oTmJ^f^^ m5^ S6 1916 Snowden, James Henry, ^^^'^ PsYchology of religion and its appkcato preaching and leaclimg, ^ I THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION BY THE SAME AUTHOR SCENES AND SAYINGS IN THE LIFE OF CHRIST. $1.50. A SUMMER ACROSS THE SEA. $1.00. THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM : An Introduction to Metaphysics. $1.50. THE BASAL BELIEFS OF CHRISTL ANITY. $1.50. THE CITY OF TWELVE GATES: A Study in Catholicity. 35 cents. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION AND ITS APPLICATION IN PREACHING. AND TEACHING JAMES H. SNOWDEN, D.D., LL.D. Professor of Systematic Theology in theWestem Theological Seminary, Pittsburgh,Pa. Author of '■ The World a Spiritual System : an Introduction to Metaphysics, ^H " The Basal Beliefs of Christianity, " " Scenes and Sayings in the Life of Christ,'" etc. New York Ciiicaoo Toronto Fleming H. Revell Company LOKDON AND EDINBURGH Copyright, 1916, by FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY New York: 158 Fifth Avenue Chicago: 17 N. Wabash Ave. Toronto: 25 Richmond St., W.. London : 21 Paternoster Square Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street SAMUEL BLACK McCORMICK, D.D., LL.D., Chancellor of the University of Pittsburgh, This Volume Is Respectfully Dedicated PREFACE PSYCHOLOGY may approach the study of re- ligion along either of two lines. It may come as a pure science to study religion in its cold white light, without religious presuppositions. It will then scrutinize the nature of religion and endeavour to dis- cern its facts and deduce its laws. Such purely scien- tific and critical psychology of religion has a work to do, and it must be permitted to have a full and free right of way in its processes and conclusions. Much of this kind of work has been done, and it has its value. However, the scientific psychologist cannot, any more than any other thinker, wholly strip himself of pre- suppositions, but consciously or latently has in his mind some religious or philosophical system or assump- tions which inevitably shape and colour his study of religion. The other line of approach to this subject is that which is based on views of religion which are accepted by the psychologist as already established on their own grounds. He then comes to religion to clarify it of error and to confirm and illuminate it, as other psychologists approach the study of education or busi- ness as established fields of human activity and pro- ceed to illuminate them with the light of their science. The present volume follows the second of these two lines of approach. It takes up the study of religion on the accepted basis of ])hilosnplii('al theism and Christian faith, and its object is to throw the light of 7 8 PREFACE psychological elucidation on such faith and life. It is therefore of the nature of an exposition rather than of ^ a critical investigation. But such application of psy- chology is as legitimate as its similar application to other fields of life. In order to make the book available for readers that have not formally studied psychology, it opens with an elementary chapter in which the faculties and activities of the soul are sketched as a background or introduction to the special field of the psychology of religion. The applications of the subject to preach- ing and teaching are necessarily limited to a few prin- cipal points, but these are suggestive of the practical usefulness of this study. It is hoped that the volume will be found helpful by ministers and Sunday-school teachers and general readers in enabling them to understand better the religious life and to be more efficient in Christian service. J. H. S. Pittsburgh, Pa. CONTENTS I. Introduction i. 17 (1) Psychology a late science. (2) The application of psychology. (3) Psychology in the field of religion. (4) VaUie of work done in this field. (5) Sources and methods. II. The Psychology of the Soul ... 26 I. The Fundamentajl Faculties of the Soul, 1. THE INTELLECT. ( 1 ) Perception. (2) Concepts. (3) Reasoning. (4) Association. (5) Memory. (6) Imagination. 2. SENSIBILITY. ( 1 ) Sensations. (2) Emotions. (3) Pain and pleasure tone. (4) Temperaments. (5) The uses of the feelings. 3. THE WILL. (1) The attention. (2) Motives. (a) Instincts. ( 6 ) Ideas. (c) Desires. (3) The freedom of the will. II. Some General CnARACTEBisrics of tke Soul. (1) Habit. (2) Charaoter, (3) Individuality. (4) The Huhconsciousness. (5) Growth. 10 CONTENTS III. The Psychology of the Moral and Re- ligious Nature 73 I. The Moral Nature of the Soul. ( 1 ) Conscience. (2) The scale of values. (3) The authority of conscience. II. The Religious Nature of the Soul. ( 1 ) The relation of morality to religion. (2) The origin and nature of religion. (3) Religion rooted in every part of our nature. (a) In our intuitions and instincts. (6) In the feelings, (c) In the intellect. {d) In the will. IV. The Psychology of Sin 103 I, The Natl^re of Sin. (1) The Biblical idea of sin. (a) The Hebrew words for sin. (6) The Greek words for sin. (2) The psychological nature of sin. (a.) Sin as sensuousness. (&) Sin as finiteness. (c) Sin as selfishness. (3) Is sin a state of the soul? II. A Study of Six in Action. ( 1 ) Temptation tipped with doubt. (2) Entrance of temptation through sense per- ception. • (3) Association intensifies temptation. (4) The act of sin. (5) The sense of sin. (6) The enslavement and contagion of sin. III. Is the Sense of Sin Declining? (1) Abatement of the general sense of fear. (2) Reaction against extreme views of hell. (3) Changed views of the character of God. (4) Changed views of sin itself. (5) Our modern life less subjective and more objective. (6) Increased emphasis on the positive side of life. (7) A broader and finer ethical sense. (8) The terrible fact of sin remains. CONTENTS 11 I V. The Psychology of Conversion . . . 143 ■ I. The Nature of Conversion. i ( 1 ) Conversions in the non-religious field. ! (a) Carlyle. j (6) John Stuart Mill. j (c) Multiple personalities. i (2) Conversions in the religious field. j (a) Tolstoy. ' (6) Twice-Born Men. \ (c) Paul. I II. The Means of Conversion. i ( 1 ) Conversion an act of mind. I (2) Three steps in conversion. j (a) Repentance. i (6) Faith. (c) Obedience. i (3) Conversion and the subconsciousness. | (4) Conversion and revivals. , (5) The power of the v^ill in conversion. III. The Age of Conversion. ^^. ( 1 ) The facts as to early conversion. (2) The explanation of the facts. IV. Types of Con\t:rsion. ( 1 ) Childhood and adult conversions. (2) Gradual and comfortable, and Sudden and violent conversions. (3) Intellectual and emotional conversions. VI. The Psychology of the Christian Life . 200 I. Growth. (1) The Christian life a growth. (2) Pedagogical applications of the principle of growth. II. Environment. III. Truth. (1) The nature and function of truth. (2) The Bible a Htorehou9t> of religious truth. (3) The psychology of words. (4) The comprehensive and progressive nature of r<>ligious truth. (5) The formation of beliefs and creeds. (6) Doctrinal preaching. (7) The place of doubt in religious belief. (8) Meditation. (9) Truth and life. U CONTENTS IV. Worship. .. ( 1 ) Prayer. (a) The objective reality of prayer. (6) The subjective conditions of prayer, {c) The reflex influence of prayer. (d) Prayer issuing in obedience. (2) Music and song. (3) Giving. (4) Social worship. (5) Esthetic element in worship. V. Work. ( 1 ) For our own sake. (2) For the sake of others. (3) The call to service. VI. Imagination. ( 1 ) flakes truth vivid. (2) Corrects faults. (3) Builds up Christian character. VII. Habit. ( 1 ) The value of habit in religion. (2) Four rules on habits, ; (a) Begin with all your might. I (&) Never suffer an exception. '. (c) Seize the first opportunity to act. ; {d) Keep the faculty of effort alive by ex- ercise. \ M^III. Christ in Us. j (1) Negative aspects of the Christian life. < (a) Not religious forms. j (6) Not knowledge about Christ. ; (c) Not moral education. ' (d) Not imitation of Christ. (2) Positive aspects of the Christian life. ; (a) The life and liberty of the spirit. ! ( 6 ) Self-surrender of the heart to Christ. I * IX. Discipline. i X. Character. ] (1) The nature of Christian character. i (2) Is character a by-product? | (3) Individuality in Christian character. i (4) Christian society. VII. The Psychology of the Sermon . . 290 I. The Parts of the Sermon. (1) The text. ! (2) The topic. {a) A subject worth while. ! ( i ,1 J CONTENTS 13 i i (6) One that concerns us. ! (c) Timely. i {d) Attractively stated. i (3) The plan. . (a) Unity. I (6) Logical order, (c) Cumulative power. (4) The introduction. > (5) The body of the sermon. i (6) The conclusion. I II. General Chaeacteristics of the Sermon. .(1) Style. I (a) Lucidity. (6) Force. i (c) Beauty. : (2) Illustrations. ' (3) Slang and humour. ] (4) Imagination. i (a) Creative imagination. (6) Illustrative imagination, (c) Verbal imagination. (5) The spirit of the sermon. III. I^lANNER AND DELR-ERY. 1 ( 1 ) The manner of the preacher. ] (2) The delivery of the sermon. } (a) Distinctness. j (6) Varying modulation. \ (c) Conversational style. ' {d) Gestures. I VIII. The Broader PsYcnoLOor of Preaching . 327 I. The Study of Nature. (1) Good health. ^ i (2) Intimate acquaintance with nature. (3) A good thinking shop. ' II. The Study of Literature. ' (1) Discipline in thought. i (2) Discipline in feeling and imagiuation. j (3) Discipline in style. III, The Study of PHn.osopnY. \ (1) Mental discipline. , (2) The use of pliilosophy in preaching. I (3) The foundation of thrologj'. j (4) An*" objection answered. , IV. The Powkr of Personality. i (1) Personality the master force of life. (2) What is personality? 14 CONTENTS (3) Points in efficient personality, (a) BV)dily vigour. (&) Unity. (c) Unconsciousness of self. {d) Intensity, (e) The Cliristlike spirit. V. The Preacher as a Prophet. IX. The Psychology of Teaching . . . 355 I. Definite Aims in Teaching. II. The Preparation of the Lesson. III. The Teacher Before the Class. IV. The Art of Questioning. V. The Use of Imagination and Illustration. VI. Getting the Scholars to Work. VII. The Teacher's, Interest in the Scholars. VIIL Leading Scholars to Christ. Bibliographical Note 379 Index . •. . 383 Draw if thou canst the mystic line j Severing rightly His from thine, ' Which is human, which Divine. ■ — Emebson. I i I say that man was made to grow, not stop; That help, he needed once, and needs no more, | Having grown but an inch by, is withdrawn: i For he hath new needs, and new helps to these. i This imports solely, man should mount on each New height in view; the help whereby he mounts, Tlie ladder-rung his foot has left, may fall, Since all things suffer change save God the Truth. Man apprehends him newly at each stage Whereat earth's ladder drops, its service done; ' And nothing shall prove twice what once was proved. \ — Browning. * Till we all attain unto the unity of the faith, and of the I knowledge of the Son of God, unto a full-grown man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. — Paul. ' CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION PSYCHOLOGY is the science of the soul; the study of its faculties and activities, of the modes and laws of its operations. I. Psychology a Late Science. — As psychology is the knowledge of man's own mind and inmost self we might expect to find that it appeared early in the history of human thought as one of the first of the sciences : yet it is one of the latest. Man studied every- thing else before he studied himself. His own con- sciousness was the last thing of which he became con- scious. At first he was absorbed in his senses and lived objectively in the outward world, and only long afterr^-ard did he become aware of himself and study his subjective states and processes. In this respect the experience of the race is recapitulated by the child, a fact which has been finely expressed by Tennyson: The baby new to earth and sky, What time its tender palm is prest Against the circle of the breast, Has never thought that "this is I: " But as he grows he gathers much, And h-arns the use of " I " and " me," And finds " I am not wliat I gee. And other than tlie things I touch." So rounds he to a separate mind From whence clear memory may begin, As thro' the frame that binds him in His isolation grows defined. 17 18 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION Of course man used his mind and unconsciously obeyed its laws long before he studied psychology. Practical experience always precedes systematic knowl- edge ; art is older than science. Men did not first think about life and then begin to live, but they first lived and then began to think. Their instinctive impulses and practical needs pushed them into action before they reflected on what they were doing. For ages they lived in the sunlight before they studied solar physics, and practised agriculture before they developed the sciences of chemistry and botany. They used their bodies before they dreamed of physiology, and health did not wait on hygiene. So they have used their minds since the first man began to live, but psychology is a modern science. It is true that there were beginnings of this science in ancient times, as all our modern sciences have their ancient roots and germs. The Delphic oracle said, " Know thyself," and Plato and Aristotle were even profound psychologists; yet the scientific study of psychology is hardly a hundred years old. At first it was largely introspective and subjective and only re- cently has it entered the laboratory of accurate obser- vation and measurement. But, now that it has gotten a start, it has grown rapidly and much progress has been made and a great literature on the subject has been produced. 2. The Application of Psychology. — Science first grows out of experience, as the flower out of the soil, and then goes back into experience to deepen and enrich it, as the petals of the flower fall back into the soil to fertilize it and bring forth finer blossoms. Sci- ence and art thus constantly react upon and mutually enrich each other. All our magic machines and mar- vellous multiplication of goods grow out of our science INTRODUCTION 19 which masters the forces of nature and turns them into our nimble and mighty servants. The same result fol- lows from the study of psychology. As it discloses the laws of the mind it enables us to use these laws more efficiently and fruitfully. The mind is the primary agent with which men work in all their activities, and therefore psychology should be one of the most prac- tical of the sciences. Psychologists were slow and late in beginning this application, but now they are working it out in all di- rections. Recently some of the master psychologists have been writing such practical books. Professor Josiah Royce entitles his work on psychology Outlines of Psychology/ with Some Practical Applications, and such applications are suggested all through the book. Professor William James delivered his helpful Talks to Teachers on Psychology. More recently Professor Mtinsterberg has written several w^orks on the prac- tical application of psychology, notably his Psychol- ogy and Industrial Efficiency, in which he applies this science to the choice of a vocation, scientific manage- ment, the electric railway service, the telephone ex- change, advertising, buying and selling goods, and to many other points in the field of business, in a most illuminating and helpful way. There is a growing literature of such books, and they bring psychology down out of the clouds of theory and out of the laboratory and hitch it to the wagons of the world's work. 3. Psychology in the Field of Religion. — If psy- chology is of such practical inii)ortanre in the fields of education and art and even of business, how much more so should it 1)6 in the field of religion. Religion is the highest activity and interest of the soul, and 20 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION therefore it is of the most vital importance that we understand its psychology in order that we may de- velop it into its fullest power and finest fruitage. And it is specially important that ministers and religious teachers should understand it, for religious psychol- ogy is the very stuff with which they work. The psy- chologists have only recently entered this field. When they first broke into it they were immensely interested in and pleased with it as a rich ^^ find " or mine in their domain, and they have been working it with un- common diligence and delight. Professor Edwin D. Starbuck was one of the first to enter this field, and his Psychology of Religion, with its inductive gather- ing and tabulation and analysis of facts and results, is still one of the most useful books on the subject. Professor William James followed with his Varieties of Religious Experience, which on the whole holds its place as the most important contribution psychology has yet made to religion. Other books have followed in rapid succession, and the literature on the subject is already very large and rich. 4. Value of Work Done in this Field. — The value of the work done in this field widely varies. Some of it has been highly subjective and speculative and even characterized by wild vagaries; but much of it has been sound and sane and has vielded solid results of t.' great value. The psychology of religion is a doubly subjective science in that it depends on both the psy- chology and the religion of the worker in this field. As some psychologists have tried to work out a psy- chology of the soul without any soul, so have some of them endeavoured to construct a psychology of re- ligion T\ithout religion. Under their treatment of it religion has evaporated into a mere subjective feeling INTRODUCTION 21 or delusion without any objective reality, and such psychology of religion is baseless and worthless both as psychology and as religion. Any one's view of the psychology of religion will depend upon his philosophy lying back of both his psychology and his religion. If he is a materialist or pantheist or any kind of deter- minist, neither his psychology nor his religion will have much value to a theist, for such deterministic monism cuts the ground from under free agency and responsibility and lets all worthy and useful psychol- ogy and religion fall into a common ruin. The present book is based on theistic philosophy and Christian faith, and with such a soil this field of studv has some root and substance and sap and can grow fruit that is worth while. The psychology of religion has not made any revo- lutionary discoveries or introduced any radical changes in religion. As a rule advancing science does not up- set the fundamental practical experience of the race, but confirms and illuminates it. Agricultural science has not driven wheat from the harvest field or dis- placed bread from the table, and astronomy has not blown out the sun. Psychology- has not appeared as the foe of religion to destroy it or radically change it, but as its friend to help it. The facts of religion are indejKindent of the theories of psychology, and they stand as some of the most solidly rooted and perma- nent facts in the world. Psychology searches into the nature and operation of religion, but it can no more uproot it than geology can uproot the mountains. Religion has so far not suffered at the hands of psy- chology: when some psychologists have explained re- ligion away, it was not their psychology but their philosoi)hy that did this destructive work. Psychology 22 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION simply throws new light on the old facts of religion and thereby makes them more luminous and fruitful. No doubt it does sweep away many shadows and errors from religion, but this is the work, not of an enemy, but of a friend. The psychology of religion comes not to destroy but to fultil. 