| II. THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ACCOVNT OF RELIGION | Title page | IV. SPIRITUAL HEALING AND PSYCHOLOGICAL PROCESS |
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THE reply to the psychological attack upon religion is to be found not in the theistic arguments—though it should be noted that such validity as these possess remains completely unaffected but in a constructive approach to religion as it is developed and expressed in human life.
By common agreement the basic principle is faith, developing in relation to love. The dual aspect of faith, according as its emotional or its cognitive aspect is stressed, only appears in its later phases, and is only a difficulty if Creeds are regarded as the starting-point of the religious life.
The essential character of faith is personal relationship with its object. This is implicit even in its earliest forms. Thus its natural expression is to be seen in Prayer and Worship.
The psychological criticism that these are merely forms of suggestion is readily met by a consideration of the nature of suggestion, which is seen to be a principle of the same character as faith, and, like faith, dependent upon the reality and significance of its object. While it is doubtless true that this principle is fundamental to the development of the ego, it finds its full expression in the organized sentiments. This is exactly parallel to the organization of faith through love. Thus there is no conflict here between the psychological and the religious account of human development.
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Now abideth faith, hope, love, these three ; and the greatest of these is love.—I Cor. xiii. 13.
THE most fundamental of the problems raised by modern psychology has been stated, as fully as possible, in the last two lectures. Is the whole structure of religious belief an illusion, the God of our worship a shadow of ourselves ?
Thou art a man ; God is no more.
Thine own humanity learn to adore. [1]
What if not only Blake’s mysticism, but all that religion has ever meant to simple folk, can really be cramped within the narrow limits of those two strange lines ?
Certain general considerations which may help us towards an answer were outlined briefly at the close of the last lecture. We must now turn to consider more fully the real nature of the problem, and the ordering of our reply.
But at this point our opponent may well interrupt us. Psychology has much more to say, and things that loom even larger in those mists where men grope for the truth. Is not faith now seen to be only a form of auto-suggestion, whereby we attain not reality but mere conviction ? Are not prayer and corporate worship simply the means whereby the illusion is fixed ever more firmly in men’s minds ? Do they mean more than that we whisper encouragingly in our own ear, or shout together in the four-part harmony of ecclesiastical tradition, until the last vestiges of doubt are swallowed up [ p. 70 ] in the reverberations of our mutual reassurance ? Or, again, if we speak of the wonder of conversion and of the new life and strength which comes to those who have found themselves in finding God, is there anything here that cannot readily be matched in the records of modern psychotherapy ? Do not the miracles of scientific healing at once explain and surpass all that we can really believe of the narratives of the Gospels, or of the legends of the saints ? Is there not, further, fundamental confusion between sin and mental disease, which would rapidly be cleared up if it were not for the obscurantism of the Church ? And, finally, is not the long search for an adequate theory of that authority which men undoubtedly find in their varied conceptions of religion and of the Church, in itself a proof that its real basis is within man himself, that it is in fact but one more manifestation of that élan vital, that libido, which is the driving force of all human endeavour, and that its apparent association with a form of Church government, or with a book, is only another example of the principle of projection ?
It is small wonder that many among us are confused. The doubts are so many, the difficulties real enough, and the explanation offered seems at first sight so simple and complete. It is only upon a closer scrutiny that we find that the explanation does not explain, and that all the difficulties remain, transformed in nothing save the language in which they are described. And further, behind all the new psychological terminology, a structure as yet more imposing in its technicalities than in its accuracy of reference, the problem of the nature of Reality is still untouched, and, to say the least, is no nearer a solution for being shelved. Yet this is, after all, the fundamental question. Compared with this challenge to the reality of God, the other questions that we have asked are secondary and unimportant. If we can build up an adequate answer upon this main point we shall find ourselves taking such lesser matters in our stride.
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We may start our task by making two general observations. In the first place nothing in the whole range of psychological criticism makes any difference whatever to the classical theistic arguments, as stated, for example, by Kant. So far as pure reason is concerned the situation remains unchanged. Philosophers have been, and are, divided as to the ultimate validity of these arguments, and it is doubtless true that the final step of the ontological argument is rather assumption than proof. But psychology has nothing to say in the matter upon the one side or the other. The arguments would still hold, for whatever they may be worth, even if the experience upon which they are based were riddled with illusion. For the experience of an illusion is just as real as any other kind of experience, and forms just is valid a basis for the fundamental ontological assumption that there is a Reality towards which reason strives, whether it may attain or not.
This consideration is of real importance, but it is outside our main purpose to discuss it in these lectures. We have to bear in mind, too, that the defence of religion by logical argument has proved singularly unconvincing. And that is as it should be, for to demonstrate the existence of God would be to reduce Him to the status of an inference. But it is not in an inference that ‘ we live, and move, and have our being,’ God is nearer to us than that.
In the second place it should in fairness be noted that psychology gives no account at all of the nature of reality. Theology at least makes the attempt, and although its anguage is inevitably symbolic [2] when it endeavours to [ p. 72 ] define what it means when it speaks of God, the attempt is worth making. Even if the symbolism proves inadequate, the Reality remains. Psychology may even help us to understand and so to revise our symbols. But God remains ever greater than the garment of words which we weave about Him.
But when this has been said it still remains worth while to consider the psychological account of religion in detail and to enquire whether the conflict between psychological and religious conceptions is as great as we are sometimes asked to suppose. For this purpose it is obviously useless to start from such formulae as the Creeds. Creeds are the last and not the first words of religion. We must turn rather to the elementary facts of the religious life and submit these to psychological analysis. It is clear enough that such an analysis is possible, since religion, like all other aspects of life, has its emotions and its specific types of behaviour. What we may hope to find is that the mechanisms and processes of religion, and, indeed of all life, are not to be explained from within, but that they look always to an end beyond themselves. Our task is, in fact, to give a constructive account of religion, and to see whether we can, in so doing, dispense with the hypothesis of a God.
