimitedfrom without, and unlimited also from within; for limitation is non-being; and God is being itself.

This unlimitedness makes God infinitely perfect. Moreover, God is ONE, and ONLY, for theinfinitely perfect can admit no peer. He is SPIRITUAL, for were He composed of physical parts,some other power would have to combine them into the total, and his aseity would thus becontradicted. He is therefore both simple and non-physical in nature. He is SIMPLEMETAPHYSICALLY also, that is to say, his nature and his existence cannot be distinct, as theyare in finite substances which share their formal natures with one another, and are individual onlyin their material aspect. Since God is one and only, his essentia and his esse must be given at onestroke. This excludes from his being all those distinctions, so familiar in the world of finite things,between potentiality and actuality, substance and accidents, being and activity, existence andattributes. We can talk, it is true, of God's powers, acts, and attributes, but these discriminations areonly "virtual," and made from the human point of view. In God all these points of view fall into anabsolute identity of being.

This absence of all potentiality in God obliges Him to be IMMUTABLE. He is actuality, throughand through. Were there anything potential about Him, He would either lose or gain by itsactualization, and either loss or gain would contradict his perfection. He cannot, therefore, change.

Furthermore, He is IMMENSE, BOUNDLESS; for could He be outlined in space, He would becomposite, and this would contradict his indivisibility. He is therefore OMNIPRESENT,indivisibly there, at every point of space. He is similarly wholly present at every point of time--inother words ETERNAL. For if He began in time, He would need a prior cause, and that wouldcontradict his aseity. If He ended it would contradict his necessity. If He went through anysuccession, it would contradict his immutability.

He has INTELLIGENCE and WILL and every other creature-perfection, for we have them, andeffectus nequit superare causam. In Him, however, they are absolutely and eternally in act, andtheir OBJECT, since God can be bounded by naught that is external, can primarily be nothing elsethan God himself. He knows himself, then, in one eternal indivisible act, and wills himself with aninfinite self-pleasure.[295] Since He must of logical necessity thus love and will himself, Hecannot be called "free" ad intra, with the freedom of contrarieties that characterizes finite creatures.

Ad extra, however, or with respect to his creation, God is free. He cannot NEED to create, beingperfect in being and in happiness already. He WILLS to create, then, by an absolute freedom.

[295] For the scholastics the facultas appetendi embraces feeling, desire, and will.

Being thus a substance endowed with intellect and will and freedom, God is a PERSON; and aLIVING person also, for He is both object and subject of his own activity, and to be thisdistinguishes the living from the lifeless. He is thus absolutely SELF-SUFFICIENT: his SELFKNOWLEDGEand SELF-LOVE are both of them infinite and adequate, and need no extraneousconditions to perfect them.

He is OMNISCIENT, for in knowing himself as Cause He knows all creature things and eventsby implication. His knowledge is previsive, for He is present to all time. Even our free acts areknown beforehand to Him, for otherwise his wisdom would admit of successive moments ofenrichment, and this would contradict his immutability. He is OMNIPOTENT for everything thatdoes not involve logical contradiction. He can make BEING --in other words his power includesCREATION. If what He creates were made of his own substance, it would have to be infinite inessence, as that substance is; but it is finite; so it must be non-divine in substance. If it were madeof a substance, an eternally existing matter, for example, which God found there to his hand, and towhich He simply gave its form, that would contradict God's definition as First Cause, and makeHim a mere mover of something caused already. The things he creates, then, He creates ex nihilo,and gives them absolute being as so many finite substances additional to himself. The forms whichhe imprints upon them have their prototypes in his ideas. But as in God there is no such thing asmultiplicity, and as these ideas for us are manifold, we must distinguish the ideas as they are inGod and the way in which our minds externally imitate them. We must attribute them to Him onlyin a TERMINATIVE sense, as differing aspects, from the finite point of view, of his uniqueessence.

God of course is holy, good, and just. He can do no evil, for He is positive being's fullness, andevil is negation. It is true that He has created physical evil in places, but only as a means of widergood, for bonum totius praeeminet bonum partis. Moral evil He cannot will, either as end ormeans, for that would contradict his holiness. By creating free beings He PERMITS it only, neitherhis justice nor his goodness obliging Him to prevent the recipients of freedom from misusing thegift.

As regards God's purpose in creating, primarily it can only have been to exercise his absolutefreedom by the manifestation to others of his glory. From this it follows that the others must berational beings, capable in the first place of knowledge, love, and honor, and in the second place ofhappiness, for the knowledge and love of God is the mainspring of felicity. In so far forth one maysay that God's secondary purpose in creating is LOVE.

I will not weary you by pursuing these metaphysical determinations farther, into the mysteries ofGod's Trinity, for example. What I have given will serve as a specimen of the orthodoxphilosophical theology of both Catholics and Protestants. Newman, filled with enthusiasm at God'slist of perfections, continues the passage which I began to quote to you by a couple of pages of arhetoric so magnificent that I can hardly refrain from adding them, in spite of the inroad theywould make upon our time.[296] He first enumerates God's attributes sonorously, then celebrateshis ownership of everything in earth and Heaven, and the dependence of all that happens upon hispermissive will. He gives us scholastic philosophy "touched with emotion," and every philosophyshould be touched with emotion to be rightly understood. Emotionally, then, dogmatic theology isworth something to minds of the type of Newman's. It will aid us to estimate what it is worthintellectually, if at this point I make a short digression.

[296] Op. cit., Discourse III. Section 7.

What God hath joined together, let no man put asunder. The Continental schools of philosophyhave too often overlooked the fact that man's thinking is organically connected with his conduct. Itseems to me to be the chief glory of English and Scottish thinkers to have kept the organicconnection in view. The guiding principle of British philosophy has in fact been that everydifference must MAKE a difference, every theoretical difference somewhere issue in a practicaldifference, and that the best method of discussing points of theory is to begin by ascertaining whatpractical difference would result from one alternative or the other being true. What is the particulartruth in question KNOWN AS? In what facts does it result? What is its cash-value in terms ofparticular experience? This is the characteristic English way of taking up a question. In this way,you remember, Locke takes up the question of personal identity. What you mean by it is just yourchain of particular memories, says he. That is the only concretely verifiable part of its significance.

All further ideas about it, such as the oneness or manyness of the spiritual substance on which it isbased, are therefore void of intelligible meaning; and propositions touching such ideas may beindifferently affirmed or denied. So Berkeley with his "matter."The cash-value of matter is our physical sensations. That is what it is known as, all that weconcretely verify of its conception. That, therefore, is the whole meaning of the term "matter"--anyother pretended meaning is mere wind of words. Hume does the same thing with causation. It isknown as habitual antecedence, and as tendency on our part to look for something definite tocome. Apart from this practical meaning it has no significance whatever, and books about it maybe committed to the flames, says Hume. Dugald Stewart and Thomas Brown, James Mill, JohnMill, and Professor Bain, have followed more or less consistently the same method; andShadworth Hodgson has used the principle with full explicitness. When all is said and done, it wasEnglish and Scotch writers, and not Kant, who introduced "the critical method" into philosophy,the one method fitted to make philosophy a study worthy of serious men. For what seriousness canpossibly remain in debating philosophic propositions that will never make an appreciabledifference to us in action? And what could it matter, if all propositions were practically indifferent,which of them we should agree to call true or which false?

An American philosopher of eminent originality, Mr. Charles Sanders Peirce, has renderedthought a service by disentangling from the particulars of its application the principle by whichthese men were instinctively guided, and by singling it out as fundamental and giving to it a Greekname. He calls it the principle of PRAGMATISM, and he defends it somewhat as follows:[297]-[297] In an article, How to make our Ideas Clear, in the Popular Science Monthly for January,1878, vol. xii. p. 286.

Thought in movement has for its only conceivable motive the attainment of belief, or thought atrest. Only when our thought about a subject has found its rest in belief can our action on thesubject firmly and safely begin. Beliefs, in short, are rules for action; and the whole function ofthinking is but one step in the production of active habits. If there were any part of a thought thatmade no difference in the thought's practical consequences, then that part would be no properelement of the thought's significance. To develop a thought's meaning we need therefore onlydetermine what conduct it is fitted to produce; that conduct is for us its sole significance; and thetangible fact at the root of all our thought-distinctions is that there is no one of them so fine as toconsist in anything but a possible difference of practice. To attain perfect clearness in our thoughtsof an object, we need then only consider what sensations, immediate or remote, we areconceivably to expect from it, and what conduct we must prepare in case the object should be true.

Our conception of these practical consequences is for us the whole of our conception of the object,so far as that conception has positive significance at all.

This is the principle of Peirce, the principle of pragmatism. Such a principle will help us on thisoccasion to decide, among the various attributes set down in the scholastic inventory of God'sperfections, whether some be not far less significant than others.

If, namely, we apply the principle of pragmatism to God's metaphysical attributes, strictly socalled, as distinguished from his moral attributes, I think that, even were we forced by a coercivelogic to believe them, we still should have to confess them to be destitute of all intelligiblesignificance. Take God's aseity, for example; or his necessariness; his immateriality; his"simplicity" or superiority to the kind of inner variety and succession which we find in finitebeings, his indivisibility, and lack of the inner distinctions of being and activity, substance andaccident, potentiality and actuality, and the rest; his repudiation of inclusion in a genus; hisactualized infinity; his "personality," apart from the moral qualities which it may comport; hisrelations to evil being permissive and not positive; his self-sufficiency, self-love, and absolutefelicity in himself:--candidly speaking, how do such qualities as these make any definiteconnection with our life? And if they severally call for no distinctive adaptations of our conduct,what vital difference can it possibly make to a man's religion whether they be true or false?

For my own part, although I dislike to say aught that may grate upon tender associations, I mustfrankly confess that even though these attributes were faultlessly deduced, I cannot conceive of itsbeing of the smallest consequence to us religiously that any one of them should be true. Pray, whatspecific act can I perform in order to adapt myself the better to God's simplicity? Or how does itassist me to plan my behavior, to know that his happiness is anyhow absolutely complete? In themiddle of the century just past, Mayne Reid was the great writer of books of out-of-dooradventure. He was forever extolling the hunters and field-observers of living animals' habits, andkeeping up a fire of invective against the "closet-naturalists," as he called them, the collectors andclassifiers, and handlers of skeletons and skins. When I was a boy, I used to think that a closet-naturalist must be the vilest type of wretch under the sun. But surely the systematic theologians arethe closet-naturalists of the deity, even in Captain Mayne Reid's sense. What is their deduction ofmetaphysical attributes but a shuffling and matching of pedantic dictionary-adjectives, aloof frommorals, aloof from human needs, something that might be worked out from the mere word "God"by one of those logical machines of wood and brass which recent ingenuity has contrived as wellas by a man of flesh and blood. They have the trail of the serpent over them. One feels that in thetheologians' hands, they only set of titles obtained by a mechanical manipulation ofsynonyms;verbalityhasstepp(are) edinto(a) the place of vision, professionalism into that of life. Insteadof bread we have a stone; instead of a fish, a serpent. Did such a conglomeration of abstract termsgive really the gist of our knowledge of the deity, schools of theology might indeed continue toflourish, but religion, vital religion, would have taken its flight from this world. What keepsreligion going is something else than abstract definitions and systems of concatenated adjectives,and something different from faculties of theology and their professors. All these things are aftereffects,secondary accretions upon those phenomena of vital conversation with the unseen divine,of which I have shown you so many instances, renewing themselves in saecula saeculorum in thelives of humble private men.

So much for the metaphysical attributes of God! From the point of view of practical religion, themetaphysical monster which they offer to our worship is an absolutely worthless invention of thescholarly mind.

What shall we now say of the attributes called moral? Pragmatically, they stand on an entirelydifferent footing. They positively determine fear and hope and expectation, and are foundations forthe saintly life. It needs but a glance at them to show how great is their significance.

