Chapter 42

88 See, for example, F. Paulhan, in his book Les Caractères, 1894, who contrasts les Equilibrés, les Unifiés, with les Inquiets, les Contrariants, les Incohérents, les Emiettés, as so many diverse psychic types.

89 ANNIE BESANT: an Autobiography, p. 82.

90 SMITH BAKER, in Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases, September, 1893.

91 LOUIS GOURDON (Essai sur la Conversion de Saint Augustine, Paris, Fischbacher, 1900) has shown by an analysis of Augustine’s writings immediately after the date of his conversion (A. D. 386) that the account he gives in the Confessions is premature. The crisis in the garden marked a definitive conversion from his former life, but it was to the neo‐platonic spiritualism and only a halfway stage toward Christianity. The latter he appears not fully and radically to have embraced until four years more had passed.

92 Confessions, Book VIII., chaps. v., vii., xi., abridged.

93 TH. JOUFFROY: Nouveaux Mélanges philosophiques, 2me édition, p. 83. I add two other cases of counter‐conversion dating from a certain moment. The first is from Professor Starbuck’s manuscript collection, and the narrator is a woman.

“Away down in the bottom of my heart, I believe I was always more or less skeptical about ‘God;’ skepticism grew as an undercurrent, all through my early youth, but it was controlled and covered by the emotional elements in my religious growth. When I was sixteen I joined the church and was asked if I loved God. I replied ‘Yes,’ as was customary and expected. But instantly with a flash something spoke within me, ‘No, you do not.’ I was haunted for a long time with shame and remorse for my falsehood and for my wickedness in not loving God, mingled with fear that there might be an avenging God who would punish me in some terrible way.... At nineteen, I had an attack of tonsilitis. Before I had quite recovered, I heard told a story of a brute who had kicked his wife downstairs, and then continued the operation until she became insensible. I felt the horror of the thing keenly. Instantly this thought flashed through my mind: ‘I have no use for a God who permits such things.’ This experience was followed by months of stoical indifference to the God of my previous life, mingled with feelings of positive dislike and a somewhat proud defiance of him. I still thought there might be a God. If so he would probably damn me, but I should have to stand it. I felt very little fear and no desire to propitiate him. I have never had any personal relations with him since this painful experience.”

The second case exemplifies how small an additional stimulus will overthrow the mind into a new state of equilibrium when the process of preparation and incubation has proceeded far enough. It is like the proverbial last straw added to the camel’s burden, or that touch of a needle which makes the salt in a supersaturated fluid suddenly begin to crystallize out.

Tolstoy writes: “S., a frank and intelligent man, told me as follows how he ceased to believe:—

“He was twenty‐six years old when one day on a hunting expedition, the time for sleep having come, he set himself to pray according to the custom he had held from childhood.

“His brother, who was hunting with him, lay upon the hay and looked at him. When S. had finished his prayer and was turning to sleep, the brother said, ‘Do you still keep up that thing?’ Nothing more was said. But since that day, now more than thirty years ago, S. has never prayed again; he never takes communion, and does not go to church. All this, not because he became acquainted with convictions of his brother which he then and there adopted; not because he made any new resolution in his soul, but merely because the words spoken by his brother were like the light push of a finger against a leaning wall already about to tumble by its own weight. These words but showed him that the place wherein he supposed religion dwelt in him had long been empty, and that the sentences he uttered, the crosses and bows which he made during his prayer, were actions with no inner sense. Having once seized their absurdity, he could no longer keep them up.” My Confession, p. 8.

94 Op. cit., Letter III., abridged.

I subjoin an additional document which has come into my possession, and which represents in a vivid way what is probably a very frequent sort of conversion, if the opposite of “falling in love,” falling out of love, may be so termed. Falling in love also conforms frequently to this type, a latent process of unconscious preparation often preceding a sudden awakening to the fact that the mischief is irretrievably done. The free and easy tone in this narrative gives it a sincerity that speaks for itself.

“For two years of this time I went through a very bad experience, which almost drove me mad. I had fallen violently in love with a girl who, young as she was, had a spirit of coquetry like a cat. As I look back on her now, I hate her, and wonder how I could ever have fallen so low as to be worked upon to such an extent by her attractions. Nevertheless, I fell into a regular fever, could think of nothing else; whenever I was alone, I pictured her attractions, and spent most of the time when I should have been working, in recalling our previous interviews, and imagining future conversations. She was very pretty, good humored, and jolly to the last degree, and intensely pleased with my admiration. Would give me no decided answer yes or no, and the queer thing about it was that whilst pursuing her for her hand, I secretly knew all along that she was unfit to be a wife for me, and that she never would say yes. Although for a year we took our meals at the same boarding‐house, so that I saw her continually and familiarly, our closer relations had to be largely on the sly, and this fact, together with my jealousy of another one of her male admirers, and my own conscience despising me for my uncontrollable weakness, made me so nervous and sleepless that I really thought I should become insane. I understand well those young men murdering their sweethearts, which appear so often in the papers. Nevertheless I did love her passionately, and in some ways she did deserve it.

