The development of modern Psychology which has excited most general interest is the investigation of the subconscious levels of the mind. Writing over twenty years ago, James pronounced this to be the most important step forward that had occurred in Psychology in his time, and spoke of ‘a discovery which had revealed an entirely unsuspected peculiarity in the constitution of human nature.’ His description of the phenomena was that ‘there exists beyond the field, or subliminally, a set of memories, thoughts or feelings which are outside of primary consciousness altogether, but must yet classed as conscious facts of some sort, able to reveal their presence by unmistakable signs.’1 The mysterious territory was actually discovered by religious explorers who may be said to have constructed rough charts, and given names to mountains and rivers; expeditions were made by Leibniz and Sir William Hamilton;2 and modern Psychology has undertaken a scientific survey that has improved the maps, changed place-names, brought to light many new facts, and also provoked much controversy as to the nature of the territory, the character of the inhabitants, and the form of their government. Religion has had a twofold connection with the subconscious. The typical facts and occurrences are largely supplied by religious experience. Theology, moreover, has generally been identified with an interpretation of the facts in which the limitations imposed upon scientific inquiry have been unknown or have been disregarded, and a metaphysical explanation has been offered of the more impressive phenomena. It is desirable to begin with a general view of the subconscious, in which we distinguish its divisions with their characteristic data, and thereafter to discuss the principal interpretations with special reference to the theological explanation.

I

The term subconscious has been used with a wider and a narrower range of meaning. In the wider sense, which is here adopted, it embraces all that lies outside and below the field of consciousness. In the centre lies the division which may be called the land of light—that which at any given moment is illuminated by the operations of conscious intelligence. The subconscious which lies beyond this sunlit space consists of two realms—the subconscious in the narrower sense of the word, which is a land of twilight, and the unconscious, of which it may be said, as of primeval chaos, that darkness is upon the face of the deep. The subconscious in the narrow sense is the borderland between the region of light and the region of darkness. It rounds off and frames the field of consciousness, and it shades off into the realm of the unconscious. The unconscious also has been defined more widely and more narrowly—sometimes as including all the contents of the mind which at a particular time are unrealised and lie beyond our ken, sometimes as restricted to a section from which the intelligence is entirely excluded, and which only makes known its existence and its contents in indirect ways. Within the territory of the subconscious, a number of departments have been distinguished. Those commonly recognised are the storehouses which serve as repositories of psychical materials, and the workshops in which mental processes are carried out. The processes imply workers of some sort, and workers may be held to imply the existence, as a third department, of dwellings or retreats.

The subconscious in the narrower sense, as has been indicated, is the field containing those objects of which we are dimly and partially aware when the mind is giving its attention to matters within the range of its conscious interests. The stock illustrations are the student who, while engrossed in his book, is also aware of the ticking of the clock, or the miller who, while intent on grinding his corn, is also alive to the noise made by his machinery and his water-wheel. This mode of consciousness has been utilised in religion to reconcile the claims of God upon the soul with the natural and necessary preoccupations of an earth-bound creature. For it makes it possible for a man to be involved in worldly employments and recreations, and at the same time to preserve a habitual sense of the presence of God, and to give to the things which are seen and temporal a constant reference to the things that are unseen and eternal.

1. Beyond or below the borderland the realm of the subconscious has its equipment of storehouses. It is obvious that there exist in the mind, somehow or somewhere, at least two repositories upon which we are continually drawing for information and directions. One is the storehouse of the memory. In addition to the things which we may be recalling at any moment by conscious effort, or which present themselves before us of their own accord, there are innumerable things which we could recollect if we desired, or which would start up out of the depths of oblivion if they were likely to be relevant to a conversation or useful for the business in hand. The dormant state of the contents of memory was defined by Hamilton as the first degree of mental latency. ‘I know a science, or language, not merely while I make a temporary use of it, but inasmuch as I can apply it when and how I will. The infinitely greater part of our spiritual treasures lies always beyond the sphere of consciousness, hid in the obscure recesses of the mind.’3 A second repository which is recognised in popular as well as in philosophical thinking is the individual character. Our thoughts, words and actions have their source in a system of tendencies and dispositions which have acquired a certain fixity and permanence. Every individual may be said to possess a character of a sort in respect that he is a bundle of habitudes, and when the habitudes are such that he is normally governed by good maxims he possesses a character in the higher meaning of the word. Religion, occupied as it has been with central concerns of the soul, has naturally had much to do with these repositories, and much to say about their contents. The call to repentance has been enforced by the admonition to remember past sins. The storehouse of character was recognised by Jesus when He said that ‘the good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is good; and the evil man out of the evil treasure bringeth forth that which is evil’ (Luke vi. 45). In Christian Theology it is taught that spiritual well-being consists in the possession of a sanctified character which spontaneously utters itself in pious thoughts and feelings, and in virtuous actions. Theology has also affirmed the existence of a special repository to which it has given the name of original sin. In opposition to the view that actual sins are due to the efficiency of a will acting with the liberty of indifference, it has been maintained that they have a secret source in a body of selfish and sensuous propensities which are part of the inherited outfit of human nature, and which exercise upon the will so strong and constant a pressure that a fall has been a foregone conclusion for every child of Adam.

The storehouse of memory contains a special chamber which is inaccessible, either because nature has locked the door, or because one has mislaid the key. This was referred to by Hamilton as the second degree of latency. He illustrates it by a number of cases of persons who displayed unsuspected accomplishments under abnormal conditions—the most memorable being that of an illiterate servant-girl who, when in a fever, recited passages in Hebrew, Greek and Latin, which she had overheard years before from the intellectual exercises that went on in a minister’s study.4 This barred chamber has been recognised in religion in various forms, and it was rediscovered by the Freudian school. Its contents are described by Rivers as’ the experience which is not capable of being brought into the field of consciousness by any of the ordinary processes of memory or association, but can only be recalled under certain special conditions, such as sleep, hypnotism, the method of free association, and certain pathological states.’5

