PSYCHOLOGY IN THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION 287 



always occurs in quite specific and, in spite of all difference, essen- 

 tially similar psychical experiences and states. This problem of the 

 actualizing of the religious a priori and of its connection with con- 

 crete individual psychical phenomena, Kant completely overlooked 

 in his abstract concept of religion, or rather, deliberately ignored, 

 because, as he wrote to Jacobi, he saw all the dangers of mysticism 

 lurking in it. This fear was justified; for, as a matter of fact, all the 

 specific occurrences of mysticism, from conversion, prayer, and con- 

 templation to enthusiasm, vision, and ecstasy, do lurk in it. But 

 without this mysticism there is no real religion, and the psychology 

 of religion shows most clearly how the real pulse of religion beats in 

 the mystical experiences. A religion without it is only a preliminary 

 step, or a reverberation of real and actual religion. Moreover, the 

 states are easily conceived in a theory of knowledge, if one sees in 

 them the actualizing of the religious a priori, the production of 

 actual religion in the fusion of the rational law with the concrete 

 individual psychical fact. The mysticism recognized as essential by 

 the psychology of religion must find its place in the theory of know- 

 ledge, and it finds it as the psychological actualizing of the religious 

 a priori, in which alone that interlacing of the necessary, the rational, 

 the conformable to law, and the factual occurs, which characterizes 

 real religion. The dangers of such a mysticism, which are recognized 

 a thousandfold in experience, cannot be dispelled altogether by the 

 displacement of mysticism, for that would mean to displace religion 

 itself. It would be the same, if one should try to avoid the dangers 

 of illusion and error, by keeping to the pure categories alone, and 

 ceasing to employ them in the actual thinking of experience. Rather, 

 they can be dispelled only in that the actualizing of the rational 

 a priori is recognized in the mystical occurrences, and thus the 

 intricacies and one-sidedness of the mere psychological stream of 

 religiousness be avoided. The psychological reality of religion must 

 always remember the rational substance of religion, and always bring 

 religion as central in the system of consciousness into fruitful and 

 adjusted contact with the total life of the reason. Thus the psycho- 

 logical reality corrects and purifies itself out of its own a priori, with- 

 out, however, destroying itself; or rather, the actual religion in the 

 psychical category of the mystical occurrences will subside to a more 

 or less degree. Thus we have the irrational prevailing here in its third 

 form, which like the two others was contained in the very outset of 

 the critical system, in the form of the once-occurring, factual, and 

 individual, which, of course, has a rational basis or a rational element 

 in itself,^ but is besides a pure fact and reality. Just this is the 

 excellence of the rationalism immanent in experience (the critical 

 system) , that it makes room for this feature beside the general and 

 conceptual rationality. It did not make room for it to the extent 



