284 ESSAYS OF A BIOLOGIST 



ence, the two must be harmonized in interpenetrat- 



mg union. 



Once this harmony has been achieved, it is for one 

 thing so precious in itself that it will be sought for 

 again; the knowledge that we have once reached the 

 stage at which difficulties and doubts are resolved in 

 what the philosophers would perhaps call a higher 

 unity, but which I should prefer to call an organic 

 harmony, is always there to fall back upon in times 

 of discouragement; and finally the harmony is ac- 

 tually woven into the tissue of our mind, just as the 

 amazing physical harmony revealed by physiology 

 has, in the course of evolution, been woven into the 

 structure and working of living bodies; and it can 

 remain there as the dominant idea to which the rest 

 of our ideas, and consequently our actions, are 

 brought into subordinate relation. In other words, 

 it becomes the dominant sublimating principle. 

 Once more, however, the subordination is not forced, 

 but free — we find that what we once thought ob- 

 stacles are aids, what once seemed sin is now the will- 

 ing and efficient handmaid of good. That is the 

 fundamental fact in all genuine and valuable re- 

 ligious experience as such — the resolution of conflict 

 and the losing, or enlarging as you will, of the private 

 personality, the mere "self." You will find this set 

 out more fully, though in different terminology, in 

 Miss Underhill's books on mysticism, or in William 

 James's Varieties of Religious Experience, or in 

 Thouless's Psychology of Religion. 



