pression "immanent" has done
harm in this direction. There is nothing profound about this
conception of "immanence." It is an entirely materialistic
conception drawn from sense analogy.

The same criticism applies to much of the vague speculation
which is usually called "mysticism." Mysticism is not a spiritual
attitude. It is often no more than the expression of thwarted
sex-desire directed towards the universe instead of towards the person
who has repulsed it. The basic motive of mysticism, although in
the highest cases it springs from intuition, is very often only an
extension into the unknown of physiological misery or of
physiological well-being.

The word "spiritual" retains, by some instinctive wisdom in human
language, a far nobler significance than the word "mystical."

It is, so to speak, a purer word, and has succeeded, in its progress
down the ages, in keeping itself more clear of physiological
associations than any other human word except the word "soul." It
must, however, be recognized, when we submit the two words to
analysis, that the word "spirit" is less free from metaphorical
materialism than the word "soul."

The word "spirit" is a metaphorical word derived from the material
phenomenon of breath. For the purest and least tangible of all
natural phenomena, except perhaps "ether" or electricity, is
obviously nothing less than the wind. "The wind bloweth where it
listeth," and this elementary "freedom of the wind," combined
with our natural association of "breath" and "breathing" with all
organic life, accounts for the traditional nobility of the word spirit.

"Spirit" and "life" have become almost interchangeable terms. The
modern expression "the life-force" is only a metaphorical
confusion of the idea conveyed by the word "spirit" or "breath"
with the idea conveyed by the word "consciousness" when
abstracted from any particular conscious soul. The use of the term
"spirit" as applied to what metaphysical idealists name "the
absolute" is the supreme example of this metaphorical confusion.

According to this use of the term "spirit" we have an arbitrary
association of the ultimate fact of self-consciousness--a fact drawn
from the necessity of thought--with that attenuated and etherial
materialism implied in the words "breath" or "breathing" and in
the elemental "freedom of the wind." The word "spiritual" is a
purer and nobler word than the word "mystical" for the same
reason that the word "soul"