Rudolf Otto (25 September 1869 – 6 March 1937) was an eminent German Lutheran theologian, philosopher, and comparative religionist. He is regarded as one of the most influential scholars of religion in the early twentieth century and is best known for his concept of the numinous, a profound emotional experience he argued was at the heart of the world's religions
THE IDEA OF THE HOLY 大覺
AN INQUIRY INTO THE NON-RATIONAL FACTOR IN THE IDEA OF THE DIVINE AND ITS RELATION TO THE RATIONAL
BY
RUDOLF OTTO
PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF SIARBl RO
TRANSLATED BY
JOHN W. HARVEY
PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY AT ARMSTRONG COLLEGE
X EWCAST1.E-ON-TYN E
REVISED WITH ADDITIONS
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
LONDON : HUMPHREY MILFORD
First Impression November 1923
Second December 1924
Third Revised October 1925
Fourth November 1926
Fifth Revised February 1929
Sixth May 1931
CONTENTS PAGE
FOREWORD BY THE AUTHOR .... vii
TRANSLATOR S PREFACE ix
TRANSLATOR S NOTE TO THE THIRD IMPRESSION . xx
CHAP.
I. THE RATIONAL AND THE NON-RATIONAL . 1
II. NtJMEN AND THE NUMINOUS ... 5
III. THE ELEMENTS IN THE NUMINOUS
Creature-Feeling 8
IV. MYSTERIUM TREMENDUM :
THE ANALYSIS OF TREMENDUM . . . 12
1. The Element of Awfulness . . 13
2. The Element of Overpoweringness . 20
3. The Element of Energy or Urgency . 23
V. THE ANALYSIS OF MYSTERIUM :
4. The Wholly Other .... 25
VI. 5. THE ELEMENT OF FASCINATION . . 31
VII. ANALOGIES AND ASSOCIATED FEELINGS . . 42
The Law of the Association of Feelings 43
O
Schematization 46
VIII. THE HOLY AS A CATEGORY OF VALUE :
Sin and Atonement 52
IX. MEANS OF ｅxpression OF THE NUMINOUS:
1. Direct Means 62
2. Indirect Means ..... 64
3. Means by which the Numinous is ex
pressed in Art 68
X. THE NUMINOUS IN THE OLD TESTAMENT . 74
XI. THE NUMINOUS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT . 85
XII. THE NUMINOUS IN LUTHER .... 97
XIII. THE Two PROCESSES OF DEVELOPMENT . . 113
XIV. THE HOLY AS AN A PHI OKI CATEGORY. PART I 116
XV. ITS EARLIEST MANIFESTATIONS . . . 121
XVI. THE CRUDER PHASES . 136
XVII. THE HOLY AS AN A PRIORI CATEGORY. PART II 140
XVIII. THE MANIFESTATIONS OF THE HOLY AND
THE FACULTY OF DIVINATION . . 147
XIX. DIVINATION IN PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY . 159
XX. DIVINATION IN CHRISTIANITY TO-DAY . . 166
XXI. HISTORY AND THE A PRIORI IN BELIGION :
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION . . .179
APPENDIXES :
I. Chrysostom on the Inconceivable in God . 183
II. The Numinous in Poetry, Hymn, and Liturgy 191
III. Original Numinous Sounds .... 194
IV. Spirit and * Soul as Numinous Entities . 198
V. The Supra-Personal in the Numinous . . 201
VI. The Mystical Element in Luther s Conception
of Faith 209
VII. Signs Following 212
VIII. Silent Worship ... 216
IX. A Numinous Experience of John Ruskin . 221
X. The ｅxpression of the Numinous in English 222
XI. The Mysterlum Tremendum in Robertson and
Watts 226
XII. The Resurrection as a Spiritual Experience . 228
XIII. Religious Essays, A Supplement to The Idea of
the Holy (O.U.P.) : table of contents . . 235
INDEX 237
FOREWORD BY THE AUTHOR
IN this book I have ventured to write of that which may
be called non-rational or supra-rational in the depths of
the divine nature. I do not thereby want to promote in any
way the tendency of our time towards an extravagant and
fantastic irrationalism , but rather to join issue with it in its
morbid form. The irrational is to-day a favourite theme of
all who are too lazy to think or too ready to evade the
arduous duty of clarifying their ideas and grounding their
convictions on a basis of coherent thought. This book,
recognizing the profound import of the non-rational for meta-
physic, makes a serious attempt to analyse all the more
exactly the feeling which remains where the concept fails,
and to introduce a terminology which is not any the more
loose or indeterminate for having necessarily to make use of
symbols.
Before I ventured upon this field of inquiry I spent many
years of study upon the rational aspect of that supreme
Reality we call God , and the results of my work are
contained in my books, Naturalietische und religiose Welt-
antacid (Eng. Tr. Naturalism and Religion , London, 1907), and
Die Kant-friesisclie Religions-Philosophic. And I feel that no
one ought to concern himself with the Numen ineflabile
who has not already devoted assiduous and serious study to
the Ratio aeterna .
This foreword gives me a very welcome opportunity to
express my thanks to the translator for his care, his remark
able delicacy of interpretation, and for the valuable supple
mentary pages he has added. An English critic has said that
the translation is much better than the original ; and to this
I have nothing to object.
RUDOLF OTTO.
MABBUBQ.
TEANSLATOR S PREFACE
THIS translation of Dr. Rudolf Otto s Das Heiliye has been
made from the ninth German edition, but certain passages,
mostly additions to the book in its first form, have been
omitted with the concurrence of the author. The chief of
these are certain of the appendixes, especially a long one upon
Myth and Religion in Wundt s Volkerpsycltologie , and some
citations in the text from German and other hymns and
liturgies which, besides defying adequate translation, appeared
to be of less interest to the English than to the German
reader. on the other hand, I would refer the English reader
o
to the brief appendix (No. X) that I have ventured to add,
in which I have noted some points relevant to the subject
discussed in the book suggested by the usage of English words,
and added one or two illustrative passages from English
writers.
My warmest thanks are due to the author, not only for the
many corrections he has made in the text of the translation,
the whole of which he read in manuscript, but more for his
generous and patient encouragement, without which it would
have been neither undertaken nor completed. My best thanks
are also due to the readers of the Oxford University Press for
many helpful suggestions and corrections in my English text.
* * *
In the six years since its first publication in 1917, Das
lleilifje has already passed through ten editions. At a time
when circumstances are as adverse to writers and purchasers
of serious books as they have been for the last few years in
Germany, this fact would alone suggest that the author s work
has met a genuine need in his own land ; and any one who has
followed the movement of religious thought abroad during
this period is aware that the success of his book is much more
than a mere vogue, and that it is exerting no little influence
upon religious thought in Germany and North Europe at
the present time. It may be of interest to consider briefly
where its chief significance may be found from the point
of view of the English reader.
One of the most unmistakable points of contrast between
the thought of to-day and that of the later nineteenth century
is the increased comprehensiveness and adequacy with which
the study of religion is being pursued. Not only has the older,
harder, more dogmatic tone on all sides given place to one
more tolerant and sympathetic, but the study of religion has
come to claim a much wider reference and to draw material
from far more diverse sources than would at one time have
been recognized ; and the frontiers of the subject have been
enormously extended in consequence. Anthropology, Sociology,
Psychology, and the history and comparative study of religious
forms and institutions, if they have at once modified and com
plicated the problems of religious inquiry, have definitely
increased the range of observations likely to throw light upon
them.
If we consider only the English-speaking countries, a future
generation may perhaps judge that no writer did more to
introduce or render more effective this new spirit in the study
of religion than William James in his famous Gifford lectures
on The Varieties of Religious Experience, published just over
twenty years ago (1902). In any case the title of that book
might be taken as giving the chief characteristics of that spirit,
the preoccupation with religion in all its manifold forms as a
specific experience, rather than as either the vehicle of a system
of dogma or metaphysics on the one hand or as simply the
emotional heightening of morality on the other. This latter
view is well represented by Matthew Arnold, himself in many
respects a very typical child of his age; and Arnold s well-
known phrase that the true meaning of religion is " morality
touched by emotion " is a fair ｅxpression of the limita-
tions and bias of the nineteenth-century mind. It suggests
the fundamentally rational temper ( rational even when
attacking rationalism ) of an age interested almost wholly in
practice and conduct, which, rightly reacting against views
tending to identify religion with creed and dogma, was content
to correct them by one that practically reduced it to an ethic.
It has been justly noted l that such an account leaves un
answered the question, which to-day so obviously needs asking
and wliich is in part the theme of this book, what sort of
feelings or emotions it is by which morality is enkindled into
religion.
For to-day this almost purely rational and ethical approach
to the study of religion has been abandoned. Modern in
quiries into the nature of religious experience have indeed
tended to overweight the opposite scale. Feeling has, perhaps,
something more than come into its own. Instinct, emotion,
intuition, the more obscure and the more subjective aspects of
religious experience it is these that are to-day the main
centre of interest. The vogue (perhaps now already declining)
of M. Bergson s philosophy, in which instinct and intuition
are put in fundamental contrast to, if not actually opposed to,
rationality and the needs of practical life, has been one, but
only one, of the influences making in this direction. Equally
significant is the quite modern interest in Mysticism, which
owes so much to the admirable works of such writers as Dean
Inge, Miss Evelyn Underbill, and Baron von Hiigel in this
country, and Professor Rufus M. Jones in America. In
Germany, where the popular interest in Mysticism is even
more recent than it is with us, the same tendency is marked by
a special leaning towards the study of oriental, and especially
of Indian, religions. There, as here, a constant stream of books
indicates how widely held is the conviction that there are
essential elements in religion which are not to be comprised in
any systematically thought-out fabric of ideas, nor wholly
exhausted in practice and conduct elements which, if they
admit of ｅxpression at all, can find it only in symbolism and
imagery.
If, as one suspects, there are already signs of a new reaction
against the possible over-emphasis of what may be called, for
want of a better single term, the elements of feeling in
religion, such a movement of criticism need not be regretted.
We may note at any rate two points in which it may prove
salutary.
In the first place, it has been urged, not altogether unjustly,
that some modern students of religion, and especially of religion
in its mystical forms, have been misled by their interest in
the experiences of exceptional men into a distorted account of
religion as a whole. They do not see the wood for the trees ;
or, more accurately, they fail to get a true view of the common
nature of the trees in their structure and growth through
an undue preoccupation with certain particularly striking
examples. It is easy (so it may be urged) to pursue the
varieties so far as to neglect the identities of religious expe
rience, those fundamental elements which distinguish it as
religious from experience of other kinds. Mystical experience
is surely after all something exceptional. Religion is some
thing wider than Mysticism. Yet sometimes one gets the
impression that the non-mystic is only rather grudgingly
and half-heartedly admitted to have any first-hand genuine
religious experience at all. The abnormal is often the more
interesting, the more fascinating study, but it ought not on
that account to be allowed to usurp the place of the normal ;
and this, it may be suggested, is one mistake to which the
modern comprehensive, fertile, and far-casting study of religion
is prone.
This is one possible point of criticism. A second would
emphasize the danger of subjectivism. It is possible to devote
our attention to religious experience in a sense which would
TRANSLATOR S PREFACE xiii
almost leave out of account the object of which it is an
experience. We may so concentrate upon the feeling , that
the objective cause of it may fall altogether out of sight. Is
religious experience essentially just a state of mind, a feeling,
whether of oppression or of exaltation, a sense of sin or an
assurance of salvation ; or is it not rather our apprehension
of the divine , meaning by that term at least something
independent of the mental and emotional state of the moment
of experience 1 In short, it is suggested that by a one-sided
over-emphasis of the subjective aspect of it the matter of our
study may cease to be religion and come to be merely
1 religiosity , to employ a word which, commoner in German
than in English, might well be better acclimatized in our
language.
The enlarged and emancipated study of religion character
istic of to-day has sometimes given just ground for these two
criticisms. It has not always avoided exaggerating the
exceptional experience at the expense of the normal ; and it
has perhaps not infrequently allowed itself to become so far
absorbed in the subjective states of mind manifested in religious
experience as to ignore or half ignore the objective significance
of them.
It is not least in reference to these two points that the value
of Dr. Otto s volume lies. He is concerned tg^gxamine the
nature of those elements in the religious experience which lie
outside and beyond the scope of reason which cannot be
comprised in ethical or rational conceptions, but which none
the less as feelings cannot be disregarded by any honest
inquiry. And his argument shows in the first place that in all
the forms which religious experience may assume and has as
sumed, so far as these can be re-interpreted in polytheistic and
monotheistic cults, non-mystical and mystical worship alike-
certain basic moments of feeling (again a word of which
our language might well make fuller use) are always found
to recur. All genuine religion exhibits these characteristic
reactions in consciousness. They are seen emerging as
religion itself emerges, and we are shown their antecedents in
the crude and savage stages of pre-religion , in magic and in
the world of primitive superstition. For this inquiry the author
not only draws upon his long familiarity with the theories of
the anthropologists and the literature of Naturalism, 1 but also
lays under contribution his great erudition in the history of
religious development in all its varieties. He has ransacked
the ages, spoiled the climes . The remote Mosaic and pre-
Mosaic religion of Israel, the Hebrew prophets, and modern
Judaism; the religions of Greece and Rome and Islam, of
China and of India; the New Testament, the Fathers, the
medieval mystics, the reformers, and modern Protestantism:
the author calls them all as witnesses. He makes particularly
effective use of examples drawn from India through his
familiarity with Sanskrit and the great classics of Hinduism.
His argument, while laying due stress on the essential
differences between religions, emphasizes and establishes their
no less fundamental kinship on the side of feeling; and
Mysticism, especially, falls into its proper place as neither
a morbid freak nor the sole true fruit of religion, but as differ
ing from other forms of religious experience not so much in
its essential nature as in the degree in which it stresses and
overstresses certain common elements shared with them.
But of still more significance is the author s argument in
relation to the second of the two points already mentioned
the question of subjectivism. Here we are shown that the
religious feeling properly involves a unique kind of appre
hension, sui generis, not to be reduced to ordinary intellectual
or rational knowing with its terminology of notions and
concepts, and yet and this is the paradox of the matter
itself a genuine knowing , the growing awareness of an object,
1 His book, Natunilistische und religiose Weltansicht (The Naturalistic
and the Religious View of the World), has been translated into English
under the title Naturalism and Religion, 1907.
deity. All the feelings and emotions that recur the same
through all their diversities of manifestation in different
religions are shown to be just the reflection in human feeling
of this awareness, as it changes and grows richer and more
unmistakable ; a response, so to speak, to the impact upon the
human mind of the divine , as it reveals itself whether
obscurely or clearly. The primary fact is the confronta
tion of the human mind with a Something, whose character
is only gradually learned, but which is from the first felt
as a transcendent presence, the beyond , even where it is
also felt as the within man. Hence the author shows that
Schleiermacher, who did so much to emphasize the function of
* feeling in religion, is wrong in starting his account with the
sense of absolute dependence , for that is to start from what
is after all secondary and derivative, the reflection in self-
feeling of this felt presence of the divine.
The feeling element in religion involves, then, a genuine
knowing or awareness, though, in contrast to that knowing
which can express itself in concepts, it may be termed non-
rational . The feeling of the * uncanny , the thrill of awe or
reverence, the sense of dependence, of impotence, or of nothing
ness, or again the feelings of religious rapture and exaltation,
all these are attempted designations of the mental states
which attend the awareness of certain aspects of the divine .
In some religions one may be more prominent and in some
another ; and different individuals will vary widely in their
susceptibility to these feelings, or, in Dr. Otto s terminology,
in the degree and character of their faculty of divination .
But all of these feelings have a necessary and some a per
manent place in the developing recognition of the divine
nature. The particular aspect of it, glimpsed, as it were, in
each of them, he tries to isolate the better by having recourse
to a Latin terminology : but such terms as mysterium ,
maiestas , fascinans , are confessedly, like fear , awe ,
love , in their religious application, not so much precise and
definable concepts as what he calls ideograms , hinting at
meanings which elude exact formulation.
A word of explanation and defence (for the English reader
does not take kindly to fresh word-coinages) may be offered
in respect to the chief new word introduced by the author.
Dr. Otto is maintaining the autonomy and uniqueness of a
particular sort of knowing . Just as the recognition and
appreciation of beauty cannot be reduced to that of moral
goodness, just as the beautiful and the good are, in the
philosopher s phrase, categories in their own right, so, too, it
is with religion. There, too, we have to deal with a peculiar
and irreducible kind of apprehension we employ or apply
a distinct category . The natural term for this would be
that which stands in the title of this book : the holy , or else
the sacred . But the meaning of these words is at once too
lofty and too narrow. Holiness , sanctity , are words which
are charged with ethical import. 1 A large part, perhaps the
chief part, of their meaning is moral. This, as the author
maintains, is necessarily the case, inasmuch as, the better the
character of deity and the divine becomes known, the more
intimately it absorbs within itself all the highest moral and
rational attributes. But though, in our final experience of
God s Holiness , perfect goodness has an absolutely essential
and central place, yet there remains a something beyond.
Holiness or sanctity has an element in it independent of the
category of the good. And to this the author gives the
name of the numinous element, from the Latin numen, the
most general Latin word for supernatural divine power.
Numinous feeling is, then, just this unique apprehension of
a Something, whose character may at first seem to have little
connexion with our ordinary moral terms, but which later
becomes charged with the highest and deepest moral
significance. And the holy will be, in Dr. Otto s language,
a complex category of the numinous and the moral , or, in
one of his favourite metaphors, a fabric in which we have
the non-rational numinous experience as the woof and the
rational and ethical as the warp.
* Numinous and Numen will, then, be words which bear
no moral import, but which stand for the specific non-rational
religious apprehension and its object, at all its levels, from the
first dim stirrings where religion can hardly yet be said to
exist to the most exalted forms of spiritual experience. And
then we can keep the words holy and sacred , holiness and
1 sanctity , to their more usual meaning.
Dr. Otto is concerned in this volume primarily to establish
the autonomy and uniqueness of this numinous experience
to show its essential place in religion and its significance in
religious development. But so far from claiming that this is
all, that, for example, mystic intuition* can dispense with the
knowledge that comes through human reason and moral
experience, he asserts emphatically the contrary. And in his
later chapters he makes it clear that for him the supremacy of
Christianity over all other religions lies in the unique degree
in which (as he holds) in Christianity the numinous elements,
such as the sense of awe and reverence before infinite mystery
and infinite majesty, are yet combined and made one with the
rational elements, assuring us that God is an all-righteous,
all-provident, and all-loving Person, with whom a man may
enter into the most intimate relationship.
What is maintained in this book is, in fact, that religion is
something not only natural but also, in the strict sense of the
word, paradoxical. It is a real knowledge of, and real per
sonal communion with, a Being whose nature is yet above
knowledge and transcends personality. This apparent con
tradiction cannot be evaded by concentrating upon one aspect
of it and ignoring the other, without doing a real injury to
religion. It must be faced directly in the experience of
worship, and there, and only there, it ceases to be a contra
diction and becomes a harmony. And many who are grateful
to Dr. Otto for his clear exposition of the unity of Religion
through all the diversity of religions, and for his emphasis
upon the objective significance of religious feeling, will be per
haps still more grateful to him for insisting that both elements
in the harmony must be preserved.
For in this, too, the argument of this book has something to
offer to the thought of to-day. It would hardly be denied that
the dominant movement of thought in this nearly completed
first quarter of the twentieth century has been what has
been called humanistic , and what might better be termed
* anthropocentric . In religion, as in other domains, we have
learned to view things, in the phrase of a brilliant exponent of
this way of thinking, 1 from the human end ; man, an ideal
humanity, has come to be increasingly our measure. We see
one example of this in such a popular religious philosophy
as that of Mr. H. G. Wells, with its virtual apotheosis of
the spirit of striving mankind and the sharp antagonism it
introduces between the God in man and the Veiled Being, the
mysterious Power in Nature. It is only the former who has
any religious significance for Mr. Wells. In such cases
a standard less merely ethical may be employed than that
which the moralistic tendency of the nineteenth century
demanded, but it is far more a purely human standard. We
need not repeat the taunt of the later nineteenth-century
agnosticism which finds nothing in the God of traditional
orthodoxy but man s giant shadow, hailed divine . 2 To say
that religious thought to-day is too anthropocentric does not
mean that it is thus crudely anthropomorphic. But it does
suggest that by undue preoccupation with the human and the
personal we may blind ourselves to that transcendent and
supra-personal character of the deity which cannot be
surrendered without a real loss to religion.
Is it possible that once more in this too anthropocentric
trend in religious thought the tide is on the turn, and that
men are beginning to feel it insufficient to think of God in
wellnigh exclusively human terms? one suspects that it may
be so, and that at any rate a religion which sets God as Person
and Friend of Man at scarcely disguised enmity with the
inscrutable power and mysterious tremendousness of nature
will not for long satisfy the demands of the soul. And those
who think thus will value all the more an exposition which
recalls us, as this volume does, to the unsearchable otherness
as well as to the human likeness of deity.
* * *
In this book there are certain features that may be puzzling
and unfamiliar to some readers. Those unaccustomed to such
terms may find words like category , a priori , schematize ,
repellent to them. To the general reader the quasi-Kantian
treatment of this matter or that may be a stumbling-block,
and to the mystic perhaps foolishness. Again, some may
find the argument too much of an analysis ; others, too much
of an apologetic. To some it may seem too logical ; to others,
too theological. But it is good that our incurable propensity
to think in compartments, to keep, if we admit them at all, our
philosophy and theology strangers, should receive a shock now
and then. And, for the rest, it is surely good that a book
upon religion should be written by a man who feels that
religion stands at the very centre and basis of life that the
divine in man is, in Plato s phrase, the head and the root of
him and who can make no pretence of viewing his own
religion from without, as though it meant no more to him than
any other. For though in so many departments in life it is the
detached and unprejudiced observer who can best pronounce
judgement, in this one the paradox must hold that he who
professes to stand outside religion and view all the religions of
the world in impartial detachment will never wholly under
stand any one of them.
J. W. 11.
March 1023.
TRANSLATOR S NOTE TO THE THIRD
IMPRESSION
I HAVE been glad of the opportunity of revision afforded by the
gratifying welcome which English readers have given to this
book. The difficulty of stereotype has unfortunately prevented
me from removing a great many minor typographical irregularities,
but I have been able to correct a number of inaccuracies in the
translation. Had it been possible I should have wished further
to substitute submerged (submergence) for abased (abasement) on
pp. 10, 18, 20, 36, 52, 92, and to give exuberant (exuberance) as an
alternative for over- abound ing (over-aboundingness) on pp. 37, 39,
88, 107. The reader is requested to make these alterations for
himself.
The appendixes of the later editions of Das Hcilige, the con
tinual multiplication of which had threatened to overwhelm the
original text, have now been published with additional matter in
a separate volume entitled Aufsatze das Numinose betreffend (Essays
concerning the Numinous), and a translation of the table of contents
of this work has been inserted on p. 235, in order that the reader
may at least have an inkling in what directions TJte Idea of the
Holy has been supplemented by these later essays. one of these,
TJie Eesurrection as a Spiritual Experience, has been added (slightly
curtailed) to this edition as Appendix XII, so that about two-fifths
of the Aufsiitze are now included in the present translation. I
may add that the eleventh German edition of Das Heilige contains
a good deal of additional matter, mostly citations from various
authors, which as they illustrate rather than amplify the author s
argument, it has not been judged worth while to include in this
impression.
ADDITIONS have been made in this edition at the close of
chapters VIII and IX (pp. 61 and 69) giving the substance
of paragraphs added in the fourteenth German edition, from which
the two English citations forming the new Appendix XI have also
been taken.
September 1928. J. W. H.
----------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER I
THE RATIONAL AND THE NON-RATIONAL
IT is essential to every theistic conception of God, and most
of all to the Christian, that it designates and precisely
characterizes Deity by the attributes Spirit, Reason, Purpose,
Good Will, Supreme Power, Unity, Selfhood. The nature of
God is thus thought of by analogy with our human nature of
reason and personality ; only, whereas in ourselves we are
aware of this as qualified by restriction and limitation, as
applied to God the attributes we use are completed , i.e.
thought as absolute and unqualified. Now all these attributes
constitute clear and definite concepts: they can be grasped by
the intellect; they can be analysed by thought; they even
admit of definition. An object that can thus be thought con
ceptually may be termed rational. The nature of deity
described in the attributes above mentioned is, then, a rational
nature ; and a religion which recognizes and maintains such
a view of God is in so far a rational religion. only on such
terms is Belief possible in contrast to mere feeling. And of
Christianity at least it is false that feeling is all, the name
but sound and smoke ] ; where name stands for conception
or thought. Rather we count this the very mark and criterion
of a religion s high rank and superior value that it should
have no lack of conceptions about God; that it should admit
knowledge the knowledge that comes by faith of the
transcendent in terms of conceptual thought, whether those
already mentioned or others which continue and develop them.
Christianity not only possesses such conceptions but possesses
them in unique clarity and abundance, and this is, though not
the sole or even the chief, yet a very real sign of its superiority
over religions of other forms and at other levels. This must
be asserted at the outset and with the most positive emphasis.
1 Goethe, Faust.
B
2 THE RATIONAL AND THE NON-RATIONAL
But, when this is granted, we have to be on our guard
against an error which would lead to a wrong and one-sided
interpretation of religion. This is the view that the essence
of deity can be given completely and exhaustively in sucli
1 rational attributions as have been referred to above and in
others like them. It is not an unnatural misconception. We
are prompted to it by the traditional language of edification,
with its characteristic phraseology and ideas ; by the learned
treatment of religious themes in sermon and theological
instruction ; and further even by our Holy Scriptures them
selves. In all these cases the rational element occupies the
foreground, and often nothing else seems to be present at all.
But this is after all to be expected. All language, in so far as
it consists of words, purports to convey ideas or concepts ;
that is what language means ; and the more clearly and
unequivocally it does so, the better the language. And hence
expositions of religious truth in language inevitably tend to
stress the rational attributes of God.
But though the above mistake is thus a natural one enough,
it is none the less seriously misleading. For so far are these
1 rational attributes from exhausting the idea of deity, that
they in fact imply a non-rational or supra-rational Subject of
which they are predicates. They are essential (and not
merely accidental ) attributes of that subject, but they are
also, it is important to notice, synthetic essential attributes.
That is to say, we have to predicate them of a subject which
they qualify, but which in its deeper essence is not, nor indeed
can be, comprehended in them ; which rather requires com
prehension of a quite different kind. Yet, though it eludes the
conceptual way of understanding, it must be in some way or
other within our grasp, else absolutely nothing could be
asserted of it. And even Mysticism, in speaking of it as TO
dpprjTov, the ineffable, does not really mean to imply that
absolutely nothing can be asserted of the object of the religious
consciousness ; otherwise, Mysticism could exist only in un
broken silence, whereas what has generally been a character
istic of the mystics is their copious eloquence.
Here for the first time we come up against the contrast
THE RATIONAL AND THE NON-RATIONAL 3
between Rationalism and profounder religion, and with this
contrast and its signs we shall be repeatedly concerned in what
follows. We have here in fact the first and most distinctive
mark of Rationalism, with which all the rest are bound up.
It is not that which is commonly asserted, that Rationalism is
the denial, and its opposite the affirmation, of the miraculous.
That is manifestly a wrong or at least a very superficial
distinction. For the traditional theory of the miraculous as
the occasional breach in the causal nexus in nature by a Being
who himself instituted and must therefore be master of it
this theory is itself as massively rational as it is possible to
be. Rationalists have often enough acquiesced in the possi
bility of the miraculous in this sense ; they have even them
selves contributed to frame a theory of it ; whereas anti-
Rationalists have been often indifferent to the whole controversy
about miracles. The difference between Rationalism and its
opposite is to be found elsewhere. It resolves itself rather
into a peculiar difference of quality in the mental attitude and
emotional content of the religious life itself. All depends
upon this : in our idea of God is the non-rational overborne,
even perhaps wholly excluded, by the rational ? Or conversely,
docs the non-rational itself preponderate over the rational ?
Looking at the matter thus, we see that the common dictum,
that Orthodoxy itself has been the mother of Rationalism, is
in some measure well founded. It is not simply that Ortho
doxy was preoccupied with doctrine and the framing of dogma,
for these have been no less a concern of the wildest mystics.
It is rather that Orthodoxy found in the construction of
dogma and doctrine no way to do justice to the non-rational
aspect of its subject. So far from keeping the non-rational
element in religion alive in the heart of the religious experi
ence, orthodox Christianity manifestly failed to recognize its
value, and by this failure gave to the idea of God a one-sidedly
intellectualistic and rationalistic interpretation.
This bias to rationalization still prevails, not only in theology
but in the science of comparative religion in general, and from
top to bottom of it. The modern students of mythology, and
those who pursue research into the religion of primitive man
B 2
4 THE RATIONAL AND THE NON-RATIONAL
and attempt to reconstruct the bases or * sources of religion,
are all victims to it. Men do not, of course, in these cases
employ those lofty rational concepts which we took as our
point of departure ; but they tend to take these concepts and
their gradual evolution as setting the main problem of their
inquiry, and fashion ideas and notions of lower value, which
they regard as paving the way for them. It is always in
terms of concepts and ideas that the subject is pursued,
natural ones, moreover, such as have a place in the general
L O
sphere of man s ideational life, and are not specifically reli
gious . And then with a resolution and cunning which one
can hardly help admiring, men shut their eyes to that which
is quite unique in the religious experience, even in its most
primitive manifestations. But it is rather a matter for
astonishment than for admiration ! For if there be any single
domain of human experience that presents us with something
unmistakably specific and unique, peculiar to itself, assuredly
it is that of the religious life. In truth the enemy has often
a keener vision in this matter than either the champion of
religion or the neutral and professedly impartial theorist.
For the adversaries on their side know very well that the
entire pother about mysticism has nothing to do with
( reason and rationality .
And so it is salutary that we should be incited to notice that
Religion is not exclusively contained and exhaustively com
prised in any series of rational assertions ; and it is well
worth while to attempt to bring the relation of the different
* moments of religion to one another clearly before the mind,
so that its nature may become more manii est.
This attempt we are now to make with respect to the quite
distinctive category of the holy or sacred.
CHAPTER II
NUMEN AND THE NUMINOUS
HOLINESS* the holy is a category of interpretation
and valuation peculiar to the sphere of religion. It is, indeed,
applied by transference to another sphere that of Ethics
but it is not itself derived from this. While it is complex, it
contains a quite specific element or moment , which sets it
apart from the Rational in the meaning we gave to that
word above, and which remains inexpressible an apprjTov or
iiieffabile in the sense that it completely eludes apprehension
in terms of concepts. The same thing is true (to take a quite
different region of experience) of the category of the beautiful.
Now these statements would be untrue from the outset if
the holy were merely what is meant by the word, not only
in common parlance, but in philosophical, and generally even
in theological usage. The fact is we have come to use the
words holy, tarred (heilig) in an entirely derivative sense, quite
different from that which they originally bore. We generally
take holy as meaning completely good ; it is the absolute
moral attribute, denoting the consummation of moral goodness.
In this sense Kant calls the will which remains unwaveringly
obedient to the moral law from the motive of duty a holy
will ; here clearly we have simply the perfectly moral will. In
the same way we may speak of the holiness or sanctity of Duty
or Law, meaning merely that they are imperative upon conduct
and universally obligatory.
But this common usage of the term is inaccurate. It is
true that all this moral significance is contained in the word
holy , but it includes in addition as even we cannot but
feel a clear overplus of meaning, and this it is now our tusk
to isolate. Nor is this merely a later or acquired meaning;
rather, holy , or at least the equivalent words in Latin and
6 NUMEN AND THE < NUMINOUS
Greek, in Semitic and other ancient languages, denoted first
and foremost only this overplus : if the ethical element was
present at all, at any rate it was not original and never con
stituted the whole meaning of the word. Any one who uses it
to-day does undoubtedly always feel the morally good to be
implied in holy ; and accordingly in our inquiry into that
element which is separate and peculiar to the idea of the holy
it will be useful, at least for the temporary purpose of the
investigation, to invent a special term to stand for the holy
minus its moral factor or moment , and, as we can now add,
minus its t rational aspect altogether.
It will be our endeavour to suggest this unnamed Something
to the reader as far as we may, so that he may himself feel it.
There is no religion in which it does not live as the real inner
most core, and without it no religion would be worthy of the
name. It is pre-eminently a living force in the Semitic religions,
and of these again in none has it such vigour as in that of the
Bible. Here, too, it has a name of its own, viz. the Hebrew
qddosh, to which the Greek ayios and the Latin sanctus, and,
more accurately still, sacer, are the corresponding terms. It is
not, of course, disputed, that these terms in all three languages
connote, as part of their meaning, good, absolute goodness,
when, that is, the notion has ripened and reached the highest
stage in its development. And we then use the word holy
to translate them. But this holy then represents the
gradual shaping and filling in with ethical meaning, or what
we shall call the schematization , of what was a unique
original feeling-response, which can be in itself ethically
neutral and claims consideration in its own right. And when
this moment or element first emerges and begins its long
development, all those ｅxpressions (qdddsh, ay* or, sacer, &c.)
mean beyond all question something quite other than the
good . This is universally agreed by contemporary criticism,
which rightly explains the rendering of qddosh by good as
a mistranslation and unwarranted * rationalization or
moralization of the term.
Accordingly, it is worth while, as we have said, to find
a word to stand for this element in isolation, this extra in
NUMEN AND THE NUMINOUS* 7
the meaning of holy above and beyond the meaning of
goodness. By means of a special term we shall the better be
able, first, to keep the meaning clearly apart and distinct, and
second, to apprehend and classify connectedly whatever sub
ordinate forms or stages of development it may show. For
this purpose I adopt a word coined from the Latin numen.
Omen has given us ominous, and there is no reason why from
numen we should not similarly form a word numinous .
I shall speak then of a unique numinous category of value
and of a definitely numinous state of mind, which is always
found wherever the category is applied. This mental state is
perfectly sui generis and irreducible to any other; and there
fore, like every absolutely primary and elementary datum,
while it admits of being discussed, it cannot be strictly defined.
There is only one way to help another to an understanding of
it. He must be guided and led on by consideration and
discussion of the matter through the ways of his own mind,
until he reach the point at which the numinous in him perforce
begins to stir, to start into life and into consciousness. We can
co-operate in this process by bringing before his notice all that
can be found in other regions of the mind, already known and
familiar, to resemble, or again to afford some special contrast
to, the particular experience we wish to elucidate. Then we
must add : This X of ours is not precisely this experience,
but akin to this one and the opposite of that other. Cannot
you now realize for yourself what it is? In other words our
X cannot, strictly speaking, be taught, it can only be evoked,
awakened in the mind ; as everything that comes of the
spirit must be awakened.
CHAPTER III
THE ELEMENTS IN THE NUMINOUS
Creature-Feeling.
THE reader is invited to direct his mind to a moment of
deeply-felt religious experience, as little as possible qualified
by other forms of consciousness. Whoever cannot do this,
whoever knows no such moments in his experience, is requested
to read no further ; for it is not easy to discuss questions of
religious psychology with one who can recollect the emotions
of his adolescence, the discomforts of indigestion, or, say, social
feelings, but cannot recall any intrinsically religious feelings.
We do not blame such an one, when he tries for himself to
advance as far as he can with the help of such principles of
explanation as he knows, interpreting Aesthetics in terms of
sensuous pleasure, and Religion as a function of the gre
garious instinct and social standards, or as something more
primitive still. But the artist, who for his part has an intimate
personal knowledge of the distinctive element in the aesthetic
experience, will decline his theories with thanks, and the
religious man will reject them even more uncompromisingly.
Next, in the probing and analysis of such states of the soul
as that of solemn worship, it will be well if regard be paid to
what is unique in them rather than to what they have in
common with other similar states. To be rapt in worship is
one thing; to be morally uplifted by the contemplation of
a good deed is another ; and it is not to their common features,
but to those elements of emotional content peculiar to the first
that we would have attention directed as precisely as possible.
As Christians we undoubtedly here first meet with feelings
familiar enough in a weaker form in other departments of
experience, such as feelings of gratitude, trust, love, reliance,
humble submission, and dedication. But this does not by any
THE ELEMENTS IN THE NUMINOUS 9
means exhaust the content of religious worship. Not in any
of these have we got the special features of the quite unique
and incomparable experience of solemn worship. In what does
this consist 1
Schleiermacher has the credit of isolating a very important
element in such an experience. This is the feeling of de- .
pendence . But this important discovery of Schleiermacher
is open to criticism in more than one respect.
In the first place, the feeling or emotion which he really
has in mind in this phrase is in its specific quality not a * feel
ing of dependence in the natural sense of the word. As
such, other domains of life and other regions of experience
than the religious occasion the feeling, as a sense of personal
insufficiency and impotence, a consciousness of being determined
by circumstances and environment. The feeling of which
Schleiermacher wrote has an undeniable analogy with these
states of mind : they serve as an indication to it, and its nature
may be elucidated by them, so that, by following the direction
in which they point, the feeling itself may be spontaneously
felt. But the feeling is at the same time also qualitatively
different from such analogous states of mind. Schleiermacher
himself, in a way, recognizes this by distinguishing the feeling
of pious or religious dependence from all other feelings of
dependence. His mistake is in making the distinction merely
that between * absolute and relative dependence, and there
fore a difference of degree and not of intrinsic quality. What
he overlooks is that, in giving the feeling the name feeling of
dependence at all, we are really employing what is no more
than a very close analogy. Any one who compares and con
trasts the two states of mind irrespectively will find out,
I think, what I mean. It cannot be expressed by means of any
thing else, just because it is so primary and elementary a datum
in our psychical life, and therefore only definable through itself.
It may perhaps help him if I cite a well-known example, in
which the precise moment or element of religious feeling of
which we are speaking is most actively present. When
Abraham ventures to plead with God for the men of Sodom,
he says (Genesis xviii. 27) : Behold now, I have taken upon
10 THE ELEMENTS IN THE * NUMINOUS
me to speak unto the Lord, which am but dust and ashes.
There you have a self-confessed feeling of dependence , which
is yet at the same time far more than, and something other than,
merely a feeling of dependence. Desiring to give it a name of
its own, I propose to call it creature-consciousness or creature-
feeling. It is the emotion of a creature, abased and overwhelmed
by its own nothingness in contrast to that which is supreme
above all creatures.
It is easily seen that, once again, this phrase, whatever it is,
is not a conceptual explanation of the matter. All that this
new term, creature-feeling , can express, is the note of self-
abasement into nothingness before an overpowering, absolute
might of some kind ; whereas everything turns upon the
character of this overpowering might, a character which
cannot be expressed verbally, and can only be suggested
indirectly through the tone and content of a man s feeling-
response to it. And this response must be directly experienced
in oneself to be understood.
We have now to note a second defect in the formulation of
Schleiermacher s principle. The religious category discovered
by him, by whose means he professes to determine the real
content of the religious emotion, is merely a category of self-
valuation, in the sense of self-depreciation. According to him
the religious emotion would be directly and primarily a sort
of se//-consciousness, a feeling concerning one s self in a special,
determined relation, viz. one s dependence. Thus, according
to Schleiermacher, I can only come upon the very fact of God
as the result of an inference, that is, by reasoning to a cause
beyond myself to account for my feeling of dependence .
But this is entirely opposed to the psychological facts of the
case. Rather, the creature-feeling is itself a first subjective
concomitant and effect of another feeling-element, which casts
it like a shadow, but which in itself indubitably has immediate
and primary reference to an object outside the self. 1
1 This is so manifestly borne out by experience that it must be about
the first thing to force itself upon the notice of psychologists analysing
the facts of religion. There is a certain naivete in the following
passage from William James s Varieties of Religious Experience (p. 58),
THE ELEMENTS IN THE NUMINOUS 11
Now this object is just what we have already spoken of as
the numinous . For the creature-feeling and the sense of
dependence to arise in the mind the numen must be
experienced as present, a numen praesens , as in the case of
Abraham. There must be felt a something numinous ,
something bearing the character of a numen , to which the
^ O
mind turns spontaneously ; or (which is the same thing in
other words) these feelings can only arise in the mind as
accompanying emotions when the category of the numinous
is called into play.
The numinous is thus felt as objective and outside the self.
We have now to inquire more closely into its nature and the
modes of its manifestation.
where, alluding to the origin of the Grecian representations of the gods,
he says : As regards the origin of the Greek gods, we need not at pre
sent seek an opinion. But the whole array of our instances leads to a
conclusion something like this: It is as if there were in the human con
sciousness a sense of reality, a feelimj of objective presence, a perception of
what we may call " something there", more deep and more general than
any of the special and particular " senses" by which the current psycho
logy supposes existent realities to be originally revealed. (The italics
are James s own.) James is debarred by his empiricist and pragmatist
stand-point from coming to a recognition of faculties of knowledge and
potentialities of thought in the spirit itself, and he is therefore obliged
to have recourse to somewhat singular and mysterious hypotheses to
explain this fact. - But he grasps the fact itself clearly enough and is
sufficient of a realist not to explain it away. But this feeling of reality ,
the feeling of a numinous object objectively given, must be posited as
a primary immediate datum of consciousness, and the feeling of depen
dence is then a consequence, following very closely upon it, viz. a
depreciation of the subject in his own eyes. The latter presupposes the
former,
CHAPTER IV
MYSTERIUM TREMENDUM
The Analysis of Tremendum .
WE said above that the nature of the numinous can only be
suggested by means of the special way in which it is reflected
in the mind in terms of feeling. Its nature is such that
it grips or stirs the human mind with this and that deter
minate affective state. We have now to attempt to give
a further indication of these determinate states. We must
once again endeavour, by adducing feelings akin to them for
the purpose of analogy or contrast, and by the use of metaphor
and symbolic ｅxpressions, to make the states of mind we are
investigating ring out, as it were, of themselves.
Let us consider the deepest and most fundamental element
in all strong and sincerely felt religious emotion. Faith unto
Salvation, Trust, Love all these are there. But over and
above these is an element which may also on occasion, quite
apart from them, profoundly affect us and occupy the mind
with a wellnigh bewildering strength. Let us follow it up
with every effort of sympathy and imaginative intuition
wherever it is to be found, in the lives of those around us, in
sudden, strong ebullitions of personal piety and the frames of
mind such ebullitions evince, in the fixed and ordered solemnities
of rites and liturgies, and again in the atmosphere that clings
to old religious monuments and buildings, to temples and to
churches. If we do so we shall find we are dealing with
something for which there is only one appropriate ｅxpression,
mysterium tremendum. The feeling of it may at times come
sweeping like a gentle tide, pervading the mind with a tranquil
mood of deepest worship. It may pass over into a more set
and lasting attitude of the soul, continuing, as it were, thril-
lingly vibrant and resonant, until at last it dies away and the
MYSTERIUM TREMENDUM 13
soul resumes its profane , non-religious mood of everyday
experience. It may burst in sudden eruption up from the
depths of the soul with spasms and convulsions, or lead to the
strangest excitements, to intoxicated frenzy, to transport, and
to ecstasy. It has its wild and demonic forms and can sink to
an almost grisly horror and shuddering. It has its crude,
barbaric antecedents and early manifestations, and again it
may be developed into something beautiful and pure and
glorious. It may become the hushed, trembling, and speech
less humility of the creature in the presence of whom or
what ? In the presence of that which is a Myttery inexpressible
and above all creatures.
