Chapter XVIII: Part 18

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.

INDEX.

Absolute, oneness with the, 419.

Abstractness of religious objects, 53.

ACHILLES, 86.

ACKERMANN, MADAME, 63.

Adaptation to environment, of things, 438;
of saints, 374‐377.

Æsthetic elements in religions, 460.

Alacoque, 310, 344, 413.

Alcohol, 387.

AL‐GHAZZALI, 402.

ALI, 341.

ALLEINE, 228.

ALLINE, 159, 217.

Alternations of personality, 193.

ALVAREZ DE PAZ, 116.

AMIEL, 394.

Anæsthesia, 288.

Anæsthetic revelation, 387‐393.

ANGELUS SILESIUS, 417.

Anger, 181, 264.

“Anhedonia,” 145.

Aristocratic type, 371.

ARISTOTLE, 495.

Ars, le Curé d’, 302.

Asceticism, 273, 296‐310, 360‐365.

Aseity, God’s, 439, 445.

Atman, 400.

Attributes of God, 440;
their æsthetic use, 458.

AUGUSTINE, SAINT, 171, 361, 496.

AURELIUS, see MARCUS.

Automatic writing, 62, 478.

Automatisms, 234, 250, 478‐483.

BALDWIN, 347, 503.

BASHKIRTSEFF, 83.

BEECHER, 256.

BEHMEN, see BOEHME.

Belief, due to non‐rationalistic impulses, 73.

BESANT, MRS., 23, 168.

Bhagavad‐Gita, 361.

BLAVATSKY, MADAM, 421.

BLOOD, 389.

BLUMHARDT, 113.

BOEHME, 410, 417, 418.

BOOTH, 203.

BOUGAUD, 344.

BOURGET, 263.

BOURIGNON, 321.

BOWNE, 502.

BRAINERD, 212, 253.

BRAY, 249, 256, 290.

BROOKS, 512.

BROWNELL, 515.

BUCKE, 398.

Buddhism, 31, 34, 522.

Buddhist mysticism, 401.

BULLEN, 287.

BUNYAN, 157, 160.

BUTTERWORTH, 411.

CAIRD, EDWARD, 106.

CAIRD, J., on feeling in religion, 434;
on absolute self, 450;
he does not prove, but reaffirms, religion’s dicta, 453.

CALL, 289.

CARLYLE, 41, 300.

CARPENTER, 319.

Catharine, Saint, of Genoa, 289.

Catholicism and Protestantism compared, 114, 227, 336, 461.

Causality of God, 517, 522.

Cause, 502.

CENNICK, 301.

Centres of personal energy, 196, 267, 523.

Cerebration, unconscious, 207.

Chance, 526.

CHANNING, 300, 488.

CHAPMAN, 324.

Character, cause of its alterations, 193;
scheme of its differences of type, 197, 214.

Causes of its diversity, 261;
balance of, 340.

Charity, 274, 278, 310, 355.

Chastity, 310.

Chiefs of tribes, 371.

Christian Science, 106.

Christ’s atonement, 129, 245.

Churches, 335, 460.

CLARK, 389.

CLISSOLD, 481.

COE, 240.

Conduct, perfect, 355.

Confession, 462.

Consciousness, fields of, 231;
subliminal, 233.

Consistency, 296.

Conversion, to avarice, 178.

Conversion, Fletcher’s, 181;
Tolstoy’s, 184;
Bunyan’s, 186;
in general, Lectures IX and X, passim;
Bradley’s, 189;
compared with natural moral growth, 199;
Hadley’s, 201;
two types of, 205 ff.;
Brainerd’s, 212;
Alline’s, 217;
Oxford graduate’s, 221;
Ratisbonne’s, 223;
instantaneous, 227;
is it a natural phenomenon? 230;
subliminal action involved, in sudden cases, 236, 240;
fruits of, 237;
its momentousness, 239;
may be supernatural, 242;
its concomitants:
sense of higher control, 244,
happiness, 248,
automatisms, 250,
luminous phenomena, 251;
its degree of permanence, 256.

Cosmic consciousness, 398.

Counter‐conversion, 176.

Courage, 265, 287.

Crankiness, see Psychopathy.

CRICHTON‐BROWNE, 384, 386.