5. Sources and Methods. — The original source of all psychology is the mind itself, which is immediately known to the psychologist only in his own mind. In- trospection is therefore the first source of psychology in general and of the psychology of religion in par- ticular. The student of this science should learn to observe the working of his own mind so as to dis- criminate all its various activities and note its modes and laws. This is a difficult art because not only does such introspection call for the trained skill required in all scientific observation, but the mind itself, when made the object of its own observation, is so change- able and elusive that it is hard to catch it and hold it still. The very act of becoming conscious of a state of one's own mind changes the state and may radically modify if not wholly destroy it. Trying to catch and see one's own mind is like trying to turn on the gas or electric light quick enough to see the dark: the state may vanish as we try to see it. Nevertheless we can study our own mental states, and such states are the original and only direct source we can have of any kind of psychology. If therefore we have no religious experience we can have no re- ligious psychology. We see things not only as they are but also as we are, and our own faculties and' affinities limit our possible experiences. The absence of any religious experience in the soul is as fatal a bar to religious psychology as blindness is to the sci- INTRODUCTION 23 ence of esthetics. In this study, then, we need to keep in close touch with the reality of our own experi- ence and translate everything into its terms and bring it to this test. The secondary and derived source of material for the psychology of religion is the experience of others as this is observed in their behaviour and is com- municated to us orally or through written records. There are many special books which record the re- ligious experience of others, and these are rich sources of religious psychology. The biographies of notable religious characters are especially valuable as ma- terials for this study. But all literature is a secretion from the experience of the human soul and is a great mine containing rich veins of ore that can be worked in the interest of religious psychology. This science, like Caesar, sends out a decree that all the world shall be taxed in its interest, and every field of human experience brings grist to its mill. The gTeat book and source for this subject, of course, is the Bible. This is a mass of religious experi- r ence from beginning to end; for it was all experienced before it was written, and after it was experienced it was expressed, after it was done it was said. The Hebrew people were endowed with religious genius, as the Greeks were with intellectual brilliance and the Romans with organizing power, and God could blow his breath and music througli them more fully and richly than through less spiritually sensitive souls. Their prophets and apostles were mountain peaks that caup^lit the li^^ht of God's unity and spirituality and righteousness earlier than other i)e(»ple and rellected it down upon the world. Their religious experiences were therefore deeper and loftier and richer than 24 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION those of any other people and have become the classi- cal ideal and inspiration for succeeding ages. This religious experience of these wonderful people was secreted and crystallized in the Bible, which re- mains as the richest mine of religious psychology in the world. The divine revelations they received are recorded in it, their prayers and songs are embalmed in it, their growth and discipline in faith and right- eousness, their doubts and fears, blind gropings and stumblings, trials and tears, mistakes and sins and shame, their penalties and repentance, the growing spirituality and beauty of their ideals, and all the tragedy and pathos of their history, are mirrored on these pages, the most immortal and incomparable book in the world. It is a masterpiece of psychology in its dissection of the human heart and disclosure of the in- terior workings of the soul and its religious experience. To this classical book and source we must ever go for the fullest and clearest illustration and illumination of the psychology of religion. The method of our science is the general method of all psychology and of all science, which is the careful observation and interpretation of the facts in its field. Some sciences have an elaborate outfit of special instru- ments, but psychology has few : its laboratory, useful as it is, plays a subordinate part and has made few impor- tant contributions to the science, William James, the master psychologist of the day, being the witness on this point. The mind's own processes are the funda- mental instruments of all science. Observation, com- parison, discrimination, tracing of causal links and connections, deduction of general principles, — these are the methods of science. Science has no secret cham- ber in which it works and no patented process of dis- INTRODUCTION 25 covering truth. It works in the open and uses the ordinary processes of human thinking. The greatest scientist or even the profoundest metaphysician does not differ in his essential processes of reasoning from the man on the street : he is only more careful. The study of the psychology of religion calls for no other faculties and methods than those we use in the common fields of life. We need to strive to see clearly and accurately, to cleanse our minds of prejudices, to see reality as it is and interpret it into its true mean- ing, to be candid and humble and teachable, to have a passion for truth and to be obedient to every heavenly vision, and then we may hope to find the truth, at least as a practical guide in life. As the psychology of religion is a special branch or application of general psychology, it may be well, in an elementary book like this, to introduce the subject with an outline sketch of the psychology of the soul. Such a sketch must be very rudimentary and little more than a skeleton or bundle of definitions, but it will furnish a background and framework for what is to follow. CHAPTER II THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE SOUL WE are now to observe the soul itself and take stock of its contents. It is not a far-off world, or one external to us, but is our inmost self in which we live and move and have our being. We might then think that we understand it per- fectly, and we do understand it better than anything else, for we have immediate experience of it; and yet our knowledge of it may be vague and confused, or mis- taken and perverted, and needs to be cleared and sys- tematized by reflective thought. We shall not stop to define or discuss the nature of the soul, or to consider whether or not we have or are souls, for these questions belong to philosophy rather than psychology. We accept the empirical intuitive fact, more certain than any other fact, that we think,, therefore we are ; we are conscious beings, and the con- gdpus self is what we mean by the soul. Consciousness is an infinite complex and may at first appear to be a scene of confusion ; but, like the world of nature, it turns out to be a world of beautiful order, and its operations can be reduced to a few fundamental activities and laws. I. The Fundamental Faculties of the Soul An old and obvious and fundamental division of the faculties of the soul is the threefold division into intel- lect, sensibility, and will. We think, we feel, and we 26 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE SOUL 21 will: these exhaust the activities of the soul, for we never do anything more or less than these things. It is not meant, of course, that the soul has three separate faculties or parts that act in these ways, for the soul has no material dimensions and parts and is not di- visible, but the whole consciousness acts in these three fundamental modes. Neither does the soul act in only one of these ways at a time, but i^ all of them simul- taneously, though they are combined and blended in different ways and degrees. We never think that we do not at the same time feel, and we never feel that we do not at the same time will. Every state and activity of consciousness is a complex exercise of thought, feeling, and will. Yet one of these states may be and usually is so predominant as to submerge and obscure the others. We may seem to be thinking only, or feeling only, or willing only, but closer inspection discloses all three in simultaneous action. There are also logical relations among these states, thought stirring up feelings and feelings moving the will, and this fact is of the greatest practical importance. However, while these three fundamental activities are always interblended and logically related, yet we can dissect them and study them one at a time. 1. INTELLECT The intellect comes first in order of our study. This is the knowing power of the mind, and it resolves itself into the faculties or activities of perception, concepts, reasoning, association, memory, and iinagiuation. I. Perception. — Sense perception is the conscious- ness of external objects when the mind is stirred into activity by the excitation of our senses. These are the organs of sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch, which 28 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION are nerve ends differentiated and adapted to receive different kinds of external impressions. By counting our organic feelings as senses and breaking up the sense of touch into various subsenses, such as contact, heat, cold, and still others, we can have any number of senses up to fifteen or twenty; but the classical number of five stands in the usual description of our senses. Each one of the sense organs is a wonderful arrange- ment for receiving external impressions and trans- mitting them to the brain. Sound waves, which are successive rarefactions and condensations of the air caused by the vibrating body, impinge on the drum of the ear and send a stream of molecular changes up to the auditory centre in the brain; and the other senses send their currents of distinctive changes up to their special brain centres. These sense excitations arrive in the brain as some form of molecular agitation, very much as telegraphic messages arrive in a telegraph office, or as telephone calls arrive in the central ex- change. And now the mind has the wonderful and quite mys- terious power of interpreting or experiencing these molecular changes as perceptions of the external ob- jects producing them. How the mind does this is ut- terly beyond our inspection and knowledge and is one of the ultimate mysteries of psychology. It is to be noted, however, that the mind is not sim- ply a blank and passive plate or mirror that receives these impi-essions and contributes nothing to them it- self. On the contrarv, the mind is active and creative in the process. It has a constitution of its own which furnishes the moulds in which these sense materials are cast and shaped. It has inherent general principles or ideas of unity and difference, quantity and quality, THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE SOUL 29 logical order and causation, and other " categories," as Kant, their great discoverer, called them, and by these the mind gives form and meaning to its sense materials. It would lead us over into the field of philosophy to discuss this point further, but it is funda- mental in the constitution of the mind. The sense of sight gives us a visual image of an ob- ject, the sense of sound an auditory image of it, and so on, each sense thus creating in our mind its appropri- ate sense perception or percept. When two or more of these percepts are caused by the same external object, they combine into a unitary compound percept, or construct, as it is called. These percepts and constructs are the immediate objects of our knowledge and are the only things we thus know. They are the only things in our mind and immediately present in its experience. We intuitively project these percepts and constructs into the outer world and think we see objects in external space; but this is a kind of mental illusion, and the real process of seeing and knowing takes place in the mind itself. This fact does not in the least deny or impair the reality of the outer world, but it does throw light on the process by which we know it. In forming its sense perceptions the mind not only contributes to them its constitutional jirinciples or categories, but it also pours into them the contents of its existing knowledge and thus colours and enriches them, or, it may be, perverts them with mistaken no- tions. We set every new fact or im])ressi(m in the framework and light of our existing knowledge, and this " apjierception," as it is called, is a large and vital factor in all our knowledge. We thus see things, not only as they are, but also as we are. The mind itself is an active and determining agent in forming our 30 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION knowledge. Every one thus sees his own objects and creates his own world. It is these differences in minds that make the immense differences in the things men see. When Turner showed one of his sunsets to a friend and the friend remarked that he had never seen such a sunset, Turner replied, ''Don't you wish you could?" Ruskin says that ^' the greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something, and tell what it saw in a plain way." We may think that he did not tell anything in a plain way in his pages that are cloth of gold emblazoned with gems, but then he did tell in a plain way what he saw. These percepts and constructs are the representatives in our minds of the realities of the objective world, and therefore it is of the first importance that they repre- sent them accurately. They are the constituent ele- ments or cut stones or pressed bricks out of which we build our world. We then see the fundamental im- portance of forming correct percepts and constructs. Any inaccuracy or error in them, caused by inattention, ignorance, mental blindness, self-interest, prejudice, or passion, will throw us out of gear and right working relations with reality; it will ramify and pervert all our ideas and plans; and it may undermine and ruin our whole structure of thought and life. We should then bring the most skilful training and give the greatest care to the forming of our percepts so that they will exactly fit and reproduce reality. In seeing things we should train our vision so that we shall see them clearly and correctly, and not see blurred and blotted, distorted and perverted images of them; and so with all the other senses. In seeing accurately the shape of a leaf or the colour of a bit of ribbon w^e may be determining something of immense importance. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE SOUL 31 If the tiny bricks in a building, or even one brick, is of the wrong size or shape, it may throw the whole build- ing out of plumb and even endanger its stability. We should beware of mixing up our subjective opinions and prejudices and especially our own interests with objective reality and thus shaping and colouring it to suit our own ends. Of course we should and must in- terpret things in the light of our own knowledge, and this is a reason why we should be constantly stocking our minds with richer stores of knowledge that we may ever see a richer world. In a sense w^e make the things we see, for we contribute to them the contents of our own minds, as we have already seen. But this process does not justify us in contributing any false colour or element to our perceptions. elupt to perceive reality as it is : this is the foundation of truth and honesty; it goes deep into our character and life and destiny; and we should give to it our utmost training and care. 2. Concepts. — The next step in our mental processes is to turn an individual percept or construct into a general idea or concept. The mental image that repro- duces an individual object, such as an apple, is released from its local context in consciousness and made to stand for and represent all apples, or the class or gen- eral idea of an apple; and in a similar way all indi- vidual percepts or constructs are generalized into con- cepts. These general classes, however, are not the same as the intuitional principles or categories of the mind of which we have spoken. Categories are inherent in the constitution of the mind and are not the product of experience, although experience is necessary to call them into action. This process by which we generalize objects into 32 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION classes is a very high power of the mind. The lower animals do not have it. A horse or a dog knows indi- vidual things, but it does not have general ideas or con- cepts of things. The accuracy and fulness and richness of contents of our concepts depend upon the correctness and vividness and wealth of detail of our percepts ; and so again we see the importance of accurate sense per- ceptions as the foundation and constituent elements of our general ideas. 3. Reasoning. — The process by which the mind works with its percepts and concepts is its reasoning power. This consists in comparing, discriminating, analyzing, and classifying its percepts and concepts, or its images of objects and its general ideas, so as to discern their relations, logically combine them into larger units, trace their connections and especially their causal links and deduce their consequences; and thus we build up our knowledge into judgments and propositions and systems and draw practical conclu- sions. It is this power of the mind that arranges and rules all the fields of life. Thus starting with tiny visual images in his eyes and percepts and constructs in his mind the astronomer combines these into grand concepts and reasons out a sublime system for the whole stupendous heavens. Every other scientist in like manner perceives and con- structs the facts in his field, and thus our knowledge grows from more to more. Each one of us thus reasons out his own purposes and plans and builds his own world. 