It is again evident at once that here too our attempted
formulation by means of a concept is once more a merely
negative one. Conceptually mysterium denotes merely that
which is hidden and esoteric, that which is beyond conception
or understanding, extraordinary and unfamiliar. The term
does not deh ne the object more positively in its qualitative
character. But though what is enunciated in the word is
negative, what is meant is something absolutely and intensely
positive. This pure positive we can experience in feelings,
feelings which our discussion can help to make clear to us, in
so far as it arouses them actually in our hearts.
1 . Tit e Ele ment of A iveful ness.
To get light upon the positive quale of the object of these
feelings, we must analyse more closely our phrase mysterium
tremeiulum, and we will begin first with the adjective.
Tremor is in itself merely the perfectly familiar and natu
ral emotion of fear. But here the term is taken, aptly enough
but still only by analogy, to denote a quite specific kind of
emotional response, wholly distinct from that of being afraid,
though it so far resembles it that the analogy of fear may be
used to throw light upon its nature. There are in some
languages special ｅxpressions which denote, either exclusively
or in the first instance, this fear that is more than fear
proper. The Hebrew hiqdish (hallow) is an example. To
14 MYSTERIUM TREMENDUM
keep a thing holy in the heart means to mark it off by
a feeling of peculiar dread, not to be mistaken for any ordinary
dread, that is, to appraise it by the category of the numinous.
But the Old Testament throughout is rich in parallel expres
sions for this feeling. Specially noticeable is the emdt of
Yahweh ( fear of God ), which Yahweh can pour forth,
dispatching almost like a daemon, and which seizes upon a
man with paralysing effect. It is closely related to the SeTfia
iraviKov of the Greeks. Compare Exodus xxiii. 27 : I will
send my fear before thee and will destroy all the people to
whom thou shalt come . . . ; also Job ix. 34; xiii. 21 ( Let
not his fear terrify me ; Let not thy dread make me afraid ).
Here we have a terror fraught with an inward shuddering
such as not even the most menacing and overpowering created
thing can instil. It has something spectral in it.
In the Greek language we have a corresponding term
in o-e/SaoToy. The early Christians could clearly feel that the
title o-/3aaT09 (augustus) was one that could not fittingly be
given to any creature, not even to the emperor. They felt that
to call a man o-e/Sacrroy was to give a human being a name
proper only to the numen, to rank him by the category proper
only to the numen, and that it therefore amounted to a kind
of idolatry. Of modern languages English has the words
awe , awef ul , which in their deeper and most special sense
approximate closely to our meaning. The phrase, he stood
aghast , is also suggestive in this connexion. on the other
hand, German has no native-grown ｅxpression of its own for
the higher and riper form of the emotion we are considering,
unless it be in a word like erschauern , which does suggest it
fairly well. It is far otherwise with its cruder and more
debased phases, where such terms as grausen and * Schauer ,
and the more popular and telling gruseln ( grue ), graven ,
and yrasdich ( grisly ), very clearly designate the numinous
element. In my examination of Wundt s Animism I suggested
the term Scheu (dread) ; but the special numinous quality
(making it awe rather than dread in the ordinary sense)
would then of course have to be denoted by inverted commas.
Religious dread (or awe ) would perhaps be a better
MYSTERIUM TREMENDUM 15
designation. Its antecedent stage is daemonic dread (cf. the
horror of Pan) with its queer perversion, a sort of abortive
off-shoot, the dread of ghosts . It first begins to stir in the
feeling of something uncanny , eerie , or weird . It is this
feeling which, emerging in the mind of primeval man, forms
the starting-point for the entire religious development in
history. Daemons and gods alike spring from this root, and
all the products of mythological apperception or fantasy are
nothing but different modes in which it has been objectified.
And all ostensible explanations of the origin of religion in
terms of animism or magic or folk psychology are doomed from
the outset to wander astray and miss the real goal of their
inquiry, unless they recognize this fact of our nature primary,
unique, underivable from anything else to be the basic factor
and the basic impulse underlying the entire process of religious
evolution. 1
Not only is the saying of Luther, that the natural man cannot
fear God perfectly, correct from the standpoint of psychology,
but we ought to go further and add that the natural man
is quite unable even to shudder (graueu) or feel horror in
the real sense of the word. For shuddering is something more
than natural , ordinary fear. It implies that the mysterious
is already beginning to loom before the mind, to touch the
feelings. It implies the first application of a category of valua
tion which has no place in the everyday natural world of
ordinary experience, and is only possible to a being in whom
has been awakened a mental predisposition, unique in kind and
1 Cf. my papers in Thfotogische Riindscliau, 1910, vol. i, on Myth and
Religion in Wundt s Volkerpsychologie , and in Deutsche Littratiuzeitung,
1910, No. 38. I find in more recent investigations, especially those of R. R.
Marett and N. Soderblom, a very welcome confirmation of the positions
I there maintained. It is true that neither of them calls attention quite
as precisely as, in this matter, psychologists need to do, to the unique
character of the religious awe and its qualitative distinction from all
natural feelings. But Marett more particularly comes within a hair s
breadth of what I take to be the truth about the matter. Cf. his Thres
hold of Rel if/ion (London, 1909], and N. Sflderblom s Das Werden df8
Gottesglaubens (Leipzig, 1915), also my review of the latter in Throl.
Literaturzeitung, Jan. 1915.
16 MYSTERIUM TREMENDUM
different in a definite way from any natural faculty. And
this newly- revealed capacity, even in the crude and violent
manifestations which are all it at first evinces, bears witness
to a completely new function of experience and standard
of valuation, only belonging to the spirit of man.
Before going on to consider the elements which unfold as the
tremendum develops, let us give a little further consideration
to the first crude, primitive forms in which this numinous
dread or a^ve shows itself. It is the mark which really
characterizes the so-called Religion of Primitive Man , and
there it appears as daemonic dread . This crudely nai ve and
primordial emotional disturbance, and the fantastic images to
which it gives rise, are later overborne and ousted by more
highly-developed forms of the numinous emotion, with all its
mysteriously impelling power. But even when this has long
attained its higher and purer mode of ｅxpression it is possible
for the primitive types of excitation that were formerly a part
of it to break out in the soul in all their original naivete and
so to be experienced afresh. That this is so is shown by the
potent attraction again and again exercised by the element of
horror and shudder in ghost stories, even among persons
of high all-round education. It is a remarkable fact that the
physical reaction to which this unique dread of the uncanny
gives rise is also unique, and is not found in the case of any
natural fear or terror. We say : my blood ran icy cold ,
and my flesh crept . The cold blood feeling may be a
symptom of ordinary, natural fear, but there is something non-
natural or supernatural about the symptom of creeping flesh .
And any one who is capable of more precise introspection must
recognize that the distinction between such a dread and
natural fear is not simply one of degree and intensity. The
awe or dread may indeed be so overwhelmingly great that
it seems to penetrate to the very marrow, making the man s
hair bristle and his limbs quake. But it may also steal upon
him almost unobserved as the gentlest of agitations, a mere
fleeting shadow passing across his mood. It has therefore
nothing to do with intensity, and no natural fear passes over
into it merely by being intensified. I may be beyond all
MYSTERIUM TREMENDUM 17
measure afraid and terrified without there being even a trace
of the feeling of uncanniness in ray emotion.
We should see the facts more clearly if psychology in general
would make a more decisive endeavour to examine and classify
the feelings and emotions according to their qualitative differ
ences. But the far too rough division of elementary feelings
in general into pleasures and pains is still an obstacle to this.
In point of fact pleasures no more than other feelings are
differentiated merely by degrees of intensity ; they show very
definite and specific differences. It makes a specific difference
to the condition of mind whether the soul is merely in a state
of pleasure, or joy, or aesthetic rapture, or moral exaltation,
or finally in the religious bliss that may come in worship.
Such states certainly show resemblances one to another, and
on that account can legitimately be brought under a common
class-concept ( pleasure ), which serves to cut them off from
other psychical functions, generically different. But this
class-concept, so far from turning the various subordinate
species into merely different degrees of the same thing, can do
nothing at all to throw light upon the essence of each several
state of mind which it includes.
^ Though the numinous emotion in its completest development
shows a world of difference from the mere daemonic dread , yet
not even at the highest level does it belie its pedigree or
kindred. Even when the worship of daemons has long since
reached the higher level of worship of gods , these gods still
retain as numina something of the ghost in the impress
they make on the feelings of the worshipper, viz. the peculiar
quality of the uncanny and awful , which survives with
the quality of exaltedness and sublimity or is symbolized by
means of it. And this element, softened though it is, does
not disappear even on the highest level of all, where the
worship of God is at its purest. Its disappearance would be
indeed an essential loss. The shudder reappears in a form
ennobled beyond measure where the soul, held speechless,
trembles inwardly to the furthest fibre of its being. It
invades the mind mightily in Christian worship with the
words : Holy, holy, holy ; it breaks forth from the hymn
of Tersteegen :
c
18 MYSTERIUM TREMENDUM
God Himself is present:
Heart, be stilled before Him :
Prostrate inwardly adore Him.
The shudder has here lost its crazy and bewildering note,
but not the ineffable something that holds the mind. It has
become a mystical awe, and sets free as its accompaniment,
reflected in self-consciousness, that creature-feeling that has
already been described as the feeling of personal nothingness
and abasement before the awe-inspiring object directly expe
rienced.
The referring of this feeling of numinous tremor to its
object in the numen brings into relief a property of the
latter which plays an important part in our Holy Scriptures,
and which has been the occasion of many difficulties, both to
commentators and to theologians, from its puzzling and baffling
nature. This is the opyrj (orge), the Wrath of Yahweh, which
recurs in the New Testament as opy?) 6eov, and which is
clearly analogous to the idea occurring in many religions of a
mysterious ira deorum . To pass through the Indian Pantheon
of Gods is to find deities who seem to be made up altogether
out of such an opyrj ; and even the higher Indian gods of grace
and pardon have frequently, beside their merciful, their wrath
form. But as regards the Wrath of Yahweh , the strange
features about it have for long been a matter for constant
remark. In the first place, it is patent from many passages of
the Old Testament that this Wrath has no concern what
ever with moral qualities. There is something very baffling
in the way in which it is kindled and manifested. It is, as
has been well said, like a hidden force of nature , like stored-
up electricity, discharging itself upon any one who comes too
near. It is incalculable and arbitrary . Any one who is
accustomed to think of deity only by its rational attributes
must Bee in this * Wrath mere caprice and wilful passion.
But such a view would have been emphatically rejected by
the religious men of the Old Covenant, for to them the Wrath
of God, so far from being a diminution of His Godhead, appears
as a natural ｅxpression of it, an element of holiness itself,
and a quite indispensable one. And in this they are entirely
MYSTEBIUM TREMENDUM 19
right. This opyr; is nothing but the tremendum itself,
apprehended and expressed by the aid of a naive analogy from
the domain of natural experience, in this case from the ordinary
passional life of men. But naive as it may be, the analogy is
most disconcertingly apt and striking; so much so that it will
always retain its value, and for us no less than for the men of
old be an inevitable way of expressing one element in the
religious emotion. It cannot be doubted that, despite the
protest of Schleiermacher and Ritschl, Christianity also has
something to teach of the Wrath of God .
It will be again at once apparent that in the use of this
word we are not concerned with a genuine intellectual c con
cept , but only with a sort of illustrative substitute for a
concept. Wrath here is the ideogram of a unique
emotional moment in religious experience, a moment whose
singularly daunting and awe-inspiring character must be
gravely disturbing to those persons who will recognize nothing
in the divine nature but goodness, gentleness, love, and a sort
of confidential intimacy, in a word, only those aspects of God /
which turn towards the world of men.
This opyrj is thus quite wrongly spoken of as natural
wrath : rather it is an entirely non- or super-natural, i. e.
numinous, quality. The rationalization process takes place
when it begins to be filled in with elements derived from the
moral reason: righteousness in requital, and punishment for
moral transgression. But it should be noted that the idea of
the Wrath of God in the Bible is always a synthesis, in which
the original is combined with the later meaning that has come
to fill it in. Something supra-rational throbs and gleams,
palpable and visible, in the Wrath of God , prompting to
a sense of terror that no natural an<rer can arouse.
O
Beside the Wrath or An r er of Yahweh stands the related
O
ｅxpression Jealousy of Yahweh . The state of mind denoted
by the phrase being jealous for Yahweh is also a numinous
state of mind, in which features of the tremendum pass over
into the man who has experience of it.
c 2
20 MYSTERIUM TREMENDUM
2. The element of Overpower ingness ( majestas ).
We have been attempting to unfold the implications of that
aspect of the mysterium tremendum indicated by the adjec
tive, and the result so far may be summarized in two words,
constituting, as before, what may be called an ideogram ,
rather than a concept proper, viz. absolute unapproachability .
It will be felt at once that there is yet a further element
which must be added, that, namely, of might , power ,
* absolute overpoweringness . We will take to represent this
the term * majestas , majesty the more readily because any
one with a feeling for language must detect a last faint trace
of the numinous still clinging to the word. The tremendum
may then be rendered more adequately ; tremenda majestas ,
or awef ul majesty . This second element of majesty may
continue to be vividly preserved, where the first, that of
unapproachability, recedes and dies away, as may be seen, for
example, in Mysticism. It is especially in relation to this
element of majesty or absolute overpoweringness that the
creature-consciousness, of which we have already spoken,
comes upon the scene, as a sort of shadow or subjective
reflection of it. Thus, in contrast to the overpowering of
which we are conscious as an object over against the self,
there is the feeling of one s own abasement, of being but
dust and ashes and nothingness. And this forms the
numinous raw material for the feeling of religious humility. 1
Here we must revert once again to Schleiermacher s expres
sion for what we call creature- feel ing , viz. the feeling of
dependence . We found fault with this phrase before on the
ground that Schleiermacher thereby takes as basis and point
of departure what is merely a secondary effect ; that he sets
out to teach a consciousness of the religious object only by way
of an inference from the shadow it casts upon ^//-conscious
ness. We have now a further criticism to bring against it,
and it is this. By feeling of dependence Schleiermacher
means consciousness of being conditioned (as effect by cause),
and so he develops the implications of this logically enough
1 Cf. R. R. Marett, The Birth of Humility, in The Tlireshold of Religion,
2nd ed., 1914. [Tr.]
MYSTERIUM TREMENDUM 21
in his sections upon Creation and Preservation. on the
side of the deity the correlate to dependence would thus
be causality , i. e. God s character as all-causing and all-
conditioning. But a sense of this does not enter at all
into that immediate and first-hand religious emotion which we
have in the moment of worship, and which we can recover in
a measure for analysis ; it belongs on the contrary decidedly
to the rational side of the idea of God ; its implications admit
of precise conceptual determination ; and it springs from quite
a distinct source. The difference between the feeling of
dependence of Schleiermacher and that which finds typical
utterance in the words of Abraham already cited might be
expressed as that between the consciousness of createdness (Ge-
Bchaffenheit) and the consciousness of creaturehood (Geschopf-
lichkeit). In the one case you have the creature as the work
o-f the divine creative act; in the other, impotence and general
nothingness as against overpowering might, dust and ashes
as against majesty . In the one case you have the fact of
having been created ; in the other, the status of the creature.
And as soon as speculative thought has come to concern itself
with this latter type of consciousness as soon as it has come
to analyse this majesty we are introduced to a set of ideas
quite different from those of creation or preservation. We
come upon the ideas, first, of the annihilation of self, and
then, as its complement, of the transcendent as the sole and
entire reality. These are the characteristic notes of Mysticism
in all its forms, however otherwise various in content. For one
of the chiefest and most general features of Mysticism is just
this self -depreciation (so plainly parallel to the case of Abra
ham) the estimation of the self, of the personal 1 , as some
thing not perfectly or essentially real, or even as mere nullity,
a self-depreciation which comes to demand its own fulfilment
in practice in rejecting the delusion of selfhood, and so makes
for the annihilation of the self. And on the other hand Mysti
cism leads to a valuation of the transcendent object of its
reference as that which through plenitude of being stands
supreme and absolute, so that the finite self contrasted with it
becomes conscious even in its nullity that I am nought, Thou
22 MYSTERIUM TREMENDUM
art all . There is no thought in this of any causal relation
between God, the creator, and the self, the creature. The
point from which speculation starts is not a consciousness of
absolute dependence of myself as result and effect of a
divine cause for that would in point of fact lead to insistence
upon the reality of the self ; it starts from a consciousness of
the absolute superiority or supremacy of a power other than
myself, and it is only as it falls back upon ontological terms
to achieve its end terms generally borrowed from natural
science that that element of the tremendum , originally
apprehended as plenitude of power , becomes transmuted into
1 plenitude of being .
This leads again to the mention of Mysticism. No mere
inquiry into the genesis of a thing can throw any light upon
its essential nature, and it is hence immaterial to us how
Mysticism historically arose. But essentially Mysticism is the
stressing to a very high degree, indeed the overstressing, of
the non-rational or supra-rational elements in religion ; and it
is only intelligible when so understood. The various phases
and factors of the non-rational may receive varying emphasis,
and the type of Mysticism will differ according as some or
others fall into the background. What we have been analys
ing, however, is a feature that recurs in all forms of Mysticism
everywhere, and it is nothing but the creature-consciousness
stressed to the utmost and to excess, the ｅxpression meaning,
if we may repeat the contrast already made, not feeling of
our createdness but feeling of our creaturehood , that is, the
consciousness of the littleness of every creature in face of that
which is above all creatures.
A characteristic common to all types of Mysticism is the
Identification, in different degrees of completeness, of the
personal self with the transcendent Reality. This identifi
cation has a source of its own, with which we are not here
concerned, and springs from moments of religious experience
which would require separate treatment. Identification
alone, however, is not enough for Mysticism ; it must be Iden
tification with the Something that is at once absolutely
supreme in power and reality and wholly non-rational. And it
is among the mystics that we most encounter this element of
MYSTERIUM TEEMENDUM 23
religious consciousness. Rdcejac has noticed this in his Evaai
sur les fondements de la coimausance mystique (Paris, 1897).
He writes (p. 90) :
Le mysticisme commence par la crainte, par le sentiment
d une domination universelle, invincible, et devient plus tard
un de sir d union avec ce qui domine ainsi.
And some very clear examples of this taken from the religious
experience of the present day are to be found in W.James (op.
cit., p. G(J) :
The perfect stillness of the night was thrilled by a more
solemn silence. The darkness held a presence that was all the
more felt because it was not seen. I could not any more have
doubted that lie was there than that I was. Indeed, I felt
myself to be, if possible, the less real of the two.
This example is particularly instructive as to the relation of
Mysticism to the feelings of Identification , for the experience
here recounted was on the point of passing into it. 1
3. The Element of Energy or Urgency.
There is, finally, a third element comprised in those of tre-
mendum and uiajestas , awefulness and majesty, and this I
venture to call the urgency or energy of the numinous object.
It is particularly vividly perceptible in the opyrj or Wrath ;
and it everywhere clothes itself in symbolical ｅxpressions
vitality, passion, emotional temper, will, force, movement, 2
excitement, activity, impetus. These features are typical and
recur again and again from the daemonic level up to the idea
of the living God. We have here the factor that has every
where more than any other prompted the fiercest opposition to
the philosophic God of mere rational speculation, who can
be put into a definition. And for their part the philosophers
have condemned these ｅxpressions of the energy of the numen,
whenever they are brought on to the scene, as sheer anthropo
morphism. In so far as their opponents have for the most
part themselves failed to recognize that the terms they have
borrowed from the sphere of human coimtive and affective life
have merely value as analogies, the philosophers are right to
1 Compare too the experience on p. 70 : . . . "What I felt on these
occasions was a temporary loss of my own identity.
1 The mobilitaj* L)ei of Luctantiua.
24 MYSTERIUM TREMENDUM
condemn them. But they are wrong, in so far as, this error
notwithstanding, these terms stood for a genuine aspect of the
divine nature its non-rational aspect a due consciousness of
which served to protect religion itself from being rationalized
away.
For wherever men have been contending for the living
God and for voluntarism, there, we may be sure, have been
non-rationalists fighting rationalists and rationalism. It was
so with Luther in his controversy with Erasmus ; and Luther s
omnipotentia Dei in his De Servo Arbitrio is nothing but
the union of majesty in the sense of absolute supremacy
with this energy , in the sense of a force that knows not stint
nor stay, which is urgent, active, compelling, and alive. In
Mysticism, too, this element of energy is a very living and
vigorous factor, at any rate in the voluntaristic Mysticism,
the Mysticism of love, where it is very forcibly seen in that
consuming fire of love whose burning strength the mystic
can hardly bear, but begs that the heat that has scorched him
may be mitigated, lest he be himself destroyed by it. And in
this urgency and pressure the mystic s love claims a per
ceptible kinship with the opy-q itself, the scorching and con
suming wrath of God ; it is the same energy , only differently
directed. Love , says one of the mystics, is nothing else
than quenched Wrath .
The element of energy reappears in Fichte s speculations
on the Absolute as the gigantic, never-resting, active world-
stress, and in Schopenhauer s daemonic Will . At the same
time both these writers are guilty of the same error that
is already found in Myth ; they transfer natural attributes,
which ought only to be used as ideograms for what is itself
properly beyond utterance, to the non-rational as real qualifica
tions of it, and they mistake symbolic ｅxpressions of feelings
for adequate concepts upon which a scientific structure of
knowledge may be based.
In Goethe, as we shall see later, the same element of energy
is emphasized in a quite unique way in his strange descriptions
of the experience he calls daemonic .
CHAPTER V
THE ANALYSIS OF MYSTERIUM
Ein begriffener Gott ist kein Gott.
A God comprehended is no God. (TERSTEEGEN.)
WE gave to the object to which the numinous consciousness
is directed the name mysterium tremendum , and we then
set ourselves first to determine the meaning of the adjective
1 tremendum which we found to be itself only justified by
analogy because it is more easily analysed than the sub
stantive idea mysterium . We have now to turn to this,
and try, as best we may, by hint and suggestion, to get to
a clearer apprehension of what it implies.
4. The Wholly Other .
It might be thought that the adjective itself gives an
explanation of the substantive ; but this is not so. It
is not merely analytical ; it is a synthetic attribute to it ;
i.e. tremendum adds something not necessarily inherent in
mysterium . It is true that the reactions in consciousness
that correspond to the one readily and spontaneously over
flow into those that correspond to the other ; in fact, any
one sensitive to the use of words would commonly feel that
the idea of mystery (mysterium) is so closely bound up with
its synthetic qualifying attribute aweful (tremendum) that
one can hardly say the former without catching an echo of
the latter, mystery almost of itself becoming aweful
mystery to us. But the passage from the one idea to the
other need not by any means be always so easy. The elements
of meaning implied in awefulness and rnysteriousnefis are
in themselves definitely different. The latter may so far
preponderate in the religious consciousness, may stand out so
26 THE ANALYSIS OF MYSTERIUM
vividly, that in comparison with it the former almost sinks out
of sight ; a case which again could be clearly exemplified from
some forms of Mysticism. Occasionally, on the other hand,
the reverse happens, and the tremendurn may in turn occupy
the mind without the mysterium .
This latter, then, needs special consideration on its own
account. We need an ｅxpression for the mental reaction
peculiar to it ; and here, too, only one word seems appropriate
though, as it is strictly applicable only to a natural state of
mind, it has here meaning only by analogy : it is the word
stupor . Stupor is plainly a different thing from tremor ; it
signifies blank wonder, an astonishment that strikes us dumb,
amazement absolute. 1 Taken, indeed, in its purely natural
sense, mysterium would first mean merely a secret or a
mystery in the sense of that which is alien to us, uncom-
prehended and unexplained ; and so far mysterium is itself
merely an ideogram, an analogical notion taken from the
natural sphere, illustrating, but incapable of exhaustively
rendering, our real meaning. Taken in the religious sense,
that which is mysterious is to give it perhaps the most
striking ｅxpression the wholly other (Qdrepov, anyad, alie-
num), that which is quite beyond the sphere of the usual,
the intelligible, and the familiar, which therefore falls quite
outside the limits of the canny , and is contrasted with it,
filling the mind with blank wonder and astonishment.
This is already to be observed on the lowest and earliest
level of the religion of primitive man, where the numinous
consciousness is but an inchoate stirring of the feelings. What
is really characteristic of this stage is not as the theory of
: Compare also olstupefacere . Still more exact equivalents are the
Greek&i/ijSos 1 and Qa^dv. The sound 6ap.^(thamb) excellently depicts this
state of mind of blank, staring wonder. And the difference between the
moments of stupor and tremor is very finely suggested by the pas
sage, Mark x. 32 (cf. infra, p. 1C3). on the other hand, what was said above
of the facility and rapidity with which the two moments merge and
blend is also markedly true of 0a^/3o9, which then becomes a classical
term for the (ennobled) awe of the numinous in general. So Mark xvi.
5 is rightly translated by Luther und sie entsetzten sich , and by the
English Authorized Version and they were affrighted .
THE ANALYSIS OF MYSTERIUM 27
Animism would have us believe that men are here concerned
with curious entities, called souls or spirits , which happen
to be invisible. Representations of spirits and similar con
ceptions are rather one and all early modes of rationalizing
a precedent experience, to which they are subsidiary. They
are attempts in some way or other, it little matters how, to guess
the riddle it propounds, and their effect is at the same time
always to weaken and deaden the experience itself. They are
the source from which springs, not religion, but the rationaliza
tion of religion, which often ends by constructing such a
massive structure of theory and such a plausible fabric of
interpretation, that the mystery is frankly excluded. 1 Both
imaginative Myth , when developed into a system, and intel-
lectualist Scholasticism, when worked out to its completion,
are methods by which the fundamental fact of religious
experience is, as it were, simply rolled out so thin and flat
as to be finally eliminated altogether.
Even on the lowest level of religious development the
essential characteristic is therefore to be sought elsewhere
than in the appearance of spirit representations. It lies
rather, we repeat, in a peculiar moment of consciousness, to
wit, the stupor before something wholly other , whether
such an other be named spirit or daemon or deva , or
be left without any name. Nor does it make any difference
in this respect whether, to interpret and preserve their
apprehension of this other , men coin original imagery of
their own or adapt imaginations drawn from the world of
legend, the fabrications of fancy apart from and prior to any
stirrings of daemonic dread.
O
In accordance with laws of which we shall have to speak
again later, this feeling or consciousness of the wholly other
will attach itself to, or sometimes be indirectly aroused by
means of, objects which are already puzzling upon the natural
plane, or are of a surprising or astounding character; such as
extraordinary phenomena or astonishing occurrences or things
1 A Kpirit or fcoul that has been conceived and comprehended no
longer prompts to shuddering , as is proved b) Spiritualism. But it
thereby ceaaes to be of interest for the psychology of religion.
28 THE ANALYSIS OF MYSTERIUM
in inanimate nature, in the animal world, or among men. But
7 O
here once more we are dealing with a case of association
between things specifically different the numinous and the
natural moment of consciousness and not merely with
the gradual enhancement of one of them the natural till
it becomes the other. As in the case of natural fear and
1 daemonic dread already considered, so here the transition
from natural to daemonic amazement is not a mere matter of
degree. But it is only with the latter that the complementary
ｅxpression mysterium perfectly harmonizes, as will be felt
perhaps more clearly in the case of the adjectival form
mysterious . No one says, strictly and in earnest, of a piece
of clockwork that is beyond his grasp, or of a science that he
cannot understand : That is " mysterious " to me.
It might be objected that the mysterious is something
which is and remains absolutely and invariably beyond our
understanding, whereas that which merely eludes our under
standing for a time but is perfectly intelligible in principle
should be called, not a mystery , but merely a problem .
But this is by no means an adequate account of the matter.
The truly mysterious object is beyond our apprehension and
comprehension, not only because our knowledge has certain
irremovable limits, but because in it we come upon something
inherently wholly other , whose kind and character are in
commensurable with our own, and before which we therefore
recoil in a wonder that strikes us chill and numb. 1
This may be made still clearer by a consideration of that
degraded offshoot and travesty of the genuine numinous
dread or awe, the fear of ghosts. Let us try to analyse this
experience. We have already specified the peculiar feeling-
1 In Confessions, ii. 9. 1, Augustine very vstrikingly suggests this stiffen
ing, benumbing element of the wholly other and its contrast to the
rational aspect of the numen ; the dissimile and the simile .
Quid est illud, quod interlucet mihi et percutit cor nieum sine laesione ?
Et inhorresco et inardesco. Inhorresco, in quantum dissimilis ei sum.
Inardesco, in quantum similis ei sum.
( VVhat is that which gleams through me and smites my heart without
wounding it ? I am both a-shudder and a-glow. A-shudder, in so far as
I am unlike it, a-glow in so far as I am like it. )
THE ANALYSIS OF MYSTERIUM 29
element of dren<l aroused by the ghost as that of grue ,
grisly horror (gruseln, graven). Now this grue obviously
contributes something to the attraction which ghost-stories
exercise, in so far, namely, as the relaxation of tension ensuing
upon our release from it relieves the mind in a pleasant and
agreeable way. So far, however, it is not really the ghost
itself that gives us pleasure, but the fact that we are rid of it.
But obviously this is quite insufficient to explain the ensnaring
attraction of the ghost-story. The ghost s real attraction
rather consists in this, that of itself and in an uncommon
degree it entices the imagination, awakening strong interest
and curiosity ; it is the weird thing itself that allures the
fancy. But it does this, not because it is something long
and white (as some one once defined a ghost), nor yet through
any of the positive and conceptual attributes which fancies
about ghosts have invented, but because it is a thing that
doesn t really exist at all , the wholly other , something
which has no place in our scheme of reality but belongs to an
absolutely different one, and which at the same time arouses
an irrepressible interest in the mind.
But that which is perceptibly true in the fear of ghosts, which
is, after all, only a caricature of the genuine thing, is in a far
stronger sense true of the daemonic experience itself, of
which the fear of ghosts is a mere off-shoot. And while,
following this main line of development, this element in the
numinous consciousness, the feeling of the wholly other , is
heightened and clarified, its higher modes of manifestation
come into being, which set the numinous object in contrast
not only to everything wonted and familiar (i.e., in the end,
to nature in general), thereby turning it into the super
natural , but finally to the world itself, and thereby exalt it to
the supraraundane , that which is above the whole world-order.
In Mysticism we have in the Beyond (tTre/caya) again the
strongest stressing and over-stressing of those non-rational
elements which are already inherent in all religion. Mysticism
continues to its extreme point this contrasting of the numinous
object (the numen), as the wholly other , with ordinary experi
ence. Not content with coutrastinr it with all that is of
30 THE ANALYSIS OF MYSTERIUM
nature or this world, Mysticism concludes by contrasting it
with Being itself and all that is , and finally actually calls
it that which is nothing . By this nothing is meant not
only that of which nothing can be predicated, but that which
is absolutely and intrinsically other than and opposite of
everything that is and can be thought. But while exaggerat
ing to the point of paradox this negation and contrast the
only means open to conceptual thought to apprehend the
mysterium Mysticism at the same time retains the positive
quality of the wholly other as a very living factor in its
over-brimming religious emotion.
But what is true of the strange nothingness of our mystics
holds good equally of the sunyam and the sunyata , the
void and emptiness of the Buddhist mystics. This aspira
tion for the void and for becoming void, no less than the
aspiration of our western mystics for nothing and for becom
ing nothing, must seem a kind of lunacy to any one who has
no inner sympathy for the esoteric language and ideograms of
Mysticism, and lacks the matrix from which these come neces
sarily to birth. To such an one Buddhism itself will be simply
a morbid sort of pessimism. But in fact the void of the
eastern, like the nothing of the western, mystic is a numinous
ideogram of the wholly other .
These terms, supernatural and transcendent (literally,
supramundane : uberweltlich), give the appearance of positive
attributes, and, as applied to the mysterious, they appear to
divest the mysterium of its originally negative meaning
and to turn it into an affirmation. on the side of conceptual
thought this is nothing more than appearance, for it is obvious
that the two terms in question are merely negative and ex
clusive attributes with reference to nature and the world
or cosmos respectively. But on the side of the feeling-content
it is otherwise ; that is in very truth positive in the highest
degree, though here too, as before, it cannot be rendered
explicit in conceptual terms. It is through this positive
feeling-content that the concepts of the transcendent and
supernatural become forthwith designations for a unique
wholly other reality and quality, something of whose special
character we can feel, without being able to give it clear
conceptual ｅxpression.
CHAPTER VI
5. THE ELEMENT OF FASCINATION
THE qualitative content of the numinous experience, to
which the mysterious stands as/c^-m, is in one of its aspects
the element of daunting awefulness and majesty , which
has already been dealt with in detail ; but it is clear that it
has at the same time another aspect, in which it shows itself
as something uniquely attractive and fascinating.
These two qualities, the daunting and the fascinating, now
combine in a strange harmony of contrasts, and the resultant
dual character of the numinous consciousness, to which the
entire religious development bears witness, at any rate from
the level of the daemonic dread onwards, is at once the
strangest and most noteworthy phenomenon in the whole
history of religion. The daemonic-divine object may appear
to the mind an object of horror and dread, but at the same
time it is no less something that allures with a potent charm,
and the creature, who trembles before it, utterly cowed and
cast down, has always at the same time the impulse to turn to
it, nay even to make it somehow his own. The mystery is
for him not merely something to be wondered at but some
thing that entrances him ; and beside that in it which
bewilders and confounds, lie feels a something that captivates
and transports him with a strange ravishment, rising often
enough to the pitch of dizzy intoxication ; it is the Dionysiac-
element in the numen.
The ideas and concepts which are the parallels or schemata
on the rational side of this non-rational element of fasci
nation are Love, Mercy, Pity, Comfort; these are all
natural elements of the common psychical life, only they
are here thought as absolute and in completeness. But
important as these are for the experience of religious bliss or
32 THE ELEMENT OF FASCINATION
felicity, they do not by any means exhaust it. It is just the
same as with the opposite experience of religious infelicity
the experience of the opyr) or Wrath of God : both alike
contain fundamentally non-rational elements. Bliss or beati
tude is more, far more, than the mere natural feeling of being
comforted, of reliance, of the joy of love, however these may
be heightened and enhanced. Just as Wrath , taken in
a purely rational or a purely ethical sense, does not exhaust
that profound element of awef illness which is locked in the
mystery of deity, so neither does Graciousness exhaust the
profound element of wond erf illness and rapture which lies in
the mysterious beatific experience of deity. The term grace
may indeed be taken as its aptest designation, but then only
in the sense in which it is really applied in the language of
the mystics, and in which not only the gracious intent but
c something more is meant by the word. This * something
more has its antecedent phases very far back in the history
of religions.
It may well be possible, it is even probable, that in the first
stage of its development the religious consciousness started
with only one of its poles the daunting aspect of the numen
and so at first took shape only as daemonic dread . But
if this did not point to something beyond itself, if it were not
but one moment of a completer experience, pressing up
gradually into consciousness, then no transition would be
possible to the feelings of positive self-surrender to the numen.
The only type of worship that could result from this dread
alone would be that of airaiTt ia-Qai and dirorptTreiv , taking
the form of expiation and propitiation, the averting or the
appeasement of the wrath of the numen. It can never explain
how it is that c the numinous is the object of search and
desire and yearning, and that too for its own sake and not
only for the sake of the aid and backing that men expect
from it in the natural sphere. It can never explain how this
takes place, not only in the forms of rational religious
worship, but in those queer sacramental observances and
rituals and procedures of communion in which the human
being seeks to get the numen into his possession.
THE ELEMENT OF FASCINATION 33
Religious practice may manifest itself in those normal and
easily intelligible forms which occupy so prominent a place in
the history of religion, such forms as Propitiation, Petition,
Sacrifice, Thanksgiving, &c. But besides these there is a series
of strange proceedings which are constantly attracting greater
and greater attention, and in which it is claimed that we may
recognize, besides mere religion in general, the particular roots
of Mysticism. I refer to those numerous curious modes of
behaviour and fantastic forms of mediation, by means of
which the primitive religious man attempts to master the
mysterious , and to fill himself and even to identify himself
with it. These modes of behaviour fall apart into two
classes. on the one hand the magical identification of the
self with the numen proceeds by means of various transactions,
at once magical and devotional in character by formula, ordi
nation, adjuration, consecration, exorcism, &c. : on the other hand
are the shamanistic ways of procedure, possession, indwelling,
Belf-imbuement with the numen in exaltation and ecstasy. All
these have, indeed, their starting-points simply in magic, and
their intention at first was certainly simply to appropriate the
prodigious force of the numen for the natural ends of man.
But the process does not rest there. Possession of and by the
numen becomes an end in itself ; it begins to be sought for its
own sake ; and the wildest and most artificial methods of
asceticism are put into practice to attain it. In a word, the
vita religiosa begins; and to remain in these strange and
bizarre states of numinous possession becomes a good in itself,
even a way of salvation, wholly different from the profane
goods pursued by means of magic. Here, too, commences the
process of development by which the experience is matured
and purified, till finally it reaches its consummation in the
eublimest and purest states of the life within the Spirit and
in the noblest Mysticism. Widely various as these states are
in themselves, yet they have this element in common, that in
them the mysterium is experienced in its essential, positive,
and specific character, as something that bestows upon man
a beatitude beyond compare, but one whoso real nature ho
can neither proclaim in speech nor conceive in thought, but
D
34 THE ELEMENT OF FASCINATION
may know only by a direct and living experience. It is a bliss
which embraces all those blessings that are indicated or
suggested in positive fashion by any doctrine of Salvation ,
and it quickens all of them through and through ; but these do
not exhaust it. Rather by its all-pervading, penetrating glow
it makes of these very blessings more than the intellect can
conceive in them or affirm of them. It gives the Peace that
passes understanding, and of which the tongue can only
stammer brokenly. only from afar, by metaphors and
analogies, do we come to apprehend what it is in itself, and
even so our notion is but inadequate and confused.
c Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into
the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them
that love Him. Who does not feel the exalted sound of these
words and the Dionysiac element of transport and fervour
in them ? It is instructive that in such phrases as these, in
which consciousness would fain put its highest consummation
into words, all images fall away* and the mind turns from
them to grasp ｅxpressions that are purely negative. And it is
still more instructive that in reading and hearing such words
their merely negative character simply is not noticed ; that we
can let whole chains of such negations enrapture, even intoxi
cate us, and that entire hymns and deeply impressive hymns
have been composed, in which there is really nothing positive
at all ! All this teaches us the independence of the positive
content of this experience from the implications of its overt
conceptual ｅxpression, and how it can be firmly grasped,
thoroughly understood, and profoundly appreciated, purely in.
with, and from the feeling itself.
Mere love, mere trust, for all the glory and happiness
they bring, do not explain to us that moment of rapture that
breathes in our tenderest and most heart-felt hymns of salva
tion, as also in such eschatological hymns of longing as that
Rhyme of St. Bernard in which the very verses seem to dance.
Urbs Sion unica, mansio mystica, condita caelo,
Nunc tibi gaudeo, nunc tibi lugeo, tristor, anhelo,
Te, quia corpore non queo, pectore saepe penetro ;
Sed caro terrea, terraque carnea, mox cado retro.
THE ELEMENT OF FASCINATION 35
Nemo retexere, nemoque promcre sustinet ore,
Quo tua moenia, quo capitolia plena nitore.
Id queo dicere, quo modo tangere pollice coclum,
Ut mare currere, sicut in acre figere teluni.
Opprimit omne cor ille tuns decor, O Sion, O Pax.
Urbs sine tempore, nulla potest fore laus tibi mendax.
O nova mansio, te pia concio, gens pia munit,
Provehit, excitat, auget, identitat, em cit, unit. 1
This is where the living something more of the fascinans ,
the element of fascination, is to be found. It lives no less
in those tense extollings of the blessing of salvation, which
recur in all religions of salvation, and stand in such remarkable
contrast to the relatively meagre and frequently childish
import of that which is revealed in them by concept or by
image. Everywhere Salvation is something whose meaning
is often very little apparent, is even wholly obscure, to the
natural man ; on the contrary, so far as he understands it,
he tends to find it highly tedious and uninteresting, sometimes
downright distasteful and repugnant to his nature, as he
would, for instance, find the beatific vision of God in our
own doctrine of Salvation, or the Henosis of God all in all
among the mystics. So far as he understands , be it noted ;
but then he does not understand it in the least. Because he
lacks the inward teaching of the Spirit, he must needs confound
what is offered him as an ｅxpression for the experience of
salvation a mere ideogram of what is felt, whose import
it hints at by analogy with natural concepts, as though it
were itself just such an one. And so he wanders ever
further from the goal .
1 Zion, thou cityBole and single, mystic mansion hidden away in the
heavens, now I rejoice in thee, now I moan for thee and moujn and
yearn for thee ; Thee often I pass through in the heart, as I cannot in the
body, but being but earthly flesh and fleshly earth soon I fall back.
None can disclose or utter in speech what plenary radiance fills thy walls
and thy citadels. I can as little tell of it as I can touch the skies with
my finger, or run upon the sea or make a dart stand still in the air.
This thy splendour overwhelms every heart, Sion, Peace ! time
less City, no praise can belie thee. O new dwelling-place, thee the
concourse and people of the faithful erects and exalts, inspires and in
creases, joins to itself, and makes complete and one.
D ii
36 THE ELEMENT OF FASCINATION
It is not only in the religious feeling of longing that the
moment of fascination is a living factor. It is already alive
and present in the moment of solemnity , both in the gathered
concentration and humble abasement of private devotion,
when the mind is exalted to the holy, and in the common
worship of the congregation, where this is practised with
earnestness and deep sincerity, as, it is to be feared, is with us
a thing rather desired than realized. It is this and nothing
else that in the solemn moment can fill the soul so full and
keep it so inexpressibly tranquil. Schleiermacher s assertion l
is perhaps true of it, as of the numinous consciousness in
general, viz. that it cannot really occur alone on its own
account, or except combined and penetrated with rational
elements. But, if this be admitted, it is upon other grounds
than those adduced by Schleiermacher ; while, on the other
hand, it may occupy a more or less predominant place and
lead to states of calm (rivv^ta) as well as of transport, in
which it almost of itself wholly fills the soul. But in all the
manifold forms in which it is aroused in us, whether in
eschatological promise of the coming kingdom of God and the
transcendent bliss of Paradise, or in the guise of an entry
into that beatific Reality that is above the world ; whether
it come first in expectancy or preintimation or in a present
experience ( When I but have Thee, I ask no question of
heaven and earth ) ; in all these forms, outwardly diverse but
inwardly akin, it appears as a strange and mighty propulsion
toward an ideal good known only to religion and in its nature
fundamentally non-rational, which the mind knows of in
yearning and presentiment, recognizing it for what it is behind
the obscure and inadequate symbols which are its only
ｅxpression. And this shows that above and beyond our
rational being lies hidden the ultimate and highest part of our
nature, which can find no satisfaction in the mere allaying of
the needs of our sensuous, psychical, or intellectual impulses
and cravings. The mystics called it the basis or ground of
the soul.
