It is true, likewise, that now and then what seemed to be a fair structure of moral purpose suddenly tumbles into ruin. Yet these moral self-revelations or reversals are rarely if ever a mere explosion of a previously inactive impulse, but rather a coming into the foreground of what had been growing in the background by repeated but forgotten reactions. Thus it is that converts now and again find themselves on the side of religion without knowing how they got there.

The third theory, that of a detached subconsciousness, appeals to the popular mind more than it does to psychology. It has got its vogue largely by heaping up supposed marvels instead of patiently taking them to pieces. The medical mind, too, with its traditional "disease entities," and with imperative motive for immediate action, sometimes finds it convenient to hypostasize mental abnormalities. To persons who are emotionally inclined toward occultism, the notion of a detached subconsciousness is more comforting than any doctrine of mental continuity can be. Likewise, religious thinkers who reluctantly yield the physical world to natural law find it possible to make a last stand for supernaturalism by referring to supposed divine communications delivered in the mysterious twilight of the

Cotton Mather, The Wonders of the Invisible World (reprint, London, 1862), p. 20. The process here is similar to that of all thought. One fixes attention upon a topic, and ideas simply come. The marvel, if there is ground for it at all, rests, not in the process, but in the useableness of the product.

1 And then dogmatize about them! It is noteworthy, however, that Morton Prince, when he finally faces this problem, declares that there is entire continuity between the conscious, the "co-conscious," and the "unconscious." See The Unconscious (New York, 1914).

subconscious. Indeed, the doctrine of a detached subconsciousness reproduces in refined form the ancient religious notion of possession.'

It behooves us to be humble as well as incredulous in the presence of such widespread, persistent impressions. Time and again they have been found to have "something in them," after rational criticism had declared them to be delusions or frauds. The range of perception is certainly far wider than the psychology of fifty years ago was ready to admit. There is something in witchcraft, in clairvoyance, in mediumship, that is worthy of careful scientific analysis. To declare unthinkable the possession of one individual consciousness by another, or the use of one person's muscles by another person, would certainly be rash. The mental life is a complicated intermeshing that has the prima facie look of a tangle. Just which thread is which and just what constitutes a thread are problems. If psychology could wholly ignore

That any Christian theologian should regard it as a gain for religion when men look for God in the dim, outlying regions of consciousness rather than at the focal points called "I" and "thou,” is rather surprising. If there is one thing that distinguishes Christian thought from all other theologies, it is the extraordinary value that has been ascribed to the individual ever since Jesus declared that one person outweighs the whole non-personal world. Yet not a few Christian writers of our day find the focus of religious experience in the self's continuity with nature rather than in the self's interaction with society. Certain details of this theological situation I have discussed in "Religion and the Subconscious," American Journal of Theology, XIII (1909), 337-49. To the theological publications there referred to should be added the subsequently published works of Professor W. Sanday, in which he suggests that God was in Christ as his subconsciousness. These works are: Christologies, Ancient and Modern (Oxford University Press, 1910), and Personality in Christ and in Ourselves (Oxford University Press, 1911).

psychic individuality; if what we have to deal with were separate states which combine merely in the sense of touching one another at their surfaces, as marbles in a bag, or bricks in a wall, then there would be no problem of the subconscious. But since our mental life is given largely as intercourse between individuals, we have to face questions that concern the nature of such intercourse, including the question as to how we identify another individual as present.

Two considerations that are urged in favor of the doctrine of a detached subconsciousness deserve attention. First, the "something more" sometimes exhibits high organization. Connected discourse flows from the pen of some automatic writers who afterward declare that they have no memory of having written anything. In cases designated as alternating personality the physical organism, through speech and conduct, expresses now one coherent set of ideas and attitudes, now another, the two being as different as those of two ordinary members of society. Secondly, the "something more" is believed to be an effective source of knowledge, of wisdom, of artistic excellence, of moral reinforcement.

The second consideration is palpably based upon picked facts. The shallow repetition, the misinformation and misguidance, the ignorance and stupidity that proceed from the same source, must be weighed against the relatively few happy hits. This statement is true of religious inspirations as it is of spiritism and occultism generally. It is never difficult to secure the authority of inspiration for anything that is believed, desired, or feared, and any sort of stupidity can be thus sanctified. Mohammed's ability to secure inspirations that assisted

his desires is well known. All in all, the farther back we go toward periods confessedly of ignorance and delusion the more clear-cut is the impression of the divinity as revealing himself by the detached route. In short, the products of the religious subconscious have multitudinous marks of the primary personalities with which they have been associated. What we are obviously dealing with here is the whole human welter of things wise and things foolish, things known and things guessed or hoped for, things good, bad, and indifferent. It is probably our very selves that we give back to ourselves when we think we are possessed.

The facts of multiple personality do strongly suggest a detached subconsciousness. Yet even here there is no such complete break as is popularly supposed. The secondary personality depends upon and uses the mental acquisitions of the primary-uses its language, has its understanding of common sights and sounds, has its memories as its own. Hence, even if the primary per

'Guillaume Monod (b. 1800, d. 1896), announcing himself as Christ, the redeemer of the world, gathered about himself a sect that looked upon him as a revealer. When some of his predictions failed of literal fulfilment, he saved his claim by pointing out that biblical predictions failed in the same sense. Similarly, he found biblical parallels for his lack of omniscience, for the fact of his human ancestry, his mortality, and even for a period of insanity. See G. Revault d'Allonnes, Psychologie d'une Religion (Paris, 1908). Among the writings produced in the interest of what I venture to call “psychic" theology is a book by H. C. Stanton that bears the following suggestive title: Telepathy of the Celestial World. ("Psychic Phenomena here but Foreshadowings of our transcendent Faculties hereafter. Evidences from Psychology and Scripture that the Celestials can instantaneously and freely communicate across distance indefinitely great") (New York, 1913). Chap. iii argues that the method of communication among the three persons of the godhead is telepathy.

sonality were totally unable to recall experiences of the secondary, nevertheless the usual sort of psychic individuality is here in large measure. But inability to recall the secondary has been exaggerated. There are apparently all degrees of memory lapse, not just one characteristic and complete sort. The popular notion that hypnotized subjects upon being wakened have no memory of what has occurred during hypnosis is erroneous. Sometimes there is full recall, sometimes partial recall, sometimes apparently complete amnesia. Even a subject who declares that he cannot recall anything is sometimes, at least, mistaken. The sundering, in short, is best interpreted as a phenomenon of attention and memory. It is a dissociated individual consciousness with which we are dealing, not two individual consciousnesses related by a subconscious bond.

I

There is no manner of doubt that painstaking analysis of particular cases of the subconscious in religion has tended with great regularity to transfer more and more of the mysterious "other" to the account of the "mine" or of the ordinary "not mine." The particular content of the inspiration and often the very form of the seizure

To such a subject I said, "Try hard to remember! Try!" To which he replied, "I heard something." "What did you hear? Try to remember!" I said. "I heard music," he answered. Further questions that gave no suggestions but only helped to hold attention to the problem elicited a complete account of the hypnotic hallucination. Here, then, was a subject whose first, positive declaration seemed to indicate an utter break, whereas the ordinary bridge between one's present and one's own past was there. There was the full appearance, but not the reality, of a detached consciousness.

2

2 Occasionally something like a crucial experiment is made, as when certain tongue-speakers, believing that their gift prepared them to preach the Gospel in non-Christian lands without preliminary study