The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-dayUnderhill, Evelyn
Religion
The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day
Underhill, Evelyn
Spiritual life
This conception of the multiplicity in unity of the psyche, conscious
and unconscious, is probably one of the most important results of
recent psychological advance. It means that we cannot any longer in the
good old way rule off bits or aspects of it, and call them intellect,
soul, spirit, conscience and so forth; or, on the other hand, refer to
our "lower" nature as if it were something separate from ourselves. I am
spirit when I pray, if I pray rightly. I am my lower nature, when my
thoughts and deeds are swayed by my primitive impulses and physical
longings, declared or disguised. I am most wholly myself when that
impulsive nature and that craving spirit are welded into one, subject to
the same emotional stimulus, directed to one goal. When theologians and
psychologists, ignoring this unity of the self, set up arbitrary
divisions--and both classes are very fond of doing so--they are merely
making diagrams for their own convenience. We ourselves shall probably
be compelled to do this: and the proceeding is harmless enough, so long
as we recollect that these diagrams are at best symbolic pictures of
fact. Specially is it necessary to keep our heads, and refuse to be led
away by the constant modern talk of the primitive, unconscious,
foreconscious instinctive and other minds which are so prominent in
modern psychological literature, or by the spatial suggestions of such
terms as threshold, complex, channel of discharge: remembering always
the central unity and non-material nature of that many-faced psychic
life which is described under these various formulae.
If we accept this central unity with all its implications, it follows
that we cannot take our superior and conscious faculties, set them
apart, and call them "ourselves"; refusing responsibility for the more
animal and less fortunate tendencies and instincts which surge up with
such distressing ease and frequency from the deeps, by attributing these
to nature or heredity. Indeed, more and more does it become plain that
the sophisticated surface-mind which alone we usually recognize is the
smallest, the least developed, and in some respects still the least
important part of the real self: that whole man of impulse, thought and
desire, which it is the business of religion to capture and domesticate
for God. That whole man is an animal-spirit, a living, growing, plastic
unit; moving towards a racial future yet unperceived by us, and carrying
with him a racial past which conditions at every moment his choices,
impulses and acts. Only the most rigid self-examination will disclose to
us the extent in which the jungle and the Stone Age are still active in
our games, our politics and our creeds; how many of our motives are
still those of primitive man, and how many of our social institutions
offer him a discreet opportunity of self-expression.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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