According to Professor James's theory, it is the person who chances to have a well-developed subliminal life who is predestined to be saved, for then God will be able to reach him. As Professor James informs us that "nitrous oxide and ether, especially nitrous oxide, when sufficiently diluted with air, stimulate the mystical consciousness in an extraordinary degree," so that "depth beyond depth of truth seems revealed to the inhaler," the unbelieving Philistine ought to be recommended to inhale this truth-revealing, and therefore faith-producing, gas. Like music, it must be meant as an aid to worship. The new beatitude will then be, as Mr. Leuba remarks, "Blessed are the intoxicated, for to them the kingdom of spirits is revealed!" I can quite understand the interest aroused by Professor James's remarkable book; but that Theists and would-be Theists should take its chief conclusion seriously is beyond me--or, rather, I should say it is one more proof to me that the inherited capacity for superstition is still strong within us. We can understand why supernatural beliefs die hard. MUSIC AND THE EMOTIONS. [238] Are our emotions reliable guides, or are they not? Though the motive-power in our nature, though they go to make up that heart upon which Mr. Fielding so eloquently discourses in his Hearts of Men, do they not need to be carefully controlled by reason? Are they not the very same emotions which, in all but religious matters, are admittedly a fruitful source of self-deception? Take the emotion excited by music. I know many good people who think they possess considerable religious feeling, and have had a religious experience, because they are peculiarly affected by music, and especially by fine sacred music. [239] Similarly, Dr. Torrey's "Glory Song" appeals to the untrained ear of his emotional audiences, and the Salvation band, all out of tune, elevates the soul of the Salvationist. Yet lower down the scale of musical culture we find a clash of discordant sounds exciting the religious emotions of the savage. Is it too much to say that these "experiences" differ only in degree from those of the dog who howls as certain notes affect him? Granted that music, suited to the taste of the worshipper, is an aid to worship, we have to remember that there are those whose temperaments are so constituted that they are more or less unaffected by music--good, bad, or indifferent--and, if the religious feeling evoked be from God, may we not ask in all reverence: "Why should the unmusical be debarred from this means of feeling His presence? Why should the man without a note of music in his composition have this much less chance of eternal salvation?" Surely we are not to take seriously and literally the words of our great philosopher-poet when he says: "Let no such man be trusted"? SEXUAL LOVE.