{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_59091/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_59091","id":"gutenberg_59091","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/59091","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Religion/Spirituality","New Thought"],"text":"Produced by MFR and the Online Distributed Proofreading\nTeam at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from\nimages generously made available by The Internet Archive)\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThe Art of Life Series\n\n\n\n\n_The Sixth Sense_\n\n\n\n\n                         THE ART OF LIFE SERIES\n                     _Edward Howard Griggs, Editor_\n\n                             The Sixth Sense\n                         ITS CULTIVATION AND USE\n\n                                   BY\n                            CHARLES H. BRENT\n\n                   AUTHOR OF \u201cWITH GOD IN THE WORLD,\u201d\n                \u201cLEADERSHIP,\u201d \u201cWITH GOD IN PRAYER,\u201d ETC.\n\n                                NEW YORK\n                              B. W. HUEBSCH\n                                  1911\n\n                             COPYRIGHT, 1911\n                            BY B. W. HUEBSCH\n\n                           PRINTED IN U. S. A.\n\n\n\n\nTO\n\nR. C. AND E. M. D.,\n\nDEAR FRIENDS\n\n\n\n\nINTRODUCTORY NOTE\n\n\nThis book was planned and promised to the publisher more than three years\nago. Exacting duties have compelled the writer from time to time, to\ndefer the completion of his undertaking. The delay has been profitable in\nthat it has afforded opportunity for the study of recent works on kindred\ntopics, which in some respects has modified and in some enlarged the\noriginal conception of the subject in hand. A long ocean voyage at last\nhas provided the quiet in which to write out these thoughts.\n\n    _SS. Prinz Eitel Friedrich_,\n    Gulf of Aden,\n    8 January, 1911.\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n\n    CHAPTER                             PAGE\n\n            INTRODUCTORY NOTE              9\n\n          I THE SIXTH SENSE               13\n\n         II IN RELATION TO HEALTH         35\n\n        III IN RELATION TO THOUGHT        52\n\n         IV IN RELATION TO CHARACTER      69\n\n          V IN RELATION TO RELIGION       86\n\n\n\n\n_The Sixth Sense_\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER I\n\nTHE SIXTH SENSE\n\n\nBy the Sixth Sense I mean the Mystic Sense, or that inner perceptive\nfaculty which distinguishes man from the highest below him and allies\nhim to the highest above him. So distinctive among created objects is it\nof man that it might, not inaptly, be characterized as the Human Sense.\nIt is used for no one exclusive purpose; on the contrary it is only\nunder its operation that man\u2019s activities, one and all, become human.\nIn its nature it differs essentially from the bodily senses though we\nare justified in thinking of it as a sense because its function is, like\nthem, to perceive and to afford food for thought.\n\nThe five bodily senses originally, in the first stages of evolution,\nwere, and, in their ultimate aspect are, one sense\u2014the sense of\ntouch. By means of it plant, mollusc and worm relate themselves to the\nuniverse of which they are a part. By degrees the single sense, in the\nevolutionary process, finds opportunity and occasion for specialization.\nSight is extraordinarily sensitized touch by means of which form and\ncolor are perceived, and the distant object comes bowing to our feet; the\nstars, leaping across space, are converted into intimate friends, and\nearth\u2019s farthest horizon lies at our door. Hearing is touch localized\nand specialized so as to be capable of perceiving the vibrations caused\nby the impact of one body upon another; its enlarged capacity classifies\nsound in such a way as to offer its mutations and subtleties for our use\nand pleasure as the weaver offers his threads to the loom. Smell is that\nspecialization of touch, uniquely delicate, supposed by Maeterlinck to be\nstill in its earlier stage of development in human kind, which responds\nto the stimulus of those otherwise intangible exhalations called odor.\nLastly, taste is touch specialized so as to discern the inner properties\nof food stuff; taste is the testing sense. Mere touch determines the\nexistence, specialized touch the character and niceties of matter of the\nphysical universe.\n\nAs indicative of the unity of the animal senses and the co\u00f6perative\nsympathy between them, it is noteworthy that when one sense is impaired\nor destroyed, the others diligently endeavor to supply its absence, the\nentire body playing the part as far as possible of eye or ear or both,\nand each remaining sense growing extraordinarily acute so as to take on\nsomewhat of the character of the most nearly affiliated or the neighbor\nsense. The blind man can almost see with ears and hands, the deaf can\nalmost hear with eyes. The senses that are left strain, not without a\nmeasure of success, to convey to the brain impressions for which they are\nnot congenitally adapted.\n\nThe organic differences in the bodily senses, then, find a close unity\nin functional similarity, all the sensory nerves grouping themselves\nunder the head of touch. The Mystic Sense, likewise, first comes to our\nattention as a simple faculty of perception by which we gain cognition\nof that department of reality that transcends bodily touch and its\nsub-divisions, but study reveals that its unity is ordered complexity,\nas in the case of all developed endowments. Broadly speaking it is the\nsense which relates man to the spiritual or psychic aspect of reality. It\nputs us into relation with the spiritual order of which we are a part.\nIt finds room for exercise, gains its freedom, and reaches its highest\ndevelopment in this sphere, beginning operations at the point where the\nbodily senses are compelled by inherent limitations to halt. It discerns\nthe innermost character, use, value of the objective, and differentiates\nbetween the human and the animal estimate of things. Indeed it has in\nit that which is not of this world or order. It soars beyond human and\nmundane affairs and steeps its wings in Divine altitudes where the throne\nof God is set. Not only does it perceive but it also lays hold of and\nappropriates that phase of reality which lies beyond the unaided reach,\nor eludes the grasp, of all the rest of our faculties in their happiest\ncombination, and therefore of any one of them independently. It takes the\nmaterial gathered by physical contact with the world of sight and sound,\nand presents it to the mind for rationalizing operations. More than that,\nit comes back freighted with wealth gathered in explorations in regions\nwhere neither body nor reason can tread, converting life\u2019s dull prose\ninto poetry and song.\n\nThe most alert and indispensable of endowments, it is at once sociable\nwith the remainder of man\u2019s faculties, external and internal, and\njealously independent of them saving of human consciousness alone.\nIn its higher stages of development it accepts suggestions from all,\ndictation from none. Its manner is courteous and its mode of approach\none of promptings and hints. The sphere of every other faculty is its\nsphere where it is content to play the modest part of a handmaiden, never\nusurping functions already provided for, although it has a sphere of\nits own whither not even reason can follow. It is supplementary to all,\ncontradictory to none. Without its exercise there can be no progress or\ngrowth. It has its origin in a groping instinct, its final development\nin orderly activities capable of increasingly clear classification.\nBody, intellect, character, moral and religious, are under its influence\nand dependent upon its beneficent operations. It plays upon the body,\ncontributing to its health and efficiency; it gives wings to the\nintellect, making it creative and productive, capable of formulating\nhypotheses and venturing upon speculation; it converts the seemingly\nimpossible into the normal, bringing moral ideals within reach of the\nwill, without which improvement in character would be a matter of chance;\nit unfolds the Divine to the human and forms a nexus between here and\nbeyond, now and to-morrow, finite and infinite, God and man. It looks\nnot only up but down, making the nature outside of us intelligible to\nthe nature inside of us and friendly with it. If it peoples the stars,\nit also makes a universe of the atom. It is mysterious, recollective,\nemotional, intuitive, speculative, imaginative, prophetic, minatory,\nexpectant, penetrative. As it moves up or down with equal freedom, so\nit reaches backward or forward, is attached or detached at will, in its\noperations.\n\nThe Sixth Sense, or, to be more accurate, the second group of senses,\nhas its specialized functions, difficult as it is to analyze with\naccuracy this most spiritual endowment of human personality, the inner\ngift of touch. It has specializations parallel to those of the bodily\nsenses. Sight, hearing and testing are its functions. So clear eyed is\nit that it can see with the nicety of an eye aided by the microscope,\nso sensitive to voices that the lowest whispers impart a message, so\ncritical as to test values with a precision and swiftness that surpass\nthe taste and smell which tell us what is sweet and what unsavory.\n\nIf it be argued that I am but dilating on certain aspects of mind, I am\nnot concerned to deny that all may be comprehended under that convenient\nblanket-word. But they are as distinct from the rationalizing media as\nfrom the will.\n\nThe nearest approach to a satisfactory substitute for the term \u201cmystic\nsense\u201d in terms of the reason is \u201cconceptual reason.\u201d It furnishes\nus with the thought of a faculty which has procreative or generative\nproperties capable of being fertilized by intercourse with that which\nis separate from and higher than itself. Its first activity is to lay\nitself over against that which, though partaking of its own nature, is\nnot itself. It is not self-fertilizing and can conceive or beget only\nafter having perceived and apprehended.[1] It has constant regard for an\nobjective and communication with it.\n\nThe operation of the Mystic Sense is summed up in the single word faith,\nwhich is described as the giving substance to that which is hoped for,\nthe testing of things not seen.[2] There is no objection to letting the\nworld faith cover the whole working of the Mystic Sense, provided it is\nnot restricted to a severely religious meaning. It is thus that it is\ncommonly understood, or at any rate when applied in other connections it\nis assumed to be the working of a different faculty from that exercised\nin the sphere of religion. In its distinctively religious meaning, faith\nis the operation of the Mystic Sense in its highest employment. There is\nno one faculty that is reserved exclusively for religious employment. The\nfact is that religious faith is no more separate from the processes of\nthe Mystic Sense which appropriate health for the body, hypotheses for\nthe mind, working principles for the man of action, and ideals for the\ncharacter, or independent of them, than the act of physical perception,\nwhich enables us to touch the stars, is separate from that use of the\nsensory nerves which relates us to the book we handle, or independent of\nit. They are both the result of a single faculty, or group of faculties,\noperating in different altitudes. Faith will be accepted in these pages\nas a philosophic term. Thus we speak of scientific faith, moral faith,\nand religious faith with equal appropriateness, meaning the Mystic Sense\noperating respectively in the interests of the scientific, of the moral,\nand of the religious.\n\nThe Mystic Sense has for its workshop the uplands of life in the rarefied\natmosphere of ideas and ideals. It is at once a super-sense giving us a\nbird\u2019s-eye view of the universe which is not permitted at close quarters,\nand a sub-sense bringing before our attention the contents hidden beneath\nthe surface of things. There are not two worlds, objective and subjective\nrespectively, but two aspects of one world\u2014things as they are in their\nabsolute and ultimate being, and things as they are relatively or as\napprehended by our cognitive powers. Our conception of the truth is a\ndistortion or falls short of the truth, and it is our aspiration to bring\nabout such a coincidence as will make the relation of subject to object\nperfect. We draw the thing as we see it for the God of things as they are\nnow, not to-morrow only, the sole difference being that to-morrow our\npainting will be truer to the original and consequently more artistic\nthan now. All objective is immediately reduced by man, by subconscious\nor conscious process, into subjective, so that we may for the sake of\nconvenience talk of subjective and objective phases of reality, the\nsubjective being human, partial, progressive, the objective being divine,\nabsolute, and final.\n\nThere is an objective physical world and an objective psychic or\nspiritual world, the latter being immanent in the former, though not\nlimited by it, so that every material object has spiritual contents. The\nspiritual is no more an inside without an outside than the physical is\nan outside without an inside. Each has its phase of reality, though in\nthe ultimate analysis the physical is dependent for its value upon its\nspiritual capacity. The physical has a non-sensible inside which to be\ndiscerned calls for distinctively human as distinguished from mere animal\npowers of perception. Dimly in animal life there is a recognition of\ninner character in objects\u2014hostility, affinity, nourishment and the like\nare instinctively sensed; but here deep perception stops except where, by\nreason of what is called domestication or association with man, certain\nhuman characteristics are faintly imaged in dog or horse.