God's holiness, for example: being holy, God can will nothing but the good. Being omnipotent,he can secure its triumph. Being omniscient, he can see us in the dark. Being just, he can punish usfor what he sees. Being loving, he can pardon too. Being unalterable, we can count on himsecurely. These qualities enter into connection with our life, it is highly important that we shouldbe informed concerning them. That God's purpose in creation should be the manifestation of hisglory is also an attribute which has definite relations to our practical life. Among other things it hasgiven a definite character to worship in all Christian countries. If dogmatic theology really doesprove beyond dispute that a God with characters like these exists, she may well claim to give asolid basis to religious sentiment. But verily, how stands it with her arguments?

It stands with them as ill as with the arguments for his existence. Not only do post-Kantianidealists reject them root and branch, but it is a plain historic fact that they never have convertedany one who has found in the moral complexion of the world, as he experienced it, reasons fordoubting that a good God can have framed it. To prove God's goodness by the scholastic argumentthat there is no non-being in his essence would sound to such a witness simply silly.

No! the book of Job went over this whole matter once for all and definitively. Ratiocination is arelatively superficial and unreal path to the deity: "I will lay mine hand upon my mouth; I haveheard of Thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth Thee." An intellect perplexed andbaffled, yet a trustful sense of presence--such is the situation of the man who is sincere withhimself and with the facts, but who remains religious still.[298]

[298] Pragmatically, the most important attribute of God is his punitive justice. But who, in thepresent state of theological opinion on that point, will dare maintain that hell fire or its equivalentin some shape is rendered certain by pure logic? Theology herself has largely based this doctrineupon revelation, and, in discussing it, has tended more and more to substitute conventional ideas ofcriminal law for a priori principles of reason. But the very notion that this glorious universe, withplanets and winds, and laughing sky and ocean, should have been conceived and had its beams andrafters laid in technicalities of criminality, is incredible to our modern imagination. It weakens areligion to hear it argued upon such a basis.

We must therefore, I think, bid a definitive good-by to dogmatic theology. In all sincerity ourfaith must do without that warrant. Modern idealism, I repeat, has said goodby to this theologyforever. Can modern idealism give faith a better warrant, or must she still rely on her poor self forwitness?

The basis of modern idealism is Kant's doctrine of the Transcendental Ego of Apperception. Bythis formidable term Kant merely meant the fact that the consciousness "I think them" must(potentially or actually) accompany all our objects. Former skeptics had said as much, but the "I"in question had remained for them identified with the personal individual. Kant abstracted anddepersonalized it, and made it the most universal of all his categories, although for Kant himselfthe Transcendental Ego had no theological implications.

It was reserved for his successors to convert Kant's notion of Bewusstsein uberhaupt, or abstractconsciousness, into an infinite concrete self-consciousness which is the soul of the world, and inwhich our sundry personal self-consciousnesses have their being. It would lead me intotechnicalities to show you even briefly how this transformation was in point of fact effected.

Suffice it to say that in the Hegelian school, which to-day so deeply influences both British andAmerican thinking, two principles have borne the brunt of the operation.

The first of these principles is that the old logic of identity never gives us more than a postmortemdissection of disjecta membra, and that the fullness of life can be construed to thoughtonly by recognizing that every object which our thought may propose to itself involves the notionof some other object which seems at first to negate the first one.

The second principle is that to be conscious of a negation is already virtually to be beyond it. Themere asking of a question or expression of a dissatisfaction proves that the answer or thesatisfaction is already imminent; the finite, realized as such, is already the infinite in posse.

Applying these principles, we seem to get a propulsive force into our logic which the ordinarylogic of a bare, stark self-identity in each thing never attains to. The objects of our thought nowACT within our thought, act as objects act when given in experience. They change and develop.

They introduce something other than themselves along with them; and this other, at first only idealor potential, presently proves itself also to be actual. It supersedes the thing at first supposed, andboth verifies and corrects it, in developing the fullness of its meaning.

The program is excellent; the universe IS a place where things are followed by other things thatboth correct and fulfill them; and a logic which gave us something like this movement of factwould express truth far better than the traditional school-logic, which never gets of its own accordfrom anything to anything else, and registers only predictions and subsumptions, or staticresemblances and differences. Nothing could be more unlike the methods of dogmatic theologythan those of this new logic. Let me quote in illustration some passages from the Scottishtranscendentalist whom I have already named.

"How are we to conceive," Principal Caird writes, "of the reality in which all intelligence rests?"He replies: "Two things may without difficulty be proved, viz., that this reality is an absoluteSpirit, and conversely that it is only in communion with this absolute Spirit or Intelligence that thefinite Spirit can realize itself. It is absolute; for the faintest movement of human intelligence wouldbe arrested, if it did not presuppose the absolute reality of intelligence, of thought itself. Doubt ordenial themselves presuppose and indirectly affirm it. When I pronounce anything to be true, Ipronounce it, indeed, to be relative to thought, but not to be relative to my thought, or to thethought of any other individual mind. From the existence of all individual minds as such I canabstract; I can think them away. But that which I cannot think away is thought or self-consciousness itself, in its independence and absoluteness, or, in other words, an Absolute Thoughtor Self-Consciousness."Here, you see, Principal Caird makes the transition which Kant did not make: he converts theomnipresence of consciousness in general as a condition of "truth" being anywhere possible, intoan omnipresent universal consciousness, which he identifies with God in his concreteness. He nextproceeds to use the principle that to acknowledge your limits is in essence to be beyond them; andmakes the transition to the religious experience of individuals in the following words:-"If [Man] were only a creature of transient sensations and impulses, of an ever coming and goingsuccession of intuitions, fancies, feelings, then nothing could ever have for him the character ofobjective truth or reality. But it is the prerogative of man's spiritual nature that he can yield himselfup to a thought and will that are infinitely larger than his own. As a thinking self-conscious being,indeed, he may be said, by his very nature, to live in the atmosphere of the Universal Life.

As a thinking being, it is possible for me to suppress and quell in my consciousness everymovement of self-assertion, every notion and opinion that is merely mine, every desire thatbelongs to me as this particular Self, and to become the pure medium of a thought that isuniversal--in one word, to live no more my own life, but let my consciousness be possessed andsuffused by the Infinite and Eternal life of spirit. And yet it is just in this renunciation of self that Itruly gain myself, or realize the highest possibilities of my own nature. For whilst in one sense wegive up self to live the universal and absolute life of reason, yet that to which we thus surrenderourselves is in reality our truer self. The life of absolute reason is not a life that is foreign to us."Nevertheless, Principal Caird goes on to say, so far as we are able outwardly to realize thisdoctrine, the balm it offers remains incomplete. Whatever we may be in posse, the very best of usin actu falls very short of being absolutely divine. Social morality, love, and self-sacrifice even,merge our Self only in some other finite self or selves. They do not quite identify it with theInfinite. Man's ideal destiny, infinite in abstract logic, might thus seem in practice foreverunrealizable.

"Is there, then," our author continues, "no solution of the contradiction between the ideal and theactual? We answer, There is such a solution, but in order to reach it we are carried beyond thesphere of morality into that of religion. It may be said to be the essential characteristic of religionas contrasted with morality, that it changes aspiration into fruition, anticipation into realization;that instead of leaving man in the interminable pursuit of a vanishing ideal, it makes him the actualpartaker of a divine or infinite life. Whether we view religion from the human side or the divine-asthe surrender of the soul to God, or as the life of God in the soul--in either aspect it is of its veryessence that the Infinite has ceased to be a far-off vision, and has become a present reality. Thevery first pulsation of the spiritual life, when we rightly apprehend its significance, is theindication that the division between the Spirit and its object has vanished, that the ideal hasbecome real, that the finite has reached its goal and become suffused with the presence and life ofthe Infinite.

"Oneness of mind and will with the divine mind and will is not the future hope and aim ofreligion, but its very beginning and birth in the soul. To enter on the religious life is to terminatethe struggle. In that act which constitutes the beginning of the religious life--call it faith, or trust, orself-surrender, or by whatever name you will--there is involved the identification of the finite witha life which is eternally realized. It is true indeed that the religious life is progressive; butunderstood in the light of the foregoing idea, religious progress is not progress TOWARDS, butWITHIN the sphere of the Infinite. It is not the vain attempt by endless finite additions orincrements to become possessed of infinite wealth, but it is the endeavor, by the constant exerciseof spiritual activity, to appropriate that infinite inheritance of which we are already in possession.

The whole future of the religious life is given in its beginning, but it is given implicitly. Theposition of the man who has entered on the religious life is that evil, error, imperfection, do notreally belong to him: they are excrescences which have no organic relation to his true nature: theyare already virtually, as they will be actually, suppressed and annulled, and in the very process ofbeing annulled they become the means of spiritual progress. Though he is not exempt fromtemptation and conflict, [yet] in that inner sphere in which his true life lies, the struggle is over, thevictory already achieved. It is not a finite but an infinite life which the spirit lives. Every pulse-beatof its [existence] is the expression and realization of the life of God."[299]

[299] John Caird: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion London and New York, 1880,pp. 243-250, and 291-299, much abridged.

You will readily admit that no description of the phenomena of the religious consciousness couldbe better than these words of your lamented preacher and philosopher. They reproduce the veryrapture of those crises of conversion of which we have been hearing; they utter what the mystic feltbut was unable to communicate; and the saint, in hearing them, recognizes his own experience. Itis indeed gratifying to find the content of religion reported so unanimously. But when all is saidand done, has Principal Caird--and I only use him as an example of that whole mode of thinking-transcendedthe sphere of feeling and of the direct experience of the individual, and laid thefoundations of religion in impartial reason? Has he made religion universal by coercive reasoning,transformed it from a private faith into a public certainty? Has he rescued its affirmations fromobscurity and mystery?

I believe that he has done nothing of the kind, but that he has simply reaffirmed the individual'sexperiences in a more generalized vocabulary. And again, I can be excused from provingtechnically that the transcendentalist reasonings fail to make religion universal, for I can point tothe plain fact that a majority of scholars, even religiously disposed ones, stubbornly refuse to treatthem as convincing. The whole of Germany, one may say, has positively rejected the Hegelianargumentation. As for Scotland, I need only mention Professor Fraser's and Professor PringlePattison'smemorable criticisms, with which so many of you are familiar.[300] Once more, I ask, iftranscendental idealism were <445> as objectively and absolutely rational as it pretends to be,could it possibly fail so egregiously to be persuasive?

[300] A. C. Fraser: Philosophy of Theism, second edition, Edinburgh and London, 1899,especially part ii, chaps. vii. and viii. A. Seth [Pringle-Pattison]: Hegelianism and Personality,Ibid., 1890, passim.

The most persuasive arguments in favor of a concrete individual Soul of the world, with which Iam acquainted, are those of my colleague, Josiah Royce, in his Religious Aspect of Philosophy,Boston, 1885; in his Conception of God, New York and London, 1897; and lately in his AberdeenGifford Lectures, The World and the Individual, 2 vols., New York and London, 1901-02. Idoubtless seem to some of my readers to evade the philosophic duty which my thesis in this lectureimposes on me, by not even attempting to meet Professor Royce's arguments articulately. I admitthe momentary evasion. In the present lectures, which are cast throughout in a popular mould,there seemed for subtle metaphysical discussion, and for tactical purposes it was sufficientthecont(no) ention(room) of philosophy being what it is (namely, that religion can be transformedinto a universally convincing science), to point to the fact that no religious philosophy has actuallyconvinced the mass of thinkers. Meanwhile let me say that I hope that the present volume may befollowed by another, if I am spared to write it, in which not only Professor Royce's arguments, butothers for monistic absolutism shall be considered with all the technical fullness which their greatimportance calls for. At present I resign myself to lying passive under the reproach ofsuperficiality.

What religion reports, you must remember, always purports to be a fact of experience: the divineis actually present, religion says, and between it and ourselves relations of give and take are actual.

