UC-NRLF hfl 1EM IIGIQUS CONFESSIONS AN D C ON FE S SAN TS AN) i G -ESON:BURR HI Mi- &nna Eobeean 38tttr RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS AND CONFESS- ANTS. THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY. THE JESSOP BEQUEST. HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY BOSTON AND NEW YORK RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS AND CONFESSANTS RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS AND CONFESSANTS ^ ** * WITH A CHAPTER ON THE HISTORY OF INTROSPECTION BY ANNA ROBESON BURR II BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 1914 S COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY ANNA ROBESON BURR ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Published May IQI4 "0 this gloomy world ! In what a shadow or deep pit of darkness Doth womanish and fearful mankind live!" The Duchess of Malfi. 897583 PREFACE IT has been the privilege of the writer to do much of her work in the library of the late Dr. Henry C. Lea its shelves still laden with that material which assumed so significant an aspect under the guidance of his distinguished mind. Such surroundings were in themselves an inspiration and she is grateful for the kindness which procured them. Thanks are also due for the courteous co-operation of the librarians of the two Friends' Libraries, of the Presbyterian and Methodist Historical Societies, of the Philadelphia Library, of Haverford College, of S. Carlo Borromeo, and of S. Thomas of Villanova. Through the kindness of Dr. Jastrow, the University of Pennsylvania Library gave the writer access to her material all over the country. Such goodwill has lent the work an ever-increasing pleasure. While reading for an earlier study on autobiog- raphy, the writer had been impressed by the present superabundance of works on religious and mystical theory, side by side with a total absence of any col- lation of the documents of personal religion. No one has apparently thought it worth his while to examine the foundations on which the current elaborate doc- trines are based. Some years of investigation have resulted in this book. If the work has turned in directions not at first anticipated, yet it formulates viii PREFACE no theory except by induction from the data it fur- nishes. In its final position, it agrees with Hobbes, when he remarks, "that ignorant and superstitious men make great wonders of those works, which other men, knowing to proceed from nature (which is not the immediate but the ordinary work of God), ad- mire not at all. ' ' March, 1914. CONTENTS I. INTRODUCTORY 3 II. CONFESSION AND APOLOGIA .... 19 III. INTROSPECTION : THE INTROSPECTIVE TYPE 71 IV. THE DOCUMENTS 141 V. THE DATA ANALYZED: I .... 171 VI. THE DATA ANALYZED: II . . . . 229 VII. THE DATA ANALYZED: III ... 273 VIII. MYSTICISM AND ITS INTERPRETATION . . 329 IX. THE RELIGIOUS INSTINCT: I ... 397 X. THE RELIGIOUS INSTINCT: II ... 449 NOTES 491 BIBLIOGRAPHY OF CASES .... 527 INDEX . 549 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS AND CONFESSANTS I INTRODUCTORY RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS AND CONFESSANTS INTRODUCTORY ONE of the characteristics of the present age, so often accused of infidelity, is its interest in religion. Works upon this subject were never so many in the ages of faith. Indeed, one may almost go so far as to say that the study of religion is a study essentially modern. In the past, men studied dogma, they studied theology, they studied metaphysics and mystical phi- losophy, but they did not study religion. For such study there is necessary not only a knowledge of cer- tain basic sciences very recent of date in themselves, such as ethnology and anthropology, biology and psychology, but also the security of our latter-day ideals of tolerance. Protected by these, the writer on religious topics has been able, for the first time in the world's history, to place his matter in perspective for proper examination. The strict limitations imposed on such work in the past, with the sinister shadow of the Inquisition ever ready to fall across his page, produced in the writer a fret and a tension which caused him too often to be personal and acrimonious in RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS tone, while in statement he remained safely indefinite. To-day, his manner is calmer and less controversial, while the nature of his work has tended to become less abstract and more concrete, more specialized, and more individual. The present essay is an attempt to handle, in a broad way, some of the more intimate aspects of man 's knowledge of himself. A chief element of this knowl- edge has been his natural interest in the question of his ultimate destination, with his concomitant feelings and ideas respecting all that part of his nature which is unknown to him. This interest in, this curiosity about, self, was made the subject of observation and theory long before the simplest knowledge of physical man had been acquired. But such theory necessarily remained a priori for centuries, until the bulk of sci- entific facts increased sufficiently to allow of sounder methods. If sounder method is possible to-day, it must be borne in mind that possible is the word. Many diffi- culties will occur to the student ; there are many which may not occur to him. He will easily recall the names of several recent books on religious psychology, and he will agree that their effect, on the whole, has been far from conclusive, while yet he may or may not realize that this impression springs from their funda- mental weakness in the matter of data. To do such work to-day there is needed, first of all, a definitive, systematic collection of the available data of personal religious experience, and such a collection may come to the rescue of the theorist. The material for such data is not wanting; it lies INTRODUCTORY 5 embedded in the recorded history of the human mind for over two thousand years. Scattered in a hundred corners, it has crumbled with the crumbling edifice of succeeding civilizations, and the fragments that re- main have been trodden under foot by prejudice, or ignored by tradition. Its presence has had little sig- nificance for the exact mind, and as to its value, opin- ions have fluctuated. Bacon held that ' ' as for the nar- rations touching the prodigies and miracles of reli- gions, they are either not true or not natural, and there- fore impertinent for the story of nature." 1 At the same time, while he decided that the "narrations which have mixture with superstition be sorted by them- selves," he yet would not omit them altogether. Our modern idea holds rather that "the study of religion is essentially psychological. . . . Whatever else can be predicated of religion, we must admit that it consists of a great variety of mental experiences"; 2 and the difficulty of obtaining the facts concerning such experience although acknowledged constitutes no valid excuse for ignoring them. The student must simply apply to their examination certain important correctives, just as he must apply similar correctives to the examination of any mass of facts. He will rather repeat the words of Montesquieu: "J'ai d'abord examine les hommes et j 'ai cru que, dans cette infinie diversite de lois et de mo3urs, ils n'etaient pas uniquement conduits par leurs f antaisies. ' ' 3 Thus what appears to be mere chaos, is not so ; and through all these passions, characters, and experiences, there operates the universal law of the identity of our common nature. "The life of the individual," says 6 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS Caird, " is a sort of epitome of the history of human- ity"; 4 and it must be studied from this point of view, not forgetting the corrective influence brought to bear upon it by the broader outlines of history. If opinions as to the value of the material are not unanimous, yet there has been no doubt as to the imme- diate necessity for its examination. The religious con- fessionjfwith which it is the main object of this essay to deal, is nothing less than the first coherent, system- atie, voluntary attempt at self -study, by which man has sought to determine the nature and the limits of his consciousness. From this first effort has been evolved all later, more complex religious ideas, and many of the later philosophic ideas. The confession, therefore, would have a vital historical interest for us if it had no other. But in reality it has far more. It serves to lay bare the fundamental forces of history. A recent historian 5 has made a penetrating commentary on the value of the private record as a means of understanding public action ; while a recent psychologist 6 has observed that the most instructive human documents lie along the beaten highway. The personal record, in many cases, furnishes the only valid means of observing the movement of certain minds under the pressure of given circumstances. 7 Any work upon the development of the idea of sect must needs be built upon these documents, whose existence alone has made it possible. If any excuse were needed for this attempt to bring the alien, uncharted matter into the domain of law, it will surely be found in the present cry of the scientist for more facts. INTRODUCTORY 7, 11 II n'y avait point d'emploi plus legitime et plus honorable de 1 'esprit, " writes Sainte-Beuve, "que de voir les choses et les hommes comme ils sont et de les exprimer comme on les voit, de decrire, autour de soi en serviteur de la science, les varietes de 1'espece, les divers formes de I'organisation humaine, etrange- ment modifiee au moral dans la societe et dans le dedale artificiel des doctrines. " 8 To be the servitor of science, in regard to the study of men's beliefs, is, as we have said, an ideal of to-day ; yet in saying this, one must not forget that the very constitution of the religions preceding Christianity admitted of a similar ideal. Havet 9 points out that the ancient religions, so ex- acting in respect of cult, had comparatively few dog- mas, thus leaving open a vast field for those fruit- ful discussions which Christianity forbade. In the fragments of those discussions which remain to us, there is a freshness and often a boldness of concep- tion which render them significant and suggestive, bringing, as they do, the mind of the ancient student closer to the mind of the student of to-day. When Manu speaks of self-consciousness and egoism as "lordly" he joins in the speech of Schopenhauer or Nietzsche. 10 Both ancient and modern students recognize two main approaches to the study of religion. This force in human life is manifested in two ways: it may be observed in its effect upon the mass, through its group- manifestation ; or in its effect upon the individual, through its personal, psychological manifestation. The gate of the first approach has been open for cen- 8 EELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS turies; philosophers and historians have passed there- by, each aiding future generations, though not al- ways in the way he expected. The gate of the second approach has not yet been opened to the investigator ; and the difficulties in the way of a valid study of religion in the individual cannot be over-impressed upon the reader's attention. The perplexing question of fundamental sincerity has been dealt with in a preceding volume. 11 When the degree of this sincerity has been, relatively speak- ing, determined, the student is brought face to face with the equally perplexing problem of classification. A fair degree of candour in the personal revelation may be admitted ; and yet how are the results of such can- dour to be rendered amenable to science ? Can they be so rendered ? At first sight nothing would seem more impossible "than to find law, order, and reason in what seems accidental, capricious, and meaningless, ' ' 12 Nevertheless, no mean authority assures us that this is the true work of science; and while he suggests its accomplishment by restricting the field, and by limit- ing its content as much as possible, Caird adds that, while the spiritual life is most complex and difficult to understand, yet it must be intelligible ; for, if man can comprehend the phenomena of the universe, he should surely be able to comprehend his own ! 13 On the other hand, it must not be forgotten that what is fortuitous or casual in itself does not enter into the domain of science. Law is only "that con- stant rule to which a given order of facts is subservi- ent" 14 It may be determined from observation of the facts themselves, when they are properly limited, INTRODUCTORY 9 classified, and compared. The broad general prin- ciples of science in regard to this classification and comparison must be brought to bear upon this mate- rial. Human specimens must needs be subjected to the same treatment as botanical or marine specimens. They must be gathered, identified, labelled, and made accessible to study. And human specimens have this permanent disadvantage as specimens, that in the nature of things they cannot present data mechan- ically consistent. The data are in fact accidental and capricious to a degree, varying in different ex- amples, but always sufficiently to daunt the orderly mind. The first task, therefore, must be to determine the constant factors in each case, analyze the elements thereof, and classify these elements for comparison. It has been remarked of the comparative method that it can be properly employed only where the things compared resemble each other. Yet the things com- pared must also differ from one another or there would be no need to compare them. The presence of a definite religious emotion, then, is the first factor whose presence should determine the use of a docu- ment for this work. Various as may be the manifesta- tions of this emotion, it must exist in a recognizable form. The second factor, not less important, must be the first-hand composition of the document it must be the work of the person himself. Such limitation per- mits us to include, beside formal autobiography or confession, the material contained in journals, day- books, diaries, intimate letters, as well as that which 10 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS may be found in philosophical disquisition or in theo- logical apologia asking only that it be religious, that it be personal, and that it be composed by the subject himself. Those " young adventurers who produce their performance to the wise ear of Time, ' ' 15 have equal right to be heard in this regard with the medi- aeval mystics or the self -analyzing philosophers, since all are moved by the same spirit. "Once read thine own breast right, And thou hast done with fears; Man gets no other light, Search he a thousand years. Sink in thyself! there ask what ails thee, at that shrine!" ^ And it is with the seekers at this shrine that we are here to deal. It would seem obvious that the study of religion in its group-manifestation must precede and lay the foundation for any study of the individual manifestation, yet it were well at the outset to remind one 's self of this truth. No overcharged attention to a task apparently more novel should cause the student to minimize the greater relative importance of the historical treatment, or to undervalue its effect upon the work at hand. The individual may be properly understood only through a study of his group, his nation, his race. ' ' If religion is veritably to be based upon experience/' Dr. Watson reminds us, "no one is justified in citing the partial and fragmentary con- sciousness of this or that individual." 17 He must generalize rather from a whole than from a partial experience. Such work as we are to do in this place must needs be supplementary to any broad, general study; and INTRODUCTORY 11 the work and conclusions of the greater religious his- torians must take precedence of it, must form its proper corrective. By no means does this fact lessen the value of an investigation into the individual mind, it rather heightens such value. By specialization, a service is rendered to all those engaged in generalizing, and who are perpetually in search of suitable material. In the following pages we shall endeavor to contrib- ute to the work of religious investigation an amount of data, which has at least the merit of having been collated under a salutary method. Should it be im- possible to arrive at any conclusions as to the major problems presented by the subject, such conclusions may, perchance, be suggested to the mind of some future investigator. Our business, then, to put it briefly as may be, is to study, by means of induction through individual ex- amples, the manifestation in human life of that force to which tradition has assigned the name religion. This is no new idea, for just so do we study, by means of its manifestations, that physical force to which we have assigned the name electricity. Both of these forces proceed from unknown and invisible causes. Both of them are observable only through their direct and indirect effects. Both of them are continuously present, though dormant, in the very at- mosphere around us; from both of these silent, in- visible forces, the proper agent will on an instant draw the leaping spark. Our prejudices in the past have so hampered us, by attaching a factitious and sacrosanct character (almost in the nature of the savage tabu) to the manifestations of the force known 12 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS as religion, that we are much more deficient, scien- tifically speaking, in our knowledge thereof. We have not weighed it, nor measured it, nor stud- ied, in any fulness, the conditions which give rise to it, nor noted when we may expect it, and when we may not expect it. Our reverence forbade us to experiment in the ages when experiment might have been of value. But if reverence once hampered us, irreverence to-day hampers us still more. The sub- ject of electricity and electrical forces does not tempt the untrained; nor will the ignorant gather an au- dience if he theorize thereon. But upon the obscure subject of religion, any fool is sure of an audience to his folly. Our irreverence toward our fellow-men has cast them helpless into the power of the sciolist and the charlatan, who have added to the confusion by obscuring the facts. For, upon this vital subject there appears to prevail a constitutional inability to preserve what Delacroix has called 'Tintegralite du fait." 18 To the facts, then, and to the facts alone, we must turn and return. The subjective can only be reached objectively; these cases must be handled in the same way as are other natural phenomena. A full list must include emotional natures and philosophical na- tures, objective types and introspective types, normal cases and abnormal cases. Many writers have dealt with religion; we shall seek to know the religious. Tiny as the individual may be, he is at least a part, by means of which the mind may better grasp the whole. As for the proposed method, it is similar to that now advocated by students of English law. Law had INTRODUCTORY 13 been taught as philosophy was taught, from textbooks of broad general principles. Science has to-day tended to substitute the inductive method; and from groups of cases, the student is now required to in- duce a principle and to make the application. There is no reason why such method should not be equally valid for the study of religion, even though the law has the immense advantage in having had its data me- chanically collected, for centuries past, into systematic records. The difficulties in the way of so collecting the reli- gious data are very great, but they are not insur- mountable ; they but demand a special word of warn- ing. The great temptation in all work of this nature is to carry it too far. Human specimens are not ma- rine specimens, and human cases are not law cases; and if it be important that the student should be able to see the conclusions they present, it is even more important that he should be able to refrain from see- ing what is not there. For, when he falls into that error, he at once lowers himself to the level of those recent writers on mysticism, whose method has thus effectually checked all progress in the direction of truth. There is much to repay the patient collector of these facts. In her preface to Obermann, George Sand says, most beautifully, that "for all profound and dreamy souls, for all delicate and openminded intelligences," 19 the rare and austere productions of human suffering have an importance even greater than that of history. Anything, she adds, which as- sists us to understand such suffering must ultimately 14 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS assist us to ameliorate it. And this voices the stimu- lating, the sustaining hope of such an inquiry as the present. There is need to point out that the inductive method may yield a very different result from the selective method. It is one thing to evolve a theory, and after it has taken shape, to seek for its confirmation by means of some ten or twenty carefully selected cases ; it is quite another to start without any a priori con- ceptions, simply to gather together all available data bearing on the subject, and then to note how the cases so gathered may confirm, contradict, or comment upon each other. It is one thing to select a special set of facts to confirm your special theory; it is another to determine which theory will best account for all the facts. Through a peculiar misconception as to the nature of the material at hand, the first of these methods has been used, practically without exception, in all work on this subject; and used, moreover, by those who must needs have been aware of its technical unsoundness. 20 And it is doubtless for this if for no other reason that the new religious psychology has produced, as a whole, such negligible results. Once more we must repeat that a definitive collection of the data of religion must needs take precedence of any theory. The essential difficulty in treating this subject is just that it is religion and religion is the product of centuries of emotion, and indissolubly woven into the very fabric of the theorist's race and temperament, prejudices and traditions. The very word implies idealism ; the very conception colors the mind dealing INTRODUCTORY 15 with it. Thus, that writer whose mystical tempera- ment inclines him to believe in the influence of this force for good, will select his evidence according to its beauty and balance ; while that writer whose cyni- cal temperament inclines him to believe in the in- fluence of this force for evil, will select his evidence according to its ugliness and abnormality. One writer hopes that doubt will be cleared and faith stim- ulated by such investigation; while another believes that by the same investigation ancient superstition will receive its death-blow. No other scientific work seems to strike its roots thus, through the intellect, into the obscure depths of heredi- tary tendency and emotional bias. It seems too much to ask of us being what we are, the children of our fathers to handle the material bearing on the reli- gious life coolly and impersonally. Yet an approach to impersonal coolness must be made if any real work on this topic is ever to be done. Man, hitherto, has made it the battleground of his passions ; surely, in this tolerant age, he should be able to go soberly to and fro, and decide how much of it is worth his con- test. The field lies open to certain fundamental and searching queries. What are the manifestations, in an individual, of the force we name religion? What reasons have we for thinking these particular mani- festations are due to that particular force and not to some other force? How do we know them to be re- ligious? Since we can judge this force only through its effects, and since each one of us during his life can come into contact with but few of these effects, how can we be sure that we are correct in ascribing 16 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS them to that cause ? What are the recognizable symp- toms of the religious experience? These are vital questions, and it is worth while to attend to them, even if most of us, being what we are, should fail to give an answer. At least, we may examine the material at hand, since such examination is a part of " the proper study of mankind. " A word as to the plan of approach: Since the mo- tive-power of this documentary material lies in cer- tain impulses and faculties, which, in themselves, have had no small influence over the trend of literature and philosophy, the first two sections of this work have been devoted to their better understanding. The im- pulse toward confession, and the faculty of introspec- tion by which such impulse is usually accompanied, are here discussed in their Jmmder .asp&cts. The rec- ords are next approached through an analysis of their main characteristics and are related to the groups or sects from which they have emanated. Then the data in the records are classified under separate heads, in such manner that the reader himself may follow the progress of the religious experience in every phase, from its first indication to its termination. A thor- ough comprehension of underlying conditions, together with the cases which they have produced, is essential to the reader's grasp of the final, theoretical sections. Distinct as these seem in treatment and manner, their conclusions are based upon the preceding material without which they must lack stability and authority. The bearing of the data on the fundamental question of the existence and meaning of religious instinct, is the raison d'etre of its collection and of this book. II CONFESSION AND APOLOGIA I. 1. Confession in ancient religions, Egyptian, Baby- lonian, Islamic, Vedie, Manu. 2. Buddhistic, Greek, Hebrew. 3. The early Church, Origen. 4. Rite of Exomologesis, libelli, Loyola, Abelard, Othloh. 5. Augustin and his imitators. 6. Port-Royal, Petrarch. II. 1. The confessional impulse; publicity as privacy. 2. Relation of thought and speech. 3. Power of ideas; exaggeration; Macaulay, Shelley, Morley. III. 1. The classic apologia. 2. Rufinus and Jerome; the personal note. 3. Middle Ages, testamenta, apologia, confessiones. 4. The mystics and their records. 5. Hamilton and the Reynolds Pamphlet. 6. Development of the modern personal apology. II CONFESSION AND APOLOGIA MOST of us are so well accustomed to the phenomena of our conscious being that its common miracles of thought and emotion no longer rouse astonishment. Now and again, however, one of us will call the others to some appreciation of these imperious wonders, as Stevenson, when he found the universal ideal of duty " strange to the point of lunacy." 1 The uneasi- ness of thought concealed, the pain of having some- thing " on one's mind," the relief when one is rid of it these rank surely among our most familiar mental sensations, without which no one of us can live for long. Yet how often do we ask ourselves why this should be ? Why is there, for most of us, an un- easiness in the fact of concealment, and why does the act of confession bring so definite a relief? "What is the reason that our thoughts are, on the whole, so difficult to hide, and so easy to avow? People exist, of course, in whom this impulse counts for little ; to whom concealment is more natural than avowal. Yet this temperament is rare and is regarded as apart from the common human type. And what is the reason? Is nature a moralist in this respect, laying some vital prohibition on the hiding of the truth ? Whence spring those impulses which urge us 19 20 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS to tell what we know ? That we are so urged is matter of human history, and is traceable long before the time religion caused the impulse to crystallize into the shape of ritual. To-day we associate the idea of confession wholly with confession of sin, and with that group of ideas concerning penitence and submission. And yet its presence in that group is not readily accounted for. Has human nature elaborated an idea having a source purely artificial and ritualistic; or rather, has ritual seized upon and elaborated an idea sprung from a fundamental need of human nature? To the impulse toward confession and its evolu- tion, much in literature is owing, and this fact is a suf- ficient warrant to justify any formal enquiry into its nature and origin. Nor could there be a better intro- duction to such an inquiry than an historical survey of its presence in its technical religious form. Brief as this survey will be, it should at least serve to con- nect in the reader's mind the auricular, with the writ- ten confessions of the past; a formal act of penitence and submission, with that spontaneous, individual, even, if one will, rebellious, movement of the suffering human soul. The rite of confession of sin in the Christian Church has a direct, concrete bearing on the genesis of the written confession, and its significance is shown by its great antiquity. Public confession of wrongdoing was current in the ritual of the ancient religions, although holding no such important place therein as it came later to acquire in the Christian ritual. The confes- sion-idea, however, will be found manifest in some CONFESSION AND APOLOGIA 21 very curious and suggestive forms. In the religion of ancient Egypt, for instance, it is connected with that elaborate trial of the soul after death of which we possess full records. The dead soul was obliged to make a curious "plea" or "negative confession,'* when it came before Osiris and forty-two other judges in Amenti. 2 " I have not told falsehoods," pleaded the soul, awaiting judgment, "I have not done any wicked thing. ... I have not murdered. ... I have not done fraud to men. ..." And so on, through a catalogue of acts and deeds, ending, * * I am pure . . . I am pure ... I am pure!" This formula appeared to have a cleansing and absolving significance, and was evidently not intended to be taken literally. Then followed a positive confes- sion addressed to the gods of the underworld. " I live upon right and truth," the soul declared. . . . "I have performed the commandments of men. . . . I have given bread to the hungry man . . ," 3 And the same idea was repeated in a litany or hymn to Osiris, which formed part of the ceremony of the soul's reception. Each verse ends, "For I am just and true, I have not spoken lies wittingly nor have I done aught with deceit." 4 After such formulas the soul was weighed and admitted. The Babylonian religion had a conventionalized form of confession which does not appear to have expressed any individual appeal, although the Baby- lonian penitential hymns contain certain forms of con- fession of suffering, wherein the supplicant, who has failed to fulfil the law, bewails his sin. 5 But there 22 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS is little likeness to any modern spiritual confession in these forms, nor in that avowal of guilt which was required by the ritual of Zoroastrianism. 6 The faith of Islam is too objective to make any such requirement of confession of sin as it made of fighting for the Prophet. The Koran makes but an insignificant ref- erence to this spiritual need; and in truth, humility was not insisted upon by Mahomet save under certain special conditions. It is interesting to contrast Islam, in this respect, with the various religions of India, whose deeply introspective character caused them to lay great stress on the idea of self-examination and confession of sinful act and thought. This is clearly developed in the collections of Sacred Books. Manu says : * ' In proportion as a man who has done wrong himself confesses it, even so far is he freed from guilt as a snake from its slough. ' ' 7 There will also be found in one of the Vedas (the ceremonial code of the Brahmans) the statement that, "when con- fessed, the sin becomes less because it becomes truth." 6 The Mahavagga of the Palis contains the sentence: "For this is called progress in the dis- cipline of the Noble One [i.e., the disciple of Buddha], if one sees his sin in its sinfulness, and duly makes amends for it, and refrains from it in future." 9 Upon the idea of the value of self-examination were founded the practices of the Buddhist "Samgha" a confraternity of monks, who, at stated intervals, made confession one to another according to a fixed form. 10 Such a rite is familiar to the Christian, who will not have forgotten that it is advocated by St. James, in no uncertain words. 11 To find that the earlier Buddhist CONFESSION AND APOLOGIA 23 doctrines had so clear an idea of the need for self- study and confession as an aid to religious develop- ment, would seem to prove that the religions of India had passed through their subjective period long before the Western world came into contact with them ; 12 and before such ideas as these crystallized into mere for- malism. The naturally introspective cast of the Orien- tal mind tended to adopt all such religious practices, although they have later developed the more mystical at the expense of the less. Definite public confession was enjoined by the Greeks under certain circumstances, when it was ad- dressed to an oracle or to a priest. "In the days of Socrates, " recounts Plutarch, "Lysander consulted the oracle at Samothrace, and was told by the priest to confess the worst actions of his life. 'Is it thou who commandest this,' he asked, 'or the gods?' The priest replied, 'It is the gods.' 'Then at once retire,' said Lysander, 'that I may answer the gods!' " 13 This anecdote displays a typical situation as re- gards the confession; i.e., the priestly effort to make use of it as a weapon for the benefit of the hierarchy, with the ensuing resentment of a certain kind of penitent. Moreover, it is precisely this Lysander-type whose influence has been set against the practice from the beginning and continues until the present day. A masterful man is willing to confess to God, but not to the priest; and had there been more examples of this temperament, the control of the confessional would have lapsed more slowly into priestly hands. Early ideas of submission and of discipline, with the early lack of individualism, made this control inevitable; 24 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS but that Lysander and his like existed and must be reckoned with, cannot be ignored when the origin of the written confession is to be discussed. 14 From very early times, the Jews made confession on the eve of Day of Atonement. The form which they recited differs little from that employed by Chris- tianity; and involved an act of atonement, just as, later on, the penitent will be found making a rich gift to the Church. But the Hebrew confession was less in- dividual than national; the people, as one penitent, could and did make confession of their sin. 15 From the evidence of the Old Testament, this movement seems to have sprung from a deep and spontaneous emotion of patriotism; and its impressiveness had, doubtless, much to do with its later influence over the penitential system of the Church. The emotional Aramean, who beat his breast and confessed his sin, presented a more vivid picture of remorse than the pagan world was accustomed to behold. Thus, many of the rites and formulas, which served to heighten the emotional appeal of Christianity, were retained there- in, despite their origin. The Jewish confession does not seem to have been often a written document; but preserved its public and national character. Unquestionably, this was at first also the character of the Christian confession. It was enjoined by the Church as a public, penitential, and disciplinary formula, without any individual sig- nificance whatever, and this fact must be remembered when the reader plunges into the vast literature of the Christian ritual. There was no need for Lysander to protest in those days. By the time public confession CONFESSION AND APOLOGIA 25 of sin had become a regular sacrament of the Church, its disadvantages were manifest and its use had begun to create scandal; while to regularize the practice by private confession had become inevitable. 10 The pe- riod of transition, according to scholars, is somewhat vague ; for the Church long wavered between her defi- nite dogmatic necessities and the authority of certain texts, which, though clear in their general meaning, were yet not specific. 17 In the first and second centuries confession pre- ceded baptism. "The pardon symbolized by the baptismal rite," says Dr. Lea, 18 "was only to be earned by a cleansing of the heart, confession of sin to God and earnest repentance. ..." This confes- sion, which was supposed to be public and voluntary, was to be rewarded by a mitigation of that penalty which the sinner incurred as discipline, at the hands of the Church. 19 Nor would the Church, even at this date, have permitted so high-handed an action as that of Lysander : she was already jealous of her authority. "Public confession and public penance were the only process then recognized by the Church;" while Ori- gen 20 in his "Homilies" recommends the penitent to lay bare his soul to some expert in whom he has confi- dence. It appears to be the influence of Origen, rather than the action of Pope Calixtus, which systematized defin- itively the rite of confession. The former had in- stituted it in 218 A.D. ; 21 but the rite of Exomologesis, as it is called, and as it appears in the old Armenian service-books, was but a repetition of the rite of bap- tism, involving confession, but involving much else 26 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS beside. The confession-idea, in reality, was therefore but a part of the whole penitential system it had no such importance as it afterwards received, and some historians even make no separate mention of it. 22 Origen planned the different steps and stages of pen- ance as "contrition, satisfaction, and self -accusation or confession." 