4. Association. — Association of ideas is the power they have of clinging together so that when one comes up in the mind it brings others with it. It is our con- stant familiar experience that one object or idea sug- THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE SOUL 33 gests another or many others. The sight of a rain cloud suggests the idea of an umbrella, and this idea may sug- gest the fact that it was borrowed from a neighbour, possibly without his consent or knowledge. The sight of a little lock of hair or a glimpse of the old home crowds the mind with a thousand fond recollections too deep for tears. When any idea enters the mind it quickly draws to itself a cluster of associations, as when a magnet is thrust into a keg of nails it comes out thickly encrusted with the bits of iron. Every one knows that any idea arising in the mind may grow until it fills all the thoughts and absorbs the whole life. A striking illustration of this is seen in Dr. J. G. Frazer's work on primitive religion en- titled The Golden Bough. It appeared in the first edi- tion in two large volumes, but in the third edition these had grown to twelve, and the bibliography, con- taining the titles of the works quoted in it, and the in- dex fill the last volume. " When I originally conceived the idea of the work," he writes in the Preface of the third edition, " my intention merely was to explain the strange rule of the priesthood or sacred kingship of Nemi and wuth it the legend of the Golden Bough, immortalized by Virgil, and at first I thought that it might be adequately set forth within the compass of a small volume. But I soon found that in attemi)tiug to settle one question I had raised many more: wide and wider prospects 0{)ened out before me; and thus step by step I was lured on into far-spreading fields of primitive thought which had been little explored by my predecessors. Thus the book grew on my hands, and soon the projected essay became a ponderous treatise." The subject tlius kept running its roots out over the borders of the field until it encompassed and 84f THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION enmeshed the globe. And even then Dr. Frazer prob- ably felt that he had only begun his investigations. As- sociation is an insatiable appetite that devours more and more, a fire that spreads from a centre in every direction, a banyan tree that keeps dropping branches that become roots and thus grows into a vast forest. A single seed may become a harvest that fills all the years of life. All knowledge is related, and from any centre association may run threads of relation and bind it into unitv. These associations often seem accidental and whimsi- cal, but they are really governed by beautiful laws that spin threads and enable us to trace links of connection between associations that seem at first to have no pos- sible relation. The most common of these laws are contiguity in time and place, similarity and contrast, and causal connection. Objects and ideas that have been experienced together once will tend to appear to- gether again, and any object tends to suggest its like- ness or contrast, or its cause or consequence. However fantastic or absurd seems the association there is al- ways some connection, it may be through many inter- mediate links, by which the one term in such a relation suggests another. Every object and idea and word is surrounded with a fringe or atmosphere of associations, and as every mind has its own stock of knowledge, words and ideas have very different meanings and suggestions for dif- ferent minds. The idea of a prison has a vastly differ- ent connotation or meaning for a convict than for one who has never been inside prison walls, or the word music for the musician than for one without musical training or sense. These associations give breadth and depth and wealth of meaning to words and objects THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE SOUL 35 as the overtones in music give character and richness to musical notes. It is the number and variety of the associations with which our minds are stored that constitute the width and wealth and power of our mental life. Every mind organizes around any idea its entire contents. It per- ceives every new truth in the light of and brings it into relation with its existing knowledge, in accordance with the process of apperception. One mark of a man of genius is the immense range and variety of his associa- tions by which he calls the whole world to his aid to illustrate and illuminate his ideas; and the poverty and impotence of an ignorant or feeble mind is the meagre- ness of its associations. Multiply your associations, store your mind with facts and ideas through observa- tion and reading, and you will thus have a reservoir in your mind that you can tap on any subject at any time and draw forth streams of thought and power. This is one result and value of education. 5. Memory. — Memory is the conserving power of the mind, its capacity to store up and retain and recall its experiences. It is the treasure house of life in which all its past is packed away and out of which our associa- tions emerge ; it is the thread of continuity that binds all our days together into conscious unity. Without the i)Ower of memory we would not have conscious knr)\s ledge of the past and would not even know our- selves as identical persons from day to day. It is thus the spinal coluiim of personality. While it is not the highest power of the mind and is related to conserva- tism rather than to initiative and progress, yet memory is fundamental and enters vitally into our whole life. Its cardinal virtues are quick reception, tenacity of retention, and readiness of recall, and it thus puts our 36 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION whole stock of knowledge and experience at our fingers^ ends. 6. Imagination. — Imagination is the picture-making power of the mind. It is sometimes thought of as a mere play of the mind, while observation and reasoning do its sober solid w^ork. There is a kind of imagina- tion, the fancy, which does move in an unreal world on a light gay wing, but imagination proper is one of the most fundamental and fruitful of our faculties. It begins with memory images, which are bits of imagina- tion, and it constructs images or pictures of objects and scenes from the stores of memory. This is re- productive imagination, and it is a constituent element in all our thought. A deeper use of the imagination is its power of realizing objects that lie beyond the immediate range of the senses and contact of the mind with reality. It is the mental tool by which we translate symbols, such as words and algebraic signs which only stand for things, into the meaning and power of the things them- selves. Thus in studying geography and history the mind has certain information about places and events that are not immediately before it: imagination takes these statements which are little more than symbols and translates them into images w^hich we see almost or altogether as vividly as though the realities themselves were present to us; it clothes these skeletons with flesh and blood so that they breathe and move. Knowledge is never digested and assimilated into our ow^n thought and experience, it never becomes alive and moves us, until we thus turn it into pictures or vivid images that may be as vital and vigorous as the living realities. Imagination is an eye that sweeps the earth and the THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE SOUL 37 heavens and penetrates all space and time and sees facts face to face. A still higher activity of this faculty is the creative imagination which constructs pictures, plans, ideals, visions of its own, and thus " bodies forth the forms of things unknown, turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing a local habitation and a name." It is this form of imagination that creates plans that improve our life at every point. A mother sees in her mind an ideal of a better home, and presently her own home begins to grow into new order and show new touches of taste and beauty until her ideal is realized. A farmer sees the vision of a better farm, more thorough in its cultivation and more fruitful in its fields and orchards, and his own farm soon shows improvement and approximates his ideal. A mechanic imagines a better piece of work, more strongly built or handsomely shaped or finely finished, and he makes a better engine or piece of furniture. It is the creative imagination that produces all the glories of literature and art and all the great achieve- ments of men. Men of genius are eminently the chil- dren of their imagination ; they see visions that unveil the beauty of the world. A poet sees fairy fancies and grand cathedrals of poetic thought and, with his " eye in a fine frcnz}' rolling," he puts them into im- mortal lines. The painter sees in the gallery of his imagination a picture of fair features and gl(>wing colours and deep meaning, and his brush copies it on canvas. A sculptor sees an angel in a block of marble, and his chisel sets it free until it l)egins to breathe. A musician hears in the chamber of his heart sweet strains and grand harmonies, and he (lings them out through his voice and linger lips upon the air. 38 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION Every deed was first a thought, every, victory was first a vision. Columbus saw in imagination a new path to the old world, and that vision, treated with scepticism and ridicule by the dull-eyed men of his day, led him out over the unknown mysterious Atlantic until he stood victorious upon a new shore. Four centuries later another man of creative imagination saw an elec- tric cable running under that same ocean, and again the vision was ridiculed; but it held on its way and now enmeshes the earth with a network of cables that is constantly throbbing with the life of the world. Luther had a vision that shattered papal despotism and liber- ated Europe. Lincoln had a vision that wrote the Emancipation Proclamation and freed an enslaved race. Imagination, then, is no light and fanciful exercise of the mind, but is its most powerful faculty. It is by this power that man dreams dreams and that over his path hover visions that coax and woo him on to larger and lovelier things. He follows their gleam, he hitches his wagons to their stars and rises starward from the dust. The world has learned to beware of how it stands in the way of imagination: that invisible im- palpable power may have in it more might than ten thousand bayonets or a million tons of dynamite and may crush mountains, shape the centuries, and create a new world. We have thus rapidly looked into the workshop of the intellect and noted the machinery by which it turns out the products of thought. It is by these faculties and processes that the human mind has written all the books and libraries in the world; that it perceives ob- jects, evolves ideas and ideals, builds systems of science and philosophy, conquers nature, constructs the plans THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE SOUL 39 and paths along which life moves, and has thought out our whole vast civilization. We may note, in leaving this part of our subject, the important distinction between knowledge and intelli- gence. Knowledge is information: intelligence is de- veloped and disciplined mind. Knowledge is a posses- sion: intelligence is a power. Knowledge does not necessarily produce or imply intelligence: intelligence produces knowledge. Knowledge is static and passive : intelligence is dynamic and active. Knowledge re- ceives: intelligence creates. Knowledge handles the old and familiar and is disconcerted with the new: in- telligence is stimulated by the new and meets and mas- ters novel situations and problems. Knowledge drills, and intelligence thrills. Knowledge is useful and neces- sary, great widths and immense stocks of it in the mind by so much enlarge and enrich life, but intelligence is the principal thing, for only intelligence is power, and with all our getting we should develop intelligence. 2. SENSIBILITY The sensibility is the power of the soul to experience feeling, or a state of excitement. The feelings are an infinite complex, shading into one another like the evanescent hues of a sunset, and they do not admit of such exact classification and analvsis as do tlio faculties of the intellect. They fall, however, into some broad classes. I. Sensations. — Sensations are feelings caused by direct physical action on tlie nerves. They include, first, the excitations of the senses. The degree of feel- ing in tliese senses varies. It is very slight in sight and hearing, excejjt when the excitation is excessive, or when the organ is abnoimaiiy sensitive by reason of on 40 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION inflamed or diseased condition, and then the feeling may be intense. There is also but slight feeling in smell and little in taste. These four senses produce states of perception that are largely intellectual. ^' Knowledge and feeling, perception and sensation," says Sir William Hamilton, ^' though alvv'ays coexistent, are always in the inverse ratio of each other." In the sense of touch the feeling element becomes pro- nounced and often predominant. The sensation of re- sistance experienced in hard or rough substances or on sharp points or edges is almost purely a feeling. The nerves of feeling distributed over the entire surface of the body are really a complex sense. Temperature has special nerves for both heat and cold; and there are many special pain and pleasure points or nerves all over the bodv. Besides the senses, there are numberless organic feelings throughout the body. The appetites are at- tended with a wide range and variety of feeling in tone and intensity. The movement of the muscles is accom- panied with muscular feelings. The internal organs ordinai^ly carry on their activities without producing any feeling, but any derangement of their condition or operation reports itself in feeling that may range from dim discomfort to intense agony. There is always pres- ent a scarcely perceptible, quiet, comfortable mass or sense of feeling that is the background of our conscious- ness and whole life. Every sensory nerve in the body is sensitive to irritation and is ready to respond with its peculiar feeling. 2. Emotions. — A second general class of feelings are the emotions, which are feelings caused by the presenta- tion to the mind of an object or idea. The sight of an enemy may throw the soul into a state of violent fear. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE SOUL 41 and of a friend may kindle it into a glow of love and joy; and the idea of an enemy or of a friend will pro- duce the same feelings, though in a much weaker de- gree. Every object and idea tends to produce its own peculiar feeling and there may thus be as many kinds or shades of emotion as there are objects and ideas; but they fall into a few general classes, such as fear and hope, hatred and love, joy and sorrow, antipathy and sympathy, the sublime and the ridiculous, aspiration and reverence, and these may range in degree from a mere tendency or slight stir of feeling to the greatest intensity. When the intellectual element predominates over the feeling and especially when it is a fixed system or dis- position of ideas the emotion becomes a sentiment, such as the sentiment of friendship or patriotism ; and when the feeling element predominates over the intellectual the emotion becomes a passion. 3. Pain and Pleasure Tone. — Feelings have a pain or pleasure tone, which is often their most distinctive and compelling characteristic. Every feeling, whether of sensation or emotion, has this quality. The physical sensations are attended with the pains and pleasures of the senses and appetites or organic feelings, and emotions are characterized not less by the same tone. A mere idea may flood the soul with pleasure or send flames of agony leaping along the nerves. All of our feelings may be arranged and marshalled under these two captains of the soul. Love, Hope, and Joy, fair j)loasurc'8 smiling train, Hope, Fear, and firief, the family of pain; Thfsc mixed with art and to diu" bounds confined, Make and maintain the balance of the mind. — PorE. 42 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION 4. Temperaments. — Every person has a prevailing emotional tone or disposition which is a native in- heritance and is persistent through life, though subject to some control and slow modification by the will. A temperament is the emotional pitch to which one is kej^ed and is the tonic note of all his music. It is the sounding-board which gives quality to all his moods. It is an emotional lens that gives character and colour to all his experiences. All his mental states sift through his temperament, as light through a stained glass window, and are tinged by its hues. There are four temperaments, which have been known and named from ancient times: the sanguine, the phlegmatic, the choleric, and the melancholy. These names embody the ancient view that these tempera- ments were due to four humours of the body: blood, phlegm, bile, and a hypothetical black bile. The sanguine temperament, implying fulness of blood, is a lively and hopeful disposition. It is marked by vivacity and effervescence, bubbling over with ex- uberant hopefulness and always seeing things through a rosy optimism. It looks at the bright side of ob- jects and has great confidence in its own views and visions. It paints its plans and prospects in the colours of the imagination and wreathes them in rainbows. It may be correspondingly blind to the real difficulties in the way and meet with unseen obstructions and run into disaster. It infects language, and people of this temperament are apt to speak in glowing terms, uncon- sciously bordering on visionary unreality. They some- times live in a " fooFs Paradise," and often experience a rude awakening and shock. Yet they quickly recover their resiliency and are soon dreaming new dreams. The sanguine people furnish the lively element in life; THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE SOUL 43 they radiate good cheer and are the optimists of the world. The opposite of the sanguine is the phlegmatic tem- perfiment. This is a dull passive disposition, slow in its movements of thought and action. It is deficient in initiative and progressiveness and jogs along in tradi- tional grooves. It is not easily excited with hope on the one hand, or on the other depressed with discour- agement, but plods along with equal step through sun- shine and storm. People of phlegmatic temperament furnish the ballast in the ship of progress. They are solid and immobile and give substance and stability to the world. The choleric temperament is impulsive and rash, hot and violent, progressive and pushing, decisive and domineering. It will brook no interference with its desires and plans, but breaks through all opposition. It is the progressive spring in human character, impa- tient of tradition and conservatism, and driving for- ward, it may be, recklessly and blindly. People of this disposition are leaders and pioneers in the world, work- ing under high pressure and sweeping all obstacles and opposition out of their path. The melancholic is the deep brooding temperament, characterized by outward passivity but inward inten- sity. It is given to thought and meditation and strives to see things as they are in their inmost natures. It does not shrink from but rather is attracted to the dark side of things and is veined and tinged with pessimism. Its deep undertone is one of sadness in view of the world. It weaves minor notes into all its chords. The people of nielanc liolic temj)eraniont are tlio philosophers and prophets and poets, the thinkers and di*eamers of the race. U THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION These four temperaments may be more or less mixed in the same person, with one of them the predominant strain. Some people alternate in their temperament so that at different times they seem like different persons. Moods are passing phases of temperament, and these are very changeable in the weather of the soul. One temi)erament may prevail at one age in life, and an- other at a later age. Childhood, it is said, is phleg- matic, youth is sanguine, maturity choleric, and old age melancholic. The female sex is prevailingly san- guine and phlegmatic, and the male choleric and melancholic. Nations and races may be characterized by dominant temperaments. The Hebrews were melan- cholic, the Greeks sanguine, and the Eomans choleric. The Irish are sanguine, the English phlegmatic, and the Scotch choleric. The French are sanguine, and the Germans phlegmatic. These temperaments go deep into character and life and give texture and tone to our virtues and vices, our temptations and triumphs; and they produce different