If definite perceptions of fact like this cannot stand upon their own feet, surely abstract reasoningcannot give them the support they are in need of. Conceptual processes can class facts, definethem, interpret them; but they do not produce them, nor can they reproduce their individuality.

There is always a PLUS, a THISNESS, which feeling alone can answer for. Philosophy in thissphere is thus a secondary function, unable to warrant faith's veracity, and so I revert to the thesiswhich I announced at the beginning of this lecture.

In all sad sincerity I think we must conclude that the attempt to demonstrate by purelyintellectual processes the truth of the deliverances of direct religious experience is absolutelyhopeless.

It would be unfair to philosophy, however, to leave her under this negative sentence. Let meclose, then, by briefly enumerating what she CAN do for religion. If she will abandon metaphysicsand deduction for criticism and induction, and frankly transform herself from theology into scienceof religions, she can make herself enormously useful.

The spontaneous intellect of man always defines the divine which it feels in ways that harmonizewith its temporary intellectual prepossessions. Philosophy can by comparison eliminate the localand the accidental from these definitions. Both from dogma and from worship she can removehistoric incrustations. By confronting the spontaneous religious constructions with the results ofnatural science, philosophy can also eliminate doctrines that are now known to be scientificallyabsurd or incongruous. Sifting out in this way unworthy formulations, she can leave a residuum ofconceptions that at least are possible. With these she can deal as HYPOTHESES, testing them inall the manners, whether negative or positive, by which hypotheses are ever tested. She can reducetheir number, as some are found more open to objection. She can perhaps become the champion ofone which she picks out as being the most closely verified or verifiable. She can refine upon thedefinition of this hypothesis, distinguishing between what is innocent over-belief and symbolism inthe expression of it, and what is to be literally taken. As a result, she can offer mediation betweendifferent believers, and help to bring about consensus of opinion. She can do this the moresuccessfully, the better she discriminates the common and essential from the individual and localelements of the religious beliefs which she compares.

I do not see why a critical Science of Religions of this sort might not eventually command asgeneral a public adhesion as is commanded by a physical science. Even the personally nonreligiousmight accept its conclusions on trust, much as blind persons now accept the facts ofoptics--it might appear as foolish to refuse them. Yet as the science of optics has to be fed in thefirst instance, and continually verified later, by facts experienced by seeing persons; so the scienceof religions would depend for its original material on facts of personal experience, and would haveto square itself with personal experience through all its critical reconstructions. It could never getaway from concrete life, or work in a conceptual vacuum. It would forever have to confess, asevery science confesses, that the subtlety of nature flies beyond it, and that its formulas are butapproximations. Philosophy lives in words, but truth and fact well up into our lives in ways thatexceed verbal formulation. There is in the living act of perception always something that glimmersand twinkles and will not be caught, and for which reflection comes too late. No one knows this aswell as the philosopher. He must fire his volley of new vocables out of his conceptual shotgun, forhis profession condemns him to this industry, but he secretly knows the hollowness andirrelevancy. His formulas are like stereoscopic or kinetoscopic photographs seen outside theinstrument; they lack the depth, the motion, the vitality. In the religious sphere, in particular, beliefthat formulas are true can never wholly take the place of personal experience.

In my next lecture I will try to complete my rough description of religious experience; and in thelecture after that, which is the last one, I will try my hand at formulating conceptually the truth towhich it is a witness.
Lecture XIX OTHER CHARACTERISTICS
We have wound our way back, after our excursion through mysticism and philosophy, to wherewe were before: the uses of religion, its uses to the individual who has it, and the uses of theindividual himself to the world, are the best arguments that truth is in it. We return to the empiricalphilosophy: the true is what works well, even though the qualification "on the whole" may alwayshave to be added. In this lecture we must revert to description again, and finish our picture of thereligious consciousness by a word about some of its other characteristic elements. Then, in a finallecture, we shall be free to make a general review and draw our independent conclusions.

The first point I will speak of is the part which the aesthetic life plays in determining one'schoice of a religion. Men, I said awhile ago, involuntarily intellectualize their religious experience.

They need formulas, just as they need fellowship in worship. I spoke, therefore, toocontemptuously of the pragmatic uselessness of the famous scholastic list of attributes of the deity,for they have one use which I neglected to consider. The eloquent passage in which Newmanenumerates them[301] puts us on the track of it. Intoning them as he would intone a cathedralservice, he shows how high is their aesthetic value. It enriches our bare piety to carry these exaltedand mysterious verbal additions just as it enriches a church to have an organ and old brasses,marbles and frescoes and stained windows. Epithets lend an atmosphere and overtones to ourdevotion. They are like a hymn of praise and service of glory, and may sound the more sublime forbeing incomprehensible. Minds like Newman's[302] grow as jealous of their credit as heathenpriests are of that of the jewelry and ornaments that blaze upon their idols.

[301] Idea of a University, Discourse III. Section 7.

[302] Newman's imagination so innately craved an ecclesiastical system that he can write: "Fromthe age of fifteen, dogma has been the fundamental principle of my religion: I know no otherreligion; I cannot enter into the idea of any other sort of religion." And again speaking of himselfabout the age of thirty, he writes: "I loved to act as feeling myself in my Bishop's sight, as if itwere the sight of God." Apologia, 1897, pp. 48, 50.

Among the buildings-out of religion which the mind spontaneously indulges in, the aestheticmotive must never be forgotten. I promised to say nothing of ecclesiastical systems in theselectures. I may be allowed, however, to put in a word at this point on the way in which theirsatisfaction of certain aesthetic needs contributes to their hold on human nature. Although somepersons aim most at intellectual purity and simplification, for others RICHNESS is the supremeimaginative requirement.[303] When one's mind is strongly of this type, an individual religion willhardly serve the purpose. The inner need is rather of something institutional and complex, majesticin the hierarchic interrelatedness of its parts, with authority descending from stage to stage, and atevery stage objects for adjectives of mystery and splendor, derived in the last resort from theGodhead who is the fountain and culmination of the system. One feels then as if in presence ofsome vast incrusted work of jewelry or architecture; one hears the multitudinous liturgical appeal;one gets the honorific vibration coming from every quarter. Compared with such a noblecomplexity, in which ascending and descending movements seem in no way to jar upon stability,in which no single item, however humble, is insignificant, because so many august institutionshold it in its place, how flat does evangelical Protestantism appear, how bare the atmosphere ofthose isolated religious lives whose boast it is that "man in the bush with God may meet."[304]

What a pulverization and leveling of what a gloriously piled-up structure! To an imagination usedto the perspectives of dignity and glory, the naked gospel scheme seems to offer an almshouse fora palace.

[303] The intellectual difference is quite on a par in practical importance with the analogousdifference in character. We saw, under the head of Saintliness, how some characters resentconfusion and must live in purity, consistency, simplicity (above, p. 275 ff.). For others, on thecontrary, superabundance, over-pressure, stimulation, lots of superficial relations, areindispensable. There are men who would suffer a very syncope if you should pay all their debts,bring it about that their engagements had been kept, their letters answered their perplexitiesrelieved, and their duties fulfilled, down to one which lay on a clean table under their eyes withnothing to interfere with its immediate performance. A day stripped so staringly bare would be forthem appalling. So with ease, elegance, tributes of affection, social recognitions--some of usrequire amounts of these things which to others would appear a mass of lying and sophistication.

[304] In Newman's Lectures on Justification Lecture VIII. Section 6, there is a splendid passageexpressive of this aesthetic way of feeling the Christian scheme. It is unfortunately too long toquote.

It is much like the patriotic sentiment of those brought up in ancient empires. How manyemotions must be frustrated of their object, when one gives up the titles of dignity, the crimsonlights and blare of brass, the gold embroidery, the plumed troops, the fear and trembling, and putsup with a president in a black coat who shakes hands with you, and comes, it may be, from a"home" upon a veldt or prairie with one sitting-room and a Bible on its centre-table. It pauperizesthe monarchical imagination!

The strength of these aesthetic sentiments makes it rigorously impossible, it seems to me, thatProtestantism, however superior in spiritual profundity it may be to Catholicism, should at thepresent day succeed in making many converts from the more venerable ecclesiasticism. The latteroffers a so much richer pasturage and shade to the fancy, has so many cells with so many differentkinds of honey, is so indulgent in its multiform appeals to human nature, that Protestantism willalways show to Catholic eyes the almshouse physiognomy. The bitter negativity of it is to theCatholic mind incomprehensible. To intellectual Catholics many of the antiquated beliefs andpractices to which the Church gives countenance are, if taken literally, as childish as they are toProtestants. But they are childish in the pleasing sense of "childlike"--innocent and amiable, andworthy to be smiled in consideration of the undeveloped condition of the dear people's intellects.TotheProtest(on) ant, on the contrary, they are childish in the sense of being idioticfalsehoods. He must stamp out their delicate and lovable redundancy, leaving the Catholic toshudder at his literalness. He appears to the latter as morose as if he were some hard-eyed, numb,monotonous kind of reptile. The two will never understand each other--their centres of emotionalenergy are too different. Rigorous truth and human nature's intricacies are always in need of amutual interpreter.[305] So much for the aesthetic diversities in the religious consciousness.

[305] Compare the informality of Protestantism, where the "meek lover of the good," alone withhis God, visits the sick, etc., for their own sakes, with the elaborate "business" that goes on inCatholic devotion, and carries with it the social excitement of all more complex businesses. Anessentially worldly-minded Catholic woman can become a visitor of the sick on purely coquettishprinciples, with her confessor and director, her "merit" storing up, her patron saints, her privilegedrelation to the Almighty, drawing his attention as a professional devote, her definite "exercises,"and her definitely recognized social pose in the organization.

In most books on religion, three things are represented as its most essential elements. These areSacrifice, Confession, and Prayer. I must say a word in turn of each of these elements, thoughbriefly. First of Sacrifice.

Sacrifices to gods are omnipresent in primeval worship; but, as cults have grown refined, burntofferings and the blood of he-goats have been superseded by sacrifices more spiritual in theirnature. Judaism, Islam, and Buddhism get along without ritual sacrifice; so does Christianity, savein so far as the notion is preserved in transfigured form in the mystery of Christ's atonement. Thesereligions substitute offerings of the heart, renunciations of the inner self, for all those vainoblations. In the ascetic practices which Islam, Buddhism, and the older Christianity encourage wesee how indestructible is the idea that sacrifice of some sort is a religious exercise. In lecturing onasceticism I spoke of its significance as symbolic of the sacrifices which life, whenever it is takenstrenuously, calls for.[306] But, as I said my say about those, and as these lectures expressly avoidearlier religious usages and questions of derivation, I will pass from the subject of Sacrificealtogether and turn to that of Confession.

[306] Above, p. 354 ff.

In regard to Confession I will also be most brief, saying my word about it psychologically, nothistorically. Not nearly as widespread as sacrifice, it corresponds to a more inward and moral stageof sentiment. It is part of the general system of purgation and cleansing which one feels one's selfin need of, in order to be in right relations to one's deity. For him who confesses, shams are overand realities have begun; he has exteriorized his rottenness. If he has not actually got rid of it, he atleast no longer smears it over with a hypocritical show of virtue--he lives at least upon a basis ofveracity. The complete decay of the practice of confession in Anglo-Saxon communities is a littlehard to account for. Reaction against popery is of course the historic explanation, for in poperyconfession went with penances and absolution, and other inadmissible practices. But on the <453>

side of the sinner himself it seems as if the need ought to have been too great to accept so summarya refusal of its satisfaction. One would think that in more men the shell of secrecy would have hadto open, the pent-in abscess to burst and gain relief, even though the ear that heard the confessionwere unworthy. The Catholic church, for obvious utilitarian reasons, has substituted auricularconfession to one priest for the more radical act of public confession. We English-speakingProtestants, in the general self-reliance and unsociability of our nature, seem to find it enough ifwe take God alone into our confidence.[307]

[307] A fuller discussion of confession is contained in the excellent work by Frank Granger: TheSoul of a Christian, London, 1900, ch. xii.