“The queer thing was the sudden and unexpected way in which it all stopped. I was going to my work after breakfast one morning, thinking as usual of her and of my misery, when, just as if some outside power laid hold of me, I found myself turning round and almost running to my room, where I immediately got out all the relics of her which I possessed, including some hair, all her notes and letters, and ambrotypes on glass. The former I made a fire of, the latter I actually crushed beneath my heel, in a sort of fierce joy of revenge and punishment. I now loathed and despised her altogether, and as for myself I felt as if a load of disease had suddenly been removed from me. That was the end. I never spoke to her or wrote to her again in all the subsequent years, and I have never had a single moment of loving thought towards one who for so many months entirely filled my heart. In fact, I have always rather hated her memory, though now I can see that I had gone unnecessarily far in that direction. At any rate, from that happy morning onward I regained possession of my own proper soul, and have never since fallen into any similar trap.”

This seems to me an unusually clear example of two different levels of personality, inconsistent in their dictates, yet so well balanced against each other as for a long time to fill the life with discord and dissatisfaction. At last, not gradually, but in a sudden crisis, the unstable equilibrium is resolved, and this happens so unexpectedly that it is as if, to use the writer’s words, “some outside power laid hold.”

Professor Starbuck gives an analogous case, and a converse case of hatred suddenly turning into love, in his Psychology of Religion, p. 141. Compare the other highly curious instances which he gives on pp. 137‐144, of sudden non‐religious alterations of habit or character. He seems right in conceiving all such sudden changes as results of special cerebral functions unconsciously developing until they are ready to play a controlling part, when they make irruption into the conscious life. When we treat of sudden “conversion,” I shall make as much use as I can of this hypothesis of subconscious incubation.

95 H. FLETCHER: Menticulture, or the A‐B‐C of True Living, New York and Chicago, 1899, pp. 26‐36, abridged.

96 I have considerably abridged Tolstoy’s words in my translation.

97 In my quotations from Bunyan I have omitted certain intervening portions of the text.

98 A sketch of the life of Stephen H. Bradley, from the age of five to twenty‐four years, including his remarkable experience of the power of the Holy Spirit on the second evening of November, 1829. Madison, Connecticut, 1830.

99 Jouffroy is an example: “Down this slope it was that my intelligence had glided, and little by little it had got far from its first faith. But this melancholy revolution had not taken place in the broad daylight of my consciousness; too many scruples, too many guides and sacred affections had made it dreadful to me, so that I was far from avowing to myself the progress it had made. It had gone on in silence, by an involuntary elaboration of which I was not the accomplice; and although I had in reality long ceased to be a Christian, yet, in the innocence of my intention, I should have shuddered to suspect it, and thought it calumny had I been accused of such a falling away.” Then follows Jouffroy’s account of his counter‐conversion, quoted above on p. 176.

100 One hardly needs examples; but for love, see p. 179, note; for fear, p. 162; for remorse, see Othello after the murder; for anger, see Lear after Cordelia’s first speech to him; for resolve, see p. 178 (J. Foster case). Here is a pathological case in which _guilt_ was the feeling that suddenly exploded: “One night I was seized on entering bed with a rigor, such as Swedenborg describes as coming over him with a sense of holiness, but over me with a sense of _guilt_. During that whole night I lay under the influence of the rigor, and from its inception I felt that I was under the curse of God. I have never done one act of duty in my life—sins against God and man, beginning as far as my memory goes back—a wildcat in human shape.”

101 E. D. STARBUCK: The Psychology of Religion, pp. 224, 262.

102 No one understands this better than Jonathan Edwards understood it already. Conversion narratives of the more commonplace sort must always be taken with the allowances which he suggests: “A rule received and established by common consent has a very great, though to many persons an insensible influence in forming their notions of the process of their own experience. I know very well how they proceed as to this matter, for I have had frequent opportunities of observing their conduct. Very often their experience at first appears like a confused chaos, but then those parts are selected which bear the nearest resemblance to such particular steps as are insisted on; and these are dwelt upon in their thoughts, and spoken of from time to time, till they grow more and more conspicuous in their view, and other parts which are neglected grow more and more obscure. Thus what they have experienced is insensibly strained, so as to bring it to an exact conformity to the scheme already established in their minds. And it becomes natural also for ministers, who have to deal with those who insist upon distinctness and clearness of method, to do so too.” Treatise on Religious Affections.