\n\nThere is no antagonism between the physical and the spiritual. The\nphysical world is to man a medium through which phases of the spiritual\nare reached. The only antagonism there can be is that which arises by\nan attempt to use the material without regard for its full spiritual\ncontents or inside. Were not the physical universe a sacrament it would\nbe a phantasm. If man divorces the inside from the outside with a view\nto gratifying his physical senses he abdicates his character as a man\nto become an animal; if to feed anything less than his entire selfhood,\nhe presents the spectacle of arrested development. The bodily senses\nalone can get at the full content, the deep inside of nothing, no matter\nhow pronounced its objectivity, \u201cThe truly real is a thing that has an\ninside.\u201d[3] The more pronounced or attractive the external substance\nand form of a material object and the closer we are to it, the greater\nthe difficulty for the average character to gain cognition of its\nspiritual essence. \u201cHow hardly shall they that have riches enter into\nthe Kingdom of God.\u201d[4] Even those who place an undue valuation upon the\nmaterial, whether possessed of wealth or not, have a like difficulty in\npenetrating into the internal realm which lies beneath and around as\nwell as above and within the external.[5] It is absurd for men to expect\nto sense the spiritual except with spiritual faculties. The physical\nworld is perceived by a sensory apparatus of the same substance as that\nof the physical world; the spiritual world is perceived by a sensory\napparatus of the same substance as that of the spiritual world. There\nmust be an inherent affinity between the thing apprehended and the organ\napprehending. Now the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit\nof God; for they are foolishness unto him; and he cannot know them\nbecause they are spiritually proved.[6]\n\nReality is a term too often confined to that which can be expressed\nin terms of bodily senses; whereas it is that which has existence in\nheaven above, in the earth beneath, and in the waters under the earth,\nand which, apart from human perception, though in a minimum degree or\npassively, plays upon and affects man and his universe, but which reaches\nits highest potentiality manward when, by the volitional operation of\nhuman faculties it is subjectively apprehended and finds permanent\nplace in his consciousness. Reality is that which supports and feeds\nthe subconscious life by the pressure of its mere existence or laws of\nbeing, but which is capable of bestowing larger gifts in proportion to\nthe degree in which it receives conscious admission into the activities\nof personal experience. It is a law of spiritual or psychic, as well as\nof physical, existence that every part is related to every other part\nand influenced by it through either attraction or energy. In the case\nof inanimate matter mere spacial propinquity or distance determines the\nmeasure of attraction or energy of object upon object, but where sentient\nbeings are concerned the reaction of conscious volition on environment\nis the determining factor regulating the degree of influence released.\n\nThe search for the real in internal processes cannot ignore the external.\nConversely the activities of the workaday world cannot summarily dismiss\nthe internal.[7] The physical senses have a modest but indispensable\npart to play under the primacy of the Mystic Sense. The normal use of\nthe Mystic Sense does not make a mystic. The healthily developed man is\nmystical though not a mystic. His dominating sense is that of the spirit,\nnot that of the flesh. A mystic, technically defined, is a specialist\nin the subjective or internal, just as a collector is a specialist in\nthe objective or external. There is no danger in either extreme except\nso far as its votary adopts an exclusive attitude toward its seeming\nopposite (which really is its complement), or toward the balance of human\nthought and life. A deliberate and persistent use of the Mystic Sense\nwithout respect for the objective would be subversive of all progress\nand a reversion to chaos. \u201cThe progress of thought consists in gradually\nseparating the series of objective and universally valid, from that of\nsubjective experiences. In the measure that their confusion prevails, man\nis, to all intents and purposes, mad; and it is this note of insanity\nthat characterizes medicine and religion in their early stages. Dreams\nand reality are mixed up; subjective connections are objectified.\u201d[8]\nIf the objective and the subjective may not be divorced and set at odds\nagainst one another, neither may they be confused. Both errors would\nresult in disorder and hopeless perplexity.\n\nThe serious crux is how, in the realm of the spiritual and the physically\nintangible, to distinguish between the real and the seeming, the true and\nthe false. This it is the function of the Mystic Sense to do aided by the\nfull complement of inner faculties. In a measure the Mystic Sense, like\nthe bodily senses, acts automatically, but like them it needs special\ntraining in order to separate phantasm from reality, to determine values,\nand to grade and classify ideals until they reveal themselves to be\nordered unity, not less but more mysterious because more intelligible or\napprehensible by the whole man. The first principle to lay down is that\nno man can treat himself as a unit or credit the findings of his Mystic\nSense with absolute or final authority until he has tried them by some\nvalid corporate test. Neither sight, nor hearing, nor touch, used without\nregard to the experience of others and respect for it, can fail to lead\nus astray. The conclusions of the wisest and the competent register\nthemselves from age to age, coming to us in the shape of beneficent\nauthority to prevent a man from repeating work that has already been done\nand well done. Verification is not contemptuous of authority, though he\nflouts authority, indeed, who ignores it in a process of individualistic\nexperiments. Pure individualism at best can apprehend but a fragment of\nreality and at worst declines into eccentricity or even insanity. Those\nwho are really educated recognize their relation to a social whole and\nbring the results of their sense perceptions, before accepting their\nverdict, to be tested by the age-long, man-wide experiences of humanity\nas formulated in the accepted conclusions of their generation and\nfound in its institutions and customs. Universal experience is never\nwholly but only approximately infallible, yet accurate enough to be\nauthoritative for corrective purposes. By respectful attention to it,\nindividual judgment is checked in possible error and at the same time\nis given opportunity to offer its own contribution to the totality of\nknowledge, a contribution which may endorse, modify, or enlarge that\nalready reached. In this way only is society preserved from becoming a\nmob of eccentrics and fanatics, each whirling in his own little circle.\nCommerce, art, science, letters, government, religion\u2014in short every\ndepartment of life you can think of requires such a mode of procedure\nfor the protection of reality in its varied manifestations and for the\nprotection of the individual against himself. But in no conditions is a\nsocial checking off of findings more essential than in the psychic or\nspiritual realm. Mystical experience organizes itself or is consciously\norganized in a sufficient degree to give men that high kind of freedom\nwhich comes to us when we act with constant reference to the fact that we\nare members one of another, so that the experience of the human race is\nours wherewith to enrich ourselves. A mystic of the type of St. Theresa,\nwho could hardly see the objective in her rush past form to reach idea,\ncould not be distinguished from the inmate of a madhouse who insists that\nhis tinsel crown is the diadem of a Napoleon, unless she interpreted\nher personal experience in relation to the spiritual consciousness of\nChristendom. \u201cOnce,\u201d writes this saint, \u201cwhen I was holding in my hand\nthe cross of my rosary, He took it from me into His own hand. He returned\nit; but it was then four large stones incomparably more precious than\ndiamonds: the five wounds were delineated on them with the most admirable\nart. He said to me that for the future that cross would appear so to me\nalways, and so it did. The precious stones were seen, however, only by\nmyself.\u201d[9] A madman would have omitted the last sentence. Her mystical\nexperience was individual though it preserved for its foundation a\nbackground of universal experience. It united her to her fellows, instead\nof separating her from them.\n\nThe law of use is as applicable to the Mystic Sense as to the rest of the\ngifts and endowments which make up the completeness of human personality.\nIts exercise enlarges its capacity and quickens its general efficiency;\nif used through the whole range of its opportunities, it becomes a hardy\nfaculty, trustworthy in every sphere where its responsibility lies;\nspecialization of operation in one direction, to the partial neglect of\nother departments open to it, produces acuteness in one direction and\ndulness in other directions which is characteristic of specialists in\nscience; if the specialization is so exclusive as to shut off observation\nand consideration of every interest but one, there must ensue lop-sided\ngrowth and maimed personality.\n\nIt is the purpose of this book to trace the operation of the Mystic Sense\nin normal manhood through the major departments of human experience\nin order to encourage greater confidence in this wonderful gift, to\nappeal for a more comprehensive use of it, and to indicate how it may be\ncultivated.\n\n\nNOTE TO CHAPTER I.\n\nVon H\u00fcgel in his study of the _Mystical Element of Religion_ concludes\nthat there is \u201cno distinct faculty of mystical apprehension.\u201d In a\npassage following this contention (vol. ii, pp. 283, 284), he so states\nhis position as to make it possible for me to start from a contradictory\nassertion and reach his conclusion. We agree that mysticism is \u201cnot\neverything in any one soul, but something in every soul of man.\u201d\n\nThe entire passage reads as follows:\n\n    \u201cIs there, then, strictly speaking, such a thing as a\n    specifically distinct, self-sufficing, purely Mystical mode\n    of apprehending Reality? I take it, distinctly not; and that\n    all the errors of the Exclusive Mystic proceed precisely\n    from the contention that Mysticism does constitute such an\n    entirely separate, completely self-supported kind of human\n    experience. This denial does not, of course, mean that soul\n    does not differ quite indefinitely from soul, in the amount and\n    kind of the recollective, intuitive, deeply emotive element\n    possessed and exercised by it concurrently or alternately\n    with other elements,\u2014the sense of the Infinite within and\n    without the Finite springing up in the soul on occasion of\n    its contact with the Contingent; nor, again, that these more\n    or less congenital differences and vocations amongst souls\n    cannot be and are not still further developed by grace and\n    heroism into types of religious apprehension and life, so\n    strikingly divergent, as, at first sight, to seem hardly even\n    supplementary the one to the other. But it means that, in even\n    the most purely contingent-seeming soul, and in its apparently\n    but Institutional and Historical assents and acts, there ever\n    is, there can never fail to be, some, however, implicit,\n    however slight, however intermittent, sense and experience\n    of the Infinite, evidenced by at least some dissatisfaction\n    with the Finite, except as this Finitude is an occasion for\n    growth in, and a part-expression of, that Infinite, our true\n    home. And, again, it means, that even the most exclusively\n    mystical-seeming soul ever depends, for the fulness and\n    healthiness of even the most purely mystical of its acts and\n    states, as really upon its past and present contacts with\n    the Contingent, Temporal, and Spacial, and with social facts\n    and elements, as upon its movement of concentration, and the\n    sense and experience, evoked on occasion of those contacts or\n    of their memories, of the Infinite within and around those\n    finitudes and itself.\n\n    \u201cOnly thus does Mysticism attain to its true, full dignity,\n    which consists precisely in being, not everything in any one\n    soul, but something in every soul of man; and in presenting at\n    its fullest, the amplest development, among certain special\n    natures with the help of certain special graces and heroisms,\n    or what, in some degree, and form, is present in every truly\n    human soul, and in such a soul\u2019s every, at all genuine and\n    complete, grace-stimulated religious act and state. And only\n    thus does it, as Partial Mysticism, retain all the strength and\n    escape the weaknesses and dangers of would-be Pure Mysticism,\n    as regards the mode and character or Religious Experience,\n    Knowledge, and Life.\u201d\n\nIf my interpretation of this writer be correct, he terms that a\n\u201crecollective, intuitive, deeply emotive element\u201d which I conceive to\nbe a mystic faculty or sense. The fact that it pervades every part of\nhuman personality does not disqualify it from claiming the dignity of a\ndistinctive faculty. It bears a similar relation to the higher endowments\nof personality which the ether bears to light and to the call of world to\nworld. The Mystic Sense is the enabling faculty, which makes man human.\nIts pervasiveness does not detract from, rather does it enhance, its\ndistinctness. To call it an element seems to clothe it in a vagueness\nwhich its character does not merit. If man were merely a phase of matter,\nwe could employ the term element with propriety. That which _can_ be only\nan element in a universe, at any rate _may_ be a faculty or sense in man.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II\n\nIN RELATION TO HEALTH\n\n\nThere is nothing so multiple in its composition, and yet nothing so\nseemingly simple, so unit-like a unity, as normal personality\u2014a normal\ncharacter englobed by a normal body. Normality is the product of a\ntwo-fold force, the true interrelation between the organs of the body\nand a similar interrelation between the inner faculties, culminating\nin a rhythmic interaction between the two. The normal man acts in the\ncompleteness of his manhood in all that he does, never adopting the\nr\u00f4le of either mere machine or mere ghost. In so far as the inside and\nthe outside of man work as a unity, the dignity of human personality\nmanifests itself; any departure from harmony approaches that dangerous\nborderland beyond which lies disintegration and disorder. Disease is a\nlack of rhythm, a note in the scale out of tune. Health is harmony.