Criminal character, 263.

Criteria of value of spiritual affections, 18.

CRUMP, 239.

Cure of bad habits, 270.

DAUDET, 167.

Death, 139, 364.

DERHAM, 493.

Design, argument from, 438, 492 ff.

Devoutness, 340.

DIONYSIUS AREOPAGITICUS, 416.

Disease, 99, 113.

Disorder in contents of world, 438.

Divided Self, Lecture VIII, passim;
Cases of:
Saint Augustine, 172,
H. Alline, 173.

Divine, the, 31.

Dog, 281.

Dogmatism, 326, 333.

DOWIE, 113.

DRESSER, H. W., 96, 99, 289, 516.

Drink, 268.

Drummer, 476.

DRUMMOND, 262.

Drunkenness, 387, 403, 488.

“Dryness,” 204.

DUMAS, 279.

Dyes, on clothing, 294.

Earnestness, 264.

Ecclesiastical spirit, the, 335, 338.

ECKHART, 417.

EDDY, 106.

EDWARDS, JONATHAN, 20, 114, 200, 229, 238, 239, 248, 330.

EDWARDS, MRS. J., 276, 280.

Effects of religious states, 21.

Effeminacy, 365.

Ego of Apperception, 449.

ELLIS, HAVELOCK, 418.

ELWOOD, 292.

EMERSON, 32, 56, 167, 205, 239, 330.

Emotion, as alterer of life’s value, 150;
of the character, 195, 261 ff., 279.

Empirical method, 18, 327 ff., 443.

Enemies, love your, 278, 283.

Energy, personal, 196;
mystical states increase it, 414.

Environment, 356, 374.

Epictetus, 474.

Epicureans, 143.

Equanimity, 284.

Ether, mystical effects of, 392.

Evil, ignored by healthy‐mindedness, 88, 106, 131;
due to _things_ or to the _Self_, 134;
its reality, 163.

Evolutionist optimism, 91.

Excesses of piety, 340.

Excitement, its effects, 195, 266, 279, 325.

Experience, religious, the essence of, 508.

Extravagances of piety, 339, 486.

Extreme cases, why we take them, 486.

Failure, 139.

Faith, 246, 506.

Faith‐state, 505.

Fanaticism, 338 ff.

Fear, 98, 159, 161, 263, 275.

Feeling deeper than intellect in religion, 431.

FIELDING, 436.

FINNEY, 207, 215.

FLETCHER, 98, 181.

FLOURNOY, 67, 514.

Flower, 476.

FOSTER, 178, 383.

FOX, GEORGE, 7, 291, 335, 411.

FRANCIS, SAINT, D’ASSISI, 319.

FRANCIS, SAINT, DE SALES, 11.

FRASER, 454.

Fruits, of conversion, 237;
of religion, 327;
of Saintliness, 357.

FULLER, 41.

GAMOND, 288.

GARDINER, 269.

Genius and insanity, 16.

Geniuses, see Religious leaders.

Gentleman, character of the, 317, 371.

GERTRUDE, SAINT, 345.

“Gifts,” 151.

Glory of God, 342.

GOD, 31;
sense of his presence, 66‐72, 272, 275 ff.;
historic changes in idea of him, 74, 328 ff., 493;
mind‐curer’s idea of him, 101;
his honor, 342;
described by negatives, 417;
his attributes, scholastic proof of, 439;
the metaphysical ones are for us meaningless, 445;
the moral ones are ill‐deduced, 447;
he is not a mere inference, 502;
is _used_, not known, 506;
his existence must make a difference among phenomena, 517, 522;
his relation to the subconscious region, 242, 515;
his tasks, 519;
may be finite and plural, 525.

GODDARD, 96.

GOERRES, 407.

GOETHE, 137.

GOUGH, 203.

GOURDON, 171.

“Grace,” the operation of, 226;
the state of, 260.

GRATRY, 146, 476, 506.

Greeks, their pessimism, 86, 142.

Guidance, 472.

GURNEY, 527.

GUYON, 276, 286.

HADLEY, 201, 268.

HALE, 82.

HAMON, 367.

Happiness, 47‐49, 79, 248, 279.

HARNACK, 100.

Healthy‐mindedness, Lectures IV and V, passim;
its philosophy of evil, 131;
compared with morbid‐mindedness, 162, 488.

