Religion and Psychology 307 



and social environment and to be true to an ethical ideal, a feeling 

 of insufficiency weighs upon his mind, and produces depression from 

 which he struggles to free himself. Peace may come in one way 

 or another, and the process of passing from such a state of conflict 

 and strain to a state of harmony and peace is the process of con- 

 version. Among certain religious sects conversion is striven after 

 along definite lines. The sense of insufficiency and sin is empha- 

 sised in the prospective convert. He is encouraged to struggle 

 hard against his difficulties, to face them, and to realise them as 

 fully as possible. He passes through a state of intense mental 

 anguish, and then suddenly reaches a state of calm and peace. But 

 in another class of individuals who take religious life j ust as seriously, 

 such sudden conversion may not occur. Yet I do not think that 

 we can say that conversion as such is absent, and I am inclined to 

 believe that conversion in its general sense of turning from the 

 merely naturalistic attitude towards life to a more spiritual attitude 

 occurs in every case, but in many cases it may occur slowly and 

 gradually, as a process of healthy growth. Cases of sudden con- 

 version are often to some extent pathological. I do not mean that 

 the conversion itself is pathological, but that the conditions and 

 consequences may be in part pathological. The strain and stress of 

 mental conflict may produce temporary disturbance of functioning 

 of the nervous system, and in that way give rise to experiences 

 that are not in every respect normal religious experiences ; — 

 depression, hallucinations, and even temporary delusions that show 

 very close resemblance to the depression, hallucinations, and delu- 

 sions met with in mental patients quite independently of their 

 religious life. 



The feeling of peace and relief may be partly explained on the 

 psychological side as a transition from a state of division of the self, 

 where one part of the self is fighting against another, to a state of 

 unification and harmony. In this transition from division to 

 unification a certain amount of energy is liberated which as a 

 surplus allows all mental processes to occur more readily and freely, 

 producing a feeling of happiness. This is an extremely crude 

 theory, in terms of physiology and psychology, and certainly cannot 

 be accepted as a fully adequate account of the process. The truth 

 is that, so long as we speak merely as psychologists, we are tending 

 to leave out the truly religious attitude altogether. Again, I 

 can only illustrate by the analogy of knowledge. So far as we 