\n\nUp to the time that consciousness of existence awakens, the processes of\nlife operate under the stimulus and protection of the human and physical\nenvironment which surround the infant. With the immediate effect of\nsuitable shelter and wholesome nourishment we are fairly conversant. As\nto just what direct or indirect influence psychic surroundings have upon\nthe subconscious life of a baby, we are not in a position to dogmatize,\nthough we can arrive inferentially at certain rational probabilities.\n\nApparently the infant, and certainly the child, is extraordinarily\nsensitive to subtle forces. Acting upon this supposition the Christian\nChurch from the beginning, by a symbolic and sacramental act, has aimed\nto thrust children deep into the bosom of God by the rite of baptism, and\nclaimed for them not only a place but a place of chief importance in the\nspiritual society. Instinctively the mother, with exquisite solicitude,\nwhispers her ideals for the future of her offspring into the ears of\nthe babe at her breast, talking as though to one whose consciousness\nwere awake. In this way Samuels have been raised to Israel. At the close\nof each day the mother bids her child sleep by singing lullabies and\nhanging mystic poppies over wide-awake eyes. She speaks in the highest\ntype of language, in poetry adorned with song, to this little unconscious\nscrap of humanity. In other words her mystic sense is pressing upon the\nmystic sense of her child as naturally and fittingly as her arms fold the\ninfant body and her lips touch its cheek.\n\nUnless positive proof to the contrary is adduced, it is safe to believe\nthat it makes a great difference to the child\u2019s after life of what sort\nits psychic environment is during its first years on earth, whether the\nminds about it are healthy, expressing themselves healthily, whether the\ntone of family life is hopeful and spiritual. Though it cannot finally\ndetermine the course that the child\u2019s life will take, at any rate it\naffords the best opportunity for making it a worthy course. My conviction\nis, that the difference between good and bad psychic environment for\na baby is the same as that between healthy and unhealthy vegetable\nenvironment for a young plant. An infant abandoned by its mother to the\ncare of nurses and servants, be the provision for its animal comfort and\nsafety what it may, begins life with a minimum of opportunity. Man is not\nborn mere animal but man from the first breath. Therefore from the first\nbreath he needs man\u2019s surroundings. In order that his latent character\nmay have its best chance, he ought to be given the most congenial human\nenvironment available. If there is no conscious self, at any rate there\nis a subconscious self, struggling at a very early moment by baby smiles\nand frets, gropings and babblings to utter itself. Psychology seems to\nhave reached at least this conclusion\u2014that the subconscious is, that it\nis the fundamental part of man, that it is his most sensitive self, never\nrelinquishing that which it grasps and grasping everything that touches\nit.\n\nPsychic forces may influence mightily the subconscious life of an infant\nand promote healthy character, but have they any effect on physical\nwell-being? The reply would seem to be that, if at any time in the span\nof a lifetime they work beneficently in this direction, it is probable\nthat they do so from the outset. It would be sheer waste of time to\nadduce arguments to prove that healthy minds conduce directly to healthy\nphysique. The difficulty is to find the limit of such influence, so vast\nis it. Physical well-being, however, is not an end in itself, and it is\na subversion of the human order to aim at health of mind or character\nin order that our physique may be improved. So nicely is human nature\nproportioned and adjusted that it is doubtful whether a person could\nachieve physical health by becoming good with that sole end in view.\nPhysical health is not essential to a high degree of human efficiency,\nthough health of character is and therefore must be sought first because\nof its priceless value. But it is our just assumption that a child\nwith a healthy body is more likely to have a normal inner personality\nthan if it had a sickly body. Outer and inner health act and react and\ninteract so that it is equally true to say that, given a healthy mind\nand disposition, other things being equal, the body will have the best\nopportunity of being normal and, whatever its condition, of being used to\nthe best advantage. There can be no consideration of higher importance\nthan to make a child sensitive as soon after birth as possible, to his\npsychic, moral, and mystical environment. It will conduce to loftiness\nof character and, for aught we know, to useful longevity and vigor of\nphysique.\n\nOnly soulless animals can be satisfied with physical splendor or count\nmuscle sufficient in itself. Man by virtue of his manhood can never\nlive according to merely animal laws. His animal nature itself is\nultimately weakened if he does. In proportion as he has fine physique\nhe must develop a fine mind and character. If not, unrestrained passion\nand ruin stare him in the face. The body finds its full meaning and so\nits possibilities, only when the soul has discovered itself and claimed\nits liberty. It is then alone that a whole army of anxieties and fears\nis scattered, leaving the body free and joyously adventurous, ready\nto identify its movements with those of the soul. Consequently it is\nnot illogical or untrue to say that the first requisite for physical\nefficiency of a child is to insure that whatever its subconscious life\nis able to drink in should be sweet, wholesome, and strong. The tone of\ndomestic life, the character of the child\u2019s attendants, the whole expanse\nof human bosom on which it lies and from which it receives nourishment,\nought to be as near what one would wish it to be if from the first the\nlittle babe had a conscious as well as a subconscious self, and were\na morally responsible and not a mere non-moral agent. There can be a\nhealthy domestic environment for the keen-eyed, deep-seeing child only\nwhen it has been preceded by a similar environment for the baby. What\nthe tone was for the purely subconscious, it will be for the conscious\nlife when it awakes. Therefore even though parents are skeptical of\ntheir influence upon infant subconsciousness, they cannot dispense with\nattention to its character if they hope to bring beneficial pressure to\nbear on the child\u2019s conscious life. From the first they must learn to\ndeal with a baby as a moral being, impressionable beyond observation.\n\nWhen we turn to man\u2019s conscious life and the relation between health of\nbody and a healthy consciousness we are on more demonstrable ground.\nExperience has proved that our external and internal faculties work\nin sympathy with one another. If the body is distressed, the inner\nconsciousness droops; if the inner consciousness becomes morbid or out\nof sorts, the body, though not always actually falling ill, loses in\nefficiency. Yet, let it be added, the body is less able to bear psychic\nillness than the inner self to bear physical illness. The body can never\nturn psychic suffering into nerve and muscle, but the psychic nature can\nweave malady into genius through the powerful operation of the Mystic\nSense.\n\nTo be healthy is a commendable ambition. Being in good health, our\ndesire is to become as immune as may be to disease, or being ill to give\nourselves the best chance of recovery. Health is preserved by keeping\nbody and mind in close relation to health-giving processes. It is not\nour concern to discuss in this connection questions of diet, sanitation,\nhygiene, exercise and similar aids to the promotion of health. Their\nvalue is of the first order and may not be ignored or discounted. But\njust now we are concerned with another part of human nature which has\nmuch to do in determining our condition of body\u2014the sense which furnishes\nus with ideals.\n\nThe objective of an ideal is found in the idea flowing from the mind\nof God. It is as real to the Mystic Sense as a flower is to sight and\nsmell. An ideal is the reflection of God\u2019s idea and is distorted or true\naccording as the sense which perceives ideas is healthy or diseased. The\nMystic Sense relates us to ideas, and enables us to touch, test, see\nand hear them, as truly as our bodily senses enable us to touch, test,\nsee and hear the world of matter, form and sound. A healthy ideal is a\nvitalizing force, an unhealthy ideal is an invitation to disease. Ideals\nare subjectified ideas.\n\nIn the course of the development of that most experimental of all\nsciences, medicine, not only has dosing been reduced to a minimum, but\nalso the natural recuperative powers of the patient have been discovered\nand are relied upon. The physician tries to open, for the sick, doors\ninto nature\u2019s healthiest rooms. The patient being placed in a vitalizing\nenvironment is expected by the use of his will and Mystic Sense to\nrespond to it. The physician alone can do but half the work. The will,\nand not only the willingness, to live, a mystical laying hold of the idea\nof health, is in all cases a valuable, in some an indispensable, factor\nin the process of recovery. The suggestion of health predisposes to\nhealth; the suggestion of disease is provocative of disease. Medicine may\nbe both a material curative and a sacrament of health.\n\nThe habit of our day has been such as to create in us a marked\npathological consciousness. The very process which, by slow degrees, has\nbeen driving disease to the wall, has produced in us a sensitiveness\nto the idea of disease that is inimical to health. The discovery of the\ncauses of disease has peopled the imagination, even of those who have\nnever looked through a microscope, with an army of hostile germs to the\nobscuration of those superior influences which conduce to well-being,\nuntil we have become chronically nervous of the hidden perils which beset\nour path. Insignificant pains are construed into the symptoms of the last\ndisease discussed in the papers or the advertisement of a proprietary\nnostrum. Momentary fluctuations in health send us tripping with anxious\nbrow to the doctor. Dabbling in pathology is an undesirable occupation,\nespecially for the young. The wrappers of patent medicines, let alone the\nmedicines themselves, have caused more agony than peace of mind and have\nbeen more provocative of disease than of health. Happily we are emerging\nfrom the patent medicine stage.\n\nA therapeutic consciousness ought to be the normal consciousness. The\nforces which make for life are in excess of those which make for death.\nThe universe would go into steady decline were not the dominant forces\nsalutary, and life would flicker out like the wick of a candle guttered\nin its socket. There is an inexhaustible fund of vitality open to man\nand we are competent to draw upon it so that we shall receive a maximum\nrather than a minimum. Part of the function of science is to put man into\nsuch a relation to the nature outside of him as to place the wholesome\nand remedial at his disposal, preventing disease by immunizing him from\nit. It is the common laws of health which are the most important. With\nthe curious inconsistency which characterizes many human beings, we\nfrequently see men adhering to some vigorous regimen of secondary or\ndoubtful importance, while all the time they are flagrantly disobeying\nsome primary law of health. The unity between the outer and the inner\nnecessitates not only an intelligent and scientific treatment but also\nthat which is mystical and more or less mysterious. Prayer, which is at\nonce an appeal to the Source of Life to let loose saving health in our\ndirection and an opening up of our being for the reception of hidden and\nunknown aid, is a higher form of psychic effort than either suggestion\nor auto-suggestion in that it includes both, though not precluding the\nconcurrent use of either. Auto-suggestion looks only for self-induced\nbenefit to the patient by application to an impersonal ideal; prayer does\nnot think merely to apprehend a passive or indifferent remedy, but also\nto be apprehended by healthful, forceful Personality, like but superior\nto our own. A prayer to the ether would have in its reflex effect a\ntotally different influence on the petitioner from a prayer to what was\nconceived to be a personal God. Similarly the quality of the virtue which\nis the result of mere ethical culture is as different from that which is\nthe product of correspondence with the Christian\u2019s God as cotton is from\nlinen. Nor is it that God is inactive until we pray. He is operating to\nthe uttermost that our listless or passive or antagonistic personality\nwill allow. The highest personality can do his best to the object of his\nlove only when the latter adopts a responsive and co-operative attitude.\nThe feeble spot in much, if not most, prayer, is that it asks without\nimportunity, or importunes without appropriating. The Mystic Sense must\nreach up until it feels the hand containing the gift, and take the gift\nas its own. Auto-suggestion is a lame term indicating the application of\nthe ideal to the defective. Suggestion is a similar application on the\npart of another to a companion. With a background of prayer, the insomnia\npatient can with profit watch the dream sheep go through the hedge,\nor lay himself in the cradle of old nursery rhymes, or welcome to his\nbedside the veiled legions of slumber as they troop forth on their silent\nerrand from the presence of Him who giveth His beloved sleep.\n\nFaith, which is simply the highest operation of the mystic sense, is as\nnecessary to the complete work of healing as in the days when Jesus said,\n\u201cAccording to thy faith be it unto thee.