We saw that in the case of the element of the mysterious the
1 Glaubenslehre, 5.
THE ELEMENT OF FASCINATION 37
c wholly other led on to the supernatural and transcendent
and that above these appeared the beyond (eVc/ccu/a) of Mysti
cism, through the non-rational side of religion being raised to
its highest power and stressed to excess. It is the same in
the case of the element of * fascination ; here, too, is possible
a transition into Mysticism. At its highest point of stress
the fascinating becomes the * overabounding \ l the mystical
moment which exactly corresponds upon this line to the
7reAceu a upon the other line of approach, and which is to be
understood accordingly. But while this feeling of the over-
abounding is specially characteristic of Mysticism, a trace of
it survives in all truly felt states of religious beatitude, how
ever restrained and kept within measure by other factors.
This is seen most clearly from the psychology of those great
experiences of grace, conversion, second birth in which
the religious experience appears in its pure intrinsic nature
and in heightened activity, so as to be more clearly grasped
than in the less typical form of piety instilled by education. The
hard core of such experiences in their Christian form consists
of the redemption from guilt and bondage to sin, and we
shall have presently to see that this also does not occur with
out a participation of non-rational elements. But leaving this
out of account, what we have here to point out is the unutter-
ableness of what has been yet genuinely experienced, and how
such an experience may pass into blissful excitement, rapture,
and exaltation verging often on the bizarre and the abnor
mal. 2 This is vouched for by the autobiographical testi
mony of the converted from St. Paul onward. William James
has collected a great number of these, without, however,
1 Das UberscJnnngliche.
2 This may be found fatal to the attempt to construct a Religion
within the limits of pure reason or of humanity * ; but, none the less,
the matter is aa we have described it, as far as concerns the psychologi
cal inquiry into religion, which asks, not what it is within the afore
mentioned limit*, but what it is in its own essential nature. And for
that matter this proceeding of constructing a humanity prior to and
apart from the most central and potent of human capacities is like
nothing so much as the attempt to frame a standard idea of the human
body after having previously cut off the head.
38 THE ELEMENT OF FASCINATION
himself noticing the non-rational element that thrills in
them.
Thus, one writes
. . . For the moment nothing but an ineffable joy and
exaltation remained. It is impossible fully to describe the
experience. It was like the effect of some great orchestra,
when all the separate notes have melted into one swelling
harmony, that leaves the listener conscious of nothing save
that his soul is being wafted upwards and almost bursting
with its own emotion. ( Varieties, &c., p. 66.)
And another :
. . . The more I seek words to express this intimate inter
course, the more I feel the impossibility of describing the thing
by any of our usual images. (Ibid., p. 68.)
And almost with the precision of dogma, a third (Jonathan
Edwards) indicates the qualitative difference of the experience
of beatitude from other rational joy :
The conceptions which the saints have of the loveliness of
God and that kind of delight which they experience in it are
quite peculiar and entirely different from anything which a
natural man can possess or of which he can form any proper
notion/ (Ibid., p. 229.)
Cf. also pp. 192, 225; and the testimony of Jacob Boehme
given on p. 417. Also this of Boehme :
But I can neither write nor tell of what sort of Exaltation
the triumphing in the Spirit is. It can be compared with
nought, but that when in the midst of death life is born, and
it is like the resurrection of the dead.
With the mystics these experiences pass up wholly into the
over-abounding . O that I could tell you what the heart
feels, how it burns and is consumed inwardly ! only, I find
no words to express it. I can but say : Might but one little
drop of what I feel fall into Hell, Hell would be transformed
into a Paradise. So says St. Catherine of Genoa ; and all the
multitude of her spiritual kindred testify to the same effect.
What we Christians know as the experiences of grace and
the second birth have their parallels also in the religions
of high spiritual rank beyond the borders of Christianity.
Such are the breaking out of the saving Bodhi , the opening
THE ELEMENT OF FASCINATION 39
of the heavenly eye , the Jndna by ISvarae prasdda,
which is victorious over the darkness of nescience and shines out
in an experience with which no other can be measured. And
in all these the entirely non-rational and specific element in
the beatific experience is immediately noticeable. The quali
tative character of it varies widely in all these cases, and is
again in them all very different from its parallels in Chris
tianity ; still in all it is very similar in intensity, and in all it
is a salvation and an absolute fascination , which in contrast
to all that admits of natural ｅxpression or comparison is
deeply imbued with the over-abounding nature of the numen.
And this is also entirely true of the rapture of Nirvana,
which is only in appearance a cold and negative state. It is only
conceptually that Nirvana is a negation ; it is felt in con
sciousness as in the strongest degree positive ; it exercises a
fascination by which its votaries are as much carried away
as are the Hindu or the Christian by the corresponding objects
of their worship. I recall vividly a conversation I had with
a Buddhist monk. He had been putting before me methodi
cally and pertinaciously the arguments for the Buddhist
1 theology of negation , the doctrine of Anatman and entire
emptiness . When he had made an end, I asked him, what
then Nirvana itself is ; and after a long pause came at last the
single answer, low and restrained : Bliss unspeakable . And
the hushed restraint of that answer, the solemnity of his voice,
demeanour, and gesture, made more clear what was meant than
the words themselves.
And so we maintain, on the one hand, following the via
eminentiae et causalitatis , that the divine is indeed the highest,
strongest, best, loveliest, and dearest that man can think of;
but we assert on the other, following the via negationis , that
God is not merely the ground and superlative of all that can
be thought; He is in Himself a subject on His own account
and in Himself.
* : *
In the adjective Stivos the Greek language possesses a word
peculiarly difficult to translate, and standing for an idea
peculiarly difficult to grasp in all its strange variations. And
40 THE ELEMENT OF FASCINATION
if we ask whence this difficulty arises, the answer is plain ; it
is because 5ety6y is simply the numinous (mostly of course at
a lower level, in an arrested form, attenuated by rhetorical or
poetic usage). Consequently 5et*>6y is the equivalent of dirus
and tremendus . It may mean evil or imposing, potent and
strange, queer and marvellous, horrifying and fascinating,
divine and daemonic, and a source of energy . Sophocles
means to awaken the feeling of c numinous awe through the
whole gamut of its phases at the contemplation of man, the
creature of marvel, in the choric song of the Antigone :
TroXXa TO, Seiva, KovSzv avQp&Trov Stivorepov neXei.
This line defies translation, just because our language has no
term that can isolate distinctly and gather into one word the
total numinous impression a thing may make on the mind.
The nearest that German can get to it is in the ｅxpression
* das Ungeheuere (monstrous), while in English weird is
perhaps the closest rendering possible. The mood and attitude
represented in the foregoing verse might then be fairly well
rendered by such a translation as :
Much there is that is weird ; but nought is weirder than
man.
The German ungeheuer is not by derivation simply huge , in
quantity or quality ; this, its common meaning, is in fact a
rationalizing interpretation of the real idea ; it is that which is
not geheuer , i. e., approximately, the uncanny in a word, the
numinous. And it is just this element of the uncanny in man
that Sophocles has in mind. If this, its fundamental meaning,
be really and thoroughly felt in consciousness, then the word
could be taken as a fairly exact ｅxpression for the numinous
in its aspects of mystery, awefulness, majesty, augustness,
and energy ; nay, even the aspect of fascination is dimly
felt in it.
The variations of meaning in the German word ungeheuer
can be well illustrated from Goethe. 1 He, too, uses the word
1 Cf. Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre, Bk. I, ch. 10; Wahlveneandtschaf-
ten, 2. 15 ; Dichtunq und Wahrheit, 2. 9 ; 4. 20.
THE ELEMENT OF FASCINATION 41
first to denote the huge in size what is too vast for our
faculty of space-perception, such as the immeasurable vault of
the night sky. In other passages the word retains its original
non-rational colour more markedly; it comes to mean the
uncanny, the fearful, the dauntingly other and incomprehen
sible, that which arouses in us stupor and Od^pos ; and
finally, in the wonderful words of Faust which I have put
upon my title-page, it becomes an almost exact synonym for
our numinous under all its aspects.
Das Schaudern ist der Menschheit bestes Teil.
Wie auch die Welt ihm das Gefiihl verteuere,
Ergritfen fiihlt er tief das Ungeheuere. 1
1 Awe is the best of man : howe er the world s
Misprizing of the feeling would prevent us,
Deeply we feel, once gripped, the weird Portentous.
(GOETHE, Faust, Second Part, Act I, Sc. v.)
CHAPTEE VII
ANALOGIES AND ASSOCIATED FEELINGS
IN order to give an adequate account of this second aspect
of the numinous, we were led to add to its original designation
as mysterium tremendum that it at the same time exercises a
supreme fascination . And this its dual character, as at once
an object of boundless awe and boundless wonder, quelling and
yet entrancing the soul, constitutes the proper positive content
of the mysterium as it manifests itself in conscious feeling.
No attempt of ours to describe this harmony of contrasts in
the import of the mysterium can really succeed ; but it may
perhaps be adumbrated, as it were from a distance, by taking
an analogy from a region belonging not to religion but to
aesthetics. In the category and feeling of the sullime we
have a counterpart to it, though it is true it is but a pale
reflexion, and moreover involves difficulties of analysis all its
own. The analogies between the consciousness of the sublime
and of the numinous may be easily grasped. 1 To begin with,
the sublime , like the numinous , is in Kantian language an
idea or concept that cannot be unfolded or explicated (unaus-
wickelbar). Certainly we can tabulate some general rational
signs that uniformly recur as soon as we call an object sublime ;
as, for instance, that it must approach, or threaten to overpass,
the bounds of our understanding by some dynamic or
mathematic greatness, by potent manifestations of force
1 We are often prone to resort to this familiar feeling-content to fill
out the negative concept transcendent , explaining frankly God s trans
cendence by His sublimity . As a figurative analogical description
this is perfectly allowable, but it would be an error if we meant it literally
and in earnest. Religious feelings are not the same as aesthetic feelings,
and the sublime is as definitely an aesthetic term as the beautiful \
however widely different may be the facts denoted by the words.
ANALOGIES AND ASSOCIATED FEELINGS 43
or magnitude in spatial extent. But these are obviously
only conditions of, not the essence of, the impression of sub
limity. A thing does not become sublime merely by being
great. The concept itself remains unexplicated ; it has in
it something mysterious, and in this it is like that of
1 the numinous . A second point of resemblance is that the
sublime exhibits the same peculiar dual character as the
numinous; it is at once daunting, and yet again singularly
attracting, in its impress upon the mind. It humbles and at
the same time exalts us, circumscribes and extends us beyond
ourselves, on the one hand releasing in us a feeling analogous
to fear, and on the other rejoicing us. So the idea of the
sublime is closely similar to that of the numinous, and is well
adapted to excite it and to be excited by it, while each tends
to pass over into the other.
The Law of the Association of Feelings.
As these ｅxpressions excite and pass over will later
assume importance, and as the latter in particular is hedged
about with misconceptions which are prominent in the modern
doctrines of Evolution and give rise to quite erroneous con
clusions, we will enter at once upon a closer consideration of
them.
It is a well-known and fundamental psychological law that
ideas attract one another, and that one will excite another and
call it into consciousness, if it resembles it. An entirely similar
law holds good with regard to feelings. A feeling, no less
than an idea, can arouse its like in the mind ; and the
presence of the one in my consciousness may be the occasion
for my entertaining the other at the same time. Further,
just as in the case of ideas the law of reproduction by similarity
leads to a mistaken substitution of ideas, so that I come to
entertain an idea x, when y would have been the appropriate
one, so we may be led to a corresponding substitution of
feelings, and I may react with a feeling x to an impression
to which the feeling y would normally correspond. Finally,
/can pass from one feeling to another by an imperceptibly
gradual transition, the one feeling x dying away little by
44 ANALOGIES AND ASSOCIATED FEELINGS
little, while the other, y, excited together with it, increases and
strengthens in a corresponding degree. But it is important
here to recognize the true account of the phenomenon. What
passes over undergoes transition is not the feeling itself.
It is not that the actual feeling gradually changes in quality
or evolves , i. e. transmutes itself into a quite different one,
but rather that / pass over or make the transition from one
feeling to another as my circumstances change, by the gradual
decrease of the one and increase of the other. A transition of
the actual feeling into another would be a real transmutation ,
and would be a psychological counterpart to the alchemist s
production of gold by the transmutation of metals.
And yet it is this transmutation that is assumed by the
modern Evolutionism more properly to be called Transmu-
tationism by the introduction of the equivocal phrase,
gradually evolve (i. e. from a thing of a certain quality to
something qualitatively different), or the no less equivocal
words * Epigenesis , Heterogony , l and their like. In this
way, they would have us believe, the feeling, e.g. of moral
obligation, evolves or develops. At first, so it is said, all
that exists is the simple constraint of uniform custom, as seen in
the community of the clan. Then, out of that, it is said, arises
the idea of a universally obligatory ought . How the idea can
do so is not disclosed. Now such a theory misses the fact that
in moral obligation we have something qualitatively quite
different from constraint by custom. The finer and more pene
trating psychological analysis that can apprehend differences
in quality is rudely ignored and in consequence the whole
problem is misconceived. Or, if something of the essential
difference is felt, it is covered up and glozed over by the
phrase gradually evolve , and the one thing is made to turn
into the other par la dure e , much as milk grows sour from
standing. But ought is a primary and unique meaning, as
little derivable from another as blue from bitter, and there are
not transmutations in the psychological any more than in the
1 Neither Heterogony nor Epigenesis is genuine Evolution. They
are rather just what the biologists call generatio equivoca , and there
fore mere formation of an aggregate by addition and accumulation.
ANALOGIES AND ASSOCIATED FEELINGS 45
physical world. The idea ought is only evolvable out of
the spirit of man itself, and then in the sense of being arous-
able , because it is already potentially implanted in him. Were
it not so, no evolution could effect an introduction for it.
The evolutionists may be quite correct in reconstructing the
kind of historical process that took place, viz. the gradual
and successive entry upon the scene of different moments of
feeling-consciousness in historical sequence, and the order of
entry itself may have been correctly discovered. But the
explanation of this process is quite different from that which
they intend ; it Is, namely, the law of the excitation and
arousin"- of feelings and ideas according to the measure of
O O "
their resemblance. There is in point of fact a very strong
analogy between constraint by custom and constraint by moral
obligation, as both are constraints upon conduct. Conse
quently the former can arouse the latter in the mind if it
the latter was already potentially planted there ; the feeling
of ought may start into consciousness at the presence of the
other feeling, and the man may gradually effect a transition
to it from that other. But what we are concerned with is the
replacement of the one by the other, and not the transmuta
tion of the one into the other.
Now it is just the same with the feeling of the numinous
as with that of moral obligation. It too is not to be derived
from any other feeling, and is in this sense unevolvable . It is
a content of feeling that is qualitatively svi generis, yet at the
same time one that has numerous analogies with others, and
therefore it and they may reciprocally excite or stimulate one
another and cause one another to appear in the mind. Instead
of framing epigenctic and other fabrications of the course
the evolution of religion has taken, it is our task to inquire
into these stimuli or excitations , these elements that cause
the numinous feeling to appear in consciousness, to intimate
by virtue of what analogies they came to be able to do so, and
so to discover the series or chain of these stimuli by whose
operation the numinous feeling was awakened in us.
Such a power of stimulation characterizes the feeling of the
Bublime, in accordance with the law we found, and through
46 ANALOGIES AND ASSOCIATED FEELINGS
the analogies it bears to the numinous feeling. But this is
indubitably a stimulus that only makes its appearance late in
the excitation-series, and it is probable that the feeling of the
sublime is itself first aroused and disengaged by the precedent
religious feeling not from itself, but from the rational spirit
of man and its a priori capacity.
Schematization.
The Association of Ideas does not simply cause the idea y
to reappear in consciousness with the given idea x occasionally
only, it also sets up under certain circumstances lasting com
binations and connexions between the two. And this is no less
true of the association of feelings. Accordingly, we see religious
feeling in permanent connexion with other feelings which are
conjoined to it in accordance with this principle of Association.
It is, indeed, more accurate to say conjoined than really con
nected , for such mere conjunctions or chance connexions
according to laws of purely external analogy are to be distin
guished from necessary connexions according to principles
of true inward affinity and cohesion. An instance of a con
nexion of this latter kind an example, indeed, of an inner
a priori principle is (following the theory of Kant) the con
nexion of the Category of Causality with its temporal
* schema , the temporal sequence of two successive events,
which by being brought into connexion with the Category of
Causality is known and recognized as a causal relation of the
two. In this case analogy between the two the category
and the schema has also a place, but it is not chance external
resemblance but essential correspondence, and the fact that
the two belong together is here a necessity of our reason. on
the basis of such a necessity the temporal sequence schema
tizes the category.
Now the relation of the rational to the non-rational ele
ment in the idea of the holy or sacred is just such a one of
schematization , and the non-rational numinous fact, schema
tized by the rational concepts we have suggested above, yields
us the complex category of holy itself, richly charged and
complete and in its fullest meaning. And that the schematism
ANALOGIES AND ASSOCIATED FEELINGS 47
is a genuine one, and not a mere combination of analogies, may
be distinctly seen from the fact that it does not fall to
pieces, and cannot be cut out as the development of the
consciousness of religious truth proceeds onwards and up
wards, but is only recognized with greater definiteness and
certainty. And it is for the same reason inherently probable
that there is more, too, in the combination of the holy with
the sublime than a mere association of feelings ; and per
haps we may say that, while as a matter of historical genesis
such an association was the means whereby this combination
was awakened in the mind and the occasion for it, yet the in
ward and lasting character of the connexion in all the higher
religions does prove that the sublime too is an authentic
scheme of the holy .
The intimate interpenetration of the non-rational with the
rational elements of the religious consciousness, like the inter
weaving of warp and woof in a fabric, may be elucidated by
taking another familiar case, in which a universal human
O
feeling, that of personal affection, is similarly interpene
trated by a likewise thoroughly non-rational and separate
element, namely, the sex instinct. It goes without saying
that this latter lies just on the opposite side of reason to the
numinous consciousness; for, while this is above all reason ,
the sex impulse is below it, an element in our instinctive life.
1 The numinous infuses the rational from above, the sexual
presses up from beneath, quite wholesomely and normally
out of the nature which the human being shares with the
general animal world, into the higher realm of the specifically
humane . But though the two things I am comparing are
thus manifestly opposite extremes, they have a closely corre
sponding relation to that which lies between them, viz. the
reason. For the quite special domain of the erotic is only
brought into existence as the reproductive instinct passes up
out of the merely instinctive life, penetrates the higher humane
life of mind and feeling, and infuses wishes, cravings, and
longings in personal liking, friendship, and love, in song and
poetry and imaginative creation in general. Whatever falls
within the sphere of the erotic is therefore always a composite
48 ANALOGIES AND ASSOCIATED FEELINGS
product, made up of two factors : the one something that
occurs also in the general sphere of human behaviour as such,
as friendship and liking, the feeling of companionship, the
mood of poetic inspiration or joyful exaltation, and the like ;
and the other an infusion of a quite special kind, which is not
to be classed with these, and of which no one can have any
inkling, let alone understand it, who has not learnt from the
actual inward experience of eros or love. Another point
in which the erotic is analogous to the holy is in
having in the main no means of linguistic ｅxpression but
terms drawn from other fields of mental life, which only cease
to be innocuous (i. e. only become genuinely erotic terms)
when it is realized that the lover, like the orator, bard, or singer,
expresses himself not so much by the actual words he uses as
by the accent, tone, and imitative gesture which reinforce
them.
The phrase he loves me is verbally identical, whether it is
said by a child of its father or by a girl of her lover. But in
the second case a c love is meant which is at the same time
something more (viz. sexual love), and something more not
only in quantity but in quality. So, too, the phrase We
ought to fear, love, and trust him l is verbally identical,
whether it refers to the relation of child to father or to that
of man to God. But again in the second case these ideas are
infused with a meaning of which none but the religious-
minded man can have any comprehension or indeed any
inkling, whose presence makes, e. g., the fear of God some
thing more than any fear of a man, qualitatively, not merely
quantitatively, though retaining the essence of the most
genuine reverence felt by the child for its father. And Suso
means in the same way to distinguish love and love of
God , when he says :
There was never a string so dulcet-toned but ceased to
sound if stretched to a withered frame ; a heart poor in love
can no more understand speech rich in love than a German
can an Italian. 2
1 Luther s amplification of the First Commandment.
1 Works, ed. Denifle, p. 309.
ANALOGIES AND ASSOCIATED FEELINGS 49
There is another kind of experience in which we may find
an example of the way in which rational elements in our
feeling-consciousness may be thus penetrated by quite non-
rational ones, and an example even more proximate to the
complex feeling of the holy than that just described erotic*
experience ; in so far as the non-rational element is, like the
numinous feeling but unlike the sexual impulse, at the same
time tu/>ra-ration;il. I refer to the state of mind induced
in us by a song set to music. The verbal text of the song
expresses feelings that are natural , homesickness perhaps,
or confidence in time of danger, hope for a future good, or joy
in a present possession all concrete elements in our natural
human lot, and capable of being described in conceptual terms.
But it is otherwise with the music, purely as music. It
releases a blissful rejoicing in us, and we are conscious of a
glimmering, billowy agitation occupying our minds, without
being able to express or explain in concepts what it really is
that moves us so deeply. And to say that the music is mourn
ful or exultant, that it incites or restrains, is merely to use
signs by analogy, choosing them for their resemblance to the
matter in hand out of other regions of our mental life ; and at
any rate we cannot say what the object or ground of this
mourning or exulting may be. Music, in short, arouses in us
an experience and vibrations of mood that are quite specific in
kind and must simply be called musical ; but the rise and
fall and manifold variations of this experience exhibit
though again only in part definite, if fugitive, analogies and
correspondences with our ordinary non-musical emotional
states, and so can call these into consciousness and blend with
them. If this happens, the specific music-consciousness is
thereby schematized and rationalized, and the resultant
complex mood is, as it were, a fabric, in which the general
human feelings and emotional states constitute the warp, and
the non-rational music-feelings the woof. The song in its
entirety is therefore music rationalized .
Now here is illustrated the contrast between the legitimate
and the illegitimate processes of rationalization . For, if the
Bongmay be called music rationalized in the legitimate sense,
E
50 ANALOGIES AND ASSOCIATED FEELINGS
in programme-music we have a musical rationalism in the
bad sense. Programme-music, that is to say, misinterprets and
perverts the idea of music by its implication that the inner
content of music is not as in fact it is something unique and
mysterious, but just the incidental experiences joy and grief,
expansion and repression familiar to the human heart. And
in its attempt to make of musical tones a language to recount
the fortunes of men programme-music abolishes the autonomy
of music, and is deceived by a mere resemblance into employ
ing as a means what is an end and substantive content in its
own right. It is just the same mistake as when the august
aspect of the numinous is allowed to evaporate into the
morally good , instead of merely being schematized by it,
or as when we let the holy be identified with the perfectly
good will. And not only programme-music is at fault here.
The music-drama of Wagner, by attempting a thorough
going unification of the musical and the dramatic, commits the
same offence against both the non-rational spirit of the former
and the autonomy of either. We can only succeed in very
partial and fragmentary fashion in schematizing the non-
rational factor in music by means of the familiar incidents of
human experience. And the reason is just this, that the
real content of music is not drawn from the ordinary human
emotions at all, and that it is in no way merely a second lan
guage, alongside the usual one, by which these emotions find
ｅxpression. Musical feeling is rather (like numinous feeling)
something wholly other , which, while it affords analogies and
here and there will run parallel to the ordinary emotions of
life, cannot be made to coincide with them by a detailed point-
to-point correspondence. It is, of course, from those places
where the correspondence holds that the spell of a composed
song arises by a blending of verbal and musical ｅxpression.
But the very fact that we attribute to it a spell, an enchant
ment, points in itself to that woof in the fabric of music of
which we spoke, the woof of the unconceived and non-
rational. 1
1 This is the point of view from which to estimate both the excellent and
the inadequate features of E. Hanslick s book, Vom Musicalisch-Schunen.
ANALOGIES AND ASSOCIATED FEELINGS 51
But we must beware of confounding in any way the non-
rational of music and the non-rational of the numinous itself,
as Schopenhauer, for example, does. Each is something in its
own right, independently of the other. We shall discuss later
whether, and how far, the former may become a means of
ｅxpression for the latter.
E 2
CHAPTER VIII
THE HOLY AS A CATEGORY OF VALUE
Sin and Atonement
WE have already met that strange and profound mental
reaction to the numinous which we proposed to call creature-
feeling or creature-consciousness, with its concomitant feelings
of abasement and prostration and of the diminution of the self
into nothingness ; bearing always in mind that these expres
sions do not hit with precision, but merely hint at what is
really meant, 1 inasmuch as this diminution of the self , &c.,
is something very different from the littleness, weakness, or
dependence of which we may become aware under other
conditions than that of numinous feeling. And we had to
notice that this experience marks a definite depreciation or
disvaluation of the self in respect, so to speak, of its reality
and very existence. We have now to put alongside of this
another sort of self-disvaluation, which has long been a
matter of common observation, and only needs to be suggested
in order to be recognized. I am a man of unclean lips and
dwell among a people of unclean lips. Depart from me^
for I am a sinful man, O Lord. So say respectively Isaiah
and Peter, when the numinous reality encounters them as
a present fact of consciousness. In both cases this self-
depreciating feeling-response is marked by an immediate,
almost instinctive, spontaneity. It is not based on delibera
tion, nor does it follow any rule, but breaks, as it were,
palpitant from the soul like a direct reflex movement at
the stimulation of the numinous. It does not spring from
1 Cf. Hugo of St. Victor s words : Sumpta sunt vocabula, ut intellegi
aliquatenus posset quod comprehend! non poterat . ( These words were
chosen, that that which could not be comprehended might yet in some
measure be understood. )
THE HOLY AS A CATEGORY OF VALUE 53
the consciousness of some committed transgression, but rather
is an immediate datum given with the feeling of the nutnen :
it proceeds to disvalue together with the self the tribe to
which the person belongs, and indeed, together with that,
all existence in general. Now it is to-day pretty generally
agreed that, all this being the case, these outbursts of feeling
are not simply, and probably at first not at all, moral deprecia
tions, but belong to a quite special category of valuation and
appraisement. The feeling is beyond question not that of the
transgression of the moral law, however evident it may be that
such a transgression, where it has occurred, will involve it as
a consequence : it is the feeling of absolute * profaueness .
But what is this 1 Again something which the natural
man cannot, as such, know or even imagine. He, only, who is
in the Spirit knows and feels what this profaneness is ; but
to such an one it comes with piercing acuteness, and is accom
panied by the most uncompromising judgement of self-deprecia
tion, a judgement passed, not upon his character, because of
individual profane actions of his, but upon his own very
existence as creature before that which is supreme above all
creatures. And at the same moment he passes upon the
liumcn a judgement of appreciation of a unique kind by the
^Cfttegorv diametrically contrary to the profane , the category
hoTpjwinch~is proper to the numen alone, but to it in an
aUsoIute degree ; he says : Tu solus sanctus . This sanctus
is not merely perfect or beautiful or sublime or good ,
though, being like these concepts also a value, objective
and ultimate, it has a definite, perceptible analogy with them.
It is the positive numinous value or worth, and to it corre
sponds on the side of the creature a numinous disvalue or
1 unworth .
In every highly-developed religion the appreciation of moral
obligation and duty, ranking as a claim of the deity upon man,
has been developed side by side with the religious feeling
itself. None the less a profoundly humble and heartfelt
recognition of the holy may occur in particular experiences
without being always or definitely charged or infused with the
Hense of moral demands. The holy will then be recognized as
54 THE HOLY AS A CATEGORY OF VALUE
that which commands our respect, as that whose real value is to
be acknowledged inwardly. It is not that the awe of holiness
is itself simply fear in face of what is absolutely overpower
ing, before which there is no alternative to blind, awe-struck
obedience. Tu solus sanctus is rather a paean of praise, which,
so far from being merely a faltering confession of the divine
supremacy, recognizes and extols a value, precious beyond all
conceiving. The object of such praise is not simply absolute
Might, making its claims and compelling their fulfilment, but
a might that has at the same time the supremest right to make
the highest claim to service, and receives praise because it is in
an absolute sense worthy to be praised. Thou art worthy to
^receive praise and honour and power (Rev. iv. 11).
When once it has been grasped that qdddsh or sanctus is not
| originally a moral category at all, the most obvious rendering
L of the words is transcendent ( supramundane , uberweltlich).
The one-sided character of this rendering to which we had to
take exception has been supplemented by the more detailed
exposition of the numinous and its implications. But its most
essential defect remains to be noted : transcendent is a
purely ontological attribute and not an attribute of value ;
it denotes a character that can, if need be, abash us, but
cannot inspire us with respect. It might once again, therefore,
be an advantage to introduce another term to underline this
side of the numinous, and the words augustus and o-e/^oy
suggest themselves for the purpose. Augustus , august , no
less than o-e/zj/6?, is really appropriate only to numinous objects
to rulers only as offspring or descendants of gods. Then,
while <j/3ao-r6? indicates the being of the numen, creyui/o? or
augustus would refer rather to its supreme worth or value, its
illustriousness. There will, then, in fact be two values to dis
tinguish in the numen ; its fascination (fascinans) will be that
element in it whereby it is of subjective value ( = beatitude) to
man; but it is august (augustum) in so far as it is recognized
as possessing in itself objective value that claims our homage.
Mere unlawfulness only becomes sin , impiety , sacri
lege , when the character of numinous unworthiness or
disvalue goes on to be transferred to and centred in moral
THE HOLY AS A CATEGORY OF VALUE 55
delinquency. And only when the mind feels it as sin does
the trans<a*ession of law become a matter of such dreadful
O
gravity for the conscience, a catastrophe that leads it to
despair of its own power. The meaning of * sin is not under
stood by the natural , nor even by the merely moral, man ;
and the theory of certain dogmatists, that the demand of
morality as such urged man on to an inner collapse and then
obliged him to look round for some deliverance, is palpably
incorrect. There are serious-minded men of sincere moral
endeavour who cannot understand what such a deliverance
or redemption may be, and dismiss it with a shrug of the
shoulders. They are aware that they are erring and imperfect-
men, but they know and put into practice the methods of self-
discipline, and so labour onward upon their way with sturdy
resolution. The morally robust older Rationalism was lacking
neither in a sincere and respectful recognition of the moral law
nor in honest endeavour to conform to it. It knew well and
sternly condemned what was wrong , and the aim of its
exhortations and instruction was that men should realize better
and take more in earnest the facts of moral ri<rht and wron<r.
o o
But no downfall or collapse and no need of redemption
came within its scheme, because the objection brought against
it by its opponents was in fact just ; Rationalism lacked under
standing of what sin is. 1 Mere morality is not the soil from
which grows either the need of redemption and deliverance
or the need for that other unique good which is likewise
1 Cf. the testimony of Theodore Parker certainly a man of far from
crude mental development -as to his own experience, given by W.James,
Varieties, p. 81 :
They (HC. the heathen of classical antiquity) were conscious of wrath,
of cruelty, avarice, drunkenness, lust, sloth, cowardice, and other actual
vices, and struggled and got rid of the deformities; but they were not
conscious of " enmity against God " and didn t sit down and whine and
groun against non-exihtt-nt evil. I have done wrong things enough in
my life, and do them now: I miss the mark, draw bow, and try again.
Hut ... 1 know there IB much "health in me"; and in my body, even
now, there dwelk-th many a good thing, spite of consumption aud
Saint Paul.
If there is nothing crude about such a statement, it is at any rate
ntpttjicial. The depths of the non-rational consciousness must be stirred
to Cud with Anselm quanti ponderiu bit peccatum .
56 THE HOLY AS A CATEGORY OF VALUE
altogether and specifically numinous in character, covering ,
and atonement . There would perhaps be less disputing as
to the warrant and value of these latter in Christian doctrine
if dogmatic theology itself had not transferred them from their
mystical sphere into that of rational ethics and attenuated them
into moral concepts. They were thus taken from a sphere
where they have an authentic and necessary place to one where
their validity is most disputable.
We meet the moment of covering in specially clear form
in the religion of Yahweh, in its rites and the emotion they
excite ; but it is contained also, though more obscurely, in many
other religions. It comprises, first, a manifestation of the
numinous awe, viz. the feeling that the profane creature can
not forthwith approach the numen, but has need of a covering
or shield against the opyij of the numen. Such a covering
is then a consecration , i.e. a procedure that renders the
approacher himself numinous , frees him from his profane
being and fits him for intercourse with the numen. The means
of consecration , however means of grace in the proper
sense are derived from, or conferred and appointed by, the
numen itself, which bestows something of its own quality to
make man capable of communion with it. And this act is
something very different from the annulment of mistrust ,
the phrase in which Ritschl seeks to rationalize these relations
between God and man.
c Atonement , following our view, is a sheltering or cover
ing , but a profounder form of it. It springs directly from the
idea of numinous value or worth and numinous disvalue or
unworth as soon as these have been developed. Mere awe, mere
need of shelter from the tremendum , has here been elevated to
the feeling that man in his profaneness is not worthy to stand
in the presence of the holy one, and that his own entire personal
unworthiness might defile even holiness itself. This is obviously
the case in the vision of the call of Isaiah ; and the same note
recurs, less emphatically but quite unmistakably, in the story
of the centurion of Capernaum (St. Luke vii. 1-10), and his
words : I am not worthy that thou shouldest enter under my
roof . Here we have both the light thrill of awe before the
THE HOLY AS A CATEGORY OF VALUE 57
1 tremendum of the numen and also, and more especially, the
feeling of this unique disvalue or unworth of the profane
confronted by the numen, which suggests to the man that even
holiness itself may be tainted and tarnished by his presence.
Here, then, comes in the felt necessity and longing for
atonement , and all the more strongly when the close presence
of the nuinen, intercourse with it, and enduring possession of
it, becomes an object of craving, is even desired as the sumwum
bonum. It amounts to a longing to transcend this sundering
un worthiness, given with the self s existence as creature and
profane natural being. It is an element in the religious con
sciousness, which, so far from vanishing in the measure in
which religion is deepened and heightened, grows on the
contrary continually stronger and more marked. Belonging,
as it does, wholly to the non-rational side of religion, it may
remain latent while, in the course of religious evolution, the
rational side at first unfolds and assumes vigorous and definite
form ; it may retire for a time behind other elements and
apparently die away, but only to return more powerfully and
insistently than before. And again it may grow to be the sole,
one-sided, exclusive interest, a cry that drowns all other notes,
so that the religious consciousness is distorted and disfigured ;
as may readily happen where through long periods of time the
rational aspects of religion have been fostered unduly and at
the cost of the non-rational.
The special character of this consciousness of need for
atonement may perhaps be brought home more clearly by an
analogy from our natural emotional life ; but at the same
time it is important that the religious feeling we are con
sidering should itself be kept distinct from its analogue, as the
two are frequently confounded. The analogy is with the
feeling arising from moral transgression. There, too, we
practise a kind of self-depreciation which is clear and familiar
and perfectly intelligible to us, when we esteem ourselves
guilty of a bad action and the action itself as morally evil.
The evil of the action weighs upon us and deprives us of our
self-respect. We accuse ourselves and remome sets in. But
alongside this self -depreciation stands a second one, which
58 THE HOLY AS A CATEGORY OF VALUE
while it may have reference to the same action as the other
yet avails itself of definitely different categories. The same
perverse action that before weighed upon us now pollutes us ;
we do not accuse ourselves, we are defiled in our own
eyes. And the characteristic form of emotional reaction is
no longer remorse but loathing. The man feels a need,
to express which he has recourse to images of washing
and cleansing. The two kinds of self-depreciation proceed
on parallel lines and may relate to the same action ; but
none the less it is obvious that they are, inwardly and in
their essence, determinately different. Now the second of
them has a plain analogy with the need for atonement , and
so can fairly be drawn upon for its elucidation ; while at the
same time it is yet nothing more than an analogy from another
sphere, viz. that of morality.
No religion has brought the mystery of the need for
atonement or expiation to so complete, so profound, or so
powerful ｅxpression as Christianity. And in this, too, it
shows its superiority over others. It is a more perfect religion
and more perfectly religion than they, in so far as what is
potential in religion in general becomes in Christianity a pure
actuality. And the distrust and suspicion which so widely
obtains with regard to this mystery is only to be explained
from the general custom for which our theoretical cult of
homiletics, liturgy, and catechism is largely responsible of
taking into account only the rational side of religion. Yet
this atonement mystery is a moment which no Christian
teaching that purports to represent the religious experience
of the Christian and biblical tradition can afford to surrender.
The teacher will have to make explicit, by an analysis of the
Christian religious experience, how the very numen , by
imparting itself to the worshipper, becomes itself the means of
atonement . And in this regard it does not matter so
very much what the decisions of the commentators are
as to what, if anything, Paul or Peter wrote on the sub
ject of expiation and atonement, or whether, indeed, there
is any scriptural authority for the thing at all. Were
there in scripture no word written about it, it might still
THE HOLY AS A CATEGORY OF VALUE 59
be written to-day from our own experience. But it would
indeed be extraordinary if it had not long ago been written
of. For the God of the New Testament is not less holy than
the God of the Old Testament, but more holy. The interval
between the creature and Him is not diminished but made
absolute ; the unworthiness of the profane in contrast to Him
is not extenuated but enhanced. That God none the less
admits access to Himself and intimacy with Himself is not
a mere matter of course ; it is a grace beyond our power to
apprehend, a prodigious paradox. To take this paradox out
of Christianity is to make it shallow and superficial beyond
recognition. But if this is so, the intuitions concerning, and
the need felt for, Covering and Atonement result imme-
o
diately. And the divinely appointed means of God s self-
revelation, where experienced and appraised as such the
Word , the Spirit , the Person of Christ , become that to
which the man flees , in which he finds refuge, and in which
he locks himself, in order that, consecrated and cleansed of
his profaneness thereby, he may come into the presence of
Holiness itself.
That these ideas are viewed with a certain distrust may be
traced to two causes. one is, that what is a specifically
religious element is distortingly moralized. If we start from
mere morality and in relation to a God understood as being
the personification of the moral order endowed with love,
then all these things are wholly inapplicable and a source of
genuine difficulty. But we are concerned with religious (not
merely moral) intuitions, and it is impossible to dispute how
right or wrong they are with a man whose interest is wholly
in morality and not in religion, and who is therefore quite
incapable of appreciating them. Whoever, on the other hand,
penetrates to the unique centre of the religious experience, so
that it starts awake in his own consciousness, finds that the
truth of these intuitions is experienced directly, as soon as he
penetrates into their depths.
The other ground of distrust is that usually in our theo
logical systems an attempt is made to develop conceptual
theories of these ideas, which are all pure intuitions, emotional
60 THE HOLY AS A CATEGORY OF VALUE
rather than conceptual in character. They are thus made
objects of speculation, and the final outcome is the quasi-
mathematical Doctrine of Imputation and its drastic ascrip
tion to the credit of the sinner of the merit of Christ, not
to mention the learned inquiry whether this transaction
involves an analytic or a { synthetic judgement of God.
# * * *
Let us look back once more from the point we have reached
over the course our inquiry has so far taken. As the sub
title of this book suggests, we were to investigate the non-
rational element in the idea of the divine. The words non-
rational and irrational are to-day used almost at random.
The non-rational is sought over the most widely different
regions, and writers generally shirk the trouble of putting
down precisely what they intend by the term, giving it often
the most multifarious meanings or applying it with such vague
generality that it admits of the most diverse interpretations.
Pure fact in contrast to law, the empirical in contrast to
reason, the contingent in contrast to the necessary, the psycho
logical in contrast to transcendental fact, that which is known
a posteriori in contrast to that which is determinable a priori ;
power, will, and arbitrary choice in contrast to reason, know
ledge, and determination by value ; impulse, instinct, and the
obscure forces of the subconscious in contrast to insight,
reflection, and intelligible plan ; mystical depths and stirrings
in the soul, surmise, presentiment, intuition, prophecy, and
finally the f occult powders also ; or, in general, the uneasy
stress and universal fermentation of the time, with its groping
after the thing never yet heard or seen in poetry or the
plastic arts all these and more may claim the names non-
rational , irrational , and according to circumstances are
extolled or condemned as modern irrationalism . Whoever
makes use of the word non-rational to-day ought to say
what he actually means by it. This we did in our intro
ductory chapter. We began with the rational in the idea of
God and the divine, meaning by the term that in it which is
clearly to be grasped by our power of conceiving, and enters the
domain of familiar and definable conceptions. We went on to
THE HOLY AS A CATEGORY OF VALUE 61
maintain that beneath this sphere of clarity and lucidity lies
a hidden depth, inaccessible to our conceptual thought, which
we in so far call the non-rational*.
The meaning of the two contrasted terms may be made
plainer by an illustration. A deep joy may fill our minds
without any clear realization upon our part of its source and
the object to which it refers, though some such objective
reference there must always be. But as attention is directed
to it the obscure object becomes clearly identified in precise
conceptual terms. Such an object cannot, then, be called,
in our sense of the word, non-rational . But it is quite
otherwise with religious bliss and its essentially numinous
aspect, the fascinans . Not the most concentrated attention
can elucidate the object to which this state of mind refers,
bringing it out of the impenetrable obscurity of feeling into the
domain of the conceptual understanding. It remains purely
a felt experience, only to be indicated symbolically by ideo
grams . That is what we mean by saying, it is non-rational.
And the same is true of all the moments of the numinous
experience. The consciousness of a wholly other evades
precise formulation in words, and we have to employ symbolic
phrases which seem sometimes sheer paradox, that is, irrational
not merely non-rational in import. So with religious awe
and reverence. In ordinary fear and in moral reverence I can
indicate in conceptual terms what it is that I fear or revere ; in
jury, e. g. or ruin in the one case, heroism or strength of character
in the other. But the object of religious awe or reverence
the tremendum and augustum, cannot be fully determined
conceptually : it is non-rational, as is the beauty of a musical
composition, which no less eludes complete conceptual analysis.
