The Varieties of Religious Experience

by William James

Published in 1902

The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature is a book by psychologist and philosopher William James. It comprises his edited Gifford Lectures on natural theology, which were delivered at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, between 1901 and 1902. The lectures concerned the nature of religion and the neglect of science in the academic study of religion. Soon after its publication, Varieties entered the Western canon of psychology and philosophy and has remained in print for over a century.

Genres: Philosophy, Theology

Tags: psychology, religion, pragmatism, philosophy, mysticism

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 Index: original.md
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 # The Varieties of Religious Experience
 ## License
 **Title:** The Varieties of Religious Experience (Timeless Library Edition)
 The version of this book is: v1.0
 ## LECTURE I. RELIGION AND NEUROLOGY.
+I feel nervous as I take my place before this distinguished audience. To Americans, learning from European scholars is familiar; at Harvard, each winter brings its harvest of lectures from Scottish, English, French, and German representatives. We listen naturally to Europeans; the opposite habit—talking while Europeans listen—we have not yet acquired, making an apology seem necessary.
+It is with no small amount of trepidation that I take my place behind this
+desk, and face this learned 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 of Harvard, 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 whom we have either induced to
+cross the ocean to address us, or captured on the wing as they were
+visiting our land. It seems the natural thing for us to listen whilst the
+Europeans talk. The contrary habit, of talking whilst the Europeans
+listen, we have not yet acquired; and in him who first makes the adventure
+it begets a certain sense of apology being due for so presumptuous an act.
+Particularly must this be the case on a soil as sacred to the American
+imagination as that of Edinburgh. The glories of the philosophic chair of
+this university were deeply impressed on my imagination in boyhood.
+Professor Fraser’s Essays in Philosophy, then just published, was the
+first philosophic book I ever looked into, and I well remember the awe‐
+struck feeling I received from the account of Sir William Hamilton’s
+class‐room therein contained. Hamilton’s own lectures were the first
+philosophic writings I ever forced myself to study, and after that I was
+immersed in Dugald Stewart and Thomas Brown. Such juvenile emotions of
+reverence never get outgrown; and I confess that to find my humble self
+promoted from my native wilderness to be actually for the time an official
+here, and transmuted into a colleague of these illustrious names, carries
+with it a sense of dreamland quite as much as of reality.
+This is especially true on soil as sacred as Edinburgh. The glories of this university's philosophy chair were deeply impressed on my imagination in boyhood. Professor Fraser's *Essays in Philosophy*, newly published then, was my first philosophy book; I remember my awe reading his account of Sir William Hamilton's classroom. Hamilton's lectures were the first I forced myself to study, followed by Dugald Stewart and Thomas Brown. Such youthful reverence is never outgrown. I must confess that being promoted from the "wilderness" of my home to become a temporary colleague to these illustrious names feels as much dream as reality.
+But since I have received the honor of this appointment I have felt that
+it would never do to decline. The academic career also has its heroic
+obligations, so I stand here without further deprecatory words. Let me say
+only this, that now that the current, here and at Aberdeen, has begun to
+run from west to east, I hope it may continue to do so. As the years go
+by, I hope that many of my countrymen may be asked to lecture in the
+Scottish universities, changing places with Scotsmen lecturing in the
+United States; I hope that our people may become in all these higher
+matters even as one people; and that the peculiar philosophic temperament,
+as well as the peculiar political temperament, that goes with our English
+speech may more and more pervade and influence the world.
+Yet having accepted this honor, I could not decline. Academic life has noble obligations, so I stand here without further apology, only hoping this West-to-East exchange of ideas continues, here and at Aberdeen. May many of my countrymen lecture in Scottish universities as Scotsmen lecture in America, until our people become as one in these higher matters, and the English-language temperament continues influencing the world.
+                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
+***
+As regards the manner in which I shall have to administer this
+lectureship, I am neither a theologian, nor a scholar learned in the
+history of religions, nor an anthropologist. Psychology is the only branch
+of learning in which I am particularly versed. To the psychologist the
+religious propensities of man must be at least as interesting as any other
+of the facts pertaining to his mental constitution. It would seem,
+therefore, that, as a psychologist, the natural thing for me would be to
+invite you to a descriptive survey of those religious propensities.
+As to my approach: I am not a theologian, historian of religion, or anthropologist. Psychology is my only expertise. To a psychologist, man's religious tendencies must be as interesting as any other mental fact, so naturally I invite you to a descriptive survey of them.
+If the inquiry be psychological, not religious institutions, but rather
+religious feelings and religious impulses must be its subject, and I must
+confine myself to those more developed subjective 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 always are, yet when one seeks earnestly for its full
+significance, one must always look to its more completely evolved and
+perfect forms. It follows from this that the documents that will most
+concern us will be those of the men who were most accomplished in the
+religious life and best able to give an intelligible account of their
+ideas and motives. These men, of course, are either comparatively modern
+writers, or else such earlier ones as have become religious classics. The
+_documents humains_ which we shall find most instructive need not then be
+sought for in the haunts of special erudition—they lie along the beaten
+highway; and this circumstance, which flows so naturally from the
+character of our problem, suits admirably also your lecturer’s lack of
+special theological 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 be no
+detriment to the value of my conclusions. It is true that some more
+adventurous reader and investigator, lecturing here in future, may unearth
+from the shelves of libraries documents that will make a more delectable
+and curious entertainment to listen to than mine. Yet I doubt whether he
+will necessarily, by his control of so much more out‐of‐the‐way material,
+get much closer to the essence of the matter in hand.
+If this inquiry is psychological, its subject must be religious feelings and impulses, not institutions. I must limit myself to developed internal experiences recorded by highly self-aware individuals in devotional and autobiographical literature. While origins are interesting, full significance requires the most evolved forms. Therefore our documents will be from those most accomplished in religious life and best able to account for their ideas—modern writers or religious classics. These lie along literature's well-traveled paths, which suits my lack of specialized theological training. I can draw examples from books most of you have read without diminishing my conclusions. While future researchers might find more obscure documents, I doubt this would bring them closer to the essence.
+The question, What are the religious propensities? and the question, What
+is their philosophic significance? are two entirely different orders of
+question from the logical point of view; and, as a failure to recognize
+this fact distinctly may breed confusion, I wish to insist upon the point
+a little before we enter into the documents and materials to which I have
+referred.
+> **Quote:** "The question, What are the religious propensities? and the question, What is their philosophic significance? are two entirely different orders of question from the logical point of view; and, as a failure to recognize this fact distinctly may breed confusion, I wish to insist upon the point a little before 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? The answer to the one question is given in an _existential judgment_
+or proposition. The answer to the other 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 by making them first separately, and then adding
+them together.
+Modern logic distinguishes two inquiries: first, what is a thing's nature, origin, history? This yields an *existential judgment*. Second, what is its importance or meaning? This is a *proposition of value*, what Germans call a *Werthurtheil*—a *spiritual judgment*. Neither follows from the other; they arise separately and combine only by addition.
+In the matter of religions it is particularly easy to distinguish the two
+orders of question. Every religious phenomenon has its history and its
+derivation from natural antecedents. What is nowadays called the higher
+criticism of the Bible is only a study of the Bible from this existential
+point of view, neglected too much by the earlier church. Under just what
+biographic conditions did the sacred writers bring forth their various
+contributions to the holy volume? And what had they exactly in their
+several individual minds, when they delivered their utterances? These are
+manifestly questions of historical fact, and one does not see how the
+answer to them can decide offhand the still further question: of what use
+should such a volume, with its manner of coming into existence so defined,
+be to us as a guide to life and a revelation? To answer this other
+question we must have already in our mind some sort of a general theory as
+to what the peculiarities in a thing 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
+indeed deduce another spiritual judgment as to the Bible’s worth. Thus if
+our theory of revelation‐value were to affirm that any book, to possess
+it, must have been composed automatically or not by the free caprice of
+the writer, or that it must exhibit no scientific and historic errors and
+express no local 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 and
+deliberate human composition, if only it be a true record of the inner
+experiences of great‐souled persons wrestling with the crises of their
+fate, then the verdict would be much more favorable. You see that the
+existential facts by themselves are insufficient for determining the
+value; and the best adepts of the higher criticism accordingly never
+confound the existential with the spiritual problem. 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 of values differs.
+In religion this difference is clear. Every phenomenon has a history and natural origin. Biblical "higher criticism" studies the Bible existentially—a perspective the early church neglected. What biographical conditions shaped the sacred authors? What was in their minds? These are historical facts. But how do they decide the Bible's value as revelation? To answer that we need a theory of what makes something revelatory—that's a spiritual judgment. Combine it with existential facts and we deduce worth. If revelation requires freedom from error or passion, the Bible fails. If it allows errors in a true record of great souls struggling with fate, the verdict is favorable. Existential facts alone cannot determine value. The best higher critics never confuse these problems. Same facts, different spiritual judgments yield different valuations.
+                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
+I make these remarks because many religious people—perhaps some here—do not yet practice this distinction. You may feel startled by my purely existential perspective, treating religious experience biologically and psychologically as mere personal history. Some might see this as degrading a sublime subject, suspecting me of trying to discredit religion.
+I make these general remarks about the two sorts of judgment, because
+there are many religious persons—some of you now present, possibly, are
+among them—who do not yet make a working use of the distinction, and who
+may therefore feel at first a little startled at the purely existential
+point of view from which in the following lectures the phenomena of
+religious experience must be considered. When I handle them biologically
+and psychologically as if they were mere curious facts of individual
+history, some of you may think it a degradation of so sublime a subject,
+and may even suspect me, until my purpose gets more fully expressed, of
+deliberately seeking to discredit the religious side of life.
+Such a result is foreign to my intention. This prejudice would prevent understanding, so I will elaborate.
+Such a result is of course absolutely alien to my intention; and since
+such a prejudice on your part would seriously obstruct the due effect of
+much of what I have to relate, I will devote a few more words to the
+point.
+A religious life pursued exclusively makes a person exceptional and eccentric. I don't mean the average believer following conventional traditions—Buddhist, Christian, or Muslim—whose religion is second-hand, made by others, passed down by habit. Studying this would be useless. We must look for original experiences that set the pattern, found in individuals for whom religion is not dull habit but "acute fever"—"geniuses" in the religious sphere. Like other historical geniuses, they often show nervous instability. Religious leaders have perhaps even more abnormal psychological experiences: intense emotional sensitivity, conflicted inner lives, melancholy, obsessions, fixed ideas, trances, voices, visions—peculiarities usually classified as pathological. Yet these very features often gave them religious authority.
+There can be no doubt that as a matter of fact a religious life,
+exclusively pursued, does tend to make 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, or Mohammedan. 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 this
+second‐hand religious life. We must make search rather for the original
+experiences which were the pattern‐setters to all this mass of suggested
+feeling and imitated conduct. These experiences we can only find in
+individuals for whom religion exists not as a dull habit, but as an acute
+fever rather. But such individuals are “geniuses” in the religious line;
+and like many other geniuses who have brought forth fruits effective
+enough for commemoration in the pages of biography, such religious
+geniuses have often shown symptoms of nervous instability. Even more
+perhaps than other 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 a discordant inner
+life, and had melancholy during a part of their career. They have known no
+measure, 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 as pathological.
+Often, moreover, these pathological features in their career have helped
+to give them their religious authority and influence.
+For a concrete example, consider George Fox. The Quaker religion he founded is impossible to overpraise—in an era of hypocrisy, it was a religion of truth rooted in spiritual inwardness, a return to the original gospel. As modern Christian sects liberalize, they essentially return to Fox's position. No one can claim Fox lacked spiritual wisdom; everyone from Oliver Cromwell to jailers acknowledged his superior character. Yet neurologically, Fox was deeply unstable. His *Journal* contains entries like this:
+If you ask for a concrete example, there can be no better one than is
+furnished by the person of George Fox. The Quaker religion which he
+founded is something which it is impossible to overpraise. In a day of
+shams, it was a religion of veracity rooted in spiritual inwardness, and a
+return to something more like the original gospel truth than men had ever
+known in England. So far as our Christian sects to‐day are evolving into
+liberality, they are simply reverting in essence to the position which Fox
+and the early Quakers so long ago assumed. No one can pretend for a moment
+that in point of spiritual sagacity and capacity, Fox’s mind was unsound.
+Every one who confronted him personally, from Oliver Cromwell down to
+county magistrates and jailers, seems to have acknowledged his superior
+power. Yet from the point of view of his nervous constitution, Fox was a
+psychopath or _détraqué_ of the deepest dye. His Journal abounds in
+entries of this sort:—
+> **Quote:** "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 the word of the Lord came to me, that I must go thither... I was commanded by the Lord to pull off my shoes. I stood still, for it was winter: but the word of the Lord was like a fire in me. So I put off my shoes, and left them with the shepherds... Then I walked on about a mile, and as soon as I was got within the city, the word of the Lord came to me again, saying: Cry, ‘Wo to the bloody city of Lichfield!’ ... As I went thus crying 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... Afterwards I came to understand, that in the Emperor 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... that I might raise up the memorial of the blood of those martyrs, which had been shed above a thousand years before, and lay cold in their streets."
+Studying religion's existential conditions requires we not ignore these pathological aspects, but describe them as we would in anyone. We instinctively shrink from seeing what we love handled intellectually. The intellect first classifies objects, but something infinitely important to us feels unique. A crab would feel a sense of personal outrage to be casually called a 'crustacean' and thus disposed of. 'I am no such thing,' it would say; 'I am myself, alone.'
+    “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
+    the word of the Lord came to me, that I must go thither. Being
+    come to the house we were going to, I wished the friends to walk
+    into the house, saying nothing to them of whither I was to go. As
+    soon as they were gone I stept away, and went by my eye over hedge
+    and ditch till I came within a mile of Lichfield; where, in a
+    great field, shepherds were keeping their sheep. Then was I
+    commanded by the Lord to pull off my shoes. I stood still, for it
+    was winter: but the word of the Lord was like a fire in me. So I
+    put off my shoes, and left them with the shepherds; and the poor
+    shepherds trembled, and were astonished. Then I walked on about a
+    mile, and as soon as I was got within the city, the word of the
+    Lord came to me again, saying: Cry, ‘Wo to the bloody city of
+    Lichfield!’ So I went up and down the streets, crying with a loud
+    voice, Wo to the bloody city of Lichfield! It being market 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 thus crying
+    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, and felt
+    myself clear, I went out of the town in peace; and returning to
+    the shepherds gave them some money, and took my shoes of them
+    again. But the fire of the Lord was so on my feet, and all over
+    me, that I did not matter to put on my shoes again, and was at a
+    stand whether I should or no, till I felt 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 that city, and call it The bloody
+    city! For though the parliament had the minister one while, and
+    the king another, and much blood had been shed in the town during
+    the wars between them, yet there was no more than had befallen
+    many other places. But afterwards I came to understand, that in
+    the Emperor 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 the
+    market‐place, that I might raise up the memorial of the blood of
+    those martyrs, which had been shed above a thousand years before,
+    and lay cold in their streets. So the sense of this blood was upon
+    me, and I obeyed the word of the Lord.”
+Next the intellect uncovers causes. Spinoza said he would analyze human actions and desires "as if they were a matter of lines, planes, and solids," viewing passions as natural things following necessity like triangles. Similarly, Taine wrote: "Whether facts are moral or physical, it makes no difference. They always have causes. There are causes for ambition, courage, and truthfulness, just as there are for digestion, muscle movement, and body heat."
+> **Quote:** "Vice and virtue are products like vitriol and sugar."
+Bent as we are on studying religion’s existential conditions, we cannot
+possibly ignore these pathological aspects of the subject. We must
+describe and name them just as if they occurred in non‐religious men. It
+is true that we instinctively 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 an object
+is to class it along with something else. But any object that is
+infinitely important to us and awakens our devotion feels to us also as if
+it must be _sui generis_ and unique. Probably a crab would be filled with
+a sense of personal outrage if it could hear us class it without ado or
+apology as a crustacean, and thus dispose of it. “I am no such thing,” it
+would say; “I am MYSELF, MYSELF alone.”
+Such proclamations threaten our inner life. We worry cold analysis will explain away our soul's secrets, making them no more precious than groceries.
+                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
+The assumption that "lowly" origins destroy spiritual value appears in common comments: Alfred believes in immortality only because he's emotional; Fanny is conscientious only from overstimulated nerves; William's melancholy is bad digestion; Eliza's religious joy is hysteria; Peter would worry less if he exercised more. A more developed version links religious emotions to sexuality: conversion is puberty crisis; saintly self-denial is perverted parental instinct; the "hysterical" nun's Christ is an imaginary husband.
+The next thing the intellect does is to lay bare the causes in which the
+thing originates. Spinoza says: “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
+properties with the same eye with which he looks on all other natural
+things, since the consequences of our affections flow from their nature
+with the same necessity as it results from the nature of a triangle that
+its three angles should be equal to two right angles. Similarly M. Taine,
+in the introduction to his history of English literature, has written:
+“Whether facts be moral or physical, it makes no matter. They always have
+their causes. There are causes for ambition, courage, veracity, just as
+there are for digestion, muscular movement, animal heat. Vice and virtue
+are products like vitriol and sugar.” When we read such proclamations of
+the intellect bent on showing the existential conditions of absolutely
+everything, we feel—quite apart from our legitimate impatience at the
+somewhat ridiculous swagger of the program, in view of what the authors
+are actually able to perform—menaced and negated in the springs of our
+innermost life. Such cold‐blooded assimilations threaten, we think, to
+undo our soul’s vital secrets, as if the same breath which should succeed
+in explaining their origin would simultaneously explain away their
+significance, and make them appear of no more preciousness, either, than
+the useful groceries of which M. Taine speaks.
+We all use this method to discredit mindsets we dislike. But when others criticize our more exalted > **Quote:** 'soul-flights'  by calling them > **Quote:** 'nothing but'  expressions of our organic disposition, we feel outraged. We know our mental states have value as truth revelations regardless of physical makeup. We wish this "medical materialism" would be quiet.
+Perhaps the commonest expression of this assumption that spiritual value
+is undone if lowly origin be asserted is seen in those comments which
+unsentimental people so often pass on their more sentimental
+acquaintances. Alfred believes in immortality so strongly because his
+temperament is so emotional. Fanny’s extraordinary conscientiousness is
+merely a matter of over‐instigated nerves. William’s melancholy about the
+universe is due to bad digestion—probably his liver is torpid. Eliza’s
+delight in her church is a symptom of her hysterical constitution. Peter
+would be less troubled about his soul if he would take more exercise in
+the open air, etc. A more fully developed example of the same kind of
+reasoning is the fashion, quite common nowadays among certain writers, of
+criticising the religious emotions by showing a connection between them
+and 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 gone astray. For the
+hysterical nun, starving for natural life, Christ is but an imaginary
+substitute for a more earthly object of affection. And the like.(1)
+"Medical materialism" dismisses Saint Paul's Damascus vision as occipital cortex discharge, calling him epileptic; writes off Saint Teresa as hysteric and Saint Francis as hereditarily degenerate; treats George Fox's spiritual longing as digestive disorder; explains Carlyle's misery as chronic stomach inflammation. It claims all mental tension is merely physical constitution—likely internal toxins from glandular malfunction.
+We are surely all familiar in a general way with this method of
+discrediting states of mind for which we have an antipathy. We all use it
+to some degree in criticising persons whose states of mind we regard as
+overstrained. But when other people criticise our own more exalted soul‐
+flights by calling them “nothing but” expressions of our organic
+disposition, we feel outraged and hurt, for we know that, whatever be our
+organism’s peculiarities, our mental states have their substantive value
+as revelations of the living truth; and we wish that all this medical
+materialism could be made to hold its tongue.
+Medical materialism concludes it has dismantled these figures' spiritual authority.
+Medical materialism seems indeed a good appellation for the too simple‐
+minded system of thought which we are considering. Medical materialism
+finishes up Saint Paul by calling his vision on the road to Damascus a
+discharging lesion of the occipital cortex, he being an epileptic. It
+snuffs out Saint Teresa as an hysteric, Saint Francis of Assisi as an
+hereditary degenerate. George Fox’s discontent with the shams of his age,
+and his pining for spiritual veracity, it treats as a symptom of a
+disordered colon. Carlyle’s organ‐tones of misery it accounts for by a
+gastro‐duodenal catarrh. All such mental over‐tensions, it says, are, when
+you come to the bottom of the matter, mere affairs of diathesis (auto‐
+intoxications most probably), due to the perverted action of various
+glands which physiology will yet discover.
+But modern psychology's hypothesis of thorough mind-body dependence makes medical materialism's claims generally true: Paul likely had epileptoid seizures; Fox may have had degenerative inheritance; Carlyle had internal toxicity. Yet how does this account of physical origins decide spiritual significance? Every state of mind—high or low, healthy or pathological—depends on physical processes. Scientific theories are physically conditioned just like religious emotions. The liver determines the atheist's views as decisively as the seeker's. Liver states produce Methodist or atheist mindsets; all ecstasy, dryness, longing, and belief are equally rooted in biology.
+And medical materialism then thinks that the spiritual authority of all
+such personages is successfully undermined.(2)
+To argue that physical cause refutes spiritual value is illogical—unless you've already linked value to specific physiological changes. Otherwise, no thought or feeling could reveal truth, since all arise from bodily states.
+Let us ourselves look at the matter in the largest possible way. Modern
+psychology, finding definite psycho‐physical connections to hold good,
+assumes as a convenient hypothesis that the dependence of mental states
+upon bodily conditions must be thorough‐going and complete. If we adopt
+the assumption, then of course what medical materialism insists on must be
+true in a general way, 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 some
+organ or other, no matter which,—and the rest. But now, I ask you, how can
+such an existential account 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 our
+states 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 of the sturdy atheist as decisively as it does those of the
+Methodist under conviction anxious about his soul. When it alters in one
+way the blood that percolates it, we get the methodist, when in another
+way, we get the atheist form of mind. So of all our raptures and our
+drynesses, our longings and pantings, our questions and beliefs. They are
+equally organically founded, be they of religious or of non‐religious
+content.
+Medical materialism doesn't follow this logic to skeptical conclusions. It remains certain some mental states are superior and reveal more truth, relying on standard spiritual judgments. It has no physiological theory for its own preferred states; its vague links to nerves or liver, or illness labels to discredit disliked states, is inconsistent.
+To plead the organic causation of a religious state of mind, then, in
+refutation of its claim to possess superior spiritual value, is quite
+illogical and arbitrary, unless one have already worked out in advance
+some psycho‐physical theory connecting spiritual values in general with
+determinate sorts of physiological change. Otherwise none of our thoughts
+and feelings, not even our scientific doctrines, not even our
+_dis_‐beliefs, could retain any value as revelations of the truth, for
+every one of them without exception flows from the state of their
+possessor’s body at the time.
+When we judge mental states superior, is it ever from physical origins? No—always for two different reasons: immediate joy, or belief they produce good life results. We reject "feverish delusions" not for the fever itself (which might be a better truth-environment than 98 degrees), but because delusions are unpleasant or can't withstand post-fever criticism. We praise healthy thoughts not for their chemistry (which we barely understand), but for inner happiness, consistency with other beliefs, or usefulness.
+It is needless to say that medical materialism draws in point of fact no
+such sweeping skeptical conclusion. It is sure, just as every simple man
+is sure, that some states of mind are inwardly superior to others, and
+reveal to us more truth, and in this it simply makes use of an ordinary
+spiritual judgment. It has no physiological theory of the production of
+these its favorite states, by which it may accredit them; and its attempt
+to discredit the states which it dislikes, by vaguely associating them
+with nerves and liver, and connecting them with names connoting bodily
+affliction, is altogether illogical and inconsistent.
+These two criteria—immediate feel and long-term result—don't always align. What feels good isn't always true. The classic example: "Philip drunk" vs. "Philip sober." If feeling good were the test, drunkenness would be highest. But its revelations don't hold up. This discrepancy makes spiritual judgments uncertain. Some mystical experiences carry massive inner authority, yet are rare, not universal, and may contradict the rest of life. Some follow momentary intuition; others prefer long-term results. This creates deep disagreement in spiritual judgments—a discord that will become clear.
+Let us play fair in this whole matter, and be quite candid with ourselves
+and with the facts. When we think certain states of mind superior to
+others, is it ever because of what we know concerning their organic
+antecedents? No! it is always for two entirely different reasons. It is
+either because we take an immediate delight in them; or else it is because
+we believe them to bring us good consequential 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,
+° or 104° Fahrenheit might be a much more favorable temperature for
+truths to germinate and sprout in, than the more ordinary blood‐heat of 97
+or 98 degrees. It is either the disagreeableness itself of the fancies, or
+their inability to bear the criticisms of the convalescent hour. When we
+praise the thoughts which health brings, health’s peculiar chemical
+metabolisms have nothing to do with determining our judgment. We know in
+fact almost nothing about these metabolisms. It is the character of inner
+happiness in the thoughts which stamps them as good, or else their
+consistency with our other opinions and their serviceability for our
+needs, which make them pass for true in our esteem.
+This disagreement can never be settled by a medical test.
+Now the more intrinsic and the more remote of these criteria do not always
+hang together. Inner happiness and serviceability do not always agree.
+What immediately feels most “good” is not always most “true,” when
+measured by the verdict of the rest of experience. The difference between
+Philip drunk and Philip sober is the classic instance in corroboration. If
+merely “feeling good” could decide, drunkenness would be the supremely
+valid human experience. But its revelations, however acutely satisfying at
+the moment, are inserted into an environment which refuses to bear them
+out for any length of time. The consequence of this discrepancy of the two
+criteria is the uncertainty which still prevails over so many of our
+spiritual judgments. There are moments 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 come seldom, and they do not come to every one; and the rest of life
+makes either no connection with them, or tends to contradict them more
+than it confirms them. Some persons follow more the voice of the moment in
+these cases, some prefer to be guided by the average results. Hence the
+sad discordancy of so many of the spiritual judgments of human beings; a
+discordancy which will be brought home to us acutely enough before these
+lectures end.
+A perfect example is the theory that genius is caused by pathology. One author calls genius a branch on the "neuropathic tree"; another says it's hereditary degeneration related to epilepsy; a third notes that famous lives inevitably fall into illness categories, with greater genius bringing greater instability.
+                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
+Do these authors dismiss the value of genius's fruits? Do they tell us to stop admiring masterpieces?
+It is, however, a discordancy that can never be resolved by any merely
+medical test. A good example of the impossibility of holding strictly to
+the medical tests is seen in the theory of the pathological causation of
+genius promulgated by recent authors. “Genius,” said Dr. Moreau, “is but
+one of the many branches of the neuropathic tree.” “Genius,” says Dr.
+Lombroso, “is a symptom of hereditary degeneration of the epileptoid
+variety, and is allied to moral insanity.” “Whenever a man’s life,” writes
+Mr. Nisbet, “is at once sufficiently illustrious and recorded with
+sufficient fullness to be a subject of profitable study, he inevitably
+falls into the morbid category.... And it is worthy of remark that, as a
+rule, the greater the genius, the greater the unsoundness.”(3)
+No. Their natural instincts hold against consistent medical materialism. One follower dismisses only art he dislikes; mostly, masterpieces go unchallenged. The medical attack usually targets either eccentric secular works or, most often, religious experiences—attacked because the critic already dislikes them on spiritual grounds.
+Now do these authors, after having succeeded in establishing to their own
+satisfaction that the works of genius are fruits of disease, consistently
+proceed thereupon to impugn the _value_ of the fruits? 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 outright that no neuropath can ever be a revealer of new
+truth?
+In science and industry, no one disproves opinions by citing neurological makeup. Opinions are tested by logic and experiment regardless of temperament. Religious opinions should be no different. Their value can only be determined by direct spiritual judgment—based primarily on immediate feelings, secondarily on moral needs and consistency with other knowledge.
+No! their immediate spiritual instincts are too strong for them here, and
+hold their own against inferences which, in mere love of logical
+consistency, medical materialism ought to be only too glad to draw. One
+disciple of the school, indeed, has striven to impugn the value of works
+of genius in a wholesale way (such works of contemporary art, namely, as
+he himself is unable to enjoy, and they are many) by using medical
+arguments.(4) But for the most part the masterpieces are left
+unchallenged; and the medical line of attack either confines itself to
+such secular productions as every one admits to be intrinsically
+eccentric, or else addresses itself exclusively to religious
+manifestations. And then it is because the religious manifestations have
+been already condemned because the critic dislikes them on internal or
+spiritual grounds.
+> **Quote:** "Immediate luminousness, in short, philosophical reasonableness, and moral helpfulness are the only available criteria."
+In the natural sciences and industrial arts it never occurs to any one to
+try to refute opinions by showing up their author’s neurotic constitution.
+Opinions here are invariably tested by logic and by experiment, no matter
+what may be their author’s neurological type. It should be no otherwise
+with religious opinions. Their value can only be ascertained by spiritual
+judgments directly passed upon them, judgments based on our own immediate
+feeling primarily; and secondarily on what we can ascertain of their
+experiential relations to our moral needs and to the rest of what we hold
+as true.
+Teresa could have had a cow's calm nervous system, but it wouldn't save her theology if it failed these tests. Conversely, if her theology passes, her hysteria doesn't matter.
+_Immediate luminousness_, in short, _philosophical reasonableness_, and
+_moral helpfulness_ are the only available criteria. Saint Teresa might
+have had the nervous system of the placidest cow, and it would 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 no difference how hysterical or
+nervously off her balance Saint Teresa may have been when she was with us
+here below.
+We return to empirical philosophy: truth must be tested by experience. Dogmatic philosophies seek an immediate, absolute mark to prevent error. Origin has been a favorite test: intuition, church authority, revelation, spirit possession. Medical materialists are modern dogmatists, using origin to destroy rather than validate.
+                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
+Their pathological origin argument works only against supernatural origin claims. But origin has rarely been used alone—it's insufficient. Dr. Maudsley, most skilled at rejecting religion by origin, still writes:
+You see that at bottom we are thrown back upon the general principles by
+which the empirical philosophy has always contended that we must be guided
+in our search for truth. Dogmatic philosophies 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
+and forever, against all mistake—such has been the darling dream of
+philosophic dogmatists. It is clear that the _origin_ of the truth would
+be an admirable criterion of this sort, if only the various origins could
+be discriminated from one another from this point of view, and the history
+of dogmatic 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, or unaccountable
+impression; origin in direct possession by a higher spirit, expressing
+itself in prophecy and warning; origin in automatic utterance
+generally,—these origins have been stock warrants 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 tables on their predecessors by using the criterion of origin
+in a destructive instead of an accreditive way.
+> **Quote:** "What right have we to believe Nature under any obligation to do her work by means of complete minds only? She may find an incomplete mind a more suitable instrument for a particular purpose. It is the work that is done,"
+They are effective with their talk of pathological origin only so long as
+supernatural origin is pleaded by the other side, and nothing but the
+argument from origin is under discussion. But the argument 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 matters is the work's quality and the person's character. Cosmically, it's inconsequential if they were flawed—a hypocrite, adulterer, eccentric, or madman. We return to the final test: humanity's collective agreement, or at least the consensus of the educated.
+“What right have we to believe Nature under any obligation to do her work
+by means of complete minds only? She may find an incomplete mind a more
+suitable instrument for a particular purpose. It is the work that is done,
+and the quality in the worker by which it was done, that is alone of
+moment; and it may be no great matter from a cosmical standpoint, if in
+other qualities of character 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 of
+mankind, or of the competent by instruction and training among
+mankind.”(5)
+Maudsley's test is not origin but how belief works as a whole—our empiricist standard, which even supernatural origin proponents must use. History shows some visions too absurd, some trances too useless for character improvement, to be accepted as divine. Christian mysticism's challenge—distinguishing divine miracles from devilish counterfeits—required skilled spiritual directors who eventually used our standard:
+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 stoutest insisters on
+supernatural origin have also been forced to use in the end. Among the
+visions and messages some have always been too patently silly, among the
+trances and convulsive seizures some have been too fruitless for conduct
+and character, to pass themselves off as significant, still less as
+divine. In the history of Christian mysticism the problem how to
+discriminate between such messages and experiences as were really divine
+miracles, and such others as the demon in his malice was able to
+counterfeit, thus making the religious person twofold more the child of
+hell he was before, has always been a difficult one to solve, needing all
+the sagacity and experience of the best directors of conscience. In the
+end it had to come to our empiricist criterion: By their fruits ye shall
+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. No appearances whatever are
+infallible proofs of grace. Our practice is the only sure evidence, even
+to ourselves, that we are genuinely Christians.
+> **Quote:** "By their fruits ye shall know them, not by their roots."
+Jonathan Edwards's *Treatise on Religious Affections* explores this. Virtue's roots are hidden; no outward appearance proves divine grace. Behavior is the only sure evidence of being Christian.
+    “In forming a judgment of ourselves now,” Edwards writes, “we
+    should certainly adopt that evidence which our supreme Judge will
+    chiefly make use of when we come to stand before him at the last
+    day.... There is not one grace of the Spirit of God, of the
+    existence of which, in any professor of religion, Christian
+    practice is not the most decisive evidence.... The degree in which
+    our experience is productive of practice shows the degree in which
+    our experience is spiritual and divine.”
+> **Quote:** "In forming a judgment of ourselves now, we should certainly adopt that evidence which our supreme Judge will chiefly make use of when we come to stand before him at the last day.... There is not one grace of the Spirit of God, of the existence of which, in any professor of religion, Christian practice is not the most decisive evidence.... The degree in which our experience is productive of practice shows the degree in which our experience is spiritual and divine."
+Catholic writers agree. The positive state left by a vision is the only sign it isn't demonic deception. Saint Teresa writes:
+Catholic writers are equally emphatic. The good dispositions which a
+vision, or voice, or other apparent heavenly favor leave behind them are
+the only marks by which we may be sure they are not possible deceptions of
+the tempter. Says Saint Teresa:—
+> **Quote:** "Like imperfect sleep which, instead of giving more strength to the head, doth but leave it the more exhausted, the result of mere operations of the imagination is but to weaken the soul. Instead of nourishment and energy she reaps only lassitude and disgust: whereas a genuine heavenly vision yields to her a harvest of ineffable spiritual riches, and an admirable renewal of bodily strength. I alleged these reasons to those who so often accused my visions of being the work of the enemy of mankind and the sport of my imagination.... I showed them the jewels which the divine hand had left 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 being hidden, was brilliantly evident to all men. As for myself, it was impossible to believe that if the demon were its author, he could have used, in order to lose me and lead me to hell, an expedient so contrary to his own interests as that of uprooting my vices, and filling me with masculine courage and other virtues instead, for I saw clearly that a single one of these visions was enough to enrich me with all that wealth."
+I may have digressed longer than necessary. Regardless, you should now judge religious life solely by results, and "morbid origins" should no longer offend.
+    “Like imperfect sleep which, instead of giving more strength to
+    the head, doth but leave it the more exhausted, the result of mere
+    operations of the imagination is but to weaken the soul. Instead
+    of nourishment and energy she reaps only lassitude and disgust:
+    whereas a genuine heavenly vision yields to her a harvest of
+    ineffable spiritual riches, and an admirable renewal of bodily
+    strength. I alleged these reasons to those who so often accused my
+    visions of being the work of the enemy of mankind and the sport of
+    my imagination.... I showed them the jewels which the divine hand
+    had left 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 being
+    hidden, was brilliantly evident to all men. As for myself, it was
+    impossible to believe that if the demon were its author, he could
+    have used, in order to lose me and lead me to hell, an expedient
+    so contrary to his own interests as that of uprooting my vices,
+    and filling me with masculine courage and other virtues instead,
+    for I saw clearly that a single one of these visions was enough to
+    enrich me with all that wealth.”(6)
+Yet you might ask: if results are the only basis for evaluation, why study physical and psychological conditions? Why not ignore pathology?
+Two reasons: irrepressible curiosity, and we better understand significance by examining extremes and perversions. We don't dismiss the subject by associating it with inferior versions, but use contrast to define merits precisely and see corruption's specific forms.
+I fear I may have made a longer excursus than was necessary, and that
+fewer words would have dispelled the uneasiness which may have arisen
+among some of you as I announced my pathological programme. At any rate
+you must all be ready now to judge the religious life by its results
+exclusively, and I shall assume that the bugaboo of morbid origin will
+scandalize your piety no more.
+Mental disorders isolate mental factors like scalpels and microscopes. To understand anything, we must see it both in and out of environment, and know its full variation. Hallucination studies unlocked normal sensation; illusions unlocked perception; morbid impulses illuminated normal will; obsessions unlocked belief.
+Still, you may ask me, if its results are to be the ground of our final
+spiritual estimate of a religious phenomenon, why threaten us at all with
+so much existential study of its conditions? Why not simply leave
+pathological questions out?
+Similarly, genius has been clarified by classifying it with disorders. "Borderline states"—eccentricity, unstable temperament—combined with superior intellect increase the chance of leaving an era-mark. There's no natural link: most disordered people have limited intellect, most brilliant minds are normal. But sensitive temperament brings intense passion and obsessions. Thoughts translate immediately into belief and action; new ideas must be proclaimed or practiced.
+To this I reply in two ways: First, I say, irrepressible curiosity
+imperiously leads one on; and I say, secondly, that it always leads to a
+better understanding of a thing’s significance to consider its
+exaggerations and perversions, its equivalents and substitutes and nearest
+relatives elsewhere. Not that we may thereby swamp the thing in the
+wholesale condemnation which we pass on its inferior congeners, 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 be exposed.
+Mrs. Annie Besant wrote: "Plenty of people wish well to any good cause, but very few care to exert themselves to help it, and still fewer will risk anything in its support. ‘Someone ought to do it, but why should I?’ is the constant refrain of weak-willed kindness. ‘Someone ought to do it, so why not I?’ is the cry of the earnest servant of humanity, springing forward to face a dangerous duty. Between these two sentences lie entire centuries of moral evolution." This marks the difference between ordinary and volatile temperaments. When superior intellect merges with restless temperament, we find effective genius—people possessed by ideas who impose them on their age. Researchers like Lombroso and Nisbet count these individuals when linking genius to madness.
+Insane conditions have this advantage, that they isolate special factors
+of the mental life, and enable us to inspect them unmasked by their more
+usual surroundings. They play the part in mental anatomy which the scalpel
+and the microscope play in the anatomy of the body. To understand a thing
+rightly we need to see it both out of its environment and in it, and to
+have acquaintance with the whole range of its variations. The study of
+hallucinations has in this way been for psychologists the key to their
+comprehension of normal sensation, that of illusions has been the key to
+the right comprehension of perception. Morbid impulses and imperative
+conceptions, “fixed ideas,” so called, have thrown a flood of light on the
+psychology of the normal will; and obsessions and delusions have performed
+the same service for that of the normal faculty of belief.
+Turning to religious phenomena: the melancholy vital to religious development, the happiness following belief, the mystic's trance-like insight—these are specific instances of broader human experiences. Religious melancholy is still melancholy; religious happiness is happiness; a religious trance is a trance. Once we abandon the absurd idea that classification or origin "explains away" a thing—once we judge by experimental results and inner quality—we understand religious states better by comparing them to other human experiences than by treating them as outside nature.
+Similarly, the nature of genius has been illuminated by the attempts, of
+which I already made mention, to class it with psychopathical phenomena.
+Borderland insanity, crankiness, insane temperament, loss of mental
+balance, psychopathic degeneration (to use a few of the many synonyms by
+which it has been called), has certain peculiarities and liabilities
+which, when combined with a superior quality of intellect in an
+individual, make it more probable that he will make his mark and affect
+his age, than if his temperament were less neurotic. There is of course no
+special affinity between crankiness as such and superior intellect,(7) for
+most psychopaths have feeble intellects, and superior intellects more
+commonly have normal nervous systems. But the psychopathic temperament,
+whatever be the intellect with which it finds itself paired, often brings
+with it ardor and excitability of character. The cranky person has
+extraordinary emotional susceptibility. He is liable to fixed ideas and
+obsessions. His conceptions tend to pass immediately into belief and
+action; and when he gets a new idea, he has no rest till he proclaims it,
+or in some way “works it off.” “What shall I think of it?” a common person
+says to himself about a vexed question; 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, and still fewer will risk
+anything in its support. ‘Some one ought to do it, but why should I?’ is
+the ever reëchoed phrase of weak‐kneed amiability. ‘Some one ought to do
+it, so why not I?’ is the cry of some earnest servant of man, eagerly
+forward springing to face some perilous duty. Between these two sentences
+lie whole centuries of moral evolution.” True enough! and between these
+two sentences 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 permutations and
+combinations of human faculty, they are bound to coalesce often enough—in
+the same individual, we have the best possible condition for the kind of
+effective genius that gets into the biographical dictionaries. Such men do
+not remain mere critics and understanders with their intellect. Their
+ideas possess them, they inflict them, for better or worse, upon their
+companions or their age. It is they who get counted when Messrs Lombroso,
+Nisbet, and others invoke statistics to defend their paradox.
+These lectures will confirm this view. The psychological origins of religious phenomena shouldn't surprise or upset, even if they're precious divine encounters. No one possesses whole truth. Few lack weakness or illness, which often help unexpectedly. The unstable temperament provides deep emotionality for moral perception, intensity for moral strength, and interest in metaphysics that carries one beyond physical surfaces. Naturally, it opens doors to religious truths that your robust Philistine type of nervous system—forever offering its biceps to be felt and thanking Heaven it hasn't a single morbid fiber—would be sure to hide forever.
+To pass now to religious phenomena, take the melancholy which, as we shall
+see, constitutes an essential moment in every complete religious
+evolution. Take the happiness which achieved religious belief confers.
+Take the trance‐like states of insight into truth which all religious
+mystics report.(8) These are each and all of them special cases of kinds
+of human experience of much wider scope. Religious melancholy, whatever
+peculiarities it may have _quâ_ religious, is at any rate melancholy.
+Religious happiness is happiness. Religious trance is trance. And the
+moment we renounce the absurd notion that a thing is exploded away as soon
+as it is classed with others, or its origin is shown; the moment we agree
+to stand by experimental results and inner quality, in judging of
+values,—who does not see that we are likely to ascertain the distinctive
+significance of religious melancholy and happiness, or of religious
+trances, far better by comparing them as conscientiously as we can with
+other varieties of melancholy, happiness, and trance, than by refusing to
+consider their place in any more general series, and treating them as if
+they were outside of nature’s order altogether?
+If higher inspiration exists, a sensitive, neurotic temperament may be its primary condition for receptivity. Having said this, I can move on.
+I hope that the course of these lectures will confirm us in this
+supposition. As regards the psychopathic origin of so many religious
+phenomena, that would not be in the least surprising or disconcerting,
+even were such phenomena certified from on high to be the most precious of
+human experiences. No one organism can possibly yield to its owner the
+whole body of truth. Few of us are not in some way infirm, or even
+diseased; and our very infirmities help us unexpectedly. In the
+psychopathic temperament we have the emotionality which is the _sine quâ
+non_ of moral perception; we have the intensity and tendency to emphasis
+which are the essence of practical moral vigor; and we have the love of
+metaphysics and mysticism which carry one’s interests beyond the surface
+of the sensible world. What, then, is more natural than that this
+temperament should introduce one to regions of religious truth, to corners
+of the universe, which your robust Philistine type of nervous system,
+forever offering its biceps to be felt, thumping its breast, and thanking
+Heaven that it hasn’t a single morbid fibre in its composition, would be
+sure to hide forever from its self‐satisfied possessors?
+The vast collection of related phenomena—healthy or disordered—with which we compare religious experiences forms the "apperceiving mass," the context for grasping them. My only novelty is this context's breadth. I hope to discuss religious experiences in a wider framework than typical university courses.
+If there were such a thing as inspiration from a higher realm, it might
+well be that the neurotic temperament would furnish the chief condition of
+the requisite receptivity. And having said thus much, 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 religious phenomena must be compared in order to understand them
+better, forms what in the slang of pedagogics is termed “the apperceiving
+mass” by which we comprehend them. The only novelty that I can imagine
+this course of lectures to possess lies in the breadth of the apperceiving
+mass. I may succeed in discussing religious experiences in a wider context
+than has been usual in university courses.
 ## LECTURE II. CIRCUMSCRIPTION OF THE TOPIC.
+Most books on the philosophy of religion begin by defining its essence, but their numerous, conflicting attempts prove "religion" is a collective name, not a single principle. The theorizing mind oversimplifies, breeding dogmatism. Let us avoid narrowness and admit from the outset that we may find no single essence, but many equally important characteristics.
+Most books on the philosophy of religion try to begin with a precise
+definition of what its essence consists of. Some of these would‐be
+definitions may possibly come before us in later portions 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 to prove that the word “religion” cannot stand for any
+single principle or essence, but is rather a collective name. The
+theorizing mind tends always to the over‐simplification of its materials.
+This is the root of all that absolutism and one‐sided dogmatism by which
+both philosophy and religion have been infested. Let us not fall
+immediately into a one‐sided view of our subject, but let us rather admit
+freely at the outset that we may very likely find no one essence, but many
+characters which may alternately be equally important in religion. If we
+should inquire for the essence of “government,” for example, one man might
+tell us it was authority, another submission, another police, another an
+army, another an assembly, another a system of laws; yet all the while it
+would be true that no concrete government can exist without all these
+things, one of which is more important at one moment and others at
+another. The man who knows governments most completely 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 regard an 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)
+Take "government": some say it's authority, others submission, police, armies, assemblies, or laws. Yet no government exists without all these, their importance shifting with circumstance. The true expert worries least about definitions, finding abstract unification more misleading than enlightening. Why should religion be less complex?
+                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
+Consider the "religious sentiment" so often mentioned as if it were a single mental entity. One person connects it to dependence, another to fear, others to sexuality or the infinite. Such diversity should alone arouse doubt. The moment we treat "religious sentiment" as a collective name for the many feelings religious objects stir up, we see it contains nothing psychologically unique.
+Consider also the “religious sentiment” which we see referred to in so
+many books, as if it were a single sort of mental entity.
+Religious love is ordinary love directed toward religious objects; religious fear is daily anxiety awakened by divine retribution; religious awe is the same organic thrill felt in a forest or gorge, only prompted by our supernatural relations. These emotions differ from their secular counterparts only by their object. There is no single, abstract "religious emotion" present in every experience.
+In the psychologies and in the philosophies of religion, we find the
+authors 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 it with the feeling
+of the infinite; and so on. Such different ways of conceiving it ought of
+themselves to arouse doubt as to whether it possibly can be one specific
+thing; and the moment we are willing to treat the term “religious
+sentiment” as a collective name for the many sentiments which religious
+objects may arouse in alternation, we see that it probably contains
+nothing whatever of a psychologically specific nature. There is religious
+fear, religious love, religious awe, religious joy, 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 the human breast, in so far as the notion
+of divine retribution may arouse it; religious awe is the same organic
+thrill which we feel in a forest at twilight, or in a mountain gorge; only
+this time it comes over us at the thought of our supernatural relations;
+and similarly of all the various sentiments which may be called into play
+in the lives of religious persons. As concrete states of mind, made up of
+a feeling _plus_ a specific sort of object, religious emotions of course
+are psychic entities distinguishable from other concrete emotions; but
+there is no ground for assuming a simple abstract “religious emotion” to
+exist as a distinct elementary mental affection by itself, present in
+every religious experience without exception.
+Just as there seems to be no single elementary religious emotion, but only a common storehouse of emotions that religious objects may draw upon, there might also prove to be no single essential religious object or act.
+As there thus seems to be no one elementary religious emotion, but only a
+common storehouse of emotions upon which religious objects may draw, so
+there might conceivably also prove to be no one specific and essential
+kind of religious object, and no one specific and essential kind of
+religious act.
+The field of religion is so wide that I must limit myself to a fraction. While it would be foolish to create an abstract definition and defend it against critics, I must take my own narrow view for these lectures. Out of many meanings, I may choose one and declare that when I say "religion," I mean *that*. I will now mark out my chosen field.
+                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
+One easy way to define it is to say which aspects we are leaving out. At the outset, we are struck by a great divide. On one side lies institutional religion; on the other, personal religion. As Sabatier says, one branch keeps the divinity in view, while the other focuses on the human being. Worship, sacrifice, methods for influencing the deity, theology, ceremony, and church organization are institutional religion's essentials. If we limited our view to this side, we would have to define religion as an external art—the art of winning the gods' favor.
+The field of religion being as wide as this, it is manifestly impossible
+that I should pretend to cover it. My lectures must be limited to a
+fraction of the subject. And, although it would indeed be foolish to set
+up an abstract definition of religion’s essence, and then proceed to
+defend that definition against all comers, yet this need not prevent me
+from taking my own narrow view of what religion shall consist in _for the
+purpose of these lectures_, or, out of the many meanings 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 must do, and I will now preliminarily seek to mark out the
+field I choose.
+In personal religion, however, the inner dispositions form the center: conscience, helplessness, incompleteness. Although God's favor remains essential, the acts are personal rather than ritual. The individual handles the matter alone; church organization becomes secondary. The relationship goes directly from heart to heart, from soul to soul, between a person and their creator.
+One way to mark it out easily is to say what aspects of the subject we
+leave out. At the outset we are struck by one great partition which
+divides the religious field. On the one side of it lies institutional, on
+the other personal religion. As M. P. Sabatier says, one branch of
+religion keeps the divinity, another keeps man most in view. Worship and
+sacrifice, procedures for working on the dispositions of the deity,
+theology and ceremony and ecclesiastical organization, are the essentials
+of religion in the institutional branch. Were we to limit our view to it,
+we should have to define religion as an external art, the art of winning
+the favor of the gods. In the more personal branch of religion it is on
+the contrary the inner dispositions of man himself which form the centre
+of interest, his conscience, his deserts, his helplessness, his
+incompleteness. And although the favor of the God, as forfeited or gained,
+is still an essential feature of the story, and theology plays a 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 its priests and
+sacraments and other go‐betweens, sinks to an altogether secondary place.
+The relation goes direct from heart to heart, from soul to soul, between
+man and his maker.
+In these lectures, I propose to ignore the institutional branch entirely. I will say nothing of church organization, consider systematic theology as little as possible, and confine myself to personal religion, pure and simple. To some of you, this may seem too incomplete to deserve the name. You might say it is only unorganized beginning, better called conscience or morality. But if you say this, it only shows how definition becomes dispute over names. I am willing to accept almost any name. Call it conscience or morality if you prefer—under either name, it is equally worthy of study. As for myself, I believe it contains elements that morality alone does not, and I will soon point these out. Therefore, I will continue to apply the word "religion" to it. In the final lecture, I will bring in theology and church structures and discuss their relationship to this personal core.
+Now in these lectures I propose to ignore the institutional branch
+entirely, to say nothing of the ecclesiastical organization, to consider
+as little as possible the systematic theology and the ideas about the gods
+themselves, and to confine myself as far as I can to personal religion
+pure and simple. To some of you personal religion, thus nakedly
+considered, will no doubt seem too incomplete a thing to wear the general
+name. “It is a part of religion,” you will say, “but only its unorganized
+rudiment; if we are to name it by itself, we had better call it man’s
+conscience or morality than his religion. The name ‘religion’ should be
+reserved for the fully organized system of feeling, thought, and
+institution, for the Church, in short, of which this personal religion, so
+called, is but a fractional element.”
+In one sense, personal religion is more fundamental than theology or church organization. Churches live second-hand on tradition, but the *founders* of every church owed their power to direct, personal communion with the divine. This is true not only of superhuman founders like Christ, Buddha, or Muhammad, but of all originators of sects. Thus, personal religion should be seen as primary, even by those who consider it incomplete.
+But if you say this, it will only show the more plainly how much the
+question of definition tends to become a dispute about names. Rather than
+prolong such a dispute, I am willing to accept almost any name for the
+personal religion of which I propose to treat. Call it conscience or
+morality, if you yourselves prefer, and not religion—under either name it
+will be equally worthy of our study. As for myself, I think it will prove
+to contain some elements which morality pure and simple does not contain,
+and these elements 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 say
+something of its relation to them.
+Though fetishism and magic predate personal piety historically, anthropologists like Jevons and Frazer contrast them with religion, and such systems might equally be called primitive science. The question becomes verbal, and our knowledge of these stages too speculative to discuss further.
+In one sense at least the personal religion will prove itself more
+fundamental than either theology or ecclesiasticism. Churches, when once
+established, live at second‐hand upon tradition; but the _founders_ of
+every church owed their power originally to the fact of their direct
+personal communion 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 still seem the
+primordial thing, even to those who continue to esteem it incomplete.
+Therefore, for our purposes, I ask you to accept this arbitrary definition:
+There are, it is true, other things in religion chronologically more
+primordial than personal devoutness in the moral sense. Fetishism and
+magic seem to have preceded inward piety historically—at least our records
+of inward piety do not reach back so far. And if fetishism and magic be
+regarded as stages of religion, one may say that personal religion in the
+inward sense and the genuinely spiritual ecclesiasticisms which it founds
+are phenomena of secondary or even tertiary order. But, quite apart from
+the fact that many anthropologists—for instance, Jevons and
+Frazer—expressly oppose “religion” and “magic” to each other, it is
+certain that the whole system of thought which leads to magic, fetishism,
+and the lower superstitions may just as well be called primitive science
+as called primitive religion. The question thus becomes a verbal one
+again; and our knowledge of all these early stages of thought and feeling
+is in any case so conjectural and imperfect that farther discussion would
+not be worth while.
+> **Quote:** "the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine."
+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 as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to
+whatever they may consider the divine_. Since the relation may be either
+moral, physical, or ritual, it is evident that out of religion in the
+sense in which we take it, theologies, philosophies, and ecclesiastical
+organizations may secondarily grow. In these lectures, however, as I have
+already said, the immediate personal experiences will amply fill our time,
+and we shall hardly consider theology or ecclesiasticism at all.
+Since this relationship can be moral, physical, or ritual, theologies, philosophies, and church organizations can grow from it. In these lectures, however, the immediate personal experiences will occupy all our time, and we will hardly consider theology or institutionalism at all.
+We escape much controversial matter by this arbitrary definition of our
+field. But, still, a chance of controversy comes up over the word “divine”
+if we take it in the definition in too narrow a sense. There are systems
+of thought which the world usually calls religious, and yet which do not
+positively assume a God. Buddhism is in this case. Popularly, of course,
+the Buddha himself stands in place of a God; but in strictness the
+Buddhistic system is atheistic. Modern transcendental idealism,
+Emersonianism, for instance, also seems to let God evaporate into abstract
+Ideality. Not a deity _in concreto_, not a superhuman person, but the
+immanent divinity in things, the essentially spiritual structure of the
+universe, is the object of the transcendentalist cult. In that address to
+the graduating class at Divinity College in 1838 which made Emerson
+famous, the frank expression of this worship of mere abstract laws was
+what made the scandal of the performance.
+We avoid much controversy by this arbitrary definition. Yet controversy can still arise over "divine" if we define it too narrowly. There are systems usually called religious that do not positively assume a God. Buddhism is one such case. Popularly, the Buddha stands in place of a God, but strictly speaking, the Buddhist system is atheistic. Modern transcendental idealism—Emersonianism, for example—also lets God evaporate into an abstract Ideal. The object is not a specific deity, but the immanent divinity in things, the essentially spiritual structure of the universe. In the 1838 Divinity College address that made Emerson famous, it was his frank expression of this worship of abstract laws that caused scandal.
+> **Quote:** "These laws," said the speaker, "execute themselves. They are out of time, out of space, and not subject to circumstance: Thus, in the soul of man there is a justice whose retributions are instant and entire. He who does a good deed is instantly ennobled. He who does a mean deed is by the action 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 of acquaintance with his own being. Character is always known. The thefts never enrich; alms never impoverish; murder will speak out of stone walls. The least admixture of a lie—for example, the taint of vanity, any attempt to make a good impression, a favorable appearance—will instantly vitiate the effect. But speak the truth, and all things alive or brute are vouchers, and the very roots of the grass underground there do seem to stir and move to bear your witness. For all things proceed out of the same spirit, which is differently named love, justice, temperance, in its different applications, just as the ocean receives different names on the several shores which it washes. In so far as he roves from these ends, a man bereaves himself of power, of auxiliaries. His being shrinks ... he becomes less and less, a mote, a point, until absolute badness is absolute death. The perception of this law awakens in the mind a sentiment which we call the religious sentiment, and which makes our highest happiness. Wonderful is its power to charm and to command. It is a mountain 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 of man. 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 from supreme wisdom. Then he can worship, and be enlarged by his worship; for he can never go behind this sentiment. All the expressions of this sentiment are sacred and permanent in proportion to 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 upon mankind, whose name is not so much written as ploughed into the history of this world, is proof of the subtle virtue of this infusion."
+    “These laws,” said the speaker, “execute themselves. They are out
+    of time, out of space, and not subject to circumstance: Thus, in
+    the soul of man there is a justice whose retributions are instant
+    and entire. He who does a good deed is instantly ennobled. He who
+    does a mean deed is by the action 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 of
+    acquaintance with his own being. Character is always known. Thefts
+    never enrich; alms never impoverish; murder will speak out of
+    stone walls. The least admixture of a lie—for example, the taint
+    of vanity, any attempt to make a good impression, a favorable
+    appearance—will instantly vitiate the effect. But speak the truth,
+    and all things alive or brute are vouchers, and the very roots of
+    the grass underground there do seem to stir and move to bear your
+    witness. For all things proceed out of the same spirit, which is
+    differently named love, justice, temperance, in its different
+    applications, just as the ocean receives different names on the
+    several shores which it washes. In so far as he roves from these
+    ends, a man bereaves himself of power, of auxiliaries. His being
+    shrinks ... he becomes less and less, a mote, a point, until
+    absolute badness is absolute death. The perception of this law
+    awakens in the mind a sentiment which we call the religious
+    sentiment, and which makes our highest happiness. Wonderful is its
+    power to charm and to command. It is a mountain 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 of man. 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 from supreme
+    wisdom. Then he can worship, and be enlarged by his worship; for
+    he can never go behind this sentiment. All the expressions of this
+    sentiment are sacred and permanent in proportion to 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 upon mankind, whose
+    name is not so much written as ploughed into the history of this
+    world, is proof of the subtle virtue of this infusion.”(10)
+Such is the Emersonian religion. The universe has a divine soul of order, which is moral and is also the soul within the soul of man. But whether this soul is a mere quality, like the eye's brilliance, or a self-conscious life, like the eye's seeing, is a distinction that never clearly appears in Emerson's writings. He hovers on the boundary, leaning one way or the other to suit literary rather than philosophical need. Whatever it is, though, it is active. We can trust it to protect all ideal interests and keep the world's balance as much as if it were a God. The sentences in which Emerson expressed this faith are as fine as anything in literature:
+> **Quote:** "If you love and serve men, you cannot by any hiding or stratagem escape the remuneration. Secret retributions are always restoring the level, when disturbed, of the divine justice. It is impossible to tilt the beam. All the tyrants and proprietors and monopolists of the world in vain set their shoulders to heave the bar. Settles forevermore the ponderous equator to its line, and man and mote, and star and sun, must range to it, or be pulverized by the recoil."
+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 quality like the eye’s
+brilliancy or the skin’s softness, or whether it be a self‐conscious life
+like the eye’s seeing or the skin’s feeling, is a decision that never
+unmistakably appears in Emerson’s pages. It quivers on the boundary of
+these things, sometimes leaning one way, sometimes the other, to suit the
+literary rather than the philosophic need. Whatever it is, though, it is
+active. As much as if it were a God, we can trust it to protect all ideal
+interests and keep the world’s balance straight. The sentences in which
+Emerson, to the very end, gave utterance to this faith are as fine as
+anything in literature: “If you love and serve men, you cannot by any
+hiding or stratagem escape the remuneration. Secret retributions are
+always restoring the level, when disturbed, of the divine justice. It is
+impossible to tilt the beam. All the tyrants and proprietors and
+monopolists of the world in vain set their shoulders to heave the bar.
+Settles forevermore the ponderous equator to its line, and man and mote,
+and star and sun, must range to it, or be pulverized by the recoil.”(11)
+Yet the experiences behind such faith deserve to be called religious. Emersonian optimism and Buddhistic pessimism make practically the same appeal as Christianity. We must interpret "divine" broadly: any object considered god-like, deity or not.
+Now it would be too absurd to say that the inner experiences that underlie
+such expressions of faith as this and impel the writer to their utterance
+are quite unworthy to be called religious experiences. The sort of appeal
+that Emersonian optimism, on the one hand, and Buddhistic pessimism, on
+the other, make to the individual and the sort of response which he makes
+to them in his life are in fact indistinguishable from, and in many
+respects identical with, the best Christian appeal and response. We must
+therefore, from the experiential point of view, call these godless or
+quasi‐godless creeds “religions”; and accordingly when in our definition
+of religion we speak of the individual’s relation to “what he considers
+the divine,” we must interpret the term “divine” very broadly, as denoting
+any object that is god_like_, whether it be a concrete deity or not.
+But if "godlike" becomes a floating general quality, it grows extremely vague. Many gods have flourished, their attributes contradictory. What, then, is that essentially godlike quality—whether embodied in a deity or not—our relationship to which defines us as religious? It will be useful to seek an answer.
+                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
+Gods are primary sources of being and power—they overarch and envelop us. Whatever is most fundamental and all-encompassing might be treated as godlike; religion could be our attitude toward what we feel to be ultimate truth.
+But the term “godlike,” if thus treated as a floating general quality,
+becomes exceedingly vague, for many gods have flourished in religious
+history, and their attributes have been discrepant enough. What then is
+that essentially godlike quality—be it embodied in a concrete deity or
+not—our relation to which determines our character as religious men? It
+will repay us to seek some answer to this question before we proceed
+farther.
+Such a definition would be defensible. If religion is a total reaction to life, why not call any such reaction religious? Total reactions differ from casual ones, requiring us to look behind existence's foreground and tap into our sense of the universe as an everlasting presence—intimate or alien, terrible or amusing—which everyone possesses. As a colleague of mine said of a student manifesting an atheistic ardor: > **Quote:** "He believes in No-God, and he worships him."
+For one thing, gods are conceived to be first things in the way of being
+and power. They overarch and envelop, and from them there is no escape.
+What relates to them is the first and last word in the way of truth.
+Whatever then were most primal and enveloping and deeply true might at
+this rate be treated as godlike, and a man’s religion might thus be
+identified with his attitude, whatever it might be, towards what he felt
+to be the primal truth.
+If we compare such reactions, we find a character perfectly distinct from those of tamer minds so cool and reasonable that we might call them philosophical rather than religious. But if we use "religion" so broadly, we encounter difficulty. There are trivial, mocking attitudes toward life, systematic and final in some people. It would stretch language too far to call such attitudes religious, even if a critical philosophy might find them reasonable. Voltaire wrote at seventy-three: "As for myself, weak as I am, I carry on the war to the last moment, I receive a hundred pike-thrusts, I return two hundred, and I laugh. I see near my Geneva on fire with quarrels over nothing, and I laugh again; and, thank God, I can look upon the world as a farce even when it becomes tragic. Everything balances out at the end of the day, and everything balances out even more when all the days are over."
+Such a definition as this would in a way be defensible. Religion, whatever
+it is, is a man’s total reaction upon life, so why not say that any total
+reaction upon life is a religion? Total reactions are different 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 curious sense of the whole residual
+cosmos as an everlasting presence, intimate or alien, terrible or amusing,
+lovable or odious, which in some degree every one possesses. This sense of
+the world’s presence, appealing as it does to our peculiar individual
+temperament, makes us either strenuous or careless, 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 answers to the question, “What is the character of this universe in
+which we dwell?” It expresses our individual sense of it in the most
+definite way. Why then not call these reactions our religion, no matter
+what specific character they may have? Non‐religious as some of these
+reactions may be, in one sense of the word “religious,” they yet belong to
+_the general sphere of the religious life_, and so should generically be
+classed as religious reactions. “He believes in No‐God, and he worships
+him,” said a colleague of mine of a student who was manifesting a fine
+atheistic ardor; and the more fervent opponents of Christian doctrine have
+often enough shown a temper which, psychologically considered, is
+indistinguishable from religious zeal.
+Much as we may admire such robust spirit, calling it religious would be strange. Yet for the moment, this is Voltaire's reaction to life. *Je m'en fiche* is the vulgar French equivalent of "Who cares?" The term *je m'en fichisme* describes the systematic determination not to take anything too seriously. "All is vanity" is the comforting word in all difficult crises for this way of thinking—a mindset that Renan took pleasure in expressing during his later years of "sweet decay," in flirtatiously sacrilegious ways. Take this passage— Renan says we must hold to duty even against the evidence, but continues:
+But so very broad a use of the word “religion” would be inconvenient,
+however defensible it might remain on logical grounds. There are trifling,
+sneering attitudes even towards the whole of life; and in some men these
+attitudes are final and systematic. It would strain the ordinary use of
+language too much to call such attitudes religious, even though, from the
+point of view of an unbiased critical philosophy, they might conceivably
+be perfectly reasonable ways of looking upon life. Voltaire, for example,
+writes thus to a friend, at the age of seventy‐three: “As for myself,” he
+says, “weak as I am, I carry on the war to the last moment, I get a
+hundred pike‐thrusts, I return two hundred, and I laugh. I see near my
+door Geneva on fire with quarrels over nothing, and I laugh 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 even when all the days are over.”
+> **Quote:** "There are many chances that the world may be nothing but a fairy pantomime of which no God has care. We must therefore arrange ourselves so that on neither hypothesis we shall be completely wrong. We must listen to the superior voices, but in such a way that if the second hypothesis were true we should not have been too completely duped. If in effect the world be not a serious thing, it is the dogmatic people who will be the shallow ones, and the worldly minded whom the theologians now call frivolous will be those who are really wise.
+Much as we may admire such a robust old gamecock spirit in a
+valetudinarian, to call it a religious spirit would be odd. Yet it is for
+the moment Voltaire’s reaction on the whole of life. _Je m’en fiche_ is
+the vulgar French equivalent for our English ejaculation “Who cares?” And
+the happy term _je m’en fichisme_ recently has been invented to designate
+the systematic determination not to take anything in life too solemnly.
+“All is vanity” is the relieving word in all difficult crises for this
+mode of thought, which that exquisite literary genius Renan took pleasure,
+in his later days of sweet decay, in putting into coquettishly
+sacrilegious forms which remain to us as excellent expressions of the “all
+is vanity” state of mind. Take the following passage, for example,—we must
+hold to duty, even against the evidence, Renan says,—but he then goes on:—
+> "_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 that at certain moments at least we shall be with the truth.... Good‐humor is a philosophic state of mind; it seems to say to Nature that we take her no more seriously than she takes us. I maintain that one should always talk of philosophy with a smile. We owe it to the Eternal to be virtuous; but we have the right to add to this tribute our irony as a sort of personal reprisal. In this way we return to the right quarter jest for jest; we play the trick that has been played on us. Saint Augustine’s phrase: _Lord, if we are deceived, it is by thee!_ remains a fine one, well suited to our modern feeling. Only we wish the Eternal to know that if we accept the fraud, we accept it knowingly and willingly. We are resigned in advance to losing the interest on our investments of virtue, but we wish not to appear ridiculous by having counted on them too securely."
+Surely religion would lose its usual meaning if irony were included. For most people, religion always signifies a serious state of mind. If one phrase captures its message, it would be: "All is not vanity in this Universe." Religion favors gravity, not flippancy; it says "hush" to empty chatter and clever wit.
+    “There are many chances that the world may be nothing but a fairy
+    pantomime of which no God has care. We must therefore arrange
+    ourselves so that on neither hypothesis we shall be completely
+    wrong. We must listen to the superior voices, but in such a way
+    that if the second hypothesis were true we should not have been
+    too completely duped. If in effect the world be not a serious
+    thing, it is the dogmatic people who will be the shallow ones, and
+    the worldly minded whom the theologians now call frivolous will be
+    those who are really wise.
+But while hostile to light irony, religion is equally hostile to heavy grumbling. The world appears tragic enough in some religions, but that tragedy is understood as purification, with deliverance believed to exist. We will see enough of this religious melancholy later; but melancholy loses any right to be called religious when—in Marcus Aurelius's vivid words—the sufferer simply lies kicking and screaming like a sacrificed pig. The mood of a Schopenhauer or Nietzsche—though often ennobling sadness—is almost as often peevishness running away with the bit between its teeth. Their sallies frequently remind one of the sick shriekings of two dying rats, lacking the purifying tone of religious sadness.
+    “_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 that at certain moments at least we shall be with the
+    truth.... Good‐humor is a philosophic state of mind; it seems to
+    say to Nature that we take her no more seriously than she takes
+    us. I maintain that one should always talk of philosophy with a
+    smile. We owe it to the Eternal to be virtuous; but we have the
+    right to add to this tribute our irony as a sort of personal
+    reprisal. In this way we return to the right quarter jest for
+    jest; we play the trick that has been played on us. Saint
+    Augustine’s phrase: _Lord, if we are deceived, it is by thee!_
+    remains a fine one, well suited to our modern feeling. Only we
+    wish the Eternal to know that if we accept the fraud, we accept it
+    knowingly and willingly. We are resigned in advance to losing the
+    interest on our investments of virtue, but we wish not to appear
+    ridiculous by having counted on them too securely.”(12)
+There must be something solemn, serious, and tender about any religious attitude. If joyful, it must not smirk; if sad, it must not scream. It is specifically as solemn experiences that I wish to interest you. So I propose—again arbitrarily—to narrow our definition by saying that "divine" shall mean only that primal reality to which an individual feels compelled to respond with solemnity and gravity, rather than with a curse or a jest.
+But solemnity comes in many shades, and we must face the truth that we are dealing with a field where no single concept can be sharply defined. To claim rigorously "scientific" or "exact" terminology would prove we don't understand our task. Things are more or less divine, states of mind more or less religious, but boundaries are always blurry. Nevertheless, at their extremes, there can be no question which experiences are religious. The divinity of the object and the solemnity of the reaction are too clear to doubt.
+Surely all the usual associations of the word “religion” would have to be
+stripped away if such a systematic _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 any
+one phrase could gather its universal message, that phrase would be, “All
+is _not_ vanity in this Universe, whatever the appearances may suggest.”
+If it can stop anything, religion as commonly apprehended can stop just
+such chaffing talk as Renan’s. It favors gravity, not pertness; it says
+“hush” to all vain chatter and smart wit.
+Hesitation about whether a state is "religious" occurs only when it is weakly defined—and then it is hardly worth study. We need not concern ourselves with states that can only be called religious as a courtesy; our only productive work is with what no one could possibly call anything else. As I said in my first lecture, we learn most about a thing when we look at it in its most extreme form. The only cases likely to be rewarding enough are those where the religious spirit is unmistakable and intense; its fainter expressions we can ignore. Take Frederick Locker Lampson's total reaction to life, described in his autobiography *Confidences*:
+But if hostile to light irony, religion is equally hostile to heavy
+grumbling and complaint. The world appears tragic enough in some
+religions, but the tragedy is realized as purging, and a way of
+deliverance 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 the fashion of a sacrificed pig. The mood of a Schopenhauer or a
+Nietzsche,—and in a less degree one may sometimes say the same of our own
+sad Carlyle,—though often an ennobling sadness, is almost as often only
+peevishness running away with the bit between its teeth. The sallies of
+the two German authors remind one, half the time, of the sick shriekings
+of two dying rats. They lack the purgatorial note which religious sadness
+gives forth.
+> **Quote:** "I am so far resigned to my lot that I feel small pain at the thought of having to part from what has been called the pleasant habit of existence, the sweet fable of life. I would not care to live my wasted life over again, and so to prolong my span. Strange to say, I have but little wish to be younger. I submit with a chill at my heart. I humbly submit because it is the Divine Will, and my appointed destiny. I dread the increase of infirmities that will make me a burden to those around me, 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.
+There must be something solemn, serious, and tender about any attitude
+which we denominate religious. If glad, it must not grin or snicker; if
+sad, it must not scream or curse. It is precisely as being _solemn_
+experiences that I wish to interest you in religious experiences. So I
+propose—arbitrarily again, 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, for that meaning if
+taken without restriction might well prove too broad. The divine shall
+mean for us only such a primal reality as the individual feels impelled to
+respond to solemnly and gravely, and neither by a curse nor a jest.
+> "I do not know that there is a great deal to be said for this world, or our sojourn here upon it; but it 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, the strange cozenage of a brighter to‐morrow? At best it is but a froward child, that must be played with and humored, to keep it quiet till it falls asleep, and then the care is over."
+But solemnity, and gravity, and all such emotional attributes, admit of
+various shades; and, do what we will with our defining, the truth must at
+last be confronted that we are dealing with a field of 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 as lacking in understanding of
+our task. Things are more or less divine, states of mind are more or less
+religious, reactions are more or less total, but the boundaries are always
+misty, and it is everywhere a question of amount and degree. Nevertheless,
+at their extreme of development, there can never be any question as to
+what experiences are religious. The divinity of the object and the
+solemnity 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 of mind is weakly
+characterized, but in that case it will be hardly worthy of our study at
+all. With states that can only by courtesy be called religious we need
+have nothing to do, our only profitable business being with what nobody
+can possibly feel tempted to call anything else. I said in my former
+lecture that we learn most about a thing when we view it under a
+microscope, as it were, or in 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
+where the religious spirit is unmistakable and extreme. Its fainter
+manifestations we may tranquilly pass by. Here, for example, is the total
+reaction upon life of Frederick Locker Lampson, whose autobiography,
+entitled “Confidences,” proves him to have been a most amiable man.
+This is a complex, tender, submissive, and graceful state of mind. I would have no problem calling it religious, though many of you might find it too listless to deserve the name. But what does it matter? It is too insignificant to teach much; even the author described it in terms he wouldn't have used unless thinking of more energetically religious moods in others. Our business is solely with these more energetic states, and we can easily afford to ignore the minor notes and uncertain boundaries.
+It was these extreme cases I had in mind when I said that personal religion—even without theology or ritual—contains elements that morality alone does not. I can now explain what I meant.
+    “I am so far resigned to my lot that I feel small pain at the
+    thought of having to part from what has been called the pleasant
+    habit of existence, the sweet fable of life. I would not care to
+    live my wasted life over again, and so to prolong my span. Strange
+    to say, I have but little wish to be younger. I submit with a
+    chill at my heart. I humbly submit because it is the Divine Will,
+    and my appointed destiny. I dread the increase of infirmities that
+    will make me a burden to those around me, 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.
+> **Quote:** "I accept the universe" is reported to have been a favorite utterance of Margaret Fuller; and when someone repeated this to Thomas Carlyle, his sardonic comment was: "Gad! she'd better!"
+    “I do not know that there is a great deal to be said for this
+    world, or our sojourn here upon it; but it 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, the strange cozenage of a
+    brighter to‐morrow? At best it is but a froward child, that must
+    be played with and humored, to keep it quiet till it falls asleep,
+    and then the care is over.”(13)
+At its core, the primary concern of both morality and religion is how we accept the universe. Do we accept it only partially and grudgingly, or heartily and completely? Should our protests against evil be radical, or should we believe that even with evil, there are ways of living that must lead to good? If we accept the whole, do we do so as if forced into submission—"Gad! we'd better!"—or with enthusiastic agreement? Morality accepts the reigning law enough to acknowledge and obey it, but it may obey with a heavy, cold heart, never ceasing to feel it as a burden. But for religion, in its strong forms, serving the highest is never a burden. Dull submission is left behind, and a mood of welcome—ranging from cheerful serenity to enthusiastic joy—has taken its place.
+It makes a massive emotional and practical difference whether one accepts the universe with the gray resignation of a Stoic, or with the passionate happiness of a Christian saint. The difference is as great as that between passivity and activity, or between a defensive and aggressive spirit. When you compare the extremes, you face two separate psychological universes; in moving between them, a "critical point" has been crossed.
+This is a complex, a tender, a submissive, and a graceful state of mind.
+For myself, I should have no objection to calling it on the whole a
+religious state of mind, although I dare say that to many of you it may
+seem too listless and half‐hearted to merit so good a name. But what
+matters it in the end whether we call such a state of mind religious or
+not? It is too insignificant for our instruction in any case; and its very
+possessor wrote it down in terms which he would not have used unless he
+had been thinking of more energetically religious moods in others, with
+which he found himself unable to compete. It is with these more energetic
+states that our sole business lies, and we can perfectly well afford to
+let the minor notes and the uncertain border go.
+If we compare Stoic and Christian expressions, we see more than doctrinal difference—rather, a difference in emotional mood separates them. When Marcus Aurelius reflects on eternal reason, there is a frosty chill rarely found in Jewish writing, never in Christian. Compare his sentence: "If the gods do not care for me or my children, there is a reason for it," with Job's cry: "Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him!" The *anima mundi* to which the Stoic surrenders is something to be respected and submitted to; but the Christian God is someone to be loved. The emotional difference is like that between arctic and tropical climates, though the practical result—accepting conditions without complaint—seems the same in abstract terms.
+It was the extremer cases that I had in mind a little while ago when I
+said that personal religion, even without theology or ritual, would prove
+to embody some elements that morality pure and simple does not contain.
+You may remember that I promised shortly to point out what those elements
+were. In a general way I can now say what I had in mind.
+> **Quote:** "It is a man's duty to comfort himself and wait for the natural dissolution, and not to be vexed, but to find refreshment solely in these thoughts—first that nothing will happen to me which is not conformable to the nature of the universe; and secondly that I need do nothing contrary to the God and deity within me; for there is no man who can compel me to transgress. He is an abscess on the universe who withdraws and separates himself from the reason of our common nature, through being displeased with the things which happen. For the same nature produces these, and has produced thee too. And so accept everything which happens, even if it seem disagreeable, because it leads to this, the health of the universe and to the prosperity and felicity of Zeus. For he would not have brought on any man what he has brought, if it were not useful for the whole. The integrity of the whole is mutilated if thou cuttest off anything. And thou dost cut off, as far as it is in thy power, when thou art dissatisfied, and in a manner triest to put anything out of the way."
+                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
+Compare this mood with that of the old Christian author of the *Theologia Germanica*:
+“I accept the universe” is reported to have been a favorite utterance of
+our New England transcendentalist, Margaret Fuller; and when some one
+repeated this phrase to Thomas Carlyle, his sardonic comment is said to
+have been: “Gad! she’d better!” At bottom the whole concern of both
+morality and religion is with the manner of our acceptance of the
+universe. Do we accept it only in part and grudgingly, or heartily and
+altogether? Shall our protests against certain things in it be radical and
+unforgiving, or shall we think that, even with evil, there are ways of
+living that must lead to good? If we accept the whole, shall we do so as
+if stunned into submission,—as Carlyle would have us—“Gad! we’d
+better!”—or shall we do so with enthusiastic assent? Morality pure and
+simple 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 for religion, in its
+strong and fully developed manifestations, the service of the highest
+never is felt as a yoke. Dull submission is left far behind, and a mood of
+welcome, which may fill any place on the scale between cheerful serenity
+and enthusiastic gladness, has taken its place.
+> **Quote:** "Where men are enlightened with the true light, they renounce all desire and choice, and commit and commend themselves and all things to the eternal Goodness, so that every enlightened man could say: 'I would fain be to the Eternal Goodness what his own hand is to a man.' Such men are in a state of freedom, because they have lost the fear of pain or hell, and the hope of reward or heaven, and are living in pure submission to the eternal Goodness, in the perfect freedom of fervent love. When a man truly perceiveth and considereth himself, who and what he is, and findeth himself utterly vile and wicked and unworthy, he falleth into such a deep abasement that it seemeth to him reasonable that all creatures in heaven and earth should rise up against him. And therefore he will not and dare not desire any consolation and release; but he is willing to be unconsoled and unreleased; and he doth not grieve over his sufferings, for they are right in his eyes, and he hath nothing to say against them. This is what is meant by true repentance for sin; and he who in this present time entereth into this hell, none may console him. Now God hath not forsaken a man in this hell, but He is laying his hand upon him,"
+It makes a tremendous emotional and practical difference to one whether
+one accept the universe in the drab discolored way of stoic resignation to
+necessity, or with the passionate happiness of Christian saints. The
+difference is as great as that between passivity and activity, as that
+between the defensive and the aggressive mood. Gradual as are the steps by
+which an individual may grow from one state into the other, many as are
+the intermediate stages which different individuals represent, yet when
+you place the typical extremes beside each other for comparison, you feel
+that two discontinuous psychological universes confront you, and that in
+passing from one to the other a “critical point” has been overcome.
+...that a person may not desire or regard anything but the eternal Good alone. And then, when a person neither cares for nor desires anything but the eternal Good, and seeks not himself or his own interests, but the honor of God alone, he becomes a partaker of every kind of joy, bliss, peace, rest, and consolation, and so the person is henceforth in the kingdom of heaven. This hell and this heaven are two good, safe paths for a person, and happy is he who truly finds them.
+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 the eternal reason that has
+ordered things, there is a frosty chill about his words which you rarely
+find in 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,” with
+Job’s cry: “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him!” and you
+immediately see the difference I mean. The _anima mundi_, to whose
+disposal of his own personal destiny the Stoic consents, is there to be
+respected and submitted to, but the Christian God is there to be loved;
+and the difference of emotional atmosphere is like that between an arctic
+climate and the tropics, though the outcome in the way of accepting actual
+conditions uncomplainingly may seem in abstract terms to be much the same.
+How much more active and positive is the Christian writer's impulse to accept his place! Marcus Aurelius agrees *to* the scheme—the German theologian agrees *with* it. He literally *overflows* with agreement; he runs out to embrace the divine decrees.
+Occasionally the Stoic rises to something like Christian warmth, as in Marcus Aurelius's passage:
+    “It is a man’s duty,” says Marcus Aurelius, “to comfort himself
+    and wait for the natural dissolution, and not to be vexed, but to
+    find refreshment solely in these thoughts—first that nothing will
+    happen to me which is not conformable to the nature of the
+    universe; and secondly that I need do nothing contrary to the God
+    and deity within me; for there is no man who can compel me to
+    transgress.(14) He is an abscess on the universe who withdraws and
+    separates himself from the reason of our common nature, through
+    being displeased with the things which happen. For the same nature
+    produces these, and has produced thee too. And so accept
+    everything which happens, even if it seem disagreeable, because it
+    leads to this, the health of the universe and to the prosperity
+    and felicity of Zeus. For he would not have brought on any man
+    what he has brought, if it were not useful for the whole. The
+    integrity of the whole is mutilated if thou cuttest off anything.
+    And thou dost cut off, as far as it is in thy power, when thou art
+    dissatisfied, and in a manner triest to put anything out of the
+    way.”(15)
+> **Quote:** "Everything harmonizes with me which is harmonious to thee, O Universe. Nothing for me is too early 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?"
+But compare even this devout passage with a genuine Christian outpouring, and it seems a little cold. Turn to the *Imitation of Christ*:
+Compare now this mood with that of the old Christian author of the
+Theologia Germanica:—
+> **Quote:** "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 to thine honour. Place me where thou wilt, and freely work thy will with me in all things.... When could it be evil when thou wert near? I had rather be poor for thy sake than rich without thee. I choose rather to be a pilgrim upon the earth with thee, than without thee to possess heaven. Where thou art, there is heaven; and where thou art not, behold there death and hell."
+It is a good rule in physiology, when studying an organ's purpose, to ask about its most unique performance. Surely the same principle holds: the essence of religious experiences must be that quality we find nowhere else, most prominent in the most intense examples.
+    “Where men are enlightened with the true light, they renounce all
+    desire and choice, and commit and commend themselves and all
+    things to the eternal Goodness, so that every enlightened man
+    could say: ‘I would fain be to the Eternal Goodness what his own
+    hand is to a man.’ Such men are in a state of freedom, because
+    they have lost the fear of pain or hell, and the hope of reward or
+    heaven, and are living in pure submission to the eternal Goodness,
+    in the perfect freedom of fervent love. When a man truly
+    perceiveth and considereth himself, who and what he is, and
+    findeth himself utterly vile and wicked and unworthy, he falleth
+    into such a deep abasement that it seemeth to him reasonable that
+    all creatures in heaven and earth should rise up against him. And
+    therefore he will not and dare not desire any consolation and
+    release; but he is willing to be unconsoled and unreleased; and he
+    doth not grieve over his sufferings, for they are right in his
+    eyes, and he hath nothing to say against them. This is what is
+    meant by true repentance for sin; and he who in this present time
+    entereth into this hell, none may console him. Now God hath not
+    forsaken a man in this hell, but He is laying his hand upon him,
+    that the man may not desire nor regard anything but the eternal
+    Good only. And then, when the man neither careth for nor desireth
+    anything but the eternal Good alone, and seeketh not himself nor
+    his own things, but the honour of God only, he is made a partaker
+    of all manner of joy, bliss, peace, rest, and consolation, and so
+    the man is henceforth in the kingdom of heaven. This hell and this
+    heaven are two good safe ways for a man, and happy is he who truly
+    findeth them.”(16)
+When we compare these intense experiences with those of tamer minds, we find a character perfectly distinct. That character, it seems to me, should be regarded as the practically important distinction of religion; and exactly what it is can be brought out by comparing an abstractly conceived Christian with a similarly conceived moralist.
+We say a life is manly, stoical, moral, or philosophical in proportion to how much it is swayed less by petty personal considerations and more by objective goals that demand energy, even if that brings personal loss and pain. This is the positive side of war, calling for "volunteers." And for morality, life is a war, and service of the highest good is a cosmic patriotism calling for volunteers. Even a sick person, unable to be physically militant, can carry on the moral struggle. He can willfully turn attention from his own future, train himself to be indifferent to setbacks, follow public news, cultivate cheerful manners, remain silent about miseries, contemplate ideal aspects of existence, and practice duties—patience, resignation, trust. Such a person lives on his loftiest plane. He is a high-hearted, free man, not a pining slave. And yet, he lacks something that the quintessential Christian possesses, making him a human being of an altogether different category.
+How much more active and positive the impulse of the Christian writer to
+accept his place in the universe is! Marcus Aurelius agrees _to_ the
+scheme—the German theologian agrees _with_ it. He literally _abounds_ in
+agreement, he runs out to embrace the divine decrees.
+The Christian also spurns the pinched and mumping sick-room attitude—saints show a callousness to diseased conditions of the body that no other records show. But moralistic rejection requires willpower, while Christian rejection flows from higher emotion, needing no effort. The moralist must hold his breath and keep muscles tense; but this athletic attitude tends to break down, even in the strongest, when the body decays or morbid fears invade. To suggest will and effort to someone overwhelmed by powerlessness is to suggest the impossible. What they crave is to be consoled in their powerlessness—to feel that the universe's spirit recognizes and protects them, even as they decay. Well, in the end, we are all such helpless failures. The sanest of us are made of the same clay as lunatics, and death eventually runs us down. Whenever we feel this, a sense of our self-directed career's futility comes over us, so that all morality seems a bandage hiding a wound it can never cure, and all well-doing seems a hollow substitute for the well-*being* our lives ought to be grounded in, but, alas, are not.
+Occasionally, it is true, the Stoic rises to something like a Christian
+warmth of sentiment, as in the often quoted passage of Marcus Aurelius:—
+And here religion comes to our rescue. There is a state of mind, known to religious people but to no others, in which the will to assert ourselves is replaced by willingness to be silent and as nothing in God's floods. In this state, what we most dreaded becomes our safety's home, and the hour of our moral death turns into our spiritual birthday. The time for inner tension is over, and the time of happy relaxation, of calm deep breathing, of an eternal present—with no discordant future to dread—has arrived. Fear is not merely held in check as by simple morality; it is positively erased.
+We shall see many examples of this happy state. We shall see how infinitely passionate religion can be at its highest. Like love, wrath, hope, ambition, or jealousy, it adds an enchantment to life that cannot be rationally derived. This enchantment, coming as a gift—of our biology, as physiologists say, or of God's grace, as theologians say—is either present or absent. There are people who can no more be possessed by it than they can fall in love by command. Religious feeling is thus an absolute addition to life's range, giving a new sphere of power. When the outward battle is lost, it redeems and brings life to an interior world that would otherwise be wasteland.
+    “Everything harmonizes with me which is harmonious to thee, O
+    Universe. Nothing for me is too early 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?”(17)
+If religion means anything definite, I believe it means this added emotional dimension, this enthusiastic spirit of commitment, where morality can at best bow its head. It should mean nothing less than this new reach of freedom, with the struggle over, the universe's keynote sounding, and everlasting possession spread before us.
+This happiness in the absolute and everlasting is found nowhere but in religion. It is separated from all animal happiness by that element of solemnity I have emphasized. Solemnity is difficult to define abstractly, but certain characteristics are obvious. A solemn state of mind is never crude; it seems to contain a measure of its opposite. A solemn joy carries bitterness in its sweetness; a solemn sorrow is one to which we intimately consent. But some writers, realizing that supreme happiness is religion's privilege, forget this complexity and call all happiness religious. Mr. Havelock Ellis identifies religion with the soul's liberation from oppressive moods:
+But compare even as devout a passage as this with a genuine Christian
+outpouring, and it seems a little cold. Turn, for instance, to the
+Imitation of Christ:—
+> **Quote:** "The simplest functions of physiological life may be its ministers. Every one who is at all acquainted with the Persian mystics knows how wine may be regarded as an instrument of religion. 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 the momentary 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 not discomfort or pain, not even the muscular contraction of strenuous manhood, but a joyous expansion 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."
+But such direct identification of religion with every happiness leaves out its essential uniqueness. Common happinesses are "reliefs" from evils experienced or threatened. But religious happiness is no mere escape. It consents to evil outwardly as sacrifice; inwardly, it knows evil permanently overcome. If you ask *how* religion thus "falls on the thorns" and faces death—and in that act cancels annihilation—I cannot explain; it is religion's secret. To understand it, you must have been a religious person of the extreme type. In our future examples, we shall find this complex sacrificial structure, where a higher happiness holds a lower unhappiness in check. In the Louvre, Guido Reni's painting of St. Michael with his foot on Satan's neck is rich partly because the demon's figure is there. The world is richer for having a devil in it, *as long as we keep our foot on his neck*. In religious consciousness, that is exactly the demon's position. We shall see how, in certain saints, this takes monstrously ascetic form. There are saints who have fed on humiliation, deprivation, and suffering—their souls growing happier exactly as their outward state became more intolerable. No emotion but religious emotion can bring a person to this state. Therefore, when we ask about religion's value for human life, we should look among these violent examples rather than moderate ones. By starting with the phenomenon in its acute form, we can scale it down later. If in these cases—repulsive as they may be—we find ourselves compelled to acknowledge religion's value, it will have proved its value for life in general. By subtracting these extravagances, we can then trace its legitimate influence.
+    “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 to
+    thine honour. Place me where thou wilt, and freely work thy will
+    with me in all things.... When could it be evil when thou wert
+    near? I had rather be poor for thy sake than rich without thee. I
+    choose rather to be a pilgrim upon the earth with thee, than
+    without thee to possess heaven. Where thou art, there is heaven;
+    and where thou art not, behold there death and hell.”(18)
+It makes our task difficult to deal so much with eccentricities and extremes. You might ask, "How can religion be the most important human function if every manifestation must be corrected and sobered down?" Such a thesis seems an impossible paradox—yet I believe something like it must be our conclusion. That personal attitude which the individual feels driven to take toward what he perceives as the divine—remember, this was our definition—will prove both a helpless and sacrificial attitude. We will have to admit at least some dependence on pure mercy, and practice some renunciation—great or small—to keep our souls alive. The nature of our world requires it:
+As Goethe sang:
+It is a good rule in physiology, when we are studying the meaning of an
+organ, to ask after its most peculiar and characteristic sort of
+performance, and to seek its office in that one of its functions which no
+other organ can possibly exert. Surely the same maxim holds good in our
+present quest. The essence of religious experiences, the thing by which we
+finally must judge them, must be that element or quality in them which we
+can meet nowhere else. And such a quality will be of course most prominent
+and easy to notice in those religious experiences which are most one‐
+sided, exaggerated, and intense.
+> **Quote:** "Entbehren sollst du! sollst entbehren!
+Now when we compare these intenser experiences with the experiences of
+tamer minds, so cool and reasonable that we are tempted to call them
+philosophical rather than religious, we find a character that is perfectly
+distinct. That character, it seems to me, should be regarded as the
+practically important _differentia_ of religion for our purpose; and just
+what it is can easily be brought out by comparing the mind of an
+abstractly conceived Christian with that of a moralist similarly
+conceived.
+Das ist der ewige Gesang
+A life is manly, stoical, moral, or philosophical, we say, in proportion
+as it is less swayed by paltry personal considerations and more by
+objective ends that call for energy, even though that energy 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 cosmic patriotism which also calls for
+volunteers. Even a sick man, unable to be militant outwardly, can carry on
+the moral warfare. He can willfully turn his attention away from his own
+future, whether in this world or the next. He can train himself to
+indifference to his present drawbacks and immerse 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 about his miseries. He can contemplate whatever
+ideal aspects of existence his philosophy is able to present to him, and
+practice whatever duties, such as patience, resignation, trust, his
+ethical system requires. Such a man lives on his loftiest, largest plane.
+He is a high‐hearted freeman and no pining slave. 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 altogether different denomination.
+Der jedem an die Ohren klingt,
+The Christian also spurns the pinched and mumping sick‐room attitude, and
+the lives of saints are full of a kind of callousness to diseased
+conditions of body which probably no other human records show. But whereas
+the merely moralistic spurning takes an effort of volition, the Christian
+spurning is the result of the excitement of a higher kind of emotion, in
+the presence of which no exertion of volition is required. The moralist
+must hold his breath and keep his muscles tense; and so long as this
+athletic attitude is possible all goes well—morality suffices. But the
+athletic attitude tends ever to break down, and it inevitably does break
+down even in the most stalwart when the organism begins to decay, or when
+morbid fears invade the mind. To suggest personal will and effort to one
+all sicklied o’er with the sense of irremediable impotence is to suggest
+the most impossible of things. What he craves is to be consoled in his
+very powerlessness, to feel that the spirit of the universe recognizes and
+secures him, all decaying and failing as he is. Well, we are all such
+helpless failures in the last resort. The sanest and best of us are of one
+clay with lunatics and prison inmates, and death finally runs the
+robustest of us down. And whenever we feel this, such a sense of the
+vanity and provisionality of our voluntary career comes over us that all
+our morality appears but as a plaster hiding a sore it can never cure, and
+all our well‐doing as the hollowest substitute for that well‐_being_ that
+our lives ought to be grounded in, but, alas! are not.
+Den, unser ganzes Leben lang
+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 own has been displaced by
+a willingness to close our mouths and be as nothing in the floods and
+waterspouts of God. In this state of mind, what we most dreaded has become
+the habitation of our safety, and the hour of our moral death has turned
+into our spiritual birthday. The time for tension in our soul is over, and
+that of happy relaxation, of calm deep breathing, of an eternal present,
+with no discordant future to be anxious about, has arrived. Fear is not
+held in abeyance as it is by mere morality, it is positively expunged and
+washed away.
+Uns heiser jede Stunde singt."
+We shall see abundant examples of this happy state of mind in later
+lectures of this course. We shall see how infinitely passionate a thing
+religion at its highest flights can be. Like love, like wrath, like hope,
+ambition, jealousy, like every other instinctive eagerness and impulse, it
+adds to life an enchantment which is not rationally or logically deducible
+from anything else. This enchantment, coming as a gift when it does
+come,—a gift of our organism, the physiologists will tell us, 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 by mere word of command. Religious feeling
+is thus an absolute addition to the Subject’s range of life. It gives him
+a new sphere of power. When the outward battle is lost, and the outer
+world disowns him, it redeems and vivifies an interior world which
+otherwise would be an empty waste.
+For when all is said, we are absolutely dependent on the universe, drawn into sacrifices and surrenders—deliberately considered and accepted—as our only permanent rest. In states of mind falling short of religion, surrender is submitted to as imposed necessity, and sacrifice is endured at best without complaint. In religion, on the contrary, surrender and sacrifice are positively embraced; even unnecessary sacrifices are added so happiness may increase. *Religion thus makes easy and joyful what is necessary anyway*; and if it is the only force that can accomplish this, its vital importance is established beyond dispute. It becomes an essential organ of life, performing a function no other part of our nature can fulfill. From a biological perspective, this is a conclusion to which we will inevitably be led—by following the purely empirical method I outlined in the first lecture. I will say nothing now about religion's further role as metaphysical revelation.
+If religion is to mean anything definite for us, it seems to me that we
+ought to take it as meaning this added dimension of emotion, this
+enthusiastic temper of espousal, in regions where morality strictly so
+called can at best but bow its head and acquiesce. It ought to mean
+nothing short of this new reach of freedom for us, with the struggle over,
+the keynote of the universe sounding in our ears, and everlasting
+possession spread before our eyes.(19)
+But to foreshadow the investigation's end is one thing; to arrive safely is another. In the next lecture, leaving behind the extreme generalities that have occupied us, I propose we begin our actual journey by turning directly to concrete facts.
+This sort of happiness in the absolute and everlasting is what we find
+nowhere but in religion. It is parted off from all mere animal happiness,
+all mere enjoyment of the present, by that element of solemnity of which I
+have already made so much account. Solemnity is a hard thing to define
+abstractly, but certain of its marks are patent enough. A solemn state of
+mind is never crude or simple—it seems to contain a certain measure of its
+own opposite in solution. A solemn joy preserves 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 is at all acquainted with the Persian
+    mystics knows how wine may be regarded as an instrument of
+    religion. 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 the
+    momentary 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 not
+    discomfort or pain, not even the muscular contraction of strenuous
+    manhood, but a joyous expansion 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.”(20)
+But such a straight identification of religion with any and every form of
+happiness leaves the essential peculiarity of religious happiness out. The
+more commonplace happinesses which we get are “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. It cares no longer to escape. It consents to the evil outwardly as
+a form of sacrifice—inwardly it knows it to be permanently overcome. If
+you ask _how_ religion thus falls on the thorns and faces death, 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 our future examples, even of the
+simplest and healthiest‐minded type of religious consciousness, we shall
+find this complex sacrificial constitution, in which a higher happiness
+holds a lower unhappiness in check. In the Louvre there is a picture, by
+Guido Reni, of St. Michael with his foot on 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 the richer for having a devil in it, _so long as we
+keep our foot upon his neck_. In the religious 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 of view.(21) 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, and
+the thought of suffering and death,—their souls growing in happiness just
+in proportion as their outward state grew more intolerable. No other
+emotion than religious emotion can bring a man to this peculiar pass. And
+it is for that reason that when we ask our question about the value of
+religion for human life, I think we ought to look for the answer among
+these violenter examples rather than among those of a more moderate hue.
+Having the phenomenon of our study in its acutest possible form to start
+with, we can shade down as much as we please later. And if in these cases,
+repulsive as they are to our ordinary worldly way of judging, we find
+ourselves compelled to acknowledge religion’s value and treat it with
+respect, it will have proved in some way its value for life at large. By
+subtracting and toning down 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 much with
+eccentricities and extremes. “How _can_ religion on the whole be the most
+important of all human functions,” you may ask, “if every 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 like it will have to be our final
+contention. That personal attitude which the individual finds himself
+impelled to take up towards what he apprehends to be the divine—and you
+will remember that this was our definition—will prove to be both a
+helpless and a sacrificial attitude. That is, we shall have to confess to
+at least some amount of dependence on sheer mercy, and to practice some
+amount of renunciation, great or small, to save our souls alive. The
+constitution of the world we live in requires 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 into sacrifices and surrenders of some sort,
+deliberately looked at and accepted, we are drawn and pressed as into our
+only permanent positions of repose. Now in those states of mind which fall
+short of religion, the surrender is submitted to as an imposition of
+necessity, and the sacrifice is undergone 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 the happiness may increase. _Religion thus makes easy and felicitous
+what in any case is necessary_; and if it be the only agency that can
+accomplish this result, its vital importance as a human faculty stands
+vindicated beyond dispute. It becomes an essential organ of our life,
+performing a function which no other portion of our nature can so
+successfully fulfill. From the merely biological point of view, so to call
+it, this is a conclusion to which, so far as I can now see, we shall
+inevitably be led, and led moreover by following the purely empirical
+method of demonstration which I sketched to you in the first lecture. Of
+the farther office of religion as a metaphysical revelation I will say
+nothing now.
+But to foreshadow the terminus of one’s investigations is one thing, and
+to arrive there safely is another. 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.
+If one were asked to define the religious life in the broadest terms possible, one might say that:
+Were one asked to characterize the life of religion in the broadest and
+most general terms possible, one might say that it consists of the belief
+that there is an unseen order, and that our supreme good lies in
+harmoniously adjusting ourselves thereto. This belief and this adjustment
+are the religious attitude in the soul. I wish during this hour to call
+your attention to some of the psychological peculiarities of such an
+attitude as this, of 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 our consciousness, the things which we believe to
+exist, whether really or ideally, along with ourselves. 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 is notoriously in many cases as strong as that due to
+sensible presences. It may be even stronger. The memory of an insult may
+make us angrier than the insult did when we received it. We are frequently
+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 material sensations actually present may have a
+weaker influence on our action than ideas of remoter facts.
+> "it consists of the belief that there is an unseen order, and that our supreme good lies in harmoniously adjusting ourselves thereto."
+The more concrete objects of most men’s religion, the deities whom they
+worship, are known to them only in idea. It has been vouchsafed, for
+example, to very few Christian believers to have had a sensible vision of
+their Saviour; though enough appearances of this sort are on record, by
+way of miraculous 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 past experience directly serves as a model.
+This belief and adjustment constitute the religious attitude. All our attitudes—moral, practical, emotional, religious—are shaped by the "objects" of our consciousness: the things we believe exist alongside us, whether physical or purely ideal. These objects trigger our reactions, and ideas about distant facts often influence us more than immediate physical sensations. The memory of an insult can make us angrier than the insult itself; we feel more ashamed of mistakes afterward than at the moment. Our higher practical and moral life depends on this fact.
+But in addition to these ideas of the more concrete religious objects,
+religion is full of abstract objects which prove to have an equal power.
+God’s attributes as such, his holiness, his justice, his mercy, his
+absoluteness, his infinity, his omniscience, his tri‐unity, the various
+mysteries of the redemptive process, the operation of the sacraments,
+etc., have proved fertile wells of inspiring meditation for Christian
+believers.(22) 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 a successful 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 subsequent attitude very powerfully for good.
+The concrete objects of most people's religion—their deities—are known only as ideas. Few Christians have had a physical vision of their Savior, though enough such accounts exist as miraculous exceptions. Thus the Christian religion's force, as far as belief determines attitude, is generally exerted through pure ideas for which nothing in past experience serves as direct model.
+Immanuel Kant held a curious doctrine about such objects of belief as God,
+the design of creation, the soul, its freedom, and the life hereafter.
+These things, he said, are properly not objects of knowledge at all. Our
+conceptions always require a sense‐content to work with, and as the words
+“soul,” “God,” “immortality,” cover no distinctive sense‐content whatever,
+it follows that theoretically speaking they are words devoid of any
+significance. Yet strangely enough they have a definite meaning _for our
+practice_. We can act _as if_ there were a God; feel _as if_ we were free;
+consider Nature _as if_ she were full of special designs; lay plans _as
+if_ we were to be immortal; and we find then that these words do make a
+genuine difference in our moral life. Our faith _that_ these
+unintelligible objects actually exist proves thus to be a full equivalent
+in _praktischer Hinsicht_, as Kant calls it, or from the point of view of
+our action, for a knowledge of _what_ they might be, in case we were
+permitted positively to conceive them. So we have the strange phenomenon,
+as Kant assures us, of a mind believing with all its strength in the real
+presence of a set of things of no one of which it can form any notion
+whatsoever.
+But religion is also full of abstract objects with equal power: God's attributes—holiness, justice, mercy, infinity, omniscience—as well as the mysteries of redemption and sacraments, have inspired deep meditation. Mystical authorities insist that the absence of definite sensory images is necessary for successful prayer or contemplation of higher truths. Such contemplations influence the believer's subsequent attitude, and consistently fulfill that expectation.
+My object in thus recalling Kant’s doctrine to your mind is not to express
+any opinion as to the accuracy of this particularly uncouth part of his
+philosophy, but only to illustrate the characteristic of human nature
+which we are considering, by an example so classical in its exaggeration.
+The sentiment of reality can indeed attach itself so strongly to our
+object of belief that our whole life is polarized 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 mind at all. It is as if a bar of iron, without touch or
+sight, with no representative faculty whatever, might nevertheless be
+strongly endowed with an inner capacity for magnetic feeling; and as if,
+through the various arousals of its magnetism by magnets coming and going
+in its neighborhood, it might be consciously determined to different
+attitudes and tendencies. Such a bar of iron could never give you an
+outward description of the agencies that had the power of stirring it so
+strongly; yet of their presence, and of their significance for its life,
+it would be intensely aware through every fibre of its being.
+Immanuel Kant held a curious doctrine about objects like God, the soul, its freedom, and the afterlife. These, he argued, are not objects of knowledge at all. Our concepts require sensory content, and since "soul," "God," and "immortality" correspond to no sensory data, they are theoretically words without significance. Yet strangely, they have definite meaning for our practical lives. We can act *as if* there were a God; feel *as if* we were free; consider Nature *as if* it were full of purpose; and make plans *as if* we were immortal. When we do, these words make a genuine difference in our moral lives. Our faith *that* these unintelligible objects exist proves a complete equivalent in *praktischer Hinsicht*, or from the perspective of our action, for a knowledge of *what* they might be. Thus we have the strange phenomenon of a mind believing with all its strength in the real presence of things of which it can form no clear concept.
+It is not only the Ideas of pure Reason, as Kant styled them, that have
+this power of making us vitally feel presences that we are impotent
+articulately to describe. All sorts of higher abstractions bring with them
+the same kind of impalpable appeal. Remember those passages from Emerson
+which 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 of abstract 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 through all things good, strong, significant,
+and just.
+I recall Kant's doctrine not to judge this particularly uncouth part of his philosophy, but to illustrate the characteristic of human nature we are considering through an example so classical in its exaggeration. The feeling of reality can attach so strongly to an object of belief that our entire life is polarized by its existence, even though it cannot be clearly described or said to be present to our minds at all. It is as if a bar of iron, without touch or sight, and with no representative faculty whatever, might nevertheless be strongly endowed with an inner capacity for magnetic feeling. Through stirrings of its magnetism by passing magnets, it might be consciously driven toward different attitudes, yet could never physically describe the forces that stirred it so strongly; it would be intensely aware of their presence and significance through every fiber of its being.
+Such ideas, and others equally abstract, form the background for all our
+facts, the fountain‐head of 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 can never look directly at them, for they are bodiless
+and featureless and footless, but we grasp all other things by their
+means, and in handling the real world we should be stricken with
+helplessness in just so far forth as we might lose these mental objects,
+these adjectives and adverbs and predicates and heads of classification
+and conception.
+It is not only "Ideas of Pure Reason" that have this power. All higher abstractions carry the same intangible appeal. The universe of concrete objects swims in a wider universe of abstract ideas that give it significance. Just as time and space permeate all things, we feel that abstract goodness, beauty, strength, and justice permeate everything that is good, strong, and just.
+This absolute determinability of our mind by abstractions is one of the
+cardinal facts in our human constitution. Polarizing and magnetizing us as
+they do, we turn towards them and from them, we seek them, hold them, hate
+them, bless them, just as if they were so many concrete beings. And beings
+they are, beings as real in the realm which they inhabit as the changing
+things of sense are in the realm of space.
+Such ideas form the background for all our facts and the source of all possibilities we imagine. They give every specific thing its "nature." We understand all other things through them, though we can never look at them directly, for they are bodiless and featureless. Without these mental objects, we would be helpless.
+Plato gave so brilliant and impressive a defense of this common human
+feeling, that the doctrine of the reality of abstract objects has been
+known as the platonic theory of ideas ever since. Abstract Beauty, for
+example, is for Plato a perfectly definite individual being, of which the
+intellect is aware as of something additional to all the perishing
+beauties of the earth. “The true order of going,” he says, in the often
+quoted passage in his “Banquet,” “is to use the beauties of earth as steps
+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 fair notions, until from fair
+notions he arrives at the notion of absolute Beauty, and at last knows
+what the essence of Beauty is.”(23) In our last lecture we had a glimpse
+of the way in which a platonizing writer like Emerson may treat the
+abstract divineness of things, the moral structure of the universe, as a
+fact worthy of worship. In those various churches without a God which to‐
+day are spreading through the world under the name of ethical societies,
+we have a similar worship of the abstract divine, the moral law believed
+in as an ultimate object. “Science” in many minds is genuinely 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 would have it that in their origin the
+Greek gods were only half‐metaphoric personifications of those great
+spheres of abstract law and order into which the natural world falls
+apart—the sky‐sphere, the ocean‐sphere, the earth‐sphere, and the like;
+just as even now we may speak of the smile of the morning, the kiss of the
+breeze, or the bite of the cold, without really meaning that these
+phenomena of nature actually wear a human face.(24)
+This susceptibility to abstractions is fundamental to human nature. Magnetized by them, we turn toward or seek them, hold them, hate or bless them, as if they were concrete beings. And beings they are—as real in their realm as the changing things of sense are in the physical world.
+As regards the origin of the Greek gods, we need not at present seek an
+opinion. But the whole array 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” by which 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 first exciting this sense of reality; but anything else,
+any idea, for example, that might similarly excite it, would have that
+same prerogative of appearing real which objects of sense normally
+possess. So far as religious conceptions were able to touch this reality‐
+feeling, they would be believed in in spite 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
+objects of his moral theology to be.
+Plato offered such a brilliant defense of this common feeling that the doctrine has been known as the Platonic theory of ideas ever since. For Plato, "Abstract Beauty" is a perfectly definite, individual being of which the intellect is aware as existing beyond all fleeting earthly beauties.
+The most curious proofs of the existence of such an undifferentiated sense
+of reality as this are found in experiences of hallucination. It often
+happens that an hallucination is imperfectly developed: the person
+affected will feel a “presence” in the room, definitely localized, facing
+in one particular way, real in the most emphatic sense of the word, often
+coming suddenly, and as suddenly 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 presence
+religion is more peculiarly concerned.
+> "The true order of going," he says in the "Banquet," "is to use the beauties of earth as steps 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 actions to fair notions, until from fair notions he arrives at the notion of absolute Beauty, and at last knows what the essence of Beauty is."
+An intimate friend of mine, one of the keenest intellects I know, has had
+several experiences of this sort. He writes as follows in response to my
+inquiries:—
+In our last lecture, we glimpsed how a Platonic writer like Emerson treats the abstract divinity of things—the moral structure of the universe—as a fact worthy of worship. In the "churches without a God" known as ethical societies, we see similar worship of the abstract divine, where moral law is believed as ultimate reality. In many minds, "Science" is taking religion's place, with scientists revering the "Laws of Nature" as objective facts. One theory suggests Greek gods were originally half-metaphorical personifications of abstract law and order—sky, ocean, earth—as we might speak of the "smile of the morning" without meaning it has a human face.
+We need not settle the origin of Greek gods now.
+    “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 experience
+    which 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 as great
+    as the difference between feeling a slight warmth originating I
+    know not where, and standing in the midst of a conflagration with
+    all the ordinary senses alert.
+> **Quote:** "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' by which the current psychology supposes existent realities to be originally revealed."
+    “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 the
+    arm, which made me get up and search the room for an intruder; but
+    the sense of presence properly so called came on the next night.
+    After I had got into bed and blown out the candle, I lay awake
+    awhile thinking on the previous night’s experience, when suddenly
+    I _felt_ something come into the room and stay close to my bed. It
+    remained only a minute or two. I did not recognize it by any
+    ordinary sense, and yet there was a horribly unpleasant
+    ‘sensation’ connected with it. It stirred something more at the
+    roots of my being than any ordinary perception. The feeling had
+    something of the quality of a very large tearing vital pain
+    spreading chiefly over the chest, but within the organism—and yet
+    the feeling was not _pain_ so much as _abhorrence_. At all events,
+    something was present with me, and I knew its presence far more
+    surely than I have ever known the presence of any fleshly living
+    creature. I was conscious of its departure as of its coming: an
+    almost instantaneously swift going through the door, and the
+    ‘horrible sensation’ disappeared.
+The senses trigger our attitudes by first exciting this sense of reality; anything else—any idea—that similarly excites it has the same quality of appearing "real." So long as religious concepts can touch this feeling, they will be believed despite criticism, even if vague and remote— even if as lacking in definite qualities as Kant's objects of moral theology.
+    “On the third night when I retired my mind was absorbed in some
+    lectures which I was preparing, and I was still absorbed in these
+    when I became aware of the actual presence (though not of the
+    _coming_) of the thing that was there the night before, and of the
+    ‘horrible sensation.’ I then 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 compel it to go. It went as on the
+    previous night, and my body quickly recovered its normal state.
+The most curious proofs of this general sense of reality are found in hallucinations. It often happens that an hallucination is only partially developed: the person feels a "presence" in the room, specifically located, real in the most emphatic sense, yet neither seen, heard, touched, nor perceived in any usual way. Let me give an example before moving to religion's specific objects.
+    “On two other occasions in my life I have had precisely the same
+    ‘horrible sensation.’ Once it lasted a full quarter of an hour. In
+    all three instances the certainty that there in outward space
+    there stood _something_ was indescribably _stronger_ than the
+    ordinary certainty of companionship when 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 to speak, or finite, small,
+    and distressful, as it were, I didn’t recognize it as any
+    individual being or person.”
+An intimate friend, one of the sharpest intellects I know, writes:
+"Several times I have felt what is called the 'consciousness of a presence.' The difference between this and other experiences is as great as the difference between slight warmth and standing in a massive fire.
+Of course such an experience as this does not connect itself with the
+religious sphere. Yet it may upon occasion do so; and the same
+correspondent informs me that at more than one other conjuncture he had
+the sense of presence developed with equal intensity and abruptness, only
+then it was filled with a quality of joy.
+"The first experience was September 1884. After a vivid physical hallucination the previous night, the sense of presence came the next night. In bed with the candle blown out, I suddenly *felt* something enter and stay close. It remained only a minute or two. I did not recognize it through any ordinary sense, yet there was a horribly unpleasant 'sensation'—not quite pain but *abhorrence*—spreading across my chest. Something was present, and I knew its presence more certainly than any living human being. I was aware of its departure as of its coming: it left through the door almost instantaneously, and the horrible sensation vanished.
+"On the third night, absorbed in lecture preparation, I became aware of the same presence with the same horrible sensation. I mentally commanded it to leave if evil, or tell me what it was if not. It left as before.
+    “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 of
+    some poem, or scene, or blossom, of music, but the sure knowledge
+    of the close presence of a sort of mighty person, and after it
+    went, the memory persisted as the one perception of reality.
+    Everything else might be a dream, but not that.”
+"On two other occasions I had the same sensation, once lasting fifteen minutes. In all instances, the certainty that *something* stood there was indescribably *stronger* than ordinary certainty of company. The something seemed intensely more real than ordinary perception, finite and distressed like me, yet not any specific person."
+Such experiences need not connect to religion, yet they can. My friend also felt a presence with equal intensity but filled with joy:
+My friend, as it oddly happens, does not interpret these latter
+experiences theistically, as signifying the presence of God. But it would
+clearly not have been unnatural to interpret them as a revelation of the
+deity’s existence. When we reach the subject of mysticism, we shall have
+much more to say upon this head.
+"It wasn't just consciousness of something there; fused into that happiness was startling awareness of some indescribable good. It wasn't vague like poetry or music, but certain knowledge of the close presence of a powerful person. Afterward, the memory remained as the one true perception of reality. Everything else might be a dream, but not that."
+Lest the oddity of these phenomena should disconcert you, I will venture
+to read you a couple of similar narratives, much shorter, merely to show
+that we are dealing with a well‐marked natural kind of fact. In the first
+case, which I take from the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research,
+the sense of presence developed in a few moments into a distinctly
+visualized hallucination,—but I leave that part of the story out.
+My friend does not interpret these theistically, but it would not have been unnatural to do so.
+To show this is a well-defined type of experience, here are two shorter accounts. From the Society for Psychical Research:
+    “I had read,” the narrator says, “some twenty minutes or so, was
+    thoroughly absorbed in the book, my mind was perfectly quiet, and
+    for the time being my friends were quite forgotten, when suddenly
+    without a moment’s warning my whole being seemed roused to the
+    highest state of tension or aliveness, and I was aware, with an
+    intenseness not easily imagined by those who had never experienced
+    it, that another being or presence was not only in the room, but
+    quite close to me. I put my book down, and although my excitement
+    was great, I felt quite collected, and not conscious of any sense
+    of fear. Without changing my position, and looking straight at the
+    fire, I knew somehow that my friend A. H. was standing at my left
+    elbow, but so far behind me as to be hidden by the armchair in
+    which I was leaning back. Moving my eyes round slightly without
+    otherwise changing my position, the lower portion of one leg
+    became visible, and I instantly recognized the gray‐blue material
+    of trousers he often wore, but the stuff appeared semi‐
+    transparent, reminding me of tobacco smoke in
+    consistency,”(25)—and hereupon the visual hallucination came.
+"I had been reading twenty minutes, thoroughly absorbed, when suddenly my whole being roused to highest tension. With unimaginable intensity, I was aware another being was not only in the room but next to me. Without moving, looking at the fire, I somehow knew my friend A. H. stood at my left elbow, hidden by the armchair. Moving my eyes slightly, I saw the lower part of a leg in gray-blue trousers, semi-transparent like tobacco smoke"—and then the visual hallucination began.
+Another writes:
+Another informant writes:—
+"Early in the night I was awakened. Turning to sleep again, I immediately felt a presence—not a living person but a spiritual presence, accompanied by superstitious dread, as if something strange were about to happen."
+Professor Flournoy shared testimony from a lady who practices automatic writing:
+    “Quite early in the night I was awakened.... I felt as if I had
+    been aroused intentionally, and at first thought some one was
+    breaking into the house.... I then turned on my side to go to
+    sleep again, and immediately felt a consciousness of a presence in
+    the room, and singular to state, it was not the consciousness of a
+    live person, but of a spiritual presence. This may provoke a
+    smile, but I can only tell you the facts as they occurred to me. I
+    do not know how to better describe my sensations than by simply
+    stating that I felt a consciousness of a spiritual presence.... I
+    felt also at the same time a strong feeling of superstitious
+    dread, as if something strange and fearful were about to
+    happen.”(26)
+"Whenever I write automatically, what convinces me it isn't just my subconscious is the feeling of a foreign presence external to my body, sometimes so distinct I could point to its location. If it is someone I love, I feel it immediately, before any writing starts. My heart seems to recognize it."