By common consent the basic principle of religion is faith and upon no term in the theological vocabulary has [ p. 73 ] there been such persistent and widespread misunderstanding. [3] It is at once the beginning of the Christian life, and its final and most difficult achievement. It is the simple and direct act of the human soul, whereby the child may come to Jesus, for of such is the Kingdom of God. It is one of the three supreme ‘ theological virtues,’ infused by God Himself, fed by knowledge, and formed by love. Even those whose lives may truly be called Christian commonly think of faith as the means whereby they are enabled to retain a sure hold upon truths which, as they imagine, lie beyond reason, [4] and it is hardly a step from this to the famous ‘ credo quia impossibile ’ [5] of the early Church, or to the almost equally famous schoolboy howler, fabricated, doubtless, by some nineteenth-century cynic : ‘ Faith is that power whereby I steadfastly believe what I know to be untrue,’ [6]
Let us examine this paradox a little more closely. The writer to the Hebrews speaks of faith in God as part of the foundation laid at the very outset of the ‘ preaching of Christ.’ [7] It even precedes that preaching, for it underlies hope [8] in those who did not receive the promise. [9] And this is entirely in accordance with the usage of the Synoptic narratives. Those who came to Jesus for healing in Galilee [ p. 74 ] were certainly not instructed Christians. Many of them, we may suppose, never became Christians. Yet by faith they were made whole. In the Fourth Gospel we have a careful and considered analysis of the stages of belief, starting from the interest and attention resulting from the preaching of the Baptist and from the signs wrought by Jesus Himself, and finding its climax in an assurance and certainty in which the effort to understand has been superseded by a trust and love which lies beyond knowledge. ‘ Let us also go, that we may die with Him ’ [10] is the climax of personal faith. Where this has been achieved, conviction follows. It is St. Thomas who at the last proclaims the first and the final creed of Christianity, ‘ My Lord and my God,’ [11] But already, even within the pages of the Gospel the supreme triumph of love and trust is beginning to be stated more and more in terms of knowledge : ‘ These things are written that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing ye may have life in His Name,’ [12]
This movement of thought is carried much further in the first Johannine Epistle and is perhaps one of the most substantial pieces of evidence that it is by another hand than that which wrote the Gospel. Here faith is primarily ‘ faith in the Name.’ It is true that the love of God is stressed, but the end of the whole matter is an assurance which is less trust in God than a certainty that a series of propositions are true. [13] The age-long confusion of faith and knowledge has already begun, despite the warning of St. James that ‘ the devils also believe, and tremble,’ [14]
The position is put clearly enough by the great [ p. 75 ] theologians. ‘When the mind,’ says Augustine, ‘hath been imbued with the beginning of faith, which worketh by love, it goes on by living well to arrive at sight also, wherein is unspeakable beauty known to high and holy hearts, the full vision of which is the highest happiness.’ [15] This is entirely in the tradition of the Gospels, and states with precision the fundamental character of those beginnings of the religious life which, as Augustine himself points out, precede understanding, and are therefore prior to all theology. But love must sometimes give account of itself, and in the effort, often an unwelcome effort enough, theology is born. It is not the first but the second phase of faith when we declare that ‘ he that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that seek after Him.’ [16] Or, as Augustine puts it, ‘ No man can love that which he doth not believe to exist. Then if he believe and love, by doing well he bringeth it about that he may have hope also.’ [17]
This close connection between faith and love persists throughout their development in the Christian life, and at every point underlies their creedal aspect. Anselm’s famous credo ut intelligam [18] is an astonishingly obscure remark, but at least it implies the futility of all attempts to understand that do not rest upon a faith that lies deeper than understanding. And the whole argument of his Cur Deus Homo is explicitly stated to be a rational exposition of a faith firmly held on grounds other than reason. [19] It is only [ p. 76 ] rendered necessary by the misunderstanding of unbelievers, [20] and in any case reason can only go part of the way. ‘ At the last,’ Anselm says, ‘ we must recognise that whatever man may say or know upon such a topic, yet deeper reasons lie hidden.’ [21]
Aquinas, in his discussion of the ‘ theological virtues ’ has given classical accuracy to the distinction between the simple faith in which religion begins and the finished faith of the Christian, which includes knowledge. The link between them is not knowledge but love, in which fides informis becomes fides formata. ‘ In the order of perfection,’ he says, ‘ love precedes faith and hope, since both faith and hope are formed by love, and attain perfection as virtues.’ [22] And so he draws his conclusion : ‘ Although in the order of perfection love, which is the form and root of all the virtues, precedes hope and faith, yet in the order of their generation faith precedes hope, and hope precedes love.’ [23]
We need not spend much time over the disastrous lowering of the conception of faith in the writings of the great Reformers. [24] Melanchthon simply defines it as ‘ a constant assent to every word of God,’ [25] and again as ‘ trust in the divine mercy promised by Christ.’ [26] It had meant much more than that to Luther, for whom Christ was far more than creeds or promises. ‘ To believe in Christ is to put Him on, to become one with Him.’ [27] ‘ Faith unites the Soul to Christ as the wife to the husband.’ [28] Here we have the authentic note of Christian experience, and the language in which it is expressed is, as we shall see, of profound psychological import. But for the later Protestant theologians faith is almost entirely restricted to an assurance of [ p. 77 ] salvation coupled with conviction of the truth of God’s word. Love seems to be forgotten, at least in its full and personal significance. ‘ Human faith,’ says the Second Helvetic Confession, ‘ is not an opinion or a human persuasion, but a most firm assurance and an evident and constant assent of the soul, and, finally, a most right comprehension of God’s truth.’ [29] And again the Heidelberg Catechism declares that faith ‘ is not only a certain knowledge whereby I hold for truth all that God has revealed to us in His word, but also a heartfelt confidence, which the Holy Ghost works by the Gospel within me, that not only to others but to me also, remission of sins, everlasting righteousness, and blessedness, are freely given by God, of pure grace, only for the sake of Christ’s merits.’ [30] In itself such language as this is not untrue, but it lacks the living simplicity of the faith of Aquinas and Luther. It stresses the effects of faith at the cost of losing that directness of personal trust in God which is far more than trust in any written record. And so it opened the door to a Fundamentalism, a confidence in words, as strange to the tradition of the Church as it is remote from the simple love and trust of the first disciples.