Confronted by the fact of the non-rational thus interpreted
we cannot be satisfied with a mere bare statement, which
would open the door to all the vague and arbitrary phraseology
of an emotionalist irrationalism. We are bound to try, by
means of the most precise and unambiguous symbolic and
figurative terms that we can find, to discriminate the different
elements of the experience so far as we can in a way that can
claim general validity.
CHAPTER IX
MEANS OF ｅxpression OF THE NUMINOUS
1. Direct Means
IT may serve to make the essential nature of the numinous
consciousness clearer if we call to mind the manner in which
it expresses itself outwardly, and how it spreads and is trans
mitted from mind to mind. There is, of course, no trans
mission of it in the proper sense of the word ; it cannot be
taught , it must be awakened from the spirit. And this
could not justly be asserted, as it often is, of religion as
a whole and in general, for in religion there is very much that
can be taught that is, handed down in concepts and passed
on in school instruction. What is incapable of being sc
handed down is this numinous basis and background to
religion, which can only be induced, incited, and aroused.
This is least of all possible by mere verbal phrase or external
symbol ; rather we must have recourse to the way all other
moods and feelings are transmitted, to a penetrative imagina
tive sympathy with what passes in the other person s
mind. More of the experience lives in reverent attitude and
gesture, in tone and voice and demeanour, expressing its
momentousness, and in the solemn devotional assembly of
a congregation at prayer, than in all the phrases and negative
nomenclature which we have found to designate it. Indeed,
these never give a positive suggestion of the object to which
the religious consciousness refers ; they are only of assistance
in so far as they profess to indicate an object, which they at
the same time contrast with another, at once distinct from
and inferior to it, e. g. the invisible , the eternal (non-
temporal), the supernatural , the transcendent . Or they
MEANS OF ｅxpression OF THE NUMINOUS 63
are simply ideograms for the unique content of feeling,
ideograms to understand which a man must already have had
the experience himself. Far the best means are actual holy
situations or their representation in description. If a man
does not ft el what the numinous is, when he reads the sixth
chapter of Isaiah, then no preaching, singing, telling , in
Luther s phrase, can avail him. Little of it can usually be
noticed in theory and dogma, or even in exhortation, unless it
is actually heard. Indeed no element in religion needs so
much as this the * viva vox .transmission by living fellowship
and the inspiration of personal contact. 1
But the mere word, even when it comes as a living voice
is powerless without the Spirit in the heart of the hearer
to move him to apprehension. And this Spirit, this inborn
capacity to receive and understand, is the essential thing. If
that is there, very often only a very small incitement, a very
remote stimulus, is needed to arouse the numinous conscious
ness. It is indeed astonishing to see how small a stimulus
Kiifliccs and that too coming sometimes only in clumsy and
bewildered guise to raise the Spirit of itself to the strongest
pitch of the most definitely religious excitement. But where
the wind of the Spirit blows, there the mere rational terms
themselves are indued with power to arouse the feeling of the
non-rational , and become adequate to tune the mood at
once to the right tone. Here schematization starts at once
and needs no prompting. He who in the Spirit reads the
written word lives in the numinous, though he may have
neither notion of it nor name for it, nay, though he may be
unable to analyse any feeling of his own and so make explicit
1 SUBO says of the transmission of the mystical experience : one thing
there may be known ; unlike as it is, when a man heareth himself a dulcet
instrument of strings sweetly sounding, compared to whoso but heareth
tell thereof, even BO are the words which are received in the purity of
grace and flow forth out of a living heart by a living mouth unlike to
those name words if they are beheld upon the dead parchment. . . . For
there they grow cold, I know not how, and wither away like roses that
have been plucked. For the lovely melody that above all toucheth the
heart is then quenched to silence ; and in the waste places of the withered
heart are they then received.
64 MEANS OF ｅxpression OF THE NUMINOUS
to himself the nature of that numinous strand running through
the religious experience.
2. Indirect Means
For the rest, the methods by which the numinous
feeling is presented and evoked are indirect ; i. e. they
consist in those means by which we express kindred and
similar feelings belonging to the natural sphere. We have
already become acquainted with these feelings, and we shall
recognize them at once if we consider what are the means of
ｅxpression which religion has employed in all ages and in
every land.
One of the most primitive of these which is later
more and more felt to be inadequate, until it is finally
altogether discarded as unworthy is quite naturally the
fearful and horrible, and even at times the revolting and
the loathsome. Inasmuch as the corresponding feelings are
closely analogous to that of the tremendum , their outlets
and means of ｅxpression may become indirect modes of
expressing the specific numinous awe that cannot be
expressed directly. And so it comes about that the horrible
and dreadful character of primitive images and pictures of
gods, which seems to us to-day frequently so repellent, has
even yet among naive and primitive natures nay, occasionally
even among ourselves the effect of arousing genuine feelings
of authentic religious awe. And, vice versa, this awe operates
as a supremely potent stimulus to express the element of
terror in different forms of imaginative representation. The
hard, stern, and somewhat grim pictures of the Madonna in
ancient Byzantine art attract the worship of many Catholics
more than the tender charm of the Madonnas of Raphael.
This trait is most signally evident in the case of certain figures
of gods in the Indian pantheon. Durga, the great Mother of
Bengal, whose worship can appear steeped in an atmosphere
of profoundest devotional awe, is represented in the orthodox
tradition with the visage of a fiend. And this same blend
ing of appalling frightfulness and most exalted holiness can
perhaps be even more clearly studied in the eleventh book
MEANS OF ｅxpression OF THE NUMINOUS 65
of the Bhagavad-Gita, 1 in which Vishnu who is yet to his
votaries the very principle of goodness displays himself to
Aryuna in the true height of his divinity. Here, too, the
mind has recourse for mode of ｅxpression first to the fearful
and dreadful, though this is at the same time permeated with
that element of the grand to which we next turn.
This mode of ｅxpression, by way of grandeur or sub
limity , is found on higher levels, where it replaces mere
terror and dread . We meet it in an unsurpassable form
in the sixth chapter of Isaiah, where there is sublimity alike
in the lofty throne and the sovereign figure of God, the skirts
of His raiment * filling the temple and the solemn majesty of
the attendant angels about Him. While the element of
dread is gradually overborne, the connexion of the sub
lime and the holy becomes firmly established as a legi
timate fichematization and is carried on into the highest
forms of religious consciousness a proof that there exists a
hidden kinship between the numinous and the sublime which
is something more than a merely accidental analogy, and to
which Kant s Critique of Judgement bears distant witness.
So far we have been concerned with that element or factor of
the numinous which was the first our analysis noted and which
we proposed to name symbolically * the aweful (tremeiidum).
We pass now to consider the means by which the second the
element of the mysterious (mysterium) is expressed. Here
we light upon the analogical mode of manifestation that in every
religion occupies a foremost and extraordinary place, and the
theory of which we are now in a position to give. I refer to
miracle. Miracle is the dearest child of Faith ; if the
history of religions had not already taught us the truth of
Schiller s saying, we might have reached it by anticipation
a priori from the element of the mysterious , as already
shown. Nothing can be found in all the world of natural
feelings bearing so immediate an analogy mutatis mutandis
to the religious consciousness of ineffable, unutterable mystery,
1 See Appendix II. Nowhere can the non-mtional element of opy, , be
better studied than in this chapter, one of the perfectly classical passages
for the theory of Religion.
66 MEANS OF ｅxpression OF THE NUMINOUS
the absolute other , as the incomprehensible, unwonted,
enigmatic thing, in whatever place or guise it may confront
us. This will be all the more true if the uncomprehended
thing is something at once mighty and fearful, for then there
is a twofold analogy with the numinous that is to say, an
analogy not only with the mysterium aspect of it, but with
the tremendum aspect, and the latter again in the two
directions already suggested of fearfulness proper and sub
limity. This exemplifies the general truth already considered
that any form of the numinous consciousness may be stirred
by means of feelings analogous to it of a natural kind, and
then itself pass over into these, or, more properly, be replaced
by them. And in fact this is everywhere manifest in the
experience of man. Whatever has loomed upon the world of
his ordinary concerns as something terrifying and baffling to the
intellect ; whatever among natural occurrences or events in
the human, animal, or vegetable kingdoms has set him astare
in wonder and astonishment such things have ever aroused
in man, and become endued with, the daemonic dread and
numinous feeling, so as to become portents , prodigies ,
and marvels . Thus and only thus is it that the miraculous
rose. And, in the reverse direction, the feeling of the numen
as the mysterious worked as a potent stimulus on the
naive imagination, inciting it to expect miracles, to invent
them, to experience them, to recount them, just as before
the felt awefulness of the numen became a stimulus to
select or fashion inventively, as a means of religious expres
sion, images of fear and dread. The mysterious became
an untiring impulse, prompting to inexhaustible invention
in folk-tale and myth, saga and legend, permeating ritual
and the forms of worship, and remaining till to-day to naive
minds, whether in the form of narrative or sacrament, the
most powerful factor that keeps the religious consciousness
alive. But here too, as in the case of the fearful and terrible,
progress to a higher stage of development shows the gradual
elimination of this merely external analogue to the numinous,
viz. the miraculous; and so we see how, on the more
enlightened levels, miracle begins to fade away ; how Christ
MEANS OF ｅxpression OF THE NUMINOUS 67
is at one with Mohammed and Buddha in declining the r61e
of mere wonder-worker ; how Luther dismisses the out
ward miracles disparagingly as jugglery or apples and nuts
for children ; and finally how the supernaturalism of miracle
is purged from religion as something that is only an imperfect
analogue and no genuine schema of the numinous.
There are other manifestations of this tendency of the
feeling of the mysterious to be attracted to objects and
aspects of experience analogous to it in being uncompre-
hended . It finds its most unqualified ｅxpression in the spell
exercised by the only half intelligible or wholly unintelligible
language of devotion, and in the unquestionably real enhance
ment of the awe of the worshipper which this produces.
Instances of this are the ancient traditional ｅxpressions,
still retained despite their obscurity, in our Bible and hym
nals ; the special emotional virtue attaching to words like
Hallelujah, Kyrie eleison, Selah, just because they are wholly
other and convey no clear meaning ; the Latin in the service
of the Mass, felt by the Catholic to be, not a necessary evil,
but something especially holy; the Sanskrit in the Buddhist
Mass of China and Japan ; the language of the gods in the
ritual of sacrifice in Homer ; and many similar cases.
Especially noticeable in this connexion are the half-revealed,
half-concealed elements in the Service of the Mass, in the
Greek Church liturgy, and so many others ; wo can see
here one factor that justifies and warrants them. And the
same is true of the remaining portions of the old Mass which
recur in the Lutheran ritual. Just because their design
shows but little of regularity or conceptual arrangement, they
preserve in themselves far more of the spirit of worship than
the proposed recastings of the service put forward by the
most recent practical reformers. In these we find carefully
arranged schemes worked out with the balance and coherence
of an essay, but nothing unaccountable, and for that very
reason suggestive ; nothing accidental, and for that very
reason pregnant in meaning ; nothing that rises from the deeps
below consciousness to break the rounded unity of the wonted
disposition, and thereby point to a unity of a higher order
r 2
68 MEANS OF ｅxpression OF THE NUMINOUS
in a word, little that is really spiritual. All the cases cited,
then, derive their power of suggestion from the same source ;
they are all instances of the analogy to the mysterious
afforded by that which is not wholly understood, unwonted
and at the same time venerable through age ; and in the
resemblance they present to the mysterious they arouse it
in the mind by a sort of anamnesis or reminder, and at the
same time constitute its outward analogical representation.
3. Means by which the Numinous is expressed in Art
In the arts nearly everywhere the most effective means of
representing the numinous is * the sublime . This is especially
true of architecture, in which it would appear to have first been
realized. one can hardly escape the idea that this feeling for
ｅxpression must have begun to awaken far back in the remote
Megalithic Age. The motive underlying the erection of those
gigantic blocks of rock, hewn or unworked, single monoliths
or titanic rings of stone, as at Stonehenge, may have well been
originally to localize and preserve and, as it were, to store up
the numen in solid presence by magic ; but the change to the
motive of ｅxpression must have been from the outset far too
vividly stimulated not to occur at a very early date. In fact
the bare feeling for solemn and imposing magnitude and for the
pomp of sublime pose and gesture is a fairly elementary one,
and we cannot doubt that this stage had been reached when
the mastabas, obelisks and pyramids were built in Egypt. It
is indeed beyond question that the builders of these Temples,
and of the Sphinx of Gizeh, which set the feeling of the
sublime, and together with and through it that of the numinous,
throbbing in the soul almost like a mechanical reflex, must
themselves have been conscious of this effect and have in
tended it.
Further, we often say of a building, or indeed of a song,
a formula, a succession of gestures or musical notes, and in
particular of certain manifestations of ornamental and decora
tive art, symbols, and emblems, that they make a downright
magical impression, and we feel we can detect the special
characteristic of this magical note in ,rt with fair assurance
MEANS OF ｅxpression OF THE NUMINOUS 69
even under the most varying conditions and in the most
diverse relationships. The art of China, Japan, and Tibet,
whose specific character has been determined by Taoism and
Buddhism, surpasses all others in the unusual richness and
depth of such impressions of the magical , and even an in
expert observer responds to them readily. The designation
4 magical is here correct even from the historical point
of view, since the origin of this language of form was
properly magical representations, emblems, formularies, and
contrivances. But the actual impression of magic is quite
independent of this historical bond of connexion with magical
practices. It occurs even when nothing is known of the
latter; nay, in that case it comes out most strongly and
uribrokenly. Beyond dispute art has here a means of creating
a unique impression that of the magical apart from and
independent of reflection. Now the magical is nothing but
a suppressed and dimmed form of the numinous, a crude form
of it which great art purifies and ennobles. In great art the
point is reached at which we may no longer speak of the
magical , but rather are confronted with the numinous itself,
with all its impelling motive power, transcending reason,
expressed in sweeping lines and rhythm. 1 In no art, perhaps,
is this more fully realized than in the great landscape painting
and religious painting of China in the classical period of the
T ang and Sung dynasties. It has been said of this great art :
These works are to be classed with the profoundest and
Bublirnest of the creations of human art. The spectator who,
1 This numinous magical character in specially noticeable in the-
atrangely impressive figures of the Buddha in early Chinese art ; and
here too it atlects the observer independently of ideas , i.e. without
his knowing anything about the speculative doctrines of Buddhism.
ThuH Siien justly says of the great Buddha from the Lung-Men Caves
(T ang Dynawty):
Anyone who approaches this figure will realize that it has ft religious
Hignificance without knowing anything about its motif. ... It matters
little whether we call it a prophet or a god, because it is a complete
work of ait permeated by a spiritual will, which communicates itself to
the beholder . . . The religious element of such a figure is immanent; it
is "a presence" or an atmosphere rather than a formulated idea. ... It
cannot be dencnbed in wordH, because it lies beyond intellectual definition.
(Oswald Siren, Chinese Sculpture, London, 1925, vol, i, p. 20.)
70 MEANS OF ｅxpression OF THE NUMINOUS
as it were, immerses himself in them feels behind these waters
and clouds and mountains the mysterious breath of the primeval
Tao, the pulse of innermost being. Many a mystery lies half-
concealed and half-revealed in these pictures. They contain
the knowledge of the " nothingness " and the " void ", of the
" Tao " of heaven and earth, which is also the Tao of the human
heart. And so, despite their perpetual agitation, they seem
as remotely distant and as profoundly calm as though they
drew secret breath at the bottom of a sea. l
To us of the West the Gothic appears as the most numinous
of all types of art. This is due in the first place to its
sublimity ; but Worringer in his work Probleme der Gothik
has done a real service in showing that the peculiar impressive-
ness of Gothic does not consist in its sublimity alone, but
draws upon a strain inherited from primitive magic, of which
he tries to show the historical derivation. To Worringer,
then, the impression Gothic makes is one of magic ; and, what
ever may be said of his historical account of the matter, it is
certain that in this at least he is on the right track. Gothic
does instil a spell that is more than the effect of sublimity.
But magic is too low a word : the tower of the Cathedral of
Ulm is emphatically not magical , it is numinous. And the
difference between the numinous and the merely magical can
nowhere be felt more clearly than in the splendid plate
Worringer gives in his book of this marvellous work of archi
tecture. But when this is said, we may still keep the word
magic in use to denote the style and means of artistic
ｅxpression by which the impression of the numinous comes
into being.
But in neither the sublime nor the magical, effective as
they are, has art more than an indirect means of representing
the numinous. Of directer methods our Western art has only
two, and they are in a noteworthy way negative, viz. darkness
and silence. The darkness must be such as is enhanced and
made all the more perceptible by contrast with some last
1 From an article by Otto Fischer on Chinese landscape painting in
Das KunstMatt, Jan. 1920.
MEANS OF ｅxpression OF THE NUMINOUS 71
vestige of brightness, which it is, as it were, on the point of
extinguishing ; hence the mystical effect begins with semi-
darkness. Its impression is rendered complete if the factor of
the sublime comes to unite with and supplement it. The
semi-darkness that glimmers in vaulted halls, or beneath the
branches of a lofty forest glade, strangely quickened and
stirred by the mysterious play of half-lights, has always
spoken eloquently to the soul, and the builders of temples,
mosques, and churches have made full use of it.
SUeiice is what corresponds to this in the language of musical
sounds. Yahweh is in His holy Temple, let all the earth keep
silence before Him. (Habakkuk, ii. 20.) Neither we nor
(probably) the prophet any longer bear in mind that this
keeping silence (as ^v^rj^lv in Greek), if regarded from
the historical, genetic standpoint, springs from the fear of
using words of evil omen, which therefore prefers to be
altogether speechless. It is the same with Tersteegen in his
God is present, let all in us be silent . With prophet and
psalmist and poet we feel the necessity of silence from another
and quite independent motive. It is a spontaneous reaction
to the feeling of the actual numen praesens . once again,
what is found coming upon the scene at a higher level of
evolution cannot be explained by merely interpolating links
in a historico-genetic chain of development ; and the Psalmist
and Terbteegen and even we ourselves are at least as interesting
subjects for the analysis of the psychologist of religion as are
the Primitives , with their habitual practice of (ixprjfjLia, the
silence that merely avoids words of ill augury.
Besides Silence and Darkness oriental art knows a third
direct means for producing a strongly numinous impression, to
wit, emptiness and empty distances. Empty distance, remote
vacancy, is, as it were, the sublime in the horizontal. The
wide-stretching desert, the boundless uniformity of the steppe,
have real sublimity, and even in us Westerners they set
vibrating chords of the numinous along with the note of the
sublime, according to the principle of the association of
feelings. Chinese architecture, which is essentially an art in
the laying out and grouping of buildings, makes a wise and
72 MEANS OF ｅxpression OF THE NUMINOUS
very striking use of this fact. It does not achieve the
impression of solemnity by lofty vaulted halls or imposing
altitudes, but nothing could well be more solemn than the
silent amplitude of the enclosed spaces, courtyards, and vesti
bules which it employs. The imperial tombs of the Ming
emperors at Nanking and Peking are, perhaps, the strongest
example of this, including, as they do, in their plan the empty
distances of an entire landscape. Still more interesting is the
part played by the factor of void or emptiness in Chinese
painting. There it has almost become a special art to paint
empty space, to make it palpable, and to develop variations
upon this singular theme. Not only are there pictures upon
which almost nothing is painted, not only is it an essential
feature of their style to make the strongest impression with
the fewest strokes and the scantiest means, but there are very
many pictures especially such as are connected with con
templation which impress the observer with the feeling that
the void itself is depicted as a subject, is indeed the main
subject of the picture. We can only understand this by
recalling what was said above on the nothingness and the
void of the mystics and on the enchantment and spell
exercised by the negative hymns . For Void is, like Dark
ness and Silence, a negation, but a negation that does away
with every this and here , in order that the wholly other
may become actual.
Not even music, which else can give such manifold ｅxpression
to all the feelings of the mind, has any positive way to express
the holy . Even the most consummate Mass-music can only
give utterance to the holiest, most numinous moment in
the Mass the moment of transubstantiation by sinking into
stillness : no mere momentary pause, but an absolute cessation
of sound long enough for us to hear the Silence itself ; and
no devotional moment in the whole Mass approximates in
impressiveness to this keeping silence before the Lord . It is
instructive to submit Bach s Mass in B minor to the test in this
matter. Its most mystical portion is the Incarnatus in the
Credo, and there the effect is due to the faint, whispering,
lingering sequence in the fugue structure, dying away
MEANS OF ｅxpression OF THE NUMINOUS 73
pianissimo. The held breath and hushed sound of the passage,
its weird cadences, sinking away in lessened thirds, its pauses
and syncopations, and its rise and fall in astonishing semi
tones, which render so well the sense of awe-struck wonder
all this serves to express the mysterium by way of intimation,
rather than in forthright utterance. And by this means Ba<jh
attains his aim here far better than in the Sanctus . This
latter is indeed an incomparably successful ｅxpression of Him,
whose is the power and the glory , an enraptured and
triumphant choric hymn to perfect and absolute sovereignty.
But it is very far distant from the mood of the text that
accompanies the music, which is taken from Isaiah vi, and which
the composer should have interpreted in accordance with that
passage as a whole. No one would gather from this magnifi
cent chorus that the Seraphim covered their faces with two
of their wings. 1 In this point Mendelssohn shows very fine
sensibility in his musical setting of Psalm ii at the words
(v. 11) : Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling.
And here too the matter is expressed less in the music itself
than in the way the music is restrained and repressed one
might almost say, abashed as the Cathedral choir at Berlin so
well knows how to render it. And, if a final example may be
cited, the Popule meus of Thomas Luiz gets as near to the heart
of the matter as any music can. In this the first chorus sings the
first words of the Trisagion : Hagios, ho theos, hagios ischyros,
hagios athanatos , and the second chorus sings in response the
Latin rendering of the words : Sanctus deus, sanctus fortis,
sanctus immortalis , each chorus thrillino- with a sort of muffled
O
tremor. But the Trisagion itself, sung pianissimo by singers
kept out of sight far at the back, is like a whisper floating
down through space, and is assuredly a consummate reproduc
tion of the scene in the vision of Isaiah.
1 Tlie Jewish tradition has been, however, very well aware of the import
of the matter. In the splendid New Year s day Hymn of Melek Elyon
the words run: All the mighty ones on high whisper low : Yahwth is
King.
CHAPTEE X
THE NUMINOUS IN THE OLD TESTAMENT
WHILE the feelings of the non-rational and numinous
constitute a vital factor in every form religion may take,
they are pre-eminently in evidence in Semitic religion and
most of all in the religion of the Bible. Here Mystery lives
and moves in all its potency. It is present in the ideas of
the daemonic and angelic world, which, as a wholly other ,
surrounds, transcends, and permeates this world of ours ; it
is potent in the Biblical eschatology and the ideal of a king
dom of God contrasted with the natural order, now as being
future in time, now as being eternal, but always as the down
right marvellous and other ; and finally it impresses itself
on the character of Yahweh and Elohim that God who is
nevertheless the Heavenly Father of Jesus and as such
fulfils , not loses, his character as Yahweh.
The lower stage of numinous consciousness, viz. daemonic
dread, has already been long superseded by the time we reach
the Prophets and Psalmists. But there are not wanting
occasional echoes of it, found especially in the earlier narra
tive literature. The story in Exodus iv. 24, of how Yahweh
in his 0/3777 met Moses by the way and sought to kill him ,
still bears this daemonic character strongly, and the tale
leaves us almost with the suggestion of a ghostly apparition.
And from the standpoint of the more highly developed fear
of God one might easily get from this and similar stories
the impression that this is not yet religion at all, but a sort
of pre-religious, vulgar fear of demons or the like. That
would, however, be a misconception ; a c vulgar fear of demons
would refer to a demon in the narrower sense of the word,
in which it is a synonym for devil, fiend, or goblin, and is
contrasted with the divine. But demon in this sense has
THE NUMINOUS IN THE OLD TESTAMENT 75
not been, any more than ghost or spectre , a point in the
transition, or, if it be preferred, a link in the chain of develop
ment which religious consciousness has undergone. Both
demon (= fiend) and spectre are, so to speak, offshoots
from the true line of progress, spurious fabrications of the
fancy accompanying the numinous feeling. We must carefully
distinguish from such a demon the Saifiow or daemon in
the more general sense of the word, which, if it is not yet
itself a god , is still less an anti-god, but must be termed
a l pre-god , the numen at a lower stage, in which it is still
trammelled and suppressed, but out of which the god
gradually grows to more and more lofty manifestations. This
is the phase whose after-effects can be detected in these
ancient stories.
It will be worth while to consider this matter further.
Two things may help to an understanding of the real relation
with which we are here concerned. First, we may refer back
to what was said on an earlier page upon the capacity of the
dreadful and terrible in general to attract and arouse, and
also to express, the true numinous consciousness or emotion.
In the second place, we may refer to the parallel case of
music. A man with a pronounced musical faculty, so long as
he is a mere raw tyro, may be enraptured by the sound of the
bagpipes or the hurdy-gurdy, though perhaps both become
intolerable to him when his musical education has been com
pleted. But, if he then recalls the qualitative character of his
earlier musical experience and compares it with his present
one, he will have to admit that, in both, one and the same side
of his mind is functioning, and that what has taken place in
the rise of his feeling for music to a more elevated form
is no transition to something different in kind, but a process
which we may call development or growth to maturity ,
but can hardly further specify. Were we to hear to-day
the music of Confucius, it would probably be to us merely
a succession of queer noises. Yet already Confucius speaks
of the power of music on the mind in a way we moderns
cannot better, and touches upon just those elements which we
also must recognize in the experience of music. But the most
76 THE NUMINOUS IN THE OLD TESTAMENT
striking consideration in this regard is the way in which
some savage tribes are endowed with a capacity for a ready
appreciation of our music, which they grasp quickly, practise
assiduously, and enjoy intensely, when it is brought before
them. This endowment did not first enter their minds
at the moment they heard the music by a heterogony ,
epigenesis , or other miracle ; it simply existed all the time
as a natural predisposition or latent capacity. It was aroused
and began to develop as soon as the proper incitement came
to stimulate it, but to the end it was yet the selfsame disposi
tion that had been formerly excited to such primitive and
crude manifestations. This crude , primitive form of music
is often almost or wholly unrecognizable as real music by our
developed musical taste, although it was the manifestation of
the same impulse and the same element of our psychical
nature. Now it is exactly a parallel case when the God
fearing man of to-day finds it hard to detect in the narrative
of Exodus iv that which is akin to his own religious experience,
or misjudges it altogether. All this involves a point of view
which should be taken into consideration more generally with
respect to the religion of primitive man , though naturally
great caution should be used in applying it, seeing that very
mistaken conclusions can be drawn from it and there is a
real danger of confounding the lower with the higher levels
of development and of making too little of the interval
between them. However, it is still more dangerous to exclude
this point of view altogether, as is unfortunately very com
monly done. 1
Recent research has sought to discover a difference in char
acter between Yahweh, the austere and stern, and Elohim, the
familiar, patriarchal God, and there is something very illumi
nating in the suggestion. Soderblom s supposition 2 is that
the notion of Yahweh had its point of origin in earlier ani
mistic ideas. I do not dispute the importance of such
animistic ideas in the religious evolutionary process; in
1 In this regard Mr. Marett in particular has important and novel
considerations to offer.
3 So derblom, Das Werden des Gottesglaubens, 1916, pp. 297 ff.
THE NUMINOUS IN THE OLD TESTAMENT 77
fact, I should go even farther than Soderblom in that respect,
for he would explain them as a sort of primitive philosophy ,
and therefore has to exclude them altogether from the domain
of genuinely religious imagination. It would be perfectly
compatible with my own view to hold that where ideas of
an animistic character had been framed they could serve as
an important link in the chain of stimulation by which true
numinous consciousness is aroused (namely, in so far as they
served to disengage and free the obscure feeling-element of
existent being , latent in it). But what distinguishes Yahwehi
from El-Shaddai-Elohim is not that the former is an anima ,!
but (and the distinction may be applied to differentiate all
god-types) that, whereas in Yahweh the numinous preponder
ates over the familiar rational character, in Elohim the
rational aspect outweighs the numinous. Outweighs is as
much as we can say, for in Elohim too the numinous element
is certainly present ; Elohim is, for instance, the subject of the
genuinely numinous narrative of the theophany in the burning
bush, with the characteristic verse (Exodus iii. 6) : And Moses
hid his face ; for he was afraid to look upon God.
For the copious and diverse characteristics of the idea of
God of the ancient Israelites which might be instanced here the
reader is referred to works upon the history of religion. 1 The
venerable religion of Moses marks the beginning of a process
which from that point onward proceeds with ever increasing
momentum, by which the numinous is throughout rational
ized and moralized, i.e. charged with ethical import, until it
becomes the holy in the fullest sense of the word. The
culmination of the process is found in the Prophets and in
the Gospels. And it is in this that the special nobility of
the religion revealed to us by the Bible is to be found, which,
when the stage represented by the deutero-Lsaiah is reached,
justifies its claim to be a universal world-religion. Here is
to be found its manifest superiority over, e. g., Islam, in which
Allah is mere numen , and is in fact precisely Yahweh in his
pre-Mosaic form and upon a larger scale. But this moralizing
1 They are given exhauntively in the Encyclopaedia Die Reliyion in
Geschichte und Gegentcart, vol. ii, pp. 1530, 2036.
78 THE NUMINOUS IN THE OLD TESTAMENT
and rationalizing process does not mean that the numinous
itself has been overcome, but merely that its preponderance has
been overcome. The numinous is at once the basis upon which
and the setting within which the ethical and rational meaning
is consummated.
The capital instance of the intimate mutual interpenetration
of the numinous with the rational and moral is Isaiah. The
note struck in the vision of his call is the keynote of his
entire prophecy. And nothing is in this regard more signifi
cant than the fact that it is in Isaiah that the ｅxpression
the Holy one of Israel first becomes established as the
ｅxpression, par excellence, for the deity, prevailing over all
others by its mysterious potency. This remains so in the
writings of the deutero-Isaiah , who follows the tradition of
the earlier Isaiah. Assuredly in deutero-Isaiah, if in any
writer, we have to do with a God whose attributes are clear
to conceptual thought : omnipotence, goodness, wisdom, truth ;
and yet all the time these are attributes of the Holy one ,
whose strange name deutero-Isaiah too repeats no less than
fifteen times and always in passages where it has a special
impressiveness.
Related ｅxpressions akin to the holiness of Yahweh are His
fury , His jealousy , His wrath , the consuming fire , and
the like. The import of them all is not only the all-requiting
righteousness of God, not even merely His susceptibility to
strong and living emotions, but all this ever enclosed in and
permeated with the awefulness and the majesty , the
mystery and the augustness , of His non-rational divine
nature.
And this holds good, also, of the ｅxpression the living God .
God s livingness is perceptibly akin to His jealousy and is
manifested in and through this, as in His other passions
generally. 1 It is by His life that this God is differ-
1 Cf. Deut. v. 26 : For who is there of all flesh, that hath heard the
voice of the living God speaking out of the midst of the fire, as we have,
and lived? Cf. also Josh. iii. 10 ; 1 Sam. xvii. 26, 36 ; 2 Kings xix. 4;
Isa. xxxvii. 4, 17 ; Jer. x. 10 : He is the living God : ... at His wrath the
earth shall tremble and the nations shall not be able to abide His indigna-
THE NUMINOUS IN THE OLD TESTAMENT 79
entiated from all mere World Reason , and becomes this
ultimately non-rational essence, that eludes all philosophic
treatment. This is the God that lives in the consciousness of
all prophets and apostles of the Old and the New Dispensa
tion alike. And all those who later championed against the
God of philosophy the living God and the God of anger
and love and the emotions have unwittingly been defending
the non-rational core of the Biblical conception of God from
all excessive rationalization. And so far they were right.
Where they were wrong and sank into anthropomorphism
was in defending, not figurative anger and emotion , but
literal anger and emotion, misconceiving the numinous character
of the attributes in question and holding them simply to be
natural attributes, taken absolutely, instead of realizing that
they can only be admitted as figurative indications of some
thing essentially non-rational by means of symbols drawn from
feelings that have analogy to it.
We find the power of the numinous in its phase of the
mysterious to excite and intensify the imagination displayed
with particular vividness in Ezekiel. Here are to be classed
Ezekiel s dreams and parables and fanciful delineation of
God s being and sovereign state, which are, as it were, an
example by anticipation of the later more spurious sort of
excitement of the religious impulse to the mysterious, leading
(in accordance with analogies already expounded) to the
merely strange, the extraordinary, the marvellous, and the
fantastic. When such an operation of the religious conscious
ness works itself out in accordance with a wrong analogy, the
way is prepared for miracle and legend and the whole dream-
tion ; Jer. xxiii. 36 ; 2 Mace. vii. 33 ; Matt. xxvi. 63 (the adjuration by
the liriny God , the God of terror and dread); and Heb. x. 31 : It is a
fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. The Old Testa
ment idea of the terrible living God reaches its completion in the ideas
of the avenging God , of which the most ruthless ｅxpression is in the
almo.st appalling image of the treader of the wine-press, ISA. Ixiii. 3 : I will
tread them in mine anger, and trample them in my fury ; and their blood
shall be sprinkled upon my garments and I will Rtain all my raiment.
The dreadful image recurs in the New Testament in Rev. xix. 15 : He
treadeth the wine-press of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.
80 THE NUMINOUS IN THE OLD TESTAMENT
world of pseudo-mysticism ; and, though these are all truly
enough emanations from the genuine religious experience, they
are emanations broken by the opaque, dull medium through
which they pass, a mere substitute for the genuine thing, and
they end in a vulgar rankness of growth that overspreads
the pure feeling of the mysterium as it really is and chokes
its direct and forthright emotional ｅxpression.
But, if Ezekiel hardly shows the numinous moment apart
from an admixture of excessive fantasy and imagination, the
same is not true of the Book of Job. In the 38th chapter of
Job we have the element of the mysterious displayed in
rare purity and completeness, and this chapter may well rank
among the most remarkable in the history of religion. Job
has been reasoning with his friends against Elohim, and as
far as concerns them he has been obviously in the right.
They are compelled to be dumb before him. And then Elohim
Himself appears to conduct His own defence in person. And
He conducts it to such effect that Job avows himself to be
overpowered, truly and rightly overpowered, not merely
silenced by superior strength. Then he confesses : There
fore I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes. That
is an admission of inward convincement and conviction,
not of impotent collapse and submission to merely superior
power. Nor is there here at all the frame of mind to which
St. Paul now and then gives utterance ; e.g. Rom. ix. 20:
Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast
thou made me thus ? Hath not the potter power over the
clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and
another unto dishonour ? To interpret the passage in Job
thus would be a misunderstanding of it. This chapter does
not proclaim, as Paul does, the renunciation of, the realization
of the impossibility of, a theodicy ; rather, it aims at putting
forward a real theodicy of its own, and a better one than that
of Job s friends ; a theodicy able to convict even a Job, and
not only to convict him, but utterly to still every inward
doubt that assailed his soul. For latent in the weird expe
rience that Job underwent in the revelation of Elohim is
at once an inward relaxing of his soul s anguish and an
THE NUMINOUS IN THE OLD TESTAMENT 81
appeasement, an appeasement which would alone and in itself
perfectly suffice as the solution of the problem of the Book
of Job, even without Job s rehabilitation in chapter xlii,
where recovered prosperity comes as an extra payment thrown
in after quittance has been already rendered. But what is this
strange moment of experience that here operates at once as
a vindication of God to Job and a reconciliation of Job to God?
In the words put into the mouth of Elohim nearly every note
is sounded which the situation may prepare one to expect
a priori: the summons to Job, and the demonstration of God s
overwhelming power, His sublimity and greatness, and His
surpassing wisdom. This last would yield forthwith a plausible
and rational solution of the whole problem, if only the argu
ment were here completed with some such sentences as : My
ways are higher than your ways ; in my deeds and my actions
I have ends that you understand not ; viz. the testing or puri
fication of the godly man, or ends that concern the whole
universe as such, into which the single man must fit himself
with all his sufferings. If you start from rational ideas and
concepts, you absolutely thirst for such a conclusion to the dis
course. But nothing of the kind follows ; nor does the chapter
intend at all to suggest such teleological reflections or solutions.
In the last resort it relies on something quite different from
anything that can be exhaustively rendered in rational con
cepts, namely, on the sheer absolute wondrousness that
transcends thought, on the mysterium, presented in its pure,
non-rational form. All the glorious examples from nature
speak very plainly in this sense. The eagle, that dwelleth
and abideth on the rock, upon the crag of the rock, and the
strong place , whose eyes behold afar off" her prey, and
whose young ones also suck up blood, and where the slain
are, there is she this eagle is in truth no evidence for the
ideological wisdom that prepares all cunningly and well ,
but is rather the creature of strangeness and marvel, in whom
the wondrousness of its creator becomes apparent. And the
same is true of the ostrich (xxxix. 13-18) with its inexplicable
instincts. The ostrich is indeed, as here depicted, and ration
ally considered, a crucial difficulty rather than an evidence of
82 THE NUMINOUS IN THE OLD TESTAMENT
wisdom, and it affords singularly little help if we are seeking
purpose in nature: which leaveth her eggs in the earth,
and warmeth them in the dust, and forgetteth that the foot
may crush them or that the wild beast may break them.
She is hardened against her young ones as though they were
not hers: her labour is in vain without fear; because God
hath deprived her of ivisdom, neither hath he imparted to her
understanding.
It is the same with the wild ass (verse 5) and the unicorn
(verse 9). These are beasts whose complete dysteleology
or negation of purposiveness is truly magnificently depicted ;
but, nevertheless, with their mysterious instincts and their
inexplicable behaviour, this very negation of purpose becomes
a thing of baffling significance, as in the case of the wild
goat (verse 1) and the hind. The wisdom of the inward
parts (xxxviii. 36), and the knowledge of dayspring, winds,
and clouds, with the mysterious ways in which they
come and go, arise and vanish, shift and veer and re-form ;
and the wonderful Pleiades aloft in heaven, with Orion and
Arcturus and his sons these serve but to emphasize the
same lesson. It is conjectured that the descriptions of the
hippopotamus (behemoth) and crocodile (leviathan) in xl. 15 ff.
are a later interpolation. This may well be the fact ; but,
if so, it must be admitted that the interpolator has felt the
point of the entire section extraordinarily well. He only
brings to its grossest ｅxpression the thought intended by
all the other examples of animals ; they gave portents only,
he gives us monsters but the monstrous is just the
mysterious in a gross form. Assuredly these beasts would
be the most unfortunate examples that one could hit upon
if searching for evidences of the purposefulness of the divine
wisdom . But they, no less than all the previous examples
and the whole context, tenor, and sense of the entire passage,
do express in masterly fashion the downright stupendousness,
the wellnigh daemonic and wholly incomprehensible character
of the eternal creative power ; how, incalculable and wholly
other , it mocks at all conceiving but can yet stir the mind
to its depths, fascinate and overbrim the heart. What is
THE NUMINOUS IN THE OLD TESTAMENT 83
meant is the mysterium not as mysterious simply, but at
the same time also as fascinating and august ; and here,
too, these latter meanings live, not in any explicit con
cepts, but in the tone, the enthusiasm, in the very rhythm
of the entire exposition. And here is indeed the point of
the whole passage, comprising alike the theodicy and the
appeasement and calming of Job s soul. The mysterium,
simply as such, would merely (as discussed above) be a part
of the absolute inconceivability of the numen, and that,
though it might strike Job utterly dumb, could not convict
him inwardly. That of which we are conscious is rather an
intrinsic value in the incomprehensible a value inexpressible,
positive, and fascinating . This is incommensurable with
thoughts of rational human teleology and is not assimilated
to them : it remains in all its mystery. But it is as it becomes
felt in consciousness that Elohim is justified and at the same
time Job s soul brought to peace.
A very real parallel to this experience of Job is to be found
in the work of a writer of our own day, which is not the less
deeply impressive because it is found in the fictitious context
of a novel. Max Eyth recounts in his story Berufs-Tragik
(in the collection Hinter Pjlug und Schraubstock) the build
ing of the mighty bridge over the estuary of the Ennobucht.
The most profound and thorough labour of the intellect, the
most assiduous and devoted professional toil, had gone to the
construction of the great edifice, making it in all its signifi
cance and purposefulness a marvel of human achievement. In
spite of endless difficulties and gigantic obstacles, the bridge
is at length finished, and stands defying wind and waves.
Then there comes a raging cyclone, and building and builder
are swept into the deep. Utter meaninglessness seems to
triumph over richest significance, blind destiny seems to
stride on its way over prostrate virtue and merit. The
narrator tells how he visits the scene of the tragedy and
returns again.
When we got to the end of the bridge, there was hardly
a 2
84 THE NUMINOUS IN THE OLD TESTAMENT
a breath of wind ; high above, the sky showed blue-green,
and with an eerie brightness. Behind us, like a great open
grave, lay the Ennobucht. The Lord of life and death hovered
over the waters in silent majesty. We felt His presence, as
one feels one s own hand. And the old man and I knelt down
before the open grave and before Him.
Why did they kneel ? Why did they feel constrained to do
so ? one does not kneel before a cyclone or the blind forces of
nature, nor even before Omnipotence merely as such. But
one does kneel before the wholly uncomprehended Mystery,
revealed yet unrevealed, and one s soul is stilled by feeling
the way of its working, and therein its justification.
It would be possible to cite many other traces of numinous
feeling in the Old Testament. But they have already been
admirably put together by one who wrote sixteen hundred
years ago in the same sense as we upon the non-rational .
This was Chrysostom. We shall be considering him later on
and will not anticipate further in this place. 1
1 See Appendix I.
CHAPTER XI
THE NUMINOUS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT
I.v the Gospel of Jesus we see the consummation of that
process tending to rationalize, moralize, and humanize the
idea of God, which began with the earliest period of the old
Hebrew tradition and became specially prominent as a living
factor in the Prophets and the Psalms, continually bringing
the apprehension of the numinous to a richer fulfilment by
recognizing in it attributes of clear and profound value for
r* o +
the reason. The result was the faith in the fatherhood of
God in that unsurpassable form in which it is peculiar to
Christianity.
But in this case, too, it would be a mistake to think that
such a rationalization means that the numinous is excluded
or superseded. That is a misunderstanding into which we
are led by the all too plausible delineations of Jesus s faith in
the fatherhood of God now prevalent, but it certainly mis
represents the attitude of the first Christian congregations. The
error is only possible if we disregard in the message of Christ
that which it really purports to be, first, last, and all the time,
viz. the Gospel of the Kingdom. As against all rationalizing
attempts to tone it down into something less startling, the
most recent research shows quite decisively that the kingdom
is just greatness and marvel absolute, the wholly other
heavenly thing, set in contrast to the world of here and
now, the mysterious itself in its dual character as awe-
compelling yet all-attracting, glimmering in an atmosphere of
genuine religious awe . As such, it sheds a colour, a mood,
a tone, upon whatever stands in relation to it, upon the men
86 THE NUMINOUS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT
who proclaim it or prepare for it, upon the life and practice
that are its precondition, upon the tidings of it, upon the
congregation of those who await it and attain to it. All is
made into a mystery all, that is, becomes numinous .