+In an earlier book, I cited a case of a blind man who felt a gray-bearded man in a salt-and-pepper suit squeezing under the door and moving across the floor. The blind subject, exceptionally intelligent, has no visual imagination and is certain his other senses were not involved. It was an abstract concept with feelings of reality and physical presence directly attached—a fully externalized *idea*.
+Professor Flournoy of Geneva gives me the following testimony of a friend
+of his, a lady, who has the gift of automatic or involuntary writing:—
+Such cases sufficiently prove that our mental machinery contains a sense of reality more diffused and general than specific senses provide. For psychologists, tracing its physical origin would be interesting—perhaps connecting it to the muscular sense, the feeling of muscles preparing for action. Whatever stimulated activity might then seem real even if only an abstract idea. But our interest lies with the mental faculty itself rather than its physical origin.
+Like all positive states, the sense of reality has its negative counterpart: a feeling of unreality that can haunt people:
+    “Whenever I practice automatic writing, what makes me feel that it
+    is not due to a subconscious self is the feeling I always have of
+    a foreign presence, external to my body. It is sometimes so
+    definitely characterized that I could point to its exact position.
+    This impression of presence is impossible to describe. It varies
+    in intensity and clearness according to the personality from whom
+    the writing professes to come. If it is some one whom I love, I
+    feel it immediately, before any writing has come. My heart seems
+    to recognize it.”
+"When I reflect that I have appeared by accident upon a globe whirled through space as the plaything of celestial catastrophes," says Madame Ackermann; "when I see myself surrounded by beings as fleeting and incomprehensible as I am, all chasing pure illusions, I experience a strange feeling of being in a dream. It seems as if I have loved and suffered and shall die in a dream. My last word will be, 'I have been dreaming.'"
+In another lecture, we will see how in unhealthy depression, this sense of unreality can become a gnawing pain leading to suicide. We can now be certain that in the religious sphere, many people hold the objects of their belief not as mere concepts their intellect accepts, but as
+In an earlier book of mine I have cited at full length a curious case of
+presence felt by a blind man. 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 a sofa. The blind subject of this quasi‐hallucination is an
+exceptionally intelligent reporter. He is entirely without internal visual
+imagery and cannot represent light or colors to himself, and is positive
+that his other senses, hearing, etc., were not involved in this false
+perception. It seems to have been an abstract conception rather, with the
+feelings of reality and spatial outwardness directly attached to it—in
+other words, a fully objectified and exteriorized _idea_.
+> "quasi‐sensible realities directly apprehended."
+Such cases, taken along with others which would be too tedious for
+quotation, seem sufficiently to prove the existence in our mental
+machinery of a sense of present reality more diffused and general than
+that which our special senses yield. For the psychologists the tracing of
+the organic seat of such a feeling would form a pretty problem—nothing
+could be more natural than to connect it with the muscular sense, with the
+feeling that our muscles were innervating themselves for action.
+Whatsoever thus innervated our activity, or “made our flesh creep,”—our
+senses are what do so oftenest,—might then appear real and present, even
+though it were but an abstract idea. But with such vague conjectures we
+have no concern at present, for our interest lies with the faculty rather
+than with its organic seat.
+As this sense fluctuates, the believer alternates between warm and cold faith. Examples illustrate this better than abstract descriptions. The first is negative, lamenting the loss of this sense, from a scientific man:
+Like all positive affections of consciousness, the sense of reality has
+its negative counterpart in the shape of a feeling of unreality by which
+persons may be haunted, and of which one sometimes hears complaint:—
+"In my twenties I gradually became agnostic; yet I cannot say I ever lost that 'indefinite consciousness' of an Absolute Reality behind appearances, which Herbert Spencer describes. To me this Reality was not Spencer's pure 'Unknowable.' Although I had stopped childhood prayers to God and never prayed to *It* formally, my recent experience shows I was in a relationship practically the same as prayer. Whenever I had trouble—conflicts with others, depression, anxiety—I relied on this curious relationship with this fundamental cosmic *It*. It was on my side in that particular trouble, strengthening me with endless vitality. It was an unfailing fountain of justice, truth, and strength to which I instinctively turned, and it always brought me through. I know now I was in a personal relationship because in recent years this power has left me, and I feel a definite loss. I used to always find it. Then came years when I sometimes found it, sometimes not. Many nights I lay awake worrying, searching mentally for that familiar sense of a higher mind within my own, which had always seemed close at hand; but there was no spiritual current, only a void where *It* had been. Now at nearly fifty, my ability to connect has entirely vanished, and a great help has gone from my life. Life has become empty and indifferent. I see now my old experience was probably exactly the same as the prayers of the orthodox, though I didn't call them that. What I called 'It' was simply my own instinctive God, whom I relied on for higher sympathy but have somehow lost."
+Nothing is more common in religious biographies than descriptions of alternating seasons of vibrant and difficult faith. Probably every religious person remembers crises where a more direct vision of truth—perhaps a direct perception of a living God's existence—swept in and overwhelmed ordinary belief. James Russell Lowell's letters contain a note about such an experience:
+    “When I reflect on the fact that I have made my appearance by
+    accident upon a globe itself whirled 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, and all excitedly pursuing pure chimeras, I
+    experience a strange feeling of being in a dream. It seems to me
+    as if I have loved and suffered and that erelong I shall die, in a
+    dream. My last word will be, ‘I have been dreaming.’ ”(27)
+"I had a revelation last Friday evening. I was at Mary's, and after saying something about the presence of spirits (of whom I said I was often dimly aware), Mr. Putnam argued with me on spiritual matters. As I spoke, the whole system rose before me like a vague destiny emerging from the Abyss. I never so clearly felt the Spirit of God within and around me. The whole room seemed full of God. The air rippled with the presence of Something, though I knew not what. I spoke with the calmness and clarity of a prophet. I cannot tell you what this revelation was; I have not yet studied it enough. But I will refine it one day, and you shall hear and acknowledge its grandeur."
+Here is a more developed experience from a clergyman, from Starbuck's collection:
+In another lecture we shall see how in morbid melancholy this sense of the
+unreality of things may become a carking pain, and even lead to suicide.
+"I remember the night, and almost the spot on the hilltop, where my soul opened into the Infinite, and there was a merging of the two worlds, the inner and outer.
+We may now lay it down as certain that in the distinctively religious
+sphere of experience, many persons (how many we cannot tell) possess the
+objects of their belief, not in the form of mere conceptions which their
+intellect accepts as true, but rather in the form of quasi‐sensible
+realities directly apprehended. As his sense of the real presence of these
+objects fluctuates, so the believer alternates between warmth and coldness
+in his faith. Other examples will bring this home to one better than
+abstract description, so I proceed immediately to cite some. The first
+example is a negative one, deploring the loss of the sense in question. I
+have extracted it from an account given me by a scientific man of my
+acquaintance, of his religious life. It seems to me to show clearly that
+the feeling of reality may be something more like a sensation than an
+intellectual operation properly so‐called.
+> **Quote:** "It was deep calling unto deep,—the deep that my own struggle had opened up within being answered by the unfathomable deep without, reaching beyond the stars."
+I stood alone with Him who made me, and all the beauty, love, sorrow, and temptation of the world. I did not seek Him, but felt my spirit in perfect harmony with His. My ordinary awareness faded. For the moment, only inexpressible joy and exaltation remained. It is impossible to fully describe. It was like a great orchestra where all notes melt into one swelling harmony, leaving the listener conscious only that his soul is carried upward. The perfect stillness was vibrated by a more solemn silence. The darkness held a presence felt all the more because it was not seen. I could no more doubt that *He* was there than that I was. Indeed, I felt myself to be, if possible, the less real of the two.
+    “Between twenty and thirty I gradually became more and more
+    agnostic and irreligious, yet I cannot 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 of Spencer’s philosophy, for although
+    I had ceased my childish prayers to God, and never prayed to _It_
+    in a formal manner, yet my more recent experience shows me to have
+    been in a relation to _It_ which practically was the same thing as
+    prayer. Whenever I had any trouble, especially when I had conflict
+    with other people, either domestically or in the way of business,
+    or when I was depressed in spirits or anxious about affairs, I now
+    recognize that I used to fall back for support upon this curious
+    relation I felt myself to be in to this fundamental cosmical _It_.
+    It was on my side, or I was on Its side, however you please to
+    term it, in the particular trouble, and it always strengthened me
+    and seemed to give me endless vitality to feel its underlying and
+    supporting presence. In fact, it was an unfailing fountain of
+    living justice, truth, and strength, to which I instinctively
+    turned at times of weakness, and it always brought me out. I know
+    now that it was a personal relation I was in to it, because of
+    late years the power of communicating with it has left me, and I
+    am conscious of a perfectly definite loss. I used never to fail to
+    find it when I turned to it. Then came a set of years when
+    sometimes I found it, and then again I would be wholly unable to
+    make connection with it. I remember many occasions on which at
+    night in bed, I would be unable to get to sleep on account of
+    worry. I turned this way and that in the darkness, and groped
+    mentally for the familiar sense 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 there instead of _It_: I couldn’t find
+    anything. Now, at the age of nearly fifty, my power of getting
+    into connection with it has entirely left me; and I have to
+    confess that a great help has gone out of my life. Life has become
+    curiously dead and indifferent; and I can now see that my old
+    experience 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, but
+    just my own instinctive and individual God, whom I relied upon for
+    higher sympathy, but whom somehow I have lost.”
+"My highest faith and truest idea of God were born then. I have stood upon the Mount of Vision since and felt the Eternal around me. But never since has there been that same stirring. Then, if ever, I stood face to face with God and was born again of His spirit. My early, crude conception had burst into flower. There was no destruction of the old, but a rapid, wonderful unfolding. Since then, no discussion of God's existence has shaken my faith. Having once felt God's presence, I have never lost it for long. My most convincing evidence is rooted in that hour of vision, and in the conviction that something similar has come to all who have found God. I know it may be called mystical. I am not philosopher enough to defend it. I feel I have obscured it with words rather than clarified it. But I have described it as carefully as I can."
+Here is another document, more specific, which I translate from French, as the writer was Swiss:
+Nothing is more common in the pages of religious biography than the way in
+which seasons of lively and of difficult faith are described as
+alternating. Probably every religious person has the recollection of
+particular crises 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. In James Russell Lowell’s
+correspondence there is a brief memorandum of an experience of this kind:—
+"I was in perfect health; we were on our sixth day of hiking. I felt no fatigue, hunger, or thirst; my mind was healthy. I had received good news from home; I had no anxieties, for we had a good guide and clear path. My condition was one of equilibrium. Suddenly I felt lifted above myself; I felt God's presence—I describe it exactly as experienced—as if His goodness and power completely penetrated me. The emotion was so intense I could barely tell the boys to go on without me. I sat on a stone, unable to stand, and my eyes filled with tears. I thanked God that He had taught me to know Him, that He sustained my life and took pity on the insignificant creature and sinner I was. I prayed my life might be dedicated to His will. I felt His reply: that I should do His will from day to day, in humility and poverty, leaving Him to judge whether I might one day testify publicly. Slowly the ecstasy left; I felt God withdrew the communion He had granted, and I could walk on, though slowly, still moved by inner emotion. Besides, I had wept continuously, my eyes were swollen, and I did not want companions to see. The ecstasy may have lasted four or five minutes, though it felt longer. My comrades waited ten minutes at the cross of Barine, but it took me twenty-five or thirty minutes to reach them. The impression was so profound I wondered if Moses on Sinai could have had more intimate communion with God. I should add that in this ecstasy, God had no form, color, smell, or taste; the feeling of His presence was not tied to any location. It was as if my personality had been transformed by a *spiritual spirit*. But the more I search for words, the more I feel the impossibility of describing it with usual images. The expression most apt to render what I felt is this:
+> "God was present, though invisible; he fell under no one of my senses, yet my consciousness perceived him."
+    “I had a revelation last Friday evening. I was at Mary’s, and
+    happening to say something of the presence of spirits (of whom, I
+    said, I was often dimly aware), Mr. Putnam entered into an
+    argument with me on spiritual matters. As I was speaking, the
+    whole system rose up before me like a vague destiny looming from
+    the Abyss. I never before so clearly felt the Spirit of God in me
+    and around me. The whole room seemed to me full of God. The air
+    seemed to waver to and fro with the presence of Something I knew
+    not what. I spoke with the calmness and clearness of a prophet. I
+    cannot tell you what this revelation was. I have not yet studied
+    it enough. But I shall perfect it one day, and then you shall hear
+    it and acknowledge its grandeur.”(28)
+The adjective "mystical" applies most often to short-duration states. Such hours of rapture are mystical experiences, about which I will say more later. Meanwhile, here is a shortened record of another mystical experience in a mind naturally inclined to passionate piety, from Starbuck's collection. The lady is the daughter of a man known as a writer against Christianity. Her conversion shows how natural the sense of God's presence must be to certain minds. Raised in ignorance of Christian doctrine, while in Germany she read the Bible and prayed after talking with Christian friends, and finally the "plan of salvation" flashed upon her like light.
+"To this day I cannot understand hesitating over religion. The instant I heard my Father's cry, my heart leapt in recognition. I ran, stretched out my arms, cried aloud, 'Here, here I am, my Father.' Oh, happy child, what should I do? 'Love me,' God answered. 'I do, I do,' I cried passionately. 'Come to me,' called my Father. 'I will,' my heart panted. Did I stop to ask if I was good enough? Not one question. It never occurred to me to hesitate over unfitness or wait until satisfied. Satisfied! I was satisfied. Had I not found my God? Did He not love me? Was there not a Church I could enter? Since then I have had direct answers to prayer—so significant they are almost like talking with God. The idea of God's reality has never left me for a moment."
+Here is a longer and more developed experience from a manuscript
+communication by a clergyman,—I take it from Starbuck’s manuscript
+collection:—
+Here is another case, by a twenty-seven-year-old man, describing the experience less vividly:
+"On several occasions I have felt intimate communion with the divine. These came uninvited, consisting simply in the temporary stripping away of social conventions.... Once at a mountain summit I looked over a rugged landscape to the ocean horizon. At other times I saw only white clouds below, with peaks drifting like anchored ships. What I felt was temporary loss of identity, accompanied by enlightenment revealing deeper significance to life. This is how I justify saying I experienced communication with God. To me, absence of such being would result in chaos."
+    “I remember the night, and almost the very spot on the hilltop,
+    where my soul opened out, as it were, 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 being answered by the unfathomable deep without,
+    reaching beyond the stars. I stood alone with Him who had made me,
+    and all the beauty of the world, and love, and sorrow, and even
+    temptation. I did not seek Him, but felt the perfect unison of my
+    spirit with His. The ordinary sense of things around me faded. For
+    the moment nothing but an ineffable joy and exaltation remained.
+    It is impossible fully to describe the experience. It was like the
+    effect of some great orchestra when all the separate notes have
+    melted into one swelling harmony that leaves the listener
+    conscious of nothing save that his soul is being wafted upwards,
+    and almost bursting with its own emotion. The perfect stillness of
+    the night was thrilled by a more solemn silence. The darkness held
+    a presence that was all the more felt because it was not seen. I
+    could not any more have doubted that _He_ was there than that I
+    was. Indeed, I felt myself to be, if possible, the less real of
+    the two.
+Regarding a more constant sense of God's presence, this example from Starbuck's collection illustrates the idea, from a forty-nine-year-old man; likely thousands of ordinary Christians would provide nearly identical account:
+    “My highest faith in God and truest idea of him were then born in
+    me. I have stood upon the Mount of Vision since, and felt the
+    Eternal round about me. But never since has there come quite the
+    same stirring of the heart. Then, if ever, I believe, I stood face
+    to face with God, and was born anew of his spirit. There was, as I
+    recall it, no sudden change of thought or of belief, except that
+    my 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 of God’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 in that hour of vision, in the memory of that supreme
+    experience, and in the conviction, gained from reading and
+    reflection, that something the same has come to all who have found
+    God. I am aware that it may justly be called mystical. I am not
+    enough acquainted with philosophy to defend it from that or any
+    other charge. I feel that in writing of it I have overlaid it with
+    words rather than put it clearly to your thought. But, such as it
+    is, I have described it as carefully as I now am able to do.”
+> "God is more real to me than any thought or thing or person. I feel his presence positively, and the more as I live in closer harmony with his laws as written in my body and mind."
+I feel Him in sunshine or rain; a sense of awe mixed with delicious restfulness describes my feelings. I talk to Him like a companion in prayer and praise, and our communion is wonderful. He answers repeatedly—often in words so clear it seems my physical ear heard them, though usually through strong mental impressions. Often it is a Scripture passage revealing a new perspective. I could provide hundreds of examples. The sense that He is mine and I am His never leaves me; it is constant joy. Without it, life would be a void, a desert, a trackless waste.
+Here is another document, even more definite in character, which, the
+writer being a Swiss, I translate from the French original.(29)
+I include further examples from Starbuck's collection, which could be greatly increased. From a twenty-seven-year-old man:
+"God is very real. I talk to Him and often receive answers. Sudden thoughts, distinct from my previous thinking, come after asking direction. Over a year ago I spent weeks in distress. When trouble first arose I was dazed, but soon I clearly heard: 'My grace is sufficient for you.' Every time my thoughts returned to the problem, I heard those words. I don't think I ever doubted God's existence. He has frequently intervened noticeably, directing many small details. However, on two or three occasions He directed me toward paths contrary to my ambitions."
+    “I was in perfect health: we were on our sixth day of tramping,
+    and in good training. We had come the day before from Sixt to
+    Trient by Buet. I felt neither fatigue, hunger, nor thirst, and my
+    state of mind was equally healthy. I had had at Forlaz good news
+    from home; I was subject to no anxiety, either near or remote, for
+    we had a good guide, and there was not a shadow of uncertainty
+    about the road we should follow. I can best describe the condition
+    in which I was by calling it a state of equilibrium. When all at
+    once I experienced a feeling of being raised above myself, I felt
+    the presence of God—I tell of the thing just as I was conscious of
+    it—as if his goodness and his power were penetrating me
+    altogether. The throb of emotion was so violent that I could
+    barely tell the boys to pass on and not wait for me. I then sat
+    down on a stone, unable to stand any longer, and my eyes
+    overflowed with tears. I thanked God that in the course of my life
+    he had taught me to know him, that he sustained my life and took
+    pity both on the insignificant creature and on the sinner that I
+    was. I begged him ardently that my life might be consecrated to
+    the doing of his will. I felt his reply, which was that I should
+    do his will from day to day, in humility and poverty, leaving him,
+    the Almighty God, to be judge of whether I should some time be
+    called to bear witness more conspicuously. Then, slowly, the
+    ecstasy left my heart; that is, I felt that God had withdrawn the
+    communion which he had granted, and I was able to walk on, but
+    very slowly, so strongly was I still possessed by the interior
+    emotion. Besides, I had wept uninterruptedly for several minutes,
+    my eyes were swollen, and I did not wish my companions to see me.
+    The state of ecstasy may have lasted four or five minutes,
+    although it seemed at the time to last much longer. My comrades
+    waited for me ten minutes at the cross of Barine, but I took about
+    twenty‐five or thirty minutes to join them, for as well as I can
+    remember, they said that I had kept them back for about half an
+    hour. The impression had been so profound that in climbing slowly
+    the slope I asked myself if it were possible that Moses on Sinai
+    could have had a more intimate communication with God. I think 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. It was 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 of
+    describing the thing by any of our usual images. At bottom the
+    expression most apt to render what I felt is this: God was
+    present, though invisible; he fell under no one of my senses, yet
+    my consciousness perceived him.”
+Another account—no less valuable for being childlike—from a seventeen-year-old boy:
+"Sometimes in church I feel God is right there with me, by my side, singing and reading Psalms with me. And other times I feel I could sit beside Him, put my arms around Him, and kiss Him. When I take Holy Communion, I try to be with Him and generally feel His presence."
+The adjective “mystical” is technically applied, most often, to states
+that are of brief duration. Of course such hours of rapture as the last
+two persons describe are mystical experiences, of which in a later lecture
+I shall have much to say. Meanwhile here is the abridged record of another
+mystical or semi‐mystical experience, in a mind evidently framed by nature
+for ardent piety. I owe it to Starbuck’s collection. The lady who gives
+the account is the daughter of a man well known in his time as a writer
+against Christianity. The suddenness of her conversion shows well how
+native the sense of God’s presence must be to certain minds. She relates
+that she was brought up in entire ignorance 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 of light.
+I will list a few other cases at random:
+"God surrounds me like the atmosphere, closer than my own breath. In Him I live and move and have my being."
+    “To this day,” she writes, “I cannot understand dallying with
+    religion and the commands of God. 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 never occurred to me to ask whether I was
+    good enough, or to hesitate over my unfitness, or to find out what
+    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 not
+    a Church into which I might enter?... Since then I have had direct
+    answers to prayer—so significant as to be almost like talking with
+    God and hearing his answer. The idea of God’s reality has never
+    left me for one moment.”
+"There are times I seem to stand in His very presence and talk with Him. Answers to prayer have come direct and overwhelming. Sometimes God seems distant, but that is always my own fault."
+"I have a sense of a presence—strong yet soothing—that hovers over me, sometimes wrapping me in sustaining arms."
+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:—
+This is how the human imagination conceives existence, and how persuasive its creations can be. Beings that cannot be pictured are experienced as real, with intensity almost like hallucination. They determine our fundamental attitude as decisively as a lover's attitude is determined by constant sense of the beloved's existence, even when not consciously visualizing her face.
+I spoke of how convincing these feelings of reality are, and must dwell on that. They are as convincing as direct sensory experience, usually more persuasive than logical results. One may be entirely without them—likely some here are—but if you have them strongly, you probably cannot help viewing them as genuine perceptions of truth, revelations that no opposing argument can remove from belief.
+    “I have on a number of occasions felt that I had enjoyed a period
+    of intimate communion with the divine. These meetings came unasked
+    and unexpected, and seemed to consist merely in the temporary
+    obliteration of the conventionalities which usually surround and
+    cover my life.... Once it was when from the summit of a high
+    mountain I looked over a gashed and corrugated landscape extending
+    to a long convex of ocean that ascended to the horizon, and again
+    from the same point when I could see nothing beneath me but a
+    boundless expanse of white cloud, on the blown surface of which a
+    few high peaks, including the one I was on, seemed plunging about
+    as if they were dragging their anchors. What I felt on these
+    occasions was a temporary loss of my own identity, accompanied by
+    an illumination which revealed to me a deeper significance than I
+    had been wont to attach to life. It is in this that I find my
+    justification for saying that I have enjoyed communication with
+    God. Of course the absence of such a being as this would be chaos.
+    I cannot conceive of life without its presence.”
+In philosophy, the view opposed to mysticism is often called *rationalism*. Rationalism insists all beliefs must be based on clear, articulable grounds: (1) stated abstract principles; (2) definite sensory facts; (3) hypotheses based on those facts; (4) logical inferences. Vague impressions of something indefinable have no place. On its positive side, rationalism is a magnificent movement; it has produced all philosophy and physical science.
+Nevertheless, if we examine the whole of human mental life as it actually exists—the inner, private lives men lead apart from formal education and science—we must admit rationalism explains a relatively superficial portion. It carries prestige because it is articulate; it can demand proofs, engage in clever logic, silence you with words. But it fails to convince if your silent intuitions oppose it. If you have intuitions, they come from a deeper level than rationalism's talkative level. Your subconscious life—impulses, faiths, needs, premonitions—has prepared the groundwork. Your consciousness feels the weight of the result, and something *knows* that result must be truer than any clever rationalist talk contradicting it.
+Of the more habitual and so to speak chronic sense of God’s presence the
+following sample from Professor 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.
+This weakness of rationalism in establishing belief is as obvious when it argues *for* religion as when it argues against it. That massive literature of "proofs" for God's existence based on nature's order, so convincing a century ago, now gathers dust because our generation no longer believes in that kind of God. Whatever God may be, we *know* today He is no longer merely the external inventor of "mechanisms" designed to show off His "glory." Exactly how we know this is impossible to explain clearly. I doubt any of you could fully explain your conviction that if God exists, He must be more cosmic and tragic than that earlier Being.
+The truth is that in metaphysical and religious spheres, logical reasons are only powerful when our wordless feelings of reality have already been swayed toward that conclusion. Then indeed, intuitions and reason work together, and great systems like Buddhist or Catholic philosophy can grow. Our impulsive belief establishes the original core of truth, and articulated philosophy is merely its flashy translation into formulas.
+    “God is more real to me than any thought or thing or person. I
+    feel his presence positively, and the 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 my feelings. I talk to him as to
+    a companion in prayer and praise, and our communion is delightful.
+    He answers me again and again, often in words so clearly spoken
+    that it seems my outer ear must have carried the tone, but
+    generally in strong mental impressions. Usually a text of
+    Scripture, unfolding some new view of him and his love for me, and
+    care for my safety. I could give hundreds of instances, in school
+    matters, social problems, financial difficulties, etc. That he is
+    mine and I am his never leaves me, it is an abiding joy. Without
+    it life would be a blank, a desert, a shoreless, trackless waste.”
+> "The unreasoned and immediate assurance is the 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 as shown in these quotations, your critical arguments, however superior, will try in vain to change their faith. Note, I am not yet saying it is *better* for the subconscious and non-rational to hold such power in religion. I am simply pointing out that they do.
+I subjoin some more examples from writers of different ages and sexes.
+They are also from Professor Starbuck’s collection, and their number might
+be greatly multiplied. The first is from a man twenty‐seven years old:—
+So much for our sense of the reality of religious objects. Let me now say a brief word about the attitudes they inspire. We have agreed these attitudes are *solemn*, and we have reason to believe the most distinctive is the joy that can result from absolute self-surrender. The nature of the object determines the joy's specific character, and the phenomenon is more complex than simple formulas capture. The ancient saying that fear was the first creator of gods is supported by evidence from all religious history; nevertheless, history also shows joy's vital role. Sometimes joy is primary; other times it is secondary, the gladness of being delivered from fear. This latter state, being more complex, is also more complete. As we move forward, we will find reason to include both sadness and gladness if we view religion with required breadth. In complete terms: a person's religion involves both moods of contraction and expansion of being.
+But the relative amounts and order of these moods vary so much that you could argue either for dread and submission, or for peace and freedom, as the essence—and still be essentially correct. A somber person and an optimistic one inevitably emphasize opposite sides.
+    “God is quite real to me. I talk to him and often get answers.
+    Thoughts sudden and distinct from any I have been entertaining
+    come to my mind after asking God for his direction. Something over
+    a year ago I was for some weeks in the direst perplexity. When the
+    trouble first appeared before me I was dazed, but before long (two
+    or three hours) I could hear distinctly a passage of Scripture:
+    ‘My grace is sufficient for thee.’ Every time my thoughts turned
+    to the trouble I could hear this quotation. I don’t think I ever
+    doubted the existence of God, or had him drop out of my
+    consciousness. God has frequently stepped into my affairs very
+    perceptibly, and I feel that he directs many little details all
+    the time. But on two or three occasions he has ordered ways for me
+    very contrary to my ambitions and plans.”
+The naturally somber religious person treats even religious peace as very serious. Danger still feels present; there is tension and restraint. After being saved, it would be trivial to burst into lighthearted laughter, forgetting the hawk on the branch. Better to remain humble, for you are in the hands of a living God. In the Book of Job, the author focuses exclusively on man's powerlessness and God's omnipotence. "It is as high as heaven; what can you do? It is deeper than hell; what can you know?" There is sharp, bitter satisfaction in this conviction, and for some it is the closest they can get to religious joy.
+In Job, as the coldly truthful author of *Mark Rutherford* suggests, God reminds us that man is not the measure of his creation. The world is immense, built on no plan or theory the human intellect can grasp. It is transcendent everywhere. This is every verse's theme. God is great, and we do not know His ways. He takes everything, yet if we keep our souls in patience, we *might* pass through the valley of shadow and find sunlight. We might, or might not. There is nothing more to say than what God said from the whirlwind twenty-five hundred years ago.
+Another statement (none the less valuable psychologically for being so
+decidedly childish) is that of a boy of seventeen:—
+For the optimistic observer, deliverance is not complete unless the burden is entirely removed and danger forgotten. Their definitions seem, to somber minds, to lack the solemnity distinguishing religious peace from animal pleasure. Professor J. R. Seeley suggests any "habitual and regulated admiration" deserves to be called religion; consequently, our music, science, and "civilization"—as we organize and admire them—are our time's more genuine religions. Certainly, the unhesitating way we impose our civilization on "lesser" races with Hotchkiss guns reminds one of early Islam spreading faith by sword.
+In my last lecture, I mentioned Havelock Ellis's radical opinion that laughter could be a religious exercise because it signals the soul's liberation. I cited this only to argue it was inadequate. But we must examine this optimistic thinking more carefully; it is too complex to dismiss. Therefore, I propose we make religious optimism the subject of our next two lectures.
+    “Sometimes as I go to church, I sit down, join in the service, and
+    before I go out I feel as if God was with me, right side of me,
+    singing and reading the Psalms with me.... And then again I feel
+    as if I could sit beside him, and put my arms around him, kiss
+    him, etc. When I am taking Holy Communion 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 him literally 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 prayer have 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 to birth. Unpicturable beings are realized, and realized
+with an intensity almost like that of an hallucination. They determine our
+vital attitude as decisively as the vital attitude of lovers is determined
+by the habitual sense, by which each is haunted, of the other being in the
+world. A lover has notoriously this sense of the continuous being of his
+idol, even when his attention is addressed to other matters and he no
+longer represents her features. He cannot forget her; she uninterruptedly
+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
+have them as any direct sensible experiences can be, and they are, as a
+rule, much more convincing than results established by mere logic ever
+are. One may indeed be entirely without them; probably more 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 genuine perceptions of truth, as revelations of a
+kind of reality which no adverse argument, however unanswerable 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 abstract principles; (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
+in the rationalistic system, which on its positive side is surely a
+splendid intellectual tendency, for not only are all our philosophies
+fruits of it, but physical science (amongst other good things) is its
+result.
+Nevertheless, if we look on man’s whole mental life as it exists, on the
+life of men that lies in them apart from their learning and science, and
+that they inwardly and privately follow, we have to confess that the part
+of it of which rationalism can give an account is relatively superficial.
+It is the part that has the _prestige_ undoubtedly, for it has the
+loquacity, it can challenge you for proofs, and chop 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 from a deeper level of your nature than the
+loquacious level which rationalism inhabits. Your whole subconscious life,
+your impulses, your faiths, your needs, your divinations, have prepared
+the premises, of which your consciousness now feels the weight of the
+result; and something in you absolutely _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
+belief is just as manifest when rationalism argues for religion as when it
+argues against it. That vast literature of proofs of God’s existence drawn
+from the order of nature, which a century ago seemed so overwhelmingly
+convincing, to‐day does little more than gather dust in libraries, for the
+simple reason that our generation has ceased to believe in the kind of God
+it argued for. Whatever sort of a 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 such
+satisfaction, though just how we know this we cannot possibly make clear
+by words either to others or to ourselves. I defy any of you here fully to
+account for your persuasion that if a God exist 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 us only when our inarticulate feelings of reality
+have already been impressed in favor of the same conclusion. Then, indeed,
+our intuitions and our reason work together, and great world‐ruling
+systems, like that of the Buddhist or of the Catholic philosophy, may grow
+up. Our impulsive belief is here always what sets up the original body of
+truth, and our articulately verbalized philosophy is but its showy
+translation into formulas. The unreasoned and immediate assurance is the
+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 my quotations, your
+critical arguments, be they never so superior, will vainly set themselves
+to change his 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 out that 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 more about the attitudes they characteristically awaken.
+We have already agreed that they are _solemn_; and we have seen reason to
+think that the most distinctive 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 with
+determining the precise complexion of the joy; and the whole phenomenon is
+more complex than any simple formula allows. In the literature of the
+subject, sadness and gladness have each been emphasized in turn. The
+ancient saying that the first maker of the Gods was fear receives
+voluminous corroboration from every age of religious history; but none the
+less does religious history 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 have abundant reason for refusing to leave out either the sadness or
+the gladness, if we look at religion with the breadth of view which it
+demands. Stated in the completest possible terms, a man’s religion
+involves both moods of contraction and moods of expansion of his being.
+But the quantitative mixture and order of these moods vary so much from
+one age of the world, from one system of thought, and from one individual
+to another, that you may insist either on the dread and the submission, or
+on the peace and the freedom as the essence of the matter, and still
+remain materially within the limits of the truth. The constitutionally
+sombre and the constitutionally sanguine 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 sober thing. Danger still hovers in the air about it. Flexion
+and contraction are not wholly checked. It were 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 in the hands of a living God. In the Book of
+Job, for example, the impotence of man and the omnipotence of God is the
+exclusive burden of its author’s mind. “It is as high as heaven; what
+canst thou do?—deeper than hell; what canst thou know?” There is an
+astringent relish about the truth of this conviction which some men can
+feel, and which for them is as near an approach as can be made to the
+feeling of religious joy.
+    “In Job,” says that coldly truthful writer, the author of Mark
+    Rutherford, “God reminds us that man is not the measure of his
+    creation. The world is immense, constructed on no plan or theory
+    which the intellect of man can grasp. It is _transcendent_
+    everywhere. This is the burden of every verse, and is the secret,
+    if there be one, of the poem. Sufficient or insufficient, there is
+    nothing more.... God is great, we know not his ways. He takes from
+    us all we have, but yet if we possess 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 the whirlwind over two thousand five hundred years
+    ago?”(30)
+If we turn to the sanguine onlooker, on the other hand, we find that
+deliverance is felt as incomplete unless the burden be altogether overcome
+and the danger forgotten. Such onlookers give us definitions that seem to
+the sombre minds of whom we have just been speaking to leave out all the
+solemnity that makes religious peace so different from merely animal joys.
+In the opinion of some writers an attitude might be called religious,
+though no touch were left in it of sacrifice or submission, no tendency to
+flexion, no bowing of the head. Any “habitual and regulated admiration,”
+says Professor J. R. Seeley,(31) “is worthy to be called a religion”; and
+accordingly he thinks that our Music, our Science, and our so‐called
+“Civilization,” as these things are 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 our
+civilization upon “lower” races, by means of Hotchkiss guns, etc., reminds
+one of nothing so much as of the early spirit of Islam spreading its
+religion by the sword.
+In my last lecture I quoted to you the ultra‐radical opinion of Mr.
+Havelock Ellis, that laughter of any sort may be considered a religious
+exercise, for it bears witness to the soul’s emancipation. I quoted this
+opinion in order to deny its adequacy. But we must now settle our scores
+more carefully with this whole optimistic way of thinking. It is far too
+complex to be decided off‐hand. I propose accordingly that we make of
+religious optimism the theme of the next two lectures.
 ## LECTURES IV AND V. THE RELIGION OF HEALTHY‐MINDEDNESS.
+If we ask, "What is the primary concern of human life?" one answer is: "Happiness." How to gain, keep, and recover happiness is the hidden motive behind most human action. The hedonistic school of ethics derives the moral life entirely from the experiences of happiness and unhappiness; and even more so in the religious life, happiness and unhappiness are the poles around which our interests revolve. Any lasting enjoyment can *produce* a kind of religion—a grateful admiration for such a happy existence. More complex religious experiences offer new ways to produce happiness when natural existence proves unhappy, as it often does.
+If we were to ask the question: “What is human life’s chief concern?” one
+of the answers we should receive would be: “It is happiness.” How to gain,
+how to keep, how to recover happiness, is in fact for most men at all
+times the secret motive of all they do, and of all they are willing to
+endure. The hedonistic school in ethics deduces the moral life wholly from
+the experiences of happiness and unhappiness which different kinds of
+conduct bring; and, even more in the religious life than in the moral
+life, happiness and unhappiness seem to be the poles round which the
+interest revolves. We need not go so far as to say with the author whom I
+lately quoted that any persistent enthusiasm is, as such, religion, nor
+need we call mere laughter a religious exercise; but we must admit that
+any persistent enjoyment may _produce_ the sort of religion which consists
+in a grateful admiration of the gift of so happy an existence; and we must
+also acknowledge that the more complex ways of experiencing religion are
+new manners of producing happiness, wonderful inner paths to a
+supernatural kind of happiness, when the first gift of natural existence
+is unhappy, as it so often proves itself to be.
+Given these links, people naturally regard the happiness a belief provides as proof of its truth. "Such a belief ought to be true; therefore it is true"—this is one of the natural conclusions of ordinary religious logic.
+With such relations between religion and happiness, it is perhaps not
+surprising that men come to regard 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 ordinary men.
+A German writer declares: "The near presence of God’s spirit may be experienced in its reality—indeed *only* experienced. The mark by which the spirit’s existence and nearness are made irrefutably clear is the utterly incomparable *feeling of happiness* connected with the nearness. This is not only a possible feeling but the best and most indispensable proof of God’s reality. No other proof is equally convincing, and therefore happiness is the point from which every efficacious new theology should start."
+I invite you to consider the simpler forms of religious happiness, leaving complex types for another day.
+    “The near presence of God’s spirit,” says a German writer,(32)
+    “may be experienced in its reality—indeed _only_ experienced. And
+    the mark by which the spirit’s existence and nearness are made
+    irrefutably clear to those who have ever had the experience is the
+    utterly incomparable _feeling of happiness_ which is connected
+    with the nearness, and which is therefore not only a possible and
+    altogether proper feeling for us to have here below, but is the
+    best and most indispensable proof of God’s reality. No other proof
+    is equally convincing, and therefore happiness is the point from
+    which every efficacious new theology should start.”
+Many people find happiness innate and persistent. For them, a "feeling for the universe" inevitably becomes enthusiasm and freedom. I mean those who, when unhappiness is presented, positively refuse to feel it, as if it were petty and wrong. We find such people in every age, passionately embracing life's goodness despite hardship or gloomy theology. Their religion is one of union with the divine. The heretics before the Reformation were accused of law-defying practices, just as early Christians were accused of orgies. In every century, enough people have idealized the refusal to think ill of life to form sects, open or secret, claiming all natural things permitted. Saint Augustine’s maxim—
+> **Quote:** "Dilige et quod vis fac" — if you but love [God], you may do as you incline.
+In the hour immediately before us, I shall invite you to consider the
+simpler kinds of religious happiness, leaving the more complex sorts to be
+treated on a later day.
+—is morally profound, yet for such people it justifies moving beyond conventional morality. Saint Francis and his followers belonged to this group, as did Rousseau, Diderot, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, and many eighteenth-century anti-Christian leaders. Their influence came from an authoritative feeling that Nature, if trusted enough, is absolutely good.
+In many persons, happiness is congenital and irreclaimable. “Cosmic
+emotion” inevitably takes in them the form of enthusiasm and freedom. I
+speak not only of those who are animally happy. I mean those who, when
+unhappiness is offered or proposed to them, positively refuse to feel it,
+as if it were something mean and wrong. We find such persons in every age,
+passionately flinging themselves upon their sense of the goodness of life,
+in spite of the hardships of their own condition, and in spite of the
+sinister theologies into which they may be born. From the outset their
+religion is one of union with the divine. The heretics who went before the
+reformation are lavishly accused by the church writers of antinomian
+practices, just as the first Christians were accused of indulgence in
+orgies by the Romans. It is probable that there never has been a century
+in which the deliberate refusal to think ill of life has not been
+idealized by a sufficient number of persons to form sects, open or secret,
+who claimed all natural things to be permitted. Saint Augustine’s maxim,
+_Dilige et quod vis fac_,—if you but love [God], you may do as you
+incline,—is morally one of the profoundest of observations, yet it is
+pregnant, for such persons, with passports beyond the bounds of
+conventional morality. According to their characters they have been
+refined or gross; but their belief has been at all times systematic enough
+to constitute a definite religious attitude. God was for them a giver of
+freedom, and the sting of evil was overcome. Saint Francis and his
+immediate disciples were, on the whole, of this company of spirits, of
+which there are of course infinite varieties. Rousseau in the earlier
+years of his writing, Diderot, B. de Saint Pierre, and many of the leaders
+of the eighteenth century anti‐christian movement were of this optimistic
+type. They owed their influence to a certain authoritativeness in their
+feeling that Nature, if you will only trust her sufficiently, is
+absolutely good.
+We likely all have a friend—more often female than male, young than old—whose soul is sky-blue. Their natural connections are with flowers, birds, and innocent delights rather than dark human passions; they can think no ill of man or God. In them, religious joy is present from the start and needs no rescue from prior soul-burden.
+It is to be hoped that we all have some friend, perhaps more often
+feminine than masculine, and young than old, whose soul is of this sky‐
+blue tint, whose affinities are rather with flowers and birds and all
+enchanting innocencies than with dark human passions, who can think no ill
+of man or God, and in whom religious gladness, being in possession from
+the outset, needs no deliverance from any antecedent burden.
+Francis W. Newman distinguishes "the once-born and the twice-born." He describes the once-born:
+> **Quote:** "They see God, not as a strict Judge, but as the animating Spirit of a beautiful harmonious world, Beneficent and Kind. They have no metaphysical tendencies; they do not look back into themselves. Hence they are not distressed by their own imperfections, yet it would be absurd to call them self-righteous, for they hardly think of themselves *at all*. This childlike quality makes religion's opening very happy: they shrink from God no more than a child from an emperor before whom the parent trembles. 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 harmonious nature. Of human sin they know perhaps little in their own hearts and not much in the world; human suffering melts them to tenderness. Thus when they approach God, no inward disturbance ensues; and without being spiritual, they have a certain complacency in their simple worship."
+    “God has two families of children on this earth,” says Francis W.
+    Newman,(33) “_the once‐born_ and _the twice‐born_,” and the once‐
+    born he describes as follows: “They see God, not as a strict
+    Judge, 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 no metaphysical
+    tendencies: they do not look back into themselves. Hence they are
+    not distressed by their own imperfections: yet it would be absurd
+    to call them self‐righteous; for they hardly think of themselves
+    _at all_. This childlike quality of their nature makes the opening
+    of religion very happy to them: for they no more shrink from God,
+    than a child from an emperor, before whom the parent trembles: in
+    fact, they have no vivid conception of _any_ of the qualities in
+    which the severer Majesty of God consists.(34) 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 harmonious
+    nature. 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 inward
+    disturbance ensues; and without being as yet spiritual, they have
+    a certain complacency and perhaps romantic sense of excitement in
+    their simple worship.”
+Such characters find more fertile ground in Catholicism than in Protestantism, though even within Protestantism they have been abundant. In recent "liberal" developments—Unitarianism, broad-minded theology—minds of this type have played leading roles. Emerson is a perfect example. Theodore Parker is another; here are characteristic passages from his letters:
+> **Quote:** "Orthodox scholars say: ‘In the heathen classics you find no consciousness of sin.’ It is very true—God be thanked for it. They were conscious of wrath, cruelty, avarice, drunkenness, lust, sloth, cowardice, and other vices, and struggled against them, but they were not conscious of ‘enmity against God,’ and didn’t sit down and whine. I have done wrong things enough in my life, and do them now; I miss the mark, draw bow, and try again. But I am not conscious of hating God, or man, or right, or love, and I know there is much ‘health in me’."
+In the Romish Church such characters find a more congenial soil to grow in
+than in Protestantism, 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 and still
+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’s correspondence.(35)
+In another letter:
+> **Quote:** "I have swum in clear sweet waters all my days; and if sometimes they were a little cold and the stream ran adverse, it was never too strong to breast. From earliest boyhood to gray-bearded manhood, every moment has left me honey in the hive of memory that I feed on for present delight. When I recall the years, I am filled with sweetness and wonder. But I must confess that the chiefest of all my delights is still the religious."
+    “Orthodox scholars say: ‘In the heathen classics you find no
+    consciousness of sin.’ It is very true—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 were not conscious of ‘enmity
+    against God,’ and didn’t sit down and whine and groan against non‐
+    existent evil. I have done wrong things enough in my life, and do
+    them now; I miss the mark, draw bow, and try again. But I am not
+    conscious of hating God, or man, or right, or love, and I know
+    there is much ‘health in me’; and in my body, even now, there
+    dwelleth many a good thing, spite of consumption and Saint Paul.”
+    In another letter Parker writes: “I have swum in clear sweet
+    waters all my days; and if sometimes they were a little cold, and
+    the stream ran adverse and something rough, it was never too
+    strong to be breasted and swum through. From the days of earliest
+    boyhood, when I went stumbling through the grass,... up to the
+    gray‐bearded manhood of this time, there is none but has left me
+    honey in the hive of memory that I now feed on for present
+    delight. 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 my
+    delights is still the religious.”
+Dr. Edward Everett Hale gives another expression of this "once-born" consciousness:
+> **Quote:** "I observe with profound regret the religious struggles which come into many biographies, as if almost essential to the hero's formation. I ought to say that any man has an advantage, not to be estimated, who is born, as I was, into a family where the religion is simple and rational; who is trained so that he never knows, for an hour, what these religious struggles are. I always knew God loved me, and I was always grateful. I always liked to tell him so, and was always glad to receive his suggestions. I can remember perfectly that when I was coming to manhood, the half-philosophical novels of the time had much to say about young people facing the ‘problem of life.’ I had no idea what the problem of life was. To live with all my might seemed easy; to learn where there was so much to learn seemed pleasant; to lend a hand, if one had a chance, seemed natural; and if one did this, he enjoyed life because he could not help it, without proving he ought to. A child early taught that he is God’s child, that he may live and move in God and has infinite strength for conquering any difficulty, will take life more easily than one told he is born a child of wrath and incapable of good."
+Another good expression of the “once‐born” type of consciousness,
+developing straight and natural, with no element of morbid compunction or
+crisis, is contained in the answer of Dr. Edward Everett Hale, the eminent
+Unitarian preacher and writer, to one of Dr. Starbuck’s circulars. I quote
+a part of it:—
+One recognizes in such writers a temperament naturally cheerful and forbidden from dwelling on the universe's darker aspects. In some, optimism becomes almost pathological—the capacity for sadness or humility seems cut off by innate anesthesia.
+The supreme modern example of an inability to feel evil is Walt Whitman. His disciple Dr. Bucke writes:
+    “I observe, with profound regret, the religious struggles which
+    come into many biographies, as if almost essential to the
+    formation of the hero. I ought to speak of these, to say that any
+    man has an advantage, not to be estimated, who is born, as I was,
+    into a family where the religion is simple and rational; who is
+    trained in the theory of such a religion, so that he never knows,
+    for an hour, what these religious or irreligious struggles are. I
+    always knew God loved me, and I was always grateful to him for the
+    world he placed me in. I always liked to tell him so, and was
+    always glad to receive his 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 were facing the ‘problem of life.’ I had no
+    idea whatever what the problem of life was. To live with all my
+    might seemed to me easy; to learn where there was so much to learn
+    seemed pleasant and almost of course; to lend a hand, if one had a
+    chance, natural; and if one did this, why, he enjoyed life because
+    he could not help it, and without proving to himself that he ought
+    to enjoy it.... A child who is early taught that he is God’s
+    child, that he may live and move and have his being in God, and
+    that he has, therefore, infinite strength at hand for the
+    conquering of any difficulty, will take life more easily, and
+    probably will make more of it, than one who is told that he is
+    born the child of wrath and wholly incapable of good.”(36)
+> **Quote:** "His favorite occupation seemed to be strolling outdoors, looking at grass, trees, flowers, light, sky, listening to birds, crickets, tree frogs. It was evident these gave him pleasure far beyond ordinary people. Until I knew him, it had not occurred to me anyone could derive so much absolute happiness from these things. He was fond of flowers, wild or cultivated—lilacs, sunflowers, roses. Perhaps no man who ever lived liked so many things and disliked so few. All natural objects had a charm; all sights and sounds pleased him. He appeared to like all people he saw (though I never heard him say so), but each felt he liked them. I never knew him to argue, speak about money, or express fretfulness, antipathy, complaint. After long observation, I satisfied myself these mental states were entirely absent. He never spoke deprecatingly of any nationality, class, time, trades, animals, insects, inanimate things, laws of nature, or their results—illness, deformity, death. He never complained about weather, pain, or anything. He never swore, never spoke in anger, apparently never was angry. He never exhibited fear, and I do not believe he ever felt it."
+Whitman owes his importance to the systematic expulsion of all ‘contractile’ elements from his writing. The only sentiments he expressed were expansive. He used the first person—not from arrogance but on behalf of all—so a passionate, mystical feeling for existence permeates his words, persuading readers that all things are divinely good.
+One can but recognize in such writers as these the presence of a
+temperament organically weighted on the side of cheer and fatally
+forbidden to linger, as those of opposite temperament linger, 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 off from them as by a kind of congenital
+anæsthesia.(37)
+Many today regard Whitman as the restorer of an eternal, natural religion. He has infected them with his love of others and joy in existence. Societies have formed in his honor; a periodical spreads his views. Others write hymns in his style; he is even compared to Christ's founder—not always to the latter's advantage.
+The supreme contemporary example of such an inability to feel evil is of
+course Walt Whitman.
+Whitman is often called a "pagan," but neither definition fits. He is more than a natural person who hasn't tasted the fruit of knowledge—he has enough awareness of sin for swagger in his indifference, a conscious pride in freedom from mental tensions a genuine pagan would never show.
+> **Quote:**
+    “His favorite occupation,” writes his disciple, Dr. Bucke, “seemed
+    to be strolling or sauntering about outdoors by himself, looking
+    at the grass, the trees, the flowers, the vistas of light, the
+    varying aspects of the sky, and listening to the birds, the
+    crickets, the tree frogs, and all the hundreds of natural sounds.
+    It was evident that these things gave him a pleasure far beyond
+    what they give to ordinary people. Until I knew the man,”
+    continues Dr. Bucke, “it had not occurred to me that any one could
+    derive so much absolute happiness from these things as he did. He
+    was very fond of flowers, either wild 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 Walt Whitman. All natural objects seemed to
+    have a charm for him. All sights and sounds seemed to please him.
+    He appeared to like (and I believe he did like) all the men,
+    women, and children he saw (though I never knew him to say that he
+    liked any one), but each who knew him felt that he liked him or
+    her, and that he liked others also. I never knew him to argue or
+    dispute, and he never spoke about money. He always justified,
+    sometimes playfully, sometimes quite seriously, those who spoke
+    harshly of himself or his writings, and I often thought he even
+    took pleasure in the opposition of enemies. When I first knew
+    [him], I used to think that he watched himself, and would not
+    allow his tongue to give expression to fretfulness, antipathy,
+    complaint, and remonstrance. 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 was entirely real. He never spoke deprecatingly of
+    any nationality or class of men, or time in the world’s history,
+    or against any trades or occupations—not even against any animals,
+    insects, or inanimate 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, or anything else. He never swore. He could not very
+    well, since he never spoke in anger and apparently never was
+    angry. He never exhibited fear, and I do not believe he ever felt
+    it.”(38)
+> "I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contained,
+> I stand and look at them long and long;
+> They do not sweat and whine about their condition.
+> They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins.
+> Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with owning things,
+> Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind from thousands of years ago,
+> Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth."
+No natural pagan could write these lines. Yet Whitman is "less" than a Greek or Roman; their consciousness, even in Homer's era, was filled with somber mortality—a consciousness Whitman refuses. When Achilles is about to kill Lycaon, the young son of Priam, and hears him beg for mercy, he stops:
+Walt Whitman owes his importance in literature to the systematic expulsion
+from his writings of all contractile elements. The only sentiments he
+allowed himself to express were of the expansive order; and he expressed
+these in the first person, not as your mere monstrously conceited
+individual might so express them, but vicariously for all men, so that a
+passionate and mystic ontological emotion suffuses his words, and ends by
+persuading the reader that men and women, life and death, and all things
+are divinely good.
+> **Quote:** "Ah, friend, thou too must die: why thus lamentest thou? Patroclos too is dead, who was better far than thou.... Over me too hang death and forceful fate. There cometh morn or eve or some noonday when my life too some man shall take in battle."
+Thus it has come about that many persons to‐day regard Walt Whitman as the
+restorer of the eternal natural religion. He has infected them with his
+own love of comrades, with his own gladness that he and they exist.
+Societies are actually formed for his cult; a periodical organ exists for
+its propagation, in which the lines of orthodoxy and heterodoxy are
+already beginning to be drawn;(39) hymns are written by others in his
+peculiar prosody; and he is even explicitly compared with the founder of
+the Christian religion, not altogether to the advantage of the latter.
+Achilles then kills the boy, throws him in the river, and tells the fish to eat his flesh. Here cruelty and sympathy both ring true without interfering, just as Greeks and Romans kept sadness and joy separate and complete. They did not consider instinctive good a sin, nor did they feel any such desire to ‘save the credit of the universe’ by insisting that what immediately appears as evil must be ‘good in the making.’ For early Greeks, good was simply good, bad simply bad. They did not deny nature's hardships—Whitman's line "What is called good is perfect and what is called bad is just as perfect" would seem nonsense. Nor did they invent "another and better world" to escape those hardships. This honesty of natural reactions gives poignant dignity to ancient pagan feeling. Whitman's outpourings lack this quality. His optimism is too intentional and aggressive; his message has bravado and artificiality that diminishes its effect on many readers otherwise inclined toward optimism.
+Whitman is often spoken of as a “pagan.” The word nowadays means sometimes
+the mere natural animal man without a sense of sin; sometimes it means a
+Greek or Roman with his own peculiar religious consciousness. In neither
+of these senses does it fitly define this poet. He is more than your mere
+animal man who has not tasted of the tree of good and evil. He is aware
+enough of sin for a swagger to be present in his indifference towards it,
+a conscious pride in his freedom from flexions and contractions, which
+your genuine pagan in the first sense of the word would never show.
+If we label seeing everything as good "healthy-mindedness," we must distinguish instinctive from systematic versions. Instinctive healthy-mindedness feels immediate happiness about the world. Systematic healthy-mindedness abstractly defines everything as good, deliberately excluding evil from its field of vision. While this seems difficult for the intellectually honest, the situation is too complex for simple criticism.
+Happiness, like every emotional state, has an instinctive weapon for self-protection: blindness to opposing facts. When happy, evil cannot feel real, just as good cannot feel real when melancholy rules. The happy person must ignore evil; to an observer they seem to perversely shut their eyes.
+    “I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self‐
+                contained,
+    I stand and look at them long and long;
+    They do not sweat and whine about their condition.
+    They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins.
+    Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of
+                owning things,
+    Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of
+                years ago,
+    Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.”(40)
+But this "hushing up" can grow into deliberate religious policy or preconceived stance. Much evil is due simply to how we perceive phenomena. It can be converted into bracing good by changing the sufferer's inner attitude—from fear to fighting spirit. Its sting often vanishes when, after vainly avoiding it, we agree to face it cheerfully. One is almost bound by honor to adopt this escape regarding many disturbing facts. Refuse to admit they are bad; despise their power; ignore their presence; turn attention elsewhere. Even if facts remain, their "evil" character is gone.
+> **Quote:** "Since you make them evil or good by your own thoughts about them, it is the ruling of your thoughts which proves to be your principal concern."
+No natural pagan could have written these well‐known lines. But on the
+other hand Whitman is less than a Greek or Roman; for their consciousness,
+even in Homeric times, was full to the brim of the sad mortality of this
+sunlit world, and such a consciousness Walt Whitman resolutely refuses to
+adopt. When, for example, Achilles, about to slay Lycaon, Priam’s young
+son, hears him sue for mercy, he stops to say:—
+The deliberate adoption of optimistic mind thus enters philosophy. Once established, its logical boundaries are hard to find. Not only does the human instinct for happiness work in its favor, but higher ideals do too. The attitude of unhappiness is not only painful; it is mean and ugly.
+> **Quote:** "What can be more base than the pining, puling, mumping mood, no matter what outward ills engendered it? What is more injurious to others? What less helpful as a way out?"
+    “Ah, friend, thou too must die: why thus lamentest thou? Patroclos
+    too is dead, who was better far than thou.... Over me too hang
+    death and forceful fate. There cometh morn or eve or some noonday
+    when my life too some man shall take in battle, whether with spear
+    he smite, or arrow from the string.”(41)
+It only fastens and perpetuates the trouble, increasing total evil. At all costs we should reduce this mood, reject it in ourselves and others. But this discipline requires zealously emphasizing brighter aspects and minimizing darker ones. Our resolution not to indulge misery, beginning at a small point within, may not stop until it reshapes our entire view of reality into a systematic optimistic conception.
+I am not yet referring to mystical insight or belief that the universe must be absolutely good. That plays an enormous role in religious consciousness and we must examine it later. More ordinary, non-mystical states of rapture are enough to prove my point. All overwhelming moral states and passionate enthusiasms make a person insensitive to evil. Common penalties no longer deter the patriot; usual cautions are thrown to wind by the lover. When passion is extreme, suffering may actually be celebrated if for ideal cause; death may lose its sting. In these states, the ordinary contrast between good and ill seems swallowed by higher power—an all-powerful excitement that engulfs evil and which humans welcome as life's crowning experience. This, they say, is truly living; they exult in heroic opportunity.
+Then Achilles savagely severs the poor boy’s neck with his sword, heaves
+him by the foot into the Scamander, and calls to the fishes of the river
+to eat the white fat of Lycaon. Just as here the cruelty and the sympathy
+each ring true, and do not mix or interfere with one another, so did the
+Greeks and Romans keep all their sadnesses and gladnesses unmingled and
+entire. Instinctive good they did not reckon sin; nor had they any such
+desire to save the credit of the universe as to make them insist, as so
+many of _us_ insist, that what immediately appears as evil must be “good
+in the making,” 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 order to escape from those ills, invent “another
+and a better world” of the imagination, in which, along with the ills, the
+innocent goods of sense would also find no place. This integrity of the
+instinctive reactions, this freedom from all moral sophistry and strain,
+gives a pathetic dignity to ancient pagan feeling. And this quality
+Whitman’s outpourings have not got. His optimism is too voluntary and
+defiant; his gospel has a touch of bravado and an affected twist,(42) and
+this diminishes its effect on many readers who yet are well disposed
+towards optimism, and on the whole quite willing to admit that in
+important respects Whitman is of the genuine lineage of the prophets.
+The systematic cultivation of healthy-mindedness as religious attitude is therefore consistent with important human currents and anything but absurd. We all cultivate it to some degree, even when official theology should forbid it. We divert attention from disease and death as much as possible.
+                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
+> **Quote:** "...the world we recognize officially in literature and society is a poetic fiction far handsomer and cleaner and better than the world that really is."
+If, then, we give the name of healthy‐mindedness to the tendency which
+looks on all things and sees that they are good, we find that we must
+distinguish between a more involuntary and a more voluntary or systematic
+way of being healthy‐minded. In its involuntary variety, healthy‐
+mindedness is a way of feeling happy about things immediately. In its
+systematical variety, it is an abstract way of conceiving things as good.
+Every abstract way of conceiving things selects some one aspect of them as
+their essence for the time being, and disregards the other aspects.
+Systematic healthy‐mindedness, conceiving good as the essential and
+universal aspect of being, deliberately excludes evil from its field of
+vision; and although, when thus nakedly stated, this might seem a
+difficult feat to perform for one who is intellectually sincere with
+himself and honest about facts, a little reflection shows that the
+situation is too complex to lie open to so simple a criticism.
+The endless slaughterhouses and indecencies upon which life is built are hidden from sight.
+In the first place, happiness, like every other emotional state, has
+blindness and insensibility to opposing facts given it as its instinctive
+weapon for self‐protection against disturbance. When happiness is actually
+in possession, the thought of evil can no more acquire the feeling of
+reality than the thought of good can gain reality when melancholy rules.
+To the man actively happy, from whatever cause, evil simply cannot then
+and there be believed in. He must ignore it; and to the bystander he may
+then seem perversely to shut his eyes to it and hush it up.
+The rise of so-called liberalism in Christianity over the past fifty years can be seen as healthy-mindedness's victory over the gloom of old "hell-fire" theology. Entire congregations now have preachers who downplay sin, ignore eternal punishment, and insist on human dignity rather than depravity. They view the old-fashioned Christian's obsession with "salvation of the soul" as sickly rather than admirable. An optimistic, "muscular" attitude—pagan to our ancestors—has become an ideal Christian element. I am not asking whether they are right; I am only pointing out the change.
+But more than this: the hushing of it up may, in a perfectly candid and
+honest mind, grow into a deliberate religious policy, or _parti pris_.
+Much of what we call evil is due entirely to the way men take the
+phenomenon. It can so often be converted into a bracing and tonic good by
+a simple change of the sufferer’s inner attitude from one of fear to one
+of fight; its sting so often departs and turns into a relish when, after
+vainly seeking to shun it, we agree to face about and bear it cheerfully,
+that a man is simply bound in honor, with reference to many of the facts
+that seem at first to disconcert his peace, to adopt this way of escape.
+Refuse to admit their badness; despise their power; ignore their presence;
+turn your attention the other way; and so far as you yourself are
+concerned at any rate, though the facts may still exist, their evil
+character exists no longer. Since you make them evil or good by your own
+thoughts about them, it is the ruling of your thoughts which proves to be
+your principal concern.
+Most retain nominal connection with Christianity while discarding pessimistic elements. But the "theory of evolution"—gaining momentum for a century, sweeping Europe and America in the last twenty-five years—provides foundation for a new "religion of Nature" that has replaced Christianity for many. Universal evolution lends itself to a doctrine of progress and "meliorism" that fits healthy-minded religious needs so well it seems created for them. Consequently, many contemporaries—often scientifically trained or fond of popular science, already dissatisfied with orthodox Christianity's harshness—interpret evolutionism optimistically as traditional religion's substitute.
+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 be more base and unworthy than the
+pining, puling, mumping mood, no matter by what outward ills it may have
+been engendered? What is more injurious to others? What less helpful as a
+way out of the difficulty? It but fastens and perpetuates the trouble
+which occasioned it, and increases the total evil of the situation. At all
+costs, then, we ought to reduce the sway of that mood; we ought to scout
+it in ourselves and others, and never show it tolerance. But it is
+impossible to carry on this discipline in the subjective sphere without
+zealously emphasizing the brighter and minimizing the darker aspects of
+the objective sphere of things at the same time. And thus our resolution
+not to indulge in misery, beginning at a comparatively small point within
+ourselves, may not stop until it has brought the entire frame of reality
+under a systematic conception optimistic enough to be congenial with its
+needs.
+Examples better than descriptions: I quote a document from Professor Edwin Starbuck’s survey. The writer’s state of mind might be called religion because it is his systematic, reflective reaction to reality, binding him to inner ideals. You will recognize a familiar contemporary type.
+In all this I say nothing of any mystical insight or persuasion that the
+total frame of things absolutely must be good. Such mystical persuasion
+plays an enormous part in the history of the religious consciousness, and
+we must look at it later with some care. But we need not go so far at
+present. 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 some direction. The common penalties cease
+to deter the patriot, the usual prudences are flung by the lover to the
+winds. When the passion is extreme, suffering may actually be gloried in,
+provided it be for the ideal cause, death may lose its sting, the grave
+its victory. In these states, the ordinary contrast of good and ill seems
+to be swallowed up in a higher denomination, an omnipotent excitement
+which engulfs the evil, and which the human being welcomes as the crowning
+experience of his life. This, he says, is truly to live, and I exult in
+the heroic opportunity and adventure.
+**Q. What does Religion mean to you?**
+The systematic cultivation of healthy‐mindedness as a religious attitude
+is therefore consonant with important currents in human nature, and is
+anything but absurd. In fact, we all do cultivate it more or less, even
+when our professed theology should in consistency forbid it. We divert our
+attention from disease and death as much as we can; and the slaughter‐
+houses and indecencies without end on which our life is founded are
+huddled out of sight and never mentioned, so that the world we recognize
+officially in literature and in society is a poetic fiction far handsomer
+and cleaner and better than the world that really is.(43)
+**A.** Nothing. The most religious people usually lack integrity; those without religious convictions are best. Praying teaches reliance on supernatural power instead of ourselves. I *teetotally* disbelieve in God. The idea came from ignorance and fear. If I die now, I’d rather die enjoying music or sport.
+The advance of liberalism, so‐called, in Christianity, during the past
+fifty years, may fairly be called a victory of healthy‐mindedness within
+the church over the morbidness with which the old hell‐fire theology was
+more harmoniously related. We have now whole congregations whose
+preachers, 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 the depravity of man.
+They look at the continual preoccupation of the old‐fashioned Christian
+with the salvation 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 become in 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.
+> **Quote:** "As a timepiece stops, we die—there being no immortality."
+The persons to whom I refer have still retained for the most part their
+nominal connection with Christianity, in spite of their discarding of its
+more pessimistic theological 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 the ground laid for
+a new sort of religion of Nature, which has entirely displaced
+Christianity from the thought of a large part of our generation. The idea
+of a universal evolution lends itself to a doctrine of general meliorism
+and progress which fits the religious needs of the healthy‐minded so well
+that it 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 a
+multitude of our contemporaries who have either been trained
+scientifically, or been fond of reading popular science, and who had
+already begun to be inwardly dissatisfied with what seemed to them the
+harshness and irrationality of the orthodox Christian scheme. As examples
+are better than descriptions, I will quote a document received in answer
+to Professor Starbuck’s circular of questions. The writer’s state of mind
+may by courtesy be called a religion, for it is his reaction on the whole
+nature of things, it is systematic and reflective, and it loyally binds
+him to certain inner ideals. I think you will recognize in him, coarse‐
+meated and incapable of wounded spirit as he is, a sufficiently familiar
+contemporary type.
+**Q. What comes to mind when you hear God, Heaven, Angels?**
+**A.** Nothing. Mythic nonsense.
+    Q. _What does Religion mean to you?_
+**Q. Have you had any providential experiences?**
+    A. It means nothing; and it seems, so far as I can observe,
+    useless to others. I am sixty‐seven years of age and have resided
+    in X. fifty years, and have been in business forty‐five,
+    consequently I have some little experience of life and men, and
+    some women too, and I find that the most religious 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, singing of hymns, and
+    sermonizing are pernicious—they teach us to rely on some
+    supernatural power, when we ought to rely on ourselves. I
+    _tee_totally disbelieve in a God. The God‐idea was begotten in
+    ignorance, fear, and a general lack of any knowledge of Nature. If
+    I were to die now, being in a healthy condition for my age, both
+    mentally and physically, I would just as lief, yes, rather, die
+    with a hearty enjoyment of music, sport, or any other rational
+    pastime. As a timepiece stops, we die—there being no immortality
+    in either case.
+**A.** None. No "superintending" agency exists; scientific law explains everything.
+    Q. _What comes before your mind corresponding to the words God,
+    Heaven, Angels, etc.?_
+**Q. What moves your emotions most?**
+    A. Nothing whatever. I am a man without a religion. These words
+    mean so much mythic bosh.
+**A.** Lively songs, comic opera, Scott, Burns, Byron, Longfellow, Shakespeare. I enjoy nature and fine weather. I walked twelve miles on Sundays without fatigue. I never attend church but go to good lectures. My thoughts are healthy because I see things as they are and adjust to my environment. Mankind is progressive; humans will advance greatly in a thousand years.
+    Q. _Have you had any experiences which appeared providential?_
+**Q. What is your notion of sin?**
+    A. None whatever. There is no agency of the superintending kind. A
+    little judicious observation as well as knowledge of scientific
+    law will convince any one of this fact.
+**A.** A condition—a disease from man's incomplete development. Obsessing over it increases the disease. A million years hence, equity and order will be so established that no one will conceive of evil or sin.
+    Q. _What things work most strongly on your emotions?_
+**Q. What is your temperament?**
+    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 Sundays into the
+    country, twelve miles often, with no fatigue, and bicycle forty or
+    fifty. I have dropped the bicycle. I never go to church, but
+    attend lectures when there are any good ones. All of my thoughts
+    and cogitations have been of a healthy and cheerful kind, for
+    instead of doubts and fears I see things as they 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 present status a thousand
+    years hence.
+**A.** Nervous, active, wide-awake. I’m sorry Nature forces us to sleep.
+    Q. _What is your notion of sin?_
+If we seek a "broken and contrite heart," we won't find it here. His contentment with the finite incases him like a lobster-shell, shielding him from any morbid repining at his distance from the Infinite. He is an excellent example of optimism encouraged by popular science.
+    A. It seems to me that sin is a condition, a disease, incidental
+    to man’s development not being yet advanced enough. Morbidness
+    over it increases the disease. We should think that a million of
+    years hence equity, justice, and mental and physical good order
+    will be so fixed and organized that no one will have any idea of
+    evil or sin.
+A far more important and religiously interesting movement—recently poured over America and gathering strength—is the "Mind-cure movement." There are various sects within this "New Thought," but their similarities are so deep that differences can be ignored. I will treat it as a single entity.
+    Q. _What is your temperament?_
+It is a deliberately optimistic philosophy with theoretical and practical sides. In its development over the last quarter-century, it has absorbed several elements and must be recognized as a genuine religious power. Demand for its literature is now high enough that publishers produce mediocre, market-driven material—a sign it has moved past insecure beginnings.
+    A. Nervous, active, wide‐awake, mentally and physically. Sorry
+    that Nature compels us to sleep at all.
+Doctrinal sources include the four Gospels, Emerson and New England Transcendentalism, Berkeley’s idealism, Spiritualism's messages of "law" and "progress," optimistic popular science, and Hinduism. But the most characteristic feature is direct inspiration: leaders have intuitive belief in the saving power of healthy-minded attitudes, the effectiveness of courage, hope, and trust, and contempt for doubt, fear, worry, and anxious states. This belief is generally confirmed by followers' practical experience, constituting massive evidence.
+The blind see, the crippled walk; lifelong invalids regain health. Moral results are equally remarkable. Deliberately adopting a healthy-minded attitude proves possible for many who never thought they could; character transformations happen on large scale; cheerfulness returns to countless homes. Indirect influence is significant too. Mind-cure principles permeate culture; people catch their spirit second-hand. We hear of the "Gospel of Relaxation," the "Don't Worry Movement," and mottos like "Youth, health, vigor!" Complaining about weather is forbidden in many households; more recognize it as "bad form" to discuss disagreeable sensations or life's ordinary inconveniences.
+If we are in search of a broken and a contrite heart, clearly we need not
+look to this brother. His contentment with the finite incases him like a
+lobster‐shell and shields him from all morbid repining at his distance
+from the Infinite. We have in him an excellent example of the optimism
+which may be encouraged by popular science.
+These general positive effects would be good even without striking results. But those results are so abundant we can overlook failures and self-deceptions (inevitable in anything human) and the wordiness of much literature, some so wildly optimistic and vague that an academically trained mind finds it almost unreadable.
+To my mind a current far more important and interesting religiously than
+that which sets in from natural science towards healthy‐mindedness is that
+which has recently poured over America and seems to be gathering force
+every day,—I am ignorant what foothold it may yet have acquired in Great
+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 the names by which it calls itself;
+but their agreements are so profound that their differences may be
+neglected for my present purpose, and I will treat the movement, without
+apology, as if it were a simple thing.
+The plain fact is that the movement spreads through practical results. The extremely practical American character is illustrated by their only original contribution to systematic philosophy being so tied to physical healing. Both medical and clerical professions in the United States—though resisting—are beginning to recognize Mind-cure's importance. It is clearly destined to develop further; its most recent writers are the most capable. It doesn't matter that many cannot be influenced by Mind-cure ideas, just as many cannot pray. The important point is that a large number *can* be. They represent a psychological type that should be studied with respect.
+It is a deliberately optimistic scheme of life, with both a speculative
+and a practical side. In its gradual development during the last quarter
+of a century, it has taken up into itself a number of contributory
+elements, and it must now be reckoned with as a genuine religious power.
+It has reached the stage, for example, when the demand for its literature
+is great enough for insincere stuff, mechanically produced for the market,
+to be to a certain extent supplied by publishers,—a phenomenon never
+observed, I imagine, until a religion has got well past its earliest
+insecure beginnings.
+The movement's creed rests on the general basis of religious experience: man's dual nature connected to two spheres of thought, shallower and deeper. The shallower sphere includes physical sensations, instincts, desires, ego, doubt, personal interests. While Christian theology considers "willfulness" the essential vice, Mind-curers say the true "mark of the beast" is *fear*. This gives their perspective an entirely new religious turn.
+One of the doctrinal sources of Mind‐cure is the four Gospels; another is
+Emersonianism or New England transcendentalism; another is Berkeleyan
+idealism; another is spiritism, with its messages of “law” and “progress”
+and “development”; another the optimistic popular science evolutionism of
+which I have recently spoken; and, finally, Hinduism has contributed a
+strain. But the most characteristic feature of the mind‐cure movement is
+an inspiration much more direct. The leaders in 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 way been
+corroborated by the practical experience of their disciples; and this
+experience forms to‐day a mass imposing in amount.
+"Fear," writes one, "had its uses in evolution, but that it should remain part of civilized human life is absurd. The fear-element of forethought does not stimulate civilized people, who are motivated by duty and attraction; instead it weakens and discourages. As soon as it becomes unnecessary, fear becomes a positive hindrance and should be removed like dead flesh. To assist analysis, I coined *fearthought* for the useless element of forethought. I defined ‘worry’ as *fearthought in contradistinction to forethought*—the self-imposed suggestion of inferiority, belonging in the category of harmful, unnecessary, and therefore not respectable things."
+The blind have been made to see, the halt to walk; lifelong invalids have
+had their health restored. 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; regeneration of character
+has gone on on an extensive scale; and cheerfulness has been restored to
+countless homes. The indirect influence of this has been great. The mind‐
+cure principles are beginning so to pervade the air that one catches their
+spirit at second‐hand. One hears of the “Gospel of Relaxation,” of the
+“Don’t 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 more people are recognizing it to be bad form to speak of
+disagreeable sensations, or to make much of the ordinary inconveniences
+and ailments of life. These general tonic effects on public opinion would
+be good even if the more striking results were non‐existent. But the
+latter abound so that we can 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 a
+good deal of the mind‐cure literature, some of which is so moonstruck with
+optimism and so vaguely expressed that an academically trained intellect
+finds it almost impossible to read it at all.
+The "misery-habit" and "martyr-habit," created by "fearthought," are sharply criticized:
+The plain fact remains that the spread of the movement has been due to
+practical fruits, and the extremely practical turn of character of the
+American people has never been better shown than by the 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 the medical and clerical professions in the United
+States are beginning, though with much recalcitrancy and protesting, to
+open their eyes. It is evidently bound to develop still farther, both
+speculatively and practically, and its latest writers are far and away the
+ablest of the group.(45) It matters nothing that, just as there are hosts
+of persons who cannot pray, so there are greater hosts who 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 a psychic type to be studied with
+respect.(46)
+> **Quote:** "Consider the habits into which we are born: social conventions, customs, theological bias, general world-view, conservative ideas about training, education, marriage, career. Then come expectations: childhood diseases, middle-age diseases, old age, losing faculties, becoming childlike again, and crowning all, fear of death. Then specific fears: accidents, calamity, financial loss, robbery, fire, war. And we fear for friends too—if someone falls ill, we immediately fear the worst. When someone experiences sorrow, sympathy is taken to mean entering into and increasing that suffering.
+To come now to a little closer quarters with their creed. The fundamental
+pillar on which it rests is nothing more than the general basis of all
+religious experience, the fact that man has a dual nature, and is
+connected with two spheres of thought, a shallower and a profounder
+sphere, in either of which he may learn to live more habitually. The
+shallower and lower sphere is that of the fleshly sensations, instincts,
+and desires, of egotism, doubt, and the lower personal interests. But
+whereas Christian theology has always considered _frowardness_ to be the
+essential vice of this part of human nature, the mind‐curers say that the
+mark of the beast in it is _fear_; and this is what gives such an entirely
+new religious turn to their persuasion.
+> "Man often has fear stamped upon him before birth; he is raised in fear; he spends life enslaved by fear of disease and death, making his mental state restricted, narrow, depressed. His body follows... Only boundless divine love, exuberance, and vitality constantly flowing in—even without our realizing it—could somewhat counteract such an ocean of sickness."
+Though Mind-cure followers often use Christian language, their view of "the fall of man" differs significantly from traditional Christians. Their understanding of human nature's higher side is equally different—clearly pantheistic. In Mind-cure philosophy, humanity's spiritual aspect is partly conscious but mostly subconscious. Through this subconscious part, we are already united with the Divine without needing a miracle of grace or new inner self. This perspective contains elements of Christian mysticism, transcendental idealism, Vedantism, and modern subliminal psychology. A few quotes clarify their central viewpoint:
+    “Fear,” to quote a writer of the school, “has had its uses in the
+    evolutionary process, and seems to constitute the whole of
+    forethought in most animals; but that it should remain any part of
+    the mental equipment of human civilized life is an absurdity. I
+    find that the fear element of forethought is 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 a positive deterrent, and should
+    be entirely removed, as dead flesh is removed from living tissue.
+    To assist in the analysis of fear, and in the denunciation of its
+    expressions, I have coined the word _fearthought_ 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, in the category of harmful, unnecessary, and
+    therefore not respectable things.”(47)
+> **Quote:** "The great central fact of the universe is that spirit of infinite life and power that is back of all, manifesting itself in and through all. This is what I call God. I don't care what term you use—Kindly Light, Providence, the Oversoul, Omnipotence—so long as we agree on the central fact. God fills the universe alone, so everything is from Him and in Him, nothing exists outside. He is the life of our life, our very life itself. We share in God's life; we differ only in that we are individual spirits while He is the Infinite Spirit who includes us all, but in essence, God's life and man's life are identically the same. They differ only in degree, not quality.
+> "The central fact of human life is coming to conscious, vital realization of our oneness with Infinite Life and opening ourselves fully to this divine inflow. To the exact degree we realize this oneness and open ourselves, we manifest Infinite Life's qualities within ourselves, becoming channels for Infinite Intelligence and Power. You will trade disease for ease, discord for harmony, suffering for abundant health. Recognizing our divinity and connection to the Universal is like attaching our machinery's belts to the Universe's powerhouse. No one needs to stay in hell longer than they choose; we can rise to any heaven we choose, and when we do, all higher powers combine to help us."
+The “misery‐habit,” the “martyr‐habit,” engendered by the prevalent
+“fearthought,” get pungent criticism from the mind‐cure writers:—
+Let me move from abstract theories to concrete accounts. I have many letters—the only difficulty is choosing. The first two are personal friends. One woman writes:
+> **Quote:** "The primary cause of all sickness, weakness, or depression is the *human sense of being separate* from Divine Energy. The soul that can affirm with calm, joyful confidence—as Jesus did: 'I and my Father are one'—has no need for healing. This is the whole truth; no other foundation for wholeness exists. Disease cannot affect one who stands on this foundation, feeling Divine Breath's flow every moment. If united with Omnipotence, how can exhaustion enter the mind or illness attack that unconquerable spark?
+    “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 theological bias, a general view of the
+    world. There are conservative ideas in regard to our early
+    training, our education, marriage, and occupation in life.
+    Following close upon this, there is a long series of
+    anticipations, namely, that we shall suffer certain children’s
+    diseases, diseases of middle life, and of old age; the thought
+    that we shall grow old, lose our faculties, and again become
+    childlike; while crowning all is the fear of death. Then there is
+    a long line of particular fears and trouble‐bearing expectations,
+    such, for example, as ideas associated with certain articles of
+    food, the dread of the east wind, the terrors of hot weather, the
+    aches and pains associated with cold weather, the fear of catching
+    cold if one sits in a draught, the coming of hay‐fever upon the
+th of August in the middle 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 shapes which our fellow‐men, and especially physicians,
+    are ready to help us conjure up, an array worthy to rank with
+    Bradley’s ‘unearthly ballet of bloodless categories.’
+> "This possibility of canceling fatigue's law has been proven in my life. My earlier years were marked by many years bedridden, paralyzed in spine and legs. My thoughts were pure, but my belief that illness was necessary was thick and uninformed. Since my physical 'resurrection,' I have worked as a healer fourteen years without vacation. I honestly have never felt fatigue or pain, despite constant exposure to weakness, illness, disease. How can a conscious part of God be sick? 'Greater is he that is *with* us than all that can strive against us.'"
+    “Yet this is not all. This vast array is swelled by innumerable
+    volunteers from daily life,—the fear of accident, the possibility
+    of calamity, the loss of property, the chance of robbery, of fire,
+    or the outbreak of war. And it is not deemed sufficient to fear
+    for ourselves. When a friend is taken ill, we must forthwith fear
+    the worst and apprehend death. If one meets with sorrow ...
+    sympathy means to enter into and increase the suffering.”(48)
+My second correspondent:
+    “Man,” to quote another writer, “often has fear stamped upon him
+    before his entrance into the outer world; he is reared in fear;
+    all his life is passed in bondage to fear of disease and death,
+    and thus his whole mentality becomes cramped, limited, and
+    depressed, and his body follows its shrunken pattern and
+    specification.... Think of the millions of sensitive and
+    responsive souls among our ancestors who have been under the
+    dominion of such a perpetual nightmare! Is it not surprising 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 an ocean
+    of morbidity.”(49)
+> **Quote:** "Life once seemed very difficult. I was always breaking down, suffering nervous exhaustion and terrible insomnia that left me on the verge of losing my mind. I had digestion issues, was sent away under doctor's care, took sedatives, stopped work, followed strict diet—knew every doctor nearby. But I never truly recovered until 'New Thought' took hold.
+> "The most impressive lesson was learning we must maintain constant 'mental touch' with the essence of life flowing through everything—God. This is almost impossible to understand unless we *live* it—constantly turning to our deepest consciousness or God within for guidance, as we look to the sun for light. When you do this consciously, you discover the superficiality of external objects that previously consumed you.
+Although the disciples of the mind‐cure often use Christian terminology,
+one sees from such quotations how widely their notion of the fall of man
+diverges from that of ordinary Christians.(50)
+> "I stopped worrying specifically about physical health because health follows naturally as secondary result. It cannot be achieved by specific mental effort or desire, only by maintaining that general mindset. The things we usually make life's goals—business success, fame, reputation in charity, even harmless pleasures like social conventions—should be results, not primary objects. They are superficial and even unhealthy excesses."
+Their notion of man’s higher nature is hardly less divergent, being
+decidedly pantheistic. The spiritual 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 of grace, or abrupt creation of a new inner man. As this view is
+variously expressed by different writers, we find in it traces of
+Christian mysticism, of transcendental idealism, of vedantism, and of the
+modern psychology of the subliminal self. A quotation or two will put us
+at the central point of view:—
+A more specific case, also from a woman:
+> **Quote:** "I suffered from childhood until forty. [Medical details omitted.] I was in Vermont months hoping fresh air would help, but grew steadily weaker. One October afternoon while resting, I suddenly heard: 'You will be healed and do work you never dreamed of.' These words were so powerful I immediately believed they came from God, despite continued suffering until Christmas. Within two days of returning to Boston, a friend took me to a mental healer (January 7, 1881). The healer said: 'There is only Mind; we are expressions of One Mind; body is mortal belief; as a person thinks, so they are.' I couldn't accept everything, but interpreted what I could: 'There is only God; I am created by Him and dependent on Him; my mind is mine to use; if I focus on my body acting rightly, I will be freed from ignorance, fear, and past experiences.'
+    “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 is what 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
+    the great central fact itself. God then fills the universe alone,
+    so that all is from Him and in Him, and there is nothing that is
+    outside. He is the life of our life, our very life itself. We are
+    partakers of the life of God; and though we differ from Him in
+    that we are individualized spirits, while He is the Infinite
+    Spirit, including us, as well as all else beside, yet in essence
+    the life of God and the life of man are identically the same, and
+    so are one. They differ not in essence or quality; they differ in
+    degree.
+> "That day I began eating everything served, telling myself: 'The Power that created the stomach must care for what I eat.' By holding these thoughts through evening, I slept through the night for the first time in years. The next day I felt like an escaped prisoner and believed I'd found the secret to perfect health. Within ten days I could eat anything; after two weeks I began creating positive mental affirmations, like stepping stones:
+    “The great central fact in human life is the coming into a
+    conscious vital realization of our oneness with this Infinite
+    Life, and the opening of ourselves fully to this divine inflow. In
+    just the degree that we come into a conscious realization of our
+    oneness with the Infinite Life, and open ourselves 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 dis‐ease for ease, inharmony for harmony, suffering and
+    pain for abounding health and strength. To recognize our own
+    divinity, and our intimate relation to the Universal, is to attach
+    the belts of our machinery to the powerhouse of the Universe. One
+    need remain in hell no longer than one chooses to; we can rise to
+    any heaven we ourselves choose; and when we choose so to rise, all
+    the higher powers of the Universe combine to help us
+    heavenward.”(51)
+> 1. I am Soul; therefore it is well with me.
+> 2. I am Soul; therefore I *am* well.
+> 3. I had a vision of myself as a four-footed beast with growths where I felt pain, begging me to accept it. I focused on wellness and refused to look at my old self.
+> 4. The vision appeared again faintly; I refused.
+> 5. The vision appeared once more as eyes with longing; I refused. Then came deep conviction I was perfectly well because I was Soul—God's perfect thought. That was complete separation between what I truly was and what I appeared to be. I never lost sight of my true being after that, constantly affirming it. Over two years of hard work, I expressed continuous health throughout my body.
+> "In nineteen years since, this Truth has never failed when applied. Failures from ignorance taught me simple childlike trust."
+Let me now pass from these abstracter statements to some more concrete
+accounts of experience with the mind‐cure religion. I have many answers
+from correspondents—the only difficulty is to choose. The first two whom I
+shall quote are my personal friends. One of them, a woman, writing as
+follows, expresses well the feeling of continuity with the Infinite Power,
+by which all mind‐cure disciples are inspired.
+I worry I may tire you with examples, so let me return to broader points. You can see why mind-cure must be classified as primarily religious. Its doctrine of the oneness of our life with God is, in fact, indistinguishable from an interpretation of Christ's message defended by some of the ablest Scottish religious philosophers in these very Gifford lectures.
+But while philosophers try to provide semi-logical explanations for evil, Mind-curers (as far as I know) offer no theoretical explanation for selfish, suffering, fearful finite consciousness's existence. For them, evil exists in practice as for everyone, but they focus on the practical. It wouldn't fit their spirit to waste time worrying over evil as "mystery" or analyzing suffering's lessons as Evangelicals do. As Dante says, don't reason; glance and pass on! To them it is *Avidhya*—ignorance! Something to outgrow, leave behind, transcend, forget. Christian Science is Mind-cure's most radical branch in handling evil. To them, evil is simply a *lie*, and mentioning it makes one a liar. Their optimistic ideal forbids even giving evil the compliment of direct attention. This is a significant theoretical omission, but closely tied to the system's practical benefits. A Mind-curer asks: Why need a philosophy of evil if I can give you a life of good?
+    “The first underlying cause of all sickness, weakness, or
+    depression is the _human sense of separateness_ from that Divine
+    Energy which we call God. The soul which can feel and affirm in
+    serene but jubilant confidence, as did the Nazarene: ‘I and my
+    Father are one,’ has no further need of healer, or of healing.
+    This is the whole truth in a nutshell, and other foundation for
+    wholeness can no man lay than this fact of impregnable divine
+    union. Disease can no longer attack one whose feet are planted on
+    this rock, who feels hourly, momently, the influx of the Deific
+    Breath. If one with Omnipotence, how can weariness enter the
+    consciousness, how illness assail that indomitable spark?
+Ultimately, life quality matters. Mind-cure has developed a practical mental hygiene system that arguably outshines all previous "dietetics of the soul" literature, built entirely on optimism:
+    “This possibility of annulling forever the law of fatigue has been
+    abundantly proven in my own case; for my earlier life bears a
+    record of many, many years of bedridden invalidism, with spine and
+    lower limbs paralyzed. My thoughts were no more impure than they
+    are to‐day, although my belief in the necessity of illness was
+    dense and unenlightened; but since my resurrection in the flesh, I
+    have worked as a healer unceasingly for fourteen years without a
+    vacation, and can truthfully assert that I have never known a
+    moment of fatigue or pain, although coming in touch constantly
+    with excessive weakness, illness, and disease of all kinds. For
+    how can a conscious part of Deity be sick?—since ‘Greater is he
+    that is _with_ us than all that can strive against us.’ ”
+> **Quote:** "Pessimism leads to weakness. Optimism leads to power."
+> **Quote:** "Thoughts are things."
+My second correspondent, also a woman, sends me the following statement:—
+One prominent author prints in bold at every page's bottom: if your thoughts are on health, youth, vigor, success, these will manifest. No one escapes persistent optimistic thinking's influence. Everyone possesses inherent divine connection. Fear and self-centered thinking are paths to destruction. Most Mind-curers believe thoughts are "forces" that, by law of like attracts like, draw similar thoughts from around the world. Thus through thinking, one gains reinforcements for desires. The key to living is getting these heavenly forces on your side by opening your mind.
+There is striking psychological similarity between Mind-cure and the movements of Luther and Wesley. To those anxiously asking, "What shall I do to be saved?" Luther and Wesley replied: "You are saved now, if you would believe it." Mind-curers offer nearly identical liberation. While they speak to people for whom "salvation" has lost meaning, these people still struggle with eternal human problems. They feel things are wrong and ask, "What should I do to be clear, right, healthy, whole?" The answer: "You *are* healthy, whole, clear already, if you only knew it." As one author put it:
+    “Life seemed difficult to me at one time. I was always breaking
+    down, and had several attacks of what is called nervous
+    prostration, with terrible insomnia, being on the verge of
+    insanity; besides having many other troubles, especially of the
+    digestive organs. I had been sent away from home in charge of
+    doctors, had taken all the narcotics, stopped all work, been fed
+    up, and in fact knew all the doctors within reach. But I never
+    recovered permanently till this New Thought took possession of me.
+> **Quote:** "God is well, and so are you. You must awaken to knowledge of your real being."
+    “I think that the one thing which impressed me most was learning
+    the fact that we must be in absolutely constant relation or mental
+    touch (this word is to me very expressive) with that essence of
+    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, deepest
+    consciousness of our real selves or of God in us, for illumination
+    from within, just as we turn to the sun for light, warmth, and
+    invigoration without. When you do this consciously, realizing that
+    to turn inward to the light within you is to live in the presence
+    of God or your divine self, you soon discover the unreality of the
+    objects to which you have hitherto been turning and which have
+    engrossed you without.
+That this message meets so many people's mental needs gave power to earlier gospels. The same is true for Mind-cure, however foolish it seems. Given its rapid growth and healing successes, one wonders if it is destined—perhaps because of its very crudeness—to play as significant a role in popular religion's evolution as earlier movements did.
+    “I have come to disregard the meaning of this attitude for bodily
+    health _as such_, because that comes of itself, as an incidental
+    result, and cannot be found by any special mental act or desire to
+    have it, beyond that general attitude of mind I have referred to
+    above. That which we usually make the object of life, those outer
+    things we are all so wildly seeking, which we so often live and
+    die for, but which then do not give us peace and happiness, they
+    should all come of themselves as accessory, and as the mere
+    outcome or natural result of a far higher life sunk deep in the
+    bosom of the spirit. This life is the real seeking of the kingdom
+    of God, the desire for his supremacy in our hearts, so that all
+    else comes as that which shall be ‘added unto you’—as quite
+    incidental and as a surprise to us, perhaps; and yet it is the
+    proof of the reality of the perfect poise in the very centre of
+    our being.
+I worry I may be "getting on the nerves" of this academic audience. You might think contemporary oddities shouldn't take so much space in prestigious Gifford lectures. I ask patience. The ultimate goal is highlighting spiritual life's enormous diversity. People's needs and capacities vary so much they must be categorized differently, creating distinct religious experience types. In exploring the "healthy-minded" type, we must examine its most radical form. Individual character-type psychology is barely explored; these lectures might contribute. The first thing to remember—especially if we belong to the intellectual "correct" type tempted to ignore others—is that dismissing phenomena we cannot personally relate to is foolish.
+    “When I say that we commonly make the object of our life that
+    which we should not work for primarily, I mean many things which
+    the world considers praiseworthy and excellent, such as success in
+    business, fame as author or artist, physician or lawyer, or renown
+    in philanthropic undertakings. Such things should be results, not
+    objects. I would also include pleasures of many kinds which seem
+    harmless and good at the time, and are pursued because many accept
+    them—I mean conventionalities, sociabilities, and fashions in
+    their various development, these being mostly approved by the
+    masses, although they may be unreal, and even unhealthy
+    superfluities.”
+The history of Lutheran "salvation by faith," Methodist conversions, and Mind-cure proves many people—at certain life stages—improve character more successfully by doing the opposite of what traditional moralists suggest. Official moralists say: "Be vigilant day and night; suppress passive tendencies; spare no effort; keep your will tense as a drawn bow." But those I describe find this conscious effort leads only to failure and frustration, making them twice as miserable. This intense voluntary attitude becomes unbearable fever and torment. Internal machinery stops when bearings overheat and belts pull too tight. In these cases, the path to success—verified by countless authentic accounts—is the anti-moralistic approach, that "surrender" I mentioned in my second lecture. Passivity rather than activity, relaxation rather than intense effort, must now be the rule. Relinquish responsibility, let go your grip, entrust destiny to higher powers. Become truly indifferent to outcome, and you find not only perfect inner relief but often, ironically, the very things you thought you were giving up.
+> **Quote:** "This is salvation through self-despair, the dying to be truly born, of Lutheran theology, the passage into _nothing_ of which Jacob Behmen writes."
+Here is another case, more concrete, also that of a woman. I read you
+these cases without comment,—they express so many varieties of the state
+of mind we are studying.
+Reaching this state usually requires passing a critical point or turning an internal corner. Something inside must yield; natural hardness must break down and melt. This event—as we will see later—is often sudden and automatic, leaving impression of external power acting upon one.
+Whatever its final meaning, this is certainly a fundamental human experience form. Some argue this experience's capacity—or lack thereof—distinguishes truly religious from merely moralistic character. For those who experience it fully, no criticism can make them doubt its reality. They *know*, because they have actually *felt* higher powers the moment they released personal will's tension.
+    “I had been a sufferer from my childhood till my fortieth year.
+    [Details of ill‐health are given which I omit.] I had been in
+    Vermont several months hoping for good from the change of air, but
+    steadily growing weaker, when one day during the latter part of
+    October, while resting in the afternoon, I suddenly heard as it
+    were these words: ‘You will be healed and do a work you never
+    dreamed of.’ These words were impressed upon my mind with such
+    power I said at once that only God could have put them there. I
+    believed them in spite of myself and of my suffering and weakness,
+    which continued until Christmas, when I returned to Boston. Within
+    two days a young friend offered to take me to a mental healer
+    (this was January 7, 1881). The healer said: ‘There is nothing but
+    Mind; we are expressions of the One Mind; body is only a mortal
+    belief; as a man thinketh so is he.’ I could not accept all she
+    said, but I translated all that was there for _me_ in this way:
+    ‘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 in body I
+    shall be lifted out of bondage to my ignorance and fear and past
+    experience.’ That day I commenced accordingly to take a little of
+    every food provided for the family, constantly saying to myself:
+    ‘The Power that created the stomach must take care of what I have
+    eaten.’ By holding these suggestions through the evening I went to
+    bed and fell asleep, saying: ‘I am soul, spirit, just one with
+    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
+    an escaped 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 have my own positive mental suggestions of Truth, which were to
+    me like stepping‐stones. I will note a few of them; they came
+    about two weeks apart.
+Revivalist preachers tell of a man slipping down a cliff at night. He caught a branch and clung in misery for hours. Finally his fingers gave way; with despairing goodbye to life, he let go. He fell six inches. If he had stopped struggling sooner, he would have been spared agony.
+    “1st. I am Soul, therefore it is well with me.
+> **Quote:** "As mother earth received him, so will the everlasting arms receive _us_ if we confide absolutely in them, and give up the hereditary habit of relying on personal strength, with precautions that cannot shelter and safeguards that never save."
+    “2d. I am Soul, therefore I _am_ well.
+Mind-curers have applied this experience most extensively. They show renewal through relaxation and letting go—psychologically identical to Lutheran "justification by faith" or Wesleyan "acceptance of free grace"—is accessible even to those with no sense of sin or interest in Lutheran theology. It is simply letting your small, anxious, private self rest, only to find a greater Self present. Whether results are slow or sudden, large or small, renewal after abandoning effort remains a solid human nature fact—regardless of whether we explain it theistically, pantheistically, or medically.
+    “3d. A sort of inner vision of myself as a four‐footed beast with
+    a protuberance on every part of my body where I had suffering,
+    with my own face, begging me to acknowledge it as myself. I
+    resolutely fixed my attention on being well, and refused to even
+    look at my old self in this form.
+When we examine revivalist conversion phenomena, we will learn more. Meanwhile, I briefly discuss Mind-curers' methods.
+    “4th. Again the vision of the beast far in the background, with
+    faint voice. Again refusal to acknowledge.
+Their methods are largely based on suggestion. Suggestive environmental influence plays huge role in spiritual education. But because "suggestion" has gained official scientific status, it unfortunately acts as barrier to investigation, used to shut down inquiries about why individuals differ in susceptibility. "Suggestion" is just another name for ideas' power when they effectively influence belief and behavior. Ideas that work for some fail for others. Ideas effective in certain times/settings are not effective elsewhere. Christian churches' ideas today don't seem to have therapeutic power, regardless of earlier achievements. When the real question is why "salt has lost its flavor" here or gained it there, simply waving "suggestion" like a banner provides no insight. Dr. Goddard, in his honest essay on faith healing, attributes cures to nothing but ordinary suggestion, concluding: "Religion contains everything found in mental therapeutics, in its best form. Living up to religious ideas will do anything for us that can be done." He says this despite popular Christianity actually doing nothing—or doing nothing until Mind-cure intervened.
+    “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 completed separation between what I was and what I
+    appeared to be. I succeeded in never losing sight after this of my
+    real being, by constantly affirming this truth, and by degrees
+    (though it took me two years of hard work to get there) _I
+    expressed health continuously throughout my whole body_.
+For an idea to be suggestive, it must strike the individual with revelation's force. Mind-cure, with its gospel of "healthy-mindedness," has arrived as revelation to many whose hearts were left cold by traditional church Christianity. It unlocked their deeper life sources. Any religious movement's originality lies simply in finding a previously blocked channel through which inner springs release in a group. Personal faith's power, enthusiasm, example, and—above all—novelty are always this success's primary driver. In its earliest stages, a religion is a vibrant, personal revelation. > **Quote:** In its acuter stages every religion must be a homeless Arab of the desert.  The church knows this well; it deals with constant internal struggle between the intense religion of the few and the routine religion of the many—the latter often hardening into resistance worse than the irreligious opposition to Spirit's movements.
+    “In my subsequent nineteen years’ experience I have never known
+    this Truth to fail when I applied it, though in my ignorance I
+    have often failed to apply it, but through my failures I have
+    learned the simplicity and trustfulness of the little child.”
+> **Quote:** "We may pray concerning all those saints that are not lively Christians, that they may either be enlivened, or taken away; if it be true that these cold dead saints do more hurt than natural men, and lead more souls to hell, it would be well for mankind if they were all dead."
+The next condition for success is the apparent existence of many people who combine healthy-minded outlook with readiness for renewal through letting go. Protestantism has been too pessimistic about human nature, Catholicism too focused on rules and morals, for either to appeal broadly to this trait mix. Even if few here fit this description, it clearly represents a distinct psychological type well-represented in the world.
+But I fear that I risk tiring you by so many examples, and I must lead you
+back to philosophic generalities again. You see already by such records of
+experience how impossible it is not to class mind‐cure as primarily a
+religious movement. Its doctrine of the oneness of our life with God’s
+life is in fact quite indistinguishable from an interpretation of Christ’s
+message which in these very Gifford lectures has been defended by some of
+your very ablest Scottish religious philosophers.(52)
+Finally, Mind-cure has made unprecedented use of subconscious life, at least within Protestant cultures. Beyond logical advice and confident assertions, its founders include systematic exercises in passive relaxation, concentration, and meditation—even hypnosis-like techniques. I quote at random:
+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, timorous finite consciousness,
+the mind‐curers, so far as I am acquainted with them, profess to give no
+speculative explanation. Evil is empirically there for them as it is for
+everybody, but the practical point of view predominates, and it would ill
+agree with the spirit of their system to spend time in worrying 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 and pass beyond! It is Avidhya,
+ignorance! something merely to be outgrown and left behind, transcended
+and forgotten. Christian Science so‐called, the sect of Mrs. Eddy, is the
+most radical branch of mind‐cure in its dealings with evil. For it evil is
+simply a _lie_, and any one who mentions it is a liar. The optimistic
+ideal of duty forbids us to pay it the compliment even of explicit
+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 a philosophy of evil, a
+mind‐curer would ask us, if I can put you in possession of a life of good?
+> **Quote:** "The value, the potency of ideals is the great practical truth on which New Thought insists—the development from within outward, from small to great. Consequently one's thought should center on ideal outcome, even if this trust is literally a step in the dark. To direct mind effectively, New Thought advises practicing concentration, attaining self-control. One learns to marshal mind's tendencies so the chosen ideal holds them together. Set apart times for silent meditation, preferably in a room favorable to spiritual thought. In New Thought terms, this is ‘entering the silence.’
+After all, it is the life that tells; and mind‐cure has developed a living
+system of mental hygiene which may well claim to have thrown all previous
+literature of the _Diätetik 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 writers prints 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 can fail of the regenerative influence of optimistic
+thinking, pertinaciously pursued. Every man owns indefeasibly this inlet
+to the divine. Fear, on the contrary, and all the contracted and egoistic
+modes of 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 themselves as allies
+all the thoughts of the same character that exist the world over. Thus one
+gets, by one’s thinking, reinforcements from elsewhere for the realization
+of one’s desires; and the great point in the conduct of life is to get the
+heavenly forces on one’s side by opening one’s own mind to their influx.
+> "The time will come when in busy office or noisy street you can enter silence by simply drawing your thoughts' mantle about you, realizing the Spirit of Infinite Life, Love, Wisdom, Peace, Power, Plenty guides, keeps, protects, leads you there and everywhere. This is continual prayer's spirit. One intuitive man had a desk at a city office where others worked constantly, talking loudly. Entirely undisturbed, this self-centered faithful man would, in any perplexity, draw privacy's curtains so completely that he was as effectually removed from distractions as if alone in primeval wood. Taking his difficulty into mystic silence as direct question, he remained utterly passive until reply came, never disappointed or misled through many years' experience."
+On the whole, one is struck by a psychological similarity between the
+mind‐cure movement and the Lutheran and Wesleyan movements. To the
+believer in moralism and works, with his anxious query, “What shall I do
+to be saved?” Luther and Wesley replied: “You are saved now, if you would
+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 ancient theological meaning, but who labor
+nevertheless with the same eternal human difficulty. _Things are wrong
+with them_; and “What shall I do to be clear, right, sound, whole, well?”
+is the form 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 I have already
+quoted, “_God is well, and so are you_. You must awaken to the knowledge
+of your real being.”
+How does this essentially differ from Catholic discipline's "recollection"—"the practice of the presence of God" (familiar through writers like Jeremy Taylor)? Alvarez de Paz defines it:
+The adequacy of their message to the mental needs of a large fraction of
+mankind is what gave force to those earlier gospels. Exactly the same
+adequacy holds in the case of the mind‐cure message, foolish as it may
+sound upon its surface; and seeing its rapid growth in influence, and its
+therapeutic triumphs, one is tempted to ask whether it may not be destined
+(probably by very reason of the crudity and extravagance of many of its
+manifestations(53)) to play a part almost as great in the evolution of the
+popular religion of the future as did those earlier movements in their
+day.
+> **Quote:** "It is the recollection of God, the thought of God, which in all places and circumstances makes us see Him present, lets us commune respectfully and lovingly, and fills us with desire and affection. Would you escape every ill? Never lose this recollection of God, in prosperity nor adversity nor any occasion. Invoke not difficulty or business importance to excuse yourself; you can always remember God sees you, you are under His eye. If you forget Him a thousand times an hour, reanimate recollection a thousand times. If you cannot practice continuously, at least make yourself familiar; like those who in rigorous winter draw near the fire as often as possible, go as often as you can to that ardent fire which will warm your soul."
+                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
+External rituals differ, but the purely spiritual practice is identical. Advocates speak with authority because they have clearly experienced what they describe. Compare these other Mind-cure statements:
+But I here fear that I may begin to “jar upon the nerves” of some of the
+members of this academic audience. Such contemporary vagaries, you may
+think, should hardly take so large a place in dignified Gifford lectures.
+I can only beseech you to have patience. The whole outcome of these
+lectures will, I imagine, be the emphasizing to your mind of the enormous
+diversities which the spiritual lives of different men exhibit. Their
+wants, their susceptibilities, and their capacities all vary and must be
+classed under different heads. The result is that we have really different
+types of religious experience; and, seeking in these lectures closer
+acquaintance with the healthy‐minded type, we must take it where we find
+it in most radical form. The psychology of individual types of character
+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 belong to the clerico‐academic‐
+scientific type, the officially and conventionally “correct” type, “the
+deadly respectable” type, for which to ignore others is a besetting
+temptation) is that nothing can be more stupid than to bar out phenomena
+from our notice, merely because we are incapable of taking part in
+anything like them ourselves.
+> **Quote:** "High, healthful, pure thinking can be encouraged, promoted, strengthened. Its current can be turned upon grand ideals until it forms a habit and wears a channel. By this discipline the mental horizon can be flooded with sunshine of beauty, wholeness, harmony. To inaugurate pure, lofty thinking may at first seem difficult, even mechanical, but perseverance renders it easy, then pleasant, finally delightful.
+Now the history of Lutheran salvation by faith, of methodistic
+conversions, and of what I call the mind‐cure movement seems to prove the
+existence of numerous persons in whom—at any rate at a certain stage in
+their development—a change of character for the better, so far from being
+facilitated by the rules laid down by official moralists, will take place
+all the more successfully if those rules be exactly reversed. Official
+moralists advise us never to relax our strenuousness. “Be vigilant, day
+and night,” they adjure us; “hold your passive tendencies in check; shrink
+from no effort; keep your will like a bow always bent.” But the persons I
+speak of find that all this conscious effort leads to nothing but failure
+and vexation in their hands, and only makes them two‐fold more the
+children of hell they were before. The tense and voluntary attitude
+becomes in them an impossible fever and torment. Their machinery refuses
+to run at all when the bearings are made so hot and the belts so tight.
+> "The soul's real world is what it builds of thoughts, mental states, imaginations. If we *will*, we can turn our backs on the lower, sensuous plane and lift ourselves into spiritual Reality, gaining residence there. Assuming states of expectancy and receptivity attracts spiritual sunshine, which flows in naturally as air to vacuum. Whenever thought is not occupied with daily duty, it should be sent aloft into spiritual atmosphere. There are quiet moments by day and wakeful hours at night when this wholesome exercise may engage to great advantage. One who earnestly pursues this course for a month will be surprised and delighted; nothing will induce return to careless, aimless, superficial thinking. At favorable seasons the outside world is barred out, and one enters the inner temple's silent sanctuary to commune and aspire. Spiritual hearing becomes sensitive, the ‘still, small voice’ audible, external sense's tumultuous waves hushed, a great calm descends. The ego becomes conscious it faces Divine Presence—that mighty, healing, loving, Fatherly life nearer to us than we are to ourselves. There is soul-contact with Parent-Soul, an influx of life, love, virtue, health, happiness from the Inexhaustible Fountain."
+Under these circumstances the way to success, as vouched for by
+innumerable authentic personal narrations, is by an anti‐moralistic
+method, by the “surrender” of which I spoke in my second lecture.
+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, be genuinely indifferent as to what
+becomes of it all, and you will find not only that you gain a perfect
+inward relief, but often also, in addition, the particular goods you
+sincerely thought you were renouncing. This is the salvation through self‐
+despair, the dying to be truly born, of Lutheran theology, the passage
+into _nothing_ of which Jacob Behmen writes. To get to it, a critical
+point must usually be passed, a corner turned within one. Something must
+give way, a native hardness must break down and liquefy; and this event
+(as we shall abundantly see hereafter) is frequently sudden and automatic,
+and leaves on the Subject an impression that he has been wrought on by an
+external power.
+When we reach mysticism, you will be so immersed in these elevated consciousness states that any chill of doubt from this brief exposure will have vanished—doubt, I mean, whether such writing is abstract rhetoric to encourage others. I trust you will be convinced these "union" states constitute a specific experience category, occasionally accessible, more fundamental to some lives than anything else.
+Whatever its ultimate significance may prove to be, this is certainly one
+fundamental form of human experience. Some say that the capacity or
+incapacity for it is what divides the religious from the merely moralistic
+character. With those who undergo it in its fullness, no criticism avails
+to cast doubt on its reality. They _know_; for they have actually _felt_
+the higher powers, in giving up the tension of their personal will.
+This leads to a general philosophical reflection to transition from healthy-mindedness and conclude this overlong discussion. It concerns organized healthy-mindedness's and Mind-cure religion's relationship to scientific method and scientific life.
+A story which revivalist preachers often tell is that of a man who found
+himself at night slipping down 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 himself drop. He fell just six inches.
+If he had given up the struggle earlier, his agony would have been spared.
+As the mother earth received him, so, the preachers tell us, will the
+everlasting arms receive _us_ if we confide absolutely in them, and give
+up the hereditary habit of relying on our personal strength, with its
+precautions that cannot shelter and safeguards that never save.
+In a later lecture I will explicitly address religion's relationship to science and primitive thought. Many today calling themselves "scientists" or "positivists" say religious thought is a relic—regression to consciousness type enlightened humanity has outgrown. If you ask explanation, they say primitive thought understands everything through personality: things happen because of personal forces for individual purposes. Even nature responds to individual needs as if those needs were basic natural forces. Science, they say, has proved personality is merely passive byproduct of truly fundamental forces—physical, chemical, physiological, neuropsychological—which are impersonal and general. Nothing individual achieves anything except by obeying and demonstrating universal law. If you ask how science replaced primitive thought, they say through rigorous experimental verification. If you follow science's concepts—ignoring personality entirely—your expectations will always be verified.
+The mind‐curers have given the widest scope to this sort of experience.
+They have demonstrated that a form of regeneration by relaxing, by letting
+go, psychologically indistinguishable from the Lutheran justification by
+faith and the Wesleyan acceptance of free grace, is within the reach of
+persons who have no conviction of sin and care nothing for the Lutheran
+theology. It is but giving your little private convulsive self a rest, and
+finding that a greater Self is there. The results, slow or sudden, or
+great or small, of the combined optimism and expectancy, the regenerative
+phenomena which ensue on the abandonment of effort, remain firm facts of
+human nature, no matter whether we adopt a theistic, a pantheistic‐
+idealistic, or a medical‐materialistic view of their ultimate causal
+explanation.(54)
+> **Quote:** "The world is so made that all your expectations will be experientially verified so long, and only so long, as you keep the terms from which you infer them impersonal and universal."
+When we take up the phenomena of revivalistic conversion, we shall learn
+something more about all this. Meanwhile I will say a brief word about the
+mind‐curer’s _methods_.
+But here we have Mind-cure, with completely opposite philosophy, making identical claim. "Live as if I am true," it says, "and every day will prove you right in practice." The ideas that nature's controlling energies are personal, that your thoughts are actual forces, that the universe's powers respond directly to individual needs—your entire physical and mental experience will verify these. That experience largely confirms these ancient religious ideas is proven by Mind-cure's spread—not through claims and assertions, but tangible practical results. Even now, at scientific authority's peak, Mind-cure wages aggressive campaign against scientific philosophy, succeeding by using science's own methods and weapons. Based on belief that higher power cares for us better than we can—if we sincerely surrender and let it work—the movement finds this belief not only unchallenged but confirmed by observation.
+They are of course largely suggestive. The suggestive influence of
+environment plays an enormous part in all spiritual education. But the
+word “suggestion,” having acquired official status, is unfortunately
+already beginning to play in many quarters the part of a wet blanket upon
+investigation, being used to fend off all inquiry into the varying
+susceptibilities of individual cases. “Suggestion” is only another name
+for the power of ideas, _so far as they prove efficacious over belief and
+conduct_. Ideas efficacious over some people prove inefficacious over
+others. Ideas efficacious at some times and in some human surroundings are
+not so at other times and elsewhere. The ideas of Christian churches are
+not efficacious in the therapeutic direction to‐day, whatever they may
+have been in earlier centuries; and when the whole question is as to why
+the salt has lost its savor here or gained it there, the mere blank waving
+of the word “suggestion” as if it were a banner gives no light. Dr.
+Goddard, whose candid psychological essay on Faith Cures ascribes them to
+nothing but ordinary suggestion, concludes by saying that “Religion [and
+by this he seems to mean our popular Christianity] has in it all there is
+in mental therapeutics, and has it in its best form. Living up to [our
+religious] ideas will do anything for us that can be done.” And this in
+spite of the actual fact that the popular Christianity does absolutely
+_nothing_, or did nothing until mind‐cure came to the rescue.(55)
+The way conversions happen and followers are confirmed is clear from stories shared. I quote two more short accounts to make this concrete. First:
+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 the church Christianity had left
+hardened. It has let loose their springs of higher life. In what can the
+originality 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?
+> **Quote:** "One of my first experiences applying this teaching occurred two months after first visiting the healer. I fell and sprained my right ankle. Four years earlier I'd done this and needed crutch and brace for months, guarding it since. As soon as I was on my feet, I made positive suggestion, feeling it through my whole being: ‘There is nothing but God; all life comes from Him perfectly. I cannot be sprained or hurt; I will let Him care for it.' I never felt pain and walked two miles that very day."
+The force of personal faith, enthusiasm, and example, and above all the
+force of novelty, are always the prime suggestive agency in this kind of
+success. If mind‐cure should ever become official, respectable, and
+intrenched, these elements of suggestive efficacy will be lost. In its
+acuter stages 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 the many,
+indurated into an obstructiveness worse than that which irreligion opposes
+to the movings of the Spirit. “We may pray,” says Jonathan Edwards,
+“concerning all those saints that are not lively Christians, that they may
+either be enlivened, or taken away; if that be true that is often said by
+some at this day, that these cold dead saints do more hurt than natural
+men, and lead more souls to hell, and that it would be well for mankind if
+they were all dead.”(56)
+Next illustrates not only experiment and verification but also passivity and surrender:
+The next condition of success is the apparent existence, in large numbers,
+of minds who unite healthy‐mindedness with readiness for regeneration by
+letting go. Protestantism has been too pessimistic as regards the natural
+man, Catholicism has been too legalistic and moralistic, for either the
+one or the other to appeal in any generous way to the type of character
+formed of this peculiar mingling of elements. However few of us here
+present may belong to such a type, it is now evident that it forms a
+specific moral combination, well represented in the world.
+> **Quote:** "I went shopping one morning and soon felt ill. Symptoms grew rapidly: aching bones, nausea, faintness, headache—all flu's precedents. I thought I was catching the grippe, then epidemic in Boston. Mind-cure teachings came to mind; I saw an opportunity to test myself. On the way home I met a friend and resisted telling her how I felt—that was first step. I went to bed immediately. My husband wanted to call a doctor, but I said I'd wait until morning.
+Finally, mind‐cure has made what in our protestant countries is an
+unprecedentedly great use of the subconscious life. To their reasoned
+advice and dogmatic assertion, its founders have added systematic exercise
+in passive relaxation, concentration, and meditation, and have even
+invoked something like hypnotic practice. I quote some passages at
+random:—
+> "Then followed one of my life's most beautiful experiences. I cannot express it except to say I ‘lay down in the stream of life and let it flow over me.' I gave up all fear of impending disease; was perfectly willing and obedient. There was no intellectual effort or thought train. My dominant idea was: ‘Behold the handmaid of the Lord: be it unto me even as thou wilt,' with perfect confidence all would be well, that all *was* well. Creative life flowed into me every instant; I felt allied with Infinite, in harmony, full of peace that passeth understanding.'
+> "There was no room for suffering body in my mind. I had no awareness of time, space, or other people—only love, happiness, faith. I don't know how long this lasted or when I fell asleep, but when I woke, *I was well*."
+    “The value, the potency of ideals is the great practical truth on
+    which the New Thought most strongly 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 be literally like a step in the dark.(58) To attain the
+    ability thus effectively to direct the mind, the New Thought
+    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
+    Thought terms, this is called ‘entering the silence.’ ”(59)
+Though these instances may seem trivial, they represent experiment and verification's method. It doesn't matter whether you consider these patients victims of imagination. The fact they felt cured by experiments tried was enough to convert them. While one must have certain mental temperament for such results (not everyone can be cured this way, any more than by first doctor called), it would be narrow-minded to demand those who *can* verify this primitive philosophy through experience should give it up because science dictates otherwise. Has science overextended its claims?
+    “The time will come when in the busy office or on the noisy street
+    you can enter into the silence by simply drawing the mantle of
+    your own thoughts about you and realizing that there and
+    everywhere 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 most
+    intuitive men we ever met had a desk at a city office where
+    several other gentlemen were doing business constantly, and often
+    talking loudly. Entirely undisturbed by the many various sounds
+    about him, this self‐centred faithful man would, in any moment of
+    perplexity, draw the curtains of privacy so completely about him
+    that he would be as fully inclosed in his own psychic aura, and
+    thereby as effectually removed from all distractions, as though he
+    were alone in some primeval wood. Taking his difficulty with him
+    into the mystic silence in the form of a direct question, to which
+    he expected a certain answer, he would remain utterly passive
+    until the reply came, and never once through many years’
+    experience did he find himself disappointed or misled.”(61)
+I believe dogmatic scientists' claims are at least premature. The experiences studied today—along with other religious experiences—plainly show the universe is far more multi-faceted than any single group, even scientific community, acknowledges. Ultimately, what are all our "verifications" but experiences fitting conceptual systems our minds built? Why must we assume only one system can be true? The obvious conclusion of total experience is that the world can be managed through many different idea systems. Different people use different systems; each provides specific benefits while other benefits are set aside. Science gives telegraphs, electric lights, medical diagnoses, preventing and curing much disease. Religion, as Mind-cure, gives some serenity, moral balance, happiness, preventing certain diseases as effectively as science—or better for some people.
+> **Quote:** "Evidently, then, science and religion are both genuine keys for unlocking the world's treasure-house. Neither is exhaustive, and neither excludes the simultaneous use of the other."
+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 of the presence of God (and so
+known among ourselves, as for instance in Jeremy Taylor), it is thus
+defined by the eminent teacher Alvarez de Paz in his work on
+Contemplation.
+Why shouldn't the world be so complex it consists of many overlapping reality spheres? We can approach these spheres by alternating perspectives and attitudes, like mathematicians handling numerical and spatial facts through geometry, algebra, or calculus, reaching correct results every time. In this view, religion and science—each verified through daily life—coexist eternally. Primitive thought, with its belief in personal forces, seems no closer to being driven out by science than ever. Many educated people still find it the most direct experimental way to engage reality.
