And from this point of view we must safeguard what has already been said in regard to the culture and gradual development of our psychical inner nature. It is true that the “soul” does not spring up ready-made in the developing body, lying dormant in it, and only requiring to waken up gradually. It really becomes. But the becoming is a self-realisation. It is not true that it is put together and built up bit by bit by experience, so that a different being might develop if the experiences were different. It is undoubtedly dependent upon experience, impressions, and circumstances, and without these its development would be impossible. But these impressions act as a stimulus, developing only what is previously inherent. They do not themselves create anything. A characteristic predetermination restricts the development to comparatively narrow limits. And this is identical with the individuality itself. A man may turn out very different according to circumstances, education, influences. But he would nevertheless recognise “himself” under any circumstances. He will never become anything of which [pg 329] he had not the possibility within him from the very beginning, any more than the rose will become a violet if it is nurtured with a different kind of manure.
Genius.
We cannot venture to say much about genius and the mystery of it. In it and its creative power something of the spirit, the nature of the spirit, seems to look up at us, as we might think of it in itself and apart from the limits of existence in time and space. It is usually most obvious and most accessible to us in the domain of art. But it has its place too in the realm of science. And it is most of all genius, and therefore most inaccessible to us ordinary mortals, in the domain of religion.
Mysticism.
Even “pronounced individuality” “has an element of mysticism” in it—of the non-rational, which we feel the more distinctly the more decidedly we reject all attempts to make it rational again through crude or subtle mythologies. This is much more true of genius, artistic insight, and inspiration. But these are much too delicate to be exposed to the buffeting of controversy, much more so the dark and mysterious boundary region in the life of the human spirit which we know under the name of mysticism in the true sense, without inverted commas. It is not a subject that is adapted for systematic treatment. Where it has been subjected to it, everything becomes crude and repulsive, [pg 330] a mere caricature of pure mysticism like the recrudescent occultism of to-day. Therefore it is enough simply to call the attention of the sympathetic reader to it and then to pass it by. In face of the witness borne to it by all that is finest and deepest in history, especially in the history of religion, naturalism is powerless.
Mind and Spirit. The Human and the Animal Soul.
What is the relation between the human and the animal mind? This has always been a vital question in the conflict between naturalism and the religious outlook. And as in the whole problem of the psychical so here the interest on both sides has been mainly concentrated on the question of “mortality” or “immortality.” Man is immortal because he has a soul. Animals “have no souls.” “Animals also have souls, differing only in degree but not in substantial nature from the soul of man: as they are mortal, man must be so too.” “Animals have minds: the merely psychical passes away with the body. But man has spirit in addition. It is imperishable.” These and many other assertions were made on one side or the other. And both sides made precisely the same mistake: they made the belief in the immortality of our true nature dependent upon a proof that the soul has a physical “substantial nature,” which is to be regarded as an indestructible substance, a kind of spiritual atom. And on the other hand they overlooked [pg 331] the gist of the whole matter, the true starting-point, which cannot be overlooked if the religious outlook is not to be brought into discredit. It is undoubtedly a fundamental postulate, and one which the religious outlook cannot give up, that the human spirit is more than all creatures, and is in quite a different order from stars, plants, and animals. But absolutely the first necessity from the point of view of the religious outlook is to establish the incomparable value of the human spirit; the question of its “substantial nature” is in itself a matter of entire indifference. The religious outlook observes that man can will good and can pray, and no other creature can do this. And it sees that this makes the difference between two worlds. Whether the bodily and mental physics in both these worlds is the same or different, is to it a matter rather of curiosity than of importance.