The next topic on which I must comment is Prayer--and this time it must be less briefly. We haveheard much talk of late against prayer, especially against prayers for better weather and for therecovery of sick people. As regards prayers for the sick, if any medical fact can be considered tostand firm, it is that in certain environments prayer may contribute to recovery, and should beencouraged as a therapeutic measure. Being a normal factor of moral health in the person, itsomission would be deleterious. The case of the weather is different. Notwithstanding the recencyof the opposite belief,[308] every one now knows that droughts and storms follow from physicalantecedents, and that moral appeals cannot avert them. But petitional prayer is only onedepartment of prayer; and if we take the word in the wider sense as meaning every kind of inwardcommunion or conversation with the power recognized as divine, we can easily see that scientificcriticism leaves it untouched.

[308] Example: "The minister at Sudbury, being at the Thursday lecture in Boston, heard theofficiating clergyman praying for rain. As soon as the service was over, he went to the petitionerand said 'You Boston ministers, as soon as a tulip wilts under your windows, go to church and prayfor rain, until all Concord and Sudbury are under water.'" R. W. Emerson: Lectures andBiographical Sketches, p. 363.

Prayer in this wide sense is the very soul and essence of religion. "Religion," says a liberalFrench theologian, "is an intercourse, a conscious and voluntary relation, entered into by a soul indistress with the mysterious power upon which it feels itself to depend, and upon which its fate iscontingent. This intercourse with God is realized by prayer. Prayer is religion in act; that is, prayeris real religion. It is prayer that distinguishes the religious phenomenon from such similar orneighboring phenomena as purely moral or aesthetic sentiment. Religion is nothing if it be not thevital act by which the entire mind seeks to save itself by clinging to the principle from which itdraws its life. This act is prayer, by which term I understand no vain exercise of words, no mererepetition of certain sacred formula, but the very movement itself of the soul, putting itself in apersonal relation of contact with the mysterious power of which it feels the presence--it may beeven before it has a name by which to call it. Wherever this interior prayer is lacking, there is noreligion; wherever, on the other hand, this prayer rises and stirs the soul, even in the absence offorms or of doctrines, we have living religion. One sees from this why "natural religion, so-called,is not properly a religion. It cuts man off from prayer. It leaves him and God in mutual remoteness,with no intimate commerce, no interior dialogue, no interchange, no action of God in man, noreturn of man to God. At bottom this pretended religion is only a philosophy. Born at epochs ofrationalism, of critical investigations, it never was anything but an abstraction. An artificial anddead creation, it reveals to its examiner hardly one of the characters proper to religion."[309]

[309] Auguste Sabatier: Esquisse d'une Philosophie de la Religion. 2me ed., 1897, pp. 24-26,abridged.

It seems to me that the entire series of our lectures proves the truth of M. Sabatier's contention.

The religious phenomenon, studied as in Inner fact, and apart from ecclesiastical or theologicalcomplications, has shown itself to consist everywhere, and at all its stages, in the consciousnesswhich individuals have of an intercourse between themselves and higher powers with which theyfeel themselves to be related. This intercourse is realized at the time as being both active andmutual. If it be not effective; if it be not a give and take relation; if nothing be really transactedwhile it lasts; if the world is in no whit different for its having taken place; then prayer, taken inthis wide meaning of a sense that SOMETHING IS TRANSACTING, is of course a feeling ofwhat is illusory, and religion must on the whole be classed, not simply as containing elements ofdelusion--these undoubtedly everywhere exist--but as being rooted in delusion altogether, just asmaterialists and atheists have always said it was. At most there might remain, when the directexperiences of prayer were ruled out as false witnesses, some inferential belief that the whole orderof existence must have a divine cause. But this way of contemplating nature, pleasing as it woulddoubtless be to persons of a pious taste, would leave to them but the spectators' part at a play,whereas in experimental religion and the prayerful life, we seem ourselves to be actors, and not ina play, but in a very serious reality.

The genuineness of religion is thus indissolubly bound up with the question whether theprayerful consciousness be or be not deceitful. The conviction that something is genuinelytransacted in this consciousness is the very core of living religion. As to what is transacted, greatdifferences of opinion have prevailed. The unseen powers have been supposed, and are yetsupposed, to do things which no enlightened man can nowadays believe in. It may well prove thatthe sphere of influence in prayer is subjective exclusively, and that what is immediately changed isonly the mind of the praying person. But however our opinion of prayer's effects may come to belimited by criticism, religion, in the vital sense in which these lectures study it, must stand or fallby the persuasion that effects of some sort genuinely do occur. Through prayer, religion insists,things which cannot be realized in any other manner come about: energy which but for prayerwould be bound is by prayer set free and operates in some part, be it objective or subjective, of theworld of facts.

This postulate is strikingly expressed in a letter written by the late Frederic W. H. Myers to afriend, who allows me to quote from it. It shows how independent the prayer-instinct is of usualdoctrinal complications. Mr. Myers writes:-"I am glad that you have asked me about prayer, because I have rather strong ideas on thesubject. First consider what are the facts. There exists around us a spiritual universe, and thatuniverse is in actual relation with the material. From the spiritual universe comes the energy whichmaintains the material; the energy which makes the life of each individual spirit. Our spirits aresupported by a perpetual indrawal of this energy, and the vigor of that indrawal is perpetuallychanging, much as the vigor of our absorption of material nutriment changes from hour to hour.

"I call these 'facts' because I think that some scheme of this kind is the only one consistent withour actual evidence; too complex to summarize here. How, then, should we ACT on these facts?

Plainly we must endeavor to draw in as much spiritual life as possible, and we must place ourminds in any attitude which experience shows to be favorable to such indrawal. PRAYER is thegeneral name for that attitude of open and earnest expectancy. If we then ask to whom to pray, theanswer (strangely enough) must be that THAT does not much matter. The prayer is not indeed apurely subjective thing;--it means a real increase in intensity of absorption of spiritual power orgrace;--but we do not know enough of what takes place in the spiritual world to know how theprayer operates;--WHO is cognizant of it, or through what channel the grace is given. Better letchildren pray to Christ, who is at any rate the highest individual spirit of whom we have anyknowledge. But it would be rash to say that Christ himself HEARS US; while to say that GODhears us is merely to restate the first principle--that grace flows in from the infinite spiritualworld."Let us reserve the question of the truth or falsehood of the belief that power is absorbed until thenext lecture, when our dogmatic conclusions, if we have any, must be reached. Let this lecture stillconfine itself to the description of phenomena; and as a concrete example of an extreme sort, of theway in which the prayerful life may still be led, let me take a case with which most of you must beacquainted, that of George Muller of Bristol, who died in 1898. Muller's prayers were of thecrassest petitional order. Early in life he resolved on taking certain Bible promises in literalsincerity, and on letting himself be fed, not by his own worldly foresight, but by the Lord's hand.

He had an extraordinarily active and successful career, among the fruits of which were thedistribution of over two million copies of the Scripture text, in different languages; the equipmentof several hundred missionaries; the circulation of more than a hundred and eleven million ofscriptural books, pamphlets, and tracts; the building of five large orphanages, and the keeping andeducating of thousands of orphans; finally, the establishment of schools in which over a hundredand twenty-one thousand youthful and adult pupils were taught. In the course of this work Mr.

Muller received and administered nearly a million and a half of pounds sterling, and traveled overtwo hundred thousand miles of sea and land.[310] During the sixty-eight years of his ministry, henever owned any property except his clothes and furniture, and cash in hand; and he left, at the ageof eighty-six, an estate worth only a hundred and sixty pounds.

[310] My authority for these statistics is the little work on Muller, by Frederic G. Warne, NewYork, 1898.

His method was to let his general wants be publicly known, but not to acquaint other people withthe details of his temporary necessities. For the relief of the latter, he prayed directly to the Lord,believing that sooner or later prayers are always answered if one have trust enough. "When I losesuch a thing as a key," he writes, "I ask the Lord to direct me to it, and I look for an answer to myprayer; when a person with whom I have made an appointment does not come, according to thefixed time, and I begin to be inconvenienced by it, I ask the Lord to be pleased to hasten him tome, and I look for an answer; when I do not understand a passage of the word of God, I lift up myheart to the Lord that he would be pleased by his Holy Spirit to instruct me, and I expect to betaught, though I do not fix the time when, and the manner how it should be; when I am going tominister in the Word, I seek help from the Lord, and . . . am not cast down, but of good cheerbecause I look for his assistance."Muller's custom was to never run up bills, not even for a week. "As the Lord deals out to us bythe day, . . . the week's payment might become due and we have no money to meet it; and thusthose with whom we deal might be inconvenienced by us, and we be found acting against thecommandment of the Lord: 'Owe no man anything.' From this day and henceforward whilst theLord gives to us our supplies by the day, we purpose to pay at once for every article as it ispurchased, and never to buy anything except we can pay for it at once, however much it may seemto be needed, and however much those with whom we deal may wish to be paid only by the week."The articles needed of which Muller speaks were the food, fuel, etc., of his orphanages.

Somehow, near as they often come to going without a meal, they hardly ever seem actually to havedone so. "Greater and more manifest nearness of the Lord's presence I have never had than whenafter breakfast there were no means for dinner for more than a hundred persons; or when afterdinner there were no means for the tea, and yet the Lord provided the tea; and all this without onesingle human being having been informed about our need. . . . Through Grace my mind is so fullyassured of the faithfulness of the Lord, that in the midst of the greatest need, I am enabled in peaceto go about my other work. Indeed, did not the Lord give me this, which is the result of trusting inhim, I should scarcely be able to work at all; for it is now comparatively a rare thing that a daycomes when I am not in need for one or another part of the work."[311]

[311] The Life of Trust; Being a Narrative of the Lord's Dealings with George Muller, NewAmerican edition, N. Y., Crowell, pp. 228, 194, 219.

In building his orphanages simply by prayer and faith, Muller affirms that his prime motive was"to have something to point to as a visible proof that our God and Father is the same faithful Godthat he ever was--as willing as ever to prove himself the living God, in our day as formerly, to allthat put their trust in him."[312] For this reason he refused to borrow money for any of hisenterprises. "How does it work when we thus anticipate God by going our own way? We certainlyweaken faith instead of increasing it; and each time we work thus a deliverance of our own we findit more and more difficult to trust in God, till at last we give way entirely to our natural fallenreason and unbelief prevails. How different if one is enabled to wait God's own time, and to lookalone to him for help and deliverance! When at last help comes, after many seasons of prayer itmay be, how sweet it is, and what a present recompense! Dear Christian reader, if you have neverwalked in this path of obedience before, do so now, and you will then know experimentally thesweetness of the joy which results from it."[313]

[312] Ibid., p. 126.

[313] Op. cit., p. 383, abridged.

When the supplies came in but slowly, Muller always considered that this was for the trial of hisfaith and patience When his faith and patience had been sufficiently tried, the Lord would sendmore means. "And thus it has proved,"--I quote from his diary--"for to-day was given me the sumof 2050 pounds, of which 2000 are for the building fund [of a certain house], and 50 for presentnecessities. It is impossible to describe my joy in God when I received this donation. I was neitherexcited nor surprised; for I LOOK out for answers to my prayers. I BELIEVE THAT GODHEARS ME. Yet my heart was so full of joy that I could only SIT before God, and admire him,like David in 2 Samuel vii. At last I cast myself flat down upon my face and burst forth inthanksgiving to God and in surrendering my heart afresh to him for his blessed service."[314]

[314] Ibid., p. 323George Muller's is a case extreme in every respect, and in no respect more so than in theextraordinary narrowness of the man's intellectual horizon. His God was, as he often said, hisbusiness partner. He seems to have been for Muller little more than a sort of supernaturalclergyman interested in the congregation of tradesmen and others in Bristol who were his saints,and in the orphanages and other enterprises, but unpossessed of any of those vaster and wilder andmore ideal attributes with which the human imagination elsewhere has invested him. Muller, inshort, was absolutely unphilosophical. His intensely private and practical conception of hisrelations with the Deity continued the traditions of the most primitive human thought.[315] Whenwe compare a mind like his with such a mind as, for example, Emerson's or Phillips Brooks's, wesee the range which the religious consciousness covers.