+Mind-cure was so relevant I couldn't resist using it to illustrate these truths, but I must limit myself today. In a later lecture, religion, science, and primitive thought's relationship will receive more detailed attention.
+    “It is the recollection of God, the thought of God, which in all
+    places and circumstances makes us see him present, lets us commune
+    respectfully and lovingly with him, and fills us with desire and
+    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 excuse
+    yourself from this duty, either the difficulty or the importance
+    of your business, for you can always remember that God sees you,
+    that you are under his eye. If a thousand times an hour you forget
+    him, reanimate a thousand times the recollection. If you cannot
+    practice this exercise continuously, at least make yourself as
+    familiar with it as possible; and, like unto those who in a
+    rigorous winter draw near the fire as often as they can, go as
+    often as you can to that ardent fire which will warm your
+    soul.”(62)
+All the external associations of the Catholic discipline are of course
+unlike anything in mind‐cure thought, 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 their
+own persons that whereof they tell. Compare again some mind‐cure
+utterances:—
+    “High, healthful, pure thinking can be encouraged, promoted, and
+    strengthened. Its current can be turned upon grand ideals until it
+    forms a habit and wears a channel. By means of such discipline the
+    mental horizon can be flooded with the sunshine of beauty,
+    wholeness, and harmony. To inaugurate pure and lofty thinking may
+    at first seem difficult, even almost mechanical, but perseverance
+    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. If we _will_, we can turn our
+    backs upon the lower and sensuous plane, and lift ourselves into
+    the realm of the spiritual and Real, and there gain a residence.
+    The assumption of states of expectancy and receptivity will
+    attract spiritual sunshine, and it will flow in as naturally as
+    air inclines to a vacuum.... Whenever the thought is not occupied
+    with one’s daily duty or profession, it should be sent aloft into
+    the spiritual atmosphere. There are quiet leisure moments by day,
+    and wakeful hours at night, when this wholesome and delightful
+    exercise may be engaged in to great advantage. If one who has
+    never made any systematic effort to lift and control the thought‐
+    forces will, for a single month, earnestly pursue the course here
+    suggested, he will be surprised and delighted at the result, and
+    nothing will induce him to go back to careless, aimless, and
+    superficial thinking. At such favorable seasons the outside world,
+    with all its current of daily events, is barred out, and one goes
+    into the silent sanctuary of the inner temple of soul to commune
+    and aspire. The spiritual hearing becomes delicately sensitive, so
+    that the ‘still, small voice’ is audible, the tumultuous waves of
+    external sense are hushed, and there is a great calm. The ego
+    gradually becomes conscious that it is face to face with the
+    Divine Presence; that mighty, healing, loving, Fatherly life which
+    is nearer to us than we are to ourselves. There is soul‐contact
+    with the Parent‐Soul, and an influx of life, love, virtue, health,
+    and happiness from the Inexhaustible Fountain.”(63)
+When we reach the subject of mysticism, you will undergo so deep an
+immersion into these exalted states of consciousness as to be wet all
+over, if I may so express myself; and the cold shiver 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 _pour encourager 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 which they have acquaintance.
+This brings me to a general philosophical reflection with which I should
+like to pass from the subject of healthy‐mindedness, and close a topic
+which I fear is already only too 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 one hand, 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 a mere survival, an atavistic reversion to a type of
+consciousness which humanity in its more enlightened examples has long
+since left behind and outgrown. If you ask them to explain themselves more
+fully, they will probably say that for primitive thought everything is
+conceived of under the form of personality. The savage thinks that things
+operate by personal forces, and for the sake of individual ends. For him,
+even external nature obeys individual needs and claims, just as if these
+were so many elementary powers. Now science, on the other hand, these
+positivists say, has proved that personality, so far from being an
+elementary force in nature, is but a passive resultant of the really
+elementary forces, physical, chemical, physiological, and psycho‐physical,
+which are all impersonal and general in character. Nothing individual
+accomplishes anything in the universe save in so far as it obeys and
+exemplifies some universal law. Should you then inquire of them by what
+means science has thus supplanted primitive thought, and discredited its
+personal way of looking at things, they would undoubtedly say it has been
+by the strict use of the method of experimental verification. Follow out
+science’s conceptions practically, they will say, the conceptions that
+ignore personality altogether, and you will always be corroborated. The
+world is so made that all your expectations will be experientially
+verified so long, and only so long, as you keep the terms from which you
+infer them impersonal and universal.
+But here we have mind‐cure, with her diametrically opposite philosophy,
+setting up an exactly identical claim. Live as if I were true, she says,
+and every day will practically prove you right. That the controlling
+energies of nature are personal, that your own personal thoughts are
+forces, that the powers of the universe will directly respond to your
+individual appeals and needs, are propositions which your whole bodily and
+mental experience will verify. And that experience does largely verify
+these primeval religious ideas is proved by the fact that the mind‐cure
+movement spreads as it does, not by proclamation and assertion simply, but
+by palpable experiential results. Here, in the very heyday of science’s
+authority, it carries on an aggressive warfare against the scientific
+philosophy, and succeeds by using science’s own peculiar methods and
+weapons. Believing that a higher power will take care of us in certain
+ways better than we can take care of ourselves, if we only genuinely throw
+ourselves upon it and consent to use it, it finds the belief, not only not
+impugned, but corroborated by its observation.
+How conversions are thus made, and converts confirmed, is evident enough
+from the narratives which I have quoted. I will quote yet another couple
+of shorter ones to give the matter a perfectly concrete 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 a crutch and elastic anklet for some months, and carefully
+    guarding it ever since. As soon as I was on my feet I made the
+    positive suggestion (and felt it through all my being): ‘There is
+    nothing but God, all life comes from him perfectly. I cannot be
+    sprained or hurt, I will let him take care of it.’ 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 passivity and 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 I began to feel ill. The ill feeling
+    increased rapidly, until I had pains in all my bones, nausea and
+    faintness, headache, all the symptoms in short that precede an
+    attack of influenza. I thought that I was going to have the
+    grippe, epidemic then in Boston, or something worse. The mind‐cure
+    teachings 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, and I refrained with
+    some effort from telling her how I felt. That was the first step
+    gained. I went to bed immediately, and my husband wished to send
+    for the doctor. But I told him that I would rather wait until
+    morning and see how I felt. Then followed one of the most
+    beautiful experiences of my life.
+    “I cannot express it in any other way than to say that I did ‘lie
+    down in the stream of life and let it flow over me.’ I gave up all
+    fear of any impending disease; I was perfectly willing and
+    obedient. There was no intellectual effort, or train of thought.
+    My dominant idea was: ‘Behold the handmaid of the Lord: be it unto
+    me even as thou wilt,’ and a perfect confidence that all would be
+    well, that all _was_ well. The creative life was flowing into me
+    every instant, and I felt myself allied with the Infinite, in
+    harmony, and full of the peace that passeth understanding. There
+    was no place in my mind for a jarring body. I had no consciousness
+    of time or space or persons; but only of love and happiness and
+    faith.
+    “I do not know how long this state lasted, nor when I fell asleep;
+    but when I woke up in the morning, _I was well_.”
+These are exceedingly trivial instances,(64) but in them, if we have
+anything at all, we have the method of experiment and verification. For
+the point I am driving at now, it makes no difference whether you consider
+the patients to be deluded victims of their imagination or not. That they
+seemed to _themselves_ to have been cured by the experiments tried was
+enough to make them converts to the system. And although it is evident
+that one must be of a certain mental mould to get such results (for not
+every one can get thus cured to his own satisfaction any more than every
+one can be cured by the first regular practitioner whom he calls in), yet
+it would surely be pedantic and over‐scrupulous for those who _can_ get
+their savage and primitive philosophy of mental healing verified in such
+experimental ways as this, to give them up at word of command for more
+scientific therapeutics. What are we to think of all this? Has science
+made too wide a claim?
+I believe that the claims of the sectarian scientist are, to say the
+least, premature. The experiences which we have been studying during this
+hour (and a great many other kinds of religious experiences are like them)
+plainly show the universe to be a more many‐sided affair than any sect,
+even the scientific sect, allows for. What, in the end, are all our
+verifications but experiences that agree with more or less isolated
+systems of ideas (conceptual systems) that our minds have framed? But why
+in the name of common sense need we assume that only one such system of
+ideas can be true? The obvious outcome of our total experience is that the
+world can be handled according to many systems of ideas, and is so handled
+by different men, and will each time give some characteristic kind of
+profit, for which he cares, to the handler, while at the same time some
+other kind of profit has to be omitted or postponed. Science gives to all
+of us telegraphy, electric lighting, and diagnosis, and succeeds in
+preventing and curing a certain amount of disease. Religion in the shape
+of mind‐cure gives to some of us serenity, moral poise, and happiness, and
+prevents certain forms of disease as well as science does, or even better
+in a certain class of persons. Evidently, then, the science and the
+religion are both of them genuine keys for unlocking the world’s treasure‐
+house to him who can use either of them practically. Just as evidently
+neither is exhaustive or exclusive of the other’s simultaneous use. And
+why, after all, may not the world be so complex as to consist of many
+interpenetrating spheres of reality, which we can thus approach in
+alternation by using different conceptions and assuming different
+attitudes, just as mathematicians handle the same numerical and spatial
+facts by geometry, by analytical geometry, by algebra, by the calculus, or
+by quaternions, and each time come out right? On this view religion and
+science, each verified in its own way from hour to hour and from life to
+life, would be co‐eternal. Primitive thought, with its belief in
+individualized personal forces, seems at any rate as far as ever from
+being driven by science from the field to‐day. Numbers of educated people
+still find it the directest experimental channel by which to carry on
+their intercourse with reality.(65)
+The case of mind‐cure lay so ready to my hand that I could not resist the
+temptation of using it to bring these last truths home to your attention,
+but I must content myself to‐day with this very brief indication. In a
+later lecture the relations of religion both to science and to primitive
+thought will have to receive much more explicit attention.
 Appendix
+**CASE I.**
+(See note to p. 121.)
+> **Quote:** "My experience: I had been ill long time. Twelve years earlier, double vision made reading/writing almost impossible. Later, I couldn't exercise without immediate, extreme exhaustion. I was treated by top doctors in Europe and America—men in whom I had great faith—with no results or negative ones. Then, as I seemed to be rapidly worsening, I heard enough about mental healing to want to try it. I tried it as *chance*, partly intrigued by possibility, partly because it was only option left. I went to a Boston practitioner from whom friends had received great help. Treatment was silent; little was said, and what was said didn't convince me. Whatever influence occurred was another person's thoughts/feelings silently projected onto my unconscious mind and nervous system as we sat together. From the start I believed such action *possible* because I knew mind's power to help/hinder body's nervous system. I thought telepathy probable though unproven, viewing it only as possibility; I had no strong conviction or religious faith to trigger powerful imagination.
+> "I sat quietly with healer thirty minutes daily. At first nothing happened. Then after about ten days, I suddenly became aware of tide of new energy rising within—power to move beyond old limitations, break through walls confining my life for years. I began reading and walking as I hadn't in years; change was sudden, unmistakable. Tide seemed to grow about a month. When summer arrived, I left and resumed treatment months later. Improvement was permanent, leaving me gaining ground instead of losing it. However, after initial surge, influence seemed spent. Even though my confidence in this power had grown immensely—which should have helped me gain more strength if belief were main factor—I never again experienced as striking result as first one, which occurred when I had little faith and low expectations.
+    CASE I. “My own experience is this: I had long been ill, and one
+    of the first results of my illness, a dozen years before, had been
+    a diplopia which deprived me of the use of my eyes for reading and
+    writing almost entirely, while a later one had been to shut me out
+    from exercise of any kind under penalty of immediate and great
+    exhaustion. I had been under the care of doctors of the highest
+    standing both in Europe and America, men in whose power to help me
+    I had had great faith, with no or ill result. Then, at a time when
+    I seemed to be rather rapidly losing ground, I heard some things
+    that gave me interest enough in mental healing to make me try it;
+    I had no great hope of getting any good from it—it was a _chance_
+    I tried, partly because my thought was interested by the new
+    possibility it seemed to open, partly because it was the only
+    chance I then could see. I went to X. in Boston, from whom some
+    friends of mine had got, or thought that they had got, great help;
+    the treatment was a silent one; little was said, and that little
+    carried no conviction to my mind; whatever influence was exerted
+    was that of another person’s thought or feeling silently projected
+    on to my unconscious mind, into my nervous system as it were, as
+    we sat still together. I believed from the start in the
+    _possibility_ of such action, for I knew the power of the mind to
+    shape, helping or hindering, the body’s nerve‐activities, and I
+    thought telepathy probable, although unproved, but I had no belief
+    in it as more than a possibility, and no strong conviction nor any
+    mystic or religious faith connected with my thought of it that
+    might have brought imagination strongly into play.
+> "It is difficult to put all evidence into words, but I always felt I had enough evidence to justify my conclusion: first, physical change resulted from mental state change; second, this mental change wasn't primarily caused by excited imagination or conscious hypnotic suggestion. Ultimately, I believe this change resulted from receiving healthier, more energetic attitude telepathically, on mental level well below immediate consciousness, from another person intending to impress that attitude. In my case, illness was classified nervous, not organic. However, from what I've observed, I believe the line drawn between them is arbitrary, as nerves control internal activities and nutrition throughout body. I believe central nervous system can exert vast influence on any disease if engaged. The question is how to engage it. Mental healing's uncertainty and varying results only show our ignorance of forces at work. My observations convince me these results are not coincidences. While conscious mind and imagination are certainly factors in many cases, in others—sometimes extraordinary ones—they hardly seem to play role at all. On whole, I believe that as healing and illness often spring from unconscious mind, most effective impressions are those unconscious receives directly from healthier mind through hidden law of sympathy."
+    “I sat quietly with the healer for half an hour each day, at first
+    with no result; then, after ten days or so, I became quite
+    suddenly and swiftly conscious of a tide of new energy rising
+    within me, a sense of power to pass beyond old halting‐places, of
+    power to break the bounds that, though often tried before, had
+    long been veritable walls about my life, too high to climb. I
+    began to read and walk as I had not done for years, and the change
+    was sudden, marked, and unmistakable. This tide seemed to mount
+    for some weeks, three or four perhaps, when, summer having come, I
+    came away, taking the treatment up again a few months later. The
+    lift I got proved permanent, and left me slowly gaining ground
+    instead of losing it, but with this lift the influence seemed in a
+    way to have spent itself, and, though my confidence in the reality
+    of the power had gained immensely from this first experience, and
+    should have helped me to make further gain in health and strength
+    if my belief in it had been the potent factor there, I never after
+    this got any result at all as striking or as clearly marked as
+    this which came when I made trial of it first, with little faith
+    and doubtful expectation. It is difficult to put all the evidence
+    in such a matter into words, to gather up into a distinct
+    statement all that one bases one’s conclusions on, but I have
+    always felt that I had abundant evidence to justify (to myself, at
+    least) the conclusion that I came to then, and since have held to,
+    that the physical change which came at that time was, first, the
+    result of a change wrought within me by a change of mental state;
+    and, secondly, that that change of mental state was not, save in a
+    very secondary way, brought about through the influence of an
+    excited imagination, or a _consciously_ received suggestion of an
+    hypnotic sort. Lastly, I believe that this change was the result
+    of my receiving telepathically, and upon a mental stratum quite
+    below the level of immediate consciousness, a healthier and more
+    energetic attitude, receiving it from another person whose thought
+    was directed upon me with the intention of impressing the idea of
+    this attitude upon me. In my case the disease was distinctly what
+    would be classed as nervous, not organic; but from such
+    opportunities as I have had of observing, I have come to the
+    conclusion that the dividing line that has been drawn is an
+    arbitrary one, the nerves controlling the internal activities and
+    the nutrition of the body throughout; and I believe that the
+    central nervous system, by starting and inhibiting local centres,
+    can exercise a vast influence upon disease of any kind, if it can
+    be brought to bear. In my judgment the question is simply how to
+    bring it to bear, and I think that the uncertainty and remarkable
+    differences in the results obtained through mental healing do but
+    show how ignorant we are as yet of the forces at work and of the
+    means we should take to make them effective. That these results
+    are not due to chance coincidences my observation of myself and
+    others makes me sure; that the conscious mind, the imagination,
+    enters into them as a factor in many cases is doubtless true, but
+    in many others, and sometimes very extraordinary ones, it hardly
+    seems to enter in at all. On the whole I am inclined to think that
+    as the healing action, like the morbid one, springs from the plane
+    of the normally _un_conscious mind, so the strongest and most
+    effective impressions are those which _it_ receives, in some as
+    yet unknown, subtle way, _directly_ from a healthier mind whose
+    state, through a hidden law of sympathy, it reproduces.”
+**CASE II.**
+    CASE II. “At the urgent request of friends, and with no faith and
+    hardly any hope (possibly owing to a previous unsuccessful
+    experience with a Christian Scientist), our little daughter was
+    placed under the care of a healer, and cured of a trouble about
+    which the physician had been very discouraging in his diagnosis.
+    This interested me, and I began studying earnestly the method and
+    philosophy of this method of healing. Gradually an inner peace and
+    tranquillity came to me in so positive a way that my manner
+    changed greatly. My children and friends noticed the change and
+    commented upon it. All feelings of irritability disappeared. Even
+    the expression of my face changed noticeably.
+> **Quote:** "At friends' urgent request, and with no faith and almost no hope (due to previous failed Christian Science experience), we placed our little daughter under healer's care. She was cured of condition for which physician's diagnosis had been very discouraging. This piqued my interest; I began studying method's philosophy. Gradually, inner peace and tranquility came so strongly my entire demeanor changed. Children and friends noticed and commented. All irritability vanished; even facial expression changed noticeably.
+    “I had been bigoted, aggressive, and intolerant in discussion,
+    both in public and private. I grew broadly tolerant and receptive
+    toward the views of others. I had been nervous and irritable,
+    coming home two or three times a week with a sick headache
+    induced, as I then supposed, by dyspepsia and catarrh. I grew
+    serene and gentle, and the physical troubles entirely disappeared.
+    I had been in the habit of approaching every business interview
+    with an almost morbid dread. I now meet every one with confidence
+    and inner calm.
+> "I had been narrow-minded, aggressive, intolerant in discussions, public and private. I became broadly tolerant and open to others' views. I had been nervous and irritable, coming home two or three times weekly with sick headache I blamed on indigestion. I became serene and gentle; physical problems disappeared entirely. I used to approach every business meeting with dread; now I meet everyone with confidence and inner calm.
+    “I may say that the growth has all been toward the elimination of
+    selfishness. I do not mean simply the grosser, more sensual forms,
+    but those subtler and generally unrecognized kinds, such as
+    express themselves in sorrow, grief, regret, envy, etc. It has
+    been in the direction of a practical, working realization of the
+    immanence of God and the Divinity of man’s true, inner self.”
+> "This growth has been toward eliminating selfishness—not just obvious kind, but subtler, unrecognized types manifesting as sorrow, grief, regret, envy. It has been journey toward practical realization of God's presence and true inner self's divinity."
 ## LECTURES VI AND VII. THE SICK SOUL.
+We previously examined the healthy-minded temperament—an innate inability to endure prolonged suffering, where optimism is like a 'water of crystallization' in which the individual’s character is set. This temperament can form a unique religion: "good," even earthly goods, becomes the only rational focus, with darker aspects settled by refusing to take them to heart, ignoring them, or denying their existence.
+At our last meeting, we considered the healthy‐minded temperament, the
+temperament which has a constitutional incapacity for prolonged suffering,
+and in which the tendency to see things optimistically is like a water of
+crystallization in which the individual’s character is set. We saw how
+this temperament may become the basis for a peculiar type of religion, a
+religion in which good, even the good of this world’s life, is regarded as
+the essential thing for a rational being to attend to. This religion
+directs him to settle his scores with the more evil aspects of the
+universe by systematically declining to lay them to heart or make much of
+them, by ignoring them in his reflective 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 original complaint. Even repentance and remorse, affections
+which come in the character of ministers of good, may be but sickly and
+relaxing impulses. The best repentance is to up and act for righteousness,
+and forget that you ever had relations with sin.
+> “Evil is a disease; and worry over disease is itself an additional form of disease, which only adds to the original complaint. Even repentance and remorse... may be but sickly and relaxing impulses. The best repentance is to up and act for righteousness, 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 has been one secret of its fascination. He whom
+Reason leads, according to Spinoza, is led altogether by the influence
+over his mind of good. Knowledge of evil is an “inadequate” knowledge, fit
+only for slavish minds. So Spinoza categorically condemns repentance. When
+men make mistakes, he says,—
+Spinoza’s philosophy rests on this healthy-mindedness. The person led by Reason is guided entirely by good; understanding evil is "inadequate" knowledge, fit only for servile minds. He explicitly condemns repentance:
+> “One might perhaps expect gnawings of conscience and repentance to help... Yet... not only are they not good, but on the contrary deleterious and evil passions. For it is manifest that we can always get along better by reason and love of truth than by worry of conscience and remorse... we should endeavor... to flee and shun these states of mind.”
+    “One might perhaps expect gnawings of conscience and repentance to
+    help to bring them on the right path, and might thereupon conclude
+    (as every one does conclude) that these affections are good
+    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 along
+    better by reason and love of truth than by worry of conscience and
+    remorse. Harmful are these and evil, inasmuch as they form a
+    particular kind of sadness; and the disadvantages of sadness,” he
+    continues, “I have already proved, and shown that we should strive
+    to keep it from our life. Just so we should endeavor, since
+    uneasiness of conscience and remorse are of this kind of
+    complexion, to flee and shun these states of mind.”(66)
+Within Christianity, where repenting sins has been central, healthy-mindedness offers a gentler interpretation: repentance means moving *away* from sin rather than agonizing over it. Catholic confession is a systematic way to maintain this control—settling spiritual debts periodically so one may start fresh. While Luther rejected priestly absolution, he held healthy-minded views on repentance, largely through his vast conception of God’s grace:
+> “When I was a monk, I thought that I was utterly cast away... If I had rightly understood these sentences of Paul: ‘The flesh lusteth contrary to the Spirit...’ I should not have so miserably tormented 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.’”
+Within the Christian body, for which repentance of sins has from the
+beginning been the critical religious act, healthy‐mindedness has always
+come forward with its milder interpretation. Repentance according to such
+healthy‐minded Christians means _getting away from_ the sin, not groaning
+and writhing over its commission. The Catholic practice of confession and
+absolution is in one of its aspects little more than a systematic method
+of keeping healthy‐mindedness on top. By it a man’s accounts with evil are
+periodically squared and audited, so that he may start the clean page with
+no old debts inscribed. Any Catholic will tell us how clean and fresh and
+free he feels after the purging operation. Martin Luther by no means
+belonged to the healthy‐minded type in the radical sense in which we have
+discussed it, and he repudiated priestly absolution for sin. Yet in this
+matter of repentance he had some very healthy‐minded ideas, due in the
+main to the largeness of his conception of God.
+Molinos, founder of Quietism, was condemned by Jesuits for his healthy-minded view:
+> “When thou fallest into a fault... do not trouble nor afflict thyself... The common enemy will make thee believe... that thou walkest in error... knowing thy misery, and trusting in the divine mercy... lose no time, get up and take the course again... If thou seest thyself fallen... thou oughtest to make use of... a loving confidence in the divine mercy.”
+    “When I was a monk,” he says, “I thought that I was utterly cast
+    away, if at any time I felt the lust of the flesh: that is to say,
+    if I felt any evil motion, fleshly lust, wrath, hatred, or envy
+    against any brother. I assayed many ways to help to quiet my
+    conscience, but it would not be; for the concupiscence and lust of
+    my flesh did always return, so that I could not rest, but was
+    continually vexed with these thoughts: This or that sin thou hast
+    committed: thou art infected with envy, with impatiency, and such
+    other sins: therefore thou art entered into this holy order in
+    vain, and all thy good works are unprofitable. But if then I had
+    rightly understood these sentences of Paul: ‘The flesh lusteth
+    contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit contrary to the flesh; and
+    these two are one against another, so that ye cannot do the things
+    that ye would do,’ I should not have so miserably tormented
+    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 I would become a better man: but I
+    never performed that which I vowed. Hereafter I will make no such
+    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 and
+    all my good deeds, to stand before him.’ This (of Staupitz’s) was
+    not only a true, but also a godly and a holy desperation; and this
+    must they all confess, both with mouth and heart, who will be
+    saved. For the godly trust not to their own righteousness. They
+    look unto Christ their reconciler, who gave his life for their
+    sins. Moreover, they know that the remnant of sin which is in
+    their flesh is not laid to their charge, but freely pardoned.
+    Notwithstanding, in the mean while they fight in spirit against
+    the flesh, lest they should _fulfill_ the lusts thereof; and
+    although they feel the flesh to rage and rebel, and themselves
+    also do fall sometimes into sin through infirmity, yet are they
+    not discouraged, nor think therefore that their state and kind of
+    life, and the works which are done according to their calling,
+    displease God; but they raise up themselves by faith.”(67)
+Now stands the opposite perspective, which "maximizes" evil, treating darkness as life’s essence. Before turning to this morbid view, one more reflection: If evil is essential to existence, we burden religious philosophy with a classic difficulty. Theism, when systematic, tends toward monism—viewing the world as a single absolute fact where God is Everything. This clashes with practical theism, usually pluralistic, content with many principles so long as the divine remains supreme. In pluralism, God isn’t responsible for evil unless it’s finally undefeated. In monism, evil must be rooted in God, which creates problems if God is absolutely good. In any perfect unit, the worst parts are as essential as the best. > **Quote:** Such a unit is an Individual, and in it the worst parts must be as essential as the best... since if any part whatever in an individual were to vanish or alter, it would no longer be that individual at all.
+The philosophy of healthy-mindedness votes for pluralism. While Hegel might say everything real is rational and evil must be integrated into a final truth, healthy-mindedness refuses:
+One of the heresies for which the Jesuits got that spiritual genius,
+Molinos, the founder of Quietism, so abominably condemned was his healthy‐
+minded opinion of repentance:—
+> “Evil... is emphatically irrational, and _not_ to be pinned in, or preserved, or consecrated in any final system of truth. It is a pure 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 is a refined extract, totally separated from diseased material. Here is the notion that some elements don’t form a rational whole with others—from any system they create, dark parts are merely irrelevant accidents—what we might call 'dirt,' or matter out of place. Do not forget this idea; however much philosophers ignore it, we must eventually admit it contains truth. Thus "mind-cure" appears with dignity: a genuine religion, its experimental verification similar to science, and now champion of a specific metaphysical structure.
+    “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
+    make thee believe, as soon as thou fallest into any fault, that
+    thou walkest in error, and therefore art out of God and his favor,
+    and herewith would he make thee distrust of the divine Grace,
+    telling thee of thy misery, and making a giant of it; and putting
+    it into thy head that every day thy soul grows worse 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 the mercy divine.
+    Would not he be a mere fool who, running at tournament with
+    others, and falling in the best of the career, should lie weeping
+    on the ground and afflicting himself with discourses upon his
+    fall? Man (they would tell him), lose no time, get up and take the
+    course again, for he that rises again quickly and continues his
+    race is as if he had never fallen. If thou seest thyself fallen
+    once and a thousand times, thou oughtest to make use of the remedy
+    which I have given thee, that is, a loving confidence in the
+    divine mercy. These are the weapons with which thou must fight and
+    conquer cowardice and vain thoughts. This is the means thou
+    oughtest to use—not to lose time, not to disturb thyself, and reap
+    no good.”(68)
+Let us turn to those who cannot shake awareness of evil, predisposed to suffer from its presence. As healthy-mindedness has shallower and deeper levels, so too does the morbid mind. For some, evil is "maladjustment"—curable by changing self or environment. For others, it’s radical—a flaw in essential nature requiring supernatural remedy. Latin cultures lean toward the first, seeing evil as removable ills; Germanic cultures tend toward Sin singular, deep-rooted and incurable by minor changes. This "Northern" tone inclines toward personal pessimism, far more instructive for our study.
+Psychology uses "threshold" to describe where one state passes into another. We speak of pain-threshold, fear-threshold, misery-threshold. Some cross this line quickly; in others it sits too high to reach. The optimistic live on misery-line’s sunny side; the depressed beyond it, in darkness. Some start life with joy surplus; others born near pain-threshold, where slightest irritation pushes them over.
+Now in contrast with such healthy‐minded views as these, if we treat them
+as a way of deliberately minimizing evil, stands a radically opposite
+view, a way of maximizing evil, if you please 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 have now to address ourselves to this more morbid way of looking
+at the situation. But as I closed our last hour with a general
+philosophical reflection on the healthy‐minded way of taking life, I
+should like at this point to make another philosophical reflection upon it
+before turning to that heavier task. You will excuse the brief delay.
+Doesn’t someone living habitually on pain’s side need a different religion? This question—different religions fitting different needs—arises naturally and will become serious. But first we must hear what "sick souls" say of their inner torment. Let us turn from "once-born" optimism and see if pity, pain, fear, and helplessness might offer a deeper key to our situation.
+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 of religion. Theism, whenever
+it has erected itself into a systematic philosophy of the universe, has
+shown a reluctance to let God be anything less than All‐in‐All. In other
+words, philosophic theism has always shown a tendency to become
+pantheistic and monistic, and to consider the world as one unit of
+absolute fact; and this has been at variance with popular or practical
+theism, which latter has ever been more or less frankly pluralistic, not
+to say polytheistic, and shown itself perfectly well satisfied with a
+universe composed of many original principles, provided we be only allowed
+to believe that the divine principle remains supreme, and that the others
+are subordinate. In this latter case God is not necessarily responsible
+for the existence of evil; he would only be responsible if it were not
+finally overcome. But on the monistic or pantheistic view, evil, like
+everything else, must have its foundation in God; and the difficulty is to
+see how this can possibly be the case if God be absolutely good. This
+difficulty faces us in every form of philosophy in which the world appears
+as one flawless unit of fact. Such a unit is an _Individual_, and in it
+the worst 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 _that_
+individual 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 much as scholastic theism struggled in its time; and
+although it would be premature to say that there is no speculative issue
+whatever from the puzzle, it is perfectly fair to say that there is no
+clear or easy issue, and that the only _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
+or collection of higher and lower things and principles, rather than an
+absolutely unitary fact. For then evil would not need to be essential; it
+might be, and may always have been, an independent portion that had no
+rational or absolute right to live with the rest, and which we might
+conceivably hope to see got rid of at last.
+How can worldly successes provide stable foundation? A chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and life is a chain. Even the healthiest life contains links of illness, danger, disaster. As the poet said, something bitter rises from every fountain of pleasure: nausea, loss of joy, melancholy. These warnings feel as though from a deeper region, carrying terrifying conviction. The buzz of life stops at their touch, like a piano string silenced by a muffler.
+Now the gospel of healthy‐mindedness, as we have described it, casts its
+vote distinctly for this pluralistic view. Whereas the monistic
+philosopher finds himself more or less bound to say, as Hegel 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 of truth, healthy‐mindedness refuses to
+say anything of the sort.(69) Evil, it says, is emphatically irrational,
+and _not_ to be pinned in, or preserved, or consecrated in any final
+system of truth. It is a pure 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 co‐
+extensive with the whole actual, is a mere _extract_ from the actual,
+marked by its deliverance from all contact with this diseased, inferior,
+and excrementitious stuff.
+The music can restart—at intervals. But this leaves healthy-minded consciousness with an unfixable fragility, like a cracked bell ringing only by permission and accident.
+Here we have the interesting notion fairly and squarely presented to us,
+of there being elements of the universe which may make no rational whole
+in conjunction with the other elements, and which, from the point of view
+of any system which those other elements make up, can only be considered
+so much irrelevance and accident—so much “dirt,” as it were, and matter
+out of place. I ask you now not to forget this notion; for although most
+philosophers seem either to forget it or to disdain it too much ever to
+mention it, I believe that we shall have to admit it ourselves in the end
+as containing an element of truth. The mind‐cure gospel thus once more
+appears to us as having dignity and importance. We have seen it to be a
+genuine religion, and no mere silly appeal to imagination to cure disease;
+we have seen its method of experimental verification to be not unlike the
+method of all science; and now here we find mind‐cure as the champion of a
+perfectly definite conception of the metaphysical structure of the world.
+I hope that, in view of all this, you will not regret my having pressed it
+upon your attention at such length.
+Even if someone never experiences these moments personally, a thinking person must view their life in context of others, seeing their escape as mere luck, not fundamental difference. They could have been born to an entirely different fate. How hollow that security feels! What kind of order is it where the best you can say is "Thank God, it let me off clear this time!" Isn’t this peace a fragile fiction? Isn’t that joy a shallow delight, like a rogue’s snicker at his success? Take the happiest man—nine times out of ten his innermost consciousness is failure. Either his ideals exceed his achievements, or he has secret ideals where he knows himself falling short.
+                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
+When a conqueror of optimism like Goethe speaks thus, how must it be for less successful men?
+Let us now say good‐by for a while to all this way of thinking, and turn
+towards those persons who cannot so swiftly throw off the burden of the
+consciousness of evil, but are congenitally fated to suffer from its
+presence. Just as we saw that in healthy‐mindedness there are shallower
+and profounder 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 wrong
+correspondence 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, the two terms
+may be made to fit, and all go merry as a marriage bell again. But there
+are others for whom evil is no mere relation of the subject to particular
+outer things, but something more radical and general, a wrongness or vice
+in his essential nature, which no alteration of the environment, or any
+superficial rearrangement of the inner self, can cure, and which requires
+a supernatural remedy. On the whole, the Latin races have leaned more
+towards the former way of looking upon evil, as made up of ills and sins
+in the plural, removable in detail; while the Germanic races have tended
+rather to think of Sin in the singular, and with a capital S, as of
+something ineradicably ingrained in our natural subjectivity, and never to
+be removed by any superficial piecemeal operations.(70) These comparisons
+of races are always open to exception, but undoubtedly the northern tone
+in religion has inclined to the more intimately pessimistic persuasion,
+and this way of feeling, being the more extreme, we shall find by far the
+more instructive for our study.
+> “I will say nothing against the course of my existence. But at bottom it has been nothing but pain and burden, and I can affirm that... I have not had four weeks of genuine well‐being. It is but the perpetual rolling of a rock that must be raised up again forever.”
+Recent psychology has found great use for the word “threshold” as a
+symbolic designation for the point at which one state of mind passes into
+another. Thus we speak of the threshold of a man’s consciousness in
+general, to indicate the amount of noise, pressure, or other outer
+stimulus which it takes to arouse his attention at all. One with a high
+threshold will doze through an amount of racket by which one with a low
+threshold would be immediately waked. Similarly, when one is sensitive to
+small differences in any order of sensation, we say he has a low
+“difference‐threshold”—his mind easily steps over it into the
+consciousness of the differences in question. And just so we might speak
+of a “pain‐threshold,” a “fear‐threshold,” a “misery‐threshold,” and find
+it quickly overpassed by the consciousness of some individuals, but lying
+too high in others to be often reached by their consciousness. The
+sanguine and healthy‐minded live habitually on the sunny side of 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 their credit; whilst others seem to have
+been born close to the pain‐threshold, which the slightest irritants
+fatally send them over.
+What individual was ever as successful as Luther? Yet when old, he looked back on his life as absolute failure:
+Does it not appear as if one who lived more habitually on one side of the
+pain‐threshold might need a different sort of religion from one who
+habitually lived on the other? This question, of the relativity of
+different types of religion to different types of need, arises naturally
+at this point, and will become a serious problem ere we have done. But
+before we confront it in general terms, we must address ourselves to the
+unpleasant task of hearing what the sick souls, as we may call them in
+contrast to the healthy‐minded, have to say of the secrets of their
+prison‐house, their own peculiar form of consciousness. Let us then
+resolutely turn our backs on the once‐born and their sky‐blue optimistic
+gospel; let us not simply cry out, in spite of all appearances, “Hurrah
+for the Universe!—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 into our hands a more
+complicated key to the meaning of the situation.
+> “I am utterly weary of life. I pray the Lord will come forthwith and carry me hence... I would readily eat up this necklace today, for the Judgment to come tomorrow.”
+                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
+Failure, then, failure! The world brands us at every turn. We litter it with blunders, misdeeds, lost opportunities—monuments to our inadequacy. And with devastating emphasis the world erases us. No small fine, no apology satisfies; every pound of flesh is soaked in blood. The subtlest suffering ties to poisonous humiliations following failure.
+To begin with, how _can_ things so insecure as the successful experiences
+of this world afford a stable 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 disaster are
+always interposed? Unsuspectedly from the bottom of every fountain of
+pleasure, as the old poet said, something bitter rises up: a touch of
+nausea, a falling dead of the delight, a whiff of melancholy, things that
+sound a knell, for fugitive as they may be, they bring a feeling of coming
+from a deeper region and often have an appalling convincingness. The buzz
+of life ceases at their touch as a piano‐string stops sounding when the
+damper falls upon it.
+This is a pivotal human experience, clearly integral to life. As Stevenson writes:
+Of course the music can commence again;—and again and again,—at intervals.
+But with this the healthy‐minded consciousness is left with an
+irremediable sense of precariousness. It is a bell with a crack; it draws
+its breath on sufferance and by an accident.
+> “Whatever else we are intended to do, we are not intended to succeed; failure is the fate allotted.”
+Even if we suppose a man so packed with healthy‐mindedness as never to
+have experienced in his own person any of these sobering intervals, still,
+if he is a reflecting being, he must generalize and class his own lot with
+that of others; and, doing so, he must see that his escape is just a lucky
+chance and no essential difference. He might just as well have been born
+to an entirely different fortune. And then indeed the hollow security!
+What kind of a frame of things is it of which the best you can say is,
+“Thank God, it has let me off clear this time!” Is not its blessedness a
+fragile fiction? Is not your joy in it a very vulgar glee, not much unlike
+the snicker of any rogue at his success? If indeed it were all success,
+even on such terms as that! But take the happiest man, the one most envied
+by the world, and in nine cases out of ten his inmost consciousness is one
+of failure. Either his ideals in the line of his achievements are pitched
+far higher than the achievements themselves, or else he has secret ideals
+of which the world knows nothing, and in regard to which he inwardly knows
+himself to be found wanting.
+Since our nature is rooted in failure, is it any wonder theologians deemed it essential? They believed only through humiliation can deeper significance be reached.
+When such a conquering optimist as Goethe can express himself in this
+wise, how must it be with less successful men?
+But this is only first-stage "world-sickness." Increase sensitivity slightly, push further past misery-threshold, and successful moments' quality corrupts. All natural goods perish. Riches vanish; fame is breath; love can deceive; youth, health, pleasure fade. Can things ending in dust be true goods? Behind everything stands universal death:
+> “What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the Sun?... all was vanity and vexation of spirit... The dead know not anything... Truly the light is sweet... but if a man live many years and rejoice in them all, yet let him remember the days of darkness; for they shall be many.”
+    “I will say nothing,” writes Goethe in 1824, “against the course
+    of my existence. But at bottom it has been nothing but pain and
+    burden, and I can affirm that during the whole of my 75 years, I
+    have not had four weeks of genuine well‐being. It is but the
+    perpetual rolling of a rock that must be raised up again forever.”
+Life and its negation are inextricably blended. If life is good, its negation must be bad—yet both are equally essential facts. Thus natural happiness seems infected with contradiction. The stench of the grave surrounds it. "Healthy-mindedness" can only say: “Nonsense, get fresh air!” or “Cheer up, you’ll be fine!” But can such crude talk be rational? To assign religious value to happy-go-lucky contentment sanctifies forgetfulness and superficiality. Our troubles lie too deep. That we *can* die, that we *can* be ill, confuses us; that we’re currently alive is irrelevant. We need a life not tied to death, health not subject to illness, a good that will not perish—a good transcending nature.
+It all depends on soul-sensitivity to discords. “The trouble with me,” said a friend, “is that I believe too much in common happiness and goodness, and nothing can console me for their temporary nature. I am appalled it is even possible.” For most of us, a little cooling of vital instincts, slight loss of toughness, a bit of irritable weakness, and the worm at our joys' core appears, turning us into melancholy philosophers. The pride of life shrivels. This is the ancient quarrel between passionate youth and gray age—and age has the last word: the purely naturalistic view, however enthusiastic it begins, ends in sadness.
+What single‐handed man was ever on the whole as successful as Luther? yet
+when he had grown old, he looked back on his life as if it were an
+absolute failure.
+This sadness lies at the heart of every materialistic, agnostic, or naturalistic philosophy. Even if optimistic healthy-mindedness ignores the negative with strange power, the dark background remains, and the skull still grins at the banquet. In practical life, our gloom or joy regarding any present fact depends on larger goals and hopes. Its context gives primary value. If it leads nowhere, its glow disappears. An old man with a hidden disease may laugh and drink, but knowledge of his fate drains satisfaction. These pleasures become partners with death; the worm is their brother, turning them flat and meaningless.
+The brightness of the present hour is always borrowed from possibilities it implies. If our experiences are wrapped in eternal moral order; if suffering has immortal significance; if Heaven smiles upon earth—then days pass with zest. But place around them instead the chilling gloom that naturalism and evolutionary science see, and the thrill turns to anxious trembling.
+    “I am utterly weary of life. I pray the Lord will come forthwith
+    and carry me hence. Let him come, 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: “O God, grant that it may
+    come without delay. I would readily eat up this necklace to‐day,
+    for the Judgment to come to‐morrow.”—The Electress Dowager, one
+    day when Luther was dining with her, said to him: “Doctor, I wish
+    you may live forty years to come.” “Madam,” replied he, “rather
+    than live forty years more, I would give up my chance of
+    Paradise.”
+For naturalism fed on modern science, mankind lives on a frozen lake surrounded by cliffs with no escape. They know the ice melts bit by bit, and the day nears when the last sliver disappears, and human fate will be to drown shamefully. The merrier the skating, the warmer the sun, the more poignant the sadness when reality strikes.
+The early Greeks are often held up as models of healthy-minded joy from nature-worship. There was indeed much joy—Homer’s enthusiasm is consistent. But even in Homer, reflective passages are cheerless, and once Greeks became thoughtful about ultimate things, they became total pessimists. The jealousy of gods, retribution after happiness, all-encompassing death, dark fate, and unintelligible cruelty fixed their imagination. Their polytheism's beautiful joy is largely a modern poetic fiction. They knew no joys comparable in depth to those Brahmans, Buddhists, Christians, and Muslims—"twice-born" people whose religion is not nature-based—derive from mysticism and renunciation.
+Failure, then, failure! so the world stamps us at every turn. We strew it
+with our blunders, our misdeeds, our lost opportunities, with all the
+memorials of our inadequacy to our vocation. And with 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 its blood. The subtlest forms of suffering
+known to man are connected with the poisonous humiliations incidental to
+these results.
+Stoic indifference and Epicurean resignation were the farthest the Greek mind advanced. The Epicurean said: “Do not seek happiness, but escape unhappiness; intense happiness links with pain; stay near safe shore, expect little, aim low; above all, do not worry.” The Stoic said: “The only genuine good is free possession of one’s own soul; all other goods are lies.” Both are, to some degree, philosophies of despair about nature’s gifts. Trusting abandonment to joy vanished; each proposes escape from disillusionment. Epicureanism hopes from managing indulgence; Stoicism hopes for nothing and gives up natural goods entirely. There is dignity in both resignations—distinct stages in sobering our primitive intoxication with sensory happiness. In one, passion cooled; in the other, turned cold. Though I speak in past tense, Stoicism and Epicureanism will always mark a specific stage in the world-sick soul’s evolution. They conclude the "once-born" period, representing natural man’s highest achievements—Epicureanism showing refinement, Stoicism moral will. They leave the world an unresolved contradiction, seeking no higher unity. Compared to complex ecstasies of spiritually regenerated Christians or Oriental pantheists, their peace-formulas seem almost crude. I am not yet judging these attitudes, only describing variety.
+And they are pivotal human experiences. A process so ubiquitous and
+everlasting is evidently an integral part of life. “There is indeed one
+element in human destiny,” Robert Louis Stevenson writes, “that not
+blindness itself can controvert. Whatever else we are intended to do, we
+are not intended to succeed; failure is the fate allotted.”(71) And our
+nature being thus rooted in failure, is it any wonder that theologians
+should have held it to be essential, and thought that only through the
+personal experience of humiliation which it engenders the deeper sense of
+life’s significance is reached?(72)
+Historically, the surest path to "twice-born" ecstatic happiness runs through more radical pessimism. We’ve seen worldly goods stripped of glow. But there is unhappiness so great that goods are entirely forgotten. Reaching this extreme requires more than observing life or reflecting on death—the individual must personally fall victim to pathological melancholy. Just as healthy-minded enthusiasts ignore evil, melancholy sufferers ignore any good; for them, it may no longer feel real. Such mental pain-sensitivity is rare in normal nervous constitutions, seldom found even in healthy people suffering terrible external misfortunes. Here the "neurotic constitution" enters, playing a major role. Since these melancholy experiences are private, I will use personal accounts. They will be painful, almost indecent to discuss publicly, yet lie directly in our path. If we take psychology of religion seriously, we must dive below polite conversation’s deceptive surface.
+But this is only the first stage of the world‐sickness. Make the human
+being’s sensitiveness a little greater, carry him a little farther over
+the misery‐threshold, and the good quality of the successful 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. Can things 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:—
+We can distinguish many pathological depressions. Sometimes it’s passive joylessness—loss of taste, zest, energy. Professor Ribot coined *anhedonia*:
+> “The state of anhedonia... has been very little studied, but it exists. A young girl... with liver disease... felt no longer any affection for her father and mother... The same things which formerly convulsed her with laughter entirely failed to interest her now. Esquirol observed... a very intelligent magistrate... with hepatic disease. Every emotion appeared dead within him... The thought of his house, of his home, of his wife, and of his absent children moved him... as little as a theorem of Euclid.”
+    “What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under
+    the Sun? I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and
+    behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit. For that which
+    befalleth 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 now perished; 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 live many years and rejoice in
+    them all, yet let him remember the days of darkness; for they
+    shall be many.”
+Prolonged seasickness produces temporary anhedonia. Every good, earthly or heavenly, is imagined only to be rejected with disgust. Such a temporary condition, linked to religious development of a high-minded character, appears in Catholic philosopher Father Gratry’s memoirs. From social isolation and excessive study at the Polytechnic school, young Gratry fell into nervous exhaustion:
+> “I had such universal terror that I woke at night with a start, thinking the Pantheon was tumbling on the school... And when these impressions passed, all day long without respite I suffered incurable and intolerable desolation, verging on despair. I thought myself rejected by God, lost, damned! I suffered something like the suffering of hell... Now, and all at once, I suffered... what is suffered there.”
+In short, life and its negation are beaten up inextricably together. But
+if the life be good, the negation of it must be bad. Yet the two are
+equally essential facts of existence; and all natural happiness thus seems
+infected with a contradiction. The breath of the sepulchre surrounds it.
+> “But what was perhaps still more dreadful is that every idea of heaven was taken away... Heaven seemed a vacuum; a mythological elysium, an abode of shadows less real than earth. I could conceive no joy, no pleasure... Happiness, joy, light, affection, love—all these words were now devoid of sense... I neither perceived nor conceived any longer the existence of happiness or perfection. An abstract heaven over a naked rock. Such was my present abode for eternity.”
+To a mind attentive to this state of things and rightly subject to the
+joy‐destroying chill which such 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 be treated as a rational answer? To
+ascribe religious value to mere happy‐go‐lucky contentment with one’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 at all, is what perplexes us;
+the fact that we now for a moment live and are well is irrelevant to that
+perplexity. We need a life not correlated with death, a health not liable
+to illness, a kind of good that will not perish, a good in fact that flies
+beyond the Goods of nature.
+A far worse form is active, positive anguish—mental nerve pain unknown to healthy life. This anguish takes many forms: loathing, irritation, self-despair, suspicion, anxiety, terror. The patient may rebel or submit, blame self or outside forces, and may or may not be tormented by why they suffer. Most cases are mixed. Only a small portion connect to religious experience; extreme irritability usually does not. Here is the first melancholy case at hand—a letter from a French asylum patient:
+It all depends on how sensitive the soul may become to discords. “The
+trouble with me is that I believe too much in common happiness and
+goodness,” said a friend of mine whose consciousness was of this sort,
+“and nothing can console me for their transiency. I am appalled and
+disconcerted at its being possible.” And so with most of us: a little
+cooling down of animal excitability and instinct, 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 turn us into melancholy metaphysicians. The pride of life
+and glory of the world will shrivel. It is after all but the standing
+quarrel of hot youth and hoary eld. Old age has the last word: the purely
+naturalistic look at life, however enthusiastically it may begin, is sure
+to end in sadness.
+“I suffer too much in this hospital, physically and mentally. Besides burning sensations and sleeplessness... I feel fear—atrocious fear... Where is the justice? What have I done to deserve such severity?... What would I not owe to anyone who would release me from my life! Eat, drink, lie awake all night, suffer without pause—such is the fine inheritance I received from my mother!... I am defenseless against the invisible enemy tightening his coils... I can write in no other way, having neither brain nor thoughts left. O God! What a misfortune to be born!... There is more pain in life than joy—it is one long agony until the grave.”
+This sadness lies at the heart of every merely positivistic, agnostic, or
+naturalistic scheme of philosophy. Let sanguine healthy‐mindedness do its
+best with its strange power of living in the moment and ignoring and
+forgetting, still the evil background is really there to be thought of,
+and the skull will grin in at the banquet. In the practical life of the
+individual, we know how his whole gloom or glee about any present fact
+depends on the remoter schemes and hopes with which it stands related. Its
+significance and framing give it the chief part of its value. Let it be
+known to lead nowhere, and however agreeable it may be in its immediacy,
+its glow and gilding vanish. The old man, sick with an insidious internal
+disease, may laugh and quaff his wine at first as well as ever, but he
+knows his fate now, for the doctors have revealed it; and the knowledge
+knocks the satisfaction out of all these functions. They are partners of
+death and the worm is their brother, and they turn to a mere flatness.
+This letter shows two things. First, the poor man’s consciousness is so overwhelmed by evil that any sense of good is lost: the sun has left his sky. Second, his complaining misery prevents religious direction. A complaining mind tends toward irreligion; as far as I know, it has played no part in constructing religious systems.
+The lustre of the present hour is always borrowed from the background of
+possibilities it goes with. Let our common experiences be enveloped in an
+eternal moral order; let our suffering have an immortal significance; let
+Heaven smile upon the earth, and deities pay their visits; let faith and
+hope be the atmosphere which man breathes in;—and his days pass by with
+zest; they stir with prospects, they thrill with remoter values. Place
+round them on the contrary the curdling cold and gloom and absence of all
+permanent meaning which for pure naturalism and the popular science
+evolutionism of our time are all that is visible ultimately, and the
+thrill stops short, or turns rather to an anxious trembling.
+Religious melancholy needs softer, more receptive tone. Tolstoy’s *My Confession* gives wonderful account of the melancholy attack leading to his religious conclusions. These conclusions are peculiar, but the melancholy shows two characteristics making it perfect for our purpose: First, clear anhedonia—passive loss of appetite for all life’s values. Second, it shows how the world’s altered appearance stimulated Tolstoy’s intellect into gnawing, distressing questioning and philosophical relief effort.
+For naturalism, fed on recent cosmological speculations, mankind is in a
+position similar to that of a set of people living on a frozen lake,
+surrounded by cliffs over which there is no escape, yet knowing that
+little by little the ice is melting, and the inevitable day drawing near
+when the last film 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 the bonfires at night,
+the more poignant the sadness with which one must take in the meaning of
+the total situation.
+First, regarding spiritual judgments and value sense. Facts coexist with opposite emotional interpretations; the same fact inspires entirely different feelings in different people, or at different times in the same person. No logical connection exists between external fact and feelings it provokes. These feelings originate in physical and spiritual depths of individual being. Imagine yourself suddenly stripped of all emotion your world inspires, and try to imagine it *as it exists* without your commentary. It would be impossible to conceive such negativity. No universe part would have more importance than another; objects and events would be without significance, character, expression. Whatever value our worlds appear to have are pure gifts from observer’s mind. Love’s passion is the most familiar example: if it happens, it happens; if not, no reasoning can force it. Yet it transforms the loved person’s value completely, sets the whole world to a new tune, gives life new direction. Fear, indignation, jealousy, ambition, worship do the same. If present, life changes. Whether present depends almost always on non-logical, often physical, conditions. These passions are *gifts*—from sources sometimes low, sometimes high, but almost always non-logical and beyond control. How can a dying old man reason his way back to the romance, mystery, and anticipation the earth held when he was young? These are gifts of body or spirit, and the spirit blows where it chooses.
+The early Greeks are continually held up to us in literary works as models
+of the healthy‐minded joyousness which the religion of nature may
+engender. There was indeed much joyousness among the Greeks—Homer’s flow
+of enthusiasm for most things that the sun shines upon is steady. But even
+in Homer the reflective passages are cheerless,(73) and the moment the
+Greeks grew systematically pensive and thought of ultimates, they became
+unmitigated pessimists.(74) The jealousy 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 their imagination. The beautiful joyousness of their
+polytheism is only a poetic modern fiction. They knew no joys comparable
+in quality of preciousness to those which we shall erelong see that
+Brahmans, Buddhists, Christians, Mohammedans, twice‐born people whose
+religion is non‐naturalistic, get from their several creeds of mysticism
+and renunciation.
+The practically real world for each of us is compound: physical facts and emotional values inseparably combined. Remove or distort either part, and pathology follows.
+Stoic insensibility and Epicurean resignation were the farthest advance
+which the Greek mind made in that direction. The Epicurean said: “Seek not
+to be happy, but rather to escape unhappiness; strong happiness is always
+linked with pain; therefore hug the safe shore, and do not tempt the
+deeper raptures. Avoid disappointment by expecting little, and by aiming
+low; and above all do not fret.” The Stoic said: “The only genuine good
+that life can yield a man is the free possession of his own soul; all
+other goods are lies.” Each of these philosophies is in its degree a
+philosophy of despair in nature’s boons. Trustful self‐abandonment to the
+joys that freely offer has entirely 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
+of indulgence and damping of desire. The Stoic hopes for no results, and
+gives up natural good altogether. There is dignity in both these forms of
+resignation. They represent distinct stages in the sobering process which
+man’s primitive intoxication with sense‐happiness is sure to undergo. In
+the one the hot blood has grown cool, in the other it has become quite
+cold; and although I have spoken of them in the past tense, as if they
+were merely historic, yet Stoicism and Epicureanism will probably be to
+all time typical attitudes, marking a certain definite stage accomplished
+in the evolution of the world‐sick soul.(75) They mark the conclusion of
+what we call the once‐born period, and represent the highest flights of
+what twice‐born religion would call the purely natural man—Epicureanism,
+which can only by great courtesy be called a religion, showing his
+refinement, and Stoicism exhibiting his moral will. They leave the world
+in the shape of an unreconciled contradiction, and seek no higher unity.
+Compared with the complex ecstasies which the supernaturally regenerated
+Christian may enjoy, or the oriental pantheist indulge in, their receipts
+for equanimity are expedients which seem almost crude in their simplicity.
+In Tolstoy’s case, the sense that life had any meaning was temporarily withdrawn. The result was total transformation in reality’s appearance. When we study conversion or religious rebirth, we’ll see a frequent consequence is nature’s transfiguration—new heaven shining on new earth. In melancholy, there is usually similar change but opposite direction. The world looks remote, strange, sinister, uncanny. Its color is gone, breath cold, eyes staring without light. “It is as if I lived in another century,” says one asylum patient. “I see everything through a cloud... I see, I touch, but things do not come near me; a thick veil alters the color and look of everything.” “People move like shadows, sounds seem from a distant world.” “There is no longer any past; people appear so strange; it is as if I could see no reality, as if I were in a theater; I can no longer find myself; everything floats before my eyes but leaves no impression.” “I weep false tears, I have unreal hands: the things I see are not real things.” Such expressions naturally come to those describing melancholy’s changed state.
+Please observe, however, that I am not yet pretending finally to _judge_
+any of these attitudes. I am only describing their variety.
+For some, this creates deepest astonishment. This strangeness feels wrong; unreality cannot be whole truth. A mystery hides; metaphysical solution must exist. If natural world is so deceptive and alien, what *is* real? Urgent wondering begins—a focused theoretical activity—and in desperate effort to find right relationship with world, sufferer is often led to satisfying religious solution.
+The securest way to the rapturous sorts of happiness of which the twice‐
+born make report has as an historic matter of fact been through a more
+radical pessimism than anything that we have yet considered. We have seen
+how the lustre and enchantment may be rubbed off from the goods of nature.
+But there is a pitch of unhappiness so great that the goods of nature 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 life and reflection upon death. The
+individual must in his own person become the prey of a pathological
+melancholy. As the healthy‐minded enthusiast succeeds in ignoring evil’s
+very existence, so the subject of melancholy is forced in spite of himself
+to ignore that of all good whatever: for him it may no longer have the
+least reality. Such sensitiveness and susceptibility to mental pain is a
+rare occurrence where the nervous constitution is entirely normal; one
+seldom finds it in a healthy subject even where he is the victim of the
+most atrocious cruelties of outward fortune. 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. Since these experiences of melancholy are in the first instance
+absolutely private and individual, I can now help myself out with personal
+documents. Painful indeed they will be to listen to, and there is almost
+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 forget conventionalities, and dive below
+the smooth and lying official conversational surface.
+Around age fifty, Tolstoy began having moments of perplexity, "arrest," as if he did not know "how to live." Life had been enchanting; now it was dead. Things whose meaning had been self-evident became meaningless. Questions “Why?” and “What next?” haunted him increasingly. At first, answers seemed easy; but as urgency grew, he realized they were like first ignored signs of illness until they became continuous suffering. Then he understood what he took for passing ailment was the most important thing: his death.
+One can distinguish many kinds of pathological depression. Sometimes it is
+mere passive joylessness and dreariness, discouragement, dejection, lack
+of taste and zest and spring. Professor Ribot has proposed the name
+_anhedonia_ to designate this condition.
+These questions—“Why?” “For what?” “To what end?”—found no response:
+> “I felt 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 force impelled me to get rid of my existence... It was an aspiration of my whole being to get out of life.”
+    “The state of _anhedonia_, if I may coin a new word to pair off
+    with _analgesia_,” he writes, “has been very little studied, but
+    it exists. A young girl was smitten with a liver disease which for
+    some time altered her constitution. She felt no longer any
+    affection for her father and mother. She would have played with
+    her doll, but it was impossible to find the least pleasure in the
+    act. The same things which formerly convulsed her with laughter
+    entirely failed to interest her now. Esquirol observed the case of
+    a very intelligent magistrate who was also a prey to hepatic
+    disease. Every emotion appeared dead within him. He manifested
+    neither perversion nor violence, but complete absence of emotional
+    reaction. If he went to the theatre, which he did out of habit, he
+    could find no pleasure there. The thought of his house, of his
+    home, of his wife, and of his absent children moved him as little,
+    he said, as a theorem of Euclid.”(76)
+"Look at me then—a man happy and in good health, hiding a rope so as not to hang myself... look at me no longer going out hunting, lest I give in to the too-easy temptation of ending my life with my gun.
+I did not know what I wanted. I was afraid of life; I was driven to leave it; and despite that, I still hoped for something.
+Prolonged seasickness will in most persons produce a temporary condition
+of anhedonia. Every good, terrestrial or celestial, is imagined only to be
+turned from with disgust. A temporary condition of this sort, connected
+with the religious evolution of a singularly lofty character, both
+intellectual and moral, is well described by the Catholic philosopher,
+Father Gratry, in his autobiographical recollections. In consequence of
+mental isolation and excessive study at the Polytechnic school, young
+Gratry fell into a state of nervous exhaustion with symptoms which he thus
+describes:—
+All this happened when, as far as external circumstances, I should have been completely happy. I had a good wife who loved me, good children, a large estate growing without effort. I was more respected than ever; I was praised by strangers; I could believe my name was famous. Moreover, I possessed physical and mental strength I rarely saw in people my age.
+And yet I could give no rational meaning to any action of my life. I was surprised I had not understood this from the beginning. My state was as if someone played a wicked joke. One can live only as long as one is intoxicated, drunk with life; but when sober, one cannot help seeing it is all stupid deception. The most honest thing is that it isn't even funny; it is cruel and stupid.
+    “I had such a universal terror that I woke at night with a start,
+    thinking that the Pantheon was tumbling on the Polytechnic school,
+    or that the school was in flames, or that the Seine was pouring
+    into the Catacombs, and that Paris was being swallowed up. And
+    when these impressions were past, all day long without respite I
+    suffered an incurable and intolerable desolation, verging on
+    despair. I thought myself, in fact, rejected by God, lost, damned!
+    I felt something like the suffering of 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.
+The oriental fable of the traveler surprised in the desert by a wild beast is very old.
+    “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. It
+    was like a vacuum; a mythological elysium, an abode of shadows
+    less real than the earth. I could conceive no joy, no pleasure in
+    inhabiting it. Happiness, joy, light, affection, love—all these
+    words were now devoid of sense. Without doubt I could still have
+    talked of all these things, but I had become incapable of feeling
+    anything in them, of understanding anything about them, of hoping
+    anything from them, or of believing them to exist. There was my
+    great and inconsolable grief! I neither perceived nor conceived
+    any longer the existence of happiness or perfection. An abstract
+    heaven over a naked rock. Such was my present abode for
+    eternity.”(77)
+Trying to save himself, the traveler jumps into a waterless well; but at the bottom, a dragon waits to devour him. The unhappy man, not daring to climb out for fear of the beast, nor jump down for fear of the dragon, clings to a bush’s branches growing from a crack. His hands weaken; he must soon surrender; but still he clings, and sees two mice, one white and one black, gnawing the bush’s roots.
+The traveler knows he must inevitably perish; but while hanging, he finds honey drops on leaves. He licks them with delight.
+So much for melancholy in the sense of incapacity for joyous feeling. A
+much worse form of it is positive and active anguish, a sort of psychical
+neuralgia wholly unknown to healthy life. Such anguish 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 of suspicion, anxiety, trepidation, fear. The patient
+may rebel or submit; may accuse himself, or accuse outside powers; and he
+may or he may not be tormented by the theoretical mystery of why he should
+so have to suffer. Most cases are mixed cases, and we should not treat our
+classifications with too much respect. Moreover, it is only a relatively
+small proportion of cases that connect themselves with the religious
+sphere of experience at all. Exasperated cases, for instance, as a rule do
+not. I quote now literally from the first case of melancholy on which I
+lay my hand. It is a letter from a patient in a French asylum.
+> “Thus I hang upon life’s boughs, knowing the inevitable dragon of death waits to tear me, and I cannot comprehend why I am thus made martyr. I try to suck the honey that formerly consoled me; but honey pleases me no longer, and day and night the white mouse and black mouse gnaw the branch I cling to. I can see but one thing: the inevitable dragon and mice—I cannot turn my gaze away.”
+This is no fable but literal, undeniable truth everyone understands. What will be the outcome of what I do today? Tomorrow? My whole life? Why live? Why do anything? Is there any purpose death does not undo?
+    “I suffer too much in this hospital, both physically and morally.
+    Besides the burnings and the sleeplessness (for I no longer sleep
+    since I am shut up here, and the little rest I get is broken by
+    bad dreams, and I am waked with a jump by nightmares, dreadful
+    visions, lightning, thunder, and the rest), fear, atrocious fear,
+    presses me down, holds me without respite, never lets me go. Where
+    is the justice in it all! What have I done to deserve this excess
+    of severity? Under what form will this fear crush me? What would I
+    not owe to any one who would rid me of my life! Eat, drink, lie
+    awake all night, suffer without interruption—such is the fine
+    legacy I have received from my mother! What I fail to understand
+    is this abuse of power. There are limits to everything, there is a
+    middle way. But God knows neither middle way nor limits. I say
+    God, but why? All I have known so 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 you read this, it will easily
+    prove to you my insanity. The style and the ideas are incoherent
+    enough—I can see that myself. But I cannot keep myself from being
+    either crazy or an idiot; and, as things are, from whom should I
+    ask pity? I am defenseless against the invisible enemy who is
+    tightening his 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 a morning; and how true and right I was
+    when in our philosophy‐year in college I chewed the cud of
+    bitterness with the pessimists. Yes, indeed, there is more pain in
+    life than gladness—it is one long agony 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 more years!”(78)
+These questions are simplest in the world. From ignorant child to wisest old man, they are in every human soul. Without answers, life cannot go on—as I experienced.
+'But perhaps,' I said, 'there is something I have failed to notice. It isn't possible this despair is natural to humanity.' I sought explanation in every knowledge branch. I questioned painfully, not from idle curiosity but like a lost man trying to save himself—and found nothing. I became convinced everyone who sought answers in sciences before me also found nothing, and recognized that the meaningless absurdity of life is the only undeniable knowledge accessible to humans.
+This letter shows two things. First, you see how the entire consciousness
+of the poor man is so choked with the feeling of evil that the sense of
+there being any good in the world is lost for him altogether. His
+attention excludes it, cannot admit it: the sun has left his heaven. And
+secondly you see 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.
+To prove this, Tolstoy quotes Buddha, Solomon, and Schopenhauer. He finds only four ways his class and society typically deal with this: simple animal blindness—sucking honey without seeing dragon or mice; thoughtful epicureanism—snatching pleasure while day lasts; courageous suicide; or seeing mice and dragon yet weakly clinging to life.
+                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
+Suicide was logically consistent.
+Religious melancholy must be cast in a more melting mood. Tolstoy has left
+us, in his book called My Confession, a wonderful account of the attack of
+melancholy which led him to his own religious conclusions. The latter in
+some respects are peculiar; but the melancholy presents two characters
+which make it a typical document for our present purpose. First it is a
+well‐marked case of anhedonia, of passive loss of appetite for all life’s
+values; and second, it shows how the altered and estranged aspect which
+the world assumed in consequence of this stimulated Tolstoy’s intellect to
+a gnawing, carking questioning and effort for philosophic relief. I mean
+to quote Tolstoy at some length; but before doing so, I will make a
+general remark on each of these two points.
+"Yet," says Tolstoy, "while my intellect worked, something else worked too and kept me from the act—a consciousness of life... my heart continued to suffer with another longing emotion... a thirst for God. This craving had nothing to do with my logical thoughts—it was their direct opposite—but came from my heart. It was dread that made me feel orphaned and isolated, softened by hope of finding help."
+First on our spiritual judgments and the sense of value in general.
+Of the process that led from this God-idea to Tolstoy’s recovery, I will say nothing now, saving it for later. Our focus is the phenomenon of total disenchantment with ordinary life—the fact that habitual values can appear ghastly mockery to a man so capable.
+It is notorious that facts are compatible with opposite emotional
+comments, since the same fact will inspire entirely different feelings in
+different persons, and at different times in the same person; and there is
+no rationally deducible connection between any outer fact and the
+sentiments it may happen to provoke. These have their source in another
+sphere of existence altogether, in the animal and spiritual region of the
+subject’s being. Conceive yourself, if possible, suddenly stripped of 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 will be almost impossible for you to
+realize such a condition of negativity and deadness. No one portion of the
+universe would then have importance beyond another; and the whole
+collection of its things 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 thus
+pure gifts of the spectator’s mind. The passion of love is the most
+familiar and extreme example of this fact. If it comes, it comes; if it
+does not come, no process of reasoning can force it. Yet it transforms the
+value of the creature loved as utterly as the sunrise transforms Mont
+Blanc from a corpse‐like gray to a rosy enchantment; and it sets the whole
+world to a new tune for the lover and gives a new issue to his life. So
+with fear, with indignation, jealousy, ambition, worship. If they are
+there, life changes. And whether they shall be there or not depends almost
+always upon non‐logical, 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 sources
+sometimes low and sometimes high; but almost always non‐logical and beyond
+our control. How can the moribund old man reason back to himself the
+romance, the mystery, the imminence of great 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’s materials lend their surface passively to all the
+gifts alike, as the stage‐setting receives indifferently whatever
+alternating colored lights may be shed upon it from the optical apparatus
+in the gallery.
+When disillusionment reaches this depth, complete restoration rarely follows. Once you’ve tasted the tree’s fruit, Eden’s simple happiness never returns. Any happiness that does come—and often it fails to return acutely, though sometimes intensely—is not based on simple ignorance of evil. Instead, it is more complex, incorporating natural evil as element, yet no longer finding evil terrifying because swallowed in supernatural good. This is redemption, not mere return to natural health. When saved, the sufferer is saved by what feels like second birth—a deeper conscious existence than before.
+Meanwhile the practically real world for each one of us, the effective
+world of the individual, is the 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
+call pathological ensues.
+We find another religious melancholy type in John Bunyan’s autobiography. Tolstoy’s concerns were largely objective—troubled by life’s purpose; Bunyan’s centered on his personal self. He was classic unstable temperament, oversensitive conscience to morbid degree, plagued by doubts, fears, intrusive thoughts. He was victim of verbal automatisms—Scripture verses coming half-hallucinatorily as voices, seizing his mind like a shuttlecock. With this came terrible melancholy self-contempt and despair.
+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 the phenomenon of conversion
+or religious regeneration, we shall see that a not infrequent consequence
+of the change operated in the subject is a transfiguration of the face of
+nature in his eyes. A new heaven seems to shine upon a new earth. In
+melancholiacs there is usually a similar change, 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 I lived in another century,” says one asylum
+patient.—“I see everything through a cloud,” says another, “things are not
+as they were, and I am changed.”—“I see,” says a third, “I touch, but the
+things do not come near me, a thick veil alters the hue and look of
+everything.”—“Persons move like shadows, and sounds seem to come from a
+distant world.”—“There is no longer any past for me; people appear so
+strange; it is as if I could not see any reality, as if I were in a
+theatre; as if people 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 unreal hands: the
+things I see are not real things.”—Such are expressions that naturally
+rise to the lips of melancholy subjects describing their changed
+state.(79)
+“I thought I was growing worse, further from conversion than ever. If I had been burned at the stake, I could not have believed Christ loved me... I saw this, felt this, was broken to pieces, yet could not find in my soul true desire for deliverance. My heart was at times exceedingly hard. If I would have given a thousand pounds for a single tear, I could not shed one—nor even want to.
+Now there are some subjects whom all this leaves a prey to the profoundest
+astonishment. The strangeness is wrong. The unreality cannot be. A mystery
+is concealed, and a metaphysical solution must exist. If the natural world
+is so double‐faced and unhomelike, what world, what thing is real? An
+urgent wondering and questioning is set up, a poring theoretic activity,
+and in the desperate effort to get into right relations with the matter,
+the sufferer is often led to what becomes for him a satisfying religious
+solution.
+> “Oh, how gingerly did I then go, in all I did or said! I found myself as on a miry bog that shook if I did but stir; and was as there left both by God and Christ, and the spirit, and all good things.”
+At about the age of fifty, Tolstoy relates that he began to have moments
+of perplexity, of what he calls arrest, as if he knew not “how to live,”
+or what to do. It is obvious that these were moments in which the
+excitement and interest which our functions naturally bring had ceased.
+Life had been enchanting, it was now flat sober, more than sober, dead.
+Things were meaningless whose meaning had always been self‐evident. The
+questions “Why?” and “What next?” began to beset him more and more
+frequently. At first it seemed as if such questions must be answerable,
+and as if he 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 attention till they
+run into one continuous suffering, and then he realizes that what he took
+for a passing disorder means the most momentous thing in the world for
+him, means his death.
+“My original and inward corruption was my plague. Because of it, I was more loathsome in my own eyes than a toad, and thought I was so in God’s eyes too. Sin would bubble from my heart as naturally as water from a fountain... I was certain I was forsaken by God, and remained in this state for years.
+These questions “Why?” “Wherefore?” “What for?” found no response.
+“By now I was sorry God had made me man. I blessed beasts, birds, fish, for they had no sinful nature... I would have rejoiced if my condition were like theirs. I envied dog and toad; I would gladly have been dog or horse, for they had no soul to perish under Hell’s weight, as mine seemed destined. Even seeing and feeling this, broken to pieces, what added to sorrow was that I could not find true desire for deliverance.
+> “I was both a burthen and a terror to myself; nor did I ever so know, as now, what it was to be weary 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.”
+    “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 force
+    impelled me to get rid of my existence, in one way or another. It
+    cannot be said exactly that I _wished_ 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 impelled me in the opposite direction.
+    It was an aspiration of my whole being to get out of life.
+Bunyan, like Tolstoy, eventually saw light, but we set that aside for now. In a later lecture I will share Henry Alline’s conclusion—his religious melancholy peak was not unlike Bunyan’s:
+    “Behold me then, a man happy and in good health, hiding the rope
+    in order not to hang myself to the rafters of the room where every
+    night I went to sleep alone; behold me no longer going shooting,
+    lest I should yield to the too easy temptation of putting an end
+    to myself with my gun.
+“Everything I saw seemed a burden; earth seemed accursed. All trees, plants, rocks, hills, valleys seemed dressed in mourning, groaning under curse, conspiring for my ruin. My sins seemed laid bare, so everyone seeing me knew them... I had such sense of vanity and emptiness below that the entire world could not make me happy—not even all creation... I often looked at animals with envy, wishing I were in their place so I would have no soul to lose... I often thought: 'Oh, that I could fly away from danger!'”
+    “I did not know what I wanted. I was afraid of life; I was driven
+    to leave it; and in spite of that I still hoped something from it.
+Envying peaceful animals seems common sadness symptom.
+    “All this took place at a time when so far as all my outer
+    circumstances went, I ought to have been completely happy. I had a
+    good wife who loved me and whom I loved; good children and a large
+    property which was increasing with no pains taken on my part. I
+    was more respected by my kinsfolk and acquaintance than I had ever
+    been; I was loaded with praise by strangers; and without
+    exaggeration I could believe my name already famous. Moreover I
+    was neither insane nor ill. On the contrary, I possessed a
+    physical and mental strength which I have rarely met in persons of
+    my age. I could mow as well as the peasants, I could work with my
+    brain eight hours uninterruptedly and feel no bad effects.
+The worst melancholy form manifests as panic. Here is an excellent example, permitted for publication. The original is French; though the writer was in fragile nervous state, his case is remarkably clear. I translate freely:
+    “And yet I could give no reasonable meaning to any actions of my
+    life. And I was surprised that I had not understood this from the
+    very beginning. My state of mind was as if some wicked and stupid
+    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.
+“While in philosophical pessimism and depression, I entered a dressing room one twilight evening. Suddenly, without warning, a horrible fear of my own existence fell upon me as if from darkness. Simultaneously, an image arose of an epileptic patient I had seen in asylum—a black-haired youth with greenish skin, completely catatonic, sitting all day on a bench with knees pulled to chin, covered by a coarse gray undershirt, moving nothing but black eyes, appearing non-human. This image and my fear merged.
+    “The oriental fable of the traveler surprised in the desert by a
+    wild beast is very old.
+> “That shape am I, I felt, potentially. Nothing I possess can defend me against that fate, if the hour should strike for me as it struck for him.”
+    “Seeking to save himself from the fierce animal, the traveler
+    jumps into a well with no water in it; but at the bottom of this
+    well he sees a dragon waiting with open mouth to devour him. And
+    the unhappy man, not daring to go out lest he should be the prey
+    of the beast, not daring to jump to the bottom lest he should be
+    devoured by the dragon, clings to the branches of a wild bush
+    which grows out of one of the cracks of the well. His hands
+    weaken, and he feels that he must soon give way to certain fate;
+    but still he clings, and sees two mice, one white, the other
+    black, evenly moving round the bush to which he hangs, and gnawing
+    off its roots.
+“The horror and realization of how narrowly I differed from him was so intense that something solid in my chest gave way entirely, and I became trembling fear. Afterward, the universe changed completely. I woke morning after morning with horrible dread and life-insecurity I never knew before or since. It was revelation; though immediate feelings passed, the experience made me sympathetic to morbid feelings ever since. Fear gradually faded, but for months I could not go out into dark alone.
+    “The traveler sees this and knows that he must inevitably perish;
+    but while thus hanging he looks about him and finds on the leaves
+    of the bush some drops of honey. These he reaches with his tongue
+    and licks them off with rapture.
+“In general, I dreaded being left alone. I wondered how others lived, how I had ever lived so unaware of insecurity’s pit beneath life’s surface. My mother, very cheerful, seemed total paradox in her peace, which I was careful not to disturb. I always believed this melancholy had religious significance.”
+    “Thus I hang upon the boughs of life, knowing that the inevitable
+    dragon of death is waiting ready to tear me, and I cannot
+    comprehend why I am thus made a martyr. I try to suck the honey
+    which formerly consoled me; but the honey pleases me no longer,
+    and day and night the white mouse and the black mouse gnaw the
+    branch to which I cling. I can see but one thing: the inevitable
+    dragon and the mice—I cannot turn my gaze away from them.
+Asked to explain, he replied:
+    “This is no fable, but the literal incontestable truth which every
+    one may understand. What will be the outcome of what I do to‐day?
+    Of what I shall do to‐morrow? What will be the outcome of all my
+    life? Why should I live? Why should I do anything? Is there in
+    life any purpose which the inevitable death which awaits me does
+    not undo and destroy?
+“I mean the fear was so invasive that if I had not clung to verses like ‘The eternal God is my refuge,’ ‘Come unto me... heavy-laden,’ ‘I am the resurrection and the life,’ I think I would have gone insane.”
+    “These questions are the simplest in the world. From the stupid
+    child to the wisest old man, they are in the soul of every human
+    being. Without an answer to them, it is impossible, as I
+    experienced, for life to go on.
+No more examples needed; these suffice. One shows mortal things’ vanity, another sense of sin, another fear of universe. It is always through these three paths that original optimism and self-satisfaction are leveled.
+    “ ‘But perhaps,’ I often said to myself, ‘there may be something I
+    have failed to notice or to comprehend. It is not possible that
+    this condition of despair should be natural to mankind.’ And I
+    sought for an explanation in all the branches of knowledge
+    acquired by men. I questioned painfully and protractedly and with
+    no idle curiosity. I sought, not with indolence, but laboriously
+    and obstinately for days and nights together. I sought like a man
+    who is lost and seeks to save himself,—and I found nothing. I
+    became convinced, moreover, that all those who before me had
+    sought for an answer in the sciences have also found nothing. And
+    not only this, but that they have recognized that the very thing
+    which was leading me to despair—the meaningless absurdity of
+    life—is the only incontestable knowledge accessible to man.”
+In none was there intellectual insanity or delusion. But if we examined truly insane melancholy, with hallucinations and delusions, the story would be grimmer—absolute desperation where universe solidifies into overwhelming horror, surrounding sufferer without exit. This is no mere intellectual concept of evil, but a > **Quote:** grisly blood-freezing heart-palsying sensation  of it being right there, a presence so total that no other feeling can survive. Faced with such desperate need, our refined optimisms and moral consolations seem irrelevant.
+> “Here is the real core of the religious problem: Help! help! No prophet can claim to bring final message unless he says things that have sound of reality in victims’ ears such as these.”
+To prove this point, Tolstoy quotes the Buddha, Solomon, and Schopenhauer.
+And he finds only four ways in which men of his own class and society are
+accustomed to meet the situation. Either mere animal blindness, sucking
+the honey without seeing the dragon or the mice,—“and from such a way,” he
+says, “I can learn nothing, after what I now know;” or reflective
+epicureanism, snatching what 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 the
+bush of life.
+But rescue must be as powerful as suffering to be effective. This likely explains why 'coarser' religions—intense revivalism, raw emotion, blood, miracles, supernatural operations—may never be replaced. Some temperaments need them too much.
+Suicide was naturally the consistent course dictated by the logical
+intellect.
+Here we see natural conflict between healthy-minded view and view seeing evil experience as essential. To morbid-minded perspective, pure healthy-mindedness seems incredibly blind and shallow. Conversely, to healthy-minded person, sick soul’s way seems unmanly and diseased—with focus on dark corners, manufactured fears, preoccupation with unwholesome misery, something almost offensive about these 'children of wrath' craving second birth. If religious intolerance returned, healthy-minded would likely be less indulgent.
+As impartial observers, what should we say? We must admit morbid-mindedness covers wider experience range; its perspective is more comprehensive. Ignoring evil and living in good’s light is wonderful when it works—it works for far more than we realize, and within its sphere, nothing can be said against it as religious solution. But it fails helplessly when melancholy sets in. Even if personally free from melancholy, healthy-mindedness is inadequate philosophy because evil facts it refuses to acknowledge are genuine reality parts. They may be best key to life’s significance and only way to open eyes to deepest truth.
+    “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
+    that obliged 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 end
+    the business, whether by the rope or by the bullet, during all
+    that time, alongside of all those movements 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 to do with the movement
+    of my ideas,—in fact, it was the direct contrary of that
+    movement,—but it came from my heart. It was like a feeling of
+    dread that made me seem like an orphan and isolated in the midst
+    of all these things that were so foreign. And this feeling of
+    dread was mitigated by the hope of finding the assistance of some
+    one.”(80)
+Normal life contains moments as terrible as anything in insane melancholy—moments where radical evil takes its turn. Insane visions are all drawn from daily life reality:
+> “Our civilization is founded on the shambles, and every individual existence goes out in lonely spasm of helpless agony.”
+Of the process, intellectual as well as emotional, which, starting from
+this idea of God, led to Tolstoy’s recovery, I will say nothing in this
+lecture, reserving it for a later hour. The only thing that need interest
+us now is the phenomenon of his absolute disenchantment with ordinary
+life, and the fact that the whole range of habitual values may, to a man
+as powerful and full of faculty as he was, come to appear so ghastly a
+mockery.
+If you object, wait until you experience it! It is hard to imagine prehistoric carnivorous reptiles; they seem museum specimens. Yet no tooth in those skulls did not daily, through long ages, clamp onto struggling, desperate victims. Horrors as dreadful to victims, though smaller scale, fill our world today. In our homes and gardens, predatory cat plays with panting mouse. Crocodiles, rattlesnakes, pythons fill every dragging day. When they seize prey, the deadly horror melancholy sufferers feel is literally correct reaction.
+When disillusionment has gone as far as this, there is seldom a
+_restitutio ad integrum_. One has tasted of the fruit of the tree, and the
+happiness of Eden never comes again. The happiness that comes, when any
+does come,—and often enough it fails to return in an acute form, though
+its form is 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 and terror
+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 to him a second birth, a
+deeper kind of conscious being than he could enjoy before.
+It may be that no religious reconciliation with existence’s absolute totality is possible. While some evils might lead to higher good, there may be evil forms so extreme they cannot fit any good system. Regarding such evil, silent submission or ignoring may be only resource. This question must confront us on a later day. But as method, since evil is as much nature’s part as good, we should assume it has rational significance. Systematic healthy-mindedness failing to actively attend to sorrow, pain, death is logically less complete than systems including these elements.
+                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
+Most complete religions seem those where pessimistic elements are best developed. Buddhism and Christianity are prominent examples—essentially religions of deliverance: person must die to unreal life before born into real life. In my next lecture, I will discuss psychological conditions of this second birth. Fortunately, from now on we deal with more cheerful subjects.
+We find a somewhat different type of religious melancholy enshrined in
+literature in John Bunyan’s autobiography. Tolstoy’s preoccupations were
+largely objective, for the purpose and meaning of life in general was what
+so troubled him; but poor Bunyan’s troubles were over the condition 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 victim of 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 if
+they were voices, and fasten on his mind and buffet it between them like a
+shuttlecock. Added to this 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 was before. 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 I would tell my condition to the people
+    of God, which, when they heard, they would pity me, and would tell
+    of the Promises. But they had as good have told me that I must
+    reach the Sun with my finger as have bidden me receive or rely
+    upon the Promise. [Yet] all this while as to the act of sinning, I
+    never was more tender than now; I durst not take a pin or stick,
+    though but so big as a straw, for my conscience now was sore, and
+    would smart at every touch; I could not tell how to speak my
+    words, for fear I should misplace them. Oh, how gingerly did I
+    then go, in all I did or said! I found myself as on a miry bog
+    that shook if I did but stir; and was as there left both by God
+    and 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, I was more loathsome in my own eyes
+    than was a toad; and I thought I was so in God’s eyes too. Sin and
+    corruption, I said, would as naturally bubble out of my heart as
+    water would bubble out of a fountain. I could have changed heart
+    with anybody. I thought none but the Devil himself could equal me
+    for inward wickedness and pollution of mind. Sure, thought I, I am
+    forsaken of God; and thus 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 their condition, 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 of theirs. Now I blessed
+    the condition of the dog and toad, yea, gladly would I have been
+    in the condition of the dog or horse, for I knew they had no soul
+    to perish under the everlasting weight of Hell or Sin, as mine was
+    like to do. Nay, and though I saw this, felt this, and was broken
+    to pieces with it, yet that which added to my sorrow was, that I
+    could not find with all my soul that I did desire deliverance. My
+    heart was at times exceedingly hard. If I would have given a
+    thousand pounds 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 be weary 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)
+Poor patient Bunyan, like Tolstoy, saw the light again, but we must also
+postpone that part of his story to another hour. In a later lecture I will
+also give the end of the experience of Henry Alline, a devoted evangelist
+who worked in Nova Scotia a hundred years ago, and who thus vividly
+describes the high‐water mark of the religious melancholy which formed its
+beginning. The type was 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 of
+    the curse, and everything around me seemed to be conspiring my
+    ruin. My sins seemed to be laid open; so that I thought that every
+    one I saw knew them, and sometimes I was almost ready to
+    acknowledge many things, which I thought they knew: yea sometimes
+    it seemed to me as if every one was pointing me out as the most
+    guilty wretch upon earth. I had now so great a sense of the vanity
+    and emptiness of all things here below, that I knew the whole
+    world could not possibly make me happy, no, nor the whole system
+    of creation. When I waked in the morning, the first thought 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 with envy, wishing
+    with all my heart I was in their place, that I might have no soul
+    to lose; and when I have seen birds flying over my head, have
+    often thought within myself, Oh, that I could fly away from my
+    danger and distress! Oh, how happy should I be, if I were in their
+    place!”(82)
+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 excellent example, for permission to print which I have to
+thank the sufferer. The original is in French, and though the subject was
+evidently in a bad nervous condition at the time of which he writes, his
+case has otherwise the merit of extreme simplicity. I translate freely.
+    “Whilst in this state of philosophic pessimism and general
+    depression of spirits about my prospects, 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 the darkness, a horrible fear of my own
+    existence. Simultaneously there arose in my mind the image of an
+    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 only garment, drawn over them inclosing
+    his entire figure. He sat there like a sort of sculptured Egyptian
+    cat or Peruvian mummy, moving nothing but his black eyes and
+    looking absolutely non‐human. This image and my fear entered into
+    a species of combination with each other. _That shape am I_, I
+    felt, potentially. Nothing that I possess can defend me against
+    that fate, if the hour for it should strike for me as it struck
+    for him. There was such a horror of him, and such a perception of
+    my own merely momentary discrepancy from him, that it was as if
+    something hitherto solid within my breast gave way entirely, and I
+    became a mass of quivering fear. After this the universe was
+    changed for me altogether. I awoke morning after morning with a
+    horrible dread at the pit of my stomach, and with a sense of the
+    insecurity of life that I never knew before, and that I have never
+    felt since.(83) It was like a revelation; and although the
+    immediate feelings passed away, the experience has made me
+    sympathetic with the morbid feelings of others ever since. It
+    gradually faded, but for months I was unable to go out into the
+    dark alone.
+    “In general I dreaded to be left alone. I remember wondering how
+    other people could live, how I myself had ever lived, so
+    unconscious of that pit of insecurity beneath the surface of life.
+    My mother in particular, a very cheerful person, seemed to me a
+    perfect paradox in her unconsciousness of danger, which you may
+    well believe I was very careful not to disturb by revelations of
+    my own state of mind. I have always thought that this experience
+    of melancholia of mine had a religious bearing.”
+On asking this correspondent to explain more fully what he meant by these
+last words, the answer 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.,
+    ‘I am the resurrection and the life,’ etc., I think I should have
+    grown really insane.”(84)
+There is no need of more examples. The cases we have looked at are enough.
+One of them gives us 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 and
+self‐satisfaction get leveled with the dust.
+In none of these cases was there any intellectual insanity or delusion
+about matters of fact; but were we disposed to open the chapter of really
+insane melancholia, with its hallucinations and delusions, it would be a
+worse story still—desperation absolute and complete, the whole universe
+coagulating about the sufferer into a material of overwhelming horror,
+surrounding him without 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 to live
+for a moment in its presence. How irrelevantly remote seem all our usual
+refined optimisms and intellectual and moral consolations in presence of a
+need of help like this! Here is the real core of the religious problem:
+Help! help! No prophet can claim to bring a final message unless he says
+things that will have a sound of reality in the ears of victims such as
+these. But the deliverance must come in as strong a form as the complaint,
+if it is to take effect; and that seems a reason why the 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 the healthy‐minded way of viewing life and the way that
+takes all this experience of evil as something essential. To this latter
+way, the morbid‐minded way, as we might call it, healthy‐mindedness pure
+and 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 of living in the light; with
+their manufacture of fears, and preoccupation with every unwholesome kind
+of misery, there is something almost obscene about these children of wrath
+and cravers of a second birth. If religious intolerance and hanging and
+burning could again become the order of the day, there is little doubt
+that, however it may have been in the past, the healthy‐minded would 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 this quarrel? It seems to me that we are bound to say that
+morbid‐mindedness ranges over the wider scale of experience, and that its
+survey is the one that overlaps. The method of averting one’s attention
+from evil, and living simply in the light of good is splendid as long as
+it will work. It will work with many persons; it will work far more
+generally than most of us are ready to suppose; and within the sphere of
+its successful operation there is nothing to be said against it as a
+religious solution. But it breaks down impotently as soon as melancholy
+comes; and even though one be quite free from melancholy one’s self, there
+is no doubt that healthy‐mindedness is inadequate as a philosophical
+doctrine, because the evil facts which it refuses positively to account
+for are a genuine portion of reality; and they may after all be the best
+key to life’s significance, and possibly the 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 is filled with, moments in which radical evil gets its
+innings and takes its solid turn. The lunatic’s visions of horror are all
+drawn from the material of daily fact. Our civilization is founded on the
+shambles, and every individual existence goes out in a lonely spasm of
+helpless agony. If you protest, my friend, wait till you arrive there
+yourself! To believe in the carnivorous reptiles of geologic 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 the foretime hold fast to the body struggling in
+despair of some fated living victim. Forms of horror just as dreadful to
+their victims, if on a smaller spatial scale, fill the world about us to‐
+day. Here on our very hearths and in our gardens the infernal cat plays
+with the panting mouse, or holds the hot bird fluttering in her jaws.
+Crocodiles and rattlesnakes and pythons are at this moment vessels of life
+as real as we are; their loathsome existence fills every minute of every
+day that drags its length along; and whenever they or other wild beasts
+clutch their living prey, the deadly horror which an agitated melancholiac
+feels is the literally right reaction on the situation.(85)
+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 of evil so
+extreme as to enter into no good system whatsoever, and that, in respect
+of such evil, dumb submission or neglect to notice is the only practical
+resource. This question must confront us on a later day. But
+provisionally, and as a mere matter of program and method, since the evil
+facts are as genuine parts of nature as the good ones, the philosophic
+presumption should be that they have some rational significance, and that
+systematic healthy‐mindedness, failing as it does to accord to sorrow,
+pain, and death any positive and active attention whatever, is formally
+less complete than systems 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 are best developed. Buddhism, of course, and
+Christianity are the best known to us of these. They are essentially
+religions of deliverance: the man must die to an unreal life before he can
+be born into the real life. In my next lecture, I will try to discuss some
+of the psychological conditions of this second birth. Fortunately from now
+onward we shall have to deal with more cheerful subjects than those which
+we have recently been dwelling on.
 ## LECTURE VIII. THE DIVIDED SELF, AND THE PROCESS OF ITS UNIFICATION.
+At our previous lecture's close, we confronted the contrast between two perspectives: the "healthy-minded," who need only be born once, and the "sick souls," who must be born again to find happiness. This yields two different universe-conceptions. For the "once-born," the world is a rectilinear, single-story affair: accounts kept in one currency, parts having their natural surface value, and a simple algebraic sum of pluses and minuses providing the total worth.
+The last lecture was a painful one, dealing as it did with evil as a
+pervasive element of the world we live in. At the close of it we were
+brought into full view of the contrast between the two ways of looking at
+life which are characteristic respectively of what we called the healthy‐
+minded, who need to be born only once, and of the sick souls, who must be
+twice‐born in order to be happy. The result 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 one denomination, whose parts have just the values which naturally
+they appear to have, and of which a simple algebraic sum of pluses and
+minuses will give the total worth. Happiness and religious peace consist
+in living on the plus side of the account. In the religion of the twice‐
+born, on the other hand, the world is a double‐storied mystery. Peace
+cannot be reached by the simple addition of pluses and elimination of
+minuses from life. Natural good is not simply insufficient in amount and
+transient, there lurks a falsity in its very being. Cancelled as it all is
+by death if not by earlier enemies, it gives no final balance, and can
+never be the thing intended for our lasting worship. It keeps us from our
+real good, rather; and renunciation and despair of it are our first step
+in the direction of the truth. There are two lives, the natural and the
+spiritual, and we must lose the one before we can participate in the
+other.
+For the "twice-born," however, the world is a double-story mystery. Peace cannot be found by tallying pluses and minuses. Natural goodness is fundamentally false—not merely insufficient but canceled by death, keeping us from our true good. Letting it go and despairing of it are first steps toward truth.
+In their extreme forms, of pure naturalism and pure salvationism, the two
+types are violently contrasted; though here as in most other current
+classifications, the radical extremes are somewhat ideal abstractions, and
+the concrete human beings whom we oftenest meet are intermediate varieties
+and mixtures. Practically, however, you all recognize the difference: you
+understand, for example, the disdain of the methodist convert for the mere
+sky‐blue healthy‐minded moralist; and you likewise enter into the aversion
+of the latter to what seems to him the diseased subjectivism of the
+Methodist, dying to live, as he calls it, and making of paradox and the
+inversion of natural appearances the essence of God’s truth.(86)
+> **Quote:** "There are two lives, the natural and the spiritual, and we must lose the one before we can participate in the other."
+                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
+In their purest forms—pure naturalism and pure "salvationism"—these types stand in sharp contrast. Yet these radical extremes are mostly theoretical; actual people are intermediate varieties. Still, you recognize the difference: you understand the Methodist convert's disdain for the merely "healthy-minded" moralist, and the moralist's aversion to the Methodist's "dying to live," which turns paradox into God's truth.
+The psychological basis of the twice‐born character seems to be a certain
+discordancy or heterogeneity in the native temperament of the subject, an
+incompletely unified moral and intellectual constitution.
+The psychological basis of the "twice-born" character seems to be a certain discord or internal inconsistency in the person's natural temperament—an incompletely unified moral and intellectual makeup.
+> **Quote:** “Homo duplex, homo duplex!” writes Alphonse Daudet. “The first time that I perceived that I was two was at the death of my brother Henri, when my father cried out so dramatically, ‘He is dead, 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 me that I have never been able to intoxicate, to make shed tears, or put to sleep. And how it sees into things, and how it mocks!”
+    “Homo duplex, homo duplex!” writes Alphonse Daudet. “The first
+    time that I perceived that I was two was at the death of my
+    brother Henri, when my father cried out so dramatically, ‘He is
+    dead, 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.
+Recent studies have discussed this extensively. Some are born with harmonious inner makeup: impulses aligned, will following intellect, passions moderate, few regrets. Others are built opposite, from slight inconsistencies to deep discord causing extreme hardship.
+    “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 me
+    that I have never been able to intoxicate, to make shed tears, or
+    put to sleep. And how it sees into things, and how it mocks!”(87)
+> **Quote:** “I have ever been the queerest mixture of weakness and strength, and have paid heavily for the weakness. As a child I used to suffer tortures of shyness, and if my shoe-lace was untied would feel shamefacedly that every eye was fixed on the unlucky string; as a girl I would shrink away from strangers and think myself unwanted and unliked, so that I was full of eager gratitude to any one who noticed me kindly; as the young mistress of a house I was afraid of my servants, and would let careless work pass rather than bear the pain of reproving the ill-doer; when I have been lecturing and debating with no lack of spirit on the platform, I have preferred to go without what I wanted at the hotel rather than to ring and make the waiter fetch it. Combative on the platform in defense of any cause I cared for, I shrink from quarrel or disapproval in the house, and am a coward at heart in private while a good fighter in public. How often have I passed unhappy quarters of an hour screwing up my courage to find fault with some subordinate whom my duty compelled me to reprove, and how often have I jeered at myself for a fraud as the doughty platform combatant, when shrinking from blaming some lad or lass for doing their work badly. An unkind look or word has availed to make me shrink into myself as a snail into its shell, while, on the platform, opposition makes me speak my best.”
+This level of inconsistency seems a charming weakness, but more intense inner conflict can ruin a life. Some lives are little more than zigzags, as spirit battles flesh, impulses interrupt plans, and existence becomes a drama of regret.
+Recent works on the psychology of character have had much to say upon this
+point.(88) Some persons 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 of their intellect, their passions are not excessive, and their
+lives are little haunted by regrets. Others are oppositely constituted;
+and are so in degrees which may vary from something so slight as to result
+in a merely odd or whimsical inconsistency, to a discordancy of which the
+consequences may be inconvenient in the extreme. Of the more innocent
+kinds of heterogeneity I find a good example in Mrs. Annie Besant’s
+autobiography.
+This fractured personality has been explained as inheritance—conflicting traits from incompatible ancestors preserved side-by-side. This theory needs more proof, but we see extreme examples in the psychologically intense temperament mentioned in my first lecture. All writers highlight this inner fragmentation; often it's the only trait that leads us to label someone thus. A *'dégénéré supérieur'* is simply someone with high sensitivity who finds it harder than most to keep his spiritual house in order and his furrow straight, because feelings and impulses are too intense and contradictory.
+We see perfect examples in persistent obsessions, irrational impulses, morbid fears. John Bunyan was obsessed with "Sell Christ for this, sell him for that!" They ran through his mind hundreds of times until, exhausted from shouting "I will not," he impulsively thought "Let him go." This kept him in despair over a year. Saints' lives are full of such intrusive thoughts, attributed to Satan. This connects to the "subconscious self," which we'll discuss soon.
+    “I have ever been the queerest mixture of weakness and strength,
+    and have paid heavily for the weakness. As a child I used to
+    suffer tortures of shyness, and if my shoe‐lace was untied would
+    feel shamefacedly that every eye was fixed on the unlucky string;
+    as a girl I would shrink away from strangers and think myself
+    unwanted and unliked, so that I was full of eager gratitude to any
+    one who noticed me kindly; as the young mistress of a house I was
+    afraid of my servants, and would let careless work pass rather
+    than bear the pain of reproving the ill‐doer; when I have been
+    lecturing and debating with no lack of spirit on the platform, I
+    have preferred to go without what I wanted at the hotel rather
+    than to ring and make the waiter fetch it. Combative on the
+    platform in defense of any cause I cared for, I shrink from
+    quarrel or disapproval in the house, and am a coward at heart in
+    private while a good fighter in public. How often have I passed
+    unhappy quarters of an hour screwing up my courage to find fault
+    with some subordinate whom my duty compelled me to reprove, and
+    how often have I jeered at myself for a fraud as the doughty
+    platform combatant, when shrinking from blaming some lad or lass
+    for doing their work badly. An unkind look or word has availed to
+    make me shrink into myself as a snail into its shell, while, on
+    the platform, opposition makes me speak my best.”(89)
+In all of us—more so if intense and sensitive, most if temperamentally unstable—normal character development means straightening and unifying this inner self. Higher and lower feelings, useful and misguided impulses, begin in chaos; they must end as a stable system. Unhappiness marks this struggle. If conscience is sensitive and religious awakening occurs, this becomes remorse and guilt—feeling inwardly vile and misaligned with God. This is the religious melancholy and "conviction of sin" central to Protestant Christianity. The interior becomes a battlefield: actual vs. ideal self.
+> **Quote:** “Je suis le champ vil des sublimes combats: Tantôt l’homme d’en haut, et tantôt l’homme d’en bas; Et le mal dans ma bouche avec le bien alterne, Comme dans le désert le sable et la citerne.”
+This amount of inconsistency will only count as amiable weakness; but a
+stronger degree of heterogeneity may make havoc of the subject’s life.
+There are persons whose existence is little more than a series of zigzags,
+as now one tendency and now another gets the upper hand. Their spirit wars
+with their flesh, they wish for incompatibles, wayward impulses interrupt
+their most deliberate plans, and their lives are one long drama of
+repentance and of effort to repair misdemeanors and mistakes.
+It is a life of wrong turns and helpless aspirations.
+Heterogeneous personality has been explained as the result of
+inheritance—the traits of character of 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 whatever the cause of heterogeneous personality may be,
+we find the extreme examples of it in the psychopathic temperament, of
+which I spoke in my first lecture. All writers about that temperament make
+the inner heterogeneity prominent in their descriptions. Frequently,
+indeed, it is only this trait that leads us to ascribe that temperament to
+a man at all. A “dégénéré supérieur” is simply a man of sensibility in
+many directions, who finds more difficulty than is common in keeping his
+spiritual house in order and running his furrow straight, because his
+feelings and impulses are too keen and too discrepant mutually. In the
+haunting and insistent ideas, in the irrational impulses, the morbid
+scruples, dreads, and inhibitions which beset the psychopathic temperament
+when it is thoroughly pronounced, we have exquisite examples of
+heterogeneous personality. 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 breath
+with retorting, “I will not, I will not,” he impulsively said, “Let him go
+if he will,” and this loss of the battle kept him in despair for over a
+year. The lives of the saints are full of such blasphemous obsessions,
+ascribed invariably to the direct agency of Satan. The phenomenon connects
+itself with the life of the subconscious self, so‐called, of which we must
+ere‐long speak more directly.
+> **Quote:** “What I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I.”
+Now in all of us, however constituted, but to a degree the greater in
+proportion as we are intense and sensitive and subject to diversified
+temptations, and to the greatest possible degree if we are decidedly
+psychopathic, does the normal evolution of character chiefly consist in
+the straightening out and unifying of the inner self. The higher and the
+lower feelings, the useful and the erring impulses, begin by being a
+comparative chaos within us—they must end by forming a stable system of
+functions in right subordination. Unhappiness is apt to characterize the
+period of order‐making and struggle. If the individual be of tender
+conscience and religiously quickened, the unhappiness will take the form
+of moral remorse and compunction, of feeling inwardly vile and wrong, and
+of standing in false relations to the author of one’s being and appointer
+of one’s spiritual fate. This is the religious melancholy and “conviction
+of sin” that have played so large a part in the history of Protestant
+Christianity. The man’s interior is a battle‐ground for what he feels to
+be two deadly hostile selves, one actual, the other ideal. As Victor Hugo
+makes his Mahomet say:—
+It is self-loathing and despair—an incomprehensible burden mysteriously inherited.
+Saint Augustine's story is the classic case. Raised between pagan and Christian influences and later distracted by the struggle between the two souls in his breast, he felt ashamed of his weak will when others had already dedicated themselves to the higher life. Finally, he heard a voice in the garden say, "Take and read." Opening the Bible at random, he saw a text that silenced his inner storm forever. Augustine's psychological insight provided an unsurpassed account of divided-self pain.
+    “Je suis le champ vil des sublimes combats:
+    Tantôt l’homme d’en haut, et tantôt l’homme d’en bas;
+    Et le mal dans ma bouche avec le bien alterne,
+    Comme dans le désert le sable et la citerne.”
+> **Quote:** “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 other spiritual, contended with each other and disturbed my soul. I understood by my own experience what I had read, ‘flesh lusteth against spirit, and spirit against flesh.’ It was myself indeed in both the wills, yet more myself in that which I approved in myself than in that which I disapproved in myself. Yet it was through myself that habit had attained so fierce a mastery over me, because I had 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 would awake, but being overpowered with sleepiness is soon asleep again. Often does a man when heavy sleepiness is on his limbs defer to shake it off, and though not approving it, encourage it; even so I was sure it was better to surrender to thy love than to yield to my own lusts, yet, though the former course convinced me, the latter pleased and held me bound. There was naught in me to answer thy call, ‘Awake, thou sleeper,’ but only drawling, drowsy words, ‘Presently; yes, presently; wait a little while.’ But the ‘presently’ had no ‘present,’ and the ‘little while’ grew long.... For I was afraid thou wouldst hear me too soon, and heal me at once of my disease of lust, which I wished to satiate rather than to see extinguished. With what lashes of words did I not scourge my own soul. Yet it shrank back; it refused, though it had no excuse to offer.... I said within myself: ‘Come, let it be done 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. And I made another effort, and almost succeeded, yet I did not reach it, and did not grasp it, hesitating to die to death, and live to life; and the evil to which I was so wonted held me more than the better life I had not tried.”
+No better description exists of a divided will—when higher desires lack that final spark of intensity, that motivating force, to break through and permanently overcome lower tendencies. We'll discuss this higher excitability state later.
+Wrong living, impotent aspirations; “What I would, that do I not; but what
+I hate, that do I,” as Saint Paul says; self‐loathing, self‐despair; an
+unintelligible and intolerable burden to which one is mysteriously the
+heir.
+Alline's melancholy I mentioned in the last lecture. This young man's "sins" were quite harmless—fondness for carnal mirth, esteem among young company—yet they caused him great distress as they interfered with his true calling.
+Let me quote from some typical cases of discordant personality, with
+melancholy in the form of self‐condemnation and sense of sin. Saint
+Augustine’s case is a classic example. You all remember his half‐pagan,
+half‐Christian bringing up at Carthage, his emigration to Rome and Milan,
+his adoption of Manicheism and subsequent skepticism, and his restless
+search for truth and purity of life; and finally how, distracted by the
+struggle between the two souls in his breast, and ashamed of his own
+weakness of will, when so many others whom he knew and knew of had thrown
+off the shackles of sensuality and dedicated themselves to chastity and
+the higher life, he heard a voice in the garden say, “_Sume, lege_” (take
+and read), and opening the Bible at random, saw the text, “not in
+chambering and wantonness,” etc., which seemed directly sent to his
+address, and laid the inner storm to rest forever.(91) Augustine’s
+psychological genius has given an account of the trouble of having a
+divided self which has never been surpassed.
+> **Quote:** “I was now very moral in my life, but found no rest of conscience. I now began to be esteemed in young company, who knew nothing of my mind all this while, and their esteem began to be a snare to my soul, for I soon began to be fond of carnal mirth, though I still flattered myself that if I did not get drunk, nor curse, nor swear, there would be no sin in frolicking and carnal mirth, and I thought God would indulge young people with some (what I called simple or civil) recreation. I still kept a round of duties, and would not suffer myself to run into any open vices, and so got along very well in time of health and prosperity, but when I was distressed or threatened by sickness, death, or heavy storms of thunder, my religion would not do, and I found there was something wanting, and would begin to repent my going so much to frolics, but when the distress was over, the devil and my own wicked heart, with the solicitations of my associates, and my fondness for young company, were such strong allurements, I would again give way, and thus I got to be very wild and rude, at the same time kept up my rounds of secret prayer and reading; but God, not willing I should destroy myself, still followed me with his calls, and moved with such power upon my conscience, that I could not satisfy myself with my diversions, and in the midst of my mirth sometimes would have such a sense of my lost and undone condition, that I would wish myself from the company, and after it was over, when I went home, would make many promises that I would attend no more on these frolics, and would beg forgiveness for hours and hours; but when I came to have the temptation again, I would give way: no sooner would I hear the music and drink a glass of wine, but I would find my mind elevated and soon proceed to any sort of meritment or diversion, that I thought was not debachued or openly vicious; but when I returned from my carnal mirth I felt as guilty as ever, and could sometimes not close my eyes for some hours 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 if I was tired), and go out and walk about crying and praying, as if my very heart would break, and beseeching God that he would not cut me off, nor give me up to hardness of heart. Oh, what unhappy hours and nights I thus wore away! When I met sometimes with merry companions, and my heart was ready to sink, I would labor to put on as cheerful a countenance as possible, that they might not distrust anything, and sometimes would begin some discourse with young men or young women on purpose, or propose a merry song, lest the distress of my soul would be discovered, or mistrusted, when at the same time I would then rather have been in a wilderness in exile, than with them or any of their pleasures or enjoyments. Thus for many months when I was in company, I would act the hypocrite and feign a merry heart, but at the same time would endeavor as much as I could to shun their company, oh wretched and unhappy mortal that I was! Everything I did, and wherever I went, I was still in a storm, and yet I continued to be the chief contriver and ringleader of the frolics for many months after; though it was a toil and torment to attend them; but the devil and 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 the esteem of my associates: and all this while I continued as strict as possible in my duties, and left no stone unturned to pacify my conscience, watching even against my thoughts, and praying continually wherever I went: for I did not think there was any sin in my conduct, when I was among carnal company, because I did not take any satisfaction there, but only followed it, I thought, for sufficient reasons. But still, all that I did or could do, conscience would roar night and day.”
+Both Augustine and Alline eventually emerged into inner unity and peace. Next, consider the unification process: it can be gradual or sudden; come through feeling changes, new action capacity, intellectual insights, or later-call-'mystical' experiences. However it arrives, it brings relief—most powerful when religious. Religion transforms unbearable misery into deep, lasting happiness.
+    “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 other
+    spiritual, contended with each other and disturbed my soul. I
+    understood by my own experience what I had read, ‘flesh lusteth
+    against spirit, and spirit against flesh.’ It was myself indeed in
+    both the wills, yet more myself in that which I approved in myself
+    than in that which I disapproved in myself. Yet it was through
+    myself that habit had attained so fierce a mastery over me,
+    because I had 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.
+But finding religion is only one path to unity; healing inner incompleteness is a general psychological process that needn't be religious. When evaluating religious regeneration, recognize it's one variety of a broader category. A "new birth" might lead toward skepticism, from scrupulosity to excess, or be triggered by new stimuli like love, ambition, greed, revenge, or patriotism.
+    “Thus the thoughts by which I meditated upon thee were like the
+    efforts of one who would awake, but being overpowered with
+    sleepiness is soon asleep again. Often does a man when heavy
+    sleepiness is on his limbs defer to shake it off, and though not
+    approving it, encourage it; even so I was sure it was better to
+    surrender to thy love than to yield to my own lusts, yet, though
+    the former course convinced me, the latter pleased and held me
+    bound. There was naught in me to answer thy call, ‘Awake, thou
+    sleeper,’ but only drawling, drowsy words, ‘Presently; yes,
+    presently; wait a little while.’ But the ‘presently’ had no
+    ‘present,’ and the ‘little while’ grew long.... For I was afraid
+    thou wouldst hear me too soon, and heal me at once of my disease
+    of lust, which I wished to satiate rather than to see
+    extinguished. With what lashes of words did I not scourge my own
+    soul. Yet it shrank back; it refused, though it had no excuse to
+    offer.... I said within myself: ‘Come, let it be done 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. And I made another effort, and almost
+    succeeded, yet I did not reach it, and did not grasp it,
+    hesitating to die to death, and live to life; and the evil to
+    which I was so wonted held me more than the better life I had not
+    tried.”(92)
+> **Quote:** "In all these instances we have precisely the same psychological form of event,—a firmness, stability, and equilibrium succeeding a period of storm and stress and inconsistency."
+In these non-religious cases, the new person may also be born either gradually or suddenly.
+There could be no more perfect description of the divided will, when the
+higher wishes lack just that last acuteness, that touch of explosive
+intensity, of dynamogenic quality (to use the slang of the psychologists),
+that enables them to burst their shell, and make irruption efficaciously
+into life and quell the lower tendencies forever. In a later lecture we
+shall have much to say about this higher excitability.
+> **Quote:** "I shall never forget that December night," writes Jouffroy, "when the veil that hid my own skepticism was torn away. I can still hear my footsteps in that narrow, bare room where I used to pace back and forth long after the hour for sleep had passed. I see that moon again, half-hidden by clouds, which from time to time lit up the cold windowpanes. The hours of the night flowed by, and I did not notice them passing. I followed my thoughts anxiously as they descended layer by layer toward the foundation of my consciousness; one by one, they scattered the illusions that had hidden its winding paths from my view, making them more clearly visible with every moment.
+                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
+"I clung in vain to these last beliefs, as a shipwrecked sailor clings to the fragments of his ship; in vain, terrified by the unknown void in which I was about to float, I turned back with them toward my childhood, my family, my country—all that was dear and sacred to me. But the relentless current of my thought was too strong: parents, family, memories, beliefs—it forced me to let go of everything. The investigation became more stubborn and severe as it drew near its conclusion, and it did not stop until the end was reached. I knew then that in the depths of my mind, nothing was left standing.
+I find another good description of the divided will in the autobiography
+of Henry Alline, the Nova Scotian evangelist, of whose melancholy I read a
+brief account in my last lecture. The poor youth’s sins were, as you will
+see, of the most harmless order, yet they interfered with what proved to
+be his truest vocation, so they gave him great distress.
+"That moment was a terrifying one; and when toward morning I threw myself onto my bed, exhausted, I felt as if my earlier life—so bright and full—had gone out like a fire. Before me, another life opened up: dark and empty, where in the future I would have to live alone—alone with the grim thoughts that had exiled me there, and which I was tempted to curse. The days following this discovery were the saddest of my life."
+John Foster's *Essay on Decision of Character* records a sudden conversion to greed:
+    “I was now very moral in my life, but found no rest of conscience.
+    I now began to be esteemed in young company, who knew nothing of
+    my mind all this while, and their esteem began to be a snare to my
+    soul, for I soon began to be fond of carnal mirth, though I still
+    flattered myself that if I did not get drunk, nor curse, nor
+    swear, there would be no sin in frolicking and carnal mirth, and I
+    thought God would indulge young people with some (what I called
+    simple or civil) recreation. I still kept a round of duties, and
+    would not suffer myself to run into any open vices, and so got
+    along very well in time of health and prosperity, but when I was
+    distressed or threatened by sickness, death, or heavy storms of
+    thunder, my religion would not do, and I found there was something
+    wanting, and would begin to repent my going so much to frolics,
+    but when the distress was over, the devil and my own wicked heart,
+    with the solicitations of my associates, and my fondness for young
+    company, were such strong allurements, I would again give way, and
+    thus I got to be very wild and rude, at the same time kept up my
+    rounds of secret prayer and reading; but God, not willing I should
+    destroy myself, still followed me with his calls, and moved with
+    such power upon my conscience, that I could not satisfy myself
+    with my diversions, and in the midst of my mirth sometimes would
+    have such a sense of my lost and undone condition, that I would
+    wish myself from the company, and after it was over, when I went
+    home, would make many promises that I would attend no more on
+    these frolics, and would beg forgiveness for hours and hours; but
+    when I came to have the temptation again, I would give way: no
+    sooner would I hear the music and drink a glass of wine, but I
+    would find my mind elevated and soon proceed to any sort of
+    merriment or diversion, that I thought was not debauched or openly
+    vicious; but when I returned from my carnal mirth I felt as guilty
+    as ever, and could sometimes not close my eyes for some hours
+    after I had gone to my bed. I was one of the most unhappy
+    creatures on earth.
+He tells of a young man who, having wasted his fortune, reached the brink of suicide. Standing on an eminence overlooking his lost estates, he underwent a sudden 'conversion' to avarice. He resolved to regain it all, beginning by shoveling coal for pennies and living with extreme parsimony until he died a wealthy miser.
+    “Sometimes I would leave the company (often speaking to the
+    fiddler to cease from playing, as if I was tired), and go out and
+    walk about crying and praying, as if my very heart would break,
+    and beseeching God that he would not cut me off, nor give me up to
+    hardness of heart. Oh, what unhappy hours and nights I thus wore
+    away! When I met sometimes with merry companions, and my heart was
+    ready to sink, I would labor to put on as cheerful a countenance
+    as possible, that they might not distrust anything, and sometimes
+    would begin some discourse with young men or young women on
+    purpose, or propose a merry song, lest the distress of my soul
+    would be discovered, or mistrusted, when at the same time I would
+    then rather have been in a wilderness in exile, than with them or
+    any of their pleasures or enjoyments. Thus for many months when I
+    was in company, I would act the hypocrite and feign a merry heart,
+    but at the same time would endeavor as much as I could to shun
+    their company, oh wretched and unhappy mortal that I was!
+    Everything I did, and wherever I went, I was still in a storm, and
+    yet I continued to be the chief contriver and ringleader of the
+    frolics for many months after; though it was a toil and torment to
+    attend them; but the devil and 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 the esteem of my associates: and all this
+    while I continued as strict as possible in my duties, and left no
+    stone unturned to pacify my conscience, watching even against my
+    thoughts, and praying continually wherever I went: for I did not
+    think there was any sin in my conduct, when I was among carnal
+    company, because I did not take any satisfaction there, but only
+    followed it, I thought, for sufficient reasons.
+In his book *Menticulture*, Horace Fletcher provides a simple example: a conversion to systematic healthy-mindedness by one already naturally of that type.
+    “But still, all that I did or could do, conscience would roar
+    night and day.”
+> **Quote:** "‘You must first get rid of anger and worry.’ ‘But,’ I said, ‘is that possible?’ ‘Yes,’ he replied; ‘it is possible for the Japanese, and it should be possible for us.’
+"On my way back, I could think of nothing else but the words ‘get rid, get rid.’ This idea must have continued to occupy me while I slept, because my first conscious thought in the morning was the same one, accompanied by a sudden realization. It took the form of this logic:
+Saint Augustine and Alline both emerged into the smooth waters of inner
+unity and peace, and I shall 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 altered
+feelings, or through altered powers of action; or it may come through new
+intellectual insights, or through experiences which we shall later have to
+designate as “mystical.” However it come, it brings a characteristic sort
+of relief; and never such extreme relief as when it is cast into the
+religious mould. Happiness! happiness! religion is only one of the ways in
+which men gain that gift. Easily, permanently, and successfully, it often
+transforms the most intolerable misery into the profoundest and most
+enduring happiness.
+> **Quote:** "If it is possible to get rid of anger and worry, why is it necessary to have them at all?"
+But to find religion is only one out of many ways of reaching unity; and
+the process of remedying 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 the religious form. In
+judging of the religious types of regeneration which we are about to
+study, it is important 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 moral scrupulosity
+into freedom and license; or it may be produced by the irruption into the
+individual’s life of some new stimulus or passion, such as love, ambition,
+cupidity, revenge, or patriotic devotion. In all these instances we have
+precisely the same psychological form of event,—a firmness, stability, and
+equilibrium succeeding a period of storm and stress and inconsistency. In
+these non‐religious cases the new man may also be born either gradually or
+suddenly.