types of religious life. 5. The Uses of the Feelings. — The uses or functions of the feelings is a subject much discussed by psy- chologists, but with varying results. The broad use of the feelings is to promote the volume and value of life and give it interest and motive. Pleasure as a rule attends and stimulates such activities of body and mind as are conducive to life, and pain attends such activities as injure or hinder it. As Herbert Spencer expresses this fact, "Pains are the correlatives of actions in- jurious to the organism, while pleasures are the cor- relatives of actions conducive to its welfare." He works this principle out at great length in his PiHn- ciples of Psychology, and again in his Principles of THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE SOUL 45 Ethics, unfolding the modifications and limitations that govern its application. It is evident that this view is true in a broad way. The bodily activities that sus- tain and promote life, such as eating and exercise, are usually attended with jjleasure, and injurious activities and conditions, such as disease, produce pain. And the same fact is true of emotions, for they stimulate or depress life according as they are pleasurable or^ painful. We at once think, however, of the pleasures, such as gluttony and intoxication, that are injurious and even deadly, and of the pains, such as those attending medicine and surgery, that may promote health and save life. But only the effect of pleasures and pains in the long run is to be considered. Activities that are permanently pleasurable jjromote life, and pains that ultimately bring good results are accepted as good. And further, when pleasures are taken to include satis- factions of the higher moral and spiritual sense, these higher satisfactions take precedence over and control sensual gratifications and are the greatest means of life. It is not true that pleasures of the lower order are the means and guides of life and that we are to do all we can to get pleasure and avoid pain; but in the long run and up through the whole scale of life it is true that pleasure or satisfaction coincides with life and pain with death. It is the feelings that give us a sense of the value of objects. Pure intellect perceives facts and relations, but not worths. One object is as truly a part of reality to it as another, and it thinks only in terms of realitv and not of value. Its work is done when it determines the reality and relations of an object; some other power 46 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION of the soul must evaluate its worth, and the heart does this. " Our judgments," says William James, " con- cerning the worth of things, big or little, depend on the feelings the things arouse in us. When we judge a thing to be precious in consequence of the idea we frame of it, this is only because the idea is itself asso- ciated already with a feeling. If we were radically feelingless, and if ideas were the only things our minds could entertain, we should lose all our likes and dislikes at a stroke, and be unable to point to any one situation of experience in life more valuable or significant than any other." ^ The interest of life resides in our feelings. It is not until our ideas strike these mystic strings and wake them into music or discord that they excite our inter- est. The feelings are like the box of the violin or sounding-board of the piano: the strings would give forth thin and insignificant notes if they were not reen- forced by these resonators which sympathetically catch up their vibrations and give them depth and com- plexity, richness and sweetness. And so out of our feelings arise the joys and sorrows, the triumphs and tragedies of our life. The feelings also are the immediate motives that move the will. There is no tendencv for the will to act until the feelings pour their flood upon it as a stream upon a wheel, or as steam into the cylinder upon the piston that drives the engine. Objects and ideas gen- erate feelings of sensation and emotion, and these accumulate in volume and pressure until they overcome the inertia or indecision or opposition of the will and push it into action, or explode it as a spark explodes ^ Talks to Teachers on Psychologxh p. 229. See also The Problem of Knowledge, by D. C. Mackintosh; p. 348. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE SOUL 47 powder. Pain and pleasure especially are imperious forces that move the will and guide and govern life. 3. THE WILL The will is the power of the soul to control itself in its thoughts and feelings, decisions and actions. We have seen that through the senses a stream of sensa- tions pours into the consciousness. The whole con- sciousness is a stream of activity, fluctuating in level and volume and rapidity, sinking into the subconscious deeps in sleep and then rising into a tumultuous tor- rent and overflowing all the banks of the soul. This stream, however, is not an ungovernable flood, sweep- ing everything before it, on which the will floats as a helpless log or drifts in a boat without engine or rud- der. The will has a large control over the stream and flood ; it has a rudder in its hand and an engine in its boat by which it can steer and drive it in any direc- tion to its own destination. I. The Attention. — The will first exercises its power in attention. As the word means, this is a " stretch- ing" or striving of the mind towards an object. The field of consciousness swarms with impulses, sense per- ceptions, concepts, memories, feelings, desires, ideas, and ideals. The mind is not indillerent and helpless in Ihe presence of this complex field, but has various aflin- ities and interests and has the power of choosing the object it will fasten upon and make the focus of its attention. It then concentrates its powers on this ob- ject as the centre of consciousness, wliile other objects are crowded into the background and margin of the field. This act of attention is necessary to any normal menial activity whatever. The simplest act of seeing a light or hearing a sound involves the fixing and focus- 48 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION ing of the mind on the object. Consciousness cannot be diffused over a miscellaneous multitude of things. Such a mental field grows misty and loses all mean- ing and perception. Consciousness must concentrate itself on one principal object as the focus of attention, though many other objects lying around the central object on the margin of the mind may be dimly seen or felt. This object of attention is forced on the mind in in- voluntary attention, which occurs when an object is thrust into the mind so violently as to overwhelm and exclude all other objects. A flash of lightning or a clap of thunder instantly compels attention and for the moment crowds everything else out of consciousness. In voluntary attention, however, the mind exercises its own power in selecting the object on which it fixes its gaze and interest. Many objects, ideas, desires may be competing for the attention and crowding on the self with their vociferous and even violent claims and clamours, but the soul can itself decide which of these contestants it will choose as the object to which it will give its attention and thus enthrone it in the central place in its field. Voluntary attention is the root of self-control and character, the power that compresses all the energies of the soul into one stream and the lack of which lets them divide and drift off into impotence, so that the soul is strong or weak according to its strength or weak- ness at this point. ^' Human nature," says Professor Hugo Miinsterberg, ^' is indeed so arranged that the attention at first follows in an involuntary way all that is shining, loud, sensational, and surprising. The real development of mankind lies in the growth of the volun- tary attention, which is not passively attracted, but THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE SOUL 49 which turns actively to that which is important and significant and valuable in itself. No one is born with such a power. It has to be trained and educated. Yes, perhaps the deepest meaning of education is to secure this mental energy which emancipates itself from hap- hazard stimulations of the world, and firmly holds that which conforms to our purpose and ideals. This great function of education is too much neglected." ^ Con- stant care and exercise should be given to this power, that it may be developed and disciplined into masterful self-control. Once the attention is given to an object a wonderful process sets in. The associations of the mind begin to gravitate to the central object in an increasing mass. All the knowledge and experiences and memories in the mind having any affinity with the central object gather around it, swelling and enriching its volume and mean- ing and power. This process goes on until the total contents of the mind may be organized around this one idea.^ At the same time these associated ideas kindle their appropriate emotions, and they add their fire to the central mass and turn it into a blazing heap. And thus the attention piles fuel on an idea and converts what at first may be a mere spark or pale cold image into the hot spot and burning focus of consciousness, which rages as a furnace in the soul and moves the will and masters the life. These associated ideas embrace all the operations of the mind, such as tracing the nature and activities, the causes and consequences of an object, and these are attended with their appropriate feelings. When this process has accumulated a sufficient volume and pres- ^ Prohkms of To-day, p. 17. 'See pp. 32-35. 50 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION sure of feeling, the will responds with the appropriate decision and action. The will is thus not a power external to the operations of the mind, which thrusts its arbitrary decision in upon them, but is inherent in the mind's constitution. The action of the will marks the point where thought and feeling have reached a sufficient degree of clearness and intensity to over- come any indifference and doubt and opposition and to effect choice and decision. At this point the feelings pour their stream upon the will and push it into action. Thus the will unconsciously works in involuntary at- tention and in all the operations of the mind, and in voluntary attention it consciously forms its choices and decisions. 2. Motives. — This brings us to the fact, familiar in our experience, that the will is not an arbitrary action of the mind, but a rational process, taking place under the play of motives. A motive is any influence tending to move the mind, and motives are of several kinds. (a) The first motives are the instincts. An instinct is that which instigates or " stings " us into action, as the word means. It is an inherited constitutional tendency to act in a certain way when the appropriate condition or stimulus is present. It is a reflex re- sponse, a latent impulse or coiled-up spring v>'aiting to be released. It is not the product of personal experi- ence, but is prior to such experience and is at first in- voluntary and unconscious in its action. Instincts are seen in beautiful purity and perfec- tion in an infant, which at once begins to perform many complex and even difficult acts with perfect precision, such as suckling the breast and clasping objects, and then in rapid succession it begins to grasp at objects and carry them to its mouth, to cry and smile, to laugh THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE SOUL 51 and play, to creep and stand, to walk and talk, and so on through childhood. Some instincts serve their tem- porary purpose and then fade away, and others arise as they are needed. The appetites of hunger and of sex are two of the most powerful human instincts and are among the main masters of the world. The animal world is full of instincts, many of them marvels and mysteries of adaptation and perfection. Most animal instincts are also found in man, with many more that are peculiar to himself. Professor James, in his Psy- chology,'^ devotes a chapter to their study, enumerating and describing many of them, such as fear, anger, imi- tation, sympathy, acquisitiveness, constructiveness, play, curiosity, sociability, secretiveness, cleanliness, modesty, love, and parental love. The important fact about instincts is that they ex- press and satisfy the fundamental needs of life by their automatic action. They urge us into action along the line of these needs before we are able to reason them out and consciously supply them. They are reflex ac- tions which do not pass through the higher centres of the brain but are short-circuited through the lower centres. The babe can do nothing as the result of rea- soning, and if it had to act on conscious motives it would quickly perish. Even the mother could not keep it alive if it did not have an outfit of instincts that do necessary things automatically. It is imperative that we should eat and sleep and work and play, and nature does not wait for us to find out those needs and discover and supi)ly the means of satisfying them, but it has put springs within us which are released at the touch of the proper stimuli and push us into action before we re- flect on the process. »Vol. II, Chapter XXIV. 52 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION It is important to observe, however, that instincts sooner or later emerge into the field of consciousness and reason, and then they often need enlightenment and control. They may fall out of adjustment by reason of changes in environment and advancing civilization, or become abnormal and perverted, or they may conflict with higher motives and need modification or inhibition or even suppression. In so far as they act as involun- tary and blind impulses they are no more rational and ethical activities than the digestion of the stomach and the beating of the heart and are not motives in the proper sense. But as they emerge into the light of rea- son and conscience they become rational and ethical and are true motives. There are not only instincts that relate to our bodily life, but also those that are intellectual and moral. The mind has as many instincts as the body, and the whole soul is full of them ; or rather all instincts have mental roots and relations. Curiosity is a universal and powerful intellectual instinct, sprouting prolifi- cally in every child and impelling savages to peer into caves and astronomers to explore the heavens. Re- ligion is one of the profoundest and most universal instincts in our human world, building its temples and altars under every sky. Instincts thus cover the whole field of our activities and remain through life as funda- mental springs and motives that push the will along the path of our primary needs. ( 6 ) Ideas of action are incipient motives. They tend to slip by and short-circuit the processes of deliberation and decision and, like reflex actions, to discharge them- selves immediately. The moment we think of an action we experience an inclination to do that thing. Thus when we look down from a height the idea of jumping THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE SOUL 53 down that suggests itself makes us feel like giving way to the impulse, and this feeling is so strong in some persons that they fear and avoid such places. Then why do not all our ideas pass directly into action? Because they are inhibited by other ideas that counter- act them. The idea that emerges in the centre of con- sciousness and tends to execute itself is surrounded with other ideas in the margin of the field, ideas of right or propriety or fear of consequences, and these act as checks to curb it. Were it not for these in- hibitory restraints every idea would immediately dis- charge itself, and this would destroy our deliberation and free will and responsibility. This is the condition of some insane minds. Thev rattle riorht off into in- stant action, as a locomotive runs wild and exhausts itself when it starts witli no engineer in its cab. The normal mind is under the restraint of many inhibitory ideas and these hold it in the balance until it can form its decision. Ideas become proper motives only when they are deliberative. (c) A third class of motives are our conscious de- sires and ends. A desire is a complex mental state con- sisting of an idea and a feeling, an idea of an end or object, and a feeling of an attitude towards it, such as craving for it or antipathy to it. Desires cover the whole field of life, embracing the infinite manifold of our cravings. They are forward-looking in their atti- tude, whereas instincts push us on from behind. They stand peering into the future to see what they can seize that will furl her their satisfaction. They move the workman to his toil, the mercliant to his trade, the gold seeker in his search, the statesman in his anibi tion, the prophet and preacher in the j)ursuit of their ideals, and the philosopher and poet in their divams of 54 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION truth and beauty. The two master desires are for the possession and enjoyment of good and for escape from evil, corresponding with the two primary feelings and forces of pleasure and pain. These motives differ endlessly in nature and effi- ciency. A motive is effective according as it perceives reality correctly and clearly, seizes on ends that are realizable and adopts means that are suitable and ef- ficient for them ; and it is further effective as this idea or intellectual element is fired with intense feeling that gives it force to cut its way through opposition to at- tainment. The motive and the will at this point are fused into one activity and a powerful motive and a masterly will are one and the same thing. Men differ in their will power, then, according to their ability to perceive practicable ends clearly and to energize the ideas of these ends with vivid and unconquerable feelings of purpose and determination. These motives are subject to growth. They may ap- pear in the mind as mere sparks of light or germs of per- ception and craving, but as the mind dwells upon them association begins to deepen and enrich and intensify them and thus they grow into a hot spot and glowing focus that fills the whole soul with light and heat and drives the will into action. The way to control our wills is to choose our ends and multiply their associa- tions and thereby intensify their feelings until they tip the scale of the mind into decision. When motives con- flict, as they often do, throwing the field of conscious- ness into a state of unstable equilibrium, doubt, and perplexity, or turning it into a battle-ground of terrific strife and suffering, we have it in our power to decide the contest by choosing one side or motive and then intensifying it until it overpowers its opponents and THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE SOUL 55 wins the victory. This choice is not an arbitrary de- cision, a pitching by sheer force on one motive rather than another, but is a process and act of delibera- tion and consideration, weighing facts and principles, causes and consequences, ideas and ideals, deeds and duties, and thus coming to a conclusion that carries with it the will. 3. The Freedom of the Will. — This brings us to the age-long controversy over the freedom of the will. The question is to be settled by personal intuitional and ethical experience rather than by psychological analysis and demonstration. We are immediately aware in our consciousness of the freedom or power to control our- selves in our decisions and actions, and no argument can shake this conviction. It is the primary assump- tion of all our thinking and reasoning so that, without this power, our very argument over it would be vain and self-contradictory. The very fact that we discuss the question assumes the freedom we discuss. And our awareness or intuition of such freedom is stronger than any argument we can construct against it. Though we disproved all the arguments for it and proved all the arguments against it, yet we would believe in it still: for the principle of freedom is prior to the process of reasoning and gives to that process all its validity. Trying to persuade us that we are not rationally and morally free is like the attempt of the Jews to con- vince the man whose sight had been restored that he was still blind. '' One thing I know, tliat, whereas I was blind, now T see." With the sun blazing in liis eyes no argument, however specious and strong, could touch his experience. So in answer to all the argu- ments of determinism we declare, ()n<' thing we know: we control our own decisions and actions. 