23 During the transition period, to which we have just alluded, this confession varied. Sometimes "it was private before the bishop or priest, sometimes public before the whole congregation, Public confession was demanded of persons who were guilty of grievous public sins"; unless the recital of such sins would tend to create scandal. In other words, the bishops were required to use their own judgment; in special cases they are found consulting their diocesan counselor, or asking the advice by letter of their brother-bishops. Such was the situation regarding confession of sin, in which the penitent Christian convert of the first and second centuries found himself. The public re- cital of his crimes was no doubt even then largely con- ventional, consisting, as it now does, in the repeti- tion of a set formula. But his vital offences were obliged to have a private hearing ; and this latter prac- tice so personal, so intimate, fed the Church 's growing need of power to knit together her isolated con- gregations. For this reason, if for no other, the practice of auricular private confession was encour- aged. 24 Yet so many of the devout shared the objec- tion of Lysander that progress in this direction was felt to be provokingly slow; the cases remaining scanty, indeed, even in the third century. 25 The CONFESSION AND APOLOGIA 27 custom was held to be salutary for the penitent, and a wholesome exercise in the development of self-re- straint, but since Dr. Lea writes that it was far from common as late as 850 A.D., one may judge of its in- frequency in the days of Augustin. The name of the great Bishop brings us without further parley to the immediate point of departure between the spoken and the written confession. While his influence on the latter is profound, it formed but a part of his general influence on the whole pen- itential system of the Church; while the breadth and force of this personal and intellectual influence is difficult to overestimate. "In the Decretum of Gra- tian, no less than 607 canons are taken from his works. St. Paul furnished but 408. It was on Augustin rather than on Paul that the schoolmen built. " * 6 So writes the historian, not omitting to note that in the "Confessiones," Augustin had laid a foundation upon which not only the Church, but the whole world of thought was to build. The modern student of philosophy 27 sees in Augus- tin "a virtuoso of self -observation and self -analysis "; and to the open-minded reader his greatest book is charged with the vital power of literary genius, and full of the zeal and color with which genius informs a new idea. This literary quality must not be for- gotten, because it is a factor only recently acknowl- edged as responsible for the book's success. To find in publicity all the sacredness of the confessional, is Augustin 's new idea; and his genius pours forth his sin and his humility, his love and his joy, "in the ears of the believing sons of men." While it is easy to 28 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS realize the effect upon the sensitive mind of such con- fidences as these, and to understand how literature at large came to regard them, yet their immediate result was not literary but theological, heightening the im- portance of Exomologesis in the eyes of the Church. There has never been a shorter and more inevi- table road to power than that furnished by the confes- sional. 28 The rule laid down by Gregory of Nyssa "mitigated all penance to those persons who volunta- rily revealed any sin not before known, and who sought a remedy. " 29 Gradually the practice became regular- ized after the penitent had been taught the means of duly expressing his humility. The word confessio meant also memoria, the burial-place of a martyr, or the shrine of a reliquary ; and in this manner the idea of revealing something precious and hidden became identified with the idea of a self -revelation. It is not easy to state when the practice of writing the confession developed; doubtless in the beginning it was the necessary result of the distances which separated the members of those early isolated con- gregations. Libelli (as these written records were called) came to be read aloud in church to spare the personal mortification of the penitent. 30 St. Basil, who advocated this custom, states that he received such a written record from a woman in Caesarea, of high rank but very evil life, who, in this manner, laid con- fession of her sins before the Lord. 81 In the ninth century, Robert of Le Mans, when sick unto death, sent a written statement of his sins to the Bishop, and received absolution in the same way. 32 But by the thirteenth century the written records were CONFESSION AND APOLOGIA 29 forbidden, and the rule finally established that all con- fession must be auricular. Dr. Lea, however, reminds us that the practice itself did not become annually ob- ligatory on the faithful until the year 1216, in the reign of Pope Innocent III. 33 With the history of auricular confession this study has little to do. After it has been related to the special document with which it is our business to deal, the evolution of the practice does not greatly con- cern us. The fathers differed widely in their opinion of its value, and these opinions furnish a suggestive commentary upon their personalities. Abelard is not sure it is always desirable ; St. Bernard is never weary extolling its virtues. 3 * Long after private confession had superseded the older public form, that form sur- vived when men made confession to one another, in crises where no priest was to be had. 35 This act had the warrant of St. James, and more than one autobiog- raphy of the Middle Ages make mention of the oc- currence. "When the expected day of battle came," writes Loyola, "he made his confession to one of the nobles who had often fought by his side, and who, in turn, also confessed to him." 36 To a similar impulse is due Abelard 's letter, "Historia Calamitatum"; while Abbot Othloh of St. Emmeran writes a detailed account lest death should prevent him from making a full oral confession. 37 No better proof could be given of the penitent's deep 'humility and sincere repent- ance. Other mediaeval expedients show the depth of this feeling. The nun, Maria Maddalena de' Pazzi, was used to kneel in the chapel and, after repeating certain psalms, to recite aloud her faults of the day, 30 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS addressing herself directly to God. In a phraseology full of touching humility and beauty, she accused her- self of negligence and of preoccupation with things of the flesh. Her very simplest thoughts, she felt, were wholly unworthy of her Lord. "Deja, mon Dieu, la nuit arrive, et je n'ai rien fait encore sans vous offenser!" 38 was her avowal. And no doubt there were many to follow her pious example. The intensity of this desire to confess will be felt by even the most casual student of these days. Au- gustin 's influence, both literary and theological, had been to vitalize all penitential practices with the breath of emotion, and to stimulate them by his liter- ary genius. His work lent the penitent a sacredness which he has not lost even to-day ; a sacredness which Augustin felt to be inherent in his own humility and love of the Divine. No cold array of dogmas could possibly have roused the sinful man to a sense of his sinfulness, as does this personal contact with the soul of another man who is at once his fellow-sinner and his guide. What the Church owes Augustin on this one count is incalculable, since he provided a means whereby the Lysanders of this world may be brought to their knees without a loss of self-respect. That there are yet other sources affecting both the production and the character of these documents, cannot be forgotten, and they are to receive, in their turn, full considera- tion at our hands. Yet, when all is said and done, it may be doubted if they are more powerful than the personal appeal of the "Confessions." The author's understanding of human nature is equal to his pity, and both are based on real experience. No figment of CONFESSION AND APOLOGIA SI life had he lived the Bishop of Hippo ! He knew the horror of the sinner and the exaltation of the saved. He had realized to the full a Vedic saying, "that, when confessed, the sin becomes less, because it be- comes truth" : and he felt in his own proper person the "purifying influence of public confession" by which ' ' hope in lies is forever swept away. ' ' 39 In treating his " Confessions" as a perfect type of this document, one desires to do away with those clouds which the misinterpretation of centuries has caused to dim its brilliant surface. Perfect con- fession is indeed rare and difficult and distrusted of men. According to Ramon de Penafort it must be "bitter, speedy, complete, and frequent." 40 So hard is it for an active, objective mind to grasp the princi- ples of self-examination that it tends to confuse the practice with an unhealthy self-depreciation. Along with reverence for Augustin, distrust of Augustin's introspection has gone hand in hand for centuries, and it has so permeated many minds that we find the edition prepared for general reading has most of the self -study expurgated. It is a shock to the Church, it is a shock to the average reader, to find so great a figure making an avowal of this and that, with such a great humility. But to another type of mind this avowed kinship is as the breath of life; nor can Au- gustin have lacked the knowledge that herein lay the great value of his work. No book has been more studied, and to less purpose; no book has been more read, and is less really known. The world, for a thousand years and more, has tried to open these doors without a key. Just as in the case of Jerome Cardan's 32 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS very different but equally candid life, 41 the world has been obliged to wait until science gave it both the facts and the knowledge of how to apply them, which it needed to elucidate the writer's statements. Meanwhile, a mountain of exegesis, criticism, and so- called interpretation has been piled upon the "Con- fessions." The favorite attitude of critic and com- mentator insists that the "Confessions" are not auto- biographical at all and were never intended by the author to be thought so. The Church is very strong upon this view, chiefly, it would seem, to preserve the great Father's sanctity; and in order that the vulgar shall not have the satisfaction or the scandal of be- lieving that he lied, or stole, or dwelt "in a chaldron of unholy loves." As he is St. Augustin, argues the Church, he cannot have done these things. He must have exaggerated his trifling peccadilloes, because we have canonized him. The logic here is the logic of the cleric, but its effect has so deeply permeated the his- tory of the subject as to have an unfortunate result for the written confession in general. For Augus- tin 's supposed exaggeration has, of course, been made a text for the exaggeration of his followers, without the churchly reasoning being taken into account. Quite apart from questions of hierarchical policy, Augustin has suffered, with many another, from that passion of the commentator for the involved, indirect explanation, invented by himself, instead of the simple, direct explanation furnished by the words of the subject. 42 Even in the English standard edi- tion, the translator is found to have made the impor- tant discovery that the "Confessions" are only "con- CONFESSION AND APOLOGIA 33 fessions of praise. " This is based on an observation of Augustin in his exposition of the Psalms, that * ' Confessions of sin all know, but confessions of praise few attend to." These words, together with the un- dercurrent of worship and praise carrying along the music of the prose, satisfy this editor that Augustin did not intend to tell all about himself. One is roused in these latter days to a weary im- patience when it comes to combating such artificial views as these, but it must be done, since they prevent us from seeing our subject as it really is. From the standpoint of reverence which should have weight with many it would seem very little to listen and believe what Augustin tells us. "We know his heart to beat with ours, we have the best of human reasons to feel his truth and his sincerity; let us be confident, then, that he did what he says he did, and that he confessed his sins when he declares that he confessed them. The words are there in all their poignancy, and the man who wrote them did not write for the purpose of hiding his real meaning. More- over, it is not difficult to decide whether or not the "Confessions" form a genuine autobiography. We have but to compare the body of facts which the book contains with the body of facts obtainable from other sources. If the book be not intended as an autobiog- raphy, then these facts will necessarily be fewer and less essential than the outside facts; and we should be able to gain just as clear a picture of the man if he had never written any confessions at all. A rapid examination of the different chapters will show, better than any words, how exceedingly rich 34, RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS they are in personal data. In his first book Augnstin presents a minute analysis of his childish development, not omitting such details as his prayer to God that he might not be flogged. 43 Book II contains a study of the crisis of puberty; and after that a careful description of his education. 44 Book III opens with one of the most striking pictures in all literature of the effect of life and art upon a vivid, youthful imagina- tion; its new joy in ideas, and chiefly in the drama, whence came, he declares, "my love of griefs/' 45 If his purpose, indeed, was not primarily autobiograph- ical, why these analyses ? Whence these details ? They serve no purpose in the scheme of a "confession of praise. " Let the reader compare them with Rous- seau ; or their vitality of ideas with the similar youth- ful vitality displayed in such letters as those of Shel- ley 46 or the young Goethe, and he will see that the re- ligious purpose has not been allowed to interfere with the intention of sincere self -study. Later, in depicting his period of temptation through the senses, Augus- tin's self -observation is remarkably full and valuable. He tells of his indifference to perfume, his fondness for music, his delight in beautiful imaginings and colors, and "that vain and curious longing" which he terms the "lust of the eye for things hidden." 47 There are similar details given in such highly secular studies as Cardan's, 48 and the "De Profundis" 49 of Oscar Wilde, and for the same reason, i.e., that the writer may "be known to the reader as he really is. Augus- tin's whole book, in truth, loses meaning if it be re- garded in the sense insisted upon by the religious world as that of a mere penitential handbook of prayer and CONFESSION AND APOLOGIA 35 praise. Such prayer and praise it contains in full measure, 50 but they are intended to be secondary and should be so regarded. Moreover, the power and influence of Augustin 's "Confessions" over the world of literature has been maintained for no other reason than their sincerity and truthful information. Prayer and praise have their own beauty and place, but they make no such universal appeal to man as do the works which add to his stock of knowledge. In vain has the Church warned the faithful that he must not dare to suppose Augustin lived in sin simply because he says that he did; the human heart knows better. It knows that for one exaggeration of an error, a man will write ten understatements. It feels exactly what Augustin meant when he cried out to God; "Accept the sacri- fice of my confession by the agency of my tongue. ' ' 51 And it echoes and reechoes the words of his humility through all the years to the present, when yet another sinner repeats them: "A man's very highest moment is, I have no doubt, when he kneels in the dust and beats his breast, and tells all the sins of his life. ' ' 52 "What, then, have I to do with men that they should hear my confession ? ' ' Augustin asks of future genera- tions. "A people curious to know the lives of others, but slow to correct their own. ' ' 53 To-day we wonder if his wildest dreams showed him to what extent this estimate was true. The effect of the "Confessions" during certain eras became a sort of spiritual conta- gion ; and a volume would be all too small to hold its manifestations. Of M. de Saint-Cyran the Port-Roy- alist, we read, for instance, that he "plunged and re- 36 KELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS plunged, lost himself in this writer. ' ' B * Sainte-Beuve speaks with weariness of "toute cette serie d'ouvrages, qui sont les l Confessions' de St. Augustin seculari- sees et profanees"; 65 while he compares its influence in literature to one other only, that of the man with- out God, Montaigne. In one of the most beautiful of his familiar letters, 56 Petrarch describes the effect upon himself of an ex- perience which in his day was practically unique, the ascent of a mountain. For us to-day, who rejoice in the large freedom of nature, to whom no peak ap- pears unconquerable, it is hard to realize what such an action meant in the fourteenth century. Petrarch's ascent of Mont Ventoux has been called an "epoch- making act," but our modern mind finds itself less in- terested in the deed than in the thoughts which the poet took with him to that windy height. ' ' At first, ' ' he writes, "owing to the unaccustomed quality of the air and the effect of the great sweep of view ... I stood like one dazed. I beheld the clouds under our feet, and what I had read of Athos and Olympus seemed less incredible as I myself witnessed the same thing from a mountain of less fame. ... Then a new idea took possession of me, and I shifted my thoughts to a consideration of time rather than place. * To- day it is ten years since, having completed thy youthful studies, thou didst leave Bologna. ... In the name of immutable wisdom, think what alterations in thy char- acter this intervening period has beheld!' ... I am not yet in a safe harbor where I can calmly recall past storms. The time may come when I can review in due order all the experiences of the past, saying with St. CONFESSION AND APOLOGIA 37 Augustine, 'I desire to recall my foul actions and the carnal corruption of my soul, not because I love them, but that I may the more love thee, my God ! ' " 57 How naturally did these words of Augustin rise in Petrarch's heart, how readily did he yield himself to that poignant influence ! "I rejoiced in my progress. ' * he proceeds, "mourned my weaknesses, and commis- erated the universal instability of human conduct. . . . The sinking sun and the lengthening shadows of the mountain were already warning us that the time was near at hand when we must go. ... While I was thus dividing my thoughts, now turning my attention to some terrestrial object that lay before me, now rais- ing my soul, as I had done my body, to higher planes, it occurred to me to look into my copy of St. Augus- tine's * Confessions/ a gift that I owe to your love, and that I always have about me. ... I opened the compact little volume, small, indeed, in size, but of infinite charm, with the intention of reading whatever came to hand. . . . Where I first fixed my eyes it was written : ' And men go about to wonder at the heights of the mountains, and the mighty waves of the sea, and the wide sweep of rivers, and the circuit of the ocean, and the revolution of the stars, but themselves they consider not/ ' It would seem to us who read these words that the revelation which came on the top of Mont Ventoux to the first of modern men is hardly less important than that which came to the lawgiver on Sinai. All about him were spread the glories of this world, and they were as nothing compared to the wonder of self. ' ' I closed the book, ' ' he adds, ' ' angry with myself that I should still be admiring earthly 38 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS things, who might long ago have learned even from the pagan philosophers that nothing is wonderful but the soul. ... I turned my inward eye upon myself, and from that time not a syllable fell from my lips until we reached the bottom again. Those words had given me occupation enough. . . . " 58 In this passage the world may almost be said to come of age; the mind of man, if we permit Petrarch to personify it for us, attains maturity. The touch of Augustin has led many another to that threshold since, but no one has described the crisis more beautifully. "The face of all the world is changed, I think, Since first I heard the footsteps of thy soul Move still, oh, still, beside me . . ." <"> has been the cry of the devout heart to the Bishop of Hippo, from almost every reader of his great "Con- fessions." Later in his life, Petrarch definitely imi- tates them, and, by the practice of self-examination, "laid open the secret uncleanness of my transgres- sions," 60 not once but many times. And from Pe- trarch's day it shall be our task to mark the footsteps of the saint, as he walks through these pages beside the souls of men. With the appearance of Augustin 's book, a means was indicated to the sincere and introspective man, whereby he might, as it were, make his confession di- rect to God. Such a man must have felt very early the inadequacy, for his soul's needs, of the auricular confession; and that he did so feel is shown by the rapid growth of the written record. Dr. Lea 61 has fully determined (though the question is somewhat CONFESSION AND APOLOGIA 39 beside our present business) that the salutary effect of confession largely ceased when addressed in private to a single priest. Too much power had been deliv- ered into priestly hands; while the confession itself tended to lose spontaneity. Similar objections may be raised to the questionnaire method in general, wherever it obtains, and whether it be applied by re- ligion or by science, by the confessor, or by the psy- chologist. 62 But at the moment this question does not concern us. What we wish to emphasize is the recognition by Augustin, in the fourth century, of a fundamental psychological fact, and his own admirable use of it for the purpose of leading souls to God. From this recognition we may date the appearance, in litera- ture, of the * ' Conf essant ' ' himself. The term is used and sanctioned by Bacon in order to escape the ambiguity of the word ' ' Confessor, " which, as we have seen, may indicate both the penitent and the priest to whom the confession is addressed. From this time on, we shall make use of Bacon's term in discussing the person with whom it is the object of this book to deal. The confessant, as he appears in these pages, is personally, at least, the direct result of the influence of Augustin. That human impulse to "cleanse the stuff 'd bosom of that perilous stuff which weighs upon the heart, ' ' 63 first really understood by the Bishop of Hippo, is re- sponsible for more than one philosophic and literary tendency. Reading the "Confessions" from this point of view, the author's subtlety of understanding seems freshly amazing, so does it outrun the develop- 40 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS ment of the surrounding civilized world. Modern to the last degree, both in its expansions as in its reti- cences, it proves at least the familiarity of the idea of self -study to the more cultivated minds of that time. Dr. Lea has exhaustively portrayed the Church's effort to utilize this human impulse in a social-religious attempt to bind together its congrega- tions; but he nowhere suggests that such an attempt was other than instinctive. It seemed simply a part of the natural effort at unification, for the purpose of self-preservation. If we know all about each other's sins and errors, then we must stand and fall to- gether. A solidarity is at once formed, based on mutual understanding and mutual leniency, and this solidarity was the pressing and immediate need of the Church for several centuries. Later conditions tended to conventionalize this idea into a ritual, but in this universal human impulse the Church found a weapon which it did not scruple to use for its own purposes and the purposes, supposedly, of Heaven. How may one best define this universal human im- pulse? Though we know it to be influential upon al- most all branches of literature, yet, by scholars, it has been practically ignored. "All men have a natural impulse to communicate their inward feelings and sen- sations," writes a modern investigator. "The desire to 'tell all about it 9 produces intense satisfaction of the emotions. Suppression of it involves a tension . . . and a general uneasiness. Criminals are not seldom led by this impulse to confess offenses committed long before. This impulse is quite a normal one, and be- longs in some measure to every man." 64 The writer CONFESSION AND APOLOGIA 41 adds that in poets and artists this feeling is apt to be intensified, although he does not tell us why ; and our ease-list more or less confirms his observation. In the simple fact of suppression, involving tension and un- easiness, lies the whole religious situation of the con- verted individual. The practice of written confession, as we have seen, composed in heart-searching privacy, permits the con- fessant to gain all the benefit, all the exaltation, of the confession-idea, without the humiliation attend- ing upon the auricular form; it encourages self -disci- pline and self-knowledge, without weakening the in- dividual will. So long as the Church, recognizing the soul's impulse to "tell all about it," made use of that impulse for the health of the soul itself, just so long was a direct means provided for a human need. But the moment that the Church began to use the confession-idea, if only partially, for its own bene- fit and that of its confessors, at once the practice de- generated into tyranny of a peculiarly hateful sort. No necessity is there to repeat in these pages the de- tails of that tyranny and the protests against it ; 65 the reader sees for himself at once that the independent mediaeval mind must needs have found another chan- nel for its impulse to "tell all about it." Even Au- gustin, in the fourth century, knew this; and under his influence the written confession sprang into being, supplying in a measure the place of that general, public avowal which prevailed in the naif beginnings of the early Church. For public opinion to which such a record is con- fided is safer than the seal of the confessional. 42 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS Men may securely tell their sins to a collective body of their fellow-men; such confidence presupposes a very sacredness of privacy. That this paradox is true is proven by the nature of some of the sins thus entrusted to the printed page, by such confessants as Abelard 66 and Cardan, such self -students as Ben- venuto Cellini and Rousseau. The feeling which realizes that this privacy is real because it is also publicity, forms a part of the autobiographical inten- tion toward sincerity, which is one of the basic ideas of self -study in autobiography. 67 The origins of the written confession, therefore, are seen to be social, literary, and psychological ; and these must receive due consideration, since the religious self- study is in a measure evolved from all of them. At the moment, our purpose is but to establish the con- nection between the ritual and the document, with the effect on both of the work of Augustin. When that original, human impulse to * ' tell all about it ' ' had familiarized itself with a form of expression provided for its aid by the builders of the early Church, a fresh impetus was given to all similar forms. Hence Augustin 's " Confessions" introduced to the confes- sion proper the autobiographical intention and idea. It was plain that a full sincerity involved giving the complete history of the subject, the sources of his sin, the progress of his conversion-process. A definite plan of self -study thus came to be formulated. Au- gustin not only taught this self -study to be full and sincere, but furnished an imperishable classic by the way of example, and one which was to be followed by the most enthusiastic imitation. Through him, the CONFESSION AND APOLOGIA 43 religious record became the natural means of expres- sion for the emotions of the Middle Ages. Since the day of the Bishop of Hippo, the further evolution of this type has been comparatively slow. Already has it been noted that the derivation of the confession-idea from paganism was hardly more than formal; and that in the more ancient religions it lacked both in vitality and personal appeal. Its vital conception is purely the flower of Augustin's genius. Modern exponents have added but little: more facts, perhaps ; a clearer understanding of what was seen ; better comparison in the matter of case and case; nothing more. There are more minds of an introspective cast to-day, owing to the tendency and development of modern thought, yet their records have added but little to the form bequeathed by Augustin. His fascination over their imaginations has endured for nearly one thousand years, while his method of self-revelation has proved more satisfying than that of the confessional. To its disciplinary effect, since it requires an equally stringent self-ex- amination, there are many to testify; while the ugli- ness of the written sin constitutes no light penance for the sensitive mind. Many temperaments are aided and uplifted by this act of confession; it is their natural need, and may be the only hold which goodness has upon them. Lit- erature is filled with examples to show that the impulse may become overmastering, such as the cases in ' ' The Scarlet Letter," or in Dostoievski's " Crime and Pun- ishment. ' ' 68 But it does not need examples so melo- dramatic to bring this truth home to us. What 44 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS mother has not had the startling yet sacred experience of hearing a sensitive child make sudden and volun- tary confession? Some evil act which may be wholly unsuspected or some evil thought which has been too long suppressed serves to set up an unbear- able tension and uneasiness. Is not this what De Quincey meant when he wrote, "If in this world there is one misery having no relief, it is the pressure on the heart from the Incommunicable. And . . . what burden is that which only is insupportable by human fortitude ? I should answer ... it is the bur- den of the Incommunicable. ' ' 69 True, indeed, it is that * ' For him who confesses, shams are over and reali- ties are begun. " 70 The soul's endeavor to purge itself is an impulse so definite and so universal at certain stages in its development, that to determine these stages forms a valuable point of departure for a psychological analysis. The question asked at the outset of this chapter will not have been forgotten by the reader. When we turn to science and enquire why the act of confes- sion should bring a relief so intense to the mind and spirit, the mental physiologist has an answer ready. If it seem an answer more or less theoretical, one must not forget that the whole subject, after all, is still in the realm of hypothesis and theory, and that a categorical reply cannot in the nature of things be given until there is a further advance in the study of the mental phenomena. Yet much has been de- termined. By recent experiment it has been shown that the connection between our speech and our ideas is closer than we used to think; that the latter, indeed, CONFESSION AND APOLOGIA 45 is practically dependent upon the former; and that upon the faculty of language our whole intellectual fabric really rests. 71 Many philosophers have suggested this dependence in the past. From Abelard to Humboldt, it has been the favorite paradox of the bolder mind. But it can never have been more than a paradox, a sug- gestion, until the modern experiments in the study of the deaf-mute revealed its possibilities as a truth. These studies have demonstrated at least one fact; i.e., that the person deprived of the faculty of speech (and this includes, of course, any possibility of hear- ing and understanding speech) is deprived as well of those mental images which are associated with lan- guage. Lacking the means of expression, the subject will be found also lacking in the ideas to express. The teachers of Helen Keller 72 describe her original condition as one almost of idiocy. This woman, who now wields a prose of extraordinary clarity and beauty in the service of the most poetic and complex ideas, as a young child felt none but brute emotions, such as hunger or anger; and was incapable of anything even approaching an abstract conception. By the restoration of the normal channels to thought, very gradually, but very surely, the ideas themselves, first simple, then more elaborate, were evolved and re- stored to their domination in the human scheme. The power of forming a conception is by this example seen to be dependent on the means of expressing it; while language takes its place as the normal and indis- pensable prerequisite to thought. 73 Once possessed of language, man raised himself very 46 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS rapidly above the brute-level, for his every new word became the nucleus for a group of new concepts. Com- municativeness, as such, is therefore his natural tend- ency; his mental capital must be kept constantly in circulation if it is to increase ; and the busy garrulity of the world is a guaranty of its vitality. Further, it is normal, if not inevitable, for speech to utter whatever thought the mind conceives. That restless spirit which we call human cannot lie hid; it must forth or die. After having once attained to a certain degree of vitality, no concept can be suppressed with- out strain. An idea, once formulated in your mind, is a power which must act, and if you fail to give it an outlet by your utterance, it is apt to create a dis- agreeable tension. That these suppressions are ab- normal, that if persisted in they cause a marked un- easiness, that one's natural impulse is to share one's thought or idea with another, we do not need to read in books ; they are matter of daily experience. Such popular phrases as "having something on one's mind," express clearly our perception of this condition. In children, to whom fresh ideas are a continual source of excitement, the strain may become exaggerated. Wholly apart from conduct, many a child cannot eat or sleep normally if it be prevented from "telling mother" of some new idea which has taken a hold upon its mind. A child known to the writer will lie awake for hours under the tension of such a suppression, and be asleep in five minutes after the perplexity has been communicated, even when all explanation has been postponed till morning. Adults have naturally more self-control ; yet literature is filled CONFESSION AND APOLOGIA 47 with the struggles involved by such suppression, when the suppressed idea is one of importance. Bizarre avowals, confessions, and explanations crowd the pages of history; yet we continue to wonder at the candid revelations of Pepys, or Cellini, Ivan the Terrible, or Catherine of Russia, without realizing the power of the law by which they are driven to make them. 74 It has been assumed that the idea must attain to a certain degree of importance in the mind conceiving it. No ideas are more important to most of us than those affecting our own conduct or opinions. A per- son having these under consideration has created a group of ideas concerning self. If he adds thereto dis- satisfaction with himself due to newly aroused reli- gious feeling, immediately this nucleus is charged with emotion, penitence, grief, and humility. Thus height- ened, it becomes an unbearable centre of mental ac- tivity, possessing temporarily all his energies, and in its struggle for expression, distracting the whole poor creature. Hawthorne vividly describes this condition in "The Marble Faun." 75 "I could not bear it," Hilda cries. ' ' It seemed as if I made the awful guilt my own by keeping it hidden in my heart. I grew a fearful thing to myself. I was growing mad ! ' ' The relief when she makes her confession is described as unspeakable, the satisfaction of a great need of the heart, and the passing away of a torture. 