2. The subconscious realm is, next, the seat of workshops in which things are done which bear the impress of mental activity. This is the department to which the name of the subconscious is often specially attached. ‘A subconscious process,’ says Dr. Morton Prince, ‘may be provisionally defined as one of which the personality is unaware, which, therefore, is outside the personal consciousness, and which is a factor in the determination of conscious and bodily phenomena, or produces effects analogous to those which might be directly or indirectly induced by consciousness.’6 The reason for postulating the invisible workshops is that results emerge in our conscious field which we do not own as our handiwork, while yet they have the marks of being the products of a train of thought or of a sustained effort of will. These results were ascribed by Hamilton to ‘unconscious modifications of mind,’ or ‘latent activities below the surface of consciousness.’ Examples are given from the experiences of the intellectual life. ‘An author, wrestling with the intricacies of his plot, finds his mind flagging. He lights his pipe, paces his room, glances at a picture or the newspaper, giving his mind a holiday. When he returns to his task the argument has advanced, difficulties have vanished and he proceeds to write. Or he sleeps over it and all is cleared up.’ in hypnotic states there is a much more complete detachment from conscious activity. ‘you suggest in hypnosis to a suitable subject that he shall multiply certain numbers, or calculate the number of seconds intervening between certain hours—let us say between 10.43 and 1.13 o’clock, the answer to be given in writing on a certain day. The subject is then awakened immediately, before he has time to do the calculation while in hypnosis. Later, if the experiment be successful, at the time designated the subject will absent-mindedly or automatically write the figures giving the answers.’7 the decision, in the often-quoted words of Wendell Holmes, ‘is delivered like a prepaid parcel, laid at the door of consciousness like a foundling in a basket.’

This form of experience has been familiar in the religious life. It was known to the psalmist who said that ‘God giveth unto His beloved in sleep’ (cxxvii. 2). The process is exemplified in the type of conversion that has been distinguished as spontaneous awakening, in which the mind suddenly realises that it has come into possession of a new apprehension of God or of the terms of salvation. Illumination was regarded by the Lutheran divines as one of the well-marked stages of conversion, and it was taught that the experience could occur as the result of a process in which the Word of God had secretly germinated in the mind. ‘The power illumination, wherewith the divine word is endowed, is not strictly tied to the acts of hearing, reading or meditation, but the word which has been heard, read, transmitted to and retained by the mind ever works efficaciously, in virtue of its illuminating powers.’8 under the same law a person may awake to the fact that his faith has secretly withered and died. And similarly with the religious feelings—it may be found that during a season of waiting they have been quickened to new warmth and intensity, or, more commonly, are found to have run a course issuing in lukewarmness or indifference. The will also seems to do important work connected with the religious standing below the level of consciousness. Resolutions of the kind that are fundamental in conversion are declared to have been decisively though unconsciously taken, while it is a common experience that important particular problems such as the choice of a spiritual vocation may settle themselves overnight in the same spontaneous fashion. And these also have their negative counterparts in apostasies, betrayals and perversions, which may issue in a sudden discovery that, though a man knew it not, the foundations of his character had been broken up in the dark.

3. The activities of the storehouses and the workshops, as has been said, require us to think of a working population of some kind. Experience makes us acquainted with systems of tendencies which give the impression of being more than impersonal forces working blindly and mechanically, and which have therefore been readily personified in popular thinking. These fall into two classes, according as they are associated with our normal life or emerge in connection with pathological states.

Normal experience has so much of variety and incoherence that even the ordinary man feels there is something to be said for the idea that he is two persons and perhaps more. It is an old and widespread conception that there are two selves—a lower and a higher, which behave as if they were unsympathetic and hostile individuals. This idea was favoured by Plato; and it was given a prominent place in Christian thinking by St. Paul, who pictured the soul as torn by a perennial conflict between the mind, also called the inward man, and the flesh or the outward man, in which the flesh has the upper hand until the mind is renewed and reinforced by the Spirit of God (Rom. VII 14 FF.). Modern Psychology has taken over the distinction and has carried the analysis further. James contrasted the self as knower, the I, with the self as known, the me, and in the known or empirical self he distinguished the material me, the social me, and the spiritual me.9 The constitutional situation might be more fully described by saying that there are secondary selves which may be assigned to a lower nature, and four which may be assigned to a higher nature. The three which live and move on the lower plane are the bodily self, chiefly urged by appetites and the desire of repose, which values sensuous pleasure and ease as the highest good; the possessive self, inspired by the acquisitive instinct, which delights in accumulating and handling the goods of which money is the symbol; and the social self, prone to self-display, and also touched with tender emotions, which sets high store on honour and affection. Each of these quasi-individuals has its manifest utility in the economy of the human constitution, but when any one exaggerates its importance and seeks to determine the policy of the whole it notoriously produces disorder and mischief, and may reduce the whole community to ruin and disgrace. They also exercise a salutary check upon one another. The possessive self may call on the bodily self to curb its indulgences, and rouse itself out of sloth to profitable activities, while the social self can insist on the possessive self doing generous things that will win the respect and the goodwill of the society in which one’s lines have fallen. The secondary selves associated with the higher nature are the intellectual self which gives its heart to know, the aesthetic which delights in the world of beauties and sublimities, the ethical which disposes us to think and act in terms of duty, and the religious which impels us to communion with God. It is symptomatic of the difference in dignity of the two groups that for members of the lower group symbols have been found among the animals—as the hog, the fox, and the peacock, while the members of the higher group may be cited as the student, the artist, the schoolmaster, and the priest of the soul. In the hour of temptation it is found useful to identify the quarter from which a dubious suggestion emanates, and to refer the proposal to the arbitrament of a council comprising the other members of the community.

In addition to these secondary selves, which are more or less familiar acquaintances in ordinary experience, there are others with more striking features which make their appearance under exceptional conditions. In the hypnotic state there comes upon the scene a quasi-individual of a more mysterious kind, which stands in close relation with the normal self, and shares in its equipment and resources, but which also has distinctive traits, and seems to have at its command special intellectual resources of its own. The subconscious personality is defined as a condition where ‘complexes of subconscious processes are constellated into a personal system, manifesting a secondary system of self-consciousness endowed with volition and intelligence.’10 In pathological cases the personality seems to be shattered, and several quasi-individuals, distinguished by intellectual and moral differences, can appear in succession and assume the direction of the affairs of the household. An often-quoted case is that of a Frenchwoman, Felida, who oscillated between two modes of existence—in which she appeared to be two totally different persons, one of whom knew everything, and the other knew nothing, about her occult associate.11 The story of Miss Beauchamp, as told by Dr. Morton Prince, is stranger than fiction. The personality of a cultured high-minded young lady, as the result of a shock, split up into three, which gradually revealed themselves in the diverse characters of a serious but some-what eccentric student, an irresponsible madcap, and a well-principled and sensible woman of the world. The first two developed very strained relations, plotted and counter-plotted, and in a prolonged duel fought not merely for the mastery, but as if for their very lives. The result of the therapeutic treatment was that the audacious and mischievous member was thrown into chains in some asylum of the unconscious, and that the other two were consolidated in a satisfactory synthesis which substantially reproduced the character that had existed before the disruptive shock.

