PRAYER AND GENIUS [To the Editor of THE SrEcTA•roa.] –
If your correspondent, Capt. Blacker, has meant to clarify a subject only too likely to be obscure, he certainly has not done so. To begin with; the unnecessary introduction of such a phrase as " inferiority complex," borrowed from the hasty vocabulary of quack-psychologists, is highly prejudicial to perspicuity. And a comparison of the scattered sentiments in his letter leaves one lost in uncertainty whether Capt. Blacker considers the " aesthetic," the -" practical," the " mechanis- tic " or the " scientific " is, in the pursuit of—genius, prayer or the spiritual life, which is it-?—the best auxiliary.
And what is " the scientific conception of prayer " ? The word " scientific " is one used far too freely and vaguely by those who neglect to test their thinking by the discipline of language. The only sense in which prayer may be scientific is that it .may be methodical. But so far as the investigation of natural laws by physical instruments is concerned, Prayer has nothing whatever to do with Science. That prayer ought to be methodized internally, so to speak, rather than by the paltry device of liturgies one is not prepared to deny.—I am,
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