76 For a longer or shorter period of time, according to the subject's strength of character and the various crises through which he may pass, this suppression continues, bringing with it an intense misery. The religious crisis forwards the moment of confession by 4,8 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS softening the man's heart and loosening his will. And when, by his first words of avowal, this tension is relaxed, the relief has been compared to the drain- ing of an abscess. Physicians understand this fact so well, in their treatment of many nervous cases, that confessions are not discouraged, and are treated as under the seal. The writer heard not long since how a famous neurologist had treated a woman patient un- successfully for many months ; but after she had con- fessed to a hidden sin, she recovered rapidly. In examples where this impulse is heightened by literary gifts and natural expansiveness, the relief is touched with joy. Not only has a channel been provided through which the pent-up feelings may readily flow, but it is a channel also open to the crea- tive faculties a new outlet for newly acquired powers. Thus Augustin is filled with exultant delight, prais- ing God; thus, too, is Teresa, casting aside her diffi- dence. The sense of serene power, so strong in Cardan's "Life," and in the opening books of Rous- seau's "Confessions," is due to such a combination. Many critics have set this emotion down to piety only, but if we regard it nearly, we will see that it partakes the characteristics of a joy more constant and less subject to fluctuation than the pious joy no less than the happiness of intellectual creation. Were it possible to obtain the data, it would be interesting to determine the usual length of the period of suppression and its cause. These must vary widely. Criminal annals have shown us cases where such a suppression has lasted for many years; and there may, of course, be natures who die unconf essed. CONFESSION AND APOLOGIA 49 But when we realize that the recipient of the confession need only be one other, and that the relief of such confession may be just as great if no action of any kind follow it, we see that it is very doubtful if many men go to their graves carrying with them secrets which no other human being has shared. And if any religious emotion or disturbance enter into one's life at all, its first effect would be unquestionably to rouse and to excite this impulse to confess. The characteristics of the earlier confessions are readily comprehended. Their motive-forces have not changed to-day, although familiarity with the literary form has brought into play the confusing elements of imitation, and the ages have weakened the primal emotions. Still are they being written under the influence of that autobiographical intention, which has been discussed elsewhere, 77 and which has been denned "as writing as though no one in the world were to read it, yet with the purpose of being read/' 78 In the privacy of unveiling the soul to God and so making a fuller revelation to man, the first religious confession was written, and the last will be writ- ten. ' * Columbus, ' ' says Emerson, * ' discovered no isle or key so lonely as himself/' 79 and this is the first discovery of all serious self -study. Charged with a feeling the more intense because of its previous sup- pression, a confessant sits down to "tell all about it" as far as his gifts and powers of expression will permit. We have seen how these differ, and we shall return to this difference, which is important. All confess- ants are not Augustin, nor yet Bunyan, nor yet James Linsley, nor yet John Gratton. But they must and do 50 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS share certain characteristics and tendencies, however wide the variations in individual force. Surely the very act of writing a confession presup- poses that the emotions confessed have dropped from their first height, and reached a secondary stage. This subsidence must not be forgotten, though it gen- erally is ; it is equally true of every feeling described, of love or hate, of pious or criminal passion. The mere fact of writing about it shows that the high- water mark of the emotion itself has been passed. Failure to comprehend this is one of the most potent sources of prevalent misinterpretation of the document. When the confessant writes, "I feel thus and so," a distrust is immediately bred in the mind of the reader, who, finding it impossible to believe that a fellow- creature can so catch his own moods and feelings "on the wing," as it were, communicates this distrust to the matter of the record. Less difficulty is experienced where the writer substitutes the past tense ; remember- ing that all confessions must needs be confessions of something which the mind is able to analyze and sur- vey, i.e., of something past. That in a sensitive nature the mental eye may exaggerate the past experience, is of course true; but it is less common than many have imagined. The reasons why Augustin is accused of it have already been mentioned. Many of us, how- ever, share Macaulay's feeling, that the religious man over-accents his wickedness. " There cannot be a greater mistake," declares Macaulay with his usual emphasis, "than to infer from the strong expressions in which a devout man bemoans his exceeding sinful- ness, that he has led a worse life than his neighbors. CONFESSION AND APOLOGIA 51 Many excellent persons . . . have in their autobiogra- phies and diaries applied to themselves, and doubtless with sincerity, epithets as severe as could be applied to Titus Oates or Mrs. Brownrigg. " 80 Macaulay, with many others, fails to observe that the difference here is not that the converted man has led a worse life than his neighbors, but only that he is now able to recognize it as evil. Bunyan's youth resembles that of many men, yet the moralist does not find it admirable any more than Bunyan did. 81 The early years of Tolstoi differ very little from those spent by other young Russians of his day and so- ciety; but are we required to think, for that reason, that they were well spent? Do we really feel as we read his avowals, or those of Alfieri, for instance, that he exaggerates when he calls that preconverted time immoral ? 82 When John B. Gough describes his drunkard degradation, and George Miiller the vices for which he was arrested, 83 are they exaggerating be- cause they have come to see themselves as others see them? The facts of the case are against Macaulay. And if we shift our standards a little, believing that the eyes which see the hideousness of sin are now open, when before they were closed, then we feel no distrust of the self-depreciation of our great confessants. In one of Shelley's letters, he remarks that "Rous- seau's 'Confessions' are either a disgrace to the con- fessor or a string of falsehoods, and probably the lat- ter. ' ' 84 The ' ' either-or, ' ' in this sentence is very characteristic of Shelley 's hasty and tumultuous mind ; and his criticism well exhibits his inability to see things as they really were. With all his high ideals 52 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS of virtue, his acts yet produced the miserable re- sults of vice; with all his delicate sensitiveness to beauty, his private relations yet show an ugly as- pect ; while the lack of courageous self-knowledge ham- pered him throughout his life. A man like this finds an indelicacy in all real candour, and by temperament would rather never look facts about himself in the face. His attitude toward Rousseau is shared by many, even Lord Morley thinks that the opening sentences of the "Confessions" are blasphemous. 85 Yet it is to such an one, if he be at all open-minded, that the sincere confession is especially addressed, and for whom it has a particular value. It may form, perhaps, his only influence on the subjective side, caus- ing him for once to examine his real state ; "to strip himself bare as Christ stripped himself before cruci- fixion ... to look at the face of his soul in the mir- ror of the virtues of Christ. ' ' 86 Such examination is in itself a religious act, and shows its effect by the impression which these records have produced in times past over minds by no means naturally intro- spective. For the introspective person has his uses, though he will never form one of the majority. He is a develop- ment of the Christian influence, which has for cen- turies worked to produce this special and highly evo- lutionized type of the inward-looking mind. What religion encouraged, on the one hand, science also, with her perpetual questioning and analyzing, encouraged on the other, so that the very word philosophy has to- day become almost a synonym for subjective discus- sion. What result these influences have had upon the CONFESSION AND APOLOGIA 53 evolution of modern man, and modern thought ; upon the recorded inner life of the first, and the special trend of the second, must needs form the subject of a separate chapter. It has been noted that there are other sources for the early religious self -study, and other influences af- fecting its character, upon which we have not yet touched. Before entering on the study of the basic underlying problems of subjectivity and introspection, it were well to consider such of these sources as may be revealed by history. The connotation in our minds of the words " apologia " and " confession" is founded on a very modern rapprochement of the two ideas. When Newman wrote an " Apologia pro Vita sua," he used a title which already carried for his reader an idea beyond mere exposition, and involving excuse. Now, this meaning of excuse is modern and secon- dary, although in a sense it usurps the functions of the primary meaning of exposition. When one examines that group of writings technically known as the ' ' Cor- pus Apologetarum Christianorum, " or the "Body of Christian Apologetics, " he is struck with their im- personal character. A defence of the faith by means of an adequate exposition of its doctrines, this was the original aim of the apologist. To him, there would have been dishonor in the faintest suggestion of ex- cuse. This same intention is maintained here and there in literature, during the Middle Ages, and there are returns to it, occasionally, even to-day. But these returns only serve to mark more strikingly that a new, personal meaning is now attached to the word 54 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS "apology." When Pietro Pomponazzi 87 wrote an "Apologia" for his materialistic tract whose doctrine disagreed with the doctrine of the soul's immortality, one somehow expects to find it contain his personal excuses for his lack of faith. When Sir Leslie Ste- phen 88 calls his volume of essays "An Agnostic's Apol- ogy, ' ' one is somehow surprised to find the term used in its elder sense of doctrinal defence and exposition. How, then, did this idea of defence by exposition come to include that of personal statement and per- sonal confession ? The Greek word means simply the speech of a defendant in reply to that of a prose- cutor. 89 Hence the "Apology" of Socrates, whose de- fiant attitude seems in our minds a very contradic- tion of his titular address. 90 "I am conscious of no guilt, ' ' he declared ; and then entered on certain argu- ments in support of his opinions which permitted him to display his powers in their most characteristic form. 91 There is certainly here no intention of ex- cuse. It has been similarly suggested that Christianity, being a prophetic religion, should not have descended to argument, but should have continued merely to de- clare God's will. The Fathers, however, did not find that a mere declaration sufficed them. During that great second century, when apologetics 92 became prac- tically a science, all literature of this kind begins to change in tone. It displays, in fact, the first effects of that spontaneous evolution from the objective to the subjective which was characteristic of other lines of thought as well. The Fathers may not have known, as we know, that every creed must pass through its CONFESSION AND APOLOGIA 55 apologetic stage, when the energy of its adherents must needs be devoted to doctrinal exposition, defini- tion, and defence. The building of a Church from a creed, of an organization from a set of opinions, is largely dependent upon the manner in which this primary exposition is accomplished. The definition and development of men 's ideas as to the value of such and such a belief, is naturally of the greatest impor- tance in causing that belief to prevail. Christianity possessed an immense advantage in the vitality, the acumen, and the energy of its primary apologists and expositors. It is true that the modern reader will have difficulty in finding a single docu- ment of this large group 93 which bears what he to-day would term an apologetic significance. Their attitude is as sure and unswerving as that of Socrates him- self ; nor must it be forgotten that the whole world stood, at this time, for the prosecutor of Christianity, whose place at the bar was not unlike that of the Greek philosopher, while facing some of the same charges. These disquisitions are almost wholly doctrinal in character, many of them occupied only in the analy- sis of certain moot-points of dogma. The only sugges- tion of personality about them lies in their acrimony.; for the vexation of the writer is an indication that his feelings and his temperament in general are in- volved in the discussion. By the time of the Eenaissance, the classic, i.e., the impersonal, intellectual apology, had grown to be dif- ferentiated from the personal apology. This last was the child of Christian controversy, born of the furious 56 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS zeal of the saints, to whom a difference of opinion on doctrinal points meant life or death. To our greater tolerance there is something strange and unnecessary in this ready anger of the Fathers, which charged their writings with animus, while at the same time it re- moved them even further, if possible, from our pres- ent conception of the sphere of apology. Let us take the famous controversy between Rufinus and Jerome. 04 The former states his attitude toward Manichseanism, with his reasons for making certain interpretations from the works of Origen; the latter directly attacks these views, and gives his reasons therefor. Both adopt an assertive manner quite contrary to what we should now term "apologetic" in any current sense of that word. Rufinus talks of Jerome 's ' ' invectives ' ' and of his "subterfuges of hypocrisy." Jerome re- torts upon "the unprecedented shamelessness" of Rufinus, whom he scruples not to call "a scorpion." Each accuses the other of heresy and of double-deal- ing; each defends himself by accusing the other. 95 When Rufinus asserts that Jerome is still a Cicero- nian, notwithstanding his dream that God accused him of following Cicero more ardently than Christ, Jerome opens the full vials of his irony upon his less cultured opponent. He congratulates Rufinus upon a literary style, so unclassical, so rough and thorny, which shows that he has not been hampered by any love of the classics ! Although Jerome himself has written of his famous dream as a complete conversion to things heavenly; yet he cannot bear that Rufinus should say a word against * ' My Tully ' * ; and immedi- ately rushes to declare, with all heat and defiance, that CONFESSION AND APOLOGIA 57 no sensible person would hold himself to be bound by a promise given in a dream ! Neither of these two men offers any explana- tion of his own views which would convince a modern, unpartisan outsider that he had the right to such a hostile attitude toward the views of the other. Apolo- getic is the least accurate possible word to describe the assaults of Jerome's wit, his irony, vituperation, and impatient energy of refutation. Yet both in his matter and manner, in his imagery and his attack, there is seen the development of a personal note ; and this personal tone is augmented by the introduction of autobiographical details, though these are scattered and slight. 96 Here, then, is the beginning of the personal note in apology ; and of course it is more marked in a nature like that of Jerome than it would be in a cooler head and heart. John Chrysostom 97 makes use of the per- sonal manner, but he is not, like Jerome, introspec- tive. In Justin Martyr, the personal tone has grown into a full personal explanation. The study of early Christian apologetics will not further our purpose in these pages beyond this point. It will be understood that the drill in exegesis which work of this type lent to the powerful intelli- gences of the Fathers tended to expand and heighten the qualities which make for self -study and self -un- derstanding. Jerome and Eufinus may confine their personal exposition to an interchange of vituperation ; Tertullian's voice may thunder down the ages bear- ing his expression of opinion; but the tendency to make personal all religious appeal becomes more 58 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS marked. No man can explain to another a truth very near his own heart without studying his own nature; nor can any one vividly expound his religious views without drawing some picture of their effect upon him- self. An appreciation of this verity is borne in upon us on reading such documents as Justin Martyr's "Dialogue with Trypho," and the apocalyptic "Shep- herd of Hernias." In the former, several paragraphs, dealing with Justin's education and religious develop- ment, show how keenly he felt the need of a personal exposition of these matters. The unknown Hermas, author of the "Shepherd," makes one of the earliest attempts in literature to give a systematic account of a personal revelation through divine visions. 98 Thus, the appeal of a man's belief to himself, its influence on himself, are, after all, his chief reasons for trying to impose it upon another, as well as his best guides as to the manner of so doing. Faith is an emotional factor; and no one can hope to make converts by a mere abstract discussion of its validity or its reason- ableness. "La raison," observes Renan, "aura tou- jours peu de martyrs." The doctrines of Manichasus seemed to Augustin to have been based on a truly scientific method," but that fact could not hold him, once their personal appeal had waned. The instant they ceased to affect him for good, to aid his steps, that instant they appeared to his mind to be pernicious and heretical. The influence which sways another to our view is, first of all, the effect our opinion has had upon ourselves. The vitality in all defence, in all apology, lies here. Once introduced into the religious literature of the CONFESSION AND APOLOGIA 59 early Middle Ages, this personal note becomes clearly traceable through the scattered monkish and ecclesias- tical and even the secular confessiones, testamenta, and apologiae of the first twelve centuries. In many cases, such as that of the anti-Christian Epistle of the Neo-Platonist Porphyry to the prophet Anebo, 100 the personal manner is merely rhetorical, and is not in- tended to be taken literally. In this Epistle, the author states his religious doubts and asks for their elucidation, with an assumption of ignorance which we know cannot have been real; though it is interesting to find him using a personal method. The oft-cited passages in the work of Philo-Judasus 101 contain not only real and important self -study, but also some of the earliest data obtainable 102 on the influence of that Daemon, "who is accustomed, ' ' writes Philo, "to con- verse with me in an unseen manner, prompting me with suggestions. " The material, however, is em- bodied in this paragraph without further evolution; it has evidently little self-consciousness in its testi- mony. A number of autobiographical, apologetic confes- sions are to be found during the centuries before these documents took the conventional shape to which we are now accustomed. Some among them suggest the religious confession of the future; although it must be remembered that, before the unrest preceding the Reformation, they lacked the powerful motive for completeness which is furnished by change of sect. Among the more noteworthy should be mentioned the testament and confession in Syriac, of Ephraim of Edessa, 103 who, in the fourth century, accuses himself 60 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS of being envious, quarrelsome and cruel, until his heart was touched by a spirit. Some doubt attaches to the authenticity of this document in its present form, but it holds a curious interest for us. The better-known "Confessio Patricii" 104 is entirely personal, touching, and complete. There will be occasion later in these pages to refer to the narrative of Patrick 's conversion and following career which it contains ; at the moment, attention should be called only to the accent of humil- ity in which the writer describes himself: ". . . I, a rustic, a fugitive, unlearned, indeed . . ." or again: "I, Patrick, a sinner, the rudest and least of all the faithful, and most contemptible to very many. ' ' Similar records, if of less value, are enshrined in Latin collections. Prosper of Aquitaine 105 is said to have left a confession markedly personal in tone. Perpetuus, 106 Bishop of Tours, confided the statement of his beliefs to a " Testamentum, " about the same date. Alcuin's lor "Confessio Fidei" is said to be the work of his disciples, although it makes use of the first person. A confession in metrical Latin prose, by Paul of Cordova, 108 is filled with prayer and invocation. A monk, Gotteschalchus, 109 who was tried for heresy in the same century, expresses himself both in a "Con- fessio," and a "Confessio prolixior" (post hceresim damnatam), supporting his apology with texts from Scripture. By the eleventh century, one may easily find full- formed and highly developed confessions, whose origi- nal religious purpose has already begun to be modified from other causes. The famous letter of Peter Dam- iani 110 in which he terms himself "Petrus peccator," CONFESSION AND APOLOGIA 61 shows self-study as well as self-accusation. The tone of this letter is deeply penitent, and the writer charges himself with many sins, especially those of scurrility and laughter. Anselm of Canterbury, 111 according to his friend and biographer, Eadmer, portrays his own remorse in his "Oratio meditative," whose out- burst of anguish is, indeed, piercing. Wholly differ- ent is its accent from that of a naif chronicler like the monk Kaoul Glaber, 112 whose narrative contains his own reformation through the visit of a hideous fiend. When this visitant perched, with mops and mows, upon the foot of Glaber 's bed, terror drove him to pray in the chapel for the rest of the night. Such examples serve, at least, to show the trend of the document, its descriptive idea, its personal note, its apologetic tendency. Heterogeneous forms begin already to appear; and the twelfth century gives us, beside the Augustinian confession, the personal apology, the confession of revelation, the narrative of visions, or of travels to the unseen world, whether of heaven or hell. 113 Monkish historical chronicles there are, not at all religious and but indirectly autobio- graphical, while the germ of the scientific self -study be- gins to show itself in descriptions of one's own education, records of mental development, and the like. Abelard's " Letter II," 11 * Guibert de Nogent's "Life," prefixed to his "History of the Crusades," 115 are documents beginning to mark this differentiation in tone. The " Metalogicus " of John of Salis- bury 116 gives a plain account of the course of studies pursued by that famous scholar. Full of greater de- 62 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS tail is a similar record, the ' ' Euriditionis Didasca- licae" 117 of the mystic, Hugo of St. Victor, who is also reported to have left a "Confessio Fidei." Roger Bacon makes his apology to the Pope, in a letter de- scribing his labors and struggles. 118 Often religion enters into such documents as these only when they come under the fear of the Inquisition ; their nature is, of course, affected by such fear, and their appeal is made directly to the authorities of the Holy Office. The entrance into this field of the mystics and their records, or revelations, brings us to a final division of the subject. It was in these centuries that the Via Mystica opened to the imagination of the Middle Ages. Along that Way are to pass a great company "Itin- erarium mentis in Deum," as John of Fidanza 119 named his own progress thereon. The gates of this Way had been indicated by Augustin, by Plotinus, as some have thought, and by lamblichus, since undoubt- edly Neo-Platonism is the source of all later mys- ticism. 120 The visions and revelations to saints and contemplatives, such as Hildegarde of Bingen, Eliza- beth of Schonau, and their like, threw the gates wide. Some of the more important of these pilgrims will be considered later in this book. With the introduction into the apology, of personal confession, the use of this form as a plain exposition of doctrine slowly declined. It was no longer needed in the same way ; the Church was the indisputed mis- tress of the medieval world. Her votaries were no longer obliged to explain their views to the crowd, since the crowd believed as they did. It was no longer necessary to convince the Stoic, or the dilettante, or CONFESSION AND APOLOGIA 63 the aristocratic Epicurean of the elder Roman order, that he must believe and be saved. Much of the seriousness of self -study had been born of this earlier necessity, when a man was forced to look very nearly to his own mind and beliefs, since he wished his family and friends to share them. He felt he must show how he had changed for the better ; he must describe what he was before his conversion as well as what he be- came after it. Difference of opinion, heresy, in a word, was always wickedness, and the man who felt his conduct or his opinions to stand in need of defence or excuse, kept alive the apologetic attitude, as we understand it to-day. Later on, it seems only conduct that evokes apology. Not Bruno 's 121 heresy, but Lorenzino de ' Medici 's crime 122 needs an apologia. Still later the tone lightens ; in the hand of Colley Gibber, 123 for instance, the apology becomes almost gay. But even in our own day the examples of this form may be found in all their original seriousness with only that change in ac- centuating conduct which we have just noticed. New- man 124 felt that not his change to Catholicism required an apology ; but rather the charge of double-dealing in connection with his submission to the Church. This he justifies, he excuses, as best he may ; it is not easily explained. His attitude is curiously non-apologetic on that side where some apology would seem to have been demanded by the nature of the acts confessed. But then the apologetic attitude would seem to be al- most wholly a question of temperament, not that of will. Augustin, Eousseau, Oscar Wilde, possess it; and there exist candid confessions where it never 64 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS seems even to have been felt by the conf essant himself, and where he merely states the facts without comment. Cardan is an example of this ; so is his contemporary, Cellini ; 125 De Quincey is another notable instance ; and there is a curious example of a non-apologetic state of mind contained in that confession by Alex- ander Hamilton which was known as "The Keynolds Pamphlet." 126 Hamilton had been accused of spec- ulating with the public funds, such being the general explanation of his relations with Reynolds. The real explanation was an intrigue with Mrs. Reynolds, util- ized by the husband for purposes of blackmail. Hamilton is forced to make a full statement of the truth. He writes in this tone: "I proceed ... to offer a frank and plain solution of the enigma, by giv- ing a history of the origin and progress of my con- nection with Mrs. R . . ." And later, "I had noth- ing to lose as to my reputation for chastity ; concern- ing which the world had fixed a previous opinion." After remarking that this opinion was the correct one, and that "I dreaded extremely a disclosure and was willing to make large sacrifices to avoid one," he proceeds energetically to refute the embezzlement charges, pointing to the truth as to a justification. The relative importance in his mind of the two sins is at once characteristic and suggestive. What would to many minds have appeared to require a sincere apology (if only to Mrs. Hamilton), is treated as the insignificant explanation of an unjust accusation. The literary influence of the body of Christian apologetics has thus been exerted in unexpected direc- tions; and has, partially at least, endured until the CONFESSION AND APOLOGIA 65 present time. From Jerome and Pamphilus to New- ton and Whiston the difference in their theological manner is comparatively slight. It is true that one must not exaggerate their influence, since it was their ardent faith that counted rather than their intellec- tual force. 127 Until the nineteenth century, when- ever the apologist made his appearance, it was to build his explanation upon the old foundations, and to raise his defence upon the classic plan. 128 Still, for him did theology, philosophy, and metaphysics form the three strands of one cord. But with the latter-day growth of scientific methods, these strands have been permanently loosened. The new psychology, the an- thropology of Tylor, Spencer, and Frazer, the evolu- tion theories as affecting biology, all these have tended to separate and divide those various elements which together form a man's philosophy and religion. Thus the self-student can no longer approach his apologia in the same spirit. His candour may produce similar results, but it has a different motive power. He real- izes, as Augustin, by reason of his genius, realized, that the accurate effect of the religious experience upon himself is better worth analyzing than all the metaphysics of the Schoolmen. Augustin felt this when he devoted ten books of the "Confessions" to the psychological treatment of his subject, and only three to the theological. Our modern confessant has done well to observe the same general proportion. The "Corpus Apologetarum Christianorum" has maintained its effective position in religious literature by reason of the vigorous intellectual force originally responsible for all exposition and defence of doctrine. 66 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS The personal record owes it much beside name and flexibility of treatment. In modern times, its classic animosity of tone has been transferred to the contro- versies of science ; while the milder apology, so-called, has tended to become the property of that mind which is anxious to convince itself of its own strength or weakness. Hence to-day we readily connect the idea of apology with that of excuse. 129 In the study of any subject by a valid method, classi- fication and analysis must precede induction. If these are full and sufficient, then the reader is often able to foresee the conclusions of his author. When it be un- derstood how the written confession arose at the in- spiration of Augustin, just as the practice of public confession was tending to decline (in the second and third centuries), then it will be readily comprehended that its literary style must have been formed by the explanatory drill in the works of the Christian Apolo- gist. That its vitality came from yet another source that subjective trend developing in the world of thought must not be forgotten, although the discus- sion of this source is necessarily postponed until the following chapter. But even without any tendency to subjectivism being taken into account, history makes plain certain personal attitudes, which, even in the time of Rousseau, remained obscure. If the forces governing thought and controlling literary movements are noted in their beginnings, their later progress presents few difficulties to our comprehen- sion. Science to-day, as never before, aids the task. Psychology, teaching the relation between idea and language, together with the power of group- imitation; CONFESSION AND APOLOGIA fc anthropology and sociology, unfolding the growth of peoples and of societies, now throw a clearer light upon the individual records with which we are about to deal. The time spent in analysis, therefore, has not been wasted, since it permits us to approach the more complex parts of our subject, with confidence that its historical and literary elements have been dis- entangled, and are understood. Ill INTROSPECTION: THE INTROSPECTIVE TYPE I. 1. Definition, and attitudes toward introspection. 2. Plato, Christianity, the Sophists, Protagoras, Dem- ocritus. 3. Animism, metaphysics, the Church. 4. Tendency toward subjectivity; Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus. 5. Self -study and mysticism; Neo-Platonists, Plotinus, Augustin. II. 1. Self-consciousness. 2. Mental processes. 3. Psychology. 4. Value of introspection in the past. 5. The Ego. III. 1. The types in literature and philosophy; Augustin. 2. England and Germany; Al-Ghazzali and Descartes. 3. Kant, Comte, Fichte, Schelling, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche. 4. Dante, Petrarch, Eneas Sylvius, Montaigne. 5. B-Cowne, Rousseau, Cardan, Byron, and Shelley. 6. Minor examples. 7. Emerson, Amiel, the Gurneys, and Oscar Wilde. Ill INTROSPECTION : THE INTROSPECTIVE TYPE IT is now determined of what main elements the first religious confessions were composed, how partly the general drift of thought, and partly the direct im- pulse given by individual genius, was responsible for their form and for their content. Nor will it be found difficult to believe that the training in exegesis and in dialectic of those earlier apologists, would later, have a perceptible influence. Thus, gradually, the records of personal religious experience came to have a definite character of their own, one, moreover, which tended to become more and more subjective. But such influences in themselves do not wholly account for the increasing development in religion of the mental habit which we term introspection; they might give definiteness and direction to the introspective tend- ency, but they could not of themselves create it. A new element introduced into thought will of neces- sity create new literary forms and fresh points of view. It remains for us to ascertain what were the ele- ments introduced by introspection into the religious life, and what new literary forms it has served to pro- duce. The word means no more, of course, than "looking within "; although it is used to describe a familiar mental state, and one which we are apt to think of 71 72 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS as wholly modern. All that is implied in this moder- nity is best defined in the words of Mill, when he re- marked that "the feelings of the modern mind are more various, more complex and manifold than those of the ancients ever were. The modern mind is what the ancient was not, brooding and self-conscious ; and its meditative self -consciousness has discovered depths in the human soul which the Greeks and Romans did not dream of, and would not have understood. ' ' l That the world has owed much to this power of 1 'meditative self -consciousness/' Mill hardly needs to remind us; yet no one will deny that it is in general regarded with distrust. There has come to be attached to our conception of the introspective state of mind the idea that it is unwholesome and abnormal; and this connotation suggests that the world clings to cer- tain standards of what is normal, long after they have ceased to be in any sense accurate. The introspec- tive type of mind has ceased to be a rarity; and one may well question if it be advisable to thrust it aside as abnormal without a more valid reason than is fur- nished by instincts half-vestigiary. No doubt the presence of a self -analytical tendency in some neurotic conditions, and the "culte du moi" in certain so- called decadent literary schools, have had their share in maintaining this antagonism. Yet it will be noticed that even when there is no neurosis and no decadence when the introspective tendency is coin- cident with a healthy energy and a robust scientific habit yet the world's antagonism is never lessened. In fact, it is a sentiment only to be accurately de- fined by the use of such terms as "instinctive uneasi- THE INTROSPECTIVE TYPE 73 ness," "instinctive distrust," suggesting that it is in itself a part of our inheritance from the past. Possi- bly it is to this same instinctive distrust that we owe the curious silence of some of our greatest critics on the subject a silence which seems at times, to be almost deliberate. Arnold, for instance, though he loved to write of such profoundly introspective na- tures as Amiel, or the de Guerins, and of such topics as "Pagan and Mediaeval Religious Sentiment" yet somehow contrives to avoid any discussion of the degree and the value of a "looking within." He ac- cepts the introspection contained in these thoughts and journals, but it does not appear to hold any sig- nificance for him. Nor is this true of Arnold only; it is true of other critics, both English and foreign; it makes the pathway which we have to tread singu- larly barren of comment. No authoritative voice speaks to us concerning this trend of the human mind. We are unguided when, in our endeavor to look into the past, we seek for the earliest indications of that tendency which was to mark the world's maturity. For to the Greek, to the pagan mind, introspection as we know it, was practically non-existent; and there came a time when a joyously objective world beheld with anxiety the clouding of its sky by the develop- ment of self-consciousness. It is true that the con- templative religions of the East had long held another ideal. When Manu describes the creation of the universe, he tells that "From himself [Buddha] drew forth the mind, which is both real and unreal ; likewise from the mind egoism which possesses the function of self-con- 74 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS sciousness, and is lordly. " 2 This sentence has a mod- ern ring ; it bears, indeed, almost a Nietzschean quality. It would seem to mark the contrast between Eastern and Western philosophy. Yet even among the Greeks there are to be found, if one searches, the germs of what appears to be in the nature of a curiosity about self, which, later, was to evolve new types of thinkers and of thoughts. But of what nature is this curiosity ? Is it properly to be called subjective at all? It is true that Socrates quoted that ancient Delphian inscription "Know thyself, " 3 and in a manner suggestive of modern conceptions: "I must first 'know myself,' as the Delphian inscription says ; to be curious about that which is not my concern, while I am still in ignorance of my own self, would be ridiculous. . . . Am I a monster more complicated and swollen with passion than the serpent Typho, or a creature of a gentler and simpler sort?" * Although Socrates asked such ques- tions, he did not attempt to answer them by any method which to-day would be called introspective. In his mind these queries rather served a disciplinary purpose; much, indeed, as the modern philosopher loves to propound anew the ultimate enigmas in order both to humble his reader and to justify his specula- tion. Plato's introduction to the "Alcibiades" 5 (the authenticity of which remains in doubt) contains a paragraph wherein Socrates recommends his "sweet friend" to attain self-knowledge through observation and an open mind. 6 There is small suggestion of any real "looking within" about this. Yet there are historians who still insist in placing upon Plato the entire responsibility THE INTROSPECTIVE TYPE 75 for the modern interest in self. Notwithstanding the fact that Plato specifically condemns it as a weakness, and this for reasons to be noted later, this fact of his depreciation of the Ego has been held by these crit- ics to constitute the source of the later Christian doc- trine of self -mortification ! 