Heart, softening of, 267.

HEGEL, 389, 449, 454.

HELMONT, VAN, 497.

Heroism, 364, 488, note.

Heterogeneous personality, 169, 193.

Higher criticism, 4.

HILTY, 79, 275, 472.

HODGSON, R., 524.

HOMER, 86.

HUGO, 171.

Hypocrisy, 338.

Hypothesis, what make a useful one, 517.

HYSLOP, 524.

IGNATIUS LOYOLA, 313, 406, 410.

Illness, 113.

“Imitation of Christ,” the, 44.

Immortality, 524.

Impulses, 261.

Individuality, 501.

Inhibitions, 261 ff.

Insane melancholy and religion, 144.

Insanity and genius, 16;
and happiness, 279.

Institutional religion, 335.

Intellect a secondary force in religion, 431, 514.

Intellectual weakness of some saints, 370.

Intolerance, 342.

Irascibility, 264.

JESUS, HARNACK on, 100.

JOB, 76, 448.

JOHN, SAINT, OF THE CROSS, 304, 407, 413.

JOHNSTON, 258.

JONQUIL, 476.

JORDAN, 347.

JOUFFROY, 176, 198.

Judgments, existential and spiritual, 4.

KANT, 54, 448.

Karma, 522.

KELLNER, 401.

Kindliness, see Charity.

KINGSLEY, 385.

LAGNEAU, 285.

Leaders, see Religious leaders.

Leaders, of tribes, 371.

LEJEUNE, 113, 312.

LESSING, 318.

LEUBA, 201, 203, 220, 246, 506.

Life, its significance, 151.

Life, the subconscious, 207, 209.

LOCKER‐LAMPSON, 39.

Logic, Hegelian, 449.

Louis, Saint, of Gonzaga, 350.

Love, see Charity.

Love, cases of falling out of, 179.

Love of God, 276.

Love your enemies, 278, 283.

LOWELL, 65.

Loyalty, to God, 342.

LUTFULLAH, 164.

LUTHER, 128, 137, 244, 330, 348, 382.

Lutheran self‐despair, 108, 211.

Luxury, 365.

LYCAON, 86.

Lyre, 267.

Mahomet, 171.
See MOHAMMED.

MARCUS AURELIUS, 42, 44, 474.

MARGARET MARY, see ALACOQUE.

Margin of consciousness, 232.

MARSHALL, 503.

MARTINEAU, 475.

MATHER, 303.

MAUDSLEY, 19.

Meaning of life, 151.

Medical criticism of religion, 413.

Medical materialism, 10 ff.

Melancholy, 145, 279;
Lectures V and VI, passim;
cases of, 148, 149, 157, 159, 198.

Melting moods, 267.

Method of judging value of religion, 18, 327.

Methodism, 227, 237.

MEYSENBUG, 395.

Militarism, 365‐367.

Military type of character, 371.

MILL, 204.

Mind‐cure, its sources and history, 94‐97;
its opinion of fear, 98;
cases of, 102‐105, 120, 123;
its message, 108;
its methods, 112‐123;
it uses verification, 120‐124;
its philosophy of evil, 131.

Miraculous character of conversion, 227.

MOHAMMED, 341, 481.

MOLINOS, 130.

MOLTKE, VON, 264, 367.

Monasteries, 296.

Monism, 416.

Morbidness compared with healthy‐mindedness, 488.
See, also, Melancholy.

Mormon revelations, 482.

Mortification, see Asceticism.

MUIR, 482.

MULFORD, 497.

MÜLLER, 468.

MURISIER, 349.

MYERS, 233, 234, 466, 511, 524.

Mystic states, their effects, 21, 414.

Mystical experiences, 66.

Mysticism, Lectures XVI and XVII, passim;
its marks, 380;
its theoretic results, 416, 422, 428;
it cannot warrant truth, 422;
its results, 425;
its relation to the sense of union, 509.

Mystical region of experience, 515.

Natural theology, 492.

Naturalism, 141, 167.

Nature, scientific view of, 491.

Negative accounts of deity, 417.

NELSON, 208, 423.

NETTLETON, 215.

NEWMAN, F. W., 80.

