in the said Proceedings, part xlii., May, 1901.

[355] Compare the inventory given above on pp. 472-4, and also what is
said of the subconscious self on pp. 228-231, 235-236.

Let me then propose, as an hypothesis, that whatever it may be on its
FARTHER side, the "more" with which in religious experience we feel
ourselves connected is on its HITHER side the subconscious continuation
of our conscious life. Starting thus with a recognized psychological
fact as our basis, we seem to preserve a contact with "science" which
the ordinary theologian lacks. At the same time the theologian's
contention that the religious man is moved by an external power is
vindicated, for it is one of the peculiarities of invasions from the
subconscious region to take on objective appearances, and to suggest to
the Subject an external control. In the religious life the control is
felt as "higher"; but since on our hypothesis it is primarily the
higher faculties of our own hidden mind which are controlling, the
sense of union with the power beyond us is a sense of something, not
merely apparently, but literally true.

This doorway into the subject seems to me the best one for a science of
religions, for it mediates between a number of different points of
view. Yet it is only a doorway, and difficulties present themselves as
soon as we step through it, and ask how far our transmarginal
consciousness carries us if we follow it on its remoter side. Here the
over-beliefs begin: here mysticism and the conversion-rapture and
Vedantism and transcendental idealism bring in their monistic
interpretations[356] and tell us that the finite self rejoins the
absolute self, for it was always one with God and identical with the
soul of the world.[357] Here the prophets of all the different
religions come with their visions, voices, raptures, and other
openings, supposed by each to authenticate his own peculiar faith.

[356] Compare above, pp. 410 ff.

[357] One more expression of this belief, to increase the reader's
familiarity with the notion of it:--

"If this room is full of darkness for thousands of years, and you come
in and begin to weep and wail, 'Oh, the darkness,' will the darkness
vanish? Bring the light in, strike a match, and light comes in a
moment. So what good will it do you to think all your lives, 'Oh, I
have done evil, I have made many mistakes'? It requires no ghost to
tell us that. Bring in the light, and the evil goes i