7 No doubt the conception of a multiple personality, of an Ego, which was not one but two, or even more ; of one Self ruling, or watching, or struggling with another Self, is very, very old. No doubt it is the first of our conceptions the formation of which was due to a deliberate effort at introspection, however rudimentary. There are traditions, for example, that Pythagoras recommended self-examination to his dis- ciples, but they remain traditions. 8 Such a conception, at such a time, must have been a veritable tour-de- force; and would necessarily have been followed by a reaction. Comments are freely made by critics and historians on the incapacity or the unwillingness of the Greeks to let us see anything whatever of their thinking and feeling selves. It was a practice so foreign to their habit of mind, that when Pater causes Marius "to keep a register of the movements of his own private thoughts or humors/' he is obliged to excuse the pro- ceeding for his hero, by terming it a "modernism." ' ' The ancient writers, * ' Pater continues, ' ' having been jealous for the most part of affording us so much as a glimpse of that interior self, which, in many cases, would have actually doubled the interest of their objective informations." 9 This incapacity or unwillingness becomes more com- 76 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS prehensible when we turn from the Greek mind itself, to the nature of the beliefs with which it was filled. To us, maturity means self-knowledge, and self-knowl- edge implies the ability to distinguish the subjective from the objective, the actuality from the illusion. Our minds have incorporated into such ideas the ex- periences of many centuries, and so completely, that to detach our ideas from their fundamental bases is diffi- cult, if not impossible. Let us try, at least, to conceive the Greek imagination as filled wholly with the con- ception of forces possessing a real, objective existence. The Self, or Spirit, was as real to him, as it is to-day to the Australian bushman, and in much the same way. It was no less than a little, tangible image of the man, winged, elusive, and under the control of powerful in- visible forces quite outside the natural visible forces which he understood. Its movements, passions, and destination were not in the least affected by the will of the possessor. Naturally, therefore, he did not like to talk about it, nor indeed to think or write about it ; since, when he did so, he only felt the more his help- lessness in the grasp of Destiny. Moreover, to ex- amine too closely into the habits of this co-dweller, might be apt to call down upon the inquisitive the wrath of his gods, whose power lay in their mystery. No wonder the Greek remained jealous of affording us any glimpse into that interior self, real dweller on the threshold of life! A change, of course, in these semi-savage imagina- tions came at last. And for this change, and its bear- ing on the development of the introspective tendency, one must turn to the histories of philosophy. One THE INTROSPECTIVE TYPE 77 and all, these unite in attributing to that strange group of men, known as the Greek Sophists, the first attempt at a definitely subjective philosophical conception. 10 Yet, if one bears in mind the fact that to the Greek, his eidolon, his image of himself, which comes near to what to-day we should call the soul, had a definitely objective existence, much of his antagonism to the Sophist teaching is made plain. We understand much better why he felt it to be destructive. Turning to inner experience, the Sophists made what is believed to be the first attempt to study man, through his mental life. Their doctrine, startling in its novelty, held that religion lies within our con- sciousness, and does not reside in the performance of traditional rites and customs. 11 Protagoras, the first to avow himself Sophist, 12 stated the formula, "Man is the measure of all things ; " 13 which, if accepted, takes for granted a modern attitude, and no small amount of subjectivism. Tracing his idea to its source, it will be remembered that tradition assigns to Pro- tagoras as teacher that Democritus of Abdera, in whose doctrine a high place was allotted to a distinct con- ception of soul. This soul, we know must have been objective; it was the eidolon of the man. Yet, in itself, such a conception postulates a rudimentary in- trospection; while there remain to us also fragments by Democritus of an autobiographical character. 14 Even the developed subjective doctrines of the Sophists seem to-day elementary from the philosophi- cal point of view, but their tendency is significant. That such tendency should have produced little of defi- nite importance is not surprising when we know that 78 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS most of the facts essential to the formation of a sub- jective philosophy were lacking at the time, even to those men who held the soul to be distinct from the body, and who advocated a study of self. The entrance into the field of investigation at this point of the ethnologist and anthropologist, with their com- parative data, opens a new and fascinating approach to the study of mental development, nor is it possible to ignore that striking theory wherein Tylor accounts by his data upon animism, for the first subjective tendencies of thought. Tylor 's arguments are exceedingly interesting, and we shall have frequent occasion to refer to them in a later section of this book. "The savage thinker," he writes, "though occupying himself so much with the phenomena of life, sleep, disease, and death, seems to have taken for granted, as a matter of course, the ordinary operations of his own mind. It hardly oc- curred to him to think about the machinery of think- ing. . . . The metaphysical philosophy of thought taught in our modern European lecture-rooms is his- torically traced back to the speculative psychology of ancient Greece. . . . When Democritus propounded the great problem of metaphysics, 'How do we per- ceive external things?' ... he put forth, in answer, ... a theory of thought. He explained the fact of perception by declaring that things are always throw- ing off images (eidola) of themselves, which images . . . enter a recipient soul and are thus perceived. . . . Writers ... are accustomed to treat the doc- trine as actually made by the philosophical school which taught it. Yet the evidence here brought for- THE INTROSPECTIVE TYPE 79 ward shows it to be really the savage doctrine of object-souls, turned to a new purpose as a method of explaining the phenomena of thought. ... To say that Democritus was an ancient Greek is to say that from his childhood he had looked on at the funeral ceremonies of his country, beholding the funeral sacri- fices of garments and jewels and money and food and drink, rites which his mother and his nurse could tell him were performed in order that the phantasmal images of these objects might pass into the possession of forms shadowy like themselves, the souls of dead men. Thus ? Democritus, seeking a solution of his great problem of the nature of thought, found it by simply decanting into his metaphysics a surviving doc- trine of primitive savage animism. . . . Lucretius ac- tually makes the theory of film-like images of things (simulacra, membrance) account for both the appari- tions which come to men in dreams and the images which impress their minds in thinking. So unbroken is the continuity of philosophic speculation from sav- age to cultured thought. Such are the debts which civilized philosophy owes to primitive animism. ' ' 15 These brilliant pages of a brilliant book have a significance for us in the course of the present enquiry which they have acquired since they were written ; and the last two sections of this work must needs return to them. By connecting the doctrine of object-souls with the first efforts of the Greek mind in formulating a coherent metaphysics, Tylor establishes many other links in that continuity between savage and civilized thought. Yet one must not allow these ideas wholly to submerge his mind. The whole significance of Protag- 80 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS oras and his disciples, and of the Sophist teachings, lies just in the fact that they made the first definite attempt to get away from the animistic doctrine lin- gering over from savage times, and that this effort was one of the results of an elementary introspection. The endeavor of the Sophist to study mental life, by turn- ing toward inner experience, led to his first shadowy perception of subjectivity, and to a differentiation between that reality and the appearance with which men so often confounded it. Once men, through self -observation, began to perceive the illusory nature of much that had seemed to them real, and imbued with life, once they had come to grasp the signifi- cance of their own state of mind, an immense stride had been made away from savagery. Just the differ- ence between the beliefs of to-day and those of the ancient or medieval world, lies in the fact that the modern mind is introspective enough to perceive the subjective nature of many of those impulses which, to the Greek, possessed an objective existence. Protagoras, therefore, marked an era in more senses than one. There is an especial suggestiveness in the fact that the teachings of the Sophists were received with general distrust. That there was, after all, but slight reason for holding Protagoras and his followers to constitute an influence toward public corruption, is of less interest than the fact that by public opinion they were so regarded. The antagonism which has been noted is thus seen to be no new antagonism ; it is a dis- like and distrust sprung up among that portion of mankind who are still to be found clinging instinc- tively to standards of the normal which have long THE INTROSPECTIVE TYPE 81 ceased to obtain. Unquestionably, the Sophistical doc- trines tended toward the destructive effects inherent in any broad, general scepticism ; and apparently they failed to satisfy the robust mental needs of their day. 16 The present writer, in a former volume, 17 commented on the fact that no definitive history of the subjective trend in literature has been written, and that its ori- gins remain complex and obscure. What is true of subjectivity in general, is true of introspection in particular. The omission is of importance, because, the more one studies the subject, the more it seems as though a history of introspection involves the ap- proach of philosophy from a new direction. For what, after all, is philosophy, if it be not our intellec- tual effort to systematize all our conclusions respecting the phenomena of life and nature, which seem to us so capricious and inexplicable ? And of these phenom- ena, those proceeding out of our own consciousness, and constituting our own personality, will ever be the most vital. We know that it is practically impossible for philos- ophy to do without the consideration of these phenom- ena for any length of time. Their vitality remains unimpaired despite the philosophers who claim to ig- nore them, and to despise that psychology which is the science created for the purpose of dealing with them in detail. Such an one was Auguste Comte, who stated that ' ' after two thousand years of psychology no one prop- osition is established to the satisfaction of its fol- io wers." 18 This belief is founded upon the idea that 82 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS psychology is necessarily dependent upon metaphysics, and metaphysics upon introspection. Comte denies that the intellect can pause during its activities to ex- amine its processes. That such processes could come in the future to be automatically registered by means of machinery, Comte, of course, had no idea, since his work antedates the precise experiment of the psycho- logical laboratory. It may be true that, if we use the first term in its modern sense, psychology and meta- physics are no longer interdependent; they have, indeed, differentiated since the days of the St. Victors. And it remains equally true, be one's conclusion what it may, that in the realm of metaphysics every theorist, from Descartes to Bergson, has been forced to rely upon introspection as an essential factor. Is Comte thereby justified in claiming that no progress has been made on this account ? 19 The nature of any philosophical advance is two- fold ; it may be an advance in idea, it may be an ad- vance in method. Comte may be right in denying that introspection, in se, has been the means of fur- nishing any ideas to philosophy; but without the use of introspective methods, few of those ideas could have obtained a hearing. In metaphysics, for instance, it is practically impossible to make any proposition clear, without a decided degree of "looking within/' in order to force one's hearer to "look within" also. The metaphysician must tell his reader what passes in his own mind, and the reader must "look within" and see if this be true. Explanations do not explain unless one's inner observation confirms them. A writer's statement of what he has found to be true in him- THE INTROSPECTIVE TYPE 83 self has no vitality, no significance for the reader, until this reader pauses and looks inward to see if it be equally true in his own case. If it be not, he shakes his head and throws aside his book; if it be, the philosopher has gained an adherent. In any case, upon this faculty of introspection, the meta- physician is bound to rely and it therefore follows as a corollary, that the degree of introspection prev- alent among certain societies and at certain times has had a powerful influence upon the spread of certain doctrines. Kealizing this necessary reliance, the Ger- man school of philosophy has for more than a century made copious use of the first person, of the introspec- tive demand upon the reader, and of the argument by direct personal experience. Self-examination and introspection have been the very foundation stones of the German metaphysical philosophies. 20 The connection between introspection and meta- physics is not closer than the connection of intro- spection with religion. The earliest possible exercise of this faculty in half-civilized man must have been to heighten any religious sentiment. So soon as any introspection is possible to a man, there springs up in his imagination the resultant conception of a dual or multiple personality. This is his way of defining what happens when he " looks inward" and perforce decides that there exists in himself a something which looks, and a something which is being looked at. The appreciation of this dual state is by no means confined to the metaphysician; it is a world-wide and common possession of our humanity. Colloquial speech is full of idioms, phrases, and imagery which 84 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS show its realization. In English, such sentences as, "It lies between me and my conscience," or, "You were more frightened than you realized," give ex- pression to this conception of the many in the one. Now this very conception must necessarily have some religious significance. It is inextricably interwoven with ideas of good and evil, and with the perpetual struggle between darkness and light. Our selves were felt by the Church to hide innumerable puzzling and dangerous entities which could be routed only when we turned the light of self -observation into our darker corners. Hence the insistence early laid by the Church on the daily exercise of a stringent self-examination. It is commended as a discipline and as a means of perfection. 21 The great abbot, Eichard of St. Victor, whose doctrines had such vogue during the Renais- sance, gave word to the cumulative thought of many centuries, when he wrote his reasons for introspection. "Who thirsts to see his God," he cried, "let him cleanse his mirror and purify his spirit. After he hath thus cleared his mirror, long and diligently gazed into it, a certain clarity of divine light begins to shine through upon him, and a certain immense ray of unwonted vision to appear before his eyes. From this vision the mind is wondrously inflamed." Here are the introspective practices advocated as a means of contemplation, which has always been their first use to the mystical mind; but Eichard goes somewhat fur- ther. ' ' If the mind would fain ascend to the height of science, let its first and principal study be to know itself, " 22 he says ; thus showing in his proper person THE INTROSPECTIVE TYPE 85 that the effect of the earlier, rudimentary self -study leads to mysticism. In Jeremy Taylor 's ' ' Holy Living and Dying, ' ' the diligent and frequent scrutiny of self is recommended, as the fit preparation for each night's rest; "when we compose ourselves," as the good bishop quaintly puts it, "to the little images of death." 23 But by his reference to Seneca throughout this chapter, the reader gathers that the influences traceable in Taylor's thought were stoical and pagan rather than Chris- tian and Catholic. In any case, it will be enough to show that the practice of self-examination is every- where not only generally preached, but was fol- lowed from earliest times. Ephraim Syrus is quoted as practicing it twice daily and as comparing him- self to the merchant who keeps a daily balance. 24 Basil, Gregory the Great, and Bernard commend it. 25 Origen held that self-knowledge through self-contem- plation was a part of the Divine "Wisdom. 26 What Augustin felt we know. Jerome may not have preached a doctrine of self -study, but that he prac- ticed it his letters and treatises testify. 27 The question of the immediate effect of Christian- ity and its teachings upon any latent introspective tendency, is one of great interest. Existence of this tendency at all must necessarily imply that man is no longer that savage "who took for granted the ordinary operations of his own mind." 28 It must, therefore, have made its appearance comparatively late in his evolution, and it rather belongs to his equipment of maturity. Once it be assumed that a stage in mental growth was reached at which man's intellectual 86 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS curiosity turned inward for its satisfaction, then not only the influence, but the acceptance of Christianity as a religion, becomes clear. Not only did the Chris- tian doctrine give impetus to all introspective prac- tices; but the latent tendency toward greater sub- jectivity of thought itself made for the success of the Christian faith. The rite of confession, with which we have just dealt in the preceding chapter, must have both heightened and directed such tendency. This idea of the importance of self was compara- tively new, for at least it had not been advocated in any coherent system among the ancients. The learned world of the first and second centuries, therefore, was without classical guide in the presence of this new force. Plato had depreciated the Ego, which he taught also it was healthy to ignore. The Christian philosopher, while he might believe with Pascal that "Le Moi est haissable," yet constantly magnified the Ego by discussing and cataloguing its iniquities. 29 When to save his own soul became man's first busi- ness, he must needs know that soul, must study, must examine it. Prescribed as a duty, introspection be- came at once a main characteristic of religious life. Those great contemplatives and saints, upon whose guidance the whole of early Christianity depended, established the cult of introspection and introspective practices. It seems as though they must have recog- nized as a truth the generalization "that the senti- ment of religion is in its origin and nature purely personal and subjective. ' ' 30 That the tendency toward subjectivity was present THE INTROSPECTIVE TYPE 87 to assist the spread of Christianity, we know by its appearance under other shapes during the same cen- turies, and chiefly by its government of certain markedly non-Christian philosophies and philosophers. A favorite assumption on the part of some Church historians holds that the introspective tendency in the work of Seneca or of Marcus Aurelius is accounted for by their real but concealed sympathy with certain Christian doctrines. The world's general intellectual disposition to "look within/' which disposition had its religious as well as its philosophical side, would ap- pear to be the more accurate explanation. Nor must it be forgotten that the Stoic doctrines by which these writers were influenced, were informed by a deep sense of moral responsibility which augmented the tend- ency. 31 To a serious nature, any introspective prac- tice intensifies the importance of conduct, independ- ently of the religious rite to which he may be accus- tomed. Seneca 32 advocates self -study as a personal duty. "I use this power," he declares, "and daily examine myself when the light is out and my wife is silent. I examine the whole day that is past . . . and consider both my actions and words. I hide nothing from myself; I let nothing slip, for why should I fear any of mine errors?" This last phrase is in the key of Rousseau a valid justification for any self-analysis. More familiar to the reader, perhaps, are the passages in which Marcus Aurelius expresses the same influence at work upon his mental life. 33 The Greek Epictetus, 34 in the second century, held also, "The beginning of philosophy to him at least who 88 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS enters on it in the right way ... is a consciousness of his own weakness, ' ' thus more or less predicating self - study. One evidence of the growth of subjective thought at this time, will be found when we turn to that group of philosophical writers, who, gathered in Alexandria, made the last definite, intellectual stand against the Christian doctrine. The Neo-Platonists have certain characteristics which later were to become loosely identified with Christianity; but which in reality are but another manifestation of similar tendencies. Their mysticism is due less to the influence of Chris- tian mystics, than to the fact that it is sprung from a similar source. The reader will not forget it is of even greater importance later in this discussion that the first effect of all elementary or imperfect self-study is mysticism. The first emotion raised by any " looking inward" is wonder, and a sense that a new world has been opened to the traveller. Upon the path through this world the via only the mys- tically inclined sets forth only the genuine mystic arrives at the goal. From the third to the fifth cen- turies, the Neo-Platonists, markedly influenced by their efforts at introspection, practically anticipated, in the person of Plotinus, the Christian mediaeval mysticism. For instance, it is recorded that four times in six years Plotinus attained to that ecstatic moment of union with God, which, first in the Mid- dle Ages, was called unification. 36 The doctrines of this philosophical school show introspective tenden- cies not unlike those of the Christian philosophy. The Enneads of Plotinus, by an analysis of the THE INTROSPECTIVE TYPE 89 senses, by the thesis that to know the Divine is the property of a higher faculty, and one in which the subject becomes identified with its object, show the re- sult of a systematic attempt at psychological intro- spection. Once this fact is clear, Neo-Platonism ceases to seem fantastic or bizarre ; it becomes rather the logical effect from a cause. Any elementary introspection undertaken without scientific knowl- edge or guidance, is apt to lead the mind in the direction of transcendentalism. The mind's eye " looking inward" is confused by what it sees, by the action and interaction of the intellect, the senses, the emotions, and the will. How is the ignorant and inexperienced self -observer to differentiate? Since all is mystery, only mystery accounts for all. Thus we see in the fifth century that Proclus, 36 analyz- ing Plato's "Know Thyself," appears to take for granted that to look truly within is to provide the only means of looking truly without. Thus follow his ideas of Divine revelation, since the inward eye alone may catch the flash of divinely directed inspira- tion. By another route, the same conclusion is reached by the mediaeval mystic, when he, too, looking within, confuses and misinterprets the phenomena he beholds. Porphyry, in his letter to Anebo, and lamblichus in the answer thereto, had already begun to formulate a sys- tematic demonology ; 37 but these ideas were succeeded by the more abstract ones of Proclus, that last flame in the flickering Alexandrian lamp. Christianity, while embodying many of the inherent principles of Neo-Platonism, had an anchor in the form of its ethical conceptions, which were of the most 90 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS objective and definite type. Among other advantages over Neo-Platonism, was that of the practical applica- bility of its philosophy to the various minds around it. Neo-Platonism held an introspection merely specu- lative, and as incapable of evolving any scientific method as it was of using any scientific material. As a philosophy it was necessarily sterile and perishable, but it holds interest for us as a landmark in the history of the subjective and introspective tendency. It has been noted that Augustin's mastery in the portrayal of psychical states "formed a new starting- point for philosophy/' 38 The metaphysics of inner experience took their rise in his ability to use, with a fresh meaning, the suggestions of Plotinus. His in- tense consciousness of self, of personality, lifts him above the mists of his time ; while by his doubts and fears, he repeats the "Cogito; ergo sum" of Descartes. Augustin, the first great Christian psychologist, uses with the vitality of genius the tentative or ill-defined ideas prevalent in his day; and through him Chris- tianity came to absorb the suggestions of Neo-Plato- nism. Moreover, it must not be forgotten that the di- rect effect of the introspective tendency upon Chris- tianity is as marked as the effect, a little later, of Christian teaching upon introspection. In showing man how to preserve "the reverent relation to his own past/' 39 there is added to the need of "looking within" that other need of looking backward, of sur- veying the whole of one's life as a process, divinely guided, and with salvation for an object. Thus, from the Christian standpoint, no duty is more religious than introspection; and no practices testify more THE INTROSPECTIVE TYPE 91 deeply to the religious import of life than do self- study and self-examination. Before proceeding further, it would seem necessary to look a little more closely into the nature of that self-consciousness from which, according to Schopen- hauer, 40 we proceed. No longer is Schopenhauer held to be our guide, yet it is important that we should know something more of our self -consciousness. How has it been observed and how determined? Until the last century, all theories on the subject must have been necessarily a priori. There is hardly a portion of the body, from the spine to the pineal gland, which has not in turn been named as the seat of self-con- sciousness, or the Ego. 41 When one reads some of these theories, one is not amazed at Comte's estimate of psychology; and even to-day, in the face of more precise experiment, one is constantly confronted by expressions which show how little has really been ac- complished. "Man by the very constitution of his mind," says Caird 42 ". . . can look outwards . . . inwards, and upwards. He is essentially self-conscious"; and again: "Man looks outward before he looks inward, and looks inward before he looks upward." This is more antithetical than accurate. Tylor and others would seem to show beyond dispute that man looks up- ward before he looks inward ; and scientific observation adds in her turn that once he begins to look inward, then he rarely comes again to look upward in the same way. Introspection and introspective habits have a way of absorbing a man's religious energies, caus- ing him to watch and follow the religious life wholly as 92 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS within himself. Fascinated by the inward stir and tumult, he lifts his eyes from it no more, but passes through the world listening only to the inward voice, seeing only the inward vision. The outer world, the world outside of self, is very dim and insubstantial to such an one, who to many of us has represented our so-called highest religious type the mystic or con- templative. Such were the two St. Victors, the Ab- bots Hugh and Kichard, in whose ideas mysticism and philosophy were blended. 43 Now the highest type of metaphysical philosopher resembles the religious mys- tic so much in his method, that we are apt to call him mystical, when we really do not mean mystical but rather introspective. Both of them are attempting the same thing, to obtain truth by watching their own processes and seeing what particular truth sought is thereby revealed to the watcher; and either one may succeed in proportion as he is able to recognize the different elements constituting his self -consciousness. How is he able to do this ? The study of mental processes is a recent one, for it is practically only since the experiments of the modern psychological laboratory that science has even been willing to declare what is truth and what illusion, what is fact and what fallacy in the region of mind. For centuries men worked perforce in the dark, since by its very constitution the brain cannot explain itself, and, when passive, no organ gives less hint of its meth- ods. 44 Hence, the world failed to connect the brain with feeling at all (which was supposed to be seated in the bowels, or, later, in the heart), until a compara- tively recent date. When Paul Broca 45 gave to the THE INTROSPECTIVE TYPE 93 world, in 1861, his discovery of the activities in that convolution which now bears his name, he did much more than merely to determine which region of the brain governed our speech. He gave a starting-point for other investigations into the various brain-regions, ideas regarding which had remained in confusion since the phrenological fallacies of Gall. It is not for us to lead the student through the fascinating by-paths of mental physiology, to the con- flicts which still rage upon the subjects of Personality and Self-Consciousness. Space and authority are lack- ing here for any proper treatment of themes so per- plexing. Bather will we ask of him to give his atten- tion to some of the views expressed by the psychologist regarding the results obtained by the use of introspec- tion in this field. It is true that a purely introspective method has been held to resemble that of ' l a man who tries to raise himself by his own boot-straps"; 48 but it is also true that but for an original faculty and desire of " looking within," we should never know we had any self-consciousness or personality at all. The savage is unaware of any self, until his first pause of elementary introspection brings that fact to his atten- tion. One observes, moreover, that until he attains to that point of self -consciousness, any deliberate progress in any given intellectual direction is impossible to him. The first introspection, therefore, with its concom- itant first self-consciousness, is a crucial moment in the history of mind. During that moment the human in- tellect crossed at one leap the major part of the dis- tance which lies between ourselves and such a creature as the Neanderthal man. 94 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS The existence of which we are the best assured and which we know the best," says a recent philosopher, "is incontestably our own, since of all other objects we have notions which one might judge exterior and superficial, while we perceive ourselves interiorly and profoundly." 47 This consciousness of self has been given concrete illustration by a number of self -students, whose obser- vations have been noted in a previous book. 48 The profundity and power of their interior realization has been found to produce a species of terror, an emotion both individual and indescribable, whose roots strike into primal depths. The boy who cried out at one in- stant, "I am a Me"! 49 was experiencing a crisis not only individual, but racial and primitive; and it is a crisis brought about by the first attempt at introspec- tion. Since the result of this first introspection is ac- companied by decided and characteristic emotion, the act remains significant in the history of individual mental development. To many natures it points a crisis, and such natures come to it as the traveller stumbles upon a forgotten sign-board, half -obliterated by a thicket of newer growth. Philosophy, imperson- ating the surveyor of this strange country, must take account of such crucial impulses. And there are other reasons why the philosopher still clings to the intro- spective method, despite the continually narrowing limitations prescribed by science. The reader will find in the history of philosophy something of the struggle to escape from introspection and to provide other means, because of the realization that interior phe- THE INTROSPECTIVE TYPE 95 nomena are so much less susceptible of direct observa- tion than are exterior phenomena. 50 Yet this realization was long in coming, and there was a period in the world's history when the interior phenomena must have seemed the clearer of the two. Scholars now unite in thinking that the first attempts at what we call modern psychology, took their rise in the abbey of St. Victor, under the efforts of those great mystics known as the Victorines. The first of these men, Hugh of St. Victor, was held by the Middle Ages so high as an authority, that he received the name of the "second Augustin." His works are quoted by every great writer and doctor of the time, since his attempt to formulate a system of mystical philosophy appealed at once to the intellect and to the piety around him. Even to-day, if the mysticism of Hugh seems naif, his accent is still that of a spiritual force. "All the world," he wrote, "is a place of exile to philosophers," and to live content in this exile, he believes should be man's aim. Undoubtedly, his gen- eral transcendental doctrine has had more listeners than his purely philosophical doctrine. Naturally a delicate, an exalted temperament, he made the strong- est effort to combine the floating mystical ideas of the day into a working system. Hugh took from Dionysius and applied to the mystical life, the idea of "spiritual grades or steps, ' ' by whose aid the soul was to mount up to that ineffable union with God which is conceived as the final stage in the mystical way. By such means, he endeavored to intellectualize the entire scheme of mysticism, substituting for the three usual steps of purgation, illumination, and union, three other steps of 96 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS cogitation, meditation, and contemplation. Any at- tempt to systematize the indefinable is foredoomed to failure, but Hugh and his successors reached a primary consciousness of inner experience. 