RELIGION AND SCIENCE 271 



There is another process at work in the human 

 mind which is of the utmost importance for our 

 problem. I mean the process of sublimation. If it 

 is not easy to give a short and clear definition of sub- 

 limation, at least the process is familiar to all. The 

 commonest example is * falling in love,' where the 

 simple sex-instinct becomes intertwined with other 

 instincts and with past emotional experience, and 

 projects itself in wholly new guise upon its object. 

 We may perhaps best say that a sublimated instinct 

 has more and higher values attached to its satisfection 

 than one unsublimated. The mere satisfection of 

 the sexual impulse need be little more than a physio- 

 logical desirability ; but the satisfection of passionate 

 love involves every fibre of the mental organism, 

 hopes and ideals converging with memories and 

 instincts on to the highest pitch of being. 



In such a case sublimation occurs with the normal 

 object of the instinct. But the elasticity of man's 

 mind permits of further complication ; the instinct 

 may be not only sublimated but attached to new objects. 

 Through the cogs and spirals of the mind, the sexual 

 instinct may find an outlet at higher levels, and con- 

 tribute to the driving force of adventurous living, of 

 art, or as we may see in many mystics — St. Teresa 

 for example — of religious ecstasy. 



It is as if a swift stream were falling into under- 

 ground channels below the mill of our being, where 

 it could churn and roar away to waste. But some of 