[315] I cannot resist the temptation of quoting an expression of an even more primitive style ofreligious thought, which I find in Arber's English Garland, vol. vii. p. 440. Robert Lyde, anEnglish sailor, along with an English boy, being prisoners on a French ship in 1689, set upon thecrew, of seven Frenchmen, killed two, made the other five prisoners, and brought home the ship.

Lyde thus describes how in this feat he found his God a very present help in time of trouble:-"With the assistance of God I kept my feet when they three and one more did strive to throw medown. Feeling the Frenchman which hung about my middle hang very heavy, I said to the boy, 'Goround the binnacle, and knock down that man that hangeth on my back.' So the boy did strike himone blow on the head which made him fall. . . . Then I looked about for a marlin spike or anythingelse to strike them withal. But seeing nothing, I said, 'LORD! what shall I do?' Then casting up myeye upon my left side, and seeing a marlin spike hanging, I jerked my right arm and took hold, andstruck the point four times about a quarter of an inch deep into the skull of that man that had holdof my left arm. [One of the Frenchmen then hauled the marlin spike away from him.] But throughGOD'S wonderful providence! it either fell out of his hand, or else he threw it down, and at thistime the Almighty GOD gave me strength enough to take one man in one hand, and throw at theother's head: and looking about again to see anything to strike them withal, but seeing nothing, Isaid, 'LORD! what shall I do now?' And then it pleased GOD to put me in mind of my knife in mypocket. And although two of the men had hold of my right arm, yet GOD Almighty strengthenedme so that I put my right hand into my right pocket, drew out the knife and sheath, . . . put itbetween my legs and drew it out, and then cut the man's throat with it that had his back to mybreast: and he immediately dropt down, and scarce ever stirred after."--I have slightly abridgedLyde's narrative.

There is an immense literature relating to answers to petitional prayer. The evangelical journalsare filled with such answers, and books are devoted to the subject,[316] but for us Muller's casewill suffice.

[316] As, for instance, In Answer to Prayer, by the Bishop of Ripon and others, London, 1898;Touching Incidents and Remarkable Answers to Prayer, Harrisburg, Pa., 1898 (?); H. L. Hastings:

The Guiding Hand, or Providential Direction, illustrated by Authentic Instances, Boston, 1898(?).

A less sturdy beggar-like fashion of leading the prayerful life is followed by innumerable otherChristians. Persistence in leaning on the Almighty for support and guidance will, such persons say,bring with it proofs, palpable but much more subtle, of his presence and active influence. Thefollowing description of a "led" life, by a German writer whom I have already quoted, would nodoubt appear to countless Christians in every country as if transcribed from their own personalexperience. One finds in this guided sort of life, says Dr. Hilty-"That books and words (and sometimes people) come to one's cognizance just at the verymoment in which one needs them; that one glides over great dangers as if with shut eyes,remaining ignorant of what would have terrified one or led one astray, until the peril is past--thisbeing especially the case with temptations to vanity and sensuality; that paths on which one oughtnot to wander are, as it were, hedged off with thorns; but that on the other side great obstacles aresuddenly removed; that when the time has come for something, one suddenly receives a couragethat formerly failed, or perceives the root of a matter that until then was concealed, or discoversthoughts, talents, yea, even pieces of knowledge and insight, in one's self, of which it is impossibleto say whence they come; finally, that persons help us or decline to help us, favor us or refuse us,as if they had to do so against their will, so that often those indifferent or even unfriendly to usyield us the greatest service and furtherance. (God takes often their worldly goods, from thosewhom he leads, at just the right moment, when they threaten to impede the effort after higherinterests.)"Besides all this, other noteworthy things come to pass, of which it is not easy to give account.

There is no doubt whatever that now one walks continually through 'open doors' and on the easiestroads, with as little care and trouble as it is possible to imagine.

"Furthermore one finds one's self settling one's affairs neither too early nor too late, whereas theywere wont to be spoiled by untimeliness, even when the preparations had been well laid. Inaddition to this, one does them with perfect tranquillity of mind, almost as if they were matters ofno consequence, like errands done by us for another person, in which case we usually act morecalmly than when we act in our own concerns. Again, one finds that one can WAIT for everythingpatiently, and that is one of life's great arts. One finds also that each thing comes duly, one thingafter the other, so that one gains time to make one's footing sure before advancing farther. Andthen every thing occurs to us at the right moment, just what we ought to do, etc., and often in avery striking way, just as if a third person were keeping watch over those things which we are ineasy danger of forgetting.

"Often, too, persons are sent to us at the right time, to offer or ask for what is needed, and whatwe should never have had the courage or resolution to undertake of our own accord.

"Through all these experiences one finds that one is kindly and tolerant of other people, even ofsuch as are repulsive, negligent, or ill-willed, for they also are instruments of good in God's hand,and often most efficient ones. Without these thoughts it would be hard for even the best of usalways to keep our equanimity. But with the consciousness of divine guidance, one sees many athing in life quite differently from what would otherwise be possible.

"All these are things that every human being KNOWS, who has had experience of them; and ofwhich the most speaking examples could be brought forward. The highest resources of worldlywisdom are unable to attain that which, under divine leading, comes to us of its own accord."[317]

[317] C. Hilty: Gluck, Dritter Theil, 1900, pp. 92 ff.

Such accounts as this shade away into others where the belief is, not that particular events aretempered more towardly to us by a superintending providence, as a reward for our reliance, butthat by cultivating the continuous sense of our connection with the power that made things as theyare, we are tempered more towardly for their reception. The outward face of nature need not alter,but the expressions of meaning in it alter. It was dead and is alive again. It is like the differencebetween looking on a person without love, or upon the same person with love. In the latter caseintercourse springs into new vitality. So when one's affections keep in touch with the divinity ofthe world's authorship, fear and egotism fall away; and in the equanimity that follows, one finds inthe hours, as they succeed each other, a series of purely benignant opportunities. It is as if all doorswere opened, and all paths freshly smoothed. We meet a new world when we meet the old world inthe spirit which this kind of prayer infuses.

Such a spirit was that of Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus.[318] It is that of mind-curers, of thetranscendentalists, and of the so-called "liberal" Christians. As an expression of it, I will quote apage from one of Martineau's sermons:-[318] "Good Heaven!" says Epictetus, "any one thing in the creation is sufficient to demonstratea Providence, to a humble and grateful mind. The mere possibility of producing milk from grass,cheese from milk, and wool from skins; who formed and planned it? Ought we not, whether we digor plough or eat, to sing this hymn to God? Great is God, who has supplied us with theseinstruments to till the ground; great is God, who has given us hands and instruments of digestion,who has given us to grow insensibly and to breathe in sleep. These things we ought forever tocelebrate. . . . But because the most of you are blind and insensible, there must be some one to fillthis station, and lead, in behalf of all men, the hymn to God; for what else can I do, a lame oldman, but sing hymns to God? Were I a nightingale, I would act the part of a nightingale; were I aswan, the part of a swan. But since I am a reasonable creature, it is my duty to praise God . . . and Icall on you to join the same song." Works, book i. ch. xvi., Carter-Higginson (translation)abridged.

"The universe, open to the eye to-day, looks as it did a thousand years ago: and the morninghymn of Milton does but tell the beauty with which our own familiar sun dressed the earliest fieldsand gardens of the world. We see what all our fathers saw. And if we cannot find God in yourhouse or in mine, upon the roadside or the margin of the sea; in the bursting seed or openingflower; in the day duty or the night musing; in the general laugh and the secret grief; in theprocession of life, ever entering afresh, and solemnly passing by and dropping off; I do not thinkwe should discern him any more on the grass of Eden, or beneath the moonlight of Gethsemane.

Depend upon it, it is not the want of greater miracles, but of the soul to perceive such as areallowed us still, that makes us push all the sanctities into the far spaces we cannot reach. Thedevout feel that wherever God's hand is, THERE is miracle: and it is simply an indevoutnesswhich imagines that only where miracle is, can there be the real hand of God. The customs ofHeaven ought surely to be more sacred in our eyes than its anomalies; the dear old ways, of whichthe Most High is never tired, than the strange things which he does not love well enough ever torepeat. And he who will but discern beneath the sun, as he rises any morning, the supporting fingerof the Almighty, may recover the sweet and reverent surprise with which Adam gazed on the firstdawn in Paradise. It is no outward change, no shifting in time or place; but only the lovingmeditation of the pure in heart, that can reawaken the Eternal from the sleep within our souls: thatcan render him a reality again, and reassert for him once more his ancient name of 'the LivingGod.'"[319]

[319] James Martineau: end of the sermon "Help Thou Mine Unbelief," in Endeavours after aChristian Life, 2d series. Compare with this page the extract from Voysey on p. 270, above, andthose from Pascal and Madame Guyon on p. 281.

When we see all things in God, and refer all things to him, we read in common matters superiorexpressions of meaning. The deadness with which custom invests the familiar vanishes, andexistence as a whole appears transfigured. The state of a mind thus awakened from torpor is wellexpressed in these words, which I take from a friend's letter:-"If we occupy ourselves in summing up all the mercies and bounties we are privileged to have,we are overwhelmed by their number (so great that we can imagine ourselves unable to giveourselves time even to begin to review the things we may imagine WE HAVE NOT). We sumthem and realize that WE ARE ACTUALLY KILLED WITH GOD'S KINDNESS; that we aresurrounded by bounties upon bounties, without which all would fall. Should we not love it; shouldwe not feel buoyed up by the Eternal Arms?"Sometimes this realization that facts are of divine sending, instead of being habitual, is casual,like a mystical experience. Father Gratry gives this instance from his youthful melancholyperiod:-"One day I had a moment of consolation, because I met with something which seemed to meideally perfect. It was a poor drummer beating the tattoo in the streets of Paris. I walked behindhim in returning to the school on the evening of a holiday. His drum gave out the tattoo in such away that, at that moment at least, however peevish I were, I could find no pretext for fault-finding.

It was impossible to conceive more nerve or spirit, better time or measure, more clearness orrichness, than were in this drumming. Ideal desire could go no farther in that direction. I wasenchanted and consoled; the perfection of this wretched act did me good. Good is at least possible,I said. since the ideal can thus sometimes get embodied."[320]

[320] Souvenirs de ma Jeunesse, 1897, p. 122.

In Senancour's novel of Obermann a similar transient lifting of the veil is recorded. In Parisstreets, on a March day, he comes across a flower in bloom, a jonquil:

"It was the strongest expression of desire: it was the first perfume of the year. I felt all thehappiness destined for man. This unutterable harmony of souls, the phantom of the ideal world,arose in me complete. I never felt anything so great or so instantaneous. I know not what shape,what analogy, what secret of relation it was that made me see in this flower a limitless beauty. . . . Ishall never inclose in a conception this power, this immensity that nothing will express; this formthat nothing will contain; this ideal of a better world which one feels, but which, it seems, naturehas not made actual."[321]

[321] Op. cit., Letter XXX.

We heard in previous lectures of the vivified face of the world as it may appear to converts aftertheir awakening.[322] As a rule, religious persons generally assume that whatever natural factsconnect themselves in any way with their destiny are significant of the divine purposes with them.

Through prayer the purpose, often far from obvious, comes home to them, and if it be "trial,"strength to endure the trial is given. Thus at all stages of the prayerful life we find the persuasionthat in the process of communion energy from on high flows in to meet demand, and becomesoperative within the phenomenal world. So long as this operativeness is admitted to be real, itmakes no essential difference whether its immediate effects be subjective or objective. Thefundamental religious point is that in prayer, spiritual energy, which otherwise would slumber,does become active, and spiritual work of some kind is effected really.