This is shown most strikingly in the name by which the
company of the disciples call themselves collectively and each
other individually, the numinous technical term ot ayioi,
the holy ones or the Saints . It is manifest at once that
this does not mean the morally perfect people : it means
the people who participate in the mystery of the final Day.
Their title is the clear and unambiguous antithesis to the
term the profane , which we have already met with. For
this reason the early Christians are able later to call them
selves also actually a priestly or sacerdotal people , that
is, a group of consecrated persons. But the precondition
of all this was given with the Gospel itself and its claim to be
the preaching of the coming Kingdom.
What of the lord of this kingdom, the heavenly Father 1
As its lord He is not less, but far more holy , numinous ,
mysterious, qadosh , d y*oy, sacer , and sanctus than His
kingdom. He is all these in an absolute decree, and in this
O O
aspect of His nature He represents the sublimation and the
consummation of all that the old Covenant had grasped by way
of creature-consciousness , holy awe , and the like. Not to
realize this is to turn the Gospel of Jesus into a mere idyll.
That these moments do not occur severally in Jesus s message
in the form of special doctrines is due to the circumstances
already mentioned more than once. But apart from the
inherent impossibility of teaching them, how could He have
had need of teaching what was simply the primary, self-
evident fact to every Jew, and especially to every believer in
the Kingdom , namely, that God was the Holy one in Israel ?
Christ had rather to teach and to proclaim what was not
self-evident to the Jews, but His own original discovery and
revelation, that this very Holy one is a heavenly Father .
This point of view necessarily occupied the whole of His
teaching , and all the more so because it was the point of
view thrust sharply into the foreground by the two opposed
THE NUMINOUS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT 87
influences of His time, against both of which the Gospel came
historically as a reaction. on the one hand was Pharisaism,
with its servitude to Law ; on the other, John the Baptist,
with his harsh, ascetic interpretation of God ; and, in con
trast to both, the Gospel of the Sonhood of man and the
Fatherhood of God came as the easy yoke, the light burden.
But though it is necessarily this new message that the parables
and discourses and pronouncements of Jesus complete and fill
out, it is in such a way that it always remains an over
whelming and daring paradox, claiming our utmost homage,
that He who is in heaven is yet our Father . That that
1 heavenly Being of marvel and mystery and awe is Himself
the eternal, benignant, gracious will : this is the resolved
contrast that first brings out the deep-felt harmony in true
Christian experience; and the harmony cannot be heard
aright by the man whose ear does not detect always sounding
in it this sublimated seventh .
It is significant, and yet again so natural, that the first
petition in the prayer of the Christian fellowship is : Hallowed
be Thy name. What I have already said should make the
meaning of this clear in its connexion with the Biblical mean
ing of the word. And we can sometimes detect, even in the
teaching of Jesus, notes still vibrating which seem to suggest
a trace of that weird awe and shuddering dread before the
mysteries of the transcendent of which we have already
spoken. Such a passage is Matthew x. 28 : But fear him
which is able to (.kstroy both soul and lody in hell
The dark and awful ring of this saying cannot be missed, and
it is a rationalization of it merely to refer it to the Judge and
His judgement on the Last Day. The same note rings out again
clearly in the saying in Hebrews x. 31 : It is a fearful thing
to fall into the hands of the living God ; and in Hebrews xii.
X"J : Our God is a consuming fire. (Here the adaptation of
Deuteronomy iv. 24 : The Lord is a consuming fire into Our
God is a consuming lire gives a contrast whose ettect enhances
the horror of the saying.) And when occasion demands it
the Old Testament God of vengeance recurs even in the
teaching of Jesus Himself, unveiled and in His own authentic
88 THE NUMINOUS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT
character ; as, for instance, in Matthew xxi. 41 : He will
miserably destroy those wicked men.
Finally, it is in the light of, and with the background of,
this numinous experience, with its mystery and its awe
its mykterium tremendum that Christ s Agony in the night
of Gethsemane must be viewed, if we are to comprehend or
realize at all in our own experience what the import of that
agony was. What is the cause of this * sore amazement and
heaviness , this soul shaken to its depths, exceeding sorrow
ful even unto death , and this sweat that falls to the ground
like great drops of blood ? Can it be ordinary fear of death
in the case of one who had had death before his eyes for
weeks past and who had just celebrated with clear intent his
death-feast with his disciples ? No, there is more here than
the fear of death ; there is the awe of the creature before the
mysterium tremendum , before the shuddering secret of the
numen. And the old tales come back into our mind as
strangely parallel and, as it were, prophetically significant,
the tales of Yahweh who waylaid Moses by night, and
of Jacob who wrestled with God until the breaking of the
day . He had power with God . . . and prevailed , with the
God of Wrath and Fury , with the numen, which yet is
itself My Father . In truth even those who cannot recog
nize the Holy one of Israel elsewhere in the God of the
Gospel must at least discover Him here, if they have eyes to
see at all.
I have no need to dwell upon the numinous atmosphere
pervading the writings of St. Paul. God dwelleth in a light
that none may come nigh. The over-aboundingness of the
idea of God and the feeling of God leads with Paul to the
special terminology and experiences of Mysticism. 1 But it is
1 As a provisional definition of Mysticism I would suggest that, while
sharing the nature of religion, it shows a preponderance of its non-rational
elements and an over-stressing of them in respect to the overabounding
aspect of the numen . A type of religious experience acquires mystical
colouring if it shows an inclination to Mysticism. In this sense
Christianity since St. Paul and St. John is not Mysticism, but religion
with a mystical colouring. And this is justified.
THE NUMINOUS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT 89
not confined to these: it can be seen alive through all his
utterances in the feelings of exalted enthusiasm and his
O
spiritual terminology of the pneuma , which are alike far
removed from the merely rational side of Christian piety.
His dualistic depreciation of the Flesh , as of all that pertains
to creaturehood, is that numinous self-disvaluation spoken
of on pp. 52 ff. carried to its extreme. These catastrophes
and sudden reversals that befall the religious conscious
ness, the tragedy of sin and guilt, or again the glow of
beatitic joy, are only possible and intelligible on the basis
of numinous experience. And just as the opyr) Stov with
St. Paul is more than the mere reaction of righteous retri
bution, just as it is permeated by the awefulness of the
numinous, so on the other side is the fascination of the
experienced love of God, that bears the spirit beyond its
boundaries into the third heaven, more than the mere con
summation of the natural human feeling of a child for its
parent. The opyr] &eov is potently and vividly present in the
grand passage in Romans i. 18 ff., where we recognize directly
the jealous, passionate Yahweh of the Old Testament, here
grown to a God of the Universe of fearful power, who pours
out the blazing vials of His wrath over the whole world. In this
passage there is an intuition, genuinely non-rational in char
acter, the sublimity of which has an almost horrible quality :
that the commission of sin is the angry God s punishment for
bin. St. Paul reiterates this thought so intolerable, if con
sidered rationally in three separate verses. Wherefore
God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of
their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between
themselves (Romans i. 24) ; For this cause God gave them up
unto vile affections (i. 26) ; God gave them over to a repro
bate mind, .. . being filled with all unrighteousness , &c.
(i. 28, 29).
To feel the full weight and force of this intuition it is
necessary to escape a far as possible from the mental
atmosphere of our dogmatic interpretations and judiciously
toned-down catechisms, and to try to recapture the awe that
could be felt by the Jew toward the fury of Yahweh, by the
90 THE NUMINOUS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT
Hellenistic Greek toward the horror of Heimarmene or Destiny,
and by primitive man in general toward the ira deorum or
anger of the gods.
There is one other point in the teaching of Paul that
demands notice in this connexion his doctrine of predestina
tion. It is perhaps precisely the * rationalist who feels most
directly that with the idea of predestination we are standing
on downright non-rational ground. Nothing remains so
alien to the rationalist as this doctrine. And from his point of
view he is quite right; from the standpoint of the rational
this notion of predestination is a sheer absurdity, an absolute
offence. Let him acquiesce in all the paradoxes of the Trinity
and Christology, predestination will yet remain perpetually to
confront him as a stumbling-block.
Not, as need hardly be said, in the form in which it has
been put forward since the time of Schleiermacher, following
the tradition of Leibniz and Spinoza. That is simply a
capitulation to Natural Law and causae secundae , a sur
render to the claim of modern Psychology that all human
resolves and actions are subject to the compelling force of
motives, so that a man is unfree and predetermined thereby.
And so, this predetermination by nature, having been identified
with the all-embracing efficacy of God, in the end the outcome
of the profound and purely religious intuition of divine pre
determination which has no concern at all with laws of
nature is the comparatively trivial scientific notion of uni
versal causal connexion. There can be no more spurious product
of theological speculation, no more fundamental falsification of
religious conceptions than this ; and it is certainly not against
this that the Rationalist feels an antagonism, for it is itself
a piece of solid rationalism, but at the same time a complete
abandonment of the real religious idea of predestination .
This false scientific interpretation of predestination
having been put aside, it may be shown that as a religious idea
it springs from two sources and has two quite distinct aspects,
which should be distinguished by separate names. The one
is election , the other striking an essentially different note
predestination proper.
THE NUMINOUS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT 91
The idea of election i. e. of having been chosen out and
pre-ordained by God unto salvation is an immediate and pure
ｅxpression of the actual religious experience of grace. The
recipient of divine grace feels and knows ever more and
more surely, as he looks back on his past, that he has not grown
into his present self through any achievement or effort of his
own, and that, apart from his own will or power, grace was
imparted to him, grasped him, impelled, and led him. And
even the resolves and decisions that were most his own and
most free become to him, without losinnr the element of free-
O
dom, something that he experienced rather than did. Before
every deed of his own he sees love the deliverer in action, seek
ing and selecting, and acknowledges that an eternal gracious
purpose is watching over his life. But this preordainment
is purely a preordainment unto salvation and has in itself
nothing to do with the praedestinatio ambigua , the predeter
mination of all men either to be saved or to be damned. The
rational and logical conclusion of course would be that, if he
is elected of God but others are not, God, in appointing the
elect to bliss, determines also the rejected for damnation.
But this conclusion is not, and must not be, drawn, for what
we are concerned with is a religious intuition which, as such,
stands alone and is only warrant for itself, and which indeed
is outraged by any attempt to weave it into a system or
make it yield a series of inferences. In this respect Schleier-
rnacher is quite right when he says in his Discourses upon
Religion 1 : Every (sc. religious) intuition is a self-subsistent
work . . . knowing nothing of derivation and point of
connexion.
So much for election . From it must be distinguished
predestination proper, as it appears in St. Paul, e. g. Romans
ix. 18 : Therefore hath He mercy on whom He will, and whom
He will He hardeneth.
It is true that the thought of election , prominent in
St. Paul, can be detected here as well. But the reflection in
v. iiO is obviously the utterance of quite a different frame of
mind : Nay, but, O man, who art thou that repliest against
1 Schleierm&cher, IteJtn Hberdie Religion, ed. K. Otto, 4th ed., pp. 37-8.
92 THE NUMINOUS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT
God ? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why
hast thou made me thus ? That is a line of thought wholly
out of keeping with the set of ideas centring about election .
And yet even less can it be derived from any abstractly
theoretic doctrine of the all-causing nature of God. Such
a doctrine we find in Zwingli, and with him it does indeed
give rise to a doctrine of predestination , but one that is
rather the artificial product of philosophical speculation than
the result of immediate religious experience. The true pre
destination , springing directly from religious intuition, has
its origin beyond question in St. Paul. But in him it is easily
recognized as the numinous feeling in face of the mysterium
tremendum ; and that unique phase of it that we met with above
(pp. 9 ff.) in the narrative of Abraham recurs here in a signally
intensified form. For the religious conception in the notion of
predestination is nothing but that creature-consciousness ,
that self-abasement and the annulment of personal strength
and claims and achievements in the presence of the trans
cendent, as such. The numen, overpoweringly experienced,
becomes the all in all. The creature, with his being and doing,
his * willing and running (Rom. ix. 16), his schemes and
resolves, becomes nothing. The conceptual ｅxpression to
indicate such a felt submergence and annihilation over against
the numen is then here impotence and there omnipotence-
here the futility of one s own choice, there the will that
ordains all and determines all.
It is next to be noted that predestination in this sense,
as identical with the absolute supremacy of the numen, has
nothing whatever to do with the unfree will of Determinism .
Rather, it finds very frequently precisely in the free will of
the creature the contrast which makes it stand out so pro
minently. Will what thou wilt and how thou canst ; plan
and choose ; yet must all come about as it shall and as is
determined : that is the earliest and most genuine ｅxpression
of the matter. In face of the eternal power man is reduced to
nought, together with his free choice and action. And the
eternal power waxes immeasurable just because it fulfils its
decrees despite the freedom of human will. This is the aspect
THE NUMINOUS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT 93
of the matter designedly thrust into the foreground in many
typical Mohammedan narratives which profess to display the
inflexibility of the decrees of Allah. In these, men are able to
devise and decide and reject ; but, however they choose or act,
Allah s eternal will is accomplished to the very day and hour
that was ordained. The purport of this is precisely, not that
God and God alone is an active cause, but rather that the
activity of the creature, be it never so vigorous and free, is
overborne and determined absolutely by the eternal operative
purpose. 1 The thought of the deity as the absolutely sole and
all-embracing active cause first occurs where the creature-
O
feeling is intensified still further, and is at the same time
combined with theoretic considerations. It then leads to
Mystic-ism; and it is only again a further consequence if the
speculations about Being, peculiar to and characteristic of
Mysticism, become then attached to the thought of God as sole
cause. To the creature then is denied, not merely efficacy
as a cause, but true reality and complete being, and all existence
and fullness of being is ascribed to the absolute entity, who
alone really is, while all being of creatures is either a function
of this absolute Being which brings them into existence or
mere illusion. This sequence of ideas is found in particularly
explicit form in the Mysticism of Geulincx and the Occa-
sionalists. Ubi nihil vales, ibi nihil velis. Sometimes we
hear the same mystical chord in St. Paul also, as in his
mysterious saying about the final issue of all things, where
1 The story told by Bcidhavi, an expositor of the Koran, illustrates this :
Once when Asrael, the angel of Death, came before Solomon he directed his
gaze upon one of the king s companions. Who is that? asked the
man. The angel of Death, replied Solomon. He seems to be looking
at me, continued the other, BO command the wind that it bear me hence
and set me down in India. Solomon did so. Then said the Angel,
I gazed upon him for BO long out of astonishment, seeing it had been
commanded me to fetch his soul out of India, while he was yet with thee
in Canaan. This is a predestination which presupposes free will just as
its foil. However freely man makes his plans, Allah has always set his
countermine.
[This Btoiy is told in verse by Leigh Hunt in his poem The Inevitable ;
cf. Oxford ed. (1922), pp. 95-6. (Trans.)]
94 THE NUMINOUS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT
God shall be all in all . But the passage in Romans is differ
ent. It goes no farther than the thought of predestination
itself; and predestination we have found to be nothing but
the intensified creature-feeling in conceptual ｅxpression, and
to be altogether rooted in the numinous consciousness.
A further consideration may make it plainer that this must
be so. If it be really true that the consciousness of the
numinous, as creature-feeling , is the root of the predestina
tion idea, then we should expect that the form of religious
faith marked by an undue and exaggerated insistence on the
non-rational elements in the idea of God would also lean most
markedly to predestination. And such is obviously the case.
No religion has such a leaning to predestination as Islam ; and
the special quality of Islam is just that in it, from its commence
ment onwards, the rational and specifically moral aspect of the
idea of God was unable to acquire the firm and clear impress
that it won, e. g., in Christianity or Judaism. In Allah the
numinous is absolutely preponderant over everything else. So
that, when Islam is criticized for giving a merely fortuitous
character to the claim of morality, as though the moral law
were only valid through the chance caprice of the deity, the
criticism is well justified, only chance and fortuitousness have
nothing to do with the matter. The explanation is rather that
the numinous in Allah, nay, even his uncanny and daemonic
character, outweighs what is rational in him. And this will
account for what is commonly called the fanatical character
of this religion. Strongly excited feeling of the numen, that
runs to frenzy, untempered by the more rational elements of
religious experience that is everywhere the very essence of
Fanaticism.
The above interpretation of the notion of predestination
gives at the same time our estimate of it. It is an attempted
statement, in conceptual terms and by analogy, of something
that at bottom is incapable of explication by concepts. Fully
justified in this sense as an analogical ｅxpression, it is wholly
unjustified ( summum jus becoming summa injuria ) if its
character as analogy is missed, so that it is taken as an adequate
formulation of theological theory. In that case it is disastrous
THE NUMINOUS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT 95
and intolerable to a rational religion like Christianity, in spite
of the attempts that are made to render it innocuous by all the
arts of evasion and mitigation.
There is another element in the thought of Paul besides
his notion of predestination that is rooted in the numinous:
I refer to his utter depreciation of the Flesh . The Flesh
with Paul is simply the condition of the creature in general.
And this is utterly disparaged and depreciated by the numinous
consciousness (as we saw on pp. 9 ff., 52 ff.) in contrast to the
transcendent, both in regard to its existence and its value ; in
respect to the first as Dust and ashes , nothingness , in
sufficient, weak, transient, and perishing, and in respect to the
second as the profane , the impure, which is unable to assume
the worth of holiness or to come into its presence. We find
these two same sorts of depreciation among the ideas of Paul,
and the specifically Pauline feature in them is only the vigour
and completeness with which he expresses them. It is a quite
separate question whence Paul derives this intensity in his
denunciation and depreciation of the Flesh , whether it is
original to him or stimulated by the dualistic environment
of thought in which he moved. As has been already said, one
can determine nothing about the essential nature or the value
of a thing by tracing its genesis and continuous historic
derivation from other sources. And at least we may main
tain that Paul might well be stimulated to this emphatic
ｅxpression by many genuine cases of the numinous experience
recorded in the Old Testament. There too Basar, the flesh,
is both the principle of being dust and ashes and the
principle of the pollution of the creature in the presence of
holiness.
In St. John, no less than in St. Paul, there is a strong strain
of the numinous. The element of awefulness , it is true, dies
away in him, as so commonly in mysticism, without ever
quite vanishing, for, jxice Kitsch], even in John the wrath of
God abideth (John iii. 36) ; but this only makes the elements
of mystery and fascination the stronger, even in their
mystical form. In John, Christianity absorbs 0o>y and far/,
light 1 and life , into itself from the religions at rivalry with
96 THE NUMINOUS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT
it ; l and justly so, for only in Christianity do they win home.
But what is this light and this life"? Not to feel what
they are is to be made of wood, but none can express it. They
are a sheer abounding overplus of the non-rational element
in religion.
And the same is true even of that saying of St. John to
which the Rationalists are so specially fond of referring : God
is a Spirit (John iv. 24). This was the text on account of which
Hegel held Christianity to be the highest because the most
truly spiritual (geistig) religion. But Hegel meant by spirit
the * absolute reason . St. John when he speaks of 7n>e5/za is
not thinking of absolute reason but of that which is in
absolute contrast to everything of the world and the flesh ,
the utterly mysterious and miraculous heavenly Being who
surpasses all the understanding and reason of the natural
man. He is thinking of that Spirit which bloweth where
it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell
whence it cometh and whither it goeth the Spirit which
just on that account is not confined to Zion or Gerizim, and
whose worship is only for those who are themselves in spirit
and in truth . So that this saying, apparently wholly rational
in import, is itself the strongest and clearest indication of the
non-rational element in the Biblical idea of God. 2
1 And thereby drains these religions of their life-blood, according to
the right of the stronger . And henceforth these elements belong to
Christianity indissolubly as ita very own. For
Wenn gtarke Geisteskraft
Die Elemente
An sich herangerafft :
Kein Engel trennte
Geeinte Zwienatur
Der innigen Beiden
and still less can the criticism of scholars! [ When the vigour of the
spirit has gathered the elements into itself, then may no angel sunder
the double nature now made single of the united twain. ]
2 Compare with this chapter my recently published book Reich Gottes
und Menschensohn.
CHAPTER XII
THE NUMINOUS IN LUTHER
IN Catholicism the feeling of the numinous is to be found
as a living factor of singular power. It is seen in Catholic
forms of worship and sacramental symbolism, in the less
authentic forms assumed by legend and miracle, in the para
doxes and mysteries of Catholic dogma, in the Platonic and
neo- Platonic strands woven into the fabric of its religious
conceptions, in the solemnity of churches and ceremonies, and
especially in the intimate rapport of Catholic piety with
Mysticism. For reasons already suggested, the mysterious
is much less in evidence in the oflicial systems of doctrine,
whether Catholic or Protestant. Particularly since the time
when the great mediaeval scholastics (the theologi moderni ,
so called) replaced Plato by Aristotle and welded the latter
and his method on to the doctrines of the Church, Catholic
orthodoxy has been subjected to a strong rationalizing influ
ence, to which, however, actual living religious practice
and feeling never conformed or corresponded. The battle
here joined between so-called Platonism and Aristotelian-
ism , and in general the long persistent protest against the
scholastics, is itself in lar^e part nothing but the stru^le
O A O -s
between the rational and the non-rational elements in the
Christian religion. And the same antithesis is clearly opera
tive as a factor in Luther s protest against Aristotle and the
1 theologi moderni .
At that time Plato himself was known (very imperfectly)
chiefly through the interpretations and misinterpretations
of him by Augustine, Plotinus, and Dionysius the Areopagite.
Yet it was a true feeling that led the contrasted attitudes of
H
98 THE NUMINOUS IN LUTHER
mind to choose the names of Plato and Aristotle as their
battle-cries. Plato did indeed make a powerful contribution
towards the rationalization of his religion, for according to
his philosophy the deity had to become identical with the
Idea of the Good , and consequently something wholly rational
and conceivable. But the most remarkable characteristic of
Plato s thought is just that he himself finds science and
philosophy too narrow to comprise the whole of man s mental
life. He has indeed properly no Philosophy of Religion ; he
grasps the object of religion by quite different means than
those of conceptual thinking, viz. by the ideograms of myth,
by enthusiasm or inspiration, eros or love, * mania or the
divine frenzy. He abandons the attempt to bring the object
of religion into one system of knowledge with the objects of
science (cTnori} //?;), i.e. reason, and it becomes something
not less but greater thereby; while at the same time it is
just this that allows the sheer non-rational aspect of it to be
so vividly felt in Plato, and indeed vividly expressed as well
as felt. No one has enunciated more definitively than this
master-thinker that God transcends all reason, in the sense
that He is beyond the powers of our conceiving, not merely
beyond our powers of comprehension.
Therefore is it an impossible task both to discover the
Creator and Father of this Whole Universe and to publish
the discovery of him in words for all to understand. J
Aristotle s thought is much more theological than Plato s,
but his temper is far less religious ; and at the same time his
theology is absolutely rationalistic. And this contrast between
the two is repeated among those who profess themselves
Platonists or Aristotelians .
1 Timaeus, 28 C TOV /zeV ovv TTOITJT^ KOI Trartpa roCSf TOU iravrbs evpdv r(
fpyov /cat (vpovra tls iravTas ativvarov \tyciv. For the non-rational and
supra- rational strain in Plato the reader is referred to von Wilamowitz-
Mollendorff, Plato, i. 418: and especially to the splendid passage from
Plato s seventh letter : 341 C : Concerning these things (sc. ultimate
truth) there is not, nor will there be, any treatise written by me. For
they do not at all admit of being expounded in writing, as do objects of
other (scientific) studies. . . . only after long, arduous conversance with
the matter itself ... a light suddenly breaks upon the soul as from a kindled
THE NUMINOUS IN LUTHER 99
Another influence which orthodox doctrine underwent, from
the earliest patristic period onwards, and which tended to
weaken the non-rational element in religion, came from the
acceptance of the ancient theory of the divine dirdOfia or
immunity from passiorf. The God of Greek, and especially
of Stoic, theology was constructed after the ideal of the
4 Wise man , who achieves this apathy by the overcoming
of his passions and affections ; and the attempt was now
made to assimilate this God to the living God of Scripture.
And, as intimated above, an effective if unconscious factor
in this contest was the antithesis between the non-rational
and the rational aspects of the deity. Lactantius, in his
treati.se De Ira Del, illustrates particularly strikingly this
fight against the God of the philosophers. He uses the same
wholly rational terms, taken from man s emotional life, as
do his opponents, but raises them to a higher power, so that
he makes God, as it were, a gigantic mind, quick with an
immense vitality. But whoever in this way contends for the
living God is at the same time contending unwittingly for
the divine in God, that which cannot be reduced to Idea
world-order, moral order, principle of Being, or purposive
will. And many of Lactantius s own ｅxpressions point of
themselves to something beyond. Thus, quoting Plato, he
says: Quid omnino sit Deus, non esse quaerendum : quia
nee inveniri possit nee enarrari. 1 He is in general fond of
emphasizing the incomprehensibilitas of God: Quern nee
aestimare eensu valeat humana mens nee eloqui lingua morta-
lis. Sublimior enim ac maior est, quam ut possit aut cogita-
tione hominis aut sermone comprehendi. 2 He is fond of the
ｅxpression maiestas Dei , and blames the philosophers for
flume, and once born keeps alive of itself. . . . only to a few men is the
exposition of those things of any profit, and they only need a slight
indication of them for their discovery.
1 Kd. Fritsche, p. 227: We ought not to ask what God is altogether;
for it can neither be discovered by any nor utated in words.
1 Ibid., p. 116: (God) whom the human mind has no power to appraise,
nor tongue of mortals to utter. For he is too sublime and too great to be
grasped in the thought or the speech of man.
H 2
100 THE NUMINOUS IN LUTHER
misjudging the unique majesty of God. And he feels the
tremendum in the maiestas when he asserts that God
is wroth , and demands awe as a fundamental characteristic
of religion when he says: Ita fit, ut religio et maiestas
et honor metu constet. Metus autem non est, ubi nullus
irascitur. l He says that a God who cannot be angry cannot
love either: and a God that knows neither love nor anger
would be immobilis and not the Deus vivus , the living
God of Scripture.
This ancient battle of Lactantius against the dens philo-
sophorum comes to life again in the Middle Ages in Duns
Scotus s battle for the God of Willing , as opposed to the God
of Being , and for the validity of volition as an essential
in religion, as opposed to cognition . And the non-rational
elements which are still latent in Duns Scotus break out
openly in Luther in a whole series of some of his most
characteristic thoughts.
This aspect of Luther s religion was later tacitly expunged,
and is to-day readily dismissed as not the authentic Luther ,
or as a residuum of the scholastic speculations of the nomi
nalists . But, if that is so, it is strange that this residuum
of Scholasticism exercised such a power in Luther s own
mental life as it palpably did. In point of fact this is not
a residuum at all, but beyond all question the mysterious
background of his religious life, obscure and uncanny , and
to estimate it in all its power and profundity we need to
abstract the lucid bliss and joyfulness of Luther s faith in the
divine grace, and to see this faith in relation to the back
ground of that mysterious experience on which it rests. It
matters not from what source, whether nominalism or the
traditional teaching of his Order, his consciousness was first
stirred; we have in any case in Luther the numinous con
sciousness at first hand, stirred and agitated through its
typical moments , as we have come to know them. It is
a corroboration that these moments appear in Luther in
1 Thus it comes that religion and majesty and honour depend upon
fear. But there is no fear where none is angry.
THE NUMINOUS IN LUTHER 101
their completed series, and so point back to the common basis
that unites them all.
(1) We are not here concerned with the many strands,
strong at the outset, weaker later, but never altogether dis
appearing, that connect him with Mysticism. Nor are we
concerned with the surviving effects of the numinous element
of the Catholic worship in his doctrine of the Eucharist,
which cannot be wholly derived either from his doctrine of
the forgiveness of sins or from his deference to the written
word of scripture. Let us rather consider Luther s mirae
speculations upon the unrevealed in God in contrast to
the facies Dei revelata (revealed face of God), upon the
divina maiestas and the omnipotentia Dei in contrast to
his gratia , as he treats of them in his work De Servo
ArlUrio. The investigation as to how far Luther took over
1 doctrines from Scotus does not amount to much ; they stand
in most intimate connexion with his own innermost religious
life, of which they are a genuine first-hand utterance, and
should be examined as such. Luther himself guarantees
expressly that he does not teach such things merely as subjects
of dispute in the schools or as philosophical deductions and
corollaries, but because they are a central part of the religious
experience of the Christian, who must know them in order
to have faith and to have life. He rejects the cautious fore
sight of Erasmus s view, that such things should at least be
withheld from the common people, preaching them himself
in public sermons (e.g. upon Exodus, in reference to the
hardening of Pharaoh s heart) and writing them in his letter
to the men of Antwerp. And again, just before his death,
speaking of his book De Servo Arbitrio, in which these
ideas stand clearly expressed, Luther acknowledges that
nothing he wrote was so truly his own.
Is this borne out in his general teaching? His words in
the Great Catechism, To have a God is nothing else than
to trust Him from the heart , might seem to imply the
negative. And certainly to Luther God is He who overbrims
with pure goodness . Yet this same Luther knows depths
and abysses in the Godhead that make his heart despond,
102 THE NUMINOUS IN LUTHER
from which he flees for refuge to the Word , like a hare to
his cleft in the rocks , flees, it may be, to the Sacrament or
to absolution, or to the comforting official pronouncements
of Dr. Pommeranus, but in general no less to every word of
comfort or promise in the Psalms and the Prophets. But
that before which his soul quails again and again in awe is
not merely the stern Judge, demanding righteousness for
He is wholly a God of revelation but rather at the same
time God in His unrevealedness , in the aweful majesty of
His very Godhead ; He before whom trembles not simply the
transgressor of the law, but the creature, as such, in his
uncovered creaturehood. Luther even ventures to designate
this awe-inspiring, non-rational character of deity as Deus
ipse, ut est in sua natura et maiestate 1 (an assumption which
would be in fact a dangerous and erroneous one; for no
distinction of the non-rational and the rational aspects of
God should imply that the latter is less essential than the
former).
The passages relevant in this connexion from Luther s De
Servo Arbitrio are cited often enough: but to understand
the wellnigh daemonic character of this numinous feeling the
reader should particularly note the effect of the following
passage from Luther s sermon on Exodus xx. The preacher
leaves no means untried to bring out effectively the element
of numinous horror in his text :
Yea, for the world it seemeth as though God were a mere
silly yawner, with mouth ever agape, or a cuckold, who lets
another lie with his wife and feigneth that he sees it not/
But * He assaileth a man, and hath such a delight therein
that He is of His Jealousy and Wrath impelled to consume
the wicked .
Then shall we learn how that God is a consuming
fire, . . . That is then the consuming, devouring fire.
Wilt thou sin ? Then will He devour thee up. For God is
a fire, that consumeth, devoureth, rageth ; verily He is your
undoing, as fire consumeth a house and maketh it dust and
ashes.
1 God Himself, as He is in his own very nature and majesty.
THE NUMINOUS IN LUTHER 103
And in another place :
Yea, He is more terrible and frightful than the Devil.
For He dealeth with us and bringeth us to ruin with power,
smiteth and hammereth us and payeth no heed to us. In
His majesty He is a consuming lire. For therefrom can
no man refrain : if he thinketh on God aright, his heart in
his body is struck with terror . . . Yea, as soon as he heareth
God named, he is filled with trepidation and fear. 1
It is the absolute numen , felt here partially in its aspect
of maiestas and tremenduin . And the reason I introduced
these terms above to denote the one side of the numinous
experience was in fact just because I recalled Luther s own
ｅxpressions, and borrowed them from his divina maiestas
and metuenda voluntas , which have rung in my ears from
the time of my earliest study of Luther. Indeed I grew to
understand the numinous and its difference from the rational
in Luther s De Servo Arbitrio long before I identified it in
the qadosh of the Old Testament and in the elements of
religious awe in the history of religion in general.
One must have beheld these gulfs and abysses in Luther to
understand aright how significant it is that it is the same
man who on the other hand endeavours to put the whole of
Christianity into a confiding faith. The same contrast noted
above in the religion of the Gospel and in the paradoxes of
the faith in God the Father recurs in the religious experience
of Luther, but in unexampled intensity. That it is the
unc^proachalle which becomes approachable, the Holy one
who is pure goodness, that it is Majesty which makes itself
familiar and intimate there is the inwardness of the matter }
and this finds only very dubious ｅxpression in the subsequent
one-sided doctrine of the schools, where the mystical character
of the Wrath , which is of the essence of holiness infused
with that of goodness , is referred simply to the righteous
ness of God, and taken thus as righteous anger or indig
nation.
1 Vide the Erlangen edition of Luther s works, xxxvi, pp. 210 ff., 222,
231. J37 ; xxxv, p. 167 ; xlvii, p. 145 ; 1, p. 200.
104 THE NUMINOUS IN LUTHER
(2) once the numinous consciousness has been aroused, it
is to be expected, seeing that it is a unity, that one of its
moments will be found to be bound up with the rest. In
the case of Luther we find next after this element of Wrath
the numinous manifesting itself in the set of ideas which we
may fairly call those of Job. The Book of Job, as was seen
above, is not so much concerned with the awefulness of the
majesty of the numen as with its mysterious ness ; it is con
cerned with the non-rational in the sense of the irrational,
with sheer paradox baffling comprehension, with that which
challenges the ( reasonable and what might be reasonably
expected, which goes directly against the grain of reason.
To this place belong Luther s violent onslaughts upon the
whore Reason , which must seem grotesque to any one who
has not rightly grasped the problem of the non-rational
element in the idea of God. But certain set phrases, con
stantly recurring in Luther and very typical of him, are
specially significant in this connexion, as showing the strong
feeling he had for the non-rational aspect of the divine nature
in general. The most interesting passages are not those in
which he gives this feeling currency in the small change of
popular edification, that soothes itself with the thought that
God s ways are too high for us men ; but those in which he
lays hold of some startling paradox. He can indeed tell in
quite a homely and popular way how strange a lord our God
is , and refer this to the fact that God does not esteem or
count as the world counts, and that He disciplines us by
the strange ways of His guidance. Such ｅxpressions are of
general currency ; but others and these the more character
istic strike a loftier note. God is altogether mysteriis suis
et iudiciis impervestigabilis ( beyond tracking out in His
mysteries and His judgements ), displays as in Job His
vera maiestas in metuendis mirabilibus et iudiciis suis incom-
prehensibilibus ( in His fearful marvels and incomprehensible
judgements ), is in His essence hidden away from all reason,
knows no measure, law, or aim, and is verified in the paradox :
ut ergo fidei locus sit, opus est, ut omnia, quae creduntur,
abscondantur ( in order, therefore, that there may be a place
THE NUMINOUS IN LUTHER 105
for faith, all the things that are believed must be hidden
away ). And his concern is not simply to note this as an
inconceivable paradox, to acknowledge it and bow before it,
but to recognize that such a paradox is essential to the nature
of God and even its distinguishing characteristic.
Si enim talis esset eius iustitia, quae humano captu posset
iudicari esse iusta, plane non esset divina et nihilo diflerret
ab huinana iustitia. At cum sit Deus verus et unus, deinde
totus incomprehensibilis et inaccessibilis humana ratione, par
est, immo necessarium est, ut et iustitia sua sit incomprehensi
bilis. *
Theology gives ｅxpression to its perplexed endeavour to
find a name for the elements of the non-rational and the
mysterious in the repulsive doctrine that God is * exlex
(outside the law), that good is good because God wills it,
instead of that God wills it because it is good, a doctrine that
results in attributing to God an absolutely fortuitous will,
which would in fact turn Him into a capricious despot .
These doctrines are specially prominent in the theology of
Islam, and this can be immediately understood if the two
positions we maintain are sound, viz. that such doctrines are
really perplexed ｅxpressions of the non-rational, numinous
side of the divine nature, and that this is altogether the pre
ponderant aspect in Islam. And we find them also in Luther
in the same connexion. In this very fact, however, lies the
excuse for doctrines in themselves so blasphemous and horrible:
they are caricatures prompted by a deficient psychology and
a mistaken choice of ｅxpressions, and not by any disregard of
the absoluteness of moral values.
(3) From the point of view already considered in detail it
will be seen that, with such feelings as a basis, it was in
evitable that the doctrine of predestination would in due
course make its appearance in Luther s religion. And in his
For were Ilia juhtice Buch as could be adjudged as just by the human
understanding it were manifestly not divine, and would differ in nothing
from human justice. But since God is true and single, yea in Ilia entirety
incomprehensible and inaccessible to human reason, it is right, nay it
follows necesiarily, that His justice also is incomprehensible.
106 THE NUMINOUS IN LUTHER
case we do not need, as we did in the case of Paul, to postulate
the close inner connexion between this doctrine and the
numinous temper, for in the De Servo Arbitrio it is palpably
evident. The one explicitly depends upon the other, and the
inward bond of union between the two is so unmistakable
that this treatise of Luther s becomes a sort of psychological
key to related phases of religious experience.
It is only occasionally that these purely numinous ele
ments in Luther s religious consciousness are displayed so
strongly and forcibly as in the treatise De Servo Arbitrio.
But in his battles with desperatio and with Satan, in his
constantly recurring religious catastrophes and fits of melan
choly, in his wrestlings for grace, perpetually renewed,
which bring him to the verge of mental disorder, in all these
there are more than merely rational elements at work in his
soul. Moreover, even when he is speaking solely in rational
terms of Judgement, Punishment, and the Wrath of God, we
must, if we are to recapture the real Luther in these ｅxpressions,
hear sounding in them the profoundly non-rational strain of
religious awe*. For this Wrath of God also has often,
perhaps has always, something in it of that Fury of Yahweh,
that opytj of the numen.
(4) This circumstance suggests a further point. The ex
pressions unrevealed God and tremenda maiestas mani
festly repeated only those moments of the numinous
which we found first in our analysis of it (p. 13), especially
the tremendum , the daunting aspect of the numinous.
What of that of fascination in Luther ? Is it missing
altogether, to be replaced merely by the rational attributes
of trustworthiness and love and the corresponding element in
the mind of the worshipper, viz. faith and trustfulness ? No,
beyond all question it is not. only, the element of fascination
is in Luther wholly interwoven with these rational elements
and comes to utterance with them and in them. This can be
felt forcibly in the boisterous, almost Dionysiac, blissfulness
of his experience of God.
Christians are a blissful people, who can rejoice at heart
THE NUMINOUS IN LUTHER 107
and sing praises, stamp and dance and leap for joy. That is
well pleasing to God and doth our heart good, when we trust
in God and find in Him our pride and our joyfulness. Such
a gift should only kindle a fire and a light in our heart, so
that we should never cease dancing and leaping for joy.
Who will extol this enough or utter it forth It is neither
to be expressed nor conceived.
If thou feelest it truly in the heart, it will be such a great
thing to thee that thou wilt rather be silent than speak
aught of it. 1
Here should be borne in mind what was remarked earlier
(p. 48) respecting the interweaving of the non-rational with
the rational and the consequently deepened import of rational
ｅxpressions. As the awe-inspiring character of the Tran
scendent is comprised in the God of sternness and punishment
and justice, so is its bliss-giving character included in the
God who overbrims with pure goodness . Indeed it is
involved in the overabounding and mystical tone of Luther s
actual creed. Here, as elsewhere, there is no mistaking his
connexion with Mysticism. 2 Though for Luther faith begins
more and more to take the place of knowledge and Love of
God (Gottes-Minne) which means a marked qualitative
alteration of the whole religious temper, as compared with
that of Mysticism yet, despite the change, it remains obvious
that there are definite features in c Faith , as the term is used
by Luther, which justify us in classing it with the mystical
ways of response to which it is in apparent contrast, and
clearly distinguish it from the fides taught by the Lutheran
school with its determinate, well-ordered, unmystical temper.
Faith for Luther plays the same essential part, mutatis
mutandis, as knowledge and love for the earlier mystics :
it is the unique power of the soul, the adhaesio Dei , which
unites man with God : and unity is the very signature of
the mystical. So that when Luther says that Faith makes man
one cake (ein Kuche) with God or Christ, or holds him as a
ring holds a jewel (sicut annulus gemvuim), he is not speaking
any more figuratively than when Tauler says the same of
Love. Faith for Luther, as Love for Tauler and the
1 Erlungen cd., xi. 194, 2 See Appendix VI.
108 THE NUMINOUS IN LUTHER
mystics generally, is a something that cannot be exhaustively
comprised in rational concepts, and to designate which figures
and images are a necessity. To him Faith is the centre of
the Soul the fundus animae or basis of the soul of the
mystics in which the union of man with God fulfils itself.
It is at the same time an independent faculty of knowledge,
a mystical a priori element in the spirit of man, by which
he receives and recognizes supra- sensible truth, and in this
respect identical with the Holy Spirit in the heart (Spiritus
Sanctus in corde). Faith* is further the mighty creative
thing in us and the strongest of affects, most closely akin to the
Greek enthusiasm (tvQovcriafrcrOou). It even takes over all
the functions which all enthusiasts from Paul onwards have
ascribed to the Spirit ; for it is faith that transforms us
inwardly and brings us forth anew . In this regard, different
as it is in its inner attitude, Faith is very similar to the
amor mysticus . And in the bliss of the assurance of
salvation (certitudo salutis) that it arouses, and the intensity
of Luther s childlike faith , we have in a subdued form
a recurrence of the childhood feelings of Paul, which go
beyond mere comfort of the soul, appeasement of conscience,
or feeling of protectedness. All subsequent mystics from
Johann Arndt to Spener and Arnold * have always felt
these aspects of Luther s inner life to be congenial and akin
to their own, and have carefully collected the relevant passages
from his writings as a defence against the attacks of the
rationalized doctrine of the Lutheran school.
For in opposition to the rationalizations of the schools
the non-rational elements are maintained and fostered in the
western Mysticism that came to its later flower both on
Catholic and Protestant soil. In this, as in Christian Mys
ticism as a whole from its first stirrings, the elements of
the non-rational already detailed are easily recognizable,
most prominently of all those of mystery , fascination ,
and majesty . The element of awe , on the other hand,
1 [Johann Arndt, 1555-1621; Gottfried Arnold, 1666-1697; Philipp
Jacob Spener, 1635-1705: the last-named was one of the founders of
Pietism in Germany. (Trans.)]