103 Studies in the Psychology of Religious Phenomena, American Journal of Psychology, vii. 309 (1896).

104 I have abridged Mr. Hadley’s account. For other conversions of drunkards, see his pamphlet, Rescue Mission Work, published at the Old Jerry M’Auley Water Street Mission, New York city. A striking collection of cases also appears in the appendix to Professor Leuba’s article.

105 A restaurant waiter served provisionally as Gough’s “Saviour.” General Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army, considers that the first vital step in saving outcasts consists in making them feel that some decent human being cares enough for them to take an interest in the question whether they are to rise or sink.

106 The crisis of apathetic melancholy—no use in life—into which J. S. Mill records that he fell, and from which he emerged by the reading of Marmontel’s Memoirs (Heaven save the mark!) and Wordsworth’s poetry, is another intellectual and general metaphysical case. See Mill’s Autobiography, New York, 1873, pp. 141, 148.

107 Starbuck, in addition to “escape from sin,” discriminates “spiritual illumination” as a distinct type of conversion experience. Psychology of Religion, p. 85.

108 Psychology of Religion, p. 117.

109 Psychology of Religion, p. 385. Compare, also, pp. 137‐144 and 262.

110 For instance, C. G. Finney italicizes the volitional element: “Just at this point the whole question of Gospel salvation opened to my mind in a manner most marvelous to me at the time. I think I then saw, as clearly as I ever have in my life, the reality and fullness of the atonement of Christ. Gospel salvation seemed to me to be an offer of something to be accepted, and all that was necessary on my part was to get my own consent to give up my sins and accept Christ. After this distinct revelation had stood for some little time before my mind, the question seemed to be put, ‘Will you accept it now, to‐ day?’ I replied, ‘Yes; _I will accept it to‐day, or I will die in the attempt!_’ ” He then went into the woods, where he describes his struggles. He could not pray, his heart was hardened in its pride. “I then reproached myself for having promised to give my heart to God before I left the woods. When I came to try, I found I could not.... My inward soul hung back, and there was no going out of my heart to God. The thought was pressing me, of the rashness of my promise that I would give my heart to God that day, or die in the attempt. It seemed to me as if that was binding on my soul; and yet I was going to break my vow. A great sinking and discouragement came over me, and I felt almost too weak to stand upon my knees. Just at this moment I again thought I heard some one approach me, and I opened my eyes to see whether it were so. But right there the revelation of my pride of heart, as the great difficulty that stood in the way, was distinctly shown to me. An overwhelming sense of my wickedness in being ashamed to have a human being see me on my knees before God took such powerful possession of me, that I _cried at the top of my voice, and exclaimed that I would not leave that place if all the men on earth and all the devils in hell surrounded me_. ‘What!’ I said, ‘such a degraded sinner as I am, on my knees confessing my sins to the great and holy God; and ashamed to have any human being, and a sinner like myself, find me on my knees endeavoring to make my peace with my offended God!’ The sin appeared awful, infinite. It broke me down before the Lord.” Memoirs, pp. 14‐16, abridged.

111 STARBUCK: Op. cit., pp. 91, 114.

112 Extracts from the Journal of Mr. John Nelson, London, no date, p. 24.

113 STARBUCK, p. 64.

114 STARBUCK, p. 115.

115 STARBUCK, p. 113.

116 EDWARD’S and DWIGHT’S Life of Brainerd, New Haven, 1822, pp. 45‐47, abridged.

117 Describing the whole phenomenon as a change of equilibrium, we might say that the movement of new psychic energies towards the personal centre and the recession of old ones towards the margin (or the rising of some objects above, and the sinking of others below the conscious threshold) were only two ways of describing an indivisible event. Doubtless this is often absolutely true, and Starbuck is right when he says that “self‐surrender” and “new determination,” though seeming at first sight to be such different experiences, are “really the same thing. Self‐surrender sees the change in terms of the old self; determination sees it in terms of the new.” Op. cit., p. 160.

118 A. A. BONAR: Nettleton and his Labors, Edinburgh, 1854, p. 261.

119 CHARLES G. FINNEY: Memoirs written by Himself, 1876, pp. 17, 18.

120 Life and Journals, Boston, 1806, pp. 31‐40, abridged.

121 My quotations are made from an Italian translation of this letter in the Biografia del Sig. M. A. Ratisbonne, Ferrara, 1843, which I have to thank Monsignore D. O’Connell of Rome for bringing to my notice. I abridge the original.

