Even “pronounced individuality” “has an element of mysticism” in it—of the
non-rational, which we feel the more distinctly the more decidedly we
reject all attempts to make it rational again through crude or subtle
mythologies. This is much more true of genius, artistic insight, and
inspiration. But these are much too delicate to be exposed to the
buffeting of controversy, much more so the dark and mysterious boundary
region in the life of the human spirit which we know under the name of
mysticism in the true sense, without inverted commas. It is not a subject
that is adapted for systematic treatment. Where it has been subjected to
it, everything becomes crude and repulsive, a mere caricature of pure
mysticism like the recrudescent occultism of to-day. Therefore it is
enough simply to call the attention of the sympathetic reader to it and
then to pass it by. In face of the witness borne to it by all that is
finest and deepest in history, especially in the history of religion,
naturalism is powerless.
Mind and Spirit. The Human and the Animal Soul.
What is the relation between the human and the animal mind? This has
always been a vital question in the conflict between naturalism and the
religious outlook. And as in the whole problem of the psychical so here
the interest on both sides has been mainly concentrated on the question of
“mortality” or “immortality.” Man is immortal because he has a soul.
Animals “have no souls.” “Animals also have souls, differing only in
degree but not in substantial nature from the soul of man: as they are
mortal, man must be so too.” “Animals have minds: the merely psychical
passes away with the body. But man has spirit in addition. It is
imperishable.” These and many other assertions were made on one side or
the other. And both sides made precisely the same mistake: they made the
belief in the immortality of our true nature dependent upon a proof that
the soul has a physical “substantial nature,” which is to be regarded as
an indestructible substance, a kind of spiritual atom. And on the other
hand they overlooked the gist of the whole matter, the true
starting-point, which cannot be overlooked if the religious outlook is not
to be brought into discredit. It is undoubtedly a fundamental postulate,
and one which the religious outlook cannot give up, that the human spirit
is more than all creatures, and is in quite a different order from stars,
plants, and animals. But absolutely the first necessity from the point of
view of the religious outlook is to establish the incomparable value of
the human spirit; the question of its “substantial nature” is in itself a
matter of entire indifference. The religious outlook observes that man can
will good and can pray, and no other creature can do this. And it sees
that this makes the difference between two worlds. Whether the bodily and
mental physics in both these worlds is the same or different, is to it a
matter rather of curiosity than of importance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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