THE NUMINOUS IN LUTHER 109
recedes and is subdued ; there has never been in the West
a Mysticism of Horror, such as we find in certain kinds of
Indian Mysticism, both Buddhist and Hindu in Bhagavad-
Ghita, ch. 11 l in some forms of the Shiva and Durga worship,
and in the horrible form of Tantrism. Yet, though the
tremendum clement in Christian mysticism is subdued, it
is not entirely lacking. It remains a living factor in the
Catigo and the altum tiilentium, in the Abyss , the Night ,
the Deserts of the divine nature, into which the soul
must descend, in the agony , abandonment , barrenness ,
taedium, in which it must tarry, in the shuddering and shrink
ing from the loss and deprivation of self-hood and the anni
hilation of personal identity. Thus Suso writes:
In this inconceivable mountain of the supra-divine Where
(the height of the divine Majesty transcending substance )
there is a precipitousnessof which all pure spirits are sensible.
Here the Soul enters a secret namelessness, a marvellous alie
nation. It is the bottomless abyss no creature can sound
... the spirit perishos there, to become all-living in the won
ders of the Godhead. -
And lie can pray :
Ah, woe is me, Thy wrathful countenance is so full of
fury. Thy turning away in anger is so unendurable. Woe
is me ! And the words of Thy enmity are so tiery, they cleave
through heart and soul. 3
This note is familiar also to the later mystics. Thus
St. John of the Cross says :
As this clear sight of the divine comes like a violent
assault upon the soul to subdue it, the soul feels such anguish
in its weakness that all power and breath leave it together,
while sense and spirit as though they stood burdened beneath
a dark unmeasured load sutler such agony and are oppressed
by Hiich deadly fear that the soul would choose death as
a mitigation and refreshment. 4
And again :
1 The fourth kind of anguish is brought into being in the
BOU! . . . from the Majesty and Glory of God. 6
1 Sec Appendix II.
1 SUBO, German writings, cd. Denifle, pp. 280 ff. Ibid., p. 353.
4 St. John of the Crow, The Ascent of Mount Carmtl. B Ibid.
110 THE NUMINOUS IN LUTHER
Once more :
Therefore He destroys, crushes and overwhelms (the soul)
in such a deep darkness, that it feels as though melted and in
its misery destroyed by a cruel death of the spirit. Even as
though it were to feel it had been swallowed by some savage
beast and buried in the darkness of his belly. l
But in our Western Mysticism the writer in whom the
non-rationally dreadful and even the daemonic phase of
the numinous remains a most living element is Jakob Bohme.
For all his adoption of its motives, Bohme is in his specula
tion and theosophy sharply distinguished from the earlier
Mysticism. He is at one with this (as represented, for
instance, by Eckhart) in aiming at a construction and
an understanding of God, and from Him of the world:
and, like Eckhart, he finds as a starting point for his
speculation the primal bottom , the supra-comprehensible
and inexpressible. But this stands to him, not for Being and
Above-being, but for Stress and Will ; it is not good and above-
good, but a supra-rational identification of good and evil in
an Indifferent, in which is to be found the potentiality for
evil as well as for good, and therewith the possibility of the
dual nature of deity itself as at once goodness and love on
the one hand and fury and wrath on the other. J If the
1 St. John of the Cross, The Ascent of Mount Carmel.
2 The ferocity is the origin of Lucifer, in whom the mere potentiality
of evil is actualized. It might be said that Lucifer is fury , the opyr],
hypostatized, the mysterium tremendum cut loose from the other
elements and intensified to mysterium liorrendum. The roots at least
of this may be found in the Bible and the early Church. The ideas of
propitiation and ransom are not without reference to Satan as well as to
the divine Wrath. The rationalism of the myth of the fallen angel
does not render satisfactorily the horror of Satan and of the depths of
Satan (Rev. ii. 24) and the mystery of iniquity (2 Thess. ii. 7). It is
a horror that is in some sort numinous, and we might designate the object
of it as the negatively numinous. This also holds good of other religions
than that of the Bible. In all religions the devilish plays its part and
has its place as that which, opposed to the divine, has yet something in
common with it. As such it should be the subject of a special inquiry,
which must be an analysis of fundamental feelings, and something very
different from a mere record of the evolution of the idea of the devil .
THE NUMINOUS IN LUTHER 111
inventions and comparisons, with whose aid Bb hme com
poses a sort of chemico-physical romance of God, strike us
as extremely qu2er and bizarre, the strange intuitions of the
religious feeling underlying them are yet highly significant.
They are intuitions of the numinous, and are akin to those
of Luther. With Bb hme, as with Luther, the non-rational
energy and majesty of God and his awcfulness appear con
ceptualized and symbolized as Will . And with Bohme, as
with Luther, this is conceived as fundamentally independent
of mond elevation or righteousness, and as indifferent toward
good or evil action. It is rather a ferocity , a fiery wrath
about something unknown ; or, better still, not about anything
at all, but Wrath on its own account and without reference
to any object ; an aspect of character which would be quite
meaningless if taken literally in the sense of a real con
ceivable and apprehensible anger. Who is not directly con
scious that it is simply the non-rational element of awefulness ,
the tremendwm, for which Wrath , Fire , Fury , are excellent
ideograms? 1 If such an ideogram is taken as an adequate
concept, the result is anthropomorphism, such as mythology
illustrates, and the writings of Lactantius (v. p. 99). And if
speculation follows, based upon such concepts, the result is
the pseudo-science of theosophy. For the characteristic mark
of all theosophy is just this: having confounded analogical
and figurative ways of expressing feeling with rational con
cepts, it then systematizes them, and out of them spins, like
a monstrous web, a * Science of God , which is and remains
something monstrous, whether it employs the doctrinal terms
of scholasticism, as Eckhart did, or the alchemical substances
and mixtures of Paracelsus, as Bohme did, or the cate
gories of an animistic logic, as Hegel did, or the elaborate
1 Btfhme s disciple, Johann Pordage, has some feeling of this when
he writes: So hope I then, that you will Dot be angered with mo, if
you find that I impute to God acerbity and bitterness, dread, wrath,
fire, . . . and the like. For even Jakob Bflhme found no other words in
which to express his exalted sfnsation (Empfindung) of God. You must
then take all those forms of ppeech in a high divine sense, far removed
from all imperfection (Divine and True Hfetaphysic, i. 166).
112 THE NUMINOUS IN LUTHER
diction of Indian religion, as Mrs. Besant does. For the
history of religion it is not on account of his theosophy
that Bohme is interesting, but because in him behind the
theosophy the consciousness of the numinous was astir and
alive as an element of genuine value : so that herein Bohme
was an heir of Luther, preserving what in Luther s own school
came to be overlooked and disregarded.
For the Lutheran school has itself not done justice to the
numinous side of the Christian idea of God. By the exclusively
moral interpretation it gave to the terms, it distorted the
meaning of holiness and the wrath of God , and already
from the time of Johann Gerhardt and onwards Lutheranism
was returning to the doctrine of divine aTrdQeia or passion-
lessness. More and more it deprived the forms of worship
of the genuinely contemplative and specifically devotional
elements in them. The conceptual and doctrinal the ideal
of orthodoxy began to preponderate over the inexpressible,
whose only life is in the conscious mental attitude of the
devout soul. The Church became a school, and her communi
cations, in truth, found a more and more contracted access to
the mind, as Tyrrell has put it somewhere, through the
narrow clefts (?) of the understanding .
Schleiermacher was the first to attempt to overcome this
rationalism, most boldly and uncompromisingly in the rhapsody
of his Discourses, with less heat and more subdued tone in
his Glaubenslehre and his theory of the feeling of absolute
dependence , which in point of fact give a representation as
has been pointed out already of the first stirring of the
feeling of the numinous. It will be a task for contemporary
Christian teaching to follow in his traces and again to deepen
the rational meaning of the Christian conception of God by
permeating it with its non-rational elements.
CHAPTER XIII
THE TWO PROCESSES OF DEVELOPMENT <
THIS permeation of the rational with the non-rational is
to lead, then, to the deepening of our rational conception of
God ; it must not be the means of blurring or diminishing
it. For if (as suggested at the close of the last chapter)
the disregard of the numinous elements tends to impoverish
religion, it is no less true that holiness , sanctity , as Chris
tianity intends the words, cannot dispense with the rational,
and especially the clear ethical elements of meaning which Pro
testantism more particularly emphasizes in the idea of God.
To get the full meaning of the word holy as we find it used
in the New Testament (and religious usage has established it
in the New Testament sense to the exclusion of others), we
must no longer understand by the holy or sacred the
merely numinous in general, nor even the numinous at its
own highest development ; we must always understand by
it the numinous completely permeated and saturated with
elements signifying rationality, purpose, personality, morality.
It is in this combined meaning that we retain and apply the
term holy in our subsequent chapters. But that the course
of the historical development may be clearly understood, we
venture first to recapitulate our view upon this matter as
explicitly as possible.
That which the primitive religious consciousness first
apprehends in the form of daemonic dread , and which, as
it further unfolds, becomes more elevated and ennobled, is
in origin not something rational or moral, but something
distinct, non-rational, an object to which the mind responds
in a unique way with the special feeling-reflexes that have
been described. And this element or moment passes in
itself through a process of development of its own, quite apart
I
114 THE TWO PROCESSES OF DEVELOPMENT
from the other process which begins at an early stage
by which it is rationalized and moralized , i. e. filled with
rational and ethical meaning. Taking this non-rational pro
cess of development first, we have seen how the daemonic
dread , after itself passing through various gradations, rises to
the level of fear of the gods , and thence to fear of God .
The Saifioviov or daemonic power becomes the 6dov or divine
power : * dread becomes worship ; out of a confusion of inchoate
emotions and bewildered palpitations of feeling grows c religio ,
and out of shudder a holy awe. The feelings of dependence
upon and beatitude in the numen, from being relative, become
absolute. The false analogies and fortuitous associations are
gradually dispelled or frankly rejected. The numen becomes
God and Deity. It is then to God and Deity, as numen
rendered absolute, that the attribute denoted by the terms
qddosh, sanctus, ayioy, holy, pertains, in the first and directest
sense of the words. It is the culmination of a development
which works itself out purely in the sphere of the non-
rational. This development constitutes the first central fact of
religious study, and it is the task of religious history and
psychology to trace its course.
Next, secondary and subsidiary to this, is the task of tracing
the course of the process of rationalization and moralization
on the basis of the numinous consciousness. It nearly, if not
quite, synchronizes and keeps pace with the stages of the
purely numinous development, and, like that, it can be traced
in its different gradations in the most widely different regions
of religious history. Almost everywhere we find the numinous
attracting and appropriating meanings derived from social
and individual ideals of obligation, justice, and goodness.
These become the will of the numen, and the numen their
guardian, ordainer, and author. More and more these ideas
come to enter into the very essence of the numen and charge the
term with ethical content. Holy becomes good , and good
from that very fact in turn becomes holy , sacrosanct ; until
there results a thenceforth indissoluble synthesis of the two
elements, and the final outcome is thus the fuller, more com
plex sense of holy , in which it is at once good and sacrosanct.
THE TWO PROCESSES OF DEVELOPMENT 115
The greatest distinction of the religion of ancient Israel, at
least from Amos onwards, is precisely the intimate coalescence
of both elements. No God is like the God of Israel : for He is
the absolutely Holy one (= perfectly good). And, on the other
hand, no law is like Yahweh s Law, for it is not merely good,
but also at the same time holy (= sacrosanct).
And this process of rationalization and moralization of the
numinous, as it grows ever more clear and more potent, is in
fact the most essential part of what we call the History of
Salvation and prize as the ever-growing self-revelation of the
divine. But at the same time it should be clear to us that this
process of the moralization of the idea of God , often enough
represented to us as a principal problem, setting the main line for
inquiry into the history of religion, is in no wise a suppression
of the numinous or its supersession by something else which
would result not in a God, but a God substitute but rather
the completion and charging of it with a new content. That
is to say, the moralization process assumes the numinous and
is only completed upon this as basis.
CHAPTER XIV
THE HOLY AS AN A PRIORI CATEGORY
PART I
IT follows from what has been said that the holy in
the fullest sense of the word is a combined, complex category,
the combining elements being its rational and non-rational
components. But in both and the assertion must be strictly
maintained against all Sensationalism and Naturalism it
is a purely a priori category.
The rational ideas of Absoluteness, Completion, Necessity, and
Substantiality, and no less so those of the good as an objective
value, objectively binding and valid, are not to be evolved from
any sort of sense-perception. And the notions of epigenesis ,
heterogony , or whatever other ｅxpression we may choose to
denote our compromise and perplexity, only serve to conceal the
problem, the tendency to take refuge in a Greek terminology
being here, as so often, nothing but an avowal of one s own
insufficiency. Rather, seeking to account for the ideas in
question, we are referred away from all sense-experience back
to an original and underivable capacity of the mind implanted
in the pure reason independently of all perception.
But in the case of the non-rational elements of our category
of the Holy we are referred back to something still deeper than
the pure reason , at least as this is usually understood, namely
to that which Mysticism has rightly named the fundus animae ,
the bottom or f ground of the soul (Seelengrund). The ideas
of the numinous and the feelings that correspond to them are,
quite as much as the rational ideas and feelings, absolutely
pure , and the criteria which Kant suggests for the pure
concept and the pure feeling of respect are most precisely
applicable to them. In the famous opening words of the
1 Critique of Pure Reason he says :
That all our knowledge begins with experience there can
be no doubt. For how is it possible that the faculty of cogni
tion should be awakened into exercise otherwise than by means
THE HOLY AS AN A PRIORI CATEGORY 117
of objects which affect our senses ? . . . But, though all our know
ledge begins with experience, it by no means follows that all
arises out of experience.
And, referring to empirical knowledge, he distinguishes that
part which we receive through impressions and that which our
own faculty of cognition supplies from itself, sense-impressions
giving merely the occasion.
The numinous is of the latter kind. It issues from the
deepest foundation of cognitive apprehension that the soul
possesses, and, though it of course comes into being in and
amid the sensory data and empirical material of the natural
world and cannot anticipate or dispense with those, yet it does
not arise out of them, but only by their means. They are the
incitement, the stimulus, and the occasion for the numinous
experience to become astir, and, in so doing, to begin at first
with a naive immediacy of reaction to be interfused and
interwoven with the present world of sensuous experience,
until, becoming gradually purer, it disengages itself from this
and takes its stand in absolute contrast to it. The proof that
in the numinous we have to deal with purely a priori cogni
tive elements is to be reached by introspection and a critical
examination of reason such as Kant instituted. We find, that
is, involved in the numinous experience, beliefs and feelings
qualitatively different from anything that natural sense-
perception is capable of giving us. They are themselves not
perceptions at all, but peculiar interpretations and valuations,
at first of perceptual data, and then at a higher level of
posited objects and entities, which themselves no longer belong
to the perceptual world, but are thought of as supplementing
and transcending it. And as they are not themselves sense-
perceptions, RO neither are they any sort of transmutation of
Bense-perceptions. The only transmutation possible in respect
to sense-perception is the transformation of the intuitively
given concrete percept, of whatever sort, into the corresponding
concept ; there is never any question of the transformation of
o/t class of percepts into a class of entities qualitatively oilier.
The facts of the numinous consciousness point therefore as
likewise do alao the pure concepts of the understanding of
118 THE HOLY AS AN A PRIORI CATEGORY
Kant and the ideas and value-judgements of ethics or aesthetics
to a hidden substantive source, from which the religious ideas
and feelings are formed, which lies in the mind independently
of sense-experience ; a pure reason in the profoundest sense,
which, because of the surpassingness of its content, must be
distinguished from both the pure theoretical and the pure
practical reason of Kant, as something yet higher or deeper
than they.
The justification of the evolutionist theory of to-day stands
or falls with its claim to explain the phenomenon of religion.
That is in truth the real task of the psychology of religion.
But in order to explain we must have the data from which an
explanation may be forthcoming ; out of nothing nothing can be
explained. Nature can only be explained by an investigation
into the ultimate fundamental forces of nature and their laws :
it is meaningless to propose to go further and explain these
laws themselves, for in terms of what are they to be explained ?
But in the domain of spirit the corresponding principle from
which an explanation is derived is just the spirit itself, the
reasonable spirit of man, with its predispositions, capacities,
and its own inherent laws. This has to be presupposed : it can
not itself be explained. None can say how mind or spirit is
made though this is in effect just what the theory of Epi-
genesis is fain to attempt. The history of humanity begins
with man, and we have to presuppose man, to take him for
granted as he is, in order that from him we may understand
his history. That is, we must presuppose man as a being
analogous to ourselves in natural propensities and capacities.
It is a hopeless business to seek to lower ourselves into the
mental life of a pithecanthropus erectus-, and, even if it
were not, we should still need to start from man as he is, since
we can only interpret the psychical and emotional life of animals
regressively by clumsy analogies drawn from the developed
human mind. To try, on the other hand, to understand and
deduce the human from the sub-human or brute mind is
to try to fit the lock to the key instead of vice versa ; it is to
seek to illuminate light by darkness. In the first appearance
of conscious life on dead unconscious matter we have a simple,
THE HOLY AS AN A PRIORI CATEGORY 119
irreducible, inexplicable datum. But that which here appears
is already a manifold of qualities, and we can only interpret
it as a seed of potentiality, out of which issue continually
maturer powers and capacities, as the organization of the body
increases in stability and complexity. And the only way we
can throw any light upon the whole region of sub-human
psychical life is by interpreting it once again as a sort of pre
disposition (Anlage) at a second remove, i.e. a predisposition
to form the predispositions or faculties of the actual developed
mind, and standing in relation to this as an embryo to the
full-grown organism. But we are not completely in the dark
as to the meaning of this word predisposition . For in
our own awakening and growth to mental and spiritual
maturity we trace in ourselves in some sort the evolution
by which the seed develops into the tree the very opposite of
transformation and epigenesis by successive addition. 1
We call the source of growth a hidden predisposition of
the human spirit, which awakens when aroused by divers
excitations. That there are predispositions of this sort
in individuals no one can deny who has given serious study
to the history of religion. They are seen as propensities,
predestining the individual to religion, and they may grow
spontaneously to quasi-instinctive presentiments, uneasy seek
ing and groping, yearning and longing, and become a religious
imjfuksioii, that only finds peace when it has become clear to
itself and attained its goal. From them arise the states of
1 The physical analogue to these spiritual or mental relationships is
the relation of potential to kinetic energy. The assumption of such a rela
tion in the world of mind (i.e. a relation between potential and kinetic
mind) is, of course, only to be expected from one who is prepared to accept
as the final cause of all mind in the world as a whole the absolute mind
as pure actuality whose ellampatio or effulgence (in Leibniz s phrase)
all other mind is. For all that is potential presupposes an actual aa the
ground of its possibility, a.s Aristotle long ago showed. But indeed how
can we afford to reject such a pure actuality ? It is an inconsequent
proceeding to postulate actuality, as is done, for a starting point for the
pbynical world, a a system of stored-up energy, whose transference to
kint-tic energy constitutes the rush of worlds and wheel of systems , and
yet to reject the analogous aisumption in the world of niind and spirit.
120 THE HOLY AS AN A PRIORI CATEGORY
mind of prevenient grace , described in masterly fashion by
Suso :
Loving, tender Lord ! My mind has from the days of my
childhood sought something with an earnest thirst of longing,
Lord, and what that is have I not yet perfectly apprehended.
Lord, I have now for many a year been in hot pursuit of it,
and never yet have I been able to succeed, for I know not
aright what it is. And yet it is something that draws my
heart and my soul after it, and without which I can never
attain to full repose. Lord, I was fain in the earliest days of
my childhood to seek it among created things, as I saw others
before me do. And the more I sought, the less I found it ; and
the nearer I went, the further I wandered from it. ... Now my
heart rages for it, for fain would I possess it. ... Woe is me !
. . . What is this, or how is it fashioned, that plays within me
in such hidden wise ? x
These are manifestations of a predisposition becoming a
search and a driving impulsion. But here, if nowhere else,
the * fundamental biogenetic law really does hold good, which
uses the stages and phases in the growth of the individual
to throw light upon the corresponding stages in the growth of
his species. The predisposition which the human reason
brought with it when the species Man entered history became
long ago, not merely for individuals but for the species as
a whole, a religious impulsion, to which incitements from
without and pressure from within the mind both contributed.
It begins in undirected, groping emotion, a seeking and shaping
of representations, and goes on, by a continual onward striving,
to generate ideas, till its nature is self-illumined and made
clear by an explication of the obscure a priori foundation
of thought itself, out of which it originated. 2 And this emotion,
this searching, this generation and explication of ideas, gives
the warp of the fabric of religious evolution, whose woof
we are to discuss later. 3
1 Worts, ed. Denifle, p. 311.
2 The reader may compare what Kant says in his Lectures on Psychology
(Leipsic ed., 1889, p. 11) of the treasure buried in the field of obscure
ideas, constituting the deep abyss of human knowledge, which we cannot
sound. This deep abyss is just the fundus animae that is aroused
in Suso. s Of. pp. 180, 181.
CHAPTER XV
ITS EARLIEST MANIFESTATIONS
ONLY upon the basis of the foregoing assumptions is it
possible to understand the historical origin and further develop
ment of religion. It must be admitted that when religious
evolution first begins sundry curious phenomena confront
us, preliminary to religion proper and deeply atfecting its
subsequent course. Such are the notions of clean and
unclean , belief in and worship of the dead, belief in and
worship of souls or spirits , magic, fairy tale, and myth,
homage to natural objects, whether frightful or extraordinary,
noxious or advantageous, the strange idea of power (orenda
or mana), fetishism and totemism, worship of animal and
plant, daemonisin and polydaemonism. Different as these
things are, they are all haunted by a common and that
a numinous element, which is easily identifiable. They did
not, perhaps, take their origin out of this common numinous
element directly ; they may have all exhibited a preliminary
stage at which they were merely * natural products of the
na ive, rudimentary fancies of primitive times. 1 ut these
things acquire a strand of a quite special kind, which alone
gives them their character as forming the vestibule of religion,
brings them first to clear and explicit form, and furnishes
them with the prodigious power over the minds of men which
history universally proves them to possess. Let us attempt to
grasp this peculiar strand, common to all these modes of thought
and practice which stand upon the threshold of religion.
1. We will begin with magic. There has been at all times,
and there still is to-day, a natural magic, that is to nay,
modes of behaviour exhibiting some simple analogy and carried
out quite unreilectively and without any basis in theory, whose
122 ITS EARLIEST MANIFESTATIONS
object is to influence and regulate an event in accordance with
the wishes of the agent. It may be noticed on any skittle-
alley or bowling-green. A bowler aims and plays his bowl,
wishing it to roll straight and hit the jack. He watches eagerly
as it rolls, nodding his head, his body bent sideways, stands
balancing on one leg, jerks over violently to the other side as
the critical point is reached, makes as though to push the ball
on with hand or foot, gives a last jerk and the end is reached.
Its hazards past, the ball rolls safely into position. What was
the man doing in this case ? He was not simply imitating the
course of the ball ; he meant to prescribe and determine it, but
this obviously without any reflection on his queer behaviour,
without the belief of primitive man in universal animism , i. e.
in the animatedness of everything, in this instance of the ball,
and without a belief in some sympathetic rapport between his
own soul power and the soul of the ball. His action was
merely naively analogical, for the attainment of a definite
wish. The proceedings of rain-makers were often, perhaps
at first were always, just the same sort of thing ; and so were
the naive charms purporting to influence the course of sun and
moon, clouds and winds. But clearly, so long as they are not
more than this, these are not by any means magic in the proper
sense. There must be in addition a new ingredient, unique
in quality, the element that is usually called supernatural
efficacy . But this ｅxpression is a misnomer : supernatural
has nothing to do with the case ; it is much too imposing an
ｅxpression, and ascribes far too much to the naive mind. The
conception of Nature as a single connected system of events
united by laws is the final and most difficult outcome of
abstraction ; and this conception of nature, or at least some
hint of it, must have been arrived at before there could be any
place for its negation, the supernatural . Again, nothing is
explained, as Wundt would have it, by spirit-power or * soul-
power . For, first, it is to-day universally recognized that
magic is independent of a belief in spirits or souls, and probably
existed before it. And, second, the point at issue is not by
means of what class of powers the magical effect was produced
whether soul-powers or others but by means of what
ITS EARLIEST MANIFESTATIONS 123
quality or character in the powers. And this quality can
be indicated solely through the daemonic , a character ascribed
to certain definite operations of force, be they strong or weak,
extraordinary or quite trivial, the work of a soul or a non-
soul . The quality can be only suggested through that unique
element of feeling, the feeling of uncanniness , of which we
have already spoken, whose positive content cannot be defined
conceptually, and can only be indicated by that mental response
to it which we called shuddering .
O
2. The same is true of the worship of the dead. It does not
arise out of any theory of animism, according to which the
primitive man thinks of inanimate objects, and so also of the
dead, as animate and operative. Even in itself this entire
theory of an ostensible attribution of soul or the principle of
animation to everything is a mere fabrication of the study,
llow much more when it is clumsily spatchcocked and w r elded
together with * belief in spirits or souls , which is something
quite different ! The dead man, in point of fact, exercises
a spell upon the mind only when, and only because, he is felt as
a thing of horror and shudder . But alike to the naive mind
of the savage and to the blase mind of modern civilized man
O
this feeling comes about w r ith such an immediate compelling
force that we usually accept it as something immediately self-
evident, failing altogether to remark that even the estimating
something as horrible or grisly shows the emergence of
a qualitatively separate content of feeling which the mere
fact of death does not explain. Feeling-reactions to the dead,
if prompted naturally , are pretty obviously only of two
kinds : on the one hand, the experient feels disgust at the
corpse s putrefaction, stench, revoltingness : on the other,
he feels his own will to life disturbed and checked, the fear of
death and the startled fright that directly follows on the sight
of a corpse, especially if it be that of a member of one s own
species. Both these sorts of feeling-response, viz. disgust and
startled fright, are already found manifested among animals.
I observed this in a very pronounced degree on one occasion,
when, upon a lonely ride, we suddenly came upon the body
of a dead horse, and Diana, my excellent mount, on
124 ITS EARLIEST MANIFESTATIONS
nizing her dead fellow, gave every indication of the most
natural fright and disgust. But these two moments of
feeling do not by any means afford in themselves the materials
for the art of making shudder (in the words of the old folk
tale). It is something new and demands to be learnt as the
folk-tale rightly declares : that is, this is a feeling that is not
simply present with the other natural and normal mental
functions, disgust, or fright, and cannot be got from these by
analysis. It is a dread (or awe), qualitatively sui generis ;
and even with regard to this rudimentary stage represented by
the primitive worship of the dead we cannot admit that we
have to do merely with a universal feeling, that has simply to
be presupposed at the outset as a regular factor of folk psycho
logy, a collectively engendered feeling that explains itself. on
the contrary, it cannot be disputed that here too there have
been persons endowed with special propensities in this direction,
who possessed such feelings actually, and then, by giving
ｅxpression to them, aroused them in others. Even the awe
of the dead and from it the worship of the dead have
been, as it were, instituted and have had founders .
3. We consider next ideas of souls and spirits . It
would be possible to show, did not the subject lead us too far
afield, that these were not conceived by the fanciful processes
of which the animists tell us, but had a far simpler origin.
But again the important point is not the origin of spirits in
their ideational aspect, but the qualitative element of feeling
relative to them. And this does not consist in the fact that
1 spirits or souls are thinner or less easily visible than the
body, or quite invisible, or fashioned like air : often all this
is true of them ; no less often none of it is ; most frequently
of all it is both true and false. The essence of the soul lies
not in the imaginative or conceptual ｅxpression of it, but
first and foremost in the fact that it is a spectre , that it
arouses dread or awe , as described above. But again,
a spectre is not to be explained from natural feelings, and
these are equally unable to explain the further development
by which these somethings (and this is the only core ot
conceptual meaning that can really be given them), at first
ITS EARLIEST MANIFESTATIONS 125
always very eagerly shunned, later on become beings honoured
in a positive way and loved, capable of rising into heroes,
pitris, daemons, holy or sacred ones, and gods.
4. We turn to the idea of power , the mana of the Pacific
Islands and the orenda of the North American Indians. It
can have its antecedents in very natural phenomena. To
notice power in plants, stones, and natural objects in general
and to appropriate it by gaining possession of them ; to eat the
heart or liver of an animal or a man in order to make his
power and strength one s own this is not religion but science.
Our science of medicine follows a similar prescription. If the
power of a calf s glands is good for goitre and imbecility,
we do not know what virtue we may not hope to find in frogs
brains or Jews livers. All depends here upon observation,
and our science of medicine in this respect only differs from
that of the medicine-man in being more exact and in possess
ing experimental methods. Pow r er does not take its place
in the ante-chamber of religion, is not appropriated by
religion in communion rites and sacraments (as we call
them), until it too has come to include the idea of spell
and malc .
O
5. Volcanoes, mountain peaks, moon, sun, and clouds are
regarded by primitive man as being alive or animate, not in
consequence of a naV ve theory of the omnipresence of spirit
or soul Panthelism , so called but as a result of precisely
the same criterion that we ourselves apply when we recognize
anything to be alive or animate, apart from the one live thing
we can observe directly, our self ; that is to say, both we and
the primitive credit an object with life if, and in so far as, we
think we remark in it living efficacy and agency; and whether
we do so rightly or wrongly is again simply a matter of more
or less exact observation. But while from this criterion the
natural objects mentioned above, and of course others, may be
invested with life by the naive observer, this does not in itself
lead to myth or religion. Purely as animate or living beings,
these entities are far from being yet divine or gods ; nay,
they do not even become so when the man turns to them with
desire and petition ; for petition is something less than prayer
126 ITS EARLIEST MANIFESTATIONS
and trust need not have a religious character. The objects in
question only become divine objects of worship when the
category of the numinous is applied to them, and that does not
come about until, first, an attempt is made to influence them
by numinous means, viz. by magic ; and, second, their special
efficacy or way of working is at the same time accepted as
something numinous, viz. something magical.
6. As regards fairy -stories, these presuppose the natural
impulse to fantasy, narrative, and entertainment, and its
products. But the fairy-story proper only comes into being
with the element of the wonderful , with miracle and miracu
lous events and consequences, i. e. by means of an infusion
of the numinous. And the same holds good in an increased
degree of myth.
7. All the factors and elements named so far in this chapter
are but, as it were, the vestibule at the threshold of the real
religious feeling, an earliest stirring of the numinous conscious
ness, which comes upon the scene blended with associated feel
ings in conformity to principles of analogy which it would be
easy to specify for each several case. only with the rise of the
daemon do we have a really separate beginning. The most
authentic form of the daemon may be seen in those strange
deities of ancient Arabia, which are properly nothing but
wandering demonstrative pronouns, neither * given shape and
feature by means of myth , for there is in the main no mytho
logy attached to them at all, nor evolved out of nature-
deities, nor grown out of souls or spirits , but none the
less felt as deities of mighty efficacy, who are the objects of
very living veneration. They are pure products of the religious
consciousness itself. And in their case it is very evident that
they do not arise as a collective product of crowd-imagination,
and that they do not therefore have their origin in group- or
folk- psychology, but were the intuitions of persons of innate
prophetic powers. For there is always the Kahin (the primi
tive form of the prophet ) belonging to these numina , and
he alone experiences a numen or divine-daemonic power at
first hand. only where and when it has been revealed
through such a one do the forms of worship and a common
ITS EARLIEST MANIFESTATIONS 127
cult arise. To each nuraen is assigned a Seer and there is none
without one.
8. The notions clean and unclean , pure and impure ,
are already found in a purely natural sense, prior to their
religious application. The unclean is the loathsome, that which
stirs strong feelings of natural disgust. And it is just during
the more primitive stages of human development that the
emotion of disgust exercises such special power. Probably these
emotional reactions are a part of our natural self-protective
endowment, instinctive safeguards for many important vital
functions. The effect of civilization is to refine these emotions
of disgust and loathing by diverting them to different objects,
so that things which were loathsome to the savage cease to be
so and things which were not become so. This refinement
spells at the same time a weakening in the intensity of the
emotion ; we do not now loathe and feel disgust with the
unbridled violence and strength of the savage. In this respect
we can notice even to-day a plain distinction between our more
primitive rural and our more refined urban population : we
townsmen feel disgust at much that is harmless to the country
man, but where the latter does feel it he is affected by the
emotion more radically than we are ; it is a pro founder reaction
in him.
We have so far been concerned with the ordinary feeling of
disgust. Bofcween this and the feeling of the horrible there
is a very close analogy ; and from this it becomes apparent,
in accordance with the law of reciprocal attraction between
analogous feelings and emotions, how the natural unclean or
impure is bound to pass over into, and develop in, the sphere
of the numinous. once, in fact, we have in our hand the key
of the problem the analogy and the law just mentioned we
can reconstruct a priori the actual genetic process involved,
by which the one emotion prompts the other. We indeed have
ourselves a direct experience of the same thing to-day in our
emotional reaction to the sight of flowing blood, in which it
would be hard to say whether the element of disgust or
horror is the stronger.
Later, then, when the more maturely developed elements of
128 ITS EARLIEST MANIFESTATIONS
awe came upon the scene and went to shape the more
elevated ideas of the daemonic and the divine, sacer and
sanctus, things could become unclean or impure in the
numinous sense without any substratum of natural impurity
to serve as point of departure. And we can learn something
of the relation of feeling-analogy involved from the fact that
in the reverse direction the feeling of the numinously impure
calls up easily by association the natural emotion of disgust
(i.e. the feeling of the naturally impure), so that things
become disgustful or loathsome which intrinsically were not
objects of disgust at all, but of numinous horror. In fact such
secondary and derived feelings of disgust can maintain them
selves independently long after the original numinous awe
which they once evoked has died away. Certain social feelings
of loathing, such as those of caste, can be explained in this
way : they had once a purely daemonic root, but long after
that has died out they still survive in their secondary, acquired
character as feelings of disgust.
9. If the examples numbered 1 to 8 may be termed pre-
religion , this is not in the sense that religion and the possi
bility of religion are explicable by their means : rather, they
are themselves only made possible and can only be explained
from a religious basic element, viz. the feeling of the numinous.
This is a primal element of our psychical nature that needs
to be grasped purely in its uniqueness and cannot itself be
explained from anything else. Like all other primal psychical
elements, it emerges in due course in the developing life of
human mind and spirit and is thenceforward simply present.
Of course it can only emerge if and when certain conditions
are fulfilled, conditions involving a proper development of the
bodily organs and the other powers of mental and emotional
life in general, a due growth in suggestibility and spontaneity
and responsiveness to external impressions and internal ex
periences. But such conditions are no more than conditions ;
they are not its causes or constituent elements. To recognize
this is not to relegate the whole matter to the domain of mystery
and supernaturalism, but simply to maintain that the same thing
holds good of this which holds good of all other primal ele-
ITS EARLIEST MANIFESTATIONS 129
ments of our mental or spiritual life. Pleasure or pain, love or
hate, all faculties of sense-perception, such as susceptibility to
light and sound, consciousness of space and time, and sub
sequently all higher capacities of the mind, all duly emerge,
sooner or later, in the course of development. That they do
BO in conformity to laws and under definite conditions is
indisputable, but not the less is each a new, original, underiv-
able fact, and they are only to be explained on the assumption
of a rich potentiality of spirit or mind, which underlies the
course of their development and realizes itself more and more
abundantly in them in proportion as the conditions of organic
and cerebral evolution are more fully realized. And what is
true of all these other elements of our mental life is also true
of the i eelinir o f the numinous.
O
10. The purest case, however, of the spontaneous stirring of
numinous emotion would seem to be that mentioned in No. 7
(the feeling of daemons), which is of quite special signifi
cance for the evolution of religion. This is because here the
1 religious emotion does not from the first get diverted (follow
ing the stimulation of emotional associations) to earthly
things, wrongly taken as numinous : but either it remains
a pure fueling, as in panic terror (in the literal sense of the
word), or itself invents, or, better, discovers, the numinous
object by rendering explicit the obscure germinal ideas latent
in itself. Even this latter case is not altogether beyond the
reach of introspective analysis, which, moreover, can throw some
light upon the transition from mere feeling to its explication
and to the positing of the numinous object. At least there is
none of us who has any living capacity for emotion but must
have known at some time or at some place what it is to feel
really * uncanny , to have a feeling of eerieness . And more
exact psychological analysis will notice the following points
in such a state of mind. First, there is the point of which we
have already spoken, its separate and underivable, irreducible,
qualitative character. Second, there is the very curious circum
stance that the external features occasioning this state of
mind are often quite slight, indeed so scanty that hardly any
account can be given of them, so disproportionate are they to
K
130 ITS EARLIEST MANIFESTATIONS
the strength of the emotional impression itself. Indeed the
clutching force and violence of the emotion so far exceeds any
impressiveness contributed by the circumstances of time and
place that one can often scarcely speak of an impression at
all, but at most of an encounter, serving as cue or occasion for
the felt experience. This experience of eerie shuddering and
awe breaks out rather from depths of the soul which the circum
stantial, external impression cannot sound, and the force with
which it breaks out is so disproportionate to the mere external
stimulation that the eruption may be termed, if not entirely,
at least very nearly, spontaneous. And with this we are
brought to the third point which psychological analysis of the
uncanny experience brings to view ; meanings are aroused
and awakened in it of a unique and special content, though
altogether obscure, latent, and germinal, which are the real
ground for the emotion of awe. For, if such meanings are not
there at the start in some form or other, the mental and
emotional disturbance could never take place. In the fourth
place, the mental state we are discussing may, on the one hand,
remain pure feeling , pursue its course and pass away with
out its obscure thought-content being rendered explicit. If in
this implicit form it is summed up in a phrase, this will be
merely some such exclamation as : How uncanny ! or * How
eerie this place is ! on the other hand, the implicit meaning
may be rendered explicit. It is already a beginning of this
explicative process though still in merely negative terms
when a man says : It is not quite right here ; It is
uncanny. The English This place is haunted* shows a
transition to a positive form of ｅxpression. Here we have the
obscure basis of meaning and idea rising into greater clarity
and beginning to make itself explicit as the notion, however
vague and fleeting, of a transcendent Something, a real opera
tive entity of a numinous kind, which later, as the development
proceeds, assumes concrete form as a c numen loci , a daemon,
an El , a Baal, or the like.
In Genesis xxviii. 17 Jacob says : How dreadful is this
place ! This is none other than the house of Elohim. This
verse is very instructive for the psychology of religion ; it
ITS EARLIEST MANIFESTATIONS 131
exemplifies the point that has just been made. The first
sentence gives plainly the mental impression itself in all its
immediacy, before reflection has permeated it, and before the
meaning-content of the feeling itself has become clear or
explicit. It connotes solely the primal numinous awe, which
has been undoubtedly sufficient in itself in many cases to mark
out holy or sacred places, and make of them .spots of aweful
veneration, centres of a cult admitting a certain development.
There is no need, that is, for the experient to pass on to resolve
his mere impression of the eerie and aweful into the idea of
a numen , a divine power, dwelling in the aweful place,
still less need the numen become a nomen, a named power,
or the nomen become something more than a mere pro
noun. Worship is possible without this farther explicative
process. But Jacob s second statement gives this process of
explication and interpretation ; it is no longer simply an
ｅxpression of the actual experience.
The German ｅxpression Es spukt hier (literally, it haunts
here) is also instructive. It has properly no true subject, or at
least it makes no assertion as to what the es, the it , is which
haunts ; in itself it contains no suggestion of the concrete
representations of ghost , phantom , spectre , or spirit
common to our popular mythology. Rather is the statement
simply the pure ｅxpression of the emotion of eerieness or
uncanniness itself, when just on the point of detaching and
disengaging from itself a first vaguely intimated idea of a
numinous something, an entity from beyond the borders of
natural experience. It is to be regretted that the German
language possesses no general word less vulgar than spuken ,
no word which, instead of pointing us aside, as this word does,
to the domain of superstition and the impure offshoots of the
numinous consciousness, should retain its fundamental meaning
in an unperverted form. 1 But even so we can feel by an effort of
1 The ｅxpression es geistet hier may perve, but it haa an artificial
sound. The English to haunt is a nobler ｅxpression than the German
1 spuken . We might legitimately translate Huliakkuk ii. 20 : Yahweh
haunts His holy Temple. Such a haunting is frequently the meaning
of the Hebrew ihukan. And we get a fuller and truer rendering of
K 2
132 ITS EARLIEST MANIFESTATIONS
imaginative introjection how akin the debased feeling of haunt
ing, given by this word, is to those primary numinous experi
ences by which long ago seers had experience of aweful , holy ,
numen-possessed places, discovering thereby the starting-points
for local cults and the birth-places of the El worshipped
there. The echo of such primaeval experiences lingers in
Genesis xxviii. 17 (Jacob at Bethel) and Exodus iii (the burn
ing bush). The places here set apart by Moses and Jacob are
genuine haunted places , at which es spukt , places about which
there is something eerie . only, the feeling of being haunted
has in these cases not the impoverished and debased sense of
our modern eerie feeling of being haunted by ghosts and
spectres ; it comprises all the rich potentialities and possibilities
of development inherent in the true primal numinous emotion.
Nor can we doubt that even to-day the finer awe that may
steal over us in the stillness and half-gloom of our own present-
day sanctuaries has ultimate kinship not only with that of
which Schiller writes in his verses :
Und in Poseidons Fichtenhain
Tritt er mit frommem Schauder ein, 1
but also with genuine ghostly emotions. The faint shiver
that may accompany such states of mind is not unrelated to
the feeling of creeping flesh , whose numinous character we
have already considered (p. 16). In its efforts to derive
daemon and god forcibly from souls and spirits , animism
is looking the wrong way. It would be, at any rate, on the
right path if it maintained that they are haunting apparitions.
This is partially proved by certain ancient, still extant
terms, which long ago had reference to the original awe of the
haunting spirit (in the good sense), and later grew to become
designations both of the lowest and the highest forms of awe .
Such a term is the enigmatical word asura in Sanskrit.
Ps. xxvi. 8 : the place where Thine honour dwelleth by translating it :
the places haunted by Thy majesty . The Sheklnah is properly the
haunting presence of Yahweh in the Temple at Jerusalem.
1 Schiller, Die Kraniche des Ibykus (The Cranes of Ibykus) :
And to Poseidon s grove of pine
With awe devout he enters in.