\u201d It appropriates to the full the\nremedial contents of scientific agencies which, under its touch become\nsacramental, and clothes the life in the soft robe of unanxious peace\nand serene cheerfulness. It is easy enough for a well man to talk to the\nsick concerning the desirability and curative value of a therapeutic\nconsciousness. The depressed soul resents the necessity of being called\nupon to act independently of the body and in opposition to it. Most\npatients, too, for the time being are inclined to count each one his own\ncase unique. But the Mystic Sense is wonderfully elastic. Cheerfulness\ncomes by being cheerful, hope by being hopeful, calmness by being calm,\nhealthymindedness by being healthyminded. This is the work of the Mystic\nSense living in the realm of vigor even when the body is in distress.\nWhen the Mystic Sense goes exploring in high altitudes it never comes\nback empty handed. Even when it fails to return with health of body, it\nholds in its grasp health of mind. A blithe spirit in a feeble body can\naccomplish more than a sluggish spirit in a robust body. There are two\nkinds of healthymindedness\u2014temperamental and acquired. The latter is the\nmost powerful and may be had by anyone who cultivates his Mystic Sense.\n\nThe extent to which the Mystic Sense works toward a cure cannot be\nformulated. It varies with conditions. Of this we can be assured. It is\nalways salutary, frequently indispensable. Diseases caused or induced by\nan abuse or morbid use of the imagination cannot be banished without the\naid of the Mystic Sense as the chief agent. The imagination must be cured\nbefore the sickness can be cured, and there are instances when the cure\nof the imagination is the cure of the disease. That is none the less a\ndisease, the seat of which is in the psychic, rather than in the physical\npart of self.\n\nTwo things remain to be said. First, our day is laying a dangerous accent\non the value of mere physical life in man. It tends to foster physical\nself-consciousness and is an aspect of degrading materialism. All the\nefforts being put forth in the direction of making it possible for the\nphysically feeble to survive, are dangerous, unless followed up by\ncommensurate efforts to make them lit as characters. Mere existence and\nmere longevity are false gods.\n\nIt is haply justifiable for men of low breed, who honestly think this\nlife the only one, to grasp at all its available gifts, and struggle to\nretain it on any terms for as long a period as may be. But not so among\nthose who have risen to a knowledge of the meaning of immortality, even\nin its lesser aspects, of the perpetuation of the nation and the race,\nand the persistence of a man\u2019s work and influence among men after he\nhimself has vanished. For such there is a higher food than mere life,\nbeside which mere survival looks cheap and worthless.\n\n    \u201cA man must live, we justify\n    Low shift and trick to treason high,\n      A little vote for a little gold\n      To a whole senate bought and sold,\n    By that self-evident reply.\n\n    But is it so? Pray tell me why\n    Life at such cost you have to buy?\n      In what religion were you told\n        A man must live?\n\n    There are times when a man must die,\n    Imagine, for a battle-cry,\n      From soldiers, with a sword to hold,\u2014\n      From soldiers, with the flag unrolled,\u2014\n    This coward\u2019s whine, this liar\u2019s lie,\u2014\n        A man must live!\u201d[10]\n\nThere is, however, a type of heroism which is not as uncommon as it seems\nto be for it is hidden\u2014the type to which Kipling refers when he says:\n\n    \u201cIf you can force your heart and nerve and sinew\n      To serve your turn long after they are gone,\n      And so hold on, when there is nothing in you\n      Except the will which says to them: \u2018Hold on!\u2019\u201d\u2014\n\nand once more we quote from another writer:\n\n    \u201cLet us, for one thing, never forget that physical health\n    is not the true end of human life, but only one of its most\n    important means and conditions.... Death may and should be\n    risked, the slow but certain undermining of the physical health\n    may be laudably embarked on, if only the mind and character\n    are not damaged, and if the end to be attained is found to\n    be necessary or seriously helpful, and unattainable by other\n    means.\u201d[11]\n\nSecondly, special and mystical means of promoting or regaining health\nmust have as a background the accumulated knowledge and scientific skill\nof the day. If there are individual exceptions here and there, they go to\nprove the rule. We can no more ignore the history of medical and chemical\nscience, the findings of the microscope and laboratory, without disaster,\nthan we can cut our country off from the traditions, laws and customs\nof yesterday without similar results. On the other hand, it is at least\nequal folly to flout or discredit the mystical experience of the ages.\nHuman life, individually and corporately, is a unit, and due recognition\nmust be given to all that goes to make it up.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III\n\nIN RELATION TO THOUGHT\n\n\nThe mind includes the Mystic Sense in somewhat a similar way to the\nmanner in which the body includes the physical senses. But the Mystic\nSense can be, indeed must be, considered as a distinct faculty having a\npeculiar function in the formation of that product of the mind called\nthought, which is \u201cthe effort to win over facts to ideas, or to adjust\nideas to facts.\u201d[12] The Mystic Sense can and does operate when the\nrationalizing faculty is reverently silent, and by its operation prepares\nnew material for pure reason to consider.\n\nThere is no specifically intellectual organ. It is the whole man which\napprehends knowledge just as it is the whole man and not an exclusively\nreligious part of him, which apprehends and is apprehended by eternities\nand infinities. It is popularly supposed that science and mathematics\ncall for the exercise of one set of faculties, and philosophy and\nreligion another. Whereas the truth is that the same faculties are used\nfor all alike in pretty much the same relation to one another. The Mystic\nSense is as indispensable to science as it is to piety. Its method of\noperation is precisely the same in the one sphere as in the other.\n\nWe can best appreciate the important part the Mystic Sense plays in\nscience by a survey of the foundations of accepted scientific fact.\nThe whole body of our knowledge concerning the material universe is\nconstructed upon a few ultimates, chief among them being the ether and\nthe atom. The physical senses, so busy in that workshop of science, the\nlaboratory, cease to be important when we deal with these fundamentals.\nThe discoverer of ether never perceived it by touch, taste, smell, sight\nor hearing. Newton postulated it because he said it was a necessity,\nexactly as we postulate the existence of God. How could there be\nattraction across the measureless spaces which separate worlds if there\nwere not some intangible substance? The ether was therefore discovered to\norder by the Mystic Sense and accepted because it proved a good working\nhypothesis. We are solemnly told by physicists that it is an \u201celastic\nsolid,\u201d a \u201cpervasive fluid,\u201d a \u201ctenuous substance.\u201d And yet when we\nchase this elusive something into a corner we find it to be \u201cthat which\nundulates,\u201d a form of motion\u2014well, so is a field mouse!\n\nAgain the atomic theory, first conceived by the Greeks, was restated by\nDalton more than 2,000 years later, who brought it down \u201cfrom the clouds\nto the laboratory and factory.\u201d But neither Dalton nor anyone else ever\ntouched an atom, saw an atom, heard an atom, smelt an atom, or tasted\nan atom, ultimate of matter that it is. The physicist claims, however,\n\u201cthat though he cannot handle or see them, the atoms and molecules are as\nreal as the ice-crystals in the cirrhus clouds that he cannot reach\u2014as\nreal as the unseen members of a meteoric swarm whose death glow is lost\nin the sunshine, or which sweep past us unentangled in the night\u201d\u2014that\nthe atoms are in fact \u201cnot merely helps to puzzled mathematicians, but\nphysical realities.\u201d[13] All this may be so. Nevertheless both the ether\nand the atom are so little material as to escape physical perception\nas completely as a ghost, and so nearly spiritual as to be perceived by\nthe Mystic Sense with sufficient clearness to enable the scientist to\nuse them as his fundamental hypothesis. If this reasoning be true, the\nultimate of matter is spiritual and not material!\n\nAs with the ether so with the atom, it was a scientific necessity.\nThe Mystic Sense contributed it to the laboratory, where it has been\ncontentedly accepted as the ultimate of matter, until the other day, when\nsomeone opened the window of the atom to discover that it was a huge\nuniverse, of which a \u03b2 corpuscle or electron was the least particle,\nrelated to the atom as a mote dancing in the sunbeam is to the room where\nit is. No sense but the Mystic Sense has yet sensed the electron. Not\nonly, then, has science accepted the findings of the Mystic Sense, but,\nhaving accepted them, it has in the main not had reason to distrust them\nand continues confidently to base its research upon the foundation thus\nlaid.\n\nThe freshest of more recent scientific discoveries, evolution, is as\nmuch the child of the Mystic Sense as of inductive reasoning. It was\nthe Mystic Sense of ancient philosophers, exploring the unseen, which\nfirst descried it on the horizon as the sailor at the masthead spies the\ndistant land. Darwin was the helmsman who steered the ship to port. He\nrationalized it and applied it as a working hypothesis. It is instructive\nto note that Darwin began his career with a rather acute sense of the\nmystical. He had a keen appetite for poetry, and pictures, and the music\nin King\u2019s College Chapel \u201cgave him intense pleasure, so that his backbone\nwould sometimes shiver.\u201d[14] He even began preparation for Holy Orders.\nIn later life the interests that meant so much to him in youth died.\n\u201cMy mind,\u201d he says, \u201cseems to have become a kind of machine for finding\ngeneral laws out of large collections of facts, but why this should\nhave caused the atrophy of that part of the brain alone, on which the\nhigher tastes depend, I cannot conceive. A man with a mind more highly\norganized or better constituted than mine, would not, I suppose, have\nthus suffered; and if I had to live my life again, I would have made a\nrule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once a week;\nfor perhaps the parts of my brain now atrophied would thus have been\nkept active through use. The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness,\nand may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the\nmoral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.\u201d It\nwould be more accurate, perhaps, to explain this loss, not by atrophy but\nby too narrow specialization. His Mystic Sense and powerful imagination\nwere not dead. They were centred on a single object. Having developed his\nMystic Sense in one or all the ways open to him, a man may abandon its\nuse in every direction but one. Christian worship, poetry, music prepare\nthe Mystic Sense for that daring creation of hypotheses characteristic of\nDarwin. Without his power of hypothesis he could never have become more\nthan a mere collector of the jackdaw order. He is his own best witness to\nthe truth of this assertion. He says, \u201cI have steadily endeavored to keep\nmy mind free so as to give up any hypothesis, however much beloved (and I\ncannot resist forming one on every subject), as soon as facts are shown\nto be opposite to it,\u201d adding that he could not remember \u201ca single first\nformed hypothesis which had not after a time to be given up or modified.\u201d\n\nIt is one of the chief functions of the Mystic Sense to present\nhypotheses. Without hypothesis the reason is a shorn Samson. A goal must\nbe postulated, otherwise the wood could not be seen for the trees, and\nthe intellect would be hopelessly lost in a tangle of underbrush and\nsmothered by the weight of its own learning. \u201cWhile theory is aimless\nand impotent without experimental check, experiment is dead without some\ntheory passing beyond the limits of ascertained knowledge to control it.\nHere, as in all parts of natural knowledge, the immediate presumption\nis strongly in favor of the simplest hypothesis; the main support, the\nunfailing clue, of physical science is the principle that, nature being a\nrational _cosmos_, phenomena are related on the whole in the manner that\nconceptual reason would anticipate.\u201d[15] Generalization of a tentative\ncharacter precedes and gives a starting point for induction. Hypothesis\nis more often the child of intuitive processes which capture thought\nby quick assault than of slower and more analyzable forces. First comes\nhypothesis, then the accumulation of data, finally, when all available\nevidence is in, rejection and the adoption of fresh hypothesis, or\nmodification, or verification. \u201cA bundle of disconnected facts is only\nthe raw material for an investigation: their mere collection is the very\nearliest stage in the process; and even while collecting them there is\nnearly always some system, some place, some idea under trial.\u201d[16] The\nspiritual contents of the physical universe are, in part, evolution,\nthe ether, the atom and such like. They bear material names, but they\nare ideas, out of reach of our sensory nerves, and capable of being\nperceived, first dimly and then clearly, only through the Mystic Sense.\nThey form the allegorical department of scientific thought, and are to\nthe reality as the Apocalypse is to the Kingdom of Heaven.