The phenomena of the hypnotised subject and of the dissociated personality have bulked largely in religious history and literature. Magic seized upon them, and they brought much gain to the soothsayers. They supplied material to the Greek oracles, which, however, was edited with the help of general knowledge and of common sense. The great religions viewed them askance as belonging to a domain with which it was unlawful and dangerous to intermeddle. The Old Testament gives a tragic example of the shattered personality in the story of Saul, and the writer of the Fourth Gospel suggests that there was a Judas who was other and better than the traitor (John xiii. 27). In the ministry of Jesus, the natural horror excited by sufferers was replaced by the spirit of the good Samaritan, and abundant powers for the work of healing were promised to the children of the Kingdom (Matt. x. 8; Mark xvi. 17). The Church of the patristic age regarded exorcism as an important branch of Christian service. The Protestant Church has doubted the old diagnosis, and in modern times it has on the whole left the possessed to the physician.

II

Is it possible to assign to the subconscious a definite rôle? It may be taken for granted that its existence as part of our constitution is of itself conclusive evidence of its utility to the species. And obviously at the least it is a labour-saving and a time-saving mechanism. It makes it possible for us to devote ourselves to new objects and fresh tasks while retaining a real hold upon other things with which we had previously dealt. With its repositories of memory and character it serves in the intellectual and in the moral life much the same uses which are served in the economic life by the bank in which we deposit our gains, and on which we can draw when we require money. It seems indeed to be a very grave disservice that it makes the hand of the past to lie so heavily upon us, and indeed the dead hand not only of a human but of a subhuman past, but this has to be accepted as the way in which it makes effective the principle of human solidarity, to which we owe the best as well as the worst of what we have; and if it makes sin to abound, it makes amends by reproducing from generation to generation many high qualities which make man to differ from the brutes. Opinion is seriously divided as to the general character of the subconscious, and as to its distinctive function. According to one view it is an amorphous or protean entity, which staggers to and fro like a drunken man, behaving without any leading idea or coherent purpose. When a definite is assigned to it, it has been conceived to be characteristically sinister and dangerous, and also to preponderantly friendly and beneficent.

1. The subconscious, as commonly depicted, is a mass of inconsistencies. The things which have been said of it might be put together somewhat as follows in a character-sketch.

‘The intellectual powers of the subconscious are of a low order. It is incapable of rational thinking, and it in responsible for our unconsidered utterances and our stupid blunders. On the other hand, it has intellectual gifts which are remarkable and in some respects prodigious. It has an extraordinary memory in which are preserved every incident of our past lives, every other item of knowledge that we ever possessed, and also manifold pieces of information which we picked up casually and did not know that we had acquired. It has command of much information which is outside the ken of our normal self, especially in regard the state of our health, so that it is able to perceive the necessity of a grave operation, and perhaps to make it known in a dream. It is good at figures and can solve difficult mathematical problems. It cultivates poetry, in which it sometimes rises to the heights of genius. It has much cleverness of the sort which is directed to the art of persuasion, and provides plausible arguments in support of any course which it knows we desire in our hearts. It has striking telepathic powers, and conveys its discoveries through automatic writing. On the ethical plane it is weaker. It lacks self-control, is childish in disposition, and has passionate outbursts of anger. it is the receptacle of, and panders to, the animal propensities. But it has one quality which goes some way to atone for its ethical deficiencies, for it is extremely impressionable—responding readily to good influences as well as bad, and so long as a good impression lasts it casts its influence strongly on the virtuous side. And on occasion also it supplies the inspiration to acts of moral heroism. On the religious side it is an indifferentist, with a tendency to profanity. On the other hand, it is a channel if not a source of saintly aspirations, and of the intuitions of religious genius. in short, as man has been said to be the enigma of the universe, so the unconscious may be said to be the enigma of man.’