ITS EARLIEST MANIFESTATIONS 133
Asura is the aweful or dreadful in the sense in which
Jacob used the word, the eerie or uncanny. Later, in Indian
religion, it is used as the technical ｅxpression for the lower
forms of the spectral, ghostly, and daemonic. But at the same
time it is from primaeval times a title of the sublimest of all
the gods of the Rig- Veda, the weirdly exalted Varuna. And
in the Persian ｅxpression Ahura-rrutzda it becomes the name
of the one and only eternal godhead itself. The same thing
is true of the term adbhida . You experience an adbhuta
when you are in an empty house , pays an old definition. 1
It is the experience of our shuddering . But, on the other
hand, udUiuta is also the name for the supreme transcendent
marvel and its attractive spell, the element of fascination ,
even for the eternal Brahman himself and his salvation, the
Adt hutdm that passes beyond the reach of speech. 2
11. Finally, it is only upon our assumption of an a priori
basis of ideas and feelings that an explanation is forthcoming
for the interesting phenomena to which Andrew Lang 3 rightly
drew attention. These do not, of course, support the hypo
thesis of a primitive monotheism , that offspring of missionary
apologetic, which, eager to save the second chapter of Genesis,
yet feels the shame of a modern at the walking of Yahweh in
the garden in the cool of the day . But they do point to facts
which remain downright riddles, if we start from any natural
istic foundation of religion whether animism, pantheism, or
another and must in that case be got out of the way by the
most violent hypotheses. The essence of the matter is this,
1 A-dbhuta means literally the inapprehensible, inexpressible. But in
the Gist instance it is exactly our mysterium stupcndutn, whereas aswa
is the tr> mendum.
1 Adbhuta (and focnrya) would be an accurate rendering in Sanskrit
for our numinous , were it not that the word, like the German wunder-
bar and the English awful , has long ago become trite and shallow
from the profane non-religious uses to which it has been so per
petually put.
s Myth, llitual, and Religion, 1899. Th> Mnkiny of Ileligion, 1902.
Mayic and Iieli<jion, 1901. Cf. also P. W. Schmidt, Gruncllinien einer
Vergleichung der Iteliyionen und Mytholoyien der austrontaischen Vulker>
Vienna, 1910.
134 ITS EARLIEST MANIFESTATIONS
that elements and strands are to be found in numerous
mythologies and the stories of savage tribes, which reach
altogether beyond the point they have otherwise attained
in religious rites and usages. Notions of high gods are
adumbrated, with whom the savage has often hardly any rela
tions in practice, if any at all, and in whom he yet acknow
ledges, almost in spite of himself, a value superior to that of
all other mythological images, a value which may well accord
with the divine in the highest sense.
Sometimes, but by no means always, we can discern that these
anticipations of a higher religious experience are the outcome
of a past growth of myth. What is characteristic and at the
same time so puzzling is the elevation with which they stand
out from the surrounding more primitive religious life amid
which they are found. Indeed, in cases where missions have
introduced the preaching of Christian theism, these appre
hended, exalted divinities are readily and frequently identified
with God and reinforce the preaching of the missionary. And
converts often come to admit that, though they had not
honoured God, they had had knowledge of Him. It is, of
course, true that this sort of fact can sometimes be explained
as due to traditional influences, protracted from an earlier time,
when the tribe in question was in contact with a higher theistic
religion : the very names given to these higher beings some
times prove as much. But even in this form the phenomenon
is a very singular one. Why should savages , set in other
respects in an utterly alien milieu of barbaric superstition,
accept and, what is more, retain these notions, unless their own
savage minds were so predisposed to them that, so far from
being able to let them go, they were obliged to take at least
an interest in them as a tradition and very frequently to
acknowledge their authority by the felt witness of their own
consciences? But, though the theory of a surviving tradi
tion is sometimes applicable, there are many of these cases in
which it is impossible to apply it without doing violence to the
facts. In these we have clearly to do with anticipations
and presentiments rather than survivals. Assuming the
continual pressure and operation of an inward reasonable
ITS EARLIEST MANIFESTATIONS 135
disposition to form certain ideas, these anticipations are not
only no matter for surprise ; they are as naturally to be
expected as are the achievements of gipsy musicians, who, set
otherwise in a milieu of the most primitive culture, yet respond
to the pressure of a strong, innate, musical disposition. With
out such an assumption, the facts would remain as an insoluble
puzzle.
Naturalistic psychologists, in this as in other cases, ignore a
fact which might be thought at least to have a psychological
interest, and which they could notice in themselves by careful
introspection, namely, the self-attestation of religious ideas in
one s own mind. This is, to be sure, more certain in the case
of the naive than in that of the more blase* mind ; but many
people would identify it in their own consciousness if they
would only recall deliberately and impartially their hours of
preparation for the ceremony of confirmation . But what tho
mind attests it can also under favourable circumstances
evince and elicit from itself in premonitory stirring and felt
surmise. The upholders of the theory of Primitive Mono
theism , on the other hand, show no less serious disregard of
this central fact than the naturalistic psychologists. For if
the phenomena w r e have been considering were based simply
and solely on historical traditions and dim memories of a
primeval revelation , as on such a theory they must be, this
self-attestation from within would be just as much excluded
as before. *
1 Compare with this chapter my recently published book Das Geftihl
da Uiti-u-eltlichen, especially Chapter VI: Das Werden eines Gottea.
CHAPTER XVI
THE CRUDER PHASES
IT is not only the more developed forms of religious experi
ence that must be counted underivable and a priori. The same
holds good throughout and is no less true of the primitive,
crude , and rudimentary emotions of daemonic dread which,
as we have seen, stand at the threshold of religious evolution.
Religion is itself present at its commencement : religion, nothing
else, is at work in these early stages of mythic and daemonic
experience. Let us consider the circumstances in which alone
the primitive and crude character of these consists.
(a) First, it is due to the merely gradual emergence and
successive awakening of the several moments of the numinous.
The numinous only unfolds its full content by slow degrees, as
one by one the series of requisite stimuli or incitements becomes
operative. But where any whole is as yet incompletely pre
sented its earlier and partial constituent moments or elements,
aroused in isolation, have naturally something bizarre, unin
telligible, and even grotesque about them. This is especially
true of that religious moment which would appear to have
been in every case the first to be aroused in the human mind,
viz. daemonic dread. Considered alone and per se, it necessarily
and naturally looks more like the opposite of religion than
religion itself. If it is singled out from the elements which form
its context, it appears rather to resemble a dreadful form of
auto-suggestion, a sort of psychological nightmare of the tribal
mind, than to have anything to do with religion ; and the
supernatural beings with whom men at this early stage profess
relations appear as phantoms, projected by a morbid, unde
veloped imagination afflicted by a sort of persecution-phobia.
One can understand how it is that not a few inquirers could
seriously imagine that * religion began with devil-worship,
and that at bottom the devil is more ancient than God.
THE CRUDER PHASES 137
To this serial and gradual awakening of the different aspects
and moments of the numinous is also to be ascribed the
difficulty of classifying religions by genus and species. Every
one who undertakes the task produces a different classification.
For the facts to be classified are for the most part not at all
related as the distinct species of one and the same genus ; they
are not alternative, determinate forms into which the whole
religion may be analysed, but constituent elements, out of
which it is to be synthesized or built up. It is as though
a whale should begin to show itself above the water part
by part, and as though people should then attempt to classify
the arched back, the end of the tail, and the head spouting
water, by genus and species, instead of seeking for such a real
understanding of these phenomena as would recognize each of
them in its place and proper connexion with the rest as a part
and member of one whole body, which must itself have been
grasped in its entirety before its parts could be properly
apprehended.
(b) In the second place, the primitiveness of the cruder
phases is due to the abrupt, capricious, and desultory character
which marks the earliest form of numinous emotion ; and, in
consequence, to its indistinctness, which causes it to be merged
and confounded with natural feelings.
(c) It is due, next, to the fact that the valuation prompted
by the moment of numinous consciousness (e.g. the * daemonic
dread phase) is attached in the first place, and very naturally,
to objects, occurrences, and entities falling within the workaday
world of primitive experience, which prompt or give occasion
to the stirring of numinous emotion by analogy and then divert
it to themselves. This circumstance is more than anything
else the root of what has been called nature-worship and the
deification of natural objects. only gradually, under pressure
from the numinous feeling itself, are such connexions subse
quently spiritualized or ultimately altogether rejected, and
not till then does the obscure content of the feeling, with its
O ?
reference to absolute transcendent reality, come to light in all
its integrity and self -subsistence.
(d) A fourth factor contributing to the crudity of primitive
138 THE CRUDER PHASES
religion is the uncontrolled, enthusiastic form, making for
wild fanaticism, in which the numinous feeling storms the
savage mind, appearing as religious mania, possession by
the numen, intoxication, and frenzy.
(e) Again, a quite essential factor is the wrong schematiza-
tions it undergoes, when interpreted in terms of some experi
ence analogous, perhaps, but not really appertaining to it.
Examples of this have already been given (e.g. p. 127).
(/) Finally, and most important, there is the deficient
rationalization and moralization of the experience, for it is
only gradually that the numinous feeling becomes charged
with progressively rational, moral, and cultural significance.
These considerations account for the primitive and savage
character of the numinous consciousness at its outset. But it
must be repeated that in its content even the first stirring of
4 daemonic dread is a purely a priori element. In this respect
it may be compared from first to last with the aesthetic judge
ment and the category of the beautiful. Utterly different as
my mental experiences are when I recognize an object as
beautiful or as horrible , yet both cases agree in this, that
I ascribe to the object an attribute that professes to interpret
it, which I do not and cannot get from sense-experience, but
which I rather ascribe to it by a spontaneous judgement of my
own. Intuitively I apprehend in the object only its sensuous
qualities and its spatial form, nothing more. That the mean
ing I call beautiful fits the object, i. e. that these sense-data
mean beautiful , or even that there is any such meaning
at all these are facts which sensory elements can in no wise
supply or tell me. I must have an obscure conception of the
beautiful itself , and, in addition, a principle of subsumption,
by which I attribute it to the object, else even the simplest
experience of a beautiful thing is rendered impossible. And
this analogy may be pursued further. Joy in the beautiful,
however analogous to mere pleasure in the agreeable, is yet
distinguishable from it by a plain difference in quality, and
cannot be derived from anything other than itself ; and just
such is the relation of the specific religious awe to mere natural
fear.
THE CRUDER PHASES 139
The crude stage is transcended as the numen reveals
iteelf (i. e. becomes manifest to mind and feeling) ever more
strongly and fully. An essential factor in this is the process
by which it is tilled out and charged with rational elements,
whereby it passes at the same time into the region of the con
ceivable and comprehensible. Yet all the time all the elements
of non-rational inconceivability are retained on the side
of the numinous and intensified as the revelation proceeds.
Revelation does not mean a mere passing over into the
intelligible and comprehensible. Something may be profoundly
and intimately known in feeling for the bliss it brings or the
agitation it produces, and yet the understanding may find no
concept for it. To know and to understand conceptually are
two different things, are often even mutually exclusive and
contrasted. The mysterious obscurity of the numen is by no
means tantamount to unknowableness. Assuredly the deus
alsconditus et incomprehensibUis was for Luther no deus
ignotuts . And so, too, St. Paul knows the Peace, which yet
passeth understanding .
CHAPTER XVII
THE HOLY AS AN A PRIORI CATEGORY
PART II
WE conclude, then, that not only the rational but also the
non-rational elements of the complex category of holiness
are a priori elements and each in the same degree. Religion
is not in vassalage either to morality or teleology, ethos or
telos , and does not draw its life from postulates ; and its
non-rational content has, no less than its rational, its own
independent roots in the hidden depths of the spirit itself.
But the same a priori character belongs, in the third place,
to the connexion of the rational and the non-rational elements
in religion, their inward and necessary union. The histories
of religion recount indeed, as though it were something
axiomatic, the gradual interpretation of the two, the pro
cess by which the divine is charged and filled out with
ethical meaning. And this process is, in fact, felt as some
thing axiomatic, something whose inner necessity we feel
to be self-evident. But then this inward self-evidence
is a problem in itself; we are forced to assume an obscure,
a priori knowledge of the necessity of this synthesis, com
bining rational and non-rational. For it is not by any
means a logical necessity. How should it be logically inferred
from the still crude , half-daemonic character of a moon-god
or a sun-god or a numen attached to some locality, that he
is a guardian and guarantor of the oath and of honourable
dealing, of hospitality, of the sanctity of marriage, and of
duties to tribe and clan ? How should it be inferred that he
is a god who decrees happiness and misery, participates in the
concerns of the tribe, provides for its well-being, and directs
the course of destiny and history ? Whence comes this most
surprising of all the facts in the history of religion, that
THE HOLY AS AN A PRIORI CATEGORY 141
beings, obviously born originally of horror and terror, become
g ( d# beings to whom men pray, to whom they confide their
Borrow or their happiness, in whom they behold the origin and
the sanction of morality, law, and the whole canon of justice 1
And how does all this come about in such a way that, when
once such ideas have been aroused, it is understood at once as
the plainest and most evident of axioms, that so it must be ?
Socrates, in Plato s Jiejwllic, ii. 382 E, says: God then is
single and true in deed and word, and neither changes himself
nor deceives others . . . And Adeimantos answers him : So
too is it apparent to me, now that you say it. The most
interesting point in this passage is not the elevation and purity
of the conception of God, nor yet the lofty rationalization and
moralizatioD of it here enunciated, but, on the side of Socrates,
the apparently dogmatic tone of his pronouncement for he
does not spend the least pains in demonstrating it and, on the
side of Adeimantos, the ingenuous surprise and, at the same
time, the confident assurance with which he admits a truth
novel to him. And his assent is such as implies convincement ;
he does not simply believe Socrates ; he sees clearly for himself
the truth of his words. Now this is the criterion of all a priori
knowledge, namely, that, so soon as an assertion has been clearly
expressed and understood, knowledge of its truth comes into
the mind with the certitude of first-hand insight. And what
passed here between Socrates and Adeimantos has been repeated
a thousand times in the history of religions. Amos, also, says
something new when he proclaims Yahweh as the God of
inflexible, universal, and absolute righteousness, and yet this is
a novelty that he neither proves nor justifies by an appeal
to authorities. He appeals to a priori judgements, viz. to
the religious conscience itself, and this in truth bears witness
to his message.
Luther, again, recognizes and maintains such an a j/riori
knowledge of the divine nature. His rage against the whore
Reason leads him, to be sure, usually to utterances in the
opposite sense, such as the following :
1 It is a knowledge a posteriori, in that we look at God from
without, at His works and His government, as one looketh at
142 THE HOLY AS AN A PRIORI CATEGORY
a castle or house from without and thereby f eeleth (spuret) the
lord or householder thereof. But a priori from within hath no
wisdom of men yet availed to discover what and of what
manner of being is God as He is in Himself or in His inmost
essence, nor can any man know nor say aught thereof, but they
to whom it has been revealed by the Holy Ghost.
Here Luther overlooks the fact that a man must feel
or detect the householder a priori or not at all. But in other
passages he himself allows the general human reason to possess
many true cognitions of what God is in Himself or in His
inmost essence . Compare the following :
Atque ipsamet ratio naturalis cogitur earn concedere
proprio suo iudicio convicta, etiamsi nulla esset scriptura.
Omnes enim homines inveniunt hanc sententiam in cordibus
Buis scriptam et agnoscunt earn ac probatam, licet inviti, cum
audiant earn tractari : primo, Deum esse omnipotentem . . .
deinde, ipsum omnia nosse et praescire, neque errare neque
falli posse . . . Istis duobus corde et sensu concessis . . . l
The interesting words of this statement are : proprio suo
iudicio convicta, for they make the distinction between cogni
tions and mere innate ideas or supernaturally instilled
notions, both of which latter may produce thoughts , but not
convictions ex proprio iudicio . Note also the words : cum
audiant earn tractari , which exactly correspond to the experi
ence of Plato s Adeimantos, already quoted. 2
1 Luther, Weimar ed., xviii. 719: And the natural reason itself is
forced, even were there no holy scripture, to grant it (sc. this assertion),
convinced by its own judgement. For all men, as soon as they hear it
treated of, find this belief written in their hearts, and acknowledge it
as proved, even unwillingly : first, that God is omnipotent, . . . then,
that He has knowledge and foreknowledge of all things and can neither
err nor be deceived . . . Since these two things are admitted by heart
and feeling . . .
2 The most interesting features in Luther in this connexion, however^
are the passages upon Faith , in which Faith is described as a unique
cognitive faculty for the apprehension of divine truth, and as such is con
trasted with the natural capacities of the Understanding, as elsewhere
the Spirit is contrasted. Faith is here like the Synteresis in the
theory of knowledge of the mystics, the inward teacher (maciister in-
ternus) of Augustine, and the inward light of the Quakers, which are all
of them of course above reason , but yet an a priori element in ourselves.
THE HOLY AS AN A PRIOKI CATEGORY 143
It is the same experience which missionaries have so often
undergone. once enunciated and understood, the ideas of the
unity and goodness of the divine nature often take a surpris
ingly short time to become firmly fixed in the hearer s mind, if
he show any susceptibility for religious feeling. Frequently,
thereupon, the hearer adapts the religious tradition that has
hitherto been his to the new meaning he has learned. Or,
O
A particularly striking passage is the following from Luther s TaUe-
Talk (Wei. v. 5820) :
Omnium hominum mentibus impressa est divinitus notitia Dei. Quod
sit Dous, omnes homines sine ullaartium et disciplinarum cognitione sola
natura duce sciunt,et omnium hominum mentibus hoc divinitus impressum
est. Nulla umquam fuit tarn fera gens et immanis, quae non crediderit,
esse divinitatem quandam, quae omnia creavit. Itaque Paulus inquit :
Invisibilia Dei a creatura rnundi per ea f quae facta sunt, intellecta con-
spiciuntur, sempiterna eius virtus et divinit-is. Quare omnes ethnici
eciveiunt esse Deum, quanturavis fuerunt Epicurei, quantumvis con-
tenderunt, non esse Deum. Non in eo, quod negant esse Deum, simul
confessi sunt esse Deum ? Nemo enim negare id potest, quod nescit
Quare, etsi quidam per omnem vitam in maximis versati sunt flagitiis et
eceleribus et non aliter omnino vixerunt, ac si nullus esset Deus, tamen
nunquam conscientiam animis potuerunt eicere testantem et affir-
mantem, quod sit Deus. Et quamvis ilia conscientia pravis et perversis
opinionibus ad tempus oppressa fuit, redit tamen et convincit eos iu
extn-mae vitae spiritu.
The knowledge of God is impressed upon the mind of every man by
God. Under the sole guidance of nature all men know that God is
without any acquaintance with the arts or sciences ; and this is divinely
imprinted upon all men s minds. There has never been a people so wild
and cavage that it did not believe that there is some divine power that
created all things. And thus it is that Paul says: "the invisible things
of God from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood
by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead."
Wherefore all the Gentiles knew that there is a God, however much they
were Epicureans, however much they maintained that there is no God.
Did they not confess God s being in that very denial of Him? For no
one can deny that of which he has no knowledge. Wherefore, although
men have all their lives long been occupied in the greatest sins and
crimes and have lived just as though there were no God, yet they have
never been able to cast forth from their minds the conscience that testifies
and afiirms that God is. And although that conscience has been over
borne for a time by evil and perverse opinions, yet it comes back to
convict them in their life s final breath.
144 THE HOLY AS AN A PRIORI CATEGORY
where resistance is offered to the new teaching, it is yet often
noticeably in the face of pressure the other way from the
man s own conscience. Such experiences have been made
known to me by missionaries among the Tibetans and among
African negroes, and it would be interesting to make a collection
of them, both in regard to the general question of the a priori
factors in religion, and especially as throwing light upon the
a priori knowledge of the essential interdependence of the
rational and the non -rational elements in the idea of God.
For this the history of religion is itself an almost unanimous
witness. Incomplete and defective as the process of moralizing
the numina may often have been throughout the wide regions
of primitive religious life, everywhere there are traces of it to
be found. And wherever religion, escaping from its first
crudity of manifestation, has risen to a higher type, this
process of synthesis has in all cases set in and continued
more and more positively. And this is all the more remark
able when one considers at what widely different dates the
imaginative creation of the figures of gods had its rise in
different cases, and under what diverse conditions of race,
natural endowment, and social and political structure its
evolution proceeded. All this points to the existence of
a priori factors universally and necessarily latent in the
human spirit : those, in fact, which we can find directly in
our own religious consciousness, when we, too, like Adeimantos,
naively and spontaneously concur with Socrates saying, as
with an axiom whose truth we have seen for ourselves : God
is single, and true in deed and word.
As the rational elements, following a priori principles, come
together in the historical evolution of religions with the non-
rational, they serve to schematize these. This is true, not
only in general of the relation of the rational aspect of the
holy , taken as a whole, to its non-rational, taken as a whole,
but also in detail of the several constituent elements of the
two aspects. The tremendum, the daunting and repelling
moment of the numinous, is schematized by means of the
rational ideas of justice, moral will, and the exclusion of what
is opposed to morality ; and schematized thus, it becomes the
THE HOLY AS AN A PRIORI CATEGORY 145
holy Wrath of God , which Scripture and Christian preaching
alike proclaim. The fascinans, the attracting and alluring
moment of the numinous, is schematized by means of the
ideas of goodness, mercy, love, and, so schematized, becomes
all that we mean by Grace, that term so rich in import, which
unites with the holy Wrath in a single harmony of contrasts ,
and like it is, from the numinous strain in it, tinged with Mys
ticism. The moment mysteriosum is schematized by the abso
luteness of all rational attributes applied to the Deity. Probably
the correspondence here implied between the mysterious
and the absoluteness of all rational attributes will not appear
at first sight so immediately evident as in the two foregoing
cases, Wrath and Grace. None the less it is a very exact
correspondence. God s rational attributes can be distinguished
from like attributes applied to the created spirit by being not
relative, as tho^e are, but absolute. Human love is relative,
admitting of degrees, and it is the same with human know
ledge and human goodness. God s love and knowledge and
goodness, on the other hand, and all else that can be asserted
of Him in conceptual terms, are formally absolute. The content
of the attributes is the same ; it is an element of form which
marks them apart as attributes of God. But such an element
of form is also the mysterious as such : it is, as we saw on
p. 31, the formal aspect of the wholly other . But to this
plain correspondence of the two things, the mysterious and
the absoluteness of rational attributes, a further one must be
added. Our understanding can only compass the relative.
That which is in contrast absolute, though it may in a sense
be thought, cannot be thought home, thought out ; it is within
the reach of our conceiving, but it is beyond the grasp of our
comprehension. Now, though this does not make what ia
absolute itself genuinely mysterious , as this term was
expounded on p. 28, it does make it a genuine schema of the
mysterious . The absolute exceeds our power to comprehend ;
the mysterious wholly eludes it. The absolute is that which
surpasses the limits of our understanding, not through its
actual qualitative character, for that is familiar to us, but
through its formal character. The mysterious, on the other
L
146 THE HOLY AS AN A PRIORI CATEGORY
hand, is that which lies altogether outside what can be thought,
and is, alike in form, quality, and essence, the utterly and
wholly other . We see, then, that in the case of the moment
of mystery , as well as those of awef ulness and fascina
tion , there is an exact correspondence between the non-
rational element and its rational schema, and one that admits
of development.
By the continual living activity of its non-rational elements
a religion is guarded from passing into rationalism . By
being steeped in and saturated with rational elements it is
guarded from sinking into fanaticism or mere mysticality, or
at least from persisting in these, and is qualified to become a
religion for all civilized humanity. The degree in which
both rational and non-rational elements are jointly present,
united in healthy and lovely harmony, affords a criterion
to measure the relative rank of religions and one, too,
that is specifically religious. Applying this criterion, we
find that Christianity, in this as in other respects, stands
out in complete superiority over all its sister religions.
The lucid edifice of its clear and pure conceptions, feelings,
and experiences is built up on a foundation that goes far
deeper than the rational. Yet the non-rational is only the
basis, the setting, the woof in the fabric, ever preserving for
Christianity its mystical depth, giving religion thereby the
deep undertones and heavy shadows of Mysticism, without
letting it develop into a mere rank growth of mysticality.
And thus Christianity, in the healthily proportioned union of
its elements, assumes an absolutely classical form and dignity,
which is only the more vividly attested in consciousness as we
proceed honestly and without prejudice to set it in its place in
the comparative study of religions. Then we shall recognize
that in Christianity an element of man s spiritual life, which
yet has its analogies in other fields, has for the first time come
to maturity in a supreme and unparalleled way.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE MANIFESTATIONS OF THE HOLY AND THE
FACULTY OF DIVINATION .
IT is one thing merely to believe in a reality beyond the
senses and another to have experience of it also ; it is one
thing to have ideas of the holy and another to become
consciously aware of it as an operative reality, intervening
actively in the phenomenal world. Now it is a fundamental
conviction of all religions, of religion as such, we may say,
that this latter is possible as well as the former. Religion is
convinced not only that the holy and sacred reality is attested
by the inward voice of conscience and the religious conscious
ness, the still, small voice of the Spirit in the heart, by feeling,
presentiment, and longing, but also that it may be directly
encountered in particular occurrences and events, self-revealed
in persons and displayed in actions, in a word, that beside the
inner revelation from the Spirit there is an outward revelation
of the divine nature. Religious language gives the name of
sign to such demonstrative actions and manifestations, in
which holiness stands palpably self-revealed. From the time
of the most primitive religions everything has counted as
a sign that was able to arouse in man the sense of the holy,
to excite the feeling of apprehended sanctity, and stimulate it
into open activity. Of this kind were those factors and circum
stances of which we have already spoken the thing terrible,
sublime, overpowering, or astounding, and in an especial
degree the uncomprehended, mysterious thing, which became
the portent and miracle . But, as we saw, all these were
not signs in the true sense, but opportunities, circumstances,
prompting the religious feeling to awake of itself; and the
L 2
148 THE MANIFESTATIONS OF THE < HOLY
factor promoting this result was found to lie in an element
common to them all, but merely analogous with the holy .
The interpretation of them as actual appearances of the holy
itself in its own nature meant, we saw, a confounding of the
category of holiness with something only outwardly resembling
it : it was not a genuine anamnesis , a genuine recognition of
the holy in its own authentic nature, made manifest in appear
ance. And therefore we find that such false recognitions of
the holy are later rejected and wholly or partly extruded as
inadequate or simply unworthy, so soon as a higher level of
development and a purer religious judgement have been reached.
There is a precisely parallel process in another department of
judgement, that of aesthetic taste. While the taste is still
crude, a feeling or fore-feeling of the beautiful begins to stir,
which must come from an obscure a priori conception of
beauty already present, else it could not occur at all. The
man of crude taste, not being capable of a clear recognition
of authentic beauty, falls into confusion and misapplies this
obscure, dim conception of the beautiful, judging things to be
beautiful which are in fact not beautiful at all. Here, as in
the case of the judgement of holiness, the principle underlying
the erroneous judgement of beauty is one of faint analogy.
Certain elements in the thing wrongly judged to be beautiful
have a closer or remoter analogy to real beauty. And later
here, too, when his taste has been educated, the man rejects
with strong aversion the quasi-beautiful but not really beauti
ful thing and becomes qualified to see and to judge rightly,
i. e. to recognize as beautiful the outward object in which the
beauty of which he has an inward notion and standard
really appears .
Let us call the faculty, of whatever sort it may be, of
genuinely cognizing and recognizing the holy in its appear
ances, the faculty of divination. Does such a faculty exist,
and, if so, what is its nature ?
To the supernaturalistic theory the matter is simple
enough. Divination consists in the fact that a man encounters
an occurrence that is not natural , in the sense of being
inexplicable by the laws of nature. Since it has actually
AND THE FACULTY OF DIVINATION 149
occurred, it must have had a cause ; and, since it has no
1 natural cause, it must (so it is said) have a supernatural
one. This theory of divination is a genuine, solidly rationalist
theory, put together with rigid concepts in a strict demon
strative form and intended as such. And it claims that the
capacity or faculty of divination is the understanding, the
faculty of reflection in concept and demonstration. The
transcendent is here proved as strictly as anything can be
proved, logically from given premisses.
It would be almost superfluous to adduce in detail in oppo
sition to this view the argument that we have no possibility
of establishing that an event did not arise from natural causes
or was in conflict with the laws of nature. The religious con
sciousness itself rises against this desiccation and materializa
tion of what in all religion is surely the most tender and
living moment, the actual discovery of and encounter with very
deity. Here, if anywhere, coercion by proof and demonstra
tion and the mistaken application of logical and juridical pro
cesses should be excluded ; here, if anywhere, should be liberty,
the unconstrained recognition and inward acknowledgement
that comes from deep within the soul, stirred spontaneously,
apart from all conceptual theory. If not natural science or
metaphysics , at least the matured religious consciousness
itself spurns such ponderously solid intellectualistic explana
tions. They are born of rationalism and engender it again ;
and, as for genuine divination , they not only impede
it, but despise it as extravagant emotionalism, mysticality,
and false romanticism. Genuine divination, in short, has
nothing whatever to do with natural law and the relation
or lack of relation to it of something experienced. It is not
concerned at all with the way in which a phenomenon be it
event, person, or thing came into existence, but with what it
mean*, that is, with its significance as a sign of the holy.
The faculty or capacity of divination appears in the lan
guage of dogma hidden beneath the fine name testimonium
Spiritus Sancti internum , the inner witness of the Holy Spirit
limited, in the case of dogma, to the recognition of Scripture
as Holy . And this name is the only right one, and right in
150 THE MANIFESTATIONS OF THE HOLY
a more than figurative sense, when the capacity of divination
is itself grasped and appraised by divination. This is not
our task here. We therefore employ a psychological rather
than a religious ｅxpression as being more appropriate to the
nature of our discussion.
In this sense, then, divination is no new theological
discovery. Schleiermacher, in his Discourses upon Religion
(1799), Jacob Friedrich Fries, in his doctrine of Ahndung
( inkling , surmise, presage), and Schleiermacher s colleague
and Fries s pupil, De Wette, have all in effect made use of it
and given it a footing in theology, the last-named with special
reference to the divination of the divine in history, under the
name Surmise of the divine government of the world . I
have discussed Schleiermacher s discovery at greater length in
my edition of his Discourses, 1 and in my volume, Kantisch-
Fries sche Religionsphilosophie und ihre Anwendung auf die
Theologie, I have given a more precise statement of the
Ahndung theory, as it is found in Fries and De Wette.
To these two works the reader is referred for a more detailed
exposition of the matter, and I shall here note only very
briefly the more salient features of this doctrine.
What Schleiermacher is feeling after is really the faculty or
capacity of deeply absorbed contemplation, when confronted
by the vast, living totality and reality of things as it is in
nature and history. Wherever a mind is exposed in a spirit
of absorbed submission to impressions of the universe , it
becomes capable so he lays it down of experiencing intui
tions and feelings (Anschauungen and Gefuhle) of something
that is, as it were, a sheer overplus, in addition to empirical
reality. This overplus, while it cannot be apprehended by
mere theoretic cognition of the world and the cosmic system
in the form it assumes for science, can nevertheless be really
and truly grasped and experienced in intuition, and is given
form in single intuitions . And these, in turn, assume
shape in definite statements and propositions, capable of a
certain groping formulation, which are not without analogy
1 Schleierraacher s Vber die Religion. Vandenboeck & Ruprecht,
Gottingen, pp. 17 ft .
AND THE FACULTY OF DIVINATION 151
with theoretic propositions, but are to be clearly distin
guished from them by their free and merely felt, not reasoned,
character. In themselves they are groping intimations of
meanings figuratively apprehended. They cannot be em
ployed as statements of doctrine in the strict sense, and
can neither bo built into a system nor used as premisses
for theoretical conclusions. But, though these intuitions are
limited and inadequate, they are none the less indisputably
true, i. e. true as far as they go ; and for all Schleiermacher s
aversion to the word in this connexion they must certainly be
termed cognitions, modes of knowing, though, of course, not
the product of reflection, but the intuitive outcome of feeling.
Their import is the glimpse of an Eternal, in and beyond the
temporal and penetrating it, the apprehension of a ground and
meaning of things in and beyond the empirical and transcend
ing it. They are surmises or inklings of a Reality fraught
with mystery and momentousness. And it is to be noted that
Schleiermacher himself sometimes avails himself of the term
tahnden (divining, surmise) instead of his principal ones,
intuition and feeling , and expressly connects together the
divination of prophecy and the knowledge of miracle in the
religious sense of a sign .
When Schleiermacher, in expounding the nature of the
experience, tries to elucidate its object by giving examples, he
is for the most part led to adduce impressions of a higher
TAo9, an ultimate, mysterious, cosmic purposiveness, of which
we have a prescient intimation. Here he is quite in agree
ment with the exposition of Fries, who defines the faculty of
1 Ahnduiig as being just a faculty of divining the objective
teleology of the world. And De Wette says the same thing
even more unreservedly. But in Schleiermacher this rational
element is none the less grounded in eternal mystery, that
basis of the cosmos that goes beyond reason. This is shown
in the groping, hesitant, tentative manner in which the mean
ing of the experience always reveals itself. And it is
emphasized especially forcibly when Schleiermacher shows
where in his own case this experience is to be found in the
world he confronts; that it is not so much in its universal
152 THE MANIFESTATIONS OF THE HOLY
conformity to law a rational quality, interpretable by the
intellect in terms of purpose but rather by means of what
appears to us as a baffling exception to law, thereby hinting
at a meaning that eludes our understanding. 1
No intellectual, dialectical dissection or justification of such
intuition is possible, nor indeed should any be attempted, for
the essence most peculiar to it would only be destroyed
thereby. Rather it is once again to aesthetic judgements we
must look for the plainest analogy to it. And the faculty of
judging (Urteilsvermogen), here presupposed by Schleiermacher,
certainly belongs to that Judgement (Urteilskraft), which
Kant analyses in his Third Critique, and which he himself sets
as aesthetic judgement in antithesis to logical judgement.
Only, we may not infer from this that the particular several
judgements passed in this way need be judgements of taste
in their content. Kant s distinction between the aesthetic
and logical judgement did not mean to imply that the faculty
of aesthetic judgement was a judgement upon aesthetic
objects in the special narrow sense of the term aesthetic , as
being concerned with the beautiful. His primary intention
is simply and in general terms to separate the faculty of judge
ment based upon feeling of whatever sort from that of
the understanding, from discursive, conceptual thought and
inference ; and his term aesthetic is simply meant to mark
as the peculiarity of the former that, in contrast to logical
judgement, it is not worked out in accordance with a clear
intellectual scheme, but in conformity to obscure, dim princi
ples which must be felt and cannot be stated explicitly as
premisses. Kant employs sometimes another ｅxpression also
to denote such obscure, dim principles of judgement, based on
pure feeling, viz. the phrase not-unfolded or unexplicated
concepts ( unausgewickelte Begriffe ); and his meaning is
here exactly that of the poet, when he says:
Und wecket der dunklen Gefiihle Gewalt,
Die im Herzen wunderbar schliefen. 2
1 Op. cit., p. 53.
1 It waketh the power of feelings obscure
That in the heart wondrously slumbered/
(SCHILLER: Der Graf von Habsburg.)
AND THE FACULTY OF DIVINATION 153
Or again :
Was von Menschen nicht gewusst
Oder nicht bedacht,
Durch das Labyrinth der Brust
Wandelt bei der Nacht. 1
On the other hand, those judgements that spring from pure
contemplative feeling also resemble judgements of aesthetic
taste in claiming, like them, objective validity, universality,
and necessity. The apparently subjective and personal char
acter of the judgement of taste, expressed in the maxim : De
gustibus non disputandum , simply amounts to this, that
tastes of different degrees of culture and maturity are first
compared, then so opposed one to the other that agreement is
impossible. But unanimity, even in judgements of taste, grows
and strengthens in the measure in which the taste matures
with exercise ; so that even here, despite the proverb, there is
the possibility of taste being expounded and taught, the
possibility of a continually improving appreciation, of con-
vincement and conviction. And if this is true of the judgement
arising from aesthetic feeling in the narrower sense, it is at least
equally true of the judgement arising from contemplation .
Where, on the basis of a real talent in this direction, contempla
tion grows by careful exercise in depth and inwardness, there
what one man feels can be expounded and brought to con
sciousness in another : one man can both educate himself to
a genuine and true manner of feeling and be the means of
bringing others to the same point ; and that is what corre
sponds in the domain of contemplation to the part played
by argument and persuasion in that of logical conviction.
Schleiermacher s exposition of his great discovery suffers
from two defects. We will consider one of them here, leaving
the other to the next chapter. Schleiermacher, then, naively
and unreflectingly assumes this faculty or capacity of divi
nation to be a universal one. In point of fact it is not
1 What beyond our conscious knowing
Or our thought*! extremist span
Threads by nijjht the labyrinthine
Pathways of the breast of man.
(GoETHE : An den Alond.)
154 THE MANIFESTATIONS OF THE HOLY
universal if this means that it could be presupposed necessarily
in every man of religious conviction as an actual fact, though
of course Schleiermacher is quite right in counting it among
the general capacities of mind and spirit, and regarding it
indeed as the deepest and most peculiar element in mind, and
in that sense man being defined by his intelligent mind-
calling it a universal human element. But what is a
universal potentiality of man as such is by no means to be
found in actuality the universal possession of every single
man ; very frequently it is only disclosed as a special endow
ment and equipment of particular gifted individuals. And
Schleiermacher gives an excellent indication of how the matter
rightly lies in his very interesting exposition of the nature and
function of the M ittler (mediator) in his first Discourse .
Not Man in general (as rationalism holds), but only special
divinatory natures possess the faculty of divination in
actuality ; and it is these that receive impressions of the
transcendent, not the undifferentiated aggregate of homo
geneous individuals in mutual interplay, as held by modern
social psychology. 1
It is questionable whether Schleiermacher himself, in spite
of his (re-)discovery of divination , was a really divinatory
nature, although in his first Discourse he maintains that he
is. one of his contemporaries, to wit, Goethe, was at any
rate decidedly his superior in this respect. In Goethe s life
the power of divination, not latent but finding vital exercise,
plays an important part, and it finds singular ｅxpression in
the meaning he gives to the term daemonic , put with such
emphasis in Dichtung und Wahrheit, Book 20, and in his
Talks with Eckermann. 2 Let us briefly examine these. The
most characteristic feature in his notion of the daemonic is
1 And this is undoubtedly true as far back as the lowest levels of
development, when the religious dread first begins to stir in primitive
form and to manifest itself in ideas. To derive these from an original
group- and mass-fantasy collectively operating is itself sheer fantasy, and
the results this theory helps to produce are about as queer and grotesque
as any of the ideas of which it treats.
2 Cf. Goethe s Samtliche Werke, ed. Gotta, vol. xxv, pp. 124 ff. ; Ecker
mann, Gesprache mit Goethe, ed. A. v. d. Linden, Part II, pp. 140 ff.
AND THE FACULTY OF DIVINATION 155
that it goes beyond all conceiving , surpasses understand
ing and reason , and consequently is inapprehensible and
cannot properly be put into a statement :
1 The Daemonic is that which cannot be accounted for by
understanding and reason. It chooses for itself obscure times
of darkness. ... In a plain, prosaic town like Berlin it would
hardly n nd an opportunity to manifest itself. ... In Poetry
there is from first to last something daemonic, and especially
in its unconscious appeal, for which all intellect and reason is
insufficient, and which, therefore, has an efficacy beyond all
concepts. Such is the effect in Music in the highest degree,
for Music stands too high for any understanding to reach,
and an all-mustering eilicacy goes forth from it, of which how
ever no man is able to give an account. Religious worship
cannot therefore do without music. It is one of the foremost
means to work upon men with an effect of marvel.
Does not the daemonic (asks Eckermann) also appear in
event* 1 Pre-eminently so, said Goethe, and assuredly in
all which we cannot explain by intellect or reason. And
in general it is manifested throughout nature, visible and
invisible, in the most diverse ways. Many creatures in the
animal kingdom are of a wholly daemonic kind, and in many
we see some aspect of the daemonic operative.
We notice here how the elements of the numinous we
discovered plainly recur: the wholly non-rational, incom
prehensible by concepts, the elements of mystery, fascination,
awefulness, and energy. The note of the daemonic in
the animal kingdom reminds us of Job and the leviathan .
But in another respect Goethe s intuition falls far short of Job s
intuition of the mysterium . By his ignoring of the warn
ing of the book of Job and by applying to the mysterium
the standards of the rational understanding and reason and
conceptions of human purpose, the non-rational comes to
involve for Goethe a contradiction between meaning and mean-
inglessness, sense and nonsense, that which promotes and
that which frustrates human ends. Sometimes, however, he
approximates it to wisdom t as when he says :
So there was something daemonic governing the circum
stances of my acquaintance with Schiller all through. We
might have met earlier or later. But that we should have
156 THE MANIFESTATIONS OF THE HOLY
met just at the time when I had my Italian tour behind me
and Schiller had begun to weary of his philosophical specula
tions that was a fact of great significance and fraught with
success for both of us.
It even comes near the divine :
Such occurrences have often befallen me throughout my
life. And one comes in such cases to believe in a higher
influence (Einwirkung), something daemonic, to which one
pays adoration, without presuming to try to explain it
lurther.
Invariably the daemonic has an import of energy and
overpoweringness , and sets its stamp upon men of vehement
and overpowering personality.
Napoleon , said I, seems to have been a daemonic sort of
man.
* He was so absolutely and to such a degree , said Goethe,
that hardly any other man can be compared with him in this
respect. The late Grand Duke also was a daemonic nature,
full of limitless, active force and restlessness.
Has not Mephistopheles also " daemonic " traits?
No, he is much too negative a being. The daemonic
manifests itself in a downright positive and active power.
In Dichtung und Wahrheit (p. 126) he delineates still better
the impressions such numinous persons make, and in this
passage especially sets in the foreground our tremendum as
the element alike of dread and overpoweringness .
This daemonic character appears in its most dreadful form
when it stands out dominatingly in some man. Such are not
always the most remarkable men, either in spiritual quality
or natural talents, and they seldom have any goodness of
heart to recommend them. 1 But an incredible force goes
forth from them and they exercise an incredible power over
all creatures, nay, perhaps even over the elements. And who
can say how far such an influence may not extend ?
But the efficacy and influence of such a daemonic man,
even when it is beneficent, moves to amazement rather than
to admiration ; it is more a tumultuous urgency than ordinary
agency, and is at any rate absolutely non-rational. This is
1 i. e. they are merely numinous , not holy men.
AND THE FACULTY OF DIVINATION 157
what Goethe tries to describe in the series of antitheses in
Dichtung uiid Wahrheit (p. 124):
. . . Something that only manifested itself in contradictions
and therefore could not be comprehended under any concept,
still less under any one word. It was not divine, for it seemed
unreasonable; not human, for it lacked understanding; not
devilish, for it was beneficent ; not angelic, for it often dis
played malicious joy. It was like chance, for it pointed to no
consequence ; it resembled providence, for it indicated con
nexion and unity. All that hems us in seemed penetrable to
it ; it seemed to dispose at will of the inevitable elements of
our being, contracting time and expanding space. only in
the impossible did it seem at home, and the possible it spurned
from itself with contempt.
Although this daemonic thing can be manifested in every
thing corporeal and incorporeal, finding indeed most notable
ｅxpression among animals, still it is pre-eminently with men
that it stands in closest and most wonderful connexion, and
there fashions a power which, if not opposed to the moral
world order, yet intersects it in such a way that the one
might be taken for the warp and the other for the woof.