56 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION This insight and assurance of our intuition as to our freedom is confirmed by the fact that the denial of freedom and the doctrine of determinism uproots all responsibility and character, destroys not only ethics and religion, but psychology itself, and reduces all human character and conduct and history to physics and chemistry. The whole value and beauty and glory of our human world are swept away and only a system of mechanical cogwheels or a furnace and cinder-pile remains. " The purely dynamic theory of the world views it as a fire, burning to an ash-heap, in which spirit is only a fine flame; as a machine, running do^wTi never to go again, in which consciousness is only a cog. This view makes short work, not only with theology, but also with ethics, psychology, and history, by reducing them to physics, and raises over the entire universe the dread spectre of fatalism and final extinction. A sure escape from this fire and ash-heap is the view that sees the world as a spiritual system in which energy is will, substance is soul, ultimate reality is personality, and God is all in al]."^ So contradictorv is the doctrine of determinism to our self-consciousness and so destructive of all human character and worth and hopes that Kant postulated the freedom of the soul, along with God and immor- tality, as one of the necessities of our practical belief, necessary for the very living of our life. The freedom of the soul calls for definition and de- scription rather than for demonstration. It does not mean an unlimited and absolute freedom. It does not escape from the natural laws of the world. By no * The JVorld a Spiritual System: an Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 290. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE SOUL 57 known possibility can we in this world slit the en- velope of time and space and slip out of it. Gravita- tion cannot be coaxed or forced to relax its grip upon us. Astronomy and physics and chemistry are inex- orable. All these laws bind us, and intellectual and ethical laws are not less imperious. This limitation, however, is no real bondage to our liberty, but is rather its safety and enlargement. The steel rails do not really hinder the liberty of the locomotive: on the con- trary they give it all the liberty it has. It has freedom to move with speed and safety as long as it adheres to the rails; when it jumps the track it lands in the ditch and its liberty is gone. The laws of life are the neces- sary tracks on which we can move with safety and speed, and when we leave these tracks we lose our liberty. Law and lil)erty are not mutually exclusive and antagonistic, but are mutually complementary and harmonious; they do not hinder, but they help each other. Liberty is not license. The highest and fullest liberty is obedience to law. One far-reaching limitation on our freedom is found in birth and heredity. Our century and civilization, race, language and name, and largely our physical, mental, and moral constitution, whether born as an average normal mind, or as a genius, or as an idiot, whether in a pure home, or in a den of vice, whether to be brought up in darkest Africa or in splendid America, whether as pagan or Christian, — all these and count- less other things are foreordained for us by the point of our birth ; and yet we have no more to do with deter- mining this i)oint tlian we have with fixing the position of a star in tlie sky. I low great is the sovereignty of heredity over onr souls. We are also limited in various degrees by many of 58 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION the practical conditions of life. As a rule it is not easy and sometimes not possible for us to change the place of our residence, our home, occupation, and the general network of our environment. Often these things are woven about us like a mesh of steel wires. Yet after all these and other limitations have been allowed, there remains one field where we are free: our consciousness, especially in our motives and de- cisions. Within this narrow but vivid and vital area we can cast the deciding vote, fix the centre of our circle, plant the seed of our harvest; and in casting the vote we carry the election, in fixing the centre we sweep the whole circumference of life, in planting the seed we determine our harvest of deeds and character and destiny. Within this narrow area of conscious- ness lies all the libertv we have. Our wills can never go outside of consciousness to do anything in the ex- ternal world. All we can do in the way of controlling ourselves is to make our choice among competing ends and motives and then multiply its associations and thereby deepen our convictions and intensify our feel- ings until action results. We control and touch the trigger in consciousness that releases links of causation and currents of energy that leap out into the world and effect our near or far-off purposes, possibly piercing mountains and ultimately impinging on the frontiers of the universe. Our freedom, then, is no unimportant and trivial thing because of its limitations, but is de- cisive of all important things and has tremendous significance and force in our character and conduct. The pivot of a pair of scales is limited to an edge as thin as a knife-blade, but it balances the lever that decides which weight is the heavier. The human ■s\dll is only a knife-blade pivot, but on it trembles the THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE SOUL 59 power that determines the weight of motives and de- cides destiny. We have already had a glimpse into the mechanism by which we exercise our liberty. Motives are not some- thing thrust upon us from without. They grow up within and are our own children. The opposite of free- dom is force imposed upon us from the outside : no such force does or can restrain and bind our thoughts and choices. Our motives are not only born of our own nature, but they are subject to our deliberation and selection. They compete for our approval, but they do not compel it. We consider and weigh and evaluate them and choose according to our o\sti standards. We are immediately aware of this power and act of choice ; and this is a final fact in our mental and moral con- stitution. And further, motives are not ready-made and fixed weights that are dropped upon our wills and determine them like weights upon a pair of scales. We not only choose, but we make our motives and determine their w^eight. It is in our power, as we have seen, to inten- sify or diminish motives by increasing or decreasing their associations so that they grow into overmaster- ing heat and power, or cool and wither into paleness and impotency. We can feed a motive into fatness and lusty strength, or we can starve and strangle it to deatli; and in this power lies the very core and centi-e of our freedom and responsibility. The motives of the soul are the soul itself in delilx^ration, and its freedom is its self-activity. We are always free to choose and act according to our own nature, and this is the only real freedom. It is true that our motives are shaped and coloured by our acquired nature or character, but this character 60 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION is the product of all our past volitions and is so much deposited and crystallized will for which we are respon- sible. Our freedom is thus deeply rooted in our past, yet this limitation does not destroy our liberty, ' but only enables us to conserve and capitalize our past volitions. It is not supposed that this psychological description of the working of our free will clears up all the diffi- culties and mysteries connected -with it. It is still environed in difficulties and its very heart is a mys- tery which we may never unlock. Yet difficulties do not destroy facts, or hinder practical aetion, and our free- dom stands in the midst of its mysteries as one of the most certain facts of our experience. The will is thus the captain of the soul and the crown of its sov- ereignty, pregnant with victory and glory or defeat and shame. It builds man's world, tossing mountains out of its path and creating a vast splendid civilization, carves character and determines destiny, and every man, however humble and bound in by circumstance, is, not a wind-blown bubble on the sea or atom in the storm of the world, But this main miracle, that thou art thou. With power on thine own act and on the world. — Tennyson. The three fundamental faculties of the soul, we have now seen, are intellect, sensibility, and will. This is their logical order of action, though they are inter- blended and simultaneous in their activities, one of them usually being dominant at a time in conscious- ness. The human soul is thus a three-cycle engine. Intellect acts first and produces thought; thought kindles feeling; and feeling moves the will. The action THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE SOUL 61 of the will normally results aud rests in a state of satisfaction, which is the end of the particular move- ment. But this state or end at once suggests or stirs another movement of the intellect, and then the process begins all over again; and thus the mind keeps turn- ing through its cycle and runs its endless round. The ob.^ervance of this order is of the first importance in practical psychology and especially in the psychology of religion, and we shall have frequent occasion to refer to it. II. Some General Characteristics of the Soul There are some general characteristics of the soul that should be noted as they have an important bear- ing on our subject. I. Habit. — A habit is an acquired fixed way of act- ing. Anything acting in a certain way once tends to act in the same way again. A piece of paper folded on a line forms a crease along which it folds more easily a second time; and all material substances are sub- ject to this law. A new machine runs more smoothly after it has been in use for a time, for all its parts are adjusted to the action. A new suit of clothes grows to fit the figure and follows all its movements and thus becomes comfortable. Organic l)eings are more pli- able than inorganic substances and quickly fall into grooves of action. The human body is highly plastic and subject to habits. Muscles and nerves, having acted in one way once, tend to repeat the action, which in time grows automatic. It is thus we learn to walk, speak, attend to our work and carry on all the com- ph'X routine aflairs of life. Tlie skill of the performer, such as the i»ianist, is a remarkable example of com- plex habits that are wrought into the very texture of 62 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION the nerves and muscles so that they come to act uncon- sciously. These bodily habits have their origin in the soul, which is an organism highly plastic to the formation and retention of habits. The association of ideas, hav- ing linked two or more ideas together once, tends to keep them together so that the recurrence of one is apt to suggest, or to excite the neural connections of, the others, and thus they appear together habitually. Memory is a matter of habit. The oftener we revive a memory the more firmly it is fixed in the mind and the more readily it responds to our call. Judgments tend to repeat themselves and grow into fixed opinions or beliefs or prejudices. Emotions form habits. When we feel a certain way once the same feeling on a similar excitation again stirs or floods the soul, and thus emo- tional habits are formed. The will wears itself into grooves of action along w^hich it slips in unconscious smoothness and ease. Moral and spiritual experiences are repeated and thus character grows. Under this law of habit the whole body and soul are ploughed and grooved into a system of habits by the automatic action of which we live. By far the greater part of all our activities, language, learning, conduct and character, work and w^orship, becomes cast and cooled in the mould of habit. This fact is of tremendous importance in life. It re- sults in the skill and often the marvellous perfection with which we do our work. The pianist strikes the instrument with rapidity the eye cannot follow and yet no finarer misses a kev. At first these movements are made with awkward and painful effort, and the per- fection is the result of the long-continued practice by which the nerves and muscles are trained into auto- THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE SOUt 63 matic action. At the same time habits take over these acquired activities and release the attention and all the faculties of the mind and organs of the body to do other work. We thus walk without paying any atten- tion to our steps. If we had to think about every step and calculate the problem of maintaining our balance we could not do anything else; but we hand the whole matter of walking over to habit and give our mind and eyes to other things. This is an enormous economy of our time and attention and enables us to do many things at once, while we give our conscious attention and effort to the novel situations and complex prob- lems constantly arising which habit cannot solve. Habit thus enables us to capitalize our past actions and acquired skill in an invested fund of autonomy that carries on the general work of life. Habit keeps the world turning on its accustomed axis and is " the enormous flywheel of society, its most precious con- servative agent." This fact of course is fraught with the greatest good and evil. Good habits are steel tracks on which we drive our life with speed and safety, or they are grooves in which life slips in unconscious smoothness. They are the means of our liberty, giving to life its freest movement and its fullest joy. On the other hand, evil habits bind us in slavery. They lead us into lines of action which, however pleasant at first, at last become our bondage and bitterness from which we cannot escayx} with strong crying and tears. The moral and spiritual imjmrtance of habits is thus coulirmcd by and is grounded in their psychology. 2. Character. — Character is the system of habits we have formed; or, as John Stuart Mill expressed it, "a character is a completely fashioneil will." Its original 64. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION elements are the raw materials of the inherited con- stitution, and these are creative and decisive in deter- mining the general limitation and tone of character. Bodily constitution, emotional temperament, vigour of mind and energy of will are largely dependent on this native endowment, and one cannot escape this limita- tion any more than he can escape from the grasp of gravitation. Nevertheless, character is the form into which these elements are slowly moulded, and this proc- ess is subject to our choice and action. Every thought and emotion, choice and deed, deposits an atom of habit in the soul; bends and disposes the soul to act in that way again, and thus slowly shapes and hardens it into a system of habits that is its character and life. This law is expressed in the familiar saying: Sow a thought and reap a deed ; sow a deed and reap a habit ; sow a habit and reap a character; sow a character and reap a destiny. The character, being thus once formed, is the seed- plot of the soul out of which its thoughts and actions sprout. It is the focal reflector that gathers into itself all the aflSnities and associations of the soul and con- centrates them on its motives and ends, causing them to blaze up into vividness and to glow with heat and power. As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. An American is an American in all his political and national ideals, and a Jew is a Jew down to the last fibre of his being. A workingman sees all things in the light of his class interest, and a professional man thinks in the terms of his profession. Every one's vision and view^s are coloured by his interests and prejudices and passions, or according to his party and religion. Knowing the character of a man we can pre- dict what he will believe and do, and having his char- THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE SOUL 65 acter we have the key by which we can unlock his mind and move his will. This looks as though character constricts the freedom of the soul and finally destroys it. It does strongly commit the soul to action in accordance with its own nature. But character is itself the product of free will and is the crystallized deposit of all the volitions of the past of the soul. The soul stores up its own free action and thus gains permanence and accumulated power for its freedom. Even its evil choices were free, however they at last bind it. The soul is ever repeat- ing and perpetuating the choices of the past and is thus eating of the fruit of its own doings. This adds im- mensely to the responsibility and solemnity of our choices: they are the seeds of future character and destiny. Therefore psychology says, with Goethe : " Choose well ; your choice is brief, but endless." But some freedom remains to change even the most rigid character. It is not cast in an iron mould which cannot be modified in shape or be broken up and recast. It is true that ordinarilv character cannot be sud- denly and completely changed by a sheer act of will, though sometimes there may be poured into it a fiery thought or molten emotion that will melt it, a powerful affection that will expel every contrary thought and feeling. But ordinarily character can be slowly modi- fied and may in time be radically reconstructed. Tliis leaves open the road of hope to reform and conversion. 