ality of those great internal revolutions of which religion is well
aware, which arise purely from the mind, and are able to rid us of all
natural bonds and burdens. This mysterious region of the influence of the
mind in modifying bodily states or producing new ones is in these days
being more and more opened up. That grief can turn the hair grey and
disgust bring out eruptions on the skin has long been known. But new and
often marvellous facts are being continually added to our knowledge
through curious experiments with suggestion, hypnosis, and
auto-suggestion. And we are no longer far from believing that through
exaltations, forced states of mind associated with auto-suggestion, many
phenomena, such as "stigmata," for instance, which have hitherto been over
hastily relegated to the domain of pious legend, may possibly have a
"scientific" background.

"The Unconscious".

But one has a repugnance to descending into this strange region. And
religion, with its clear and lofty mood, can never have either taste for
or relationship with considerations which so easily take an "occult" turn.
Nor is its mysticism concerned with physiologies. But it is instructive
and noteworthy that the old idealistic faith, "It is the mind that builds
up the body for itself," is becoming stronger again in all kinds of
philosophies and physiologies of "the unconscious," as a reaction from the
onesidedness of the mechanistic theories, and that it draws its chief
support from the dependence of nervous and other bodily processes upon the
psychical, which is being continually brought into greater and greater
prominence. The moderate and luminous views of the younger Fichte, who
probably also first introduced the now current term "the unconscious,"
must be at least briefly mentioned. According to him, the impulse towards
the development of form which is inherent in everything living, and which
builds up the organism from the germ to the complete whole, by forcing the
chemical and physical processes into particular paths, is identical with
the psychical itself. In instincts, the unconscious purposive actions of
the lower animals in particular, he sees only a special mode of this at
first unconscious psychical nature, which, building up organ after organ,
makes use in doing so of all the physical laws and energies, and is at
first wholly immersed in purely physiological processes. It is only after
the body has been developed, and presents a r