51 "With constant delicate perception and feeling, through constant self- study and self-analysis, this introspective habit de- veloped powers of self -observation till then unknown. The history of one's soul became the most important of all histories, and through the need of salvation there arose a need of psychology. The successor and nephew of Hugh of St. Victor, the abbot Richard, carried out the psychological work of his master in a manner yet more detailed, and with results even more far-reaching. Taking for his great book a text from Psalms, LXVH, 28 (in the Vulgate), "There is Benjamin, a youth in ecstasy of mind," Richard of St. Victor takes the type of an ecstatic as being the highest possible to humanity. He thus laid himself open to all that rational criticism of the mys- tical life, which later ages cannot forbear. Such criti- cism will be given expression in another section of this book, for our purpose is to consider him at the moment merely in the character of an embryonic psychologist. "Full knowledge of the rational spirit is a great and high mountain, " is Richard's teaching; and the study of self becomes a prerequisite to an entrance upon the Via Mystica. Moreover, he developed the system of his predecessor into a still more minute elaboration of grades and steps, by which very definition real psy- chology was considerably advanced. The symbols, the analogies used by Richard of St. Victor, such as his comparison of the thoughts in the contemplative mind THE INTROSPECTIVE TYPE 97 to a flock of little birds, ever wheeling and returning, all have suggestiveness from a psychological point of view. 52 That psychology made such strides in the work of the Victorines was possible only because of their con- tinued introspection, applied steadily in the direc- tion of religious experience. The use of the intro- spective methods continued until the advance of the exact sciences began to impose on them certain nec- essary limitations. Then arose a conflict out of which at the beginning of the last century developed a reaction, not only against the methods, but against psychology itself. It has been noted how Comte's theory regarded the psychology of his day. Kant 5S expressed similar doubt, if less formally, while yet the very habit of his mind was profoundly subjective. The French phi- losopher characteristically suggested substituting for introspection the classification and analysis of human phenomena, which is, in truth, much according to the modern plan. Herbart, 54 by his effort scientifically to reduce consciousness to its simplest elements, opened the door for the experimental psychology of to-day. The feeling among philosophers seems to be that to achieve valid results by introspective methods, we should regard ourselves first of all in the nature of automata, and then, having registered the effects of our automatic behavior, bring those effects under the observation of our conscious intellect. Once its defi- nite limitations be understood, true introspection re- tains its value as a means of securing data. For even if a man really believes with Taine, 55 that "Nul ceil 98 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS ne pent se voir soi-meme," yet he cannot deny that there are moments in his life when the veil between him and himself is lifted. If every person now living were to contribute one single fact about himself, the total result would be heterogeneous, indeed, but it would still be data. Our tendency, therefore, should be not to disdain introspection in psychology as value- less, but rather to limit its observation to pre-deter- mined fields ; remembering that "no interpretation can be arrived at without the direct cognition of the facts of consciousness obtained by means of introspection, aided by experiment. ' ' 56 Training, of course, is of the utmost importance in this regard. As introspection grows less fortuitous, and, being trained, becomes more accurate, as the mind, ''looking within," knows when to look and for what objects, then will science be aided and not merely hampered by the contribution. Meanwhile, the reader will have recognized: First, the presence of the sub- jective and introspective trend as indicating a certain stage in the evolution of human thought. Second, the developing and heightening influence of introspection itself on all religious sentiment. And when these two ideas shall have been confirmed by the third and most important, namely, that an elementary introspection will lead the subject inevitably toward mysticism and toward transcendentalism, the purpose of this exami- nation will have been, in the main, accomplished. Aided by these conclusions, the reader should at least be better able to understand his own nature in the different stages of its growth and to see in the history of introspection, scientifically considered, nothing less THE INTROSPECTIVE TYPE 99 than the movement of the human intellect toward ma- turity. It may be well to ask what facts can the introspec- tion of the past be said to have contributed? If it has done nothing else, it has at least furnished a starting-point for all our modern conceptions of self- consciousness and identity. Every self-student is aware that his looking within has given him a number of new ideas, together with the power to differentiate his old ideas. For instance, he was probably unaware of the difference between consciousness and self -con- sciousness until absorbed in the effort of mental con- centration which continuous introspection involves. Then he notes * ' a succession of ideas which adjust and readjust themselves/' 57 which he had not before no- ticed and in which there is very little actual self -con- sciousness. In ordinary objective life, the one state practically includes the other. Another contribution to thought which we owe to introspection alone, is the better definition of all our simple concepts; and the discrimination between the various parts of our more complex concepts. Without a systematic introspection this discrimination would have been impossible; and Fichte notes it as present even in the most fleeting self -observation. 58 Moreover, without the introspection of the past we should never have been able to see and to differentiate between the various elements of the Ego. Observing the Self of another person does not readily aid one in such differentiation, because, seen from our own sphere of identity, his sphere of identity appears to be far more homogeneous and unified than it really is. 100 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS Without looking within, the psychologist 59 would never have been able to observe the Ego divided into the several social, material, and spiritual selves, with their differing constituents and qualities. The theories de- scribing these Selves and accounting for their fission, change too fast for the average reader to keep pace with them; but his own "looking within" is sufficient to convince him that there are many selves in one. He perforce returns again and again to this conception, however he may try to get away from it, and he is just as dependent upon it to explain himself to himself and others to himself, as he was in the days of Augustin. Moreover, this is quite as true of the most vividly objective person among us, as of a Cardan or a Maine de Biran. ' ' A psychological sense of identity, ' ' to use James's phrase, is common to all of us, and in all ages. Placed as such a sense is, just beyond the easy reach of our minds during the daily round, yet it is within the grasp of any and all of us, once interest or need has made it plain. Metaphysicians are constantly reminding us that however imperfect the instruments at hand may be, yet we can hardly afford to discard them, while there remains any likelihood of their becoming more valu- able through evolution or by training. As an instru- ment, introspection has undoubtedly so become. "The empirical conception of consciousness," says Villa, 60 "is that of the consciousness of self. It is characterized by the fact that its content is very re- stricted, though vivid, consisting of organic sensations, together with a particular feeling of activity owing to which we 'feel' that we are a spontaneously acting THE INTROSPECTIVE TYPE 101 personality. ... As the complexity of our mental processes increases, the consciousness of our personality becomes clearer and extends itself to a greater num- ber of phenomena." This excellent definition is of interest here from the fact that its conclusions could have been reached only through means provided by the introspective observer and his introspections. It gives us a warrant for ex- amining in detail that type of document from which science has heretofore derived much of the mate- rial respecting ourselves. This material has been cast into various moulds ; it is sometimes in the shape of fact, sometimes in the shape of theory. The pres- ence in the world of the subjective philosopher, seems to be the manifestation of an introspective tendency in our intellectual life ; and has, moreover, an impor- tance for this study, from its close connection with the religious tendency. Types of an introspective cast have always preserved an influence over the world of thought, and a consideration of them has all the value of a concrete example. In dealing with those individual cases of intro- spective writing, whose influence has been so marked at different times, upon literature, art, and philosophy, some selection must needs be made, if only to avoid repetition. Many of the names considered are more accurately to be analyzed on another account. Au- gustin, for instance, is not the less introspective be- cause he is the more religious; but citations from his "Confessions" are used so constantly in the body of this work, that it were superfluous to repeat them. The same is true of one or two other cases, who are 102 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS to be dealt with more fully under separate heads. Our endeavor in this section should rather be to clas- sify and to analyze, for purposes of comparison, those self-students whose work, while exhibiting equal sin- cerity and candour, is yet not directed by a purely religious impulse, nor strictly affiliated with religious tenets. Such analysis and comparison will aid us to compute the sum of the purely religious impulse in the introspective document and the amount and force of the purely introspective tendency in the religious confession. Some confusion has attended opinion on these points, and critics therefore have come to discuss them largely according to personal likes and dislikes. Thus we find Caird terming that important element of self-examination in religion (without which, as we have seen, the religious idea could hardly have devel- oped to meet our latter-day spiritual uses) as "the great plague of our spiritual life" ; 61 and this opinion is shared by many a devout theologian. Study there- fore of introspection as introspection, may be of value in clarifying our ideas. The use of this element in philosophy when it does not take the direct and formal shape of autobiography usually takes that of personal explanation. Much of the material respecting ourselves which has been yielded through introspective methods, has been over- looked by the student in his concentration on theory. He reads the "Discours" of Descartes for its central theme rather than for the light which it may cast on the author's mind and personality. Therefore, much significant matter lies buried under the drifting sands THE INTROSPECTIVE TYPE 103 of controversy, or is lost like the Neo-Platonists be- neath some abandoned philosophic structure. Present-day English science shows the marked effect of the introspective tendency. Guided by the idea 62 that a natural history of one's self is a proper comple- ment to one's system of thought, the group of writers clustering around the crisis of 1850 have practically without exception left definite personal records. One type of mind, such as G. J. Romanes, expresses similar ideas in an intimate " Diary/' 63 while yet another, following Descartes, 64 will incorporate the result of his introspection into the body of his thesis. An Italian critic 65 has commented with penetration on this instinct of the robust intelligence to observe itself and study the secret of its being. This tendency is plainly traceable throughout the philosophical sys- tems of Locke, Hume, Berkeley, Reid, and Hartley, where it forms part of their method of reaching and impressing other minds. 66 It is not, however, in England that the subjective and introspective philosophy is to be found in its typi- cal completeness. German metaphysicians may dif- fer widely as to conclusions, but they are practically of one mind as to their method. In German thought, the subjective tendency seemed to become even more the property of philosophical doctrine than of re- ligious doctrine, since the number of these documents outweighs the number of religious confessions. Most of the former display the same motives which under- lie the latter, such as dissatisfaction with self, and the effort to comprehend the basic principles of conscious- 104. RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS ness. German subjective philosophy, together with all modern philosophy, dates from the sixteenth cen- tury and the work of Descartes. 67 Certain earlier names shine out from the vast epoch of the Middle Ages, but they do not dim that of the great French- man. One of these Al-Ghazzali, 68 the Arabian has left us a philosophical introspective record which de- serves to be compared with the "Diseours de la Methode." Neither must we forget the sceptic monk, Giordano Bruno, 69 who, in his various replies made during his trial before the Inquisition, developed, if somewhat baldly, the theme and outline of an intro- spective philosophy. He is "entirely ready to give an account of myself, " 70 as he puts it ; and does de- scribe his change of view; how "alone retaining the crucifix " he tried to turn his religion into a philos- ophy. But in respect of our present investigation, the ideas of Bruno are not of sufficient weight to detain us longer. The similarity which has been noticed between the "Discours" of Descartes and the "Confession" of Al-Ghazzali, 71 suggests at once a possible debt of the Western to the Eastern mind. Did the introspec- tive philosophy take its rise among those peoples, naturally meditative, naturally prone to abstract con- ceptions? The question is not one to be lightly an- swered. Unquestionably, the habit of certain highly introspective practices had been developed in India, in Persia, and in Arabia, for centuries past. One might expect, therefore, to find elaborate systems of subjective philosophy permeating the arid and eager Western world from this ancient source. THE INTROSPECTIVE TYPE 105 The reason why such has not been the case would seem to lie in the predominance, over East and West alike, of the huge and objective intellect of Aristotle, whose systems dwarfed for centuries any independent thought, while they absorbed, in exege- sis and elucidation, the best minds of Arabia as of Europe. The work of Al-Ghazzali, in the twelfth century, is an indication of a fresh effort at mental independ- ence. The Aristotelians, the Platonists, and the Neo- Platonists seem to have absorbed the world's stock of ideas, as, later, the Schoolmen seem to have ab- sorbed its stock of mental energy. All the world over, men were but entombing their minds in those huge and futile folios, which stand to-day, like for- gotten sarcophagi, the objects of our curious and reverent pity. In such a record as this Arabian sage's, may be read the attempt to come out from un- der the shadow of those traditions into the light of reality and experience. "Tu m'as prie, 6 mon frere en religion, de te faire connaitre les secrets et le but des sciences reli- gieuses . . ." he begins, and adds, further, that he will depict his own sufferings in his search for truth. 72 His was suffering, indeed, because it led in the di- rection of a general scepticism and negation, a state even harder to bear during the twelfth century than in our own. "I have interrogated the beliefs of each sect," proceeds the Arabian, "and scrutinized the mysteries of each doctrine. . . . There is no philoso- pher whose system I have not fathomed, nor theologian the intricacies of whose doctrine I have not followed 106 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS out. . . . The thirst for knowledge was innate in me from an early age; it was like a second nature im- planted by God. . . . Having noticed how easily the children of Christians become Christians, and the children of Moslem embrace Islam ... I was moved by a keen desire to learn what was this innate disposi- tion in the child, the nature of the accidental be- liefs imposed on him by the authority of his par- ents . . . and finally the unreasoned conviction which he derives from their instructions. ' ' 73 The idea with which Al-Ghazzali followed this sur- vey of conditions is simply to ascertain ' * what are the bases of certitude." Misled by false appearance, by the illusions attendant on observing the action of the senses, he finds every doctrine around him in every direction untrustworthy, and so falls into the deepest doubt. During this state, which lasted: about two months, he presents to our view all the familiar phe- nomena of so-called religious depression, terminating in a complete nervous prostration with aphasia. "But God," he fervently exclaims, "at last deigned to heal me of this mental malady; my mind recovered sanity and equilibrium." 74 And, turning his ener- gies toward a careful introspection, Al-Ghazzali found that it led him directly toward the mysticism of the Sufis. It will not be forgotten that the effect of all ele- mentary and untrained introspection, whether in reli- gion or philosophy, is inevitably in the direction of mysticism, and nothing so clearly shows that four hundred years have passed between Al-Ghazzali and Descartes as the comparison of their conclusions in THE INTROSPECTIVE TYPE 107 this regard. Without insisting too closely thereon, it will be admitted that the aim of both philosophers was identical in their search for Truth. 75 Each be- gins his work with a personal statement of his fitness for this search, his position at the present stage, and the further aims of his mind. That there existed a strong similarity in their mental situations, a glance will show. "J'ai ete nourri aux lettres des mon en- fance," writes Descartes. ". . . Mais sitot que j'eus acheve tout ce cours d 'etudes . . . je me trouvais embarrasse de taut de doutes et erreurs, qu'il me semblait n 'avoir fait aucun profit." 76 And again, on the study of philosophy, he observes that "con- siderant combien il peut y avoir de diverses opinions touchant une meme matiere, qui soient soutenues par des gens doctes, sans qu'il en puisse avoir jamais plus d 'un seul qui soit vraie, je reputais presque pour faux tout ce qui n'etait que vraisemblable." 77 Here stand these two young men, each in his early twenties, side by side on the same path of enquiry. Here their ways part, led by the vital and significant influences developed by four hundred intervening years. The Oriental mind, interrogating each dogma in turn and finding all false, bends aside in despair to take refuge in that perpetual mystery which opens be- fore the inward-looking eye. "To believe in the Prophet is to admit that there is above intelligence a sphere in which are revealed to the inner vision truths beyond the grasp of intelligence, ' ' 78 is the practical conclusion of the Arabian. The Occidental mind, interrogating each dogma in 108 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS turn and finding all false, turns aside in hope, and bends all its energies into the search for method. The man resolves to study himself and to conduct his own reason, for the purpose of evolving a method which will lead him in the direction of the truth. Let us abandon, he remarks, these problems which appear so distant and insoluble, and devote our energy to the best means of reaching them by regular steps. "Meme je ne voulus point commencer a re- jeter tout-a-fait aucune des opinions qui s'etaient pu glisser autrefois en ma connaissance, " he writes, ' ' [mais] chercher la vraie methode pour parvenir a la connaissance de toutes les choses dont mon esprit seroit capable." 80 Descartes is thus separated from Al-Ghazzali by his conception of and his insistence on the importance of method. It will be asked in what manner was the soil dur- ing these four hundred years prepared for the plough of such a mind as Descartes, and an answer must be, though all too briefly, suggested. The limi- tations imposed upon the present essay make it im- possible to treat at any length of those Renaissance dis- cussions between the Aristotelians and the Platonists on such ultimate questions as the nature and immor- tality of the soul, 81 by and through which our modern conceptions have been slowly evolved. Those con- troversies added to the world's stock of definitions at the same time that their use made flexible various types and forms of philosophy and metaphysics, in- cluding the introspective. The scientific self-study and autobiography also made its appearance to add to the world's stock of ideas. By the lives of Cellini THE INTROSPECTIVE TYPE 109 and Cardan, the essays of Montaigne, and other simi- lar records, psychological introspection was developed from a rudimentary condition to a state of efficiency which made it a valuable tool in the hand of the science of that epoch. No longer elementary in char- acter, it ceased, as we see in the case of Descartes, to lead in the direction of mysticism and transcendental- ism. At the same time that the psychologist, in the per- son of Cardan, was endeavoring by close self -analysis to comprehend something of his own obscure problems, the idea of the value of such self-knowledge was slowly growing in the world's mind. The power and charm of Augustin, exerted during the early Middle Ages, 82 heightened this estimate of self-knowledge, while causing it to take its position as a department of science. Descartes, who, as we have read, had pur- sued all the philosophical doctrines prevalent during his youth, could not have failed to draw, from this development of self-knowledge, one of his greatest ele- ments of strength. His Augustin he must have read ; something he must have known of Nicholas Cusanus, and of Giordano Bruno. 83 Such earlier influences as the treatises of the Neo- Aristotelian, Pomponazzi, 84 for example, ' ' the last of the Schoolmen, " as he has been called, show the rationalistic tendencies at work upon men's minds, which cannot, either, wholly have es- caped Descartes. Pomponazzi 85 questioned the doc- trine of the immortality of the soul, denied that there are apparitions of the dead; emphasized the study of the history of religions, and concerned himself chiefly with the degree of the soul's relation to reason 110 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS or intelligence. 86 Such a sceptical and subjective treatment of great problems had a widespread effect upon men's attitude toward them, and prepared the way for a method based on pure introspection. These pages are not the place for a complete an- alysis of the Cartesian philosophy in all its far-reach- ing effects, nor would such analysis be of any real service to the present investigation. It were well, however, to point out that the introspectiveness of Descartes does not limit itself to the opening pages of description and examination. 87 On the contrary, it is interwoven with his thoughts both in the "Dis- cours" and in the " Meditations. " It is condensed and expressed in that phrase, "Je pense, done je suis," 88 by which his philosophy is identified; it is employed on every page by way of definition, and in one of his responses, 89 he avers that it is not possi- ble for him to separate his thought from himself. The one thing of which he is entirely conscious, as Augustin was, is himself: and thus, both in manner and in matter, he remains the distinguished example of the philosophical introspective type. It is natural that such intense introspection as re- sides in the manner of Descartes should be followed by a reaction, and this reaction came in Spinoza and in Leibnitz. Nevertheless, so deep and far-reaching was the Cartesian philosophy, that it ushered in what has been called ' ' The Age of Enlightenment, ' ' 90 when man became interested above all things in himself, and in the workings of his own mind. Reaction, therefore, could not carry men very far from an atti- tude which still maintained for them its freshness and THE INTROSPECTIVE TYPE ill force. Thus the eighteenth century became an age of personal affirmation and explanation, when the dis- covery made by philosophy and expressed in literature by Rousseau was freshly for each man: "Si je ne vaux pas mieux, au moins je suis autre." 91 Not in his two great "Critiques" 92 is the intro- spective tendency of Kant to be noted; but rather in his "Prolegomena of a Future Metaphysic" wherein he avows that "Hume interrupted my dogmatic slum- ber. ' ' 9S Much of his personal introspection is frag- mentary and incomplete, but the tendency is so marked as to cause him to compare himself to Rous- seau. 84 Immediately following Kant, German philosophy entered upon its great subjective period, when, aided by the influence of Locke and certain others of the English school, introspection became generally diffused throughout the whole realm of metaphysics. Its re- sults, in a sense, are assumed, and the separate de- velopment of that branch of science which we call psychology, is not the least of them. 95 Prom this time, the psychologists became a separate group of in- vestigators, and the value of introspection in psy- chology fluctuates, as we have seen, according to the opinions generally prevailing amongst the different groups. Philosophically speaking, the introspective tendency reached its height in Fichte, who, in his "Science of Knowledge," bases his entire doctrine on subjective idealism. "If I abstract myself from thought," he writes, "and look simply upon myself, then I myself become the object of a particular representation. ' V96 112 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS Thus making himself his own object, Fichte takes what he considers to be the first important step. "The question has been asked, " he proceeds, "what was I before I became self-conscious? The answer is, I was not at all, for I was not I. The Ego is, only in so far as it is conscious of itself. ' ' 87 Here is in- trospective doctrine of the type of Augustin carried to a higher degree of development. In the "Destina- tion of Man," Fichte still further elaborates the re- sults, direct and indirect, of his systematic looking- inward. "There was a time, so others tell me ... in which I was not, and a moment in which I began to be. I then only existed for others, not yet for myself. Since then, myself, my conscious being, has gradually developed itself, and I have discovered in myself certain faculties, capacities . . . and natural desires." 98 "My existence must necessarily be aware of itself for therefore do I call it mine. . . . By the limitations of my own being I perceive other existences which are not me. . . . The foundation of my belief in the existence of an external world lies in myself and not in it ... but in the limitations of my own being. In this manner I obtain the idea of other thinking beings like myself. ' ' " Fichte thus finds in self -examination the beginning of all philosophy, and in his work it touches the highest fruitfulness. Generalized later in the work of Schelling, 100 it became much less significant. Still later, Schopenhauer 101 displays the introspective tendency in scattered, incoherent paragraphs, ca- pricious, and lacking in constructive power. Nietzsche, 102 in our own day, made an attempt to THE INTROSPECTIVE TYPE 113 return to scientific introspection; but the mental conditions were untoward, and his efforts ended in a mere insane shouting of "I am this" and "I am that." Sporadic minor examples such as that Novalis [Friedrich von Hardenberg] to whom Carlyle con- secrates an essay exist here and there in Germany and in Scandinavia ; 103 but the influence of Comte, which, as we remember, was antagonistic, caused a second reaction from introspective methods in psy- chology. That this reaction has reached its limits there are several indications at present, among which is the vogue attendant on the metaphysics of Henri Bergson. In literature as in philosophy, the forces underly- ing the Renaissance gave an impetus to all forms of expression, subjective as well as objective. The Italians first indicate this movement ; among them are to be found the earliest examples of what later was to become a familiar literary type. Such Florentine domestic chronicles as that of Lapo da Castiglionchio, for instance (to name one of many during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries), display qualities speedily to be developed and popularized into regular auto- biography. Italy resembled a youth but half-awak- ened, who looked eagerly around him upon a new and vigorous world. A passionate interest in general observation and description embraced the inner as well as the outer phenomena of life. Again men turned back to the great introspective leaders of Christian doctrine, striving through their eyes to look higher and lower and deeper than ever before. 114 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS This newly aroused desire for knowledge led men far, and in directions as yet undreamt-of. "In the Middle Ages," writes one historian, "both aspects of consciousness that which faces the world and that which looks toward man's own inner life, lay dreaming, or but half -awake, under a veil which shrouded them. ... In Italy first this veil was lifted . . . the things of this world generally began to be treated objectively; but at the same time the subjective asserted its rights ; man becomes a spiritual individuality and knows that he is such. ' ' 104 These pages have already noticed how this spiritual individuality began to be evolved; how its growing introspective tendency led it to mysticism; and how, in turn, this mysticism heightened the introspection. The St. Victors show in a striking manner the inter- relation of these two influences on the religious mind, together with an intellectual attempt to formalize their results into a system. On the side purely sec- ular and profane, the introspective type was neces- sarily slower in its development, nor can it be de- tached from the study of religion until a period later in the history of literature. Dante has frequently been cited in this connection, but Dante, notwithstanding certain passages in the "Convito," must have been always an outward-look- ing, rather than an inward-looking, mind. The letter to Can Grande, for instance, is written on a personal subject, one near to religious experience, yet its tone remains impersonal and even abstract. 105 The "Vita Nuova" 106 is throughout handled in a manner curi- ously outward, it is a setting for poetic jewels, a dec- THE INTROSPECTIVE TYPE 115 orative framework for sonnet or ballata, rather than a spiritual self -study. The flame-color of the garment of Beatrice, the winged Love in a blaze of fire, these are the images which dominated the imagination of its writer. True, Dante tells how his passion affected his health, and how his grief undermined it, but he is nowhere definitely personal ; he writes poetically, and he withholds the key to his conduct so effectually, that the whole tone has remained artificial. The mind of Dante was not made of modern stuff. However different his attitude from your true intro- spective, he yet belongs to the same spiritual family as that Francis who preached to the birds, as that Ubertino da Casale, whose meditations made him a member of the Holy Family, sitting at table with them. Even in the personal portions of the "Commedia," Dante's direct, concrete imagination displays the power of a mind turned outward. Not upon himself, but upon the world without, his gaze is fixed. His heaven and hell are distinct with the imagery of real things; they have the classes and circles and divisions of the visible universe; the empyrean itself shows a decorative plan. Their vivid- ness is due to this; it is the vividness of the Italian painters; while both belong to the unself -conscious and objective past. There are many to whom the sombre figure of the Florentine, in its fierce gloom and faith, serves to personify the Middle Ages. The chasm that separates Dante from Petrarch is wider than the width of years; it is the gulf between the ancient and the modern world. Boccaccio accused Petrarch of indifference toward the elder poet, and 116 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS although Petrarch, defends himself with skill in a long letter, yet the very terms of this defence show plainly that Dante's attitude of mind is as far from him as it is from ourselves. It has been said of Petrarch that he was not content to live unquestion- ingly, but must be constantly preoccupied with his own aims and motives. 107 His passion for the works of Augustin, and especially for the "Confessions," roused in him a desire for self-understanding which he enriched by a matured power of psychological analysis. We have seen him already upon Mont Yentoux, smitten with wonder, not only at the wide sunny stretch of country, but also at the miracle of his be- holding self; and none of the thoughts and emotions roused in him by the sight are alien to our own ideas. He stands ever as an immortal Youth upon a mountain- top, to whom life opens a wider and wider prospect, while the centuries, rolling by, reveal shining peaks perpetually to be climbed. The introspective tone of Petrarch has throughout a literary quality. At no time does he show any an- ticipation of scientific self-study, of which Cardan, only two hundred years later, was to give so remark- able an example. The tone of the poet's "Epistle to Posterity, ' ' 108 is ceremonious and condescending, the facts are furnished to an admiring public by a cele- brated personage. "As to my disposition, I was not naturally perverse nor wanting in modesty, ' ' he says, noting also, "my youth was gone before I realized it ... but riper age brought me to my senses. ' ' He tells of his quickness, comeliness, and activity ; how his THE INTROSPECTIVE TYPE 117 health endured until old age brought ' ' the usual train of discomforts"; and of his deep conviction that only "by a tardy consciousness of our sins we shall learn to know ourselves." One feels that this man wished posterity to remember the esteem in which he was held by the great of his own day ; and how, without regret, he had relinquished that popularity. Less formal are his letters, yet they, too, echo this successful assurance. So highly were they valued by the writer, that he spent six years editing them for publication, with the result that, however interesting, they lack spontaneity. 109 Not only are they intro- spective, they are often self-conscious. When he writes of, "my inexorable passion for work/' or com- ments, "my mind is as hard as a rock," 110 the tone is that of the literary man, satisfying the curiosity of an eager and respectful public. The work which particularly concerns us here, is contained in a group of three dialogues to which he gave the title, "De Contemptu Mundi," while allud- ing to them also as his secret "Secretum Suum." 1U Both from a religious and an introspective aspect they have much importance for the present enquiry. They form indeed a confession, wherein the figure of Augus- tin plays the part of spiritual director. Composed in Petrarch's thirty-eighth year, they picture a man in conflict with his youthful errors and passions. In these dialogues, the poet, the lover, the courtier, give place to the student whose quenchless love of letters is the only mundane interest which a newly aroused religious feeling will allow him to indulge. "May God lead me," is his cry, "safe and sound 118 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS out of so many crooked ways ; that I may follow the Voice that calls me; that I may raise up no cloud of dust before my eyes; and, with my mind calmed and at peace, I may hear the world grow still and silent, and the winds of adversity die away ! " 112 This, surely, is another man from him who told us with complacency that his intimacy was desired by noble persons ! And, moreover, it is in these very dialogues that we see the change accomplished. Truth herself, a dazzling angel, led Augustin to the per- plexed poet, saying that his sacred voice would surely bring peace to one so tossed, so troubled. And Petrarch warns us that this little book is not to be regarded critically, as are his other compositions, for it is written chiefly that he himself may renew, as often as need be, the salutary effects of the interview. The attack on himself is opened by an arraignment (placed in Augustin 's mouth) of his own worldliness and vanity. To this accusation he is depicted as listening in all humility. 