Faith then is linked with both love and knowledge, but love is the key to its development. And this explains an important emphasis which we find again both in Aquinas and in Luther. The power of love is less a power within us than a power upon us. ‘ The theological virtues,’ says Aquinas, ‘ are wholly from without.’ [31] Even of ordinary human love this is true. The response within us is evoked, transformed, and raised to utterly unexpected levels by the object of our love. Much more is this true of the love of God. And thus the faith in which love finds its perfect work is of God too. ‘ True faith,’ declares Luther, ‘ is a [ p. 78 ] work of God in us whereby we are reborn and renewed from God.’ [32]
It is by this time clear that the theological account of faith and the psychological doctrine of the sentiments are very closely related. The main distinction is that for the theologian faith is always in the last resort faith in God, while the psychologist is less concerned with the object towards which a sentiment is directed than with the inner structure and development of the sentiment itself. Once grant the existence of a God and there will be little if any divergence between the two accounts. The most striking parallel that I have found is in a writer perhaps never before cited as a serious theologian, Alexander Cruden, more than a little mad, and maker of a Concordance through which he did yeoman service to his own and to all subsequent generations. ‘ Faith,’ says he, in his note upon that word, ‘ has a prevailing influence upon the will, it draws the affections, and renders the whole man obsequious to the Gospel,’ [33] William James and Shand together could hardly have put it better. Perhaps only one who had been through the struggle not only for peace but for sanity itself could have seen the essential mechanism of faith so clearly, and phrased it with such telling brevity.
The specific character of faith is thus seen clearly enough to lie in the field of personal relationships. This underlies the whole of its later development in the Christian life. Nobody who considers the matter at all really believes that the climax of faith consists in an assent to any series of theological propositions, or to the contents of the Creeds, whether these are regarded as statements of historical fact or as ontological interpretations of such fact. For the purpose of meeting psychological criticism it is important to notice [ p. 79 ] that this characteristic of faith is implicit even in its earliest forms. We cannot, for example, accept the account of its first beginnings in childhood given by so sympathetic a student of religion as J. B. Pratt. Discussing those who ‘ believe in God because when children they were taught to believe, and have continued doing so ever since,’ he goes on to say : ‘ Their first belief in God as children and that is true of all of us was a simple case of primitive credulity, the original tendency of the mind to accept whatever is presented to it.’ [34] There is an important truth here, and one which is as relevant to the psychological theory of suggestion as to the study of faith. ‘ Primitive credulity ’ undoubtedly exists, and is indeed a factor in belief which continues to operate throughout our lives, nor should the use of the word ‘ credulity ’ mislead us into thinking that it implies anything necessarily discreditable to faith or any unreality in its object. It is simply a way of describing the typical beginnings of knowledge, before selective attention md criticism have built them into the structure of individual life. But this is not the beginning. Behind even the most primitive forms of knowledge there lies what can be most simply called the ego-object relation, its duality still implicit. The child does not start out into life with an assured individuality, from which it sets out to conquer an outer world. It starts rather from an unresolved confusion [35] within which the ego and the other are at first undifferentiated, and out of which they are developed into the comparatively sharp distinctions of adult life. [36] The child accepts what the [ p. 80 ] mother says, not as some new and external addition to the structure of its personality, but rather as something existent within that relationship to the mother which is prior, unanalysed, and unquestioned. It is not even, in James’s phrase, ‘ faith in some one else’s faith.’ [37] That is a much later and a much more complex development. It would be more nearly true to call it simply ’ faith in some one else,’ if even that phrase did not imply a consciousness of faith and of the Other, which goes beyond the direct and unresolved unity of the relationship. This is not as yet love, or knowledge, or faith, but it is the basis of all three.
The baby new to earth and sky,
What time his 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 learns the use of ‘ I,’ and ‘ me,’
And finds ‘ I am not what I see,
And other than the things I touch.’
So rounds he to a separate mind
From whence clear memory may begin,
As through the frame that binds him in
His isolation grows defined. [38]
We note, further, that this essential basis of faith does not lose its character as life develops. It gains, however, enormously in complexity and wealth. The ego-other relationship is no longer limited to an environment of one or two persons. The whole range of the brotherhood of man opens up, with strange hints of possibilities even beyond that. The ego itself becomes more definite and [ p. 81 ] more individual in response to the ever-growing range of personal relationships about it. It does not create these relationships, though it can profoundly modify their development. Its own increasingly rich emotional life is built up into sentiments of more and more stability with love at once as its motive power and its richest achievement. Faith becomes aware of itself as an active principle of personal trust, and is more and more linked with knowledge as it takes into account the facts of experience, including that material world about us which seems to have such solid and substantial existence in its own right, and yet which only holds our attention at all in so far as it relates itself significantly to the ends and purposes of our corporate personal life.