+"I felt the strength of that argument and accepted the reasoning at once.
+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’s doubts had long harassed him;
+but he dates his final crisis from a certain night when his disbelief grew
+fixed and stable, and where the immediate result was sadness at the
+illusions he had lost.
+> **Quote:** "The baby had discovered that it could walk. It would scorn to creep any longer."
+"From the moment I realized that these cancerous growths of worry and anger could be removed, they left me. Once their weakness was revealed, they were cast out. Since then, life has had an entirely different character.
+    “I shall never forget that night of December,” writes Jouffroy,
+    “in which the veil that concealed from me my own incredulity was
+    torn. I hear again my steps in that narrow naked chamber where
+    long after the hour of sleep had come I had the habit of walking
+    up and down. I see again that moon, half‐veiled by clouds, which
+    now and again illuminated the frigid window‐panes. The hours of
+    the night flowed on and I did not note their passage. Anxiously I
+    followed my thoughts, as from layer to layer they descended
+    towards the foundation of my consciousness, and, scattering one by
+    one all the illusions which until then had screened its windings
+    from my view, made them every moment more clearly visible.
+"Although the possibility and desirability of freedom from these depressing passions became a reality to me from that moment, it took me several months to feel completely secure in my new position. But as the usual occasions for worry and anger have presented themselves over and over again, and I have found myself unable to feel them in the slightest degree, I no longer fear them or guard against them. I am amazed at my increased energy and mental vigor, at my strength in facing situations of all kinds, and at my inclination to love and appreciate everything.
+    “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
+    towards my childhood, my family, my country, all that was dear and
+    sacred to me: the inflexible current of my 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 stop until the end
+    was reached. I knew then that in the depth of my mind nothing was
+    left that stood erect.
+"I have traveled more than ten thousand miles by rail since that morning. I have encountered the same types of porters, conductors, hotel waiters, street vendors, book agents, cab drivers, and others who used to be a source of annoyance and irritation, but I am not aware of a single instance of rudeness. Suddenly, the whole world has turned good to me. I have become, so to speak, sensitive only to the rays of good.
+    “This moment was a frightful one; and when towards morning I threw
+    myself exhausted on my bed, I seemed to feel my earlier life, so
+    smiling and so full, go out like a fire, and before me another
+    life opened, sombre and unpeopled, where in future I must live
+    alone, alone with my fatal thought which had exiled me thither,
+    and which I was tempted to curse. The days which followed this
+    discovery were the saddest of my life.”(93)
+"I could describe many experiences that prove this brand-new mental condition, but one will be enough. Without the slightest feeling of annoyance or impatience, I watched a train I had planned to take with a great deal of interest and anticipation pull out of the station without me because my luggage hadn't arrived. The hotel porter came running and panting into the station just as the train disappeared. When he saw me, he looked as if he expected a scolding and began to explain being stuck in a crowded street. When he had finished, I said to him: ‘It doesn't matter at all; you couldn't help it, so we will try again tomorrow. Here is your tip—I’m sorry you had so much trouble earning it.’ The look of surprise on his face was so full of pleasure that I was rewarded on the spot for the delay. The next day, he would not accept a cent for the service, and he and I are friends for life.
+"During the first weeks of my experience, I was only on guard against worry and anger. But in the meantime, having noticed the absence of other depressing and limiting passions, I began to see a relationship, until I was convinced they are all offshoots of the two roots I identified. I have felt this freedom for such a long time now that I am sure of my position; I could no more harbor any of the draining and depressing influences I once nurtured as a common human inheritance than a well-dressed man would voluntarily roll in a filthy gutter.
+In John Foster’s Essay on Decision of Character, there is an account of a
+case of sudden conversion to avarice, which is illustrative enough to
+quote:—
+"I have no doubt that pure Christianity and pure Buddhism, as well as the Mental Sciences and all religions, fundamentally teach what I have discovered; but none of them have presented it as such a simple and easy process of elimination. At one time, I wondered if this elimination might lead to indifference and laziness. In my experience, the opposite is true. I feel such an increased desire to do something useful that it seems as if I were a boy again and my energy for play had returned. I could fight just as well as—and better than—ever, if there were a reason for it. It does not make one a coward. It can’t, since fear is one of the things that was eliminated. I notice the absence of nervousness in front of any audience. As a boy, I was standing under a tree that was struck by lightning and received a shock; I was never free from its effects until I ended my partnership with worry. Since then, I have encountered thunder and lightning under conditions that would formerly have caused great depression and discomfort without experiencing a trace of either. Surprise is also greatly diminished, and one is less likely to be startled by unexpected sights or noises.
+"As far as I am personally concerned, I am not worrying right now about what the results of this liberated condition might be. I have no doubt that the perfect health aimed at by Christian Science might be one of the possibilities, for I’ve noticed a significant improvement in how my stomach functions in processing the food I eat. I am certain it works better to the sound of a song than under the stress of a scowl. Nor am I wasting any of this valuable time trying to define an idea of a future existence or a future Heaven. The Heaven I find within myself is as appealing as any that has been promised or that I can imagine; I am willing to let my growth lead wherever it will, as long as anger and its offspring have no part in leading it astray."
+    A young man, it appears, “wasted, in two or three years, a large
+    patrimony in profligate revels with a number of worthless
+    associates who called themselves his friends, and who, when his
+    last means 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
+    awhile almost unconsciously, he came to the brow of an eminence
+    which overlooked what were lately his estates. Here he sat down,
+    and remained fixed in thought a number of hours, at the end of
+    which he sprang from the ground with a vehement, exulting emotion.
+    He had formed his resolution, which was, that all these estates
+    should be his again; he had formed his plan, too, which he
+    instantly began to execute. He walked hastily forward, determined
+    to seize the first opportunity, of however humble a kind, to gain
+    any money, though it were ever so despicable a trifle, and
+    resolved absolutely not to spend, if he could help it, a farthing
+    of whatever he might obtain. The first thing that drew his
+    attention was a heap of coals shot out of carts on the pavement
+    before a house. He offered himself to shovel or wheel them into
+    the place where they were to be laid, and was employed. He
+    received a few pence for the labor; and then, in pursuance of the
+    saving part of his plan, requested some small gratuity of meat and
+    drink, which was given him. He then looked out for the next thing
+    that might chance; and went, with indefatigable industry, through
+    a succession of servile employments in different places, of longer
+    and shorter duration, still scrupulous in avoiding, as far as
+    possible, the expense of a penny. He promptly seized every
+    opportunity which could advance his design, without regarding the
+    meanness of occupation or appearance. By this method he had
+    gained, after a considerable time, money enough to purchase in
+    order to sell again a few cattle, of which he had taken pains to
+    understand the value. He speedily but cautiously turned his 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 have
+    forgotten, the continued course of his life, but the final result
+    was, that he more than recovered his lost possessions, and died an
+    inveterate miser, worth £60,000.”(94)
+Older medicine spoke of two ways—*lysis* and *crisis*, gradual and abrupt—to recover from disease. In the spiritual realm, there are also two ways, gradual and sudden, for inner unification. Tolstoy and Bunyan serve as examples of the gradual path, though it's difficult to follow complex shifts in others' hearts; their words don't reveal entire secrets.
+> **Quote:** "Since mankind has existed, wherever life has been, there also has been the faith that gave the possibility of living. Faith is the sense of life, that sense by virtue of which man does not destroy himself, but continues to live on. It is the force whereby we live. If Man did not believe that he must live for something, he would not live at all. The idea of an infinite God, of the divinity of the soul, of the union of men’s actions with God—these are ideas elaborated in the infinite secret depths of 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 reasoning and neglect these answers given by faith, for they are the only answers to the question."
+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 of healthy‐mindedness
+of a man who must already have been naturally of the healthy‐minded type.
+It shows how, when the fruit is ripe, a touch will make it fall.
+Yet how can one believe as common people do, steeped in blatant superstition? Yet look at their lives—normal, happy! Their lives are the answer.
+Mr. Horace Fletcher, in his little book called Menticulture, relates that
+a friend with whom he was talking of the self‐control attained by the
+Japanese through their practice of the Buddhist discipline said:—
+Gradually, Tolstoy reached firm conviction—he says it took two years—that his problem was not with life in general, nor with common people's life, but with upper, intellectual, artistic class life. This was the life he had always led—of mind, social convention, artificiality, personal ambition. He had been living incorrectly and had to change. To work for basic physical needs, reject lies and vanities, help others, be simple, believe in God—therein lay happiness.
+> **Quote:** "I remember," he says, "one day in early spring, I was alone in the forest, lending my ear to its mysterious noises. I listened, and my thought went back to what for these three years it always was busy with—the quest of God. But the idea of him, I said, how did I ever come by the idea?
+    “ ‘You must first get rid of anger and worry.’ ‘But,’ said I, ‘is
+    that possible?’ ‘Yes,’ replied he; ‘it is possible to the
+    Japanese, and ought to be possible to us.’
+"And again there arose in me, with this thought, glad aspirations towards life. Everything in me awoke 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....
+    “On my way back I could think of nothing else but the words ‘get
+    rid, get rid’; and the idea must have continued to possess me
+    during my sleeping hours, for the first consciousness in the
+    morning brought back the same thought, with the revelation of a
+    discovery, which framed itself into the reasoning, ‘If it is
+    possible to get rid of anger and worry, why is it necessary to
+    have them at all?’ I felt the strength of the argument, and at
+    once accepted the reasoning. The baby had discovered that it could
+    walk. It would scorn to creep any longer.
+"After this, things cleared up within me and about me better than ever, and the light has never wholly 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 reached my moral death‐bed, just as gradually and imperceptibly did the energy of life come back. And what was strange was that this energy that came back was nothing new. It was my ancient juvenile force of faith, the belief that the sole purpose of my life was to be *better*. I gave up the life of the conventional world, recognizing it to be no life, but a parody on life, which its superfluities simply keep us from comprehending,"
+    “From the instant I realized that these cancer spots of worry and
+    anger were removable, they left me. With the discovery of their
+    weakness they were exorcised. From that time life has had an
+    entirely different aspect.
+Tolstoy then embraced peasant life and has felt right and happy since. He came to see the life of the elite as a mere parody, realizing that
+    “Although from that moment the possibility and desirability of
+    freedom from the depressing passions has been a reality to me, it
+    took me some months to feel absolute security in my new position;
+    but, as the usual occasions for worry and anger have presented
+    themselves over and over again, and I have been unable to feel
+    them in the slightest degree, I no longer dread or guard against
+    them, and I am amazed at my increased energy and vigor of mind; at
+    my strength to meet situations of all kinds, and at my disposition
+    to love and appreciate everything.
+> **Quote:** 'To acknowledge God and to live are one and the same thing. God is what life is.'
+    “I have had occasion to travel more than ten thousand miles by
+    rail since that morning. The same Pullman porter, conductor,
+    hotel‐waiter, peddler, book‐agent, cabman, and others who were
+    formerly a source of annoyance and irritation have been met, but I
+    am not conscious of a single incivility. All at once the whole
+    world has turned good to me. I have become, as it were, sensitive
+    only to the rays of good.
+As I interpret his depression, it was not merely accidental biological imbalance, though it was that. It was logically required by conflict between inner character and outward activities. Despite being a literary artist, Tolstoy was a primal, sturdy man for whom polite civilization's excesses, insincerities, greeds, complications, and cruelties were deeply unsatisfying. Eternal truths resided in more natural things. His crisis was about ordering his soul, discovering its true home, escaping falsehoods into his ways of truth. It was a fragmented personality slowly finding its unity and natural level. Though few can imitate Tolstoy—perhaps lacking that primal spirit—most can feel they might be better off if they could.
+    “I could recount many experiences which prove a brand‐new
+    condition of mind, but one will be sufficient. Without the
+    slightest feeling of annoyance or impatience, I have seen a train
+    that I had planned to take with a good deal of interested and
+    pleasurable anticipation move out of the station without me,
+    because my baggage did not arrive. The porter from the hotel came
+    running and panting into the station just as the train pulled out
+    of sight. When he saw me, he looked as if he feared 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 try again to‐
+    morrow. Here is your fee, I am sorry you had all this trouble in
+    earning it.’ The look of surprise that came over his face was so
+    filled with pleasure that I was repaid on the spot for the delay
+    in my departure. Next day he would not accept a cent for the
+    service, and he and I are friends for life.
+Bunyan's recovery was even slower.
+    “During the first weeks of my experience I was on guard only
+    against worry and anger; but, in the mean time, having noticed the
+    absence of the other depressing and dwarfing passions, I began to
+    trace a relationship, until I was convinced that they are all
+    growths from the two roots I have specified. 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 a heritage of humanity
+    than a fop would voluntarily wallow in a filthy gutter.
+> **Quote:** "My peace would be in and out twenty times a day; comfort now and trouble presently; peace now and before I could go a furlong as full of guilt and fear as ever heart could hold."
+    “There is no doubt in my mind that pure Christianity and pure
+    Buddhism, and the Mental Sciences and all Religions, fundamentally
+    teach what has been a discovery to me; but none of them have
+    presented it in the light of a simple and easy process of
+    elimination. At one time I wondered if the elimination would not
+    yield to indifference and sloth. In my experience, the contrary is
+    the result. I feel such an increased desire to do something useful
+    that it seems as if I were a boy again and the energy for play had
+    returned. I could fight as readily as (and better than) ever, if
+    there were occasion for it. It does not make one a coward. It
+    can’t, since fear is one of the things eliminated. I notice the
+    absence of timidity in the presence of any audience. When a boy, I
+    was standing under a tree which was struck by lightning, and
+    received a shock from the effects of which I never knew exemption
+    until I had dissolved partnership with worry. Since then,
+    lightning and thunder have been encountered under conditions which
+    would formerly have caused great depression and discomfort,
+    without [my] experiencing a trace of either. Surprise is also
+    greatly modified, and one is less liable to become startled by
+    unexpected sights or noises.
+When a comforting text hit home, he writes: "This gave me good encouragement for the space of two or three hours"; or "This was a good day to me, I hope I shall not forget it"; or "The glory of these words was then so weighty on me that I was ready to swoon as I sat; yet not with grief and trouble, but with solid joy and peace." Another passage says: "This took a strange hold on my spirit; it brought light with it, and commanded a silence in my heart from all those tumultuous thoughts that before used, like masterless hell-hounds, to roar and bellow and make a hideous noise within me. It showed me that Jesus Christ had not quite forsaken and cast off my Soul."
+    “As far as I am individually concerned, I am not bothering myself
+    at present as to what the results of this emancipated condition
+    may be. I have no doubt that the perfect health aimed at by
+    Christian Science may be one of the possibilities, for I note a
+    marked improvement in the way my stomach does its duty in
+    assimilating the food I give it to handle, and I am sure it works
+    better to the sound of a song than under the friction of a frown.
+    Neither am I wasting any of this precious time formulating an idea
+    of a future existence or a future Heaven. The Heaven that I have
+    within myself is as attractive as any that has been promised or
+    that I can imagine; and I am willing to let the growth lead where
+    it will, as long as the anger and their brood have no part in
+    misguiding it.”(95)
+Such moments accumulated until he could write: "And now remained only the trailing part of the storm, for the thunder had passed beyond me; only a few drops still remained that would now and then fall upon me."
+> **Quote:** "Now did my chains fall off my legs indeed; I was loosed from my afflictions and irons; my temptations also fled away; so that from that time, those dreadful Scriptures of God left off to trouble me; now went I also home rejoicing, for the grace and love of God.... Now could I see myself in Heaven and Earth at once; in Heaven by my Christ, by my Head, by my Righteousness and Life, though on Earth by my body or person.... Christ was a precious Christ to my soul that night; I could scarce lie in my bed for joy and peace and triumph through Christ."
+The older medicine used to speak of two ways, _lysis_ and _crisis_, one
+gradual, the other abrupt, in which one might recover from a bodily
+disease. In the spiritual realm there are also two ways, one gradual, the
+other sudden, in which inner unification may occur. Tolstoy and Bunyan may
+again serve us as examples, examples, as it happens, of the gradual way,
+though it must be confessed at the outset that it is hard to follow these
+windings of the hearts of others, and one feels that their words do not
+reveal their total secret.
+Bunyan became a minister of the gospel. Despite his anxious temperament and twelve years in prison for refusing to conform to the established church, his life was dedicated to active service. He was a peacemaker and doer of good, and his immortal allegory brought religious patience into many hearts.
+Howe’er this be, Tolstoy, pursuing his unending questioning, seemed to
+come to one insight after another. First he perceived that his conviction
+that life was meaningless took only this finite life into account. He was
+looking for the value of one finite term in that of another, and the whole
+result could only be one of those indeterminate equations in mathematics
+which end with 0=0. Yet this is as far as the reasoning intellect by
+itself can go, unless irrational sentiment or faith brings in the
+infinite. Believe in the infinite as common people do, and life grows
+possible again.
+But neither Bunyan nor Tolstoy could become "healthy-minded." They had tasted bitterness too deeply ever to forget, and their redemption exists in a "two-story" universe. Each discovered a good that blunted sadness's edge, yet preserved sadness as a minor element within the faith that overcame it. The interesting fact is they found *something* rising from consciousness's depths that could overcome extreme despair. Tolstoy is right to call it *that by which men live*: a stimulus, excitement, faith—a force restoring will to live, even with painful perceptions that made life unbearable. Tolstoy's perceptions of evil remained unchanged. His later works show him relentless toward social values: fashionable life's emptiness, empire's crimes, church hypocrisy, profession vanity, cruelty of success, and arrogant crimes. His experience made him permanently lose patience.
+    “Since mankind has existed, wherever life has been, there also has
+    been the faith that gave the possibility of living. Faith is the
+    sense of life, that sense by virtue of which man does not destroy
+    himself, but continues to live on. It is the force whereby we
+    live. If Man did not believe that he must live for something, he
+    would not live at all. The idea of an infinite God, of the
+    divinity of the soul, of the union of men’s actions with God—these
+    are ideas elaborated in the infinite secret depths of 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 reasoning and
+    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 is impossible,—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 arrive there—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
+always led, the cerebral life, the life of conventionality, artificiality,
+and personal ambition. He had been living wrongly and must change. To work
+for animal needs, to abjure lies and vanities, to relieve common 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 its mysterious noises. I listened,
+    and my thought went back to what for these three years it always
+    was busy 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 me awoke 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 never wholly 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 reached my moral death‐bed, just as gradually
+    and imperceptibly did the energy of life come back. And what was
+    strange was that this energy that came back was nothing new. It
+    was my ancient juvenile force of faith, the belief that the sole
+    purpose of my life was to be _better_. I gave up the life of the
+    conventional world, recognizing it to be no life, but a parody on
+    life, which its superfluities simply 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)
+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 inner character and his
+outer activities and aims. Although a literary artist, Tolstoy was one of
+those primitive 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 eternal veracities 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 unity and level.
+And though not many of us can imitate Tolstoy, not having enough, perhaps,
+of the aboriginal human marrow in our bones, most of us may at least feel
+as if it might be better for us if we could.
+Bunyan’s recovery seems to have been even slower. For years together he
+was alternately haunted with texts of Scripture, now up and now down, but
+at last with an ever growing relief in his salvation through the blood of
+Christ.
+    “My peace would be in and out twenty times a day; comfort now and
+    trouble presently; peace now and before I could go a furlong as
+    full of guilt and fear as ever heart could hold.” When a good text
+    comes home to him, “This,” he writes, “gave me good encouragement
+    for the space of two or three hours”; or “This was a good day to
+    me, I hope I shall not forget it”; or “The glory of these words
+    was then so weighty on me that I was ready to swoon as I sat; yet
+    not with grief and trouble, but with solid joy and peace”; or
+    “This made a strange seizure on my spirit; it brought light with
+    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 me that
+    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 the tempest, for the thunder was gone beyond
+    me, only some drops would still remain, that now and then would
+    fall upon me”;—and at last: “Now did my chains fall off my legs
+    indeed; I was loosed from my afflictions and irons; my temptations
+    also fled away; so that from that time, those dreadful Scriptures
+    of God left off to trouble me; now went I also home rejoicing, for
+    the grace and love of God.... Now could I see myself in Heaven and
+    Earth at once; in Heaven by my Christ, by my Head, by my
+    Righteousness and Life, though on Earth by my body or person....
+    Christ was a precious Christ to my soul that night; I could scarce
+    lie in my bed for joy and peace and triumph through Christ.”
+Bunyan became a minister of the gospel, and in spite of his neurotic
+constitution, and of the twelve years he lay in prison for his non‐
+conformity, his life was turned to active use. He was a peacemaker and
+doer of good, and the immortal Allegory which he wrote has brought the
+very spirit of religious patience home to English hearts.
+But neither Bunyan nor Tolstoy could become what we have called healthy‐
+minded. They had drunk too deeply of the cup of bitterness ever to forget
+its taste, and their redemption is into a universe two stories deep. Each
+of them realized a good which broke the effective edge of his sadness; yet
+the sadness was preserved as a minor ingredient in the heart of the faith
+by which it was overcome. The fact of interest for us is that as a matter
+of fact they could and did find _something_ welling up in the inner
+reaches of their consciousness, by which such extreme sadness could be
+overcome. Tolstoy does well to talk of it as _that by which men live_; for
+that is exactly what it is, a stimulus, an excitement, a faith, a force
+that re‐infuses the positive willingness to live, even in full presence of
+the evil perceptions that erewhile made life seem unbearable. For
+Tolstoy’s perceptions of evil appear within their sphere to have remained
+unmodified. His later works show him implacable to the whole system of
+official values: the ignobility of fashionable life; the infamies of
+empire; the spuriousness of the church, the vain conceit 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 experience has been for him a permanent
+ministry of death.
 Bunyan also leaves this world to the enemy.
+> **Quote:** "I must first pass a sentence of death," he says, "upon everything that can properly be called a thing 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 to come; and as touching this world, to count the grave my house, to make my bed in darkness, and to say to corruption, Thou art my father, and to the worm, Thou art my mother and sister.... The parting with my wife and my poor children hath often been to me as the pulling of my flesh from my bones, especially my poor blind child who lay nearer my heart than all I had besides. Poor child, thought I, what sorrow art thou like to have for thy portion in this world! Thou must be beaten, must beg, suffer hunger, cold, nakedness, and a thousand calamities, though I cannot now endure that the wind should blow upon thee. But yet I must venture you all with God, though it goeth to the quick to leave you."
+    “I must first pass a sentence of death,” he says, “upon everything
+    that can properly be called a thing 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 to come; and as touching this world,
+    to count the grave my house, to make my bed in darkness, and to
+    say to corruption, Thou art my father, and to the worm, Thou art
+    my mother and sister.... The parting with my wife and my poor
+    children hath often been to me as the pulling of my flesh from my
+    bones, especially my poor blind child who lay nearer my heart than
+    all I had besides. Poor child, thought I, what sorrow art thou
+    like to have for thy portion in this world! Thou must be beaten,
+    must beg, suffer hunger, cold, nakedness, and a thousand
+    calamities, though I cannot now endure that the wind should blow
+    upon thee. But yet I must venture you all with God, though it
+    goeth to the quick to leave you.”(97)
+The "tone of resolve" is present, but the full flood of ecstatic liberation never completely washed over Bunyan's soul. These examples should introduce us to the phenomenon technically known as "Conversion." In the next lecture, I will invite you to study its unique characteristics in more detail.
+The “hue of resolution” is there, but the full flood of ecstatic
+liberation seems never to have poured over poor John Bunyan’s soul.
+These examples may suffice to acquaint us in a general way with the
+phenomenon technically called “Conversion.” In the next lecture I shall
+invite you to study its peculiarities and concomitants in some detail.
 ## LECTURE IX. CONVERSION.
+To be converted, to be reborn, to receive grace, to experience religion, or to gain assurance—all describe the process, gradual or sudden, by which a self previously divided and consciously wrong, inferior, and unhappy becomes unified and consciously right, superior, and happy through a firmer grasp on religious realities. This is conversion's meaning, whether or not we believe direct divine intervention is required.
+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 and happy, in consequence of its firmer hold upon religious
+realities. This at least is what conversion signifies in general terms,
+whether or not we believe that a direct divine operation is needed to
+bring such a moral change about.
+Before examining this process, let me illustrate with a concrete example: the unique case of Stephen H. Bradley, an uneducated man whose experience shows how inner transformations reveal unexpected depths, like shells whose existence we never suspected.
+Before entering upon a minuter study of the process, let me enliven our
+understanding of the definition 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)
+Bradley believed himself fully converted at fourteen. "I thought I saw the Savior, through faith, in human form for about a second in the room, with arms extended, saying, 'Come.' The next day I rejoiced with trembling; soon my happiness was so great I wanted to die. This world no longer held my affections, and every day felt as solemn as the Sabbath. I desired all humanity to feel as I did, to love God supremely. Previously selfish and self-righteous, I now wished everyone's well-being and could forgive my worst enemies, willing to endure anything if I might convert even one soul in God's hands."
+I select this case because it shows how in these inner alterations one may
+find one unsuspected depth 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.
+Nine years later, in 1829, Bradley heard of a revival. "Young converts would ask if I had religion. I'd reply, 'I hope I do.' This didn't satisfy them; they *knew* they had it. I asked their prayers, thinking it time I truly had religion. One Sunday I heard a Methodist preacher describe Judgment Day so solemnly that I trembled involuntarily, though my heart felt nothing. The next evening he preached from Revelation: 'And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God.' He portrayed such terrors it would melt a heart of stone. When he finished, an old gentleman said, 'Now that's what I call preaching.' I agreed, but my feelings were unaffected; I wasn't experiencing religion, though I believed he was.
+Bradley thought that he had been already fully converted at the age of
+fourteen.
+"That night I experienced the Holy Spirit's power. Had anyone described this beforehand, I would have thought them deluded. I went home feeling dull and went to bed indifferent. About five minutes later, my heart began beating furiously—so fast I thought something was wrong, though I felt no pain. Soon I knew it was the Holy Spirit. I felt incredibly happy yet unworthy, and couldn't help saying, 'Lord, I don't deserve this happiness.' A stream, resembling air in feeling, entered my mouth and heart in a more sensible manner than that of drinking anything. For about five minutes it took complete possession of my soul. I remember asking the Lord not to give me more happiness, as I couldn't contain what I had. My heart felt near bursting until I was unutterably full of God's love. The thought came: 'What does this mean?' Suddenly my memory clarified as if the New Testament lay open at Romans 8, bright as candlelight, and I read:
+> **Quote:** "The Spirit helpeth our infirmities with groanings which cannot be uttered."
+    “I thought I saw the Saviour, by faith, in human shape, for about
+    one second in the room, with arms 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 all mankind might feel as I did; I wanted to have them all
+    love God supremely. Previous to this time I was very selfish and
+    self‐righteous; but now I desired the welfare of all mankind, and
+    could with a feeling heart forgive my worst enemies, and I felt as
+    if I should be willing to bear the scoffs and sneers 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.”
+"My heart's beating made me groan like one in distress. My brother, hearing me from another room, asked if I had a toothache. I told him no. I feared sleeping lest I lose the feeling, thinking:
+    Nine years later, in 1829, Mr. Bradley heard of a revival of
+    religion that had begun in his neighborhood. “Many of the young
+    converts,” he says, “would come to me when in meeting and ask me
+    if I had religion, and my reply generally was, I hope I have. This
+    did not appear to satisfy them; 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 I had, and hoped their prayers would
+    be answered in my behalf.
+'My willing soul would stay
+    “One Sabbath, I went to hear the Methodist at the Academy. He
+    spoke of the ushering in of the day of general judgment; and he
+    set it forth in such a solemn and terrible manner as I never heard
+    before. The scene of that day appeared to be taking place, and so
+    awakened were all the powers of my mind that, like Felix, I
+    trembled involuntarily on the bench where I was sitting, though I
+    felt nothing 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 day in such a manner that it appeared as if it would melt
+    the heart of stone. When he finished his discourse, an old
+    gentleman turned to me and said, ‘This is what I call preaching.’
+    I thought the same; but my feelings were still unmoved by what he
+    said, and I did not enjoy religion, but I believe he did.
+In such a frame as this.'
+    “I will now relate my experience of the power of the Holy Spirit
+    which took place on the same night. Had any person told me
+    previous to this that I could have experienced the power of the
+    Holy Spirit in the manner which I did, I could not have believed
+    it, and should have thought the person deluded that told me so. I
+    went directly home after the meeting, and when I got home I
+    wondered what made me feel so stupid. I retired to rest soon after
+    I got home, and felt indifferent to the things of religion until I
+    began to be exercised by the Holy Spirit, which began in about
+    five minutes after, in the following manner:—
+"After my heart stopped racing, I reflected that angels might hover near. I spoke aloud: 'O you affectionate angels! How can you take such interest in our welfare while we take so little in our own?' I fell asleep with difficulty. Waking, I thought, 'Where has my happiness gone?' Finding some remained, I asked for more and received it instantly. Dressing, I could barely stand. It felt like heaven on earth. My soul had no more fear of death than of sleep. Like a caged bird, I desired release to be with Christ if it was God's will, yet was willing to live for others. I went downstairs solemn as if all my friends were dead. Before telling my parents, I opened the New Testament to Romans 8; every verse spoke directly to me, confirming God's Word. I told them my speech seemed controlled by the Spirit within—not that the words weren't mine, but I felt influenced like the Apostles at Pentecost (minus their power to confer it). After breakfast I visited neighbors about religion, something I couldn't have been paid to do before, and prayed with them publicly for the first time."
+    “At first, I began to feel my heart beat very quick all on a
+    sudden, which made me at first think that perhaps something is
+    going to ail me, though I was not alarmed, for I felt no pain. My
+    heart increased in its beating, which soon convinced me that it
+    was the Holy Spirit from the effect it had on me. I began to feel
+    exceedingly happy and humble, and such a sense of unworthiness as
+    I never felt before. I could not very well help speaking out,
+    which I did, and said, Lord, I do not deserve this happiness, or
+    words to that effect, while there was a stream (resembling air in
+    feeling) came into my mouth and heart in a more sensible manner
+    than that of drinking anything, which continued, as near as I
+    could judge, five minutes or more, which appeared to be the cause
+    of such a palpitation 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 not contain what I had got. My heart seemed as if it
+    would burst, but it did not stop until I felt as if I was
+    unutterably full of the love and grace of God. In the mean time
+    while thus exercised, a thought arose in my mind, what can it
+    mean? and all at once, as if to answer it, my memory became
+    exceedingly 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
+th and 27th verses of that chapter, and I read these words: ‘The
+    Spirit helpeth our infirmities with groanings which cannot be
+    uttered.’ And all the time that my heart was a‐beating, it made me
+    groan like a person in distress, which was not very easy to stop,
+    though I was in no pain at all, and my brother being in bed in
+    another room came and opened the door, and asked me if I had got
+    the toothache. I told him no, and that he might get to sleep. I
+    tried to stop. I felt unwilling to go to sleep myself, I was so
+    happy, fearing I should lose it—thinking within myself
+So much for Mr. Bradley; we have no record of his later life. Now let us examine the conversion process more closely.
+    ‘My willing soul would stay
+      In such a frame as this.’
+Open any psychology textbook to "Association" and you will read that a person's ideas, goals, and interests form relatively independent internal systems. Each aim triggers specific excitement and gathers related ideas. When one system dominates our interest, ideas connected to others may be excluded from awareness. When the President goes camping with paddle, gun, and fishing rod, his mental framework changes completely. Presidential anxieties fade; official habits give way to those of a child of nature. Those who knew him only as a magistrate would not recognize the camper.
+    And while I lay reflecting, after my heart stopped beating,
+    feeling as if my soul was full of the Holy Spirit, I thought that
+    perhaps there might be angels hovering round my bed. I felt just
+    as if I wanted to converse with them, and finally I spoke, saying,
+    ‘O ye affectionate angels! how is it that ye 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 has become of my
+    happiness? and, feeling a degree of it in my heart, I asked for
+    more, which was given to me as quick as thought. I then got up to
+    dress myself, and found to my surprise that I could but just
+    stand. It appeared to me as if it was a little heaven upon earth.
+    My soul felt as completely raised above the fears of death as of
+    going to sleep; and like a bird in a cage, I had a desire, if it
+    was the will of God, to get released from my body and to dwell
+    with Christ, though willing to live to do good to others, and to
+    warn sinners to repent. I went downstairs feeling as solemn as if
+    I had lost all my friends, and thinking with myself, that I would
+    not let my parents know it until I had first looked into the
+    Testament. I went directly to the shelf and looked into it, at the
+    eighth chapter of Romans, and every verse seemed to almost speak
+    and to confirm it to be truly the Word of God, and as if my
+    feelings corresponded with the meaning of the word. I then told my
+    parents of it, and told them that I thought that they must see
+    that when I spoke, that it was not my own voice, for it appeared
+    so to me. My speech seemed entirely under the control of the
+    Spirit within me; I do not mean that the words which I spoke were
+    not my own, for they were. I thought that I was influenced similar
+    to the Apostles on the day of Pentecost (with the exception of
+    having power to give it to others, and doing what they did). After
+    breakfast I went round to converse with my neighbors on religion,
+    which I could not have been hired to have done before this, and at
+    their request I prayed with them, though I had never prayed in
+    public before.
+If he never returned to office, he would be permanently transformed. Our usual character shifts aren't called "transformations" because they reverse so quickly. But when one goal becomes stable enough to permanently displace rivals, we call it transformation.
+    “I now feel as if I had discharged my duty by telling the truth,
+    and hope by the blessing of God, it may do some good to all who
+    shall read it. He has fulfilled his promise in sending the Holy
+    Spirit down into our hearts, or mine at least, and I now defy all
+    the Deists and Atheists in the world to shake my faith in Christ.”
+Less completely, two goal-systems may coexist, one driving action while others remain "pious wishes" that lead nowhere. Saint Augustine's aspirations for purity, discussed last lecture, were such. So is a powerful President wondering if wood-chopping might be healthier. These fleeting aspirations are mere *velleitates*—whimsies existing at the mind's edge while the real self's energy occupies a different system.
+I remember, for instance, when my father read Lord Gifford's will establishing these lectureships. At that time, I had no thought of becoming a philosophy teacher; what I heard was as remote as Mars. Yet here I am, with the Gifford Lectures now at my core, my energies focused on them. > **Quote:** My soul stands now planted in what once was for it a practically unreal object, and speaks from it as from its proper habitat and centre.
+So much for Mr. Bradley and his conversion, of the effect of which upon
+his later life we gain no information. Now for a minuter survey of the
+constituent elements of the conversion process.
+When I say "soul," you needn't take it metaphysically. For Buddhists or Humeans, it's simply successive "fields of consciousness." Yet each field has a focal sub-field containing excitement and serving as the center for choosing goals. We naturally use perspective words—"here," "this," "now," "mine"—for this part, and "there," "then," "that" for the rest. But these can swap places.
+                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
+These changes come from shifts in emotional excitement. What's "hot" today may be "cold" tomorrow. We view our mental field from hot parts' perspective; from them, desire and will move. They are our dynamic energy centers, while cold parts leave us passive. Whether this language is strictly scientific is unimportant if you recognize these facts from experience.
+If you open the chapter on Association, of any treatise on Psychology, you
+will read that a man’s ideas, aims, and objects form diverse internal
+groups and systems, relatively independent of one another. Each “aim”
+which he follows awakens a certain specific kind of interested excitement,
+and gathers a certain group of ideas together in subordination to it as
+its associates; and if the aims and excitements are distinct in kind,
+their groups of ideas may have little in common. When one group is present
+and engrosses the interest, all the ideas connected with other groups may
+be excluded from 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 replaced by the habits of a son of nature, and those
+who knew the man only as the strenuous magistrate would not “know him for
+the same person” if they saw him as the camper.
+Emotional interest can oscillate, and "hot spots" can shift like sparks through paper. When they do, we have the divided self discussed previously. Or the focus may rest permanently in a system. If religious, we call it *conversion*, especially through crisis or when sudden.
+If now he should never go back, and never again suffer political interests
+to gain dominion over him, he would be for practical intents and purposes
+a permanently transformed being. Our ordinary alterations of character, as
+we pass from one of our aims to another, are not commonly called
+transformations, 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 the individual’s life, we tend to
+speak of the phenomenon, and perhaps to wonder at it, as a
+“transformation.”
+> **Quote:** "Let us hereafter, in speaking of the hot place in a man's consciousness, the group of ideas to which he devotes himself, and from which he works, call it _the habitual centre of his personal energy_."
+These alternations are the completest of the ways in which a self may be
+divided. A less complete way is the simultaneous coexistence of two or
+more different groups of aims, of which one practically holds the right of
+way and instigates activity, whilst the others are only pious wishes, and
+never practically come to anything. Saint Augustine’s aspirations to a
+purer life, in our last 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 the
+wholesomer destiny. Such fleeting aspirations are mere _velleitates_,
+whimsies. They exist on the remoter outskirts of the mind, and the real
+self of the man, the centre of his energies, is occupied with an entirely
+different system. As life goes on, there is a constant change of our
+interests, and a consequent change of place in our systems of ideas, from
+more central to more peripheral, and from more peripheral to more central
+parts of consciousness. I remember, for instance, that one evening when I
+was a youth, my father read aloud from a Boston newspaper that part of
+Lord Gifford’s will which founded these four lectureships. At that time I
+did not think of being a teacher of philosophy: and what I listened to was
+as remote from my own life as if it related to the planet Mars. 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 planted in what once was for it a practically
+unreal object, and speaks from it as from its proper habitat and centre.
+It makes a huge difference which ideas center our energy. To be "converted" means religious ideas previously peripheral now become central, forming the habitual centre of energy.
+When I say “Soul,” you need not take me in the ontological sense unless
+you prefer to; for although ontological language is instinctive in such
+matters, yet Buddhists or Humians can perfectly well describe the facts in
+the phenomenal terms which are their favorites. For them the soul 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 aim seems 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 parts the 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”
+change their places.
+Ask psychology *how* this excitement shifts and *why* peripheral goals become central, and it admits it can describe generally but not account for specifics. Neither observer nor subject can fully explain how experiences so decisively change one's energy center, or why they must wait for the right moment. We may repeat a thought or act, then one day its true meaning resonates, or the act becomes morally impossible.
+What brings such changes about is the way in which emotional excitement
+alters. Things hot and vital to us to‐day are cold to‐morrow. It is as if
+seen from the hot parts of the field that the other parts appear to us,
+and from these hot parts personal desire and volition make their sallies.
+They are in short the centres of our dynamic energy, whereas the cold
+parts leave us indifferent and passive in proportion to their coldness.
+> **Quote:** "All we know 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."
+Whether such language be rigorously exact is for the present of no
+importance. It is exact enough, if you recognize from your own experience
+the facts which I seek to designate by it.
+We could call this heat the "motor power" of a long-delayed idea, but this merely restates the question: where did that power come from? Ultimately we fall back on mechanical equilibrium: a mind is a system of ideas, each with excitement levels and impulsive/restraining tendencies that check or reinforce one another. As experiences accumulate and the organism ages, the system weakens internally yet stands by habit. A new insight, emotional shock, or exposing event collapses it, and the center of gravity settles into a stable position. The new ideas at the center become locked, and the structure permanent.
+Now there may be great oscillation in the emotional interest, and the hot
+places may shift before one almost as rapidly as the sparks that run
+through burnt‐up paper. Then we have the wavering and 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 certain system; and then, if the change be a
+religious one, we call it a _conversion_, especially if it be by crisis,
+or sudden.
+Established associations act as brakes; new information as an accelerator. The slow mutation of instincts under the "unimaginable touch of time" also influences enormously.
+Let us hereafter, in speaking of the hot place in a man’s consciousness,
+the group of ideas to which he devotes himself, and from which he works,
+call it _the habitual centre of his personal energy_. It makes a great
+difference to a man whether one set of his ideas, or another, be the
+centre of his energy; and it makes a great difference, as regards any set
+of ideas which he may possess, whether they become central or remain
+peripheral in him. To say that a man is “converted” means, in these terms,
+that religious ideas, previously peripheral in his consciousness, now take
+a central place, and that religious aims form the habitual centre of his
+energy.
+Emotional events, especially violent ones, powerfully trigger reorganizations. Love, jealousy, guilt, fear, remorse, or anger can take hold explosively. So can hope, happiness, security, and resolve—the emotions of conversion. Explosive emotions rarely leave things unchanged.
+Now if you ask of psychology just _how_ the excitement shifts in a man’s
+mental system, and _why_ aims that were peripheral become at a certain
+moment central, psychology has to reply that although she can give a
+general description of what happens, she is unable in a given case to
+account accurately for all the single forces at work. Neither an outside
+observer nor the Subject who undergoes the process can explain fully how
+particular experiences are able to change one’s centre of energy so
+decisively, or why they so often have to bide their hour to do so. We have
+a thought, or we perform an act, repeatedly, but on a certain day the real
+meaning of the thought peals through us for the first time, or the act has
+suddenly turned into a moral impossibility. All we know 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 say that the heat and liveliness mean only
+the “motor efficacy,” long deferred but now operative, of the idea; but
+such talk itself is only circumlocution, for whence the sudden motor
+efficacy? And our explanations then get so vague and general that one
+realizes all the more the intense individuality of the whole phenomenon.
+Professor Starbuck's statistical research shows that ordinary "conversion" in evangelical youth parallels normal adolescent development. The age is consistent—fourteen to seventeen. Symptoms are identical: incompleteness, brooding, depression, introspection, sin-consciousness, anxiety about the afterlife, doubt. The result is the same: happy relief and objectivity as self-confidence adjusts to a broader outlook.
+In the end we fall back on the hackneyed symbolism of a mechanical
+equilibrium. A mind is a system 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 by addition in the course of experience, and the tendencies
+alter as the organism gets more aged. A mental 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, or an occasion which lays bare the organic alteration,
+will make the whole fabric fall together; and then the centre of gravity
+sinks into an attitude more stable, for the new ideas that reach the
+centre in the rearrangement seem now to be locked there, and the new
+structure remains permanent.
+> **Quote:** "Conversion is in its essence a normal adolescent phenomenon, incidental to the passage from the child's small universe to the wider intellectual and spiritual life of maturity."
+Formed associations of ideas and habits are usually factors of retardation
+in such changes of equilibrium. New information, however acquired, plays
+an accelerating part in the changes; and the slow mutation of our
+instincts and propensities, under the “unimaginable touch of time” has an
+enormous influence. Moreover, all these influences may work subconsciously
+or half unconsciously.(99) And when you get a Subject in whom the
+subconscious life—of which I must speak more fully soon—is largely
+developed, and in whom motives habitually ripen in silence, you get a case
+of which you can never give a full account, and in which, both to the
+Subject and the onlookers, there may appear an element of marvel.
+Emotional occasions, especially violent ones, are extremely potent in
+precipitating mental rearrangements. The sudden and explosive ways in
+which 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 equally explosive. And emotions that
+come in this explosive way seldom leave things as they found them.
+Theology builds on these tendencies, recognizing that adolescent growth means bringing the person into mature personal insight. It intensifies these normal tendencies and shortens "storm and stress." Starbuck's statistics show "conviction of sin" lasts one-fifth as long as typical adolescent turmoil but is far more intense, with more frequent physical symptoms. Conversion intensifies but shortens by bringing a definitive crisis.
+In his recent work on the Psychology of Religion, Professor Starbuck of
+California has shown by a statistical inquiry how closely parallel in its
+manifestations the ordinary “conversion” which occurs in young people
+brought up in evangelical circles is to that growth into a larger
+spiritual life which 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 of incompleteness 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 happy relief and objectivity, as the confidence
+in self gets greater through the adjustment of the faculties to the wider
+outlook. In spontaneous religious awakening, apart from revivalistic
+examples, and in the ordinary storm and stress and moulting‐time of
+adolescence, we also may meet with mystical experiences, astonishing the
+subjects by their suddenness, just as in revivalistic conversion. The
+analogy, in fact, is complete; and Starbuck’s conclusion as to these
+ordinary youthful conversions would seem to be the only sound one:
+Conversion is in its essence a normal adolescent phenomenon, incidental to
+the passage from the child’s small universe to the wider intellectual and
+spiritual life of maturity.
+Starbuck's subjects are ordinary people shaped by instruction, appeal, and example—imitative phenomena. In other faiths or countries, the essence would be the same but details would differ. In Catholic and Episcopalian denominations, intense anxiety is unusual; sacraments reduce the need for personal acceptance emphasis.
+“Theology,” says Dr. Starbuck, “takes the adolescent tendencies and builds
+upon them; it sees that the essential thing in adolescent growth is
+bringing the person out of childhood into the new life of maturity and
+personal insight. It accordingly brings those means to bear which will
+intensify the normal tendencies. It shortens up the period of duration of
+storm and stress.” The conversion phenomena of “conviction of sin” last,
+by this investigator’s statistics, about one fifth as long as the periods
+of adolescent storm and stress phenomena of which he also got statistics,
+but they are very much more intense. Bodily accompaniments, loss of sleep
+and appetite, for example, are much more frequent in them. “The essential
+distinction appears to be that conversion intensifies but shortens the
+period by bringing the person to a definite crisis.”(101)
+But imitative phenomena require original models, so we should focus on firsthand adult cases. Professor Leuba places theology below morality in conversion, defining religious sense as "the feeling of un-wholeness, of moral imperfection, or sin, accompanied by yearning for unity." He notes "religion" increasingly signifies desires arising from sin and its release, providing examples from alcoholism to spiritual pride showing guilt can demand relief like physical pain.
+The conversions which Dr. Starbuck here has in mind are of course mainly
+those of very commonplace persons, kept true to a pre‐appointed type by
+instruction, appeal, and example. The particular form which they affect is
+the result of suggestion and imitation.(102) If they went through their
+growth‐crisis in other faiths and other countries, although the essence of
+the change would be the same (since it is one in the main so inevitable),
+its accidents would be different. In Catholic lands, for example, and in
+our own Episcopalian sects, no such anxiety and conviction of sin is usual
+as in sects that encourage revivals. The sacraments being more relied on
+in these more strictly ecclesiastical bodies, the individual’s personal
+acceptance of salvation needs less to be accentuated and led up to.
+Mr. S. H. Hadley, who after his conversion became an active and useful rescuer of drunkards in New York. His experience:
+But every imitative phenomenon must once have had its original, and I
+propose that for the future we keep as close as may be to the more first‐
+hand and original forms of experience. These are more likely to be found
+in sporadic adult cases.
+> **Quote:** "One Tuesday evening I sat in a Harlem saloon, homeless, friendless, dying. I had pawned everything for drink. I hadn't eaten for days; four nights I suffered delirium tremens. I had vowed to drown myself rather than become a tramp, but when the time came I couldn't walk a quarter-mile to the river. Sitting there, I felt a mighty presence—later I knew it was Jesus. I pounded the bar, glasses rattling, and declared I'd never drink again, even if I died. A voice said, 'Get locked up if you mean it.' I went to the nearest station house.
+Professor Leuba, in a valuable article on the psychology of
+conversion,(103) subordinates the theological aspect of the religious life
+almost entirely to its moral aspect. The religious sense he defines as
+“the feeling of un‐wholeness, 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 getting more and more to signify the
+conglomerate of desires and emotions springing from the sense of sin and
+its release”; and he gives a large number of examples, in which the sin
+ranges from drunkenness to spiritual pride, to show that the sense of it
+may beset one and crave relief as urgently as does the anguish of the
+sickened flesh or any form of physical misery.
+> "In my narrow cell, demons seemed to crowd in, but that Spirit from the saloon was there, saying 'Pray.' I prayed without immediate help but kept on. After release I went to my brother's. The Spirit never left me. Sunday I went to Jerry M'Auley's Mission. I saw that man of God tell his story with such sincerity I wondered, 'Can God save *me*?' I heard twenty-five testimonies from former drunkards and resolved to be saved or die there. When invited, I knelt. Jerry prayed, then Mrs. M'Auley. A whisper said 'Come'; the devil said 'Be careful.' Hesitating only a moment, I cried, 'Dear Jesus, can you help me?' Words cannot describe it. Though my soul had been in gloom, noonday sun seemed to shine into my heart. I was free! Christ's light and power had entered my life; the old had passed, all was new.
+Undoubtedly this conception covers an immense number of cases. A good one
+to use as an example is that of Mr. S. H. Hadley, who after his conversion
+became an active and useful rescuer of drunkards in New York. His
+experience runs as follows:—
+> "Since then, I've never wanted whiskey. I promised God that if He removed my craving, I'd serve Him forever. He has done His part; I've tried to do mine."
+Leuba rightly notes little formal theology here—experiences beginning with need for a higher helper and ending with that help. He gives purely ethical alcoholic conversions; John B. Gough's case is practically an atheist's conversion, mentioning neither God nor Jesus. But Leuba makes this too exclusive. It fits subjective melancholy like Bunyan's, but we saw in Lecture VII objective melancholy too—Tolstoy's sense of life's meaninglessness. Conversion elements vary and deserve careful distinction.
+    “One Tuesday evening I sat in a saloon in Harlem, a homeless,
+    friendless, dying drunkard. I had pawned or sold everything that
+    would bring a drink. I could not sleep unless I was dead drunk. I
+    had not eaten for days, and for four nights preceding I had
+    suffered with delirium tremens, or the horrors, from midnight till
+    morning. I had often said, ‘I will never be a tramp. I will never
+    be cornered, 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 the way to the river. As I sat there thinking, I seemed to feel
+    some great and mighty presence. I did not know then what it was. I
+    did learn afterwards that it was Jesus, the sinner’s friend. I
+    walked up to the bar and pounded it with my fist till I made the
+    glasses rattle. Those who stood by drinking looked 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 keep this promise,
+    go and have yourself locked up.’ I went to the nearest station‐
+    house and had myself locked up.
+Some people never are—and perhaps never could be—converted. Religious ideas cannot center their spiritual energy. They may serve God practically but aren't "children of his kingdom." Either they cannot imagine the invisible, or they suffer lifelong "barrenness" and "dryness." This may be intellectual: pessimistic and materialistic beliefs inhibit religious faculties, leaving good souls "frozen." Others feel agnostic prohibitions as shameful weaknesses, cowering afraid to trust instinct. Many never overcome these; their energy never reaches the religious center, which remains inactive.
+    “I was placed in a narrow cell, and it seemed as though all the
+    demons that could find room came in that place with me. This was
+    not all the company I had, either. No, praise the Lord; that dear
+    Spirit that came to me in the saloon was present, and said, Pray.
+    I did pray, and though I did not feel any great help, I kept on
+    praying. As soon as I was able to leave my cell I was taken to the
+    police court and remanded back to the cell. I was finally
+    released, and found my way to my brother’s house, where every care
+    was given me. While lying in bed the admonishing Spirit never left
+    me, and when I arose the following Sabbath morning I felt that day
+    would decide my fate, and toward 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 the apostle to the drunkard and the
+    outcast—that man of God, Jerry M’Auley. He rose, and amid deep
+    silence 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 I would be saved or die right
+    there. When the invitation was given, I knelt down with a crowd of
+    drunkards. Jerry made the first prayer. Then Mrs. M’Auley prayed
+    fervently for us. Oh, what a conflict 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?’ Never with mortal tongue
+    can I describe that moment. Although up to that moment my soul had
+    been filled with indescribable gloom, I felt the glorious
+    brightness of the noonday sun shine into my heart. I felt I was a
+    free man. Oh, the precious feeling of safety, of freedom, of
+    resting on Jesus! I felt that Christ with all his brightness and
+    power had come into my life; that, indeed, old things had passed
+    away and all things had become new.
+Others are anesthetic on the religious side, lacking that sensitivity. Like a weak constitution never achieving robust "animal spirits," spiritually barren natures may admire faith but never grasp its enthusiasm. Yet this may be temporary. Late in life, a bolt may pull back and the hard heart soften. Such cases suggest sudden conversion is miraculous, reminding us these aren't unchangeable categories.
+    “From that moment till now I have never wanted a drink of whiskey,
+    and I have never seen money enough to make me take one. I promised
+    God that night that if he would take away the appetite for strong
+    drink, I would work for him all my life. He has done his part, and
+    I have been trying to do mine.”(104)
+Two mental processes create different conversion types, as Starbuck notes. When you forget a name, you usually work at recall by reviewing associations. But sometimes effort fails—the name seems *jammed*, and focusing keeps it buried. The opposite approach succeeds: give up, think of something else, and the name drifts back. The effort started a hidden process that continued after it ceased. As a music teacher tells students: "Stop trying and it will do itself!"
+Thus mental results come either consciously/voluntarily or unconsciously/involuntarily. Both appear in conversion, giving Starbuck's *volitional type* and *type by self-surrender*. In volitional conversion, transformation is gradual—building moral habits piece by piece, though with rapid turning points. Progress in any skill advances by leaps, like physical growth.
+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 helped us. He gives other cases of
+drunkards’ conversions which are purely ethical, containing, as recorded,
+no theological beliefs whatever. John B. Gough’s case, for instance, is
+practically, says Dr. Leuba, the conversion of an atheist—neither God nor
+Jesus being mentioned.(105) But in spite of the importance of this type of
+regeneration, with little or no intellectual readjustment, this writer
+surely makes it too exclusive. It corresponds to the subjectively centred
+form of morbid melancholy, of which Bunyan and Alline were examples. But
+we saw in our seventh lecture that there 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) So there are distinct elements in conversion, and their
+relations to individual lives deserve to be discriminated.(107)
+> **Quote:** "An athlete ... sometimes awakens suddenly to an understanding of the fine points of the game and to a real enjoyment of it, just as the convert awakens to an appreciation of religion. If he keeps on engaging in the sport, there may come a day when all at once the game plays itself through him—when he loses himself in some great contest. In the same way, a musician may suddenly reach a point at which pleasure in the technique of the art entirely falls away, and in some moment of inspiration he becomes the instrument through which music flows. The writer has chanced to hear two different married persons, both of whose wedded lives had been beautiful from the beginning, relate that not until a year or more after marriage did they awake to the full blessedness of married life. So it is with the religious experience of these persons we are studying."
+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 be excellent 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 are life‐long subjects of “barrenness” and “dryness.”
+Such inaptitude for religious faith may in some cases be intellectual in
+its origin. Their religious faculties may be checked in their natural
+tendency to 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 indulged their religious
+propensities, find themselves nowadays, as it were, frozen; or the
+agnostic vetoes upon faith as something weak and shameful, under which so
+many of us to‐day lie cowering, afraid to use our instincts. In many
+persons such inhibitions are never overcome. To the end of their days they
+refuse to believe, their personal energy never gets to its religious
+centre, and the latter remains inactive in perpetuity.
+More remarkable examples of subconscious processes will follow. Hamilton and Laycock first noted these effects; Carpenter introduced "unconscious cerebration." Since "unconscious" misnames many cases, "subconscious" or "subliminal" is better.
+In other persons the trouble is profounder. There are men anæsthetic on
+the religious side, deficient in that category of sensibility. Just as a
+bloodless organism can never, in spite of all its goodwill, attain to the
+reckless “animal spirits” enjoyed by those of sanguine temperament; so the
+nature which is spiritually barren may admire and envy faith in others,
+but can never compass the enthusiasm 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 some thaw, some release may take place, some bolt be shot back in the
+barrenest breast, and the man’s hard heart may soften and break into
+religious feeling. Such cases more than any others suggest the idea that
+sudden conversion is by miracle. So long as they exist, we must not
+imagine ourselves to deal with irretrievably fixed classes.
+Volitional examples would be easy but less interesting than self-surrender, where subconscious effects are more startling. I'll focus on the latter, as the difference isn't radical. Even deliberate renewal has moments of partial surrender. In most cases, when will has done its utmost toward unification, the final step must be left to other forces. Self-surrender becomes essential.
+                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
+> **Quote:** "The personal will must be given up. In many cases relief refuses to come until the person ceases to resist, or to make an effort in the direction he desires to go."
+Now there are two forms of mental occurrence in human beings, which lead
+to a striking difference in the conversion process, a difference to which
+Professor Starbuck has called attention. You know how it is when you try
+to recollect a forgotten name. 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
+if the harder you tried the less hope there would be, as though the name
+were _jammed_, and pressure in its direction only kept it all the more
+from rising. And then the opposite expedient often succeeds. Give up the
+effort entirely; think of something altogether different, and in half an
+hour the lost name comes sauntering into your mind, as Emerson says, as
+carelessly as if it had never been invited. Some hidden process was
+started in you by the effort, which went on after the effort ceased, 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, and unsuccessfully attempted: “Stop trying and it
+will do itself!”(108)
+Starbuck's correspondents write: "I had said I would not give up; but when my will was broken, it was all over." Another: "Lord, I have done all I can; I leave the whole matter with Thee"—and immediately great peace came.
+There is thus a conscious and voluntary way and an involuntary and
+unconscious way in which mental 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.
+Starbuck explains why self-surrender is essential. The convert's mind contains two things: the sense of incompleteness or "sin" to escape, and the positive ideal to achieve. For most, awareness of flaws is more distinct than any vague ideal. Thus conversion is "a process of struggling away from sin rather than striving toward righteousness." Conscious will aims at something poorly imagined, while subconscious processes move toward their own result. These efforts release subconscious allies that rearrange the mind. Their destination is specific and differs from conscious plans, so voluntary efforts can "jam" the process like a name we try too hard to recall.
+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 here at which the
+movement forward seems much more rapid. This psychological fact is
+abundantly illustrated by Dr. Starbuck. Our education in any practical
+accomplishment proceeds apparently by jerks and starts, just as the growth
+of our physical bodies does.
+> **Quote:** "He must relax—that is, he must fall back on the larger Power that makes for righteousness, which has been welling up in his own being, and let it finish in its own way the work it has begun.... The act of yielding, in this point of view, is giving one's self over to the new life, making it the centre of a new personality, and living, from within, the truth of it which had before been viewed objectively."
+> **Quote:** "Man's extremity is God's opportunity"
+    “An athlete ... sometimes awakens suddenly to an understanding of
+    the fine points of the game and to a real enjoyment of it, just as
+    the convert awakens to an appreciation of religion. If he keeps on
+    engaging in the sport, there may come a day when all at once the
+    game plays itself through him—when he loses himself in some great
+    contest. In the same way, a musician may suddenly reach a point at
+    which pleasure in the technique of the art entirely falls away,
+    and in some moment of inspiration he becomes the instrument
+    through which music flows. The writer has chanced to hear two
+    different married persons, both of whose wedded lives had been
+    beautiful from the beginning, relate that not until a year or more
+    after marriage did they awake to the full blessedness of married
+    life. So it is with the religious experience of these persons we
+    are studying.”(109)
+Both recognize the same reality: when the new center has subconsciously developed enough to bloom, "hands off" is the rule; it must burst forth.
+Regardless of terms, this crisis involves throwing ourselves upon powers more ideal than ourselves, working toward redemption. This is why self-surrender is religion's vital turning point, at least inwardly. Christian history shows increasing emphasis on this crisis: from Catholicism through Lutheranism, Calvinism, Wesleyanism, to liberalism and transcendental idealism—through mystics, quietists, pietists, Quakers—we see progression toward immediate spiritual help experienced in despair, without requiring doctrinal systems.
+We shall erelong hear still more remarkable illustrations of
+subconsciously maturing processes eventuating in results of which we
+suddenly grow conscious. Sir William Hamilton and Professor Laycock 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 has since then been a popular phrase of
+explanation. The facts are now known to us far more extensively than he
+could know them, and the adjective “unconscious,” being for many of them
+almost certainly a misnomer, is better replaced by the vaguer term
+“subconscious” or “subliminal.”
+Psychology and religion agree: forces seemingly outside consciousness bring redemption. But psychology calls them "subconscious," attributing effects to "incubation" or "brain activity"—not transcending personality. Christian theology insists they are direct acts of God. I suggest we don't finalize this disagreement yet; further investigation may resolve the tension.
+Of the volitional type of conversion it would be easy to give
+examples,(110) but they are as a rule less interesting than those of the
+self‐surrender type, in which the subconscious effects are more abundant
+and often startling. I will therefore hurry to the latter, the more so
+because the difference between the two types is after all not radical.
+Even in the most voluntarily built‐up sort of regeneration there are
+passages of partial self‐surrender interposed; and in the great majority
+of all cases, when the will has done its uttermost towards bringing one
+close to the complete unification aspired after, it seems that the very
+last step must be left to other forces and performed without the help of
+its activity. In other words, self‐surrender becomes then indispensable.
+“The personal will,” says Dr. Starbuck, “must be given up. In many cases
+relief persistently refuses to come until the person ceases to resist, or
+to make an effort in the direction he desires to go.”
+Return to self-surrender psychology. Tell someone on consciousness's ragged edge, trapped by sin and inadequacy, to stop worrying and let go, and you talk nonsense. Their experience says everything is *not* fine. The better path seems a lie. "The will to believe" cannot go that far—we can strengthen existing seeds, not create belief from nothing when perception says the opposite. The suggested "better mind" feels like denying the only reality we know, which we cannot will.
+Only two ways exist to escape negative emotions: an opposing emotion overwhelms us, or exhaustion makes us stop caring—our emotional centers strike, producing apathy. This exhaustion often figures in conversion. While the "sick soul's" worry stands guard, faith cannot enter. But if worry faints, even momentarily, faith can seize and keep possession. Carlyle's Teufelsdröckh moves from "everlasting No" to "Yes" through a "Center of Indifference."
+    “I had said I would not give up; but when my will was broken, it
+    was all over,” writes one of Starbuck’s correspondents.—Another
+    says: “I simply said: ‘Lord, I have done all I can; I leave the
+    whole matter with Thee;’ and immediately there came to me a great
+    peace.”—Another: “All at once it occurred to me that I might be
+    saved, too, if I would stop trying to do it all myself, and follow
+    Jesus: somehow I lost my load.”—Another: “I finally ceased to
+    resist, and gave myself up, though it was a hard struggle.
+    Gradually the feeling came over me that I had done my part, and
+    God was willing 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 filled with
+    peace.
+David Brainerd's crisis illustrates this. I've emphasized his exhaustion. Often reports suggest exhaustion of lower emotion and arrival of higher happen simultaneously, or that higher drives out lower. Both may work together.
+"Walking alone one morning," Brainerd wrote, "I saw all my plans for salvation were useless; I was lost. I could do nothing to help myself. Self-interest alone had driven my prayers—I never truly respected God's glory. My prayers had no necessary connection to mercy; they had no more virtue than splashing water. I had piled up devotions pretending to seek God's glory while only wanting my happiness. Having never done anything for God, I deserved only destruction for my hypocrisy. My religious duties seemed vile mockery—pure self-worship abusing God.
+Dr. Starbuck gives an interesting, and it seems to me a true, account—so
+far as conceptions so schematic can claim truth at all—of the reasons why
+self‐surrender at the last moment should be so indispensable. 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 present wrongness is a far
+more distinct piece of our consciousness than is the imagination of any
+positive ideal we can aim at. In a majority of cases, indeed, the “sin”
+almost exclusively engrosses the attention, so that conversion is “_a
+process of struggling away from sin rather than of striving towards
+righteousness_.”(113) A man’s conscious wit and will, so far as they
+strain towards the ideal, are aiming at something only dimly and
+inaccurately imagined. Yet all the while the forces of 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 way work towards rearrangement; and the
+rearrangement towards which all these deeper forces tend is pretty 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 we seek too energetically to recall it),
+by his voluntary efforts slanting from the true direction.
+"From Friday to Sunday evening I remained thus. Trying to pray, I found no heart for it. I thought God's Spirit had left me; I wasn't distressed, just disconsolate, as if nothing could make me happy. After half an hour of dull prayer, walking in a grove, unspeakable glory opened to my soul—not physical light but new understanding of God. Not a Trinity person, but Divine glory. My soul rejoiced wordlessly, satisfied He should be God forever. I was so captivated I had no thought for my own salvation, hardly knowing I existed. In this joy until dark, I felt in a new world. Salvation opened with such wisdom I wondered why I'd ever sought another way. I marveled I hadn't accepted this sooner. If I could have been saved by effort, my soul would now refuse it."
+Starbuck seems to put his finger on the root of the matter when he says
+that to exercise the personal 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
+_in posse_ which directs the operation. Instead of being clumsily and
+vaguely aimed at from without, it is 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 has been welling up in his own being, and let it finish in its own
+way the work it has begun.... The act of yielding, in this point of view,
+is giving one’s self over to the new life, making it the centre of a new
+personality, and living, from within, the truth of it which had before
+been viewed objectively.”(114)
+In a large proportion of reports, the writers speak as if the exhaustion of the lower and the entrance of the higher emotion were simultaneous, yet often again they speak as if the higher actively drove the lower out.
+“Man’s extremity is God’s opportunity” is the theological way of putting
+this fact of the need of self‐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)
+T.W.B., a Nettleton convert, in despair cried, "How long, O Lord?" He says: "After repeating this, I sank into insensibility. When I came to, I was on my knees praying for others, not myself. My worries seemed lost in concern for them."
+To state it in terms of our own symbolism: When the new centre of personal
+energy has been subconsciously incubated so long as to be just ready to
+open into flower, “hands off” is the only word for us, it must burst forth
+unaided!
+Finney wrote: "I thought I'd driven the Spirit away—lost all conviction, all concern. I'd never been so unconcerned. I tried to recall my load of sin, tried to make myself anxious. I was so peaceful I worried about *that*, fearing I'd offended the Spirit."
+We have used the vague and abstract language of psychology. But since, in
+any terms, the crisis described is the throwing of our conscious selves
+upon the mercy of powers which, whatever they may 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, so far as the religious life is spiritual and no affair of
+outer works and ritual and sacraments. One may say that the whole
+development of Christianity in inwardness has consisted in little more
+than the greater and greater emphasis attached to this crisis of self‐
+surrender. From Catholicism to Lutheranism, and then to Calvinism; from
+that to Wesleyanism; and from this, outside of technical Christianity
+altogether, to pure “liberalism” or transcendental idealism, whether or
+not of the mind‐cure type, taking in the mediæval mystics, the quietists,
+the pietists, and quakers by the way, we can trace the stages of progress
+towards the idea of an immediate spiritual help, experienced by the
+individual in his forlornness and standing in no essential need of
+doctrinal apparatus or propitiatory machinery.
+Yet some people experience the higher state bursting through like a flood, regardless of exhaustion or prior distress. These instantaneous conversions, most associated with divine grace, include Mr. Bradley's case. I'll save others for the next lecture.
+Psychology and religion are thus in perfect harmony up to this point,
+since both admit that there are 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 as
+due to “incubation,” or “cerebration,” implies that they do not transcend
+the individual’s personality; and herein she diverges from Christian
+theology, which insists that they are direct supernatural operations of
+the Deity. I propose to you that we do not yet consider this divergence
+final, but leave the question for a while in abeyance—continued inquiry
+may enable us to get rid of some 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 want and incompleteness, and consequently inconsolable,
+and then simply tell him that all is well with him, that he must stop his
+worry, break with his discontent, and give up his anxiety, you seem to him
+to come with pure absurdities. The only positive consciousness he has
+tells him that all is _not_ 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 make ourselves
+more faithful to a belief of which we have the rudiments, but we cannot
+create a belief out of whole cloth when our perception actively assures us
+of its opposite. The better mind proposed to us comes in that case in the
+form of a pure negation of the only mind we have, and we cannot actively
+will a pure negation.
+There are only two ways in which it is possible to get rid of anger,
+worry, fear, despair, or other undesirable affections. One is that an
+opposite affection should overpoweringly break over us, and the other is
+by getting so exhausted with the struggle that we have to stop,—so we drop
+down, give up, and _don’t care_ any longer. Our emotional brain‐centres
+strike work, and we lapse into a temporary apathy. Now there is
+documentary proof that this state of temporary exhaustion not infrequently
+forms part of the conversion crisis. So long as the egoistic worry of the
+sick soul guards the door, the expansive confidence of the soul of faith
+gains no presence. But let the former faint away, even but for a moment,
+and the latter can profit by the opportunity, and, having once acquired
+possession, may retain it. Carlyle’s Teufelsdröckh passes from the
+everlasting No to the everlasting Yes through a “Centre of 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 my contrivances and projects to effect or
+    procure deliverance and salvation for myself were utterly in vain;
+    I was brought quite to a stand, as finding myself totally lost. I
+    saw that it was forever impossible for me to do anything towards
+    helping or delivering myself, that I had made all the pleas 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 divine mercy; that they laid not the least
+    obligation upon God to bestow his grace upon me; and that there
+    was 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 I never once truly intended it, but only my
+    own happiness. I saw that as I had never done anything for God, I
+    had no claim on anything from him but perdition, on account of my
+    hypocrisy and mockery. When I saw evidently that I had regard to
+    nothing but self‐interest, then my duties appeared 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 evening following (July 12, 1739), when I
+    was walking again in the same solitary place. Here, in a mournful
+    melancholy state _I was attempting to pray; but found no heart to
+    engage in that or any other duty; my former concern, exercise, and
+    religious affections were now gone. I thought that the Spirit of
+    God had quite left me; but still was not distressed; yet
+    disconsolate, as if there was nothing 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 thick grove, unspeakable glory seemed to
+    open to the apprehension of my soul. I do not mean any external
+    brightness, nor any imagination of a body of light, but it was a
+    new inward apprehension or view that I had of God, such as I never
+    had before, nor anything which had the least resemblance to it. I
+    had no particular apprehension of any one person in the Trinity,
+    either the Father, the Son, or the Holy Ghost; but it appeared to
+    be Divine glory. My soul rejoiced with joy unspeakable, to see
+    such a God, such a glorious Divine Being; and I was inwardly
+    pleased and satisfied that he should be God over all for ever and
+    ever. My soul was so captivated and delighted with the excellency
+    of God that I was even swallowed up in him; at least to that
+    degree that I had no thought about my own salvation, and scarce
+    reflected that there was such a creature as myself. I continued in
+    this state of inward joy, peace, and astonishing, till near dark
+    without any sensible abatement; and then began to think and
+    examine what I had seen; and felt sweetly composed in my mind all
+    the evening following. I felt myself in a new world, and
+    everything about me appeared with a different aspect from what it
+    was wont to do. At this time, the way of salvation opened to me
+    with such infinite wisdom, suitableness, and excellency, that I
+    wondered I should ever think of any other way of salvation; was
+    amazed that I had not dropped my own contrivances, and complied
+    with this lovely, blessed, and excellent way before. If I could
+    have been saved by my own duties or any other way that I had
+    formerly contrived, my whole soul would now have refused it. I
+    wondered that all the world did not see and comply with this way
+    of salvation, entirely by the righteousness of Christ.”(116)
+I have italicized the passage which records the exhaustion of the anxious
+emotion hitherto habitual. In a large proportion, perhaps the majority, of
+reports, the writers speak as if the exhaustion of the lower and the
+entrance of the higher emotion were simultaneous,(117) yet often again
+they speak as if the higher actively drove the lower out. This is
+undoubtedly true in a great many instances, as we shall presently see. But
+often there seems little doubt that both conditions—subconscious ripening
+of the one affection and exhaustion of the other—must simultaneously have
+conspired, in order to produce the result.
+    T. W. B., a convert of Nettleton’s, being brought to an acute
+    paroxysm of conviction of sin, ate nothing all day, locked himself
+    in his room in the evening in complete despair, crying aloud, “How
+    long, O Lord, how long?” “After repeating this and similar
+    language,” he says, “several times, _I seemed 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 do with me as should seem
+    good in his sight. My concern seemed all lost in concern for
+    others.”(118)
+    Our great American revivalist Finney writes: “I said to myself:
+    ‘What is this? I must have grieved the Holy Ghost entirely away. I
+    have lost all my conviction. I have not a particle of concern
+    about my soul; and it must be that the Spirit has left me.’ ‘Why!’
+    thought I, ‘I never was so far from being concerned about my own
+    salvation in my life.’... I tried to recall my convictions, to get
+    back again the load of sin under which I had been laboring. I
+    tried in vain to make myself anxious. I was so quiet and peaceful
+    that I tried to feel concerned about that, lest it should be the
+    result of my having grieved the Spirit away.”(119)
+But beyond all question there are persons in whom, quite independently of
+any exhaustion in the Subject’s capacity for feeling, or even in the
+absence of any acute previous feeling, the higher condition, having
+reached the due degree of energy, bursts through all barriers and sweeps
+in like a sudden flood. These are the most striking and memorable cases,
+the cases of instantaneous conversion to which the conception of divine
+grace has been most peculiarly attached. I have given one of them at
+length—the case of Mr. Bradley. But I had better reserve the other cases
+and my comments on the rest of the subject for the following lecture.
 ## LECTURE X. CONVERSION—CONCLUDED.
+We turn now to dramatic, instantaneous conversions—like Saint Paul’s—where old life splits from new in a blink, often amid intense upheaval. This type matters greatly in Protestant theology.
+In this lecture we have to finish the subject of Conversion, considering
+at first those striking instantaneous instances of which Saint Paul’s is
+the most eminent, and in which, often amid tremendous emotional excitement
+or perturbation of the senses, a complete division is established in 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 it behooves us to study it
+conscientiously on that account.
+As Agassiz said,
+I think I had better cite two or three of these cases before proceeding to
+a more generalized account. One must know concrete instances first; for,
+as Professor Agassiz used to say, one can see no farther into a
+generalization than just so far as one’s previous acquaintance with
+particulars enables 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 of March,
+, on which his poor divided mind became unified for good.
+> **Quote:** "one can see no farther into a generalization than just so far as one’s previous acquaintance with particulars enables one to take it in."
+We begin with concrete cases.
+    “As I was about sunset wandering in the fields lamenting my
+    miserable lost and undone condition, and almost ready to sink
+    under my burden, I thought I was in such a miserable case as never
+    any man was before. I returned to the house, and when I got to the
+    door, just as I was stepping off the threshold, the following
+    impressions came into my mind like a powerful but small still
+    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 than
+    when you first began? Are you any more prepared for heaven, or
+    fitter to appear before the impartial bar of God, than when you
+    first began to seek?
+Henry Alline's conversion occurred March 26, 1775. Wandering through fields at sunset, mourning his "miserable, lost, and ruined state," he felt unprecedented wretchedness. Returning home, thoughts struck him "like a powerful but 'still, small voice'": despite all his seeking, praying, and reforming, he was no closer to salvation. "O Lord God, I am lost! If you do not find some new way that I know nothing of, I shall never be saved." Inside, he seized an old Bible, opening to Psalm 38. "It was the first time I truly 'saw' the word of God; it seemed to pierce my entire soul, as if God were praying in, with, and for me." During family prayers he attended but paid no attention, continuing to pray the Psalm's words. At the moment he surrendered everything, "redeeming love broke into my soul through various scriptures. My whole soul seemed to melt with love. The burden of guilt was gone; the darkness expelled." He saw a subjective light—"its meaning was revealed to me, and I had to cry out: 'Enough, enough, O blessed God!'" Within half an hour, his ministry was revealed: "Amen, Lord, I’ll go; send me, send me." He spent the night in ecstasy. When the devil suggested this was delusion, he prayed, "O Lord God, if I am deceived, please undeceive me." Upon waking, his soul "seemed awake in and with God." He became a minister with no formal education, his life thereafter as disciplined as any saint's, though he never regained taste for worldly pleasures. Like Bunyan and Tolstoy, his soul bore "the iron of melancholy left a permanent imprint."
+    “It brought such conviction on me that I was obliged to say that I
+    did not think I was one step nearer than at first, but as much
+    condemned, as much exposed, and as miserable as before. I cried
+    out within myself, O Lord God, I am lost, and if thou, O Lord,
+    dost not find out some new way, I know nothing of, I shall never
+    be saved, for the ways and methods I have prescribed to myself
+    have all failed me, and I am willing they should fail. O Lord,
+    have mercy! O Lord, have mercy!
+The next case comes from a correspondent of Professor Leuba: an Oxford graduate, son of a clergyman, who lived drunk for eight years after Oxford, "sometimes drunk for a week straight, followed by a terrible repentance." The remorse turned his hair gray overnight—"like the most dreadful tortures of hellfire." His conversion came on July 13, 1886, at precisely three o'clock. Sober for a month, he was reading Drummond's *Natural Law in the Spiritual World* to impress a woman when "God met me face to face." The verse "He that hath the Son hath life eternal" seized him—"my attention was completely 'soldered' to this verse." He felt another being in the room. "In a single second, it was shown to me unmistakably that I had never truly connected with the Eternal—and that if I died then, I would inevitably be lost. I knew it as clearly as I now know I am saved." Yet he felt "supremely happy, like a little child before his father." Then "a way of escape crept in—so gently, lovingly, and unmistakably...the 'old, old story' told simply: 'There has never been a doubt in my life that both the Lord Jesus Christ and God the Father worked on me that afternoon.'"
+    “These discoveries continued until I went into the house and sat
+    down. After I sat down, being all in confusion, like a drowning
+    man that was just giving up to sink, and almost in an agony, I
+    turned very suddenly round in my chair, and seeing part of an old
+    Bible lying in one of the chairs, I caught hold of it in great
+    haste; and opening it without any premeditation, cast my eyes on
+    the 38th Psalm, which was the first time I ever saw the word of
+    God: it took hold of me with such power that it seemed to go
+    through my whole soul, so that it seemed as if God was praying in,
+    with, and for me. About this time my father called the family to
+    attend prayers; I attended, but paid no regard to what he said in
+    his prayer, but continued praying in those words of the Psalm. Oh,
+    help me, help me! cried I, thou Redeemer of souls, and save me, or
+    I am gone forever; thou canst this night, if thou pleasest, with
+    one drop of thy blood atone for my sins, and appease the wrath of
+    an angry God. At that instant of time when I gave all up to him to
+    do with me as he pleased, and was willing that God should rule
+    over me at his pleasure, redeeming love broke into my soul with
+    repeated scriptures, with such power that my whole soul seemed to
+    be melted down with love; the burden of guilt and condemnation was
+    gone, darkness was expelled, my heart humbled and filled with
+    gratitude, and my whole soul, that was a few minutes ago groaning
+    under mountains of death, and crying to an unknown God for help,
+    was now filled with immortal love, soaring on the wings of faith,
+    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 and my everlasting
+    portion. Looking up, I thought I saw that same light [he had on
+    more than one previous occasion seen subjectively a bright blaze
+    of light], though it appeared different; and as soon 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 manifestations of it are no more
+    disputable than that light which I see, or anything that ever I
+    saw.
+The next day, drinking after the hay harvest, his sister cried that he had fallen away. Drunk but coherent, he knelt at noon and said his first prayer in twenty years—not asking forgiveness but committing himself with absolute belief that his old self would be destroyed. "In such a surrender lies the secret of a holy life." From that hour, alcohol lost all power; the same happened with his pipe, "after being a regular smoker since I was twelve." Every known sin was eliminated permanently. "I have had no temptation since my conversion; it seems as if God has barred Satan from that path."
+    “In the midst of all my joys, in less than half an hour after my
+    soul was set at liberty, the Lord discovered 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 and adoring the Ancient of Days for
+    his free and unbounded grace. After I had been so long in this
+    transport and heavenly frame that my nature seemed to require
+    sleep, I thought to close my eyes for 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. I immediately cried
+    out, O Lord God, if I am deceived, undeceive me.
+The most unusual account is M. Alphonse Ratisbonne, a freethinking French Jew who converted in Rome in 1842. His brother was a Catholic priest whom he disliked. A French gentleman persuaded him to wear a religious medal and recite a short prayer to the Virgin—mostly as a joke. For days he couldn't forget the prayer's words. The night before his conversion, he dreamed of a black cross without Christ. The next day at noon, entering the church of San Andrea delle Fratte while his friend conducted business, he was "almost alone" when suddenly "the dog disappeared, the church vanished, and I saw...only one thing." He found himself prostrate, weeping, heart racing. "I felt changed, like a different person; I looked for myself in myself and did not find myself." A burst of intense joy filled his soul's depths. He saw a vision of the Virgin. "If a prophet had told me fifteen minutes earlier what would happen, I would have thought him insane—yet that nonsense is now my only wisdom and happiness."
+    “I then closed my eyes for a few minutes, and seemed to be
+    refreshed with sleep; and when I awoke, the first inquiry was,
+    Where is my God? And in an instant of time, my soul seemed awake
+    in and with God, and surrounded by the arms of everlasting love.
+    About sunrise I arose with joy to relate to my parents what God
+    had done for my soul, and declared to them the miracle of God’s
+    unbounded grace. I took a Bible to show them the words that were
+    impressed by God on my soul the evening before; but when I came to
+    open the Bible, it appeared all new to me.
+These cases show how real, definite, and memorable sudden conversion feels—always like being a passive recipient of a process performed from above. Protestant theology, combining this with doctrines of election and grace, concludes that God's spirit works miraculously at these moments, breathing an entirely new nature into us. The Moravian Protestants were the first to recognize this logical consequence, and the Methodists soon followed. Before his death, Wesley wrote:
+    “I so longed to be useful in the cause of Christ, in preaching the
+    gospel, that it seemed as if I could not rest any longer, but go I
+    must and tell the wonders of redeeming love. I lost all taste for
+    carnal pleasures, and carnal company, and was enabled to forsake
+    them.”(120)
+> **Quote:** "In London alone I found 652 members...every one of these (without a single exception) has declared that his deliverance from sin was instantaneous; that the change was wrought in a moment. Had half of these...declared it was _gradually_ wrought...I should have believed...But as I have not found...a single person speaking thus, I cannot but believe that sanctification is commonly, if not always, an instantaneous work."
+Traditional Protestant sects and Catholicism, however, see Christ's blood, sacraments, and ordinary religious duties as sufficient salvation, with or without acute crisis. Methodism holds that without such crisis, salvation is only offered, not received; Christ's sacrifice remains incomplete. This follows a deeper spiritual instinct—their models are more dramatically and psychologically complete.
+Young Mr. Alline, after the briefest of delays, and with no book‐learning
+but his Bible, and no teaching save that of his own experience, became a
+Christian minister, and thenceforward his life was fit to rank, for its
+austerity and single‐mindedness, with that of the most devoted saints. But
+happy as he became in his strenuous way, he never got his taste for even
+the most innocent carnal pleasures back. We must class him, like Bunyan
+and Tolstoy, amongst those upon whose soul the iron of melancholy left a
+permanent imprint. His redemption was into another universe than this mere
+natural world, and life remained for him a sad and patient trial. Years
+later we can find him making such an entry as this in his diary: “On
+Wednesday the 12th I preached at a wedding, and had the happiness thereby
+to be the means of excluding carnal mirth.”
+In fully evolved Revivalism, this thinking became formalized: you must first be nailed to the cross of despair, then miraculously released. Yet the most striking conversions—including all I've quoted—*have* been permanent. Ratisbonne abandoned his fiancée, became a priest, and founded a Jerusalem mission for converting Jews. He remained exemplary until his death in the late 1880s. Statistics from Starbuck (via Miss Johnston) on a hundred evangelical church members show 93% of women and 77% of men reported some "backsliding," but only 6% actually lost faith; most merely fluctuated in feeling. Starbuck concludes:
+The next case I will give is that of a correspondent of Professor Leuba,
+printed in the latter’s article, already cited, in vol. vi. of the
+American Journal of Psychology. This subject was an Oxford graduate, the
+son of a clergyman, and the story resembles in many points the classic
+case of Colonel Gardiner, which everybody may be supposed to know. Here it
+is, somewhat abridged:—
+> **Quote:** "a changed attitude towards life, which is fairly constant and permanent, although the feelings fluctuate...the persons who have passed through conversion...tend to feel themselves identified with it, no matter how much their religious enthusiasm declines."
+But is instantaneous conversion a miracle? Might it be a strictly natural process—divine in results but not in mechanism? Before answering, we must examine the subconscious.
+    “Between the period of leaving Oxford and my conversion I never
+    darkened the door of my father’s church, although I lived with him
+    for eight years, making what money I wanted by journalism, and
+    spending it in high carousal with any one who would sit with me
+    and drink it away. So I lived, sometimes drunk for a week
+    together, and then a terrible repentance, and would not touch a
+    drop for a whole month.
+The "field of consciousness" concept has recently entered psychology. Psychologists now agree the unit is the total mental state, not single "ideas," and that this field cannot be precisely outlined. Each field has its center of interest; objects fade into a vague margin. Great geniuses have vast fields; in illness, consciousness narrows to a spark. The margin's uncertainty is crucial: its material guides behavior and attention, though we can't say whether we're conscious of it or not.
+    “In all this period, that is, up to thirty‐three years of age, I
+    never had a desire to reform on religious 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—a man of superior talents
+    and education. This terrible remorse turned me gray in one night,
+    and whenever it came upon me I was perceptibly grayer the next
+    morning. What I suffered in this way is beyond the expression of
+    words. It was hell‐fire in all its most dreadful tortures. Often
+    did I vow that if I got over ‘this time’ I would reform. Alas, in
+    about three days I fully recovered, and was as happy 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.
+Ordinary psychology assumed all consciousness—focused or marginal—exists in the current field, and what lies outside is non-existent. But the most important advance since I began studying psychology is the 1886 discovery that some individuals possess memories, thoughts, and feelings *outside* primary consciousness altogether, revealed through unmistakable signs. This discovery of a "subliminal" consciousness (as Myers calls it) reveals an unsuspected human trait. Though demonstrated mainly in hypnotic subjects and hysteria patients, our basic mechanisms are presumably uniform—what's true to a high degree in some is likely true to some degree in all.
+    “I was converted in my own bedroom in my father’s rectory house at
+    precisely three o’clock in the afternoon of a hot July day (July
+, 1886). I was in perfect health, having been off from the drink
+    for nearly a month. I was in no way troubled about my soul. In
+    fact, God was not in my thoughts that day. A young lady friend
+    sent me a copy of Professor Drummond’s Natural Law in the
+    Spiritual World, asking me my opinion of it as a literary work
+    only. Being proud of my critical talents and wishing to enhance
+    myself in my new friend’s esteem, I took the book to my bedroom
+    for quiet, intending to give it a thorough study, and then write
+    her what I thought of it. It was here that God met me face to
+    face, and I shall never forget the meeting. ‘He that hath the Son
+    hath life eternal, he that hath not the Son hath not life.’ I had
+    read this scores of times before, but this made all the
+    difference. I was now in God’s presence and my attention was
+    absolutely ‘soldered’ on to this verse, and I was not allowed to
+    proceed with the book till I had fairly considered what these
+    words really involved. Only then was I allowed to proceed, feeling
+    all the while that there was another being in my bedroom, though
+    not seen by me. The stillness was very marvelous, and I felt
+    supremely happy. It was most unquestionably shown me, in one
+    second of time, that I had never touched the Eternal: and that if
+    I died then, I must inevitably be lost. I was undone. I knew it as
+    well as I now know I am saved. The Spirit of God showed it me in
+    ineffable love; there was no terror in it; I felt God’s love so
+    powerfully upon me that only a mighty sorrow crept over me that I
+    had 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 he
+    loves me. No fault on the part of the Almighty. All the time I was
+    supremely happy: I felt like a little child before his father. I
+    had done wrong, but my Father did not scold me, but loved me most
+    wondrously. Still my doom was sealed. I was lost to a certainty,
+    and being naturally of a brave disposition I did not quail under
+    it, but deep sorrow for the past, mixed with regret for what I had
+    lost, took hold upon me, and my soul thrilled within me to think
+    it was all over. Then there crept in upon me so gently, so
+    lovingly, so unmistakably, a way of escape, and what was it after
+    all? The old, old story over again, told in the simplest way:
+    ‘There is no name under heaven whereby ye can be saved except that
+    of the Lord Jesus Christ.’ No words were spoken to me; my soul
+    seemed to see my Saviour in the spirit, and from that hour to
+    this, nearly nine years now, there has never been in my life one
+    doubt that the Lord Jesus Christ and God the Father both worked
+    upon me that afternoon in July, both differently, and both in the
+    most perfect love conceivable, and I rejoiced there and then in a
+    conversion so astounding that the whole village heard of it in
+    less than twenty‐four hours.
+The most important consequence is that ordinary consciousness becomes prone to "invasions" from this region. These appear as unaccountable impulses, inhibitions, obsessive ideas, or hallucinations. Myers calls this whole range *automatism*—sensory, motor, emotional, or intellectual effects caused by "uprushes" from subliminal regions. Post-hypnotic suggestion is the simplest example: subjects perform acts with no memory of the order, inventing pretexts for their behavior. In hysteria, painful memories exist parasitically outside primary consciousness, breaking in as symptoms; remove them through suggestion, and the patient recovers.
+    “But a time of trouble was yet to come. The day after my
+    conversion I went into the hay‐field to lend a hand with the
+    harvest, and not having made any promise to God to abstain or
+    drink in moderation 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 (not muddled, however), I knew
+    that God’s work begun in me was not going to be wasted. About
+    midday I made on my knees the first prayer before God for twenty
+    years. I did not ask to be forgiven; I felt that was no good, for
+    I would be sure to fall again. Well, what did I do? I committed
+    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 surrender lies the secret of a holy life. From
+    that hour drink has had no terrors for me: I never touch it, never
+    want it. The same thing occurred with my pipe: after being a
+    regular smoker from my twelfth year the desire for it went at
+    once, and has never returned. So with every known sin, the
+    deliverance in each case being permanent and complete. I have had
+    no temptation since conversion, God seemingly having shut out
+    Satan from that course with me. He gets a free hand in other ways,
+    but never on sins of the flesh. 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 a truly surrendered life.”
+This throws new light on religious biography. We must suspect that sudden converts differ from gradual ones not by receiving divine miracle versus natural growth, but by possessing a large subconscious region where mental work occurs, from which invasive experiences can abruptly disrupt primary consciousness. Professor George A. Coe's study of seventy-seven converts confirms this: those with "striking" transformations (feeling distinctly different from normal growth) showed far more frequent automatisms—hallucinations, odd impulses, religious dreams—around conversion. Candidates who experienced "nothing striking" proved, when tested by hypnotism, prone to self-suggestion that prevented environmental influence from producing expected effects. Coe concluded:
+> **Quote:** "the ultimate test of religious values is nothing psychological, nothing definable in terms of _how it happens_, but something ethical, definable only in terms of _what is attained_."
+So much for our graduate of Oxford, in whom you notice the complete
+abolition of an ancient appetite as one of the conversion’s fruits.
+However, we must ask: does this transform the person into a different kind of being? In practice, converted men are generally indistinguishable from natural men; they lack any 'exquisite class-mark' or 'distinctive radiance' that proves a supernatural change in substance. The value is found in the 'fruits for life.' Even for the 'spiritual grubs and earthworms' of humanity, a conversion is a great salvation if it brings them to their own highest level of energy. Following this shift, the experience typically involves a sense of higher control. Adolphe Monod described his 1827 conversion crisis: "My sadness was limitless...I saw that trying to stop this disorder using my reason and will—which were themselves diseased—was like a blind man trying to fix one eye using the other equally blind one. I had no resource left except *some influence from the outside*." He surrendered to the Holy Spirit's promise, and "from that day on, a new inner life began."
+The most curious record of sudden conversion with which I am acquainted is
+that of M. Alphonse Ratisbonne, a freethinking French Jew, to Catholicism,
+at Rome in 1842. In a letter to a clerical friend, written a few months
+later, the convert gives a palpitating account of the circumstances.(121)
+The predisposing conditions appear to have been slight. He had an elder
+brother who had been converted and was a Catholic priest. He was himself
+irreligious, and nourished an antipathy to the apostate brother and
+generally to his “cloth.” Finding himself at Rome in his twenty‐ninth
+year, he fell in with a French gentleman who tried to make a proselyte of
+him, but who succeeded no farther after two or three conversations than to
+get him to hang (half jocosely) a religious medal round his neck, and to
+accept and read a copy of a short prayer to the Virgin. M. Ratisbonne
+represents his own part in the conversations as having been of a light and
+chaffing order; but he notes the fact that for some days he was unable to
+banish the words of the prayer from his mind, and that the night before
+the crisis he had a sort of nightmare, in the imagery of which a black
+cross with no Christ upon it figured. Nevertheless, until noon of the next
+day he was free in mind and spent the time in trivial conversations. I now
+give his own words.
+Luther expressed the same structure: "God is the God of the humble, the miserable, the oppressed, and the desperate...His nature is to give sight to the blind, to comfort the broken-hearted, to justify sinners...That destructive opinion of one’s own righteousness...prevents God from doing His natural work." The law must crush self-confidence, yet when terrified, one cannot simply decide "now is the time of grace." You must "cling to Christ who died for your sins." Redemption must be a free gift, and grace through Christ's sacrifice is that gift.
+Professor Leuba calls the resulting state the "Faith-state": "When the sense of estrangement...breaks down, the individual finds himself 'at one with all creation'...That state of confidence, trust, and union...is the *Faith-state*." This joyous conviction can arrive through many channels, not just conceptual belief in Christ's work. Its value doesn't stem from validating theological concepts but from being the psychological counterpart of a biological development that funnels conflicting desires into a single direction, leading to nobler actions.
+    “If at this time any one had accosted me, saying: ‘Alphonse, in a
+    quarter of an hour you shall be adoring Jesus Christ as your God
+    and Saviour; you shall lie prostrate with your face upon the
+    ground in a humble church; you shall be smiting your breast at the
+    foot of a priest; you shall pass the carnival in a college of
+    Jesuits to prepare yourself to receive baptism, ready to give your
+    life for the Catholic faith; you shall renounce the world and its
+    pomps and pleasures; renounce your fortune, your hopes, and if
+    need be, your betrothed; the affections of your family, the esteem
+    of your 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 a
+    prediction, 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.
+The characteristics of this assurance are easily listed, though their intensity is hard to grasp without experience. First: disappearance of all worry—a sense that everything is ultimately right, peace, harmony, *willingness to exist*. The certainty of God's "grace" typically accompanies this in Christians but can be absent while emotional peace remains. Second: sense of perceiving previously unknown truths—life's mysteries become clear, though the solution is often beyond words. Third: the world seems objectively changed. "An appearance of newness beautifies every object," the opposite of melancholy's terrifying unreality. Jonathan Edwards wrote:
+    “Coming out of the café I met the carriage of Monsieur B. [the
+    proselyting friend]. He stopped and invited me in for a drive, but
+    first asked me to wait for a few minutes whilst he attended to
+    some duty at the church of San Andrea delle Fratte. Instead of
+    waiting in the carriage, I entered the church myself to look at
+    it. The church of San Andrea was poor, small, and empty; I believe
+    that I found myself there almost alone. No work of art attracted
+    my attention; and I passed my eyes mechanically over its interior
+    without being arrested by any particular thought. I can only
+    remember an entirely black dog which went trotting and turning
+    before me as I mused. In an instant the dog had disappeared, the
+    whole church had vanished, I no longer saw anything, ... or more
+    truly I saw, O my God, one thing alone.
+> **Quote:** "The appearance of everything was altered; there seemed to be...a calm, sweet cast...of divine glory, in almost everything...scarce anything...was so sweet to me as thunder and lightning; formerly nothing had been so terrible to me."
+    “Heavens, how can I speak of it? Oh no! human words cannot attain
+    to expressing the inexpressible. Any description, however sublime
+    it might be, could be but a profanation of the unspeakable truth.
+Billy Bray recorded: "I said to the Lord...I have faith to believe it. In an instant the Lord made me so happy...everything looked new to me, the people, the fields, the cattle, the trees. I was like a new man in a new world."
+    “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 the
+    other. But finally I took the medal which I had on my breast, and
+    with all the effusion of my soul I kissed the image of the Virgin,
+    radiant with grace, which it bore. Oh, indeed, it was She! It was
+    indeed She! [What he had seen had been a vision of the Virgin.]
+From Starbuck's collection, a woman wrote: "I plead for mercy, and had a vivid realization of forgiveness...When rising from my knees I exclaimed, 'Old things have passed away, all things have become new.' It was like entering another world...The woods were vocal with heavenly music."
+    “I did not know where I was: I did not know whether I was Alphonse
+    or another. I only felt myself changed and believed myself another
+    me; I looked for myself in myself and did not find myself. In the
+    bottom of my soul I felt an explosion of the most ardent joy; I
+    could not speak; I had no wish to reveal what had happened. But I
+    felt something solemn and sacred within me which made me ask for a
+    priest. I was led to one; and there, alone, after he had given me
+    the positive order, I spoke as best I could, kneeling, and with my
+    heart still trembling. I could give no account to myself of the
+    truth of which I had acquired a knowledge and a faith. All that I
+    can say is that in an instant the bandage had fallen from my eyes;
+    and not one bandage only, but the whole manifold of bandages in
+    which I had been brought up. One after another they rapidly
+    disappeared, even as the mud and ice disappear under the rays of
+    the burning sun.
+A man described: "I fell on my face...Every time I would call on God, something like a man's hand would strangle me...Finally something said: 'Venture on the atonement, for you will die anyway if you don't.'" After his final struggle, "the very heavens seemed to open and pour down rays of light and glory...I was changed, and everything became new. My horses and hogs and even everybody seemed changed."
+    “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 saved
+    by an infinite mercy; and I shuddered at the sight of my
+    iniquities, stupefied, melted, overwhelmed with wonder and with
+    gratitude. You may ask me how I came to this new insight, for
+    truly I had never opened a book of religion nor even read a single
+    page of the Bible, and the dogma of original sin is either
+    entirely denied or forgotten by the Hebrews of to‐day, so that I
+    had thought so little about it that I doubt whether I ever knew
+    its name. But how came I, then, to this perception of it? I can
+    answer nothing save this, that on entering that church I was in
+    darkness altogether, and on coming out of it I saw the fullness of
+    the light. I can explain the change no better than by the simile
+    of a profound sleep or the analogy of one born blind who should
+    suddenly open his eyes to the day. He sees, but cannot define the
+    light which bathes him and by means of which he sees the objects
+    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 without
+    having any knowledge of the letter of religious doctrine, I now
+    intuitively perceived its sense and spirit. Better than if I saw
+    them, I _felt_ those hidden things; I felt them by the
+    inexplicable effects they produced in me. It all happened in my
+    interior mind; and those impressions, more rapid than thought,
+    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 and
+    barren words sentiments which the heart alone can understand?”
+This case introduces physical automatisms—involuntary actions that have marked revivals since Edwards, Wesley, and Whitfield. Initially seen as semi-miraculous proofs of the Spirit's power, opinions soon diverged. They have no essential spiritual significance; they merely indicate a highly active subconscious and nervous instability. One of Starbuck's correspondents explained: "The subject works his emotions up to the breaking point, at the same time resisting their physical manifestations...then suddenly lets them have their full sway. The relief is something wonderful."
+One frequent sensory automatism deserves special attention: hallucinatory light phenomena, or "photisms." Saint Paul's blinding vision and Constantine's cross were such, as were many conversion accounts. Colonel Gardiner saw a blazing light. President Finney wrote:
+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. Throughout the height of it he undoubtedly
+seems to himself a passive spectator or undergoer of an astounding process
+performed upon him from above. There is too much evidence of this for any
+doubt of it to be possible. Theology, combining this fact with the
+doctrines of election and grace, has concluded that the spirit of God is
+with us at these dramatic moments in a peculiarly miraculous way, unlike
+what happens at any other juncture of our lives. At that moment, it
+believes, an absolutely new nature is breathed into us, and we become
+partakers of the very substance of the Deity.
+> **Quote:** "All at once the glory of God shone upon and round about me...A light perfectly ineffable shone in my soul, that almost prostrated me on the ground...It was too intense for the eyes."
+That the conversion should be instantaneous seems called for on this view,
+and the Moravian Protestants appear to have been the first to see this
+logical consequence. The Methodists soon followed suit, practically if not
+dogmatically, and a short time ere his death, John Wesley wrote:—
+A Starbuck subject reported: "I saw a strange light that seemed to illuminate the entire room (which was dark); I felt a conscious, supreme bliss." Another described sanctification: "I seemed to be led through a large, spacious, well-lit room...the Holy Spirit gave me the impression that I was surveying my own soul...I knew that I was cleansed from all sin." Leuba cited Mr. Peek: "Every straw and head of grain seemed arrayed in a kind of rainbow glory...in the glory of God."
+The ecstasy of happiness is the most characteristic element. Finney's account is particularly vivid:
+    “In London alone I found 652 members of our Society who were
+    exceeding clear in their experience, and whose testimony I could
+    see no reason to doubt. And every one of these (without a single
+    exception) has declared that his deliverance from sin was
+    instantaneous; that the change was wrought in a moment. Had half
+    of these, or one third, or one in twenty, declared it was
+    _gradually_ wrought in _them_, I should have believed this, with
+    regard to _them_, and thought that _some_ were gradually
+    sanctified and some instantaneously. But as I have not found, in
+    so long a space of time, a single person speaking thus, I cannot
+    but believe that sanctification is commonly, if not always, an
+    instantaneous work.” Tyerman’s Life of Wesley, i. 463.
+> **Quote:** "All my feelings seemed to rise and flow out...I rushed into the back room...to pray. There was no fire and no light; nevertheless it appeared...perfectly light...I seemed to meet the Lord Jesus Christ face to face...It seemed a reality that he stood before me, and I fell down at his feet and poured out my soul...I wept aloud...It seemed I bathed his feet with my tears...
+> "I received a mighty baptism of the Holy Ghost...It seemed to come in waves and waves of liquid love...like the very breath of God. I can recollect 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 with joy and love...These waves came over me...until I cried, 'I shall die if these waves continue...Lord, I cannot bear any more,' yet I had no fear of death.
+> "How long I continued...I do not know. But...late in the evening...a member of my choir...found me in loud weeping...I could make him no answer...finally replied, 'No, but so happy that I cannot live.'"
+All this while the more usual sects of Protestantism have set no such
+store by instantaneous conversion. For them as for the Catholic Church,
+Christ’s blood, the sacraments, and the individual’s ordinary religious
+duties are practically supposed to suffice to his salvation, even though
+no acute crisis of self‐despair and surrender followed by relief should be
+experienced. For Methodism, 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
+here follows, if not the healthier‐minded, yet on the whole the profounder
+spiritual instinct. The individual models which it has set up as typical
+and worthy of imitation are not only the more interesting dramatically,
+but psychologically they have been the more complete.
+Bray wrote: "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 time I am walking."
+In the fully evolved Revivalism of Great Britain and America we have, so
+to speak, the codified and stereotyped procedure to which this way of
+thinking has led. In spite of the unquestionable fact that saints of the
+once‐born type exist, that there may be a gradual growth in holiness
+without a cataclysm; 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 religious experience can be
+perfect; you must first be nailed on the cross of natural despair and
+agony, and then in the twinkling of an eye be miraculously released.
+Before concluding, I must address whether attributing suddenness to subliminal activity excludes God's direct presence. As a psychologist, I see no necessary reason it should. Lower subconscious manifestations fall within individual resources, but waking consciousness opens our senses to the material world. If higher spiritual powers exist, the psychological condition for them to reach us *might be* a subconscious region providing access. The hubbub of the waking life might close a door that remains open in the dreamy subliminal state. Thus the perception of external control might truly be transcendent forces reaching the "subliminal" human specimen. But the *value* of these forces must be judged by their effects; supernatural origin wouldn't prove they were divine rather than diabolical.
+It is natural that those who personally have traversed such an experience
+should carry away a feeling of its being a miracle rather than a natural
+process. Voices are often heard, lights seen, or visions witnessed;
+automatic motor phenomena occur; and it always seems, after the surrender
+of the personal will, as if an extraneous higher power had flooded in and
+taken possession. Moreover the sense of renovation, safety, cleanness,
+rightness, can be so marvelous and jubilant as well to warrant one’s
+belief in a radically new substantial nature.
+I prefer to leave the topic there for now, until we can tie these threads into more definitive conclusions. The notion of a subconscious self certainly shouldn't be held to *exclude* higher influence. If such powers exist, they may only gain access through the subliminal door.
+    “Conversion,” writes the New England Puritan, Joseph Alleine, “is
+    not the putting in a patch of holiness; 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 effects of the Spirit of God are
+    altogether supernatural—are quite different from anything that
+    unregenerate men experience. They are what no improvement, or
+    composition of natural qualifications or principles will ever
+    produce; because they not only differ from what is natural, and
+    from everything that natural men experience in degree and
+    circumstances, but also in kind, and are of a nature far more
+    excellent. From hence it follows that in gracious affections there
+    are [also] new perceptions and sensations entirely different in
+    their nature and kind from anything experienced by the [same]
+    saints before they were sanctified.... The conceptions which the
+    saints have of the loveliness of God, and that kind of delight
+    which they experience in it, are quite peculiar, and entirely
+    different from anything which a natural man can possess, or of
+    which he can form any proper notion.”
+And that such a glorious transformation as this ought of necessity to be
+preceded by despair is shown by Edwards in another passage.
+    “Surely it cannot be unreasonable,” he says, “that before God
+    delivers us from a state of sin and liability to everlasting woe,
+    he should give us some considerable sense of the evil from which
+    he delivers us, in order that we may know and feel the importance
+    of salvation, and be enabled to appreciate the value of what God
+    is pleased to do for us. As those who are saved are successively
+    in two extremely different states—first in a state of condemnation
+    and then in a state of justification and blessedness—and as God,
+    in the salvation of men, deals with them as rational and
+    intelligent creatures, it appears agreeable to this wisdom, that
+    those who are saved should be made sensible of their Being, in
+    those two different states. In the first place, that they should
+    be made sensible of their state of condemnation; and afterwards,
+    of their state of deliverance and happiness.”
+Such quotations express sufficiently well for our purpose the doctrinal
+interpretation of these changes. Whatever part suggestion and imitation
+may have played in producing them in men and women in excited assemblies,
+they have at any rate been in countless individual instances an original
+and unborrowed experience. Were we writing the story of the mind from the
+purely natural‐history point of view, with no religious interest whatever,
+we should still have to write down 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 in which God is present as he is present in no change
+of heart less strikingly abrupt? Are there two classes of human beings,
+even among the apparently regenerate, of which the one class really
+partakes of Christ’s nature while the other merely seems to do so? Or, on
+the contrary, may the whole phenomenon of regeneration, even in these
+startling instantaneous examples, possibly be a strictly 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, high or low, of man’s interior life?
+Before proceeding to answer this question, I must ask you to listen to
+some more psychological remarks. At our last lecture, I explained the
+shifting of men’s centres of personal energy within them and the lighting
+up of new crises of emotion. I explained the phenomena as partly due to
+explicitly conscious processes of thought and will, but as due largely
+also to the subconscious incubation and maturing of motives deposited by
+the experiences of life. When ripe, the results hatch out, or burst into
+flower. I have now to speak of the subconscious region, in which such
+processes of flowering may occur, in a somewhat less vague way. I only
+regret that my limits of time here force me to be so short.
+The expression “field of consciousness” has but recently come into vogue
+in the psychology books. Until quite lately the unit of mental life which
+figured most was the single “idea” supposed to be a definitely outlined
+thing. But at present psychologists are tending, first, to admit that the
+actual unit is more probably the total mental state, the entire wave of
+consciousness or field of objects present to the thought at any time; and,
+second, to see that it is impossible to outline this wave, this field,
+with any definiteness.
+As our mental fields succeed one another, each has its centre of interest,
+around which the objects of which we are less and less attentively
+conscious fade to a margin so faint that its limits are unassignable. Some
+fields are narrow fields and some are wide fields. Usually when we have a
+wide field we rejoice, for we then see masses of truth together, and often
+get glimpses of relations which we divine rather than see, for they shoot
+beyond the field into still remoter regions of objectivity, regions which
+we seem rather to be about to perceive than to perceive actually. At other
+times, of drowsiness, illness, or fatigue, our fields may narrow almost to
+a point, and we find ourselves correspondingly oppressed and contracted.
+Different individuals present constitutional differences in this matter of
+width of field. Your great organizing geniuses are men with habitually
+vast fields of mental vision, in which a whole programme of future
+operations will appear dotted out at once, the rays shooting far ahead
+into definite directions of advance. In common people there is never this
+magnificent inclusive view of a topic. They stumble along, feeling their
+way, as it were, from point to point, and often stop entirely. In certain
+diseased conditions consciousness is a mere spark, without memory of the
+past or thought of the future, and with the present narrowed down to some
+one simple emotion or sensation of the body.
+The important fact which this “field” formula commemorates is the
+indetermination of the margin. 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
+lies around 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 of memories floats beyond
+this margin, ready at a touch to come in; and the entire mass of residual
+powers, impulses, and knowledges that constitute our empirical self
+stretches continuously beyond it. So vaguely drawn are the outlines
+between what is actual and what is only potential at any moment of our
+conscious life, that it is always hard to say of certain mental elements
+whether we are conscious of them or not.
+The ordinary psychology, admitting fully the difficulty of tracing the
+marginal outline, has nevertheless taken for granted, first, that all the
+consciousness the person now has, be the same focal or marginal,
+inattentive or attentive, is there in the “field” of the moment, all dim
+and impossible 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 about the subconscious life. I said, as you may recollect,
+that those who first laid stress upon these phenomena could not know the
+facts as we now know them. My first duty now is to tell you what I meant
+by such a statement.
+I cannot but think that the most important step forward that has occurred
+in psychology since I have been a student of that science is the
+discovery, first made in 1886, that, in certain subjects at least, there
+is not only the consciousness of the ordinary field, with its usual centre
+and margin, but an 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 conscious facts of
+some sort, able to reveal their presence by unmistakable signs. I call
+this the most important step forward because, unlike the other advances
+which psychology has made, this discovery has revealed to us an entirely
+unsuspected peculiarity in the constitution of human nature. 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 to advert to it now, although it
+is naturally impossible for me in this place to give you any account of
+the evidence on which the admission of such a consciousness is based. You
+will find it set forth in many recent books, Binet’s Alterations of
+Personality(122) being perhaps as good a one as any to recommend.
+The human material on which the demonstration has been made has so far
+been rather limited and, in part at least, eccentric, consisting of
+unusually suggestible hypnotic subjects, and of hysteric patients. Yet the
+elementary mechanisms of our life are presumably so uniform that what is
+shown to be true in a marked degree of some persons is probably true in
+some degree of all, and may 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 is that one’s ordinary fields of consciousness
+are liable to incursions from it of which the subject does not 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 subject himself may
+not understand even while he utters it; and generalizing this phenomenon,
+Mr. Myers has given the name of _automatism_, sensory or motor, emotional
+or intellectual, to this whole sphere of effects, due to “uprushes” into
+the ordinary consciousness of energies originating in the subliminal 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 some designated 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 act must ensue, he performs it;—but in so doing he has no
+recollection of your suggestion, and he always trumps up an improvised
+pretext for his behavior if the act be of an eccentric kind. It may even
+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 part of its source. In the
+wonderful explorations by Binet, Janet, Breuer, Freud, Mason, Prince, and
+others, of the subliminal consciousness of patients with hysteria, we have
+revealed to us whole systems of underground 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 with
+hallucinations, pains, convulsions, paralyses of feeling and of motion,
+and the whole procession of symptoms of hysteric disease of body and of
+mind. Alter or abolish by suggestion these subconscious 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 reads them, yet it is impossible to doubt their accuracy;
+and, the path having been once opened by these first observers, similar
+observations have been made elsewhere. They throw, as I said, a wholly new
+light upon our natural constitution.
+And it seems to me that they make a farther step inevitable. Interpreting
+the unknown after the analogy of the known, it seems to me that hereafter,
+wherever we meet with a phenomenon of automatism, be it motor impulses, or
+obsessive idea, or unaccountable caprice, or delusion, or hallucination,
+we are bound first of all to make search whether it be not an explosion,
+into the fields of ordinary consciousness, of ideas elaborated outside of
+those fields in subliminal regions of the mind. We should look, therefore,
+for its source in the Subject’s subconscious life. In the hypnotic cases,
+we ourselves create the source by our suggestion, so we know it directly.
+In the hysteric cases, the lost memories which are the source have to be
+extracted from the patient’s Subliminal by a number of ingenious methods,
+for an account of which you must consult the books. In other pathological
+cases, insane delusions, for example, or psychopathic obsessions, the
+source is yet to seek, but by analogy it also should be in subliminal
+regions which improvements in our methods may yet conceivably put on tap.
+There lies the mechanism logically to be assumed,—but the assumption
+involves a vast program of work to be done in the way of verification, in
+which the religious experiences of man must play their part.(123)
+                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
+And thus I return to our own specific subject of instantaneous
+conversions. You remember the cases 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 of astonished happiness, and of being wrought on by a higher
+control. If, abstracting altogether from the question of their value for
+the future spiritual life of the individual, we take them on their
+psychological side exclusively, so many peculiarities in them remind us of
+what we find outside of conversion that we are tempted to class them along
+with other automatisms, and to suspect that what makes the difference
+between a sudden and a gradual convert is not necessarily the presence of
+divine miracle in the case of one and of something less divine in that of
+the other, but rather a simple psychological peculiarity, the fact,
+namely, that in the recipient of the more instantaneous grace we have one
+of those Subjects who are in possession of a large region in which mental
+work can go on subliminally, and from which invasive experiences, abruptly
+upsetting the equilibrium of the primary consciousness, may come.
+I do not see why Methodists need object to such a view. Pray go back and
+recollect one of the conclusions to which I sought to lead you in my very
+first lecture. You may remember how I there argued against the notion that
+the worth of a thing can be decided by its origin. Our spiritual judgment,
+I said, our opinion of the significance and value of a human event or
+condition, must be decided 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, we ought 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 preëminent
+saints of whom the names illumine 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
+in the spontaneous course of methodistic growth, you will probably agree
+that no splendor worthy of a wholly supernatural creature fulgurates from
+them, or sets them apart from the mortals who have never experienced that
+favor. Were it true that a suddenly converted man as such is, as Edwards
+says,(124) of an entirely different kind from a natural man, partaking as
+he does directly of Christ’s substance, there surely ought to be some
+exquisite class‐mark, some distinctive radiance attaching even to the
+lowliest specimen of this genus, to which no one of us could remain
+insensible, and which, so far as it went, would prove him more excellent
+than ever the most highly gifted among mere natural men. But notoriously
+there is no such radiance. Converted men as a class are indistinguishable
+from natural men; some natural men even excel some converted men in their
+fruits; 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 as divine differs from
+human substance.
+The believers in the non‐natural character of sudden conversion have had
+practically to admit that there is no unmistakable class‐mark distinctive
+of all true converts. The super‐normal incidents, such as voices and
+visions and overpowering impressions of the meaning of suddenly presented
+scripture texts, the melting emotions and tumultuous affections connected
+with the crisis of change, may all come by way of nature, or worse still,
+be counterfeited by Satan. The real witness of the spirit to the second
+birth is to be found only in the disposition of the genuine child of God,
+the permanently patient heart, the love of self eradicated. And this, it
+has to be admitted, is also 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 supernaturally infused condition, in his Treatise on Religious
+Affections, there is not one decisive trait, not one mark, that
+unmistakably parts it off from what may possibly be only an exceptionally
+high degree of natural goodness. In fact, one could hardly read a clearer
+argument than this book unwittingly offers in favor of the thesis that no
+chasm exists between the orders of human excellence, but that here as
+elsewhere, nature shows continuous differences, and generation and
+regeneration are matters of degree.
+All which denial of two objective classes of human beings separated by a
+chasm must not leave us blind to the extraordinary momentousness of the
+fact of his conversion to the individual himself who gets converted. There
+are higher and lower limits of possibility set to each personal life. If a
+flood but goes above one’s head, its absolute elevation becomes a matter
+of small importance; and when we touch our own upper limit and live in our
+own highest centre of energy, we may call ourselves saved, no matter how
+much higher some one else’s centre may be. A small man’s salvation will
+always be a great salvation and the greatest of all facts _for him_, and
+we should remember this when the fruits of our ordinary evangelicism look
+discouraging. Who knows how much 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 at
+all?(125)
+If we roughly arrange human beings in classes, each class standing for a
+grade of spiritual excellence, I believe we shall find natural men and
+converts both sudden and gradual in all the classes. 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 studies tend to assimilate conversion to ordinary
+spiritual growth. Another American psychologist, Prof. George A. Coe,(126)
+has analyzed the cases of seventy‐seven converts or ex‐candidates for
+conversion, known to him, and the results strikingly confirm the view that
+sudden conversion is connected with the possession of an active subliminal
+self. Examining his subjects with reference to 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 more frequent in the group of converts whose
+transformation had been “striking,” “striking” transformation being
+defined as a change which, though not necessarily instantaneous, seems to
+the subject of it to be distinctly different from a process of growth,
+however rapid.(127) Candidates for conversion at revivals are, as you
+know, often disappointed: they experience nothing striking. Professor Coe
+had a number of persons of this class among his seventy‐seven subjects,
+and they almost all, when tested by hypnotism, proved to belong to a
+subclass which he calls “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 environment which, on the more “passive” subjects, had
+easily brought forth the effects they looked for. Sharp distinctions are
+difficult in these regions, and Professor Coe’s numbers are small. But his
+methods were careful, and the results tally with what one might expect;
+and they seem, on the whole, to justify his practical conclusion, which is
+that if you should expose to a converting influence a subject in whom
+three factors unite: first, pronounced emotional sensibility; second,
+tendency to automatisms; 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.
+Does this temperamental origin diminish the significance of the sudden
+conversion when it has occurred? Not in the least, as Professor Coe well
+says; for “the ultimate test of religious values is nothing psychological,
+nothing definable in terms of _how it happens_, but something ethical,
+definable only in terms of _what is attained_.”(128)
+As we proceed farther in our inquiry we shall see that what is attained is
+often an altogether new level of spiritual vitality, a relatively heroic
+level, in which impossible things have become possible, and new energies
+and endurances are shown. The personality is changed, the man _is_ born
+anew, whether or not his psychological idiosyncrasies are what give the
+particular shape to his metamorphosis. “Sanctification” is the technical
+name of this result; and erelong examples of it shall be brought before
+you. In this lecture I have still only to add a few remarks on the
+assurance and peace which fill the hour of change itself.
+                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
+One word more, though, before proceeding to that point, lest the final
+purpose of my explanation of suddenness by subliminal activity be
+misunderstood. I do indeed believe that if the Subject have no liability
+to such subconscious activity, or if his conscious fields have a hard rind
+of a margin that resists incursions from beyond it, his conversion must be
+gradual if it occur, and must resemble any simple growth into new habits.
+His possession of a developed subliminal self, and of a leaky or pervious
+margin, is thus a _conditio sine qua non_ of the Subject’s becoming
+converted in the instantaneous way. But if you, being orthodox Christians,
+ask me as a psychologist whether the reference of a phenomenon to a
+subliminal self does not exclude the notion of the direct presence of the
+Deity altogether, I have to say frankly that as a psychologist I do not
+see why it necessarily should. The lower manifestations of the Subliminal,
+indeed, fall within the resources of the personal subject: his ordinary
+sense‐material, inattentively taken in and subconsciously remembered and
+combined, will account for all his usual automatisms. But just as our
+primary wide‐awake consciousness throws open our senses to the touch of
+things material, so it is logically conceivable that _if there be_ higher
+spiritual agencies that can directly touch us, the psychological condition
+of their doing so _might be_ our possession of a subconscious region which
+alone should yield access to them. The hubbub of the waking life might
+close a door which in the dreamy Subliminal might remain ajar or open.