[322] Above, p. 243 ff. Compare the withdrawal of expression from the world, in Melancholiacs,p. 148.

So much for Prayer, taken in the wide sense of any kind of communion. As the core of religion,we must return to it in the next lecture.

The last aspect of the religious life which remains for me to touch upon is the fact that itsmanifestations so frequently connect themselves with the subconscious part of our existence. Youmay remember what I said in my opening lecture[323] about the prevalence of the psychopathictemperament in religious biography. You will in point of fact hardly find a religious leader of anykind in whose life there is no record of automatisms. I speak not merely of savage priests andprophets, whose followers regard automatic utterance and action as by itself tantamount toinspiration, I speak of leaders of thought and subjects of intellectualized experience. Saint Paul hadhis visions, his ecstasies, his gift of tongues, small as was the importance he attached to the latter.

The whole array of Christian saints and heresiarchs, including the greatest, the Barnards, theLoyolas, the Luthers, the Foxes, the Wesleys, had their visions, voices, rapt conditions, guidingimpressions, and "openings." They had these things, because they had exalted sensibility, and tosuch things persons of exalted sensibility are liable. In such liability there lie, however,consequences for theology. Beliefs are strengthened wherever automatisms corroborate them.

Incursions from beyond the transmarginal region have a peculiar power to increase conviction. Theinchoate sense of presence is infinitely stronger than conception, but strong as it may be, it isseldom equal to the evidence of hallucination. Saints who actually see or hear their Saviour reachthe acme of assurance. Motor automatisms, though rarer, are, if possible, even more convincingthan sensations. The subjects here actually feel themselves played upon by powers beyond theirwill. The evidence is dynamic; the God or spirit moves the very organs of their body.[324]

[323] Above, pp. 25, 26.

[324] A friend of mine, a first-rate psychologist, who is a subject of graphic automatism, tells methat the appearance of independent actuation in the movements of his arm, when he writesautomatically, is so distinct that it obliges him to abandon a psychophysical theory which he hadpreviously believed in, the theory, namely, that we have no feeling of the discharge downwards ofour voluntary motor-centres. We must normally have such a feeling, he thinks, or the SENSE OFAN ABSENCE would not be so striking as it is in these experiences. Graphic automatism of afully developed kind is rare in religious history, so far as my knowledge goes. Such statements asAntonia Bourignon's, that "I do nothing but lend my hand and spirit to another power than mine,"is shown by the context to indicate inspiration rather than directly automatic writing. In someeccentric sects this latter occurs. The most striking instance of it is probably the bulky volumecalled, "Oahspe, a new Bible in the Words of Jehovah and his angel ambassadors," Boston andLondon, 1891, written and illustrated automatically by Dr. Newbrough of New York, whom Iunderstand to be now, or to have been lately, at the head of the spiritistic community of Shalam inNew Mexico. The latest automatically written book which has come under my notice is"Zertouhem's Wisdom of the Ages," by George A. Fuller, Boston, 1901.

The great field for this sense of being the instrument of a higher power is of course "inspiration."It is easy to discriminate between the religious leaders who have been habitually subject toinspiration and those who have not. In the teachings of the Buddha, of Jesus, of Saint Paul (apartfrom his gift of tongues), of Saint Augustine, of Huss, of Luther, of Wesley, automatic or semiautomaticcomposition appears to have been only occasional. In the Hebrew prophets, on thecontrary, in Mohammed, in some of the Alexandrians, in many minor Catholic saints, in Fox, inJoseph Smith, something like it appears to have been frequent, sometimes habitual. We havedistinct professions of being under the direction of a foreign power, and serving as its mouthpiece.

As regards the Hebrew prophets, it is extraordinary, writes an author who has made a careful studyof them, to see-"How, one after another, the same features are reproduced in the prophetic books. The process isalways extremely different from what it would be if the prophet arrived at his insight into spiritualthings by the tentative efforts of his own genius. There is something sharp and sudden about it. Hecan lay his finger, so to speak, on the moment when it came. And it always comes in the form ofan overpowering force from without, against which he struggles, but in vain. Listen, for instance,[to] the opening of the book of Jeremiah. Read through in like manner the first two chapters of theprophecy of Ezekiel.

"It is not, however, only at the beginning of his career that the prophet passes through a crisiswhich is clearly not self-caused. Scattered all through the prophetic writings are expressionswhich speak of some strong and irresistible impulse coming down upon the prophet, determininghis attitude to the events of his time, constraining his utterance, making his words the vehicle of ahigher meaning than their own. For instance, this of Isaiah's: 'The Lord spake thus to me with astrong hand,'--an emphatic phrase which denotes the overmastering nature of the impulse--'andinstructed me that I should not walk in the way of this people.' . . . Or passages like this fromEzekiel: 'The hand of the Lord God fell upon me,' 'The hand of the Lord was strong upon me.' Theone standing characteristic of the prophet is that he speaks with the authority of Jehovah himself.

Hence it is that the prophets one and all preface their addresses so confidently, 'The Word of theLord,' or 'Thus saith the Lord.' They have even the audacity to speak in the first person, as ifJehovah himself were speaking. As in Isaiah: 'Hearken unto me, O Jacob, and Israel my called; Iam He, I am the First, I also am the last,'--and so on. The personality of the prophet sinks entirelyinto the background; he feels himself for the time being the mouthpiece of the Almighty."[325]

[325] W. Sanday: The Oracles of God, London, 1892, pp. 49-56, abridged.

"We need to remember that prophecy was a profession, and that the prophets formed aprofessional class. There were schools of the prophets, in which the gift was regularly cultivated.

A group of young men would gather round some commanding figure--a Samuel or an Elisha--andwould not only record or spread the knowledge of his sayings and doings, but seek to catchthemselves something of his inspiration. It seems that music played its part in their exercises. . . . Itis perfectly clear that by no means all of these Sons of the prophets ever succeeded in acquiringmore than a very small share in the gift which they sought. It was clearly possible to 'counterfeit'

prophecy. Sometimes this was done deliberately. . . . But it by no means follows that in all caseswhere a false message was given, the giver of it was altogether conscious of what he was doing.

[326]

[326] Op. cit., p. 91. This author also cites Moses's and Isaiah's commissions, as given inExodus, chaps. iii. and iv., and Isaiah, chap. vi.

Here, to take another Jewish case, is the way in which Philo of Alexandria describes hisinspiration:-"Sometimes, when I have come to my work empty, I have suddenly become full; ideas being inan invisible manner showered upon me, and implanted in me from on high; so that through theinfluence of divine inspiration, I have become greatly excited, and have known neither the place inwhich I was, nor those who were present, nor myself, nor what I was saying, nor what I waswriting, for then I have been conscious of a richness of interpretation, an enjoyment of light, amost penetrating insight, a most manifest energy in all that was to be done; having such effect onmy mind as the clearest ocular demonstration would have on the eyes."[327]

[327] Quoted by Augustus Clissold: The Prophetic Spirit in Genius and Madness, 1870, p. 67.

Mr. Clissold is a Swedenborgian. Swedenborg's case is of course the palmary one of audita et visa,serving as a basis of religious revelation.

If we turn to Islam, we find that Mohammed's revelations all came from the subconscious sphere.

To the question in what way he got them-"Mohammed is said to have answered that sometimes he heard a knell as from a bell, and thatthis had the strongest effect on him; and when the angel went away, he had received the revelation.

Sometimes again he held converse with the angel as with a man, so as easily to understand hiswords. The later authorities, however, . . . distinguish still other kinds. In the Itgan (103) thefollowing are enumerated: 1, revelations with sound of bell, 2, by inspiration of the holy spirit inM.'s heart, 3, by Gabriel in human form, 4, by God immediately, either when awake (as in hisjourney to heaven) or in dream. . . . In Almawahib alladuniya the kinds are thus given: 1, Dream,2, Inspiration of Gabriel in the Prophet's heart, 3, Gabriel taking Dahya's form, 4, with the bell-sound, etc., 5, Gabriel in propria persona (only twice), 6, revelation in heaven, 7, God appearing inperson, but veiled, 8, God revealing himself immediately without veil. Others add two other stages,namely: 1, Gabriel in the form of still another man, 2, God showing himself personally indream."[328]

[328] Noldeke, Geschichte des Qorans, 1860, p. 16. Compare the fuller account in Sir WilliamMuir's: Life of Mahomet, 3d ed., 1894, ch. iii.

In none of these cases is the revelation distinctly motor. In the case of Joseph Smith (who hadprophetic revelations innumerable in addition to the revealed translation of the <472> gold plateswhich resulted in the Book of Mormon), although there may have been a motor element, theinspiration seems to have been predominantly sensorial. He began his translation by the aid of the"peep-stones" which he found, or thought or said that he found, with the gold plates --apparently acase of "crystal gazing." For some of the other revelations he used the peep-stones, but seemsgenerally to have asked the Lord for more direct instruction.[329]

[329] The Mormon theocracy has always been governed by direct revelations accorded to thePresident of the Church and its Apostles. From an obliging letter written to me in 1899 by aneminent Mormon, I quote the following extract:-"It may be very interesting for you to know that the President [Mr. Snow] of the Mormon Churchclaims to have had a number of revelations very recently from heaven. To explain fully what theserevelations are, it is necessary to know that we, as a people, believe that the Church of Jesus Christhas again been established through messengers sent from heaven. This Church has at its head aprophet seer, and revelator, who gives to man God's holy will. Revelation is the means throughwhich the will of God is declared directly and in fullness to man. These revelations are got throughdreams of sleep or in waking visions of the mind, by voices without visional appearance or byactual manifestations of the Holy Presence before the eye. We believe that God has come in personand spoken to our prophet and revelator."Other revelations are described as "openings"--Fox's, for example, were evidently of the kindknown in spiritistic circles of to-day as "impressions." As all effective initiators of change mustneeds live to some degree upon this psychopathic level of sudden perception or conviction of newtruth, or of impulse to action so obsessive that it must be worked off, I will say nothing more aboutso very common a phenomenon.

When, in addition to these phenomena of inspiration, we take religious mysticism into theaccount, when we recall the striking and sudden unifications of a discordant self which we saw inconversion, and when we review the extravagant obsessions of tenderness, purity, and self-severitymet with in saintliness, we cannot, I think, avoid the conclusion that in religion we have adepartment of human nature with unusually close relations to the transmarginal or subliminalregion. If the word "subliminal" is offensive to any of you, as smelling too much of psychicalresearch or other aberrations, call it by any other name you please, to distinguish it from the levelof full sunlit consciousness. Call this latter the A-region of personality, if you care to, and call theother the B-region. The B-region, then, is obviously the larger part of each of us, for it is the abodeof everything that is latent and the reservoir of everything that passes unrecorded or unobserved. Itcontains, for example, such things as all our momentarily inactive memories, and it harbors thesprings of all our obscurely motived passions, impulses, likes, dislikes, and prejudices. Ourintuitions, hypotheses, fancies, superstitions, persuasions, convictions, and in general all our non-rational operations, come from it. It is the source of our dreams, and apparently they may return toit. In it arise whatever mystical experiences we may have, and our automatisms, sensory or motor;our life in hypnotic and "hypnoid" conditions, if we are subjects to such conditions; our delusions,fixed ideas, and hysterical accidents, if we are hysteric subjects; our supra-normal cognitions, ifsuch there be, and if we are telepathic subjects. It is also the fountain-head of much that feeds ourreligion. In persons deep in the religious life, as we have now abundantly seen--and this is myconclusion--the door into this region seems unusually wide open; at any rate, experiences makingtheir entrance through that door have had emphatic influence in shaping religious history.

