MR. WILLIAM JAMES ON RELIGIOUS CONVER- SION.
JR.WILLIAM JAMES, the great American psycholo- IV has written a book on" The Varieties of Religious Experience" (Longmans and Co., 12s. net). In it he asks, "What are the religious propensities, and what is their philosophic significance ? " Mr. James does not deal with any one sect, or even with any one religion; he deliberately • puts both theology and ecclesiasticism on one side, and considers only "the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider' the divine." If we look, he says, on man's whole mental lif& as it stands, the part of it of which rationalism can give account is relatively superficial; and he maintains that the general basis of all religious experience is the fact that man has a dual nature, and is connected with two spheres of thought, a shallower and a profounder sphere, in either of Which he may learn to live more habitually. In thus attributing the phenomena of religious experience to the reality of a sub- conscious self, Mr. James in no way seeks to shake the theory that such experience may prove a direct relation between God and man, it being from his point of view likely that "if there be higher spiritual agencies that can directly touch us,
the psychological condition of their doing so might be our possession of a subconscious region which alone could yield access to them."
The most interesting chapter in the book, and to our mind the key to the whole, is the one on conversion. Here Mr. James lays before his readers many pieces of religious biography belonging to the past and the present. Roman Catholics and Evangelicals, Unitarians, Christian Scientists, and even one or two Buddhists, are made to offer their contributions to the subject, and he cow:lades that 'under all dis- crepancies of creed there is a common nucleus to which all experiences bear testimony." It is not easy to epitomise such close reasoning as Mr. James's,—for his evidence and his arguments we must refer our readers to his book, merely dealing here with his conclusions. The contradictions within and without us—the struggle between our two natures and the conflicting facts of the world—cause, he believes, the mental distress in which so many thinking men live or have lived at some period of their lives. Conversion he takes to mean some sort of unification of these conflicting elements,— a reconciliation not arising from reason but from insight. Exactly what creed is adopted by such converts is not a point which mterests Mr. James ; the fact which is for him of so much significance is simply this, that those who experienced this reconciliation "did find something welling up in their inner consciousness by which their extreme sadness could be overcome." That those who have been in the "mystical state" of conversion find it absolutely authoritative and con- vincing is, Mr. James considers, reasonable enough. They have no reasonable ground, however, for demanding that those outside this state should accept their revelations uncritically ; but the fact of the commonness of their experience does establish a presumption that the visible world is part of a more spiritual universe from which it draws its chief sig- nificance, and that "the conscious person is continuous with a wider self through which saving experiences may come." The usual effect of such experience, whether it be sudden or gradual, is the "sense of the presence of a 'higher and friendly Power," "the disappearance of all fear from one's life, the quite indescribable and inexplicable feeling of an inner serenity."
This theory of the subconscious self whose triumph is con- version, whose conflict produces doubt, is, to our mind, intensely interesting and suggestive. Is it possible that this self knows, not the facts of creeds, but the fact at the bottom of all creeds, its own relation to God? May the doubt which expresses itself to-day in the restless study of history, science, and ethics in their theological bearings be in its essence nothing but an effort to recall and realise something already known,—a great mental effort analogous to the small mental effort we make when we search our minds for a lost name? If we have intuitions at all, says Mr. James, "they come from a deeper" level–of our -nature than the loquacious level_ which rationalism. inhabits." Such a theory is in no way opposed to Christianity. It would even explain many mystical passages in the New Testament. "Whither .go ye know, and the way ye know," said the Christ Who was returning to God. The Disciples immediat,ely denied this knowledge ; yet the complete sense of security, both in reward to themselves and their Master, which possessed them after He was gone testified to the spiritual truth of His words. If there were not in the mind of man some hidden knowledge, some instinct that he is in the hands of a friendly Power, could he go on• through life as cheerfully as he does ? Take away this sense of reliance, and what have we ? Nothing in front of us but blank darkness, containing the possibility of the greatest suffering, both mental and -physical, for ourselves and those we love,—the certainty of parting, the probability of annihi- lation. Yet most men, even of those who from-reason or in- difference have no -assured faith, do not see life in this light. Is it because they know by instinct that which their reason refuses to confirm ? Perhaps we have all at -times vaguely desired to be what is usually called "converted," that is, we have envied those who are able to accept without cavil the whole body of dogma declared necessary by any Church. Yet if some higher Power could offer to destroy our judgment, and enable us to believe what we think we know is not true, the-sacrifice would most likely appear to us in the light of a sin, and we should very probably refuse this illegitimate peace.
But what if the essence of conversion is outside these declarations of Churches, if they are merely the joyful guesses of those who have realised the one "excellent certainty " ? If to be converted is "the attainment of an altogether new level of spiritual vitality," surely such conversion every man must desire with his whole heart, for, as it has been truly said, "to recognise our own divinity and our intimate relation to the Universal is to attach the belts of our machinery to the power- house of the Universe." Most of us in the present day are occa- sionally torn between two theories of life,—the theory which says that the hairs of our head are all numbered, and that all the cir- cumstances in which we find ourselves have a particular meaning for us as individuals; and the theory which teaches us that we are powerless in the meshes of inexorable law, which will crush or spare us as the case may be, law so far-reaching that it can control the stars, so minute that it regulates the quiverings of every blade of grass. The conscious self believes in the one, the subconscious self in the other. Is there any possible unification of these two ideas ? Not, we believe, within the grasp of the human reason, but perhaps within the bounds of spiritual possibility. Do we not all believe in both free-will and predestination? Is truth, then, not one ? Certainly; but that one is too large for us to conceive of, and the pieces we are able to grasp appear to us to be many. But how does this triumph of the subconscious self come about ? There is, according to- Mr. James, "docu- mentary evidence" that it comes in various ways,—suddenly, as if by miracle; gradually, as if by nature. It comes at all periods of life to persons of all opinions. One of the commonest forerunners of this triumph is a sense of utter weariness, of incapacity to carry on the struggle any longer, a ceasing to care. "Our emotional brain centres strike work, and we relapse into temporary apathy. So long as the egoistic worry of the sick soul guards the door the ex- pansive confidence of the soul of faith gains no entrance ; but let the former faint away, even for a moment, and the latter can profit by the opportunity." Such a crisis may occur to individuals or to communities. For instance, at the time of the Reformation the weary up- holders of the right of private judgment, having reached what Luther called a state of "godly desperation," found peace is a new sense of knowledge and certainty which could not be exactly defined in words, and which took expression in a crude perver- sion of the doctrine of the Atonement. Is it not possible that the Western World is once more on the eve of a - great revival, whose forerunners are the prophets of psychology, not of a new Reformation which will create a new Church, but of a new inbreathing of the Spirit which will revive the spiritual life of all the'Churches,—a;time when men will pause in their hot pursuit of evidence, and read each in his own heart "the Word" which St. John realised to be God.
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