But there is black activity there, too. Always where the white becomes lustrous the black deepens. On the desk before me on that same winter day, was a communication from San Francisco—the last to me of several documents from a newly-formed society for applying psychology. The documents were very carefully done, beautifully typed and composed. They reckoned with the new dimension which is in the world, which is above flesh and above brain; which is, in fact, the unifying force of the brain faculties, called here Intuition. The founders of this society reckoned, too, with the fact that psychology as it has been taught from a material basis in schools and colleges is a blight. One can't, as a purely physical being, relate himself to mental processes; nor can one approach the super-mental area by the force of mentality alone.
But I found the turning in these documents with alarm; that the purpose divulged was to master matter for material ends. This is black business—known to be black before the old Alexandria, known to be black before the Christ came. They had asked for comment, even for criticism. I recalled that psychology is the science of the soul, and wrote this letter:
"I have received some of your early papers and plans, and thank you. I want to offer an opinion in good spirit. I find the powerful impulse running through your effort, as expressed in the papers I have read—to play to commerce and the trade mind. This is developing fast enough without bringing inner powers to work in the midst of these low forces. They will work. They will master, but it seems to me that spiritual ruin will result. For these forces which you show in operation are the real vitalities of man, which used other than in the higher schemes of life—call in the bigger devils for man to cope with. When one begins to use the dimension of the inner life, before the lower phases of the self are mastered, he becomes a peril to himself and to others. I feel that I do not need to be explicit to psychologists. I want to be on record as strongly urging you to be sure that the animal is caged before you loose the angel. Also that I have a conviction that there are ten times too many tradesmen in the world now; and that office-efficiency is not the kind that America is in need of. I repeat that I know you are in the way of real work, and that's why I venture to show my point of view; and please believe me energetic only toward the final good of the receptive surface you have set out to impress."
28
THE ABBOT DEPARTS
One day in March, the Abbot said:
"You know that woods I was telling you about?"