3. Individuality. — Every soul has its own nature and acijuired character. As no two leaves are cut after the same pattern, or petals djed with the same hue, and as one star differeth from another star in glory, so much more are no two snch complex and plastic organisms as human souls alike in mould and mood, 66 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION disposition and temperament. Heredity is infinitely complex, running its roots back through thousands of generations, and each of countless ancestors has poured a tiny stream of blood drops into every one's veins. Environment and training and all the myriad influ- ences that mould the individual are never the same in any two persons and endlessly vary. As a result we have all the types and individualities of nature and character that make up our human world. This fact has important psychological applications, especially in education and religion. In the school, ten scholars in a class may be taught to spell ten words and they may all spell them alike and correctly, and then the teacher may think that he has standardized his work and put these ten children through the same process. But what a different world of meaning each of these ten w^ords suggests to each of these ten scholars? A word may be a meaningless sign to one scholar, and to another it may call up a cluster of asso- ciations that are good and noble, rich and inspiring, and to still another associations that are painful or evil and degrading. Each mind of the ten swarms with its own suggestions as it spells each word, and this content of meaning is the thing that counts rather than the form of the spelling. The same story may be told to the class, but it divides into as many streams of suggestion and becomes as many stories as there are children listening. The telling may seem to effect the same result in all, but any such view sees no deeper than the faces of the children, and not as deep as that, for their very faces will show the discerning teacher that they are hearing or reconstructing different tales. Children differ endlessly in the very structure of their minds and senses. Some see things vividly, THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE SOUL 67 others hear them, and others may derive their chief impressions from sensations of touch. These children live in different worlds and need different training. The visualist may seem dumb when the auditory sense is addressed, and conversely. Children are often thought to be slow or unintelligent, when the difficulty is in the ability of the teacher to perceive their mental type and adapt the teaching to their needs. These dif- ferences in individuality, thus illustrated in children, are multiplied and magnified in adults, in whom in- herited natures and acquired characters are thus brought out into sharper relief. These varying types of individuality in life should be respected. Every one has an inalienable right to his own individuality, in so far as it is normal and not in need of correction from abnormality and perversion. We are strongly disposed to forget this fundamental right in connection with the character and specially the social customs and political and religious beliefs and practices of others. We unconsciously, or it may be consciously, regard ourselves as normal moulds and authoritative models and think that others, in so far as they differ from us, are in danger of the judgment, at least of our censure and pity. But this is running counter to the whole constitution of the world. When we think that others ought to be like us we forget that one of our kind is enough. Any suppression of diver- sity and constriction of i)eople to one mould in life would be an enormous impoverishment of the world, obliterating its variety and pictures(iueness and reduc- ing it to a dead level of monotony and gi-eatly impair- ing Its efficiency. We must leave room in our views of life for all the infinite individuality with which our human world is stamped. Such variety is the beauty 68 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION and glory of our life. '' To give room for wandering is it that the world is made so wide." 4. The Subconsciousness. — The subconsciousness is that part of our mental life that lies below the threshold of consciousness. Our consciousness is subject to great fluctuations in its volume and level. It rises in time of excitement to surging heights and fills and over- flows all the banks of the soul, and at other times it sinks to lower levels of quietness and dulness and drowsiness and at length falls below the level of con- sciousness in sleep. But that all mental activity does not cease in sleep is obvious from our dreams. All kinds of mental processes go on at the lower level of subconsciousness. Problems that remain unsolved when we go to sleep sometimes appear to be worked out to their conclusion when we awake. These activities in the subconsciousness are so dim and memory of them is so frail and evanescent that we have no self-con- sciousness of them at the time and no memory of them afterward. The whole life of the soul above this threshold sinks down into and is preserved in the subconsciousness. Memory has its storehouse in this deep. All our mental associations and habits are packed away in its pigeon- holes or receptacles and emerge at call from these hid- den chambers. There is reason to think that this sub- conscious life of the soul is large compared with its conscious life. As seven-eighths of an iceberg is under the surface of the sea, so the greater part of our life is submerged in these depths. The towering skyscraper has five or six stories under the ground in which is located the machinery that lights and heats and runs the whole building; so in this underground world of the soul is located the machinery that operates all our THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE SOUL 69 conscious activities. This is the night life of the soul, full of shadows and ghosts and stars. The subconsciousness plays a part of immense impor- tance in our life. It is the storehouse into which our conscious activities are packed away so that nothing is ever lost out of our life. Up out of this huge cellar come swarming through its trapdoors and back stair- ways of memory and association the shadows of the past to reenforce the present. Suggestion has the power of tapping this hidden reservoir and letting it gu3h up in jets of thought and feeling. The most pene- trating approach to and powerful control over a man are often effected through an indirect appeal to his subconsciousness, w^hich touches him below the level of his conscious prejudices and opposition and wins and masters him before he knows it. Everything that we put into our life will sooner 'or later come out of our life. Long years afterward on the most unexpected oc- casion and in the most startling ways, " old, unhappy, far-off things, and battles long ago " will come up out of this dark chamber to strengthen and comfort us, or, like ghosts out of their graves, to trouble us. The admonition of psychology at this point is : " Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life.'^ All buried life still holds a vital spark. The memory's mystic touch unbinds its deep Oblivion and starts it fortii, gay with Its ancient revelries, or trngic with The blood and tears of old forgotten crimes. Our brains are living tond)s in which arc sealed The thoughts and deeds of gf'nerations gone; And these heredities still live in us In many a masterful or infirm trait. Our past is buried there; and though it seems 70 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION To sleep it will awake and plague us with Fell retribution's gnawing tooth, or bless Us with its resurrected strength and peace. 5. Growth. — The soul is a product of growth. It does not leap into being full-forraed, but begins as a germ and slowly passes through many stages into maturity. Any growing thing is a world of wonder. A seed may be microscopic in size and seem so in significance, yet that minute speck is a vast world or cosmos of order and plan and purpose in which mysterious physical, chemical, and vital elements and energies are packed in dormant latency. With the first breath of spring or other quickening influence their slumbering powers awake and the seed becomes a marvellous workshop or loom in which invisible fingers are throwing infinitesi- mal shuttles that carrv vital threads of life and weave its v^^onderful web according to its preordained pattern. Embryologists peer through their microscopes into this world and describe processes so intricate and exquisite and inscrutable as to excite our utmost astonishment > and make us dumbly feel how great is the marvel and mystery of life. Once started the process of growth goes on inces- santly. The tiny seed becomes the child of the uni- verse. The earth cradles it, the soil and showers nurse it, the sun smiles upon it, and every star lends it a friendly ray. It throws out rootlets and filaments that lay hold of the globe and the whole heavens. Atom by atom it grows, gathering raw materials and transform- ing them by its subtle chemistry into sap and spinning them into tissue and weaving them into leaf and blos- som and distilling and crystallizing them into golden wheat or rosy apple. And thus the minute seed be- THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE SOUL 71 comes the rosebush or fruit-laden tree, a stately palm or a giant redwood that stands three hundred feet tall and was old when Caesar was born and has defied the storms of thirty centuries. Or in the germ the life principle begins to sketch an animal, with a few swift strokes outlining spinal column and limbs, heart and brain, and in due time the same process of growth pro- duces an insect or bird, or a man, even a Plato or a Shakespeare. The human soul also starts as a seed or germ en- dowed with the same absorbent and expansive nature. It begins as a bundle of latencies, dormant faculties that lie folded up and submerged deep in the uncon- scious or subconscious state. Gradually they are stirred into activity by quickening influences and find their appropriate sustenance. At first the soul is an undifferentiated mass of dim feeling and only slowly does it unfold into distinct faculties of thought and sensibility and will. In its early stages of development it is wholly absorbed in its senses, drawn objectively into the outer world, and later it begins to be aware of the inner world of itself. Sight grows into insight, and consciousness into self-consciousness and con- science. It develops perception, concepts, judgment, reasoning, memory and imagination, forms habits, sees ideals and builds them into realities, makes choices, carves character and determines destiny, follows the gleam of visions and turns them into victories. And thus the babe becomes the child and man, the scholar and philosopher, the saint or the lost soul. This process of growth lias roots running back through the developmont and origin of (he race and on backward through the f)rocess of evolulion into th(» Thr dol'lcn Hough, Third Edition, Vol. I, p. 222. 8 First Principles, p. 24. 88 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION for the incommensurable things," Edward Caird's " a man's religion is the expression of his attitude to the universe," J. R. Seeley's " permanent and habitual admiration," and Matthew Arnold's " morality touched with emotion." Schleiermacher found the essential element of re- ligion to consist in a feeling of dependence, " the imme- diate consciousness of the universal existence of all finite things in and through the Infinite, and of all temporal things in and through the Eternal." Professor William James, as the result of his wide collation of " the varieties of religious experience," con- cludes that " there is a certain uniform deliverance in which religions all appear to meet. It consists of two parts: 1. An uneasiness; and 2. Its solution. 1. The uneasiness reduced to its simplest terms is a sense that there is something tvrotig about its as we naturally stand. 2. The solution is a sense that we are saved from the wrongness by making proper connection with the higher powers." ^ E. S. Waterhouse sums up his study of religion in the conclusion that, " stated in the most general man- ner, it would seem to be the belief in a higher order of things into due relation with which man must enter in order properly to adjust his life." ^ One more definition may be added, that of Dr. Martineau: Religion is ^' belief in an Ever-living God, that is, a Divine Mind and Will ruling the Universe and holding Moral relations with mankind." ^ These statements, which might be indefinitely multi- plied, all lead to the general definition that religion is ^ Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 508; also pp. 485-486. * Modern Theories of Religion, p. 5. •J. Study of Religion, Vol. I, p. 1. PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MORAL NATURE 89 conscious relation to God. The God worshipped may be the evil demons of the savage, the many gods of the polytheist, the one God of the Hebrew and the Mo- hammedan, or the trinitarian God of Christianity. The relation is also pervaded with some degree of con- sciousness, for all men '' live and move and have their being" in God irrespective of whether they have any religion or not. This conscious idea of some relation to a higher power or deity is the root of ail religious doctrines and practices. 3. Religion Rooted in Every Part of Our Nature. — There is some element of truth in all of these theories from the lowest to the highest, and taken together they show that religion is deeply rooted in every part of our nature. (a) It is first rooted in our intuitions and instincts, it is a constitutional and practical need of life. It appeared from the beginning universally in the world, no nation or tribe having been found that did not mani- fest it in some form; and it did not appear as a con- scious creation or product of thought, but as an instinctive and necessary activity of the human soul. Men did not study theology and then become religious, but they lived religiously and then they studied theol- ogy. Man had a religious nature which immediately impelled him to live a religious life, just as he had a physical and a social nature which impelled him to live a physical and social life. As men lived in the sun- light ages before they studied astronomy and cultivated the soil long before they studied chemistry, so they worshipped God before they so much as thought about theology. The religious nature is just as constitutional and ineradicable in man as tlie mental or physical, and therefore he is necessarily and incurably religious. 90 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION It was out of human experience that belief in God arose. Men did not first construct arguments for the existence of God and then believe in him, but they first believed in him and then invented arguments to confirm this belief. God is an immediate practical necessity for man as certainly as bread, and men instinctively began to worship him. If they had not found a God waiting and seeking to meet and satisfy their spiritual needs, they would have been forced to invent one. Our belief in God is immensely older and stronger than all the reasons we can give for it. Reason did not create this belief and reason cannot destroy it. It thrives amidst opposition. And as our belief in God thus grew up out of human experience, so did all the other elements of religious life. Faith and obedience, prayer and praise, service and sacrifice, were at first necessary expressions of human needs, the instinctive and universal aspiration of the human soul. God set eternity in the heart of man, and eternity has come out of it. Every doctrine of theology, trinity and decrees, sin and atonement, mercy and love, justice and judgment, found some affin- ity and analogue in human experience. These doc- trines were never foreign and alien importations imposed on the human mind, but, though divinely implanted, grew up out of the human heart as their native soil. The Bible itself is the grand illustration and proof of this principle. It was all lived before it was written and formulated in commandments and creeds. The principles contained in the Ten Commandments were not originated by or first revealed to Moses. Laws against murder and adultery and theft had been in the world from the earliest times, and ages of human expe- PSYCHOLOGY OP THE MORAL NATURE 91 rience had confirmed them as necessary conditions of life.^ The metal of these commandments had been in use in a crude state as a means of social barter : Moses under divine inspiration minted them into current coin and put them into general and permanent circulation. The sharp die and authoritative form are his, but their substance is the raw material of universal human ex- perience. The same fact is true of the Sermon on the Mount. The substance of its teaching and many of its sayings are found scattered through Jewish literature - and can be matched even from heathen sources. This fact does not in the least detract from the divine authority of Jesus, any more than does the fact that he used human language in his preaching; rather it confirms his truth and wisdom as it shows that he made the universal experience of men the basis and substance of his ethical teaching. But he also took crude human ore and minted it into current coin and stamped it with the * Detailed evidence of this obvious fact will be found in Bad&'s The Old Testament in the Light of To-dcuy^ Chapter IV. He says: " The wrong of murder, theft, false witness, and adultery re- quired no special revelation . . . and attended the earliest mani- festations of the moral instinct even in the man of the stone ^&i" (PP- 88-89). Paul asserts the same fact in Romans 2: 14-15: " For when Gentiles that have not the law do by nature the things of the law, these, not having the law, are the law unto themselves; in that they show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness therewith, and their thoughts one with another accusinfif or else excusing them." 'Abundant proof and illustration of this will be found in Eder- shcim's Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, Vol. I, pp. 524-541, In comparing sayings in the Talmud with the Lord's Prayer ho Bays that " it may be freely admitted that tho form, and some- times even the spirit, approachod closi-ly the words of the Lord " (p. 53G). See also Guikie's Life and Words of Christ, Vol. II, p. 54. 92 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION image and superscription of his supreme authority and thus put it into the universal circulation of the world.