Reference to psychological fact is what one misses in the records of the old controversies. The disputes read as if they were about shadows. No doubt that was often the case. Catholics and non-Catholics were often agreed as to the substance of belief, while owing to their devotion to words and formulae the agreement went unrecognised. Had the disputants made clear to themselves and to each other what they meant by their abstract terms, had they translated them into their concrete psychological equivalents, heresy and schism would have been less frequent. It was, however, almost impossible for them to do so, because in their day theology was far more highly developed than psychology. Systematic observation of the workings of spirit was almost unknown. There existed no science of psychology as we know it. No clear notions attached to the terms "person" and "nature." They represented abstractions necessary to discursive reason rather than concrete psychic facts. All parties shared this defect. Among catholics and Nestorians as well as among monophysites knowledge of the constituents of human nature was of the most rudimentary character. The catholic party, however, by keeping close to the facts recorded in the gospels, achieved a Christological formula that is psychologically intelligible; while the heretical parties were led by their preconceived opinions to fashion a Christ, whose features are unrecognisable as God or man, a psychological monstrosity.
BERGSON'S THEORIES THROW LIGHT ON CHRISTOLOGY
Without claiming finality for the findings of modern psychology, we can consider some results of the science as established. They are sufficiently well established, at any rate, to provide a starting-point for our investigation. In particular the brilliant observations and theories of M. Bergson throw, so it seems to the writer, a flood of light on Christology. We propose to outline the two key doctrines of the Bergsonian psychology and show how they confirm the truth of the orthodox formula and expose the monophysite fallacy. These key doctrines are, first, the interpenetration of psychic states, and, second, the distinction between deep-seated and superficial consciousness.
BERGSON'S THEORY OF THE INTERPENETRATION OF PSYCHIC STATES
It is, says Bergson, characteristic of psychic states that they do not, like material things remain external to one another. They inter-penetrate. Cut up by human intelligence into discrete elements, in their own nature they remain a continuum. States of mind appear successive and external to one another, because age-long association with matter has accustomed men to material modes of thought. Man's intelligence is a by-product of activity. For purposes of action it is the externality of things that matters. The inner connection is relatively unimportant. Men act with precision on matter, because perception cuts up the continuum of matter into bodies, defined bodies no two of which can occupy the same space. Intelligence originating thus by contact with matter naturally prefers mechanical categories. These categories applicable to matter when applied to higher forms of existence mislead. We naturally conceive psychic states as external to one another, and their interpenetration seems an abnormality. At this stage of thought experience is pictured as a line of indefinite length, infinitely divisible, whose divisions correspond to the moments of consciousness. This spatial picture of mind is misleading in many ways, not the least in that it can offer no reasonable theory of the subconscious. Thinkers who materialise mental experience have no room in their theory for the sub-conscious. It is for them bare non-consciousness, a psychic vacuum. When, however, we start from this unique characteristic, that mind possesses, of remaining one and indivisible throughout the greatest appearance of diversity, the sub-conscious falls naturally into the scheme. No part of our experience perishes. It is essentially self-perpetuating memory. The needs of action relegate the greater portion of it to the sub-conscious, but it is there, always linked to our conscious experience, and only awaiting the occasion to emerge into the full light of consciousness. Past penetrates into the present. One portion of our present penetrates into the other portions. Conscious and unconscious, past and present, combine to form one wonderful whole.
MONOPHYSITISM IGNORES THE DUALITY IN CHRIST'S EXPERIENCE
Such in outline is Bergson's theory of the interpenetration of psychic states. If this psychology be adopted, the abstract character of the catholic doctrine of Christ's being in large measure disappears. It becomes easy to conceive the interpenetration of two natures in one Christ. Further, the Bergsonian psychology furnishes a standpoint from which criticism of monophysitism is easy. Psychology at the monophysite stage of thought conceives the moments of Christ's consciousness in their mutual externality; they follow each other as do the ticks of a clock. They are discrete elements strung along on a hypothetical ego. Christ's experience is conceived as unilinear. All that He did, suffered and thought is regarded as having taken place on one and the same plane of experience. This psychology has no room for another plane of experience. It has no room for a positive sub-consciousness. Consequently that one plane must be the one divine nature, which, as the monophysites taught, absorbed the human.
The one-nature theory is not true to the facts. It overlooks the complexity of Christ's experience. His experiences lie on two different planes. He has different universes of thought, different actuating wills and sets of feelings. Christ is not in one nature. The phases of His consciousness are twofold. His experiences fall naturally into two groups. While one group is in consciousness, the other is below the level of consciousness. Now the human experiences, now the divine, are uppermost. Both are always present. Life under such conditions is inconceivable, unless full recognition be accorded to the fact that conscious states interpermeate. If each state fall outside the other, and consciousness be a chain of successive ideas or emotions, a twofold nature within the one experience is meaningless. The view of conscious states as discrete leads inevitably to determinism. The place of one state in the chain is conditioned by its predecessor. There is no room for the spontaneity and the creative power which characterise conscious life. Associationism cannot countenance the unforeseen and incalculable. So it is out of sympathy with Christian psychology. A function of the divine in Christ is to introduce the element of the unforeseen and incalculable into His normal and human experience. The Bergsonian psychology thus supplies an intellectual basis for belief in the possibility of two natures in Christ. When ideas are regarded as psychic entities whose essential property is mutual penetration, the ground is prepared for the catholic formula. Where this truth is not recognised, there arises inevitably the tendency to assert that Christ had and must have had but one uniform level of experience, and that assertion is the essence of monophysitism.
BERGSON'S THEORY OF DEEP-SEATED AND SUPERFICIAL STATES
Bergson's psychology throws further light on a central doctrine of catholic Christology. It not only makes conceivable, as we have shown above, the co-existence of the two natures, but it lends support to the belief in the independent reality of His personality. Person and nature of Christology find their modern equivalents in the Bergsonian "deep-seated" and "superficial" states of consciousness. Bergson draws a sharp line of distinction between these two. The deep-seated states constitute the kernel of being. They are the man's existence turned inwards. They are independent, free, creative. They are a unifying force. Always present, they only rarely make their presence felt. Only at moments of deep experience do they interfere with the surface self. The superficial states form the outward-regarding existence of man. They represent consciousness relaxed into moments of clock-time, moments more or less external to one another. They are not truly free. They are conditioned by the material environment. Whatever be thought of the metaphysic of this system, recognition cannot be refused to that part of it which rests on the solid foundation of psychological fact. Self-analysis discloses a two-fold experience in man. The stream of his life contains both current and undercurrent. The current is nature, the under-current personality.