2. The sinister aspect of the subconscious conceived as the unconscious has been brought into strong relief by Freud. The impulses which come from the unconscious, we are told, ‘seem to rise up from a veritable Hell.’ ‘you refuse,’ he says, ‘to concede so large a part in the human constitution to what is evil, but do your own experiences justify you? Have you met with so much goodwill in your superiors and rivals, so much chivalry in your enemies, and so little envy amongst your acquaintances, that you feel it incumbent on you to protest against the idea of the part played by egoistic baseness in human nature? Do you not know how uncontrolled and unreliable the average human being is in all that concerns sexual life? Or are you ignorant of the fact that all the excesses and aberrations of which we dream at night are crimes actually committed every day by men who are wide awake? Psychology but confirms the old saying of Plato that the good are those who content themselves with dreaming of what others, the wicked, actually do. Human experience is the seat of a sustained conflict in which the protagonists are, not a higher and a lower nature as is commonly supposed, but self-interest and sexual lust.’12 the sexual instinct permeates experience in all directions, and appears in many forms more or less thinly disguised, and these libidinous longings come into frequent collision with the self-regarding instincts. ‘the pathogenic conflict is one between the ego-instincts and the sexual instincts.’13 the propensities cannot all get their way—especially must the libidinous longings submit to restraint and repression, and in their prison-house the turbulent company fret and fume and meditate violent irruptions. The unconscious is, in short, in the language of Mr. Bertrand Russell, ‘a sort of underground prisoner, breaking upon our day-light respectability with dark groans and maledictions and strange atavistic lusts.’14 the scandal which is thus threatened, especially by the carnally-minded company, is, however, so far averted by a special provision of our constitution to which Freud gives the name of the censor. ‘they are guarded,’ as rivers plains, ‘by an authority working within the region the unconscious, upon which it exerts a controlling ion. It checks those elements of unconscious experience which by their unpleasant nature would disturb their possessor if they were allowed to reach his consciousness, and if it permits these to pass, sees bat they appear in such a guise that their nature will not be recognised.’ ‘in sleep, this censorship allows much to reach the sleeping consciousness, but as a rule distorts it so that it appears only in a symbolic form, and with so apparently meaningless a character that the comfort of the sleeper is not affected. In the waking state the censorship is held to be active and efficient. It only allows unconscious experience to escape in the form of slips of the pen or to show its influence in apparently motiveless acts which, owing to the complete failure of the agent to recognise their nature, in no way interfere with the efficiency of the censorship.’15 ‘The unconscious system,’ says Freud, ‘may be compared to a large ante-room, in which the various mental excitations are crowding upon one another, like individual beings. Adjoining this is a second, smaller apartment, a sort of reception-room, in which, too, consciousness resides. But on the threshold between the two there stands a personage with the office of door-keeper, who examines the various mental excitations, censors them, and denies them admittance to the reception-room when he disapproves of them.’16 It has to be added that the censor, while labouring to avert scandalous outbreaks in thought and speech, is made to appear responsible for much damage and disorder of the soul through his measures of repression. For the gloom and the terrors of the unhinged mind may be due to the fact that painful experiences, though they had been thrust out of sight and forgotten, for that very reason worked on as a poisoning and disrupting influence. Riven gives as a typical case that of a man who was obsessed by claustrophobia, or the horror of confined spaces, which was discovered to have had its origin in a long-forgotten episode of his boyhood, when he was attacked in a narrow passage by a savage dog. In the psycho-analytic treatment an important part of the procedure consists in dragging the hidden things to light by divining the meaning of dreams and of casual talk, and it is reported as a common experience that, with the discovery of the cause of the obsession, a man has been delivered from the plague of his unrest and his fears. The Freudian system contains a number of elements which Theology had recognised, expressed in other ways, and utilised in a widely different context. The same class of facts were recognised in the doctrine of total depravity, but with the difference that Theology, remembering that man still bears the image of God, has seldom painted the picture in quite so dark colours. There have also been religious thinkers who, impressed like Freud with the strength of the sexual instinct, have declared sensuousness, which has its chief example in carnal concupiscence, to be the essence and the root of sin; but the general verdict has been given against this view, on the ground that there are sins of selfishness which have an independent root, and also sins of a diabolic kind which cannot be Wined either by pure selfishness or by animal lust. The work of the censor in veiling things and keeping the door of consciousness, if it have anything like the importance which Freud ascribes to it, is unlikely to have been overlooked until our time. According to the Greek sages, nothing is more difficult, though nothing is more important, than self-knowledge, and this implied that there is a veil on the face of the self. The Epistle to the Hebrews speaks of deceitfulness as being the genius of sin (iii. 13)—an observation which is illustrated by the fact that nothing is so common as for us to misunderstand our own motives, and to be mistaken as to the essential spirit and the fundamental aim of our lives. The theory of the censor that controls the malign forces of the subconscious anticipated in another way by the Roman Catholic doctrine of the guardian angel who is appointed to supervise each individual from his nativity onward, and who, in addition to providential offices, ministers to the soul by ‘suggesting good and salutary thoughts, and guarding against assaults of evil spirits.’17 The practical side of Psycho-analysis has also had parallels in Christian teaching. Theology has given a description of man’s sinful condition which bears a general resemblance to the account of the unconscious as a storehouse of suppressed memories which are at the same time the unsuspected source of afflicting and desolating influences. For it has taught that the misery of man is due in the last resort to his sins, at the same time that he is commonly unaware of the fact; and also that the beginning and the condition of the new life which has the promise of repose of soul is that a man shall remember his transgressions, recognise them in their character of sins against God, and make confession of them to God—and on fit occasion also, as St. James counselled, confess them to others (v. 16).

3. In the system of M. Coué an essentially beneficent rôle is ascribed to the subconscious, which figures as a useful coadjutor in the business of self-amelioration. The wrong way of trying to become better, we are told, is to rely on voluntary exertion. This is expressed in the law of reversed effort, which, according to the authoritative exponent of the doctrine, was Coué’s most original contribution, and indeed a stroke of genius. The law of reversed effort is that ‘when an idea imposes itself on the mind to such an extent as to give rise to a suggestion, all the conscious efforts which the subject makes in order to counteract this suggestion are not merely without the desired effect, but they actually run counter to the subject’s conscious wishes and tend to intensify the suggestion.’ ‘The harder we try to think the good idea, the more violent will be the assaults of the bad idea—as with the drunkard whose best efforts to give up drinking serve merely to lead him to the nearest taproom.’18 The right way is to use the imagination to picture the desired state of improvement, and to believe that it is well, or that it is becoming well with us. The prescription is every morning and every evening, betwixt sleep and waking, to practise concentration upon the formula of general suggestion—’day by day, in all respects, ‘get better and better,’ and to supplement this when assailed by some mental or physical trouble by the particular suggestion—‘this is passing off.’ By these practices the suggestions are passed on under favourable conditions to the subconscious, which accordingly gives them a friendly reception, and makes it its duty to see that as far as possible they will be carried into effect. It may be added that the rules, while primarily bearing upon the welfare of the body, have also an application to moral conditions.19

The maxims thus enunciated have at least a kinship principles with which the Christian has been familiar in a grander context. The law of reversed effort has some affinity with the teaching of St. Paul, that Law is weak through the flesh—that so far from making alive, the precept rather stimulates to opposition, and that the struggle after perfection is likely to issue in the despairing cry, ‘O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me out of the body of this death?’ The central feature of the system is the reassertion of the efficacy of faith—which in Theology has been magnified as the act by which man lays hold upon God and appropriates the highest spiritual blessings. But when the psychological doctrine is hailed as a gospel, it may well be asked if those who put this value on it are aware how much more has been offered them in the Christian religion which they probably profess. If a person every night and every morning offers up prayer in which mention is made with thankfulness of the goodness and mercy that have followed him all the days of his life, and in which further blessings of time and eternity are claimed by faith and hope, he may be assured of having the full benefit of the newer psychological wisdom along with such addition of blessings, spiritual and temporal, as the Father in Heaven is able and willing to bestow. Regarded as a substitute for a religion—and it is right to say that Coué himself does not make this claim for it—the scheme has nothing of the dignity of a great faith, but in its counsels concerning the management of the subconscious may rather remind us of the traffic of the savage with the ghosts and demons which he lays himself out to outwit or to cajole.