122 Published in the International Scientific Series.

123 The reader will here please notice that in my exclusive reliance in the last lecture on the subconscious “incubation” of motives deposited by a growing experience, I followed the method of employing accepted principles of explanation as far as one can. The subliminal region, whatever else it may be, is at any rate a place now admitted by psychologists to exist for the accumulation of vestiges of sensible experience (whether inattentively or attentively registered), and for their elaboration according to ordinary psychological or logical laws into results that end by attaining such a “tension” that they may at times enter consciousness with something like a burst. It thus is “scientific” to interpret all otherwise unaccountable invasive alterations of consciousness as results of the tension of subliminal memories reaching the bursting‐point. But candor obliges me to confess that there are occasional bursts into consciousness of results of which it is not easy to demonstrate any prolonged subconscious incubation. Some of the cases I used to illustrate the sense of presence of the unseen in Lecture III were of this order (compare pages 59, 61, 62, 67); and we shall see other experiences of the kind when we come to the subject of mysticism. The case of Mr. Bradley, that of M. Ratisbonne, possibly that of Colonel Gardiner, possibly that of Saint Paul, might not be so easily explained in this simple way. The result, then, would have to be ascribed either to a merely physiological nerve storm, a “discharging lesion” like that of epilepsy; or, in case it were useful and rational, as in the two latter cases named, to some more mystical or theological hypothesis. I make this remark in order that the reader may realize that the subject is really complex. But I shall keep myself as far as possible at present to the more “scientific” view; and only as the plot thickens in subsequent lectures shall I consider the question of its absolute sufficiency as an explanation of all the facts. That subconscious incubation explains a great number of them, there can be no doubt.

124 Edwards says elsewhere: “I am bold to say that the work of God in the conversion of one soul, considered together with the source, foundation, and purchase of it, and also the benefit, end, and eternal issue of it, is a more glorious work of God than the creation of the whole material universe.”

125 Emerson writes: “When we see a soul whose acts are regal, graceful, and pleasant as roses, we must thank God that such things can be and are, and not turn sourly on the angel and say: Crump is a better man, with his grunting resistance to all his native devils.” True enough. Yet Crump may really be the better _Crump_, for his inner discords and second birth; and your once‐born “regal” character, though indeed always better than poor Crump, may fall far short of what he individually might be had he only some Crump‐like capacity for compunction over his own peculiar diabolisms, graceful and pleasant and invariably gentlemanly as these may be.

126 In his book, The Spiritual Life, New York, 1900.

127 Op. cit., p. 112.

128 Op. cit., p. 144.

129 I piece together a quotation made by W. Monod, in his book La Vie, and a letter printed in the work: Adolphe Monod: I., Souvenirs de sa Vie, 1885, p. 433.

130 Commentary on Galatians, ch. iii. verse 19, and ch. ii. verse 20, abridged.

131 In some conversions, both steps are distinct; in this one, for example:—

“Whilst I was reading the evangelical treatise, I was soon struck by an expression: ‘the finished work of Christ.’ ‘Why,’ I asked of myself, ‘does the author use these terms? Why does he not say “the atoning work”?’ Then these words, ‘It is finished,’ presented themselves to my mind. ‘What is it that is finished?’ I asked, and in an instant my mind replied: ‘A perfect expiation for sin; entire satisfaction has been given; the debt has been paid by the Substitute. Christ has died for our sins; not for ours only, but for those of all men. If, then, the entire work is finished, all the debt paid, what remains for me to do?’ In another instant the light was shed through my mind by the Holy Ghost, and the joyous conviction was given me that nothing more was to be done, save to fall on my knees, to accept this Saviour and his love, to praise God forever.” Autobiography of Hudson Taylor. I translate back into English from the French translation of Challand (Geneva, no date), the original not being accessible.

132 Tolstoy’s case was a good comment on those words. There was almost no theology in his conversion. His faith‐state was the sense come back that life was infinite in its moral significance.

133 American Journal of Psychology, vii. 345‐347, abridged.

134 Above, p. 152.

135 DWIGHT: Life of Edwards, New York, 1830, p. 61, abridged.

136 W. F. BOURNE: The King’s Son, a Memoir of Billy Bray, London, Hamilton, Adams & Co., 1887, p. 9.

137 Consult WILLIAM B. SPRAGUE: Lectures on Revivals of Religion, New York, 1832, in the long Appendix to which the opinions of a large number of ministers are given.

138 Memoirs, p. 34.