+Thus that perception of external control which is so essential a feature
+in conversion might, in some cases at any rate, be interpreted as the
+orthodox interpret it: forces transcending the finite individual might
+impress him, on condition of his being what we may call a subliminal human
+specimen. But in any case the _value_ of these forces would have to be
+determined by their effects, and the mere fact of their transcendency
+would of itself establish no presumption that they were 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 I come to a much later lecture, when I hope once
+more to gather these dropped threads together into more definitive
+conclusions. The notion of a subconscious self certainly ought not at this
+point of our 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 the subliminal door. (See below, p. 515 ff.)
+                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
+Let us turn now to the feelings which immediately fill the hour of the
+conversion experience. The first 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 Protestant Adolphe 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 my life from the most indifferent
+    external acts to the most secret thoughts, and corrupted at their
+    source my feelings, my judgment, and my happiness. It was then
+    that I saw that to expect to put a stop to this disorder by my
+    reason and my will, which were themselves diseased, would be to
+    act like a blind man who should pretend to correct one of his eyes
+    by the aid of the other equally blind one. I had then no resource
+    save in _some influence from without_. I remembered the promise of
+    the Holy Ghost; and what the positive declarations of the Gospel
+    had never succeeded in 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 a real 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. Renouncing then all merit, all strength,
+    abandoning all my personal resources, and acknowledging no other
+    title to his mercy than my own utter misery, I went home and threw
+    myself on my knees, and prayed as I never yet prayed in my life.
+    From this day onwards a new interior life began for me: not that
+    my melancholy had disappeared, but it had lost its sting. Hope had
+    entered into my heart, and once entered on the path, the God of
+    Jesus Christ, to whom I then had learned to give myself up, little
+    by little did the rest.”(129)
+It is needless to remind you once more of the admirable congruity of
+Protestant theology with the structure of the mind as shown in such
+experiences. In the extreme of melancholy the self that consciously _is_
+can do absolutely nothing. It is completely bankrupt and without resource,
+and no works it can accomplish will avail. Redemption from such subjective
+conditions must be a free gift or 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
+    comfort the broken‐hearted, to justify sinners, to save the very
+    desperate and damned. Now that pernicious and 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 proper work. Therefore God must
+    take this maul in hand (the law, I mean) to beat in pieces and
+    bring to nothing this beast with her vain confidence, that she may
+    so learn at length by her own misery that she is utterly forlorn
+    and damned. But here lieth the difficulty, that when a man is
+    terrified and cast down, 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 great that then he rather seeketh to himself
+    more laws to satisfy his conscience. ‘If I live,’ saith he, ‘I
+    will amend my life: I will do this, I will do that.’ But here,
+    except thou do the quite contrary, except thou send Moses away
+    with his law, and in these terrors and this anguish lay hold upon
+    Christ who died 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 so come 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 there was 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, I take 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 justify
+    the righteous, but the _un_‐righteous, and to make _them_ the
+    children of God.”(130)
+That is, the more literally lost you are, the more literally you are the
+very being whom Christ’s sacrifice has already saved. Nothing in Catholic
+theology, I imagine, has ever spoken to sick souls as 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 of one’s own righteousness, has come to
+the front again in their religion; but the adequacy of his view of
+Christianity to the deeper parts of our human mental structure is shown by
+its wildfire contagiousness 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 so far is faith in a fact intellectually conceived
+of. But this is only one part of Luther’s faith, the other part 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 now and forever.(131)
+Professor Leuba is undoubtedly right in contending that the conceptual
+belief about Christ’s work, although so often efficacious and antecedent,
+is really accessory and non‐essential, and that the “joyous conviction”
+can also come by far other channels than this conception. It is to the
+joyous conviction itself, the assurance that all is well with one, that he
+would 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 one with 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
+    moral unity, is the _Faith‐state_. Various dogmatic beliefs
+    suddenly, on the advent of the faith‐state, acquire a character of
+    certainty, assume a new reality, become an object of faith. As the
+    ground of assurance here is not rational, argumentation is
+    irrelevant. But such conviction being a mere casual offshoot 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.(132)
+    On the contrary, its value lies solely in the fact that it is the
+    psychic correlate of a biological growth reducing contending
+    desires to one direction; a growth which expresses itself in new
+    affective states and new reactions; in larger, nobler, more
+    Christ‐like activities. The ground of the specific assurance in
+    religious dogmas is then an affective experience. The objects of
+    faith may even be preposterous; the affective stream will float
+    them along, and invest them with unshakable certitude. The more
+    startling the affective experience, the less explicable it seems,
+    the easier it is to make it the carrier of unsubstantiated
+    notions.”(133)
+The characteristics of the affective experience which, to avoid ambiguity,
+should, I think, be called the state of assurance rather than the faith‐
+state, can be easily enumerated, though it is probably difficult to
+realize their intensity, unless one have 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, the peace, the harmony, the _willingness to be_,
+even though the outer conditions should remain the same. The certainty of
+God’s “grace,” of “justification,” “salvation,” is an objective belief
+that usually accompanies the change in Christians; but this may be
+entirely lacking and yet the affective peace remain the same—you will
+recollect the case of the Oxford graduate: and many might be given where
+the assurance of personal salvation was only a later result. A passion of
+willingness, 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 life become lucid, as Professor Leuba says; and often, nay
+usually, the solution is more or less unutterable in words. But these more
+intellectual phenomena may be postponed until we treat of mysticism.
+A third peculiarity of the assurance state is the objective change which
+the world often appears to undergo. “An appearance of newness beautifies
+every object,” the precise opposite of that other sort of newness, that
+dreadful unreality and strangeness in the appearance of the world, which
+is experienced by melancholy patients, and of which you may recall my
+relating some examples.(134) This sense of clean and beautiful newness
+within and without is one of the commonest entries in conversion records.
+Jonathan Edwards thus describes it in himself:—
+    “After this my sense of divine things gradually increased, and
+    became more and more lively, and had 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,
+    and stars; in the clouds and blue sky; in the grass, flowers, and
+    trees; in the water and all nature; which used greatly to fix my
+    mind. And scarce anything, among all the works of nature, was so
+    sweet to me as thunder and lightning; formerly nothing had been so
+    terrible to me. Before, I used to be uncommonly terrified with
+    thunder, and to be struck with terror when I saw a thunderstorm
+    rising; but now, on the contrary, it rejoices me.”(135)
+Billy Bray, an excellent little illiterate English evangelist, records his
+sense of newness thus:—
+    “I said to the Lord: ‘Thou hast said, they that ask shall receive,
+    they that seek shall find, and to them that knock the door shall
+    be opened, and I have faith to believe it.’ In an instant the Lord
+    made me so happy that I cannot express what I felt. I shouted for
+    joy. I praised God with my whole heart.... I think this was in
+    November, 1823, but what day of the month I do not know. I
+    remember this, that everything looked new to me, the people, the
+    fields, the cattle, the trees. I was like a new man in a new
+    world. I spent the greater part of my time in praising the
+    Lord.”(136)
+Starbuck and Leuba both illustrate this sense of newness by quotations. I
+take the two following from Starbuck’s manuscript collection. One, a
+woman, says:—
+    “I was taken to a camp‐meeting, mother and religious friends
+    seeking and praying for my conversion. My emotional nature was
+    stirred to its depths; confessions of depravity and pleading with
+    God for salvation from sin made me oblivious of all surroundings.
+    I plead for mercy, and had a vivid realization of forgiveness and
+    renewal of my nature. When rising from my knees I exclaimed, ‘Old
+    things have passed away, all things have become new.’ It was like
+    entering another world, a new state of existence. Natural objects
+    were glorified, my spiritual vision was so clarified that I saw
+    beauty in every material object in the universe, the woods were
+    vocal with heavenly music; 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. ——’s Holiness tent—and as it was full of
+    seekers and a terrible noise inside, some groaning, some laughing,
+    and some shouting, and by a large oak, ten feet from the tent, I
+    fell on my face by a bench, and tried to pray, and every time I
+    would call on God, something like a man’s hand would strangle me
+    by choking. I don’t know whether there were any one around or near
+    me or not. I thought I should surely die if I did not get help,
+    but just as often as I would pray, that unseen hand was felt on my
+    throat and my breath squeezed off. Finally something said:
+    ‘Venture on the atonement, for you will die anyway if you don’t.’
+    So I made one final struggle to call on God for mercy, with the
+    same choking and strangling, determined to finish the sentence of
+    prayer for Mercy, if I did strangle and die, and the last I
+    remember that time was falling back on the ground with 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 praising God. The very
+    heavens seemed to open and pour down rays of light and glory. Not
+    for a moment only, but all day and night, floods of light and
+    glory seemed to pour through my soul, and oh, how I was changed,
+    and everything became new. My horses and hogs and even everybody
+    seemed changed.”
+This man’s case introduces the feature of automatisms, which in
+suggestible subjects have been so startling a feature at revivals since,
+in Edwards’s, Wesley’s, and Whitfield’s time, these became a regular 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 concerning them. Edwards, in his Thoughts on the
+Revival of Religion in New England, has to defend them against their
+critics; and their value has long been matter of debate even within the
+revivalistic denominations.(137) They undoubtedly have no essential
+spiritual significance, and although their presence makes his conversion
+more memorable to the convert, it has never been proved that converts who
+show them are more persevering or fertile in good fruits than those whose
+change of heart 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 a large
+subliminal region, involving nervous instability. This is often the
+subject’s own view of the matter afterwards. One of Starbuck’s
+correspondents writes, for instance:—
+    “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 physical
+    manifestations, such as quickened pulse, etc., and then suddenly
+    lets them have their full sway over his body. The relief is
+    something wonderful, and the pleasurable effects of the emotions
+    are experienced to the highest degree.”
+There is one form of sensory automatism which possibly deserves special
+notice on account of its frequency. I refer to hallucinatory or pseudo‐
+hallucinatory luminous phenomena, _photisms_, to use the term of the
+psychologists. Saint Paul’s blinding heavenly vision seems to have been a
+phenomenon of this sort; so does Constantine’s cross in the sky. The last
+case but one which I quoted mentions floods of light and glory. Henry
+Alline mentions a light, about whose externality he 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.... This light
+    seemed like the brightness of the sun in every direction. It was
+    too intense for the eyes.... I think I knew something then, by
+    actual experience, of that light that prostrated Paul on the way
+    to Damascus. It was surely a light such as I could not have
+    endured long.”(138)
+Such reports of photisms are indeed far from uncommon. Here is another
+from Starbuck’s collection, where the light appeared evidently external:—
+    “I had attended a series of revival services for about two weeks
+    off and on. Had been invited to the altar several times, all the
+    time becoming more deeply impressed, when finally I decided I must
+    do this, or I should be lost. Realization of conversion was very
+    vivid, like a ton’s weight being lifted from my heart; a strange
+    light which seemed to light up the whole room (for it was dark); a
+    conscious supreme bliss which caused me to repeat ‘Glory to God’
+    for a long time. Decided to be God’s child for life, and to give
+    up my pet ambition, wealth and social position. My former habits
+    of life hindered my growth somewhat, but I set about overcoming
+    these systematically, and in one year 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 in regeneration was then clear and
+    spiritual, and I had not backslidden. But I experienced entire
+    sanctification on the 15th day of March, 1893, about eleven
+    o’clock in the morning. The particular accompaniments of the
+    experience were entirely unexpected. I was quietly sitting at home
+    singing selections out of Pentecostal Hymns. Suddenly there seemed
+    to be a something sweeping into me and 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‐lighted room. As I walked with my invisible
+    conductor and looked around, a clear thought was coined in my
+    mind, ‘They are not here, they are gone.’ As soon as the thought
+    was definitely formed in my mind, though no word was spoken, the
+    Holy Spirit impressed me that I was surveying my own soul. Then,
+    for the first time in all my life, did I know that I was cleansed
+    from all sin, and filled with the fullness of God.”
+Leuba quotes the case of a Mr. Peek, where the luminous affection reminds
+one of the chromatic hallucinations 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 visible creation. I well remember we
+    reaped oats, and how every straw and head of the oats seemed, as
+    it were, arrayed in a kind of rainbow glory, or to glow, if I may
+    so express it, in the glory of God.”(139)
+The most characteristic of all the elements of the conversion crisis, and
+the last one of which I shall speak, is the ecstasy of happiness produced.
+We have already heard several accounts of it, but I 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 pour my whole soul out to God.’ The
+    rising of my soul was so great that I rushed into the back room of
+    the front office, to pray. There was no fire and no light in the
+    room; nevertheless it appeared to me as if it were perfectly
+    light. As I went in and shut the door after me, it seemed as if I
+    met the Lord Jesus Christ face to face. It did not occur to me
+    then, nor did it for some time afterwards, that it was wholly a
+    mental state. On the contrary, it seemed to me that I saw him as I
+    would see any other man. He said nothing, but looked at me in such
+    a manner as to break me right down at his feet. I have always
+    since regarded this as a most remarkable state of mind; for it
+    seemed to me a reality that he stood before me, and I fell down at
+    his feet and poured out my soul to him. I wept aloud like a child,
+    and made such confessions as I could with my choked utterance. It
+    seemed to me that I bathed his feet with my tears; and yet I had
+    no distinct impression that I touched him, that I recollect. I
+    must have continued in this state for a good while; but my mind
+    was too much absorbed with the interview to recollect anything
+    that I said. But I know, as soon as my mind became calm enough to
+    break off from the interview, I returned to the front office, and
+    found that the fire that I had made of large wood was nearly
+    burned out. But as I turned and was about to take a seat by the
+    fire, I received a mighty baptism of the Holy Ghost. Without any
+    expectation of it, without ever having the thought in my mind that
+    there was any such thing for me, without any recollection that I
+    had ever heard the thing mentioned by any person in the world, the
+    Holy Spirit descended upon me in a manner that seemed to go
+    through me, body and soul. I could feel the impression, like a
+    wave of 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 can recollect 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 with joy and love; and I do not know but I
+    should say I literally bellowed out the unutterable gushings of my
+    heart. These waves came over me, and over me, and over me, one
+    after the other, until I recollect I cried out, ‘I shall die if
+    these waves continue to pass over me.’ I said, ‘Lord, I cannot
+    bear 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 through me, I do not know. But I know it
+    was late in the evening when a member of my choir—for I was the
+    leader of the choir—came into the office to see me. He was a
+    member of the church. He found me in this state of loud weeping,
+    and said to me, ‘Mr. Finney, what ails you?’ I could make him no
+    answer for some time. He then said, ‘Are you in pain?’ I gathered
+    myself up as best I could, and replied, ‘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
+    time I am walking.”(140)
+One word, before I close this lecture, on the question of the transiency
+or permanence of these abrupt conversions. Some of you, I feel sure,
+knowing that numerous backslidings and relapses take place, make of these
+their apperceiving mass for interpreting the whole subject, and dismiss it
+with a pitying smile at so much “hysterics.” Psychologically, as well as
+religiously, however, this is shallow. It misses the point of serious
+interest, which is not so much the duration as the nature and quality of
+these shiftings of character to higher levels. Men lapse from every
+level—we need no statistics to tell us that. Love is, for instance, well
+known not to be irrevocable, yet, constant or inconstant, it reveals new
+flights and reaches of ideality while it lasts. These revelations form its
+significance to men and women, whatever be its duration. So with the
+conversion experience: that it should for even a short time show a human
+being what the high‐water mark of his spiritual capacity is, this is what
+constitutes its importance,—an importance which backsliding cannot
+diminish, although persistence might increase it. As a matter of fact, all
+the more striking instances of conversion, all those, for instance, which
+I have quoted, _have_ been permanent. The case of which 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 by those 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 to use 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 son of
+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 collected for Professor Starbuck by Miss Johnston.
+They embrace only a hundred persons, evangelical church‐members, more than
+half being Methodists. According to the statement of the subjects
+themselves, there had been backsliding of some sort in nearly all the
+cases, 93 per cent. of the women, 77 per cent. of the men. Discussing the
+returns more minutely, Starbuck finds that only 6 per cent. are relapses
+from the religious faith which the conversion confirmed, and that the
+backsliding complained of is in most only a fluctuation in the ardor of
+sentiment. Only six of the hundred cases report a change of faith.
+Starbuck’s conclusion is that the effect of conversion is to bring with it
+“a changed attitude towards life, which is fairly constant and permanent,
+although the feelings fluctuate.... In other words, the persons who have
+passed through conversion, having once taken a stand for the religious
+life, tend to feel themselves identified with it, no matter how much their
+religious enthusiasm declines.”(141)
 ## LECTURES XI, XII, AND XIII. SAINTLINESS.
+The last lecture left us anticipating the practical effects of conversion. This is the most vital part of our task, for we began this empirical study not just to explore a chapter in consciousness, but to reach a spiritual judgment on the total value and meaning of all the religious trouble and happiness we have observed. We must first describe its results, then evaluate them.
+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 important part of our task opens,
+for you remember that we began all this empirical inquiry not merely to
+open a curious chapter in the natural history of human consciousness, but
+rather to attain a spiritual judgment as to the total value and positive
+meaning of all the religious trouble and happiness which 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 preamble proceed to the descriptive task.
+This descriptive work should be pleasant, for the best fruits of religious experience are the finest things history offers. The highest flights of charity, devotion, trust, and bravery have been achieved for religious ideals. Sainte-Beuve, writing on Port-Royal, captures the phenomenon: "Through grace, the soul reaches a stable and invincible state—a truly heroic state—from which it performs its greatest deeds. Whether reached through festival, confession, or prayer, it is fundamentally one single state. Look beneath the surface and Christians of different eras are affected by the same change: there is a single spirit of piety and charity common to those who have received grace. This inner state is, above all, one of love and humility, of infinite confidence in God, and of self-discipline combined with tenderness for others."
+It ought to be the pleasantest portion of our business in these lectures.
+Some small pieces of it, it is true, may be painful, or may show human
+nature in a pathetic light, but it will be mainly pleasant, 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 to mind a succession of such
+examples as I have lately had to wander through, though it has been only
+in the reading of them, is to feel encouraged and uplifted and washed in
+better moral air.
+These devotees chart a course so different from ordinary people that we might call them monstrous deviations from nature. What inner conditions produce such extreme differences in character? The causes lie chiefly in our *differing susceptibilities to emotional excitement* and the *different impulses and inhibitions* these excitements trigger.
+The highest flights of charity, devotion, trust, patience, bravery to
+which the wings of human nature 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 of
+conversion or the state of grace.
+Our moral attitude at any moment results from two forces: impulses pushing us one way and inhibitions holding us back. "Yes! Yes!" say the impulses; "No! No!" say the inhibitions. Few realize how constantly this factor of inhibition molds us by its restrictive pressure, almost as if we were fluids pent within the cavity of a jar. You sit here now with a restraint you barely notice because of the formality of the occasion; alone, you would rearrange yourselves freely. But social etiquette breaks like cobwebs under major emotional excitement. I have seen a refined man appear in the street with shaving cream on his face because a house was on fire; a woman will run among strangers in her nightgown to save her baby. Consider a self-indulgent woman who yields to every inhibition: she lies late, survives on tea, stays indoors. Make her a mother, and maternal excitement makes her face sleeplessness, exhaustion, and labor without hesitation. The inhibitory power of pain is extinguished when her baby's interests are at stake. This is what you have heard described as:
+“Even from the purely human point of view,” Sainte‐Beuve says, “the
+phenomenon of grace must still appear sufficiently extraordinary, eminent,
+and rare, both in its nature and in its effects, to deserve a closer
+study. For the soul arrives thereby at a certain fixed and invincible
+state, a state which is genuinely heroic, and from out of which the
+greatest deeds which it ever performs are executed. Through all the
+different forms of communion, and all the diversity of the means which
+help to produce this state, whether it be reached by a jubilee, by a
+general confession, by a solitary prayer and effusion, whatever in short
+be the place and the occasion, it is easy to recognize that it is
+fundamentally one state in spirit and in fruits. Penetrate a little
+beneath the diversity of circumstances, and it becomes evident that in
+Christians of different epochs it is always one and the same modification
+by which they are affected: there is veritably a single fundamental and
+identical spirit of piety and charity, common to those who have received
+grace; an inner state which before all things is one of love and humility,
+of infinite confidence in God, and of severity for one’s self, accompanied
+with tenderness for others. The fruits peculiar to this condition of the
+soul have the same savor in all, under distant suns and in different
+surroundings, in Saint Teresa of Avila just as in any Moravian brother of
+Herrnhut.”(142)
+> **Quote:** "the expulsive power of a higher affection."
+Sainte‐Beuve has here only the more eminent instances of regeneration in
+mind, and these are of course the instructive ones for us also to
+consider. These devotees have often laid their course so differently from
+other men that, judging them by worldly law, we might be tempted to call
+them monstrous aberrations from the path of nature. I begin, therefore, by
+asking a general psychological question as to what the inner conditions
+are which may make one human character differ so extremely from another.
+Whether the affection is high or low makes no difference if the excitement is strong enough. In a flood in India, a royal Bengal tiger reached a dry bungalow and lay panting like a dog among the people, so possessed by terror that an Englishman could calmly step up and kill it with a rifle. In a soldier, dread of cowardice urges him forward while fear urges retreat. His will resolves the conflict until one emotion reaches a dominant intensity that sweeps rivals away. The fury of a charge gives courage; panic gives fear. In these dominant excitements, obstacles become like tissue-paper hoops.
+I reply at once that where the character, as something distinguished from
+the intellect, is concerned, the causes of human diversity lie chiefly in
+our _differing susceptibilities of emotional excitement_, and in the
+_different impulses and inhibitions_ which these bring in their train. Let
+me make this more clear.
+> **Quote:** “Lass sie betteln gehn wenn sie hungrig sind!”
+Speaking generally, our moral and practical attitude, at any given time,
+is always a resultant of two 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 not
+expressly reflected on the matter realize how constantly this factor of
+inhibition is upon us, how it contains and moulds us by its restrictive
+pressure almost as if we were fluids pent within the cavity of a jar. The
+influence is so incessant that it becomes subconscious. All of you, for
+example, sit here with a certain constraint at this moment, and entirely
+without express consciousness of the fact, because of the influence of the
+occasion. If left alone in the room, each of you would probably
+involuntarily rearrange himself, and make his attitude more “free and
+easy.” But proprieties and their inhibitions snap like cobwebs if any
+great emotional excitement supervenes. I have seen a dandy appear in the
+street with his face covered with shaving‐lather because a house across
+the way was on fire; and a woman will run among strangers in her nightgown
+if it be a question of saving her baby’s life or her own. Take a self‐
+indulgent woman’s life in general. She will yield to every inhibition set
+by her disagreeable sensations, lie late in bed, live upon tea or
+bromides, keep indoors 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 over her is extinguished wherever the baby’s interests are
+at stake. The inconveniences which this creature occasions have become, as
+James Hinton says, the glowing heart of a great joy, and indeed are now
+the very conditions whereby the joy becomes most deep.
+“Let them go begging if they are hungry!” cries a grenadier frantic over his Emperor’s capture. People trapped in a burning theater have cut their way through crowds with knives.
+This is an example of what you have already heard of as the “expulsive
+power of a higher affection.” But be the affection high or low, it makes
+no difference, so long as the excitement it brings be strong enough. In
+one of Henry Drummond’s discourses he tells of an inundation in India
+where an eminence with a bungalow upon it remained unsubmerged, and became
+the refuge of a number of wild animals and reptiles in addition to the
+human beings who were there. At a certain moment a royal Bengal tiger
+appeared swimming towards it, reached it, and lay panting like a dog upon
+the ground in the midst of the people, still possessed by such an agony of
+terror that one of the Englishmen could calmly step up with a rifle and
+blow out its brains. The tiger’s habitual ferocity was temporarily quelled
+by the emotion of fear, which became sovereign, and formed a new centre
+for his character.
+One mode of emotional excitability is extremely important: what manifests as irritability, impatience, grimness, or earnestness. Earnestness means willingness to live with energy, even if it brings pain. Nothing destroys inhibition as irresistibly as anger; as Moltke says of war:
+Sometimes no emotional state is sovereign, but many contrary ones are
+mixed together. In that case one hears both “yeses” and “noes,” and the
+“will” is called on then to solve the conflict. Take a soldier, for
+example, with his dread of cowardice impelling him to advance, his fears
+impelling him to run, and his propensities to imitation pushing him
+towards various courses if his comrades offer various examples. His person
+becomes the seat of a mass of interferences; and he may for a time 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 all their inhibitions away. The
+fury of his comrades’ charge, once entered on, will give this pitch of
+courage to the soldier; the panic of their rout will give this pitch of
+fear. In these sovereign excitements, 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 the circus 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’s capture, when his wife and babes are suggested;
+and men pent into a burning theatre have been known to cut their way
+through the crowd with knives.(143)
+> **Quote:** "destruction pure and simple is its essence."
+One mode of emotional excitability is exceedingly important in the
+composition of the energetic character, from its peculiarly destructive
+power over inhibitions. I mean what in its lower form is mere
+irascibility, susceptibility to wrath, the fighting temper; and what in
+subtler ways manifests itself as impatience, grimness, earnestness,
+severity of character. Earnestness means willingness to live with energy,
+though energy bring pain. The pain may be pain to other people or pain to
+one’s self—it makes little difference; for when the strenuous mood is on
+one, the aim is to break something, no matter whose or what. Nothing
+annihilates an inhibition as irresistibly as anger does it; for, as Moltke
+says of war, destruction pure and simple is its essence. This is what
+makes it so invaluable an ally of every other passion. The sweetest
+delights are trampled on with a ferocious pleasure the moment they offer
+themselves as checks to a cause by which our higher indignations are
+elicited. It costs then nothing to drop friendships, to renounce long‐
+rooted privileges and possessions, to break with social ties. Rather do we
+take a stern joy in the astringency and desolation; and what is called
+weakness of character seems in most cases to consist in the inaptitude for
+these sacrificial moods, of which one’s own inferior self and its pet
+softnesses must often be the targets and the victims.(144)
+This makes anger an invaluable ally to every passion. The sweetest delights are trampled with ferocious pleasure when they block a cause that triggers higher indignation. At such times, it costs nothing to drop friendships, renounce privileges, or break social ties. What is called "weakness of character" seems to consist of an inability to enter these sacrificial moods.
+So far I have spoken of temporary alterations produced by shifting
+excitements in the same person. But the relatively fixed differences of
+character of different persons are explained in a precisely 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 take their place. When a person has an inborn
+genius for certain emotions, his life differs strangely from that of
+ordinary people, for none of their usual deterrents check him. Your mere
+aspirant to a type of character, on the contrary, only shows, when your
+natural lover, fighter, or reformer, with whom the passion is a gift of
+nature, comes along, the hopeless inferiority of voluntary to instinctive
+action. He has deliberately to overcome his inhibitions; the genius with
+the inborn passion seems not 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 over
+those around them are as if non‐existent. Could the rest of us so
+disregard them, there might be many such heroes, for many have the wish to
+live for similar ideals, and only the adequate degree of inhibition‐
+quenching fury is lacking.(145)
+So far I have spoken of temporary changes. But fixed differences in character work the same way. In someone prone to a specific emotion, entire ranges of inhibition habitually vanish—those that remain effective in others—and other inhibitions take their place. When someone has innate genius for certain emotions, their life differs strangely because none of the usual deterrents stop them. A Fox, Garibaldi, Booth, John Brown, Louise Michel, or Bradlaugh faces obstacles that are all-powerful to others as if they did not exist. Many have similar desires but lack the necessary inhibition-quenching intensity.
+The difference between willing and merely wishing, between having ideals
+that are creative and ideals that are but pinings and regrets, thus
+depends solely either on the amount of steam‐pressure chronically driving
+the character in the ideal direction, or on the amount of ideal excitement
+transiently 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 raft of cowardly
+obstructions, which in tame persons and dull moods are sovereign
+impediments to action, sinks away at once. Our conventionality,(146) our
+shyness, laziness, and stinginess, our demands 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—
+The difference between willing and merely wishing depends on the amount of constant pressure driving the character. Given enough love, indignation, generosity, or enthusiasm, cowardly obstructions vanish. Our conventionality, shyness, laziness, stinginess, demands for precedent, guarantees, security, small suspicions, timidities, and despairs—where are they now? Severed like cobwebs, broken like bubbles in the sun. Freed from them, we float and soar. This dawn-like openness gives all creative ideal levels a bright quality, nowhere more visible than where the emotion is religious.
+> **Quote:** “The true monk,” writes an Italian mystic, “takes nothing with him but his lyre.”
+    “Wo sind die Sorge nun und Noth
+    Die mich noch gestern wollt’ erschlaffen?
+    Ich schäm’ mich dess’ im Morgenroth.”
+We may turn from these psychological generalities to the specific "fruits" of the religious state. The person living in their religious center of personal energy differs from their previous self in definite ways. The new passion consumes the lower "noes" and keeps them immune to baser parts of their nature. Acts once impossible become easy; petty conventions lose power. The internal stone wall falls; hardness breaks down.
+We can imagine this by recalling temporary "melting moods" triggered by trials, plays, or novels—especially when we weep. Tears break an internal dam, letting faults drain away, leaving us cleansed and open. For most, hardness returns, but not for saints. Many saints, even energetic ones like Teresa and Loyola, possessed the "gift of tears." In them, the melting mood held almost uninterrupted control.
+The flood we are borne on rolls them so lightly under that their very
+contact is unfelt. Set free of them, we float and soar and sing. This
+auroral openness and uplift gives to all creative ideal levels a bright
+and caroling quality, which is nowhere more marked than where the
+controlling emotion is religious. “The true monk,” writes an Italian
+mystic, “takes nothing with him but his lyre.”
+At the end of the last lecture, we saw that permanence characterizes higher insight, even if meaner motives might temporarily prevail. Documentary evidence proves that in certain cases, lower temptations remain completely canceled—as if habitual nature has been altered. The most numerous examples are reformed alcoholics. You recall Mr. Hadley; the Jerry McAuley Water Street Mission is full of similar cases. The Oxford graduate converted at three in the afternoon got drunk the next day but was permanently cured: "From that hour drink has had no terrors for me: I never touch it, never want it. The same with my pipe... the desire went and never returned. So with every known sin, the deliverance being permanent."
+                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
+Here is a similar case from Starbuck's collection:
+We may now turn from these psychological generalities to those fruits of
+the religious state which form the special subject of our present lecture.
+The man who lives in his religious centre of personal energy, and is
+actuated by spiritual enthusiasms, differs from his previous carnal self
+in perfectly definite ways. The new ardor which burns in his breast
+consumes in its glow the lower “noes” which formerly beset 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 once tyrannical hold no sway. The
+stone wall inside of him has fallen, the hardness in his heart has broken
+down. The rest of us can, I think, imagine this by recalling our state of
+feeling in those temporary “melting moods” into which either the trials of
+real life, or the theatre, or a novel sometimes throw us. Especially if we
+weep! For it is then as if our tears broke through an inveterate 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 the customary hardness quickly returns, but not
+so with saintly persons. Many saints, even as energetic ones 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 almost uninterrupted control. And as it is with tears
+and melting moods, so it is with other exalted affections. Their reign may
+come by gradual growth or by a crisis; but in either case it may have
+“come to stay.”
+"I went into the old Adelphi Theatre where there was a Holiness meeting... and I began saying, 'Lord, Lord, I must have this blessing.' Then what seemed an audible voice said: 'Are you willing to give up everything to the Lord?' Question after question came, to all of which I said: 'Yes, Lord; yes, Lord!' until: 'Why do you not accept it *now*?' and I said: 'I do, Lord.'—I felt no particular joy, only trust. As I went out onto the street, I met a gentleman smoking a fine cigar. A cloud of smoke came into my face, and I took a long, deep breath, and praise the Lord, all my appetite was gone. Passing bars where liquor smells came out, I found all taste and longing gone. Glory to God! ... For ten or eleven years [after] I was in the wilderness with ups and downs. My appetite for liquor never came back."
+At the end of the last lecture we saw this permanence to be true of the
+general paramountcy of the higher insight, even though in the ebbs of
+emotional excitement meaner motives might temporarily prevail and
+backsliding might occur. But that lower temptations may remain completely
+annulled, apart from transient emotion and as if by alteration of the
+man’s habitual nature, is also proved by documentary evidence in certain
+cases. Before embarking on the general natural history of the regenerate
+character, let me convince you of this curious fact by one or two
+examples. 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.(147) You also remember the graduate
+of Oxford, converted at three in the afternoon, and getting drunk in the
+hay‐field the next day, but after that permanently cured of his appetite.
+“From that hour drink has had no terrors for me: I never touch it, never
+want it. The same thing occurred with my pipe, ... the desire for it went
+at once and has never returned. So with every known sin, the deliverance
+in each case being permanent and complete. I have had no temptations since
+conversion.”
+The classic case of Colonel Gardiner shows a man cured of sexual temptation in one hour: "I was effectively cured of all inclination toward that sin I was so strongly addicted to—which I thought nothing but shooting me could have cured; and all desire was removed, as entirely as if I had been a nursing child; nor did temptation return."
+Here is an analogous case from Starbuck’s manuscript collection:—
+Such rapid abolition reminds us of hypnotic suggestion. Medical records show cures of deep-seated habits after few sessions—alcoholism and sexual vice cured through subconscious influence. Both processes seem to operate through the subliminal door.
+> **Quote:** "If the grace of God miraculously operates, it probably operates through the subliminal door."
+    “I went into the old Adelphi Theatre, where there was a Holiness
+    meeting, ... and I began saying, ‘Lord, Lord, I must have this
+    blessing.’ Then what was to me an audible voice said: ‘Are you
+    willing to give up everything to the Lord?’ and question after
+    question kept coming up, to all of which I said: ‘Yes, Lord; yes,
+    Lord!’ until this came: ‘Why do you not accept it _now_?’ and I
+    said: ‘I do, Lord.’—I felt no particular joy, only a trust. Just
+    then the meeting closed, and, as I went out 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 I walked along the
+    street, passing saloons where the fumes of liquor came out, I
+    found that all my taste and longing for that accursed stuff was
+    gone. Glory to God! ... [But] for ten or eleven long years [after
+    that] I was in the wilderness with its ups and downs. My appetite
+    for liquor never came back.”
+But how this operates remains unexplained. Let us leave the process behind—view it as a psychological or theological mystery—and turn to the fruits of the religious condition.
+The collective name for these mature fruits is Saintliness. The saintly character is one for whom spiritual emotions are the habitual center of personal energy. There is a "composite photograph" of universal saintliness whose features can be traced:
+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 so strongly
+addicted to that I thought nothing but shooting me through the head could
+have cured me of 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: “One
+thing I have heard the colonel frequently say, that he was much addicted
+to impurity before his acquaintance with religion; but that, so soon as he
+was enlightened from above, he felt the power of the Holy Ghost changing
+his nature so wonderfully that his sanctification in this respect seemed
+more remarkable than in any other.”(148)
+. A feeling of being part of a wider life than this world's selfish interests, and a conviction—almost tangible—of an Ideal Power. In Christianity this is God; but abstract ideals, civic utopias, or inner visions may also expand our lives.
+. A sense of friendly continuity between this power and our own lives, with willing self-surrender to its influence.
+. Immense elation and freedom as the narrow self dissolves.
+. A shifting of the emotional center toward loving affections—toward "yes, yes" and away from "no"—when others' needs are concerned.
+Such rapid abolition of ancient impulses and propensities reminds us so
+strongly of what has been observed as the result of hypnotic suggestion
+that it is difficult not to believe that subliminal influences play the
+decisive part in these abrupt changes of heart, just as they do in
+hypnotism.(149) Suggestive therapeutics abound in records of cure, after a
+few sittings, of inveterate bad habits 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 subliminal seeming thus in many individuals to have the prerogative of
+inducing relatively stable change. If the grace of God miraculously
+operates, it probably operates through the subliminal door, then. But just
+_how_ anything operates in this region is still unexplained, and we shall
+do well now to say good‐by to the _process_ of transformation
+altogether,—leaving it, if you like, a good deal of a psychological or
+theological mystery,—and to turn our attention to the fruits of the
+religious condition, no matter in what way they may have been
+produced.(150)
+These inner conditions have practical consequences:
+The collective name for the ripe fruits of religion in a character is
+Saintliness.(151) The saintly character is the character for which
+spiritual emotions are the habitual centre of the personal energy; and
+there is a certain composite photograph of universal saintliness, the same
+in all religions, of which the features can easily be traced.(152)
+*a. Asceticism.*—Self-surrender may become so passionate it turns to sacrifice, overriding physical instincts until the saint finds genuine pleasure in asceticism as a measure of loyalty.
+They are these:—
+*b. Strength of Soul.*—The sense of expanded life makes personal motives and inhibitions too insignificant to notice. New depths of patience open. Fears vanish; blissful equanimity replaces them. Whether heaven or hell awaits makes no difference!
+. A feeling of being in a wider life than that of this world’s selfish
+little interests; and a conviction, not merely intellectual, but as it
+were sensible, of the existence of an Ideal Power. In Christian
+saintliness this power is always personified as God; but abstract moral
+ideals, civic or patriotic utopias, or inner visions of holiness or right
+may also be felt as the true lords and enlargers of our life, in ways
+which I described in the lecture on the Reality of the Unseen.(153)
+*c. Purity.*—The emotional shift brings increased purity. Sensitivity to spiritual discord intensifies; cleansing existence of crude elements becomes imperative. The saintly life must deepen its spiritual consistency. In some temperaments, this takes an ascetic turn.
+. A sense of the friendly continuity of the ideal power with our own
+life, and a willing self‐surrender to its control.
+*d. Charity.*—The shift also increases charity and tenderness. Ordinary motives for dislike are suppressed. The saint loves enemies and treats loathsome beggars as brothers.
+. An immense elation and freedom, as the outlines of the confining
+selfhood melt down.
+---
+. 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.
+I must give concrete illustrations. Since the sense of a higher, friendly Power is fundamental, I begin there.
+These fundamental inner conditions have characteristic practical
+consequences, as follows:—
+In conversion narratives, the world may look shining and transfigured. Apart from anything intensely religious, we all have moments when universal life seems friendly. In youth, health, summer, woods, or mountains come days when existence's goodness enfolds us. Thoreau writes:
+_a._ _Asceticism._—The self‐surrender may become so passionate as to turn
+into self‐immolation. It may then so overrule the ordinary inhibitions of
+the flesh that the saint finds positive pleasure in sacrifice and
+asceticism, measuring and expressing as they do the degree of his loyalty
+to the higher power.
+> **Quote:** "Once, a few weeks after I came to the woods, for an hour I doubted whether man's neighborhood was essential to serene life. To be alone was unpleasant. But in a gentle rain, while these thoughts prevailed, I was suddenly sensible of such sweet society in Nature, in the pattering drops and every sight and sound around my house—an infinite friendliness sustaining me, making human neighborhood's advantages insignificant. Every pine-needle expanded with sympathy. I was so aware of something kindred that no place could seem strange again."
+_b._ _Strength of Soul._—The sense of enlargement of life may be so
+uplifting that personal motives and inhibitions, commonly omnipotent,
+become too insignificant for notice, and new reaches of patience and
+fortitude open out. Fears and anxieties go, and blissful equanimity takes
+their place. Come heaven, come hell, it makes no difference now!
+In Christian consciousness, this becomes personal and definite. A German author writes that losing personal independence brings compensation: total disappearance of fear and an indescribable feeling of inner security.
+Mr. Voysey describes this state:
+    “We forbid ourselves all seeking after popularity, all ambition to
+    appear important. We pledge ourselves to abstain from falsehood,
+    in all its degrees. We promise not to create or encourage
+    illusions as to what is possible, by what we say or write. We
+    promise to one another active sincerity, which strives to see
+    truth clearly, and which never fears to declare what it sees.
+> **Quote:** "It is the experience of trustful souls that this sense of God's unfailing presence—in coming and going, by night and day—is a source of absolute repose. It drives away all fear of what may befall. This nearness is constant security against terror and anxiety. Not that they assume physical safety or special protection, but that they are equally ready to be safe or injured. If injury comes, they bear it contentedly because the Lord is their keeper. Nothing can befall them without His will; if it be His will, injury is a blessing. Thus only is the trustful man protected. I am absolutely satisfied with this arrangement. Quite as sensitive to pain as the most highly strung organism, I feel the worst of it is conquered by the thought that God is our loving keeper."
+    “We promise deliberate resistance to the tidal waves of fashion,
+    to the ‘booms’ and panics of the public mind, to all the forms of
+    weakness and of fear.
+More intense expressions abound. Mrs. Jonathan Edwards writes:
+    “We forbid ourselves the use of sarcasm. Of serious things we will
+    speak seriously and unsmilingly, without banter and without the
+    appearance of banter;—and even so of all things, for there are
+    serious ways of being light of heart.
+> **Quote:** "Last night was the sweetest I ever had. I never before enjoyed so much heaven's light and rest in my soul, without bodily agitation. Part of the night I lay awake, sometimes asleep, sometimes between. But all night I had a constant, clear sense of Christ's excellent love, His nearness, my dearness to Him—an inexpressibly sweet calmness, entirely at rest in Him. I seemed to perceive a glow of divine love descending from Christ's heart into mine in a constant stream. Simultaneously my heart flowed out in love to Christ, so there seemed a constant flowing and reflowing of heavenly love. I floated in these bright beams like motes in sunlight. Each minute seemed worth more than all outward comfort of my whole life combined. It was pleasure without sting, without interruption—a sweetness my soul was lost in. There was little difference whether asleep or awake; if any, the sweetness was greatest while asleep. Awakening, it seemed I had done with myself entirely. The world's opinions concerning me were nothing; I had no more to do with my own outward interests than with a stranger's. God's glory swallowed every wish.... I also thought how God had given me willingness to die, then to live to do and suffer His will. I had resignation to any kind of death—to die on the rack, at the stake, in darkness. I asked whether I was willing to be kept from heaven longer—yes, a thousand years in horror, if for God's honor. His glory seemed to swallow me up; every suffering shrank to nothing before it. This resignation continued clear and bright all night, all next day, and the following night without interruption."
+    “We will put ourselves forward always for what we are, simply and
+    without false humility, as well as without pedantry, affectation,
+    or pride.”
+Catholic saints' records are equally ecstatic. Sister Séraphique de la Martinière said the "assaults of divine love" often reduced her near death. She would complain to God: "I cannot bear it. Be gentle with my weakness, or I shall die under the violence of your love."
+---
+_c._ _Purity._—The shifting of the emotional centre brings with it, first,
+increase of purity. The sensitiveness to spiritual discords is enhanced,
+and the cleansing of existence from brutal and sensual elements becomes
+imperative. Occasions of contact with such elements are avoided: the
+saintly life must deepen its spiritual consistency and keep unspotted from
+the world. In some temperaments this need of purity of spirit takes an
+ascetic turn, and weaknesses of the flesh are treated with relentless
+severity.
+Next, the charity and brotherly love that are usual fruits of saintliness. Brotherly love follows logically from assurance of God's friendly presence; human brotherhood is a direct inference from God's fatherhood. But these feelings are not just derivatives of theism. We find them in Stoicism, Hinduism, and Buddhism. They harmonize with any reflection on mankind's dependence on universal causes. We must consider them equal parts of that great spiritual excitement we study. Religious rapture, moral enthusiasm, and cosmic emotion are unifying states where self-friction disappears and tenderness takes over. The "faith-state" is a natural psychological complex that carries charity as an organic consequence. Joy is expansive, leading to self-forgetfulness and kindness.
+_d._ _Charity._—The shifting of the emotional centre brings, secondly,
+increase of charity, tenderness for fellow‐creatures. The ordinary motives
+to antipathy, which usually set such close bounds to tenderness among
+human beings, are inhibited. The saint loves his enemies, and treats
+loathsome beggars as his brothers.
+Even pathological states show this. In *La Tristesse et la Joie*, M. Georges Dumas compares melancholy and joyous phases of "circular insanity." While selfishness characterizes the first, the second is marked by altruism. Marie, stingy and useless when melancholy, became universally kind when happy—concerned for other patients, knitting socks for them. In all joyous conditions, "unselfish sentiments and tender emotions are the only affective states. The mind is closed against envy, hatred, vindictiveness, wholly transformed into benevolence."
+                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
+This partnership of joy and tenderness appears in conversion stories: "I began to work for others"; "I had more tender feelings"; "I felt for everyone." Mrs. Edwards writes:
+I now have to give some concrete illustrations of these fruits of the
+spiritual tree. The only difficulty is to choose, for they are so
+abundant.
+> **Quote:** "When I arose on the Sabbath morning, I felt a love to all mankind, wholly peculiar in strength and sweetness, far beyond anything before. I thought if surrounded by enemies venting cruelty, it would be impossible to feel anything but love, pity, desire for their happiness. I never felt so far from judging and censuring others. I realized how much Christianity lies in performing social duties. This joyful sense continued all day—sweet love to God and all mankind."
+Since the sense of Presence of a higher and friendly Power seems to be the
+fundamental feature in the spiritual life, I will begin with that.
+Whatever the explanation, charity erases human barriers. Richard Weaver's autobiography gives an example of Christian non-resistance. A coal miner and semi-professional prize-fighter, fighting when drunk was the sin his nature most craved. After conversion he relapsed once, beating a man for insulting a girl, then got drunk and broke another's jaw. I mention this to show the genuine change in his later conduct:
+In our narratives of conversion we saw how the world might look shining
+and transfigured to the convert,(154) and, apart from anything acutely
+religious, we all have moments when the universal life seems to wrap us
+round with friendliness. In youth and health, in summer, in the woods or
+on the mountains, there come days when the weather seems all whispering
+with peace, hours when the goodness and beauty of existence enfold us like
+a dry warm climate, or chime through us as if our inner ears were subtly
+ringing with the world’s security. Thoreau writes:—
+> **Quote:** "I went down the drift and found a boy crying because a workman tried taking his wagon by force. I said, 'Tom, you mustn't take that wagon.' He swore, calling me a Methodist devil. I said God didn't tell me to let him rob me. He cursed, saying he'd push the wagon over me. 'Well,' I said, 'let us see whether devil and thee are stronger than Lord and me.' The Lord and I proving stronger, he had to get out of the way. I gave the wagon to the boy. Then Tom said: 'I've a good mind to smack thee on the face.' 'Well,' I said, 'if that will do thee good, thou canst do it.' He struck me. I turned the other cheek. 'Strike again.' He struck again and again, till five times. I turned for the sixth; he turned away cursing. I shouted: 'The Lord forgive thee, for I do, and the Lord save thee.'
+> "This was Saturday; when I came home my wife saw my swollen face and asked what happened. 'I've been fighting, and given a man a good thrashing,' I said. She burst out weeping: 'O Richard, what made you fight?' I told her all; she thanked the Lord I hadn't struck back.
+    “Once, a few weeks after I came to the woods, for an hour I
+    doubted whether the near neighborhood of man was not essential to
+    a serene and healthy life. To be alone was somewhat unpleasant.
+    But, in the midst of a gentle rain, while these thoughts
+    prevailed, I was suddenly sensible of such sweet and beneficent
+    society in Nature, in the very pattering of the drops, and in
+    every sight and sound around my house, an infinite and
+    unaccountable friendliness all at once, like an atmosphere,
+    sustaining me, as made the fancied advantages of human
+    neighborhood insignificant, and I have never thought of them
+    since. Every little pine‐needle expanded and swelled with sympathy
+    and befriended me. I was so distinctly made aware of the presence
+    of something kindred to me, that I thought no place could ever be
+    strange to me again.”(155)
+> "Monday came. Tom was first I saw. I said 'Good morning,' but he didn't reply. He went down into the mine first. When I went down, I found him sitting on the wagon track waiting for me. He burst into tears: 'Richard, will you forgive me for hitting you?' 'I have forgiven you,' I said. 'Ask God to forgive you. May the Lord bless you.' I shook his hand, and we went to work."
+> **Quote:** "Love your enemies!"
+In the Christian consciousness this sense of the enveloping friendliness
+becomes most personal and definite. “The compensation,” writes a German
+author, “for the loss of that sense of personal independence which man so
+unwillingly gives up, is the disappearance of all _fear_ from one’s life,
+the quite indescribable and inexplicable feeling of an inner _security_,
+which one can only experience, but which, once it has been experienced,
+one can never forget.”(156)
+This means your *active, actual* enemies. Outside intimate relationships, it has rarely been taken literally. Yet is there an emotion so unifying that hatred becomes irrelevant? If positive goodwill reached supreme intensity, those driven by it might seem superhuman. Their lives would be morally distinct. Psychologically, the command is not contradictory—it is simply the extreme limit of magnanimity we already know. But followed radically, it requires such a break from instinct and social structure that we would be born into a different realm. Religious emotion makes us feel this realm is close.
+I find an excellent description of this state of mind in a sermon by Mr.
+Voysey:—
+This suppression of disgust appears in saints caring for the repulsive. Asceticism, humility, and charity mix when Francis of Assisi and Ignatius Loyola swap clothes with filthy beggars, or when saints clean lepers' sores with their tongues. Francis kissed lepers; Margaret Mary Alacoque, Francis Xavier, St. John of God cleaned patients' ulcers with their tongues. Elizabeth of Hungary and Madame de Chantal showed an obsession with hospital filth that makes us admire and shudder.
+---
+    “It is the experience of myriads of trustful souls, that this
+    sense of God’s unfailing presence with them in their going out and
+    in their coming in, and by night and day, is a source of absolute
+    repose and confident calmness. It drives away all fear of what may
+    befall them. That nearness of God is a constant 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 of mind equally
+    ready to be safe or to meet with injury. If injury befall them,
+    they will be content to bear it because the Lord is their keeper,
+    and nothing can befall them without his will. If it be his will,
+    then injury is for them a blessing and no calamity at all. Thus
+    and thus only is the trustful man protected and shielded from
+    harm. And I for one—by no means a thick‐skinned or hard‐nerved
+    man—am absolutely satisfied with this arrangement, and do not wish
+    for any other kind of immunity from danger and catastrophe. Quite
+    as sensitive to pain as the most highly strung organism, I yet
+    feel that the worst of it is conquered, and the sting taken out of
+    it altogether, by the thought that God is our loving and sleepless
+    keeper, and that nothing can hurt us without his will.”(157)
+Next, the equanimity, resignation, fortitude, and patience faith brings. A "paradise of inward tranquility" is the usual result. Earlier, discussing God's presence, I mentioned the inexplicable feeling of safety. How could it fail to steady nerves, calm fever, soothe anxiety, if one knows their life is kept by a power they absolutely trust? In deeply religious people, surrender to this power is passionate.
+> **Quote:** "Whoever not only says, but *feels*, 'God's will be done,' is mailed against every weakness."
+More excited expressions of this condition are abundant in religious
+literature. I could easily weary you with their monotony. Here is an
+account from Mrs. Jonathan Edwards:—
+The history of martyrs, missionaries, and reformers proves the mental peace self-surrender brings, even in distressing circumstances.
+This peace varies by temperament. In the somber, it feels like resignation; in the cheerful, joyous acceptance. Professor Lagneau, dying after long illness, wrote:
+    “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
+    my soul, 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 a constant, clear, and lively sense of the heavenly sweetness
+    of Christ’s excellent love, of his nearness to me, and of my
+    dearness to him; with an inexpressibly sweet calmness of soul in
+    an entire rest in him. I seemed to myself to perceive a glow of
+    divine love come down from the heart of Christ in heaven into my
+    heart in a constant stream, like a stream or pencil of sweet
+    light. At the same time my heart and soul all flowed out in love
+    to Christ, so that there seemed to be a constant flowing 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 which come in at the
+    window. I think that what I felt each minute was worth more than
+    all the outward comfort and pleasure which I had enjoyed in my
+    whole life put together. It was pleasure, without the least sting,
+    or any interruption. It was a sweetness, which my soul was lost
+    in; it seemed to be all that my feeble frame could sustain. There
+    was but little difference, whether I was asleep or awake, but if
+    there was any difference, the sweetness was greatest while I was
+    asleep.(158) As I awoke early the next morning, it seemed to me
+    that I had entirely done with myself. I felt that the opinions of
+    the world concerning me were nothing, and that I had no more to do
+    with any outward interest of my own than with that of a person
+    whom I never saw. The glory of God seemed to swallow 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 willingness to die; and after
+    that, in making me willing to live, that I might do and suffer
+    whatever he called me to here. I also thought how God had
+    graciously given me an entire resignation to his will, with
+    respect to the kind and manner of death that I should die; having
+    been made willing to die on the rack, or at the stake, and if it
+    were God’s will, to die in darkness. But now it occurred to me, I
+    used to 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 seemed
+    immediately to reply: Yes, a thousand years, and a thousand in
+    horror, if it be most for the honor of God, the torment of my body
+    being so great, awful, and overwhelming that none could bear to
+    live in the country where the spectacle was seen, and the torment
+    of my mind being vastly greater. And it seemed to me that I found
+    a perfect willingness, quietness, and alacrity of soul in
+    consenting that it should be so, if it were most for the glory of
+    God, so that there was no hesitation, doubt, or darkness in my
+    mind. The glory of God seemed to overcome me and swallow me up,
+    and every conceivable suffering, and everything that was terrible
+    to my nature, seemed to shrink to nothing before it. This
+    resignation continued in its clearness and brightness the rest of
+    the night, and all the next day, and the night following, and on
+    Monday in the forenoon, without interruption or abatement.”(159)
+> **Quote:** "My life will be what it must be. I ask nothing, expect nothing. For years I have existed only through the despair that is my sole strength. May it preserve in me the courage to live without desire for escape. I ask nothing more from the Source of all strength."
+There is something tragic here, but its power as a shield against shocks is obvious. Pascal expresses this submissive surrender more fully:
+The annals of Catholic saintship abound in records as ecstatic or more
+ecstatic than this. “Often the assaults of the divine love,” it is said of
+the Sister Séraphique de la Martinière, “reduced her almost to the point
+of death. She used tenderly to complain of this to God. ‘I cannot support
+it,’ she used to say. ‘Bear gently with my weakness, or I shall expire
+under the violence of your love.’ ”(160)
+> **Quote:** "Deliver me, Lord, from sadness over my suffering that self-love might create, but give me a sadness like your own. Let my sufferings appease your anger. I ask you for neither health nor sickness, life nor death; but that you may use my health, sickness, life, death for your glory. You alone know what is best. Align my will with yours. I know only that it is good to follow you and bad to offend you. Beyond that, I do not know what is good—health or sickness, wealth or poverty. That judgment is hidden in the secrets of your Providence, which I adore but do not attempt to fathom."
+                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
+In optimistic people, resignation is less passive. Madame Guyon, physically fragile but naturally happy, faced dangers with incredible peace. After imprisonment for heresy, she wrote:
+Let me pass next to the Charity and Brotherly Love which are a usual fruit
+of saintliness, and have always been reckoned essential theological
+virtues, however limited may have been the kinds of service which the
+particular theology enjoined. Brotherly love would follow logically from
+the assurance of God’s friendly presence, the notion of our brotherhood as
+men being an immediate inference from that of God’s fatherhood of us all.
+When Christ utters the precepts: “Love your enemies, bless them that curse
+you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully
+use you, and persecute you,” he gives for a reason: “That ye may be the
+children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise
+on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the
+unjust.” One might therefore be tempted to explain both the humility as to
+one’s self and the charity towards others which characterize spiritual
+excitement, as results of the all‐leveling character of theistic belief.
+But these affections are certainly not mere derivatives of theism. We find
+them in Stoicism, in Hinduism, and in Buddhism in the highest possible
+degree. They harmonize with paternal theism beautifully; but they
+_harmonize_ with all reflection whatever upon the dependence of mankind on
+general causes; and we must, I think, consider them not subordinate but
+coördinate parts of that great complex excitement in the study of which 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, and tenderness to rule. The
+best thing is to describe the condition integrally as a characteristic
+affection to 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 or
+fear, the faith‐state is a natural psychic complex, and carries charity
+with it by organic consequence. Jubilation is an expansive affection, and
+all expansive affections are self‐forgetful and kindly so long as they
+endure.
+> **Quote:** "Some friends wept bitterly when they heard, but I was in such acceptance and resignation I didn't shed a tear... There seemed in me then, as now, such total loss of concern for myself that my own interests gave little pain or pleasure. I wanted only what God wanted." Elsewhere: "We nearly drowned crossing a river. The carriage sank in quicksand. Others panicked, but my thoughts were so on God I felt no distinct danger. The thought of drowning crossed my mind, but caused no sensation except contentment, being willing if it were my heavenly Father's choice." Sailing from Nice to Genoa, a storm kept her eleven days at sea: "As angry waves crashed, I couldn't help feeling satisfaction. I enjoyed thinking those rebellious waves, under His command, might give me a watery grave. Those with me noticed my fearlessness."
+We find this the case even when they are pathological in origin. In his
+instructive work, la Tristesse et la Joie,(161) M. Georges Dumas compares
+together the melancholy and the joyous phase of circular insanity, and
+shows that, while selfishness characterizes the one, the other is marked
+by altruistic impulses. No human being so stingy and useless as was Marie
+in her melancholy period! But the moment the happy period begins,
+“sympathy and kindness become her characteristic 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 to procure wool to knit socks for some of them. Never since
+she has been under my observation have I heard her in her joyous period
+utter any but charitable opinions.”(162) And later, Dr. Dumas says of all
+such joyous conditions that “unselfish sentiments and tender emotions are
+the only affective states to be found in them. The subject’s mind is
+closed against envy, hatred, and vindictiveness, and wholly transformed
+into benevolence, indulgence, and mercy.”(163)
+Disregard for danger can be even more upbeat. Frank Bullen writes in *With Christ at Sea*:
+There is thus an organic affinity between joyousness and tenderness, and
+their companionship in the saintly life need in no way occasion surprise.
+Along with the happiness, this increase of tenderness is often noted in
+narratives of conversion. “I began to work for others”;—“I had more tender
+feeling for my family and friends”;—“I spoke at once to a person with whom
+I had been angry”;—“I felt for every one, and loved my friends better”;—“I
+felt every one to be my friend”;—these are so many expressions from the
+records collected by Professor Starbuck.(164)
+> **Quote:** "A couple of days after my conversion, it was blowing hard. After four bells we pulled down the flying-jib, and I jumped onto the boom to fold it. Sitting there, the boom suddenly gave way. The sail slipped and I fell backward, hanging head-down over foaming water, held by one foot. But I felt only pure exhilaration in my certainty of eternal life. Though death was a hair's breadth away, it gave me nothing but joy. I don't know how I got back on the boom, but I sang praises to God at the top of my lungs over the dark water."
+Martyrdom is ultimate proof of religious composure. Blanche Gamond, persecuted as a Huguenot under Louis XIV, writes:
+    “When,” says Mrs. Edwards, continuing the narrative from which I
+    made quotation a moment ago, “I arose on the morning of the
+    Sabbath, I felt a love to all mankind, wholly peculiar in its
+    strength and sweetness, far beyond all that I had ever felt
+    before. The power of that love seemed inexpressible. I thought, if
+    I were surrounded by enemies, who were venting their malice and
+    cruelty upon me, in tormenting me, it would still be impossible
+    that I should cherish any feelings towards them but those of love,
+    and pity, and ardent desires for their happiness. I never before
+    felt so far from a disposition to judge and censure others, as I
+    did that morning. I realized also, in an unusual and very lively
+    manner, how great a part of Christianity lies in the performance
+    of our social and relative duties to one another. The same joyful
+    sense continued throughout the day—a sweet love to God and all
+    mankind.”
+> **Quote:** "They shut all doors. Six women held willow rods thick as a hand and a yard long. He ordered me to undress; they stripped me, tied me to a beam, pulled the rope tight, asking 'Does it hurt?' then attacked, shouting 'Pray to your God now!' But in that moment I felt the greatest comfort of my life—the honor of being whipped for Christ, crowned with His mercy. I cannot describe the incredible peace. The women cried: 'We must hit her harder; she doesn't feel it because she isn't screaming.' How could I scream when I was faint with happiness?"
+The shift from tension and worry to composure is the most remarkable internal change. The wonder is that it often happens not by *doing* something, but by relaxing and letting go the burden. This seems the core act of religious practice. Christians who experience this deeply live in "recollection," never worrying about future outcomes. Of Saint Catherine of Genoa it is said she only noticed things as they happened, moment by moment. "The divine moment was the present moment... when that moment's duty was done, she let it go completely."
+Whatever be the explanation of the charity, it may efface all usual human
+barriers.(165)
+---
+Here, for instance, is an example of Christian non‐resistance from Richard
+Weaver’s autobiography. Weaver was a collier, a semi‐professional pugilist
+in his younger days, who became a much beloved evangelist. Fighting, after
+drinking, seems to have been the sin to which he 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, he might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb,
+he got drunk and went and broke the jaw of another man who had lately
+challenged him to fight and taunted him with cowardice for refusing as a
+Christian man;—I mention these incidents to show how genuine a change of
+heart is implied in the later conduct which he describes as follows:—
+Next is Purity of Life. The saint becomes extremely sensitive to internal inconsistency; confusion becomes unbearable. Everything must align with the spiritual core. Anything unspiritual pollutes the soul. Along with this heightened sensitivity comes passion for sacrificing anything unworthy of the deity. Sometimes purity arrives instantly; usually it is gradual. Billy Bray's story of quitting tobacco illustrates the latter:
+> **Quote:** "I had been a smoker as well as drunkard. I loved tobacco as much as food; I'd rather go into the mine without dinner than without my pipe. The Lord speaks now through His Son's spirit. I didn't just have the 'feeling' part; I could hear the still, small voice. When I picked up my pipe, it said, 'It is an idol; worship the Lord with clean lips.' The Lord also sent a woman to convince me. Mary Hawke asked: 'Don't you feel it's wrong to smoke?' I said the voice called it an idol. She said that was the Lord. I decided then to give it up. I threw the tobacco in the fire and crushed the pipe, saying 'ashes to ashes.' I haven't smoked since. It was hard, but I prayed for strength.
+    “I went down the drift and found the boy crying because a fellow‐
+    workman was trying to take the wagon from him by force. I said to
+    him:—
+> "The next day I had such bad toothache I didn't know what to do. I thought it was from quitting, but swore I'd never smoke again even if I lost every tooth. When I remembered 'My yoke is easy and my burden is light,' the pain left. Sometimes the urge returned, but the Lord kept me strong."
+    “ ‘Tom, you mustn’t take that wagon.’
+Bray tried chewing tobacco after quitting smoking but conquered that too:
+    “He swore at me, and called me a Methodist devil. I told him that
+    God did not tell me to let him rob me. He cursed again, and said
+    he would push the wagon over me.
+> **Quote:** "At a prayer meeting I heard, 'Worship me with clean lips.' I spit out my chew. When we knelt again, I put another in. The Lord said it again. I spit it out and promised I was done. From then on, I was a free man."
+    “ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘let us see whether the devil and thee are
+    stronger than the Lord and me.’
+The drive for honesty can be touching. Early Quakers fought church insincerity, but their costliest battle was for social honesty—refusing formal titles, hat-tipping, or using anything but "thee" and "thou." George Fox felt these customs were lies. His followers gave them up as sacrifice to truth, ensuring outward actions matched inner spirit.
+    “And the Lord and I proving stronger than the devil and he, he had
+    to get out of the way, or the wagon would have gone over him. So I
+    gave the wagon to the boy. Then said Tom:—
+> **Quote:** "When the Lord sent me into the world, he forbade me to take off my hat to anyone, high or low; to address everyone as 'thee' and 'thou,' rich or poor; to greet with 'Good morning' or 'Good evening,' or bow to anyone. This enraged religious sects. Oh, the fury in priests, magistrates, scholars! Especially among clergy and the learned. Though 'thou' for one person followed grammar and Scripture, they could not bear it. Because I would not tip my hat, it drove them to rage.
+    “ ‘I’ve a good mind to smack thee on the face.’
+> "Oh, the scorn, heat, fury that arose! Think of blows, beatings, imprisonments we endured just for not taking off our hats! Some had hats snatched off and thrown away forever. The verbal abuse and mistreatment—our lives often in danger, all by those claiming to be great Christians who proved by their actions they were not true believers. Though the world saw it as trivial, it caused wonderful confusion among scholars. But blessed be the Lord, many came to see the custom's pointlessness and felt Truth's weight against it."
+    “ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘if that will do thee any good, thou canst do
+    it.’ So he struck me on the face.
+Thomas Elwood, early Quaker and Milton's secretary, described his trials for following Fox's standards:
+    “I turned the other cheek to him, and said, ‘Strike again.’
+> **Quote:** "By this divine light I saw that although I had avoided common vices—debauchery and profanity—thanks to God's goodness and decent upbringing, I still had many faults to abandon. Some were not considered sins by a world 'lying in wickedness,' but through Christ's light they were revealed as evils.
+    “He struck again and again, till he had struck me five times. I
+    turned my cheek for the sixth stroke; but he turned away cursing.
+    I shouted after him: ‘The Lord forgive thee, for I do, and the
+    Lord save thee.’
+> "I recognized specifically pride's effects in my clothing's vanity and excess, which had pleased me too much. I was required to give this up. I removed unnecessary lace, ribbons, useless buttons—things serving no purpose but mistaken for 'ornament'—and stopped wearing rings.
+    “This was on a Saturday; and when I went home from the coal‐pit my
+    wife saw my face was swollen, and asked what was the matter with
+    it. I said: ‘I’ve been fighting, and I’ve given a man a good
+    thrashing.’
+> "Next, I stopped using flattering titles where no relationship justified them. This habit I had been fond of and skilled at; therefore I abandoned it. From then on I dared not say 'Sir,' 'Master,' 'My Lord,' 'Madam'—nor 'Your Servant' unless actually a servant, which I never had been.
+    “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.
+> "Furthermore, showing 'respect of persons' by removing my hat or bowing was a hollow custom, born of worldly spirit rather than true honor, used deceitfully as a token between people having no real respect. Since such gestures symbolize divine honor owed to God alone, they should not be given to men. I realized I had engaged in this too long and must stop.
+    “But the Lord had struck, and his blows have more effect than
+    man’s. Monday came. The devil began to tempt me, saying: ‘The
+    other men will laugh at thee for allowing Tom to treat thee as he
+    did on Saturday.’ I cried, ‘Get thee behind me, Satan;’—and went
+    on my way to the coal‐pit.
+> "Finally, there was the corrupt practice of speaking in plural to a single person—using 'you' instead of 'thou.' This contradicts truth's plain language: 'thou' for one, 'you' for more. This was Scripture's language until corrupt men introduced 'you' to a single person to flatter and manipulate. I had been as guilty as anyone, but was now called to leave it behind.
+    “Tom was the first man I saw. I said ‘Good‐morning,’ but got no
+    reply.
+> "These and many other harmful customs, grown from spiritual darkness, were gradually revealed as things I must avoid and testify against."
+    “He went down first. When I got down, I was surprised to see him
+    sitting on the wagon‐road waiting for me. When I came to him he
+    burst into tears and said: ‘Richard, will you forgive me for
+    striking you?’
+These Quakers were Puritans in the truest sense. Even slight gaps between word and deed prompted protest. John Woolman's diary shows this sensitivity:
+    “ ‘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.”(166)
+> **Quote:** "In my travels I've been where much cloth is dyed, walking over ground where dye waste drained. This created longing for cleanliness of spirit, person, house, garment. Since dyes please the eye and hide dirt, I desired the practice be reconsidered.
+> "Washing clothes to keep them fresh is clean, but hiding dirt is opposite of real cleanliness. By choosing to conceal dirt, we strengthen a spirit wanting to hide what's disagreeable. Real cleanliness suits a holy people; hiding uncleanliness contradicts sincerity's beauty. Some dyes make cloth less durable. If we spent dye and labor costs on keeping everything truly fresh, real cleanliness would be more common.
+“Love your enemies!” Mark you, not simply those who happen not to be your
+friends, but your _enemies_, your positive and active enemies. Either this
+is a mere Oriental hyperbole, a bit of verbal extravagance, meaning only
+that we should, as far as we can, abate our animosities, or else it is
+sincere and literal. Outside of certain cases of intimate individual
+relation, it seldom has been taken literally. Yet it makes one ask the
+question: Can there in general be a level of emotion so unifying, so
+obliterative of differences between man and man, that even enmity may come
+to be an irrelevant circumstance and fail to inhibit the friendlier
+interests aroused? If positive well‐wishing could attain so supreme a
+degree of excitement, those who were swayed by it might well seem
+superhuman beings. Their life would be morally discrete from the life of
+other men, and there is no saying, in the absence of positive experience
+of an authentic kind,—for there are few active examples in our scriptures,
+and the Buddhistic examples are legendary,(167)—what the effects might be:
+they might conceivably transform the world.
+> "Thinking often of these things, I became uneasy wearing dyed hats and clothes, or more garments in summer than necessary. I believed these customs weren't based on pure wisdom. Fear of appearing strange burdened me, so I continued against my judgment for nine months. I considered a natural-colored fur hat, but feared seeming eccentric. This weighed on me during 1762's spring meeting. After deep prayer, I became willing. Returning home, I got a hat of natural, undyed fur.
+Psychologically and in principle, the precept “Love your enemies” is not
+self‐contradictory. It is merely the extreme limit of a kind of
+magnanimity with which, in the shape of pitying tolerance of our
+oppressors, we are fairly familiar. Yet if radically followed, it would
+involve such a breach with our instinctive springs of action as a whole,
+and with the present world’s arrangements, that a critical 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.
+> "Wearing this unusual hat was a trial, especially since white hats were then fashionable. Some friends, not knowing my motives, grew distant; for a time I felt unable to speak in ministry. Some feared it was just eccentricity. To those who asked kindly, I explained my belief that wearing it was not my own personal will."
+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 we find a curious mixture of
+motives impelling in this direction. Asceticism plays its part; and along
+with charity pure and simple, we find humility or the desire to disclaim
+distinction and to grovel on the common level before God. Certainly all
+three principles were at work when Francis of Assisi and Ignatius Loyola
+exchanged their garments with those of filthy beggars. All three are at
+work when religious persons consecrate their lives to the care of leprosy
+or other peculiarly unpleasant diseases. The nursing of the sick is a
+function to which the religious seem strongly drawn, even apart from the
+fact that church traditions set that way. But in the annals of this sort
+of charity we find 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 their patients with their respective tongues; and the lives
+of such saints as Elizabeth of Hungary and Madame de Chantal are full of a
+sort of reveling in hospital purulence, disagreeable to read of, and which
+makes us admire and shudder at the same time.
+When desire for moral consistency reaches this level, the outside world may seem too full of shocks. One can only unify life and keep the soul "unspotted" by withdrawing. The same law drives an artist to create harmony by removing what clashes governs spiritual life.
+                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
+> **Quote:** "To omit, says Stevenson, is the one art in literature: 'If I knew how to omit, I should ask no other knowledge.'"
+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 life full of disorder, laziness, excess can no more have character than a poorly written book can. Hence monasteries exist. In their unchanging order—defined as much by exclusion as by action—the holy person finds peace otherwise violated by secular life's harshness.
+“A paradise of inward tranquillity” seems to be faith’s usual result; and
+it is easy, even without being religious one’s self, to understand this. A
+moment back, in treating of the sense of God’s presence, 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 be sensibly conscious that, no matter what one’s
+difficulties for the moment may appear to be, one’s life as a whole is in
+the keeping of a power whom one can absolutely trust? In deeply religious
+men 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 naturally
+agitating or distressing circumstances, which self‐surrender brings.
+We must admit this purity-obsession can become fanatical. It resembles asceticism—the next symptom we should examine. The word "ascetic" describes behavior from various psychological levels:
+The temper of the tranquil‐mindedness differs, of course, according as the
+person is of a constitutionally sombre or of a constitutionally cheerful
+cast of mind. In the sombre it partakes more of resignation and
+submission; in the cheerful it is a joyous consent. As an example of the
+former temper, I quote part of a letter from Professor Lagneau, a
+venerated teacher of philosophy who lately died, a great invalid, at
+Paris:—
+. Simple physical toughness—a reaction against too much comfort.
+. Moderation from love of purity and distaste for sensuality.
+. Acts of love—sacrificial gifts to the Deity.
+. Self-torment from self-loathing and belief in penance—"buying" freedom or avoiding future suffering.
+. In psychological struggles, irrational obsession that must be acted out to feel "right."
+. Rarely, genuine sensory perversion where pain is pleasure.
+Most clear cases combine several motives. Before citing examples, some general observations apply.
+    “My life, for the success of which you send good wishes, will be
+    what it is able to be. I ask nothing from it, I expect nothing
+    from it. For long years now I exist, think, and act, and am worth
+    what I am worth, only through the despair which is my sole
+    strength and my sole foundation. May it preserve for me, even in
+    these last trials to which I am coming, the courage to do without
+    the desire of deliverance. I ask nothing more from the Source
+    whence all strength cometh, and if that is granted, your wishes
+    will have been accomplished.”(168)
+A remarkable moral transformation has swept the Western world. We no longer believe we must face physical pain with equanimity. Men are no longer expected to endure or inflict it routinely, as our ancestors did. Today, a believer who whips or starves themselves causes more concern than inspiration. Many Catholic writers accept this change with resignation.
+Seeking ease seems instinctive; deliberately seeking hardship might seem abnormal. Yet in moderate amounts, pursuing difficulty is natural. Only extremes seem paradoxical.
+There is something pathetic and fatalistic about this, but the power of
+such a tone as a protection against outward shocks is manifest. Pascal is
+another Frenchman of pessimistic natural temperament. He expresses still
+more amply the temper of self‐surrendering submissiveness:—
+The psychological reasons are straightforward. The "will" is a complex function: pushing forward and holding back, following habits, accompanied by self-reflection, leaving satisfaction or dissatisfaction. Beyond immediate pleasure, our moral attitude brings secondary satisfaction or distaste. While some live on simple happiness, for most this is too tepid. Some austerity, danger, effort—some "no!"—must be mixed in to give life character. Everyone knows their right balance: "This is my calling; this is the best way for me to live."
+Every soul has conditions for peak efficiency. Some thrive in calm; others need tension and strong willpower. For the latter, daily gains must be paid for with sacrifice; otherwise it feels cheap.
+    “Deliver me, Lord,” he writes in his prayers, “from the sadness at
+    my proper suffering which self‐love might give, but put into me a
+    sadness like your own. Let my sufferings appease your choler. Make
+    them an occasion for my conversion and salvation. I ask you
+    neither for health nor for sickness, for life nor for death; but
+    that you may dispose of my health and my sickness, my life and my
+    death, for your glory, for my salvation, and for the use of the
+    Church and of your saints, of whom I would by your grace be one.
+    You alone know what is expedient for me; you are the sovereign
+    master; do with me according to your will. Give to me, or take
+    away from me, only conform my will to yours. I know but one thing,
+    Lord, that it is good to follow you, and bad to offend 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. That discernment is
+    beyond the power of men or angels, and is hidden among the secrets
+    of your Providence, which I adore, but do not seek to
+    fathom.”(169)
+When such people become religious, they turn their need for struggle against natural desires, developing ascetic life.
+Professor Tyndall described Thomas Carlyle making him take freezing baths every Berlin winter—a basic asceticism. Many feel cold immersion necessary for mental health. Moving up the scale, an agnostic writes:
+When we reach more optimistic temperaments, the resignation grows less
+passive. Examples are sown so broadcast throughout history that I might
+well pass on without citation. As it is, I snatch at the first that occurs
+to my mind. Madame Guyon, a frail creature physically, was yet of a happy
+native disposition. She went through many perils with admirable serenity
+of soul. After being sent to prison for heresy,—
+> **Quote:** "Often at night in my warm bed I felt ashamed of being so dependent on warmth. Whenever that thought hit, I had to get up, regardless of time, and stand in the cold a minute to prove my manhood."
+These are category 1. Next we see categories 2 and 3—systematic, extreme asceticism. This Protestant needed higher stakes:
+    “Some of my friends,” she writes, “wept bitterly at the hearing of
+    it, but such was my state of acquiescence and resignation that it
+    failed to draw any tears from me.... There appeared to be in me
+    then, as I find it to be in me now, such an entire loss of what
+    regards myself, that any of my own interests gave me little pain
+    or pleasure; ever wanting to will or wish for myself only the very
+    thing which God does.” In another place she writes: “We all of us
+    came near perishing in a river which we found it necessary to
+    pass. The carriage sank in the quicksand. Others who were with us
+    threw themselves out in excessive fright. But I found my thoughts
+    so much taken up with God that I had no distinct sense of danger.
+    It is true that the thought of being drowned passed across my
+    mind, but it cost no other sensation or reflection in me than
+    this—that I felt quite contented and willing it were so, if it
+    were my heavenly Father’s choice.” Sailing from Nice to Genoa, a
+    storm keeps her eleven days at sea. “As the irritated waves dashed
+    round us,” she writes, “I could not help experiencing a certain
+    degree 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 watery grave.
+    Perhaps I carried the point too far, in the pleasure which I took
+    in thus seeing myself beaten and bandied by the swelling waters.
+    Those who were with me took notice of my intrepidity.”(170)
+> **Quote:** "I practiced fasting and self-denial. I secretly made shirts of burlap with rough parts against my skin, put pebbles in my shoes, spent nights lying flat on the floor without blankets."
+The Catholic Church has organized these practices as "merit." But every culture shows this need. Channing, becoming a Unitarian minister:
+The contempt of danger which religious enthusiasm produces may be even
+more buoyant still. I take 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
+an account,—
+> **Quote:** "He became simpler than ever, incapable of self-indulgence. He took the smallest room for his study, an attic for his bedroom. His furniture was monk-like: hard mattress on a cot, plain wooden chairs, mat on floor. He had no fire, though extremely cold-sensitive—never complaining. After a freezing night he said playfully: 'If my bed were my country, I'd be like Napoleon: I only control the part I occupy; the moment I move, frost takes over.' He only accepted comforts when sick. His clothes were poor quality, cheap-looking, though he remained exceptionally neat."
+Channing's asceticism blended toughness and love of purity. Democracy from devotion to poverty played a role. But the next case contains strong pessimism—category 4. John Cennick, Methodism's first lay preacher, was overcome by sin in 1735:
+    “It was blowing stiffly,” he writes, “and we were carrying a press
+    of canvas to get north out of the bad weather. Shortly after four
+    bells we hauled down the flying‐jib, and I sprang out astride the
+    boom to furl it. I was sitting astride the boom when suddenly it
+    gave way with me. The sail slipped through my fingers, and I fell
+    backwards, hanging head downwards over the seething tumult of
+    shining foam under the ship’s bows, suspended by one foot. But I
+    felt only high exultation in my certainty of eternal life.
+    Although death was divided from me by a hair’s breadth, and I was
+    acutely conscious of the fact, it gave me no sensation but joy. I
+    suppose I could have hung there no longer than 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 I sang at the utmost pitch
+    of my voice praises to God that went pealing out over the dark
+    waste of waters.”(171)
+> **Quote:** "At once he stopped singing songs, playing cards, attending theaters. Sometimes he wished to join a Catholic monastery; other times to live in a cave, sleeping on leaves, feeding on forest fruits. He fasted long and often, prayed nine times daily. Feeling dry bread too indulgent for such a sinner, he ate potatoes, acorns, wild apples, grass; he wished he could live on roots and herbs. Finally in 1737 he found peace with God and went rejoicing."
+Here is morbid melancholy and fear; sacrifices were to purge sin and buy safety. Christian theology's hopelessness regarding flesh has systematized fear into powerful incentive for self-mortification. Yet the impulse to atone is too immediate and spontaneous to be called purely mercenary. In loving sacrifice, even severe ascetic discipline can result from optimistic religious feeling.
+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 under Louis XIV.:—
+M. Vianney, priest of Ars, whose holiness was exemplary, shows inner need for sacrifice:
+> **Quote:** "On this path, only the first step costs. In mortification there is a balm and savor without which one cannot live once acquainted. There is but one way to give oneself to God: give yourself entirely, keep nothing. What you keep only divides the heart and causes suffering."
+    “They shut all the doors,” Blanche Gamond writes, “and I saw six
+    women, each with a bunch of willow rods as thick as the hand could
+    hold, and a yard long. He gave me the order, ‘Undress yourself,’
+    which I did. He said, ‘You are leaving on your shift; you must
+    take it off.’ They had so little patience that they took it off
+    themselves, and I was naked from the waist up. They brought a cord
+    with which they tied me to a beam in the kitchen. They drew the
+    cord tight with all their strength and asked me, ‘Does it hurt
+    you?’ and then they discharged their fury upon me, exclaiming as
+    they struck me, ‘Pray now to your God.’ It was the Roulette woman
+    who held this language. But at this moment I received the greatest
+    consolation that I can ever receive in my life, since I had the
+    honor of being whipped for the name of Christ, and in addition of
+    being crowned with his mercy and his consolations. Why can I not
+    write down the inconceivable influences, consolations, and peace
+    which I felt interiorly? To understand them one must have passed
+    by the same trial; they were so great that I was ravished, for
+    there where afflictions abound grace is given superabundantly. In
+    vain the women cried, ‘We must double our blows; she does not feel
+    them, for she neither speaks nor cries.’ And how should I have
+    cried, since I was swooning with happiness within?”(172)
+Accordingly, he resolved: never smell a flower, never drink when parched, never brush away a fly, never show disgust, never complain about comfort, never sit, never lean on elbows while kneeling. Vianney was very cold-sensitive, yet never protected himself. One severe winter, a missionary built a false floor in his confessional with hot water beneath. The Saint was deceived: "God is very good. This year, despite all cold, my feet stayed warm."
+Here the spontaneous impulse to sacrifice from pure love for God was likely the primary motive—category 3. Some authors believe this sacrifice-impulse is religion's central phenomenon. It lies deeper than any creed. Cotton Mather, New England Puritan minister often seen as absurdly formal, wrote touchingly of his wife's death:
+The transition from tenseness, self‐responsibility, and worry, to
+equanimity, receptivity, and peace, is the most wonderful of all those
+shiftings of inner equilibrium, those changes of the personal centre of
+energy, which I have analyzed so often; and the chief wonder of it is that
+it so often comes about, not by doing, but by simply relaxing and throwing
+the burden down. This abandonment of self‐responsibility seems to be the
+fundamental act in specifically religious, as distinguished from moral
+practice. It antedates theologies and is independent of philosophies.
+Mind‐cure, theosophy, stoicism, ordinary neurological hygiene, insist on
+it as emphatically as Christianity does, and it is capable of entering
+into closest marriage with every speculative creed.(173) Christians who
+have it strongly live in what is called “recollection,” and are never
+anxious about 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 by moment_.” To her holy
+soul, “the divine moment was the present moment,... and when the present
+moment was estimated in itself and in its relations, and when the duty
+that was involved in it was accomplished, it was permitted to pass away as
+if it had never been, and to give way to the facts and duties of the
+moment which came after.”(174)
+> **Quote:** "When I saw to what point of resignation I was called, I resolved with His help to glorify Him. Two hours before my lovely consort expired, I knelt by her bedside, took her dear hand—the dearest in the world—and solemnly gave her up to the Lord. In token of real resignation, I gently put her out of my hands and laid away that lovely hand, resolving never to touch it more. This was the hardest, bravest action I ever did. She told me she signed and sealed my act of resignation. Though before she called for me continually, after this she never asked for me again."
+Hinduism, mind‐cure, and theosophy all lay great emphasis upon this
+concentration of the consciousness upon the moment at hand.
+Vianney's asceticism was a continuous flood of intense spiritual enthusiasm seeking to prove itself. The Catholic Church has gathered all ascetic motivations and codified them so thoroughly that anyone pursuing Christian perfection can find a system in ready-made manuals. The dominant concept is negative: avoiding sin, which arises from worldly desire stemming from physical passions and temptations—pride, sensuality, love of excitement and possessions. All must be resisted; austerities are most effective. But whenever a process is codified, its delicate spirit evaporates. To see undiluted asceticism—the passion of self-contempt directed at flesh, making sacrificial gift of all sensations to the adored object—we must turn to personal documents.
+                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
+Saint John of the Cross, Spanish mystic of the sixteenth century who seemed barely to "live" in the usual sense, writes:
+The next religious symptom which I will note is what I have called Purity
+of Life. The saintly person becomes exceedingly sensitive to inner
+inconsistency or discord, and mixture and confusion grow intolerable. All
+the mind’s objects and occupations must be ordered with reference to the
+special spiritual excitement which is now its keynote. Whatever is
+unspiritual taints the pure water of the soul and is repugnant. Mixed with
+this exaltation of the moral sensibilities there is also an ardor of
+sacrifice, for the beloved deity’s sake, of everything unworthy of him.
+Sometimes the spiritual ardor is so sovereign that purity is achieved at a
+stroke—we have seen examples. Usually it is a more gradual conquest. Billy
+Bray’s account of his abandonment of tobacco is a good example of the
+latter form of achievement.
+> **Quote:** "First, cultivate habitual desire to imitate Jesus Christ. If anything agreeable presents itself to senses but doesn't directly serve God's honor and glory, renounce it for love of Christ, who throughout life had no other wish than to do the will of his Father, whom he called his meat and nourishment. If you find satisfaction in hearing things not involving God's glory, deny yourself and suppress the wish to listen. Do the same with seeing, conversation, all senses, striving to free yourself from their yoke.
+> "The radical remedy lies in mortifying the four great natural passions: joy, hope, fear, grief. Deprive these of every satisfaction, leave them in darkness and void. Let your soul always turn:
+    “I had been a smoker as well as a drunkard, and I used to love my
+    tobacco as much as I loved my meat, and I would rather go down
+    into the mine without my dinner than without my pipe. In the days
+    of old, the Lord spoke by the mouths of his servants, the
+    prophets; now he speaks to us by the spirit of his Son. I had not
+    only the feeling part of religion, but I could hear the small,
+    still voice within speaking to me. When I took the pipe to smoke,
+    it would be applied within, ‘It is an idol, a lust; worship the
+    Lord with clean lips.’ So, I felt it was not right to smoke. The
+    Lord also sent a woman to convince me. I was one day in a house,
+    and I took out my pipe to light it at the fire, and Mary Hawke—for
+    that was the woman’s name—said, ‘Do you not feel it is wrong to
+    smoke?’ I said that 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, and threw it
+    into the fire, and put the pipe under my foot, ‘ashes to ashes,
+    dust to dust.’ And I have not smoked since. I found it hard to
+    break off old habits, but I cried to the Lord for help, and he
+    gave me strength, for he has said, ‘Call upon me in the day of
+    trouble, and I will deliver thee.’ The day after I gave up smoking
+    I had the toothache so bad that I did not know what to do. I
+    thought this was owing to giving up the pipe, but I said I would
+    never smoke again, if I lost every tooth in my head. 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 the Lord
+    strengthened me against the habit, and, bless his name, I have not
+    smoked since.”
+> "Not to what is easiest, but hardest;
+    Bray’s biographer writes that after he had given up smoking, he
+    thought that he would chew a little, 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 got up 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 to me 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.”
+> "Not to what tastes best, but most distasteful;
+> "Not to what most pleases, but disgusts;
+The ascetic forms which the impulse for veracity and purity of life may
+take are often pathetic enough. The early Quakers, for example, had hard
+battles to wage against the worldliness and insincerity of the
+ecclesiastical Christianity of their time. Yet the battle that cost them
+most wounds was probably that which they fought in defense of their own
+right to social veracity and sincerity in their thee‐ing and thou‐ing, in
+not doffing the hat or giving titles of respect. It was laid on George Fox
+that these conventional customs were a lie and a sham, and the whole body
+of his followers thereupon renounced them, as a sacrifice to truth, and so
+that their acts and the spirit they professed might be more in accord.
+> "Not to consolation, but desolation;
+> "Not to rest, but labor;
+    “When the Lord sent me into the world,” says Fox in his Journal,
+    “he forbade me to put off my hat to any, high or low: and I was
+    required to ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ all men and women, without any
+    respect to rich or poor, great or small. And as I traveled up and
+    down, I was not to bid people Good‐morning, or Good‐evening,
+    neither might I bow or scrape with my leg to any one. This made
+    the sects and professions rage. Oh! the rage that was in the
+    priests, magistrates, professors, and people of all sorts: and
+    especially in priests and professors: for though ‘thou’ to a
+    single person was according to their accidence and grammar rules,
+    and according to the Bible, yet they could not bear to hear it:
+    and because I could not put off my hat to them, it set them all
+    into a rage.... Oh! the scorn, heat, and fury that arose! Oh! the
+    blows, punchings, beatings, and imprisonments that we underwent
+    for not putting off our hats to men! Some had their hats violently
+    plucked off and thrown away, so that they quite lost them. The bad
+    language and evil usage we received on this account is hard to be
+    expressed, besides the danger we were sometimes in of losing our
+    lives for this matter, and that by the great professors of
+    Christianity, who thereby discovered they were not true believers.
+    And though it was but a small thing in the eye of man, yet a
+    wonderful confusion it brought among all professors and priests:
+    but, blessed be the Lord, many came to see the vanity of that
+    custom of putting off hats to men, and felt the weight of Truth’s
+    testimony against it.”
+> "Not to desiring more, but less;
+> "Not to aspiring highest, but lowest;
+In the autobiography of Thomas Elwood, an early Quaker, who at one time
+was secretary to John Milton, we find an exquisitely quaint and candid
+account of the trials he underwent both at home and abroad, in following
+Fox’s canons of sincerity. The anecdotes are too lengthy for citation; but
+Elwood sets down his manner of feeling about these things in a shorter
+passage, which I will quote as a characteristic utterance of spiritual
+sensibility:—
+> "Not to willing anything, but nothing;
+> "Not to seeking best, but worst, that for Christ's love you may enter complete destitution, perfect poverty of spirit, absolute renunciation.
+    “By this divine light, then,” says Elwood, “I saw that though I
+    had not the evil of the common uncleanliness, 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 (1 John v. 19), accounted evils,
+    but by the light of Christ were made manifest to me to be evils,
+    and as such condemned in me.
+> "Embrace these with all soul's energy, and you will soon find great delights.
+    “As particularly those fruits and effects of pride that discover
+    themselves in the vanity and superfluity of apparel; which I took
+    too much delight in. This evil of my doings I was required to put
+    away and cease from; and judgment lay upon me till I did so.
+> "Despise yourself, wish others to despise you.
+    “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; and I
+    ceased to wear rings.
+> "Speak to your disadvantage, desire others do the same;
+    “Again, the giving of flattering titles to men between whom and me
+    there was not any relation to which such titles could be pretended
+    to belong. This was an evil I had been much addicted to, and was
+    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 Your
+    Servant to any one to whom I did not stand in the real relation of
+    a servant, which I had never done to any.
+> "Maintain low opinion of yourself, be glad when others hold it."
+    “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 representation of, and used in deceit as a
+    token of respect by persons one to another, who bear no real
+    respect one to another; and besides this, being a type and a
+    proper emblem of that divine honor which all ought to pay to
+    Almighty God, and which all of all sorts, who take upon them the
+    Christian name, appear in when they offer their prayers to him,
+    and therefore should not be given to men;—I found this to be one
+    of those evils which I had been too long doing; therefore I was
+    now required to put it away and cease from it.
+> **Quote:** "To enjoy taste of all things, have no taste for anything. To know all things, learn 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 you have no taste 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."
+    “Again, the corrupt and unsound form of speaking in the plural
+    number to a single person, _you_ to 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 well as one to another, from the
+    oldest record of time till corrupt men, for corrupt ends, in later
+    and corrupt times, to flatter, fawn, and work upon the corrupt
+    nature in men, brought in that false and senseless way of speaking
+    _you_ to one, which has since corrupted the modern languages, and
+    hath greatly debased the spirits and depraved the manners of
+    men;—this evil custom I had been as forward in as others, and this
+    I was now called out of and required to cease from.
+These verses play with mysticism's dizzying self-contradiction. Saint John moves from God to the metaphysical "All":
+    “These and many more evil customs which had sprung up in the night
+    of darkness and general apostasy from the truth and true religion
+    were now, by the inshining of this pure ray of divine light in my
+    conscience, gradually discovered to me to be what I ought to cease
+    from, shun, and stand a witness against.”(175)
+> **Quote:** "When you stop at one thing, you cease opening yourself to the All. To come to the All, you must give up the All. If you attain owning the All, you must own it while desiring Nothing. In this stripping, the soul finds tranquility. Firmly established in its nothingness' center, it cannot be attacked from below; having no desires, what comes from above cannot weigh it down, for desires alone cause woes."
+Now a concrete example of categories 4 and 5 combined—irrational extremes of austerity—Henry Suso's account of his self-tortures. Suso, fourteenth-century German mystic, wrote his autobiography in third person:
+These early Quakers were Puritans indeed. The slightest inconsistency
+between profession and deed jarred some of them to active protest. John
+Woolman writes in his diary:—
+> **Quote:** "In youth his temperament was full of fire; when this made itself felt, it was painful, and he sought ways to subdue his body. Long he wore a hair shirt and iron chain until forced to stop from bleeding. He secretly had an undergarment made with leather strips containing 150 sharpened brass nails, points always toward his flesh. He slept in this at night. In summer, exhausted and ill, serving as lecturer, he would lie in bonds, oppressed by toil, tormented by insects, crying aloud, twisting like a worm on a needle. It felt like lying on an anthill. Sometimes he cried: 'Alas! Gentle God, what a way to die! When murdered or killed by beasts, it's quick; but I lie dying under cruel insects yet cannot die.' Neither long winter nights nor hot summers made him stop. Instead he devised leather loops for his hands, fastened near his throat so securely that even if his cell burned, he couldn't help himself. He continued until his arms trembled from strain, then devised leather gloves fitted with sharp brass tacks, worn at night so if he tried throwing off the hair shirt, the tacks would sink into his body. And so it happened. If he tried helping himself in sleep, he drove tacks into his chest, tearing flesh until it festered. When wounds healed after weeks, he would tear himself again.
+> "He continued this torment about sixteen years. At the end, when his blood cooled and his temperament's fire was extinguished, a heavenly messenger appeared in a vision on Whitsunday, telling him God no longer required this. He stopped and threw all instruments into a running stream."
+    “In these journeys I have been where much cloth hath been dyed;
+    and have at sundry times walked over ground where much of their
+    dyestuffs has drained away. This hath produced a longing in my
+    mind that people might come into cleanness of spirit, cleanness of
+    person, and cleanness about their houses and garments. Dyes being
+    invented partly to please the eye, and partly to hide dirt, I have
+    felt in this weak state, when traveling in dirtiness, and affected
+    with unwholesome scents, a strong desire that the nature of dyeing
+    cloth to hide dirt may be more fully considered.
+Suso then describes emulating Christ's sorrows by making a cross with thirty protruding iron needles and nails, worn on his bare back day and night:
+    “Washing our garments to keep them sweet is cleanly, but it is the
+    opposite to real cleanliness to hide dirt in them. Through giving
+    way to hiding dirt in our garments a spirit which would conceal
+    that which is disagreeable is strengthened. Real cleanliness
+    becometh a holy people; but hiding that which is not clean by
+    coloring our garments seems contrary to the sweetness of
+    sincerity. Through some sorts of dyes cloth is rendered less
+    useful. And if the value of dyestuffs, and expense of dyeing, and
+    the damage done to cloth, were all added together, and that cost
+    applied to keeping all sweet and clean, how much more would real
+    cleanliness prevail.
+> **Quote:** "The first time he put this cross on, his delicate body recoiled in terror, and he slightly blunted the sharp nails against stone. But soon, repenting this 'womanly cowardice,' he sharpened them again and replaced it. It left his back bloody and scarred. Whenever he sat or stood, it felt like wearing hedgehog skin. If anyone accidentally touched him, it tore into him."
+    “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 to be
+    customs which have not their foundation in pure wisdom. The
+    apprehension of being singular from 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 of the 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 in 1762, greatly desiring to be
+    rightly directed; when, being deeply bowed in spirit before the
+    Lord, I was 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.
+Suso next describes penances—striking the cross to drive nails deeper, self-floggings—then continues:
+    “In attending meetings, this singularity was a trial to me, and
+    more especially at this time, as white hats were used by some who
+    were fond of following the changeable modes of dress, and as some
+    friends, who knew not from what motives I wore it, grew shy of me,
+    I felt my way for a time shut up in the exercise of the ministry.
+    Some friends were apprehensive that my wearing such a hat savored
+    of an affected singularity: those who spoke with me in a friendly
+    way, I generally informed in a few words, that I believed my
+    wearing it was not in my own will.”
+> **Quote:** "During this period he found an old discarded door and lay on it at night without bedding, except a thick cloak wrapped around him, shoes removed. He thus created miserable bed: hard pea-stalks in lumps under his head, cross with sharp nails dug into his back, arms locked in bonds, hair shirt around waist, both cloak and door heavy and hard. He lay in wretchedness, afraid to move, like a log, sighing up to God.
+> "In winter he suffered greatly from frost. If he stretched his feet, they lay bare on the floor and froze; if he pulled them up, blood in his legs felt on fire, extremely painful. His feet were covered in sores, legs swollen, knees bloody and scarred, waist scarred from hair shirt, body wasted, mouth parched with intense thirst, hands trembling from weakness. He spent nights and days in these torments, enduring all because of great love for Divine Wisdom, our Lord Jesus Christ, whose agonizing sufferings he sought to imitate. After a time he gave up the door and moved into a tiny cell, using a bench so narrow and short he couldn't stretch out. In this hole, or upon the door, he lay at night in his usual bonds for about eight years. It was also his custom for twenty-five years, whenever at convent, never to go to warm room or stove in winter, however cold, unless forced. Throughout all these years he never took a bath, water or steam, to mortify his comfort-seeking body. For a long time he practiced such rigid poverty he'd neither receive nor touch money. For considerable period he strove for such high purity he'd neither scratch nor touch any body part except hands and feet."
+When the craving for moral consistency and purity is developed to this
+degree, the subject may well find the outer world too full of shocks to
+dwell in, and can unify his life and keep his soul unspotted only by
+withdrawing from it. That law which impels the artist to achieve harmony
+in his composition by simply dropping out whatever jars, or suggests a
+discord, rules also in the spiritual life. To omit, says Stevenson, is the
+one art in literature: “If I knew how to omit, I should ask no other
+knowledge.” And life, when full of disorder and slackness and vague
+superfluity, can no more have what we call character than literature can
+have it under similar conditions. So monasteries and communities of
+sympathetic devotees open their doors, and in their changeless order,
+characterized by omissions quite as much as constituted of actions, the
+holy‐minded person finds that inner smoothness and cleanness which it is
+torture to him to feel violated at every turn by the discordancy and
+brutality of secular existence.
+Suso had no consolation some ascetics enjoy—a shift turning torment into perverse pleasure. Of the founder of the Order of the Sacred Heart we read:
+                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
+> **Quote:** "Her love of pain was insatiable. She said she could cheerfully live until Judgment Day, provided she could always suffer for God; but to live a single day without suffering would be intolerable. She was consumed by two unquenchable fevers: one for Holy Communion, one for suffering, humiliation, annihilation. 'Nothing but pain,' she wrote, 'makes my life bearable.'"
+That the scrupulosity of purity may be carried to a fantastic extreme must
+be admitted. In this it resembles Asceticism, to which further symptom of
+saintliness we had better turn next. The adjective “ascetic” is applied to
+conduct originating on diverse psychological levels, which I might as well
+begin by distinguishing from one another.
+---
+Three minor branches of self-mortification recognized in consecrated life are chastity, obedience, and poverty. I will remark on obedience and poverty.
+. Asceticism may be a mere expression of organic hardihood,
+    disgusted with too much ease.
+First, Obedience. Secular life does not esteem this virtue highly. The duty of individuals to determine their conduct and profit or suffer by consequences seems deeply rooted in modern Protestant ideals. It is difficult to imagine how people with inner lives could believe subjecting their will to others advisable. Yet it clearly corresponds to profound internal need.
+. Temperance in meat and drink, simplicity of apparel, chastity,
+    and non‐pampering of the body generally, may be fruits of the love
+    of purity, shocked by whatever savors of the sensual.
+On the basic level, obedience's practicality in rigid church organization made it a virtue. Experience shows times when others advise us better than we advise ourselves. Inability to decide is common in mental exhaustion; friends' broader perspective often sees more wisely. Thus consulting and obeying a doctor, partner, or spouse can be wise. Beyond these practical concerns, we find in spiritual experiences good reasons for idealizing obedience. It can arise from inner softening, self-surrender, reliance on higher powers. These attitudes feel so redemptive they become sacred, regardless of utility. In obeying someone whose flaws we see, we may feel as when resigning our will to infinite wisdom. Add self-despair and passion for self-denial, and obedience becomes ascetic sacrifice, apart from practical benefit.
+. They may also be fruits of love, that is, they may appeal to
+    the subject in the light of sacrifices which he is happy in making
+    to the Deity whom he acknowledges.
+Catholic writers conceive obedience primarily as sacrifice or "mortification"—a person offering themselves to God as both priest and victim:
+. 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
+    buying himself free, or escaping worse sufferings hereafter, by
+    doing penance now.
+> **Quote:** "By poverty he immolates exterior possessions; by chastity his body; by obedience he completes the sacrifice, giving God all he yet holds as his own—his intellect and will. The sacrifice is then complete, a genuine holocaust, for the entire victim is consumed for God's honor."
+. In psychopathic persons, mortifications may be entered on
+    irrationally, by a sort of obsession or fixed idea which comes as
+    a challenge and must be worked off, because only thus does the
+    subject get his interior consciousness feeling right again.
+In Catholic discipline we obey a superior not merely as man, but as Christ's representative. By intending obedience to God through him, it becomes easy. But when theologians gather all reasons for recommending it, the result sounds strange: "One great comfort of monastic life is assurance that in obeying we can commit no fault. The Superior may be wrong in commanding, but you are certain you commit no fault as long as you obey. God will only ask if you performed orders; if you account for that, you are absolved. Whether actions were appropriate, or if something better existed, are questions for your Superior, not you. The moment you act from obedience, God clears it from your record and charges it to the Superior. Saint Jerome rightly exclaimed: 'Oh, supreme liberty! Oh, holy security by which one becomes almost incapable of sin!'
+. Finally, ascetic exercises may in rarer instances be prompted
+    by genuine perversions of the bodily sensibility, in consequence
+    of which normally pain‐giving stimuli are actually felt as
+    pleasures.
+> "Saint John Climacus calls obedience an excuse before God. When God asks why you did this or that, and you reply your superiors ordered it, God asks no other excuse. Just as a passenger on a sturdy ship with skilled pilot needs no concern and may sleep in peace—because the pilot watches for him—so a religious person under obedience goes to heaven as if sleeping. They lean entirely on superiors, pilots of their vessel. It is no small thing to cross life's stormy sea in another's arms; that is precisely the grace God grants those under obedience. Their Superior carries all burdens. One scholar said he'd rather spend life picking up straws in obedience than occupy himself with highest works of charity by his own choice. Through obedience you are certain of following God's will; never as certain of anything done by your own accord."
+Read Ignatius Loyola's letters recommending obedience as his order's core to understand this devotion's full spirit. They are too long to quote, but his belief appears vividly in reported sayings:
+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 assigned motives usually
+work together. Moreover, before citing any examples at all, I must invite
+you to some general psychological considerations which apply to all of
+them alike.
+An early biographer reports Ignatius saying that upon entering religious life, one should place himself entirely in God's hands and the person taking God's place by authority. He should desire his Superior to force him to give up his own judgment and conquer his mind. He should see no difference between Superiors, recognizing them all as equal before God, whose place they fill. To distinguish between them would weaken obedience's spirit.
+A strange moral transformation has within the past century swept over our
+Western world. We no longer think that we are called on to face physical
+pain with equanimity. It is not expected of a man that he should either
+endure it or inflict much of it, and to listen to the recital of cases of
+it makes our flesh creep morally as well as physically. The way in which
+our ancestors looked upon pain as an eternal ingredient of the world’s
+order, and both caused and suffered it as a matter‐of‐course portion of
+their day’s work, fills us with amazement. We wonder that any human beings
+could have been so callous. The result of this historic alteration is that
+even in the Mother Church herself, where ascetic discipline has such a
+fixed traditional prestige as a factor of merit, it has largely come into
+desuetude, if not discredit. A believer who flagellates or “macerates”
+himself to‐day arouses more wonder and fear than emulation. Many Catholic
+writers who admit that the times have changed in this respect do so
+resignedly; and even add that perhaps it is as well not to waste feelings
+in regretting the matter, for to return to the heroic corporeal discipline
+of ancient days might be an extravagance.
+> **Quote:** "In my Superior's hands I must be soft wax, a thing from which he may require whatever pleases him—write or receive letters, speak or not speak, etc.—and I must execute zealously and exactly what I'm ordered. I must consider myself a corpse without intelligence or will; be like matter that without resistance lets itself be placed wherever anyone pleases; like a stick in an old man's hand, used according to his needs. So must I be under the Order's hands, serving in the way it judges most useful. I must never ask the Superior to send me to a specific place or assign particular duty. I must consider nothing as belonging to me personally. Regarding things I use, I should be like a statue that lets itself be stripped and offers no resistance."
+Where to seek the easy and the pleasant seems instinctive—and instinctive
+it appears to be in man; any deliberate tendency to pursue the hard and
+painful as such and for their own sakes might well strike one as purely
+abnormal. Nevertheless, in moderate degrees it is natural and even usual
+to human nature to court the arduous. It is only the extreme
+manifestations of the tendency that can be regarded as a paradox.
+Rodriguez reports another saying about the Pope's authority:
+The psychological reasons for this lie near the surface. When we drop
+abstractions and take what we call our will in the act, we see that it is
+a very complex function. It involves both stimulations and inhibitions; it
+follows generalized habits; it is escorted by reflective criticisms; and
+it leaves a good 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 own general moral
+attitude in procuring or undergoing the experience brings with it a
+secondary satisfaction or distaste. Some men and women, indeed, there are
+who can live on smiles and the word “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 austerity and wintry negativity, some roughness, danger, stringency,
+and effort, some “no! no!” must be mixed in, to produce the sense of an
+existence with character and texture and power. The range of individual
+differences in this respect is enormous; but whatever the mixture of yeses
+and noes may be, the person is infallibly aware when he has struck it in
+the right proportion _for him_. This, he feels, is my proper vocation,
+this is the _optimum_, the law, the life for me to live. Here I find the
+degree 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.
+> **Quote:** "Saint Ignatius said that if the Holy Father ordered him to set sail in the first boat at Ostia, abandoning himself to sea without mast, sails, oars, rudder, or necessities, he would obey not only with speed but without anxiety, even with great internal satisfaction."
+Every individual soul, in short, like every individual machine or
+organism, has its own best conditions of efficiency. A given machine will
+run best under a certain steam‐pressure, a certain amperage; an organism
+under a certain diet, weight, or exercise. You seem to do best, I heard a
+doctor say to a patient, at about 140 millimeters of arterial tension. And
+it is just so with our sundry souls: some are happiest in calm weather;
+some need the sense of tension, of strong volition, to make them feel
+alive and well. For these latter souls, whatever is gained from day to day
+must be paid for by sacrifice and inhibition, or else it comes too cheap
+and has no zest.
+One final example of extremes this virtue reached:
+Now when characters of this latter sort become religious, they are apt to
+turn the edge of their need of effort and negativity against their natural
+self; and the ascetic life gets evolved as a consequence.
+> **Quote:** "Sister Marie Claire of Port Royal had been deeply influenced by M. de Langres's holiness. Shortly after he arrived, seeing her tenderly attached to Mother Angélique, he told her it might be better not to speak to her again. Marie Claire, eager to obey, took this casual remark as divine command; from that day she went several years without speaking to her sister once."
+When Professor Tyndall in one of his lectures tells us that Thomas Carlyle
+put him into his bath‐tub every morning of a freezing Berlin winter, he
+proclaimed one of the lowest grades of asceticism. Even without Carlyle,
+most of us find it necessary to our soul’s health to start the day with a
+rather cool immersion. A little farther along the scale we get such
+statements as this, from one of my correspondents, an agnostic:—
+---
+Our next topic is Poverty, seen across all faiths as a saintly hallmark. Since ownership instinct is fundamental to human nature, this is another ascetic paradox. Yet it seems perfectly reasonable once we remember how higher spiritual passions check lower greed.
+    “Often at night in my warm bed I would feel ashamed to depend so
+    on the warmth, and whenever the thought would come over me I would
+    have to get up, no matter what time of night it was, and stand for
+    a minute in the cold, just so as to prove my manhood.”
+The conflict between men who *have* and men who *are* is ancient. The "gentleman" of high birth, though often predatory, identified his essence not with possessions but with personal qualities—courage, generosity, pride. If life left him destitute, he believed his courage made him freer to work out salvation. "Wer nur selbst was hätte," says Lessing's *Nathan the Wise* Knight Templar: "My God, my God, I have nothing!" This ideal of the well-born without possessions dominated aristocratic views, sentimentally if not practically. We glorify soldiers as unencumbered—owning nothing but bare life, willing to sacrifice it when cause demands. The laborer, paying with his body daily, also offers ideal detachment. From his simple perspective, property owners seem smothered by ignoble burdens, "wading in straw and rubbish." Things' claims are corrupters of manhood, mortgages on soul, anchors dragging against spiritual progress.
+> **Quote:** "Everything I meet with," writes Whitefield, "seems to carry this voice:—'Go thou and preach the Gospel; be a pilgrim on earth; have no party or certain dwelling place.' My heart echoes: 'Lord Jesus, help me do or suffer thy will. When thou seest me in danger of *nestling*,—in pity—put a *thorn* in my nest to prevent me.'"
+Such cases as these belong simply to our head 1. In the next case we
+probably have a mixture of heads 2 and 3—the asceticism becomes far more
+systematic and pronounced. The writer is a Protestant, whose sense of
+moral energy could doubtless be gratified on no lower terms, and I take
+his case from Starbuck’s manuscript collection.
+Laboring classes' resentment toward "capital" seems composed of this antipathy for lives based on possession. An anarchist poet writes:
+> **Quote:** "Not by accumulating riches, but by giving away what you have, shall you become beautiful. You must undo wrappings, not case yourself in fresh ones. Not by multiplying clothes shall you make your body sound, but by discarding them. A soldier on campaign doesn't seek fresh furniture to carry, but what he can leave behind—knowing every additional thing he cannot freely use is an impediment."
+    “I practiced fasting and mortification of the flesh. I secretly
+    made burlap shirts, and put the burrs next the skin, and wore
+    pebbles in my shoes. I would spend nights flat on my back on the
+    floor without any covering.”
+Lives based on having are less free than lives based on doing or being. In spiritual fervor, people throw away possessions like heavy weights. Only those without private interests can follow an ideal immediately. Sloth and cowardice creep in with every dollar we must guard. When a novice told Saint Francis, "Father, it would be great consolation to own a prayer book, but even if our superior allows, I'd like your consent," Francis dismissed him with Charlemagne, Roland, and Oliver—who pursued enemies with sweat and labor, dying on battlefields. "So do not care about owning books and knowledge, but care for works of goodness." When the novice returned weeks later about his prayer book craving, Francis said: "After you have your prayer book, you will want a liturgy; after your liturgy, you will sit like a high official and say, 'Hand me my book.'" From then on he denied all such requests: "A man possesses only as much learning as he puts into action; a monk is a good preacher only as his deeds proclaim it; every tree is known by its fruit."
+Beyond this athletic attitude in doing and being, something deeper exists in desiring to possess nothing. It relates to religious experience's fundamental mystery: satisfaction in absolute surrender to larger power. As long as any worldly safeguard is retained, any final practical guarantee clung to, surrender remains incomplete. The vital crisis has not passed; fear still stands guard; mistrust of divine persists. We hold ourselves by two anchors—looking to God, after a fashion, but relying on our own schemes.
+The Roman Church has organized and codified all this sort of thing, and
+given it a market‐value in the shape of “merit.” But we see the
+cultivation of hardship cropping out under every sky and in every faith,
+as a spontaneous need of character. Thus we read of Channing, when first
+settled as a Unitarian minister, that—
+In medical cases we see the same critical point. An addict appeals to doctors to wean him from his enemy, yet dares not face total abstinence. The tyrannical drug remains an anchor to windward; he hides supplies secretly, just in case. Similarly, one not fully transformed still trusts own expedients. His money is like the sleeping potion the chronically sleepless patient keeps beside his bed; he throws himself on God, but *if* he should need other help, there it is. Everyone knows addicts who, despite self-reproaches and resolutions, are clearly unwilling to seriously contemplate *never* being intoxicated again.
+To really give up anything relied upon—to give it up definitively, once and for all—marks radical character change. In this process, inner man shifts into entirely different equilibrium and lives from new center of energy. The turning point usually involves sincere acceptance of total vulnerability and destitution. Throughout saintly life history runs this theme: Fling yourself upon God's providence without reserve; take no thought for tomorrow; sell all and give to the poor. Only when sacrifice is total and reckless does higher safety arrive.
+    “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 have
+    commanded one more light, airy, and in every way more suitable;
+    and chose for his sleeping chamber 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, plain wooden chairs and table, with matting on the
+    floor. It was without fire, and to cold he was throughout life
+    extremely sensitive; but he never complained or appeared in any
+    way to be conscious of inconvenience. ‘I recollect,’ says his
+    brother, ‘after one most severe night, that in the morning he
+    sportively thus alluded to his suffering: “If my bed were my
+    country, I should be somewhat like Bonaparte: I have no control
+    except over the part which I occupy; the instant I move, frost
+    takes possession.” ’ In sickness only would he change for the time
+    his apartment and accept a few comforts. The dress too that he
+    habitually adopted was of most inferior quality; and garments were
+    constantly worn which the world would call mean, though an almost
+    feminine neatness preserved him from the least appearance of
+    neglect.”(176)
+Antoinette Bourignon, persecuted by Protestants and Catholics for not accepting religion second-hand, illustrates this. As a girl in her father's house, she spent nights praying: "Lord, what will you have me do?" One night in deep repentance, asking how to please Him with no teacher, an internal voice told her to forsake all earthly things, separate from love of created beings, deny herself. She was astonished and reflected long on how to fulfill this, feeling she could not live without earthly things or loving others and herself. Yet she said, "By your grace, Lord, I will do it."
+Trying to perform her promise, she didn't know where to begin. Thinking monks and nuns forsook the world in cloisters, she asked her father's permission to enter Discalced Carmelites; he refused, saying he'd rather see her in her grave. This seemed cruel; she expected to find true Christians there, though later found her father knew cloisters better. After he forbade and refused money, she went to Director Father Laurens, offering to work for bread if he'd receive her. He smiled: "That cannot be. We need money to build; we take no girls without money. You must find a way to get it, otherwise no entry."
+Channing’s asceticism, such as it was, was evidently a compound of
+hardihood and love of purity. The democracy which is an offshoot of the
+enthusiasm of humanity, and of which I will speak later under the head of
+the cult of poverty, doubtless bore also a share. Certainly there was no
+pessimistic element in his case. In the next case we have a strongly
+pessimistic element, so that it belongs under head 4. John Cennick was
+Methodism’s first lay preacher. In 1735 he was convicted of sin, while
+walking in Cheapside,—
+This disillusioned her about cloisters, and she resolved to live alone until God showed her what to do. She continually asked when she would be perfectly His, and felt He answered: "When you no longer possess anything and die to yourself." When she asked where, He answered: "In the desert." This impressed her so she aspired to it; but being only eighteen, she was afraid and untraveled. She set aside doubts, decided to dress as hermit to pass unknown, secretly preparing clothes. While parents planned marrying her to a rich merchant, she left at four a.m. Easter evening, taking nothing but a single penny for bread. As she left, a thought: "Where is your faith? In a penny?" She threw it away, begging God's pardon, saying her faith was in Him alone. She went away entirely delivered from worldly cares, feeling more content in this poverty than in all the world's delights. The penny was a small financial safeguard but significant spiritual obstacle. Not until it was thrown could her character fully settle into new equilibrium.
+Beyond self-surrender's mystery, poverty contains other religious mysteries. There is veracity's mystery: "Naked I came." Whoever first said that understood this mystery. My bare essence must fight the battle; pretenses cannot save me. There is democracy's mystery, equality before God of all creatures. This sentiment, more widespread in Islamic than Christian lands, tends to nullify acquisition drive. Those possessing it reject dignities, preferring to humble themselves on common level before God. It is not exactly humility, though close in practice. It is *humanity* itself, refusing to enjoy anything others don't share. A moralist writes on Christ's saying:
+    “And at once left off song‐singing, card‐playing, and attending
+    theatres. Sometimes he wished to go to a popish monastery, to
+    spend his life in devout retirement. At other times he longed to
+    live in a cave, sleeping on fallen leaves, and feeding on forest
+    fruits. He fasted long and often, and prayed nine 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 roots and herbs. At
+    length, in 1737, he found peace with God, and went on his way
+    rejoicing.”(177)
+> **Quote:** "Sell all thou hast and follow me,"
+continues:
+In this poor man we have morbid melancholy and fear, and the sacrifices
+made are to purge out sin, and to buy safety. The hopelessness of
+Christian theology in respect of the flesh and the natural 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 often been worked in a mercenary way for hortatory
+purposes, to call it a mercenary incentive. The impulse to expiate and do
+penance is, in its first intention, far too immediate and spontaneous an
+expression of self‐despair and anxiety to be obnoxious to any such
+reproach. In the form of loving sacrifice, of spending all we have to show
+our devotion, ascetic discipline of the severest sort may be the fruit of
+highly optimistic religious feeling.
+> **Quote:** "Christ may have meant: If you love mankind absolutely you will as result not care for any possessions. It is one thing to believe this proposition true; another to see it as fact. If you loved mankind as Christ did, you would see this conclusion as obvious. You would sell your goods, and they'd be no loss. These truths, literal to Christ and any mind with Christ's love, become parables to lesser natures. Every generation has people who, beginning innocently, with no predetermined intention of becoming saints, find themselves drawn into vortex by interest in helping mankind, and by understanding that comes from actually doing it. Abandonment of old life is like dust in balance, done gradually, incidentally, imperceptibly. Thus the whole question of abandoning luxury is no question at all, but mere incident to another question: the degree to which we abandon ourselves to remorseless logic of our love for others."