This last point is worth a moment’s consideration. The belief that a knowledge of things is in some way prior to the knowledge of persons is sheer delusion. In the analysis of life we cannot start from the solid world about us, for both its solidity and its apparent self-existence are mere interpretations of our experience. And the experience from which we set out to interpret the world is not simply our own. [39] It is and was from the very first a corporate existence, in which we are intimately interrelated with others like ourselves. The contact of spirit with matter constitutes a problem of apparently insuperable difficulty. The contact of spirit with spirit is a primary and uncontrovertible datum. Here at least is something of which all are directly aware, even if they cannot state in clear terms exactly what they mean. Faith and love are simple and [ p. 82 ] immediate facts, and, unlike our knowledge of the so-called external world, they carry with them a certainty and a security of their own. [40] Thus, to turn back once more to the beginnings of knowledge in the child, it is not for the child in some theoretical and wholly abstract condition of isolation that the material things about it have significance, but for the child in an already existent and unquestioned relationship with its mother. Its interpretation of the confused mass of sensations which assail it bewilderingly on every side is reached through a joint experience, apart from which, to all appearance, no such interpretation would ever be achieved. [41] So alone can we account for the familiar but ever mysterious fact that words can acquire a common meaning, as the current coin through which experiences and values come to be both wholly our own, and at the same time the means whereby we share the wide manifold of common life. [42]
We thus reach a truth of the very first importance, the [ p. 83 ] truth that the meaning of the world of nature cannot be found in a direct scrutiny of the external phenomena of which, for us, it is composed. The days are past when gentlemen about to be ordained could be exhorted to diligence with their microscopes. It was within another order of things, the order of personal relationships where love leads faith on to fuller and ever more conscious faith, that the natural order first had meaning for us at all, and it is within that other, higher order that the key to reality must be sought. [43] In saying this we are not for an instant denying the reality of the world about us, as the concrete and material environment of our experience. That reality has, indeed, a quality of objectivity, of self-determination, which has made it a singularly obstinate element in psychological theory. If all were mind how comparatively simple the task of the psychologist would be ! But if it is indeed true that the way to the knowledge of the real world lies through the highest intimacy of human relationships, then we can begin to understand why it is that mankind has steadfastly refused to view that world as a cold impersonal mechanism of immutable laws. Somewhere within that range of meaning to which faith is the door and love the key, there may well be that which our ordinary human relationships, even the love of father or mother, can but faintly symbolize. It is not apart from man but through man that we come to God.
Nor is there anything irrational in believing that once in history this meaning of the Universe has been uniquely revealed in a human life. No philosophy can possibly prove that this has happened. But if it has happened, if Jesus spoke rightly when He said ‘ I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life,’ then the path of understanding lies [ p. 84 ] not through some elaborate process of theological analysis, but through faith and love. It begins, as love must begin, at home. So we pass on from love to ever wider love. The love of father or mother is the key to all human relationships. We find in that love a possibility of loving which may not stay until it reaches out to all mankind. But it is only in Christ that we come to realize how deep and rich that love may be. And in that revelation of love faith reaches out to that ultimate mystery of being which men call God. ‘ He that loveth not his brother, whom he hath seen, cannot love God whom he hath not seen.’ [44] ‘ Beloved, let us love one another : for love is of God ; and every one that loveth is begotten of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God ; for God is love.’ [45]
The natural expression of this development of faith is obviously to be seen in prayer and worship. The essence of prayer is that it is addressed to God, not in word only, but in reality, and in the organization of its various forms, whether private or public, the one test of its reality is that it should be so addressed. ‘ Prayer,’ says Aquinas, ‘ is the ascent of the mind to God.’ [46] That prayer has a strongly marked effect upon the character of the person who prays, and that corporate worship is often arranged with the explicit object of influencing the life and conduct of those who join therein, is wholly beside the mark. Equally irrelevant is the fact that prayer is often used as a means of seeking for comfort in times of distress, for peace of mind in time of anxiety, or as the last pitiful refuge of despair when all else has failed ; or again that corporate worship, with its possibilities of high emotional tension, and of appeal at once to the senses and to the intellect, [ p. 85 ] may become a mere luxury, where the tensions of life are relaxed in a transient ecstasy of self-indulgent piety. All is not worship that is called by that name, and a Church that seeks to organize its devotion with a view to making it more attractive and more effective has good cause to beware lest in seeking to save its life it lose its soul. There is nothing in ’ the finest prayer ever addressed to a Boston audience ’ to distinguish it from a concert or a dramatic performance. The test whether of worship or of prayer is sincerity, and the test of sincerity is that the worshippei should forget all else save that he is speaking with his God.
This does not mean that prayer cannot be taught, or that the forms and adornments of public worship are necessarily illegitimate. The truth that it is through man that man comes to God is all-important here. The child taught to pray at its mother’s knee prays first of all to his mother, for his mother is the one reality which he knows. [47] But he soon realizes that the mother is praying too, and that the unity of their praying looks to something or Somebody who gives the prayer its meaning. The knowledge of God is very dim as yet, but the prayer is real. And as the practice of prayer goes forward the range of humanity with which it is shared grows too. We cannot pray, any more than we can live, in real isolation, and no man has a stronger sense of his oneness with all mankind than the hermit who withdraws from the world that he may give himself up to prayer. But for most men this full corporate sense of prayer is not achieved without an outward expression in joint acts of worship. Here the one thing that matters is that the means used should not become ends in themselves. It is the danger that threatens our [ p. 86 ] cathedrals, where the crowds of sightseers may often far outnumber those who find in great architecture and beautiful music a power to check the insistent clamour of daily life, and to set them free to pray. It is the danger that threatens any parish church, where need is for order and organization, and for financial support, and where the interest of the choir in its own singing, of the bell-ringers in their own ringing, of the preacher in his own preaching, may often attract worshippers indeed, but not worshippers of God. Perchance it was for this that the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper was ordained, that in the presence of the humble symbols of so great a tragedy of love, our human pettiness and self-esteem might be swept aside, so that worship might be very worship, and the spirit of man lie bare to the Divine Presence. And so again and again it has been—and yet, when man has made of the Eucharist an occasion of strife, when Churches, to the amazement of angels and the shaming of their Lord, have wrought the Sacrament of love into a special instrument of disunion, denying their common brotherhood in the presence, as they claim, of Christ who died for all, one might almost wonder whether it was ordained in vain.