NEWMAN, J. H., on dogmatic theology, 434, 442;
his type of imagination, 459.

NIETZSCHE, 371, 372.

Nitrous oxide, its mystical effects, 387.

No‐function, 261‐263, 299, 387, 416.

Non‐resistance, 281, 358, 376.

Obedience, 310.

OBERMANN, 476.

O’CONNELL, 257.

Omit, 296.

“Once‐born” type, 80, 166, 363, 488.

Oneness with God, see Union.

Optimism, systematic, 88;
and evolutionism, 91;
it may be shallow, 364.

Orderliness of world, 438.

Organism determines all mental states whatsoever, 14.

Origin of mental states no criterion of their value, 14 ff.

Orison, 406.

Over‐beliefs, 513;
the author’s, 515.

Over‐soul, 516.

Oxford, graduate of, 220, 268.

Pagan feeling, 86.

Pantheism, 131, 416.

PARKER, 83.

PASCAL, 286.

PATON, 359.

PAUL, SAINT, 171, 357.

PEEK, 253.

PEIRCE, 444.

Penny, 323.

PERREYVE, 505.

Persecutions, 338, 342.

Personality, explained away by science, 119, 491;
heterogeneous, 169;
alterations of, 193, 210 ff.;
is reality, 499. See Character.

PETER, SAINT, OF ALCANTARA, 360.

PHILO, 481.

Philosophy, Lecture XVIII, passim;
must coerce assent, 433;
scholastic, 439;
idealistic, 448;
unable to give a theoretic warrant to faith, 455;
its true office in religion, 455.

Photisms, 251.

Piety, 339 ff.

Pluralism, 131.

Polytheism, 131, 526.

Poverty, 315, 367.

“Pragmatism,” 444, 519, 522‐524.

Prayer, 463;
its definition, 464;
its essence, 465;
petitional, 467;
its effects, 474‐477, 523.

“Presence,” sense of, 58‐63.

Presence of God, 66‐72, 272, 275 ff., 396, 418.

Presence of God, the practice of, 116.

Primitive human thought, 495.

PRINGLE‐PATTISON, 454.

Prophets, the Hebrew, 479.

Protestant theology, 244.

Protestantism and Catholicism, 114, 227, 330, 461.

Providential leading, 472.

Psychopathy and religion, 22 ff.

PUFFER, 394.

Purity, 274, 290, 348.

Quakers, 7, 291.

RAMAKRISHNA, 361, 365.

Rationalism, 73, 74;
its authority overthrown by mysticism, 428.

RATISBONNE, 223, 257.

Reality of unseen objects, Lecture III, passim.

RÉCÉJAC, 407, 509.

“Recollection,” 116, 289.

Redemption, 157.

Reformation of character, 320.

Regeneration, see Conversion;
by relaxation, 111.

REID, 446.

Relaxation, salvation by, 110.
See Surrender.

Religion, to be tested by fruits, not by origin, 10 ff., 331;
its definition, 26, 31;
is solemn, 37;
compared with Stoicism, 41;
its unique function, 51;
abstractness of its objects, 54;
differs according to temperament, 75, 135, 333,
and ought to differ, 487;
considered to be a “survival,” 118, 490, 498;
its relations to melancholy, 145;
worldly passions may combine with it, 337;
its essential characters, 369, 485;
its relation to prayer, 463‐466;
asserts a fact, not a theory, 489;
its truth, 377;
more than science, it holds by concrete reality, 500;
attempts to evaporate it into philosophy, 502;
it is concerned with personal destinies, 491, 503;
with feeling and conduct, 504;
is a sthenic affection, 505;
is for life, not for knowledge, 506;
its essential contents, 508;
it postulates issues of fact, 518.

Religious emotion, 279.

Religious leaders, often nervously unstable, 6 ff., 30;
their loneliness, 335.

“Religious sentiment,” 27.

RENAN, 37.

Renunciations, 349.

Repentance, 127.

Resignation, 286.

Revelation, the anæsthetic, 387‐393.

Revelations, see Automatisms.

Revelations, in Mormon Church, 482.

Revivalism, 228.

RIBET, 407.

RIBOT, 145, 502.

RODRIGUEZ, 313, 314, 317.

ROYCE, 454.

RUTHERFORD, MARK, 76.