With this conclusion I turn back and close the circle which I opened in my first lecture,terminating thus the review which I then announced of inner religious phenomena as we find themin developed and articulate human individuals. I might easily, if the time allowed, multiply bothmy documents and my discriminations, but a broad treatment is, I believe, in itself better, and themost important characteristics of the subject lie, I think, before us already. In the next lecture,which is also the last one, we must try to draw the critical conclusions which so much materialmay suggest.
Lecture XX CONCLUSIONS
The material of our study of human nature is now spread before us; and in this parting hour, setfree from the duty of description, we can draw our theoretical and practical conclusions. In my firstlecture, defending the empirical method, I foretold that whatever conclusions we might come tocould be reached by spiritual judgments only, appreciations of the significance for life of religion,taken "on the whole." Our conclusions cannot be as sharp as dogmatic conclusions would be, but Iwill formulate them, when the time comes, as sharply as I can.

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 harmonious 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 zest which adds itself like a gift to life, and takes the form either of lyrical enchantmentor of appeal to earnestness and heroism.

5. An assurance of safety and a temper of peace, and, in relation to others, a preponderance ofloving affections.

In illustrating these characteristics by documents, we have been literally bathed in sentiment. Inre-reading my manuscript, I am almost appalled at the amount of emotionality which I find in it.

After so much of this, we can afford to be dryer 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 perverse, 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 judgment independently. Even so with religion. We who have pursuedsuch radical expressions of it may now be sure that we know its secrets as authentically 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 vexed 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 sects and creeds 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 soften 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 Moody 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 syllable 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 frankly recognizethe fact that we live in partial systems, and that parts are not interchangeable in the spiritual life. Ifwe are peevish 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 vocation, 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 morbid mind, andbetween the once-born and the twice-born types, of which I spoke in earlier lectures (see pp. 159164),cease to be the radical antagonisms which many think them. The twice-born look down uponthe rectilinear consciousness of life of the once-born as being "mere 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 morbidness 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 temperaments. 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 espouse 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 qualified, 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 devout. Tout 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 dilettante 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 quotation 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 distilled 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 materialistic that one may wellsay that on the whole the influence of science goes against the notion that religion should berecognized at all. And this antipathy 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 presumption easily arises in his mind that any belief that is religious probably isfalse. In the "prayerful communion" of savages with such mumbo-jumbos of deities as theyacknowledge, it is hard for us to see what genuine spiritual work--even though it were workrelative only to their dark savage obligations-- can possibly be done.

The consequence is that the conclusions of the science of religions are as likely to be adverse 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 outgrown; and thisnotion our religious anthropologists at present do little to counteract.

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 pivot round which the religious life, as we have traced it, revolves, 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 utterly repudiating the personal point of view. Shecatalogues her elements and records her laws indifferent as to what purpose may be shown forth 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 firmament showeth his handiwork. Our solar system, with its harmonies, is seen nowas but one passing case of a certain sort of moving equilibrium in the heavens, realized by a localaccident in an appalling wilderness of worlds where no life can exist. In a span of time which as acosmic interval will count but as an hour, it will have ceased to be. The Darwinian notion ofchance production, and subsequent destruction, speedy or deferred, 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 undoing, 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 paltriest of our private wants. The God whom science recognizesmust be a God of universal laws exclusively, a God who does a wholesale, not a retail 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 Christian 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 expound 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 undertakings, if it were not day but night. He would then be sufficiently 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 meridian. . . . 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 vogue in the eighteenth century. "Had Man's body," says Dr. Derham, "been madeaccording to any of the Atheistical 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 Disturbance, whatMischiefs would the world eternally have lain under! No Security could have been to our persons;no Certainty, no Enjoyment of our Possessions; no Justice between Man and Man, no Distinctionbetween Good and Bad, between Friends and Foes, between Father and Child, Husband and Wife,Male or Female; but all would have been turned topsy-turvy, by being exposed to the Malice of theEnvious and ill-Natured, to the Fraud and Violence of Knaves and Robbers, to the Forgeries of thecrafty Cheat, to the Lusts of the Effeminate and Debauched, and what not! Our Courts of Justicecan abundantly testify the dire Effects of Mistaking Men's Faces, of counterfeiting their Hands,and forging Writings.

But now as the infinitely 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 deity truly after the heart of eighteenth century Anglicanism.

I subjoin, omitting the capitals, Derham's "Vindication 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 brewed of waterand malt, and it is the water in it which quenches 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 utensils, 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, discourses 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 languishing 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 abode from the hills to the vales, is an admirableeasement, refreshment, and great benefit to the valetudinarian, feeble part of mankind; affordingthose an easy and comfortable life, who would otherwise live miserably, languish, and pine away.

"To this salutary conformation of the earth we may add another great convenience of the hills,and that is affording commodious places for habitation, serving (as an eminent author wordeth it)as screens to keep off the cold and nipping blasts of the northern and easterly winds, and reflectingthe benign and cherishing sunbeams and so rendering 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 conveyance, 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, contrived 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 stagnate and perhaps stink, and also drown large tracts 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 perpetuate the traditions of the most primeval thought. To coerce 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 impersonal 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 aesthetic 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 miraculous character of the circle and of all circular movement. Thecircle is both convex and concave; it is made by a fixed 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 speculations: "Who gave to chaff such power to freeze that it preserves snowburied under it, and such power to warm that it ripens 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 cinders? . . . Then what wonderful properties do we find in charcoal, which is so brittlethat a light tap breaks it, and a slight pressure pulverizes 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 unnaturalness the sympathies andantipathies of their superficial qualities, their eccentricities, their brightness and strength anddestructiveness, were inevitably the ways in which they originally fastened our attention.

If you open early medical books, you will find sympathetic magic invoked on every page. Take,for example, the famous vulnerary ointment 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 skull of a hanged criminal, and othermaterials equally unpleasant--the whole prepared under the planet Venus if possible, but neverunder Mars or Saturn. 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 dolorous and exoticimpression from the wounded part. But to do this it has to implore the aid of the bull's fat, andother portions of the unguent. The reason why bull's fat is so powerful is that the bull at the time ofslaughter is full of secret reluctancy and vindictive murmurs, 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 imputed, not to any auxiliary concurrenceof Satan, but simply to the energy of the posthumous 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 abridge 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 slain by a witch, taken out of the yet reeking carcase, be impaled upon an arrow and roasted,immediately the whole witch becomes tormented 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, enraged and agitated 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 hog, 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 mowed off in acombat, but the celebrated 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 superstition 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, velocity, direction,position, what thin, pallid, uninteresting ideas! How could the richer animistic aspects of Nature,the peculiarities and oddities that make phenomena picturesquely striking or expressive, fail tohave been first singled out and followed by philosophy as the more promising 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 "sublimity" 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 solitude 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 impersonality 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 subjective 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 whatsoever 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 fugitive and paltry 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 insignificant 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 privately feels it rolling out on fortune's wheel may be disparaged for itsegotism, may be sneered 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 doctrine 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 axis of reality runs solely through the egotistic places--they are strung upon it likeso many beads. 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 raisin on it instead of the word "raisin," with one real egg instead ofthe word "egg," might be an inadequate meal, but it would at least be a commencement of reality.

The contention 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 repudiate the survival-theory of religion, as being founded on an egregious 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 tardy 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 fable. Similarly, the time-honoredphenomenon of diabolical 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 legitimation 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, revert 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 eccentricity rather thanthe definitively triumphant 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 bent on rehabilitating the element of feeling in religion and subordinating its intellectualpart. Individuality is founded in feeling; and the recesses of feeling, the darker, blinder strata 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 contemplates 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 banished 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 INEVITABLE INFERENCE," I recognize the tendency to let religionevaporate in intellectual terms. Would martyrs 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 pretension to meddle 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 positively 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 vein, 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 purely intellectual sentiments. "Of religious sentiment properlyso called, nothing survives at last save a vague respect for the unknowable x which is a last relic 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 entirely 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 Ethical Interpretations, 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 inhuman 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 flattening out of the subject, instead of a crescendo 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 nucleus, 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 grafted, 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 analytic 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 Stoic, Christian, and Buddhist 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 tonic, freshens our vital powers.

In almost every lecture, but especially in the lectures on Conversion and on Saintliness, we haveseen how this emotion overcomes temperamental melancholy and imparts endurance to theSubject, or a zest, or a meaning, or an enchantment 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 Psychology, 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 raptures of the divine presence, or in such mystical seizures as Dr. Bucke described.

[344] It may be a mere vague enthusiasm, half spiritual, half vital, a courage, and a feeling thatgreat and wondrous 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, intoxicated 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 precipice, one step more and I must havefallen. I took fright and gave up my nocturnal promenade." 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 onward with me, and still urge you, without the leastidea what is our destination Or whether we shall be victorious, 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 sanguine 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 passionate loyalty 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 stimulant 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 irrelevant 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, abridged. See, also, this writer's extraordinarily 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 inquiry 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 vindicated 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 discrepancies of the creeds, a common nucleus to which they beartheir testimony 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 salvation takes a mystical tinge. 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 wreck.

[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 accurately 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 exteriority of the helpingpower and yet account for our sense of union with it;[351] and they fully justify 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 possessed 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 propensity 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 pertinently 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 embedded 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 speculative differences appear most clearly. Over this point pantheism and theism, natureand second birth, works and grace and karma, immortality and reincarnation, rationalism andmysticism, carry on inveterate disputes.

At the end of my lecture on Philosophy[353] I held out the notion that an impartial science ofreligions might sift 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" renounces 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 logic will find no plausible pretext 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 offhand at the position of a particulartheology, the Christian theology, for example, and proceed immediately to define the "more" asJehovah, and the "union" as his imputation 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 entity; and I believe that in it wehave exactly the mediating 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 Subliminal Consciousness[354] is as true as when it was first written: "Each of usis in reality an abiding psychical entity far more extensive than he knows--an individuality whichcan never express itself completely through any corporeal manifestation. 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 abeyance or reserve."[355] Much of the content ofthis larger background against which our conscious being stands out in relief is insignificant.

Imperfect memories, silly jingles, inhibitive 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] Proceedings 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 isolated 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 inventory 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 subconscious 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 faculties of ourown hidden mind which are controlling, the sense of union with the power beyond us is a sense ofsomething, not merely apparently, but literally true.

This doorway 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 peculiar 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 effulgent, 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 vilest 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 almighty, 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 Infinity, 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 degradation. 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 corroborate incompatibletheological doctrines, they neutralize one another and leave no fixed results. If we follow any oneof them, or if we follow philosophical 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 domain, 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 generic, 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 bespeak the same indulgence which in a converse caseI should accord to yours.

[359] "The influence of the Holy Spirit, exquisitely called the Comforter, is a matter of actualexperience, as solid a reality as that of electro magnetism." W. C. Brownell, Scribner's Magazine,vol. xxx. p. 112.

<506> The further limits of our being plunge, 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 philosophic excuse for calling the unseen or mystical world unreal.

[360] That the transaction of opening ourselves, otherwise called prayer, is a perfectly definiteone for certain persons, appears abundantly in the preceding lectures. I append another concreteexample to rein force the impression on the reader's mind:-"Man can learn to transcend 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, twilight 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, sane, sound, rational, common-sense shifting of consciousnessfrom the phenomena of sense-perception to the phenomena of seership, from the thought of self toa distinctively 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 appellation, for us Christians at least, for the supreme 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 fulfills 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 parental 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 permanently 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 immediate 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 prolific 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 margin 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 prop 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 rosier 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 thoroughly "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 discrete, 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 vividly 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!" Humbug is humbug, even though it bear the scientific name, and thetotal expression of human experience, as I view it objectively, invincibly 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?
POSTSCRIPT
　　In writing my concluding lecture I had to aim so much at simplification that I fear that mygeneral philosophic position received so scant a statement as hardly to be intelligible to some ofmy readers. I therefore add this epilogue, which must also be so brief as possibly to remedy butlittle the defect. In a later work I may be enabled to state my position more amply andconsequently more clearly.