And what has psychology to say to all this ? Much in every way. It is perfectly clear that a great part of the mechanism of this ordering of faith in worship can be described in psychological terms. Suggestion, and methods of reinforcing suggestion, meet us at every turn. If, for example, we take any typical account of the higher stages of prayer, as attained in the mystical life, there is an obvious parallel with the stages by which simple suggestion passes through attention and concentration to those hypnoidal conditions which lead on to complete hypnosis. [48] In the ‘ prayer for individual acts ’ we have exactly the [ p. 87 ] mechanism used by Cou to draw the attention away from sickness to health, thus disarming the morbid suggestions due to fear and to the more subtle quest for the power which can be secured through the strong appeal of weakness to human sympathy. Here we have true auto-suggestion, the constant repetition of some single, self-chosen, idea, producing a state of what Baudouin has termed ‘ concentration.’ [49] In meditation the same end is achieved, but with a wider, and in the end a more normal and saner, range of voluntary submission to suggestive thought. From these the mystic passes on to so-called ‘ affective prayer,’ in which the emotions are strongly engaged, and the element of rational control recedes more and more into the background. And so the prayer of individual acts passes over into the ‘ prayer of simplicity,’ in which all volition seems to be lost. The soul is utterly rapt in the contemplation of some vision of God. It is the state called by Baudouin ‘ contention ’ [50] and by the mystics ‘ contemplation,’ or the ‘ prayer of union,’ It is the goal of Hindu piety, the condition attained in the practice of Yoga, in which the soul sinks more and more into a condition of utter self-forgetfulness, losing itself in a sense of reality for which, as all the mystics agree, no words can be found, as it passes up the Unitive Way and seems, for a time in which no sense of time is left, to be one with God.
We might similarly point to those forms of worship in which everything possible is done, through mental and physical relaxation, through the fixation of attention by lights in a darkened church, by music, by suitably chosen forms of prayer and praise, beautifully and rather monotonously reiterated, and, above all, through the strong pressure of the group itself, to induce the condition of attention and concentration in which the soul feels itself more and [ p. 88 ] more free to sink back into a sense of union with God. Or, again, in revivalist types of worship we note how the heightening of the emotions, through appeals which owe more to reiteration than to any clear intellectual presentation of a case, results in a complete if temporary abandonment of volitional control in a mystical ecstasy of penitence and in, once more, that strange heightened sense of reality and significance.
In all this we are moving strictly within the sphere of psychology. There is nothing here which, given the desired end, might not have been evolved in some wholly secular laboratory of the Behaviourists. It is exactly upon a level with the methods which psychologists have used again and again, since the days of their ancestors the witch-doctors, for all manner of purposes, black magic as well as white. [51] And we note further that this whole process has an aspect of retrogression to the infantile which practical students of religious method would do well to study. For primitive suggestibility is a necessary condition of the first stages of childish learning. But it is equally necessary that it should be superseded in the adult by free and conscious choice and control among the objects that clamour for his attention. Too much of our organized worship depends for its effects upon the lowering of the congregation to the condition of children awed by the pageantry of a circus, or overwhelmed, as in revivalism, by the sudden and overmastering emotions of a terrified and stricken moment. The very sense of reality which is so strong an element in the mystical experience is strangely like that primitive and unresolved condition of the personal relationship, from which the child must grow to knowledge of itself, of others, and, through others of God. And we remember that the mystics and the revivalists alike have taught us strangely little. They have the vision and [ p. 89 ] the power, but they have not greatly interpreted the ways of God to men. [52]
There is much food here for thought, and if we venture to suggest that what is called vocal prayer, such prayer, clothed in direct and consciously chosen words, as most nearly resembles the speech of man with man, such prayer as any child, scholar, or saint may utter when he will, is the highest prayer of all and not merely an elementary stage of some more honourable or more effective way, we shall be speaking contrary to all received religious opinion, but, I think, very comfortably to simple and sincere souls. And if we urge that the highest moments of Christian worship are not the so-called great occasions but the meeting of small groups for prayer, the quiet and unadorned gathering of the faithful about the Table of the Lord, the peaceful and unhurried silence of a retreat, we shall perplex the journalists, but the saints will understand. And as understanding spreads the Church may once again enter upon the Way of Renewal.
For in recognizing the truth of almost all that psychology has to say about suggestion in connection with faith and worship we have by no means abandoned the case for religion. All that we have done is to urge that the development of faith through love, reaching out through the sality that is known to the Reality that is unknown, is more important than the various modes through which it is expressed. If there is neither faith nor love in some particular occasion of prayer or worship, we are well content to repudiate it as superstition or worse, and to go our way. But, when we pause to think, how very few are the cases upon which we should care to pass so sweeping a condemnation.
[ p. 90 ]
It is when we come to look more closely at the psychological theory of suggestion itself that we find the real answer to this particular attack. For, surprisingly enough, the psychologists do not in the least know what suggestion is. It is simply a name attached to certain observed facts of human behaviour, in which the phenomena of hypnotism and hysterical dissociation are seen to be correlated with the childish and adolescent approaches to reality. It would not be untrue to say that suggestion is more in need of an explanation in terms of faith, than faith an explanation in terms of suggestion. And there is very much in the work of recent psychologists to support this view. We may easily see that the whole theory of suggestion involves the presupposition of a world of real personal relationships, and that even so it is incomplete, since it does not and cannot explain the search of the human soul for a reality that lies deeper still. We cannot expect to find here a psychological proof of the existence of God, but if we find that suggestion itself is no mechanical process, but itself a principle in which person and person meet in purposive activity, we may well ask whether the distinction between suggestion and faith can be maintained. And with this the whole religious approach to the problem of reality is open once again.