^ He gathered scattered human rays into the focus of his divine personality and shot them forth as a vivid blaze of light across all succeeding centuries. These rays had slight power and attracted little attention as they shone dimly in other teachers, but concentrated in his divine Person they made him the Light of the world. Divine revelation never reaches its goal and becomes complete until it passes into human experience. The Bible is a great body of such experience. It is not an artificial product or dessicated mummy, but it has red blood in every artery and vein, and palpitates with life in every nerve. It w^as all first lived before it was written, and thus illustrates and confirms the principle that religion grows out of life as fruit out of its seed. This view, it need not be said, does not in any degree deny or disparage or impair the divine element in the Bible as an inspired revelation. God was behind and in the whole process of redemption and revelation, so that holy men spoke and wrote as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. But God had to speak to men out of their own needs and in their own language and lead them along the familiar path of their own experience to loftier visions and victories. And so he accommodated himself to human ideas and words, customs and institu- tions, and at every point used human experience as a ^ Farrar, in his Life of Christ, Vol. I, p. 265, in speaking of " tlie Rabbinic parallels " to the Sermon on the Mount, quotes the following stanza from " In Memoriam " : Though truths in manhood darkly join. Deep-seated in our mystic frame. We yield all honour to the name Of Him who made them current coin. PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MORAL NATURE 93 stepping-stone on which to lure and lift men to higher things, or as the necessary prepared soil out of which to grow divine harvests. In its origin and development religion is both human and divine, and neither element should be narrowed or impaired at the expense of the other. The creeds of Christendom and all progress in theol- ogy have sprung out of the same soil of experience. Even those ancient and medieval doctrines and meta- physical distinctions that now seem to us so specula- tive and unrelated to practical life, if not false and abhorrent to our Christian sensibilities, over which ecclesiastics fought and even convulsed the Church and the world in blood, even those forms of faith closely fit the felt need of their times and were then living reali- ties. And the same is true of theological creeds and changes to-day: they keep pace with and express the growing facts of experience. Whenever the Church de- velops a new religious experience, it soon clothes it in a new credal expression. All this is tremendous proof that religion is, not a priestly invention or superstition or dream, but a reality rooted in the very constitution of man and ex- pressed in the universal experience of the world. The priest and the Church did not make it, but it made the priest and the Church. The Bible did not create it, but it created the Bible. God set eternity in man's heart, and out of this original constitution religion has sprung as a normal and necessary outgrowth. Man simply cannot live a worthy life without religion, and therefore he will and must have it. Ilis heart cries out, with Augustine: '' O God, thou hast made us for thy- self and we cannot rest until we rest in thee." (h) Religion being rooted in the whole constitution 94 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION of the soul thereby has roots in every one of its funda- mental faculties. It is rooted in the feelings. The feelings are the deep- est if not the oldest constituent of the soul. As life descends the scale feeling persists long after intelli- gence has faded out, and the heart appeared in the evo- lution of life long before the brain. Some psychologists try to resolve intelligence into feeling and make feeling the primal constituent of the soul that afterwards de- veloped intelligence. In their view intelligence is an- ticipated or forefelt feeling. However this may be, feeling appears in the infant before intelligence and remains through life as the deepest root of the soul. Religion ramifies the feelings in six forms: fear, won- der, dependence, value, obligation, and beauty. Fear is a constitutional emotion which is one of the safeguards of life. It is a danger signal that causes us to shrink from and avoid objects and courses of conduct that threaten us with harm. It runs up through the whole scale of life. It is dominant at the bottom of this scale, but it does not fade out at the top. While many of the lower fears are overcome or out- grown, yet higher fears are developed. Fear leads to religion when it takes the form of dread in the presence of the higher powers that govern the world, and in the highest religion it becomes the fear of the Lord. Any God that is worthy of our re- spect must have such a nature and such laws of char- acter and judgment as would excite our fear when we transgress his will. There is a base fear that grovels before mere power as of a tyrant, the fear of demons that is almost the whole of many primitive forms of religion. But however enlightened souls may lose such fear, they rise into the nobler fear of God which is the PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MORAL NATLTFIE 95 beginning of wisdom. It is not a deep and strong but a shallow and irreverent soul that has no fear of God. The agnostic poet may boast that ^' the menace of the years finds and shall find me unafraid," ^ but this con- fidence must depend on one's conscience and the course of his life. If the universe means intensely and means good and is to keep our respect it must ever utter the solemn warning, " Woe to the wicked ! it shall be ill with him." Only fools mock at sin and lose all sense of fear. Fear is not a high motive, but it is a true motive that urges us into religion. There is a large truth in Herbert Spencer's theory that wonder is the persistent root of religion. The sense of mystery we experience in the presence of the universe irresistibly hushes and awes the soul with a deep emotion of reverence. We are profoundly im- pressed and moved with a feeling of the transcendent greatness and awfulness of the Power that produces all these glittering constellations as the sparkling dew of its breath ; and this feeling never can be explained away or outgrown, as all our growth in knowledge only makes the mystery deeper and vaster. Such wonder is akin to worship and will ever be one strand that draws and binds us to God. A still larger element of truth is embodied in Schleiermacher's theory that religion is our sense of dependence. The babe is one of the most beautiful instances of deix^ndcnce in the world. It is nourished and cared for by the mother and would (piickly perish if cut off from such care. Almost its first act is to cling to anything that comes in its way. We never out- grow such dei)endence, but it literally grows with our growth. Life ever increases in complexity by which we » W. E. Ucnley in " Invictua." 96 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION are brought into dependence upon a wider environment and upon a greater number of human beings until our wants are supplied by millions of toilers in all lands, farmers, manufacturers, inventors, explorers, scientists, thinkers, artists, poe^s, workers in every field from the lowest to the highest. We also discover that we are dependent on nature, the soil and shower and sun and all the stars. We are bound by delicate cords to every atom of the universe and are dependent upon it at an infinite number of points. This sense of dependence, whether in its lowest and feeblest development or in its highest enlightenment and widest consciousness, ir- resistibly leads to an ultimate point of dependence, a Power that is itself independent of all change, a Rock that is higher than we, an infinite and eternal God. We cannot rest in our dependence until we feel ourselves cradled in an everlasting Arm in final sectlrity and peace. The sense of childhood is something deep and permanerit and powerful in the human heart, and it cries out as an infant crying in the night and cannot be hushed or satisfied until it finds a Father. Its great cry through all the ages is, '" Show us the Father and it sufficeth us." Our sense of value is incomplete and unsatisfied until we find a final standard and perfect embodiment of worth. We have seen that we have a scale of values ascending from lower to higher worths. Such a scale must have some absolute standard and supreme worth from which it is suspended and derives its whole value. Without this final point of suspension and ultimate standard the whole scale has no real support and value and falls to the ground. Finite and temporal worth loses its chief value if there is no absolute and eternal worth of which it is a tiny copy and on which it de- PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MORAL NATURE 97 pends for its permanent worth and sanction. And so our sense of worth logically and irresistibly runs up into our sense of worship. The two things are so closely related that, as we have seen, the names are only slightly different spellings of the same word. Our worship is our sense of the worthship of God, and any sense of worth in the world is a stepping-stone up to the high altar of the supreme worthship or worship of God. Our sense of the obligation of worth and right is another direct stepping-stone to the same altar. The feeling that we ought to obey the right means that we owe this obedience, and duty is that which is due. The implications of such words and relations can be ex- plained /)Rly in personal terms. We cannot owe any- thing to a blind kiv/ and power, but only to a Law- giver and Person. There is a person at one end of this ethical relation and duty, and there must equally be a Person at the other end, or this powerful chain that binds us is suspended on nothing, as though the gravita- tion that holds the earth in its orbit were at the other end left hanging unsupported and loose in space, in- stead of being rooted in the sun. Conscience is a power- ful witness to a supreme Lawgiver ar.d Lonl and cries out v.ith all its might that *' we ought to obey God rather than men." Our sense of l)eauty or esthetic nature is another path by which our feeling finds God. The sense of beauty within us is matched and waked into iinisic by the l>cauty without us that tunes the million-stringed harp of nature, or that carves and j)aints the world and drenches it with beauty down to its very atoms. The eye sees and the heart feels only what corre- Bponds with the nature of the soul, and therefore our 98 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION esthetic nature finds in the world an artistic essence and nature which can be the product only of an infinite Artist. Without this ultimate source, our esthetic sensibilities are an illusion without any adequate cause and satisfaction. Thus our feelings in their various forms feel after God if haply they may find him ; and they do find that he is " not far from any one of us.'' As long as feeling endures as a constituent element of the human soul religion will endure and men will worship. (c) Religion is also rooted in the intellect. There has been some reaction and even revolt in recent years against the intellect as a means of finding truth and of human guidance. Pragmatism, which puts all its eggs in the basket of practical experience, discounts and disparages the human brain as an organ of knowl- edge and would have us rather trust the heart. No doubt there has been some ground for this distrust of reason as a reaction against the extreme philosophical intellectualism of other days, by which every thinker spun the universe out of his own head. Pragmatism has rendered good service in emphasizing anew certain old philosophical principles, such as the place and im- portance of experience, of the feelings and will, and of value judgments, in our cognitive processes and prac- tical living, but it carries its reaction against the in- tellect too far, almost to the length of committing intellectual suicide, and then strangely keeps on talk- ing. It is only by using reason that pragmatists can depreciate reason and defend their pragmatism. The intellect must ever hold its place as a fundamen- tal faculty of knowledge and as a means and guide of our life. And so our belief in God, however deeply it may be rooted in the instincts and practical needs and PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MORAL NATURE 99 feelings, is also intertwined inextricably with all the filaments of the brain. It starts as a spring of in- stinct and feeling, but it quickly emerges into the field of thought and must be justified at the bar of reason. The human mind cannot stop with raw experience, but must reflect upon it, penetrate into its cause, trace its consequences and elaborate it into systematic form. Man is a thinker and cannot keep his brain from sprouting; he has an organizing instinct and will not put up with a disordered world; he is an architect and artist and seeks to build all his mental products into a symmetrical and beautiful temple of thought. Hence the raw material of every field of human experience is wrought up into a science, and so we have astronomers exploring the heavens and reducing them to order, geologists turning up and deciphering the rocky leaves of the globe, chemists and physicists feeling in among the atoms of matter, and psychologists dissecting the human soul. Religion cannot escape this process, and hence we have its pyschology and theology and philosoph3\ As the instincts find God as the satisfaction of their practical needs, and the feelings find him as the appro- priate object of their craving, so the intellect finds God as the result of its search. It rationalizes and illuminates and confirms all these instinctive and emo- tional grounds and impulses of religious faith, and then it goes on to develop arguments of its own. It studies the world as it reads a book and finds God at the end of several paths or well-known arguments for the existence and personality of God. The cosmological or causal argument finds that the world is an object of change or a manufactured product that calls for a ^laker as clearly and certainly as a 100 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION web of cloth or a watch. The argument from design finds the wgrld is intelligible in every atom and is throughout a tissue of intellectual relations and ideas. The astronomer reads the heavens, which are the real astronomy, and then copies these vast pages upon the tiny pages of his book. The geologist reads the rocky leaves of the globe, and every other scientist and thinker and poet is simply seeing the thought and beauty in nature and translating them into our language. The world is thus seen to be transparent thought and we see a Mind back of it and in it as certainly and clearly as we see the mind of the author back of and in his book. The anthropological argument applies this prin- ciple to man and finds that as he also is a product he cannot rise higher than his Maker, and therefore the supreme Cause must be a Mind and Person. These arguments, which have been written out in many volumes ^ and are ever being enlarged and illu- minated by all our increasing knowledge, have been objected to as proving only a finite cause suflQcient to produce a finite world. But our sense of causation cannot rest in a finite and dependent cause and can be satisfied only as we leap back of all such dependent causes to an independent and absolute Cause, or infinite and eternal God. And this general argument still stands as the result and verdict of the human mind after all its search into the nature of this world. Un- less it takes more reasoning power to construe than to construct it, the universe must ever stand as a sublime appeal of Thought to thought, of a personal infinite Mind to our finite minds. ^ A remarkably fresh statement of these arguments in the light of modern knowledge is found in Basic Ideas in Religion by the late Professor R. W. Micou. PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MORAL NATLTIE 101 We are here getting close to deep water as to the pos- sibility of personality in an infinite being, but modern thinkers since the day of Lotze have taken care of this difficulty, and we are only concerned with the psycho- logical fact that our mind finds the world to be a book that tells us of its Author as plainly as any human book tells us of its writer, an older bible that rolled from the hand of the Creator and bears witness to his eternal power and Godhead.^ The intellect also passes upon and interprets all other evidences and forms of religion, whether in the lowest pagan cults or in the highest revealed and in- spired religion. And thus the intellect reaches the same divine goal as the instincts and feelings and rests in God. (d) The will also joins with other fundamental faculties in calling for God. We are made for action, and all our faculties of instinct and feeling and thought are so many forces pushing and guiding us into con- duct and achievement. But achievement must be worthy of the powers that produce it, or life ends in failure. Men instinctively hunt for great things to do, something worth while to inspire their ambition and call out their energies and crown their visions with victory and satisfy their souls. They see larger and ever larger ends reaching farther and farther into the future; and this princii)le finds no wortliy final end and satisfaction until it runs up into the life of God and loses itself in his service and victory. Tlie religious nature of man expresses itself, not only in instinct and ' For a discussion of the quostion of the personality of Ood and othor points where the psycholofry of religion runs into meta- pliysics, see the author's The World a Spiritual System: an In- troduction to MctaijJiysica. 102 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION feeling and thought, but preeminently in obedience and issues in appropriate and satisfying conduct and char- acter. All human life thus points beyond itself for its com- pletion and satisfaction. The human soul swarms with instincts, needs, feelings, thoughts, visions, and aspira- tions which look beyond the present world and cry out for the Infinite and Eternal. Life that stops at the horizon of this world and at the edge of the grave is a poor and pitiful fragment, a hopeless failure, and cruel disappointment. Instinct, feeling, thought, and will feel after and fix their filaments on God and cling to him so tight they refuse to be torn loose. The whole human soul is one great cry for God that has filled all the ages, and it will never be stilled and satisfied until his fulness Flows around our incompleteness, Round our restlessness his rest. CHAPTER lY THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SIN THE natural and primal relation of man to God, we must believe, was one of harmony in which filial love and obedience blended with paternal love and care into fellowship. Historically In the be- ginning of the race this fellowship may have been only germinal, but it contained no seeds of discord. But something happened that broke this harmony and shat- tered all the music of the world. The world bears uni- versal and abundant witness that it is out of joint, a mass of wounds and woe, a scene of discord and strife. At some point a serpent crept into its garden and poi- soned its life; on some fatal day occurred Man's disobedience and the fruit Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste Brought death into the world, and all our woe. We are concerned, however, not with the historical and theological problems, but only with the' psychologi- cal nature and operations, of sin. All the way through our subject, psychology deals with religion mainly on its human and subjective side; its divine objective side falls within the field of theology. I. The Nature of Sin I. The Biblical Idea of Sin. — There are three lead- ing words used in the Old Testament and three in the New that express the Biblical idea of sin. 103 104 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION (a) The Hebrew words are translated sin, iniquity and transgression, and they are all found in one verse, Ex. 34 : 7 : " keeping lovingkindness for thousands, for- giving iniquity and transgression and sin." The word translated sin, chattath^^ expresses '' sin as missing one's aim. The etymology does not suggest a person against whom the sin is committed, and does not neces- sarily imply intentional wrongdoing. But the use of the word is not limited by its etymology, and the sin may be against man (Gen. dO:l, I Sam. 30:1) or against God (Ex. 32:33)."2 The word translated iniquity, avon,^ means " literally ' perversion,' ^ distortion.' It is to be distinguished from cJiattath ^ as being a quality of actions rather than an act, and it thus acquires the sense of guilt. Guilt may be described as the sinner's position in re- gard to God which results from his sin." This Hebrew word and idea of sin is closely paralleled by our Eng- lish word " wrong," which is only another spelling of the word " wrung," and represents wrong as that which is wrung out of its proper shape, or out of conformity to that which is right or straight. The word translated transgression, peslia,'^ expresses ^' a breaking away from a law or covenant, and thus implies a law and lawgiver. It implies what chattath ^ does not necessarily imply, namely, the voluntariness of sin." (&) The Greek words for sin in the New Testa- ' nKtsnv T — * This and other quotations in this connection are taken from Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible, article Sin. 3' ^ THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SIN 105 ment exactly parallel these Hebrew words in meaning. The word translated sin, hamartia,^ like chattath,^ means missing the mark and may "inean sin as a habit, a state, a power, and also a single act of sin.'