Part 7 (1/2)

Conversion with Augustine meant the repression of s.e.x desires and a celibate life, while in the case of Luther it meant freedom to marry.

James observes that ”the effects are infinitely wider than the alleged causes, and for the most part opposite in nature.”[123] Paul's conversion and that of mult.i.tudes after him have no suggestion of a s.e.xual element, and it is notable that men are apt to become increasingly occupied with religion in advancing age as the s.e.xual impulse wanes.

123: ”Varieties,” p. 11, note.

The adolescent theory of conversion has, indeed, a lesson for Christian parents and teachers. They should urge upon boys and girls decision and public identification with the church during this period; but it would be a loss to religion if religious teachers should forget the profound psychology of the motto: ”Give me a child for his first seven years, and you can have him for the rest of his life.” As Stevens says: ”We cannot wait till adolescence is reached before we win the soul for G.o.d. That would be fatally late. The boy must know that the highest is the highest when he sees it, and must have been prepared to love it.”[124] The profound emotional disturbance of p.u.b.erty is not regeneration in the Christian sense, while at that time the conditions for it may be peculiarly favourable.

124: ”Psychology of the Christian Soul,” p. 173.

2. Midway between those explanations of religion which refer it to a physical and to a supernatural cause is the psychological theory advocated by James, that the special seat or source of the religious life is in the Subconscious. While the ”subliminal” and the ”subconscious” are newcomers in psychology, they have already played a considerable role in religious discussion, and have been used in ill.u.s.tration and even in reconstruction of theological doctrine.

Multiple personality ill.u.s.trates the Trinity; the subconscious is made, as in Sanday's ”Christologies Ancient and Modern,” the sphere of the divine nature of Christ; and psychical research is looked to by some as a hopeful reinforcement or scientific demonstration of the doctrine of a future life.

The subconscious is used in a rather loose way by popular and even by scientific writers. James regards it as ”nowadays a well-accredited psychological ent.i.ty,”[125] while Pratt refers to the use that is made of it as ”rather questionable psychology.”[126] Some of its possible and legitimate meanings are: (_a_) Those hereditary dispositions which, unknown to the man himself, largely shape his actions; or (_b_) the psychophysical machinery of habitualized action. As Jastrow says: ”We rise upon steps of our habitualized selves, grown familiar to their task.”[127] The subconscious again (_c_) may mean that subliminal activity of the mind which, when the conscious strain of effort and attention has been unsuccessful, often, as it seems, does the work for one, recalling the forgotten name, solving the problem, or even creating a new product such as a finished song or poem.

125: ”Varieties,” p. 511.

126: _Hibbert Journal_, October, 1911, p. 231.

127: ”The Subconscious,” p. 433.

Lastly (_d_) the subconscious may refer to that more occult sphere to which belong the phenomena of hypnotism, automatism, multiple personality, and perhaps telepathy, in virtue of which the subject performs actions or has ideas to which his ordinary consciousness gives no clew. The subconscious in any or all of these senses is at least the dwelling place of mystery. Starbuck admits that ”what happens below the threshold of consciousness must, in the nature of the case, evade a.n.a.lysis.”[128] It is a mysterious region of shadows, a twilight zone in which the divine and human may meet. It may be in itself the source of the religious life, or at least the channel through which revelation and redemptive influence may come.

128: ”Psychology of Religion,” p. 107.

In James' exposition the subconscious part of a man is the higher part; and man is conscious that this higher part of himself ”is co-terminous and continuous with a MORE of the same quality, which is operative in the universe outside of him.”[129] What is this more? Our point of contact with it is the subconscious self; and without asking for the farther limits of the ”More,” and ”disregarding the over-beliefs,” ”we have in the fact that the conscious person is continuous with a wider self through which saving experiences come, a positive content of religious experience, which, it seems to me, is literally and objectively true as far as it goes.”[130]

129: ”Varieties,” p. 508.

130: _Ibid._, p. 515.