\n\nIt would be without special gain, however easy, to multiply illustrations\nof the princely place which the Mystic Sense holds in scientific\nresearch. Let us, therefore, turn for a moment to mathematics with its\narray of imperturbable digits and prosaic facts. No sooner does the\nmathematician begin to move, than he finds it necessary to call to his\naid the self-same faculty, which furnishes the physicist with his ether\nand atoms, and enables the worshipper to pray. Else how could he explore\nthe fifth dimension, and define a line as having length without breadth,\nor a plane superficies as having only length and breadth, or a point as\nhaving no parts? It is not astonishing that the mathematician, \u201cLewis\nCarroll,\u201d was the author of those most delicious imaginative works of\nimmortal fame, \u201cAlice in Wonderland\u201d and \u201cThrough the Looking-Glass.\u201d His\nvocation prepared and trained him for his avocation, and his avocation\ngave him new efficiency in his vocation. That which made him able to\nwrite the story of dreamland equipped him as an able scholar\u2014the use in\nproper relation to his other mental gifts of the Mystic Sense. Similarly\nit is not surprising, but to be expected that Bacon, Pasteur, and Kelvin\nwere, each in his own degree, religious men. They are the normal men of\nscience, La Place, Huxley, and Haeckel being eccentrics and developed in\na lop-sided way.\n\nInvention, to turn to the department of practical science, relates the\nsame story. Long before men saw, they dreamed. The locomotive was a\nvision before it was a fact; the aeroplane began as an idea, stinging\nmen into adventurous experiment, before it spread its wings above the\nearth; men talked across vast spaces in thought before the earliest cable\nticked its message, or the wireless system enthralled us by its wizardry.\nThe Mystic Sense is prophetic and sees to-morrow as though it were\nto-day, dimly first and then with increasing clearness. \u201cWithout much dim\napprehension, no dear perception; nothing is more certain than this.\u201d[17]\n\nStill once more, when we turn to literature the Mystic Sense is a\npole-star. History is a museum of the curios of yesterday, a pile of\nbones, a series of occurrences, a collection of bald facts as cold and\nbare as a heap of pebbles, until the Mystic Sense enters the sterile\nvalley and brings with it the breath of life. An idiot with a memory\ncan collect past facts as easily as a wee toddler can collect shells on\nthe sea shore and to as good purpose. But it needs a man who, however\nvast his stock of information, possesses a developed Mystic Sense to\nclassify facts and reveal their insides. Facts never tell the truth to\nan unimaginative mind. There is a higher form of accuracy and a deeper\npresentation of reality than a bare statement. Figures and prose, taken\nalone, are blind guides.\n\nIn normal childhood the Mystic Sense gets admirable training through\nthe poetry and imaginative literature that belongs to the nursery in\nevery nation. It is justly considered improper to confine a child\u2019s\neducation to the multiplication table, scientific statement, religious\ndogma, and the memorizing of historic fact. The kindergarten, be its\nmerits or defects what they may, is an endeavor to rouse the young mind\nto accurate observation and calculation through the imaginative faculty.\nAllegory, fable, and multiplied illustration form the natural vehicle\nfor imparting knowledge to the young. The abstract is unintelligible, the\nbald is uninteresting; vivid description, poetical and highly colored,\nis the main road to knowledge. Care is taken to introduce fact in its\nbest and prettiest clothing. Human life has a craving for the beautiful\nwhich is a phase of strength and an aspect of the real. Literature is the\nrecorded expression of human life and thought, colored by the character\nof its various authors.[18] Art is literature on canvas, in vibrant\nsounds, and in stone.\n\nPoetry is a necessary and not an ornamental part of literature. It is\nto a large extent the mystical embodiment of prose, or perhaps it would\nbe truer to say that it bears somewhat the same relation to prose that\nhypothesis does to science. At any rate it is the distinctive literature\nof the Mystic Sense. It is the literature of the young nation just as\nmuch as it is of the young child. The earliest and the most permanent\nliterature extant is either poetry or poetical in idea. Imagination, a\nchild of the Mystic Sense, which runs wild unless disciplined, was born\nearlier than more sober offspring of the mind. Poetry is the parent of\nprose. The habit of the nursery or schoolroom is the reproduction on a\nsmall scale of the method of history\u2014first poetry, then prose. He rules\na nation who furnishes it with songs. There is no firmer foundation for\nnational life than a great legendary epic or a garland of folk songs. The\nbetter, if not the larger, part of the Old Testament is poetic. Even the\nhistorical books do not pretend to be history as Gibbon and Green are\nhistory. Legend and history had not been distinguished from one another\nin those days. Legend is usually elaborately colored interpretation of\nfact where the actual occurrence has been lost in the interpretation,\nto such an extent that it can never be recovered or can only be guessed\nat. By subjective process, somewhat akin to reflection or digestion, the\nobjective gains a new and transfigured self apart from and independent,\nit may be, of the original object. Thus legend is over-subjectified\nhistory. The outside is ignored for the sake of the inside.\n\nPoetry and wholesome fiction must find permanent place in the life of a\nnormal man. Do not delude yourself into thinking that your chief or only\nguides in life are logic and sense perception. They are not. Intuition\nand sentiment lead you twice for every once these others do. It is so\nmuch more comfortable, not to say honest and reasonable, to acknowledge\nfrankly the primacy of your leaders, than to follow them and pretend all\nthe while that you are following other guides, which is a species of\ndisloyalty. Scientist, inventor, mathematician, man of letters, alike are\nnot quite true to fact when they claim that pure reason and an exclusive\nprocess of induction control their mental operations. I would raise the\nquestion whether there is any such thing as the exclusively inductive\nmethod. Is it not truer to speak of the deductive-inductive than of\nthe inductive? The Mystic Sense, with its adventurous and sometimes\nblundering progress, holds so important a place that without it logic and\ninduction would be as grist without a mill. To reach knowledge by \u201cpure\nreason\u201d is as impossible as to reach the sun with a stepladder. Even\nsupposing it were possible to bring bare reason over against bald fact,\nthe result would reach only a degree beyond the achievement of a pig\nthat counts, or a jackdaw that gathers a store of glittering objects.\n\nI have heard scrupulous people complain of the effect of fairy lore,\nnursery fables, and imaginative traditions like that of Santa Claus,\nupon child life. It may be a question to consider, but it is dealing\nwith a mote rather than with a beam. Cheap current literature, and\nthe psychologically false story, which is characteristic of many of\nour magazines, are far more of an injury to heart and mind than the\nimaginative excesses of the nursery. The objection to the latter is not\nin the substance, but in the unnecessary attempts to deceive and to\nconfuse objective and subjective in the child mind. Santa Claus is a\nharmless creature viewed as the Spirit of Christmas. When he is turned\ninto a chimney god to whom written or spoken prayers are offered, it\nis another matter. Who can withstand the pathos of the little sister\u2019s\ndeath, resulting from her petition before the fireplace for a new toy\nfor her baby brother? The flames took her and turned her into a burnt\nsacrifice to Santa Claus.\n\nSupply is usually responsive to demand and the amount of imaginative\nliterature and versifying in the journals of the day is a fair\nindication of the appetite for that which stimulates the Mystic Sense in\nletters. Also its hectic character is indicative of the wild state of\nthe psychic life of the readers. The normal is counted uninteresting,\nand the abnormal, in incident and character, is portrayed. A steady diet\nof such reading leaves unhealthy blotches, indelible and disfiguring, on\nhuman life. Even in more serious literature the story of the abnormal may\nbe given too great prominence. Valuable as the late Professor James\u2019s\n_Varieties of Religious Experience_ may be, it has the fault of studying\nthe abnormal as though it were the ordinary, leaving the great stretches\nof healthy religious experience practically untouched. If a physiologist\nwere to give his main attention to men with one green and one brown eye,\nor with the heart on the right instead of the left side, or some kindred\npeculiarities, the sum total of his research would not contribute much to\nour knowledge of the normal man.\n\nTo conclude: every man who respects his mind, be his vocation what it\nmay, has need to guard his Mystic Sense from defilement, and afford it\nopportunity for development. In what is technically known as education\ngreat stress is laid on proportion and subject matter. This is no less\na necessity in maturer life than it is in youth. The same result ensues\nupon reading anything that comes to hand, that ensues upon eating\nanything that comes to hand. So important a thing is it, not only that we\nshould be able to create hypotheses, but also that our hypotheses should\nbe sound, that we must furnish our Mystic Sense with the same safeguards\nand stimulus that we afford our physical senses.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV\n\nIN RELATION TO CHARACTER\n\n\nGood character is the reaction upon the whole self caused by the Mystic\nSense as a habit visioning, and the will claiming, the excellent. It is\nthe result on personality of a sustained effort to transcend the existing\nrelation to life and its conditions, a state of chronic dissatisfaction\nwith the progress and achievement of the moment, which makes the good\nmediocre by contrasting it with the superior and coveting the best\nconceivable as man\u2019s right and heritage.\n\nThe Mystic Sense is always finding a more excellent way. Excepting\nwhen taught to play casuistical tricks, it does not look for the\nconventionally proper, or rest comfortably in it.[19] It launches out\ninto that noble freedom which, from a group of probabilities, selects\nthat which is farthest removed from suspicion of selfish considerations\nand promises ultimately the best social results. On the other hand it is\nnot disregardful of the accepted code of morals. This it takes as its\nfoundation, individualizing it for personal use, and boldly submitting\npropositions for improvement to the social conscience for approval,\nmodification, or rejection. Such approval, modification, or rejection is\nnever a purely formal matter registered in the dictum of a tribunal but\nrather the culmination of a process akin, in the moral sphere, to that\nwhich is termed \u201cnatural selection\u201d in the physical sphere.\n\nCharacter and morality are not synonymous. Strong character may be good\nor bad, the latter being the result of the active exercise of the will in\na conflict with goodness; it is the transformation of evil from a mere\nnegation into a positive, personal force by conscious volition. But our\nstudy is of good character and its cultivation, so that when the word\n\u201ccharacter\u201d is used the determinative \u201cgood\u201d is understood.\n\nCharacter is the result of the correspondence of personality with the\nbest that it knows. It is measured by the faithfulness with which\nit responds to opportunity. A man with small opportunity, who is\nscrupulously conscientious in availing himself of all the privilege\nafforded him, becomes a stronger character than another, who, with his\ngreat opportunity, is less loyal in his use of it. Of course the greatest\ncharacter is that which knows ideal virtue and consistently aims to\nbring up life to its level. Character is determined by reaction upon\nenvironment, external and internal. There are many suitable environments\npossible for every character, more than there are unsuitable ones, as the\nvicissitudes of most lives testify. Character is thus bound up closely\nwith individual personality and is never abstract, as morality is in the\nscience of ethics. Character is created and disclosed by that phase of\nexperience in which the Mystic Sense is busied in photographing ideals on\nthe film monopolized by the actual to the discomfiture and obliteration\nof the latter. Better to-morrows are obtruded on poor to-days, partly by\nvirtue of the fact that the Mystic Sense is naturally in constant contact\nwith the ideally best, sensing and appropriating it just as the body,\nwithout conscious effort on our part, senses and appropriates light and\nair, and partly because, either feebly or vigorously, most men claim for\nthemselves by deliberate volition a larger life than that which is.\n\nThe possession of character is the sole justification of self-respect.\nSelf-respect ensues upon the growth of character, and is to character\nwhat perfume is to the flower. It is due to the consciousness of having\nwithin ourselves that which is worthy\u2014not mere moral acquiescence but\nsomething we have made peculiarly our own by active effort. It is a\nhigh form of the consciousness which inspires an inventor when he has\nconstructed a piece of mechanism. Self-respect is a witness to our\nhaving been individualized and is indifferent to external possessions or\naught that is our own by virtue of favor and chance rather than by merit.\nSelf-respect runs into self-conceit and stagnation when it rests content\nwith that which is. It never dawdles in its movements nor loafs on the\nstreet corners. Self-respect becomes self-contempt and self-abasement\nwhen our attention is turned from our cherished ideals and actual\nprogress, and fixed upon our defects and failures. Penitence is not a bar\nbut a necessity to character and its fragrant effluence, self-respect.