SABATIER, A., 464.

Sacrifice, 303, 462.

SAINT‐PIERRE, 83.

SAINTE‐BEUVE, 260, 315.

Saintliness, Sainte‐Beuve on, 260;
its characteristics, 272, 370;
criticism of, 326 ff.

Saintly conduct, 356‐377.

Saints, dislike of natural man for, 371.

Salvation, 526.

SANDAYS, 480.

SATAN, in picture, 50.

SCHEFFLER, 417.

Scholastic arguments for God, 437.

Science, ignores personality and teleology, 491;
her “facts,” 500, 501.

“Science of Religions,” 433, 455, 456, 488‐490.

Scientific conceptions, their late adoption, 496.

Second‐birth, 157, 165, 166.

SEELEY, 77.

Self of the world, 449.

Self‐despair, 110, 129, 208.

Self‐surrender, 110, 208.

SÉNANCOUR, 476.

SETH, 454.

Sexual temptation, 269.

Sexuality as cause of religion, 10, 11.

“Shrew,” 347.

Sickness, 113.

Sick souls, Lectures V and VI, passim.

SIGHELE, 263.

Sin, 209.

Sinners, Christ died for, 129.

Skepticism, 332 ff.

SKOBELEFF, 265.

SMITH, JOSEPH, 482.

Softening of the heart, 267.

Solemnity, 37, 48.

Soul, 195.

Soul, strength of, 273.

SPENCER, 355, 374.

SPINOZA, 9, 127.

Spiritism, 514.

Spirit‐return, 524.

Spiritual judgments, 4.

Spiritual states, tests of their value, 18.

STARBUCK, 198, 199, 204, 206, 208‐210, 249, 253, 258, 268, 276, 323, 353,
394.

STEVENSON, 138, 296.

Stoicism, 42‐45, 143.

Strange appearance of world, 151.

Strength of soul, 273.

Subconscious action in conversion, 236, 242.

Subconscious life, 115, 207, 209, 233, 236, 270, 483.

Subconscious Self, as intermediary between the Self and God, 511.

Subliminal, see Subconscious.

Sufis, 402, 420.

Suggestion, 112, 234.

Suicide, 147.

Supernaturalism its two kinds, 520;
criticism of universalistic, 521.

Supernatural world, 518.

Surrender, salvation by, 110, 208, 211.

Survival‐theory of religion, 490, 498, 500.

SUSO, 306, 349.

SWINBURNE, 421.

SYMONDS, 385, 390.

Sympathetic magic, 496.

Sympathy, see Charity.

Systems, philosophic, 433.

Taine, 9.

TAYLOR, 246.

Tenderness, see Charity.

TENNYSON, 383, 384.

TERESA, SAINT, 20, 346, 360, 408, 411, 412, 414.

Theologia Germanica, 43.

Theologians, systematic, 446.

“Theopathy,” 343.

THOREAU, 275.

Threshold, 135.

Tiger, 164, 262.

Tobacco, 270, 290.

TOLSTOY, 149, 178, 184.

TOWIANSKI, 281.

Tragedy of life, 363.

Tranquillity, 285.

Transcendentalism criticised, 522.

Transcendentalists, 516.

TREVOR, 396.

TRINE, 101, 394.

Truth of religion, how to be tested, 377;
what it is, 509;
mystical perception of, 380, 410.

“Twice‐born,” type, 166, 363, 488.

TYNDALL, 299.

“Unconscious cerebration,” 207.

Unification of Self, 183, 349.

“UNION MORALE,” 272.

Union with God, 408, 418, 425, 451, 509 ff.
See lectures on Conversion, passim.

Unity of universe, 131.

Unreality, sense of, 63.

Unseen realities, Lecture III, passim.

Upanishads, 419.

UPHAM, 289.

Utopias, 360.

VACHEROT, 502.

Value of spiritual affections, how tested, 18.

VAMBÉRY, 341.

Vedantism, 400, 419, 513, 522.

Veracity, 7, 291 ff.

VIVEKANANDA, 513.

VOLTAIRE, 38.

VOYSEY, 275.

War, 365‐367.

Wealth‐worship, 365.

WEAVER, 281.

WESLEY, 227.

Wesleyan self‐despair, 108, 211.