III

It remains to consider the explanations that have been offered of the phenomena of the subconscious realm of experience. The chief question concerns the ultimate nature of the power or agent to which the strange mental occurrences are to be referred. The explanations are of two main types which may be distinguished as immanent and transcendent. The immanent doctrine, which is the common basis of a group of scientific and philosophical theories, presupposes that the human individual is a self-contained and autonomous being, and it takes cognisance only of powers and capacities that can be reckoned as items of the constitutional equipment of man. The transcendent doctrine is to the effect that the extraordinary phenomena are attributable, at least in part, to some other spiritual being or beings that enter into communion with the human spirit, and to the transmission into human experience of thoughts and volitions that originated in some outside centres of conscious activity. The latter doctrine, while it has usually been combined with a large recognition of natural forces, has been supported in principle by a general consensus of religious thinking.

1. The immanent theories fall into two classes according as they deny or affirm that conscious mind is the chief factor in the production of the enigmatic experiences and activities. The negative attitude is taken in two theories—the materialistic, according to which the work is done by the body, and the agnostic, which has nothing to say, and makes it appear that nothing can be known, about the essential nature of the power which energises in the subconscious field. The positive pair of theories may be distinguished as the psychical and the intellectualist.

(a) The materialistic theory is to the effect that the phenomena of subconsciousness, and in particular the products of the so-called workshops, are fully explained by changes in the bodily organism. Ideas or resolutions which leap into consciousness without known antecedents of reflection and deliberation are construed as the ways in which the mind mirrors, and adopts results of, a physical process which had previously run its course in the brain and the nervous system. This is the process to which Carpenter gave the name unconscious cerebration: ‘The cerebrum,’ so he summarily states the thesis, ‘may act upon impressions transmitted to it, and may elaborate intellectual results, such as we might have attained by the intentional direction of our minds to the subject, without any consciousness on our part.’20 The theory is often associated with, but does not entirely depend on, the general doctrine of Materialism, according to which thought is merely a secretion of the brain, and our ideas and purposes are unimportant concomitants or by-products of the physical occurrences in the body. It is, now, undeniable that bodily conditions are reflected in the mental life, and that they contribute to and colour the contents of the mind. It is a familiar observation that the state of our health, which is governed by physical laws, may profoundly affect our intellectual activities, our general outlook on life, and even our moral and religious attitude. But while the body supplies materials for thinking, and also influences thinking, it seems axiomatic that a material organisation as such has not itself the power of thinking—any more than it is possible for the mind to occupy a measured portion of space, to be weighed in the balances, and to tend to fall to the centre of the earth. It is true that there are eases in which results emerge as the result of physical processes on which a high value can be placed by intelligence—generation, as Hume observed, produces very remarkable results which, as in man, may embody the highest values, while the calculating machine throws off products which the rational mind acknowledges and welcomes. In the latter case, however, it is certain, and in the former there is good ground for holding, that the reason why the results are such as intelligence can appreciate is simply that intelligence had previously had a hand in the mechanism which threw them off. The most that can be said of unconscious cerebration is that it supplies the mind with physical data and stimulates it to get to work in its own way, when it proceeds to translate them into its own characteristic products.

(b) The agnostic theory is represented by the doctrine of the unconscious which is current in the school of Psycho-analysis. When the unconscious is referred to in the sense of the productive principle, as distinguished from the phenomena, the impression is sometimes conveyed that the entity belongs to the genus of intelligent spirit—as notably in the case of the Freudian censor. But it appears that this is only a manner of speech, and that the operative factor cannot be identified with mind. ‘The un-conscious mental processes,’ it is said, ‘present all the attributes of mental ones, except that the object is unaware of them,’ and since awareness is an essential note of mind, this is tantamount to saying that its place is in a different order of existence. As Professor Laird observes, ‘it is just like Mr. Churchhill’s “cannibals in all respects except the act of devouring the flesh of the victims.”’ ‘The only evidence we have of anything in ourselves beyond bodily processes,’ says Mr. Field, ‘is our experience of our own conscious processes. And the only things which we can call “mind” or “mental” with any intelligible meaning are those conscious processes. Anything in us which is neither conscious nor physical is there-fore something unknowable or indescribable, or indescribable except in purely negative terms. But if the unconscious is thus merely a negative idea, something of which all that we can say is that it is not physical and not conscious, then it ceases to be anything which could be given as a real explanation. It is simply an x, an unknown cause, and to ascribe anything to it is simply a confession of ignorance.’21 And if it is inconceivable that matter should do the work of mind, it is equally inconceivable that the work should be done by an entity which, whatever else it may be, is something else and other than mind. It cannot even be pleaded for it, as it may for matter, that it has given evidence in other ways of very remarkable powers which bespeak for it respectful consideration when higher claims are made for it.