+M. Vianney, the curé of Ars, was a French country priest, whose holiness
+was exemplary. We read in his life the following account of his inner need
+of sacrifice:—
+But in all sentiment, one must have "been there" to understand. No American can understand Britons' loyalty to king or Germans' to emperor; nor can Britons or Germans understand Americans' peace in having no king, no Kaiser, no artificial nonsense between themselves and common God of all. If sentiments as simple as these are mysteries which one must receive as gifts of birth, how much more is this the case with those subtler religious sentiments we have been considering!
+One never grasps an emotion or understands its demands from outside. In glowing excitement, all incomprehensibles resolve; what was enigmatic becomes transparently obvious. Each emotion obeys its own logic, reaching conclusions no other logic can draw. Devotion and compassion live in different universe from worldly desires, forming entirely different energy center. As supreme sorrow may make minor annoyances consoling, or supreme love may turn minor sacrifices into gain, so supreme trust may make common safeguards feel offensive. In generous excitement's glow, holding personal possessions may appear unspeakably mean. The only sound plan, if we ourselves are outside such emotions' reach, is to observe those who feel them as well as we can, and record faithfully what we observe. This I have striven to do in these last two descriptive lectures, which I hope have covered ground sufficiently for our present needs.
+    “ ‘On this path,’ M. Vianney said, ‘it is only the first step that
+    costs. There is in mortification a balm 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 double one and make one
+    suffer.’ Accordingly he imposed it on himself that he should never
+    smell a flower, never drink when 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 lean upon his elbows when he was kneeling.
+    The Curé of Ars was very sensitive to cold, but he would never
+    take means to protect himself against it. During a very severe
+    winter, one of his missionaries contrived a false floor to his
+    confessional and placed a metal case of hot water beneath. The
+    trick succeeded, 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.’ ”(178)
+## LECTURES XIV AND XV. THE VALUE OF SAINTLINESS.
+We have reviewed the fruits of genuine religion and the characteristics of devout people. Now we must shift from description to evaluation, asking whether these fruits help us judge religion's ultimate value. If I were to parody Kant, I would call this a "Critique of Pure Saintliness."
+In this case the spontaneous impulse to make sacrifices for the pure love
+of God was probably the uppermost conscious motive. We may class it, then,
+under our head 3. Some authors think that the impulse to sacrifice is the
+main religious phenomenon. It is a prominent, a universal phenomenon
+certainly, and lies deeper than any special creed. Here, for instance, is
+what seems to be a spontaneous example of it, simply expressing what
+seemed right at the time between the individual and his Maker. Cotton
+Mather, the New England Puritan divine, is generally reputed a rather
+grotesque pedant; yet what is more touchingly simple than his relation of
+what happened when his wife came to die?
+If we could approach our subject from a top-down perspective like Catholic theologians—with fixed definitions of humanity and perfection, and positive dogmas about God—our task would be easy. Human perfection would be union with the Creator, pursued along active, purifying, or contemplative paths, and progress would be easy to measure. The absolute value of any religious experience would be handed to us almost mathematically.
+We deliberately renounced that convenience in our first lecture when we adopted the empirical method. After that renunciation, we can never hope for neat academic results. We cannot sharply divide a person into animal and rational parts, or distinguish natural from supernatural effects—nor know which are divine favors and which are "counterfeit operations of the demon." We must simply collect experiences without any preconceived theological system, and—based on individual judgments about their value, guided only by our general philosophical leanings, instincts, and common sense—decide that *on the whole* one type of religion is validated by its results and another condemned. "On the whole"—I fear that qualification, so dear to practical people and so repulsive to systematic thinkers, will haunt us throughout.
+    “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 by
+    her bedside, and I took into my two hands a dear hand, the dearest
+    in the world. With her thus in my hands, I solemnly and sincerely
+    gave her up unto the Lord: and in token of my real _Resignation_,
+    I gently put her out of my hands, and laid away a most lovely
+    hand, resolving that I would never touch it more. This was the
+    hardest, and perhaps the bravest action that ever I did. She ...
+    told me that she signed and sealed my act of resignation. And
+    though before that she called for me continually, she after this
+    never asked for me any more.”(179)
+I also fear this frank confession may seem like tossing our compass overboard and choosing whim as our pilot. A few remarks in defense seem appropriate.
+------------------------------------------------
+Father Vianney’s asceticism taken in its totality was simply the result of
+a permanent flood of high spiritual enthusiasm, longing to make proof of
+itself. The Roman Church has, in its incomparable fashion, collected all
+the motives towards asceticism together, and so codified them that any one
+wishing to pursue Christian perfection may find a practical system mapped
+out for him in any one of a number of ready‐made manuals.(180) The
+dominant Church notion of perfection is of course the negative one of
+avoidance of sin. Sin proceeds from concupiscence, and concupiscence from
+our carnal passions and temptations, chief of which are pride, sensuality
+in all its forms, and the loves of worldly excitement and possession. All
+these sources of sin must be resisted; and discipline and austerities are
+a most efficacious mode of meeting them. Hence there are always in these
+books chapters on self‐mortification. But whenever a procedure is
+codified, the more 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 to autobiographies, or other individual documents.
+Abstractly, it would seem illogical to measure a religion's worth without considering whether the inspiring God actually exists. If He does exist, then conduct to meet His requirements is reasonable; if not, it's unreasonable. If you condemned human sacrifice based on personal feelings while a deity actually demanded it, you'd be making a theological error.
+Saint John of the Cross, a Spanish mystic who flourished—or rather who
+existed, for there was little that suggested flourishing about him—in the
+sixteenth century, will supply a passage suitable for our purpose.
+To this extent—the extent of decisively disbelieving in certain deities—I frankly confess we must be theologians. If disbeliefs constitute a theology, then the prejudices, instincts, and common sense I chose as guides make theological partisans of us whenever certain beliefs become repulsive.
+But such prejudices are themselves the fruit of empirical evolution. Nothing is more striking than the historical changes in moral and religious tone as insight into nature and social structures develops. After a few generations, the mental climate proves unfavorable to notions of deity that were satisfactory earlier; the older gods have fallen below secular level and can no longer be believed. Today a deity requiring blood sacrifices would be too bloodthirsty to take seriously. In the past, his cruel appetites were evidence of power and recommended him to imaginations that respected such coarse signs.
+    “First of all, carefully excite in yourself an habitual
+    affectionate will in all things to imitate Jesus Christ. If
+    anything agreeable offers itself to your senses, yet does not at
+    the same time tend purely to the honor and glory of God, renounce
+    it and separate yourself from it for the love of Christ, who all
+    his life long had no other taste or wish than to do the will of
+    his Father whom he called his meat and nourishment. For example,
+    you take satisfaction in _hearing_ of things in which the glory of
+    God bears no part. Deny yourself this satisfaction, mortify your
+    wish to listen. You take pleasure in _seeing_ objects which do not
+    raise your mind to God: refuse yourself this pleasure, and turn
+    away your 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 original factor in shaping the image of the gods was psychological. The deity testified to by prophets and devotees was worth something to them personally. He guided their imagination, validated their hopes, directed their will, or safeguarded against demons. They chose Him for the value of the results He seemed to provide. As soon as those results seemed worthless—conflicting with human ideals, appearing childish or immoral—the deity was discredited and forgotten. This is how the Greek and Roman gods lost educated pagans; how we judge Hindu, Buddhist, and Islamic theologies; how Protestants treated Catholic concepts; how liberal Protestants treated older ideas. It is how the Chinese judge us, and how our descendants will judge us. When we cease to admire what a deity implies, we find that deity unbelievable.
+    “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 in
+    darkness and the void. Let your soul therefore turn always:
+Few changes are more curious than shifts in theological opinion. The monarchical model of sovereignty was so deeply rooted that cruelty and unpredictability in deity seemed required. They called this "retributive justice," and a God without it would seem not "sovereign" enough. But today we despise eternal suffering. That arbitrary distribution of salvation and damnation, of which Jonathan Edwards had a
+    “Not to what is most easy, but to what is hardest;
+> **Quote:** "delightful conviction," as of a doctrine "exceeding pleasant, bright, and sweet,"
+    “Not to what tastes best, but to what is most distasteful;
+appears to us supremely irrational.
+    “Not to what most pleases, but to what disgusts;
+Not only cruelty but triviality surprises later centuries. Ritual worship appears to the modern mind as addressed to a deity of almost absurdly childish character—delighting in toy-shop furniture, candles and tinsel, costumes and mummery. The formless vastness of pantheism appears empty to ritualistic natures; the stark theism of evangelicals seems intolerably bleak. Emerson says Luther would have cut off his right hand rather than nail his theses to Wittenberg's door had he foreseen the "pale negations" of Boston Unitarianism.
+    “Not to matter of consolation, but to matter for desolation
+    rather;
+So although we are compelled to use our own standard of theological probability when evaluating others' religion, this standard is born from common life. It is the voice of human experience judging gods that stand across its path. Experience is thus the source of those disbeliefs supposedly inconsistent with empiricism. This inconsistency is irrelevant.
+    “Not to rest, but to labor;
+If we move from disbeliefs to positive beliefs, there isn't even formal inconsistency. The gods we stand by are those we need and can use—whose demands reinforce our own. I propose to test saintliness by common sense, using human standards to decide how far the religious life commends itself as ideal. If it proves itself, the theological beliefs inspiring it are validated; if not, they're discredited. It is simply survival of the fittest applied to religious beliefs. Looking honestly at history, no religion has ever proven itself in any other way. Religions prove their value by serving vital needs; when they violate other needs too strongly, or better faiths arrive, they are replaced.
+    “Not to desire the more, but the less;
+The needs were always many, the tests never precise. The criticism of vagueness and "on the whole"-ness, which can be directed at empirical method, is after all criticism to which all humanity is subject in these matters. No religion has ever owed its acceptance to "absolute certainty."
+    “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;
+A word about the charge that empiricism surrenders to systematic skepticism. Since our feelings and needs change historically, it would be absurd to claim our age is beyond correction. Skepticism cannot be ruled out; no empiricist claims exemption. But admitting liability to correction is one thing; reckless doubt is another. A person who acknowledges their instrument's imperfections is better positioned to find truth than one claiming infallibility. Is rigid theology doubted less because it claims to be undeniably right? If not, what does it lose by claiming only reasonable probability? That is as much as truth-lovers can ever hope to grasp.
+    “Not to seek the best in everything, but to seek the worst, so
+    that you may enter for the love of Christ into a complete
+    destitution, a perfect poverty of spirit, and an absolute
+    renunciation of everything in this world.
+Nevertheless, dogmatism will likely condemn this admission. The appearance of unalterable certainty is so precious to some minds that renouncing it is unthinkable. But the safe path recognizes that all insights of fleeting creatures must be provisional. The wisest critic is a changing being, right only "up to date" and "on the whole." When broader truth opens, it is best to welcome it unhindered by previous claims.
+    “Embrace these practices with all the energy of your soul and you
+    will find in a short time great delights and unspeakable
+    consolations.
+> **Quote:** "Heartily know, when half‐gods go, the gods arrive."
+    “Despise yourself, and wish that others should despise you.
+Diverse judgments about religious phenomena are inescapable. But should we expect uniform opinions? Should all have the same religion? Are people so similar that the same religious motives serve the tough and sensitive, proud and humble, energetic and lazy, healthy-minded and despairing? Or are different roles assigned, so some need consolation while others need terror? It is quite possible. If so, how can any judge avoid bias toward the religion meeting his own needs? He aspires to impartiality but is too close not to be a participant, approving most warmly of those fruits that taste best to him.
+    “Speak to your own disadvantage, and desire others to do the same;
+I am aware how radical this sounds. By expressing myself abstractly, I may seem to despair of truth. I urge you to reserve judgment. I disbelieve we can attain absolutely uncorrectable truth about religious facts. I reject this dogmatic ideal not from delight in instability but from fear of losing truth by claiming to possess it entirely. I believe we can gain more by moving in the right direction, and I hope to bring you to my thinking before these lectures end.
+    “Conceive a low opinion of yourself, and find it good when others
+    hold the same;
+I will waste no more words in abstract justification but seek to apply it to the facts.
+    “To enjoy the taste of all things, have no taste for anything.
+------------------------------------------------
+    “To know all things, learn to know nothing.
+In evaluating religious phenomena, we must emphasize the distinction between religion as individual personal function and as institutional product. The word "religion" is ambiguous. Religious geniuses attract disciples and create groups that become church institutions with corporate ambitions. The spirit of politics and dogmatic control contaminate the original experience, so that "religion" inevitably suggests "church." To some, "church" suggests hypocrisy and tyranny so strongly they pride themselves on being "against" religion. Even church members condemn other churches.
+    “To possess all things, resolve to possess nothing.
+But in these lectures, church institutions hardly concern us. The religious experience we study lives in the private heart. First-hand individual experience has always appeared heretical. It enters the world naked and lonely, driving its possessor into wilderness—literal wilderness, where Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, St. Francis, George Fox, and others had to go. Fox expresses this isolation well; I can do no better than read from his Journal about when religion first stirred within him.
+    “To be all things, be willing to be nothing.
+> **Quote:** "I fasted much," Fox says, "walked abroad in solitary places many days, and often took my Bible, and sat in hollow trees and lonesome places until night came on; and frequently in the night walked mournfully about by myself; for I was a man of sorrows in the time of the first workings of the Lord in me.
+    “To get to where you have no taste for anything, go through
+    whatever experiences you have no taste for.
+> "During all this time I was never joined in profession of religion with any, but gave up myself to the Lord, having forsaken all evil company, taking leave of father and mother, and all other relations, and traveled up and down as a stranger on the earth, which way the Lord inclined my heart; 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 and profane, lest, being a tender young man, I should be hurt by conversing much with either. For which reason I kept much as a stranger, seeking heavenly wisdom and getting knowledge from the Lord; and was brought off from outward things, to rely on the Lord alone. As I had forsaken the priests, so I left the separate preachers also, and those called the most experienced people; for I saw there was none among them all that could speak to my condition. And when all my hopes in them and in all men were gone so that I had nothing outwardly to help me, nor could tell what to do; then, oh then, I heard a voice which said, 'There is one, even Jesus Christ, that can speak to thy condition.'
+    “To learn to know nothing, go whither you are ignorant.
+When I heard it, my heart leaped for joy. Then the Lord showed me why no one on earth could address my situation. I had no fellowship with any group—priests, formal believers, or sects. I was afraid of all worldly talk, seeing nothing but corruption. When I was in the depths, feeling completely shut in, I couldn't believe I would overcome; my troubles were so great I often thought I would despair. But when Christ revealed how he overcame the devil, I gained confidence. If I had possessed a king's diet, palace, and servants, it would have meant nothing; nothing gave me comfort but the Lord.
+    “To reach what you possess not, go whithersoever you own nothing.
+A genuine first-hand religious experience like this is bound to seem heretical. The prophet appears a lonely madman. If his doctrine spreads, it becomes a labeled heresy. If it triumphs over persecution, it becomes orthodoxy.
+    “To be what you are not, experience what you are not.”
+> **Quote:** "When a religion has become an orthodoxy, its day of inwardness is over: the spring is dry; the faithful live at second hand exclusively and stone the prophets in their turn."
+The new church, however good it might encourage, becomes a loyal ally in stifling the spontaneous religious spirit and stopping further bubbling from its original fountain—unless it can profit from new movements for corporate goals! The Roman Catholic hierarchy's dealings with saints provide enough examples.
+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 more metaphysical notion of the
+All.
+Human minds are constructed in water-tight compartments. People are religious yet have many other things in them; unholy entanglements inevitably occur. The baseness blamed on religion is almost entirely the fault not of religion itself but of its corrupt partner: the drive for corporate power. Most bigotries are the fault of its wicked intellectual partner: the spirit of dogmatic control. The institutional spirit is the sum of these drives. Never confuse tribal psychology with manifestations of the purely inner life that are our exclusive object. The persecution of Jews, hunting of Albigenses, stoning of Quakers, murder of Mormons—these express primitive fear of the new and aggression we all carry, an inborn hatred of outsiders, rather than actual piety.
+> **Quote:** "Piety is the mask, the inner force is tribal instinct."
+    “When you stop at one thing, you cease to open yourself to the
+    All.
+You likely believe no more than I do—despite the religious fervor with which the German emperor addressed his troops en route to China—that the conduct he suggested had anything to do with inner religious life.
+    “For to come to the All you must give up the All.
+We should no more hold piety responsible for past atrocities than for this one. At most we might blame piety for failing to restrain natural passions, sometimes providing hypocritical excuses. But hypocrisy carries obligations and restrictions. When passion's storm passes, piety may cause repentance that a secular person would not show.
+    “And if you should attain to owning the All, you must own it,
+    desiring Nothing.
+Yet we cannot clear religion of the charge that over-zealousness is a risk, so I will address that. First, a preliminary observation:
+    “In this spoliation, the soul finds its tranquillity and rest.
+    Profoundly established in the centre of its own nothingness, it
+    can be assailed by naught that comes from below; and since it no
+    longer desires anything, what comes from above cannot depress it;
+    for its desires alone are the causes of its woes.”(181)
+Our overview of saintly phenomena has left an impression of excess. Is it necessary to be *that* fanatically good? Can't we admire without imitating? Religious phenomena, like all human phenomena, are subject to the "law of the golden mean." A John Howard or Mazzini achieves historical tasks through temporary blindness to other causes. We accept them with indulgence—glad they existed, glad there are other ways of seeing life. The same holds for many saints. We are proud of human nature capable of such extremes, but hesitate to advise others to follow. The behavior we regret not following lies closer to the middle ground—less dependent on specific beliefs, the kind that ages well and any judge can commend.
+In other words, religion's fruits are liable to corruption by excess. Common sense must judge them. It may praise the devotee conditionally—as someone heroic in one way—but the absolute good needs no excuses.
+And now, as a more concrete example of heads 4 and 5, in fact of all our
+heads together, and of the irrational extreme to which a psychopathic
+individual may go in the line of bodily austerity, I will quote the
+sincere Suso’s account of his own self‐tortures. Suso, you will remember,
+was one of the fourteenth century German mystics; his autobiography,
+written in the third person, is a classic religious document.
+We find excess in every saintly virtue. In human faculties, excess means one-sidedness; it's hard to imagine an essential faculty too strong if others are equally strong. Strong emotions need strong will; active powers need strong intellect; intellect needs strong sympathies for stability. In "saints," spiritual faculties are strong, but what creates extravagance is usually relative intellectual weakness. Spiritual excitement becomes pathological when other interests are too few and intellect too narrow. We see this in all saintly attributes—devout love, purity, charity, asceticism.
+First, Devoutness. When unbalanced, its vice is fanaticism—loyalty taken to frenzied extreme. When a narrow mind is gripped by feeling that a superhuman figure deserves exclusive devotion, it idealizes devotion itself. Recognizing the idol's merits becomes the worshiper's greatest merit. Vocabularies are exhausted modifying languages to praise him; death is gain if it catches his attention; the devotee's role becomes an exalted specialty.
+    “He was in his youth of a temperament full of fire and life; and
+    when this began to make itself felt, it was very grievous to him;
+    and he sought by many devices how he might bring his body into
+    subjection. He wore for a long time a hair shirt and an iron
+    chain, until the blood ran from him, so that he was obliged to
+    leave them off. He secretly caused an undergarment to be made for
+    him; and in 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 the flesh. He had this garment made very tight, and so
+    arranged as to go round him and fasten in front, in 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 in summer, when
+    it was hot, and he was very tired and ill from his journeyings, or
+    when he held the office of lecturer, he would sometimes, as he lay
+    thus in bonds, and oppressed with toil, and tormented also by
+    noxious insects, cry aloud and give way to fretfulness, and twist
+    round and round in agony, as a worm does when run through with a
+    pointed needle. It often seemed to him as if 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.(182) Sometimes he cried to Almighty God 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, and yet cannot die.
+    The nights in winter were never so long, nor was the summer so
+    hot, as to make him leave off this exercise. On the contrary, he
+    devised something farther—two leathern loops into which he put his
+    hands, and fastened one on each side his throat, and made the
+    fastenings so secure that even if his cell had been on fire about
+    him, he could not have helped himself. This he continued until his
+    hands and arms had become almost tremulous with the strain, and
+    then he devised 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 asleep to throw off the hair undergarment, or relieve
+    himself from the gnawings of the vile insects, the tacks might
+    then stick into his body. And so it came to pass. If ever he
+    sought to help himself with his hands in his sleep, he drove the
+    sharp tacks into his breast, and tore himself, so that his flesh
+    festered. When after many weeks the wounds had healed, he tore
+    himself again and made fresh wounds.
+Legends surrounding holy lives grow from this impulse. The Buddha, Muhammad, and many saints are covered in anecdotes intended as honorable but simply tasteless—humanity's misguided tendency to praise.
+    “He continued this tormenting exercise for about sixteen years. At
+    the end of this time, when his blood was now chilled, and the fire
+    of his temperament destroyed, there appeared to him in a vision on
+    Whitsunday, a messenger from heaven, who told him that God
+    required this of him no longer. Whereupon he discontinued it, and
+    threw all these things away into a running stream.”
+An immediate consequence is jealousy for the deity's reputation. How better show loyalty than by resenting insults? In narrow, active minds, this becomes obsession. Crusades and massacres have been incited merely to avenge slights against God. Theologies depicting gods obsessed with their own glory, and churches with imperialistic agendas, have fanned this fire, making intolerance and persecution vices some link inseparably with sainthood. They are undoubtedly its most frequent sins.
+    Suso then tells how, to emulate the sorrows of his crucified Lord,
+    he made himself a cross with thirty protruding iron needles and
+    nails. This he bore on his bare back between his shoulders day and
+    night. “The first time that he stretched out this cross upon his
+    back his tender frame was struck with terror at it, and blunted
+    the sharp nails slightly against a stone. But soon, repenting of
+    this womanly cowardice, he pointed them all again with a file, and
+    placed once more the cross upon him. 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 his clothes, it tore him.”
+> **Quote:** "The saintly temper is a moral temper, and a moral temper has often to be cruel."
+    Suso next tells of his penitences by means of striking this cross
+    and forcing the nails deeper into the flesh, and likewise of his
+    self‐scourgings,—a dreadful story,—and then goes on as follows:
+    “At this same period the Servitor procured an old castaway door,
+    and he used to lie upon it at night without any bedclothes to make
+    him comfortable, except that he took off his shoes and wrapped a
+    thick cloak round him. He thus secured for himself a most
+    miserable bed; for hard pea‐stalks lay in humps under his head,
+    the cross with the sharp nails stuck into his back, his arms were
+    locked fast in bonds, the horsehair undergarment was round his
+    loins, and the cloak too was heavy and the door hard. Thus he lay
+    in wretchedness, afraid to stir, just like a log, and he would
+    send up many a sigh to God.
+It is a partisan mindset, and that is cruel. David sees no difference between his enemies and Jehovah's; Catherine of Siena, desperate to stop wars among Christians, could think of no better way than a crusade to massacre Turks; Luther protests not the horrific tortures executing Anabaptists; Cromwell praises the Lord for delivering enemies for "execution." Politics plays a role, but piety finds the partnership natural. When skeptics say religion and fanaticism are twins, we cannot deny it.
+    “In winter he suffered very much from the frost. If he stretched
+    out his feet they lay bare on the floor and froze, if he gathered
+    them up the blood became all on fire in his legs, and this was
+    great pain. His feet were full of sores, his legs dropsical, his
+    knees bloody and seared, his loins covered with scars from the
+    horsehair, his body wasted, his mouth parched with intense thirst,
+    and his hands tremulous from weakness. Amid these torments he
+    spent his nights and days; and he endured them all out of the
+    greatness of the love which he bore in his heart to the Divine and
+    Eternal Wisdom, our Lord Jesus Christ, whose agonizing sufferings
+    he sought to imitate. After a time he gave up this penitential
+    exercise of the door, and instead of it he took up his abode in a
+    very small cell, and used the bench, which was so narrow and short
+    that he could not stretch himself upon it, as his bed. In this
+    hole, or upon the door, he lay at night in his usual bonds, for
+    about eight years. It was also his custom, during the space of
+    twenty‐five years, provided he was staying in the convent, never
+    to go after compline in winter into any warm room, or to the
+    convent stove to warm himself, no matter how cold it might be,
+    unless he was obliged to do so for other reasons. Throughout all
+    these years he never took a bath, either a water or a sweating
+    bath; and this he did in order to mortify his comfort‐seeking
+    body. He practiced during a long time such rigid poverty that he
+    would neither receive nor touch a penny, either with leave or
+    without it. For a considerable time he strove to attain such a
+    high degree of purity that he would neither scratch nor touch any
+    part of his body, save only his hands and feet.”(183)
+Fanaticism must be recorded on religion's negative side as long as the intellect finds a tyrannical God satisfying. But when God appears less concerned with his honor, fanaticism ceases. It is only found where character is dominant and aggressive. In gentle characters with intense devotion but weak intellect, we find imaginative absorption in God's love that excludes practical human interests. While innocent, this is too one-sided to admire. A mind too narrow has room for only one affection. When love of God overtakes it, human love and utility are pushed out. There is no English name for this gentle excess; I call it theopathic.
+The blessed Margaret Mary Alacoque serves as example. "To be loved on earth... but to be loved by God! And loved to madness!" Margaret melted away. Like St. Philip Neri or Francis Xavier, she said:
+I spare you the recital of poor Suso’s self‐inflicted tortures from
+thirst. It is pleasant to know that after his fortieth year, God showed
+him by a series of visions that he had sufficiently broken down the
+natural man, and that he might leave these exercises off. His case is
+distinctly pathological, but he does not seem to have had the alleviation,
+which some ascetics have enjoyed, of an alteration of sensibility capable
+of actually turning torment into a perverse kind of pleasure. Of the
+founder of the Sacred Heart order, for example, we read that
+> **Quote:** "Hold back, O my God, these torrents which overwhelm me, or else enlarge my capacity for their reception."
+Clearest proofs of God's love were her hallucinations of sight, touch, hearing. Most significant were revelations of Christ's sacred heart, "surrounded with rays more brilliant than the sun... The wound of the cross was visible... a crown of thorns around this divine heart, and a cross above it." Christ's voice said that, unable to contain his love, he chose her to spread knowledge. He took her heart, placed it inside his own, ignited it, replaced it, adding:
+    “Her love of pain and suffering was insatiable.... She said that
+    she could cheerfully live till the day of judgment, provided she
+    might always have matter for suffering for God; but that to live a
+    single day without suffering would be intolerable. She said again
+    that she was devoured with two unassuageable fevers, one for the
+    holy communion, the other for suffering, humiliation, and
+    annihilation. ‘Nothing but pain,’ she continually said in her
+    letters, ‘makes my life supportable.’ ”(184)
+> **Quote:** "Hitherto thou hast taken the name of my slave, hereafter thou shalt be called the well‐beloved disciple of my Sacred Heart."
+In a later vision, the Savior revealed his "great design":
+So much for the phenomena to which the ascetic impulse will in certain
+persons give rise. In the ecclesiastically consecrated character three
+minor branches of self‐mortification have been recognized as indispensable
+pathways to perfection. I refer to the chastity, obedience, and poverty
+which the monk vows to observe; and upon the heads of obedience and
+poverty I will make a few remarks.
+> **Quote:** "I ask... that every first Friday after the week of holy Sacrament shall be made a special holy day for honoring my Heart... And I promise... my Heart will dilate to shed with abundance the influences of its love upon all those who pay these honors."
+                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
+"This revelation," says Bishop Bougaud, "is undoubtedly the most important... since the Incarnation... the supreme effort of the Sacred Heart." What were the results for Margaret Mary's life? Apparently suffering, prayers, absent-mindedness, fainting, ecstasies. She became increasingly useless at the convent. They tried her in the infirmary—kindness and devotion limitless, charity heroic, but without much success. They tried her in the kitchen—she dropped everything. They put her in the school—little girls loved her and cut her clothes for relics, but she was too absorbed to pay attention. Poor dear sister! Even less after visions than before was she of this earth, and they had to leave her in her heaven.
+First, of Obedience. The secular life of our twentieth century opens with
+this virtue held in no high esteem. The duty of the individual to
+determine his own conduct and profit or suffer by the consequences seems,
+on the contrary, to be one of our best rooted contemporary Protestant
+social ideals. So much so that it is difficult even imaginatively to
+comprehend how men possessed of an inner life of their own could ever have
+come to think the subjection of its will to that of other finite creatures
+recommendable. I confess that to myself it seems something of a mystery.
+Yet it evidently corresponds to a profound interior need of many persons,
+and we must do our best to understand it.
+Amiable and good, but with such limited intellect that we, with modern education, feel only sympathetic pity. A lower example is Saint Gertrude, a thirteenth-century nun whose "Revelations" consist mainly of proofs of Christ's favoritism—assurances of love, intimacies, caresses, absurd childish compliments addressed to Gertrude personally. We realize the gap between the thirteenth century and our own: saintliness combined with inferior intellectual sympathies produces almost worthless results. Our imagination now needs a God of entirely different character than one interested exclusively in handing out personal favors. Inspired by social justice, a God indifferent to everything but flattery lacks essential greatness. Even the best professional sainthood of past centuries, confined to such narrow views, seems strangely shallow.
+On the lowest possible plane, one sees how the expediency of obedience in
+a firm ecclesiastical organization must have led to its being viewed as
+meritorious. Next, experience shows that there are times in every one’s
+life when one can be better counseled by others than by one’s self.
+Inability to decide is one of the commonest symptoms of fatigued nerves;
+friends who see our troubles more broadly, often see them more wisely than
+we do; so it is frequently an act of excellent virtue to consult and obey
+a doctor, a partner, or a wife. But, leaving these lower prudential
+regions, we find, in the nature of some of the spiritual excitements which
+we have been studying, good reasons for idealizing obedience. Obedience
+may spring from the general religious phenomenon of inner softening and
+self‐surrender and throwing one’s self on higher powers. So saving are
+these attitudes felt to be that in themselves, apart from utility, they
+become ideally consecrated; and in obeying a man whose fallibility we see
+through thoroughly, we, nevertheless, may feel much as we do when we
+resign our will to that of infinite wisdom. Add self‐despair and the
+passion of self‐crucifixion to this, and obedience becomes an ascetic
+sacrifice, agreeable quite irrespective of whatever prudential uses it
+might have.
+Take Saint Teresa—one of history's most capable women. She had powerful practical intellect, wrote excellent descriptive psychology, possessed crisis-equal will, great political and business talent, cheerful temperament, first-rate literary style. She dedicated her whole life to religious ideals. Yet those ideals are so trivial by current standards that (though others differ) I feel only pity that such vitality was spent on poor employment.
+It is as a sacrifice, a mode of “mortification,” that obedience is
+primarily conceived by Catholic writers, a “sacrifice which man offers to
+God, and of which he is himself both the priest and the victim. By poverty
+he immolates his exterior possessions; by chastity he immolates his body;
+by obedience he completes the sacrifice, and gives to God all that he yet
+holds as his own, his two most precious goods, his intellect and his will.
+The sacrifice is then complete and unreserved, a genuine holocaust, for
+the entire victim is now consumed for the honor of God.”(185) Accordingly,
+in Catholic discipline, we obey our superior not as mere man, but as the
+representative of Christ. Obeying God in him by our intention, obedience
+is easy. But when the text‐book theologians marshal collectively all their
+reasons for recommending it, the mixture sounds to our ears rather odd.
+Despite her suffering, there's a strange superficiality. A Birmingham anthropologist, Dr. Jordan, divided humanity into "shrews" and "non-shrews"—doers versus feelers, whose expressions exceed their prompting feelings. Paradoxically, Teresa was a typical shrew. The frantic pace of her style and life proves it. Not only must she receive unheard-of personal favors from her Savior, but she must immediately write about them, capitalize on them professionally, leverage her expertise to instruct others. Her talkative egotism; her sense not of fundamental badness but of plural "faults" and "imperfections"; her predictable humility and preoccupation with herself—as if overwhelmed with "confusion" at each sign of God's unique favor for such an unworthy person—are typical of a petty mind. A person of profound feeling would be objectively lost in gratitude and silent. She had some public instincts—hating Lutherans, longing for church victory—but mostly her religion seems an endless romantic flirtation between worshiper and deity. Aside from helping nuns follow her example, she is of no human use, showing no general interest in humanity. Yet her time praised her as superhuman.
+We must pass similar judgment on sainthood based on merits. Any God who keeps pedantic accounts of individual shortcomings while showing favoritism is too small-minded to believe in.
+    “One of the great consolations of the monastic life,” says a
+    Jesuit authority, “is the assurance we have that in obeying we can
+    commit no fault. The Superior may commit a fault in commanding you
+    to do this thing or that, but you are certain that you commit no
+    fault so long as you obey, because God will only ask you if you
+    have duly performed what orders you received, and if you can
+    furnish a clear account in that respect, you are absolved
+    entirely. Whether the things you did were opportune, or whether
+    there were not something better that might have been done, these
+    are questions not asked of you, but rather of your Superior. The
+    moment what you did was done obediently, God wipes it out of your
+    account, and charges it to the Superior. So that Saint Jerome well
+    exclaimed, in celebrating the advantages of obedience, ‘Oh,
+    sovereign liberty! Oh, holy and blessed security by which one
+    becomes almost impeccable!’
+> **Quote:** "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 individuals by the Almighty, he stretched the soul's imagination and saved theology from puerility."
+    “Saint John Climachus is of the same sentiment when he calls
+    obedience an excuse before God. In fact, when God asks why you
+    have done this or that, and you reply, it is because I was so
+    ordered by my Superiors, God will ask for no other excuse. As a
+    passenger in a good vessel with a good pilot need give himself no
+    farther concern, but may go to sleep in peace, because the pilot
+    has charge over all, and ‘watches for him’; so a religious person
+    who lives under the yoke of obedience goes to heaven as if while
+    sleeping, that is, while leaning entirely on the conduct of his
+    Superiors, who are the pilots of his vessel, and keep watch for
+    him continually. It is no small thing, of a truth, to be able to
+    cross the stormy sea of life on the shoulders and in the arms of
+    another, yet that is just the grace which God accords to those who
+    live under the yoke of obedience. Their Superior bears all their
+    burdens.... A certain grave doctor said that he would rather spend
+    his life in picking up straws by obedience, than by his own
+    responsible choice busy himself with the loftiest works of
+    charity, because one is certain of following the will of God in
+    whatever one may do from obedience, but never certain in the same
+    degree of anything which we may do of our own proper
+    movement.”(186)
+So much for devotion separated from intellectual ideas that might guide it toward useful human results.
+The next saintly virtue showing excess is Purity. In God-absorbed characters, love of God must not mix with other loves. Parents, siblings, friends become distracting interferences; sensitivity and narrow-mindedness require a simplified world. While aggressive religion achieves unity by stamping out disorder, retiring religion achieves it subjectively—leaving disorder in the world but eliminating it from a smaller personal world.
+One should read the letters in which Ignatius Loyola recommends obedience
+as the backbone of his order, if one would gain insight into the full
+spirit of its cult.(187) They are too long to quote; but Ignatius’s belief
+is so vividly expressed in a couple of sayings reported by companions
+that, though they have been so often cited, I will ask your permission to
+copy them once more:—
+Thus alongside the "church militant" with prisons and inquisitions, we have the "church in retreat" with hermitages and monasteries. Both seek to unify life and simplify the soul's spectacle. A mind extremely sensitive to inner conflict drops external relationships—entertainment, society, business, family—until only seclusion with scheduled religious acts remains tolerable. Saints' lives are histories of giving up complications to preserve inner purity. "Is it not better," a young sister asks, "that I not speak at all during recreation, lest I fall into unnoticed sin?"
+If life remains social, participants must follow identical rules. In this monotony, the purity-obsessed feel clean again. The minute uniformity in religious communities—clothing, language, schedules—is almost inconceivable to worldly people, yet some find unique mental rest in this stability.
+    “I ought,” an early biographer reports him as saying, “on entering
+    religion, and thereafter, to place myself entirely in the hands of
+    God, and of him who takes His place by His authority. I ought to
+    desire that my Superior should oblige me to give up my own
+    judgment, and conquer my own mind. I ought to set up no difference
+    between one Superior and another, ... but recognize them all as
+    equal before God, whose place they fill. For if I distinguish
+    persons, I weaken the spirit of obedience. In the hands of my
+    Superior, I must be a soft wax, a thing, from which he is to
+    require whatever pleases him, be it to write or receive letters,
+    to speak or not to speak to such a person, or the like; and I must
+    put all my fervor in executing zealously and exactly what I am
+    ordered. I must consider myself as a corpse which has neither
+    intelligence nor will; be like a mass of matter which without
+    resistance lets itself be placed wherever it may please any one;
+    like a stick in the hand of an old man, who uses it according to
+    his needs and places it where it suits him. So must I be under the
+    hands of the Order, to serve it in the way it judges most useful.
+Saint Louis of Gonzaga serves as model of excessive purification. At age ten, his biographer says:
+    “I must never ask of the Superior to be sent to a particular
+    place, to be employed in a particular duty.... I must consider
+    nothing as belonging to me personally, and as regards the things I
+    use, be like a statue which lets itself be stripped and never
+    opposes resistance.”(188)
+> "The inspiration came to him to dedicate his virginity to the Mother of God... He made a vow of perpetual chastity. Mary obtained for him the extraordinary grace of never feeling the slightest touch of temptation... This was exceptional, rarely accorded even to saints, and all the more marvelous since Louis lived in royal courts where danger was frequent... Yet he felt it necessary to have recourse to such expedients for protecting his consecrated virginity. One might suppose he could content himself with ordinary precautions prescribed for all Christians. But no! In use of preservatives and means of defense, in flight from the most insignificant occasions, just as in mortification of his flesh, he went farther than most saints."
+At twelve, if his mother sent a maid with a message, he listened through a barely opened door and dismissed her. He disliked being alone with his mother; when company withdrew, he sought pretexts to retire. He avoided learning several noble ladies by sight, making a treaty with his father: he would follow all wishes if excused from visiting ladies.
+The other saying is reported by Rodriguez in the chapter from which I a
+moment ago made quotations. When speaking of the Pope’s authority,
+Rodriguez writes:—
+At seventeen, Louis joined the Jesuits against his father's passionate pleas, being heir to a princely house. When his father died a year later, he viewed it as God's "particular attention" and wrote stiff advice to his grieving mother as from a spiritual superior. He soon became such a thorough monk that when asked the number of his siblings, he had to stop and count. A priest asked if he was never troubled by thoughts of his family; he answered, "I never think of them except when praying for them." He was never seen holding a flower for pleasure. In the hospital, he sought what was most disgusting, snatching ulcer bandages from companions. He avoided worldly talk, turning every conversation to pious subjects or remaining silent. He systematically refused to notice surroundings. Ordered to fetch a book from the rector's seat, he had to ask where it was; though he'd eaten there three months, he had not noticed. During a break, having looked at a companion, he reproached himself as if for serious sin against modesty. He cultivated silence to avoid sins of the tongue; his greatest penance was his superiors' limits on self-punishment. He sought false accusations as opportunities for humility; his obedience was such that when a roommate asked for paper, he did not feel free to give it without first obtaining permission from the superior standing in God's place.
+I can find no other results of Louis's sainthood than these. He died in 1591, age twenty-eight, patron saint of youth. On his festival, the altar in his Roman chapel is surrounded by flowers, with letters at its base from young people addressed to "Paradise."
+    “Saint Ignatius said, when general of his company, that if the
+    Holy Father were to order him to set sail in the first bark which
+    he might find in the port of Ostia, near Rome, and to abandon
+    himself to the sea, without a mast, without sails, without oars or
+    rudder or any of the things that are needful for navigation or
+    subsistence, he would obey not only with alacrity, but without
+    anxiety or repugnance, and even with a great internal
+    satisfaction.”(189)
+Our final judgment on such a life depends on our view of God. Sixteenth-century Catholicism paid little attention to social justice; leaving the world to the devil while saving one's own soul was respectable. Today, rightly or wrongly, helpfulness in human affairs is viewed as essential to character. Other Jesuits, especially missionaries, had outward-looking minds; their lives still inspire. But when intellect is pinhead-size and ideas of God equally small, the result—despite heroism—is generally repulsive. We see that purity is *not* the only thing that matters; better a life pick up many stains than lose its usefulness staying spotless.
+Next: excesses of Tenderness and Charity. Here sainthood faces the charge of protecting the unfit and breeding beggars. "Do not resist evil" and "Love your enemies" are maxims worldly men find hard to discuss without impatience. Is the world right, or do saints possess deeper truth?
+With a solitary concrete example of the extravagance to which the virtue
+we are considering has been carried, I will pass to the topic next in
+order.
+No simple answer is possible. Perfect conduct involves actor, goal, and recipient. For abstract perfection, intention, execution, and reception must match. The best intention fails with wrong means or recipient. There is no worse lie than truth misunderstood by those who hear it; logical arguments are foolishness to those acting like crocodiles. Through trustfulness, the saint may hand the universe to the enemy; by not resisting, he may end his survival.
+Herbert Spencer tells us perfect conduct appears perfect only in perfect environment. Saintly conduct would be perfect in a world where everyone was already a saint. But where few are saints and many the opposite, it is poorly adapted. We must frankly admit that in the actual world, sympathy, charity, and non-resistance can be and have been carried to excess. The powers of darkness have exploited them. Modern organized charity exists because simple almsgiving failed. Constitutional government shows the value of resisting evil—hitting back rather than turning the other cheek.
+    “Sister Marie Claire [of Port Royal] had been greatly imbued with
+    the holiness and excellence of M. de Langres. This prelate, soon
+    after he came to Port Royal, said to her one day, seeing her so
+    tenderly attached to Mother Angélique, that it would perhaps be
+    better not to speak to her again. Marie Claire, greedy of
+    obedience, took this inconsiderate word for an oracle of God, and
+    from that day forward remained for several years without once
+    speaking to her sister.”(190)
+You agree, for despite Gospel or Tolstoy, you believe in fighting fire with fire—stopping usurpers, locking thieves, freezing swindlers.
+Yet you are as sure as I that if the world were limited to these hard methods; if none were ready to help a brother before checking worthiness; none willing to let go of personal wrongs from pity; none ready to be fooled many times rather than live in suspicion; none treating individuals by passion rather than cold prudence—the world would be infinitely worse. The "tender grace" of a future where the Golden Rule is natural would be lost.
+Our next topic shall be Poverty, felt at all times and under all creeds as
+one adornment of a saintly life. Since the instinct of ownership is
+fundamental in man’s nature, this is one more example of the ascetic
+paradox. Yet it appears no paradox at all, but perfectly reasonable, the
+moment one recollects how easily higher excitements hold lower cupidities
+in check. Having just quoted the Jesuit Rodriguez on the subject of
+obedience, I will, to give immediately a concrete turn to our discussion
+of poverty, also read you a page from his chapter on this latter virtue.
+You must remember that he is writing instructions for monks of his own
+order, and bases them all on the text, “Blessed are the poor in spirit.”
+Saints with extreme tenderness may be prophetic. In fact, they have proven so countless times. By treating those they met as worthy—despite past or appearance—they inspired them to *be* worthy, transforming them through radiant example.
+From this perspective, we can see human charity in saints as genuinely creative social force, helping make real a level of virtue only the saint assumes possible.
+    “If any one of you,” he says, “will know whether or not he is
+    really poor in spirit, let him consider whether he loves the
+    ordinary consequences and effects of poverty, which are hunger,
+    thirst, cold, fatigue, and the denudation of all conveniences. See
+    if you are glad to wear a worn‐out habit full of patches. See if
+    you are glad when something is lacking to your meal, when you are
+    passed by in serving it, when what you receive is distasteful to
+    you, when your cell is out of repair. If you are not glad of these
+    things, if instead of loving them you avoid them, then there is
+    proof that you have not attained the perfection of poverty of
+    spirit.” Rodriguez then goes on to describe the practice of
+    poverty in more detail. “The first point is that which Saint
+    Ignatius proposes in his constitutions, when he says, ‘Let no one
+    use anything as if it were his private possession.’ ‘A religious
+    person,’ he says, ‘ought in respect to all the things that he
+    uses, to be like a statue which one may drape with clothing, but
+    which feels no grief and makes no resistance when one strips it
+    again. It is in this way that you should feel towards your
+    clothes, your books, your cell, and everything else that you make
+    use of; if ordered to quit them, or to exchange them for others,
+    have no more sorrow than if you were a statue being uncovered. In
+    this way you will avoid using them as if they were your private
+    possession. But if, when you give up your cell, or yield
+    possession of this or that object or exchange it for another, you
+    feel repugnance and are not like a statue, that shows that you
+    view these things as if they were your private property.’
+> **Quote:** "The saints are authors, _auctores_, increasers, of goodness."
+    “And this is why our holy founder wished the superiors to test
+    their monks somewhat as God tested Abraham, and to put their
+    poverty and their obedience to trial, that by this means they may
+    become acquainted with the degree of their virtue, and gain a
+    chance to make ever farther progress in perfection, ... making the
+    one move out of his room when he finds it comfortable and is
+    attached to it; taking away from another a book of which he is
+    fond; or obliging a third to exchange his garment for a worse one.
+    Otherwise we should end by acquiring a species of property in all
+    these several objects, and little by little the wall of poverty
+    that surrounds us and constitutes our principal defense would be
+    thrown down. The ancient fathers of the desert used often thus to
+    treat their companions.... Saint Dositheus, being sick‐nurse,
+    desired a certain knife, and asked Saint Dorotheus for it, not for
+    his private use, but for employment in the infirmary of which he
+    had charge. Whereupon Saint Dorotheus answered him: ‘Ha!
+    Dositheus, so that knife pleases you so much! Will you be the
+    slave of a knife or the slave of Jesus Christ? Do you not blush
+    with shame at wishing that a knife should be your master? I will
+    not let you touch it.’ Which reproach and refusal had such an
+    effect upon the holy disciple that since that time he never
+    touched the knife again.” ...
+The potential for growth in human souls is unfathomable. Many seemingly hardened have been softened in ways that amazed them. We can never be sure any person is beyond saving through love. We have no right to view "human crocodiles" as incurably fixed. Long ago, St. Paul familiarized our ancestors with the idea that every soul is sacred. Because Christ died for everyone, we must despair of no one. This belief appears today in humane customs, reform institutions, growing dislike of the death penalty. Saints, with extreme tenderness, are torch-bearers of this belief, pioneers in darkness. Like drops sparkling ahead of a wave, they show the way. The world is not yet with them, so they often seem absurd in worldly affairs. Yet they fertilize the world, bringing dormant goodness to life. One fire lights another; without their "over-trust" in human worth, we would remain in spiritual stagnation.
+    “Therefore, in our rooms,” Father Rodriguez continues, “there must
+    be no other furniture than a bed, a table, a bench, and a
+    candlestick, things purely necessary, and nothing more. It is not
+    allowed among us that our cells should be ornamented with pictures
+    or aught else, neither armchairs, carpets, curtains, nor any sort
+    of cabinet or bureau of any elegance. Neither is it allowed us to
+    keep anything to eat, either for ourselves or for those who may
+    come to visit us. We must ask permission to go to the refectory
+    even for a glass of water; and finally we may not keep a book in
+    which we can write a line, or which we may take away with us. One
+    cannot deny that thus we are in great poverty. But this poverty is
+    at the same time a great repose and a great perfection. For it
+    would be inevitable, in case a religious person were allowed to
+    own superfluous possessions, that these things would greatly
+    occupy his mind, be it to acquire them, to preserve them, or to
+    increase them; so that in not permitting us at all to own them,
+    all these inconveniences are remedied. Among the various good
+    reasons why the company forbids secular persons to enter our
+    cells, the principal one is that thus we may the easier be kept in
+    poverty. After all, we are all men, and if we were to receive
+    people of the world into our rooms, we should not have the
+    strength to remain within the bounds prescribed, but should at
+    least wish to adorn them with some books to give the visitors a
+    better opinion of our scholarship.”(191)
+In the short term, the saint may waste tenderness and be victim of charitable fever, but his charity's role in social evolution is vital. If things are to move upward, someone must take first step and accept risk. No one unwilling to try charity can know if it will succeed. When it does, it is far more powerful than force. Force destroys enemies; caution only preserves what we have. Successful non-resistance turns enemies into friends; charity regenerates subjects. These saintly methods are creative energies. Genuine saints find in their faith's high excitement an authority that makes them irresistible where shallower people cannot manage without worldly prudence.
+> **Quote:** "This practical proof that worldly wisdom may be safely transcended is the saint's magic gift to mankind."
+Since Hindu fakirs, Buddhist monks, and Mohammedan dervishes unite with
+Jesuits and Franciscans in idealizing poverty as the loftiest individual
+state, it is worth while to examine into the spiritual grounds for such a
+seemingly unnatural opinion. And first, of those which lie closest to
+common human nature.
+Not only does his vision of a better world comfort us; even when poorly adapted, he makes converts and improves the environment. He serves as catalyst, slowly transforming earthly order into heavenly.
+The opposition between the men who _have_ and the men who _are_ is
+immemorial. Though the gentleman, in the old‐fashioned sense of the man
+who is well born, has usually in point of fact been predaceous and reveled
+in lands and goods, yet he has never identified his essence with these
+possessions, but rather with the personal superiorities, the courage,
+generosity, and pride supposed to be his birthright. To certain
+huckstering kinds of consideration he thanked God he was forever
+inaccessible, and if in life’s vicissitudes he should become destitute
+through their lack, he was glad to think that with his sheer valor he was
+all the freer to work out his salvation. “Wer nur selbst was hätte,” says
+Lessing’s Tempelherr, in Nathan the Wise, “mein Gott, mein Gott, ich habe
+nichts!” This ideal of the well‐born man without possessions was embodied
+in knight‐errantry and templardom; and, hideously corrupted as it has
+always been, it still dominates sentimentally, if not practically, the
+military and aristocratic view of life. We glorify the soldier as the man
+absolutely unencumbered. Owning nothing but his bare life, and willing to
+toss that up at any moment when the cause commands him, he is the
+representative of unhampered freedom in ideal directions. The laborer who
+pays with his person day by day, and has no rights invested in the future,
+offers also much of this ideal detachment. Like the savage, he may make
+his bed wherever his right arm can support him, and from his simple and
+athletic attitude of observation, the property‐owner seems buried and
+smothered in ignoble externalities and trammels, “wading in straw and
+rubbish to his knees.” The claims which _things_ make are corrupters of
+manhood, mortgages on the soul, and a drag anchor on our progress towards
+the empyrean.
+In this regard, the Utopian dreams of social justice cherished by modern socialists—despite impracticality—are similar to the saint's belief in existing kingdom of heaven. They help soften harshness and act as slow-working leavens for better social order.
+The next topic is asceticism, which you are ready to view as virtue prone to excess. Modern imagination's optimism and refinement have changed the church's attitude. Figures like Suso or St. Peter of Alcantara seem tragic performers rather than sane, respectable men. If inner intentions are right, why need for torment? It makes the outer self seem too important. Anyone truly free from flesh views pleasures and pains as equally irrelevant. As the Bhagavad-Gita says, only those inwardly attached to worldly actions need renounce them. If unattached to results, one engages with equanimity. I quoted St. Augustine:
+    “Everything I meet with,” writes Whitefield, “seems to carry this
+    voice with it,—‘Go thou and preach the Gospel; be a pilgrim on
+    earth; have no party or certain dwelling place.’ My heart echoes
+    back, ‘Lord Jesus, help me to do or suffer thy will. When thou
+    seest me in danger of _nestling_,—in pity—in tender pity,—put a
+    _thorn_ in my nest to prevent me from it.’ ”(192)
+> **Quote:** "If you only love God enough, you may safely follow all your inclinations."
+"He needs no devotional practices," is one of Ramakrishna's maxims,
+The loathing of “capital” with which our laboring classes to‐day are
+growing more and more infected seems largely composed of this sound
+sentiment of antipathy for lives based on mere having. As an anarchist
+poet writes:—
+> **Quote:** "whose heart is moved to tears at the mere mention of the name of Hari."
+And the Buddha, pointing out the "middle way," told disciples to avoid extremes, as excessive self-denial is as hollow as mere desire. The perfect life is inner wisdom making us indifferent to outward circumstances, leading to peace.
+    “Not by accumulating riches, but by giving away that which you
+    have,
+As ascetic saints aged and directors gained experience, they tended to place less emphasis on physical mortifications. Catholic teachers follow the rule that health is necessary for efficiency in God's service and must not be sacrificed. Liberal Protestant optimism makes self-mortification repugnant. We can no longer sympathize with cruel deities, and the idea that God takes pleasure in self-inflicted suffering is abhorrent.
+    “Shall you become beautiful;
+Yet careful consideration—distinguishing asceticism's good intention from some acts' uselessness—should restore it. Spiritually, asceticism represents the essence of "twice-born" philosophy. It symbolizes belief that real wrongness exists in the world, must be faced squarely and overcome through heroic suffering. In contrast, "once-born" optimism suggests we handle evil by ignoring it. A person who avoids significant suffering through good health might close his eyes to universal evil, believing himself free, and sail through life on simple healthy-mindedness. But we saw in lectures on melancholy how precarious this is. Moreover, it serves only the individual, leaving external evil unredeemed.
+    “You must undo the wrappings, not case yourself in fresh ones;
+No such attempt can be general solution. To darker temperaments who feel life is tragic mystery, such optimism seems shallow trick or cowardly evasion. It accepts lucky personal accident, leaving world unhelped in darkness. Twice-born insist real deliverance must be universal. Pain, wrong, death must be faced and overcome through higher being, or their sting remains unbroken. If one grasps the reality of tragic death—freezing, drowning, wild beasts, cruel men, hideous disease—it is difficult to continue worldly prosperity without suspecting one is not part of real struggle, lacking great initiation.
+    “Not by multiplying clothes shall you make your body sound and
+    healthy, but rather by discarding them ...
+This is exactly what asceticism believes, and it voluntarily undergoes that initiation. It says life is not farce or polite comedy but something we witness in mourning clothes, hoping bitter taste cures folly. Wild and heroic are such fundamental parts of life that simple healthy-mindedness can hardly be serious solution to any thinker.
+    “For a soldier who is going on a campaign does not seek what fresh
+    furniture he can carry on his back, but rather what he can leave
+    behind;
+I rely here only on humanity's common instinct for reality, which has always viewed world as stage for heroism. We feel life's supreme mystery is hidden in heroism. We have no patience for one lacking capacity for it. No matter what a man's other flaws, if he is willing to risk death—especially heroically in his cause—that act consecrates him forever. If we cling to life while he can "throw it away like a flower," we consider him natural superior. Each feels that courageous indifference to death would compensate all shortcomings.
+    “Knowing well that every additional thing which he cannot freely
+    use and handle is an impediment.”(193)
+This metaphysical mystery—that one who faces death possesses life in its most excellent form—is truth asceticism faithfully defended. The "folly of the cross," inexplicable to intellect, carries indestructible vital meaning.
+Symbolically and representatively—setting aside past errors—asceticism must be acknowledged as profounder way to handle existence. Naturalistic optimism is mere syllabub and sponge-cake in comparison. For us, practical course is not to turn our backs on ascetic impulse, as most do today, but find outlet where hardship might be objectively useful. Older monastic asceticism often concerned itself with trivialities or ended in simple egoism of individual seeking his own perfection. But can we discard older forms and yet find saner channels for their heroic inspiration?
+In short, lives based on having are less free than lives based either on
+doing or on being, and in the interest of action people subject to
+spiritual excitement throw away possessions as so many clogs. Only those
+who have no private interests can follow an ideal straight away. Sloth and
+cowardice creep in with every dollar or guinea we have to guard. When a
+brother novice came to Saint Francis, saying: “Father, it would be a great
+consolation to me to own a psalter, but even supposing that our general
+should concede to me this indulgence, still I should like also to have
+your consent,” Francis put him off with the examples of Charlemagne,
+Roland, and Oliver, pursuing the infidels in sweat and labor, and finally
+dying on the field of battle. “So care not,” he said, “for owning books
+and knowledge, but care rather for works of goodness.” And when some weeks
+later the novice came again to talk of his craving for the psalter,
+Francis said: “After you have got your psalter you will crave a breviary;
+and after you have got your breviary you will sit in your stall like a
+grand prelate, and will say to your brother: ‘Hand me my breviary.’ ...
+And thenceforward he denied all such requests, saying: ‘A man possesses of
+learning only so much as comes out of him in action, and a monk is a good
+preacher only so far as his deeds proclaim him such, for every tree is
+known by its fruits.’ ”(194)
+For example, does worship of luxury and wealth—so much of our age's "spirit"—lead toward softness and lack of character? Does the exclusively sympathetic way children are raised today, despite advantages, risk developing lack of inner resilience? Are there areas here for renewed ascetic discipline?
+But beyond this more worthily athletic attitude involved in doing and
+being, there is, in the desire of not having, something profounder still,
+something related to that fundamental mystery of religious experience, the
+satisfaction found in absolute surrender to the larger power. So long as
+any secular safeguard is retained, so long as any residual prudential
+guarantee is clung to, so long the surrender is incomplete, the vital
+crisis is not passed, fear still stands sentinel, and mistrust of the
+divine obtains: we hold by two anchors, looking to God, it is true, after
+a fashion, but also holding by our proper machinations. In certain medical
+experiences we have the same critical point to overcome. A drunkard, or a
+morphine or cocaine maniac, offers himself to be cured. He appeals to the
+doctor to wean him from his enemy, but he dares not face blank abstinence.
+The tyrannical drug is still an anchor to windward: he hides supplies of
+it among his clothing; arranges secretly to have it smuggled in in case of
+need. Even so an incompletely regenerate man still trusts in his own
+expedients. His money is like the sleeping potion which the chronically
+wakeful patient keeps beside his bed; he throws himself on God, but _if_
+he should need the other help, there it will be also. Every one knows
+cases of this incomplete and ineffective desire for reform,—drunkards
+whom, with all their self‐reproaches and resolves, one perceives to be
+quite unwilling seriously to contemplate _never_ being drunk again! Really
+to give up anything on which we have relied, to give it up definitively,
+“for good and all” and forever, signifies one of those radical alterations
+of character which came under our notice in the lectures on conversion. In
+it the inner man rolls over into an entirely different position of
+equilibrium, lives in a new centre of energy from this time on, and the
+turning‐point and hinge of all such operations seems usually to involve
+the sincere acceptance of certain nakednesses and destitutions.
+Many would point to athletics, militarism, adventure as remedies. These modern ideals promote heroic standards as remarkably as modern religion ignores them. War certainly prevents treating oneself gently, demanding incredible efforts that change motivation. Discomfort, hunger, pain, cold, filth lose power to stop us. Death becomes commonplace; its usual restraint vanishes. When these inhibitions are removed, new energy releases and life seems on higher plane.
+Accordingly, throughout the annals of the saintly life, we find this ever‐
+recurring note: Fling yourself upon God’s providence without making any
+reserve whatever,—take no thought for the morrow,—sell all you have and
+give it to the poor,—only when the sacrifice is ruthless and reckless will
+the higher safety really arrive. As a concrete example let me read a page
+from the biography of Antoinette Bourignon, a good woman, much persecuted
+in her day by both Protestants and Catholics, because she would not take
+her religion at second hand. When a young girl, in her father’s house,—
+War's beauty is its consistency with human nature. Evolution made us potential warriors; thus even ordinary individuals in an army are cured of excess tenderness and may become indifferent to suffering.
+But comparing military self-severity with ascetic saint reveals massive spiritual difference.
+    “She spent whole nights in prayer, oft repeating: _Lord, what wilt
+    thou have me to do?_ And being one night in a most profound
+    penitence, she said from the bottom of her heart: ‘O my Lord! What
+    must I do to please thee? For I have nobody to teach me. Speak to
+    my soul and it will hear thee.’ At that instant she heard, as if
+    another had spoke within her: _Forsake all earthly things.
+    Separate thyself from the love of the creatures. Deny thyself._
+    She was quite astonished, not understanding this language, and
+    mused long on these three points, thinking how she could fulfill
+    them. She thought she could not live without earthly things, nor
+    without loving the creatures, nor without loving herself. Yet she
+    said, ‘By thy Grace I will do it, Lord!’ But when she would
+    perform her promise, she knew not where to begin. Having thought
+    on the religious in monasteries, that they forsook all earthly
+    things by being shut up in a cloister, and the love of themselves
+    by subjecting of their wills, she asked leave of her father to
+    enter into a cloister of the barefoot Carmelites, but he would not
+    permit it, saying he would rather see her laid in her grave. This
+    seemed to her a great cruelty, for she thought to find in the
+    cloister the true Christians she had been seeking, but she found
+    afterwards that he knew the cloisters better than she; for after
+    he had forbidden her, and told her he would never permit her to be
+    a religious, nor give her any money to enter there, yet she went
+    to Father Laurens, the Director, and offered to serve in the
+    monastery and work hard for her bread, and be content with little,
+    if he would receive her. At which he smiled and said: _That cannot
+    be. We must have money to build; we take no maids without money;
+    you must find the way to get it, else there is no entry here._
+> **Quote:** "'Live and let live' is no device for an army. Contempt for one's comrades, for enemy troops, and above all fierce contempt for one's own person, are what war demands... Far better for an army to be too savage, too cruel, too barbarous, than to possess too much sentimentality... If the soldier is to be good for anything as a soldier, he must be exactly opposite of reasoning man... War, and even peace, require absolutely peculiar standards of morality. The recruit brings common moral notions, of which he must immediately get rid. For him victory must be everything. The most barbaric tendencies come to life again in war, and for war's uses they are incommensurably good."
+    “This astonished her greatly, and she was thereby undeceived as to
+    the cloisters, resolving to forsake all company and live alone
+    till it should please God to show her what she ought to do and
+    whither to go. She asked always earnestly, ‘When shall I be
+    perfectly thine, O my God?’ And she thought he still answered her,
+    _When thou shalt no longer possess anything, and shalt die to
+    thyself_. ‘And where shall I do that, Lord?’ He answered her, _In
+    the desert_. This made so strong an impression on her soul that
+    she aspired after this; but being a maid of eighteen years only,
+    she was afraid of unlucky chances, and was never used to travel,
+    and knew no way. She laid aside all these doubts and said, ‘Lord,
+    thou wilt guide me how and where it shall please thee. It is for
+    thee that I do it. I will lay aside my habit of a maid, and will
+    take that of a hermit that I may pass unknown.’ Having then
+    secretly made ready this habit, while her parents thought to have
+    married her, her father having promised her to a rich French
+    merchant, she prevented the time, and on Easter evening, having
+    cut her hair, put on the habit, and slept a little, she went out
+    of her chamber about four in the morning, taking nothing but one
+    penny to buy bread for that day. And it being said to her in the
+    going out, _Where is thy faith? in a penny?_ she threw it away,
+    begging pardon of God for her fault, and saying, ‘No, Lord, my
+    faith is not in a penny, but in thee alone.’ Thus she went away
+    wholly delivered from the heavy burthen of the cares and good
+    things of this world, and found her soul so satisfied that she no
+    longer wished for anything upon earth, resting entirely upon God,
+    with this only fear lest she should be discovered and be obliged
+    to return home; for she felt already more content in this poverty
+    than she had done for all her life in all the delights of the
+    world.”(195)
+These words are literally true. The soldier's immediate goal is destruction; any constructive results are indirect. Consequently the soldier cannot train himself to be too insensitive to sympathies promoting preservation. Yet war is school for strenuous life and heroism; being rooted in primal instinct, it is the only such school currently available to everyone.
+But when we ask whether this massive organization of irrationality is our only defense against softness, we are horrified and look more kindly on ascetic religion.
+The penny was a small financial safeguard, but an effective spiritual
+obstacle. Not till it was thrown away could the character settle into the
+new equilibrium completely.
+> **Quote:** "What we now need to discover in the social realm is the moral equivalent of war: something heroic that will speak to men as universally as war does, and yet will be as compatible with their spiritual selves as war has proved itself incompatible."
+                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
+I have often thought that in old monastic worship of poverty—despite its pedantry—there might be something like that moral equivalent.
+Over and above the mystery of self‐surrender, there are in the cult of
+poverty other religious mysteries. There is the mystery of veracity:
+“Naked came I into the world,” etc.,—whoever first said that, possessed
+this mystery. My own bare entity must fight the battle—shams cannot save
+me. There is also the mystery of democracy, or sentiment of the equality
+before God of all his creatures. This sentiment (which seems in general to
+have been more widespread in Mohammedan than in Christian lands) tends to
+nullify man’s usual acquisitiveness. Those who have it spurn dignities and
+honors, privileges and advantages, preferring, as I said in a former
+lecture, to grovel on the common level before the face of God. It is not
+exactly the sentiment of humility, though it comes so close to it in
+practice. It is _humanity_, rather, refusing to enjoy anything that others
+do not share. A profound moralist, writing of Christ’s saying, “Sell all
+thou hast and follow me,” proceeds as follows:—
+> **Quote:** "May not voluntarily accepted poverty be 'the strenuous life,' without need of crushing weaker peoples?"
+Poverty indeed *is* strenuous life—without brass bands, uniforms, hysterical applause, lies. When we see how wealth-pursuit has become our generation's ideal, we wonder whether reviving poverty as religious calling might be the transformation of military courage our era needs.
+    “Christ may have meant: If you love mankind absolutely you will as
+    a result not care for any possessions whatever, and this seems a
+    very likely proposition. But it is one thing to believe that a
+    proposition is probably true; it is another thing to see it as a
+    fact. If you loved mankind as Christ loved them, you would see his
+    conclusion as a fact. It would be obvious. You would sell your
+    goods, and they would be no loss to you. These truths, while
+    literal to Christ, and to any mind that has Christ’s love for
+    mankind, become parables to lesser natures. There are in every
+    generation people who, beginning innocently, with no predetermined
+    intention of becoming saints, find themselves drawn into the
+    vortex by their interest in helping mankind, and by the
+    understanding that comes from actually doing it. The abandonment
+    of their old mode of life is like dust in the balance. It is done
+    gradually, incidentally, imperceptibly. Thus the whole question of
+    the abandonment of luxury is no question at all, but a mere
+    incident to another question, namely, the degree to which we
+    abandon ourselves to the remorseless logic of our love for
+    others.”(196)
+Among English-speaking peoples especially, we need poverty's praises sung boldly again. We have become literally afraid to be poor. We despise anyone choosing poverty to simplify inner life. If he doesn't join the money-scramble, we consider him spiritless. We have lost ability to imagine what ancient idealization of poverty meant: liberation from attachments, unbribed soul, manlier indifference, paying our way by who we are rather than what we have, right to risk life without responsibility—more athletic moral fighting shape. When we "better classes" are more terrified of hardship than any people in history; when we delay marriage until homes can be artistic, tremble at having children without bank accounts—it is time to protest this unmanly state of mind.
+It is true that where wealth provides time for higher goals, it is better than poverty. But this occurs in only a small portion of cases. Elsewhere, desire for wealth and fear of losing it are primary sources of cowardice and corruption. Thousands of situations exist where wealth's slave must be slave, while one who does not fear poverty becomes free. Think of strength indifference to poverty would give us for unpopular causes. We would no longer need to keep quiet or fear supporting revolutionary movements. Our stocks might fall, promotions vanish, salaries stop, clubs close—yet we would calmly bear witness, our example helping liberate our generation. The cause would need funds, but we, its servants, would be powerful in proportion to our contentment with poverty.
+But in all these matters of sentiment one must have “been there” one’s
+self in order to understand them. No American can ever attain to
+understanding the loyalty of a Briton towards his king, of a German
+towards his emperor; nor can a Briton or German ever understand the peace
+of heart of an American in having no king, no Kaiser, no spurious
+nonsense, between him and the common God of all. If sentiments as simple
+as these are mysteries which one must receive as gifts of birth, how much
+more is this the case with those subtler religious sentiments which we
+have been considering! One can never fathom an emotion or divine its
+dictates by standing outside of it. In the glowing hour of excitement,
+however, all incomprehensibilities are solved, and what was so enigmatical
+from without becomes transparently obvious. Each emotion obeys a logic of
+its own, and makes deductions which no other logic can draw. Piety and
+charity live in a different universe from worldly lusts and fears, and
+form another centre of energy altogether. As in a supreme sorrow lesser
+vexations may become a consolation; as a supreme love may turn minor
+sacrifices into gain; so a supreme trust may render common safeguards
+odious, and in certain glows of generous excitement it may appear
+unspeakably mean to retain one’s hold of personal possessions. The only
+sound plan, if we are ourselves outside the pale of such emotions, is to
+observe as well as we are able those who feel them, and to record
+faithfully what we observe; and this, I need hardly say, is what I have
+striven to do in these last two descriptive lectures, which I now hope
+will have covered the ground sufficiently for our present needs.
+I recommend this for serious consideration, for the prevalent fear of poverty among educated classes is the worst moral disease our civilization suffers.
+I have now said all I can usefully say about religion's fruits in saints' lives, so I will briefly review and move to general conclusions.
+Our question is whether religion is justified by its results in saintly character. Individual saintly attributes may be matters of temperament, but what makes the combination distinctively religious is that it flows from sense of divine as psychological center. One who possesses this strongly believes smallest details derive infinite significance from relation to unseen divine order. This thought provides higher happiness and incomparable steadfastness. In social relations, his usefulness is exemplary; he is full of helping impulses, reaching souls as well as bodies, awakening hidden strengths. He finds happiness not in physical comfort but in higher inner excitement converting discomforts to joy. Consequently he never shirks thankless duty; we can count on him more than anyone. His humility and self-discipline save him from vanities hindering social interaction, and his purity makes him wholesome companion. Happiness, purity, charity, patience, self-discipline—these are magnificent virtues, and saints demonstrate them more fully than anyone.
+But as we've seen, these traits do not make saints infallible. When intellectual outlook is narrow, they fall into "holy" excesses: fanaticism, obsessive absorption, self-torment, prudery, gullibility, morbid inability to function. Because of intense loyalty to meager ideals, a saint can be more harmful than a superficial worldly person. We must judge him not by feelings alone, but by intellectual standards—placing him in environment and evaluating total social impact.
+Regarding intellectual standards, we must remember it is unfair always to blame individuals for narrow-mindedness; in religious matters they likely absorbed it from their generation. Moreover, we must not confuse saintliness's essentials—those general passions—with its "accidents," the specific historical expressions. In these, saints are usually loyal to cultural prejudices. Seeking refuge in monasteries was medieval norm; working for social progress is today's. If Francis or Bernard lived now, they would lead consecrated lives but not in isolation. Our dislike for specific manifestations should not abandon saintly impulses to hostile critics.
+## LECTURES XIV AND XV. THE VALUE OF SAINTLINESS.
+The most hostile critic I know is Nietzsche. He contrasts saintly with worldly passions—embodied in predatory military character—entirely to latter's advantage. Natural-born saints often possess quality making worldly persons feel instinctive disgust, so it is worthwhile to examine this contrast.
+Dislike of saintly nature seems negative byproduct of biologically useful instinct to glorify tribal chief. The chief is potential tyrant—masterful predator. We acknowledge inferiority, bow before him, cower under his gaze, yet pride ourselves serving such dangerous lord. Such submissive hero worship was essential in primitive tribal life. In endless wars, leaders were necessary for survival; tribes refusing them left no descendants. These leaders always had clear consciences because conscience was identical to will. Those watching were amazed by their lack of inner restraint as much as by outward energy.
+We have now passed in review the more important of the phenomena which are
+regarded as fruits of genuine religion and characteristics of men who are
+devout. To‐day we have to change our attitude from that of description to
+that of appreciation; we have to ask whether the fruits in question can
+help us to judge the absolute value of what religion adds to human life.
+Were I to parody Kant, I should say that a “Critique of pure Saintliness”
+must be our theme.
+Compared to these beaked and taloned graspers of the world, saints are herbivorous animals—tame barnyard poultry. There are saints whose beards you could pull with impunity. Such men excite no wonder mixed with terror; their conscience is full of doubts. Unless they appeal to different capacity for admiration, we pass them by with contempt.
+If, in turning to this theme, we could descend upon our subject from above
+like Catholic theologians, with our fixed definitions of man and man’s
+perfection and our positive dogmas about God, we should have an easy time
+of it. Man’s perfection would be the fulfillment of his end; and his 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 a simple matter to measure by the
+application of a limited number of theological and moral conceptions and
+definitions. The absolute significance and value of any bit of religious
+experience we might hear of would thus be given almost mathematically into
+our hands.
+In fact they do appeal to different faculty. The fable of wind, sun, and traveler is reenacted. The sexes often embody this difference. A woman may admire man more the stormier he is; world deifies rulers for being willful. But woman influences man through gentleness's mystery, and saint charms world similarly. Humanity is susceptible to opposite influences; rivalry never sleeps. Saintly and worldly ideals feud in literature as in life.
+If convenience were everything, we ought now to grieve at finding
+ourselves cut off from so admirably convenient a method as this. But we
+did cut ourselves off from it deliberately in those remarks which you
+remember we made, in our first lecture, about the empirical method; and it
+must be confessed that after that act of renunciation we can never hope
+for clean‐cut and scholastic results. _We_ cannot divide man sharply into
+an animal and a rational part. _We_ cannot distinguish 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 as to 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 type of religion is approved by its fruits, and another type
+condemned. “On the whole,”—I fear we shall never escape complicity with
+that qualification, so dear to your practical man, so repugnant to your
+systematizer!
+For Nietzsche, the saint represents sneakiness and slave nature—sophisticated invalid, ultimate degenerate, lacking vitality. Prevalence of such type would endanger human species.
+I also fear that as I make this frank confession, I may seem to some of
+you to throw our compass overboard, and to adopt caprice as our pilot.
+Skepticism or wayward choice, you may think, can be the only results of
+such a formless method as I have taken up. A few remarks in deprecation of
+such an opinion, and in farther explanation of the empiricist principles
+which I profess, may therefore appear at this point to be in place.
+> **Quote:** "The sick are the greatest danger for the well... The weaker, not the stronger, are the strong's undoing... What is to be dreaded more than any doom is not fear, but rather great disgust, not fear, but rather great pity—disgust and pity for our human fellows... The _morbid_ are our greatest peril—not 'bad' men, not predatory beings. Those born wrong, miscarried, broken—they it is, the _weakest_, who undermine vitality of race, poison trust in life, put humanity in question... Here swarm worms of sensitiveness and resentment; here air smells odious with secrecy... Here is woven endlessly net of meanest conspiracy, conspiracy of sufferers against those successful and victorious... Oh, how these people would like to inflict expiation, how they thirst to be hangmen! And all the while their duplicity never confesses hatred to be hatred."
+                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
+Poor Nietzsche's own hostility is sickly enough, but we understand his point. The "strong man" with predatory mind—aggressive, dominant—sees only decay in saint's gentleness, viewing him with pure loathing. The conflict revolves around two points: Should visible or unseen world be primary focus of adaptation? And should means of adapting to visible world be aggression or non-resistance?
+Abstractly, it would seem illogical to try to measure the worth of a
+religion’s fruits in merely human terms of value. How _can_ you measure
+their worth without considering whether the God really exists who is
+supposed to inspire them? If he really exists, then all the conduct
+instituted by men to meet his wants must necessarily be a reasonable fruit
+of his religion,—it would be unreasonable only in case he did not exist.
+If, for instance, you were to condemn a religion of human or animal
+sacrifices by virtue of your subjective sentiments, and if all the while a
+deity were really there demanding such sacrifices, you would be making a
+theoretical mistake by tacitly assuming that the deity must be non‐
+existent; you would be setting up a theology of your own as much as if you
+were a scholastic philosopher.
+This is serious debate. In some sense, both worlds must be acknowledged; in visible world, both aggression and non-resistance are necessary. It is matter of emphasis. Is saintly type or "strong man" type more ideal?
+To this extent, to the extent of disbelieving peremptorily in certain
+types of deity, I frankly confess that we must be theologians. If
+disbeliefs can be said to constitute a theology, then the prejudices,
+instincts, and common sense which I chose as our guides make theological
+partisans of us whenever they make certain beliefs abhorrent.
+It has been assumed there can be one inherently ideal human character. Saintly and gentlemanly/"warrior" types have been rival claimants to this absolute ideal. According to empirical philosophy, however, all ideals are relative. It would be absurd to ask for "ideal horse" definition while pulling loads, racing, breeding remain different necessary functions. You might take general-purpose animal as compromise, but he will be inferior to specialized horse in any specific task. We must remember this when asking if sainthood is ideal type of manhood. We must test it by practical social utility.
+But such common‐sense prejudices and instincts are themselves the fruit of
+an empirical evolution. Nothing is more striking than the secular
+alteration that goes on in the moral and religious tone of men, as their
+insight into nature and their social arrangements progressively develop.
+After an interval of a few generations the mental climate proves
+unfavorable to notions of the deity which at an earlier date were
+perfectly satisfactory: the older gods have fallen below the common
+secular level, and can no longer be believed in. To‐day a deity who should
+require bleeding sacrifices to placate him would be too sanguinary to be
+taken seriously. Even if powerful historical credentials were put forward
+in his favor, we would not look at them. Once, on the contrary, his cruel
+appetites were of themselves credentials. They positively recommended him
+to men’s imaginations in ages when such coarse signs of power were
+respected and no others could be understood. Such deities then were
+worshiped because such fruits were relished.
+Herbert Spencer's *Data of Ethics* method will help. Ideality in conduct is entirely matter of adaptation. A society where all were aggressive would destroy itself through friction; where some are aggressive, others must be non-resistant for order. This is current structure, and we owe blessings to this mixture. Yet aggressive members are prone to become bullies, thieves, frauds; no one believes current affairs are ultimate perfection. Meanwhile, we can imagine society without aggression, only sympathy and fairness—any small group of true friends realizes this today. In theory, such society on large scale would be paradise, because every good could be achieved without social friction cost. The saint would be perfectly adapted to such perfect society. His peaceful appeals would be effective; none would take advantage of his non-resistance. Therefore, in abstract, saint is higher type than "strong man" because adapted to highest conceivable society, whether or not that society is possible. Presence of "strong man" would cause such society to deteriorate, becoming inferior in every way except warlike excitement dear to people as they are.
+Doubtless historic accidents always played some later part, but the
+original factor in fixing the figure 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 them
+personally. 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 other people’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 indispensable human ideals, or thwarted too
+extensively other values; so soon as they appeared childish, contemptible,
+or immoral when reflected on, the deity grew discredited, and was erelong
+neglected and forgotten. It was in this way that the Greek and Roman gods
+ceased to be believed in by educated pagans; it is thus that we ourselves
+judge of the Hindu, Buddhist, and Mohammedan theologies; Protestants have
+so dealt with the Catholic notions of deity, and liberal Protestants with
+older Protestant notions; it is thus that Chinamen judge of us, and that
+all of us now living will be judged by our descendants. When we cease to
+admire or approve what the definition of a deity implies, we end by
+deeming that deity incredible.
+But turning from abstract to actual situation, individual saint may be well or poorly adapted depending on circumstances. There is no absolute excellence in sainthood. In this world, anyone who becomes total saint does so at his own risk. If he is not great enough character, he may appear more insignificant because of saintliness than if he had remained worldly. Consequently, religion has seldom been followed so radically in West that devotee could not mix it with some worldly temperament. Christ himself was fierce when occasion called. Cromwell, Stonewall Jackson, Gordon show Christians can also be "strong men."
+Few historic changes are more curious than these mutations of theological
+opinion. The monarchical type of sovereignty was, for example, so
+ineradicably planted in the mind of our own forefathers that a dose of
+cruelty and arbitrariness in their deity seems positively to have been
+required by their imagination. They called the cruelty “retributive
+justice,” and a God without it would certainly have struck them as not
+“sovereign” enough. But to‐day we abhor the very notion of eternal
+suffering inflicted; and that arbitrary dealing‐out of salvation and
+damnation to selected individuals, 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 to us, if sovereignly anything, sovereignly irrational and mean.
+Not only the cruelty, but the paltriness of 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 make
+us rub our Protestant eyes. Ritual worship in general appears to the
+modern transcendentalist, as well as to the ultra‐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, and finding his “glory” incomprehensibly enhanced
+thereby;—just as on the other hand the formless spaciousness of pantheism
+appears quite empty to ritualistic natures, and the gaunt theism of
+evangelical 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 at Wittenberg, if he had supposed that they were
+destined to lead to the pale negations of Boston Unitarianism.
+How is success measured absolutely when there are many environments and ways of looking at adaptation? It cannot be measured absolutely; verdict changes with perspective. From biological perspective, St. Paul was failure because beheaded. Yet he was magnificently adapted to larger environment of history. As long as saint's example serves as moral influence moving world toward saintlier habits, he is success regardless of immediate misfortune. Greatest saints—Francis, Bernard, Luther, Loyola, Wesley, Channing, Moody, Gratry, Phillips Brooks, Agnes Jones, Margaret Hallahan, Dora Pattison—are successes from start. They reveal themselves; everyone perceives their strength. Their sense of life's mystery, passion, and goodness radiates, expanding influence while softening character. They are like paintings with depth; compared to them, the strong men of this world seem as dry as sticks, as hard and crude as blocks of stone or brickbats.
+So far, then, although we are compelled, whatever may be our pretensions
+to empiricism, to employ some sort of a standard of theological
+probability of our own whenever we assume to estimate the fruits of other
+men’s religion, yet this very standard has been begotten out of the drift
+of common life. It is the voice of human experience within us, judging and
+condemning all gods that stand athwart the pathway along which it feels
+itself to be advancing. Experience, if we take it in the largest sense, is
+thus the parent of those disbeliefs which, it was charged, were
+inconsistent with the experiential method. The inconsistency, you see, is
+immaterial, and the charge may be neglected.
+In general, then, abandoning theological criteria and testing religion by practical common sense leaves religion in its prominent historical place. From social utility perspective, saintly qualities are indispensable to world welfare. Great saints are immediate successes; smaller ones are at least messengers and pioneers of better worldly order. Let us be saints, then, if we can, whether or not we succeed visibly. But "in my Father's house are many mansions," and each must discover the kind of religion and degree of saintliness fitting his abilities and calling. Following empirical philosophy, no successes can be guaranteed and no fixed orders given.
+If we pass from disbeliefs to positive beliefs, it seems to me that there
+is not even a formal inconsistency to be laid against our method. The gods
+we stand by are the gods we need and can use, 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 use human standards to help us decide how far the religious life
+commends itself as an ideal kind of human activity. If it commends itself,
+then any theological beliefs that may inspire it, in so far forth will
+stand accredited. If not, then they will be discredited, and all without
+reference to anything but human working principles. It is but the
+elimination of the humanly unfit, and the survival of the humanly fittest,
+applied to religious beliefs; and if we look at history candidly and
+without prejudice, we have to admit that no religion has ever in the long
+run established or proved itself in any other way. Religions have
+_approved_ themselves; they have ministered to sundry vital needs which
+they found reigning. When they violated other needs too strongly, or when
+other faiths came which served the same needs better, the first religions
+were supplanted.
+This is my conclusion so far. I know this may leave you wondering why such method has been applied to such subject, despite earlier remarks on empiricism. You might ask: how can religion, believing in two worlds, be judged only by adaptation to this world's order? Should not verdict depend on its *truth*, not utility? If religion is true, its fruits are good even if they seem poorly adapted. This brings us back to theological truth. Situation becomes more complex; we cannot avoid theoretical considerations. I propose we face this responsibility. Religious people have claimed to see truth uniquely. That way is mysticism. Therefore I will now discuss mystical phenomena at length, and afterward religious philosophy.
+The needs were always many, and the tests were never sharp. So the
+reproach of vagueness and subjectivity and “on the whole”‐ness, which can
+with perfect legitimacy be addressed to the empirical method as we are
+forced to use it, is after all a reproach to which the entire life of man
+in dealing with these matters is obnoxious. No religion has ever yet owed
+its prevalence to “apodictic certainty.” In a later lecture I will ask
+whether objective certainty can ever be added by theological reasoning to
+a religion that already empirically prevails.
+                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
+One word, also, about the reproach that in following this sort of an
+empirical method we are handing ourselves over to systematic skepticism.
+Since it is impossible to deny secular alterations in our sentiments and
+needs, it would be absurd to affirm that one’s own age of the world can be
+beyond correction by the next age. Skepticism cannot, therefore, be ruled
+out by any set of thinkers as a possibility against which their
+conclusions are secure; and no empiricist ought to claim exemption from
+this universal liability. But to admit one’s liability to correction is
+one thing, and to embark upon a sea of wanton doubt is another. Of
+willfully playing into the hands of skepticism we cannot be accused. He
+who acknowledges the imperfectness of his instrument, and makes allowance
+for it in discussing his observations, is in a much better position for
+gaining truth than if he claimed his instrument to be infallible. Or is
+dogmatic or scholastic theology less doubted in point of fact for
+claiming, as it does, to be in point of right undoubtable? And if not,
+what command over truth would this kind of theology really lose if,
+instead of absolute certainty, she only claimed reasonable probability for
+her conclusions? If _we_ claim only reasonable probability, it will be as
+much as men who love the truth can ever at any given moment hope to have
+within their grasp. Pretty surely it will be more than 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 mere outward form of inalterable certainty is so precious
+to some minds that to renounce it explicitly is for them out of the
+question. They will claim it even where the facts most patently pronounce
+its folly. But the safe thing is surely to recognize that all the insights
+of creatures of a day like ourselves must be provisional. The wisest of
+critics is an altering being, subject to the better insight of the morrow,
+and right at any moment, only “up to date” and “on the whole.” When larger
+ranges of truth open, it is surely best to be able to open ourselves to
+their reception, unfettered by our previous 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 be
+absolutely uniform in this field. Ought all men to have the same religion?
+Ought they to approve the same fruits and follow the same leadings? Are
+they so like in their inner needs that, for hard and soft, for proud and
+humble, for strenuous and lazy, for healthy‐minded and despairing, exactly
+the same religious incentives are required? Or are different functions in
+the organism of humanity allotted to different types of man, so that some
+may really be the better for a religion of consolation and 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 any possible judge or critic help
+being biased in favor of the religion by which his own needs are best met?
+He aspires to impartiality; but he is too close to the struggle not to be
+to some degree a participant, and he is sure to approve most warmly those
+fruits of piety in others which taste most good and prove most nourishing
+to _him_.
+I am well aware of how anarchic much of what I say may sound. Expressing
+myself thus abstractly and briefly, I may seem to despair of the very
+notion of truth. But I beseech you to reserve your judgment until we see
+it applied to the details which lie before us. I do indeed disbelieve that
+we or any other mortal men can attain on a given day to absolutely
+incorrigible and unimprovable truth about such matters of fact as those
+with which religions deal. But I reject this dogmatic ideal not out of a
+perverse delight in intellectual instability. I am no lover of disorder
+and doubt as such. Rather do I fear to lose truth by this pretension to
+possess it already wholly. That we can gain more and more of it by moving
+always in the right direction, I believe as much as any one, and I hope to
+bring you all to my way of thinking before the termination of these
+lectures. Till then, 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 to use it upon the facts.
+                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
+In critically judging of the value of religious phenomena, it is very
+important to insist on the distinction 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.
+The word “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 get strong enough to
+“organize” themselves, they become ecclesiastical institutions with
+corporate ambitions of their own. The spirit of politics and the lust of
+dogmatic rule are then apt to enter and to 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 so much hypocrisy and tyranny and meanness and tenacity
+of superstition that in a wholesale undiscerning way they glory in saying
+that they are “down” on religion altogether. Even we who belong 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 religious experience which we are studying is that which
+lives itself out within the private breast. First‐hand individual
+experience of this kind has always appeared as a heretical sort of
+innovation to those who witnessed its birth. Naked comes it into the world
+and lonely; and it has always, for a time at least, 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 a page from his Journal, referring
+to the period of his youth when religion began to ferment within him
+seriously.
+    “I fasted much,” Fox says, “walked abroad in solitary places many
+    days, and often took my Bible, and sat in hollow trees and
+    lonesome places until night came on; and frequently in the night
+    walked mournfully about by myself; for I was a man of sorrows in
+    the time of the first workings of the Lord in me.
+    “During all this time I was never joined in profession of religion
+    with any, but gave up myself to the Lord, having forsaken all evil
+    company, taking leave of father and mother, and all other
+    relations, and traveled up and down as a stranger on the earth,
+    which way the Lord inclined my heart; 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 and profane, lest, being a tender young
+    man, I should be hurt by conversing much with either. For which
+    reason I kept much as a stranger, seeking heavenly wisdom and
+    getting knowledge from the Lord; and was brought off from outward
+    things, to rely on the Lord alone. As I had forsaken the priests,
+    so I left the separate preachers also, and those called the most
+    experienced people; for I saw there was none among them all that
+    could speak to my condition. And when all my hopes in them and in
+    all men were gone so that I had nothing outwardly to help me, nor
+    could tell what to do; then, oh then, I heard a voice which said,
+    ‘There is one, even Jesus Christ, that can speak to thy
+    condition.’ When I heard it, my heart did leap for joy. Then the
+    Lord let me see why there was none 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
+    not believe that I should ever overcome; my troubles, my sorrows,
+    and my temptations were so great that I often thought I should
+    have despaired, I was so tempted. But when Christ opened to me how
+    he was tempted by the same devil, and had overcome him, and had
+    bruised his head; and that through 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 gave me comfort but the Lord by his power.
+    I saw professors, priests, and people were whole and at ease in
+    that condition which was my misery, and they loved that which I
+    would have been rid of. But the Lord did stay my desires upon
+    himself, and my care was cast upon him alone.”(197)
+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 spread to any others,
+it becomes a definite and labeled heresy. But if it then still prove
+contagious enough to triumph over persecution, it becomes itself an
+orthodoxy; and when a religion has become an orthodoxy, its day of
+inwardness is over: the spring is dry; the faithful live at second hand
+exclusively and stone the prophets in their turn. The new church, in spite
+of whatever human goodness it may foster, can be henceforth counted on as
+a staunch ally in every attempt to stifle the spontaneous religious
+spirit, and to stop all later bubblings of the fountain from which in
+purer days 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 protective action of this
+politic sort, promptly or tardily decided on, the dealings of the Roman
+ecclesiasticism with 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 unholy entanglements and
+associations inevitably obtain. The basenesses so commonly charged to
+religion’s account are thus, almost all of them, not chargeable at all to
+religion proper, but rather to religion’s wicked practical partner, the
+spirit of corporate dominion. And the bigotries are most of them in their
+turn chargeable to religion’s wicked intellectual partner, the spirit of
+dogmatic dominion, the passion for laying down the law in the form of an
+absolutely closed‐in theoretic system. The ecclesiastical spirit in
+general is the sum of these two spirits of dominion; and I beseech you
+never to confound the phenomena of mere tribal or corporate psychology
+which it presents with those manifestations of the purely interior life
+which are the exclusive object of our study. The baiting of Jews, the
+hunting of Albigenses and Waldenses, the stoning of Quakers and ducking of
+Methodists, the murdering of Mormons and the massacring of Armenians,
+express much 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 they express the
+positive piety of the various perpetrators. Piety is the mask, the inner
+force is tribal instinct. You believe as little as I do, in spite of the
+Christian unction with which the German emperor addressed his troops upon
+their way to China, that the conduct which he suggested, and in which
+other Christian armies went beyond them, had anything whatever to do with
+the interior religious life of those concerned in the performance.
+Well, no more for past atrocities than for this atrocity should we make
+piety responsible. At most we may blame piety for not availing to check
+our natural passions, and sometimes for supplying them with hypocritical
+pretexts. But hypocrisy also imposes obligations, and with the pretext
+usually couples some restriction; and when the passion gust is over, the
+piety may bring a reaction of repentance which the irreligious natural man
+would not have shown.
+For many of the historic aberrations which have been laid to her charge,
+religion as such, then, is not to blame. Yet of the charge that over‐
+zealousness or fanaticism is one of her liabilities we cannot wholly
+acquit her, so I will next make a remark upon that point. But I will
+preface it by a preliminary remark which connects itself with much that
+follows.
+                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
+Our survey of the phenomena of saintliness has unquestionably produced in
+your minds an impression of extravagance. Is it necessary, some of you
+have asked, as one example after another came before us, to be quite so
+fantastically good as that? We who have no vocation for the extremer
+ranges of sanctity will surely be 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 need nevertheless not be imitated, and that religious
+phenomena, like all other human phenomena, are subject to the law of the
+golden mean. Political reformers accomplish their successive tasks in the
+history of nations by being blind for the time to other causes. Great
+schools of art work out the effects which it is their mission to reveal,
+at the cost of a one‐sidedness for which other schools must make amends.
+We accept a John Howard, a Mazzini, a Botticelli, a Michael Angelo, with a
+kind 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 are proud of a human nature that
+could be so passionately extreme, but we shrink from advising others to
+follow the example. The conduct we blame ourselves for not following lies
+nearer to the middle line of human effort. It is less dependent on
+particular beliefs and doctrines. It is such as wears well 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 him only conditionally, as
+one who acts faithfully according to his lights. He shows us heroism in
+one way, but the unconditionally good way is that for which no indulgence
+need be asked.
+We find that error by excess is exemplified by every saintly virtue.
+Excess, in human faculties, means usually one‐sidedness or want of
+balance; for it is hard to imagine an essential faculty too strong, if
+only other faculties equally strong be there to coöperate with it in
+action. Strong affections need a strong will; strong active powers need a
+strong intellect; strong intellect needs strong sympathies, to keep life
+steady. If the balance exist, no one faculty can possibly be too strong—we
+only get the stronger all‐round character. In the life of saints,
+technically so called, the spiritual faculties are strong, but what gives
+the impression of extravagance proves usually on examination to be a
+relative deficiency of intellect. Spiritual excitement takes pathological
+forms whenever other interests are too few and the intellect too narrow.
+We find this exemplified by all the saintly attributes in turn—devout love
+of God, purity, charity, asceticism, all may lead astray. I will run over
+these virtues in succession.
+                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
+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 a convulsive extreme.
+When an intensely loyal and narrow mind is once grasped by the feeling
+that a certain superhuman person is worthy of its exclusive devotion, one
+of the first things that happens is that it idealizes the devotion itself.
+To adequately realize the merits of the idol gets to be considered the one
+great merit of the worshiper; and the sacrifices and servilities by which
+savage tribesmen have from time immemorial exhibited their faithfulness to
+chieftains are now outbid in favor of the deity. Vocabularies are
+exhausted and languages altered in the attempt to praise him enough; death
+is looked on as gain if it attract his grateful notice; and the personal
+attitude of being his devotee becomes what one might almost call a new and
+exalted kind of professional specialty within the tribe.(198) The legends
+that gather round the lives of holy persons are fruits of this impulse to
+celebrate and glorify. The Buddha(199) and Mohammed(200) and their
+companions and many Christian saints are incrusted with a heavy jewelry of
+anecdotes which are meant to be honorific, but are simply _abgeschmackt_
+and silly, and form a touching expression of man’s misguided propensity to
+praise.
+An immediate consequence of this condition of mind is jealousy for the
+deity’s honor. How can the devotee show his loyalty better than by
+sensitiveness in this regard? The slightest affront or neglect must be
+resented, the deity’s enemies must be put to shame. In exceedingly narrow
+minds and active wills, such a care may become an engrossing
+preoccupation; and crusades have been preached and massacres instigated
+for no other reason than to remove a fancied slight upon the God.
+Theologies representing the gods as mindful of their glory, and churches
+with imperialistic policies, have conspired to fan this temper to a glow,
+so that intolerance and persecution have come to be vices associated by
+some of us inseparably with the saintly mind. They are unquestionably its
+besetting sins. The saintly temper is a moral temper, and a moral temper
+has often to be cruel. It is a partisan temper, and that is cruel. Between
+his own and Jehovah’s enemies a David knows no difference; a Catherine of
+Siena, panting to stop the warfare among Christians which was the scandal
+of her epoch, can think of no better method of union among them than a
+crusade to massacre the Turks; Luther finds no word of protest or regret
+over the atrocious tortures with which the Anabaptist leaders were put to
+death; and a Cromwell praises the Lord for delivering his enemies into his
+hands for “execution.” Politics come in in all such cases; but piety finds
+the partnership not quite unnatural. So, when “freethinkers” tell us that
+religion and fanaticism 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 the religious person’s intellect is on the stage which the
+despotic kind of God satisfies. But as soon as the 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 love of God to the
+exclusion of all practical human interests, which, though innocent enough,
+is too one‐sided to be admirable. A mind too narrow has room but for one
+kind of affection. When the love of God takes possession of such a mind,
+it expels all human loves and human uses. There is no 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 to be
+    loved by God! and loved by him to distraction [aimé jusqù’à la
+    folie]!—Margaret melted away with love at the thought of such a
+    thing. Like Saint Philip of Neri in former times, or like Saint
+    Francis Xavier, she said to God: ‘Hold back, O my God, these
+    torrents which overwhelm me, or else enlarge my capacity for their
+    reception.’ ”(201)
+    The most signal proofs of God’s love which Margaret Mary received
+    were her hallucinations of sight, touch, and hearing, and the most
+    signal in turn of these were the revelations of Christ’s sacred
+    heart, “surrounded with rays more brilliant than the Sun, and
+    transparent like a crystal. The wound which he received on the
+    cross visibly appeared upon it. There was a crown of thorns round
+    about this divine Heart, and a cross above it.” At the same time
+    Christ’s voice told her that, unable longer to contain the flames
+    of his love for mankind, he had chosen her by a miracle to spread
+    the knowledge of them. He thereupon took out her mortal heart,
+    placed it inside of his own and inflamed it, and then replaced it
+    in her breast, adding: “Hitherto thou hast taken the name of my
+    slave, 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 to establish through her instrumentality.
+    “I ask of thee to bring it about that every first Friday after the
+    week of holy Sacrament shall be made into a special holy day for
+    honoring my Heart by a general communion and by services intended
+    to make honorable amends for the indignities which it has
+    received. And I promise thee that my Heart will dilate to shed
+    with abundance the influences of its love 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 the revelations 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.”(202) Well, what were its good
+fruits for Margaret Mary’s life? Apparently little else but sufferings and
+prayers and absences of mind and swoons and ecstasies. She became
+increasingly useless about the convent, her absorption in Christ’s love,—
+    “which grew upon her daily, rendering her more and more incapable
+    of attending to external duties. They tried her in the infirmary,
+    but without much success, although her kindness, zeal, and
+    devotion were without bounds, and her charity rose to acts of such
+    a heroism that our readers would not bear the recital of them.
+    They tried her in the kitchen, but were forced to give it up as
+    hopeless—everything dropped out of her hands. The admirable
+    humility with which she made amends for her clumsiness could not
+    prevent this from being prejudicial to the order and regularity
+    which must always reign in a community. They put her in the
+    school, where the little girls cherished her, and cut pieces out
+    of her clothes [for relics] as if she were already a saint, but
+    where she was too absorbed inwardly to pay the necessary
+    attention. Poor dear sister, even less after her visions than
+    before them was she a denizen of earth, and they had to leave her
+    in her heaven.”(203)
+Poor dear sister, indeed! Amiable and good, but so feeble of intellectual
+outlook that it would be too much to ask of us, with our Protestant and
+modern education, to feel anything but indulgent pity for the kind of
+saintship which she embodies. A lower example still of theopathic
+saintliness is that 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 undeserving person.
+Assurances of his love, intimacies and caresses and compliments of the
+most absurd and puerile sort, addressed by Christ to Gertrude as an
+individual, form the tissue of this paltry‐minded recital.(204) In reading
+such a narrative, we realize the gap between the thirteenth and the
+twentieth century, and we feel that saintliness of character may yield
+almost absolutely worthless fruits 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 different
+temperament from that Being interested exclusively in dealing out personal
+favors, with whom our ancestors were so contented. Smitten as we are with
+the vision of social righteousness, a God indifferent to everything but
+adulation, and full of partiality for his individual favorites, lacks an
+essential element of largeness; and even the best professional sainthood
+of former centuries, pent in as it is to such a conception, seems to us
+curiously shallow and unedifying.
+Take Saint Teresa, for example, one of the ablest women, in many respects,
+of whose life we have the record. She had a powerful intellect of the
+practical order. She wrote admirable descriptive psychology, possessed a
+will equal to any emergency, great talent for politics and business, a
+buoyant disposition, and a first‐rate literary style. She was tenaciously
+aspiring, and put her whole life at the service of her religious ideals.
+Yet so paltry were these, according to our present 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 found such poor employment.
+In spite of the sufferings which she endured, there is a curious flavor of
+superficiality about her genius. A Birmingham anthropologist, Dr. Jordan,
+has divided the human race into two types, whom he calls “shrews” and
+“non‐shrews” respectively.(205) The shrew‐type is defined as possessing an
+“active unimpassioned temperament.” In other words, shrews are the
+“motors,” rather than the “sensories,”(206) and their expressions are as a
+rule more energetic than the feelings which appear to prompt them. Saint
+Teresa, paradoxical as such a judgment may sound, was a typical shrew, in
+this sense of the term. The bustle of her style, as well as of her life,
+proves it. Not only must she receive unheard‐of personal favors and
+spiritual graces from her Saviour, but she must immediately write about
+them and _exploiter_ them professionally, and use her expertness to give
+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 stereotyped humility and return
+upon herself, as covered with “confusion” at each new manifestation of
+God’s singular partiality for a person so unworthy, are typical of
+shrewdom: a paramountly feeling nature would be objectively lost in
+gratitude, and silent. She had some public instincts, it is true; she
+hated the Lutherans, and longed for the church’s triumph over them; but in
+the main her idea of religion seems to have been that of an endless
+amatory flirtation—if one may say so without irreverence—between the
+devotee and the deity; and apart from helping younger nuns to go in this
+direction by the inspiration of her example and instruction, there is
+absolutely no human use in her, or sign of any general human interest. Yet
+the spirit of her age, far from rebuking her, exalted her as superhuman.
+We have to pass a similar judgment on the whole notion of saintship based
+on merits. Any God who, 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 of
+favor, 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 individuals by the Almighty, he
+stretched the soul’s imagination and saved theology from puerility.
+So much for mere devotion, divorced from the intellectual conceptions
+which might guide it towards bearing useful human fruit.
+                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
+The next saintly virtue in which we find excess is Purity. In theopathic
+characters, like those whom we have just considered, the love of God must
+not be mixed with any other love. Father and mother, sisters, brothers,
+and friends are felt as interfering distractions; for sensitiveness and
+narrowness, when they occur together, as they often do, require above all
+things a simplified world to dwell in. Variety and confusion are too much
+for their powers of comfortable adaptation. But whereas your aggressive
+pietist reaches his unity objectively, by forcibly stamping disorder and
+divergence 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, we have the church _fugient_, as one might call it, with its
+hermitages, monasteries, and sectarian organizations, both churches
+pursuing the same object—to unify the life,(207) and simplify the
+spectacle presented to the soul. A mind extremely sensitive to inner
+discords will drop one external relation 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 at last seclusion, with a subdivision of the day into hours for
+stated religious acts, is the only thing that can be borne. The lives of
+saints are a history of successive renunciations of complication, one form
+of contact with the outer life being dropped after another, to save the
+purity of inner tone.(208) “Is it not better,” a young sister asks her
+Superior, “that I should not speak at all during the hour of recreation,
+so as not to run the risk, by speaking, of falling into some sin of which
+I might not be conscious?”(209) If the life remains a social one at all,
+those who take part in it must follow one identical rule. Embosomed in
+this monotony, the zealot for purity feels clean and free once more. The
+minuteness of uniformity maintained in certain sectarian communities,
+whether monastic or not, is something almost inconceivable to a man of the
+world. Costume, phraseology, hours, and habits are absolutely stereotyped,
+and there is no doubt that some persons are so made as to find in this
+stability an incomparable kind of mental rest.
+We have no time to multiply examples, so I will let the case of Saint
+Louis of Gonzaga serve as a type of excess in purification. I think you
+will agree that this youth carried the elimination of the external and
+discordant to a point 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 to her the most agreeable of possible
+    presents. Without delay, then, and with all the fervor there was
+    in him, joyous of heart, and burning with love, he made his vow of
+    perpetual chastity. Mary accepted the offering of his innocent
+    heart, and obtained for him from God, as a recompense, the
+    extraordinary grace of never feeling during his entire life the
+    slightest touch of temptation against the virtue of purity. This
+    was an altogether exceptional favor, rarely accorded even to
+    Saints themselves, and all the more marvelous in that Louis dwelt
+    always in courts and among great folks, where danger and
+    opportunity are so unusually frequent. It is true that Louis from
+    his earliest childhood had shown a natural repugnance for whatever
+    might be impure or unvirginal, and even for relations of any sort
+    whatever between persons of opposite sex. But this made it all the
+    more surprising that he should, especially since this vow, feel it
+    necessary to have recourse to such a number of expedients for
+    protecting against even the shadow of danger the virginity which
+    he had thus consecrated. One might suppose that if any one could
+    have contented himself with the ordinary precautions, prescribed
+    for all Christians, it would assuredly have been he. But no! In
+    the use of preservatives and means of defense, in flight from the
+    most insignificant occasions, from every possibility of peril,
+    just as in the mortification of his flesh, he went farther than
+    the majority of saints. He, who by an extraordinary protection of
+    God’s grace was never tempted, measured all his steps as if he
+    were threatened on every side by particular dangers. Thenceforward
+    he never raised his eyes, either when walking in the streets, or
+    when in society. Not only did he avoid all business with females
+    even more scrupulously than before, but he renounced all
+    conversation and every kind of social recreation with them,
+    although his father tried to make him take part; and he commenced
+    only too early to deliver his innocent body to austerities of
+    every kind.”(210)
+At the age of twelve, we read of this young man that “if by chance his
+mother sent one of her maids of honor to him with a message, he never
+allowed her to come in, but listened to her through the barely opened
+door, and dismissed her immediately. He did not like to be alone with his
+own mother, whether at table or in conversation; and when the rest of the
+company withdrew, he sought also a pretext for retiring.... Several great
+ladies, relatives of his, he avoided learning to know even by sight; and
+he made a sort of treaty with his father, engaging promptly and readily to
+accede to all his wishes, if he might only be excused from all visits to
+ladies.” (Ibid., p. 71.)
+When he was seventeen years old Louis joined the Jesuit order(211) against
+his father’s passionate entreaties, for he was heir of a princely house;
+and when a year later the father died, he took the loss as a “particular
+attention” to himself on God’s part, and wrote letters of stilted good
+advice, as from a spiritual superior, to his grieving mother. He soon
+became so good a monk that if any one asked him the number of his brothers
+and sisters, he had to reflect and count them over before replying. A
+Father asked him one day if he were never troubled by the thought of his
+family, 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 pleasure in it. On the contrary, in
+the hospital, he used to seek for whatever was most disgusting, and
+eagerly snatch the bandages of ulcers, etc., from the hands of his
+companions. He avoided worldly talk, and immediately tried to turn every
+conversation on to pious subjects, or else he remained silent. He
+systematically refused to notice his surroundings. Being ordered one day
+to bring a book from the rector’s seat in the refectory, he had to ask
+where the rector sat, for in the three months he had 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 a grave sin against modesty. He cultivated
+silence, as preserving from sins of the tongue; and his greatest penance
+was the limit which his superiors set to his bodily penances. He sought
+after false accusations 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 to him
+without first obtaining the permission of the superior, who, as such,
+stood in the place of God, and transmitted his orders.
+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 altar in the chapel
+devoted to him in a certain church in Rome “is embosomed in flowers,
+arranged with exquisite taste; and a pile of letters may be seen at its
+foot, written to the Saint by young men and women, and directed to
+‘Paradiso.’ They are supposed to be burnt unread except by San Luigi, who
+must 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.(212)
+Our final judgment of the worth of such a life as this will depend largely
+on our conception of God, and of the sort of conduct he is best pleased
+with in his creatures. The Catholicism of the sixteenth century paid
+little heed to social righteousness; and to leave the world to the devil
+whilst saving 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 moral sentiment of which
+I spoke, deemed an essential element of worth in character; and to be of
+some public or private use is also reckoned as a species of divine
+service. Other early Jesuits, especially the missionaries among them, the
+Xaviers, Brébeufs, Jogues, were objective minds, and fought in their way
+for the world’s welfare; so their lives to‐day inspire us. But when the
+intellect, as in this Louis, is originally no larger than a pin’s head,
+and cherishes ideas of God of corresponding smallness, the result,
+notwithstanding the heroism put forth, is on the whole repulsive. Purity,
+we see in the object‐lesson, is _not_ the one thing needful; and it is
+better that a life should contract many 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 of Tenderness and Charity. Here saintliness has to face the
+charge of preserving the unfit, and breeding parasites and beggars.
+“Resist not evil,” “Love your enemies,” these are saintly maxims of which
+men of this world find it hard to speak without impatience. Are the men of
+this world right, 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, and the 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 the recipients 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 it either work by false means or address itself to the wrong recipient.
+Thus no critic or estimator of the value of conduct can confine himself to
+the actor’s animus alone, apart from the other elements of the
+performance. As there is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those
+who hear it, so reasonable arguments, challenges to magnanimity, and
+appeals to sympathy or justice, are folly when we are dealing with human
+crocodiles and boa‐constrictors. The saint may simply give the universe
+into the hands of the enemy by his trustfulness. He may by non‐resistance
+cut off his own survival.
+Herbert Spencer tells us that the perfect man’s conduct will appear
+perfect only when the environment is perfect: to no inferior environment
+is it suitably adapted. We may paraphrase this by 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 are saints, 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
+actually is, the virtues of sympathy, charity, and non‐resistance may be,
+and often have been, manifested in excess. The powers of darkness have
+systematically taken advantage of them. The whole modern scientific
+organization of charity is a consequence of the failure of simply giving
+alms. The whole history of constitutional government is a commentary on
+the excellence of resisting evil, and when one 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 of Tolstoi, you believe in fighting fire with fire, in
+shooting down usurpers, locking up thieves, and freezing out vagabonds and
+swindlers.
+And yet you are sure, as I am sure, that were the world confined to these
+hard‐headed, hard‐hearted, and hard‐fisted methods exclusively, were there
+no one prompt to help a brother first, and find out afterwards whether he
+were worthy; no one willing to drown his private wrongs in pity for the
+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 of prudence; 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, be prophetic. Nay, innumerable times they have proved
+themselves prophetic. Treating those whom they met, in spite of the past,
+in spite of all appearances, as worthy, they have stimulated them to _be_
+worthy, miraculously transformed them by their radiant example and by the
+challenge of their expectation.
+From this point of view we may admit the human charity which we find in
+all saints, and the great excess of it which we find in some saints, to be
+a genuinely creative social force, tending to make 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 souls are unfathomable. So many who seemed irretrievably hardened
+have in point of fact been softened, converted, regenerated, in ways that
+amazed the subjects even more than they surprised the spectators, that we
+never can be sure in advance of any man that his salvation by the way of
+love is hopeless. We have no right to speak of human crocodiles and boa‐
+constrictors as of fixedly incurable 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
+long ago made our ancestors familiar with the idea that every soul is
+virtually sacred. Since Christ died for us all without exception, St. Paul
+said, we must despair of no one. This belief in the essential sacredness
+of every one expresses itself to‐day in all sorts of humane customs and
+reformatory institutions, and in a growing aversion to the death penalty
+and to brutality in punishment. The saints, with their extravagance of
+human tenderness, are the great torch‐bearers of this belief, the tip of
+the wedge, the clearers of the darkness. Like the single drops which
+sparkle in the sun as they 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’s
+affairs to be preposterous. Yet they are impregnators of the world,
+vivifiers and animaters of potentialities of goodness which but for them
+would lie forever dormant. It is not possible to be quite as mean as we
+naturally are, when they have passed before us. One fire kindles another;
+and without that over‐trust in human worth which they show, the rest of us
+would lie in spiritual stagnancy.
+Momentarily considered, then, the saint may waste his tenderness and be
+the dupe and victim of his 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
+the risk of it. No one who is not willing to try charity, to try non‐
+resistance as the saint is always willing, can tell whether these methods
+will or will not succeed. When they do succeed, they are far more
+powerfully successful than force or worldly prudence. Force destroys
+enemies; and the best that can be said of prudence is that it keeps what
+we already have in safety. But non‐resistance, when successful, turns
+enemies into friends; and charity regenerates its objects. These saintly
+methods are, as I said, creative energies; and genuine saints find in the
+elevated excitement with which their faith endows them an authority and
+impressiveness which makes them irresistible in situations where men of
+shallower nature cannot get on at all without the use of worldly prudence.
+This practical proof that worldly wisdom may be safely transcended is the
+saint’s magic gift to mankind.(213) Not only does his vision of a better
+world console us for the generally prevailing 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
+effective ferment of goodness, a slow transmuter of the earthly into a
+more heavenly order.
+In this respect the Utopian dreams of social justice in which many
+contemporary socialists and anarchists indulge are, in spite of their
+impracticability and non‐adaptation to present environmental conditions,
+analogous to the saint’s belief in an existent kingdom of heaven. They
+help 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 without argument a virtue liable to extravagance and excess. The
+optimism and refinement of the modern imagination has, as I have already
+said elsewhere, changed the attitude of the church towards corporeal
+mortification, and a Suso or a Saint Peter of Alcantara(214) appear to us
+to‐day rather in the light of tragic mountebanks than of sane men
+inspiring us with respect. If the inner dispositions are right, we ask,
+what need of all this torment, this violation of the outer nature? It
+keeps the outer nature too important. Any one who is genuinely emancipated
+from the flesh will look on pleasures and pains, abundance and privation,
+as alike irrelevant and indifferent. He can engage in actions and
+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 really unattached to the fruits of
+action, one may mix in the world with equanimity. I quoted in a former
+lecture Saint Augustine’s antinomian saying: If you only love God enough,
+you may safely follow all your inclinations. “He needs no devotional
+practices,” is one of Ramakrishna’s maxims, “whose heart is moved to tears
+at the mere mention of the name of Hari.”(215) And the Buddha, in pointing
+out what he called “the middle way” to his disciples, told them to abstain
+from both extremes, excessive mortification being as unreal and unworthy
+as mere desire and pleasure. The only perfect life, he said, is that of
+inner wisdom, which makes one thing as indifferent to us as another, and
+thus leads to rest, to peace, and to Nirvâna.(216)
+We find accordingly that as ascetic saints have grown older, and directors
+of conscience more experienced, 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’s service, health must not be sacrificed to mortification. The general
+optimism and healthy‐mindedness of liberal Protestant circles to‐day makes
+mortification for mortification’s sake repugnant to us. We can no longer
+sympathize with cruel deities, and the notion that God can take delight in
+the spectacle of sufferings self‐inflicted in his honor is abhorrent. In
+consequence of all these motives you probably are disposed, unless some
+special utility can be shown in some individual’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 the general good intention of asceticism and the
+uselessness of some of the particular acts of which it may be guilty,
+ought to rehabilitate it in our esteem. For in its spiritual meaning
+asceticism stands for nothing less than for the essence of the twice‐born
+philosophy. It symbolizes, lamely enough no doubt, but sincerely, the
+belief that there is an element of real wrongness in this world, which is
+neither to be ignored nor evaded, but which must be squarely met and
+overcome by an appeal to the 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 of
+ignoring. Let a man who, by fortunate health and circumstances, escapes
+the suffering of any great amount of evil in his own person, also close
+his eyes to it as it exists in the wider universe outside his private
+experience, and he will be quit of it altogether, and can sail through
+life happily on a healthy‐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, unredeemed and
+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. It accepts, in lieu of a real
+deliverance, what is a lucky personal accident merely, a cranny to escape
+by. It leaves the general world unhelped and still in the clutch of Satan.
+The real deliverance, the twice‐born folk insist, must be of universal
+application. Pain and wrong and death must be fairly met and overcome in
+higher excitement, or else their sting remains essentially unbroken. If
+one has ever 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 with
+difficulty, it seems to me, continue his own career of worldly prosperity
+without suspecting that he may 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 neither farce nor genteel comedy, it says, but
+something we must sit at in mourning garments, hoping its bitter taste
+will purge us of our folly. The wild and the heroic are indeed such rooted
+parts of it that healthy‐mindedness pure and simple, with its sentimental
+optimism, can hardly be regarded by any thinking man as a serious
+solution. Phrases of neatness, cosiness, and comfort can never be an
+answer to the sphinx’s riddle.
+In these remarks I am leaning only upon mankind’s common instinct for
+reality, which in point of fact has always held the world to be
+essentially a theatre for heroism. In heroism, we feel, life’s supreme
+mystery is hidden. We tolerate no one who has no capacity whatever for it
+in any direction. On the other hand, no matter what a man’s frailties
+otherwise may be, if he be willing to risk death, and still more if he
+suffer it heroically, in the service he has chosen, the fact consecrates
+him forever. Inferior to ourselves in this or that way, if yet we cling to
+life, and he is able “to fling it away like a flower” as caring nothing
+for it, we account him in the deepest way our born superior. Each of us in
+his own person feels that a high‐hearted indifference to life would
+expiate all his shortcomings.
+The metaphysical mystery, thus recognized by common sense, that he who
+feeds on death that feeds on men possesses life supereminently and
+excellently, and meets best the secret demands of the 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 the unenlightened intellect of former times may have let it wander,
+asceticism must, I believe, be acknowledged to go with the profounder way
+of handling the gift of existence. Naturalistic optimism is mere syllabub
+and flattery and sponge‐cake in comparison. The practical course of action
+for us, as religious men, would therefore, it seems to me, not be simply
+to turn our backs upon the ascetic impulse, as most of us to‐day turn
+them, but rather to discover some outlet for it of which the fruits in the
+way of privation and hardship might be objectively useful. The older
+monastic asceticism occupied itself with pathetic futilities, or
+terminated in the mere egotism of the individual, increasing his own
+perfection.(217) But is it not possible for us to discard most of these
+older forms of mortification, and yet find saner channels for the heroism
+which inspired them?
+Does not, for example, the worship of material luxury and wealth, which
+constitutes so large a portion of the “spirit” of our age, make somewhat
+for effeminacy and unmanliness? Is not the exclusively sympathetic and
+facetious way in which most children are brought up to‐day—so different
+from the education of a hundred years ago, especially in evangelical
+circles—in danger, in spite of its many advantages, of developing a
+certain trashiness of fibre? Are there not hereabouts some points of
+application for a renovated and revised ascetic discipline?
+Many of you would recognize such dangers, but would point to athletics,
+militarism, and individual and national enterprise and adventure as the
+remedies. These contemporary ideals are quite as remarkable for the energy
+with which they make for heroic standards of life, as contemporary
+religion is remarkable for the way in which it neglects them.(218) War and
+adventure assuredly keep all who engage in them from treating themselves
+too tenderly. They demand 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 and
+cold, squalor and filth, cease to have any deterrent operation whatever.
+Death turns into a commonplace matter, and its usual power to check our
+action vanishes. With the annulling of these customary inhibitions, ranges
+of new energy are set free, and life seems cast upon a higher plane of
+power.