Suggestion is a primitive and highly important mode of communicating ideas in such a manner that they are accepted quite apart from any logical grounds for the conviction so produced. [53] The person who receives the suggestion may be influenced to act, to feel, or to believe in certain ways, and [ p. 91 ] under suitable conditions the imposition of the suggestion appears to take place quite automatically, as though his conscious volition and control were in complete abeyance. The most striking instance of this is in hypnosis, a condition in which the most absurd suggestions are readily received, and may even be carried out in action long after the hypnotic trance is over. [54] A familiar example in ordinary life is to be seen in the obvious success of advertisements which depend simply upon the attraction of attention through striking colouring or an effective picture and upon the reiteration from a thousand hoardings of some statement which a moment’s rational thought would show to be pretentious to the point of absurdity. Where the assertion is accompanied by the prestige, whether of an individual or of some long tradition, as in a nation or a Church, there are few sufficiently strong-minded to resist the suggestion altogether, unless some counter-assertion, also supported by prestige, supports them in so doing.
It is sometimes asserted that this process is purely mechanical, depending simply upon the attraction of attention by a sufficiently striking stimulus and the repetition of the suggestion with sufficient frequency. And though this view is not held by any reputable psychologist it is implied in the popular misconception which reduces faith and prayer to ‘ mere suggestion,’ In actual fact the process is not mechanical at all. Even in such a technique as that of Coué,[55] a in which the insistent pain of a sufferer could be [ p. 92 ] harried into unconsciousness by the rapid and incessant repetition, ‘Ça passe, ga passe, ga passe,’ the new idea of recovery and health had to be accepted by the patient. Hetero-suggestion must become auto-suggestion. And this acceptance was a personal and not a mechanical affair. Undoubtedly too it depended very largely upon the prestige of Coué and his method. The efficacy of the suggestion depended in fact upon faith.
The modern study of suggestion [56] has proceeded upon two main lines. It has been noted that readiness to receive and to act with unreasoning promptitude upon suggestion is highly necessary among gregarious animals. And man is unquestionably gregarious. It is an obvious fact of human behaviour that men tend to accept quite uncritically the opinions and to conform to the conduct of any society to which they may belong. Suggestibility is thus largely a phenomenon of the group, a point to which we shall return when, in a later lecture, we consider the nature of authority. But this is only part of the truth. The non-gregarious species of animal are also highly suggestible to one another, though in a very different way. And in man the most striking phenomena of suggestion are those in which individual influences individual directly. Jung, and the psycho-analysts generally, have explained this by reference to those intimate personal relationships which constitute the ‘ love-life.’ [57] Here we have an element of isolated and individual attraction and attention which operates even among gregarious animals, and operates just as powerfully as herd-suggestion, and at [ p. 93 ] certain times and seasons even more powerfully. We need not concern ourselves with the sexual language in which this theory has been expressed. Obviously it is true that the condition of falling in love renders men highly suggestible to a particular person, and true also that the special relationship of child to parent is one within which suggestions are received with peculiar force. Hypnosis may well be a state in which this condition of childish suggestibility reappears when steps are taken to hold the attention and when the person hypnotized is willing, within certain limits—for there are very definite limits to the suggestions which can be enforced under hypnosis [58]—to sink back into the infantile state of dependence. It is worthy of notice that the attention of the person hypnotized is never directed to the object, the bright light or the monotonous words, which may be used to establish the condition. It is always held by the person who is for the time being in control. We find, in fact, that primary condition of which we spoke at the beginning of this lecture, a condition which is essentially an unresolved and undifferentiated personal relationship, and in which the ego has not yet been developed into individuality by the exercise of its own activity, controlled by its own critical use of reason.
But all this means that suggestibility bears a striking resemblance to fides informis[59] the basic and elemental personal [ p. 94 ] relationship which develops as love and which, through love, shapes itself in life as that free, voluntary trust which is what we ordinarily mean by faith. It underlies all knowledge, for apart from faith, and personal faith, the knowledge of the scientist would never take shape at all. It reaches out into the unknown, seeking its own fulness of personal being in an ever-growing quest for love. And even though to the end, in human life as we know it, suggestibility and faith are intermingled, faith is not shamed or stultified thereby, any more than man is shamed or his adult personality rendered unreal by the fact that he was once a child and that he never, in this life, wholly puts away childish things.
And if faith and love are indeed the means whereby alone we penetrate to the mystery of reality, may it not well be that reality itself is such that the true approach to it is by faith and love ? [60] We have not proved the existence of a personal God. But is it not at least suggested that any other hypothesis is inadequate to the point, we might almost say, of absurdity ?