(c) Under the name of the psychical theory we may group a set of views, according to which mental occurrences are conscious processes of a human self, but not of a single or unitary self. The human being, who naturally thinks of himself as an individual, is conceived of rather as a society of individuals, possessing the personal notes of consciousness and purposiveness. Myers has given countenance to the idea of the self as a combination which may be described as a colony of selves, but he was more concerned to maintain a form of the transcendent theory according to which ‘no self of which we can have cognisance is more than a fragment of a larger self—revealed in a fashion at once shifting and limited through an organism not so framed as to afford it full manifestation.’22 The pathological cases have been adduced indubitable examples of multiple personality, and a separate personality has also been affirmed with great confidence of the subliminal self. Even the secondary selves of the psychological analysis have been taken in all seriousness as a group of co-ordinate individuals. And the theory has at least this advantage over the foregoing that it calls in mind to explain the occurrence of events which bear the hall-mark of mind. But in the main it has against it the witness of consciousness. When we distinguish between our higher and lower selves, and also between their various modifications, it is with the feeling that there is a large amount of make-believe, and with the conviction that we possess a self which, as compared with these secondary selves, has a unique degree of reality as well as an exclusive burden of responsibility. When one of the so-called secondary selves displaces another in our experience, what occurs is felt to be, not the dispossession of one personality by another, but rather a change such as a man undergoes when he passes from business to pleasure, or from town to the coast, or from his native land to a foreign country. The secondary selves, further, differ from human individuals in that they are so closely interrelated and even interwoven, that they make use to a large extent of the same mental machinery and build on the same experiences and memories. The most that can be said is that disintegration into a multiplicity of real personalities is one of the grim possibilities of the development of a human being. That such a disintegration is a possibility is established by the fact that persons exist, outside as well as inside lunatic asylums, who, when judged the recognised criterion of temperament, intellectual powers and moral principles, would appear to have been broken up into a community of individuals. And it may well be that it is the doom of the undisciplined and chaotic soul to undergo a gradual dissociation culminating in a total dissolution: of personality, and that in the long run the various tendencies will mature into an association of quarrelsome and vindictive creatures held together in a compulsory partnership, as on the other hand it is the destiny of the good man to unify his spiritual state by establishing the unquestioned supremacy of his higher self and its maxims over the turbulent and seditious elements that plot and agitate for the dismemberment of the kingdom of his soul.

(d) According to the intellectualist theory, as we may term the doctrine of the schools, the extraordinary phenomena are sufficiently accounted for by the same conscious subject, and by the same kind of operations, which account for the phenomena of ordinary experience. ‘My thoughts and actions and feelings,’ says Reid, ‘change every moment—they have no continued, but a successive existence; but that self or I to which they belong is permanent, and has the same relation to all succeeding thoughts, actions and feelings which ‘call mine.’23 It is held to be self-evident that any thoughts or volitions welling up in consciousness must be products of mind, and that they must be products of the only mind which is in sight—viz., the mind of the individual which psychologists and plain folk have hitherto been at one in recognising. If we discover in consciousness results which we do not readily acknowledge as ours, the absence of the sense of ownership is explained by the circumstance that we do not give the same attention to all the things which we do, or equally remember all that we have done, and that the results of thinking are often carried over when the processes have been carelessly observed and forgotten. The phenomena of the split personality, it is added, are rare, and have been exaggerated from an inclination to heap up dramatic effects; and no substantial problem is left when allowance has been made for the far-reaching consequences of a partial disablement of memory, and for the effect upon the mind of a radical derangement of the bodily instrument.24 But while most of the phenomena may be thus accounted for, there remains a strong case, if not for an alternative, at least for a supplementary explanation. For there has been a large and consentient body of religious opinion to the effect that men have found in their minds ideas, convictions and resolutions—and these the best of its contents—which were not the products of their own mental activity.

2. The transcendent theory, as it may be conveniently termed, breaks with the foregoing group in that it explains extraordinary events of the inner life by the intervention of other spiritual beings akin to man. Emergent ideas, impulses, and purposes which are of high moment, and marked by unusual strength and vivacity, have been interpreted as communications from other minds which had their outside of the individual soul. These influences have been attributed to finite spirits, or to the Infinite Spirit, or to both. And the spirits holding communion with men have also been distinguished as good and evil. In the highest religions the chief has been laid on the activities of the Divine Spirit, which has been regarded as the source both of intellectual gifts of illumination and of sanctifying and moralising energies. This attitude is conspicuously illustrated in the Old Testament religion. The inherited belief in the accessibility of the human mind to the other spirits was ‘increasingly concentrated into belief in accessibility to the spirit of Yahweh.’25 To Spirit of God were ascribed gifts of many kinds, including prudence and artistic skill, but specially the inspiration which gave to the prophet knowledge of God and of His will, and insight into the meaning of His mighty works in nature and history. The prophets also recognised gifts of God in the piety and the virtues: of His saints. The Messiah was described as clothed by the Spirit of the Lord with wisdom and under-standing, counsel and might, knowledge and the fear of the Lord, righteousness and faithfulness (Is. xi.2). The New Testament teaching represents the highest Christian experience as consisting in the interpenetration of the human personality by the divine—the commingling being described as being filled with the Spirit, and as an inhabitation by the glorified Christ and by the Father, while the holy enthusiasm and energies of the Church were similarly interpreted as due to the presence of a persona presence and working of God in the soul of the Christian community.26 And the same conception—that in the deepest experience there is a mystic interfusion of minds and wills—was confidently taken over by Chris tian Theology. It has been axiomatic that the Christian salvation rested on a special self-disclosure of God in the minds of prophets, and a special presence in the incarnate Son, that its sacred books were the product of divine inspiration, and that from generation to generation its saving doctrines have been understood by the help of the ministrations of the Spirit of truth. It has also, as we saw, been the deep seated conviction of the Christian society that the experiences of conversion and sanctification are in unique sense the act or the work of God. The conviction that in the great experiences the human spirit was the habitation and workshop of a divine person was still further emphasised by the dogmatic affirmation, which the foundation had been laid in the Pauline and the Johannine writings, of the personality of the Holy Spirit.

In the higher religions there has been a recognition of the influence upon man of finite spirits other than human, but the tendency was to limit it, and especially to restrict the range and the efficiency of evil spirits. The period of Animism and Polydaemonism was the golden age of the undivine spirits. The most characteristic tenet of this stage is that ghosts and demons—among whom the capricious and the malignant largely preponderate—find entrance to the Human soul in dreams and delirium, while most of the diseases to which flesh and mind are heir are diagnosed as effects of demoniac visitation or possession. But the spirits, if they had had the gift of prophecy, would have testified like John the Baptist: ‘He must increase and we must decrease.’ The animistic beliefs, indeed, have generally held their ground as cherished articles of a popular creed, and from time to time they have shown amazing powers of recrudescence, but in the great religions measures have been taken to prevent too much being made of good spirits, and especially to reduce the evil spirits to ineffectiveness. In the case of the evil spirits this has been accomplished in the three ways of ostracising them, of subjugating them, and of doubting or denying their existence. The gifted Aryans were disposed to the method of ostracism. Adoring the shining Gods who reflected the dazzling glories and the majestic movements of the firmament, their inclination was to keep the world of spirits at arm’s length. ‘The bright Homeric world,’ says Rohde, though perhaps confidently, ‘was liberated from nocturnal visitants, from the mysterious goblin operations the souls of the dead before whose uncanny doings superstition has trembled throughout the ages. The living had peace from the dead.’27 The method of subjugation is represented by the Old and New Testament Scriptures. They confess, indeed, the activities of a spirit world, and there was a movement of thought which went on to portray in ever darker colours and more dreadful characters the powers of darkness. The New Testament has an elaborated doctrine of Satan as the head of a hierarchy of principalities and powers, and as the source both of the violent and crafty opposition with which the Kingdom of God has to reckon in the world, and of the wicked imaginations and the violent and subtle temptations by which men are continually beset. It was also taken for granted that unclean spirits work havoc ill the bodies and the souls of men. But the vital feature was that God had this dark menacing realm in hand: it could do nothing save by His permission, it was subject to His checks and restraints, and it was embraced within the scope of His over-ruling Providence. The third method—which disposes of the question by disbelieving in the spirits—has been adopted by the world of modern culture, and is generally favoured in modern Protestant Theology.