WHITEFIELD, 318.

WHITMAN, 84, 395, 396, 506.

WOLFF, 492, 493.

WOOD, HENRY, 96, 99, 117.

World, soul of the, 449.

Worry, 98, 181.

Yes‐function, 261‐263, 299, 387.

Yoga, 400.

YOUNG, 256.

FOOTNOTES

1 As with many ideas that float in the air of one’s time, this notion
shrinks from dogmatic general statement and expresses itself only
partially and by innuendo. It seems to me that few conceptions are
less instructive than this re‐interpretation of religion as
perverted sexuality. It reminds one, so crudely is it often
employed, of the famous Catholic taunt, that the Reformation may be
best understood by remembering that its _fons et origo_ was Luther’s
wish to marry a nun:—the effects are infinitely wider than the
alleged causes, and for the most part opposite in nature. It is true
that in the vast collection of religious phenomena, some are
undisguisedly amatory—e.g., sex‐deities and obscene rites in
polytheism, and ecstatic feelings of union with the Saviour in a few
Christian mystics. But then why not equally call religion an
aberration of the digestive function, and prove one’s point by the
worship of Bacchus and Ceres, or by the ecstatic feelings of some
other saints about the Eucharist? Religious language clothes itself
in such poor symbols as our life affords, and the whole organism
gives overtones of comment whenever the mind is strongly stirred to
expression. Language drawn from eating and drinking is probably as
common in religious literature as is language drawn from the sexual
life. We “hunger and thirst” after righteousness; we “find the Lord
a sweet savor;” we “taste and see that he is good.” “Spiritual milk
for American babes, drawn from the breasts of both testaments,” is a
sub‐title of the once famous New England Primer, and Christian
devotional literature indeed quite floats in milk, thought of from
the point of view, not of the mother, but of the greedy babe.

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

In fact, one might almost as well interpret religion as a perversion
of the respiratory function. The Bible is full of the language of
respiratory oppression: “Hide not thine ear at my breathing; my
groaning is not hid from thee; my heart panteth, my strength faileth
me; my bones are hot with my roaring all the night long; as the hart
panteth after the water‐brooks, so my soul panteth after thee, O my
God.” _God’s Breath in Man_ is the title of the chief work of our
best known American mystic (Thomas Lake Harris); and in certain non‐
Christian countries the foundation of all religious discipline
consists in regulation of the inspiration and expiration.

These arguments are as good as much of the reasoning one hears in
favor of the sexual theory. But the champions of the latter will
then say that their chief argument has no analogue elsewhere. The
two main phenomena of religion, namely, melancholy and conversion,
they will say, are essentially phenomena of adolescence, and
therefore synchronous with the development of sexual life. To which
the retort again is easy. Even were the asserted synchrony
unrestrictedly true as a fact (which it is not), it is not only the
sexual life, but the entire higher mental life which awakens during
adolescence. One might then as well set up the thesis that the
interest in mechanics, physics, chemistry, logic, philosophy, and
sociology, which springs up during adolescent years along with that
in poetry and religion, is also a perversion of the sexual
instinct:—but that would be too absurd. Moreover, if the argument
from synchrony is to decide, what is to be done with the fact that
the religious age _par excellence_ would seem to be old age, when
the uproar of the sexual life is past?

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

2 For a first‐rate example of medical‐materialist reasoning, see an
article on “les Variétés du Type dévot,” by Dr. Binet‐Sanglé, in the
Revue de l’Hypnotisme, xiv. 161.

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

4 MAX NORDAU, in his bulky book entitled _Degeneration_.

5 H. MAUDSLEY: Natural Causes and Supernatural Seemings, 1886, pp.
257, 256.

6 Autobiography, ch. xxviii.

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

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

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

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

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

12 Feuilles détachées, pp. 394‐398 (abridged).

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

14 Book V., ch. x. (abridged).

15 Book V., ch. ix. (abridged).

16 Chaps. x., xi. (abridged): Winkworth’s translation.

17 Book IV., § 23.

18 Benham’s translation: Book III., chaps. xv., lix. Compare Mary Moody
Emerson: “Let me be a blot on this fair world, the obscurest, the
loneliest sufferer, with one proviso,—that I know it is His agency.
I will love Him though He shed frost and darkness on every way of
mine.” R. W. EMERSON: Lectures and Biographical Sketches, p. 188.