113 By comparison with the younger Augustin drawn in the ' ' Confessions, ' ' his repentance seems less deep, his tears are less bitter, his clinging is closer to the world. Yet he avows: "I am made partaker of your conflict ... I seem to be hearing the story of myself . . . not of another's wandering, but my own. . . ," 114 His defence of himself against the saint's accusa- tion appears of more strength to us to-day than it could to himself ; it prevails far more than he realized against the Augustinian asceticism. To our ideas, the great, busy, material world, and men's achieve- ments therein, possess a hold over the moral sense THE INTROSPECTIVE TYPE 119 which they had not in the fourteenth century. In words spoken by Augustin, Petrarch draws an accu- rate picture of the ascetic system of the Middle Ages, as it appears to modern eyes. All unwittingly, he places the ethics of the past in antagonism to the ethics of the present. He argues for the life of moderation, reason, and energy, as against the life of fanaticism, superstition, and quiescence. He pleads for the mental images of life and light; while his Augustin, in all sternness, dwells on the power of those images of darkness and of death. If Petrarch makes the saint carry the day in this discussion, it is because Augustin, after all, expressed both the reli- gious and the moral ideals of the time. "I will not deny," Petrarch cries, "that you have terrified me greatly by putting so huge a mass of suffering before my eyes. But may God give me such .plenteous mercy that I may steep my thoughts in meditations like these!" 115 Dialogue second analyzes Petrarch's love of wealth and fame; while again the part he bears against Augustin represents the modern ideal. Doctrines of industry, activity, and study, are advanced against the saint's plea for passive renunciation. His figure of Augustin here is not wholly consistent; for, when he describes himself as suffering from a causeless and poetic melancholy, in which he morbidly took a false delight, 116 he suddenly changes the exhortations of the saint, from advising a constant meditation on the grave, to the urging of courageous cheerfulness. This very inconsistency has a lifelike quality ; though it is true that Petrarch's Augustin seems harsher than 120 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS the Augustin we love. The progress of the composi- tion as a whole marks a growing absorption in its self -analysis, which tends to weaken the part borne therein by the saint. At the end, Petrarch even al- lows himself the last word, for, although he is buffeted by the wind of argument, and stung by the arrows of Scripture, yet he stoutly declares that he can never relinquish his love of study. In this little work, introspection takes a large stride, and enters into possession of literature. It shows as no other book could show how the grasp of Augus- tin was on the very fibre of men's hearts and minds; how, like religion and like philosophy, literary ideas lay helpless in that grasp for centuries. But then Augustin is identified with the greater moments of life; he voiced its crucial struggles. Men like Petrarch turned his pages with tears and prayer; they could no more have read them from the coldly literary point of view than they could have read their Bibles. Moreover, the style of Augustin 's "Confessions" throughout is wonderfully delicate and colored, and the whole of that marvellous Tenth Book is written as though it were to be sung to the music of a harp. Life is seldom, after all, in the lyric mood; and as self -observation grew more frequent, the "looking- within" extended itself to the mere daily round of common thoughts and feelings. The Renaissance re- vived the sceptical spirit, it became the spectator, half- cynical, half-amused, of itself. Man was interested in man, going to and fro about his ordinary business. Until the fifteenth century, the disposition to look in- THE INTROSPECTIVE TYPE 121 ward had been connected with religious discipline; and was associated with the practice of auricular con- fession, at that time firmly established in the Church. Once the introspective tendency transferred itself to the field of secular writing, it developed with such rapidity that by the sixteenth century there existed classic self -studies 117 with no religious feeling what- ever as their basis. 118 The rise of this tendency dur- ing the Renaissance may be noted in such writings as those of Eneas Sylvius Piccolomini, who afterward became Pope Pius II. He left much self-study in his "Commentary," in his letters, and in a "Retracta- tion," imitating Augustin. His temperament was primarily literary, cool, and sceptical, the latter to such an extent, indeed, that even when he was Pope, he observed that "a miracle should always be re- garded with mistrust." 119 In the personal parts of his "Commentary," as in his letters, he is extremely candid; especially concerning that period in his life, when, although neither a pious nor a fervent person, he desired to abandon his youthful errors. This change is expressed in words of sincere doubt and contrition. "I cannot trust myself," he sorrowfully writes, "to take a vow of continence." And again: "I have been a great wanderer from what is right, but I know it, and I hope the knowledge has not come too late." 120 Papal responsibilities educated Eneas Sylvius into deeper seriousness than was his by nature. His ' * Re- tractation" testifies to a sense of his own worldliness; and he asks that posterity remember him as Pius, rather than as Eneas. Throughout, he shows the crit- 122 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS ical habit of mind; and forms a significant link be- tween the ardent nature of such as Petrarch and that later introspective type, that smiling spectator of self, -Montaigne. After the Renaissance, a nature like Montaigne's seems an embodied reaction. So much piety, so much fervor, so much intensity, so much art and color, and passion and energy and heat, and then, Montaigne. He meets the mood of satiety for the first time in literature ; in him we see that the world has put forth too much force and is tired; it is beginning to ask "Cui bono?" and to be amused by its own activ- ity. This is his charm, his friendliness for us when we are weary of ardor. With pipe and by the chim- ney-corner, a man longs most for the society of him called by Sainte-Beuve "I'Homine sans Grace," 121 while the self-study of this man without grace, has evoked much similar study from other graceless men. "C'est moy que je peinds," he writes, ". . . tout entier et tout nu . . . . Ainsi, lecteur, je suis moy- meme la matiere de mon livre." It has been suggested that Montaigne's sceptical attitude was due to his sympathy with the Pyrrhonis- tic philosophy. 122 Beading him to-day, it appears rather as an affair of temperament than of intellect, as an instinctive scepticism of the literary man, rather than as the reasoned scepticism of the doctrinaire. His avowals of orthodoxy are joined to the tran- quillity of a fundamental materialism. He seems to be asking, with Emerson, "So hot, my little sir?" His self -observation partakes of this character; it is THE INTROSPECTIVE TYPE 123 formless and scattered, though Cardan himself could hardly be more minute. From literature he sought amusement, as well as from that science "qui traite de la connaissance de moy-meme." Like the Italian physician, he gives his likes and dislikes, his habits, his food and drink ; but his reason for so doing differs vastly. To Cardan, there seemed about his own per- sonality a something vital and significant which it behooved other men to know, while Montaigne appears to regard himself largely as a means of pleasant com- munication with other men of the same kind. He offers himself to the reader in a friendly fashion ; the result of his introspection brings no surprise nor shock, and his final estimate is, "pour moy doncques, j'aime la vie et la cultive." The absence of all serious fervor, of "la Grace," in Montaigne, strikes us sympathetically in our worldly moments; but it has had one ill effect. Using self- study, while yet, as it were, disregarding it, Montaigne could not fail to be imitated by the incoherent mind. There may be little excuse for egotism in any form, but there is none whatever for such loose and vague methods of self-observation. Thus, any mind which is naturally inclined to wander from the subject, hastens to take refuge in an imitation of the ' ' Essais. ' ' Contemporary literature acknowledges Montaigne as a type of introspection, but the direct effect of his influence is to deprive us of a great deal of valuable personal matter. Among the typical records of the seventeenth cen- tury, the "Keligio Medici " 123 must not be forgotten, 124 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS for the quaint elevation of its style added much weight to the force of its opinions. It is meditative, but not detailed, self -study, with something of Montaigne's influence showing in the crabbed phrases. The author tells us that he read Cardan, and he shows the same feeling for the vastness of this great universe of which one reads in the life of the Italian physician. " Every man is a Microcosm and carries the whole "World about with him, ' ' he writes ; also telling us, ' ' the world that I regard is myself." Browne is as sceptical as Mon- taigne, but with this difference : he hesitates to believe because the question of religion interests him so much, rather than because it interests him so little. His looking-within is a looking upon still greater miracles. Browne's open mind and intellectual curiosity, his lack of prejudice and of superstition, place him among the forerunners of that later type of philosopher whose high seriousness constitutes, in itself, a reli- gion. The documents of an introspective kind are few during this period, and they are not to be found where one would expect to find them. For instance, the ponderous " Diary " of the scholar, Isaac Casau- bon, is detailed but non-introspective, concerning it- self little with the inner life of the writer. Our modern standards for this sort of record, both as to candour and fulness go back no further than to Rousseau. 124 His type of introspection is the type which has influenced the world to-day. His emotional power, his feeling for style and for nature, struck a chord so responsive in eighteenth-century minds, as to THE INTROSPECTIVE TYPE 125 evoke a large group of similar confessions, frankly imitative in their nature. Eousseau's feeling that he was different from other men held also, as did Car- dan's, the belief that this difference was, in se, pro- found and important. In a manner somewhat cloudy, yet as a result of methodical observation, Rousseau comprehended that the forces which produced him were sociological and economical; while to himself he typified the great individual struggle with these forces. He knew that he was neurotic and saw what early conditions had caused the neurosis ; he knew that he was frail of physique, and yet industrious. He felt within himself the presence of a high creative imagina- tion, and he had faith in the power of its ideas. His faith was justified, for he beheld the nations shaken by the wind of his words, and he felt it necessary that men should know something of what he was and whence his spirit. 125 It is much the fashion to decry Jean Jacques, to sneer at and to despise him, to shudder at his premises and to cavil at his conclusions. Morley, for instance, finds that "The exaltation of the opening page . . . is shocking. No monk or saint ever wrote anything more revolting in its barbarous self -feeling. " 126 There is a virtuous indignation expressed here which savors a thought too much of Mrs. Grundy to be convincing to the critical mind. For, if we look upon the "Confessions" from one point of view, we find ourselves infinitely in their debt. True, Cardan is the first to suggest that by the study of abnormal man, much might be learned about normal man. Cardan 126 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS passed with the passing of the sixteenth century ; and suspected as he was, both of heresy and of madness, his work has been left locked within its Latin tomb. 127 Rousseau attempted the same task in a living tongue. Through him, through his appeal, the ex- ceptional person, the atypical child, the individual with the intense sensibilities or emotions, have come to be more sympathetically understood. His looking- within, it is true, revealed much that was unbalanced and ugly, but it also revealed what was human nature, and common to all humanity. The part borne in his life by the pressure of monstrous social injustices is differentiated and made plain, and this constitutes no small part of our indebtedness. In fact, the rising humanitarianism of the present day has been in- fluenced greatly, if not wholly produced, by Rousseau. Modern child-study and child-training, the endeavor to help the atypical person generally, have been aided by his showing us himself. The facts are placed vividly before us, when he purges his soul in all sin- cerity. His introspections are properly balanced by the historical method and made constructive by the autobiographical intention. 128 The imitators of Rousseau follow most often his attention to nature, and its reaction upon his own sensibilities. A number of dreamers, led by his ex- ample to note their dreams, follow his footsteps in a rapturous, feminized manner. Ecstatic over moun- tains and waterfalls, these dreamers lament and be- moan their misfortunes without displaying any of the robuster qualities of Rousseau's naked candour. Lavater, Richter, and Kotzebue in Germany; Ugo THE INTROSPECTIVE TYPE 127 Foscolo and Giusti in Italy, are instances of this type. Closer to Rousseau's sense of style is that of De Senancour, of whose "Obermann" 128 George Sand has written an exquisite appreciation. The founda- tion of De Senancour 's book is fictitious; its descrip- tive passages resemble, and at moments equal, Rous- seau, and by its introspection it is the forerunner of Amiel. "Je m' interrogerai, " writes Obermann, "je m' observerai, je sonderai ce coeur . . . je determin- erai ce que je suis." 130 The result in this instance upon the self-analyst is particularly destructive; his lack of mental vitality renders him incapable of ac- tion. Years slip by filled with a sense of infinite illusion; this feeling extends even to his nearest friends. Withal, he is unquiet and sad, yet, in the manner of the neurasthenic, even the sadness has but little meaning, while everything in life seems vague and trivial. The book's vogue was taken as an indi- cation of that malacbie du siecle, which was echoed by Alfred de Musset, 131 Baudelaire, and the lesser Byronists. The twentieth-century mind looking back over the nineteenth, is at times inclined to wonder how much of the so-called Byronism was due to Byron. 132 The Byronic attitude is supposed to include all possible introspective egotism, yet Lord Morley is at hand to point out the fundamentally objective character of the poet and his activities. 133 Study of his journals and memoranda which are all that remain of the de- stroyed memoir display an introspection generally constructive and well balanced. Of his work, he writes that it will be "a kind of guide-post ... to 128 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS prevent some of the lies which will be told and de- stroy some which have been told already." 134 No doubt his expressed wish that Lady Byron should be his reader, is responsible for his intention to be faith- ful and sincere. 135 The "Detached Thoughts" display a remarkable keenness and justice in their self -observation. "My passions were developed very early, ' ' he writes, * ' per- haps this was one of the reasons which caused the an- ticipated melancholy of my thoughts. ' ' 188 The "Journal," however, is more melodramatic, more typically Byronic. One catches the morbid mood, one feels the scribbler at work. Nightmares are made much of; there are such phrases as "Ugh, how my blood chilled!" and the "Heighos" of the blood-and- thunder school. The contrast between Byron and Shelley in this regard is curious and illuminating. With all his melodrama, Byron's self -study makes an attempt at candour, fulness, and method. Shelley, on the con- trary (whose opinion of Rousseau's "Confessions" has not been forgotten), found the truth during all his life to be an unpleasant surprise, because things as they are were such an ugly contrast to things as Shelley thought they ought to be. His nature seemed incapable of self-understanding, just as we read in his letters that it was incapable also of understanding others. He was vividly mistaken in his estimates of the character of almost every one with whom he came into close contact, Harriet and Eliza "Westbrook, Miss Kitchener, Hogg, Claire Clairmont, Byron himself. 137 " To the end, he retains his "colossal power of self- THE INTROSPECTIVE TYPE 129 deception, ' ' as Arnold calls it ; he remains the supreme example of a man untouched by the modern wave of subjective and introspective philosophy. "The subjective movement," says Caird, "indicates a relative advance in man's consciousness of him- self . . . for although the mind turned back upon itself may become troubled and unhealthy, yet its pain and disease are necessary steps in the way of a higher life." 138 This relative advance Shelley never made; with the result that he caused quite as much suffering as though he had been an unthinking sensualist of the Cellini type. One cannot forget poor, silly, little Harriet writing, in a gust of admiration, how Mrs. Nugent was there, "talking with Percy about virtue !" And one notes how his total lack of self-study and self -understanding caused Shelley to dash himself to pieces against the disapproval of a world, not so much more moral as more subjective, and thus unable to see why Shelley could not see what Shelley really was. With what different and deepened feelings do we read the letters of that sheltered recluse and poet, Mrs. Browning, filled, as they are, with the most delicate and just self -observation ! "I have lived only in- wardly," she says, "or with sorrow for a strong emo- tion . . . my heart in books and in poetry . . . my experience in reveries. ' ' 139 If this modern subjectivity be an advance in the gain of truth, we owe it to Kousseau. But the twentieth-century mind under modern science has car- ried the faculty of introspection far beyond that of the eighteenth, and into details which escaped Jean 130 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS Jacques. Moreover, the mutual interchange of lan- guages and literatures has developed a type of greater sensitiveness to all moods and to all shades of thought. The recently published notebooks of Emerson fore- shadow many of the newer preoccupations, by means of an intellect possessing the fresh classic quality, though in novel surroundings. His tendency toward philosophical mysticism has more importance for the reader when a perusal of these journals indicates its source. Over and over again the young Emerson makes note of the influence upon his mind of the Neo- Platonists, especially Proclus, by whom his thought and style were colored. Those passages entitled "My- self," display some of the acuteness of the modern scientific self -study, if expressed in an outworn poeti- cal manner. 140 He records his exaltation under the stimulus of nature and literature, with the depression arising from his wavering health. Deep religious feeling pervades many of the entries. "I am to give my soul to God, and to withdraw from sin and the world," 141 he wrote; and we know, kept that resolu- tion. An entry made on his nineteenth birthday forms a valuable aid to an understanding of the man. This youth writes of "a goading sense of emptiness and wasted capacity," but grants himself "an intellectual stature above the common." Of his affections, he notes: "A blank, my lord. . . . Ungenerous, selfish, cautious and cold, ... I yet wish to be romantic. There is not one being to whom I am attached with THE INTROSPECTIVE TYPE 131 warm and entire devotion." 142 No doubt such 1 'frightful confessions" are exaggerated; yet they de- fine that lack of human warmth which underlay his whole philosophy. If he was not to remain the ' ' bar- ren and desolate soul" 143 he called himself; yet he knew his weakness. Later, he notes that he lacked strong reasoning power ; 144 in other respects his in- tellect seems to have made, in a single year, gigantic strides toward greatness. Modern self -study, however, is not typically seen in a mind like Emerson's, whose calibre and character are those of the past. The "Journal" of Henri- Charles Amiel, 145 to certain temperaments, has car- ried an infinitely greater aid and suggestiveness. Many see in him a true example of the highest in- trospection, for, while he paused to watch himself, he expressed what he saw in words of the most accu- rately delicate beauty. The effect of the book was im- mediate ; 146 there are those to whom it has seemed to voice the very rhythm of life. The style was so sensitive, so flexible, so full, that one read on in a sort of bewilderment, as a traveller might behold, on either side of his path, the strange charms of a new country. In her admirable "Introduction to the Journal," Mrs. "Ward calls Amiel "the brother of Obermann," but to our minds there seems little real brotherhood between the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries. Amiel himself wrote that he resembled "that eternal self -chronicler, Maine de Biran," whose introspective experiments had so little success, at least on the posi- tive side. What Amiel did not take from French 132 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS psychology, he drew from the German subjective phi- losophers, and the combination served to heighten far beyond the average his power of "looking within." While he is "the spectator of his life-drama," he, too, like Cardan, like Obermann, or any other neuras- thenic, brings with him, into the world-theatre, that strained sense of universal illusion. Nor did his tendency to constant personal analysis fail of destructive effect. Confidence he always lacked. "That energetic subjectivity which has faith in itself," he observes, "is unknown to me." "I have never felt any inward assurance of genius . . . what dreams I have are all vague and indefinite." How different the note struck by that Italian doctor struggling against a host of difficulties unknown to modern lives! "I have lived to myself," cried Car- dan, "so far as has been permitted to me, and in the hope of the future I have despised the present." 147 The self-distrust of Amiel was based on his self- knowledge. He was undecided and overscrupulous: discouragement and ennui early laid hold on him. Moreover, he was one of those unfortunate beings whom nature has so stinted of vitality that the mere demands of daily life draw too heavily upon them, and they shrink fearfully from the greater demands of emotion, or of ambition. To such an one, any creative work is undertaken at a heavy price. Thought alone, to Amiel, was immense and satisfying; practical life seemed but to terrify him. He was perpetually pre- paring for a work which he had never the energy to begin. "I play scales as it were," he writes; "I run THE INTROSPECTIVE TYPE 133 up and down my instrument, I train my hand . . . but the work itself remains unachieved . . . and my energy is swallowed up in a kind of barren curiosity. ' ' Such a nature, like Balzac's artist, 148 has spent its force in experiment, and has none left for the ap- pointed task. Hence Amiel's languor and ennui, the sense of emptiness which caused him to lose him- self in the mists of philosophical speculation. "What interested me most in myself," he notes, "has been the pleasure of having under my hand a person in whom, as an authentic specimen of human nature, I could follow ... all the metamorphoses, the se- cret thoughts, the heart-beats, the temptations of humanity." To himself, he is continually as "a win- dow open upon the mystery of the world." At mo- ments there flutters across his page one of those deli- cate moods, whose description defies our grosser analy- sis, but which Amiel beholds in all its tenuous irides- cence: "I can find no words for what I feel. My consciousness is withdrawn into myself. I hear my heart beating and my life passing." And again: "My sensible consciousness is concentrated upon this ideal standing-point . . . whence one hears the impetuous passage of time, rushing and foaming as it flows out into the changeless ocean of eternity." Amiel has served us here as an example of pure and heightened introspection, but his journal is also a record of his religious feeling. This feeling links him with the mystics of the past notably Richard of St. Victor, with whom he has many points of likeness. His religion is of the metaphysical, mystical type, 134 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS tinged by his German heritage, and is nowhere so in- tense, emotionally, as the introspection by which it was accompanied. Minor types of the modern developed self -observer are many, and fall under various classifications. Those who watch their own processes should be con- sidered at the moment rather than the scientific self- students who merely survey themselves as they would study a crystal of definite character and fixed shape. The great latter-day autobiographers, Harriet Mar- tineau, Mill, Spencer, and others, are among these last, and have furnished us with the best means of examining the modern scientific movement. Yet .the smaller group of the purely introspective must not be overlooked. Their observations form at least a solid basis "in a world most of whose other facts have at some time tottered in the breath of philosophic doubt. ' ' 149 The reader is referred to such books as the " Journals " of Eugenie and Maurice de Guerin, to that of Marie Bashkirtsev, and to such collections of letters as MerimeVs, Balzac's, and the Brownings, if he is interested in the further manifestations of this tendency. As we turn to review the names in this section, we feel the justice of that view by which the introspective nature has, since the day of Protagoras, been linked with morbid conditions. Certainly, Montaigne, Car- dan, Rousseau, De Senancour, Amiel, are not the types of health. Yet there are very striking exceptions to this rule. Take that extraordinary family of English Quakers, the Gurneys of Earlham, 150 and note how THE INTROSPECTIVE TYPE 135 the connection between introspection and sickliness is contradicted by the facts of their lives. Both descrip- tions and portraits of the members of this family show them to have possessed an unusual degree of physical beauty and vigor, health and intelligence. The gal- lery of miniatures shows one lovely young face after another. Their family history radiates cheerfulness, activity, and high spirits. They went fox-hunting, a cluster of pretty girls, in "pink" coats, which at that time no tenet of the Society of Friends forbade them to wear. They were never idle, they were much outdoors; they danced and gave dinners and were as gay as their neighbors. With all this, the deepest, the most introspective and intense religious life formed the primary occupation of that family. Each member kept an introspective journal, and one of these (Rachel's) runs to seventeen quarto volumes. As each grew to maturity, this religious sentiment shaped itself variously, retaining a uniform stand- ard of goodness and zeal. The unique condition ex- isted among them, in that their individual changes of creed caused no break in their family harmony. All show balance and self-control. Mrs. Fry records the death of her beloved sister, Priscilla Gurney, as "a sweet time," and her account reads with the calm solemnity of a church service. From childhood, the Gurneys were in the habit of noting every passing mood. Meditation and journaliz- ing were two family dogmas ; a part of each day was set aside, and absolute truthfulness was exacted, even although the elders did not demand to read the result. One is tempted to linger over the naivete and charm 136 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS of these entries. "I feel this evening," writes Richenda, " in a most comfortable mind. ... I really felt true pleasure while I was eating an excellent apple pudding. ... I walked by myself about the fields, with the most melancholy, delightful feelings, re- flecting on a future state." "As I went down the dance yesterday," writes her sister Louisa, "I thought of Heaven and of God." One of the broth- ers, John James, enters in his diary a series of ques- tions for the purpose of systematic self-examination; while the elder sister Catherine, who left the So- ciety to join the English Church, analyzes at length the effect which Butler's "Analogy" had on her re- ligious views. This useful, happy, and amiable fam- ily serves to remind us that the introspective habit is by no means necessarily destructive. When the inner life of an individual is full of vitality, the in- trospection is often a natural means of preserving that vitality. As a group, the Friends have always possessed it; nor can it be shown to have interfered with their output of practical achievement. Worldly interests rarely suffered at their hands ; and their tend- ency to self -observation was, in most cases, a construc- tive factor in their lives. There is another sense in which an introspective nature may be at its best during its introspections; since the light will be cast into any morbid shadows by any honest effort at self -understanding. The name of the late Oscar Wilde, during his lifetime and before the tragedy which closed it, was linked in men 's mind with the world's poseurs. The cleverness of his work and its esthetic finish hardly atoned for its insincerity, THE INTROSPECTIVE TYPE 137 its perversity, and its exaggerated pose. Had death but overtaken him in time, he might easily have gone down into the ages along with George Brummell, or William Beckford, or the Count de St. Germain, and little would have remained but a poem or two, a Tdon-mot, the tradition of a sunflower in a velvet coat. But life is a ruthless dramatist, who startles us without compunction. From this figure cast into the torture- chamber of her grimmest forces, crime and shame and judgment, there rises a poignant cry "out of the depths." Strange, that the most sincere piece of self -study of our day should have come from the least sincere writer, that this most religious of modern soul- studies should be the work of the most pagan of mod- ern souls ! The "De Profundis" was written in prison during the last years of the nineteenth century. Mention of it should fitly bring this long survey to a close. Its style is not always free from phrase and paradox, ("I went down the primrose path to the sound of flutes" 151 ), and the author exaggerates his position in contemporary letters by comparing himself to Byron. But his work is much more than an exposi- tion of personal vanity; and it is in no sense an apol- ogy. The absence of weak excuse helps to make it the most inspiring study of the effects of suffering upon character that we possess in English. ' l In the begin- ning God made a world for each separate man, and in that world, which is within us, we should seek to live. ... I must say to myself that I ruined myself and that nobody great or small can be ruined except by his own hand. ' ' 1B2 These words express a truth which 188 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS cannot be reached save through the bitterest experi- ences, while to have realized it is almost to have freed one's self from their worst bitterness. * * There is only one thing left for me now, absolute humility. ' ' 153 This realization is the saving grace of the man who wrote ; nor is there anything in literature closer to truth than his own analysis of the reasons for his fall. He was, indeed, * ' that man, who, wishing to write about everything, must know everything, ' ' 154 of Balzac. His belief in reconstruction through suf- fering is reiterated in a noble music of language; for he, who began life by turning his back on all sorrow, had now come to feel "that sorrow is the most sensi- tive of all created things. ' ' 155 * ' Nothing seems to me," he writes, "of the smallest value except what one gets out of one's self. ... I have got to make everything that has happened to me good for me. ' ' In the crucible of humility and suffering some of the shame has been purged away; the sketch ends in the renewal of hope, of life, of beauty, if upon other terms. The mere composition has been an aid to the spirit of hope, "since it is by utterance that we live." A communication such as the "De Profundis" brings nearer the sense of human dependence. Each one of us is forced by inexorable law to pass on to the race the result of his experience. An identical im- pulse moved Augustin or Descartes, as it moved Abelard or Wilde. For many centuries, introspec- tion has been the instrument in the hand of this im- pulse; and as an instrument, it has not been found more imperfect than the other means through which humanity strives continually to attain the truth. IV THE DOCUMENTS I. Change of belief. II. Genius. III. Groups. IV. Methodists. V. Quakers. VI. Mormons. VII. Identity of emotion. VIII. Candour. IX. Scientific self -observation. IV THE DOCUMENTS As we approach the self -study more nearly, it be- comes evident that some adequate plan for its survey must be formulated. The documents themselves are various as the personalities responsible for them; while the matter they contain is so scattered and so heterogeneous, that the task of sifting it seems at first sight to be as hopeless as the task which Venus set before Psyche. 1 The temptation, to which many workers in this field have yielded, is to make use of separate records as instances, to cull here and there the striking example, omitting the commonplace; to select, in a word, only those cases which serve to support their special theory. Such method is quite impossible in the case of the present volume. If this is to be an inductive study from all the obtainable facts, then a classification under different heads is naturally the first step. Ere we set to work to make this classification, let us glance at the main charac- teristics of the records, in the light of those funda- mental causes which have just been discussed. That all religious self-studies have been produced by the confession-motive working along with the tendency toward introspection, would seem to have been the conclusion arrived at by an investigation 141 142 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS into these basic principles. The wish to "tell all about it" produces a necessary "looking- within" to see what there is to tell. Upon the web of a fabric whose warp and woof seem to be always woven from the same threads, there is a design wonderfully varied and complex, in colors often strange and new. Just as the Polynesian tapa, at the first glance, seems to show in its pattern a purely individual caprice, yet, when studied, its design will be found to contain ele- ments tribal, hereditary, even national, and individual only as they are combined so it is with these narra- tives. Their individual qualities may readily be dif- ferentiated, they lie rather in arrangement than in motif. All come under the sway of the same social and psychological influences, such as group-contagion, imitation, social conditions, and changes in belief. In addition, there are always a few which are purely the outcome of the creative instinct, the result of genius. These form the main motifs in the design of the religious confession; and one must examine them well if he would understand the often elaborate fig- ures of which they form an intricate and essential part. That human nature does not take an account of itself when in a state of repose and equipoise, appears obvious; change therefore is the first law of the re- ligious confession. Once his poise is disturbed the subject tends to ask himself : What am I ? and whence these changes? The ardently pious mind, having passed through a crisis caused either by a shifting of his religious point of view 2 or by the actual birth of a feeling unknown THE DOCUMENTS 143 before, 3 reaches a pause of comparative calm whence two impulses arise. If the condition be one of peace and joy, which, temporarily, it is apt to be, he is filled with a desire to communicate and to express his happiness. Using his own phrase, he longs "to bear testimony to the goodness of God ' ' ; and his con- fession thereupon becomes the Augustinian "Confes- sion of praise. ' ' * More frequently it happens that the storm through which his soul has just passed has been severe enough to shake the very foundations of the mind with un- certainty and terror. To review it upon paper, to re-trace the circumstances of his conversion and thus reassure himself of its blessed existence, is a means of establishing that serenity, of which, even now, he is by no means certain. 5 If he has friends, family, follow- ers, he is eagerly desirous that they shall witness his conflict and appreciate the worth of his victory. 6 It is more than important to him that the world should know he is not now what he was before. Of inspiration, of genius, at this crisis, our mention may be but brief. Such cases, at best, are all too few. Nevertheless, it were well to repeat that the great religious leaders, by the very fact of their genius, must needs leave behind them some systematic personal data. As a matter of fact, most of them have done so; and such material has been left in various forms, in sermon 7 or parable, 8 diary 9 or reve- lation. 