olly.
That we can gain more and more of it by moving always in the right
direction, I believe as much as any one, and I hope to bring you all to
my way of thinking before the termination of these lectures. Till
then, do not, I pray you, harden your minds irrevocably against the
empiricism which I profess.

I will waste no more words, then, in abstract justification of my
method, but seek immediately to use it upon the facts.

In critically judging of the value of religious phenomena, it is very
important to insist on the distinction between religion as an
individual personal function, and religion as an institutional,
corporate, or tribal product. I drew this distinction, you may
remember, in my second lecture. The word "religion," as ordinarily
used, is equivocal. A survey of history shows us that, as a rule,
religious geniuses attract disciples, and produce groups of
sympathizers. When these groups get strong enough to "organize"
themselves, they become ecclesiastical institutions with corporate
ambitions of their own. The spirit of politics and the lust of
dogmatic rule are then apt to enter and to contaminate the originally
innocent thing; so that when we hear the word "religion" nowadays, we
think inevitably of some "church" or other; and to some persons the
word "church" suggests so much hypocrisy and tyranny and meanness and
tenacity of superstition that in a wholesale undiscerning way they
glory in saying that they are "down" on religion altogether. Even we
who belong to churches do not exempt other churches than our own from
the general condemnation.

But in this course of lectures ecclesiastical institutions hardly
concern us at all. The religious experience which we are studying is
that which lives itself out within the private breast. First-hand
individual experience of this kind has always appeared as a heretical
sort of innovation to those who witnessed its birth. Naked comes it
into the world and lonely; and it has always, for a time at least,
driven him who had it into the wilderness, often into the literal
wilderness out of doors, where the Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, St.
Francis, George Fox, and so many others had to go. George Fox
expresses well this isolation; and I can do no better at this point
than read to you a page from his Journal, referring to the period of
his youth when religion began to ferment within him seriously.

"I fasted much," Fox says, "walked abroad in solitary places