\n\nCharacter calls for and expects communal respect in the same degree\nthat it receives self-respect. Reputation should be commensurate with\ncharacter. It is possible for men to have the unmerited respect of\ntheir fellows without having self-respect. This is due to the practice\nof deceit, conscious or unconscious, which enables them to simulate\ncharacter and have appearance without corresponding reality. To the\nman of character, it is as truly a pain to be overestimated as to\nbe underestimated. He can afford to lose his reputation, though he\ncan never be exempt from the keen pain involved. In the process of\nachieving character, the great frequently, if not always, have to endure\nthe withholding of respect on the part of the community. Seldom does\na man make a contribution to progress without being temporarily at\nleast discredited by those whom most of all he is aiming to benefit.\nSelf-respect towers at such moments. A man of character will trust\nhimself when all men doubt him but make allowance for their doubting,\ntoo; he will wait and not be tired by waiting, or being lied about, won\u2019t\ndeal in lies, or being hated won\u2019t give way to hating.[20]\n\nIdeals become tasks and tasks become character in social experience. \u201cA\ntalent,\u201d says Goethe, \u201cshapes itself in stillness, but a character in\nthe tumult of the world.\u201d \u201cThat which would have remained only a quality\nin (our Lord), if He had stayed in the desert, becomes a life when He\ngoes forth into the world.\u201d The ultimate test of a man\u2019s worth is his\ncharacter and not his degree of morality\u2014his power of volitional reaction\nupon environment, objective and subjective.\n\nEvery man at some time during his career,\u2014most men for a considerable\nportion of it, and many from beginning to end,\u2014covets character. Those\nwho fail to claim it for themselves seldom fail to admire it in others.\nFrequently they put as much effort into pretending they have it as would\nwin for them the real thing. They pay the price of gold for tinsel.\nCharacter has commercial value and sometimes men are honest according\nto law solely because it is politic, or polite according to social\nrequirement because it pays. But the honesty and courtesy of such men\nare not virtues. They are handmaidens of covetousness. They contribute\nnothing to self-respect. They have no moral content, and serve only to\naid in bolstering up a vicious characteristic. However, it is a tribute\nto the kingliness of character that, either for its market value or\nbecause of its inherent worth, men clothe themselves in its appearance\nwhen they do not seek the substance.\n\nThe substance may be had by every man. Man not only is, but also\nacknowledges himself to be, responsible for what he is. He makes the\nconfession when he keeps his worst self from the public gaze even though\nit promises him no special gain. The extreme to which the sense of\npersonal responsibility and accountability goes is evidenced by the fact\nthat, though _for others_ we find it difficult to believe in the closing\nof the possibility of self-improvement and ultimate loss fixed and final,\nmany, perhaps most of us, think and act _in our own case_ as though _we\nat least_ shall be held strictly accountable for our character and reap\nas we live. If we had no responsibility for what we were and did, there\nwould be no room for shame, were we to be publicly known to be exactly\nwhat we are. Rob Henley\u2019s poem of its defiant note and we are in the\npresence of sober fact:\n\n    \u201cIt matters not how strait the gate,\n    How charged with punishments the scroll\u2014\n    I am the Master of my fate\u2014\n    I am the Captain of my soul.\u201d\n\nCharacter, like fruit, gets rich flavor through living in a climate of\nextremes which give robustness by threatening very existence. The story\nof the transgression of Adam and his consort is illustrative rather\nthan singular. The temptation set was the very stiffest to which human\nlife, being what it is, could be subjected\u2014a demand for self-discipline\nand obedience to mysterious law. It is interesting that the first\nrecorded strain put upon the human will was not to do rather than to\ndo. Seemingly it was the limitation of freedom, the restriction of\nchoice, the narrowing of experience. In no other conditions could man\nhave had a chance to gain character. Had our first human ancestors won\ntheir day without lapse, every succeeding generation would have had to\ndo the same. You cannot inherit character. You must win it. Temptation\nis never eliminated from human life, as we know it. Its conquest in one\nform opens the door to its appearance in another form. Our earliest\nhuman ancestors having known the higher chose the lower. But this did\nnot, either in their own case or in that of their offspring through a\nthousand generations, close the door to the attainment of character.\nHuman life begins in conditions which threaten character and therefore\nbecomes eligible for character. The complaint that there are those in the\nworld who, because of hopeless environment, never have an opportunity,\nfinds sympathetic echo in every heart, but it does not absolve us from\nresponsibility to our own opportunity.\n\nMuch is made of heredity by those who know little or nothing of the\ncontroversies which gather about the study of its operation. The popular\ninterpretation presses hard upon its thorns and forgets even the\nexistence of its blossoms. \u201cThe sins of the fathers are visited upon\nthe children unto the third and fourth generation,\u201d is the dominating\nthought which, by exclusive consideration, diseases the mind of many a\nman until his whole imaginative nature is employed in the service of some\ncongenital, or supposed congenital, weakness to make him its victim. In\nthis way fatalism is induced. Fatalism is a disease of the Mystic Sense\nwhich substitutes acquiescence for reaction. It is the straw committing\nitself to the river, not the oarsman using the current to his own\nadvantage. Acquiescence is too tame a virtue for man, if indeed it be a\nvirtue at all.\n\nWhatever credit we give to heredity for endowing us with the tendencies\nof our evil forbears, we must give it equal credit for endowing us with\nthose of our good forbears. If you are determined to be fatalistic, be so\nfairly, recognizing the possible transmission of every kind of tendency.\nConscious acceptance of gifts of strength from the past is a powerful\ncounter-irritant to defend us against a real or imagined inheritance of\nweakness.\n\nThe problem of heredity is obscured by the fog of controversy which just\nnow envelopes it. We must remember that the main questions in doubt are\nits method, and extent, and our ability to intervene so as to modify\nor improve its operations. Science very cautiously says that \u201cheredity\nsuggests, though it would be rash to say it is proved, that man is almost\nentirely the product of inborn factors which are hardly affected by\n[physical] environment.\u201d[21] \u201cGiven parents of certain constitution, it\ncan be said with confidence that _on the average_ a certain proportion\nof their offspring will have such and such characters.\u201d \u201cBoth [the\nBiometrician and Mendelian] agree that what is present in the germ-cell\nwill be present in the individual, and that external conditions as a\nrule play but a small part in determining its appearance.\u201d \u201cAlmost\nentirely,\u201d \u201chardly affected,\u201d \u201con the average,\u201d \u201ca certain proportion,\u201d\n\u201cas a rule,\u201d form a relatively large group of qualifying clauses in\nthree short sentences. When we know more certainly the mechanism by which\nheredity operates we shall be better able by eugenics and physiological\nor mechanical processes to combat its evils and foster its benefits. In\nthe meantime there is no call for us to stand idle. If man were mere\nanimal it would be another matter, but he is not. His Mystic Sense, which\nlinks him to a superior order, has steadily differentiated him from all\nbelow him. It has enabled him to transcend environment. By means of it\nhe can acquire character even if the laws of transmission should forbid\nhim to pass it on to his offspring by congenital endowment. It is a\nfiner and stronger thing to improve steadily the tradition of family or\nrace by a series of successive personal conquests and achievements than\nto gain exemption from evil tendencies by the more or less mechanical\nprocess of procreation. Release from temptation is not necessarily a\nbenefit, and is never as productive of character as the gift of ability\nto defeat it. Frequently all that is needed is inspiration, mystical and\nhuman, to enable a man to rise above his evil inheritance and habit.\nEvil tradition is as real and destructive a phase of heredity as inborn\nweakness, whereas on the other hand _noblesse oblige_. It is rather\nthe tradition of the family trait of intemperance than a transmitted\nphysical peculiarity that keeps the line of drunkards unbroken. Children\nmust not be allowed to suppose that they can be excused from struggle.\nBeing prepared for all temptations as a normal part of experience they\nare least likely to become victims of any: being made expectant of all\nvirtues, they may perchance glean some.\n\nOur environment is our opportunity, particularly in those spots where\nit is uncongenial and threatening. To chafe and fret is to increase the\ninimical possibilities of difficulty. To think of it except with the\nintention of mastering it is weakening and depressing. To remove it with\nour own hands rather than have another remove it, if it be moveable, or,\nshould it be immoveable, to weave it as material into our scheme of life,\nusing its rough threads to the last stand, is to achieve character. A\nman must either fit his burden to his back or his back to his burden,\nif he desires to remain man. They are rare exceptions in mankind who\nhave not capacity for so doing, if not by themselves, at any rate in\na sympathetic social setting. A burdened life by the free use of the\nMystic Sense may become a privileged life. Introduce fearlessness and\nexperimental curiosity into hardship, and you get romance which keeps the\nwings of life moving and mounting, and makes the world of men around look\nup in aspiring wonder.\n\n    \u201cThere is no storme but this\n    Of your owne Cowardise\n      That braves you out;\n    You are the storme that mocks\n    Your selves; you are the rocks\n      Of your owne doubt:\n    Besides this feare of danger, ther\u2019s no danger here;\n    And he that here feares danger, does deserve his feare.\u201d[22]\n\nThe Mystic Sense has an inner ear. Through it conscience delivers its\nmessage by means of which we come to know and understand the meaning of\nought and ought not. Ready response to conscience is to be coveted above\nall things, especially where conscience has been trained and illumined.\nA friend once wrote me, a few days before his death, that he had come to\nsee that what pretended to be education was no education at all unless\nit included the development of conscience. But mere knowledge of right\nand wrong, ought and ought not, does not impart goodness. To be aware\nthat vice injures and virtue blesses is desirable but insufficient. There\nis not less vice among those who know than there is among those who do\nnot know ethics, other things being equal, excepting where education is\nconceived to be something more than the imparting of information.\n\nSometimes nations and individuals covet character without being ready\nto pay the whole price for it. They give admirable facilities for the\ndevelopment of certain phases of training essential to character, but\nexclude that deciding factor which determines whether or not they may\nbe woven into character. Influences from other sources may come in to\nrepair wilful neglect, but, if not, the training goes for nothing so far\nas character is concerned. Public schools can never give character its\nbest opportunity without a practical recognition of religion. Purely\nsecular education, the imparting of learning including the science of\nethics, without religion in church and home to supplement it, is a\ndoubtful blessing at best. The current idea of secular education is not\nnew. During the French Revolution its leaders mapped out what appeared\nto be a satisfactory programme of instruction. It was desired to have\nmoral training, first without religion or with the \u201cWorship of Reason,\u201d\nthen with a minimum of religion. The priests were suffered to continue\nas being at any rate moral policemen, but Danton planned to supplant\nthem by _officiers de morale_. All experiments were of no avail. \u201c_La\nmorale populaire ... cherche encore_,\u201d it was pathetically complained,\n\u201c_un point d\u2019appui solide_.\u201d Then came freedom to worship, and later the\nConcordat reintroduced the old religious order, partially, it is true,\nbecause the people could or would not live without it, but largely for\nthe sake of morals.\n\nIf religion without morality becomes superstitious sentiment, morality\nwithout religion becomes for the average man inoperative ethics and\nultimately a pitiless judge. There is no more oppressive tyrant than\na high ethical code with a will, untrained, uninspired, and helpless\nto respond. It becomes a mocking and cruel Nemesis viewing with\nindifference its writhing victims. The Chinese Classics are preserved by\nthe wonderful nation who produced them, as a literary treasure instead of\nas a practical code of conduct\u2014the sure fate of the Bible apart from the\nChristian Church.\n\nIt is too late in the day to pretend that morality and religion are\nsynonymous, however intimate their relationship, or that the end of\nreligion is to make men good. Righteousness, which is the Christian term\nfor morality, is to be had only in part by the practice of embracing the\nexcellent and bathing our mystic self in the fountain of ideals. The type\nof righteousness thus created can never be aught than self-conscious,\nlike an overdressed woman, or a gaudy painting. The Mystic Sense must\noccupy itself in still higher altitudes. Having come from God and being\npartaker of His nature, it must aspire to Him. The end of life is\nreligion, and the end of religion is to know God. The purest type of\nrighteousness, experienced or conceivable, is created by our having as\nour dominant ambition to know the only God and Jesus Christ whom He hath\nsent. The net result is Christian Character.