10 Since they have prevailed as leaders largely through the force of personality, to impress that personality as much as possible, becomes an inevi- table duty of their sacred mission. No religious 144 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS leader has succeeded nor could he hope to succeed without a plentiful use of the "I." His gen- ius must make its direct personal appeal. And in these later days this personal appeal must be printed if it would reach a wider audience, such as earlier gathered to hear him when he preached to them upon a mountain, 11 or under a sacred tree, 12 or in the market-place of a Grecian city. 13 He may leave this appeal only in his letters to intimate friends and disciples ; 14 or in a diary to which, under the seal of a cypher, he confided his combats and discourage- ments ; 15 yet often there will be present, even in these private forms, an autobiographical intention showing his instinctive desire that the record should survive him, that it should be read. But genius is genius, and for one Fox, for one Wes- ley, there are many Woolmans and Hansons. Of the asteroids which circle about genius as about a lumi- nary, some merely reflect his light, while others will be I'ound to shed a paler light all their own. The forma- tion of groups in human society differs little from the group-habit of the cosmos. Laws governing this formation have received some attention in a former volume, 16 though in a wider and more general con- nection, and were therein shown to follow the princi- ples obtaining in the formation of all crowds. The confessant, as a matter of fact, is completely subject to what has been termed "the law of the mental unity of crowds "; 17 and is much affected by contagion. The particular groups through which we may study these typical conditions readily occur to the mind. Such are the Gottesfreunde, in fourteenth-century THE DOCUMENTS 145 Germany; the English Quakers grouped around the leadership of George Fox; the English Methodists similarly grouped around John Wesley; the Scottish seventeenth-century Pietists; the French Port-Royal- ists; the American Mormons. The family likeness shown by the individual members of these clusters is sufficiently striking to demonstrate the closeness of the tie between them. Nor must one forget what Sainte-Beuve is at some pains to remind us; that until modern days the influence of Augustin was manifest not over one, but over all types of the crea- tive religious mind. 18 Augustin was in fact "a great empire divided among such distinguished heirs as Malebranche, Bossuet, and Fenelon." Already have we noticed in another section the breadth of that king- dom, which includes him who was named as the first of the moderns. A general study of religious movements will serve to confirm our impression of the part played therein by group-contagion. Inevitably one returns to the importance of the personal element; and to the need, felt by every religious leader, of making that element prevail. The means lay at hand ever since the print- ing-press stood ready to carry the Gospel among the Gentiles. Through this means, the freshness and force of the original emotion will have all the weight that the leader can give to it, will create new centres of that emotion and charge them with new energy. If this religious leader be a mystic of the ancient pattern, a Teresa, or a Mme. Guyon she is urged to expression through the influence of the confessional. If he be a reformer like Fox or Swedenborg, the motive 146 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS of self-preservation acts as a strong incentive ; for such a leader must leave an image of himself upon the printed page, so that his followers may be cheered when he has left them. If the conditions surround- ing him have been those of success, this motive may be weakened, the diary or the day-book may be briefer and more formal. This is to be seen in the case of the Wesleys, whose personal success was so overpow- ering. But such success is, after all, not common ; the religious reformer is apt to die while still uncertain as to the accomplishment of his mission. The exact relation of the confessant to his group is one not easy to determine ; since he is chary of ma- terial serviceable to that end. Individuality is ever jealous; and a confessant dislikes to admit his con- formity to any existing pattern. He is apt, on the other hand, to protest loudly his entire originality, and to cry that the extent of his candour in self -revelation has never been before attempted. 19 Style is at times the only link which appears to bind him to the other members of his group. Usually he will describe the social conditions surrounding himself and the circum- stances of his belief, thus displaying the strength of the religious influence to which he has been exposed. In the earlier confessions this may only be done in- directly; we may have lost much because of the si- lence of Augustin, concerning all these matters. The force of group-contagion is almost always un- derestimated. The great religious leader is far too often treated as an isolated phenomenon, when, as a matter of fact, he is almost never an isolated phe- nomenon. There seems to prevail the opinion that THE DOCUMENTS 147 he would become less important and less worthy if this truth were known. Actually, this is not the case. Joan of Arc 20 has not been rendered less extraordi- nary because she is now shown to have been but one of many seers of visions and hearers of voices, all eager to aid in quieting their distracted country. Is Christ less wonderful because of John the Baptist ? Religion, as one of the more communicable emotions, postulates the existence of a leader or leaders and a group of fol- lowers; some of whom may possess talent and force enough to become leaders in their turn, and to set up a further group-contagion. This is as true of later liter- ary groups, as of the earlier clusters who listened and followed the man himself. The main clusters of confessants are thickest dur- ing and after the upheavals of the Eeformation. Those documents which exist earlier come from con- vents and monasteries, and their character is largely predetermined by their surroundings. Bearing all the marks of an early simplicity and credulity, they are of great value, for by means of these records may be studied the whole of mediaeval mysticism, and in particular that state known as sanctification, so vehe- mently discussed to-day. But as nuclei, as definite groups, these records cannot be considered with any justice, since the countries and the periods of time which they cover are too wide for satisfactory classi- fication. Let us rather direct our attention, for the moment, to the typical record-groups of the Protestant sects. The seventeenth and eighteenth century pietistic re- vivals furnish an abundance of material toward the 148 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS study of these religious families; not the least impor- tant of which lies in their strong individuality and marked communal feeling. The English Quakers, the later English Methodists, possess striking group-char- acteristics, and are wholly accessible for the purpose of comparative study. An examination of them, as groups, will form a useful background to our further consideration of their individual examples. Although John "Wesley left no autobiography and although his journal is by no means so introspective as many another, yet he understood in the fullest measure how important was this method of perpetuating a re- ligious movement. The lives led by most of his preach- ers were full of physical as well as spiritual adven- ture ; and Wesley, when editing the ' ' Arminian Mag- azine, " appreciated to the full the value of all this material. We read that: "Mr. Wesley requested many of the itinerant preachers who were em- ployed under his sanction to give him in writing an account of their personal history, including a record of their conversion to God, of the circumstances under which they were led to minister the word of life, and of the principal events connected with their public labours. " 21 Here it is evident that Wesley's keen perception as- sured him of the need to cultivate a group-sentiment around the Methodist revival; and our knowledge of his mind leads us to suppose that he was well ac- quainted with similar, earlier groups. Be that as it may, the result of his request was a collection of testi- monies which formed an admirable basis for any study of the tendencies of that period, and which, together THE DOCUMENTS 149 with the Quaker group, forms a complete record of re- ligious history during two centuries. It will be observed that Wesley merely outlined the plan of these biographies, leaving the widest latitude to their writers. He seems to have had an unconscious reliance upon that impulse which we have named * * the autobiographical intention," and he does not appear to place the slightest faith in the method known later as the "questionnaire." And it is amazing how well he is justified in this opinion. The Methodist testi- monies, as a whole, are reliable, accurate, well-bal- anced, full of detail, yet marked with brevity, and pervaded with a feeling for essentials. Compared to the confusion, the vagueness, the lack of character in most "questionnaire" replies, these facts are very striking. They serve to show beyond possible con- tradiction that the spontaneous action of the mind upon any subject is an absolute prerequisite to gaining the truth; while forcing the mind and memory arbi- trarily in a given direction, as is done by a set of questions, inevitably causes the writer to omit, or to distort the emphasis, or to shift the facts. That vital element of the unexpected must perforce be lacking; while an over-zealous desire to furnish an interrogator with data will oftentimes cause the writer to manufac- ture it when it is not there. The questionnaire is intended to be a short-cut, and it has the disadvan- tages of most short-cuts; together with fundamental unfitness of its means to its material. Wise John Wesley, to ask of his ministers only "an account of their personal history with a record of their con- version to God"! 150 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS By no stretch of imagination can Wesley be termed a mystic, yet it is strangely true that there are more mystics among his followers than among those of George Fox himself. This impression may be due to the fact that it is only the leaders of the Methodists the active preachers of the sect who have left their testimony ; whereas the feeling among the Friends was such that the humblest among them has left a record of God's dealings with him. More women write their experiences among the Friends than among the Methodists; yet, although the Wesleyan movement bears all tokens of its later development, there still remain striking likenesses be- tween the two groups. Both are part of that great revival springing from the people a wave of emotion sweeping up from the hearts of the poor. Although we know that the Society of Friends has been in existence only since the lifetime of George Fox ; * 2 yet every Philadelphia!!, at least, refers with assurance to the Quaker face, the Quaker character, and even to minor Quaker traits and idiosyncrasies. Many of these characteristics, of course, have nothing to do with the Society; but are merely indicative of that type of English person, and that section of Eng- lish country, from which its votaries were originally drawn. Yet many traits remain, which in a space of but two hundred years have stamped themselves upon human life in such a manner as to produce a recognizable type. Any one noting an example so pertinent of human malleability can no longer wonder at the effect which religious beliefs have produced in a comparatively short time upon communities, even THE DOCUMENTS 151 upon nations. To such an one the cruelties of the Spanish during the time of the Inquisition, the in- sensibility of the modern Japanese to pain and death, present no longer any enigma. These are, indeed, but manifestations of the peculiar susceptibility of the human race as a whole, and of some nationalities in particular, to suggestion: and this suggestibility is thus seen as a great factor in our evolution. So great a factor, is it indeed, that the disappearance of a spe- cial suggestion (furnished in many cases by the tenets of religion) is followed by the disappearance of the special type, and the rapid subsidence of its particular idiosyncrasies, under the pressure of fresh suggestions. Rare to-day, and becoming rapidly rarer, is that con- trolled, serene personality which was produced and educated under the influence of the Society of Friends. The reader of their memoirs, testimonies, and convince- ments may, if he will, observe the type in the making. With very few exceptions, it is worth observing that the Society drew its membership in the be- ginning from persons who, since childhood, had been naturally serious and devout. The reader may be interested, if he will glance over their abstracts in sequence, to see how few are the conversions to Fox 's views, of nonreligious persons, or of those previously steeped in vice or in crime. Such a man as John Bunyan 23 was not drawn to them in fact, he pro- claims their abominable errors. There are men among the Methodists who avow that they had little or no religious feeling ; who, as soldiers or sailors, were dis- sipated or vicious, drunkards or seducers; such are seldom found among the Friends. 24 But the 152 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS religious man who feels he is not religious enough; the good person tormented by a sense of indwelling sin; the pious nature dissatisfied with its present be- lief; to these, the working mysticism offered by George Fox was a perfect solution of all their troubles. Their literal interpretation of the text, that he who humbleth himself shall be exalted, formed their guid- ing principle. The plain speech, the plain dress, were expressions of this idea of passing unnoticed by the world. 25 One man sees the vision of a lowly people ; 26 another dreams concerning a persecuted people ; 2T both join the Society. Conversions among Friends on the whole are less emotional and less violent. They have not to create a new sentiment for God, but only to change its form and give it freer rein. Hence the phrases, "under a concern," "weights and exer- cises fell upon me," "I was moved to go" here and there; phrases which rather under- than overcharge their emotional conditions. 28 No doubt the persecution of the first Friends, their sufferings and imprisonments, ridicule by families and neighbors, had its effect in heightening their self-control and strengthening their philosophy. No doubt, living as they did close to the source of a vital emotion, they drank deep thereof and found it sus- taining and pure. Their records, as a whole, are on a remarkably high ethical level for persons so cir- cumstanced; their mysticism is under far more con- trol and is less fanatical than one would have sup- posed. Much is due to the contagion of the Quaker meeting, where, by the very conditions of required passivity, there was induced in these groups a remark- THE DOCUMENTS 153 able suggestibility. In meeting, fell those " weights and exercises''; in meeting, the inward voice speaks and the heart is tendered. Fox, himself, of course, was a case more definitely mystical ; and to his idea he joined a fierce vindictiveness which was the very re- verse of a meek and quiet spirit. 29 . Any analysis of Fox would give all the particulars of his individuality in this respect; the reader need only compare him with other members of the Society. Such natures as Ellwood, Woolman, Howgill, Chalkley, or the entire family of the Gurneys of Earlham, appear much more typical of what we call to-day the Quaker spirit than does Fox. But these great qualities of early Quakerism held in them certain sources of weakness, which became ap- parent so soon as by a generation or so, its votaries were removed from the sources of their faith. In the first place, the tenets of their belief, if logically pur- sued, endangered self-preservation. Non-resistance tends to develop inertia; the practical condemnation of art gave an opportunity for the self-destructive tendencies of studied mental inferiority. There is no more striking proof that the vitality of a religious sentiment is highest at its source, that this vitality either does not persist, or becomes of little real worth where it does persist, than is shown by the later his- tory of the Society of Friends. When we come to consider Wesley and the eight- eenth-century Evangelical movement, other particu- lars are presented to our notice. The most prom- inent characteristic of the Quaker attitude toward God is love, the most prominent Methodist characteris- 154 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS tic is fear. The children of Israel under the whip of Pharaoh's overseer present no more vivid picture of persecuted terror than do Wesley's followers. The only questions which seem vital to them are those con- cerning Hell and Damnation; there is present in their narratives a perpetual undercurrent of gloomy excitement. In fact, a large number of these cases write of their condition before their conversion in terms suggesting insanity. ' ' I was as one distracted, ' ' says John Haime. "I fell on the ground groaning and pulling the hairs off of my head," cries Thomas Walsh. "The sweat poured from off me," write Whitefield and John Nelson. "I seemed to be hang- ing over the brink of hell," and so on. 30 Visions of Christ on the cross 31 or bathed in blood, 32 of a dazzling light, 33 of a strange animal s * or a strange bird, 35 with voices whispering of evil 36 or of aid, meet us on every page. The relapses and reactions are uniformly vio- lent ; the arc of the pendulum is wide and its swing is extreme. Whitefield, in this regard, is really more typical than either of the Wesleys ; for the latter were by temperament much less emotional than most of their disciples. Like many great actors, theirs was the gift of producing a higher degree of excitement than they were feeling. Whitefield, 37 a dissipated youth, "froward," as he declares, "from my mother's womb"; loving cards, "affecting to look rakish"; then suddenly overwhelmed with the inward dark- ness of terror, the sweat pouring from him in his agony of prayer, is more typical of Methodism, than the scholarly John Wesley or the gentle Charles. 38 The cultivated youth, the intellectual attitude of the THE DOCUMENTS 155 great leader of Methodism, remove him, as a person- ality, very far from such as Whitefield, or Jaco, 38 or Joyce. 40 Even in the darkest time preceding his change of belief, Wesley cannot find that he has been very sinful; only that he has been unable to reduce himself to a wholly passive state of obedience to God. 41 By nature he was spiritual in his outlook ; if he grows fearful, it is because, like Suso, 42 he works himself de- liberately into a state of depression and alarm. And when at last he found himself ; when he assumed that task the magnitude of which one cannot overestimate ; when, physically frail and always ailing, he travelled, preaching and evangelizing throughout the length and breadth of England without rest or pause; then he obtained a complete and an enduring peace, quieted and calmed by finding a suitable outlet to his genius. The fire which burned in his frail body lit a thou- sand other fires, as is the way with genius. More than any other modern man, he moved and vitalized the crowd who listened, and sent them home to new suf- ferings, to unimagined terrors. In their narratives they tell us of poignant repentance, of groans and sleeplessness, fevers and sweats, the howls of fear, the collapse from exhaustion. Man after man, stand- ing in those immense crowds, listens and is touched; we who read, may almost see that great wave of emo- tion sweep over and carry on with it, these helpless human atoms. The wave of Methodism did not spend itself in Great Britain, but travelled across the ocean to the United States. Here it found conditions especially favorable to the spread of such emotion. A people, 156 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS who had succeeded at immense cost in achieving inde- pendence, during these first years seemed to have achieved thereby only a fresh isolation. Exhausted by a war which had been an additional strain on those pioneers whose very existence was perpetual war, many families ceased to look hopefully upon the fu- ture, and relapsed into a sort of listless terror. Near the growing cities, a fresh and animating cur- rent of vitality stimulated men to the building of the new Republic; but only those who are familiar with the personal writings of pioneer families can appreciate how little this new hope held for their solitary lives. The situation was as favorable as that in the Middle Ages for the revival or recrudescence of emotional religious experience. The heredity of the pioneers, their surroundings, their traditions, all pre- disposed them to a passionate interest in the subject of religion. There will be later occasion to quote in detail from Jonathan Edwards' " Narrative of the Great Revival in New England," 4S which was the most pow- erful manifestation of this movement. All sects re- ceived an immense impulse, new communities were constantly being formed ; and new revelations received in the wilderness. The Mormon movement (which we cannot omit to note as a minor group) was" an offshoot of the Great Revival. The family of Joseph Smith, senior, after wandering through Vermont, settled in Ontario County, near Niagara. 44 This district was still close enough to the remnants of the Iroquois tribes for dread of them to be an important psychological factor in the life of the Smiths. The whole frontier had, in THE DOCUMENTS 157 truth, been ravaged by the Indians but two years pre- viously. In addition to the hardships of the frontier life, the severe winters, the scanty food, and the incessant labor, there was this active, un- remitting, vigilant terror of the Indians. Nor were the Smiths alone under the obsession of this dread, which entered into and became a part of their reli- gious fears ; it is noted in many another record. The Iroquois, painted, bestial, incredibly cruel, incredibly cunning, is a figure which comes nearer to a realization of the devil than any other on earth; just as the ex- perience of his captives must have come near to the realization of hell. This fear of hell and the Indian, this linking of these two ideas, beset the imagina- tions of the pioneer children, stamping them with an ineffaceable impression. The same combination made the Salem witch- trials yet more hideous; and it ac- counts for much beside Joseph Smith's vivid picture of the * ' Lamanites as the Devil 's children. ' ' Historians of Mormonism emphasize the multiplica- tion of sects, the general religious ferment, which sur- round the youth of the founder. 45 Smith himself calls the place he lived in, "the burnt-over district." It had been shaken by Methodist, Baptist, and Pres- byterian agitation; the Restorationists, the Pilgrims, the Shakers, had wandered through it to disappear in the West. 48 The "revival-meeting" (that uncon- sciously accurate phrase!) had come into fashion, con- fusing and bewildering simple-minded and pious youth. 47 For Joseph Smith to receive a revelation, and to found a new sect, was therefore entirely in order with surrounding circumstances. Our mention 158 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS of his personality and psychology in their proper place will show that these were likewise entirely in accord. He was at first, he says, drawn to Methodism; then swerved toward the Presbyterians ; and his first vision came as an answer to this uncertainty. Mormonism serves a definite purpose, and must not be omitted from a survey of the group, be- cause of its nearness to our own time; but that very nearness has deprived it of certain typical features. The calibre of the Prophet's mind, the style of his revelations, show a marked deteriora- tion in the quality of this particular revival. Smith's biographer comments that "Joseph's first prophecy, at the age of eighteen, concerned Deacon Jessup and the widow's cow"; 48 and there were reve- lations concerning farms, and boarding-houses, Emma Smith and so forth. There is even sheer nonsense ; "And they had horses and asses, and there were elephants, and cureloms and cumoms," 49 which last beasts, Mr. Eiley scruples not to class with the Jabber- wock. But because we observe in this outbreak signs of distinct degeneration, vulgarity, charlatanry, and cheapness, almost beyond any point yet reached by human delusion, we must not, therefore, consider it as something entirely different. It is hard for our minds not to reject with disgust any possibility which would link "peep-stone Smith, " and his revelations concerning boarding-houses, with the elegant mind of a Wesley, or the splendid fire and penetration of a Luther, or a Fox. Yet, if we look more closely, we see that this is wrong. The wave is moving through particles of muddy water, but it is the same wave. THE DOCUMENTS 159 The intensity of these narratives, the movement of these communities under the influence of emotion, are sufficient to bear witness to their real, if often piteous, sincerity. By contrast, the concerns and exercises of the Friends seem certainly less heightened. Yet no Mormon, and few Methodist confessions have the literary accent which one may enjoy in the first Quakers, nor have they that intense, poetic phrase- ology. All these groups regarded death in the light of a spiritual drama, during which the chief actor must undergo every possible emotional influence in order to make his ending the culmination of all previous religious excitements. James Lackington, during a mood of reaction, writes of his wife, that "she died in a fit of enthusiastic rant, surrounded by several Methodistical preachers. ' ' 50 To Mrs. Fry, her sis- ter 's demise was "a sweet time." 51 Here are op- posite points of view which yet indicate like conditions. It will not be forgotten how, at his mother's passing, Augustin checked all noisy grief. He writes, "My own childish feeling, which was through the youthful voice of my heart finding escape in tears, was restrained and silenced. . . . For we did not consider it fitting to celebrate that funeral with tearful plaints and groanings." His friend Evodius taking up the psalter, the mourners thereupon joined in the psalm. 52 Modern pietist sects echo the ideas and practice of the primitive Church be- fore the dogmatic ritual had chastened and controlled them. The student, considering the appended data, will 160 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS no doubt observe that in their composition the Quaker and Methodist records testify not to fortuitous circum- stance, nor to individual caprice, but to the operation of a general human law. According to such law, all emotions and especially those which are novel to the subject tend to express themselves and be communi- cated in writing or speech. The persistence of reli- gious movements is dependent upon this law; since but for the relief afforded by self -study and confes- sion, the original impetus given to the movement by emotion must soon have died away. These rows of dun-colored volumes, therefore, shed much light upon certain complex and obscure processes of the modern man; so that what before seemed futile as the dust becomes charged with vital significance. Many of us have looked upon the Sunday School autobiography (as we may call it) with wonder that it should exist, or that, existing, it should differ so little from its fellows. Few realize that it is this very spontaneous similarity which makes it so valuable. A conchologist may make little out of a single shell, but bring him fifty, and he will describe and classify the species. These memoirs share in common characteristics that enable the stu- dent to determine the extent, depth, and quality of the feeling which inspired them; together with their difference from similar manifestations, their varia- tion from other groups. Heading these documents, the student gains a con- viction of the identity of religious emotion under all circumstances, at all times, in all nations and natures. Each protest of originality, each effort of the subject to be himself, forms another link in the human chain. THE DOCUMENTS 161 Each convert, in turn, cries with Rousseau, "au moins, je suis autre." Each convert is by that very protest linked to every other convert; while the very repeti- tion is warrant of the identity of the impulse. The first effect of these bubbles of individuality, rising and subsiding again into the whirlpool of life, is to impress one with the uniformity of their cause. The confessant, telling of his life and his sins, seek- ing to kindle others with the fire in his own soul, is making a passionate effort for individualism. He does not realize that when you read him with eighty or more fellow-Methodists or Quakers, his individuality disappears almost as completely as though he were a Hebrew chronicler in the earliest days. His actual religious idea no matter how great will never be found to stand quite alone. Thus Jesus, Buddha, Mahomet, Augustin, Calvin, Luther, touch hands across the globe and across the ages. Each has dipped his cup in the same spring. The common identity of the essential human emo- tions has never been established more forcibly than by a study of the religious confession. We think always, as did Sir Thomas Browne, that " 'tis opportune to look back upon old times and contemplate our fore- fathers. Great examples grow thin and to be fetched from the passed world. ' ' 53 Yet these sentences were written in the seventeenth century; and before some of the greatest examples in literature, at least, were born. The lesser religious cases are linked with the greater, and the slow processes of evolution cause but slight changes over the centuries. Lay Augustin side by 162 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS side with Hurrell Froude, or Amiel, and we shall note the difference. The quality of religious feeling is higher and more beautiful and more intense in the Bishop of Hippo. Apart from genius this is natural ; he is closer to the source of his emotion. The intro- spection is more developed in the two moderns; in whom it has become a conscious, no longer an uncon- scious factor. It affects their composition and it is systematized by them in a way unknown to Augustin. These three minds differ widely in idea, in force, and in intellectual quality; yet all three are recognizably permeated by the same emotion. There are qualities in the religious confession, how- ever, which do not remain stable; which shift with every age ; and whose presence or absence affects very greatly the total impression made by the confessant. The most important of these is candour. Now, stand- ards of candour have changed very much, and de- veloped in accordance with the development of men's powers of introspection. The deeper a self- observer looks within, the more he tries to see, the vaster appears to him that cloudy country of self. He is like the traveller on foot, to whom at every mile the land of his pilgrimage seems to increase in ex- tent. According to the ideas of his age, Augustin is uncommonly candid, but to our minds his candour is perforce incomplete. It was impossible for Augus- tin, like Amiel, "to hear his heart beating and his life passing. ' ' 64 One of the chief reasons for this is that he was the possessor to a high degree of what Amiel had not, namely, "that energetic subjectivity which has faith in itself. ' ' Genius though he was, his intro- THE DOCUMENTS 163 spective powers were rudimentary in certain respects, compared to what such powers have since become. He told truly what he knew, and what he knew is just as important now as when he told it. Since Augustin, we have been led to know more and more; until we know now much that he never dreamed of; and our candour is greater in proportion. At all times, candour is a variable and an uncertain quality in the confessant. Its limitations are also the limitations of temperament; and in this regard, the difference among writers is amazing. Intelligences accustomed to a developed introspection find no diffi- culty in describing what other minds could not even think. What A will regard as a simple statement of fact, may appear to B as an arduous piece of self- revelation. An enquiry considered by C as scientific and legitimate, and by him satisfied with the minute- ness of a medical report, will seem to D an outrageous public glance into the private chambers of life. New- man begins the " Apologia" with an accent of solem- nity, as if about to wrest from his soul a sacredly in- timate revelation. What he tells us, after this pre- amble, is his change of creed, his views about guardian- angels, the Tractarians and the Monophysites. Ob- viously, such matters are sacredly intimate to him. His real springs of thought and action are studiously concealed ; and thus his candour is seen to be as slight as his introspective power. The reader feels that Newman would have found it impossible even to un- derstand such a sentence as Augustin wrote about giv- ing up his mistress, 55 for he had no such gift of accu- rate self -observation. "I never work better/' ob- 164 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS serves the candid Martin Luther, "than when I am inspired by anger ... for then my whole tempera- ment is quickened, my understanding sharpened. ' ' 56 The ability to make such self -study as this is rare; and it is of particular value to the confessant. Cardan, Rousseau, Alline, and even George Miiller, and John Trevor, gain in use and dignity, easing their souls by the acknowledgment of vices and habits which with many persons never even take on the crystalliza- tion of words. Their candour is a part of the special discipline of truth. De Quincey has remarked that some persons have it not in their power to be confidential; they are really incapable of piercing the haze which envelops their secret springs of action. 57 Naturally, therefore, their lack of introspection limits the extent of their candour. If a man has the ability to look deep within him- self, then merely to speak of that which lies near to the surface, cannot seem unduly frank; whereas, if he lack this ability, then to lay bare any fact lying beneath the topmost layer of convention, must seem unduly frank. The degree of unreserve in a self- portrayal becomes a question of individual tempera- ment, and the revelations resulting from this unre- serve, should in truth be so regarded whenever they are brought into contact with prevalent standards of taste. Such standards alter from age to age, if not from generation to generation ; and yet it is by them the confessant is apt to be held to a final judgment. Moreover, standards of taste often prevail in unex- pected directions, guiding the confessant himself. What else makes the "Spiritual Diary" of Sweden- THE DOCUMENTS 165 borg so vile, and the "De Profundis" of Wilde so beautiful ? Each is perfectly candid ; and the matter confessed in both is piteous and horrible. But the emphasis, the balance, the standard of taste, is pre- served in one and not in the other ; so that the reader may read one with tears in his eyes, and the other with a sense of nausea. Balance in candour is less apt to be maintained in the religious than in the secular confession. Humil- ity being to the confessant his first need, he is un- questionably apt to dwell upon his pre-converted state of sin. He will thus often be candid only about the period before conversion. George Miiller's early im- moralities are peculiarly shocking; 58 his candour about them is disagreeably complete; but once con- verted, we hear nothing more from him of a personal kind. Biographers of Alexander Pope have found him insincere, 59 but what a beautiful example of well- balanced candour he gave us, when he declared: "I writ because it amused me; I corrected because it was as pleasant to me to correct as to write. ' ' In fine, the intellectual or scientific impulse to candour is even greater than the religious or emotional. The intellec- tual reverence for the fact is as intense as the religious reverence for the idea. Therefore to many minds, the great self -studies, the work of Herbert Spencer, of Cardan, Cellini, Rousseau, and Mill, contain quali- ties seriously appealing as the work of Augustin, or Teresa, or George Fox. These readers will be, in general, thoughtful and unemotional minds, those to whom the service of the truth means in itself the service of God. Reading Augustin may lead one to 166 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS prayer and praise; reading Rousseau leads one to think and tremble. Seriousness and sincerity are often in themselves religious qualities, and the reader is awed in the presence of a really elevated candour, no matter what the cause. For these, if for no other reasons, an especial in- terest is attached to those records of self-experiment written in a particular style and for a particular pur- pose. Space forbids that all of these should be listed here, while a lack of human interest in most of them renders it unnecessary. But there are some instances which may not be omitted, of men who minutely note the result in themselves of an illness, or of a cure, or of a condition, or of a scientific experiment. De Quin- cey is a case in point. 