The transcendent theory in all its forms is ruled out by Psychology as a hypothesis which Science must decline to consider. But while it is entitled to delimit its field, and to specify the kind of causes which it is prepared to recognise, it is quite possible, as was before observed, that it comes upon facts which have their explanations in forces belonging to a different realm of existence. It may be that Science, besides splendidly exemplifying the love of truth, and fearlessness in its quest, has also been influenced by a very human prejudice. For there is in man a deep-seated impulse which leads him to form such a picture of his world and of its arrangements that he shall feel quite at home in it, and which has made him endeavour to gain dominion over the creatures in a mental way as well as in a practical fashion. He has done this on the intellectual side by framing concepts and formulating laws which help to deliver his mind from the overwhelming impression made by the vastness of the contents of the universe, and also by using standards of value which enable him to confine his attention to the persons and the events which strike him as important, and make it possible to avoid the stupefying impression that would be made by the attempt to realise crowded millenniums of past time. Similarly it is desired to bring the realm of human experience within human apprehension and control, and repugnance and even resentment are felt at the notion that the soul may be invaded by forces which can no more be located in an ordered system of human knowledge than they can be mastered and directed by the will of man. But when a wider view is taken it must be said that the transcendent theory is plausible. Members of the human species have found it possible to penetrate into one another’s minds by the use of various means—as speech, writing, Id example—whereby they enlighten the intellects, stir the feelings and sway the wills of others; and if different orders of spiritual beings exist, it is very credible that they also have avenues of approach to and means of communication with mankind. And if there exists an Infinite Being who is also the living Id, it seems absurd to deny that He is prevented from holding gracious communion with finite spirits because this would disarrange the scientific scheme of thought. Such intervention is certainly possible: the only question is whether there is evidence which proves it, or at least makes it credible.

That events have occurred in the human soul, and occur even now, which are most reasonably attribute to a special divine operation, is a thesis which has been maintained in Christian Apologetics. The contents of the higher forms of religious experience, it has been said, have been so extraordinary that they can only be explained by the miraculous intervention of the God of light and grace. The Biblical doctrine of God, it was contended, is of such sublimity and originality, and its doctrine of man, as Pascal emphasised, is at once so self-evidently true and so unacceptable to human pride, that they must needs be ascribed to the wisdom of a divine teacher; while the transformations of character wrought in conversion have been confidently declared, as by the author of the Epistle to Diognetus, to be indubitable manifestations of the intervention of God. But this argument is not conclusive to the purely ratiocinative mind; for it rests on the assumption that we are able to say what precisely human nature is and what it is not capable of, in the endeavour after truth and goodness; and it seems to be precarious, in view of the divine elements in man’s constitution, to draw a line marking the utmost possible limit of human achievement in these particulars. How, for example, can we positively know that the religious genius of the Hebrew peoples was incapable of giving birth without special inspiration to Old Testament prophecy, or that spiritual forces dormant in the soul of St. Augustine were insufficient to bring about his conversion? In view of this difficulty it has been the commoner opinion that the existence of divine grace and its operation in the soul are only known by revelation, and that the reality of revelation must be established by other proofs, notably the so-called external evidences of miracles and prophecy.28 When the question is dealt with from the empirical side it may be admitted that it is impossible to demonstrate divine causality in the events of religious experience before a scientific committee, or before the popular jury to which Paley confidently referred the question of the New Testament miracles. It is, however, a question whether the case under consideration does not fall to be dealt with by a tribunal which has the character of a court of spiritual experts; and when it has been carried to such a court we find that a judgment has been given confidently affirming the reality of a special life and activity of God in the Souls of spiritual men, and has been accompanied by reasons in support of the verdict.

The chief ground on which the affirmation of a divine causality rests is that the deepest spiritual experience is inseparably bound up with the conviction that it has been wrought by God. This conviction may be discounted by outsiders as a private or sectional opinion, which in consequence is wanting in an essential note of truth, but at least those who have had the experience are unable to think otherwise. This line of argument was familiar to the Reformers. The subject of the essential Christian experience, as was observed, is equally conscious of two facts—that he has been radically changed, and that the change was produced by another than himself. So inextricably are the two things associated that if he ceased to believe that the experience was due to a higher power he would be in danger of lapsing into the natural condition. And further, he is compelled to think of this regenerating power of God as a holy and loving will; for his experience is an ethical one, and could only be wrought by an ethical personality. To this may be added that the higher type of Christian subject lives in communion with a power which is felt to give the same evidence of personal interest and individualising love that is given in the relations of parent with child and of friend with friend. But with what right, it is asked, is this gracious power identified with the infinite and eternal God? Why might it not be some gracious finite spirit—an angelic being? It has been replied that it is an absolute experience, and that it is therefore properly referred to the Absolute as the cause29—which may be regarded as a version of the older argument that if a soul which is dead is quickened into life it must be due to the Infinite God, one of whose incommunicable predicates is that He is the Creator. But probably the chief reason for the inexpugnable conviction of the reality of divine influence is that the human spirit is so constituted that the presence and the power of God strike chords in the soul other than those which make response to objects and events of the natural world—that it knows the divine when it meets it, and recognises in the experiences of illumination and sanctification the hall-mark of the divine handiwork.