19 Once more, there are plenty of men, constitutionally sombre men, in
whose religious life this rapturousness is lacking. They are
religious in the wider sense; yet in this acutest of all senses they
are not so, and it is religion in the acutest sense that I wish,
without disputing about words, to study first, so as to get at its
typical _differentia_.

20 The New Spirit, p. 232.

21 I owe this allegorical illustration to my lamented colleague and
friend, Charles Carroll Everett.

22 Example: “I have had much comfort lately in meditating on the
passages which show the personality of the Holy Ghost, and his
distinctness from the Father and the Son. It is a subject that
requires searching into to find out, but, when realized, gives one
so much more true and lively a sense of the fullness of the Godhead,
and its work in us and to us, than when only thinking of the Spirit
in its effect on us.” AUGUSTUS HARE: Memorials, i. 244, Maria Hare
to Lucy H. Hare.

23 Symposium, Jowett, 1871, i. 527.

24 Example: “Nature is always so interesting, under whatever aspect she
shows herself, that when it rains, I seem to see a beautiful woman
weeping. She appears the more beautiful, the more afflicted she is.”
B. de St. Pierre.

25 Journal of the S. P. R., February, 1895, p. 26.

26 E. GURNEY: Phantasms of the Living, i. 384.

27 Pensées d’un Solitaire, p. 66.

28 Letters of Lowell, i. 75.

29 I borrow it, with Professor Flournoy’s permission, from his rich
collection of psychological documents.

30 Mark Rutherford’s Deliverance, London, 1885, pp. 196, 198.

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

32 C. HILTY: Glück, dritter Theil, 1900, p. 18.

33 The Soul; its Sorrows and its Aspirations, 3d edition, 1852, pp. 89,
91.

34 I once heard a lady describe the pleasure it gave her to think that
she “could always cuddle up to God.”

35 JOHN WEISS: Life of Theodore Parker, i. 152, 32.

36 STARBUCK: Psychology of Religion, pp. 305, 306.

37 “I know not to what physical laws philosophers will some day refer
the feelings of melancholy. For myself, I find that they are the
most voluptuous of all sensations,” writes Saint Pierre, and
accordingly he devotes a series of sections of his work on Nature to
the Plaisirs de la Ruine, Plaisirs des Tombeaux, Ruines de la
Nature, Plaisirs de la Solitude—each of them more optimistic than
the last.

This finding of a luxury in woe is very common during adolescence.
The truth‐telling Marie Bashkirtseff expresses it well:—

“In this depression and dreadful uninterrupted suffering, I don’t
condemn life. On the contrary, I like it and find it good. Can you
believe it? I find everything good and pleasant, even my tears, my
grief. I enjoy weeping, I enjoy my despair. I enjoy being
exasperated and sad. I feel as if these were so many diversions, and
I love life in spite of them all. I want to live on. It would be
cruel to have me die when I am so accommodating. I cry, I grieve,
and at the same time I am pleased—no, not exactly that—I know not
how to express it. But everything in life pleases me. I find
everything agreeable, and in the very midst of my prayers for
happiness, I find myself happy at being miserable. It is not I who
undergo all this—my body weeps and cries; but something inside of me
which is above me is glad of it all.” Journal de Marie Bashkirtseff,
i. 67.

38 R. M. BUCKE: Cosmic Consciousness, pp. 182‐186, abridged.

39 I refer to The Conservator, edited by Horace Traubel, and published
monthly at Philadelphia.

40 Song of Myself, 32.

41 Iliad, XXI., E. Myers’s translation.

42 “God is afraid of me!” remarked such a titanic‐optimistic friend in
my presence one morning when he was feeling particularly hearty and
cannibalistic. The defiance of the phrase showed that a Christian
education in humility still rankled in his breast.

43 “As I go on in this life, day by day, I become more of a bewildered
child; I cannot get used to this world, to procreation, to heredity,
to sight, to hearing; the commonest things are a burthen. The prim,
obliterated, polite surface of life, and the broad, bawdy, and
orgiastic—or mænadic—foundations, form a spectacle to which no habit
reconciles me.” R. L. STEVENSON: Letters, ii. 355.

