The Psychology of Inspiration

As applied to practise, the aim of the book may be illustrated thus: Some time ago I attended a meeting of scientists. As I looked about me I became aware that, so far as I knew, not one of those present was considered by himself or by others to be what is conventionally termed religious. Yet in the unselfish, untiring and well-nigh unrewarded labor that every one of these seemed performing for the advancement of the knowledge, the health, and the comfort of his fellows, I recognized such devotion, conscientiousness, and charity as could not be rightly designated irreligious. About the same time my attention was called to a meeting of ecclesiastics. All who took part in it were, presumably, considered by themselves and by others to be religious in an exceptional degree. Yet no reported speech of any one of them happened to be devoid of a certain selfish, intolerant, and unmagnanimous disregard of the feelings and thoughts of others such as, so far as one could draw just conclusions from a few utterances, did not place the speaker outside the pale of those ordinarily supposed to be particularly characterized by distinctively Christlike traits. In view of these facts, it seemed to me that it was about time for the world to have some criterion more trustworthy than those commonly accepted by which to judge of the kind of faith and life separating the religious from the non-religious. This seemed especially important in view of the influence which men of both types mentioned are constantly

exerting upon the young and the inexperienced. Is it not unfortunate that one of the first type, whom these can not but esteem and, therefore, instinctively strive to imitate, should be connected in their minds with irreligious and not infrequently injurious precepts and examples, which, if also imitated, can not but lead astray? And is it not equally unfortunate that a man of the second type whom the same classes can not fail often to disesteem, and, therefore, to strive not to imitate, should be the one connected in their minds with that which is religious and, as a rule, elevating and fitted to lead aright? Is there any need of preventing a man of either type from exerting the sort of influence for which his personal traits fit him? It does not seem to me that there is. But before this can be recognized by most men they require clearer views than they usually have with reference to the connection between Christianity as a system and the Christian as a subject of it. Here is a reason, therefore, in addition to reasons already given and to others naturally associated with each, seeming to justify, as applied to practise as well as to theory, an attempt, as in this book, to make a more careful study than has yet been undertaken of the nature of that phase of influence to which spiritually minded people believe that religion owes its source.

I may, perhaps, be excused for mentioning, before closing this Preface, two regards in which the thought presented in the pages following differs essentially

from that in almost all other works written with a somewhat similar intent. In the first place, while emphasizing the importance of rationality in religion, the arguments advanced are not in the least degree allied to those of "rationalism" in the materialistic sense in which this term is ordinarily used. On the contrary, they tend distinctly toward belief in the spiritual, and this to a degree not true of very many of the Christian discussions of our times. In the second place, while emphasizing spiritual discernment as necessary to the understanding of the literal statements of the Scriptures, the arguments are not advanced as pleas for-nor, indeed, against-any merely esoteric method of interpreting occult symbols or allegories. On the contrary, the whole line of thought tends distinctly toward confidence in the sufficient intellectual equipment of those who exercise merely honest and unbiased common sense.

-kirjat