Is there equal reason for holding that the human soul is accessible to the influence of a Devil? The older Theology was as dogmatic about the Devil and his works as about God and His grace, and it may be thought that modern Theology, in throwing over one of the two schemes of thought, or at least in allowing it to fall into desuetude, has been terrorised into inconsistency by the spirit of the age. But such a criticism is not wholly justified. The belief in diabolic agency has real supports in experience—notably in the fact that the possession of a plan of campaign by the powers of darkness is forcibly suggested by many historical events, and that the temptations with which individual men are continually beset have an appearance of being manipulated by some power that shows great astuteness as well as un-wearied pertinacity. There are, however, differences of vital importance between the evidence for the Devil and the evidence for God. The sympathies of the modern theologian, to begin with, were alienated from the doctrine of devils by the observation that the belief had wrought much evil in the Church, as well as in the world. It could also be contended that diabolic agency was a superfluous mechanism. Christian Theology had always attributed much importance to the immanent factors of hereditary depravity and acquired evil habitudes, and it was naturally thought that the principle of parsimony called for a simplification of the causal explanation of human sinfulness. Moreover, the traditional doc-trine of the Devil was found to involve grave psychological difficulties. Was it possible that a being possessed of the highest degree of intelligence should persevere in a course of rebellion against the Most High which even a fool could know would inevitably issue in hideous and eternal ruin? Was it even possible that a being in whom the elements of goodness had been completely extirpated should continue to exist, and to have at his disposal the energies that enabled him to fill a world and even a universe with his activities? And there are deeper reasons why faith in Satan has decayed while faith in God has held its ground. Man needs God for his salvation and he only needs the Devil to help to explain why salvation is desperately needed. Above all, if man is of God and for God, as he is not of the Devil and for the Devil—as may well be believed—it was only to be expected that faith in God would be reinforced and fortified, as the diabolic doctrine is not, by a corroborative testimony issuing from the deeps of the human soul.

There remains the question as to the interposition of classes of finite spirits, human and non-human, good and evil, in human affairs. Such agency is an ontological possibility—however unpalatable it may be to the scientific mind; and the only question is as to the amount and weight of the evidence. There is some evidence supporting the belief, which has been widespread in the religious world, that there are beneficent powers of an angelic order which have a terrestrial sphere of influence. A great deal has happened in the history of what may be called the elect nations which favours the doctrine that each has been under the care of a tutelary spirit, and there is much in the individual life which makes it easy to believe in the kindly attentions of a guardian angel. On the other hand, the facts may seem to be adequately accounted for from the materialistic standpoint by coincidence and good fortune, and from the religious standpoint by the doctrine of a divine Providence which achieves particular results by working with an over-ruling power and wisdom through natural forces and laws, and by the doctrine of the Holy Spirit that gives guidance and help proportioned to the needs of those who wait upon God. In regard to the spiritualistic phenomena I have not been able to form an opinion which is of any value. The modest investigations which I have made have been suspended in an access of distaste and suspicion. It may be that the earthly domain is subject to irruptions from a realm of departed spirits; but what is certain is that the general life of the race has been placed on an isolated and stable footing, and that any such invasions count for no more from the spiritual point of view than the advent of the comet or the earthquake-shock count for in the everyday life of mankind. The Power which placed man upon this planet furnished him with the rational endowment that was needed to cope with the normal difficulties of his situation, and to give him dominion over the creatures; and it is also credible that, as taught in the Christian Gospel, this was supplemented by a dispensation of grace which can give him the victory over the forces of sorrow, sin and death which must ever prove stronger than man. But it seems clear that intercourse with the spirits of the dead does not enter into the general plan under which the human race has grappled with the situation and the individual has had to live his life on earth. It may be that there will be a widespread revival of the belief that there is a realm of departed spirits which is able to give signs of its existence; but if so it may be expected that mankind will come to realise anew the wisdom of the warning which the great religions have been at one in giving and enforcing against reliance on subterranean traffic with the dead.

• 1.

  Varieties of Religious Experience,⁷, 1903, p. 233.

• 2.

  J. L. M’Intyre, Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, art. ‘Subconciousness.’

• 3.

  Lectures on Metaphysics, 1870, i. p. 339.

• 4.

  Op. cit., p. 340.

• 5.

  Instinct and the Unconscious, ², 1922, p. 9.

• 6.

  The Unconscious, ², 1921, p. 156.

• 7.

  Laird, Problems of the Self, 1917, p. 96.

• 8.

  Luthardt, Dogmatik, ⁶, 1882, p. 260.

• 9.

  Textbook of Psychology, 1904, chap. xii.

• 10.

  Morton Prince, op. cit., p. 159.

• 11.

  Binet, Alterations of Personality (Eng. tr.), 1896, pp. 7 ff.

• 12.

  Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (Eng. tr.). 1921, p. 122.

• 13.

  Ibid., p. 294.

• 14.

  The Analysis of Mind, 1921, p. 28.

• 15.

  Op. cit., p. 228.

• 16.

  Op. cit., p. 249.

• 17.

  Hunter, Outlines of Dogmatic Theology, 1895, ii. p. 302. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I. i. 113.

• 18.

  Baudouin, Suggestion and Auto-suggestion (Eng. tr.), 1920, pp.

• 19.

  Op. cit., p. 164.

• 20.

  Principles of Mental Physiology,⁷, 1896, chap. XII.

• 21.

  Mind, vol. xxxi. pp. 413 ff. Cf. H. R. Mackintosh, op. cit., chap. xi.

• 22.

  Human Personality, 1903, i. p. 15.

• 23.

  Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man, III. chap, iv.

• 24.

  For a summary of the arguments see Maher, Psychology, 1911, pp. 489 ff.

• 25.

  Wheeler Robinson, The Christian Doctrine of Man, 1911, p. 10.

• 26.

  Gal. ii. 20, v. 18; John xiv. 23; Eph. v. 26.

• 27.

  Psyche, ², 1898, i. p. 11.

• 28.

  Leclerc, Archives de Psychologie, 1910, ix. pp. 241 ff. La Vanité de l’ Expérience religieuse.

• 29.

  Frank, System der christlichen Geuwissheit, 1870. Cf. Frommel, La Vérité Humaine, 1915; L’ Experience Chrétienne, 1916.