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

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

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

47 HORACE FLETCHER: Happiness as found in Forethought _minus_
Fearthought, Menticulture Series, ii. Chicago and New York, Stone,
1897, pp. 21‐25, abridged.

48 H. W. DRESSER: Voices of Freedom, New York, 1899, p. 38.

49 HENRY WOOD: Ideal Suggestion through Mental Photography, Boston,
1899, p. 54.

50 Whether it differs so much from Christ’s own notion is for the
exegetists to decide. According to Harnack, Jesus felt about evil
and disease much as our mind‐curers do. “What is the answer which
Jesus sends to John the Baptist?” asks Harnack, and says it is this:
“ ‘The blind see, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and
the deaf hear, the dead rise up, and the gospel is preached to the
poor.’ That is the ‘coming of the kingdom,’ or rather in these
saving works the kingdom is already there. By the overcoming and
removal of misery, of need, of sickness, by these actual effects
John is to see that the new time has arrived. The casting out of
devils is only a part of this work of redemption, _but Jesus points
to that as the sense and seal of his mission_. Thus to the wretched,
sick, and poor did he address himself, but not as a moralist, and
without a trace of sentimentalism. He never makes groups and
departments of the ills; he never spends time in asking whether the
sick one ‘deserves’ to be cured; and it never occurs to him to
sympathize with the pain or the death. He nowhere says that sickness
is a beneficent infliction, and that evil has a healthy use. No, he
calls sickness sickness and health health. All evil, all
wretchedness, is for him something dreadful; it is of the great
kingdom of Satan; but he feels the power of the Saviour within him.
He knows that advance is possible only when weakness is overcome,
when sickness is made well.” Das Wesen des Christenthums, 1900, p.
39.

51 R. W. TRINE: In Tune with the Infinite, 26th thousand, N. Y., 1899.
I have strung scattered passages together.

52 The Cairds, for example. In EDWARD CAIRD’S Glasgow Lectures of
1890‐92 passages like this abound:—

“The declaration made in the beginning of the ministry of Jesus that
‘the time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of heaven is at hand,’
passes with scarce a break into the announcement that ‘the kingdom
of God is among you’; and the importance of this announcement is
asserted to be such that it makes, so to speak, a difference _in
kind_ between the greatest saints and prophets who lived under the
previous reign of division, and ‘the least in the kingdom of
heaven.’ The highest ideal is brought close to men and declared to
be within their reach, they are called on to be ‘perfect as their
Father in heaven is perfect.’ The sense of alienation and distance
from God which had grown upon the pious in Israel just in proportion
as they had learned to look upon Him as no mere national divinity,
but as a God of justice who would punish Israel for its sin as
certainly as Edom or Moab, is declared to be no longer in place; and
the typical form of Christian prayer points to the abolition of the
contrast between this world and the next which through all the
history of the Jews had continually been growing wider: ‘As in
heaven, so on earth.’ The sense of the division of man from God, as
a finite being from the Infinite, as weak and sinful from the
Omnipotent Goodness, is not indeed lost; but it can no longer
overpower the consciousness of oneness. The terms ‘Son’ and ‘Father’
at once state the opposition and mark its limit. They show that it
is not an absolute opposition, but one which presupposes an
indestructible principle of unity, that can and must become a
principle of reconciliation.” The Evolution of Religion, ii. pp.
146, 147.

53 It remains to be seen whether the school of Mr. Dresser, which
assumes more and more the form of mind‐cure experience and academic
philosophy mutually impregnating each other, will score the
practical triumphs of the less critical and rational sects.

54 The theistic explanation is by divine grace, which creates a new
nature within one the moment the old nature is sincerely given up.
The pantheistic explanation (which is that of most mind‐curers) is
by the merging of the narrower private self into the wider or
greater self, the spirit of the universe (which is your own
“subconscious” self), the moment the isolating barriers of mistrust
and anxiety are removed. The medico‐materialistic explanation is
that simpler cerebral processes act more freely where they are left
to act automatically by the shunting‐out of physiologically (though
in this instance not spiritually) “higher” ones which, seeking to
regulate, only succeed in inhibiting results.—Whether this third
explanation might, in a psycho‐physical account of the universe, be
combined with either of the others may be left an open question
here.

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