+The beauty of war in this respect is that it is so congruous with ordinary
+human nature. Ancestral evolution has made us all potential warriors; so
+the most insignificant individual, when thrown into an army in the field,
+is weaned from whatever excess of tenderness towards his precious person
+he may 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 a world‐wide difference in all their spiritual
+concomitants.
+“ ‘Live and let live,’ ” writes a clear‐headed Austrian officer, “is no
+device for an army. Contempt for one’s own comrades, for the troops of the
+enemy, and, above all, fierce contempt for one’s own person, are what war
+demands of every one. Far better is it for an army to be too savage, too
+cruel, 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 a reasoning and thinking man. The measure
+of goodness in him is his possible use in war. War, and even peace,
+require of the soldier absolutely peculiar standards of morality. The
+recruit brings with him 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.”(219)
+These words are of course literally true. The immediate aim of the
+soldier’s life is, as Moltke said, destruction, and nothing but
+destruction; and whatever constructions wars result in are remote and non‐
+military. Consequently the soldier cannot train himself to be too
+feelingless to all those usual sympathies and respects, whether for
+persons or for things, that make for conservation. Yet the fact remains
+that war is a school of strenuous life and heroism; and, being in the line
+of aboriginal instinct, is the only school that as yet is universally
+available. But when we gravely ask ourselves whether this wholesale
+organization of irrationality and crime be our only bulwark against
+effeminacy, we stand aghast at the thought, and think more kindly of
+ascetic religion. One hears of the mechanical equivalent of heat. What we
+now need to discover in the social realm is the moral equivalent of war:
+something heroic that will speak to men as universally as war does, and
+yet will be as compatible with their spiritual selves as war has proved
+itself to be incompatible. I have often thought that in the old monkish
+poverty‐worship, in spite of the pedantry which infested it, there might
+be something like that moral equivalent of war which we are seeking. May
+not voluntarily 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 popular applause or lies or circumlocutions; and when one sees
+the way in which wealth‐getting enters as an ideal into the very bone and
+marrow of our generation, one wonders whether a revival of the belief that
+poverty is a worthy religious vocation may not be “the transformation of
+military courage,” 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 be boldly sung. We have grown literally afraid to be
+poor. We despise any one who elects to be poor in order to simplify and
+save his inner life. If he does not join the general scramble and pant
+with the money‐making street, we deem him spiritless and lacking in
+ambition. We have lost the power even of imagining what the ancient
+idealization of poverty could have meant: the liberation from material
+attachments, the unbribed soul, the manlier indifference, the paying our
+way by what we are or do and not by what we have, the right to fling away
+our life at any moment irresponsibly,—the more athletic trim, in short,
+the moral fighting shape. When we of the so‐called better classes are
+scared as men were never scared in history at material ugliness and
+hardship; when we put off marriage 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
+and irreligious a state of opinion.
+It is true that so far as wealth gives time for ideal ends and exercise to
+ideal energies, wealth is better than poverty and ought to be chosen. But
+wealth does this in only a portion of the actual cases. Elsewhere the
+desire to gain wealth and the fear to lose it are our chief breeders of
+cowardice 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 to
+unpopular causes. We need no longer hold our tongues or fear to vote the
+revolutionary or reformatory 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 the spirit,
+and our example would help to set free our generation. The cause would
+need its funds, but we 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 of poverty 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 are manifested 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 these are exhibited in the saintly type of character.
+Single attributes of saintliness may, it is true, be temperamental
+endowments, found in non‐religious individuals. But the whole group of
+them forms a combination which, as such, is religious, for it seems to
+flow from the sense of the divine as from its psychological centre.
+Whoever possesses strongly this sense comes naturally to think that the
+smallest details of this world derive infinite significance from their
+relation to an unseen divine order. The thought of this order yields him a
+superior denomination of happiness, and a steadfastness of soul with which
+no other can compare. In social relations his serviceability is exemplary;
+he abounds in impulses to help. His help is inward as well as outward, for
+his sympathy reaches souls as well as bodies, and kindles unsuspected
+faculties therein. Instead of placing happiness where common men place it,
+in comfort, he places it in a higher kind of inner excitement, which
+converts discomforts into sources of cheer and annuls unhappiness. So he
+turns his back upon no duty, however thankless; and when we are in need of
+assistance, we can count upon 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 personal
+pretensions which so obstruct our ordinary social intercourse, and his
+purity gives us in him a clean man for a companion. Felicity, purity,
+charity, patience, self‐severity,—these are splendid excellencies, 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 intellectual outlook 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
+very intensity of his fidelity to the paltry ideals with which an inferior
+intellect may inspire him, a saint can be even more objectionable and
+damnable than a superficial carnal man would be in the same situation. We
+must judge him not sentimentally only, and not in isolation, but using our
+own intellectual standards, placing him in his environment, and estimating
+his total function.
+Now in the matter of intellectual standards, we must bear in mind that it
+is unfair, where we find narrowness of mind, always to impute it as a vice
+to the individual, for in religious and theological matters he probably
+absorbs his narrowness from his generation. Moreover, we must not confound
+the essentials of saintliness, which are those general passions of which I
+have spoken, with its accidents, which are the special determinations of
+these passions at any historical moment. In these determinations the
+saints will usually be loyal to the temporary idols of their tribe. Taking
+refuge in monasteries was as much an idol of the tribe in the middle ages,
+as bearing a hand in the world’s work is to‐day. Saint Francis or Saint
+Bernard, were they living to‐day, would undoubtedly be leading consecrated
+lives of some sort, but quite as undoubtedly they would not lead them in
+retirement. Our animosity to special historic manifestations must not lead
+us to give away the saintly impulses in their essential nature to the
+tender mercies of inimical critics.
+The most inimical critic of the saintly impulses whom I know is Nietzsche.
+He contrasts them with the worldly passions as we find these embodied in
+the predaceous military character, altogether to the advantage of the
+latter. Your born saint, it must be confessed, has something about him
+which often makes the gorge of a carnal man rise, so it will be worth
+while to consider the contrast in question more fully.
+Dislike of the saintly nature seems to be a negative result of the
+biologically useful instinct of welcoming leadership, and glorifying the
+chief of the tribe. The chief is the potential, if not the actual tyrant,
+the masterful, overpowering man of prey. We confess our inferiority and
+grovel before him. We quail under his glance, and are at the same time
+proud of owning so dangerous a lord. Such instinctive and submissive hero‐
+worship must have been indispensable in primeval tribal life. In the
+endless wars of those times, leaders were absolutely needed for the
+tribe’s survival. If there were any tribes who owned no leaders, they can
+have left no issue to narrate their doom. The leaders always had good
+consciences, for conscience in them coalesced with will, and those who
+looked on their face were as much smitten with wonder at their freedom
+from inner restraint as with awe at the energy of their outward
+performances.
+Compared with these beaked and taloned graspers of the world, saints are
+herbivorous animals, tame and harmless barn‐yard poultry. There are saints
+whose beard you may, if you ever care to, pull with impunity. Such a man
+excites no thrills of wonder veiled in terror; his conscience is full of
+scruples and returns; he stuns us neither by his inward freedom nor his
+outward power; and unless he found within us an altogether different
+faculty of admiration to appeal to, we should pass him by with contempt.
+In point of fact, he does appeal to a different faculty. Reënacted in
+human nature is the fable of the wind, the sun, and the traveler. The
+sexes embody the discrepancy. The woman loves the man the more admiringly
+the stormier he shows himself, and the world deifies its rulers the more
+for being willful and unaccountable. But the woman in turn subjugates the
+man by the mystery of gentleness in beauty, and the saint has always
+charmed the world by something similar. Mankind is susceptible and
+suggestible in opposite directions, and the rivalry of influences is
+unsleeping. The saintly and the worldly ideal pursue their feud in
+literature as much as in real life.
+For Nietzsche the saint represents little but sneakingness and
+slavishness. He is the sophisticated invalid, the degenerate _par
+excellence_, the man of insufficient vitality. His prevalence would put
+the human type in danger.
+    “The sick are the greatest danger for the well. The weaker, not
+    the stronger, are the strong’s undoing. It is not _fear_ of our
+    fellow‐man, which we should wish to see diminished; for fear
+    rouses those who are strong to become terrible in turn themselves,
+    and preserves the hard‐earned and successful type of humanity.
+    What is to be dreaded by us more than any other doom is not fear,
+    but rather the great disgust, not fear, but rather the great
+    pity—disgust and pity for our human fellows.... The _morbid_ are
+    our greatest peril—not the ‘bad’ men, not the predatory beings.
+    Those born wrong, the miscarried, the broken—they it is, the
+    _weakest_, who are undermining the vitality of the race, poisoning
+    our trust in life, and putting humanity in question. Every look of
+    them is a sigh,—‘Would I were something other! I am sick and tired
+    of what I am.’ In this swamp‐soil of self‐contempt, every
+    poisonous weed flourishes, and all so small, so secret, so
+    dishonest, and so sweetly rotten. Here swarm the worms of
+    sensitiveness and resentment; here the air smells odious with
+    secrecy, with what is not to be acknowledged; here is woven
+    endlessly the net of the meanest of conspiracies, the conspiracy
+    of those who suffer against those who succeed and are victorious;
+    here the very aspect of the victorious is hated—as if health,
+    success, strength, pride, and the sense of power were in
+    themselves things vicious, for which one ought eventually to make
+    bitter expiation. Oh, how these people would themselves like to
+    inflict the expiation, how they thirst to be the hangmen! And all
+    the while their duplicity never confesses their hatred to be
+    hatred.”(220)
+Poor Nietzsche’s antipathy is itself sickly enough, but we all know what
+he means, and he expresses well the clash between the two ideals. The
+carnivorous‐minded “strong man,” the adult male and cannibal, can see
+nothing but mouldiness and morbidness in the saint’s gentleness and self‐
+severity, and regards him with pure loathing. The whole feud revolves
+essentially upon two pivots: Shall the seen world or the unseen world be
+our chief sphere of adaptation? and must our means of adaptation in this
+seen world be aggressiveness or non‐resistance?
+The debate is serious. In some sense and to some degree both worlds must
+be acknowledged and taken account of; and in the seen world both
+aggressiveness and non‐resistance are needful. It is a question of
+emphasis, of more or less. Is the saint’s type or the strong‐man’s type
+the more ideal?
+It has often been supposed, and even now, I think, it is supposed by most
+persons, that there can be one intrinsically ideal type of human
+character. A certain kind of man, it is imagined, must be the best man
+absolutely and apart from the utility of his function, apart from
+economical considerations. The saint’s type, and the knight’s or
+gentleman’s type, have always been rival claimants of this absolute
+ideality; and in the ideal of military religious orders both types were in
+a manner blended. According to the empirical philosophy, however, all
+ideals are matters of relation. It would be absurd, for example, to ask
+for a definition of “the ideal horse,” so long as dragging drays and
+running races, bearing children, and jogging about with tradesmen’s
+packages all remain as indispensable differentiations of equine function.
+You may take what you call a general all‐round animal as a compromise, but
+he will be inferior to any horse of a more specialized type, in some one
+particular direction. We must not forget this now when, in discussing
+saintliness, we ask if it be an ideal type of manhood. We must test it by
+its economical relations.
+I think that the method which Mr. Spencer uses in his Data of Ethics will
+help to fix our opinion. Ideality in conduct is altogether a matter of
+adaptation. A society where all were invariably aggressive would destroy
+itself by inner friction, and in a society where some are aggressive,
+others must be non‐resistant, if there is to be any kind of order. This is
+the present constitution of society, and to the mixture we owe many of our
+blessings. But the aggressive members of society are always tending to
+become bullies, robbers, and swindlers; and no one believes that such a
+state of things as we now live in is the millennium. It is meanwhile quite
+possible to conceive an imaginary society in which there should be no
+aggressiveness, but only sympathy and fairness,—any small community of
+true friends now realizes such a society. Abstractly considered, such a
+society on a large scale would be the millennium, for every good thing
+might be realized there with no expense of friction. To such a millennial
+society the saint would be entirely adapted. His peaceful modes of appeal
+would be efficacious over his companions, and there would be no one extant
+to take advantage of his non‐resistance. The saint is therefore abstractly
+a higher type of man than the “strong man,” because he is adapted to the
+highest society conceivable, whether that society ever be concretely
+possible or not. The strong man would immediately tend by his presence to
+make that society deteriorate. It would become inferior in everything save
+in a certain kind of bellicose excitement, dear to men as they now are.
+But if we turn from the abstract question to the actual situation, we find
+that the individual saint may be well or ill adapted, according to
+particular circumstances. There is, in short, no absoluteness in the
+excellence of sainthood. It must be confessed that as far as this world
+goes, any one who makes an out‐and‐out saint of himself does so at his
+peril. If he is not a large enough man, he may appear more insignificant
+and contemptible, for all his saintship, than if he had remained a
+worldling.(221) Accordingly religion has seldom been so radically taken in
+our Western world that the devotee could not mix it with some worldly
+temper. It has always found good men who could follow most of its
+impulses, but who stopped short when it came to non‐resistance. Christ
+himself was fierce upon occasion. Cromwells, Stonewall Jacksons, Gordons,
+show that Christians can be strong men also.
+How is success to be absolutely measured when there are so many
+environments and so many ways of looking at the adaptation? It cannot be
+measured absolutely; the verdict will vary according to the point of view
+adopted. From the biological point of view Saint Paul was a failure,
+because he was beheaded. Yet he was magnificently adapted to the larger
+environment of history; and so far as any saint’s example is a leaven of
+righteousness in the world, and draws it in the direction of more
+prevalent habits of saintliness, he is a success, no matter what his
+immediate bad fortune may be. The greatest saints, the spiritual heroes
+whom every one acknowledges, the Francises, Bernards, Luthers, Loyolas,
+Wesleys, Channings, Moodys, Gratrys, the Phillips Brookses, the Agnes
+Joneses, Margaret Hallahans, and Dora Pattisons, are successes from the
+outset. They show themselves, and there is no question; every one
+perceives their strength and stature. Their sense of mystery in things,
+their passion, their goodness, irradiate about them and enlarge their
+outlines while they soften them. They are like pictures with an atmosphere
+and background; and, placed alongside of them, the strong men of this
+world and no other seem as dry as sticks, as hard and crude as blocks of
+stone or brickbats.
+In a general way, then, and “on the whole,”(222) our abandonment of
+theological criteria, and our testing of religion by practical common
+sense and the empirical method, leave it in possession of its towering
+place in history. Economically, the saintly group of qualities is
+indispensable to the world’s welfare. The great saints are immediate
+successes; the smaller ones are at least heralds and harbingers, and they
+may be leavens also, of a better mundane order. Let us be saints, then, if
+we can, whether or not we succeed visibly and temporally. But in our
+Father’s house are many mansions, and each of us must discover for himself
+the kind of religion and the amount of saintship which best comports with
+what he believes to be his powers and feels to be his truest mission and
+vocation. There are no successes to be guaranteed and no set orders to be
+given to individuals, so long as we follow the methods of empirical
+philosophy.
+                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
+This is my conclusion so far. I know that on some of your minds it leaves
+a feeling of wonder that such a method should have been applied to such a
+subject, and this in spite of all those remarks about empiricism which I
+made at the beginning of Lecture XIII.(223) How, you say, can religion,
+which believes in two worlds and an invisible order, be estimated by the
+adaptation of its fruits to this world’s order alone? It is its _truth_,
+not its utility, you insist, upon which our verdict ought to depend. If
+religion is true, its fruits are good fruits, even though in this world
+they should prove uniformly ill adapted and full of naught but pathos. It
+goes back, then, after all, to the question of the truth of theology. The
+plot inevitably thickens upon us; we cannot escape theoretical
+considerations. I propose, then, that to some degree we face the
+responsibility. Religious persons have often, though not uniformly,
+professed to see truth in a special manner. That manner is known as
+mysticism. I will consequently now proceed to treat at some length of
+mystical phenomena, and after that, though more briefly, I will consider
+religious philosophy.
 ## LECTURES XVI AND XVII. MYSTICISM.
+Throughout these lectures, I have raised points and left them unresolved for the subject of mysticism. The time has finally come to confront it in good earnest and wind up those broken threads together. Personal religious experience is rooted in mystical states of consciousness. For us, studying personal experience exclusively, these states form the vital chapter that illuminates all others. My own temperament prevents me from enjoying them directly, so I speak second-hand. Yet I will be as objective as possible, and hope to convince you of their reality and paramount importance.
+Over and over again in these lectures I have raised points and left them
+open and unfinished until we should have come to the subject of Mysticism.
+Some of you, I fear, may have smiled as you noted my reiterated
+postponements. But now the hour has come when mysticism must be faced in
+good earnest, and those broken threads wound up together. One may say
+truly, I think, that personal 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, such
+states of consciousness ought to form the vital chapter from which the
+other chapters get their light. Whether my treatment of mystical states
+will shed more light or darkness, I do not know, for my own constitution
+shuts me out from their enjoyment almost entirely, and I can speak of them
+only at second hand. But though forced to look upon the subject so
+externally, I will be as objective and receptive as I can; and I think I
+shall at least succeed in convincing you of the reality of the states in
+question, and of the paramount importance of their function.
+What does "mystical states of consciousness" mean? The word is often abused as an insult for vague opinions or supernatural beliefs. To keep it useful, I propose four characteristics that justify calling an experience mystical for our purposes.
+First of all, then, I ask, What does the expression “mystical states of
+consciousness” mean? How do we part off mystical states from other states?
+. *Ineffability.* The person experiencing a mystical state immediately says it defies expression—no adequate account can be given in words. Its quality must be experienced directly; it cannot be taught. In this respect, mystical states are more like feelings than intellect.
+The words “mysticism” and “mystical” are often used as terms of mere
+reproach, to throw at any opinion which we regard as vague and vast and
+sentimental, and without a base in either facts or logic. 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 ambiguous synonyms. 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 justify us in
+calling it mystical for the purpose of the present lectures. In this way
+we shall save verbal disputation, and the recriminations that generally go
+therewith.
+> **Quote:** One must have musical ears to know the value 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 to consider him weak‐minded or absurd.
+. _Ineffability._—The handiest of the marks by which I classify a state
+of mind as mystical is negative. The subject of it immediately says that
+it defies expression, that no adequate report of its contents can be given
+in words. It follows from this that its quality must be directly
+experienced; it cannot be imparted or transferred to others. In this
+peculiarity mystical states are more like states of feeling than like
+states of intellect. No one can make clear to another who has never had a
+certain feeling, in what the quality or worth of it consists. One must
+have musical ears to know the value 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 to consider him weak‐minded or absurd. The mystic finds that most
+of us accord to his experiences an equally incompetent treatment.
+The mystic finds most people treat his experiences with similar incomprehension.
+. _Noetic quality._—Although so similar to states of feeling, mystical
+states seem to those who experience them to be also states of knowledge.
+They are states of insight into depths of truth unplumbed by the
+discursive intellect. They are illuminations, revelations, full of
+significance and importance, all inarticulate though they remain; and as a
+rule they carry with them a curious sense of authority for after‐time.
+. *Noetic quality.* Though resembling feelings, mystical states are also perceived as knowledge—insights into truths the logical intellect cannot reach. They are illuminations full of significance, carrying a curious sense of authority that persists long after they end.
+. *Transiency.* Mystical states cannot be sustained long—usually half an hour to two hours before fading. Their quality can only be imperfectly recalled, yet when they recur, they are recognized, developing into a growing inner richness.
+. *Passivity.* Though the onset can be encouraged by voluntary efforts, once the state takes hold, the mystic's will feels suspended—sometimes grasped by a superior power. This connects them to prophetic speech or automatic writing, but true mystical states always leave memory and a sense of importance, modifying the inner life between occurrences.
+These two characters will entitle any state to be called mystical, in the
+sense in which I use the word. Two other qualities are less sharply
+marked, but are usually found. These are:—
+These four characteristics define the mystical group. Our next step is to study typical examples in series—from early stages to peak to decay, from the non-religious to the extreme.
+. _Transiency._—Mystical states cannot be sustained for long. Except in
+rare instances, half an hour, or at most an hour or two, seems to be the
+limit beyond which they fade into the light of common day. Often, when
+faded, their quality can but imperfectly be reproduced in memory; but when
+they recur it is recognized; and from one recurrence to another it is
+susceptible of continuous development in what is felt as inner richness
+and importance.
+The simplest root is that deepened sense of meaning in a maxim that occasionally strikes us. Luther described how, when a fellow monk repeated "I believe in the forgiveness of sins," he saw Scripture in a new light and felt born again. This sense isn't limited to logic—words, light, smells, music can trigger it. Most of us recall poems from youth that opened irrational doorways to existence's mystery. Lyric poetry and music live only when they reveal vague vistas that beckon yet remain out of reach.
+. _Passivity._—Although the oncoming of mystical states may be
+facilitated by preliminary voluntary operations, as by fixing the
+attention, or going through certain bodily performances, or in other ways
+which manuals of mysticism prescribe; yet when the characteristic sort of
+consciousness once has set in, the mystic feels as if his own will were in
+abeyance, and indeed sometimes as if he were grasped and held by a
+superior power. This latter peculiarity connects mystical states with
+certain definite phenomena of secondary or alternative personality, such
+as prophetic speech, automatic writing, or the mediumistic trance. When
+these latter conditions are well pronounced, however, there may be no
+recollection whatever of the phenomenon, and it may have no significance
+for the subject’s usual inner life, to which, as it were, it makes a mere
+interruption. Mystical states, strictly so called, are never merely
+interruptive. Some memory of their content always remains, and a profound
+sense of their importance. They modify the inner life of 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.
+A distinct step is the sudden feeling of "having been here before." Tennyson wrote of "glimpses of forgotten dreams." Sir James Crichton-Browne called these "dreamy states." He linked them to pre-epileptic disturbances—a needlessly alarmist view. He follows the phenomenon along the downward ladder toward insanity, whereas our path pursues the upward ladder toward spiritual insight.
+These four characteristics are sufficient to mark out a group of states of
+consciousness peculiar enough to deserve a special name and to call for
+careful study. Let it then be called the mystical group.
+Deeper plunges occur in other dreamy states. Charles Kingsley described feeling overwhelmed by "an innate feeling that everything I see has a meaning." A more extreme state is J.A. Symonds's account: "Suddenly... I felt the mood approaching. It took irresistible possession of my mind and will, lasted what seemed an eternity, and disappeared like waking from anesthesia." His trance consisted of a "gradual but rapid erasure of space, time, sensation, and the many factors of experience that define what we call the Self." Nothing remained but a "pure, absolute, abstract Self." The universe became formless, yet the Self persisted, feeling "a poignant doubt about reality—ready to see existence shatter like a bubble." The return began with recovering touch, then familiar impressions, until he felt human again. The experience recurred until age twenty-eight, impressing upon him "the ghost-like unreality of everything that makes up our ordinary consciousness."
+                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
+Such experiences suggest psychological abnormality. The next step is intoxicants, especially alcohol:
+Our next step should be to gain acquaintance with some typical examples.
+Professional mystics at the height of their development have often
+elaborately organized experiences and a philosophy based thereupon. But
+you remember what I said in my first lecture: phenomena are best
+understood when placed within their series, studied in their germ and in
+their over‐ripe decay, and compared with their exaggerated and degenerated
+kindred. The range of mystical experience is very wide, much too wide for
+us to cover in the time at our disposal. Yet the method of serial study is
+so essential for interpretation that if we really wish to reach
+conclusions we must use it. I will begin, therefore, with phenomena which
+claim no special religious significance, and end with those of which the
+religious pretensions are extreme.
+> **Quote:** "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 votary from the chill periphery of things to the radiant core. It makes him for the moment one with truth."
+The simplest rudiment of mystical experience would seem to be that
+deepened sense of the significance of a maxim or formula which
+occasionally sweeps over one. “I’ve heard that said all my 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 saw the Scripture in an entirely
+new light; and straightway I felt as if I were born anew. It was as if I
+had found the door of paradise thrown wide open.”(224) This sense of
+deeper significance is not confined to rational propositions. Single
+words,(225) and conjunctions of words, effects of light on land and sea,
+odors and musical sounds, all bring it when the mind is tuned aright. Most
+of us can remember 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 of life, stole into our
+hearts and thrilled them. The words have now perhaps become mere polished
+surfaces for us; but lyric poetry and music are alive and significant only
+in proportion as they fetch these vague vistas of a life continuous with
+our own, beckoning and inviting, yet ever eluding our pursuit. We are
+alive or dead to the eternal inner message of the arts according as we
+have kept or lost this mystical susceptibility.
+For many, this replaces symphony concerts and literature. The drunken consciousness is a fragment of mystical consciousness, and our judgment of it must be part of our judgment of the larger whole.
+A more pronounced step forward on the mystical ladder is found in an
+extremely frequent phenomenon, that sudden feeling, namely, which
+sometimes sweeps over us, of having “been here before,” as if at some
+indefinite past time, in just this place, with just these people, we were
+already saying just these things. As Tennyson writes:
+Nitrous oxide stimulates mystical consciousness extraordinarily. Layer after layer of truth seems revealed, though it fades on waking. I know people convinced it offers genuine metaphysical revelation. Years ago, I published observations, concluding:
+> **Quote:** "Our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different."
+    “Moreover, something is or seems,
+    That touches me with mystic gleams,
+    Like glimpses of forgotten dreams—
+These forms may determine our attitudes and forbid us from prematurely closing our accounts with reality. The keynote is always reconciliation, as if the world's opposites were melted into unity. James describes this as an insight where the nobler and better side of a conflict acts as a 'genus' that absorbs its opposite. To those who have ears to hear, let them hear; for me, the living sense of its reality only comes in that artificial mystical state.
+    “Of something felt, like something here;
+    Of something done, I know not where;
+    Such as no language may declare.”(226)
+Friends who believe in the "anesthetic revelation" describe a unified insight where the "other" is absorbed into the "One." J.A. Symonds recorded a chloroform experience: "Suddenly my soul became aware of God... I felt Him streaming into me like light." On waking, he shrieked 'It is too horrible!'—calling to the frightened surgeons to let him die, unable to bear the disillusionment of returning to a world that now seemed a trick of the brain. Yet he asked:
+> **Quote:** "Is it possible that I felt what some saints have always felt, the undemonstrable but irrefragable certainty of God?"
+Sir James Crichton‐Browne has given the technical name of “dreamy states”
+to these sudden invasions of vaguely reminiscent consciousness.(227) They
+bring a sense of mystery and of the metaphysical duality of things, and
+the feeling of an enlargement of perception which seems imminent but which
+never completes itself. In Dr. Crichton‐Browne’s opinion they connect
+themselves with the perplexed and scared disturbances of self‐
+consciousness which occasionally precede epileptic attacks. I think that
+this learned alienist takes a rather absurdly alarmist view of an
+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 neglect no part of a phenomenon’s
+connections, for we make it appear admirable or dreadful according to the
+context by which we set it off.
+Many mystical experiences occur outdoors. Amiel wrote of "cosmic reveries" at sunrise in ruins, under noonday sun in mountains, and on seashores at night—moments when "one feels as great as the universe and as calm as a god." Malwida von Meysenbug described kneeling before the ocean, feeling "the consciousness of unity with all that exists," hearing "the chorus of all the great souls." Whitman wrote:
+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:—
+> **Quote:** "I believe in you, my Soul ... Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass all the argument of the earth, And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own... And that a kelson of the creation is love."
+J. Trevor's *Autobiography* records a Sunday morning when, instead of attending chapel, he walked the hills. "Suddenly... I felt as if I were in Heaven—an internal state of peace, joy, and certainty so intense it is hard to describe." He adds: "These highest experiences... stand out today as the most real experiences of my life—experiences that have explained, justified, and unified all my past growth. It was in these most authentic moments that the Real Presence came, and I was aware that I was immersed in the infinite ocean of God."
+    “When I walk the fields, I am oppressed now and then with an
+    innate feeling that everything I see has a meaning, if I could but
+    understand it. And this feeling of being surrounded with truths
+    which I cannot grasp amounts to indescribable awe sometimes....
+    Have you not felt that your real soul was imperceptible to your
+    mental vision, except in a few hallowed moments?”(228)
+Dr. R.M. Bucke called the distinct form "cosmic consciousness"—not mere expansion but a new function. Its primary characteristic is consciousness of the cosmos, with intellectual enlightenment, moral exaltation, and a sense of immortality. Bucke's own experience:
+> **Quote:** "I had spent the evening... reading and discussing poetry and philosophy... All at once... I found myself wrapped in a flame-colored cloud... I knew that the fire was within myself... I saw that the universe is not composed of dead matter, but is... a living Presence; I became conscious in myself of eternal life... The vision lasted a few seconds... but the memory... has remained... I knew that what the vision showed was true."
+A much more extreme state of mystical consciousness is described by J. A.
+Symonds; and probably more persons than we suspect could give parallels to
+it from their own experience.
+Next is systematic cultivation. In India, this is yoga—experimental union with the divine through diet, posture, breathing, concentration, and discipline. The yogi enters *samâdhi*:
+> **Quote:** "The mind itself has a higher state of existence, beyond reason, a superconscious state... There is no feeling of _I_, and yet the mind works, desireless... Then the Truth shines... we know ourselves... free, immortal, omnipotent... identical with the Atman."
+    “Suddenly,” writes Symonds, “at church, or in company, or when I
+    was reading, and always, I think, when my muscles were at rest, I
+    felt the approach of the mood. Irresistibly it took possession of
+    my mind and will, lasted what seemed an eternity, and disappeared
+    in a series of rapid sensations which resembled the awakening from
+    anæsthetic influence. One reason why I disliked this kind of
+    trance was that I could not describe it to myself. I cannot even
+    now find words to render 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 pleased to call our Self. In proportion as
+    these conditions of ordinary consciousness were subtracted, the
+    sense of an underlying or essential consciousness acquired
+    intensity. At last nothing remained but a pure, absolute, abstract
+    Self. The universe became without form and void of content. But
+    Self persisted, formidable in its vivid keenness, feeling the most
+    poignant doubt about reality, ready, as it seemed, to find
+    existence break as breaks a bubble round about it. And what then?
+    The apprehension of a coming dissolution, the grim conviction that
+    this state was the last state of the conscious Self, the sense
+    that I had followed the last thread of being to the verge of the
+    abyss, and had arrived at demonstration of eternal Maya or
+    illusion, stirred or seemed to stir me up again. The return 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 I felt myself once more a human being; and though the riddle
+    of what is meant by life remained unsolved, I was thankful for
+    this return from the abyss—this deliverance from so awful an
+    initiation into the mysteries of skepticism.
+Vedantists say one may stumble into this superconsciousness without discipline, but then it is "impure." Their test is empirical: results must be good for life. Emerging from *Samâdhi*, one is "enlightened, a sage, a prophet, a saint—his whole character and life changed and illuminated."
+    “This trance recurred with diminishing frequency until I reached
+    the age of twenty‐eight. It served to impress upon my growing
+    nature the phantasmal unreality of all the circumstances which
+    contribute to a merely phenomenal consciousness. Often have I
+    asked myself with anguish, on waking from that formless state of
+    denuded, keenly sentient being, Which is the unreality?—the trance
+    of fiery, vacant, apprehensive, skeptical Self from which I issue,
+    or these surrounding phenomena and habits which veil that inner
+    Self and build a self of flesh‐and‐blood conventionality? Again,
+    are men the factors of some dream, the dream‐like unsubstantiality
+    of which they comprehend at such eventful moments? What would
+    happen if the final stage of the trance were reached?”(229)
+Buddhists use *dhyâna* for higher contemplation, with four stages: first, concentration on a single point (still intellectual); second, intellectual functions drop away, leaving unity; third, satisfaction departs for indifference; fourth, perfection of indifference. Higher stages approach Nirvana.
+In Islam, Sufism cultivates mysticism. Al-Ghazzali, the great 11th-century Persian theologian, described leaving Baghdad for ten years of solitude to seek ecstasy:
+In a recital like this there is certainly something suggestive of
+pathology.(230) The next step into mystical states carries us into a realm
+that public opinion and ethical philosophy have long since branded as
+pathological, though private practice and certain lyric strains of poetry
+seem still to bear witness to its ideality. I refer to the consciousness
+produced by intoxicants and anæsthetics, especially by alcohol. The sway
+of alcohol over mankind is unquestionably due to its power to stimulate
+the mystical faculties of human nature, usually crushed to earth by the
+cold facts and dry criticisms 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
+votary from 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 the place 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 be vouchsafed to so many of us
+only in the fleeting earlier phases of what in its totality is so
+degrading a poisoning. The drunken consciousness is one bit of the mystic
+consciousness, and our total opinion of it must find its place in our
+opinion of that larger whole.
+> **Quote:** "The Science of the Sufis aims at detaching the heart from everything that is not God... I recognized that the most essential part... is exactly what no study can grasp—only experience, ecstasy, and the transformation of the soul."
+Nitrous oxide and ether, especially nitrous oxide, when sufficiently
+diluted with air, stimulate the mystical consciousness in an extraordinary
+degree. Depth beyond depth of truth seems revealed to the inhaler. This
+truth fades out, however, or escapes, at the moment of coming to; and if
+any words 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 than one person who is
+persuaded that in the nitrous oxide trance we have a genuine metaphysical
+revelation.
+> **Quote:** How great is the difference between knowing the definitions of health, of satiety, with their causes and conditions, and being really healthy or filled. How different to know in what drunkenness consists and being drunk effectively... the transport which one attains by the method of the Sufis is like an immediate perception, as if one touched the objects with one’s hand.
+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 my impression of its truth has ever since
+remained unshaken. It is that our normal waking consciousness, rational
+consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness,
+whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie
+potential forms of consciousness entirely different. We may go through
+life without suspecting their existence; but apply the requisite stimulus,
+and at a touch they are there in all their completeness, definite types of
+mentality which probably somewhere have their field of application and
+adaptation. No account of the universe in its totality can be final which
+leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded. How to regard
+them is the question,—for they are so discontinuous with ordinary
+consciousness. Yet they may determine attitudes though they cannot furnish
+formulas, and open a region though they fail to give a map. At any rate,
+they forbid a premature closing of our accounts with reality. Looking back
+on my own experiences, they all converge towards a kind of insight to
+which I cannot help ascribing some metaphysical significance. The keynote
+of it is invariably a reconciliation. It is as if the opposites of the
+world, whose contradictoriness and conflict make all our 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 the genus, and so soaks up and absorbs its opposite
+into itself_. This is a dark saying, I know, when thus expressed in terms
+of common logic, but I cannot wholly escape from its authority. I feel as
+if it must mean something, something like what the Hegelian philosophy
+means, if one could only lay hold of it more clearly. Those who have ears
+to hear, let them hear; to me the living sense of its reality only comes
+in the artificial mystic state of mind.(231)
+Christian mysticism's foundation is "orison"—systematic meditation lifting the soul toward God. The first goal is detaching the mind from external sensations. Manuals like Ignatius's *Spiritual Exercises* use imagined holy scenes. Sensory images play a massive role, but may disappear in highest rapture. Saint John of the Cross describes the "union of love" reached through "dark contemplation":
+I just now spoke of friends who believe in the anæsthetic revelation. For
+them too it is a monistic insight, in which the _other_ in its various
+forms appears absorbed into the One.
+> **Quote:** "We receive this mystical knowledge of God clothed in none of the kinds of images... The soul then feels as if placed in a vast and profound solitude... in an immense and boundless desert... However sublime the terms we employ, how utterly vile they are when we seek to discourse of divine things by their means."
+Saint Teresa describes the "prayer of union":
+    “Into this pervading genius,” writes one of them, “we pass,
+    forgetting and forgotten, and thenceforth each is all, in God.
+    There is no higher, no deeper, no other, than the life in which we
+    are founded. ‘The One remains, the many change and pass;’ and each
+    and every one of us _is_ the One that remains.... This is the
+    ultimatum.... As sure as being—whence is all our care—so sure is
+    content, beyond duplexity, antithesis, or trouble, where I have
+    triumphed in a solitude that God is not above.”(232)
+> **Quote:** "In the orison of union, the soul is fully awake as regards God, but wholly asleep as regards things of this world... She is deprived of every feeling, and... could not think of any single thing... She is utterly dead to the things of the world and lives solely in God.... When she returns to herself, it is wholly impossible for her to doubt that she has been in God, and God in her... I knew a person ignorant of how God is in things, but after this grace, believed the truth in the most unshakable manner... But how can one have such certainty about what one does not see? These are secrets of God’s omnipotence. All I know is that I tell the truth; and I shall never believe that any soul without this certainty has ever been really united to God."
+Mystical truths are varied—some worldly (visions, reading hearts), but most are theological. Saint Ignatius learned more in one hour of meditation than from all doctors, seeing "the plan of divine wisdom" and "the deep mystery of the holy Trinity." Saint Teresa perceived "how all things are seen and contained in God" and "how one God can be in three Persons." She also saw how the Mother of God was taken into Heaven.
+This has the genuine religious mystic ring! I just now quoted J. A.
+Symonds. He also records a mystical experience with chloroform, as
+follows:—
+These states bring pleasure exceeding ordinary consciousness, bordering on pain. Intellect and senses fade away. Teresa admits: "I confess it is all a mystery in which I am lost." In *raptus*, breathing slows so much that doctors debate whether soul separates from body. These follow specific psychological patterns.
+To medical minds, these ecstasies are merely trance states built on superstition and biological decline. Undoubtedly pathology existed, but that tells us nothing about the value of the knowledge gained. We must examine practical results.
+    “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 was
+    going 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
+    to speak, in an intense personal present reality. I felt him
+    streaming in like light upon me.... I cannot describe the ecstasy
+    I felt. Then, as I gradually awoke from the influence of the
+    anæsthetics, the old 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 too horrible, 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 two surgeons (who were frightened), ‘Why did
+    you not kill me? Why would you not let me die?’ Only think of it.
+    To have felt for that long dateless ecstasy of vision the very
+    God, in all purity and tenderness and truth and absolute love, and
+    then to find that I had after all had no revelation, but that I
+    had been tricked by the abnormal excitement of my brain.
+Results varied. Some fell into helpless daze, like Margaret Mary Alacoque. But strong minds showed opposite results—Spanish mystics displayed indomitable spirit enhanced by trances.
+    “Yet, this question remains, Is it possible that the inner sense
+    of reality which succeeded, when my flesh was dead to impressions
+    from without, to the ordinary sense of physical relations, was not
+    a delusion but an actual experience? Is it possible that I, in
+    that moment, felt what some of the saints have said they always
+    felt, the undemonstrable but irrefragable certainty of God?”(233)
+Saint Ignatius became one of history's most effective forces. Saint John of the Cross writes:
+> **Quote:** "They enrich it marvelously. A single one may abolish imperfections the soul had vainly tried to rid itself of, and leave it adorned with virtues... Invested with invincible courage... the soul is seized with a strange torment—that of not being allowed to suffer enough."
+With this we make connection with religious mysticism pure and simple.
+Symonds’s question takes us back to those examples which you will remember
+my quoting in the lecture on the Reality of the Unseen, of sudden
+realization of the immediate presence of God. The phenomenon in one shape
+or another is not uncommon.
+Saint Teresa is equally emphatic. After ecstasy, "the soul emerges full of health and admirably disposed for action... animated with courage so great that if at that moment its body should be torn to pieces for God, it would feel only the liveliest comfort." She laughs at her former attachments to honor and money, seeing them as "immense lies."
+Mystical states may energize the soul, but only if the inspiration is true. This returns us to the problem of truth: Do mystical states establish the truth of theological emotions?
+    “I know,” writes Mr. Trine, “an officer on our police force who
+    has told me that many times when off duty, and on his way home in
+    the evening, there comes to him such a vivid and vital realization
+    of his oneness with this Infinite Power, and this Spirit of
+    Infinite Peace so takes hold of and so fills him, that it seems as
+    if his feet could hardly keep to the pavement, so buoyant and so
+    exhilarated does he become by reason of this inflowing tide.”(234)
+Mystical states suggest optimism and monism—reconciling, unifying states that say "yes." Their rejection of attributes—the Upanishads' "No! No!"—serves a deeper "yes." Dionysius describes absolute truth through negatives:
+> **Quote:** "The cause of all things is neither soul nor intellect... It is neither essence, nor eternity, nor time... It is not even royalty or wisdom; not one; not unity; not divinity or goodness; nor even spirit as we know it."
+Certain aspects of nature seem to have a peculiar power of awakening such
+mystical moods.(235) Most of the striking cases which I have collected
+have occurred out of doors. Literature has commemorated this fact in many
+passages of great beauty—this extract, for example, from Amiel’s Journal
+Intime:—
+This is not because truth falls short, but infinitely surpasses. Like Hegel, mystics use "absolute negativity" to reach affirmation.
+This yields paradoxes: Eckhart's "still desert of the Godhead," Boehme's "Primal Love" as "Nothing," Angelus Silesius's "God is pure Nothing." The intellect's negation has a moral counterpart: denying the finite self is the path to blessedness.
+    “Shall I ever again have any of those prodigious reveries which
+    sometimes came to me in former days? One day, in youth, at
+    sunrise, sitting in the ruins of the castle of Faucigny; and again
+    in the mountains, under the noonday sun, above Lavey, lying at the
+    foot of a tree and visited by three butterflies; once more at
+    night upon the shingly shore of the Northern Ocean, my back upon
+    the sand 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, breathes with a respiration broad, tranquil, and
+    deep as the respiration of the ocean, serene and limitless as the
+    blue firmament; ... instants of irresistible intuition in which
+    one feels one’s self great as the universe, and calm as a god....
+    What hours, what memories! The vestiges they leave behind are
+    enough to fill us with belief and enthusiasm, as if they were
+    visits of the Holy Ghost.”(236)
+Boehme continues: when you "have become Nothing to all that is nature and creature, then you are in that eternal One... The soul says: *I have nothing*... *I can do nothing*... *I am nothing*... And so, sitting down in my own Nothingness... God may will everything in me."
+> **Quote:** "I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me."
+Here is a similar record from the memoirs of that interesting German
+idealist, Malwida von Meysenbug:—
+Overcoming barriers between individual and Absolute is the great mystical achievement. In mystical states, we become one with the Absolute and aware of that oneness. This tradition endures across Hinduism, Neoplatonism, Sufism, Christian mysticism, and Whitman.
+> **Quote:** "The mystical classics have, as has been said, neither birthday nor native land."
+    “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 Dauphiné, I was impelled to kneel
+    down, this time before the illimitable ocean, symbol of the
+    Infinite. I felt that I prayed as I had never prayed before, and
+    knew now what prayer really is: to return from the solitude of
+    individuation into the consciousness of unity with all that is, to
+    kneel down as one that passes away, 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 felt myself one with them, and
+    it appeared as if I heard their greeting: ‘Thou too belongest to
+    the company of those who overcome.’ ”(237)
+By constantly speaking of unity between humanity and God, their message precedes all languages and never ages.
+> **Quote:** "That art Thou!"
+The well‐known passage from Walt Whitman is a classical expression of this
+sporadic type of mystical experience.
+The Vedantists add: "Not a part, not a mode of That, but identically That—the absolute Spirit of the World." The Sufi Gulshan-Râz says, "Every man whose heart is no longer shaken by doubt knows with certainty that there is no being except the One... In His divine majesty, the 'me,' 'we,' and 'you' are not found." Plotinus writes, "He who sees... does not properly 'see,' nor distinguish two separate things. He changes, ceases to be himself, and retains nothing... Absorbed in God, he becomes one with Him." Suso writes, "Here the spirit dies, yet is fully alive... and is lost in the stillness of the glorious, dazzling darkness." Angelus Silesius sings: "I am as great as God; He is as small as I."
+Mystical literature constantly uses self-contradictory phrases: "dazzling darkness," "whispering silence," "teeming desert." Mystical truth is best communicated not through concepts but through something like music. Many mystical scriptures are musical compositions.
+    “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 transparent summer morning.
+    Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that
+                pass all the argument of the earth,
+    And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own,
+    And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own,
+    And that all the men ever born are also my brothers and the women
+                my sisters and lovers,
+    And that a kelson of the creation is love.”(238)
+"He who would hear the voice of Nada... must learn focused concentration... When his own form appears unreal... he may perceive the ONE: the inner sound that silences the outer... And now your *self* is lost in SELF... You are YOURSELF the object of your search: the unbroken VOICE... Om tat Sat."
+If these words do not strike you as laughable, they likely stir something within you that music and language share. Music conveys messages about the nature of being that rational criticism cannot disprove.
+I could easily give more instances, but one will suffice. I take it from
+the Autobiography of J. Trevor.(239)
+"Here begins the sea that ends not till the world's end... Ah, but here man's heart leaps, yearning towards the gloom with venturous glee, From the shore that has no shore beyond it, set in all the sea."
+The doctrine that eternity is timeless—that our "immortality" exists here and now—finds support from a mysteriously deeper level of consciousness. We recognize the passwords to the mystical region, but cannot use them ourselves; that region alone holds the "primeval password."
+    “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 down there to the chapel, would be for the time an act of
+    spiritual suicide. And I felt such need for new inspiration and
+    expansion in my life. So, very reluctantly and sadly, I left my
+    wife and boys to go down into the town, while I went further up
+    into the hills with my stick and my dog. In the loveliness of the
+    morning, and the beauty of the hills and valleys, I soon lost my
+    sense of sadness and 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 peace and joy and assurance indescribably intense,
+    accompanied with a sense of being bathed in a warm glow of light,
+    as though the external condition had brought about the internal
+    effect—a feeling of having passed beyond the body, though the
+    scene around me stood out more clearly and as if nearer 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 some time
+    after, only gradually passing away.”
+My next task is to ask whether we can regard mysticism as authoritative. Does it warrant the truth of twice-bornness, supernaturalism, and pantheism? My answer, divided into three parts, is this:
+> **Quote:** "(1) Mystical states, when well developed, usually are, and have the right to be, absolutely authoritative over the individuals to whom they come. (2) No authority emanates from them which should make it a duty for those who stand outside of them to accept their revelations uncritically. (3) They break down the authority of the non‐mystical or rationalistic consciousness, based upon the 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 vitally responds to them, we may freely continue to have faith."
+The writer adds that having had further experiences of a similar sort, he
+now knows them well.
+. As a psychological fact, pronounced mystical states are usually authoritative for those who experience them. They have been "there," and they know. If the truth they discover proves a force they can live by, what right has the majority to order them otherwise? Our own rational beliefs are based on evidence exactly like what mystics cite. For those who have them, mystical experiences are as direct as any physical sensation. The mystic is invulnerable and must be left to their creed.
+. However, mystics have no right to demand that outsiders accept their revelations. At most, they create a presumption based on consensus, but this is only an appeal to numbers, with no logical power. Moreover, I oversimplified: religious mysticism is only a "special case," curated by schools. Even within it, there is little unanimity—Christian mystics vary from ascetic to antinomian; Indian thought is dualistic in Sankhya, monistic in Vedanta; Spanish mystics are non-pantheistic. The mystical feeling has no specific intellectual content of its own—it aligns with diverse philosophies. And beyond religious mysticism lies "diabolical" mysticism in psychiatry, the same mental machinery producing pessimistic delusions. Emerging from the subconscious is no guarantee of truth; what comes out must be sifted and tested empirically.
+. Yet mystical states overthrow rationalism's claim to be sole arbiter. They add meaning beyond the senses to ordinary consciousness, giving facts new expressiveness. They don't contradict sensory facts; rationalistic critics are the deniers. It remains open whether mystical states are superior viewpoints onto a more inclusive world.
+We must leave the subject here. Mystical states hold no authority simply because they are mystical. But they point where religious feelings lean—toward vastness, union, safety. They offer hypotheses we cannot disprove. The supernaturalism and optimism they suggest may be the truest insights into life's meaning.
+    “The spiritual life,” he writes, “justifies itself to those who
+    live it; but what can we say to those who do not understand? This,
+    at least, we can say, that it is a life whose experiences are
+    proved real to their possessor, because they remain with him when
+    brought closest into contact with the objective realities of life.
+    Dreams cannot stand this test. We wake from them to find that they
+    are but dreams. Wanderings of an overwrought brain do not stand
+    this test. These highest experiences that I have had of God’s
+    presence have been rare and brief—flashes of consciousness which
+    have compelled 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
+    these moments. To no soul have I named them, lest I should be
+    building my life and work on mere phantasies of the brain. But I
+    find that, after every questioning and test, they stand out to‐day
+    as the most real experiences of my life, and experiences which
+    have explained and justified and unified all past experiences and
+    all past growth. Indeed, their reality and their far‐reaching
+    significance are ever 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 live more intensely my own life, as against
+    what I knew would be the adverse judgment of the world. It was in
+    the most real seasons that the Real Presence came, and I was aware
+    that I was immersed in the infinite ocean of God.”(240)
+In my final lecture, I will argue that this permission is all religious consciousness needs. For those wanting compulsion, philosophy has always claimed logical proof—my next lecture will offer a brief look.
+Even the least mystical of you must by this time be convinced of the
+existence of mystical moments as states of consciousness of an entirely
+specific quality, and of the deep impression which they make on those who
+have them. A Canadian psychiatrist, Dr. R. M. Bucke, gives to the more
+distinctly characterized of these phenomena the name of cosmic
+consciousness. “Cosmic consciousness in its more striking instances is
+not,” Dr. Bucke says, “simply an expansion or extension of the self‐
+conscious mind with which we are all familiar, but the superaddition of a
+function as distinct from any possessed by the average man as
+_self_‐consciousness is distinct from any function possessed by one of the
+higher animals.”
+    “The prime characteristic of cosmic consciousness is a
+    consciousness of the cosmos, that is, of the life and order of the
+    universe. Along with the consciousness of the cosmos there occurs
+    an intellectual enlightenment which alone would place the
+    individual on a new plane of existence—would make him almost a
+    member of a new species. To this is added a state of moral
+    exaltation, an indescribable 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 these come what may be called a sense of immortality,
+    a consciousness of eternal life, not a conviction that he shall
+    have this, but the consciousness that he has it already.”(241)
+It was Dr. Bucke’s own experience of a typical onset of cosmic
+consciousness in his own person which led him to investigate it in others.
+He has printed his conclusions in a highly interesting volume, 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 and philosophy. 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 at once, without warning of any kind, I
+    found myself wrapped in a flame‐colored cloud. For an instant 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 of exultation, of
+    immense joyousness accompanied or immediately followed by an
+    intellectual illumination impossible to describe. Among other
+    things, I did not merely come to believe, but I saw that the
+    universe is not composed of dead matter, but is, on the contrary,
+    a living Presence; I became 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 the cosmic order is such that without any
+    peradventure all things work together for the good of each and
+    all; that the foundation principle of the world, of all the
+    worlds, is what we call love, and that the happiness of each and
+    all is in the long run absolutely certain. The vision lasted a few
+    seconds and was gone; but the memory of it and the sense of the
+    reality of what it taught has remained during the quarter of a
+    century which has since elapsed. I knew that what the vision
+    showed 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 deepest
+    depression, been lost.”(242)
+We have now seen enough of this cosmic or mystic consciousness, as it
+comes sporadically. We must 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 of yoga. Yoga means the experimental union of the
+individual with the divine. It is based on persevering exercise; and the
+diet, posture, breathing, intellectual concentration, and moral discipline
+vary slightly in the different systems which teach it. The yogi, or
+disciple, who has by these means overcome the obscurations of his lower
+nature sufficiently, enters into the condition termed _samâdhi_, “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, and that when the mind gets to
+    that higher state, then this knowledge beyond reasoning comes....
+    All the different steps in yoga are intended to bring us
+    scientifically to the superconscious state or samâdhi.... Just as
+    unconscious work is beneath consciousness, so there is another
+    work which is above consciousness, and which, also, is not
+    accompanied with the feeling of egoism.... There is no 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 Samâdhi lies potential in us
+    all—for what we truly are, free, immortal, omnipotent, loosed from
+    the finite, and its contrasts of good and evil altogether, and
+    identical with the Atman or Universal Soul.”(243)
+The Vedantists say that one may stumble into superconsciousness
+sporadically, without the previous discipline, but it is then impure.
+Their test of its purity, like our test of religion’s value, is empirical:
+its fruits must be good for life. When a man comes out of Samâdhi, they
+assure us that he remains “enlightened, a sage, a prophet, a saint, his
+whole character changed, his life changed, illumined.”(244)
+The Buddhists use the word “samâdhi” as well as the Hindus; but “dhyâna”
+is their special word for higher states of contemplation. There seem to be
+four stages recognized in dhyâna. The first stage comes through
+concentration of the mind upon one point. It excludes desire, but not
+discernment or judgment: it is still intellectual. In the second stage the
+intellectual functions drop off, and the satisfied sense of unity remains.
+In the third stage the satisfaction departs, and indifference begins,
+along with memory and 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 where the meditator says: “There exists absolutely nothing,”
+and stops. Then he reaches another region where he says: “There are
+neither ideas nor absence of ideas,” and stops again. Then another region
+where, “having reached the end of both idea and perception, he stops
+finally.” This would seem to be, not yet Nirvâna, but as close an approach
+to it as this life affords.(245)
+In the Mohammedan world the Sufi sect and various dervish bodies are the
+possessors of the mystical tradition. The Sufis have existed in Persia
+from the earliest times, and as their pantheism is so at variance with the
+hot and rigid monotheism of the Arab mind, it has been suggested that
+Sufism must have been inoculated into Islam by Hindu influences. We
+Christians know little of Sufism, for its secrets are disclosed only to
+those initiated. To give its existence a certain liveliness in 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, and ranks as one of the greatest doctors of the Moslem
+church, has left us one of the few autobiographies to be found outside of
+Christian literature. Strange that a species of book so abundant among
+ourselves should be so little represented elsewhere—the absence of
+strictly personal confessions is the chief difficulty to the purely
+literary student who would like to become acquainted with the inwardness
+of religions other than the Christian.
+M. Schmölders has translated a part of Al‐Ghazzali’s autobiography into
+French:(246)—
+    “The Science of the Sufis,” says the Moslem author, “aims at
+    detaching the heart from all that is not God, and at giving to it
+    for sole occupation the meditation of the divine being. Theory
+    being more easy for me than practice, I read [certain books] until
+    I understood all that can be learned by study and hearsay. Then I
+    recognized that what pertains most exclusively to their method is
+    just what 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 their causes and conditions, and being really healthy or
+    filled. How different to know in what drunkenness consists,—as
+    being a state occasioned by a vapor that rises from the
+    stomach,—and _being_ drunk effectively. Without doubt, the drunken
+    man knows neither the definition of drunkenness nor what makes it
+    interesting for science. Being drunk, he knows nothing; whilst the
+    physician, although not drunk, knows well in what drunkenness
+    consists, and what are its predisposing 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 what words could teach of Sufism, but
+    what was left could be learned neither by study nor through the
+    ears, 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 on every side. Considering my
+    teaching, I found it was impure before God. I saw myself
+    struggling with all my might to achieve glory and to spread my
+    name. [Here follows an account of his six months’ hesitation to
+    break away from the conditions of his life at Bagdad, at the end
+    of which he fell ill with a paralysis of the tongue.] Then,
+    feeling my own weakness, and having entirely given up 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 renouncing glory,
+    wealth, and my children. So I quitted Bagdad, and reserving from
+    my fortune only what was indispensable for my subsistence, I
+    distributed the rest. I went to Syria, where I remained about two
+    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, to prepare
+    my heart for meditating on God—all according to the methods of the
+    Sufis, as I had read of them.
+    “This retreat only increased my desire to live in solitude, and to
+    complete the purification of my heart and fit it for meditation.
+    But the vicissitudes of the times, the affairs of the family, the
+    need of subsistence, changed in some respects my primitive
+    resolve, and interfered with my plans for a purely 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, I sought to
+    return; and in this situation I spent ten years. During this
+    solitary state things were revealed to me which it is impossible
+    either to describe or to point out. I recognized for certain that
+    the Sufis are assuredly walking in the path of God. Both in their
+    acts and in their inaction, whether internal or external, they are
+    illumined by the light which proceeds from the prophetic source.
+    The first condition for a Sufi is to purge his heart entirely of
+    all that is not God. The next key of the contemplative life
+    consists in the humble prayers which escape from the fervent soul,
+    and in the meditations on God in which the heart is swallowed up
+    entirely. But in reality this is only the beginning of the Sufi
+    life, the end of Sufism being total absorption in God. The
+    intuitions and all that precede are, so to speak, only the
+    threshold for those who enter. From the beginning, revelations
+    take place in so flagrant a shape that the Sufis see before them,
+    whilst wide awake, the angels and the souls of the prophets. They
+    hear their voices and obtain their favors. Then the transport
+    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.
+    “Whoever has had no experience of the transport knows of the true
+    nature of prophetism nothing but the name. He may meanwhile be
+    sure of its existence, both by experience and by what he hears the
+    Sufis say. As there are men endowed only with the sensitive
+    faculty who reject what is offered them in the way of objects of
+    the pure understanding, so there are intellectual men who reject
+    and avoid the things perceived by the prophetic faculty. A blind
+    man can understand nothing of colors save what he has learned by
+    narration and hearsay. Yet God has brought prophetism near to men
+    in giving them all a state analogous to it in its principal
+    characters. This state is sleep. If you were to tell a man who was
+    himself without experience of such a phenomenon that there are
+    people who at times swoon away so as to resemble dead men, and who
+    [in dreams] yet perceive things that are hidden, he would deny it
+    [and give his reasons]. Nevertheless, his arguments would be
+    refuted by actual experience. Wherefore, just as the understanding
+    is a stage of human life in which an eye opens to discern various
+    intellectual objects uncomprehended by sensation; just so in the
+    prophetic the sight is illumined by a light which uncovers hidden
+    things and objects which the intellect fails to reach. The chief
+    properties of prophetism are perceptible only during the
+    transport, by those who embrace the Sufi life. The prophet is
+    endowed with qualities to which you possess nothing analogous, and
+    which consequently you cannot possibly understand. How should you
+    know their true nature, since one knows only what one can
+    comprehend? But the transport which one attains by the method of
+    the Sufis is like an immediate perception, as if one touched the
+    objects with one’s hand.”(247)
+This incommunicableness of the transport is the keynote of all mysticism.
+Mystical truth exists for the individual who has the transport, but for no
+one else. In this, as I have said, it resembles the knowledge given to us
+in sensations more than that given by conceptual thought. Thought, with
+its remoteness and abstractness, has often enough in the history of
+philosophy been contrasted unfavorably with sensation. It is a commonplace
+of metaphysics that God’s knowledge cannot be discursive but must be
+intuitive, that is, must be constructed more after the pattern of what in
+ourselves is called immediate feeling, than after that of proposition and
+judgment. But _our_ immediate feelings have no content but what the five
+senses supply; and we have seen and shall see again that mystics may
+emphatically deny that the senses play any part in the very highest type
+of knowledge which their transports yield.
+                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
+In the Christian church there have always been mystics. Although many of
+them have been viewed with suspicion, some have gained favor in the eyes
+of the authorities. The experiences of these have been treated as
+precedents, and a codified system of mystical theology has been based upon
+them, in which everything legitimate finds its place.(248) The basis of
+the system is “orison” or meditation, the methodical elevation of the soul
+towards God. Through the practice of orison the higher levels of mystical
+experience may be attained. It is odd that Protestantism, especially
+evangelical Protestantism, should seemingly have abandoned everything
+methodical in this line. Apart from what prayer may lead to, Protestant
+mystical experience appears to have been almost exclusively sporadic. It
+has been left to our mind‐curers to reintroduce methodical meditation into
+our religious life.
+The first thing to be aimed at in orison is the mind’s detachment from
+outer sensations, for these interfere with its concentration upon ideal
+things. Such manuals as Saint Ignatius’s Spiritual Exercises recommend the
+disciple to expel sensation by a graduated series of efforts to imagine
+holy scenes. The acme of this kind of discipline would be a semi‐
+hallucinatory mono‐ideism—an imaginary figure of Christ, for example,
+coming fully to occupy the mind. Sensorial images of this sort, whether
+literal or symbolic, play an enormous part in mysticism.(249) But in
+certain cases imagery may fall away entirely, and in the very highest
+raptures it tends to do so. The state of consciousness becomes then
+insusceptible of any verbal description. Mystical teachers are unanimous
+as to this. Saint John of the Cross, for instance, one of the best of
+them, thus describes the condition called the “union of love,” which, he
+says, is reached by “dark contemplation.” In this the 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 and the delicacy of the spiritual feeling
+    with which she is filled.... We receive this mystical knowledge 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 the senses and
+    the imagination are not employed, we get neither form nor
+    impression, nor can we give any account or furnish any likeness,
+    although the mysterious and sweet‐tasting wisdom comes home so
+    clearly to the inmost parts of our soul. Fancy a man seeing a
+    certain kind of thing for the first time in his life. He can
+    understand it, use and enjoy it, but he cannot apply a name to it,
+    nor communicate any idea of it, even though all the while it be a
+    mere thing of sense. How much greater will be his powerlessness
+    when it goes beyond the senses! This is the peculiarity of the
+    divine language. The more infused, intimate, spiritual, and
+    supersensible it is, the more does it exceed 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 has access, 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 the comprehension of love, ... and recognizes,
+    however sublime and learned may be the terms we employ, how
+    utterly vile, insignificant, and improper they are, when we seek
+    to discourse of divine things by their means.”(250)
+I cannot pretend to detail to you the sundry stages of the Christian
+mystical life.(251) Our time would not suffice, for one thing; and
+moreover, I confess that the subdivisions and names which we 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 the idiosyncrasies of individuals.
+The cognitive aspects of them, their value in the way of revelation, is
+what we are directly concerned with, and it is easy to show by citation
+how strong an impression they leave of being revelations of new depths of
+truth. Saint Teresa is the expert of experts in describing such
+conditions, so I will turn immediately to what she says of one of the
+highest of them, the “orison of union.”
+    “In the orison of union,” says Saint Teresa, “the soul is fully
+    awake as regards God, but wholly asleep as regards things of this
+    world and in respect of herself. During the short time the union
+    lasts, she is as it were deprived of every feeling, and even if
+    she would, she could not think of any single thing. Thus she needs
+    to employ no artifice in order to arrest the use of her
+    understanding: it remains so stricken with inactivity that she
+    neither knows what she loves, nor in what manner she loves, nor
+    what she wills. In short, she is utterly dead to the things of the
+    world and lives solely in God.... I do not even know whether in
+    this state she has enough life left to breathe. It seems to me she
+    has not; or at least that if she does breathe, she is unaware of
+    it. Her intellect would fain understand something of what is going
+    on within her, but it has so little force now that it can act in
+    no 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 all her faculties. She neither sees,
+    hears, nor understands, so long as she is united with God. But
+    this time is always short, and it seems even shorter than it is.
+    God establishes himself in the interior of this soul in such a
+    way, that when she returns to herself, it is wholly impossible for
+    her to doubt that 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 the favor she received, nor doubt of its reality. If you,
+    nevertheless, ask how it is possible that the soul can see and
+    understand that she has been in God, since during the union she
+    has neither sight nor understanding, I reply that she does not see
+    it then, but that she sees it clearly later, after she has
+    returned to herself, not by any vision, but by a certitude which
+    abides with her and which God alone can give her. I knew a person
+    who was ignorant of the truth that God’s mode of being in
+    everything must be either by presence, by power, or by essence,
+    but who, after having received the grace of which I am speaking,
+    believed this truth in the most unshakable manner. So much so
+    that, having consulted a 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 the true answer; and when she came to
+    ask wiser doctors, they confirmed her in her belief, which much
+    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 not
+    appertain to me to penetrate. All that I know is that I tell the
+    truth; and I shall never believe that any soul who does not
+    possess this certainty has ever been really united to God.”(252)
+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, the sudden
+understanding of texts, the knowledge of distant events, for example; but
+the most important revelations are theological or metaphysical.
+    “Saint Ignatius confessed one day to Father Laynez that a single
+    hour of meditation at Manresa had taught him more truths about
+    heavenly things than all the teachings of all the doctors put
+    together could have taught him.... One day in orison, on the steps
+    of the choir of the Dominican church, he saw in a distinct manner
+    the plan of divine wisdom in the creation of the world. On another
+    occasion, during a procession, his spirit was ravished in God, and
+    it was given him to contemplate, in a form and images fitted to
+    the weak understanding of a dweller on the earth, the deep mystery
+    of the holy Trinity. This last vision flooded his heart with such
+    sweetness, that the mere memory of it in after times made him shed
+    abundant tears.”(253)
+    Similarly with Saint Teresa. “One day, being in orison,” she
+    writes, “it was granted me to perceive in one instant how all
+    things are seen and contained in God. I did not perceive them in
+    their proper form, and nevertheless the view I had of them was of
+    a sovereign clearness, and has remained vividly impressed upon my
+    soul. It is one of the most signal of all the graces which the
+    Lord has granted me.... The view was so subtile and delicate that
+    the understanding cannot grasp it.”(254)
+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 as never 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. He made 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 Persons form 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 the Mother of God had been assumed into her place
+in Heaven.(255)
+The deliciousness of some of these states seems to be beyond anything
+known in ordinary consciousness. It evidently involves organic
+sensibilities, for it is spoken of as something too extreme to be borne,
+and as verging on bodily pain.(256) But it is too subtle and piercing a
+delight for ordinary words to denote. God’s touches, the wounds of his
+spear, references to ebriety and to nuptial union have to figure in the
+phraseology by which it is shadowed forth. Intellect and senses both swoon
+away in these highest states of ecstasy. “If our understanding
+comprehends,” says Saint Teresa, “it is in a mode which remains unknown to
+it, and it can understand nothing of what it comprehends. For my own part,
+I do not believe that it does comprehend, because, as I said, it does not
+understand itself to do so. I confess that it is all a mystery in which I
+am lost.”(257) In the condition called _raptus_ or ravishment by
+theologians, breathing and circulation are so depressed that it is a
+question among the doctors whether the soul be or be not temporarily
+dissevered from the body. One must read Saint Teresa’s descriptions and
+the very exact distinctions which she makes, to persuade one’s self that
+one is dealing, not with imaginary experiences, but with phenomena which,
+however rare, follow perfectly definite psychological types.
+                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
+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, but that
+fact tells us nothing about the value for knowledge of the consciousness
+which they induce. To pass a spiritual judgment upon these states, we must
+not content ourselves with superficial medical talk, but inquire into
+their fruits for life.
+Their fruits appear to have been various. Stupefaction, for one thing,
+seems not to have been altogether absent as a result. You may remember the
+helplessness in the kitchen and schoolroom of poor Margaret Mary Alacoque.
+Many other ecstatics would have perished but for the care taken of them by
+admiring followers. The “other‐worldliness” encouraged by the mystical
+consciousness makes this over‐abstraction from practical life peculiarly
+liable to befall mystics in whom the character is naturally passive and
+the intellect feeble; but in natively strong minds and characters we find
+quite opposite results. The great Spanish mystics, who carried the habit
+of ecstasy as far as it has often been carried, appear for the most part
+to have shown indomitable spirit and energy, and all 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 powerfully practical 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 certain imperfections of which
+    the soul during its whole life had vainly tried to rid itself, and
+    to leave it adorned with virtues and loaded with supernatural
+    gifts. A single one of these intoxicating consolations 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, the soul then is seized
+    with a strange torment—that of not being allowed to suffer
+    enough.”(258)
+Saint Teresa is as emphatic, and much more detailed. You may perhaps
+remember a passage I quoted from her in my first lecture.(259) There are
+many similar pages in her autobiography. Where in literature is a more
+evidently veracious account of the formation of a new centre of spiritual
+energy, than is given in her description of the effects of certain
+ecstasies which in departing leave the soul upon a higher level of
+emotional excitement?
+    “Often, infirm and wrought upon with dreadful pains before the
+    ecstasy, the soul emerges from it full 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 a favor is animated with a
+    degree of courage so great that if at that moment its body should
+    be torn to pieces for the cause of God, it would feel nothing but
+    the liveliest comfort. Then it is that promises 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 soul who,
+    from this sublime summit to which God has raised her, sees all the
+    things of earth beneath her 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 still shrouded in the darkness!... She groans at having
+    ever been sensitive to points of honor, at the illusion that made
+    her ever see as honor what the world calls by that name. Now she
+    sees in this name nothing more than an immense lie of which the
+    world remains a victim. She discovers, in the new light from
+    above, that in genuine honor there is nothing spurious, that to be
+    faithful to this honor is to give our respect to what deserves to
+    be respected really, and to consider as nothing, or as less than
+    nothing, whatsoever perishes and is not agreeable to God.... She
+    laughs when she sees grave persons, persons of orison, caring for
+    points of honor for which she now feels profoundest contempt. It
+    is suitable to the dignity of their rank to act thus, they
+    pretend, and it makes them more useful to others. But she knows
+    that in despising the dignity of their rank for the pure love of
+    God they would do more good in a single day than they would effect
+    in ten years by preserving it.... She laughs at herself that there
+    should ever have been a time in her life when she made any case of
+    money, when she ever desired it.... Oh! if human beings might only
+    agree together to regard it as so much useless mud, what harmony
+    would then reign in the world! With what friendship we would all
+    treat each other if our interest in honor and in money could but
+    disappear from earth! For my own part, I feel as if it would be a
+    remedy for all our ills.”(260)
+Mystical conditions may, therefore, render the soul more energetic in the
+lines which their inspiration favors. But this could be reckoned an
+advantage only in case the inspiration were a true one. 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 lectures on 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 its root?
+In spite of their repudiation of articulate self‐description, mystical
+states in general assert a pretty distinct theoretic drift. It is possible
+to give the outcome of the majority of them in terms that point in
+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 from a smallness into a
+vastness, and at the same time as from an unrest to a rest. We feel them
+as reconciling, unifying states. They appeal to the yes‐function more than
+to the no‐function in us. In them the unlimited absorbs the limits and
+peacefully closes the account. Their very denial of every adjective you
+may propose as applicable to the ultimate truth,—He, the Self, the Atman,
+is to be described by “No! no!” only, say the Upanishads,(261)—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 in particular, or says that
+it is _this_, seems implicitly to shut it off from being _that_—it is as
+if he lessened it. So we deny the “this,” negating the negation which it
+seems to us to imply, in the interests of the higher affirmative attitude
+by which we are possessed. The fountain‐head of Christian mysticism is
+Dionysius the Areopagite. He describes the absolute truth by negatives
+exclusively.
+    “The cause of all things is neither soul nor intellect; nor has it
+    imagination, opinion, or reason, or intelligence; nor is it reason
+    or intelligence; nor is it spoken or thought. It is neither
+    number, nor order, nor magnitude, nor littleness, nor equality,
+    nor inequality, nor similarity, nor dissimilarity. It neither
+    stands, nor moves, nor rests.... It is neither essence, nor
+    eternity, nor time. Even intellectual contact does not belong to
+    it. It is neither science nor truth. It is not even royalty or
+    wisdom; not one; not unity; not divinity or goodness; nor even
+    spirit as we know it,” etc., _ad libitum_.(262)
+But these qualifications are denied by Dionysius, not because the truth
+falls short of them, but because 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 his
+logic, mystics journey towards the positive pole of truth only by the
+“Methode der Absoluten Negativität.”(263)
+Thus come the paradoxical expressions that so abound in mystical writings.
+As when Eckhart tells of the still desert of the Godhead, “where never was
+seen difference, neither Father, Son, nor Holy Ghost, where there is no
+one at home, yet where the spark of the soul is more at peace than in
+itself.”(264) As when Boehme writes of the Primal Love, that “it may fitly
+be compared to Nothing, for it is deeper than any Thing, and is as nothing
+with respect to all things, forasmuch as it is not comprehensible by any
+of them. And because it is nothing respectively, it is therefore free from
+all things, and is that only good, which a man cannot express or utter
+what it is, there being nothing to which it may be compared, to express it
+by.”(265) Or as when Angelus Silesius sings:—
+    “Gott ist ein lauter Nichts, ihn rührt kein Nun noch Hier;
+    Je mehr du nach ihm greiffst, je mehr entwind er dir.”(266)
+To this dialectical use, by the intellect, of negation as a mode of
+passage towards a higher kind of affirmation, 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 religious experience to be the only doorway to the larger and
+more blessed life, this moral mystery intertwines and combines with the
+intellectual mystery in all mystical writings.
+    “Love,” continues Behmen, is Nothing, for “when thou art gone
+    forth wholly from the Creature and from that which is visible, and
+    art become Nothing to all that is Nature and Creature, then thou
+    art in that eternal One, which is God himself, and then thou shalt
+    feel within thee the highest virtue of Love.... The treasure of
+    treasures for the soul is where she goeth out of the Somewhat into
+    that Nothing out of which all things may be made. The soul here
+    saith, _I have nothing_, for I am utterly stripped and naked; _I
+    can do nothing_, for I have no manner of power, but am as water
+    poured out; _I am nothing_, for all that I am is no more than an
+    image of Being, and only God is to me I AM; and so, sitting down
+    in my own Nothingness, I give glory to the eternal Being, and
+    _will nothing_ of myself, that so God may will all in me, being
+    unto me my God and all things.”(267)
+In Paul’s language, I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. Only when
+I become as nothing can God enter in and no difference between his life
+and mine remain outstanding.(268)
+This overcoming of all the usual barriers between the individual and the
+Absolute is the great mystic achievement. In mystic states we both become
+one with the Absolute and we become aware of our oneness. This is the
+everlasting and triumphant mystical tradition, hardly altered by
+differences of clime or creed. In Hinduism, in Neoplatonism, in Sufism, in
+Christian mysticism, in Whitmanism, we find the same recurring note, so
+that there is about mystical utterances an eternal unanimity which ought
+to make a critic stop and think, and which brings it about that the
+mystical classics have, as has been said, neither birthday nor native
+land. Perpetually telling of the unity of man with God, their speech
+antedates languages, and they do not grow old.(269)
+“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 water remains 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 the Self.”(270) “ ‘Every man,’ says the Sufi Gulshan‐Râz,
+‘whose heart is no longer shaken by any doubt, knows with certainty that
+there is no being save only One.... In his divine majesty the _me_, the
+_we_, the _thou_, are not found, for in the One there can be no
+distinction. Every being who is annulled and entirely separated from
+himself, hears resound outside of him this voice and this echo: _I am
+God_: he has an eternal way of existing, and is no longer subject to
+death.’ ”(271) In the vision of God, says Plotinus, “what sees is not our
+reason, but something prior and superior to our reason.... He who thus
+sees does not properly see, does not distinguish or imagine two things. He
+changes, he ceases to be himself, preserves nothing of himself. Absorbed
+in God, he makes but one with him, like a centre of a circle coinciding
+with another centre.”(272) “Here,” writes Suso, “the spirit dies, and yet
+is all alive in the marvels of the Godhead ... and is lost in the
+stillness of the glorious dazzling obscurity and of the naked simple
+unity. It is in this modeless _where_ that the highest bliss is to be
+found.”(273) “Ich bin so gross als Gott,” sings Angelus Silesius again,
+“Er ist als ich so klein; Er kann nicht über mich, ich unter ihm nicht
+sein.”(274)
+In mystical literature such self‐contradictory phrases as “dazzling
+obscurity,” “whispering silence,” “teeming desert,” are continually met
+with. They prove that not conceptual speech, but music rather, is the
+element through which we are best spoken to by mystical truth. Many
+mystical scriptures are indeed little more than musical compositions.
+    “He who would hear the voice of Nada, ‘the Soundless Sound,’ and
+    comprehend it, he has to learn the nature of Dhâranâ.... When to
+    himself his form appears unreal, as do on waking all the forms he
+    sees in dreams; when he has ceased to hear the many, he may
+    discern the ONE—the inner sound which kills the outer.... For then
+    the soul will hear, and will remember. And then to the inner 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. Thou
+    art 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._”(275)
+These words, if they do not awaken laughter as you receive them, probably
+stir chords within you which music and language touch in common. Music
+gives us ontological messages which non‐musical criticism 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 the operations of our understanding, even as the waters of the
+infinite ocean send their waves to break among 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 next high 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 with
+                venturous glee,
+    From the shore that hath no shore beyond it, set in all the
+                sea.”(276)
+That doctrine, for example, that eternity is timeless, that our
+“immortality,” if we live in the eternal, is not so much future as already
+now and here, which we find so often expressed to‐day in certain
+philosophic circles, finds its support in a “hear, hear!” or an “amen,”
+which floats up from that mysteriously deeper level.(277) We recognize the
+passwords to the mystical region as we hear them, but we cannot use them
+ourselves; it alone has the keeping of “the password primeval.”(278)
+I have now sketched with extreme brevity and insufficiency, but as fairly
+as I am able in the time allowed, the general traits of the mystic range
+of consciousness. _It is on the whole pantheistic and optimistic, or at
+least the opposite of pessimistic. It is anti‐naturalistic, and harmonizes
+best with twice‐bornness and so‐called other‐worldly states of mind._
+                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
+My next task is to inquire whether we can invoke it as authoritative. Does
+it furnish any _warrant for the truth_ of the twice‐bornness and
+supernaturality and pantheism which it favors? I must give my answer to
+this question as concisely as I can.
+In brief my answer is this,—and I will divide it into three parts:—
+(1) Mystical states, when well developed, usually are, and have the right
+to be, absolutely authoritative over the individuals to whom they come.
+(2) No authority emanates from them which should make it a duty for those
+who stand outside of them to accept their revelations uncritically.
+(3) They break down the authority of the non‐mystical or rationalistic
+consciousness, based upon the 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
+vitally responds to them, we may freely continue to have faith.
+I will take up these points one by one.
+.
+As a matter of psychological fact, mystical states of a well‐pronounced
+and emphatic sort _are_ usually authoritative over those who have
+them.(279) They have been “there,” and know. It is vain for rationalism to
+grumble about this. If the mystical truth that comes to a man proves to be
+a force that he can live by, what mandate have we of the majority to order
+him to live in another way? We can throw him into a prison or a madhouse,
+but we cannot change his mind—we commonly attach it only the more
+stubbornly to its beliefs.(280) It mocks our utmost efforts, as a matter
+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. Our senses, namely, have
+assured us of certain states of fact; but mystical experiences are as
+direct perceptions of fact for those who have them as any sensations ever
+were for us. The records show that even though the five senses be in
+abeyance in them, they are absolutely sensational in their epistemological
+quality, if I may be pardoned the barbarous expression,—that is, they are
+face to face presentations of what seems immediately to exist.
+The mystic is, in short, _invulnerable_, and must be left, whether we
+relish it or not, in undisturbed enjoyment of his creed. Faith, says
+Tolstoy, is that by which men live. And faith‐state and mystic state are
+practically convertible terms.
+.
+But I now proceed to add that mystics have no right to claim that we ought
+to accept the deliverance of their peculiar experiences, if we are
+ourselves outsiders and feel no private call thereto. 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 the
+appeal to numbers has no logical force. If we acknowledge it, it is for
+“suggestive,” not for logical reasons: 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. In characterizing mystic states as pantheistic, optimistic, etc.,
+I am afraid I over‐simplified the truth. I did so for expository reasons,
+and to keep the closer to the classic mystical tradition. The classic
+religious 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 their preservation in “schools.” It is carved out
+from a much larger mass; and if we take the larger mass as seriously as
+religious mysticism has historically taken itself, we find that the
+supposed unanimity largely disappears. To begin with, even religious
+mysticism itself, the kind that accumulates traditions and makes schools,
+is much less unanimous than I have allowed. It has been both ascetic and
+antinomianly self‐indulgent within the Christian church.(281) It is
+dualistic in Sankhya, and monistic in Vedanta philosophy. I called it
+pantheistic; but the great Spanish mystics are anything but pantheists.
+They are with few exceptions non‐metaphysical minds, for whom “the
+category of personality” is absolute. The “union” of man with God is for
+them much more like an occasional miracle than like an original
+identity.(282) How different again, apart from the happiness common to
+all, is the mysticism of Walt Whitman, Edward Carpenter, Richard
+Jefferies, and other naturalistic pantheists, from the more distinctively
+Christian sort.(283) The fact is that the mystical feeling of enlargement,
+union, and emancipation has no specific intellectual content whatever of
+its own. It is capable of forming matrimonial alliances with material
+furnished by the most diverse philosophies and theologies, provided only
+they can find a place in their framework for its peculiar emotional mood.
+We have no right, therefore, to invoke its prestige as distinctively in
+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 passes out of common
+human consciousness in the direction in which they lie.
+So much for religious mysticism proper. But more remains to be told, for
+religious mysticism is only one half of mysticism. The other half has no
+accumulated traditions except those which the text‐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. In delusional 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 the smallest events, the same texts and words coming with
+new meanings, the same voices and visions and leadings and missions, the
+same controlling by extraneous powers; only this time the emotion is
+pessimistic: instead of consolations we have desolations; the meanings are
+dreadful; and the powers are enemies to life. It is evident that from the
+point of view of their psychological mechanism, 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
+the existence, but of which so little is really known. That region
+contains every kind of matter: “seraph and snake” abide there side by
+side. To come from thence is no infallible credential. What comes must 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 empirical methods, so long as we are not
+mystics ourselves.
+Once more, then, I repeat that non‐mystics are under no obligation to
+acknowledge in mystical states a superior authority conferred on them by
+their intrinsic nature.(284)
+.
+Yet, I repeat once more, the existence of mystical states absolutely
+overthrows the pretension of 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 of
+consciousness. They are excitements like the emotions of love or ambition,
+gifts to our spirit by means of which facts already objectively before us
+fall into a new expressiveness and make a new connection with our active
+life. They do not contradict these facts as such, or deny anything that
+our senses have immediately seized.(285) It is the rationalistic critic
+rather who plays the part of denier in the controversy, and his denials
+have no strength, for there never can be a state of facts to which new
+meaning may not truthfully be added, provided the mind ascend to a more
+enveloping point of view. It must always remain an open question whether
+mystical states may not possibly be such superior points of view, windows
+through which the mind looks out upon a more extensive and inclusive
+world. The difference of the views seen from the different mystical
+windows need not prevent us from entertaining this supposition. The wider
+world would in that case prove to have a mixed constitution like that of
+this world, that is all. It would have its celestial and its infernal
+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 its experiences by selecting and
+subordinating and substituting just as is our custom in this ordinary
+naturalistic world; we should be liable to error just as we are now; yet
+the counting in of that wider world of meanings, and the serious dealing
+with it, might, in spite of all the perplexity, be indispensable stages in
+our approach to the final fullness of the truth.
+                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
+In this shape, I think, we have to leave the subject. Mystical states
+indeed wield no authority due simply to their being mystical states. But
+the higher ones among them point in directions to which the 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 we may voluntarily ignore, but which as
+thinkers we cannot possibly upset. The supernaturalism and optimism to
+which they would persuade us may, interpreted in one way or another, be
+after all the truest 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 be that possibility and permission of this sort are
+all that the religious consciousness requires to live on. 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 union with the divine are true, you
+think, then not so much permission, as compulsion to believe, ought to be
+found. Philosophy has always professed to prove religious truth by
+coercive argument; and the construction of philosophies of this kind has
+always been one favorite function of the religious life, 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.
+Our study of saintliness raises a crucial question: Is the sense of divine presence a perception of something objectively true? Mysticism is willing to support religion, but its claims are too private and varied for universal authority. Philosophy, however, puts forward results that claim universal validity. Can philosophy stamp a warrant of veracity upon the religious man’s sense of the divine?
+The subject of Saintliness left us face to face with the question, Is the
+sense of divine presence a sense of anything objectively true? We turned
+first to mysticism for an answer, and found that although mysticism is
+entirely willing to corroborate religion, it is too private (and also too
+various) in its utterances to be able to claim a universal authority. But
+philosophy publishes results which claim to be universally valid if they
+are valid at all, so we now turn with our question to philosophy. Can
+philosophy stamp a warrant of veracity upon the religious man’s sense of
+the divine?
+You may suspect that having undermined mysticism, I will now discredit philosophy and conclude that religion is merely private faith based on sentiment—something that always exceeds our ability to articulate. To some extent you are right. I do believe that feeling is the deeper source of religion, and that philosophical formulas are secondary products, like translations of a text. But such a brief statement is misleading, and it will take this hour to explain precisely what I mean.
+I imagine that many of you at this point begin to indulge in guesses at
+the goal to which I am tending. I have undermined the authority of
+mysticism, you say, and the next thing I shall probably do is to seek to
+discredit that of philosophy. Religion, you expect to hear me conclude, is
+nothing but an affair of faith, based either on vague sentiment, or on
+that vivid sense of the reality of things unseen of which in my second
+lecture and in the lecture on Mysticism I gave so many examples. It is
+essentially private and individualistic; it always exceeds our powers of
+formulation; and although attempts to pour its contents into a philosophic
+mould will probably always go on, men being what they are, yet these
+attempts are always secondary processes which in no way add to the
+authority, or warrant the veracity, of the sentiments from which they
+derive their own stimulus and borrow 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 rehabilitate the primitive and
+unreflective, and to dissuade you from the hope of any Theology worthy of
+the name.
+By "secondary products" I mean that in a world without religious feeling, I doubt any philosophical theology would have been created. A cold intellectual contemplation of the universe—without inner unhappiness, need for salvation, or mystical emotion—would have produced only animistic explanations refined into science. People would have had no reason for the high-flying speculations of dogmatic or idealistic theology. Those speculations should be categorized as "over-beliefs"—intellectual structures built in directions first suggested by feeling.
+To a certain extent I have to admit that you guess rightly. I do believe
+that feeling is the deeper source of religion, and that philosophic and
+theological formulas are secondary products, like translations 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.
+Yet philosophy always has work to do. We are thinking beings, and we cannot prevent intellect from participating in our activities. We interpret our feelings intellectually, and our personal ideals and mystical experiences must fit the mental landscape we inhabit. The philosophical climate of our time inevitably forces its own clothing on us. Furthermore, we must share our feelings, which requires general and abstract formulas. Concepts are therefore a necessary part of religion. Philosophy serves as moderator amid the clash of hypotheses and mediator among the criticisms of one man’s constructions by another. It would be strange for me to dispute this, since these lectures themselves attempt to extract general facts from private religious experience.
+When I call theological formulas secondary products, I mean that in a
+world in which no religious feeling had ever existed, I doubt whether any
+philosophic theology could ever have been framed. I doubt if dispassionate
+intellectual contemplation of the universe, apart from inner unhappiness
+and need of deliverance on the one hand and mystical emotion on the other,
+would ever have resulted in religious philosophies such as we now possess.
+Men would have begun with animistic explanations of natural fact, and
+criticised these away into scientific ones, as they actually 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 speculations like those of either dogmatic or idealistic
+theology, these they would have had no motive to venture on, feeling no
+need of commerce with such deities. These speculations must, it seems to
+me, be classed as over‐beliefs, buildings‐out performed by the intellect
+into directions of which feeling originally supplied the hint.
+In other words, religious experience spontaneously generates myths, superstitions, dogmas, and metaphysical theologies. Recently, impartial classification has replaced mutual denunciations, creating the beginnings of a "Science of Religions." If these lectures contribute to such a science, I would be happy.
+But even if religious philosophy had to have its first hint supplied by
+feeling, may it not have dealt in a superior way with the matter which
+feeling suggested? Feeling is private and dumb, and unable to give an
+account of itself. It allows that its results are mysteries and enigmas,
+declines to justify them rationally, and on occasion is willing that they
+should even pass for paradoxical and absurd. Philosophy takes just the
+opposite attitude. Her aspiration is to reclaim from mystery and paradox
+whatever territory she touches. To find an escape from obscure and wayward
+personal persuasion to truth objectively valid for all thinking men has
+ever been the intellect’s most cherished ideal. To redeem religion from
+unwholesome privacy, and to give public status and universal right of way
+to its deliverances, has been reason’s task.
+But all these intellectual operations require immediate experience as their subject matter. They are interpretive and inductive; they follow religious feeling rather than existing alongside or independent of it.
+I believe that philosophy will always have opportunity to labor at this
+task.(286) We are thinking beings, and we cannot exclude the intellect
+from participating in any of our functions. Even in soliloquizing with
+ourselves, we construe our feelings intellectually. Both our personal
+ideals and our religious and mystical experiences must be interpreted
+congruously with the kind of scenery which our thinking mind inhabits. The
+philosophic climate of our time inevitably forces its own clothing on us.
+Moreover, we must exchange our feelings with one another, and in doing so
+we have to speak, and to use general and abstract verbal formulas.
+Conceptions and constructions are thus a necessary part of our religion;
+and as moderator amid the clash of hypotheses, and mediator among the
+criticisms of one man’s constructions by another, philosophy will always
+have much to do. It would be strange if I disputed this, when these very
+lectures which I am giving are (as you will see more clearly from now
+onwards) a laborious attempt to extract from the privacies of religious
+experience some general facts which can be defined in formulas upon which
+everybody may agree.
+------------------------------------
+Religious experience, in other words, spontaneously and inevitably
+engenders myths, superstitions, dogmas, creeds, and metaphysical
+theologies, and criticisms of one set of these by the adherents of
+another. Of late, impartial classifications and comparisons have become
+possible, alongside of the denunciations and anathemas by which the
+commerce between creeds used exclusively to be carried on. We have the
+beginnings of a “Science of Religions,” so‐called; and if these lectures
+could ever be accounted a crumb‐like contribution to such a science, I
+should be made very happy.
+The religious intellectualism I challenge claims to be different. It pretends to construct religious objects using only logical reason, drawing strict conclusions from objective facts. It calls its results "dogmatic theology" or "philosophy of the absolute," guaranteeing their truth through pure logic (*a priori*).
+But all these intellectual operations, whether they be constructive or
+comparative and critical, presuppose immediate experiences as their
+subject‐matter. They are interpretative and inductive operations,
+operations after the fact, consequent upon religious feeling, not
+coördinate with it, not independent of what it ascertains.
+Guaranteed systems have always been idols for ambitious souls. All-inclusive yet simple; noble, clean, clear, stable, rigorous, and true—what better refuge from the world's messiness? Consequently, theological schools disdain truth that is merely possible or probable, or results graspable only by personal conviction. Both Scholastics and Idealists express this. Principal John Caird writes in his *Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion*:
+                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
+> **Quote:** "Religion must indeed be a thing of the heart; but in order to elevate it from the region of subjective caprice and waywardness, and to distinguish between that which is true and false in religion, we must appeal to an objective standard. That which enters the heart must first be discerned by the intelligence to be _true_. It must be seen as having in its own nature a _right_ to dominate feeling, and as constituting the principle by which feeling must be judged. In estimating the religious character of individuals, nations, or races, the first question is, not how they feel, but what they think and believe—not whether their religion is one which manifests itself in emotions, more or less vehement and enthusiastic, but what are the _conceptions_ of God and divine things by which these emotions are called forth. Feeling is necessary in religion, but it is by the _content_ or intelligent basis of a religion, and not by feeling, that its character and worth are to be determined."
+The intellectualism in religion which I wish to discredit pretends to be
+something altogether different from this. It assumes to construct
+religious objects out of the resources of logical reason alone, or of
+logical reason drawing rigorous inference from non‐subjective facts. It
+calls its conclusions dogmatic theology, or philosophy of the absolute, as
+the case may be; it does not call them science of religions. It reaches
+them in an a priori way, and warrants their veracity.
+Cardinal Newman expresses this disdain even more forcefully in *The Idea of a University*. Theology, he says, is a science in the strictest sense. He explains what it is not—it is not "physical evidence" for God, nor "natural religion," for these are merely vague, subjective interpretations:
+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 system would 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 of the fore‐time, a disdain
+for merely possible or probable truth, and of results that only private
+assurance can grasp. Scholastics and idealists both express this disdain.
+Principal John Caird, for example, writes as follows in his Introduction
+to the Philosophy of Religion:—
+> **Quote:** "If the Supreme Being is powerful or skillful, just so far as the telescope shows power, or the microscope shows skill, if his moral law is to be ascertained simply by the physical processes of the animal frame, or his will gathered from the immediate issues of human affairs, if his Essence is just as high and deep and broad as the universe and no more; if this be the fact, then will I confess that there is no specific science about God, that theology is but a name, and a protest in its behalf an hypocrisy. Then, pious as it is to think of Him, while the pageant of experiment or abstract reasoning passes by, still such piety is nothing more than a poetry of thought, or an ornament of language, a certain view taken of Nature which one man has and another has not... I do not see much difference between avowing that there is no God, and implying that nothing definite can be known for certain about Him."
+What I mean by Theology, Newman continues, is none of these things:
+    “Religion must indeed be a thing of the heart; but in order to
+    elevate it from the region of subjective caprice and waywardness,
+    and to distinguish between that which is true and false in
+    religion, we must appeal to an objective standard. That which
+    enters the heart must first be discerned by the intelligence to be
+    _true_. It must be seen as having in its own nature a _right_ to
+    dominate feeling, and as constituting the principle by which
+    feeling must be judged.(287) In estimating the religious character
+    of individuals, nations, or races, the first question is, not how
+    they feel, but what they think and believe—not whether their
+    religion is one which manifests itself in emotions, more or less
+    vehement and enthusiastic, but what are the _conceptions_ of God
+    and divine things by which these emotions are called forth.
+    Feeling is necessary in religion, but it is by the _content_ or
+    intelligent basis of a religion, and not by feeling, that its
+    character and worth are to be determined.”(288)
+> **Quote:** "I simply mean the _Science of God_, or the truths we know about God, put into a system, just as we have a science of the stars and call it astronomy, or of the crust of the earth and call it geology."
+In both excerpts, the issue is clear: feeling, valid only for the individual, is pitted against reason, valid for everyone. This is a simple test of fact. If theology were based on pure reason, it should convince all people. If it does not, where is its superiority? If it creates sects just as sentiment does, how does it free us from personal whim?
+Cardinal Newman, in his work, The Idea of a University, gives more
+emphatic expression still to this disdain for sentiment.(289) Theology, he
+says, is a science in the strictest sense of the word. I will tell you, he
+says, what it is not—not “physical evidences” for God, not “natural
+religion,” for these are but vague subjective interpretations:—
+This practical test simplifies my task. I need not discredit philosophy through complex critique. It is enough to show that historically, it fails to be "objectively" convincing. Philosophy does not eliminate differences; it creates schools just as feeling does.
+> **Quote:** "The logical reason of man operates in this field of divinity exactly as it has always operated in love, or in patriotism, or in politics... It finds arguments for our conviction, for indeed it _has_ to find them. It amplifies and defines our faith, and dignifies it and lends it words and plausibility. It hardly ever engenders it; it cannot now secure it."
+    “If,” he continues, “the Supreme Being is powerful or skillful,
+    just so far as the telescope shows power, or the microscope shows
+    skill, if his moral law is to be ascertained simply by the
+    physical processes of the animal frame, or his will gathered from
+    the immediate issues of human affairs, if his Essence is just as
+    high and deep and broad as the universe and no more; if this be
+    the fact, then will I confess that there is no specific science
+    about God, that theology is but a name, and a protest in its
+    behalf an hypocrisy. Then, pious as it is to think of Him, while
+    the pageant of experiment or abstract reasoning passes by, still
+    such piety is nothing more than a poetry of thought, or an
+    ornament 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 all would be
+    the better for adopting. It is but the theology of Nature, just as
+    we talk of the _philosophy_ or the _romance_ of history, or the
+    _poetry_ of childhood, or the picturesque or the sentimental or
+    the humorous, or any other abstract quality which the genius or
+    the caprice of the individual, or the fashion of the day, or the
+    consent of the world, recognizes in any set of objects which are
+    subjected to its contemplation. I do not see much difference
+    between avowing that 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 the _Science of God_, or the truths we know
+    about God, put into a system, just as we have a science of the
+    stars and call it astronomy, or of the crust of the earth and call
+    it geology.”
+Consider traditional systematic theology. The arguments for God's existence have stood for centuries against skeptical criticism that has eroded their structural integrity without discrediting them for believers. If you already believe, these arguments confirm you; if you are atheist, they fail to change your mind.
+The varied proofs—the "cosmological" argument from world to First Cause, the "argument from design" from natural harmony to intelligent Cause, the "moral argument" from moral law to lawgiver, the "argument from universal consent" (*ex consensu gentium*) from widespread belief to natural truth—I will not discuss in technical detail. The simple fact that almost every idealist since Kant has dismissed them shows they are not solid enough to serve as religion's sole foundation. Causality is too obscure to support theology's whole weight. As for design, Darwinian theory changes everything: when we view adaptations as fortunate survivals from limitless destruction, they suggest a deity very different from earlier versions. These arguments merely follow suggestions of facts and feelings. They prove nothing strictly; they only support biases we already have.
+In both these extracts we have the issue clearly set before us: Feeling
+valid only for the individual 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 and mysticism form them, how would it fulfill its programme
+of freeing us from personal caprice and waywardness? This perfectly
+definite practical test of the pretensions of philosophy to found religion
+on universal reason simplifies my procedure to‐day. I need not discredit
+philosophy by laborious criticism of its arguments. It will suffice if I
+show that as a matter of history it fails to prove its pretension to be
+“objectively” convincing. In fact, philosophy does so fail. It does not
+banish differences; it founds schools and sects just as feeling does. I
+believe, in fact, that the logical reason of man operates in this field of
+divinity exactly as it has always operated in love, or in patriotism, or
+in politics, or in any other of the wider affairs of life, in which our
+passions or our mystical intuitions fix our beliefs beforehand. It finds
+arguments for our conviction, for indeed it _has_ to find them. It
+amplifies and defines our faith, and dignifies it and lends it words and
+plausibility. It hardly ever engenders it; it cannot now secure it.(290)
+------------------------------------
+                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
+If philosophy does so little to prove God's existence, how well does she define his attributes?
+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‐books published since Pope
+Leo’s Encyclical recommending the study of Saint Thomas. I glance first at
+the arguments by which dogmatic theology establishes God’s existence,
+after that at those by which it establishes his nature.(291)
+Since God is the First Cause, he possesses existence *a se* (from himself). From this "self-existence," theology derives his other perfections. He must be *necessary* and *absolute*—he cannot not exist, and cannot be influenced. This makes him unlimited; limitation implies lack of being, and God is Being itself. This lack of limits makes him infinitely perfect. He is *One* and *Only*, for infinite perfection cannot have an equal. He is *Spiritual*, for if composed of physical parts, some power would have assembled them, contradicting his self-existence. He is *metaphysically simple*—his nature and existence are identical. This excludes from his being distinctions we see in finite things—between potential and actual, substance and accident, being and doing. We can speak of God's powers, but these are only human perspectives. In God, all merge into absolute identity.
+The arguments for God’s existence have stood for hundreds of years with
+the waves of unbelieving criticism breaking against them, never totally
+discrediting them in the ears of the faithful, but on the whole slowly and
+surely washing out the mortar from between their joints. If you 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 from the contingence of the world
+to a First Cause which must contain whatever perfections the world itself
+contains. The “argument from design” reasons, from the fact that Nature’s
+laws are mathematical, and her parts benevolently adapted to each other,
+that this cause is both intellectual and 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
+the rational nature of man, and should therefore carry authority with it.
+This lack of "potential" requires him to be *immutable*. He is entirely actual; any change would contradict his perfection. He is *infinite* and *boundless*; if he had shape in space, he would be composed of parts, contradicting indivisibility. He is therefore *omnipresent*—indivisibly present at every point. Similarly, he is entirely present at every point in time—*eternal*. If he had a beginning, he would need a prior cause; if he had an end, he would not be "necessary." If he experienced sequence, he would not be immutable.
+As I just said, I will not discuss these arguments technically. The bare
+fact that all idealists since Kant have felt entitled either to scout or
+to neglect them shows that they are not solid enough to serve as
+religion’s all‐sufficient foundation. Absolutely impersonal reasons would
+be in duty bound to show more general convincingness. Causation is indeed
+too obscure a principle to bear the weight of the whole structure of
+theology. As for the argument from design, see how Darwinian ideas have
+revolutionized it. Conceived as we now conceive them, as so many fortunate
+escapes from almost limitless processes of destruction, the benevolent
+adaptations which we find in Nature suggest a deity very different from
+the one who figured in the earlier versions of the argument.(292)
+He possesses *intelligence*, *will*, and every creaturely perfection (a cause cannot be less than its effect). In him these are eternally active. Nothing external can limit God, so the primary object of his focus can only be himself. He knows himself in one eternal act and wills himself with infinite self-satisfaction. Because he must logically love himself, he is not "free" internally as creatures are. Externally, regarding creation, he is free. He does not *need* to create, being already perfect. Therefore he creates by absolute freedom.
+The fact is that these arguments do but follow the combined suggestions of
+the facts and of our feeling. They prove nothing rigorously. They only
+corroborate our pre‐existent partialities.
+As substance endowed with intellect, will, and freedom, God is a *person*—and a *living* person, since he is both actor and object of his activity. He is absolutely *self-sufficient*: his self-knowledge and self-love are infinite, requiring no outside conditions.
+                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
+He is *omniscient*, for by knowing himself as Cause he implicitly knows all created things. His knowledge is *foreseeing*, as he is present at all times. Even our free acts are known in advance; otherwise his wisdom would grow over time, contradicting immutability. He is *omnipotent* in everything not logically contradictory. He can create *being*. If creations were made of his substance, they would be infinite; but being finite, they must be non-divine. He creates from nothing (*ex nihilo*), granting finite substances distinct from himself. The forms he imprints are based on prototypes within his ideas. Since God is perfectly unified, we must distinguish between ideas as they exist in God and our external attempts to imitate them.
+If philosophy can do so little to establish God’s existence, how stands it
+with her efforts to define his attributes? It is worth while to look at
+the attempts of systematic theology in this direction.
+God is holy, good, and just. He can do no evil, being the fullness of positive being while evil is negation. He has created physical evil only as means to greater good; he cannot will moral evil, for that would contradict his holiness. By creating free beings, he only *permits* it.
+Regarding God's purpose, it must primarily be exercising absolute freedom by revealing his glory to rational beings capable of knowledge, love, honor, and happiness—since knowledge of God is the source of bliss. To that extent, his secondary purpose is *love*.
+    Since God is First Cause, this science of sciences says, he
+    differs from all his creatures in possessing existence _a se_.
+    From this “a‐se‐ity” on God’s part, theology deduces by mere logic
+    most of his other perfections. For instance, he must be both
+    _necessary_ and _absolute_, cannot not be, and cannot in any way
+    be determined by anything else. This makes Him absolutely
+    unlimited from 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 the infinitely 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 be contradicted. He is therefore both simple and
+    non‐physical in nature. He is _simple metaphysically_ also, that
+    is to say, his nature and his existence cannot be distinct, as
+    they are in finite substances which share their formal natures
+    with one another, and are individual only in their material
+    aspect. Since God is one and only, his _essentia_ and his _esse_
+    must be given at one stroke. 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 and attributes. We can talk, it is true,
+    of God’s powers, acts, and attributes, but these discriminations
+    are only “virtual,” and made from the human point of view. In God
+    all these points of view fall into an absolute identity of being.
+I will not follow these definitions further into mysteries like the Trinity. What I have provided is a sample of orthodox philosophical theology shared by Catholics and Protestants. Cardinal Newman, inspired by this list, continues with magnificent rhetoric—scholastic philosophy "touched with emotion." Any philosophy must be touched with emotion to be understood. Emotionally, dogmatic theology is valuable to minds like Newman's. To judge its intellectual value, I must make a short detour.
+    This absence of all potentiality in God obliges Him to be
+    _immutable_. He is actuality, through and through. Were there
+    anything potential about Him, He would either lose or gain by its
+    actualization, 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 be composite, 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,—in other words _eternal_. For if He began in time, He would
+    need a prior cause, and that would contradict his aseity. If He
+    ended, it would contradict his necessity. If He went through any
+    succession, it would contradict his immutability.
+---------------------------------
+    He has _intelligence_ and _will_ and every other creature‐
+    perfection, for _we_ have them, and _effectus nequit superare
+    causam_. In Him, however, they are absolutely and eternally in
+    act, and their _object_, since God can be bounded by naught that
+    is external, can primarily be nothing else than God himself. He
+    knows himself, then, in one eternal indivisible act, and wills
+    himself with an infinite self‐pleasure.(293) Since He must of
+    logical necessity thus love and will himself, He cannot 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,
+    being perfect in being and in happiness already. He _wills_ to
+    create, then, by an absolute freedom.
+> **Quote:** "What God hath joined together, let no man put asunder."
+    Being thus a substance endowed with intellect and will and
+    freedom, God is a _person_; and a _living_ person also, for He is
+    both object and subject of his own activity, and to be this
+    distinguishes the living from the lifeless. He is thus absolutely
+    _self‐sufficient_: his _self‐knowledge_ and _self‐love_ are both
+    of them infinite and adequate, and need no extraneous conditions
+    to perfect them.
+Continental philosophy has too often ignored that human thinking is organically linked to human conduct. The greatest achievement of English and Scottish thinkers is keeping this connection in view. Their guiding principle has been that every theoretical distinction must eventually result in a practical one—that the best way to discuss theory is to first determine what practical difference would result from one option being true.
+    He is _omniscient_, for in knowing himself as Cause He knows all
+    creature things and events by implication. His knowledge is
+    _previsive_, for He is present to all time. Even our free acts are
+    known beforehand to Him, for otherwise his wisdom would admit of
+    successive moments of enrichment, and this would contradict his
+    immutability. He is _omnipotent_ for everything that does not
+    involve logical contradiction. He can make _being_—in other words
+    his power includes _creation_. If what He creates were made of his
+    own substance, it would have to be infinite in essence, as that
+    substance is; but it is finite; so it must be non‐divine in
+    substance. If it were made of a substance, an eternally existing
+    matter, for example, which God found there to his hand, and to
+    which He simply gave its form, that would contradict God’s
+    definition as First Cause, and make Him 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 which he imprints upon
+    them have their prototypes in his ideas. But as in God there is no
+    such thing as multiplicity, and as these ideas for us are
+    manifold, we must distinguish the ideas as they are in God and the
+    way in which our minds externally imitate them. We must attribute
+    them to Him only in a _terminative_ sense, as differing aspects,
+    from the finite point of view, of his unique essence.
+> **Quote:** "What is the particular truth in question _known as_? In what facts does it result? What is its cash‐value in terms of particular experience?"
+    God of course is holy, good, and just. He can do no evil, for He
+    is positive being’s fullness, and evil is negation. It is true
+    that He has created physical evil in places, but only as a means
+    of wider good, for _bonum totius præeminet bonum partis_. Moral
+    evil He cannot will, either as end or means, for that would
+    contradict his holiness. By creating free beings He _permits_ it
+    only, neither his justice nor his goodness obliging Him to prevent
+    the recipients of freedom from misusing the gift.
+This is the characteristic English approach. Locke used it for personal identity: your identity is simply your chain of specific memories—that is the only concrete, verifiable meaning. Any further ideas about spiritual substance are meaningless. Berkeley did the same with "matter": its cash-value is our physical sensations. Hume applied it to causation: it is known as habit of seeing one thing follow another, with tendency to expect a result. Without this practical meaning, it has no significance. Stewart, Brown, the Mills, Bain, and Hodgson followed this method. Ultimately, English and Scottish writers—not Kant—introduced the "critical method" into philosophy, the only method making philosophy worthy of serious people. What seriousness remains in debating ideas that make no difference in how we act?
+    As regards God’s purpose in creating, primarily it can only have
+    been to exercise his absolute freedom by the manifestation to
+    others of his glory. From this it follows that the others must be
+    rational beings, capable in the first place of knowledge, love,
+    and honor, and in the second place of happiness, for the knowledge
+    and love of God is the mainspring of felicity. In so far forth one
+    may say that God’s secondary purpose in creating is _love_.
+An original American philosopher, Charles Sanders Peirce, extracted this instinctive principle, identified it as fundamental, and gave it a Greek name. He calls it *pragmatism*, defending it thus:
+Thought aims solely at reaching belief, which is thought at rest. Only when thinking reaches belief can we act firmly. Beliefs are rules for action; thinking's entire purpose is developing active habits. If any part of a thought has no practical consequences, that part is not truly part of the thought's meaning. To understand a thought's meaning, we need only determine what conduct it produces. The tangible reality behind intellectual distinctions is that none are so subtle as to consist of anything other than possible difference in practice. To achieve clarity about an object, we need only consider what sensations we expect from it and what conduct we must prepare. Our concept of these practical consequences is our entire concept of the object.
+I will not weary you by pursuing these metaphysical determinations
+farther, into the mysteries of God’s Trinity, for example. What I have
+given will serve as a specimen of the orthodox philosophical theology of
+both Catholics and Protestants. Newman, filled with enthusiasm at God’s
+list of perfections, continues the passage which I began to quote to you
+by a couple of pages of a rhetoric so magnificent that I can hardly
+refrain from adding them, in spite of the inroad they would make upon our
+time.(294) He first enumerates God’s attributes sonorously, then
+celebrates his ownership of everything in earth and Heaven, and the
+dependence of all that happens upon his permissive will. He gives us
+scholastic philosophy “touched with emotion,” and every philosophy should
+be touched with emotion to be rightly understood. Emotionally, then,
+dogmatic theology is worth something to minds of the type of Newman’s. It
+will aid us to estimate what it is worth intellectually, if at this point
+I make a short digression.
+This is Peirce's principle. It will help us decide whether some attributes in the formal inventory are less significant than others.
+                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
+If we apply pragmatism to God's strictly metaphysical attributes—as opposed to his moral attributes—I believe we must admit they lack intelligible meaning. Take God's self-existence; his necessity; his immateriality; his "simplicity" or superiority to internal variety; his indivisibility; his lack of distinction between being and acting, substance and accident, potentiality and actuality; his refusal to be categorized; his actualized infinity; his "personality" apart from moral traits; his permissive relationship to evil; and his absolute self-sufficiency and bliss. How do such qualities connect in any definite way with our lives? If they require no specific changes in our behavior, what vital difference does it make whether they are true or false?
+What God hath joined together, let no man put asunder. The Continental
+schools of philosophy have too often overlooked the fact that man’s
+thinking is organically connected with his conduct. It seems to me to be
+the chief glory of English and Scottish thinkers to have kept the organic
+connection in view. The guiding principle of British philosophy has in
+fact been that every difference must _make_ a difference, every
+theoretical difference somewhere issue in a practical difference, and that
+the best method of discussing points of theory is to begin by ascertaining
+what practical difference would result from one alternative or the other
+being true. What is the particular truth in question _known as_? In what
+facts does it result? What is its cash‐value in terms of particular
+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 your chain 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 is based, are therefore void of
+intelligible meaning; and propositions touching such ideas may be
+indifferently 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 we concretely verify of its conception. That, therefore, is the
+whole meaning of the term “matter”—any other pretended meaning is mere
+wind of words. Hume does the same thing with causation. It is known as
+habitual antecedence, and as tendency on our part to look for something
+definite to come. Apart from this practical meaning it has no significance
+whatever, and books about it may be committed to the flames, says Hume.
+Dugald Stewart and Thomas Brown, James Mill, John Mill, and Professor
+Bain, have followed more or less consistently the same method; and
+Shadworth Hodgson has used the principle with full explicitness. When all
+is said and done, it was English 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 can
+possibly remain in debating philosophic propositions that will never make
+an appreciable difference 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?
+For my part, though I hate to offend deeply held beliefs, I must frankly admit that even if these attributes were perfectly proven, I cannot see how it would matter to our religious lives. What specific action can I take to better adapt myself to God's "simplicity"? How does it help plan my behavior to know his happiness is complete? Mayne Reid, the famous adventure writer, constantly praised hunters of live animals while attacking "closet-naturalists" who only collected skeletons. As a boy, I thought a closet-naturalist must be the most wretched person on earth.
+An American philosopher of eminent originality, Mr. Charles Sanders
+Peirce, has rendered thought a service by disentangling from the
+particulars of its application the principle by which these men were
+instinctively guided, and by singling it out as fundamental and giving to
+it a Greek name. He calls it the principle of _pragmatism_, and he defends
+it somewhat as follows:(295)—
+> **Quote:** "But surely the systematic theologians are the closet‐naturalists of the deity, even in Captain Mayne Reid’s sense. What is their deduction of metaphysical attributes but a shuffling and matching of pedantic dictionary‐adjectives, aloof from morals, 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 well as by a man of flesh and blood."
+Thought in movement has for its only conceivable motive the attainment of
+belief, or thought at rest. Only when our thought about a subject has
+found its rest in belief can our action on the subject firmly and safely
+begin. Beliefs, in short, are rules for action; and the whole function of
+thinking is but one step in the production of active habits. If there were
+any part of a thought that made no difference in the thought’s practical
+consequences, then that part would be no proper element of the thought’s
+significance. To develop a thought’s meaning we need therefore only
+determine what conduct it is fitted to produce; that conduct is for us its
+sole significance; and the tangible fact at the root of all our thought‐
+distinctions is that there is no one of them so fine as to consist in
+anything but a possible difference of practice. To attain perfect
+clearness in our thoughts of an object, we need then only consider what
+sensations, immediate or remote, we are conceivably 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.
+They have the trail of the serpent over them. In theologians' hands they seem like titles earned through mechanical manipulation of synonyms. Empty words replace vision, professionalism replaces life. Instead of bread, we are given a stone; instead of a fish, a snake. If such abstract terms captured our knowledge of God, theology schools might survive, but vital religion would have fled the world. Religion is sustained by something other than abstract definitions—by phenomena of vital conversation with the unseen divine, renewing themselves in humble individuals.
+This is the principle of Peirce, the principle of pragmatism. Such a
+principle will help us on this occasion to decide, among the various
+attributes set down in the scholastic inventory of God’s perfections,
+whether some be not far less significant than others.
+So much for God's metaphysical attributes! From the perspective of practical religion, the metaphysical monster they present is an entirely worthless invention of the academic mind.
+If, namely, we apply the principle of pragmatism to God’s metaphysical
+attributes, strictly so called, as distinguished from his moral
+attributes, I think that, even were we forced by a coercive logic to
+believe them, we still should have to confess them to be destitute of all
+intelligible significance. Take God’s aseity, for example; or his
+necessariness; his immateriality; his “simplicity” or superiority to the
+kind of inner variety and succession which we find in finite beings, his
+indivisibility, and lack of the inner distinctions of being and activity,
+substance and accident, potentiality and actuality, and the rest; his
+repudiation of inclusion in a genus; his actualized infinity; his
+“personality,” apart from the moral qualities which it may comport; his
+relations to evil being permissive and not positive; his self‐sufficiency,
+self‐love, and absolute felicity in himself:—candidly speaking, how do
+such qualities as these make any definite connection with our life? And if
+they severally call for no distinctive adaptations of our conduct, what
+vital difference can it possibly make to a man’s religion whether they be
+true or false?
+---------------------------------
+For my own part, although I dislike to say aught that may grate upon
+tender associations, I must frankly confess that even though these
+attributes were faultlessly deduced, I cannot conceive of its being of the
+smallest consequence to us religiously that any one of them should be
+true. Pray, what specific 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 the middle of
+the century just past, Mayne Reid was the great writer of books of out‐of‐
+door adventure. He was forever extolling the hunters and field‐observers
+of living animals’ habits, and keeping up a fire of invective against the
+“closet‐naturalists,” as he called them, the collectors and classifiers,
+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 are the closet‐naturalists of the
+deity, even in Captain Mayne Reid’s sense. What is their deduction of
+metaphysical attributes but a shuffling and matching of pedantic
+dictionary‐adjectives, aloof from morals, 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 well as by a man of flesh and blood. They have the trail of
+the serpent over them. One feels that in the theologians’ hands, they are
+only a set of titles obtained by a mechanical manipulation of synonyms;
+verbality has stepped into the place of vision, professionalism into that
+of life. Instead of bread we have a stone; instead of a fish, a serpent.
+Did such a conglomeration of abstract terms give really the gist of our
+knowledge of the deity, schools of theology might indeed continue to
+flourish, but religion, vital religion, would have taken its flight from
+this world. What keeps religion 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 after‐effects, secondary accretions upon those phenomena of
+vital conversation with the unseen divine, of which I have shown you so
+many instances, renewing themselves _in sæcula sæculorum_ in the lives of
+humble private men.
+What about the moral attributes? Pragmatically, they stand on completely different ground. They directly influence our fear, hope, and expectations, and serve as basis for saintly life.
+So much for the metaphysical attributes of God! From the point of view of
+practical religion, the metaphysical monster which they offer to our
+worship is an absolutely worthless invention of the scholarly mind.
+Take God's holiness: because he is holy, God can only will what is good. Because he is all-powerful, he can ensure good triumphs. Because he is all-knowing, he can see us even in darkness. Because he is just, he can punish what he sees. Because he is loving, he can also forgive. Because he is unchanging, we can rely on him completely. These qualities connect directly to our lives; it is vital we know them. The idea that God's purpose is revealing his glory also directly impacts our practical lives, shaping worship across Christian nations. If dogmatic theology proved such a God exists, it could claim to provide solid foundation for religious feeling. But honestly, how strong are its arguments?
+                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
+They are as weak as arguments for his existence. Not only do modern idealists reject them, but history shows they have never converted anyone who doubted God's goodness based on the world's moral condition. To prove God's goodness by arguing there is no "non-being" in his essence would sound simply ridiculous.
+What shall we now say of the attributes called moral? Pragmatically, they
+stand on an entirely different footing. They positively determine fear and
+hope and expectation, and are foundations for the saintly life. It needs
+but a glance at them to show how great is their significance.
+No, the Book of Job settled this. Logical deduction is a superficial path to the divine:
+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 us for what he sees.
+Being loving, he can pardon too. Being unalterable, we can count on him
+securely. These qualities enter into connection with our life, it is
+highly important that we should be informed concerning them. That God’s
+purpose in creation should be the manifestation of his glory is also an
+attribute which has definite relations to our practical life. Among other
+things it has given a definite character to worship in all Christian
+countries. If dogmatic theology really does prove beyond dispute that a
+God with characters like these exists, she may well claim to give a solid
+basis to religious sentiment. But verily, how stands it with her
+arguments?
+> **Quote:** "I will lay mine hand upon my mouth; I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth Thee."
+It stands with them as ill as with the arguments for his existence. Not
+only do post‐Kantian idealists reject them root and branch, but it is a
+plain historic fact that they never have converted any one who has found
+in the moral complexion of the world, as he experienced it, reasons for
+doubting that a good God can have framed it. To prove God’s goodness by
+the scholastic argument that there is no non‐being in his essence would
+sound to such a witness simply silly.
+An intellect confused and defeated, yet still feeling a trusting sense of a Presence—that is the state of one honest with themselves and the facts, yet remaining religious.