| II. THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ACCOVNT OF RELIGION | Title page | IV. SPIRITUAL HEALING AND PSYCHOLOGICAL PROCESS |
Blake, The Everlasting Gospel. ↩︎
I should like to enter a protest against the use of the term ‘ mythoogical ’ which seems to be coming more and more into use in modern heological literature in the sense in which I have used the term ‘ symbolic.’ The usage goes back to Plato’s employment of the ‘ myth ’ to express some truth which lies beyond the reach of ordinary logical analysis and statement, and has been popularized by the recent German scholars of he Formgeschichte school, starting from the publication of Dibehus’ The Form-History of the Gospel (see especially p. 85), followed by Bultmann, The History of the. Synoptic Tradition. For an account of this literature see Easton, The Gospel before the Gospels. Such English writers as Dr. Rawlinson have used this hypothesis in a conservative form, and in their occasional use of the term ‘ mythological ’ they stress the truth which the ‘ myth ’ expresses, rather than its unhistorical character (e.g. Essays on the Trinity and the Incarnation, pp. ix, 32. For the Platonic background of the usage cf. Webb, God and Personality, pp. 167 ff. Dr. Rawlinson sets in the forefront of his New Testament Doctrine of the Christ quotations from P. E. More and G. K. Chesterton which use the term in this broad sense). I cannot help believing that the popular meaning of the term is too strongly entrenched to allow of this usage, and that it will give rise to endless misconception. ↩︎
C. H. Dodd, The Meaning of Paul for To-day, p. 107 : ‘ In the theological constructions which have been based upon Paul the term " faith " has suffered such twistings and turnings that it has almost lost definition of meaning. Indeed, even in Paul’s own use of the word there is very great complexity.’ ↩︎
This was the practical value of the distinction between natural and revealed religion, characteristic of the eighteenth century (e.g. in Butler’s Analogy) and going back to Lord Herbert of Cherbury. It is a convenient distinction for simple folk, but, unfortunately, leaves religion helpless against rationalistic criticism. ↩︎
Tertullian, De carne Christi, 5 : ‘ Crucifixus est dei films ; non pudet, quia pudendum est. Et mortuus est dei filius ; prorsus credibile est, quia ineptum est. Et sepultus resurrexit ; certum est, quia impossibile est.’ ↩︎
The early history of this saying is not known to me. It is quoted by James, The Will to Believe, p. 29, and appears to represent with accuracy Jung’s idea of Christian belief : cf. Psychology of the Unconscious, p. 15. ↩︎
Heb. vi. i. ↩︎
Heb. xi. i. ↩︎
Heb. xi. 39. ↩︎
Jn. xi. 16. ↩︎
Jn. xx. 28. ↩︎
Jn. xx. 31. ↩︎
The repeated emphasis upon knowledge as the result of either faith or love is perhaps the most characteristic mark of the Epistle : i Jn. ii. 5, 20, 27-29 ; iii. 2-5, 14, 19, 24 ; iv. 2, 7, 8, 13 ; v. 2, 13-20. There is nothing in the Gospel so self-conscious as this. Both writers bear witness to faith and love upon the highest Christian level, but faith in the Epistle is beginning to feel its own pulse. ↩︎
Jas. ii. 19. ↩︎
Encheiridion, c. 5. ↩︎
Heb xi. 6. ↩︎
De doct. Christ, c. 37. ↩︎
Proslogion, c. i. The whole section is of great interest, and is entirely in line with the main thesis of these lectures. See Webb’s illuminating note upon it in The Devotions of Saint Anselm : ‘ The permanent nature of the mind is a trinity of self consciousness (or, as St. Anselm says, memory), understanding, and love ; for love is the intensest form of the interest which continues without rejecting to contemplate any object. And therein he sees in the human mind an image of the Divine.’ ↩︎
‘ Quod petunt, non ut per rationem ad fidem accedant, sed ut eorum quae credunt mtellectu et contemplatione delectentur, et ut sint, quantum possunt, parati semper ad satisfactionem omni poscenti se rationem de ea quae in nobis est spe ’ (Cur Deus Homo, i. i). ↩︎
Cur Deus Homo, i. i ; cf. i. 3 and ii. 22. ↩︎
Op. cit. i. 2. ↩︎
Summa Theol. ii. Q. 62, Art. 4. ↩︎
Ibid., Conclusio. ↩︎
See V. J. K. Brook’s essay in The Atonement in History and Life. ↩︎
Corpus Reformatorum, xxi. p. 162. ↩︎
Ibid. p. 163. ↩︎
Comm. in Gal. iv. 5. ↩︎
Christian Liberty (in Wace and Buchheim, Primary Treatises), p. 111. ↩︎
Conf. Helv. c. 16. ↩︎
Heidelberg Catechism, Q. 21. ↩︎
Summa Theol. ii. Q. 63, Art. I. ↩︎
Introduction to Romans. I owe this, and one or two of the preceding references, to Brook’s essay. ↩︎
Concordance, sub voce. ↩︎
The Religious Consciousness, p. 210. See also his full discussion of primitive credulity in his earlier Psychology of Religious Belief. The analysis in Bain, The Emotions and the Will (see esp. p. 511), underlies all subsequent treatment of the subject. ↩︎
James, Principles of Psychology, ii. pp. 8, 34 f. ↩︎
Baldwin, Social and Ethical Interpretations, chaps, i., ii. ; Royce, 'The External World and the Social Consciousness,’ in Phil. Rev. iii. pp. 513545. I owe these references to J. B. Pratt, The Religious Consciousness, pp. 93 ff. Pratt himself says that ‘ the child’s consciousness of himself and his consciousness of other people as selves grow up together out of a social milieu ’ (ibid.), but even here he does seem quite sufficiently to emphasize the essential unity of that milieu as inherently personal from the first. ↩︎
The Will to Believe, p. 9. ↩︎
Tennyson, In Memoriam, xiv. ↩︎
In saying this we again traverse the fundamental presuppositions of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, where it is implicitly assumed that individual rather than corporate or shared experience is the basic material of philosophy. This assumption renders the problem of reality insoluble from the outset, since there is no way of escaping from the circle of individual experience, within which the whole argument proceeds. But the assumption is not only unnecessary but misleading. ↩︎
K. Heim’s Glaubensgewissheit is an elaborate defence of this position. See esp. pp. 17-37. ↩︎
If such a case as that of Kipling’s Mowgli had ever been recorded it would be of extreme interest in this connection. But Mowgli is a creature of the romantic imagination, and has no basis in fact. Such records as exist of so-called ‘ wolf-children,’ even if true, point wholly in another direction. ↩︎
