70 



nrscoviiHY 



St. iRiiatius Loyola, and of the control of breathing and 

 posture which is more developed in Eastern religions. 

 A similar intensification or religious experience is also 

 the result of practices in which this is not the conscious 

 intention. Such are : fasting, the use of oratory in 

 pulpits, of solemn music and ritual, of lighted candles, 

 and of a monotonous voice in the reading of the 

 religious service. 



It must be the task of the student of the psychology 

 of religion to explain the facts of religious experience 

 in terms of the same psychological theories as are used 

 to explain the facts of our ordinary mental life. A re- 

 ligious psychology which explains every new action of 

 the mind by the creation of a new faculty, which, for 

 example, explains our sense of the presence of God by 

 speaking of a " transcendental consciousness," is 

 really abandoning the task of giving a scientific 

 account of religious psychology altogether. We may, 

 of course, find that it is impossible to give an account 

 of the mental phenomena of the religious life in terms 

 of our ordinary psychology, but the method just 

 described would still be open to criticism. It professes 

 to have given an explanation when it has, in fact, 

 merely repeated the facts which it was trying to ex- 

 plain. 



We must notice at the same time that our hope of 

 finding it explicable in terms of the ordinary operations 

 of our minds is not a hope that religious experience 

 may prove illusory. In the physical world we see the 

 finger of God in events which take place in accordance 

 with law, and there seems to be no reason for taking a 

 different attitude towards mental events. Conversion 

 may take place in accordance with laws as fixed and 

 definite as those obeyed by the lightning flash (though 

 it is unlikely that we shall ever be able to demonstrate 

 that it does), but this would be no reason for denying 

 the truth of the religious explanation of it. 



Discovery in the psychology,' of religion is therefore 

 very largely the application to religion of discoveries 

 made in secular psychology. In such advances the 

 history of psychology during the last thirty years has 

 been rich. The attention of psychologists has turned 

 away from the problems of the old analytic introspec- 

 tive psychology, which was principally occupied with 

 questions connected with cognition and perception. 

 It is now much more concerned with questions of 

 greater human interest, with the driving forces behind 

 human conduct — instincts and emotions. The older 

 psychology was of great importance for the philosophy 

 of religion, since it discussed the problems of know- 

 ledge ; the newer psychology is of equal interest to the 

 psycliology of religion, since it discusses the mental 

 roots of man's behaviour, including his religious 

 behaviour. 



The discoveries in psychology whose connection 



with religious experience I wish particularly to point 

 out in this article are those made by Freud and his 

 followers. It may be objected that it seems perilous 

 to found any conclusions on a system of theories which 

 is itself being hotly contested by psychologists. At 

 the same time, we must recognise that, however much 

 psychologists may differ from Freud and his school in 

 matters of detail, there are broad general principles 

 revealed by his work which can never be overthrown 

 because they are founded on the firm basis of observed 

 fact. The discussion in this article will be limited to 

 such firmly grounded principles. 



The first of these is the fact that a large number of 

 our thoughts and actions have their causes in mental 

 processes which are unconscious. By an unconscious 

 mental process is meant one which we are not aware of, 

 and of which we cannot make ourselves aware by any 

 redirection of our attention. Thus, if a clock is ticking 

 in a room in which we are working, and though we are 

 not aware of its sound, we can immediately become 

 aware of it by listening to it, the hearing of the noise 

 would not be an unconscious mental process in the 

 sense in which the word is used by Freud. Examples 

 of true unconscious mental processes may be found in 

 an article on " Mistakes " in the Discovery of last 

 April. The wishes which express themselves in dreams 

 and in certain mistakes in speech or writing are un- 

 conscious in this sense. Experiences painful in them- 

 selves — as, for example, some of the horrible experiences 

 of the war— or wishes which become painful because of 

 the impossibility of their fulfilment, are banished from 

 the mind by an unconscious process called " repression. ' ' 

 They are no longer present to consciousness, but can 

 still exert an influence on the behaviour and emotional 

 dispositions of the person possessing them. In certain 

 cases they lead to forms of insanity. 



We will take a typical case of religious conversion, 

 and see how far the process of repression can help us 

 to understand the mental processes which precede it. 

 The story which follows is of the conversion of 

 M. Ratisbonne which is given in The Varieties oj Reli- 

 gious Experience, by W. James. 



M. Ratisbonne was a Jew who became converted to 

 Catholicism. He was irreligious, and had an antipathy 

 to priests. In his twenty-ninth year a French gentle- 

 man tried to make a proselyte of him, but M. Ratis- 

 bonne did not take his efforts seriously, his own part in 

 the conversations being of a light and chaffing order. 

 But the words of a prayer to the Virgin he promised to 

 read haunted his mind for several days, and the night 

 before the crisis he had a sort of nightmare in which 

 he saw a black cross with no Christ on it. Until noon 

 the next day, however, he was free in mind, and spent 

 the time in trivial conversations. By chance on that 

 day he met his friend, who asked him to wait for a few 