+No! the book of Job went over this whole matter once for all and
+definitively. Ratiocination is a relatively superficial and unreal path to
+the deity: “I will lay mine hand upon my mouth; I have heard of Thee by
+the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth Thee.” An intellect
+perplexed and baffled, yet a trustful sense of presence—such is the
+situation of the man who is sincere with himself and with the facts, but
+who remains religious still.(296)
+We must therefore say a final goodbye to dogmatic theology. In all sincerity, our faith must do without that validation. Modern idealism has left this theology behind forever. Can modern idealism offer faith better justification, or must faith rely on itself?
+We must therefore, I think, bid a definitive good‐by to dogmatic theology.
+In all sincerity our faith must do without that warrant. Modern idealism,
+I repeat, has said good‐by to this theology forever. Can modern idealism
+give faith a better warrant, or must she still rely on her poor self for
+witness?
+---------------------------------
+                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
+The foundation of modern idealism is Kant's doctrine of the Transcendental Ego of Apperception. By this intimidating term, Kant meant simply that awareness "I think them" must accompany all our perceptions. Earlier skeptics said as much, but for them the "I" remained personal. Kant made it abstract and impersonal, his most universal category, though even for Kant it had no theological implications.
+The basis of modern idealism is Kant’s doctrine of the Transcendental Ego
+of Apperception. By this 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 and depersonalized it, and made it the most universal of all
+his categories, although for Kant himself the Transcendental Ego had no
+theological implications.
+Kant's successors transformed his "abstract consciousness" into an infinite, concrete self-consciousness that serves as the world's soul, in which our individual self-consciousnesses exist. It would be too technical to explain this transition briefly. It is enough to say that in the Hegelian school, which still influences British and American thought, two principles carry this operation.
+It was reserved for his successors to convert Kant’s notion of
+_Bewusstsein überhaupt_, or abstract consciousness, into an infinite
+concrete self‐consciousness which is the soul of the world, and in which
+our sundry personal self‐consciousnesses have their being. It would lead
+me into technicalities 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 and American
+thinking, two principles have borne the brunt of the operation.
+First, the old logic of identity only dissects scattered parts post-mortem; life's fullness can only be understood if we recognize that every object of thought implies another that initially seems to contradict it.
+The first of these principles is that the old logic of identity never
+gives us more than a post‐mortem dissection of _disjecta membra_, and that
+the fullness of life can be construed to thought only by recognizing that
+every object which our thought may propose to itself involves the notion
+of some other object which seems at first to negate the first one.
+Second, to be aware of a negation is already, in effect, to be beyond it. The mere act of asking a question proves the answer is imminent; the finite, when recognized, is already the infinite in potential.
+The second principle is that to be conscious of a negation is already
+virtually to be beyond it. The mere asking of a question or expression of
+a dissatisfaction proves that the answer or the satisfaction is already
+imminent; the finite, realized as such, is already the infinite _in
+posse_.
+By applying these principles, we gain momentum that traditional static logic never achieves. Objects of thought now *act* within our minds, as they do in real experience. They change, develop, introduce something other than themselves, and this other, initially ideal, eventually proves actual, replacing and correcting the original idea.
+Applying these principles, we seem to get a propulsive force into our
+logic which the ordinary logic of a bare, stark self‐identity in each
+thing never attains to. The objects of our thought now _act_ 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 ideal or potential, presently proves itself
+also to be actual. It supersedes the thing at first supposed, and both
+verifies and corrects it, in developing the fullness of its meaning.
+This plan is excellent; the universe *is* a place where things are followed by others that correct and fulfill them. A logic capturing this movement would express truth far better than academic logic, which only records static categories. Nothing could be less like dogmatic theology than this new logic. Let me quote the Scottish transcendentalist I mentioned:
+The program is excellent; the universe _is_ a place where things are
+followed by other things that both correct and fulfill them; and a logic
+which gave us something like this movement of fact would express truth far
+better than the traditional school‐logic, which never gets of its own
+accord from anything to anything else, and registers only predictions and
+subsumptions, or static resemblances and differences. Nothing could be
+more unlike the methods of dogmatic theology than those of this new logic.
+Let me quote in illustration some passages from the Scottish
+transcendentalist whom I have already named.
+**Quote:**
+> "How are we to conceive of the reality in which all intelligence rests? Two things may without difficulty be proved, viz., that this reality is an absolute Spirit, and conversely that it is only in communion with this absolute Spirit or Intelligence that the finite Spirit can realize itself. It is absolute; for the faintest movement of human intelligence would be arrested, if it did not presuppose the absolute reality of intelligence, of thought itself. Doubt or denial themselves presuppose and indirectly affirm it. When I pronounce anything to be true, I pronounce it, indeed, to be relative to thought, but not to be relative to my thought, or to the thought of any other individual mind. From the existence of all individual minds as such I can abstract; 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 Thought or Self‐Consciousness."
+    “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
+    absolute Spirit, and conversely that it is only in communion with
+    this absolute Spirit or Intelligence that the finite Spirit can
+    realize itself. It is absolute; for the faintest movement of human
+    intelligence would be arrested, if it did not presuppose the
+    absolute reality of intelligence, of thought itself. Doubt or
+    denial themselves presuppose and indirectly affirm it. When I
+    pronounce anything to be true, I pronounce it, indeed, to be
+    relative to thought, but not to be relative to my thought, or to
+    the thought of any other individual mind. From the existence of
+    all individual minds as such I can abstract; 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 Thought or Self‐Consciousness.”
+Here Principal Caird makes the transition Kant did not: he turns the omnipresence of consciousness in general into omnipresent universal consciousness, which he identifies as God. He then uses the principle that acknowledging limits is essentially being beyond them, transitioning to religious experience thus:
+Here, you see, Principal Caird makes the transition which Kant did not
+make: he converts the omnipresence of consciousness in general as a
+condition of “truth” being anywhere possible, into an omnipresent
+universal consciousness, which he identifies with God in his concreteness.
+He next proceeds to use the principle that to acknowledge your limits is
+in essence to be beyond them; and makes the transition to the religious
+experience of individuals in the following words:—
+**Quote:**
+> "If [Man] were only a creature of transient sensations and impulses... then nothing could ever have for him the character of objective truth or reality. But it is the prerogative of man's spiritual nature that he can yield himself up 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 every movement of self‐assertion, every notion and opinion that is merely mine, every desire that belongs to me as this particular Self, and to become the pure medium of a thought that is universal—in one word, to live no more my own life, but let my consciousness be possessed and suffused by the Infinite and Eternal life of spirit. And yet it is just in this renunciation of self that I truly gain myself, or realize the highest possibilities of my own nature. For whilst in one sense we give up self to live the universal and absolute life of reason, yet that to which we thus surrender ourselves is in reality our truer self. The life of absolute reason is not a life that is foreign to us."
+    “If [Man] were only a creature of transient sensations and
+    impulses, of an ever coming and going succession of intuitions,
+    fancies, feelings, then nothing could ever have for him the
+    character of objective truth or reality. But it is the prerogative
+    of man’s spiritual nature that he can yield himself up 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 every movement of self‐assertion, every notion and
+    opinion that is merely mine, every desire that belongs to me as
+    this particular Self, and to become the pure medium of a thought
+    that is universal—in one word, to live no more my own life, but
+    let my consciousness be possessed and suffused by the Infinite and
+    Eternal life of spirit. And yet it is just in this renunciation of
+    self that I truly gain myself, or realize the highest
+    possibilities of my own nature. For whilst in one sense we give up
+    self to live the universal and absolute life of reason, yet that
+    to which we thus surrender ourselves is in reality our truer self.
+    The life of absolute reason is not a life that is foreign to us.”
+Nevertheless, Principal Caird continues, as far as we can realize this doctrine, its comfort remains incomplete. Whatever we may be in potential, even the best of us falls short of being absolutely divine. Social morality, love, and self-sacrifice only merge our self into another finite self; they do not identify us with the Infinite. Man's ideal destiny, though infinite in abstract logic, might seem forever unreachable.
+Nevertheless, Principal Caird goes on to say, so far as we are able
+outwardly to realize this doctrine, the balm it offers remains incomplete.
+Whatever we may be _in posse_, the very best of us _in 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 the Infinite. Man’s ideal destiny,
+infinite in abstract logic, might thus seem in practice forever
+unrealizable.
+**Quote:**
+> "Is there, then, no solution of the contradiction between the ideal and the actual? We answer, There is such a solution, but in order to reach it we are carried beyond the sphere of morality into that of religion. It may be said to be the essential characteristic of religion as 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 actual partaker of a divine or infinite life. Whether we view religion from the human side or the divine—as the surrender of the soul to God, or as the life of God in the soul—in either aspect it is of its very essence that the Infinite has ceased to be a far‐off vision, and has become a present reality. The very first pulsation of the spiritual life, when we rightly apprehend its significance, is the indication that the division between the Spirit and its object has vanished, that the ideal has become real, that the finite has reached its goal and become suffused with the presence and life of the Infinite.
+> "Oneness of mind and will with the divine mind and will is not the future hope and aim of religion, but its very beginning and birth in the soul. To enter on the religious life is to terminate the struggle. In that act which constitutes the beginning of the religious life—call it faith, or trust, or self‐surrender, or by whatever name you will—there is involved the identification of the finite with a life which is eternally realized. It is true indeed that the religious life is progressive; but understood in the light of the foregoing idea, religious progress is not progress towards, but within the sphere of the Infinite. It is not the vain attempt by endless finite additions or increments to become possessed of infinite wealth, but it is the endeavor, by the constant exercise of 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. The position of the man who has entered on the religious life is that evil, error, imperfection, do not really belong to him: they are excrescences which have no organic relation to his true nature: they are already virtually, as they will be actually, suppressed and annulled, and in the very process of being annulled they become the means of spiritual progress. Though he is not exempt from temptation and conflict, [yet] in that inner sphere in which his true life lies, the struggle is over, the victory already achieved. It is not a finite but an infinite life which the spirit lives. Every pulse‐beat of its [existence] is the expression and realization of the life of God."
+    “Is there, then,” our author continues, “no solution of the
+    contradiction between the ideal and the actual? We answer, There
+    is such a solution, but in order to reach it we are carried beyond
+    the sphere of morality into that of religion. It may be said to be
+    the essential characteristic of religion as 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 actual partaker of
+    a divine or infinite life. Whether we view religion from the human
+    side or the divine—as the surrender of the soul to God, or as the
+    life of God in the soul—in either aspect it is of its very essence
+    that the Infinite has ceased to be a far‐off vision, and has
+    become a present reality. The very first pulsation of the
+    spiritual life, when we rightly apprehend its significance, is the
+    indication that the division between the Spirit and its object has
+    vanished, that the ideal has become real, that the finite has
+    reached its goal and become suffused with the presence and life of
+    the Infinite.
+    “Oneness of mind and will with the divine mind and will is not the
+    future hope and aim of religion, but its very beginning and birth
+    in the soul. To enter on the religious life is to terminate the
+    struggle. In that act which constitutes the beginning of the
+    religious life—call it faith, or trust, or self‐surrender, or by
+    whatever name you will—there is involved the identification of the
+    finite with a life which is eternally realized. It is true indeed
+    that the religious life is progressive; but understood in the
+    light of the foregoing idea, religious progress is not progress
+    _towards_, but _within_ the sphere of the Infinite. It is not the
+    vain attempt by endless finite additions or increments to become
+    possessed of infinite wealth, but it is the endeavor, by the
+    constant exercise of 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. The position of the man who has entered on
+    the religious life is that evil, error, imperfection, do not
+    really belong to him: they are excrescences which have no organic
+    relation to his true nature: they are already virtually, as they
+    will be actually, suppressed and annulled, and in the very process
+    of being annulled they become the means of spiritual progress.
+    Though he is not exempt from temptation and conflict, [yet] in
+    that inner sphere in which his true life lies, the struggle is
+    over, the victory already achieved. It is not a finite but an
+    infinite life which the spirit lives. Every pulse‐beat of its
+    [existence] is the expression and realization of the life of
+    God.”(297)
+You will admit that no description of religious consciousness could be better than these words. They reproduce the ecstasy of conversion crises; they express what mystics feel but cannot communicate; saints recognize their experience. But has Principal Caird—and I use him only as example—actually moved beyond feeling and direct experience? Has he established religion on impartial reason? Has he made religion universal through undeniable logic, transforming private faith into public certainty? Has he rescued its claims from mystery?
+I believe he has done nothing of the kind, but simply restated individual experience in generalized vocabulary. I need not technically prove transcendentalist arguments fail to make religion universal; I can point to the plain fact that most scholars, even religious ones, refuse to find them convincing. All Germany has rejected Hegelian arguments. In Scotland, I need only mention the memorable criticisms by Professors Fraser and Pringle-Pattison. If transcendental idealism were as objectively rational as it claims, could it possibly fail so completely to persuade?
+You will readily admit that no description of the phenomena of the
+religious consciousness could be better than these words of your lamented
+preacher and philosopher. They reproduce the very rapture of those crises
+of conversion of which we have been hearing; they utter what the mystic
+felt but was unable to communicate; and the saint, in hearing them,
+recognizes his own experience. It is indeed gratifying to find the content
+of religion reported so unanimously. But when all is said and done, has
+Principal Caird—and I only use him as an example of that whole mode of
+thinking—transcended the sphere of feeling and of the direct experience of
+the individual, and laid the foundations 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
+from obscurity and mystery?
+Remember, what religion reports always claims to be experiential fact: the divine is actually present, with real interactions between it and ourselves. If definite perceptions of fact cannot stand on their own, abstract reasoning cannot support them. Conceptual processes can classify and interpret facts but do not produce them, nor reproduce their unique individuality. There is always a "plus," a "thisness," that only feeling can account for. In this realm, philosophy is secondary, unable to guarantee faith's truth; and so I return to my initial thesis.
+I believe that he has done nothing of the kind, but that he has simply
+reaffirmed the individual’s experiences in a more generalized vocabulary.
+And again, I can be excused from proving technically that the
+transcendentalist reasonings fail to make religion universal, for I can
+point to the plain fact that a majority of scholars, even religiously
+disposed ones, stubbornly refuse to treat them as convincing. The whole of
+Germany, one may say, has positively rejected the Hegelian argumentation.
+As for Scotland, I need only mention Professor Fraser’s and Professor
+Pringle‐Pattison’s memorable criticisms, with which so many of you are
+familiar.(298) Once more, I ask, if transcendental idealism were as
+objectively and absolutely rational as it pretends to be, could it
+possibly fail so egregiously to be persuasive?
+In all sincerity, we must conclude that demonstrating the truth of direct religious experience through purely intellectual processes is absolutely hopeless.
+What religion reports, you must remember, always purports to be a fact of
+experience: the divine is 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 reasoning cannot give them the support they are in need of.
+Conceptual processes can class facts, define them, 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 this sphere is thus a secondary function, unable to
+warrant faith’s veracity, and so I revert to the thesis which I announced
+at the beginning of this lecture.
+---------------------------------
+In all sad sincerity I think we must conclude that the attempt to
+demonstrate by purely intellectual processes the truth of the deliverances
+of direct religious experience is absolutely hopeless.
+It would be unfair to leave philosophy with this negative judgment. Let me briefly list what it *can* do for religion. If it abandons metaphysics for criticism and observation—transforming itself from theology into a Science of Religions—it can be enormously useful.
+                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
+The spontaneous intellect always defines the divine in ways aligning with temporary biases. Philosophy can eliminate local and accidental elements from these definitions. It can remove historical "crusts" from dogma and worship. By confronting religious ideas with natural science, it can eliminate doctrines now known to be scientifically absurd.
+It would be unfair to philosophy, however, to leave her under this
+negative sentence. Let me close, then, by briefly enumerating what she
+_can_ do for religion. If she will abandon metaphysics and deduction for
+criticism and induction, and frankly transform herself from theology into
+science of religions, she can make herself enormously useful.
+By sifting out unworthy formulations, philosophy can leave a core of concepts that are at least possible, treating them as hypotheses tested in all the ways hypotheses are tested. It can reduce their number, perhaps champion one specific hypothesis as most verified, refine its definition, and distinguish harmless symbolism from literal belief. Consequently, philosophy can mediate between believers and help achieve consensus, more successfully the better it distinguishes common essential elements from individual local ones.
+The spontaneous intellect of man always defines the divine which it feels
+in ways that harmonize with its temporary intellectual prepossessions.
+Philosophy can by comparison eliminate the local and the accidental from
+these definitions. Both from dogma and from worship she can remove
+historic incrustations. By confronting the spontaneous religious
+constructions with the results of natural science, philosophy can also
+eliminate doctrines that are now known to be scientifically absurd or
+incongruous.
+I see no reason why such a critical Science of Religions might not eventually gain public support like physical science. Even non-religious people might accept its conclusions on trust, as blind people accept optics—it would seem foolish to reject them. Yet, just as optics must be fuelled and verified by those who can see, a science of religions would depend on personal experience for original material. It would have to align with experience throughout all reconstructions. It could never escape concrete life or operate in conceptual vacuum. It must always admit, as every science does, that nature's complexity exceeds it, and that its formulas are approximations.
+Sifting out in this way unworthy formulations, she can leave a residuum of
+conceptions that at least are possible. With these she can deal as
+_hypotheses_, testing them in all the manners, whether negative or
+positive, by which hypotheses are ever tested. She can reduce their
+number, as some are found more open to objection. She can perhaps become
+the champion of one which she picks out as being the most closely verified
+or verifiable. She can refine upon the definition of this hypothesis,
+distinguishing between what is innocent over‐belief and symbolism in the
+expression of it, and what is to be literally taken. As a result, she can
+offer mediation between different believers, and help to bring about
+consensus of opinion. She can do this the more successfully, the better
+she discriminates the common and essential from the individual and local
+elements of the religious beliefs which she compares.
+Philosophy lives in words, but truth and fact rise into our lives in ways exceeding verbal formulation. In the living act of perception there is always something that glimmers and will not be caught—something for which reflection arrives too late. No one knows this better than the philosopher. He must fire his volley of new vocables out of his conceptual shotgun, but secretly knows their hollowness. His formulas are like 3D photographs seen outside the viewer; they lack depth, motion, vitality. In religion especially, belief that formulas are true can never entirely replace personal experience.
+I do not see why a critical Science of Religions of this sort might not
+eventually command as general a public adhesion as is commanded by a
+physical science. Even the personally non‐religious might accept its
+conclusions on trust, much as blind persons now accept the facts of
+optics—it might appear as foolish to refuse them. Yet as the science of
+optics has to be fed in the first instance, and continually verified
+later, by facts experienced by seeing persons; so the science of religions
+would depend for its original material on facts of personal experience,
+and would have to square itself with personal experience through all its
+critical reconstructions. It could never get away from concrete life, or
+work in a conceptual vacuum. It would forever have to confess, as every
+science confesses, that the subtlety of nature flies beyond it, and that
+its formulas are but approximations. Philosophy lives in words, but truth
+and fact well up into our lives in ways that exceed verbal formulation.
+There is in the living act of perception always something that glimmers
+and twinkles and will not be caught, and for which reflection comes too
+late. No one knows this as well as the philosopher. He must fire his
+volley of new vocables out of his conceptual shotgun, for his profession
+condemns him to this industry, but he secretly knows the hollowness and
+irrelevancy. His formulas are like stereoscopic or kinetoscopic
+photographs seen outside the instrument; they lack the depth, the motion,
+the vitality. In the religious sphere, in particular, belief that formulas
+are true can never wholly take the place of personal experience.
+In my next lecture I will complete my description of religious experience; in the final lecture I will attempt to formulate conceptually the truth to which it testifies.
+In my next lecture I will try to complete my rough description of
+religious experience; and in the lecture after that, which is the last
+one, I will try my own hand at formulating conceptually the truth to which
+it is a witness.
 ## LECTURE XIX. OTHER CHARACTERISTICS.
+After our detour through mysticism, we return to religion's utility—its value to the individual, and the individual's value to the world. This empiricism holds that what is true is what works well, "on the whole." We must complete our descriptive picture of religious consciousness before drawing conclusions.
+We have wound our way back, after our excursion through mysticism and
+philosophy, to where we were before: the uses of religion, its uses to the
+individual who has it, and the uses of the individual himself to the
+world, are the best arguments that truth is in it. We return to the
+empirical philosophy: the true is what works well, even though the
+qualification “on the whole” may always have to be added. In this lecture
+we must revert to description again, and finish our picture of the
+religious consciousness by a word about some of its other characteristic
+elements. Then, in a final lecture, we shall be free to make a general
+review and draw our independent conclusions.
+First, the aesthetic motive. I spoke dismissively earlier of scholastic lists of God's attributes, yet Cardinal Newman reveals their use: recited like a cathedral service, they enrich piety as organ music and stained glass enrich a church. These incomprehensible verbal ornaments—hymns of praise, liturgies of glory—give atmosphere and depth to devotion. Minds like Newman's protect them as ancient priests guarded their idols' jewelry.
+The first point I will speak of is the part which the æsthetic life plays
+in determining one’s choice 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, too
+contemptuously 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 Newman enumerates them(299) puts
+us on the track of it. Intoning them as he would intone a cathedral
+service, he shows how high is their æsthetic value. It enriches our bare
+piety to carry these exalted and 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 our
+devotion. They are like a hymn of praise and service of glory, and may
+sound the more sublime for being incomprehensible. Minds like
+Newman’s(300) grow as jealous of their credit as heathen priests are of
+that of the jewelry and ornaments that blaze upon their idols.
+When considering religious mental constructs, we must never forget this aesthetic need. Some demand intellectual simplicity; others require richness. For the latter, private religion rarely suffices. They crave institutional complexity, majesty in hierarchical structure where authority cascades through levels of mystery and splendor originating from the Godhead. In such settings—ornate as jewelry, weighty with tradition—one feels surrounded by noble complexity where even the smallest detail matters. Compared to this, evangelical Protestantism can seem flat. Its isolated religious lives—boasting that "man in the bush with God may meet"—appear empty to an imagination accustomed to dignity and glory.
+Among the buildings‐out of religion which the mind spontaneously indulges
+in, the æsthetic motive must never be forgotten. I promised to say nothing
+of ecclesiastical systems in these lectures. I may be allowed, however, to
+put in a word at this point on the way in which their satisfaction of
+certain æsthetic needs contributes to their hold on human nature. Although
+some persons aim most at intellectual purity and simplification, for
+others _richness_ is the supreme imaginative requirement.(301) When one’s
+mind is strongly of this type, an individual religion will hardly serve
+the purpose. The inner need is rather of something institutional and
+complex, majestic in the hierarchic interrelatedness of its parts, with
+authority descending from stage to stage, and at every stage objects for
+adjectives of mystery and splendor, derived in the last resort from the
+Godhead who is the fountain and culmination of the system. One feels then
+as if in presence of some 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 noble
+complexity, 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 institutions hold it in its place,
+how flat does evangelical Protestantism appear, how bare the atmosphere of
+those isolated religious lives whose boast it is that “man in the bush
+with God may meet.”(302) What a pulverization and leveling of what a
+gloriously piled‐up structure! To an imagination used to the perspectives
+of dignity and glory, the naked gospel scheme seems to offer an almshouse
+for a palace.
+> **Quote:** To an imagination used to the perspectives of dignity and glory, the naked gospel scheme seems to offer an almshouse for a palace.
+It is much like the patriotic sentiment of those brought up in ancient
+empires. How many emotions must be frustrated of their object, when one
+gives up the titles of dignity, the crimson lights and blare of brass, the
+gold embroidery, the plumed troops, the fear and trembling, and puts up
+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 pauperizes the monarchical imagination!
+The loss resembles what patriotic subjects feel when trading an emperor's crimson lights and gold embroidery for a president in a black coat who shakes your hand. It impoverishes the monarchical imagination.
+The strength of these æsthetic sentiments makes it rigorously impossible,
+it seems to me, that Protestantism, however superior in spiritual
+profundity it may be to Catholicism, should at the present day succeed in
+making many converts from the more venerable ecclesiasticism. The latter
+offers a so much richer pasturage and shade to the fancy, has so many
+cells with so many different kinds of honey, is so indulgent in its
+multiform appeals to human nature, that Protestantism will always show to
+Catholic eyes the almshouse physiognomy. The bitter negativity of it is to
+the Catholic mind incomprehensible. To intellectual Catholics many of the
+antiquated beliefs and practices to which the Church gives countenance
+are, if taken literally, as childish as they are to Protestants. But they
+are childish in the pleasing sense of “childlike”—innocent and amiable,
+and worthy to be smiled on in consideration of the undeveloped condition
+of the dear people’s intellects. To the Protestant, on the contrary, they
+are childish in the sense of being idiotic falsehoods. He must stamp out
+their delicate and lovable redundancy, leaving the Catholic to shudder 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 emotional energy are too different. Rigorous
+truth and human nature’s intricacies are always in need of a mutual
+interpreter.(303) So much for the æsthetic diversities in the religious
+consciousness.
+This aesthetic power makes Protestant conversion from established churches nearly impossible, regardless of spiritual depth. Catholicism offers richer imaginative sustenance—so accommodating to human nature's various sides that Catholic eyes will always see Protestantism as a spiritual poorhouse. To intellectual Catholics, old beliefs may seem as childish as they do to Protestants, but Catholics view them as "childlike"—innocent and lovable given the common people's undeveloped intellect. To the Protestant, they are "childish" lies to be wiped out, leaving the Catholic to shudder at such literal-mindedness. The two cannot understand each other; their emotional centers differ too greatly.
+In most books on religion, three things are represented as its most
+essential elements. These are Sacrifice, Confession, and Prayer. I must
+say a word in turn of each of these elements, though briefly. First of
+Sacrifice.
+> "Rigorous truth and human nature's intricacies are always in need of a mutual interpreter."
+Sacrifices to gods are omnipresent in primeval worship; but, as cults have
+grown refined, burnt offerings and the blood of he‐goats have been
+superseded by sacrifices more spiritual in their nature. Judaism, Islam,
+and Buddhism get along without ritual sacrifice; so does Christianity,
+save in so far as the notion is preserved in transfigured form in the
+mystery of Christ’s atonement. These religions substitute offerings of the
+heart, renunciations of the inner self, for all those vain oblations. In
+the ascetic practices which Islam, Buddhism, and the older Christianity
+encourage we see how indestructible is the idea that sacrifice of some
+sort is a religious exercise. In lecturing on asceticism I spoke of its
+significance as symbolic of the sacrifices which life, whenever it is
+taken strenuously, calls for.(304) But, as I said my say about those, and
+as these lectures expressly avoid earlier religious usages and questions
+of derivation, I will pass from the subject of Sacrifice altogether and
+turn to that of Confession.
+So much for aesthetic differences.
+                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
+Most books highlight three essential elements: Sacrifice, Confession, and Prayer. Sacrifice appears everywhere in ancient worship, but as religions refine, burnt offerings become spiritual. Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and Christianity function without ritual sacrifice—except where Christ's atonement preserves the concept transformed. The ascetic practices of these traditions show how persistent the sacrifice idea remains, symbolizing what intense living demands. Having discussed asceticism already, I move to confession.
+In regard to Confession I will also be most brief, saying my word about it
+psychologically, not historically. Not nearly as widespread as sacrifice,
+it corresponds to a more inward and moral stage of sentiment. It is part
+of the general system of purgation and cleansing which one feels one’s
+self in need of, in order to be in right relations to one’s deity. For him
+who confesses, shams are over and realities have begun; he has
+exteriorized his rottenness. If he has not actually got rid of it, he at
+least no longer smears it over with a hypocritical show of virtue—he lives
+at least upon a basis of veracity. The complete decay of the practice of
+confession in Anglo‐Saxon communities is a little hard to account for.
+Reaction against popery is of course the historic explanation, for in
+popery confession went with penances and absolution, and other
+inadmissible practices. But on the side of the sinner himself it seems as
+if the need ought to have been too great to accept so summary a refusal of
+its satisfaction. One would think that in more men the shell of secrecy
+would have had to open, the pent‐in abscess to burst and gain relief, even
+though the ear that heard the confession were unworthy. The Catholic
+church, for obvious utilitarian reasons, has substituted auricular
+confession to one priest for the more radical act of public confession. We
+English‐speaking Protestants, in the general self‐reliance and
+unsociability of our nature, seem to find it enough if we take God alone
+into our confidence.(305)
+Confession corresponds to a more internal, moral stage of feeling—part of a general purification needed for right relationship with the divine. For the confessor, pretense ends and reality begins; inner flaws come to light. Even if not eliminated, they are no longer hidden behind a hypocritical mask. The disappearance of confession in Anglo-Saxon communities is puzzling. Historically it was a reaction against Catholicism's tie to penance and absolution. Yet from the sinner's perspective, the need for relief should have been too strong to abandon. One would think the shell of secrecy would eventually have to break—the pent-in abscess to burst and gain relief—even if the ear that heard it were unworthy. The Catholic Church replaced public confession with private; we English-speaking Protestants, in our self-reliance and reserve, seem content to take only God into our confidence.
+                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
+Prayer requires more time. Recent criticism targets petitionary prayer—for weather, for the sick. Regarding the sick, medical evidence confirms prayer aids recovery and should be encouraged. Weather differs: droughts and storms have physical causes moral pleas cannot alter. Yet petition is only one type. Broadly defined as inner communion with divine power, prayer escapes scientific criticism entirely.
+The next topic on which I must comment is Prayer,—and this time it must be
+less briefly. We have heard much talk of late against prayer, especially
+against prayers for better weather and for the recovery of sick people. As
+regards prayers for the sick, if any medical fact can be considered to
+stand firm, it is that in certain environments prayer may contribute to
+recovery, and should be encouraged as a therapeutic measure. Being a
+normal factor of moral health in the person, its omission would be
+deleterious. The case of the weather is different. Notwithstanding the
+recency of the opposite belief,(306) every one now knows that droughts and
+storms follow from physical antecedents, and that moral appeals cannot
+avert them. But petitional prayer is only one department of prayer; and if
+we take the word in the wider sense as meaning every kind of inward
+communion or conversation with the power recognized as divine, we can
+easily see that scientific criticism leaves it untouched.
+In this broad sense, prayer is religion's heart. A French theologian writes:
+Prayer in this wide sense is the very soul and essence of religion.
+“Religion,” says a liberal French theologian, “is an intercourse, a
+conscious and voluntary relation, entered into by a soul in distress with
+the mysterious power upon which it feels itself to depend, and upon which
+its fate is contingent. This intercourse with God is realized by prayer.
+Prayer is religion in act; that is, prayer is real religion. It is prayer
+that distinguishes the religious phenomenon from such similar or
+neighboring phenomena as purely moral or æsthetic sentiment. Religion is
+nothing if it be not the vital act by which the entire mind seeks to save
+itself by clinging to the principle from which it draws its life. This act
+is prayer, by which term I understand no vain exercise of words, no mere
+repetition of certain sacred formulæ, but the very movement itself of the
+soul, putting itself in a personal relation of contact with the mysterious
+power of which it feels the presence,—it may be even before it has a name
+by which to call it. Wherever this interior prayer is lacking, there is no
+religion; wherever, on the other hand, this prayer rises and stirs the
+soul, even in the absence of forms 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, no return of man to God. At bottom
+this pretended religion is only a philosophy. Born at epochs of
+rationalism, of critical investigations, it never was anything but an
+abstraction. An artificial and dead creation, it reveals to its examiner
+hardly one of the characters proper to religion.”(307)
+> "Religion is a conscious, voluntary relation entered by a soul in distress with the mysterious power upon which it feels itself to depend. This intercourse is realized by prayer. Prayer is religion in act—real religion. It distinguishes the religious phenomenon from purely moral or aesthetic sentiment. Religion is nothing if not the vital act by which the entire mind seeks to save itself by clinging to its life principle. Wherever this interior prayer is lacking, there is no religion; wherever it rises and stirs the soul, even without forms or doctrines, we have living religion. One sees why 'natural religion' is not properly religion—it cuts man off from prayer, leaving man and God in mutual remoteness without intimate commerce or interior dialogue. At bottom it is only a philosophy—an artificial, dead abstraction."
+It seems to me that the entire series of our lectures proves the truth of
+M. Sabatier’s contention. The religious phenomenon, studied as an inner
+fact, and apart from ecclesiastical or theological complications, has
+shown itself to consist everywhere, and at all its stages, in the
+consciousness which individuals have of an intercourse between themselves
+and higher powers with which they feel themselves to be related. This
+intercourse is realized at the time as being both active and mutual. If it
+be not effective; if it be not a give and take relation; if nothing be
+really transacted while it lasts; if the world is in no whit different for
+its having taken place; then prayer, taken in this wide meaning of a sense
+that _something is transacting_, is of course a feeling of what is
+illusory, and religion must on the whole be classed, not simply as
+containing elements of delusion,—these undoubtedly everywhere exist,—but
+as being rooted in delusion altogether, just as materialists and atheists
+have always said it was. At most there might remain, when the direct
+experiences of prayer were ruled out as false witnesses, some inferential
+belief that the whole order of existence must have a divine cause. But
+this way of contemplating nature, pleasing as it would doubtless 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 in a play, but in a very serious reality.
+Our lectures prove Sabatier's point. Studied as an internal fact, separate from church or theology, religion consistently shows itself as consciousness of a relationship between individuals and higher powers—experienced as active and mutual. If ineffective, if not a give-and-take where something actually happens, then prayer is illusion and religion is rooted in delusion, as atheists claim. We might retain a theoretical belief in a divine cause, but that leaves us mere spectators at a play, whereas in lived religion we seem actors in a serious reality.
+The genuineness of religion is thus indissolubly bound up with the
+question whether the prayerful consciousness be or be not deceitful. The
+conviction that something is genuinely transacted in this consciousness is
+the very core of living religion. As to what is transacted, great
+differences of opinion have prevailed. The unseen powers have been
+supposed, and are yet supposed, to do things which no enlightened man can
+nowadays believe in. It may well prove that the sphere of influence in
+prayer is subjective exclusively, and that what is immediately changed is
+only the mind of the praying person. But however our opinion of prayer’s
+effects may come to be limited by criticism, religion, in the vital sense
+in which these lectures study it, must stand or fall by 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 prayer would be bound is by prayer set free and
+operates in some part, be it objective or subjective, of the world of
+facts.
+Religion's authenticity thus depends on whether prayerful consciousness deceives. The conviction that something real happens is living religion's core. People have believed unseen powers do things an enlightened person cannot accept. The influence may be entirely internal—changing only the praying mind. But religion stands or falls on belief that *some* real effects occur, that through prayer, energy otherwise stuck is released to act upon the world, internally or externally.
+This postulate is strikingly expressed in a letter written by the late
+Frederic W. H. Myers to a friend, who allows me to quote from it. It shows
+how independent the prayer‐instinct is of usual doctrinal complications.
+Mr. Myers writes:—
+This appears in a letter by Frederic W. H. Myers:
+> "There exists around us a spiritual universe in actual relation with the material. From it comes the energy maintaining the material and our individual spirits. Our spirits are supported by perpetual indrawal of this energy, whose vigor changes like our absorption of material nutriment. These 'facts' require that we draw in as much spiritual life as possible, placing our minds in any attitude experience shows favorable to such indrawal. Prayer is that attitude of open, earnest expectancy. To whom to pray hardly matters. The prayer means a real increase in intensity of absorption of spiritual power—not purely subjective, though we cannot know how it operates, who is cognizant, or what channel grace uses. Let children pray to Christ, the highest individual spirit we know. Yet it would be rash to say Christ himself hears us; to say God hears us merely restates that grace flows from the infinite spiritual world."
+    “I am glad that you have asked me about prayer, because I have
+    rather strong ideas on the subject. First consider what are the
+    facts. There exists around us a spiritual universe, and that
+    universe is in actual relation with the material. From the
+    spiritual universe comes the energy which maintains the material;
+    the energy which makes the life of each individual spirit. Our
+    spirits are supported by a perpetual indrawal of this energy, and
+    the vigor of that indrawal is perpetually changing, much as the
+    vigor of our absorption of material nutriment changes from hour to
+    hour.
+Let's set aside whether this belief is true until the final lecture. Consider George Müller of Bristol, who died in 1898, as an extreme example of petitionary prayer. Early in life he decided to take biblical promises literally, letting himself be supported by God's hand rather than his own planning. He distributed over two million Bibles, supported hundreds of missionaries, circulated 111 million religious books and tracts, built five orphanages, educated thousands, and established schools teaching over 121,000 pupils. He managed nearly 1.5 million pounds and traveled 200,000 miles, yet owned only clothes, furniture, and little cash, dying with an estate worth 160 pounds.
+    “I call these ‘facts’ because I think that some scheme of this
+    kind is the only one consistent with our 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 our minds in any attitude which
+    experience shows to be favorable to such indrawal. _Prayer_ is the
+    general name for that attitude of open and earnest expectancy. If
+    we then ask to _whom_ to pray, the answer (strangely enough) must
+    be that _that_ does not much matter. The prayer is not indeed a
+    purely subjective thing;—it means a real increase in intensity of
+    absorption of spiritual power or grace;—but we do not know enough
+    of what takes place in the spiritual world to know how the prayer
+    operates;—_who_ is cognizant of it, or through what channel the
+    grace is given. Better let children pray to Christ, who is at any
+    rate the highest individual spirit of whom we have any knowledge.
+    But it would be rash to say that Christ himself _hears us_; while
+    to say that _God_ hears us is merely to restate the first
+    principle,—that grace flows in from the infinite spiritual world.”
+His method was to make general needs known but never specific temporary ones. For those, he prayed directly, believing trust leads to answered prayer:
+> "When I lose a key, I ask the Lord to direct me to it; when an appointment fails, I ask Him to hasten the person; when I don't understand Scripture, I ask His Spirit to instruct me; when ministering, I seek His help and am of good cheer because I look for his assistance."
+Let us reserve the question of the truth or falsehood of the belief that
+power is absorbed until the next lecture, when our dogmatic conclusions,
+if we have any, must be reached. Let this lecture still confine itself to
+the description of phenomena; and as a concrete example of an extreme
+sort, of the way in which the prayerful life may still be led, let me take
+a case with which most of you must be acquainted, that of George Müller of
+Bristol, who died in 1898. Müller’s prayers were of the crassest
+petitional order. Early in life he resolved on taking certain Bible
+promises in literal sincerity, 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 the
+distribution of over two million copies of the Scripture text, in
+different languages; the equipment of several hundred missionaries; the
+circulation of more than a hundred and eleven million of scriptural books,
+pamphlets, and tracts; the building of five large orphanages, and the
+keeping and educating of thousands of orphans; finally, the establishment
+of schools in which over a hundred and twenty‐one thousand youthful and
+adult pupils were taught. In the course of this work Mr. Müller received
+and administered nearly a million and a half of pounds sterling, and
+traveled over two hundred thousand miles of sea and land.(308) During the
+sixty‐eight years of his ministry, he never owned any property except his
+clothes and furniture, and cash in hand; and he left, at the age of
+eighty‐six, an estate worth only a hundred and sixty pounds.
+Müller never ran debt, believing God provides day by day. For his orphanages' food, fuel, and necessities, he paid immediately upon purchase. Somehow, despite often nearing crisis, they rarely went without:
+> "Greater nearness of the Lord's presence I never had than when after breakfast there were no means for dinner for more than a hundred persons, or after dinner no means for tea, yet the Lord provided. Through grace my mind is so assured of His faithfulness that in the greatest need I work in peace. Did He not give this result of trusting, I could scarcely work at all; rarely does a day pass without need for some part of the work."
+    His method was to let his general wants be publicly known, but not
+    to acquaint other people with the 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 lose such a thing as a
+    key,” he writes, “I ask the Lord to direct me to it, and I look
+    for an answer to my prayer; when a person with whom I have made an
+    appointment does not come, according to the fixed time, and I
+    begin to be inconvenienced by it, I ask the Lord to be pleased to
+    hasten him to me, and I look for an answer; when I do not
+    understand a passage of the word of God, I lift up my heart to the
+    Lord that he would be pleased by his Holy Spirit to instruct me,
+    and I expect to be taught, though I do not fix the time when, and
+    the manner how it should be; when I am going to minister in the
+    Word, I seek help from the Lord, and ... am not cast down, but of
+    good cheer because I look for his assistance.”
+In building orphanages through prayer alone, Müller sought visible proof that God remains the same faithful Father, as willing today as ever to prove Himself the living God. He refused to borrow, asking, "What happens when we get ahead of God? We weaken faith instead of strengthening it. Each time we engineer our own rescue, trusting God becomes harder until unbelief takes over. How different when we wait for God's timing! When help arrives—perhaps after many seasons of prayer—how sweet, what immediate reward!"
+    Müller’s custom was to never run up bills, not even for a week.
+    “As the Lord deals out to us by the day, ... the week’s payment
+    might become due and we have no money to meet it; and thus those
+    with whom we deal might be inconvenienced by us, and we be found
+    acting against the commandment of the Lord: ‘Owe no man anything.’
+    From this day and henceforward whilst the Lord gives to us our
+    supplies by the day, we purpose to pay at once for every article
+    as it is purchased, and never to buy anything except we can pay
+    for it at once, however much it may seem to be needed, and however
+    much those with whom we deal may wish to be paid only by the
+    week.”
+When supplies arrived slowly, Müller saw it as a test of faith. Once complete, the Lord would send resources. He recorded: "Today I received 2,050 pounds—2,000 for building, 50 for current needs. It is impossible to describe my joy. I was neither excited nor surprised, because I expect answers. Yet my heart was so full I could only sit before God and admire Him, like David in 2 Samuel 7, then throw myself flat in thanksgiving, surrendering my heart anew."
+    The articles needed of which Müller 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 have done so.
+    “Greater and more manifest nearness of the Lord’s presence I have
+    never had than when after breakfast there were no means for dinner
+    for more than a hundred persons; or when after dinner there were
+    no means for the tea, and yet the Lord provided the tea; and all
+    this without one single human being having been informed about our
+    need.... Through Grace my mind is so fully assured of the
+    faithfulness of the Lord, that in the midst of the greatest need,
+    I am enabled in peace to go about my other work. Indeed, did not
+    the Lord give me this, which is the result of trusting in him, I
+    should scarcely be able to work at all; for it is now
+    comparatively a rare thing that a day comes when I am not in need
+    for one or another part of the work.”(309)
+Müller's case is extreme, particularly in his narrow intellectual perspective. His God was his business partner—a supernatural clergyman focused on the tradesmen and orphanages of Bristol, but unpossessed of any of those vaster and wilder and more ideal attributes with which the human imagination elsewhere has invested the Deity. He was entirely unphilosophical, continuing primitive thought traditions. Compared to Emerson or Phillips Brooks, he shows religion's vast range.
+    In building his orphanages simply by prayer and faith, Müller
+    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
+    God that he ever was,—as willing as ever to prove himself the
+    living God, in our day as formerly, to all that put their trust in
+    him.”(310) For this reason he refused to borrow money for any of
+    his enterprises. “How does it work when we thus anticipate God by
+    going our own way? We certainly weaken faith instead of increasing
+    it; and each time we work thus a deliverance of our own we find it
+    more and more difficult to trust in God, till at last we give way
+    entirely to our natural fallen reason and unbelief prevails. How
+    different if one is enabled to wait God’s own time, and to look
+    alone to him for help and deliverance! When at last help comes,
+    after many seasons of prayer it may be, how sweet it is, and what
+    a present recompense! Dear Christian reader, if you have never
+    walked in this path of obedience before, do so now, and you will
+    then know experimentally the sweetness of the joy which results
+    from it.”(311)
+Evangelical journals overflow with answered prayer accounts, but Müller suffices.
+    When the supplies came in but slowly, Müller always considered
+    that this was for the trial of his faith and patience. When his
+    faith and patience had been sufficiently tried, the Lord would
+    send more means. “And thus it has proved,”—I quote from his
+    diary,—“for to‐day was given me the sum of 2050 pounds, of which
+are for the building fund [of a certain house], and 50 for
+    present necessities. It is impossible to describe my joy in God
+    when I received this donation. I was neither excited nor
+    surprised; for I _look out_ for answers to my prayers. _I believe
+    that God hears 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 in
+    thanksgiving to God and in surrendering my heart afresh to him for
+    his blessed service.”(312)
+A less aggressive prayer life is followed by countless Christians who say persistent reliance on the Almighty brings palpable, subtler evidence of His presence. Dr. Hilty's description of a "led" life would seem to many a transcript of their own experience:
+"Books, words, people come at the needed moment. One glides past dangers as if with eyes closed, ignorant of what would have terrified until the peril passes—especially temptations of vanity or lust. Paths one shouldn't take are hedged with thorns; great obstacles suddenly vanish. When the time is right, courage appears that was lacking, or the core of a matter becomes clear. Thoughts, talents, even knowledge arise from unknown sources. People help or hinder as if against their will; often the indifferent or even unfriendly yield the greatest service. God often takes worldly goods from those he leads at just the right moment, when they threaten to impede the effort after higher interests.
+George Müller’s is a case extreme in every respect, and in no respect more
+so than in the extraordinary narrowness of the man’s intellectual horizon.
+His God was, as he often said, his business partner. He seems to have been
+for Müller little more than a sort of supernatural clergyman 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 and more ideal attributes with which the human
+imagination elsewhere has invested him. Müller, in short, was absolutely
+unphilosophical. His intensely private and practical conception of his
+relations with the Deity continued the traditions of the most primitive
+human thought.(313) When we compare a mind like his with such a mind as,
+for example, Emerson’s or Phillips Brooks’s, we see the range which the
+religions consciousness covers.
+"One walks through 'open doors' along easiest paths with minimal worry. Affairs are handled neither too early nor too late, whereas before timing often ruined good preparation. Tasks are done with perfect peace, almost as if for another—like errands we run calmly for others rather than ourselves. One learns to wait patiently, a great art of life. Everything occurs in proper order, giving time for steady footing. The right action comes at the right moment, often strikingly, as if a third person watched over our forgetfulness. People arrive at the right time offering or asking what is needed—things we'd never have courage to undertake alone.
+There is an immense literature relating to answers to petitional prayer.
+The evangelical journals are filled with such answers, and books are
+devoted to the subject,(314) but for us Müller’s case will suffice.
+"Through this, one becomes kind and tolerant toward all, even the repulsive or ill-willed, for they too are God's instruments, often efficient ones. With consciousness of divine guidance, one sees life differently."
+                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
+Such accounts blend into others where the belief is not that providence favors us, but that by cultivating continuous connection with creative Power, we become better attuned to receive. The outward face of nature need not change; the meaning we find does. What was dead becomes alive, like the difference between seeing a person with or without love. Fear and ego fall away; in resulting composure, passing hours offer purely beneficial opportunities. All doors open, all paths smooth. We encounter a new world when meeting the old world in this prayerful spirit.
+A less sturdy beggar‐like fashion of leading the prayerful life is
+followed by innumerable other Christians. 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. The following description of a “led” life, by a German writer
+whom I have already quoted, would no doubt appear to countless Christians
+in every country as if transcribed from their own personal experience. One
+finds in this guided sort of life, says Dr. Hilty,—
+This was Marcus Aurelius's spirit, and mind-curers', transcendentalists', and "liberal" Christians'. James Martineau expresses it:
+> "The universe looks as it did a thousand years ago. If we cannot find God in house or roadside, seed or flower, day duty or night musing, laughter or grief, life's procession entering and passing—we would not discern Him more in Eden's grass or Gethsemane's moonlight. It is not want of greater miracles but of soul to perceive those still allowed that pushes sanctities into unreachable spaces. The devout feel that wherever God's hand is, there is miracle. It is simply indevoutness that imagines only where miracle is can there be God's real hand."
+    “That books and words (and sometimes people) come to one’s
+    cognizance just at the very moment 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—this being especially the case with temptations
+    to vanity and sensuality; that paths on which one ought not to
+    wander are, as it were, hedged off with thorns; but that on the
+    other side great obstacles are suddenly removed; that when the
+    time has come for something, one suddenly receives a courage that
+    formerly failed, or perceives the root of a matter that until then
+    was concealed, or discovers thoughts, talents, yea, even pieces of
+    knowledge and insight, in one’s self, of which it is impossible to
+    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
+    us yield us the greatest service and furtherance. (God takes often
+    their worldly goods, from those whom he leads, at just the right
+    moment, when they threaten to impede the effort after higher
+    interests.)
+Heaven's customs should be more sacred than its anomalies; the beloved old ways, which the Most High never tires, more precious than strange events He doesn't love enough to repeat. One who recognizes the Almighty's finger beneath the rising sun may recover Adam's sweet surprise at Paradise's first dawn. It requires no outward change, only loving meditation of the pure in heart, to reawaken the Eternal and restore His ancient name, "the Living God."
+    “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 easiest
+    roads, with as little care and trouble as it is possible to
+    imagine.
+Seeing all things in God gives ordinary matters deeper meaning. Habit's dullness disappears; existence transfigures. This awakened state is expressed in a friend's letter:
+    “Furthermore one finds one’s self settling one’s affairs neither
+    too early nor too late, whereas they were wont to be spoiled by
+    untimeliness, even when the preparations had been well laid. In
+    addition to this, one does them with perfect tranquillity of mind,
+    almost as if they were matters of no consequence, like errands
+    done by us for another person, in which case we usually act more
+    calmly than when we act in our own concerns. Again, one finds that
+    one can _wait_ for everything patiently, and that is one of life’s
+    great arts. One finds also that each thing comes duly, one thing
+    after the other, so that one gains time to make one’s footing sure
+    before advancing farther. And then everything occurs to us at the
+    right moment, just what we ought to do, etc., and often in a very
+    striking way, just as if a third person were keeping watch over
+    those things which we are in easy danger of forgetting.
+"If we count mercies and gifts, we are overwhelmed—so many we cannot review what we imagine we lack. We realize we are surrounded by endless blessings without which everything would collapse. Should we not feel supported by the Eternal Arms?"
+    “Often, too, persons are sent to us at the right time, to offer or
+    ask for what is needed, and what we should never have had the
+    courage or resolution to undertake of our own accord.
+Sometimes this realization is temporary, like a mystical moment. Father Gratry describes melancholy youth:
+    “Through all these experiences one finds that one is kindly and
+    tolerant of other people, even of such 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 us always to keep our
+    equanimity. But with the consciousness of divine guidance, one
+    sees many a thing in life quite differently from what would
+    otherwise be possible.
+"One day I found consolation in a poor drummer beating rhythm in Paris streets. His drumming had such energy, timing, clarity that my irritability found no complaint. The desire for the ideal could go no further. I was enchanted: 'Good is possible,' I said, 'since the ideal can be embodied.'"
+    “All these are things that every human being _knows_, who has had
+    experience of them; and of which the most speaking examples could
+    be brought forward. The highest resources of worldly wisdom are
+    unable to attain that which, under divine leading, comes to us of
+    its own accord.”(315)
+In Sénancour's *Obermann*, a similar veil-lifting occurs. On a March day in Paris, he encounters a blooming jonquil:
+"It was the most powerful expression of desire—the first fragrance of the year. I felt all happiness intended for humanity. The phantom of the ideal world rose within me completely. I never felt anything so great or instantaneous. I cannot capture this power, this immensity, this ideal of a better world that we feel but nature seems not to make real."
+Such accounts as this shade away into others where the belief is, not that
+particular events are tempered more towardly to us by a superintending
+providence, as a reward for our reliance, but that by cultivating the
+continuous sense of our connection with the power that made things as they
+are, 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 difference between looking on
+a person without love, or upon the same person with love. In the latter
+case intercourse springs into new vitality. So when one’s affections keep
+in touch with the divinity of the world’s authorship, fear and egotism
+fall away; and in the equanimity that follows, one finds in the hours, as
+they succeed each other, a series of purely benignant opportunities. It is
+as if all doors were opened, and all paths freshly smoothed. We meet a new
+world when we meet the old world in the spirit which this kind of prayer
+infuses.
+Religious individuals assume natural events connecting to their fate signify God's purposes. Through prayer, this purpose becomes clear, and if a "trial," strength to endure is given. At every stage of prayerful life flows conviction that during communion, energy from above meets need and becomes active in the observable world. Whether effects are internal or external matters little if the activity is accepted as real.
+Such a spirit was that of Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus.(316) It is that
+of mind‐curers, of the transcendentalists, and of the so‐called “liberal”
+Christians. As an expression of it, I will quote a page from one of
+Martineau’s sermons:—
+> "The fundamental religious point is that in prayer, spiritual energy which otherwise would slumber becomes active, and spiritual work is really effected."
+So much for prayer in this broad sense. As religion's core, we must return to it.
+    “The universe, open to the eye to‐day, looks as it did a thousand
+    years ago: and the morning hymn of Milton does but tell the beauty
+    with which our own familiar sun dressed the earliest fields and
+    gardens of the world. We see what all our fathers saw. And if we
+    cannot find God in your house or in mine, upon the roadside or the
+    margin of the sea; in the bursting seed or opening flower; in the
+    day duty or the night musing; in the general laugh and the secret
+    grief; in the procession of life, ever entering afresh, and
+    solemnly passing by and dropping off; I do not think we 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 are allowed
+    us still, that makes us push all the sanctities into the far
+    spaces we cannot reach. The devout feel that wherever God’s hand
+    is, _there_ is miracle: and it is simply an indevoutness which
+    imagines that only where miracle is, can there be the real hand of
+    God. The customs of Heaven ought surely to be more sacred in our
+    eyes than its anomalies; the dear old ways, of which the Most High
+    is never tired, than the strange things which he does not love
+    well enough ever to repeat. And he who will but discern beneath
+    the sun, as he rises any morning, the supporting finger of the
+    Almighty, may recover the sweet and reverent surprise with which
+    Adam gazed on the first dawn in Paradise. It is no outward change,
+    no shifting in time or place; but only the loving meditation of
+    the pure in heart, that can reawaken the Eternal from the sleep
+    within our souls: that can render him a reality again, and
+    reassert for him once more his ancient name of ‘the Living
+    God.’ ”(317)
+Finally, religious expression frequently connects to our subconscious existence. Religious leaders' lives almost always record "automatisms"—actions or speech without conscious will. This includes not just tribal priests but intellectual leaders: Saint Paul's visions and tongues; Bernard, Loyola, Luther, Fox, Wesley with their visions, voices, trances, guiding impressions. These occur because they possess heightened sensitivity, which reinforces theology when automatic experiences confirm beliefs.
+> "Incursions from beyond the transmarginal region have a peculiar power to increase conviction."
+When we see all things in God, and refer all things to him, we read in
+common matters superior expressions of meaning. The deadness with which
+custom invests the familiar vanishes, and existence as a whole appears
+transfigured. The state of a mind thus awakened from torpor is well
+expressed in these words, which I take from a friend’s letter:—
+A vague sense of presence is stronger than an idea, but rarely equals a hallucination's certainty. Saints who see or hear their Savior reach assurance's peak. "Motor" automatisms—involuntary bodily movement—are rarer but even more convincing; the individual feels used by powers beyond their will.
+Inspiration's primary domain is this sense of being a higher power's instrument. We can distinguish leaders habitually subject to inspiration from those not. In Buddha, Jesus, Paul (aside from tongues), Augustine, Hus, Luther, Wesley, automatic composition appears occasional. In Hebrew prophets—Mohammed, some Alexandrians, minor Catholic saints, Fox, Joseph Smith—it seems frequent, sometimes habitual, with clear claims of serving as a mouthpiece. Regarding Hebrew prophets, one scholar notes:
+    “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 give ourselves time
+    even to begin to review the things we may imagine _we have not_).
+    We sum them and realize that _we are actually killed with God’s
+    kindness_; that we are surrounded by bounties upon bounties,
+    without which all would fall. Should we not love it; should we not
+    feel buoyed up by the Eternal Arms?”
+"It is extraordinary how the same features repeat. The process is sharp and sudden; the prophet can point to the exact moment. It arrives as overwhelming external force struggled against in vain, as in Jeremiah's beginning or Ezekiel's first chapters. Throughout prophetic writings are expressions of irresistible impulse descending, determining perspective, forcing speech, making words a vehicle for higher meaning. Isaiah says: 'The Lord spoke thus to me with a strong hand.' Ezekiel: 'The hand of the Lord God fell upon me.' The prophet speaks with God's authority, prefacing addresses confidently with 'Thus says the Lord,' sometimes speaking in first person as if God Himself spoke: 'I am He, I am the First, I am also the Last.' The prophet's personality fades; he feels the Almighty's mouthpiece."
+"Prophecy was a profession; prophets formed a class with 'schools' where the gift was developed. Young men gathered around a Samuel or Elisha, recording sayings and seeking inspiration. Music played a part. Not all 'Sons of the Prophets' succeeded; prophecy could be 'faked,' though not always with full awareness of deception."
+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 melancholy period:—
+Philo of Alexandria describes his inspiration:
+"Sometimes when I come to work empty, I suddenly become full. Ideas are invisibly showered and planted from above. Under this divine inspiration, I become so stimulated that I lose awareness of location, people, myself, and my words. I experience richness of interpretation, joy of light, penetrating insight, clear energy—having the same effect as the clearest visual proof."
+    “One day I had a moment of consolation, because I met with
+    something which seemed to me ideally perfect. It was a poor
+    drummer beating the tattoo in the streets of Paris. I walked
+    behind him in returning to the school on the evening of a holiday.
+    His drum gave out the tattoo in such a way 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 or richness, than were in
+    this drumming. Ideal desire could go no farther in that direction.
+    I was enchanted 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.”(318)
+In Islam, Mohammed's revelations originated from the subconscious. He reportedly heard a ringing like a bell with powerful effect; when it stopped, he had revelation. Other times he spoke with the angel as with a man. Later authorities distinguish types: bell-sound, holy spirit inspiration, Gabriel in human form, God speaking directly while awake or dreaming, Gabriel in his own person, God appearing through a veil.
+Joseph Smith's inspiration for translating the gold plates—and countless other revelations—seems mostly sensory, though with possible physical element. He began using "peep-stones" (crystal gazing) found with the plates, but generally sought direct instruction.
+In Sénancour’s novel of Obermann a similar transient lifting of the veil
+is recorded. In Paris streets, on a March day, he comes across a flower in
+bloom, a jonquil:
+Other revelations are "openings"—George Fox's were clearly what spiritualists call "impressions." All effective innovators must live to some extent on this level of sudden insight, overwhelming conviction, or intense impulse. Combining these inspiration phenomena with mysticism, conversion's unification of conflicted self, and saintliness's obsessions with purity, we must conclude religion is a part of human nature with unusually close connection to the "trans-marginal" or subliminal region.
+If "subliminal" offends as sounding like fringe theory, call it what you will to distinguish from full conscious awareness. Call the latter the "A-region" of personality, the other the "B-region."
+    “It was the strongest expression of desire: it was the first
+    perfume of the year. I felt all the happiness 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.... I shall never inclose in a conception this power, this
+    immensity that nothing will express; this form that nothing will
+    contain; this ideal of a better world which one feels, but which,
+    it seems, nature has not made actual.”(319)
+> **Quote:** The B-region, then, is obviously the larger part of each of us, for it is the abode of everything that is latent and the reservoir of everything that passes unrecorded or unobserved.
+It contains inactive memories, roots of obscure passions, impulses, likes, dislikes, prejudices. Our intuitions, hypotheses, fantasies, superstitions, convictions—all non-rational processes—originate there. It is dreams' source and destination, where mystical experiences and sensory or motor automatisms arise, where hypnotic states occur, where delusions and perhaps extra-sensory perceptions originate. It is religion's fountainhead. In people deeply involved in religious life, the door to this region seems unusually wide open. At minimum, experiences entering through that door have profoundly shaped religious history.
+We heard in previous lectures of the vivified face of the world as it may
+appear to converts after their awakening.(320) As a rule, religious
+persons generally assume that whatever natural facts connect 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 persuasion that in the
+process of communion energy from on high flows in to meet demand, and
+becomes operative within the phenomenal world. So long as this
+operativeness is admitted to be real, it makes no essential difference
+whether its immediate effects be subjective or objective. The fundamental
+religious point is that in prayer, spiritual energy, which otherwise would
+slumber, does become active, and spiritual work of some kind is effected
+really.
+With this conclusion I complete the circle begun in my first lecture, ending the review of inner religious phenomena in developed individuals. I could provide more documents, but a broad treatment is better, and the most important features are before us. In the final lecture we must attempt the critical conclusions this material suggests.
+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 its manifestations so frequently connect themselves with
+the subconscious part of our existence. You may remember what I said in my
+opening lecture(321) about the prevalence of the psychopathic temperament
+in religious biography. You will in point of fact hardly find a religious
+leader of any kind in whose life there is no record of automatisms. I
+speak not merely of savage priests and prophets, whose followers regard
+automatic utterance and action as by itself tantamount to inspiration, I
+speak of leaders of thought and subjects of intellectualized experience.
+Saint Paul had his 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 Bernards, the Loyolas,
+the Luthers, the Foxes, the Wesleys, had their visions, voices, rapt
+conditions, guiding impressions, and “openings.” They had these things,
+because they had exalted sensibility, and to such 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. The inchoate sense of presence is
+infinitely stronger than conception, but strong as it may be, it is seldom
+equal to the evidence of hallucination. Saints who actually see or hear
+their Saviour reach the acme of assurance. Motor automatisms, though
+rarer, are, if possible, even more convincing than sensations. The
+subjects here actually feel themselves played upon by powers beyond their
+will. The evidence is dynamic; the God or spirit moves the very organs of
+their body.(322)
+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 to inspiration and
+those who have not. In the teachings of the Buddha, of Jesus, of Saint
+Paul (apart from his gift of tongues), of Saint Augustine, of Huss, of
+Luther, of Wesley, automatic or semi‐automatic composition appears to have
+been only occasional. In the Hebrew prophets, on the contrary, in
+Mohammed, in some of the Alexandrians, in many minor Catholic saints, in
+Fox, in Joseph Smith, something like it appears to have been frequent,
+sometimes habitual. We have distinct 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 study of them, to see—
+    “How, one after another, the same features are reproduced in the
+    prophetic books. The process is always extremely different from
+    what it would be if the prophet arrived at his insight into
+    spiritual things by the tentative efforts of his own genius. There
+    is something sharp and sudden about it. He can lay his finger, so
+    to speak, on the moment when it came. And it always comes in the
+    form of an 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 the prophecy of Ezekiel.
+    “It is not, however, only at the beginning of his career that the
+    prophet passes through a crisis which is clearly not self‐caused.
+    Scattered all through the prophetic writings are expressions which
+    speak of some strong and irresistible impulse coming down upon the
+    prophet, determining his attitude to the events of his time,
+    constraining his utterance, making his words the vehicle of a
+    higher meaning than their own. For instance, this of Isaiah’s:
+    ‘The Lord spake thus to me with a strong hand,’—an emphatic phrase
+    which denotes the overmastering nature of the impulse,—‘and
+    instructed me that I should not walk in the way of this people.’
+    ... Or passages like this from Ezekiel: ‘The hand of the Lord God
+    fell upon me,’ ‘The hand of the Lord was strong upon me.’ The one
+    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 the
+    Lord,’ or ‘Thus saith the Lord.’ They have even the audacity to
+    speak in the first person, as if Jehovah himself were speaking. As
+    in Isaiah: ‘Hearken unto me, O Jacob, and Israel my called; I am
+    He, I am the First, I also am the last,’—and so on. The
+    personality of the prophet sinks entirely into the background; he
+    feels himself for the time being the mouthpiece of the
+    Almighty.”(323)
+    “We need to remember that prophecy was a profession, and that the
+    prophets formed a professional 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—and would not only record or spread the knowledge of his
+    sayings and doings, but seek to catch themselves something of his
+    inspiration. It seems that music played its part in their
+    exercises.... It is perfectly clear that by no means all of these
+    Sons of the prophets ever succeeded in acquiring more 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 cases
+    where a false message was given, the giver of it was altogether
+    conscious of what he was doing.”(324)
+Here, to take another Jewish case, is the way in which Philo of Alexandria
+describes his inspiration:—
+    “Sometimes, when I have come to my work empty, I have suddenly
+    become full; ideas being in an invisible manner showered upon me,
+    and implanted in me from on high; so that through the influence of
+    divine inspiration, I have become greatly excited, and have known
+    neither the place in which I was, nor those who were present, nor
+    myself, nor what I was saying, nor what I was writing; for then I
+    have been conscious of a richness of interpretation, an enjoyment
+    of light, a most penetrating insight, a most manifest energy in
+    all that was to be done; having such effect on my mind as the
+    clearest ocular demonstration would have on the eyes.”(325)
+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 that this 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 his words. The later authorities, however,
+    ... distinguish still other kinds. In the Itgân (103) the
+    following are enumerated: 1, revelations with sound of bell, 2, by
+    inspiration of the holy spirit in M.’s heart, 3, by Gabriel in
+    human form, 4, by God immediately, either when awake (as in his
+    journey to heaven) or in dream.... In Almawâhib alladunîya 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 propriâ personâ (only twice), 6,
+    revelation in heaven, 7, God appearing in person, but veiled, 8,
+    God revealing himself immediately without veil. Others add two
+    other stages, namely: 1, Gabriel in the form of still another man,
+, God showing himself personally in dream.”(326)
+In none of these cases is the revelation distinctly motor. In the case of
+Joseph Smith (who had prophetic revelations innumerable in addition to the
+revealed translation of the gold plates which resulted in the Book of
+Mormon), although there may have been a motor element, the inspiration
+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 a case of “crystal gazing.” For
+some of the other revelations he used the peep‐stones, but seems generally
+to have asked the Lord for more direct instruction.(327)
+Other revelations are described as “openings”—Fox’s, for example, were
+evidently of the kind known in spiritistic circles of to‐day as
+“impressions.” As all effective initiators of change must needs live to
+some degree upon this psychopathic level of sudden perception or
+conviction of new truth, or of impulse to action so obsessive that it must
+be worked off, I will say nothing more about so very common a phenomenon.
+When, in addition to these phenomena of inspiration, we take religious
+mysticism into the account, when we recall the striking and sudden
+unifications of a discordant self which we saw in conversion, and when we
+review the extravagant obsessions of tenderness, purity, and self‐severity
+met with in saintliness, we cannot, I think, avoid the conclusion that in
+religion we have a department of human nature with unusually close
+relations to the trans‐marginal or subliminal region. If the word
+“subliminal” is offensive to any of you, as smelling too much of psychical
+research or other aberrations, call it by any other name you please, to
+distinguish it from the level of full sunlit consciousness. Call this
+latter the A‐region of personality, if you care to, and call the other the
+B‐region. The B‐region, then, is obviously the larger part of each of us,
+for it is the abode of everything that is latent and the reservoir of
+everything that passes unrecorded or unobserved. It contains, for example,
+such things as all our momentarily inactive memories, and it harbors the
+springs of all our obscurely motived passions, impulses, likes, dislikes,
+and prejudices. Our intuitions, 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 to it. 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, if such there be, and if we are telepathic subjects. It
+is also the fountain‐head of much that feeds our religion. In persons deep
+in the religious life, as we have now abundantly seen,—and this is my
+conclusion,—the door into this region seems unusually wide open; at any
+rate, experiences making their 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 them in developed and articulate human
+individuals. I might easily, if the time allowed, multiply both my
+documents and my discriminations, but a broad treatment is, I believe, in
+itself better, and the most 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 material
+may suggest.
 ## LECTURE XX. CONCLUSIONS.
+With our data now laid out, we can draw conclusions. In my first lecture, I predicted they would come through spiritual judgments—evaluations of religion's meaning for life as a whole. They cannot be rigid, but I will state them clearly.
+The material of our study of human nature is now spread before us; and in
+this parting hour, set free from the duty of description, we can draw our
+theoretical and practical conclusions. In my first lecture, defending the
+empirical method, I foretold that whatever conclusions we might come to
+could 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 I will formulate
+them, when the time comes, as sharply as I can.
+Religious life, broadly summarized, includes these beliefs: the visible world derives meaning from a spiritual universe; union with that higher universe is our ultimate goal; prayer or inner communion with the spirit—be that spirit 'God' or 'law'—is a process wherein work is really done, producing psychological or material effects. Its psychological traits are: new vitality (enchantment or heroic earnestness), and a sense of safety with loving feelings toward others.
+Summing up in the broadest possible way the characteristics of the
+religious life, as we have found them, it includes the following beliefs:—
+We have been drenched in emotion—I am almost shocked by it myself. This results from my choice of extreme examples. If you dislike "religious enthusiasm," you may find this perverse, but extreme cases yield the profoundest information. To learn the secrets of any science, we go to expert specialists, not to commonplace pupils. Having studied these radical expressions, we know religion's secrets firsthand; now each must answer: what dangers exist here, and how must it be balanced?
+. That the visible world is part of a more spiritual universe from which
+it draws its chief significance;
+Should religion be the same for everyone? I emphatically say no. No two of us face identical difficulties, nor should we be expected to work out identical solutions. One must soften himself, another must harden himself—each defending the position assigned to him. If Emerson were forced to be Wesley, our understanding would suffer. The divine represents multiple qualities, each championed by different people.
+. That union or harmonious relation with that higher universe is our true
+end;
+> **Quote:** "Each attitude being a syllable in human nature’s total message, it takes the whole of us to spell the meaning out completely."
+. That prayer or inner communion with the spirit thereof—be that spirit
+“God” or “law”—is a process wherein work is really done, and spiritual
+energy flows in and produces effects, psychological or material, within
+the phenomenal world.
+Thus a "god of battles" suits some, while others need a god of peace. We live in incomplete systems—self-denial is necessary for irritable souls but not for naturally kind ones. Some have higher callings, but each should remain within their experience, respected.
+Religion includes also the following psychological characteristics:—
+Would adopting a "science of religions" cure this? First, knowledge is not experience.
+. A new zest which adds itself like a gift to life, and takes the form
+either of lyrical enchantment or of appeal to earnestness and heroism.
+> **Quote:** "Knowledge about a thing is not the thing itself."
+. An assurance of safety and a temper of peace, and, in relation to
+others, a preponderance of loving affections.
+As Al-Ghazzali said, a doctor's understanding of drunkenness differs from being drunk. A science might understand religion completely, yet its foremost expert might be the least devout. The person who lives religiously, however narrow their view, better serves than one who merely knows.
+In illustrating these characteristics by documents, we have been literally
+bathed in sentiment. In re‐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 that
+lies before us.
+A science of religions might conclude that religion is merely an anachronism—a "survival" of primitive thinking—because natural sciences know nothing of spiritual presences, and researchers encounter so many superstitions that they assume belief is false. This "Survival Theory" is so common I must address it before my own conclusions.
+The sentimentality of many of my documents is a consequence of the fact
+that I sought them among the extravagances of the subject. If any of you
+are enemies of what our ancestors used to brand as enthusiasm, and are,
+nevertheless, still listening to me now, you have probably felt my
+selection to have been sometimes almost perverse, and have wished I might
+have stuck to soberer examples. I reply that I took these extremer
+examples as yielding the profounder information. To learn the secrets of
+any science, we go to expert specialists, even though they may be
+eccentric persons, and not to commonplace pupils. We combine what they
+tell us with the rest of our wisdom, and form our final judgment
+independently. Even so with religion. We who have pursued such radical
+expressions of it may now be sure that we know its secrets as
+authentically as any one can 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
+it need to be restrained by other elements, to give the proper balance?
+> **Quote:** "Religion, in short, is a monumental chapter in the history of human egotism."
+                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
+Gods recognize personal calls; the divine meets individuals in their concerns. Science rejects this view entirely, cataloging elements without regard for human anxieties. The heavens no longer declare God's glory; our solar system is a temporary accident in a wilderness of worlds. Nature has no ultimate goal; in the drifting of cosmic atoms, we find only a kind of 'aimless weather,' doing and undoing, and leaving no result. Our private selves are mere "epiphenomena," as Clifford called them—bubbles on a stormy sea.
+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.(328)
+Ought it to be assumed that in all men the mixture of religion with other
+elements should be identical? Ought it, indeed, to be assumed that the
+lives of all men should show identical religious elements? In other words,
+is the existence of so many religious types and sects and creeds
+regrettable?
+> **Quote:** "The God whom science recognizes must be a God of universal laws exclusively, a God who does a wholesale, not a retail business."
+To these questions I answer “No” emphatically. And my reason is that I do
+not see how it is possible that creatures in such different positions and
+with such different powers as human individuals are, should have exactly
+the same functions and the same duties. No two of us have identical
+difficulties, nor should we be expected to work out identical solutions.
+Each, from his peculiar angle of observation, takes in a certain sphere of
+fact and trouble, which each must deal with in a unique manner. One of us
+must soften himself, another must harden himself; one must yield a point,
+another must stand firm,—in order the better to defend the position
+assigned him. If an Emerson were forced to be a Wesley, or a Moody forced
+to be a Whitman, the total human consciousness of the divine would suffer.
+The divine can mean no single quality, it must mean a group of qualities,
+by being champions of which in alternation, different men may all find
+worthy missions. Each attitude being a syllable in human nature’s total
+message, it takes the whole of us to spell the meaning out completely. So
+a “god of battles” must be allowed to be the god for one kind of person, a
+god of peace and heaven and home, the god for another. We must frankly
+recognize the fact that we live in partial systems, and that parts are not
+interchangeable in the spiritual life. If we are peevish and jealous,
+destruction of the self must be an element of our religion; why need it be
+one if we are good and sympathetic from the outset? If we are sick souls,
+we require a religion of deliverance; but why think so much of
+deliverance, if we are healthy‐minded?(329) Unquestionably, some men have
+the completer experience and the higher vocation, here just as in the
+social world; but for each man to stay in his own experience, whate’er it
+be, and for others to tolerate him there, is surely best.
+From this view, religion is a survival of ancient thinking, when dreams and facts were mixed. The religious mind still responds to terror and beauty—the voice of thunder, the gentleness of rain—not physical laws. "Pure anachronism!" says the survival theory; the remedy is to remove human qualities from our imagination.
+                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
+Scientific impersonality is shallow. While the cosmic and general are symbols, private and personal phenomena are realities in the fullest sense. Experience has objective and subjective parts; the latter is our experience itself. A field of consciousness with its object, attitude, and self-sense may be small but is solid—complete fact.
+But, you may now ask, would not this one‐sidedness be cured if we should
+all espouse the science of religions as our own religion? In answering
+this question I must open again the general relations of the theoretic to
+the active life.
+> **Quote:** "That unsharable feeling which each one of us has of the pinch of his individual destiny as he privately feels it rolling out on fortune’s wheel may be disparaged for its egotism, may be sneered at as unscientific, but it is the one thing that fills up the measure of our concrete 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."
+Knowledge about a thing is not the thing itself. You remember what Al‐
+Ghazzali told us in the Lecture on Mysticism,—that to understand the
+causes of drunkenness, as a physician understands them, is not to be
+drunk. A science might come to understand everything about the causes and
+elements of religion, and might even decide which elements were qualified,
+by their general harmony with other branches of knowledge, to be
+considered true; and yet the best man at this science might be the man who
+found it hardest to be personally devout. _Tout savoir c’est tout
+pardonner._ The name of Renan would doubtless occur to many persons as an
+example of the way in which breadth of knowledge may make one only a
+dilettante in possibilities, and blunt the acuteness of one’s living
+faith.(330) If religion be a function by which either God’s cause or man’s
+cause is to be really advanced, then he who lives the life of it, however
+narrowly, is a better servant than he who merely knows about it, however
+much. Knowledge about life is one thing; effective occupation of a place
+in life, with its dynamic currents passing through your being, is another.
+To suppress personal elements is absurd; reality's axis runs through these points. To describe the world with all individual spiritual attitudes left out is like offering a printed bill of fare as the equivalent for a solid meal. Religion connects with narrow but real private realities. I reject the survival theory: being religious connects us with ultimate reality at the only points available—our private destiny.
+For this reason, the science of religions may not be an equivalent for
+living religion; and if we turn to the inner difficulties of such a
+science, we see that a point comes when she must drop the purely theoretic
+attitude, and either let her knots remain uncut, or have them cut by
+active faith. To see this, suppose that we have our science of religions
+constituted as a matter of fact. Suppose that she has assimilated all the
+necessary historical material and distilled out of it as its essence the
+same conclusions which I myself a few moments ago pronounced. Suppose that
+she agrees that religion, wherever it is an active thing, involves a
+belief in ideal presences, and a belief that in our prayerful communion
+with them,(331) work is done, and something real comes to pass. She has
+now to exert her critical activity, and to decide how far, in the light of
+other sciences and in that of general philosophy, such beliefs can be
+considered _true_.
+You see why I've been individualistic, emphasizing feeling over intellect. Individuality is rooted in feeling—where we catch real fact in the making. The intellect's generalized objects lack solidity, like seeing a train picture without its energy.
+Dogmatically to decide this is an impossible task. Not only are the other
+sciences and the philosophy 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 practical
+commerce 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 well say that on the whole
+the influence of science goes against the notion that religion should be
+recognized at all. And this antipathy to religion finds an echo within the
+very science of religions itself. The cultivator of this science has to
+become acquainted with so many groveling and horrible superstitions that a
+presumption easily arises in his mind that any belief that is religious
+probably is false. In the “prayerful communion” of savages with such
+mumbo‐jumbos of deities as they acknowledge, it is hard for us to see what
+genuine spiritual work—even though it were work relative only to their
+dark savage obligations—can possibly be done.
+Religion must play a permanent role because it focuses on personal destinies—our only absolute realities. Now we must determine what religion reveals about them.
+The consequence is that the conclusions of the science of religions are as
+likely to be adverse as they are to be favorable to the claim that the
+essence of religion is true. There is a notion in the air about us that
+religion is probably only an anachronism, a case of “survival,” an
+atavistic relapse into a mode of thought which humanity in its more
+enlightened examples has outgrown; and this notion our religious
+anthropologists at present do little to counteract.
+This dry analysis may seem a letdown, but I deliberately reduce religion to its minimum core—terms all religions share. Upon this solid foundation, individual over-beliefs can flourish. I will add my own subdued over-belief, and hope you add yours.
+This view is so widespread at the present day that I must consider it with
+some explicitness before I pass to my own conclusions. Let me call it the
+“Survival theory,” for brevity’s sake.
+Thought and feeling both determine conduct, and across religions, feelings and conduct are nearly constant—Stoic, Christian, and Buddhist saints live indistinguishably. Theories are secondary. A 'short circuit' exists between feeling and conduct where religion's main business occurs; ideas and institutions are merely 'loop-lines' or perfections.
+The pivot round which the religious life, as we have traced it, revolves,
+is the interest of the individual in his private personal destiny.
+Religion, in short, is a monumental chapter in the history of human
+egotism. The gods believed in—whether by crude savages or by men
+disciplined intellectually—agree with each other in recognizing personal
+calls. Religious thought is carried on in terms of personality, this
+being, in the world of religion, the one fundamental fact. To‐day, quite
+as much as at any previous age, the religious individual tells you that
+the divine meets him on the basis of his personal concerns.
+These feelings produce Kant's "sthenic" affection—cheerful, expansive, energizing. This "faith-state" (Leuba's term) overcomes melancholy, giving endurance and zest. Tolstoy correctly classifies faith among life's forces; its absence means collapse.
+Science, on the other hand, has ended by utterly repudiating the personal
+point of view. She catalogues her elements and records her laws
+indifferent as to what purpose may be shown forth by them, 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 of God and the firmament
+showeth his handiwork. Our solar system, with its harmonies, is seen now
+as but one passing case of a certain sort of moving equilibrium in the
+heavens, realized by a local accident in an appalling wilderness of worlds
+where no life can exist. In a span of time which as a cosmic interval will
+count but as an hour, it will have ceased to be. The Darwinian notion of
+chance production, and subsequent destruction, speedy or deferred, applies
+to the largest as well as to the smallest facts. It is impossible, in the
+present temper of the scientific imagination, to find in the 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, and leaving no result. Nature has no one
+distinguishable ultimate tendency with which it is possible to feel a
+sympathy. In the vast rhythm of her processes, as the scientific mind now
+follows them, she appears to cancel herself. The books of natural theology
+which satisfied the intellects of our grandfathers seem to us quite
+grotesque,(332) representing, as they did, a God who conformed the largest
+things of nature to the paltriest of our private wants. The God whom
+science recognizes must be a God of universal laws exclusively, a God who
+does a wholesale, not a retail business. He cannot accommodate his
+processes to the convenience of individuals. The bubbles on the foam which
+coats a stormy sea are floating episodes, made and unmade by the forces of
+the wind and water. Our private selves are like those
+bubbles,—epiphenomena, as Clifford, I believe, ingeniously called them;
+their destinies weigh nothing and determine nothing in the world’s
+irremediable currents of events.
+The faith-state may have little intellectual content, as in mystical raptures. When ideas do attach, they become deeply ingrained, explaining loyalty to creeds. As Leuba says:
+You see how natural it is, from this point of view, to treat religion as a
+mere survival, for religion does 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
+great object 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 comparatively recent 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 affirmed confidently; and
+whatever you affirmed, your comrades believed. Truth was what had not yet
+been contradicted, most things were taken into the mind from the point of
+view of their human suggestiveness, and the attention confined itself
+exclusively to the æsthetic and dramatic aspects of events.(333)
+> **Quote:** "God is not known, he is used—sometimes as meat‐purveyor, sometimes as 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, more satisfying life, is, in the last analysis, the end of religion. The love of life, at any and every level of development, is the religious impulse."
+How indeed could it be otherwise? The extraordinary value, for explanation
+and prevision, of those mathematical and mechanical modes of conception
+which science uses, was a result that could 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 to have been first singled out
+and followed by philosophy as the more promising avenue to the knowledge
+of Nature’s life? Well, it is still in these richer animistic and dramatic
+aspects that religion delights to dwell. It is the terror and beauty of
+phenomena, the “promise” of the dawn and of the rainbow, the “voice” of
+the thunder, the “gentleness” of the summer rain, the “sublimity” of the
+stars, and not the physical laws which these things follow, by which the
+religious mind still continues to be most impressed; and just as of yore,
+the devout man tells you that in the solitude of his room or of the fields
+he still feels the divine presence, that inflowings of help come in reply
+to his prayers, and that sacrifices to this unseen reality fill him with
+security and peace.
+Thus religion serves a permanent function, regardless of its truth.
+Pure anachronism! says the survival‐theory;—anachronism for which
+deanthropomorphization of the imagination is the remedy required. The less
+we mix the private with the cosmic, the more we dwell in universal and
+impersonal terms, the truer heirs of Science we become.
+We must investigate the intellectual content itself: Is there a common core? Yes. All religions share a uniform message: uneasiness and its solution. The uneasiness is the sense that something is wrong with us; the solution is being saved by connecting with higher powers.
+In spite of the appeal which this impersonality of the scientific attitude
+makes to a certain magnanimity of temper, I believe it to be shallow, and
+I can now state my reason in comparatively few words. That reason is that,
+so long as we deal with the cosmic and the general, we deal only with 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 I mean by these words.
+In developed minds, this becomes moral wrongness and mystical salvation. The person identifies with a budding higher self, becoming conscious that this part is continuous with a MORE operative in the universe.
+                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
+> **Quote:** "He becomes conscious 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 in the wreck."
+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 never be omitted or
+suppressed. The objective part is the sum total of whatsoever at any given
+time we may 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 inner state may be the
+most fugitive and paltry activity of mind. Yet the cosmic objects, so far
+as the experience yields them, are but ideal pictures of something whose
+existence we do not inwardly possess but only point at outwardly, while
+the inner state is our very experience itself; its reality and that of our
+experience are one. A conscious field _plus_ its object as felt or thought
+of _plus_ an attitude towards the object _plus_ the sense of a self to
+whom the attitude belongs—such a concrete bit of personal experience may
+be a small bit, but it is a solid bit as long as it lasts; not hollow, not
+a mere abstract element of experience, such as the “object” is when taken
+all alone. It is a _full_ fact, even though it be an insignificant fact;
+it is of the _kind_ to which all realities whatsoever must belong; the
+motor currents of the world run through the like of it; it is on the line
+connecting real events with real events. That unsharable feeling which
+each one of us has of the pinch of his individual destiny as he privately
+feels it rolling out on fortune’s wheel may be disparaged for its egotism,
+may be sneered at as unscientific, but it is the one thing that fills up
+the measure of our concrete 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.(334)
+This accounts for the divided self, shift of center, and sense of union. It applies to every autobiography quoted.
+If this be true, it is absurd for science to say that the egotistic
+elements of experience should be suppressed. The axis of reality runs
+solely through the egotistic places,—they are strung upon it like so many
+beads. To describe the world with all the various feelings of the
+individual pinch of destiny, all the various spiritual attitudes, left out
+from the description—they being as describable as anything else—would be
+something like offering a printed bill of fare as the equivalent for a
+solid meal. Religion makes no such blunder. The individual’s religion may
+be egotistic, and those private realities which it keeps in touch with may
+be narrow enough; but at any rate it always remains infinitely less hollow
+and abstract, as far as it goes, than a science which prides itself on
+taking no account of anything private at all.
+But this analysis treats these experiences as psychological phenomena with biological value. Is the "More" real? Theologies agree it exists and acts, making life better, but differ on its nature. I suggested a science of religions might extract a common doctrine. Now I must frame such a hypothesis—something that fits the facts so well scientific logic cannot block acceptance.
+A bill of fare with one real raisin on it instead of the word “raisin,”
+with one real egg instead of the 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
+exclusively seems 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 be
+answered, it is only by acknowledging them as genuine questions, and
+living in the sphere of thought which they open up, that we become
+profound. But to live thus is to be religious; so I unhesitatingly
+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 their religion, that we should
+therefore leave off being religious at all.(335) By being religious we
+establish ourselves in possession of ultimate reality at the only points
+at which reality is given us to guard. Our responsible concern is with our
+private destiny, after all.
+What concrete facts represent this "More"? We cannot simply adopt Christian theology as our definition; that would be an over-belief. We need a description psychologists recognize: the *subconscious self*. There is literally more life in our total soul than we know, as Myers said:
+You see now why I have been so individualistic throughout these lectures,
+and why I have seemed so bent on rehabilitating the element of feeling in
+religion and subordinating its intellectual part. Individuality is founded
+in feeling; and the recesses of feeling, the darker, blinder strata of
+character, are the only places in the world in which we catch real fact in
+the making, and directly perceive how events happen, and how work is
+actually done.(336) Compared with this world of living individualized
+feelings, the world of generalized objects which the intellect
+contemplates is without solidity or life. As in stereoscopic or
+kinetoscopic pictures seen outside the instrument, the third dimension,
+the movement, the vital element, are not there. We get a beautiful picture
+of an express train supposed to be moving, but where in the picture, as I
+have heard a friend say, is the energy or the fifty miles an hour?(337)
+> **Quote:** "Each of us is in reality an abiding psychical entity far more extensive than he knows—an individuality which can never express itself completely through any corporeal manifestation. The Self manifests through the organism; but there is always some part of the Self unmanifested; and always, as it seems, some power of organic expression in abeyance or reserve."
+Let us agree, then, that Religion, occupying herself with personal
+destinies and keeping thus in contact with the only absolute realities
+which we know, must necessarily play an eternal part in human history. The
+next thing to decide is what she reveals about those destinies, or whether
+indeed she reveals anything distinct enough to be considered a general
+message to mankind. We have done as you see, with our preliminaries, and
+our final summing up can now begin.
+Much of this background is trivial, but genius and religious experience originate there. I propose: the "More" is, on its nearer side, the subconscious continuation of our conscious life. This validates the theologian's claim of external power, since subconscious intrusions take on objective appearances. The sense of union is literally true.
+I am well aware that after all the palpitating documents which I have
+quoted, and all the perspectives of emotion‐inspiring institution and
+belief that my previous lectures have opened, the dry analysis to which I
+now advance may appear to many of you like an anti‐climax, a tapering‐off
+and flattening out of the subject, instead of a crescendo of interest and
+result. I said awhile ago that the religious attitude of Protestants
+appears poverty‐stricken to the Catholic imagination. Still more poverty‐
+stricken, I fear, may my final summing up of the subject appear at first
+to some of you. On which account I pray you now to bear this point in
+mind, that in the present part of it I am expressly trying to reduce
+religion to its lowest admissible terms, to that minimum, free from
+individualistic excrescences, which all religions contain as their
+nucleus, and on which it may be hoped that all religious persons may
+agree. That established, we should have a result which might be small, but
+would at least be solid; and on it and round it the ruddier additional
+beliefs on which the different individuals make their venture might be
+grafted, and flourish as richly as you please. I shall add my own over‐
+belief (which will be, I confess, of a somewhat pallid kind, as befits a
+critical philosopher), and you will, I hope, also add your over‐beliefs,
+and we shall soon be in the varied world of concrete religious
+constructions once more. For the moment, let me dryly pursue the analytic
+part of the task.
+This is only a doorway. Following it further leads to over-beliefs: mysticism, conversion ecstasies, Vedantism, each claiming absolute truth. Those without such revelations must conclude they cancel each other out. We build religion according to personal sensibilities, and over-beliefs are indispensable.
+Both thought and feeling are determinants of conduct, and the same conduct
+may be determined either by feeling or by thought. When we survey the
+whole field of religion, we find a great variety in the thoughts that have
+prevailed there; but the feelings on the one hand and the conduct on the
+other are almost always the same, for Stoic, Christian, and Buddhist
+saints are practically indistinguishable in their lives. The theories
+which Religion generates, being thus variable, are secondary; and if you
+wish to grasp her essence, you must look to the feelings and the conduct
+as being the more constant elements. It is between these two elements that
+the short circuit exists on which she carries on her principal business,
+while the ideas and symbols and other institutions form loop‐lines which
+may be perfections and improvements, and may even some day all be united
+into one harmonious system, but which are not to be regarded as organs
+with an indispensable function, necessary at all times for religious life
+to go on. This seems to me the first conclusion which we are entitled to
+draw from the phenomena we have passed in review.
+> **Quote:** "The most interesting and valuable things about a man are usually his over-beliefs."
+The next step is to characterize the feelings. To what psychological order
+do they belong?
+Setting aside over-beliefs, we find:
+The resultant outcome of them is in any case what Kant calls a “sthenic”
+affection, an excitement of 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 have
+seen how this emotion overcomes temperamental melancholy and imparts
+endurance to the Subject, or a zest, or a meaning, or an enchantment and
+glory to the common objects of life.(338) The name of “faith‐state,” by
+which Professor Leuba designates it, is a good one.(339) It is a
+biological as well as a psychological condition, and Tolstoy is absolutely
+accurate in classing faith among the forces _by which men live_.(340) The
+total absence of it, anhedonia,(341) means collapse.
+> **Quote:** "the fact that the conscious person is continuous with a wider self through which saving experiences come"
+The faith‐state may hold a very minimum of intellectual content. We saw
+examples of this in those sudden raptures of the divine presence, or in
+such mystical seizures as Dr. Bucke described.(342) It may be a mere vague
+enthusiasm, half spiritual, half vital, a courage, and a feeling that
+great and wondrous things are in the air.(343)
+This core seems literally true. I now state my own hypothesis about its further reaches—my over-belief, which will seem disappointing to some.
+When, however, a positive intellectual content is associated with a faith‐
+state, it gets invincibly stamped in upon belief,(344) and this explains
+the passionate loyalty of religious persons everywhere to the minutest
+details of their so widely differing creeds. Taking creeds and faith‐state
+together, as forming “religions,” and treating these as purely subjective
+phenomena, without regard to the question of their “truth,” we are
+obliged, on account of their extraordinary influence upon action and
+endurance, to class them amongst the most important biological functions
+of mankind. Their stimulant and anæsthetic effect is so great that
+Professor Leuba, in a recent article,(345) goes so far as to say that so
+long as men can _use_ their God, they care very little who he is, or even
+whether he is at all. “The truth of the matter can be put,” says Leuba,
+“in this way: _God is not known, he is not understood; he is
+used_—sometimes as meat‐purveyor, sometimes as 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, more satisfying life, is, in the
+last analysis, the end of religion. The love of life, at any and every
+level of development, is the religious impulse.”(346)
+Our being's further limits plunge into a different dimension: call it mystical or supernatural. We belong there more intimately than to the visible world, for our highest impulses originate there. This region produces real effects; when we connect, work is done on our personality, transforming us. Something producing effects must be real—so the mystical world is real.
+At this purely subjective rating, therefore, Religion must be considered
+vindicated in a certain way from the attacks of her critics. It would seem
+that she cannot be a mere anachronism and survival, 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.
+"God" is the natural name for this supreme reality. We have business with God; by opening to His influence, our destiny is fulfilled. The universe's quality depends on whether we fulfill His demands. This is the instinctive belief of mankind:
+                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
+> **Quote:** "God is real since he produces real effects."
+We must next pass beyond the point of view of merely subjective utility,
+and make inquiry into the intellectual content itself.
+Most people believe these effects extend beyond individuals to the entire universe. God guarantees a permanently preserved ideal order; tragedy is temporary where He is. Only with this further faith does religion become independent of subjective experience and bring a real hypothesis. "God" must enter broader cosmic relations to justify absolute confidence.
+First, is there, under all the discrepancies of the creeds, a common
+nucleus to which they bear their testimony unanimously?
+Claiming God as absolute ruler is over-belief, yet it is universal. Religion proposes new facts; a religious world must have a natural constitution differing from materialism.
+And second, ought we to consider the testimony true?
+I believe the pragmatic approach is deeper. My over-belief is that divine facts exist. The world of our consciousness is one of many; they become continuous at points, and higher energies filter in. Being faithful to this over-belief keeps me sane. A narrow scientific view whispers "bosh!" The real world is more complex than physical science allows. Perhaps individual faithfulness helps God with His greater tasks.
+I will take up the first question first, and answer it immediately in the
+affirmative. The warring gods and formulas of the various religions do
+indeed cancel each other, but there is a certain uniform deliverance in
+which religions all appear to meet. It consists of two parts:—
+## POSTSCRIPT.
+. An uneasiness; and
+I fear my concluding lecture stated my position too briefly for some readers. I therefore add this epilogue, though it too is short; I hope in later work to state my position more fully.
+. Its solution.
+If thinkers are divided into naturalists and supernaturalists, I would be placed, with most philosophers, in the latter. But there are crasser and more refined versions. Most contemporary philosophers belong to the refined division: they follow Kant enough to prevent ideal entities from causally interfering in physical events. Refined supernaturalism is universalistic; the crasser variety might better be called piecemeal supernaturalism.
+. The uneasiness, reduced to its simplest terms, is a sense that there is
+_something wrong about us_ as we naturally stand.
+This view—associated with older theology thought to exist only among the uneducated—accepts miracles and providential guidance, inserting ideal influences into the forces determining real-world details. Refined supernaturalists believe this muddles distinct dimensions. For them, the ideal world has no direct causal power and never breaks into physical phenomena. It is not a world of facts but a perspective for judging them, belonging to a different dimension altogether. It cannot descend into everyday experience to aid prayer, as crasser believers must maintain it does.
+. The solution is a sense that _we are saved from the wrongness_ by
+making proper connection with the higher powers.
+Though I cannot accept popular Christianity or traditional academic theism, I believe communion with the Ideal brings new force into the world, taking new directions here on earth. This classifies me, I suppose, among the piecemeal or crasser supernaturalists. Universalistic supernaturalism surrenders too easily to naturalism. It accepts physical science at face value and leaves life's laws as they are, offering no remedy for bad results. It limits itself to sentiments about life as a whole—which need not be positive, as pessimism proves—and thus evaporates practical religion's essence.
+In those more developed minds which alone we are studying, the wrongness
+takes a moral character, and the salvation takes a mystical tinge. I think
+we shall keep well within the limits of what is common to all such minds
+if we formulate the essence of their religious experience in terms like
+these:—
+> **Quote:** "Both instinctively and for logical reasons, I find it hard to believe that principles can exist which make no difference in facts."
+The individual, so far as he suffers from his wrongness and criticises it,
+is to that extent consciously beyond it, and in at least possible touch
+with something higher, if anything higher exist. Along with the wrong part
+there is thus a better part of him, even though it may be but a most
+helpless germ. With which part he should identify his real being is by no
+means obvious at this stage; but when stage 2 (the stage of solution or
+salvation) arrives,(347) the man identifies his real being with the
+germinal higher part of himself; and does so in the following way. _He
+becomes conscious 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 in the wreck._
+All facts are specific, and God's existence interests me only insofar as it changes specific details. To suggest no concrete experience changes because God exists seems incredible; yet refined supernaturalism implicitly claims the Absolute relates only to experience *en bloc* and never condescends to 'transactions of detail.'
+It seems to me that all the phenomena are accurately describable in these
+very simple general terms.(348) They allow for the divided self and the
+struggle; they involve the change of personal centre and the surrender of
+the lower self; they express the appearance of exteriority of the helping
+power and yet account for our sense of union with it;(349) and they fully
+justify our feelings of security and joy. There is probably no
+autobiographic document, among all those which I have quoted, to which the
+description will not well apply. One need only add such specific details
+as will adapt it to various theologies and various personal temperaments,
+and one will then have the various experiences reconstructed in their
+individual forms.
+Though no expert on Buddhism, I agree in principle with the doctrine of Karma as I understand it. All supernaturalists admit facts are subject to higher law, but for Buddhism and religion unweakened by metaphysics, "judgment" means not an academic verdict but execution that exists within things themselves, operating causally as a partial factor in the total reality. Otherwise, the universe becomes pure Gnosticism—knowledge without effect. This view that judgment and execution go together is the crasser supernaturalist way, so this volume must be classed with that belief.
+So far, however, as this analysis goes, the experiences are only
+psychological phenomena. They possess, it is true, enormous biological
+worth. Spiritual strength really increases in the subject when he has
+them, a new life opens for him, and they seem to him a place of conflux
+where the forces 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: What is the
+objective “truth” of their content?(350)
+I state this bluntly because academic thought runs against me, and I must set my back against an open door quickly to keep it from being closed and locked. Despite its unpopularity, I believe piecemeal supernaturalism meets the greatest number of legitimate requirements, though full discussion must wait for other books. This suffices to show where I stand.
+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 come into 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 we conceive of that “union” with it of which religious
+geniuses are so convinced?
+If asked where God's existence makes factual differences, I have no hypothesis beyond what "prayerful communion" suggests—especially involving subconscious influences. In this phenomenon, something ideal—part of ourselves yet not ourselves—exerts influence, raises personal energy, and produces regenerative effects unattainable otherwise. If a wider world of being exists beyond everyday consciousness, with intermittent forces requiring an open "subliminal" door, religious phenomena make this theory plausible. I am so impressed that I adopt this hypothesis; at these points, otherworldly energies—God, if you will—produce immediate effects in the natural world.
+It is in answering these questions that the various theologies perform
+their theoretic work, and that their divergencies most come to light. They
+all agree that the “more” really exists; though some of them hold it to
+exist in the shape of a personal god or gods, while others are satisfied
+to conceive it as a stream of ideal tendency embedded in the eternal
+structure of the world. They all agree, moreover, that it acts as well as
+exists, and that something really is effected for the better when you
+throw your life into its hands. It is when they treat of the experience of
+“union” with it that their speculative differences appear most clearly.
+Over this point pantheism and theism, nature and second birth, works and
+grace and karma, immortality and reincarnation, rationalism and mysticism,
+carry on inveterate disputes.
+The change in natural "fact" that most expect from God's existence is personal immortality. For most people, religion *means* immortality, nothing else. God is immortality's source, and whoever doubts it is labeled an atheist without trial. I have said nothing in my lectures about immortality, because to me it seems secondary. If our ideals are cared for in "eternity," I do not see why we should not leave them in other hands. Yet I sympathize with the impulse to be present ourselves; in this conflict of vague yet noble impulses, I cannot decide. This seems a case where we must wait for facts to testify. I believe facts are still lacking to prove the "return of spirits," though I respect the patient work of Myers, Hodgson, and Hyslop, and am somewhat impressed by their conclusions. Consequently, I leave the matter open, so the reader is not confused why immortality was not mentioned in the main body.
+At the end of my lecture on Philosophy(351) I held out the notion that an
+impartial science of religions might sift out from the midst of their
+discrepancies a common body of doctrine which she might also formulate in
+terms to which physical science need not object. This, I said, she might
+adopt as her own reconciling hypothesis, and recommend it for general
+belief. I also said that in my last lecture I should have to try my own
+hand at framing such an hypothesis.
+The ideal power we feel—the "God" of the average person—is usually endowed with the metaphysical attributes I treated with disrespect in my philosophy lecture. He is assumed, of course, to be "one and only" and "infinite." The idea of many finite gods is hardly considered, let alone defended. Nevertheless, for clarity, I must say that religious experience does not clearly support belief in the infinite.
+The time has now come for this attempt. Who says “hypothesis” renounces
+the ambition to be coercive in his arguments. The most I can do is,
+accordingly, to offer something that may fit the facts so easily that your
+scientific logic will find no plausible pretext for vetoing your impulse
+to welcome it as true.
+> **Quote:** "The only thing that it unequivocally testifies to is that we can experience union with something larger than ourselves and in that union find our greatest peace."
+                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
+Philosophy's passion for unity and mysticism's focus on a single reality both push this to the limit, identifying that "something" with a unique, all-inclusive God. Popular opinion follows their example.
+The “more,” as we called it, and the meaning of our “union” with it, form
+the nucleus of our inquiry. Into what definite description can these words
+be translated, and for what definite facts do they stand? It would never
+do for us to place ourselves offhand at the position of a particular
+theology, the Christian theology, for example, and proceed immediately to
+define the “more” as Jehovah, and the “union” as his imputation to us of
+the righteousness of Christ. That would be unfair to other religions, and,
+from our present standpoint at least, would be an over‐belief.
+Meanwhile, practical religion seems sufficiently met by belief in a larger power beyond each person, continuous with them and friendly to their ideals. The facts require only that this power be different from and larger than our conscious selves. Anything larger will do, if large enough to trust for the next step. It need not be infinite; need not be the only one. It could even be a larger, more divine self, of which our current self is only a mutilated expression. The universe might be a collection of such selves, with varying inclusiveness, without absolute unity. This would bring us back to polytheism—which I am not defending, only keeping religious experience within its proper bounds.
+We must begin by using less particularized terms; and, since one of the
+duties of the science of religions is to keep religion in connection with
+the rest of science, we shall do well to seek first of all a way of
+describing the “more,” which psychologists may also recognize as real. The
+_subconscious self_ is nowadays a well‐accredited psychological entity;
+and I believe that in it we have exactly the mediating term required.
+Apart from all religious considerations, there is actually and literally
+more life in our total soul than we are at any time aware of. The
+exploration of the transmarginal field has hardly yet been seriously
+undertaken, but what Mr. Myers said in 1892 in his essay on the Subliminal
+Consciousness(352) is as true as when it was first written: “Each of us is
+in reality an abiding psychical entity far more extensive than he knows—an
+individuality which can never express itself completely through any
+corporeal manifestation. The Self manifests through the organism; but
+there is always some part of the Self unmanifested; and always, as it
+seems, some power of organic expression in abeyance or reserve.”(353) Much
+of the content of this 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, enter into it for a large part. But in it many of the
+performances of genius seem also to have their origin; and in our study of
+conversion, of mystical experiences, and of prayer, we have seen how
+striking a part invasions from this region play in the religious life.
+Monists will say that without one all-inclusive God, our guarantee of security is imperfect. (Polytheism, by the way, has always been the real religion of common people.) In the Absolute alone is *everything* saved. They argue that with different gods caring for their own parts, some portion might lack divine protection, making consolation incomplete. This raises the possibility that parts of the universe may be irretrievably lost. Common sense is less sweeping, tolerating a world partly saved and partly lost. The ordinary moralistic mindset makes salvation depend on how well each does their part. Partial and conditional salvation is familiar in the abstract; only the details are difficult. Some are selfless enough to accept being "unsaved" if their cause prevails—and we all feel this when excitement rises high enough.
+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 the subconscious continuation
+of our conscious life. Starting thus with a recognized psychological fact
+as our basis, we seem to preserve a contact with “science” which the
+ordinary theologian lacks. At the same time the theologian’s contention
+that the religious man is moved by an external power is vindicated, for it
+is one of the peculiarities of invasions from the subconscious region to
+take on objective appearances, and to suggest to the Subject an external
+control. In the religious life the control is felt as “higher”; but since
+on our hypothesis it is primarily the higher faculties of our own hidden
+mind which are controlling, the sense of union with the power beyond us is
+a sense of something, not merely apparently, but literally true.
+I believe a final philosophy of religion must consider the pluralistic hypothesis more seriously. For practical life, the *chance* of salvation is enough. No trait is more characteristic than the willingness to live on a chance.
+This doorway into the subject seems to me the best one for a science of
+religions, for it mediates between a number of different points of view.
+Yet it is only a doorway, and difficulties present themselves as soon as
+we step through it, and ask how far our transmarginal consciousness
+carries us if we follow it on its remoter side. Here the over‐beliefs
+begin: here mysticism and the conversion‐rapture and Vedantism and
+transcendental idealism bring in their monistic interpretations(354) and
+tell us that the finite self rejoins the absolute self, for it was always
+one with God and identical with the soul of the world.(355) Here the
+prophets of all the different religions come with their visions, voices,
+raptures, and other openings, supposed by each to authenticate his own
+peculiar faith.
+> **Quote:** "The existence of the chance makes the difference, as Edmund Gurney says, between a life of which the keynote is resignation and a life of which the keynote is hope."
+Those of us who are not personally favored with such specific revelations
+must stand outside of them altogether and, for the present at least,
+decide that, since they corroborate incompatible theological doctrines,
+they neutralize one another and leave no fixed result. If we follow any
+one of them, or if we follow philosophical theory and embrace monistic
+pantheism on non‐mystical grounds, we do so in the exercise of our
+individual freedom, and build out our religion in the way most congruous
+with our personal susceptibilities. Among these susceptibilities
+intellectual ones play a decisive part. Although the religious question is
+primarily a question of life, of living or not living in the higher union
+which opens itself to us as a gift, yet the spiritual excitement in which
+the gift appears a real one will often fail to be aroused in an individual
+until certain particular intellectual beliefs or ideas which, as we say,
+come home to him, are touched.(356) These ideas will thus be essential to
+that individual’s religion;—which is as much as to say that over‐beliefs
+in various directions are absolutely indispensable, and that we should
+treat them with tenderness and tolerance so long as they are not
+intolerant themselves. As I have elsewhere written, the most interesting
+and valuable things about a man are usually his over‐beliefs.
+But these statements are unsatisfactory in their brevity, and I can only hope to return to these questions in another book.
+Disregarding the over‐beliefs, and confining ourselves to what is common
+and generic, we have in _the fact that the conscious person is continuous
+with a wider self through which saving experiences come_,(357) a positive
+content of religious experience which, it seems to me, _is literally and
+objectively true as far as it goes_. If I now proceed to state my own
+hypothesis about the farther limits of this extension of our personality,
+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 case I should accord to yours.
+                  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
+The further limits of our being plunge, it seems to me, into an altogether
+other dimension of existence from the sensible and merely “understandable”
+world. Name it the mystical region, or the 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 cannot articulately account), we belong to it in a more
+intimate sense than that in which we belong to the visible world, for we
+belong in the most intimate sense wherever our ideals belong. Yet the
+unseen region in question is not merely ideal, for it produces effects in
+this world. When we commune with it, work is actually done upon our finite
+personality, for we are turned into new men, and consequences in the way
+of conduct follow in the natural world upon our regenerative change.(358)
+But that which produces effects within another reality must be termed a
+reality itself, so I feel as if we had no philosophic excuse for calling
+the unseen or mystical world unreal.
+God is the natural appellation, for us Christians at least, for the
+supreme reality, so I will call this higher part of the universe by the
+name of God.(359) We and God have business with each other; and in opening
+ourselves to his influence our deepest destiny is fulfilled. The universe,
+at those parts of it which our personal being constitutes, takes a turn
+genuinely for the worse or for the better in proportion as each one of us
+fulfills or evades God’s demands. As far as this goes I probably have you
+with me, for I only translate into schematic language what I may call the
+instinctive belief of mankind: God is real since he produces real effects.
+The real effects in question, so far as I have as yet admitted them, are
+exerted on the personal centres of energy of the various subjects, but the
+spontaneous faith of most of the subjects is that they 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, are secure in his parental hands. There is a
+sense, a dimension, they are sure, in which we are _all_ saved, in spite
+of the gates of hell and all adverse terrestrial appearances. God’s
+existence is the guarantee of an ideal order that shall be permanently
+preserved. This world may indeed, as science assures us, some day burn up
+or freeze; but if it is part of his order, the old ideals are sure to be
+brought elsewhere to fruition, so that where God is, tragedy is only
+provisional and partial, and shipwreck and dissolution are not the
+absolutely final things. Only when this farther step of faith concerning
+God is taken, and remote objective consequences are predicted, does
+religion, as it seems to me, get wholly free from the first immediate
+subjective experience, and bring a _real hypothesis_ into play. A good
+hypothesis in science must have other properties than those of the
+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 an hypothesis of this more
+useful order. He needs to enter into wider cosmic relations in order to
+justify the subject’s absolute confidence and peace.
+That the God with whom, starting from the hither side of our own extra‐
+marginal self, we come at its remoter margin into commerce should be the
+absolute world‐ruler, is of course a very considerable 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 really propped upon this faith. What is this but to
+say that Religion, in her fullest exercise of function, is not a mere
+illumination of facts already elsewhere given, not a mere passion, like
+love, which views things in a rosier light. It is indeed that, as we have
+seen abundantly. But it is something more, namely, a postulator of new
+_facts_ as well. The world interpreted religiously is not the
+materialistic world over again, with an altered expression; it must have,
+over and above the altered expression, _a natural constitution_ different
+at some point from that which a materialistic world would have. It must be
+such that different events can be expected in it, different conduct must
+be required.
+This thoroughly “pragmatic” view of religion has usually been taken as a
+matter of course by common men. They have interpolated divine miracles
+into the field of nature, they have built a heaven out beyond the grave.
+It is only transcendentalist metaphysicians who think that, without adding
+any concrete details to Nature, or subtracting any, but by simply calling
+it the expression of absolute spirit, you make it more divine just as it
+stands.
+I believe the pragmatic way of taking religion to be the deeper way. It
+gives it body as well as soul, it makes it claim, as everything real must
+claim, some characteristic realm of fact as its very own. What the more
+characteristically divine facts are, apart from the actual inflow of
+energy in the faith‐state and the prayer‐state, I know 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 consciousness is only one out of many worlds of consciousness that
+exist, and that those other worlds must contain experiences which have a
+meaning for our life also; and that although in the main their experiences
+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 to myself to keep more sane and
+true. I _can_, of course, put myself into the sectarian scientist’s
+attitude, and imagine vividly that the world of sensations and of
+scientific laws and objects may be all. 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 the total expression of human experience, as I view it objectively,
+invincibly urges me beyond the narrow “scientific” bounds. Assuredly, the
+real world is of a different temperament,—more intricately 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 may
+not 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 my general philosophic position received so scant a
+statement as hardly to be intelligible to some of my readers. I therefore
+add this epilogue, which must also be so brief as possibly to remedy but
+little the defect. In a later work I may be enabled to state my position
+more amply and consequently more clearly.
+Originality cannot be expected in a field like this, where all the
+attitudes and tempers that are possible have been exhibited in literature
+long ago, and where any new writer can immediately be classed under a
+familiar head. If one should make a division of all thinkers into
+naturalists and supernaturalists, I should undoubtedly have to go, along
+with most philosophers, into the supernaturalist branch. But there is a
+crasser and a more refined supernaturalism, and it is to the refined
+division that most philosophers at the present day belong. If not regular
+transcendental idealists, they at least obey the Kantian direction enough
+to bar out ideal entities from interfering causally in the course of
+phenomenal events. Refined supernaturalism is universalistic
+supernaturalism; for the “crasser” variety “piecemeal” supernaturalism
+would perhaps be the better name. It went with that older theology which
+to‐day is supposed to reign only among uneducated people, or to be found
+among the few belated professors of the dualisms which Kant is thought to
+have displaced. It admits miracles and providential leadings, and finds no
+intellectual difficulty in mixing the ideal and the real worlds together
+by interpolating influences from the ideal region among the forces that
+causally determine the real world’s details. In this the refined
+supernaturalists think that it muddles disparate dimensions of existence.
+For them the world of the ideal 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 of view for judging facts. It appertains to a different “‐ology,”
+and inhabits a different dimension of being altogether from that in which
+existential propositions obtain. It cannot get down upon the flat level of
+experience and interpolate itself piecemeal between distinct portions of
+nature, as those who 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, I suppose that my belief that in communion with the
+Ideal new force comes into the world, and new departures are made here
+below, subjects me to being classed among the supernaturalists of the
+piecemeal or crasser type. Universalistic supernaturalism surrenders, it
+seems to me, too easily to naturalism. It takes the facts of physical
+science at their face‐value, and leaves the laws of life just as
+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 and adoring, but which need not be so, as the
+existence of systematic pessimism proves. In this universalistic way of
+taking the ideal world, the essence of practical religion seems to me to
+evaporate. Both instinctively and for logical reasons, I find it hard to
+believe that principles can exist which make no difference in facts.(360)
+But all facts are particular facts, and the whole interest of the question
+of God’s existence seems to me to lie in the consequences for particulars
+which that existence may be expected to entail. That no concrete
+particular of experience should alter 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 is only with experience _en bloc_, it says, that the Absolute
+maintains relations. It condescends to no transactions of detail.
+I am ignorant of Buddhism and speak under correction, and merely in order
+the better to describe my general point of view; but as I apprehend the
+Buddhistic doctrine of Karma, I agree in principle with that. All
+supernaturalists admit that facts are under the judgment of higher law;
+but for Buddhism as I interpret it, and for religion generally so far as
+it remains unweakened by transcendentalistic metaphysics, the word
+“judgment” here means no such bare academic verdict or platonic
+appreciation as it means in Vedantic or modern absolutist systems; it
+carries, on the contrary, _execution_ with it, is _in __ rebus_ as well as
+_post rem_, and operates “causally” as partial factor in the total fact.
+The universe becomes a gnosticism(361) pure and simple on any other terms.
+But this view that judgment and execution go together is that of the
+crasser supernaturalist way of thinking, so the present volume must on the
+whole be classed with the other expressions of that creed.
+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 see it closed and
+locked. In spite of its being so shocking to the reigning intellectual
+tastes, I believe that a candid consideration of piecemeal supernaturalism
+and a complete discussion of all its metaphysical bearings will show it to
+be the hypothesis by which the largest number of legitimate requirements
+are met. That of course would be a program for other books than this; what
+I now say sufficiently 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 should have 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 region
+take 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 an influence, raises our
+centre of personal energy, and produces regenerative effects unattainable
+in other ways. If, then, there be a wider world of being than that of our
+every‐day consciousness, if in it there be forces whose effects on us are
+intermittent, if one facilitating condition of the effects be the openness
+of the “subliminal” door, we have the elements of a theory to which the
+phenomena of religious life lend plausibility. I am so impressed by the
+importance of these phenomena that I adopt the hypothesis which they so
+naturally suggest. At these places at least, I say, it would seem as
+though transmundane energies, God, if you will, produced immediate effects
+within the natural world to which the rest of our experience belongs.
+The difference in natural “fact” which most of us would assign as the
+first difference which the existence of a God ought to make would, I
+imagine, be personal immortality. Religion, in fact, for the great
+majority of our own race _means_ immortality, and nothing else. God is the
+producer of immortality; and whoever has doubts of immortality is written
+down as an atheist without farther trial. I have said nothing in my
+lectures about immortality or the belief therein, for to me it seems a
+secondary point. If our ideals are only cared for in “eternity,” I do not
+see why we might not be willing to resign their care to other hands than
+ours. Yet I sympathize with the urgent impulse to be present ourselves,
+and in the conflict of impulses, both of them so vague yet both of them
+noble, I know 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
+of Messrs. 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 possible perplexity 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, both by ordinary men and by philosophers, endowed with
+certain of those metaphysical attributes which in the lecture on
+philosophy I treated with such disrespect. He is assumed as a matter of
+course to be “one and only” and to be “infinite”; and the notion of many
+finite gods is one which hardly any one thinks it worth while to consider,
+and still less to uphold. Nevertheless, in the interests of intellectual
+clearness, I feel bound to say that religious experience, as we have
+studied it, cannot be cited as unequivocally supporting the infinitist
+belief. The only thing that it unequivocally testifies to is that we can
+experience union with _something_ larger than ourselves and in that union
+find our greatest peace. Philosophy, with its passion for unity, and
+mysticism with its monoideistic bent, both “pass to the limit” and
+identify the something with a unique God who is the all‐inclusive soul of
+the world. Popular opinion, respectful to their authority, follows the
+example which they set.
+Meanwhile the practical needs and experiences of religion seem to me
+sufficiently met by the belief that beyond each man and in a fashion
+continuous with him there exists a larger power which is friendly to him
+and to his ideals. All that the facts require is that the power should be
+both other and larger than our conscious selves. Anything larger will do,
+if only it be large enough to trust for the next step. It need not be
+infinite, it need not be solitary. It might conceivably even be only a
+larger and more godlike self, of which the present self would then be but
+the mutilated expression, and the universe might conceivably be a
+collection of such selves, of different degrees of inclusiveness, with no
+absolute unity realized in it at all.(362) Thus would a sort of polytheism
+return upon us—a polytheism which I do not on this occasion defend, for my
+only aim at present is to keep the testimony of religious experience
+clearly within its proper bounds. [Compare p. 132 above.]
+Upholders of the monistic view will say to such a polytheism (which, by
+the way, has always been 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 Absolute only,
+_all_ is saved. If there be different gods, each caring for his part, some
+portion of some of us might not be covered with divine protection, and our
+religious consolation would thus fail to be complete. It goes back to what
+was said on pages 131‐133, about the possibility of there being portions
+of the universe that may irretrievably be lost. Common sense is less
+sweeping in its demands than philosophy or mysticism have been wont to be,
+and can suffer the notion of this world being partly saved and partly
+lost. The ordinary moralistic state of mind makes the salvation of the
+world conditional upon the success with which each unit does its part.
+Partial and conditional salvation is in fact a most familiar notion when
+taken in the abstract, the only difficulty being to determine the details.
+Some men are even disinterested enough to be willing to be in the unsaved
+remnant as far as their persons go, if only they can be persuaded that
+their cause will prevail—all of us are willing, whenever our activity‐
+excitement rises sufficiently high. I think, in fact, that a final
+philosophy of religion will have to consider the pluralistic hypothesis
+more seriously than it has hitherto been willing to consider it. For
+practical life at any rate, the _chance_ of salvation is enough. No fact
+in human nature is more characteristic than its willingness to live on a
+chance. The existence of the chance makes the difference, as Edmund Gurney
+says, between a life of which the keynote is resignation and a life of
+which the keynote is hope.(363) But all these statements are
+unsatisfactory from their brevity, and I can only say that I hope to
+return to the same questions in another book.
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