ON THE DEVELOPED CONCEPTION OF GOD. 361 



grown and civilized men, so amongst these it should not 

 omit the highest order of minds, or the exceptional 

 phenomena there presented, especially when they are 

 supposed to have reference to a question so high and 

 delicate and important as that of the possible cognition 

 of Deity. For have not some men in like manner a 

 special artistic sense, which divines the several species 

 of beauty hidden from others, in mere sounds and visible 

 symbols ? Are not the special beauties of eye and ear, 

 of form and colour and sound, incommunicable and un- 

 intelligible to those who are destitute of the artistic 

 sense ; for whom the sounds, which are a revelation and 

 a speaking voice to the musical artist or poet, are mere 

 vibrations on the tympanum of the ear ; for whom " the 

 primrose by the river's brim " is only a yellow primrose, 

 while to the poet it is a suggestion and a significant 

 whisper of so much more than even its own evident 

 grace and beauty ? 



So argues the religious spirit in opposition to the 

 scientific. This view of the matter would transfer the 

 question of the existence of a religious sense from 

 the sphere of the general science of psychology to par- 

 ticular applications of it in the study of exceptional 

 minds. But even so regarded, there would still be re- 

 quired a trained and delicate psychological eye to read 

 clearly the phenomena in question ; and there would be 

 further required a very considerable faculty of faith in 

 others to credit the assertion that any such private and 

 personal illumination is a guarantee of such an objective 

 fact as the existence of a personal Deity, and not a 

 mistaken interpretation of intuitions emanating from a 

 widely different and natural, though it may still be 

 .a divine and noble, source. 



And even granting the reality of the analogy between 