^ The word translated iniquity, anomia? literally means lawlessness or anarchy. " In its strict sense it truly represents the conception of sin given in the Epistles of James and John." " Sin is lawlessness " {anomia). I John 3:4. The word translated transgression, parahasis,^ liter- ally means transgressing and presupposes "the exist- ence of a law." These Biblical words for sin thus mean missing the mark, the mark of worth and duty that one should aim at and falling below it or going beside it to some lower or other end; twisting and perverting character and conduct into a crooked thing; and transgressing the law. Those ideas all imply a standard or scale of values that should be conformed to and make sin con- sist in missing, perverting, and transgressing it. These ideas also all imply and run up into the idea of God as the highest mark and ultimate standard or law that one should attain. At times this final inci- dence and guilt of sin is in the background of con- sciousness, and at other times it becomes intense as the central hot spot of consciousness, as in David's cry, "Against thee, thee only have I sinned (cfuita), and done this evil in thy sight" (Ps. 51:4), though the first incidence of his sin in this case was against a fellow-man. Any violnlion of the moral 106 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION law is on its human side a wrong deed or, in the case of the violation of civil law, a crime, but viewed in its relation to God's law it is a sin. All crimes are sins, but all sins are not crimes. The Biblical idea of sin is succinctly expressed in the definition of the Westminster Shorter Catechism : *' Sin is anj' want of conformity unto or transgression of the law of God." 2. The Psychological Nature of Sin. — We have al- ready unfolded the psychological nature of sin as a wrong choice between a higher and a lower order of worth and obligation on the scale of value. /This scale has as its highest point and final standard the worth and wisdom and will of God. Any choice of a lower in the presence of a higher good is a missing of the mark, a perversion or twisting of the right and a trans- gression of that law. As God's wisdom and will run down through the whole scale, any such act of wrong choice is explicit or implicit rebellion against him and is sin. f The deeper question now arises as to the essence of sin. Wherein does its essential principle consist? What is the tap root that sprouts into all its scarlet blossoms and bitter fruits? The question runs into philosophy, but it also pertains to psychology. There are three leading theories on this subject which call for attention.^ (a) The first theory is that sin is sensuousness. It is due to our animal heredity and the survival in us of brute instincts and passions. It is of the nature of a physical disorder and disease. It is rooted in the blood * For a full discussion of these theories, see Dr. Augustus H. Strong's Systematic Theology, Vol. II, pp. 559-573, and Julius Muller, The Christian Doctrine of Sin, Vol. I, pp. 25-203. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SIN 107 and is a bondage into which we are born and from which we cannot escape. There is an element of truth in this theory. Many of the coarser sins of the soul, such as gluttony and intemperance, ally themselves with the flesh and ex- press themselves in and through the body. The term " flesh " in the New Testament means the carnal or fleshly nature of the soul, or the soul as allied with and rooted in the bodv. The soul uses the bodv as the instrument of many of its sins, and leaves deposits of its sins in the tissues and habits of the body until it becomes soaked and saturated with evil. Yet this element of truth in it being granted, the main contention of the theory as to the essential nature of sin cannot be accepted. It roots evil in a material organism and is allied to the old Manichean theory that matter is essentially evil in nature. Matter in itself is neither moral nor immoral, for it has no ethical ele- ment in its constitution. The animal also is below the plane of personal being and has no moral character. Granting that man did de- rive his bodily organism through evolution, yet the animal nature in the animal was not evil or in any degree moral, and therefore could not have transmitted any evil to man. The instincts and passions of man, however they may have been derived from a lower origin, did not become perverted and evil until man made them so. And further, many sins have only the slightest connection with the body. The spiritual sins of pride, envy, malice, unbelief and enmity against God are the most heinous and the dea(Hi(^1, and vet they cannot be blamed on the blood. The soul cannot point to the body, as Adam pointed to Eve, saying "-She did it," and say, " The beast in me did it." Con- 108 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION science contradicts this doctrine and fastens the guilt and essence of sin on the soul itself. If this theory is true the soul does not need a Saviour, but only the body needs a physician. The cure for sin is a cleansing of the blood. (6) A second theory of the nature of sin is that it is due to our human finiteness. It is a necessary cor- relative of our finite moral nature as our ignorance is of our finite intellect. There is no escaping ignorance because every problem solved starts a hundred others that are not solved, and thus our ignorance, so to speak, grows faster than our knowledge. However vast the circle of our light, vaster still is the outlying circle of darkness which hems the light in. So our sin is the necessary shadow that attends our finite moral nature and we never can outgrow it or leap away from it. ^' Upon this view," says Dr. Strong, '' sin is the blun- dering of inexperience, the thoughtlessness that takes evil for good, the ignorance that puts its finger into the fire, the stumbling without which one cannot learn to walk. It is a fruit which is sour and bitter simply because it is immature. It is a means of discipline and training for something better, — it is holiness in the germ, good in the making." This is the view of Royce that " Evil is discord necessary to perfect harmony " ; and of Browning: The evil is null, is naught, is silence implying sound; What was good shall be good, with, for evil, so much good more. This view also contains an element of truth, for sin is connected with our finiteness and could not exist in an infinite being; and it is often turned to good in God's grace. But the fallacy of the view is that it confuses the imperfection of the finite with the fault and guilt THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SIN 109 of sin. It is no sin that we cannot be omniscient or that we cannot be i)erfect as the Infinite is perfect. Imperfection becomes sin only when it is evil in its nature. ..The radical objection to this view is ihat it makes sin a necessary condition and activity of the soul, and it is therefore deterministic and pantheistic. In so doing it does what all determinism and pantheism do, it re- duces morality to mechanism, ethics to physics, and thereby destroys its moral nature. When freedom is gone, no moral quality remains. Human wrongdoing is as necessary and unethical as the rain or wind. Such a theory explains sin by explaining it away and cutting it up by the roots, and all conscience and judg- ment and history unite to deny and condemn it. (c) A third theory of sin is that it is essentially selfishness. Selfishness is to be distinguished from that self-love which is self-respect, appreciation, and affirma- tion of one's o\^Ti worth and dignity and even rights. Such love of self is proper and necessary, for worth in the self has the same value and rights that it has in others ; and unless one appreciates, develops, and guards his own worth he has nothing with which to love others. The command to " love thy neighbour as thyself " en- joins the love of self as the prior ground and means of loving one's neighbour. But selfishness is a perversion of self-love and con- sists in putting the interests and possessions, pleasures and passions of the self in the centre and on the throne as the supreme principle of life. It subordinates other persons to its service as mere means to its own end; weaves other lives as threads into its own web; makes the soul wholly absorbent, so that it is a sponge sucking up everything and creating a desert around it, instead 110 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION of being a fountain flinging forth streams refreshing and fertilizing other lives. Selfishness is the essence of sin because it always chooses a lower good on the scale of value and obliga- tion rather than a higher and the highest good, which is the perfection of social life and the perfect life of God. In thus choosing his own will man rebels against God. And it is the essence of sin because every kind of sin is a form of selfishness. The sins of the body, such as gluttony and intemperance, are all forms of personal gratification. Falsehood and dishonesty are obviously forms of selfishness. And the more spiritual sins of avarice, ambition, envy, jealousy, pride, and vanity are equally of the same nature. The most intellectual un- belief may involve a subtle element of pride of opinion and secret reluctance to obey the truth and thereby has a core of selfishness at its heart. In all their sins men miss the true mark because they aim at a lower mark of their own choosing; they pervert the right and trans- gress the law of God because they are seeking their own will and pleasure. It is human selfishness, then, in all its myriad manifestations and degrees, dim-eyed and blind or keen and cunning in its purpose, feeble or enormous in its power, mild or malignant in its indul- gence, that turns the world into a battle-field of strife and blood and loads it with all its crushing weight of wounds and woe. Dr. A. H. Strong quotes Dr. Samuel Harris as fol- lows : " Sin is essentially egoism or selfism, putting self in God's place. It has four principal characteristics or manifestations: (1) self-sufliciency, instead of faith; (2) self-will, instead of submission; (3) self-seeking, instead of benevolence; (4) self -righteousness, instead of humility and reverence." Dr. Julius Muller, in his THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SIN 111 classic work on sin, develops this view at great length and with searching analysis. '^ The idol, therefore," he says, " which man, in his sin, puts in the place of God, can be no other than his oion self. The individual self, and its gratifications, he makes the highest end of his life. His striving, in all the different forms and direc- tions of sin, ever has self ultimately in view; the inmost nature of sin, the principle determining, and pervading it, in all its forms, is selfishness" ^ The effect of selfishness is to crowd God out of the heart and life. In heathendom it has been said that "everything was God but God himself." Heinrich Heine declared : " I am no child. I do not want a heavenlv Father anv more." " I celebrate mvself," boasts Walt Whitman. " If I worship one thing more than another, it shall be the spread of my own body, or any part of it." The self is a devouring demon or mon- ster that will be satisfied with nothing less than the world and the universe. " Every self, once awakened, is naturally a despot, and * bears, like the Turk, no brother near the throne.' " Absorbing everything into itself it becomes " that man of sin, who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he, as God, sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God" (II Thess. 2: 3 4). But at the opposite pole the greatest Character of history, " existing in the form of God, counted not the being on an equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men; and being in fashion as a • Tlie Chriatinn Doctrine of Sin, Vol. T, p. 1:^5. His di^^cus8ion of sin as selfishnt-ss extends throufjh pp. 131-203; and his dis- cussion of sin as scnsuousneaa and as finiteucss througk pp. 293- 363. 112 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION man, he humbled himself, becoming obedient even unto death, yea, the death of the cross. Wherefore also God highly exalted him, and gave unto him the name which is above every name; that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father " (Phil. 2:6-8). Sin therefore is not a mere negation, the absence of good, the " silence implying sound," but a positive action of the human will and heart. It is man in the act of pulling down every throne that should rule over him and assuming and asserting his own sovereignty, as Napoleon clapped the imperial crown on his own head in Notre Dame. It is man's rebellion against every principle of right and rule of authority and usurping the very throne of God. 3. Is Sin a State of the Soul? — A question of great practical importance and involved in some of the deep- est problems of theology is whether sin consists only in conscious volitions, or whether it also inheres in states and dispositions of the soul. There are several grounds for the view that it also resides in disi)ositions and states. The disposition of the soul may be something that ought not to be, a wrong or evil in itself. It misses the mark and perverts the idea of what it should be and transgresses the law of God. It is of the nature of sin and therefore it is sin. But it mav be said that it lacks the essential element of an evil choice, the choice of a lower in the presence of a higher good. The character of the soul, however, is itself the result of choice, the accumulated deposit of countless volitions which have left each one an atom THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SIN 113 of habit in the soul and thus have slowly saturated it with evil. Character is the outgrowth of one's whole past. It is the soil that has been formed bj all one's action falling into it, as the loam of the forest is formed by its owTi leaves. In so far as this character gives birth to our wrong choices and evil deeds, it is only giving further expression to our own free will as ex- pressed in all these past actions. Our character is only our own free will cast and crystallized into habit and disposition, and therefore we are responsible for it. It is the common judgment of men that the disposi- tion may be evil in itself and a state for which men are responsible. We speak of " a bad character," and apply to the disposition all the terms of responsibility and guilt. Kot only so, but we do not know how to judge one's conscious volitions and acts until we know the motives and disposition out of which they spring. If a man kills another, the moral nature of the act de- pends on whether he did it without malice in self- defence, or out of a murderous heart in hatred and revenge. The disposition determines the nature of the act and is as certainly guilty as the conscious act itself. In judging others we always try to go below the im- mediate act to the heart out of which it sprung; and an evil heart, so far from excusing, aggravates guilt. If a man were not chargeable for an evil disposition, then the worse his disposition the less blameworthy for his evil deeds would he be. On this theory the worst man would be the least guilty, and this absurdity proves the premise must be wrong. The soul makes its own dis- position and must answer for it. / The deeper question whether the inherited nature is depraved and guilty belongs to theology rather tlian to psychology, but we may point out that human nature 114 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION gives every evidence of being twisted or wrung and wrong in its constitution, and it therefore misses the mark and transgresses the law of God. It begins to show its perversity as soon as it begins to act and it calls forth the universal condemnation of men as a cor- rupt thing. Yet we do not regard this inherited de- pravity and original sin as being as heinous in its nature as sinful volitions and acquired character, and theology of various schools devises means by which undeveloped racial guilt is relieved of the consequences of sin. As a broad principle sin does not become sin for which we must answer until it receives our consent, and in the consent lies the sin. / II. A Study of Sin in Action Having seen the psychological nature of sin, let us now look at sin in action. And at this point we can- not do better than take the record of the first tempta- tion, as set forth in the Third Chapter of Genesis, which has never been surpassed in ethical insight and analysis and is a masterpiece of psychology. Xow the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which Jehovah God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God ^aid. Ye shall not eat of any tree of the garden? And the woman said unto the serpent, Of the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat : but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said. Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ve touch it, lest ve die. And the / t, 7 t serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as God, knowing good and evil. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SIN 115 the eves, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat ; and she gave unto her husband, and he did eat (Genesis 3:1-6). Whatever view is taken of the literary form of this narrative, its ethical truth and religious value remain the same. This temptation, while as old as the first human sin, in its essential elements is as modern as the latest sin. This concrete instance of temptation strikingly illus- trates the nature of sin as we have already discovered it. The fatal act of Eve was the choice of a lower good in the presence of a higher good. The forbidden fruit was pleasant and good in itself, but in comparison and competition with the express command or the wisdom and will of God it fell infinitely below it and thereby became an evil, or wrong, or sin. It was also an act of selfishness, for by this act Eve put her own will above the will of God and her selfish gratification above the supreme good of the race. I. Temptation Tipped v^ith Doubt. — The temptation begins in a doubt suggested by Satan to the mind of Eve. The tempter approached her with the question, ' Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of any tree of the garden? " The question seems reasonable and inno- cent, and yet it cunningly conceals a poisoned sug- gestion; for it as mucli as says, " Is it possible that God would be so unjust and unkind, hard-licartod and cruel as to forbid you this innocent and good thing?" Tlie woman unsuspectingly answered that they were permit led to oat of the fruit of the trees of the garden, but that of this particular tree God had said, "Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lost ye die." Then Satan made his master stroke. Ue gave the lie 116 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION direct to God, declaring to the woman, " Ye shall not surely die," and went on to accuse God of denying them this tree because he knew it would make them wise, even as God himself. Eve made the fatal mistake of parleying with t^