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V\n\nIN RELATION TO RELIGION\n\n\nThe operation of the Mystic Sense in relation to religion is commonly\ncalled faith. Conversely, faith under another name is that operation\nof the Mystic Sense which promotes health of body, which affords a\nstarting point for all intellectual, scientific, and other productive\npursuits, which leads character from strength to strength. The subjective\nconditions under which, and the spheres in which, the Mystic Sense is\nemployed, differ. But the faculty itself and its _modus operandi_ are\nalways the same. Just as the sense of bodily sight which views the dirt\nbeneath our feet is the same sense which contemplates the blue sky, so\nthe inner sense of sight which perceives an electron, an ideal, or a\nhypothesis is the same sense which sees God. It is as possible to see God\nas to see a hypothesis, and as possible (not more and probably less), to\nsee a hypothesis as to see God.[23]\n\nIt is fitting that the most exalted operation of the Mystic Sense should\nbe dignified by a distinctive term, provided that in so doing no room is\ngiven for the implication that there is a faculty, or set of faculties,\nused in religion alone. A man has religious capacity because he is man,\nand not because he is a specially favored individual of his kind. Man,\nunless he abdicates his manhood, a task so difficult as to verge on the\nimpossible, must live by his Mystic Sense; he must keep touch with the\nunseen, or cease to be a man. To be a man, rounded and proportioned,\ncomplete and splendid, he must use his Mystic Sense not merely here and\nthere but everywhere. The Mystic Sense has as true an existence in the\nwhole personality, and relation to it, as the physical sense of touch,\nand is as acutely sensitive to the stimulus of the spiritual phase of\nreality as the body is to that of the material. It is analogous to all\nthe sub-divisions of the nervous system but chiefly to sight and hearing,\nthe most distinguished of the senses.[24]\n\nTo perceive an ideal is as real a sensation as to look at a flower.\nAn impression is left behind not unlike the photograph of the flower\nretained on the retina of the eye and revived by act of memory and\nwill. But the visualizing has nothing to do with physical sense\nperception, and the part of the personality thus impressed is spiritual.\nTo characterize tactual sensation of the body as real necessitates a\nlike characterization of the tactual sensation of the spirit. If it be\nargued that in the latter relationship there is no certainty as to what\nis phantasm and what reality, let it be remembered that the history of\nscience is largely a series of corrections of imperfect sense records.\nA highly developed power of observation with ability for accurate\nregistration and correlation is the distinguishing feature of culture.\nThe Mystic Sense, like the bodily senses, is capable of increasingly\naccurate perception by skilful and disciplined use. It takes its\nbeginnings in gropings like the awkward jerks of a baby\u2019s limbs, and\ndevelops into ordered and reliable movement by exercise and experiment,\nwhich includes mistakes and the profit accruing to the experience.\nSuperstition bears the same relation to faith that a false scientific\nhypothesis bears to ascertained fact. The Mystic Sense in its infant\nworking catches a distorted view of the ideal, as when Darwin propounded\nhis conception of heredity by pangenesis, and leads us astray in science;\nin like manner in religion a glimpse, through a mist of ignorance and\nmoral deficiency, of the Absolute, eventuates in superstition. Both are\nnecessary stages in the training of the Mystic Sense. Similarly to the\nway in which the theory of pangenesis stimulated discussion and research\nso as to aid the Mystic Sense to a more accurate perception of the true\nhypothesis of the manner of heredity, the superstitions of the nations\nconceived in sincerity, crude and even repulsive though they be, have\ncontributed to the complete knowledge of God and His character which\nforms our most valuable heritage.\n\nIt is not hazardous to say that the ideals and hypotheses which are still\nwaiting for the cognition of the Mystic Sense transcend gloriously those\nthus far apprehended. This means that science is in its infancy. It is\nequally true to assert that religion, so far from having fallen into\ndecline, is but girding itself to scale heights impatient to feel the\ntread of human feet. That which is good and true in itself must persist,\nwhatever its crudeness and blemishes. The Mystic Sense in relation to\nreligion is only at the beginning of its history. Human, that is mystic,\nlife began at so remote a period as to be beyond the reach of research.\nThe operation of the Mystic Sense through many thousands of years[25]\nprior to human records led the way to that ordered approach to God which\nwe call religion. The possibilities of its growth for the race at large\nare indicated and emphasized by individual instances taken from the\ncommon crowd. The world is just at this moment engrossed in seeing that\nevery one should have an opportunity of developing fine physique and of\nacquiring information. It is assumed that under proper conditions a high\naverage may be reached. The same is to be postulated for the development\nof the Mystic Sense in relation to the highest and best in religion.\nUnder a sufficient stimulus the average man will be able to apprehend\nwhat now is reached only by a minority. This, however, can not come to\npass until a whole world of men strain their inner eye and quicken their\ninner ear in the same direction, each contributing of his own strength to\nthe rest, and all to each.\n\nThe history of Christianity and its immediate progenitor, Judaism, is\nthe record of the highest development of the Mystic Sense in religion.\nIn the course of its progress the Absolute rises from a dim shadow to\nthe greatest Reality. It is distinctively the religion of orderly and\nrational mysticism. At first, men, feeling the working of the Mystic\nSense, used it in a childish way. What was splendid in them would be\nculpable in us. Abraham could consider it a call of God to slay his son:\na man of to-day could only think of it as a monstrous crime against God\nand society, revolting even to contemplate. It marked a stage in the\nrationalizing of faith when at the last moment Abraham saw mystically\nthat it was not God\u2019s purpose that any human being should ever do at His\nbidding an inhuman deed.\n\nThe most perfect individual life of faith ever lived was that of Jesus\nChrist. His Mystic Sense never erred. He was never so exclusively\nDivine as not to be completely human. He was God living the life of\nman. He walked by faith, not by sight. Visions and ecstasies found rare\nand momentary place in His experience. He reached His goal by the use\nof those gifts and endowments which we have in common with Him, and\nproclaimed forever to the race of men that it is the simple, steady,\npatient exercise of the Mystic Sense toward a God who is revealed\nas Love, which exalts human life and puts it in the way of winning\nincomparable power and beauty. His reply to the query, What shall we\ndo, that we might work the works of God, is, This is the work of God,\nthat ye _believe_\u2014believe on Him whom He hath sent. Further, He makes\nthe astounding prophecy, Assuredly I announce that he that believeth\non me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than\nthese shall he do. The early Christians were distinguished from their\nfellows as men who exhibited in high degree the faculty of belief so as\nto be in a unique sense \u201cBelievers,\u201d and their religion was one in which\nfaith played so prominent a part as to merit the name of \u201cThe Faith.\u201d\nThe whole Christian era has been an era of faith or the exercise of the\nMystic Sense. No great work can be found in it, in science, literature or\nreligion which has not been made possible by the stimulus given to faith\nby the influence of Jesus. Miracles do not cease to be miraculous when\nthey cease to be mysterious, and the Christian centuries are strewn with\nsuch miracles\u2014many of them, works of healing and moral restoration, as\ngreat as those of Jesus. But the greater works than His still lie before\nus when we have sufficiently shed materialism and committed ourselves\nmore implicitly to the life of faith.[26]\n\nThe disappearance into the spirit world of Jesus has made that world\nhuman,[27] so that the Mystic Sense can be as truly at home in it as\nit is in scientific research. He prepared for His withdrawal thither\nby centring the attention of His friends upon it. His manifestations\nafter His death on the cross were primarily to the Mystic Sense of His\nfollowers. That is to say, those unaccustomed to use the Mystic Sense in\na religious way were incapable of seeing Him. It was impossible for Him\nto show Himself to the irreligious or enemies of God. This does not mean\nthat it was only to the Mystic Sense of believers that He manifested\nHimself, but also to their bodily senses by way of the Mystic Sense.\nThere is much that comes to the cognizance of the Mystic Sense through\nphysical perception, and unless there is a refined and cultured nervous\norganism there is no mystical connotation. A Peter Bell could not find\nthe mystical in nature.\n\n    \u201cA primrose by a river\u2019s brim\n    A yellow primrose was to him,\n    And it was nothing more.\u201d\n\nThe same primrose to a Linn\u00e6us or an Asa Gray would reveal an unseen\nworld. Conversely, there are some things which cannot affect our physical\nbeing except by the way of mystical experience. Striking instances of\nthis sort have been suitably termed by von H\u00fcgel \u201cpsycho-physical.\u201d They\nare possible only where there is extraordinary sympathy between the\nmystical and physical, the latter having been made very completely the\nservant of the former. Only the mystic, or the specialist in the use of\nthe Mystic Sense, is eligible for such experiences. The tremendously\nreal fellowship with the Risen Lord of the disciples was of an ecstatic\nor psycho-physical order. It degrades the Resurrection manifestations\nto overemphasize their physical reality as though this, rather than the\nmystical, were the important feature. Their dominant note is spiritual.\nThe physical perception came through the mystical. The experience of the\ndisciples could not be reproduced in after times with other men, for the\nnecessary conditions were wanting. Here and there among spiritual giants\nthere is a well authenticated psycho-physical experience, but it is of\nphenomenal rather than of spiritual or moral value. And yet it is within\nour power to see the Christ as really and effectively as the Apostles\ndid, though not wholly after the same manner.\n\nSt. Paul did not begin his life of faith when he had his psycho-physical\nexperience on the road to Damascus. He reached there a turning point\nin its history. He was converted, turning his mystic powers in a new\ndirection. Those who were with him were not sufficiently developed to\nsee all that he saw or hear all that he heard.[28] His vision of Jesus\nwas momentary but his life of faith was continuous. If faith was at its\nbeginning when Abraham made his venture, it reached an illustrative\nand inviting climax when St. Paul made his. It was greater for St. Paul\nto espouse the cause of the Christ than to have a vision of Jesus. The\nphenomenal or extraordinary does not always culminate in such courage and\ndevotion as his. It was because he was a mystic that he had his vision,\nnot because he had a vision that he became a mystic. The Apostles who\nknew Jesus in the flesh had a lesser opportunity for faith than St. Paul\nwho saw Him but once and then after psycho-physical fashion, and who\nnever apprehended Him with all his bodily senses like those who saw \u201cwith\ntheir eyes\u201d and \u201cbeheld,\u201d and whose \u201chands handled\u201d the Word of Life. It\nwas fitting that St. Paul should give Christianity the impetus which made\nit a world religion. The highest development of faith has assigned to it\nthe biggest undertaking. St. Peter with undeveloped intellectual gifts\nand faith based on sight could not do what St. Paul with highly developed\nreason and singular faith could do. The Risen Jesus Himself declared that\nfaith dependent upon physical or psycho-physical experience is of a lower\norder than that in which the mystic sense is independent of phenomenal\naction of the bodily sense\u2014Because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed:\nblessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.\n\nThe great multitude of mortals will always be outside of psycho-physical\nexperiences. There is no religious loss in the fact. Rather the\ncontrary. That which gives the soul its permanent hold upon moral and\nspiritual realities and regard for them in mystics is not their rare\npsycho-physical experiences, but the same exercise of the Mystic Sense\nin the daily round of commonplace religious duty which is open to every\nhuman being, with like wonderful results upon character. A phenomenal\nspiritual occurrence in the case of one who was not living a religious\nlife would be a mere wonder, perhaps even productive of spiritual\nharm.[29] Such experiences are never to be sought for. If they come their\nperil is not less than their inspiration.\n\n    \u201cThe trivial round, the common task,\n    Will furnish all we need to ask,\n    Room to deny ourselves, a road\n    To bring us daily nearer God.\u201d\n\nIt is a great barrier to religious effort among the crowd, for those\nliving the life of faith, to give the impression that their experience is\none of a series of ecstasies. It is no more so than is that of a student\nof science or higher mathematics. It is the life of faith open to all men\nwhich forms the religious life of the best men and the best religious\nlife of all men\u2014the constant placing of God before the Mystic Sense in\na way not dissimilar from that in which the scientist approaches his\nhypothesis.\n\n    \u201cThink not the Faith by which the just shall live\n    Is a dead creed, a map correct of heaven,\n    Far less a feeling fond and fugitive,\n    A thoughtless gift, withdrawn as soon as given;\n    It is an affirmation and an act\n    That bids eternal truth be present fact.