James' theory of the subconscious as the organ of religion can appeal to many undoubted facts, but if it means, as the tendency of his exposition indicates, that the subconscious as the organ of religion has superior moral worth to the life of full consciousness, it may be insisted that the subliminal sphere is the source of evil as well as of good. The subconscious may be identified with the flesh as well as with the spirit. If the subconscious, to use Pauline language, is the medium of higher spiritual influences, it is also the seat of the ”old Adam,” of ”sin that dwelleth in me.” In this region is to be found the source alike of the unexpected heroisms and weaknesses of men, of Peter's courage before the Council and of his cowardice before the serving maid.

Hereditary and habitualized dispositions and tendencies are like the submerged part of an iceberg, and the winds of conscious resolution and effort are often powerless against the sweep of the hidden current beneath.

It may be admitted that ”if the grace of G.o.d miraculously operates, it probably operates through the subliminal door,”[131] but it should be remembered that in this region of the subliminal there are ”dragons” as well as seraphim. Hypnotic influences may be therapeutic or they may be baleful, and in the region of the subconscious, it is hinted, insane delusions and psychopathic obsessions may find their source.[132] The subconscious is a battle-field rather than itself a source of help, and it cannot be said that the subconscious man of the shadows, if he exists in any of the roles a.s.signed to him, is any better or more religious than the man who has his being in the full sunlight of conscious activity. The psychological explanation of religion, like the pathological and the s.e.xual, really proves too much. From all these alleged sources of religious life, not only saving influences but destructive influences flow. Royce's criticism is that ”the new doctrine, viewed in one aspect, seems to leave religion in the comparatively trivial position of a play with whimsical powers--a prey to endless psychological caprices.”[133]

131: ”Varieties,” p. 270.

132: _Ibid._, p. 235.

133: ”William James and Other Essays,” p. 23.

3. Another theory of religion, now popular, seeks its explanation not in any bodily condition or stage of growth, nor in any special department of the mental life, but in the social relations.h.i.+ps of men. Religion becomes a recognition of social values, ”a consciousness of the highest social values,”[134] and is practically to be identified with patriotism, altruism and the vision of the future of society. ”To-day,” says Leuba, ”most men and women derive whatever strength they may have to maintain their integrity and to devote themselves to the public good from their respect and love for their family, their friends, their business a.s.sociates, and the state, and from their desire for the respect and love of men, much more than from any religious conviction. It is no longer the consciousness of G.o.d, but the consciousness of Man that is the power making for righteousness.”[135] No metaphysical a.s.sumptions need be made by this view of religion except that of the existence of a world of one's fellow-men, a postulate which seems necessary even to a functional psychology.

134: Ames: ”Psychology of Religious Experiences,” p. viii.

135: ”A Psychological Study of Religion,” p. 311.

However much in harmony with the spirit of the age, the social explanation of religion is one-sided and is inadequate to the depth and ma.s.siveness and infinite perspective of religious experience. Religion is a triangle with G.o.d, the self and one's brother at its three angles.

(_a_) The Social theory of religion gives no adequate recognition of the worth either of the individual or of society. The deepest message of religion is that the soul is worth something to G.o.d. Man, in spite of his social obligations, is not made simply for his brother. ”We die alone,” Pascal says, and there is a sense in which we live alone. As a writer on the psychology of the New Testament says: ”The self, according to the New Testament, is not merely a social self developing in a community of other finite selves; it is a divine self realizing its ideal powers of service, and fulfilling its destiny only in a fellows.h.i.+p with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ.”[136] Unless Humanity is endowed with the attributes of Deity, as it almost seems to be in the Positivist ritual, the estimate of society is also lowered when men are viewed as having relations and obligations only to one another. As James Ward has pointed out, Humanity can only have the significance and sacredness of the individuals from whom it is abstracted, and if these have no permanent or enduring worth, no more has Humanity.[137]

136: M. S. Fletcher: ”The Psychology of the New Testament,” p. 245.