Originality cannot be expected in a field like this, where all the attitudes and tempers that arepossible have been exhibited in literature long ago, and where any new writer can immediately beclassed under a familiar head. If one should make a division of all thinkers into naturalists andsupernaturalists, I should undoubtedly have to go, along with most philosophers, into thesupernaturalist branch. But there is a crasser and a more refined supernaturalism, and it is to therefined division that most philosophers at the present day belong. If not regular transcendentalidealists, they at least obey the Kantian direction enough to bar out ideal entities from interferingcausally in the course of phenomenal events. Refined supernaturalism is universalisticsupernaturalism; for the "crasser" variety "piecemeal" supernaturalism would perhaps be the bettername. It went with that older theology which to-day is supposed to reign only among uneducatedpeople, or to be found among the few belated professors of the dualisms which Kant is thought tohave displaced. It admits miracles and providential leadings, and finds no intellectual difficulty inmixing the ideal and the real worlds together by interpolating influences from the ideal regionamong the forces that causally determine the real world's details. In this the refinedsupernaturalists think that it muddles disparate dimensions of existence. For them the world of theideal has no efficient causality, and never bursts into the world of phenomena at particular points.

The ideal world, for them, is not a world of facts, but only of the meaning of facts; it is a point ofview for judging facts. It appertains to a different "-ology," and inhabits a different dimension ofbeing altogether from that in which existential propositions obtain. It cannot get down upon the flatlevel of experience and interpolate itself piecemeal between distinct portions of nature, as thosewho believe, for example, in divine aid coming in response to prayer, are bound to think it must.

Notwithstanding my own inability to accept either popular Christianity or scholastic theism, Isuppose that my belief that in communion with the Ideal new force comes into the world, and newdepartures are made here below, subjects me to being classed among the supernaturalists of thepiecemeal or crasser type. Universalistic supernaturalism surrenders, it seems to me, too easily tonaturalism. It takes the facts of physical science at their face-value, and leaves the laws of life justas naturalism finds them, with no hope of remedy, in case their fruits are bad.

It confines itself to sentiments about life as a whole, sentiments which may be admiring andadoring, but which need not be so, as the existence of systematic pessimism proves. In thisuniversalistic way of taking the ideal world, the essence of practical religion seems to me toevaporate. Both instinctively and for logical reasons, I find it hard to believe that principles canexist which make no difference in facts.[362] But all facts are particular facts, and the wholeinterest of the question of God's existence seems to me to lie in the consequences for particularswhich that existence may be expected to entail. That no concrete particular of experience shouldalter its complexion in consequence of a God being there seems to me an incredible proposition,and yet it is the thesis to which (implicitly at any rate) refined supernaturalism seems to cling. It isonly with experience en bloc, it says, that the Absolute maintains relations. It condescends to notransactions of detail.

[362] Transcendental idealism, of course, insists that its ideal world makes THIS difference, thatfacts EXIST. We owe it to the Absolute that we have a world of fact at all. "A world" of fact!--thatexactly is the trouble. An entire world is the smallest unit with which the Absolute can work,whereas to our finite minds work for the better ought to be done within this world, setting in atsingle points. Our difficulties and our ideals are all piecemeal affairs, but the Absolute can do nopiecework for us; so that all the interests which our poor souls compass raise their heads too late.

We should have spoken earlier, prayed for another world absolutely, before this world was born. Itis strange, I have heard a friend say, to see this blind corner into which Christian thought hasworked itself at last, with its God who can raise no particular weight whatever, who can help uswith no private burden, and who is on the side of our enemies as much as he is on our own. Oddevolution from the God of David's psalms!

I am ignorant of Buddhism and speak under correction, and merely in order the better to describemy general point of view; but as I apprehend the Buddhistic doctrine of Karma, I agree in principlewith that. All supernaturalists admit that facts are under the judgment of higher law; but forBuddhism as I interpret it, and for religion generally so far as it remains unweakened bytranscendentalistic metaphysics, the word "judgment" here means no such bare academic verdict orplatonic appreciation as it means in Vedantic or modern absolutist systems; it carries, on thecontrary, EXECUTION with it, is in rebus as well as post rem. and operates "causally" as partialfactor in the total fact. The universe becomes a gnosticism[363] pure and simple on any otherterms. But this view that judgment and execution go together is that of the crasser supernaturalistway of thinking, so the present volume must on the whole be classed with the other expressions ofthat creed.

[363] See my Will to Believe and other Essays in popular Philosophy. 1897, p. 165.

I state the matter thus bluntly, because the current of thought in academic circles runs against me,and I feel like a man who must set his back against an open door quickly if he does not wish to seeit closed and locked. In spite of its being so shocking to the reigning intellectual tastes, I believethat a candid consideration of piecemeal supernaturalism and a complete discussion of all itsmetaphysical bearings will show it to be the hypothesis by which the largest number of legitimaterequirements are met. That of course would be a program for other books than this; what I now saysufficiently indicates to the philosophic reader the place where I belong.

If asked just where the differences in fact which are due to God's existence come in, I shouldhave to say that in general I have no hypothesis to offer beyond what the phenomenon of"prayerful communion," especially when certain kinds of incursion from the subconscious regiontake part in it, immediately suggests. The appearance is that in this phenomenon something ideal,which in one sense is part of ourselves and in another sense is not ourselves, actually exerts aninfluence, raises our centre of personal energy, and produces regenerative effects unattainable inother ways. If, then, there be a wider world of being than that of our every-day consciousness, if init there be forces whose effects on us are intermittent, if one facilitating condition of the effects bethe openness of the "subliminal" door, we have the elements of a theory to which the phenomenaof religious life lend plausibility. I am so impressed by the importance of these phenomena that Iadopt the hypothesis which they so naturally suggest. At these places at least, I say, it would seemas though transmundane energies, God, if you will, produced immediate effects within the naturalworld to which the rest of our experience belongs.

The difference in natural "fact" which most of us would assign as the first difference which theexistence of a God ought to make would, I imagine, be personal immortality. Religion, in fact, forthe great majority of our own race MEANS immortality, and nothing else. God is the producer ofimmortality; and whoever has doubts of immortality is written down as an atheist without farthertrial. I have said nothing in my lectures about immortality or the belief therein, for to me it seems asecondary point. If our ideals are only cared for in "eternity," I do not see why we might not bewilling to resign their care to other hands than ours. Yet I sympathize with the urgent impulse to bepresent ourselves, and in the conflict of impulses, both of them so vague yet both of them noble, Iknow not how to decide. It seems to me that it is eminently a case for facts to testify. Facts, I think,are yet lacking to prove "spirit-return," though I have the highest respect for the patient labors ofMessrs. Myers, Hodgson, and Hyslop, and am somewhat impressed by their favorable conclusions.

I consequently leave the matter open, with this brief word to save the reader from a possibleperplexity as to why immortality got no mention in the body of this book.

The ideal power with which we feel ourselves in connection, the "God" of ordinary men, is, bothby ordinary men and by philosophers, endowed with certain of those metaphysical attributes whichin the lecture on philosophy I treated with such disrespect. He is assumed as a matter of course tobe "one and only" and to be "infinite"; and the notion of many finite gods is one which hardly anyone thinks it worth while to consider, and still less to uphold. Nevertheless, in the interests ofintellectual clearness, I feel bound to say that religious experience, as we have studied it, cannot becited as unequivocally supporting the infinitist belief. The only thing that it unequivocally testifiesto is that we can experience union with SOMETHING larger than ourselves and in that union findour greatest peace. Philosophy, with its passion for unity, and mysticism with its monoideisticbent, both "pass to the limit" and identify the something with a unique God who is the all-inclusivesoul of the world. Popular opinion, respectful to their authority, follows the example which theyset.

Meanwhile the practical needs and experiences of religion seem to me sufficiently met by thebelief that beyond each man and in a fashion continuous with him there exists a larger powerwhich is friendly to him and to his ideals. All that the facts require is that the power should be bothother and larger than our conscious selves. Anything larger will do, if only it be large enough totrust for the next step. It need not be infinite, it need not be solitary. It might conceivably even beonly a larger and more godlike self, of which the present self would then be but the mutilatedexpression, and the universe might conceivably be a collection of such selves, of different degreesof inclusiveness, with no absolute unity realized in it at all.[364] Thus would a sort of polytheismreturn upon us--a polytheism which I do not on this occasion defend, for my only aim at present isto keep the testimony of religious experience clearly within its proper bounds. [Compare p. 130above.]

[364] Such a notion is suggested in my Ingersoll Lecture On Human Immortality, Boston andLondon, 1899.

Upholders of the monistic view will say to such a polytheism (which, by the way, has alwaysbeen the real religion of common people, and is so still to-day) that unless there be one all-inclusive God, our guarantee of security is left imperfect. In the Absolute, and in the Absoluteonly, ALL is saved. If there be different gods, each caring for his part, some portion of some of usmight not be covered with divine protection, and our religious consolation would thus fail to becomplete. It goes back to what was said on pages 129-131, about the possibility of there beingportions of the universe that may irretrievably be lost. Common sense is less sweeping in itsdemands than philosophy or mysticism have been wont to be, and can suffer the notion of thisworld being partly saved and partly lost. The ordinary moralistic state of mind makes the salvationof the world conditional upon the success with which each unit does its part. Partial andconditional salvation is in fact a most familiar notion when taken in the abstract, the only difficultybeing to determine the details. Some men are even disinterested enough to be willing to be in theunsaved remnant as far as their persons go, if only they can be persuaded that their cause willprevail--all of us are willing, whenever our activity-excitement rises sufficiently high. I think, infact, that a final philosophy of religion will have to consider the pluralistic hypothesis moreseriously than it has hitherto been willing to consider it. For practical life at any rate, the CHANCEof salvation is enough. No fact in human nature is more characteristic than its willingness to liveon a chance. The existence of the chance makes the difference, as Edmund Gurney says, between alife of which the keynote is resignation and a life of which the keynote is hope.[365] But all thesestatements are unsatisfactory from their brevity, and I can only say that I hope to return to the samequestions in another book.

[365] Tertium Quid, 1887, p. 99. See also pp. 148, 149.

WILLIAM JAMES (1842-1910)A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR OF "THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE"The road by which William James arrived at his position of leadership among Americanphilosophers was, during his childhood, youth and early maturity, quite as circuitous andunpredictable as were his father's ideas on the training of his children. That Swedenborgiantheologian foresaw neither the career of novelist for his son Henry, nor that of pragmatistphilosopher for the older William. The father's migrations between New York, Europe andNewport meant that William's education had variety if it did not have fixed direction. From 13 to18 he studied in Europe and returned to Newport, Rhode Island, to study painting under theguidance of John La Farge. After a year, he gave up art for science and entered HarvardUniversity, where his most influential teachers were Louis Agassiz and Charles W. Eliot. In 1863,William James began the study of medicine, and in 1865 he joined an expedition to the Amazon.

Before long, he wrote: "If there is anything I hate, it is collecting." His studies constantlyinterrupted by ill health, James returned to Germany and began hearing lectures and readingvoluminously in philosophy. He won his medical degree at Harvard in 1870. For four years he wasan invalid in Cambridge, but finally, in 1873, he passed his gravest physical and spiritual crisesand began the career by which he was to influence so profoundly generations of Americanstudents. From 1880 to 1907 he was successively assistant professor of philosophy, professor ofpsychology and professor of philosophy at Harvard. In 1890, the publication of his Principles ofPsycholog brought him the acknowledged leadership in the field of functional psychology. Theselection of William James to deliver the Gifford lectures in Edinburgh was at once a tribute tohim and a reward for the university that sponsored the undertaking. These lectures, collected in thisvolume, have since become famous as the standard scientific work on the psychology of thereligious impulse. Death ended his career on August 27th, 1910.

The End