60 Insanity is noted with care by B. R. Haydon 61 and Clifford W. Beers. 62 Andre de Lordes, 63 the author of "Theatre d 'Epouvante, ' ' gives a careful analysis of his early preoccupation with the emotion of fear. 64 Neurasthenia has lately formed the subject for similar self -studies, all more or less unsuccessful. The idea of scientific self-observation goes well back into the eighteenth century. Hibbert carefully notes the narrative of Nicolai, 65 a bookseller of Berlin, who, during an attack of bilious fever, no- ticed that his dreams grew so vivid as to partake of the nature of visions. Further illness and anxiety turned them into visions altogether, which were systematically studied by himself and his doctor until he was cured. Nicolai, though very much frightened at times, is on the whole wonderfully calm. "Had I not been able to distinguish phantasms," he writes, "I must have been insane . . . but I considered them what they THE DOCUMENTS 167 were, namely, the effects of disease and so made them subservient to my observations." This is a remark- ably strong-minded person, and one wonders what the end of his life brought forth. Nicolai had an imita- tor in a man who, upon an attack of inflammatory fever, accurately transcribed his hallucinations, which were supernatural in character. 66 The famous Dr. Pordage, 67 rector of Bradfield, Berks, on the contrary, had a very mystical and in- genious theory to explain the visions which worried him in the night. He believed that the "Gyant with a great sword in his hand, ' ' and the dragon with fiery eyes, were especial evidences of God's interest and favor. They might, he thought, ' ' have caused a great distemper/' had not angels in person come to his rescue. The doctor's explanation seems to us to-day quite as fantastic as his apparitions. Cardan (to whom one must needs return for all these matters) had a plentiful experience of visual and auditory phenomena; and many theories for their explana- tion. 68 In his turn he is cited by the learned Dr. John Beaumont, 69 who himself underwent the most remarkable attention from spirits of all sorts. 70 Their first visitation followed hard upon an illness; the second was some years later. There were visions and lit'tle bells ringing in his ear, which he seems to have taken calmly and describes carefully. Many scattered instances of this kind occur in the literature of auto- biography. 71 The self -experimentalists form another group in this particular connection. Charles Babbage, 72 the mathe- matician, roasted himself in an oven. Various per- 168 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS sons note the effects of ether or chloroform. 73 "Tre- lat cites the author St. Edme, who put himself to death and who minutely observed the last impressions of his last night/' 74 There is extant a like narra- tive from a Corsican named Luc-Antonio Viterbi. 75 No less a person than Sir Humphry Davy 76 wrote a monograph "on the effects of nitrous-oxide gas" tried upon his own person. The result was of some value in showing how his spirits were thereby heightened, and how images arose and turned into delusions. The reader will not have failed to remark the seri- ousness with which these experiments are undertaken. It is, indeed, their only excuse. * ' Agir et ecrire comme en la presence perpetuelle d'un spectateur indifferent et railleur," as Taine wrote of Merimee, "etre soi- meme ce spectateur"; 77 this defines the danger in self -observation. This attitude is the sterile Byron- ism, the "maladie personnelle, " which has been named as "the great plague of our spiritual life." 78 Undertaken from this cynical point of view, self- study becomes worse than useless; and is open to all the objections which have been urged against it. The service of Truth, whether one be enrolled under the banner of science or of religion, is the most important task known to man. The mere cynical self -analyzer is rarer than many critics would have us believe. He may, in fact, be left wholly aside, as we proceed in our attempt to examine and to classify that material which the sincere servants of truth and confessants of religious experience place at our disposal. V THE DATA ANALYZED: I I. Parentage: Heredity: Education. II. Health poor. III. Health good. IY. Pathological records. V. Criminal records. VI. Witchcraft records possession by devils. VII. Contagion. THE DATA ANALYZED: I FROM the moment that a study of groups has es- tablished the common identity of their emotional re- ligious experiences, much is felt to have been gained. The student is thereby enabled to move upon broader lines, and to consider the various aspects of the sub- ject as though they belonged to something homo- geneous. No longer is it needful to differentiate between the feelings of the Methodist, the Catholic, or the Friend. Each believes that he upholds, as a torch, the flame of Truth; yet to us, on beholding them all from the same distance, one star differs little from another star in glory. There is another point of view, from which the data appear as more significant than had at first been anticipated. No one studying the appended cases can fail to note that they mark the difference between the emotional process involving revelation and faith, and the intellectual process involving the formulation of a dogmatic belief. "Whereas the first experience is fundamental and universal, the second has ever been to a large degree factitious and circumstantial. That feeling which leads a man to seek for a fresh religious inspiration, does not of necessity entirely govern the shape which his belief will eventually take. Many 171 172 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS influences combine to determine his choice of a sect, or of a dogma, which influences have had absolutely no part in the great initial impulse of his religious need. Scientists have, of course, commented long ere now upon this fact, according to their several investiga- tions. Delacroix has pertinently noted the identity of the formulae of mysticism, an identity persisting, what- ever the variation in the creed of the mystic. "Les mystiques/' he wrote, "separes par le temps, Tespace, le milieu historique, forment un groupe, et leur ex- perience se rattache a un meme type psychologique. ' ' x But the facts go beyond mysticism ; they include all religious experience. The form which emotional ex- perience takes in the human soul, the process which it must follow, are governed by basic laws of heredity, physique, and temperament. The form which intellec- tual belief takes in the human mind, is governed by much narrower social and artificial conditions. The age a man dwells in, the society wherein he plays his part, affect the latter process; often he elects to join some congenial group less because of religious interests than because of social interests. The ques- tion of affiliation with a special group or sect may be due to environment or to a reaction from environ- ment. 2 There is a very wide diversity in the articles of faith subscribed to, let us say, by the Gottesfreund, the Scots Presbyterian, and the Quaker; yet who will deny the identity of the feeling in the soul of Suso and Luther, Haliburton and George Fox? It is not even necessary to confine the comparison to the sects of Christianity alone. From Al-Ghazzali the THE DATA ANALYZED: I 173 Arabian, to Uriel d'Acosta the Portuguese r Jew, the same process is at work, identical in manifestation, identical in progressive symptoms. Differences in creed dwindle to a very unimportant place in the scheme of any investigation. The subject may be a Mormon, a Christian Scientist, or a Buddhist ; either because his parents were, or because they were not. Once the heat of emotion is passed, social pres- sure aids in the crystallization of an evolved belief. The man has undergone certain feelings, and from them has drawn certain inductions leading in the di- rection of certain opinions. Human-like, he seeks to ally these opinions with other similar views, both to strengthen them and to make them prevail. What he does not usually recognize, but what we at this dis- tance recognize for him, is that the emotions which gave birth to his opinions are not peculiar to him- self, nor to his sect, nor to his nation, nor to his race. The subject, in fact, frequently confuses the effect with the cause. Just as the lover thinks that it is be- cause his beloved outvies all other women, that he loves as no man ever loved, so the religious confessant thinks that it is the importance of what he thinks and believes that causes him to suffer so intensely or to rejoice so exceedingly. The fact is he would suffer and rejoice to the same degree, no matter in what port his troubled mind finally decided to drop anchor. The emotion is human, basic, and universal; the par- ticular dogma is rather its result than its cause. If there is one good office which the reading of all these lives may do, it is to eliminate the idea that any- one creed has a right to hold itself as more religious 174 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS than any other creed. It is not religious feeling which guides a man in the choice of a Church ; rather is it his intellectual conception of the relation to con- duct of the emotion he is undergoing or has just un- dergone. This is proven by the fact that not one case of religious inspiration can be found in one sect which has not its exact parallel in another sect. The matter of all men's views is as diverse and fluctuating as the matter of their feelings is constant and stable, therefore it is with this stable matter of feeling that we have chiefly to do. The data provided in these cases are to be con- sidered as uniform, and to be classified according to human nature and to psychology. They may be roughly divided under two main heads, the personal and the purely religious. The latter is apt to be fur- nished us in a confusing fulness, so that it is often hard to sift the trivial from the important features of the case. The former, on the contrary, is frequently scanty and is sometimes omitted entirely. The reason for this will be readily understood. Even so late as the eighteenth century the pious and uplifted person regarded his own piety and ex- altation as a something wholly "not himself," hav- ing no relation to his daily life and habits, or to hygiene, or social conditions, or to heredity or health. Indeed, when we realize how completely this was true, and frequently is still true, we marvel that the confessant gives us even so much information. An historian of the modern scientific spirit, to-day be- come as dominant a quality as ever was the credulity of the Middle Ages, will no doubt observe its en- THE DATA ANALYZED: I 175 trance into the religious narrative, in the modern tendency to insert therein any material elucidating the personality or the situation of the author. Unconscious of its value, unaware, as it would seem, that accuracy of detail had any bearing on his particular religious problem, the confessant, about the middle of the six- teenth century, began to systematize his record to abandon his medieval vagueness and to open the work with an account of his parents and his infancy, his health and his education furnishing us, in a word, with the data of his case. Should any one desire con- crete illustrations of the change in manner, let him compare the writings of Thomas a Kempis, 3 the abbot Herman, 4 Juliana of Norwich, Angela da Foligno, Gertrude of Eisleben, Mechtilde, and so on, with similar confessions by Carlo da Sezze, Teresa, Jeanne de la Mothe-Guyon, or the memoiristes of Port-Royal. The difference is not merely literary, for the earlier records are extremely diffuse, but lies in a new per- ception of the value of all the facts when presenting a case. Single writers, scattered through the Middle Ages, are not lacking in this perception, which indicates their distinction of mind. Augustin had it as a part of his genius. It will be found in the abbot Guibert de Nogent, slightly in Abelard, and strongly in that remarkable woman Hildegarde of Bingen, 5 whose can- dour received as much contemptuous misunderstanding as ever that of Cardan or Rousseau. Her scientific tendency is explained by her genuinely scientific mind, for she was a distinguished botanist and physician. When we read to-day her conscientious endeavor to 176 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS present and to understand her own case, we are in- clined to agree with Michelet that she showed ' ' the last gleam of good sense' ' 6 in her age, and not with the later critic who dismisses her as ' ' a mad old woman. ' ' 7 Since nothing during the Middle Ages so quickly brought upon one the stigma of insanity, as scientific attainments or ambitions of any sort, it is not to be wondered at that Hildegarde stands sui generis. Re- ligious dogma, one must not forget, was in those days a matter not to be examined or questioned, but to be accepted and adored. For the bulk of our personal data, therefore, we are largely dependent upon the documents of later times. The purely religious data are naturally com- posed of the mystical and the non-mystical. Whether the latter, indeed, comes within the purview of this study is a question for further discussion. Since our plan is inductive, it follows that definitions should come last of all; and to separate the mystical data from the non-mystical appears to be largely an affair of definition. Should we try to solve the problem by a change of names, and term our matter normal and abnormal, our task is no easier, for the criterion by which we judge the norm shifts with the centuries, and often with the decades. The non-mystical is not necessarily always the normal, though our material- istic age prefers to think so. It seems wiser, there- fore, for the purpose of present investigation to take these terms simply at their face value and so to make use of them. Through these two main doorways all religious emotion has passed to manifest itself in the individual. THE DATA ANALYZED: I 177 For the more convenient purposes of classification, the personal data have been grouped under three main heads: Parentage, Education, and Health. Each of these heads is to be considered in the light of as many cases as possible, for the sake of the cumulative effect of the evidence. In the same manner will the rest of the data be grouped under three main heads : Beginnings of religious emotion; Conversion; Ter- mination of religious emotion. These divisions are, of course, susceptible of minor subdivisions, while the discussion of conversion- phenomena and theory will occupy a separate section. The reader will bear in mind the flexible nature of much of the evidence, which may cause the omission of some and the repetition of other instances, in a way that may at first sight appear capricious and arbitrary. But with the patient application to each minor case of those broad principles underlying their confession, which he has just determined, he cannot be long impatient or much at fault. To sift the facts of value in the history of the con- fessant from the facts of no value, is a task which at best cannot be complete. In many instances, such facts are few; in many others, they become sub- merged by the ideas, feelings, and impressions which flow abundantly from the writer's pen; in others still, the character of the document precludes their use. Journals and diaries, dealing only with the religious crisis itself, such as that of Sweden- borg, or of Fox, or of Wesley, omit matter which they consider extraneous. Therefore, a study is 178 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS limited in large measure to records regularly auto- biographical in form. Even in these, the seeker after facts is often disappointed, since the confessant nat- urally lays stress on the impression which was strong- est in his imagination, and, therefore, does not readily discriminate between values. Many names must needs be passed over in silence for one or the other of these reasons ; and this silence will include most of the mediaeval confessants, so enormously significant on other counts. The confessant usually gives some de- tails on education and the character of his forebears: inferences as to his heredity we must of course make for ourselves. Thomas Boston 8 of Ettrick was piously reared, of God-fearing Scots parentage. He was a bookish child and well- taught, prepared for college at fourteen, but was held back from entrance for a couple of years. His career there was brilliant; and he showed much taste for music. His preoccupation with the religious life came gradually. Jeanne de St. M. Deleloe was from infancy vowed to the Blessed Virgin by her fer- vent parents, and given the education of a religious. Her subsequent mysticism is shown to be a natural outcome of her teaching and of her surroundings. The same direct inheritance of piety is shown by that Quaker family, the Gurneys of Earlham. Their edu- cation intensified this spirit and the example of a deeply fervent, elder sister completed the cycle of in- fluences. The zeal and ardor of St. Paul's character was afiirmed by his orthodox Hebrew parentage and his thorough education. Rolle of Hampole quaintly says of himself only: "My youth was fond, my THE DATA ANALYZED: I 179 childhood vain, and my young age unclean." Of his parents nothing is known. The father and mother of Thomas Haliburton * ' were eminently religious. ' ' At school he remained idle and dissipated and did not do any work until after his eighteenth year, when he began to study for the min- istry. Joseph Hairs mother was a woman of rare sanctity, who filled his young mind with pious dreams and visions. Her weakly body he seems also to have inherited. So apt and talented was he, that he was sent to college, although one of a family of twelve children. Newman's religious education was thor- ough ; and while still very young he read such books as Law's "Serious Call," Milner's " Church History," and Newton ' ' On the Prophecies. ' ' At Oxford he fell under the influence of Keble and of Pusey. Nietzsche, in the " Ecce Homo, ' ' and in a brief sketch of his child- hood, mentions his youthful desire for universal knowl- edge, led thereunto by reading Humboldt. Schopen- hauer was a great force in his life. He remarks that his father was delicate and morbid, and died young. At school, the abbot Othloh was first severely beaten, but he succeeded by reason of his powerful memory. Love of books and the classics much preceded his religious interest ; and like Guibert, he felt them to be a stumbling-block in the true way. Swedenborg's parents were pious, believed warmly in spirits, heard voices and saw visions. His father, Bishop Svedberg, made note of a personal conversation with an angel. The son Emanuel had a thorough education of the scientific kind, and when he began to write, it was on economics, physiology, and metallurgy. The 180 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS heredity of Joseph Smith, the Mormon prophet, is as significant as Swedenborg 's. His grandfather, mother, and father were subject to religious gloom, dreamed dreams, saw visions and lights. The whole family was imaginative, lazy, shiftless, and credulous : all showed certain literary aptitudes. Deep melancholies and doubts beset this family, together with a fear of In- dians which is reflected in Joseph 's writings, where he identifies the savages with the powers of hell. Joseph had little schooling: and prided himself on his illiter- acy. His apt memory and ability to pick up and use a miscellaneous reading are shown in the Book of Mor- mon. John Wesley's parents were of the conven- tional, Church of England type, his mother a woman of strong character, his education that of an English gentleman destined for the Church. The zeal, the power, the emotion, were his alone. Uriel d 'Acosta was gently educated and could ride the ''Great Horse/' At the proper age he studied law, but religious ideas, and his changes of view concerning them, soon ex- cluded all other interests in his mind. "I was edu- cated, " he writes, "according to the custom of that country, in the Popish Religion ; and when I was but a young man the dread of eternal Damnation made me desirous to keep all its doctrines with the utmost exact- ness." Henry Alline went early to school and was forward in learning. Augustin's relations with his mother, Monica, are too widely known to need com- ment here. He shows, in truth, very marked traits inherited from both parents, and his description is sympathetic. "In this my childhood," he says of his education, "I had no love of learning and hated THE DATA ANALYZED: I 181; to be forced to it. I would not have learned had I not been compelled." He liked Latin, but disliked Greek ; loved Euclid, but hated Homer, and was much beaten because of this. All works of eloquence, "of a dramatic type," appealed to his mind, and he was deeply influenced first by a dialogue of Cicero the "Hortensius" and later by Aristotle. His subse- quent career of dissipation terminating in the depres- sion and discontent with self, which were the first steps toward his conversion, are dealt with under other heads. The influence of Monica on her son, both direct and indirect, is marked throughout his life. Another pious mother had for her son the great Cardinal Bel- larmin, whom, with his four brothers, she destined to the priesthood. They were the spectators of her fast- ing and flagellation ; indeed, all their early influences turned them to the Church. In addition, however, to his strong clerical bent, Bellarmin was talented, very quick, and a lover in boyhood of poetry and of the classics. He notes his taste for music and sing- ing, and that he could mend nets very well. A Jesuit at seventeen, he pursues his education thereafter in the direction of theology and Hebrew, making a gram- mar of the latter tongue, for his own use. Another precocious child, whose education aided a development first wholly intellectual, but which later became re- ligious, and mystical, was Pascal. In her curious record of changes in creed, Annie Besant describes her father as a sceptic and savant; and says that her own ardently religious bent, in the beginning, was spontaneous and individual. Robert Blair, early left an orphan, was educated at Glasgow 182 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS College, where Augustin's "Confessions" deeply im- pressed him. He developed the gift of extempore preaching, and although he had his full share of the superstition of his day, yet he showed the gradual and steady evolution of his religious nature. Bun- yan's schooling amounted to little more than learning to read and write. In youth he was exceedingly vi- cious ; and was noted always for a vivid imagination. Thomas Chalkley is more a man of the world than most Quakers; he studied hard in his Philadelphia home; and seems to have had normal youthful influ- ences. His temporal affairs prospered, showing that he had business talent and industry. J. F. Clarke was taught classics and mathematics by his grand- father; he had much taste for nature and for litera- ture. His development was normal. Few Quakers give us any information on matters temporal, but Eichard Davies, unlike many others, was ' ' brought up in a little learning. ' ' At birth, John Dunton lost his mother. He was a sickly child, fanciful and dreamy, disliking study. A violent love-affair, at thirteen, caused him still further to neglect his education ; but a year later he was ready to enter Oxford. C. G. Finney's parents were not "professors"; but his friends soon turned him toward religion. James Fraser of Brae learned well at school, but his temper was peevish, he says, and he was no "dawty." The strictness of his rearing caused many violent reactions. George Fox says little of himself as a child, save that he had "gravity and stayedness, with innocency and honesty." He had but little book-learning and that self-taught. Very different were the cultivated sur- THE DATA ANALYZED: I 183 roundings of the Arabian Al-Ghazzali, who was a savant at twenty, yet as perplexed about religious matters as ever Fox himself. Edmund Gosse con- tributes an admirable modern study of heredity in his book entitled ' ' Father and Son. ' ' The intensely pious parents members of the strict sect of Plymouth Brothers work on the imagination of their child till he becomes an elder at ten. But the father was a man of science, and this inheritance, together with the crucial intellectual conflict of the fifties, carried the son to a total change of view. Evangelistic influences of a certain type, with their inevitable effect upon a sensitive nature, have never been more admirably de- scribed than in this volume, which has the rare virtue of sympathy for outworn ideas. Unusual in a Quaker, James Gough had "a good genius and a propensity to learning, " and easily knew Latin and Greek. He was also given to poetry, until convinced of its wickedness. Yet he thinks that his youth was "a complication of ambition, envy, craft, and deceit, ' ' before his religious interests became dom- inant. The abbot Guibert de Nogent is one of the more direct examples of hereditary mysticism. The ex- cessive piety of his parents kept them apart for much of their married life; and when his mother left him alone at eight years old to enter a convent, she already spoke of demons and visions as matters of daily occur- rence. His training was very severe ; he followed his mother's example and at twelve became a monk. There ensues between them a correspondence full of their visions and mystical experiences by which each 184 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS seeks to excite and animate the fervor of the other. Like the preceding example, and many another, Gui- bert sacrificed his poetic tastes, and turned, at cost of many sighs, to the study of theology. The same mys- tical atmosphere surrounded Madame de la Mothe- Guyon in her infancy ; her parents, too, were zealots, although she thinks that in every way but the religious they neglected her and her education. It is worthy of note that she accuses practically every one with whom she comes into contact, of neglect and persecution, sisters and servants, husband, mother-in-law, and the world in general, all, according to her narrative, unite in tormenting this harmless girl. Even her ex- tremely ostentatious humility, the irritating way in which she turns the other cheek, and makes gifts to those who beat her, is not enough to account for such systematic and continuous persecution; it ends by making the reader sceptical, as though it were a de- lusion. A. J. C. Hare gives an interesting record of a severely devout education, the fervency of which, how- ever, did not retain its full effect upon his gentle, somewhat dilettante character. Frederic Harrison, in his "Apologia/' draws a picture of the via media, of a healthy upbringing, simple, cheerful ideas, holding neither hell nor terror, followed by a gradual evolu- tion to more scientific views. James Lackington is of peasant-stock and self-taught. Through many de- vious wanderings in faith, he returns at the end to his inherited simplicity. John Livingstone underwent the customary arduous Scottish education ; he says he was well-beaten and so became proficient! His religious THE DATA ANALYZED: I 185 feelings developed slowly and gradually superseded every other interest. The comte Lomenie de Brienne evidently drew a certain zeal from his father, the pious Huguenot minister to Henri IV, but a court-educa- tion was followed by violent dissipation and mania, so that much of his later life was spent at St. Lazare. The parents of Henry More were Calvinists, and he was severely reared, yet he did not naturally turn to that faith, being of a speculative mind. Knowledge and learning were at first the most important objects of his life ; his religious ideas were slowly evolved and came to take first place. John Newton, the son of poor parents, had but two years' regular schooling. By the aid of a powerful memory, however, he * ' picked up" French and Latin, and after his conversion he taught himself both Greek and Hebrew. As a boy, he is not quite so illiterate as Patrick, the saintly swineherd, who terms his own writings " drivel. " Bishop Symon Patrick, that cheerful person, blesses God for his bookish family and his careful training. This included short-hand, with which he noted ser- mons. He went to Cambridge as a sizar, but soon ob- tained a scholarship, work, and friends. Paulinus (of Pella) gives an interesting account of his pre-Christian education. He read Homer and Plato in his fifth year, but his studies were interrupted by ill-health. Mark Pattison's uncommonly slow development in- terfered with the normal course of his college career. When he does begin to develop in the early twenties, he says, "I read enormously." Kenan's Breton par- entage brought the Breton inheritance of dreamy imagination. He also, he thinks, inherited his "in- 186 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS capacity of being bad. ' ' Placed in a Roman Catholic seminary, he had in all respects the clerical training, added to the temperament of a priest. Only his in- tellect, unfettered, gigantic, turned toward "la science positive" making all else of no regard. Few personal studies remain to us of more value and suggestiveness. Among the more vivid records, that of M. A. Schimmelpenninck gives the picture of a pietist rearing. Delicate and frail, at the side of an ailing mother, this girl undergoes a strenuously thorough religious education. Taught by a father who thinks it his duty to be harsh, she suffers agonies of nervous dread and misery. The ensuing resentment, reaction, and shrinking from everything religious, culminating in melancholy and conversion, seem to be thoroughly explained by these facts. Teresa's parents were noble and gave her the upbringing of a woman of the world. Her entrance into convent-life did not alter this ideal for some time, until, indeed, she began to burn with the zeal for reform. She says little of her early self, but shows in every line she wrote her executive ability. Leon Tolstoi was also of a noble family, and brought up as the conventional young aristocrat. From this life, however, he later turned in horror, as did another Russian noble, G. Schow- valoff. Anna van Schurman was trained first in the arts ; and had done wonders in glass-etching, tap- estry, and paper flowers, before she turned her at- tention to Hebrew and the classics. She was chiefly taught by her father, from whom she had her serious and scholarly inclinations. Blanco White, like Renan, THE DATA ANALYZED: I 187 was educated for the priesthood. The piety of his parents was mingled with other characteristics in his strange personality. George Whitefield was "fro- ward," disliked study, and had an impudent temper. His dramatic tastes developed young and lasted all his life. At Oxford he set to work in earnest. In the " Dialogue with Trypho," Justin Martyr outlines a brief account of his education, of his inborn love of philosophy, and of how he turned toward Christian ideas. Details of education and heredity among the earlier minor Roman Catholic cases, we have already stated to be few. Save that she was an "indocta mulier," and concealed her revelations from her family, Hilde- garde of Bingen gives no information. The Mere Jeanne des Anges had thoroughly upset her family with her extravagances by her fifteenth year, so in de- spair they sent her to a convent. She seems to have been given a good education and was very fond of reading. Loyola received the training of a Spanish aristocrat and soldier, " delighting in feats of arms." In these words he dismisses the matter as trifling. That " little, prittie Tobie," as Charles I calls Sir Tobie Matthew, was trained in Protestantism and for a career of diplomacy. When he began to be inter- ested in Catholicism, his father's thunderings seemed to have but hastened his decision. Gertrude More's father disciplined her severely, yet her girlhood was wilful and headstrong. De Marsay had Protestant parents who gave him a devout upbringing. The young Angelique Arnauld, one of a deeply religious family, fulfilled her destiny and heritage when she 188 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS became a mystic. Both Sainte-Chantal and M. M. Alacoque came of devout parents. Paul Lowengard and Alphonse de Ratisbonne were both of Jewish de- scent. The former, in temperament being sensitive to religious ideas, suffered from the mockery of his free- thinking father; so that his conversion to Catholicism seemed more or less inevitable. The latter 's family were deeply fervent in their religious nature, and a brother preceded him into the Roman Catholic Church. This is also the case of F. Liebermann. Although f j. J. Olier had orthodox parents, yet they doubted his vocation because of his heady temperament, and so gave him a worldly training. F. Ozanam's devout nature was shared by every member of his family ; his sister "was as pious as an angel/' and his college life was filled with religious struggles and triumphs. An- other convert, Fanny Pittar, had conventional parents, a normal education, and a lively disposition. The famous Antoinette Bourignon suffered much because her father and mother quarrelled, and jeered at her infantile devotion. She felt obliged to leave home, and, later, became a recluse. John Eudes says that his parents were humble and pious like himself. Mary of the Angels was vain and fond of dress : the gentle- ness of a kind priest influenced for good her educa- tion and nature. Sister Therese, Carmelite, was one of five sisters, who all took the veil. Religious matters had always formed the chief occupation of this family. Carre de Montgeron was spoiled by an indulgent father and gave himself up to pleasure. His own wickedness, however, soon alarmed him and he began to think of reform. The parents of Anne Catherine THE DATA ANALYZED: I 189 Emmerich encouraged her in practices of excessive devotion, with the least possible food and sleep. One does not often find a confessant congratulating her- self with a pious joy on her complete ignorance. "Grace a Dieu," she cries, "je n'ai presque jamais rien lu." Peter Favre, the friend of Loyola, was brought up "by good, Catholic, and pious parents/' who saw his ability and sent him to school, instead of rearing him a Savoyard shepherd like themselves. Hugo of St. Victor gives an account of his studies and his progress, much as does John of Salisbury. In a group of modern Catholic converts, giving brief ac- counts of their submission, will be found several Swedenborgians, whose parents were unable to satisfy them by rearing them in the mystical tenets of that sect. 9 The nun Osanna Andreasi had parents so ex- traordinary for the seventeenth century, that when she began to have divine visions and conversations, they thought her epileptic and insisted that she con- sult a physician ! Henry Suso inherited both his mysticism and his nervous temperament from a devout mother. Frau- lein Malwida von Meysenbug had a keen natural piety, but received no training whatever. The cult of heroes was, for a long time, her childish religion. She underwent a long struggle with the aristocratic prej- udices of her family, and finally was obliged to break with them. John Trevor had a conventional education in religious matters, and was early im- pressed by the tragic side of life. H. Fielding writes that he was piously reared, and by women only. D. 'Jarratt came of poor parents, and was being led into 190 RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS vice by his idle, dissipated brothers. By his mind and memory, however, he gained his schoolmaster's in- terest, and so was saved to be trained for a teacher. During boyhood H. Martyn's relations badgered him with pious exhortations; at college he was irritable at being unsuccessful. On his father's death he be- came more thoughtful. J. Lathrop had a devout mother and was early susceptible to religious con- tagion. Helen Keller's entire education is of great in- terest. The religious side of it was conducted by Phil- lips Brooks, and accepted by her without question. Though Friedrich Schleiermacher's mother was de- vout, yet she could not keep her son from a phase of peculiar scepticism. After some time his college career at Halle steadied his mind. J. de la Fontaine shared the piety of his Huguenot family, and, though he failed in his studies, became a minister. A large num- ber of Quakers were born to some faith equally rigid ; and given the severe training in morals which was common one hundred years or more ago. Education among this group is represented by but a few years' schooling. Such instances present very little which may distinguish the one from the other in this par- ticular; it is therefore hardly worth our while to give separate mention to the family influences and education of J. Hoag, 0. Sansom, E. Stirredge, W. Williams, B. Follows, C. Marshall, J. Fothergill, B. Jordan,