to be
taken. Talking of this part, we involuntarily apply words of
perspective to distinguish it from the rest, words like "here," "this,"
"now," "mine," or "me"; and we ascribe to the other parts the positions
"there," "then," "that," "his" or "thine," "it," "not me." But a
"here" can change to a "there," and a "there" become a "here," and what
was "mine" and what was "not mine" change their places.

What brings such changes about is the way in which emotional excitement
alters. Things hot and vital to us to-day are cold to-morrow. It is
as if seen from the hot parts of the field that the other parts appear
to us, and from these hot parts personal desire and volition make their
sallies. They are in short the centres of our dynamic energy, whereas
the cold parts leave us indifferent and passive in proportion to their
coldness.

Whether such language be rigorously exact is for the present of no
importance. It is exact enough, if you recognize from your own
experience the facts which I seek to designate by it.

Now there may be great oscillation in the emotional interest, and the
hot places may shift before one almost as rapidly as the sparks that
run through burnt-up paper. Then we have the wavering and divided self
we heard so much of in the previous lecture. Or the focus of
excitement and heat, the point of view from which the aim is taken, may
come to lie permanently within a certain system; and then, if the
change be a religious one, we call it a CONVERSION, especially if it be
by crisis, or sudden.

Let us hereafter, in speaking of the hot place in a man's
consciousness, the group of ideas to which he devotes himself, and from
which he works, call it THE HABITUAL CENTRE OF HIS PERSONAL ENERGY. It
makes a great difference to a man whether one set of his ideas, or
another, be the centre of his energy; and it makes a great difference,
as regards any set of ideas which he may possess, whether they become
central or remain peripheral in him. To say that a man is "converted"
means, in these terms, that religious ideas, previously peripheral in
his consciousness, now take a central place, and that religious aims
form the habitual centre of his energy.

Now if you ask of psychology just HOW the excitement shifts in a man's
mental system, and WHY aims that were peripheral become at a certain
moment central, psychology has to reply that although she can give a
general description of what happens, she is unabl