\u201d\n\nThough the Mystic Sense is not the sole religious faculty, it holds the\nprimacy here as in every distinctively human activity. Used with reason\nits operation becomes reasonable or rational faith. Its opposite is not\nreason but sight, that is to say, the unaided findings of the bodily\nsenses of which sight, being the most princely, is representative. Hence\nSt. Paul\u2019s contrast\u2014we walk by faith, not by sight. Even here it is\nhardly fair to say there is antagonism. Sight is the enemy of faith only\nwhen it refuses to be an ally. Sight sees, faith in-sees and therefore\nfore-sees. Sight has boundaries which it cannot pass. Faith has horizons\nwhich retreat as it advances.\n\nFaith has become increasingly rational as the world has grown older and\nexperience has been added to experience. Its explorations in the world\nof ideals have been more frequent and daring with the advance of time.\nConsequently the man of to-day makes his flights thitherwards with a\nfulness of assurance on rational grounds or grounds of high probability\nwhich would have been impossible to an Abraham. If the triumphs open\nto faith have multiplied, so have the deterrent forces holding it back\nor set in battle array to thwart or otherwise impair it. The commonest\ninjury wrought upon faith is the deflecting of it from the worthy to\nthe unworthy or less worthy. If a man\u2019s Mystic Sense, acute in other\ndirections, is dormant or sluggish in religion, the reason is usually\nto be found, I think, in circumstances analogous to those which make a\nstudent of _belles lettres_, for instance, indifferent to science, or a\nphilosopher careless of the exploits of commerce, cases of which are not\nwanting. The mind finds higher pleasure among certain persons in being\nexclusive and technical than in being catholic. So the Mystic Sense can\nfall short of its highest employment simply because there is not in\nits possessor the will to employ it commensurately with its capacity.\nThe explanation why some men are not actively religious must be sought\nelsewhere than in the contention that they are short a faculty. The\nMystic Sense, which by virtue of their humanity they possess, is not\nemployed by them religiously from whatever reason\u2014defective interest,\nprejudice, antagonism, environment. Nevertheless the same inner sense is\npushed to its fullest activity in other directions. The faculty which by\na daring leap fixes on the evolutionary hypothesis, or with imaginative\nsubtlety suggests the plot of a novel, is the self-same one which enables\nus to say, \u201cOur Father, which art in heaven.\u201d The consideration of\nvicious men who are irreligious does not come within the purview of this\ndiscussion. Religion and vice are mutually exclusive, though piety and\nimmorality are not, so that we have the anomaly of immoral character\nrevelling in pious practices.\n\nOne thing remains to be said. The use of the Mystic Sense in religion,\nmore perhaps than in any other sphere, cannot begin and end in\nindividualism. It is requisite for each to submit the results of his\nmystic excursions and explorations to the conclusions of the most\nadvanced religion. Mystic observation and experience must have the\nsupport and purification of universal mystic experience that will\ndistinguish between the false and the true, phantasm and reality, and\ndeliver the individual from eccentricity and extravagance. In other\nwords, a church is more necessary than a chamber of commerce, a national\ngovernment, or an academy of science. Mystic experience must be organized\nlike all other experience. As the world grows older and man wiser,\norganization develops and broadens. National societies and alliances\nbecome international and a parliament of man seems a reasonable goal\ntoward which to press. Human life in its individual aspect finds its\nfullest freedom in organization and not apart from it. The idea of the\nCatholic Church is as old as Christianity. One Body, one spirit, one\nLord, one Faith, one Baptism, said St. Paul before Christianity was fifty\nyears old\u2014and the use of the Mystic Sense independently of organized\nChristian experience cannot hope to reach valuable results. Reformers\nof religion are eccentrics and detract from their service so far as\nthey ignore the religious experience of the ages by assuming exclusive\npositions or lifting a doctrine out of its setting. Our Lord never\nbroke with the faith of His fathers. His last act was to partake of the\nPassover according to the law. It was the Jews who broke with Him. He\ncame not to destroy but to fulfill. The only setting for any one part of\nthe truth is all the rest of the truth. The only relationship big enough\nfor any one man is all the rest of mankind. When at last the disturbed\nand broken Christian Church comes to rest in the large scheme of unity\nplanned by its Founder, then the mystical life of man will gain a power\nand splendor which now is but a vision and a hope.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThis concludes my endeavor to credit the Mystic Sense with that dignity\nand position of importance which belongs to it by right. The attempt is\ncrude and the brilliant vision which I had at the beginning of my task\nhas become dimmer under the process of putting it into words. Whatever\nhas been written stands as a contribution of thought and experience which\ncannot be of much value until it has been purified from the dross of\nindividualism through the findings of religion and science, and lost in\nthe great volume of truth to which I submit it with reverence and loyalty.\n\n\n\n\nFOOTNOTES\n\n\n[1] It is only partially true to say that concept follows upon percept.\nTheir action is simultaneous more nearly than consecutive. Conceptualism\nas a complete system cannot perhaps stand but in its origin it was a\nhealthy reaction against both nominalism and realism, as well as a\nmediator combining the good in both.\n\n[2] Heb. xi:1.\n\n[3] VON H\u00dcGEL, _The Mystical Element of Religion_, vol. ii, p. 264.\n\n[4] Mk. x:23.\n\n[5] Mk. x:24, 25.\n\n[6] \u03a8\u03c5\u03c7\u03b9\u03ba\u1f78\u03c2 \u03b4\u1f72 \u1f04\u03bd\u03b8\u03c1\u03c9\u03c0\u03bf\u03c2 \u03bf\u1f50 \u03b4\u03ad\u03c7\u03b5\u03c4\u03b1\u03b9 \u03c4\u1f70 \u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6 \u03a0\u03bd\u03b5\u03cd\u03bc\u03b1\u03c4\u03bf\u03c2 \u03c4\u03bf\u1fe6 \u0398\u03b5\u03bf\u1fe6; \u03bc\u03c9\u03c1\u03af\u03b1 \u03b3\u1f70\u03c1\n\u03b1\u1f50\u03c4\u1ff7 \u1f10\u03c3\u03c4\u03b9, \u03ba\u03b1\u1f76 \u03bf\u1f50 \u03b4\u03cd\u03bd\u03b1\u03c4\u03b1\u03b9 \u03b3\u03bd\u1ff6\u03bd\u03b1\u03b9, \u1f45\u03c4\u03b9 \u03c0\u03bd\u03b5\u03c5\u03bc\u03b1\u03c4\u03b9\u03ba\u1ff6\u03c2 \u1f00\u03bd\u03b1\u03ba\u03c1\u03af\u03bd\u03b5\u03c4\u03b1\u03b9. 1 Cor. ii,\n14.\n\n[7] \u201cTrue priority and superiority lies, not with one of these\nconstituents against the other, but with the total subjective\u2014objective\ninteraction or resultant, which is superior, and indeed gives their place\nand worth to, those interdependent parts.\u201d\u2014VON H\u00dcGEL\u2019S _Mystical Element\nof Religion_, vol. ii, p. 114.\n\n[8] TYRRELL\u2019S _Christianity at the Cross Roads_, p. 240.\n\n[9] Quoted by VON H\u00dcGEL, vol. ii, p. 18.\n\n[10] CHARLOTTE PERKINS STETSON\u2019S _In this our World_.\n\n[11] _The Mystical Element of Religion_, vol. ii, pp. 57, 58.\n\n[12] ROYCE\u2019S _The World and the Individual_, First Series, p. 58.\n\n[13] See MACFIE\u2019S _Science, Matter and Immortality_, an admirable volume\non this entire topic.\n\n[14] DARWIN\u2019S _Autobiography_.\n\n[15] Sir JOSEPH LARMOR in his Wilde Lecture (1908) quoted by Sir OLIVER\nLODGE in _Reason and Belief_, p. 172.\n\n[16] _Reason and Belief_, p. 181.\n\n[17] _The Mystical Element of Religion_, vol. ii, p. 265.\n\nThe author quotes KANT\u2014\u201cwe can be mediately conscious of an apprehension\nas to which we have no distinct consciousness.\u201d \u201cThe field of our obscure\napprehensions,\u2014that is, apprehensions and impressions of which we are not\ndirectly conscious, although we can conclude without doubt that we have\nthem\u2014is immeasureable, whereas clear apprehensions constitute but a very\nfew points within the complete extent of our mental life.\u201d\n\n[18] \u201cLiterature consists of those writings which interpret the meanings\nof nature and life in words of charm and power, touched with the\npersonality of the author, in artistic forms of permanent interest.\u201d\u2014VAN\nDYKE\u2019S _The Spirit of America_, p. 242.\n\n[19] \u201cThe wealthy class in Rome and all over Italy began to conform\nto that conventional code of propriety by which the rich seem always\ndestined, in the progress of civilization, to become more and more\nenslaved, till finally they lost all feeling for what is serious and\ngenuine in life. The new generation followed their example with alacrity,\nand preached the new conventions with a passionate vehemence which must\nhave been highly exasperating to those of their seniors who were still\nattached to the simplicity of primitive manners. Amongst those who\nprotested against this development there was, however, one prominent\nfigure of the younger age, Marcus Porcius Cato, a man of rich and noble\nfamily, and a descendant of Cato the Censor. His puritan spirit revolted\nagainst the tyranny of fashion to which the golden youth of Rome wished\nto make him conform; he would walk in the streets without shoes or\ntunic, to accustom himself, as he said, only to blush at things which\nwere shameful in themselves, and not merely by convention.\u201d\u2014FERRERO\u2019S\n_Greatness and Decline of Rome_, vol. i, pp. 135, 136.\n\n[20] KIPLING\u2019S _If\u2014_.\n\n[21] DONCASTER\u2019S _Heredity in the Light of Recent Research_ (1910), p.\n113 ff.\n\n[22] CRASHAW.\n\n[23] A hypothesis receives passively our quest: God moves to meet us.\n\n[24] NEWMAN in his _Dream of Gerontius_ endows the disembodied soul with\nperceptive powers analogous to those of the body, saying only the sense\nof sight. Thus:\n\n    _Soul._ \u201cI cannot of thy music rightly say\n             Whether I hear, or touch, or taste the tones.\u201d\n\n              ... \u201cHow comes it then\n             That I am hearing still, and taste, and touch,\n             Yet not a glimmer of that princely sense\n             Which binds ideas in one, and makes them live?\u201d\n\n    _Angel._ \u201cNor touch nor taste, nor hearing hast thou now;\n             Thou livest in a world of signs and types,\n             The presentation of most holy truths,\n             Living and strong, which now encompass thee.\n             A disembodied soul, thou hast by right\n             No converse with aught beside thyself;\n             But, lest so stern a solitude should load\n             And break thy being, in mercy are vouchsafed\n             Some lower measures of perception,\n             Which seem to thee, as though through channels brought,\n             Through ear, or nerves, or palate, which are gone.\n              ...\n             How, even now, the consummated Saints\n             See God in heaven, I may not explicate;\n             Meanwhile, let it suffice thee to possess\n             Such means of converse as are granted thee,\n             Though, till that Beatific Vision, thou art blind.\u201d\n\nThe idea underlying the Beatific Vision is the complete apprehension of\nGod by the complete man. Sight is chosen to denote this bliss because it\nis a princely co-ordinating sense, and our Lord spoke of the heritage of\nthe pure in heart as being the vision of God, a heritage let it be noted,\nhowever, for now and not merely for hereafter. It seems reasonable to\nsuppose that our powers of perception after death will be those mystic\npowers which we enjoy and use now, though then they will be rapidly\ndeveloped as being our only perceptive powers.\n\nThis suggests the investigation in progress of psychic phenomena by\nscientific methods. The result may lead to an increase of our knowledge\nregarding the nature of such phenomena. But I do not see how, if\ncommunication with the departed be possible at all, we can expect to\nreach, and be reached by, them except through the Mystic Sense. The\ninvocation of Saints seems to me more in line with what is probable\nthan some of the experiments of the day. Disembodied spirits presumably\napproximate the nature of God and can approach or be approached only\nafter a purely spiritual or mystical fashion, excepting in those rare\npsycho-physical instances which are themselves contingent upon a highly\ndeveloped mystical character and experience.\n\n[25] Progressive civilization may be said to have begun 8,000 B. C.\n\n[26] Two things must be remembered in connection with the interpretation\nof Jno. xiv ff. In the first place, these chapters, bursting as they are\nwith startling promises which the critic claims have not been made good,\nwere addressed to a select and specially trained group of followers. For\ninstance, Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, constitutes\na promise that could not have been made to a heterogeneous crowd. It\npresupposes an understanding of the mind of Christ that keeps prayer\nwithin its appointed limits. A promise of this sort made to a St. John\nwould be fulfilled, whereas it could not be fulfilled in the case of a\nman who thought that a prayer for the success of his lottery ticket, or\nthe triumph of a competitive business scheme stained with dishonor, might\nbe offered in the name of Jesus. In the second place, these chapters\nwere written down and became accepted Scripture not less than three\nquarters of a century after they were spoken, by one who, in common with\nlike-minded companions, had experienced the faithfulness of our Lord\u2019s\npromises. These men knew them to be true, not merely because our Lord had\nsaid them, but also because Christian experience, had verified them. This\nis so of the entire Gospel record. That was remembered and recorded which\n_Christian_ experience had verified.\n\n[27] Similarly His advent into our human world made it Divine.\n\n[28] Acts ix, 7; xxii, 9.\n\n[29] The miracles of Moses before Pharaoh are illustrative of that which\nabounds in history\u2014wonders hardening further an irreligious life.","title":"The Sixth Sense: Its Cultivation and Use","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":18729}