For the Behaviourist attempt to explain this process on mechanistic principles cf. Watson, Psychology from the Standpoint of a Behaviorist, pp. 338 ff., and Allport, Social Psychology, pp. 178 fif. The fullest account, and much the best, is given by Markey, The Symbolic Process. There is little to criticize in this book except the account of the fundamental situation (pp. 33 ff.) where the actual presence of the mother or nurse is simply assumed as part of a ‘ general situation containing general behaviour and objects.’ How the child associates the ‘ verbal stimuli ’ either with the mother or with itself remains as obscure as ever. Markey himself says that ‘ the first moment that such an integration occurs in the behaviour of a child must be a startling one. This flash of co-ordination, facilitation, inhibition, summation, and integration which occurs in the behaviour mechanisms would be a novel and extraordinary experience.’ It would indeed, if there were a developed and conscious ego there to be startled. The whole thaory, true as it is descriptively, begs the fundamental issue completely. ↩︎
For a development of this answer to theories of emergent evolution, as stated by Lloyd Morgan or S. Alexander, see Quick, Liberalism, Modernism, and Tradition, and L. S. Thornton, The Incarnate Lord. ↩︎
i John iv. 20. ↩︎
i John iv. 7, 8. ↩︎
Summa Theol. ii. 2. Q. 83, Art. i : ‘ Oratio est ascensio mentis in Deum ’ i cf. ii. 2. Q. 83, Art. 17 : ‘ Oratio est ^scensio intellectus in Deum.’ ↩︎
Tracy, The Psychology of Childhood, p. 190 : ‘A child who, for any reason, has never worshipped his mother will be by so much the less likely ever to worship any other divinity.’ ↩︎
For a fuller development of this parallel cf. Thouless, An Introduction to the Psychology of Religion, pp. 165 fi. ↩︎
Suggestion et Autosuggestion, pp. 118 f. ↩︎
Ibid. ↩︎
On this whole subject cf. the opening section of Janet’s Psychological Healing. ↩︎
In this respect the criticism of James, Varieties of Religious Experience, pp. 379 ff. f and Leuba, The Psychology of Religious Mysticism, pp. 300 ff., seems unanswerable. Mysticism has in fact been associated with every sort of creed. Von Hugel in his great book, The Mystical Element of Religion, does not succeed in relating the mysticism of St. Catherine to anything essential in her theology. To realize this does not in the least diminish the greatness of his heroine. See p. 206. ↩︎
McDougall defines suggestion as ‘ a process of communication resulting in the acceptance with conviction of the communicated proposition in the absence of logically adequate grounds for its acceptance ’ (Social Psychology, p. 97). Thouless, Introduction to the Psychology of Religion, pp. 1 8 f., criticizes this as not covering the cases where what is communicated is a feeling state or activity, and gives, as an alternative definition, ‘ a process of communication resulting in the acceptance and realisation of a communicated idea in the absence of adequate grounds for its acceptance.’ See also Thouless, Social Psychology, pp. 164 ff. ↩︎
An especially interesting study is that of T. W. Mitchell, Medical Psychology and Psychical Research, pp. 1-68. ↩︎
On the whole method cf. Coue, Self Mastery by Conscious Autosuggestion ; C. Harry Brooks, The Practice of Autosuggestion ; Baudouin, Suggestion et Autosuggestion. There is the very greatest confusion between hetero-suggestion and auto-suggestion. Cou6 supposed that nothing more was necessary than that the patient should carry out the suggestion for himself. But clearly this does not determine the source of the suggestion, and the truth of the matter is that the process always has the double aspect, external and internal. ↩︎
W. Brown, Science and Personality, pp. 86-104. In this passage there is a good discussion of auto-suggestion and hetero-suggestion. See also pp. 152 fi. for a discussion of Coue’s curious confusion of imagination, suggestion, and the will. Cf. W. Brown, Mind and Personality, pp. 272 fi. ↩︎
Jung, Analytical Psychology, pp. 238 fi. ; Ferenczi, Contributions to Psycho-analysis, chap. ii. ; Freud, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, pp. 97 ff. ; E. Jones, Papers on Psycho-analysis, pp. 331 ff. For a criticism of this view see W. Brown, Mind and Personality, pp. 177 ff. ; Science and Personality, pp. 96 fi. ↩︎
The belief that hypnosis can be used to facilitate crimes is now generally abandoned. See Janet, Psychological Healing, p. 184, and the references there given. The point is of considerable importance, since it proves that only certain aspects of the infantile condition are renewed under hypnosis. The adult ego-ideal persists throughout, even though its modes of manifestation are modified. ↩︎
The close connection between faith and suggestibility is discussed by W. Brown, Mind and Personality, pp. 271 ff. ; cf. also his Science and Personality, p. 220. He emphasizes the important distinction that faith is active and suggestion (by which he means suggestibility) passive. The distinction is valid and important for the later, adult, developments, but the passivity even in such extreme forms of suggestibility as hypnosis is a passivity accepted by the ego of the person hypnotized. It has, in fact, an original active element, personal in character, and this element is identical with those primary personal contacts out of which faith also develops. In striking support of the view taken in these lectures is L. Dewar’s identification of grace with suggestion : ‘ grace is another word for suggestion, and . . . the essence of suggestion is that it is an appeal to the instinctive forces of the psyche ’ (Magic and Grace, p. 117). Mr. Dewar here perhaps puts his case a little too abruptly, not distinguishing sufficiently clearly between grace and the mode of its operation, or between its elementary and its more developed expression in life. But if grace and suggestion can thus be connected, a similar relation obviously holds between faith, the response to grace, and suggestibility. ↩︎
This point is strikingly argued in McDowall’s Evolution and the Need tf Atonement, p. 16 and passim. ↩︎