Religion and Psychology 325 



essential to this experience, if to any, that it should be beyond time. 

 Although it may be conditioned by time, in that one gains a deeper 

 and deeper insight into its truths through an experience that comes 

 to one in the course of days, yet the experience itself takes us out 

 of time and enables us to attain to a mystic attitude towards the 

 universe, beyond any opportunism that acceptance of the reality of 

 time can give. If we assume that time is completely real for us, 

 that we are bound down in a time process, and that we do not 

 transcend it at all, then our ultimate outlook upon reality is very 

 depressing and unmeaning. Despite temporary improvements in 

 the conditions of human life and the advance of physical science, this 

 earth will eventually become uninhabitable, degeneration will come 

 sooner or later to the race, to the physical side of things, so that in 

 terms of matter and material change and temporal process there 

 seems little room for ultimate hope. The life of the human race 

 would really be " a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, 

 signifying nothing." But all the meaning we find in life is on the 

 way towards a transcending of time. When we look towards a 

 future life, we look not so much towards a life at some future time 

 that some enthusiasts would like to prove and even describe for us, 

 but to a life eternal, in which we pass beyond the conditions of the 

 merely material, which of course is the temporal and spatial. We 

 mean by matter something such that two portions of it cannot be 

 in the same place at the same time — that is probably the best defini- 

 tion of matter which we can give. We can only think of matter in 

 terms of space and time. 



It is very significant that these various experiences that appear 

 to transcend time, and also perhaps space, accompanied by disorien- 

 tation in space and time, bring with them a diminution of feeling 

 of individuality, so that at the end it looks as if we shall have to 

 dismiss individuality with other aspects of existence as appearance 

 and not reality. It is very doubtful whether we shall be able to 

 preserve individuality as an ultimate value in the scheme of things ; 

 it is a stepping-stone, no doubt, and, as far as we can see of existence 

 in this life, there is a parallel process of individuation and inter- 

 relation going on, so that really great individuals, great person- 

 alities, are those who have individualised th?ir lives so that they 

 are in closer communion with their fellows, rather than in isolation 

 from them. In a way this is an absorption. The great statesman, 

 the great man of action, the great scientist, is the person who is able 