There can be no clearer ｅxpression than this of the pro
digiously strong impression which divination of the numinous
may make upon the mind, and that obviously not on a
single occasion but repeatedly, till it has become almost
a matter of habit. But at the same time this divina
tion of Goethe is not one that apprehends the numinous as
the prophet does. It does not rise to the elevation of the
experience of Job, where the non-rational mystery is at the
same time experienced and extolled as supra-rational, as of
profoundest value, and as holiness in its own right. It is
rather the fruit of a mind which, for all its depth, was not
equal to such profundities as these, and to which, therefore,
the non-rational counterpoint to the melody of life could only
sound in confused consonance, not in its authentic harmony,
indefinable but palpable. Therefore, though it is genuine
divination, it is the divination of Goethe the pagan , as he
sometimes used to call himself. Indeed, it is a divination that
functions only at the level of the daemonic which, as we
saw, precedes religion proper, not at the level of the divine
158 THE HOLY AND DIVINATION
and the holy in the truest sense ; and it shows very clearly how
that sort of merely daemonic experience of the numinous
may in a highly cultivated mind only stir emotional reactions
of bewilderment and bedazzlement, without giving real light
or warmth to the soul. Goethe did not understand how to
adjust this divination of the daemonic to his own higher
conception of the divine; and, when Eckermann turned the
conversation to that, his answer was hesitating and evasive :
* The operative, efficacious force (said I tentatively), which
we call the daemonic", does not seem to fit in with the idea
of the divine/ Dear boy, said Goethe, what do we know
of the idea of the divine, and what can our narrow conceptions
presume to tell of the Supreme Being ? If I called him by a
hundred names, like a Turk, I should yet fall short and have
said nothing in comparison to the boundlessness of his attri
butes.
But, if we leave out of account the comparatively low level
of Goethe s divination , we have yet in it a most exact
example of what Schleiermacher had in mind. These are
* intuitions and feelings , if not of something divine, still of
something numinous in the natural world and in history, and
intuitions brought to the higher vitality by an individual with
an innate * divinatory gift. At the same time the principles
on which this divination works cannot even be suggested, for
all the examples Goethe may give. What does the daemonic
really consist in ? How does he come to be conscious of it ?
How does he identify it as one and the same through all the
manifold and contradictory forms in which it manifests itself?
These are the questions to which Goethe can suggest no answer.
It is evident that in this experience he is being guided by
mere feeling , that is, by an a priori principle that is not
explicit and overt, but dim and obscure.
CHAPTER XIX
DIVINATION IN PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY
IN the last chapter we spoke of two defects in Schleier-
macher s doctrine of divination. The first of these his
misleading assumption that this is a universal human faculty
has already been considered, and we have now to turn to
the second. This is that, though Schleiermacher s description
of divination in relation to the world of nature and history
has both warmth and insight, he gives no clear detailed
account, but only the scantiest hints, of what is after all its
worthiest object and the object most propitious to its develop
ment, namely, the history of religion, especially that of the
Bible and its culmination in the person of Christ himself. His
concluding discourse makes emphatic and significant mention
of Christianity and Christ, but Christ is here only introduced as
the supreme divining subject, not as the object of divination par
excellence. And it is the same in Schleiermacher s Glaubens-
lehre . In this, too, the significance of Christ is, essentially,
intended to be fully given in the fact that he admits us into
the power and beatitude of his consciousness of God . Now
this is a thought of hi^rh value, but it does not attain to that
o o
supreme value which Christianity imputes to Christ, of being
in his own person holiness made manifest , that is, a person
in whose being, life, and mode of living we realize of ourselves
by intuition and feeling the self-revealing power and pre
sence of the Godhead. For to the Christian it is a momentous
question whether or no a real divination a direct, first-hand
apprehension of holiness manifested, the intuition and * feel
ing of it can be got from the person and life of Christ ;
whether, in short, * the holy can be independently experienced
in him, making him a real revelation of it.
160 DIVINATION IN PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY
In this matter we can obviously get no help from the pain
ful and fundamentally impossible inquiries, so often started*
into Jesus consciousness of himself . They are impossible, if
for no other reason, because the evidence at our disposal is
neither sufficient in quantity nor appropriate to such a purpose.
Jesus puts as the content of his message and all his utterances,
not himself, but the kingdom , its beatitude and righteous
ness, and, in its first and most straightforward interpretation,
the gospel is the good tidings of the kingdom of God.
What statements about himself do occur are fragmentary and
incidental But even were this not the case, even if we could
find in the gospels a detailed theory of Jesus as to his own
nature, what would this prove ? Religious enthusiasts have
not infrequently had recourse to the most exalted modes of
self -proclamation, and often enough no doubt their statements
about themselves have been completely bona fide and sincere.
And it is just such self-revealing statements of the prophets of
all ages that are more than any others dependent for their form
upon their temporal or local context, the equipment of myth
or dogma with which his environment supplies the speaker.
The fact that the prophet or seer or inspired teacher applies
all this material to state something about himself merely
demonstrates the intensity of his self-consciousness, his sense
of mission, his conviction, and his claim to belief and obedi
ence all of which are to be taken for granted where a man
stands forward in response to an inner call. The immediate,
intuitive divination of which we are speaking would indeed
not come as a result of such statements by the prophet
about himself, however complete ; they can arouse a belief in
his authority, but cannot bring about the peculiar experience
of spontaneous insight that here is something holy made
manifest. * We have heard him ourselves and know that this
is indeed the Christ (St. John iv. 42).
It cannot now be doubted that such an avowal was made to
him as a result of a spontaneous, original divination. This must
at any rate be true of Christ s own first disciples. Otherwise
it would be unintelligible how the Church could have come
into existence at all. Mere proclamation, mere authoritative
DIVINATION IN PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY 161
statement, cannot bring about these massive certainties and
that impelling strength, that power to maintain and assert
itself, which were necessary if the Christian community was
to come into being and which can be recognized in it as its
unmistakable characteristics.
Misapprehension of this is only possible if, attempting a
one-sided approach to the phenomenon of the origin of the
Christian Church, we try to reconstruct the facts solely by
the methods of scholarship and out of the material afforded by
the staled feelings and blunted sensibility of our present-day
artificial civilization and complex mentality. It would be an
advantage if, in addition to these methods, an attempt were
made to frame a less abstract intuition of the genesis of
original and genuine religious communities with the aid of
living instances of the thing as it may still be found to-day.
It would be necessary for this to seek places and moments
at which even to-day religion shows itself alive as a naive
*/ t5
emotional force, with all its primal quality of impulse and
instinct. This can still be studied in remote corners of the
Mohammedan and Indian world. Even to-day one may come
upon scenes in the streets of Mogador or Marrakesh, which
have the strangest outward resemblance to those recorded by
the Synoptic Gospels : holy men (and very queer specimens
they generally are !) now and then make their appearance,
each the centre of a group of disciples, and about them the people
come and go, listening to their sayings, looking at their miracles,
observing how they live and what they do. Bands of adherents
gather round them, more loosely or more closely united as the
case may be. Logia , tales, and legends form and accumulate ; l
new brotherhoods arise or, if already arisen, extend in widen-
1 It is astonishing that the main problem of Gospel criticism, viz. how
the collection of* Logia arose, is not studied in this still living milieu.
It is even more astonishing that the logia-series were not long ago
elucidated from the closely corresponding milieu of the Sayings of the
Fathers (airotyiypara TW irarfpw), from the Hadith of Muhammed, or
from the Franciscan legends. And a particular striking case of the same
thing is the collection of the Logia of Kama-Krishna, which has grown
to completion in our own day and under our very eyes.
M
162 DIVINATION IN PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY
ing circles. But the centre of it all is always the man himself,
a holy man in his lifetime, and what sustains the movement
is always the peculiar power of his personality, the special
impression he makes on the bystander. Those who should know
assure us that ninety-eight per cent, of these * holy men are
impostors ; but, even so, we are left with two per cent, who are
not, a surprisingly high percentage in the case of a matter that
invites and facilitates imposture as much as this does. The
consideration of this remaining two per cent, should continue to
throw much light on the actual fact of the genesis of a reli
gious community. The point is that the holy man or the
prophet is from the outset, as regards the experience of the
circle of his devotees, something more than a mere man
(^iXoy avQpto-rros). He is the being of wonder and mystery,
who somehow or other is felt to belong to the higher order of
things, to the side of the numen itself. It is not that he
himself teaches that he is such, but that he is experienced as
such. And it is only such experiences, which, while they may
be crude enough and result often enough in self-deception,
must at least be profoundly and strongly felt, that can give
rise to religious communities.
Such cases of contemporary religious movements afford
after all a very inadequate analogy, far removed from that
which occurred long ago in Palestine. Yet, if even these move
ments are only made possible by the fact that men actually
experience, or presume that they experience, veritable holiness
in the personalities of individuals, how far more true must
this not be of the early Christian community ! That this was
so is attested directly by the whole spirit and the universal
conviction of the early communities as a whole, so far as we
can discern it in their modest records. And certain of the
slighter touches in the Synoptic portrait of Jesus confirm the
fact expressly in particular cases. We may instance here the
narratives already referred to of Peter s haul of fishes (Luke
v. 8), and of the centurion of Capernaum (Matt. viii. 8 ; Luke
vii. 6), which point to spontaneous responses of feeling when the
holy is directly encountered in experience. Especially apt in
this connexion is the passage in Mark x. 32 : KCU T)V
DIVINATION IN PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY 163
airrovs 6 Irjaovs KCLI tQanftovvTO, ot 5e a.Ko\ov6ovi>T? </>o-
/SoOi ro ( and Jesus went before them: and they were amazed ;
and as they followed, they were afraid ). This passage
renders with supreme simplicity and force the immediate
impression of the numinous that issued from the man
Jesus, and no artistry of characterization could do it so
powerfully as these few masterly and pregnant words. The
later saying in John xx. 28 (the confession of Thomas, My
Lord and my God ) may perhaps appear to us by contrast
the utterance of a time too far-reaching in its formulations, and
very far removed from the simplicity of the original experi
ence of the disciples. And this passage in Mark may appeal
to us all the more just because the living emotion here dis
dains any precise formulation at all ; none the less does it
contain the real roots of all later developments of Christology.
Such intimations of the numinous impression made by Jesus
upon those who knew him occur in the Gospel narrative only,
as it were, incidentally to the main purpose of the narrator,
who is scarcely interested in them, but absorbed rather in
miracle- or other records. In our eyes their interest is all the
greater, and we can fancy how numerous similar experiences
must have been of which no trace survives in the records, just
because there was no miracle to be told of in connexion with
them and they were simply taken for granted by the narrator
as a matter of course.
To this place belong further the belief in Jesus supremacy
over the demonic world and the tendency to legend that began
to take effect from the start; the fact that his own relatives
take him for a man possessed , an involuntary acknowledge
ment of the numinous impression he made upon them ; and
in an especial degree the conviction that breaks spontaneously
upon the minds of his disciples as by a sudden impact, won not
from his teaching but from the very experience of him, that
he is the Messiah the bein^r who stood for the circle in
o
which he moved as the numinous being par excellence. The
experiential character of this belief in his Messiahship stands
out clearly in Peter s first confession and Jesus answer to
it (Matt. xvi. 15-17), Flesh and blood have not revealed it
M 2
164 DIVINATION IN PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY
unto thee, but my Father, which is in heaven. Jesus himself
is astonished at Peter s confession, which shows that this was
not learnt on authority, but found out by Peter himself, a
genuine discovery, arising from the impression Jesus made
upon him and the testimony borne to it in the depth of the
mind, where no teaching of flesh and blood, or even of the
word , can avail, but only my Father in heaven himself and
without any intermediary.
For this factor the mind s own witness to the impression
is, it need hardly be said, an indispensable one. Without it
all impression is without effect, or rather no impression
could occur at all. Therefore, all doctrines of the c impression
made by Christ are inadequate if they do not pay regard to this
second element, which indeed is nothing but the mental pre
disposition necessary for the experience of holiness, to wit, the
category of the holy, potentially present in the spirit as a dim
or obscure a priori cognition. Impress or impression ,
that is, presupposes something capable of receiving impres
sions, and that is just what the mind is not, if in itself it is
only a tabula rasa . In that richer sense in which we use the
word here, we do not in fact mean by impression merely the
impression which, in the theory of the Sensationalist school,
is the psychical result of sense-perception and is left behind as
a psychical trace or vestige of the percept. To be impressed by
some one, in the sense we use the term here, means rather to
cognize or recognize in him a peculiar significance and to
humble oneself before it. And we maintain that this is only
possible by an element of cognition, comprehension, and valua
tion in one s own inner consciousness, that goes out to meet
the outward presented fact, i. e. by the spirit within . In
Schleiermacher s language the presentiment goes out to meet
the revelation to which it belongs. Music can only be under
stood by the musical person ; none but he receives an impres
sion of it. And to every unique kind of real impression
corresponds in the same way a unique and special sort of con
geniality , if the word may be used in this special sense of
a particular disposition or aptitude, akin to the object
arousing the impression. Nemo audit verbum, nisi spiritu
DIVINATION IN PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY 165
intus docente. l once again let us recall the example of the
beautiful. A beautiful thing can only make an impression
as such, i. e. as signifying beauty, if and in so far as a man
possesses in himself a priori the potentiality of framing a
special standard of valuation, viz. aesthetic valuation. Such
a disposition can only be understood as an original, obscure
awareness and appreciation of the value of beauty itself.
Because a man has this in him, or better, because he is capable
of realizing it by training, he is able to recognize beauty in
the particular given beautiful object that he encounters, to
feel the correspondence of this object with the hidden standard
of value within him. And so, and only so, will he get an
1 impression .
1 Cf. Luther s remark that only he who is verbo conformis under
stands the Word, and cf. Augustine, Confessions, x. 6, 20.
CHAPTER XX
DIVINATION IN CHRISTIANITY TO-DAY
THE question whether the primitive Church did or could
experience holiness in the person of Christ, which we can but
answer in the affirmative, is not so important to us as the
question whether we too to-day can still do so. Has the
portrayal of Christ s life, his actions and achievement, as pre
served and handed down by the Christian Church, the value and
power of a revelation for us to-day, or do we in this matter but
live upon the inheritance bequeathed us by the first community
of Christians and base our faith on the authority and testimony
of others ? There would be no hope of answering this question,
were it not that in us too that inner divining power of appre
hension and interpretation which has already been considered
may find a place that witness of the spirit, only possible on the
basis of a mental predisposition to recognize the holy * and to
respond to it. If without this no understanding and no impres
sion of Christ was possible even to the first disciples, of what
avail should any tradition be that requires the mediation of
generations of Christian men? But if we may make this assump
tion of a predisposing inner witness of the Spirit as we must
the matter is very different. In that case there is no harm
even in the fact that the records of Christ s life are fragmentary,
that they contain manifold uncertainties, that they are inter
mingled with legendary and overlaid with Hellenistic elements.
For the Spirit knows and recognizes what is of the Spirit.
As evidence of the way in which this inward principle
this co-witnessing spirit within us works, prompting, inter
preting, and sending out intimation and surmise, I have found
the information of a keenly observant missionary from a
remote field very instructive. He told me that he had found
it a constant matter for fresh astonishment to see how a pre-
DIVINATION IN CHRISTIANITY TO-DAY 167
sentment of the Word so inadequate which could only hint
at its meaning in a difficult foreign tongue and had to work
with alien conceptions could yet at times win so surprisingly
deep and inward an acceptance. And he said that here too
the best results always were due to the responsive apprehen
sion that came out of the hearer s heart half-way to meet the
presented truth. Certainly it is only in this fact that we have
a clue to the understanding of the problem of St. Paul. Perse
cutor of the Church as he was, the intimations he had of the
being and meaning of Christ and his Gospel must have come
to him piecemeal, in fragmentary hints and caricature. But
the spirit from within forced upon him the acknowledgement
to which he succumbed on the way to Damascus. It taught
him that infinitely profound understanding of the Christ made
manifest which has led a critic like Wellhausen to confess
that, when all is said, no man has understood Christ himself
so deeply and thoroughly as Paul.
If, no\v, the experience of holiness and the holy in Christ
is still to be possible and so afford support to our faith, one
thing is evidently to be presupposed at the outset, namely,
that his own most immediate and primary achievement and
intention can be directly understood and appraised in our
experience, so that out of this may grow the impression of
his holiness with a like directness. And here a difficulty
seems to confront us, which has to be removed if the entire
problem is not to be barred from the start. It is this : is that
which we to-day think we find in the person of Christ and in
Christianity at bottom at all the same as that which he really
intended to achieve and that which the first community of his
disciples found in him? In other words, has Christianity
really a principle of its own, which, however capable of
historical evolution, yet remains unchanged in essence, so that
the Christianity of to-day may be measured against the faith
of the first disciples and awarded a rank essentially the
same ?
Is Christianity at all and in a strict sense Jesus religion ?
That is, is the religion we know to-day as Christianity, with
its peculiar and unique content of belief and feeling, standing
168 DIVINATION IN CHRISTIANITY TO-DAY
in all its historic greatness and supremacy when measured
against other religions, with all its power to-day over the
hearts and consciences of men to elevate or to excite, to launch
accusation or confer benediction, to attract or to repel is this
religion still in its essence and inner meaning the same thing
as the simple, unpretentious religion and form of piety which
Jesus himself had, which he himself aroused and founded
in the circle of those little, heart-stirred bands of men in
that out-of-the-way corner of the world, Galilee ? It must be
generally agreed that it has at least changed its form and its
colour very significantly since those days, and that it has been
exposed to violent alterations and metamorphoses. But is
there any abiding essence, any enduring principle at all
behind all the sequence of its manifestations, susceptible of
evolution and development, but remaining one and the same
throughout 1 ? Is it a case of development and evolution, or
rather merely of continual transmutation, the influx of some
thing quite different, which one man laments as a perversion,
a second admires as a welcome substitution, and a third
merely records as a simple historical fact ?
Christianity, as it stands before us to-day in present
actuality as a great world religion , is indubitably, so far as
its claim and promise go, in the first and truest sense a reli
gion of Redemption. Its characteristic ideas to-day are
Salvation overabounding salvation, deliverance from and
conquest of the world and from existence in bondage to the
world, and even from creaturehood as such, the overcoming of
the remoteness of and enmity to God, redemption from servi
tude to sin and the guilt of sin, reconciliation and atonement,
and, in consequence, grace and all the doctrine of grace, the
Spirit and the bestowal of the Spirit, the new birth and the
new creature. These conceptions are common to Christendom,
despite the manifold cleavages that divide it into different
confessions, churches, and sects, and they characterize it
sharply and definitely as a religion of redemption par excel
lence, setting it in this respect on a level with the great reli
gions of the East, with their sharp, dualistic antithesis of the
state of liberation and bondage, nay, justifying its claim not to
DIVINATION IN CHRISTIANITY TO-DAY 169
fall short of these in regard to the necessity of redemption
and the grant of salvation, but to surpass them, both in the
importance it gives to these conceptions and in the richness of
meaning it finds in them. It cannot be doubted that here, in
these elements, is to be found the inner principle and essence
of contemporary Christianity to-day, and what we have to ask
is whether the wealth of mental and emotional content was in
very truth the principle of that plain religion of Jesus long
a^o, whose establishment must be termed the first and most
O
immediate achievement of Christ.
In answering this question in the affirmative, we would
point to a parable which, intended to have reference to the
kingdom of God, fits the principle of Christianity equally well:
the parable of the grain of mustard seed and the tree that
grew therefrom. This parable hints at a change and altera
tion, for the grown tree is something different from the seed,
but an alteration that is no transformation, no transmutation
or epigenesis , but genuine evolution or development, the
transition from potentiality to actuality.
The religion of Jesus does not change gradually into
a religion of redemption ; it is in its whole design and ten
dency a religion of redemption from its earliest commencement,
and that in the most uncompromising sense. Though it lacks
the theological terms which the Church later possessed, its
redemptive character is manifest and unambiguous. If we
try to determine as simply and concisely as possible what
really characterized the message of Jesus, ignoring what was
historically inessential, we are left with two central elements :
(1) First, there is the proclamation of the kingdom of God, as no
mere accessory, but the foundation of the whole Gospel. This
is characteristic of His ministry from the beginning and
throughout its course. (2) Second, there is the reaction against
Phariseeism, and, in connexion with this, Jesus ideal of godli
ness as the attitude and mind of a child when its fault has
been forgiven. But both points comprise in principle every
thing which later became separately formulated in the specifi
cally redemptive doctrines of Christianity : Grace, Election,
the Holy Ghost, and Renewal by the Spirit. These were
170 DIVINATION IN CHRISTIANITY TO-DAY
possessed by and experienced by that first group of disciples
as truly as by any later Christians, though in an implicit
form. A closer consideration may make this more plain.
To speak of a religion of redemption is, one may say, to
be guilty of a redundancy, at any rate if we are considering
the more highly developed forms of religion. For every such
religion, when once it has won its autonomy and freed itself
from dependent reference to an ideal of merely worldly wel
fare (f^Saifjiovia), whether private or public, develops in
itself unique and overabounding ideals of beatitude which
may be designated by the general term salvation . Such a
salvation is the goal to which the evolution of Indian reli
gions has tended ever more markedly and consciously, from
their beginning with the notion of deification of theUpanishad-
Pantheism on to the bliss-state of the Buddhist Nirvana,
which, as we have seen (p. 39), is negative only in appearance.
It is also the goal of the religions of redemption , specifically so
called, which spread with such vigour over the civilized world
from Egypt, Syria, and Asia Minor about the beginning of
our era. Further, it is obvious to an examination sharpened
by the comparative study of religions that the same tendency
to salvation is operative also in the vesture of eschatology
that gives form to the religion of Persia. Islam, too, embodies
the longing for and the experience of salvation. In this
case salvation is not simply in the hope of the joys of
Paradise : rather the most vital element in Islam is Islam
itself, i. e. that surrender to Allah which is not merely the
dedication of the will to him, but also at the same time the
entering upon the Allah state of mind here and now,
the object of longing and striving, a frame of mind which is
already salvation , and which may possess and enrapture
the man like an intoxication and can give rise to a mystic
transport of bliss.
But if the idea of salvation thus lies at the base of all
higher religion everywhere, it is manifested quite unmistakably
and in supreme fashion, both in intensity and intrinsic purity,
in the Kingdom of Heaven of Christianity, which is at once
a tenet of faith, an object of desire, and a present experience.
DIVINATION IN CHRISTIANITY TO-DAY 171
It is quite immaterial whether this thought in ancient Israel
issued from purely political considerations, only gradually
rising above the ground of mere fact, till it finally was exalted
to a transcendent meaning, or whether there were from the
first authentic religious motives at work to shape and develop
it. All this is beside the point, inasmuch as the materials by
which the religious impulse works are very frequently at first
of an unspiritual, earthly nature. It is just the unresting
activity and continual urgency of this impulsion, enabling it
to attain to freedom and press onward and upward to ever
higher levels of development, it is just this that manifests
it most characteristically, and reveals best its inner essential
being. And this is nothing else than the pure impulsion
to redemption, and the pre-intimation and anticipation of a
boded good , transcendent and wholly other , a salvation
comparable to those salvations striven after in other reli
gions, but supreme above them in the measure in which the
Lord of the Kingdom found and possessed in the Christian
experience is supreme above Brahma, Vishnu, Ormuzd, Allah,
as also above the Absolute in the form of Nirvana, Kaivalyam,
Tao, or whatever other name it may be given. So redemp
tion is throughout the purport of the gospel even in its first
and simplest form, a redemption which is both to be fulfilled
by God hereafter and yet at the same time already experienced
here and now. In the former aspect it comes as the assured
promise of the Kingdom of God ; in the latter, by the present
experience of His fatherhood, instilled by the Gospel into the
soul of the disciple as his most intimate possession. That the
early Christians were conscious of this as something entirely
novel and unheard of and exceeding all measure (a good news),
is seen in the saying of Jesus that the Law and the Prophets
were until John: since that time the gospel of the kingdom of
God is preached (Luke xvi. 16), in which John the Baptist,
who also preached a Kingdom of God , is yet classed with
1 the Law and the Prophets .
But to describe this novelty most truly and concisely it
would be necessary to invent the saying of Paul (Romans viii.
15), did it not already stand written :
172 DIVINATION IN CHRISTIANITY TO-DAY
* For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to
fear ; but ye have received the spirit of adoption, whereby we
cry, Abba, Father/
Here Paul has penetrated to the heart of the matter,
breaking definitely with the older religion and seizing un
erringly upon the very principle and essence of the new. And
this principle and essence was the same for the first fisher
men by the Lake of Galilee and has remained one and the
same throughout the whole history of Christianity. With it
is given the new attitude to Sin and Guilt, to Law and to
Freedom, and, in principle, Justification , Second Birth ,
Renewal , the bestowal of the Spirit, new creation, and the
blissful freedom of God s children. It was inevitable that
these or similar ｅxpressions and doctrines and the profound
speculation to which they would give rise should make their
appearance when the Word called to the Spirit responsive to it. 1
And so Christ s first and direct work and achievement, as
we can clearly understand it to-day, is the effectual bestowal
of salvation as future hope and present possession by
arousing a faith in his God and in the Kingdom of God.
And now how can Divination, in respect to such work of
Christ, awake in us also, in us who stand so remote in time
from him 1 ? How can we, too, come to experience in him
holiness made manifest ?
Obviously not through demonstration and proof, by apply
ing some conceptual rule. We cannot suggest any conceptual
criterion in the form : When the elements x and y are brought
together, a revelation results. It is just this impossibility
which makes us speak of divination , intuitive apprehen
sion . The experience must come, not by demonstration, but
by pure contemplation, through the mind submitting itself
unreservedly to a pure impression of the object. For this
purpose all that was given and contained in the message and
work of Jesus must be combined with the picture of his person
and life and viewed as a whole and in its context with the
1 We can even comprehend thereby the later influx of dualistic or
gnostic currents, or at least see how they became possible. A man like
Marcion is an extreme Jesu-ist as well as an extreme Paul-ist .
DIVINATION IN CHRISTIANITY TO-DAY 173
long and wonderful advance in the religious history of Israel
and Judah that was the preparation for it, and with the inter
play of diverse tributary lines of development which, even where
apparently divergent, ultimately converged upon this as their
single culmination. Account must be taken of the elements
t>
of fulfilment which the Gospel contains, and due heed given
to the attraction and impelling force which it owed to its
contrast with its Judaic environment or to parallels which it
bore to this. And all the while, for the full impression to be
received, regard is to bo paid to the non-rational, the woof of
the web, the strange setting of the whole experience, which
can nowhere be felt so palpably as in the case of Jesus Christ ;
how his effect upon the men of his own day rises and ebbs,
revealing his spiritual content, on which the salvation of the
world depends, ever more and more manifestly, and revealing at
the same time that mysteriously growing opposition of powers
in which the problem of Job recurs a thousandfold more
urgently where we have the suffering and the defeat not
merely of a righteous person, but of all that is most vitally
important for the highest interests of humanity. In fine there
is that burden of non-rational, mystical significance, which
hangs like a cloud over Golgotha. Whoever can thus immerse
himself in contemplation and open his whole mind resolutely to
a pure impression of all this combined will surely find growing
in him, obedient to an inward standard that defies ｅxpression,
the pure feeling of recognition of holiness , the intuition of
the eternal in the temporal . If something eternal, something
holy, ever results from the blending and interpenetration of
rational and non-rational, purposive and indefinable elements
in the way we tried to describe, in the person of Jesus this
stands as nowhere else potently and palpably apparent.
And in a very real sense we of the later day are not worse
but more fortunately placed for grasping it than Jesus own
contemporaries. Realization of him through surmise (Ahn-
duny) of the divine government of the world l depends essen
tially upon two factors. on the one hand there is the gene
ral view of the marvellous spiritual history of Israel as a
1 An ｅxpression of De Wette. (v. p. 150.)
174 DIVINATION IN CHRISTIANITY TO-DAY
connected whole, with its prophetic and religious development,
and with Christ appearing as its culmination. And on the
other hand there is the complete life-work and achievement of
Christ himself in its entirety. Now in both cases a general
comprehensive view is more perfectly to be attained by us
to-day than in the time of Christ ; for, not only is our histori
cal insight more keen, but we can also see the whole in better
perspective at our greater distance. Whoever sinks in con
templation of that great connected development of the Judaic
religion which we speak of as the old covenant up to Christ
must feel the stirrings of an intimation that something Eternal
is there, directing and sustaining it and urging it to its
consummation. The impression is simply irresistible. And
whoever then goes on to consider how greatly the scene is set
for the completion of the whole story and the mighty stature
of the personality that is its fulfilment, his firm, unfaltering
hold upon God, his unwavering, unfailing righteousness, his
certitude of conviction and assurance in action so mysterious
and profound, his spiritual fervour and beatitude, the struggles
and trustfulness, self-surrender and suffering, and finally the
conqueror s death that were his whoever goes on to consider
all this must inevitably conclude : * That is god-like and
divine ; that is verily Holiness. If there is a God and if He
chose to reveal himself, He could do it no otherwise than thus.
Such a conclusion is not the result of logical compulsion ; it
does not follow from clearly conceived premisses ; it is an
immediate, underivable judgement of pure recognition, and it
follows a premiss that defies exposition and springs directly
from an irreducible feeling of the truth. But that, as we have
seen, is just the manner in which genuine divination, in the
sense of an intuition of religious significance, takes place.
Such an intuition, once granted, issues, for us no less than
for the first disciples, necessarily and independently of exege
sis or the authority of the early Church, in a series of further
intuitions respecting the Person, the Work, and the Words of
Christ, and it is the task of theology to render these explicit.
Such are the intuitions gained of sacred history in general,
of its preparation in prophecy, and of its fulfilment in Jesus
DIVINATION IN CHRISTIANITY TO-DAY 175
Messiahship the Being in whom all the religious potentiali
ties of prophet and psalmist and all the anticipatory move
ments and currents in the old covenant became actualized,
in whom all previous development found its culmination, and
the evolution of a people at once its real significance and its
goal, the completion of its course and the consummation of its
allotted historical task. And there are further intuitions
which have the same origin : the intuition by which we recog
nize in Christ the portrayal and presentment of God, divining
in his agony and victory, his redemptive search and love, the
very stamp and signature of God ; the intuition of his Son-
ship , by which we recognize Christ as the only Begotten ,
the called, the fully empowered with deity, as one whose
being, only made possible and intelligible of God, repeats and
reveals the divine nature in human fashion ; or the intuition
of the new covenant , of adoption and reconciliation through
Christ, of his life-work and self-surrender to God as sacrih ce
and as a warrant of divine grace. And last, not least, the
intuition of the covering and propitiating Mediator. For
the abyss between creature and Creator, profanum and
1 sanctum , sin and holiness, is not diminished but increased by
that deeper knowledge that comes from the Gospel of Christ :
and, as a result of the emotion spontaneously stirred in the
recognition of it, that in which the holy stands self-revealed
is taken here, as in other cases, both as the refuge from, and
the means by which to approach, Holiness. And this impul
sion of the mind to see in Christ mediator and propitiator may
be roused to seek ｅxpression spontaneously, even in cases
where it is not, as in Hebrew and primitive religion, pre
pared for and sustained by a traditional cult and mysticism of
4 sacrifice . That is, it is a natural religious instinct, due to
the pressure of the numinous experience and to nothing else.
We are not, then, to deplore the fact that intuitions of this
kind find a place in the doctrines of the Christian faith : they
do so of necessity. What we must deplore is, that their free
character, as springing from divination , is so generally mis
interpreted ; that too commonly we dogmatize and theorize
about them, deducing them from * necessary truths of exegesis
176 DIVINATION IN CHRISTIANITY TO-DAY
or dogma (which are in fact always dubious), and so failing
to recognize them for what they are, free-floating utterances
and trial nights at ｅxpression of the numinous feeling ; and
that too often we give them an emphasis which puts them
unwarrantably at the centre of our religious interest, a place
which nothing but the experience itself of God ought to
occupy.
In this connexion we may draw attention to what are com
monly called the miracles of Christ, but which we may per
haps more aptly call, in the words of Mark xvi. 20, signs
following (tiraKoXovOovvra 0-rjfj.eLa). It is not upon them
primarily that the experience of holiness made manifest is
based ; but, where there has been real divination , there cer
tain traits in the portrait of Christ come to acquire a fresh
significance, as confirmation of the divination rather than its
ground. I refer to the signs of exalted spiritual power over
nature to be detected in the portrait of Jesus. These have
their parallels elsewhere in the history of religion: in the
great prophets of Israel, for instance, they are shown in the
form of that visionary intuition and boding foreknowledge
with which the prophet was endowed for his calling. In the
life of Christ they recur unmistakably as gifts of the Spirit ,
raised to a supreme power. These things are not miracles ,
for they are powers of the spirit, and so are as natural as our
will itself is, with its control over our body. But they clearly
only come upon the scene where the spirit is itself exalted
to its fullest stature and in its fullest vitality, and are most
of all to be expected where the spirit is in closest and most
intimate union with its eternal cause and foundation, and is
thereby set free to the highest it can itself achieve. 1
It is, in the last place, clear that it is in the Passion and
death of Christ that the objects of the strongest religious intui
tion must be sought. If his Incarnation, his mission, and the
manner of his Hie come to be considered as a piece of self-
revelation, in which an eternal Will of Love is mirrored, before
all else is this Love and Faith seen accomplished in the Passion.
The Cross becomes in an absolute sense the mirror of the
1 See further Appendix VII.
DIVINATION IN CHRISTIANITY TO-DAY 177
eternal Father (speculum aeterni Patris); and not of the
1 Father alone the highest rational interpretation of the
holy but of Holiness as such. For what makes Christ
in a special sense the summary and climax of the course
of antecedent religious evolution is pre-eminently this that
in his life, suffering, and death is repeated in classic and abso
lute form that most mystical of all the problems of the Old
Covenant, the problem of the guiltless suffering of the righteous,
which re-echoes again and again so mysteriously from Jere
miah and deutero-Isaiah on through Job and the Psalms. The
38lh chapter of Job is a prophecy of Golgotha. And on Gol
gotha the solution of the problem, already adumbrated in Job,
is repeated and surpassed. It lay, as we saw, entirely in the
non-rational aspect of deity, and yet was none the less a
solution. In Job the suffering of the righteous found its
significance as the classic and crucial case of the revelation,
more immediately actual and in more palpable proximity than
any other, of the transcendent mysteriousness and beyond-
ness of God. The Cross of Christ, that monogram of the
eternal mystery, is its completion. Here rational are enfolded
with non-rational elements, the revealed commingled with the
unrevealed, the most exalted love with the most awe-inspiring
wrath of the numen, and therefore, in applying to the Cross of
Christ the category holy , Christian religious feeling has
given birth to a religious intuition profounder and more vital
than any to be found in the whole history of religion.
This is what must be borne in mind in the comparison of
religions, when we seek to decide which of them is the most
perfect. The criterion of the value of a religion as religion
cannot ultimately be found in what it has done for culture,
nor in its relation to the limits of the reason or the limits
of humanity (which, forsooth, are presumed capable of being
drawn in advance apart from reference to religion itself !), nor
in any of its external features. It can only be found in what
is the innermost essence of religion, the idea of holiness as
such, and in the degree of perfection with which any given
religion realizes this.
There can naturally be no defence of the worth and validity
N
178 DIVINATION IN CHRISTIANITY TO-DAY
of such religious intuitions of pure feeling that will convince
a person who is not prepared to take the religious conscious
ness itself for granted. Mere general argument, even moral
demonstrations, are in this case useless, are indeed for obvious
reasons impossible from the outset. on the other hand the
criticisms and confutations attempted by such a person are un
sound from the start. His weapons are far too short to touch
his adversary, for the assailant is always standing right out
side the arena ! But if these intuitions, these separate responses
to the impress upon the spirit of the Gospel story and the
central Person of it if these intuitions are immune from
rational criticism, they are equally unaffected by the fluctuat
ing results of biblical exegesis and the laboured justifications
of historical apologetics. For they are possible without these,
springing, as they do, from first-hand personal divination. *
1 Compare with this chapter my recently published book Reich Gottes
tind Menschensohn.
CHAPTER XXI
HISTORY AND THE A PRIORI IN RELIGION:
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
WE have considered the holy on the one hand as an
a priori category of mind, and on the other as manifesting
itself in outward appearance. The contrast here intended is
exactly the same as the common contrast of inner and outer,
general and special revelation. And if we take reason*
(ratio) as an inclusive term for all cognition which arises in
the mind from principles native to it, in contrast to those
based upon facts of history, then we may say that the distinc
tion between holiness as an a priori category and holiness as
revealed in outward appearance is much the same as that
between * reason (in this wide sense) and history.
Every religion which, so far from being a mere faith in
traditional authority, springs from personal assurance and
inward convincement (i. e. from an inward first-hand cognition
of its truth) as Christianity does in a unique degree must
presuppose principles in the mind enabling it to be indepen
dently recognized as true. 1 But these principles must be
a priori ones, not to be derived from experience or history .
It has little meaning, however edifying it may sound, to say
that they are inscribed upon the heart by the pencil of the
Holy Spirit in history . For whence comes the assurance
that it was the pencil of the Holy Spirit that wrote, and
not that of a deceiving spirit of imposture, or of the tribal
fantasy of anthropology? Such an assertion is itself a
1 The attestation of such principles is the testimoniura Spiritus Sancti
internum of which we have already spoken. And this must clearly be
itsr-lf immediate and self-warranted, else there would be need of another
witness of the Holy Spirit to attest the truth of the first, and BO on ad
infinitum.
N 2
180 HISTORY AND THE A PRIORI IN RELIGION :
presumption that it is possible to distinguish the signature of
the Spirit from others, and thus that we have an a priori
notion of what is of the Spirit independently of history.
And there is a further consideration. There is something
presupposed by history as such not only the history of mind
or spirit, with which we are here concerned which alone
makes it history, and that is the existence of a quale, some
thing with a potentiality of its own, capable of becoming, in
the special sense of coming to be that to which it was predis
posed and predetermined. An oak-tree can become, and thus
have a sort of history ; whereas a heap of stones cannot.
The random addition and subtraction, displacement and
rearrangement, of elements in a mere aggregation can certainly
be followed in narrative form, but this is not in the deeper
sense a historical narrative. We only have the history of a
people in proportion as it enters upon its course equipped with
an endowment of talents and tendencies ; it must already be
something if it is really to become anything. And biography
is a lamentable and unreal business in the case of a man who
has no real unique potentiality of his own, no special idiosyn
crasy, and is therefore a mere point of intersection for various
fortuitous causal series, acted upon, as it were, from without.
Biography is only a real narration of a real life where, by the
interplay of stimulus and experience on the one side and pre
disposition and natural endowment on the other, something
individual and unique comes into being, which is therefore
neither the result of a mere self-unfolding nor yet the sum
of mere traces and impressions, written from without from
moment to moment upon a tabula rasa . In short, to pro
pose a history of mind is to presuppose a mind or spirit
determinately qualified ; to profess to give a history of reli
gion is to presuppose a spirit specifically qualified for religion.
There are, then, three factors in the process by which reli
gion comes into being in history. First, the interplay of pre
disposition and stimulus, which in the historical development of
man s mind actualizes the potentiality in the former, and at the
same time helps to determine its form. Second, the groping re
cognition, by virtue of this very disposition, of specific portions
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 181
of history as the manifestation of the holy , with consequent
modification of the religious experience already attained both
in its quality and degree. And third, on the basis of the
other two, the achieved fellowship with the holy in knowing,
feeling, and willing. Plainly, then, Religion is only the off
spring of history in so far as history on the one hand develops
our disposition for knowing the holy, and on the other is
itself repeatedly the manifestation of the holy. * Natural
religion, in contrast to historical, does not exist, and still less
does * innate religion. 1
A priori cognitions are not such as every one does have
such would be innate cognitions but such as every one
is capable of having. The loftier a priori cognitions are
such as while every one is indeed capable of having them
do not, as experience teaches us, occur spontaneously, but
rather are awakened through the instrumentality of other
more highly endowed natures. In relation to these the universal
predisposition is merely a faculty of receptivity and a principle
of judgement and acknowledgement, not a capacity to pro
duce the cognitions in question for oneself independently.
This latter capacity is confined to those specially endowed .
And this endowment is the universal disposition on a higher
level and at a higher power, differing from it in quality as
well as in degree. The same thing is very evident in the
sphere of art : what appears in the multitude as mere recep-
tiveness, the capacity of response and judgement by trained
aesthetic taste, reappears at the level of the artist as invention,
creation, composition, the original production of genius. This
difference of level and power, e.g. in musical composition, seen
in the contrast between what is a mere capacity for musical
experience and the actual production and revelation of music,
is obviously something more than a difference of degree. It is
very similar in the domain of the religious consciousness, reli
gious production and revelation. Here, too, most men have
only the predisposition , in the sense of a receptiveness and
susceptibility to religion and a capacity for freely recognizing
1 For the distinction between innate and a priori, cf. R. Otto,
Religionsphilosophie, p. 42.
182 HISTORY AND THE A PRIORI IN RELIGION
and judging religious truth at first hand. The Spirit is only
universal in the form of the * testimoniumSpiritus internum
(and this again only * ubi ipsi visumfuit ). The higher stage,
not to be derived from the first stage of mere receptivity, is in
the sphere of religion the prophet. The prophet corresponds in
the religious sphere to the creative artist in that of art : he is
the man in whom the Spirit shows itself alike as the power to
hear the voice within and the power of divination, and in
each case appears as a creative force. Yet the prophet does
not represent the highest stage. We can think of a third, yet
higher, beyond him, a stage of revelation as underivable from
that of the prophet as was his from that of common men. We
can look, beyond the prophet, to one in whom is found the
Spirit in all its plenitude, and who at the same time in his
person and in his performance is become most completely the
object of divination, in whom Holiness is recognized apparent.
Such a one is more than Prophet. He is the Son.
APPENDIX I
CHRYSOSTOM on THE INCONCEIVABLE IN GOD
BUT that is an impertinence to say that He who is beyond the
apprehension of even the higher Powers can be comprehended by
us earthworms, or compassed and comprised by the weak forces of
our understanding !
This protest of Chrysostom occurs at the beginning of the third
of his five discourses -rrepi aKaraXiJTrTov (Dc Incomprchensibili}, which
were directed against the avo /uoioi who were perverting the
Christian community of Antioch, and more especially against
disciples of the Arian Aetios, with their doctrine Otov oTSa is auros
6 #cos tavrov olB( ( I know God as He is known to Himself). Our
histories of Dogma do not generally say much, if anything, upon
these sermons of Chrysostom, and their contribution to dogmatics
is not indeed very important. But their interest for the psycho
logy of religion is all the greater ; and this would still remain,
even if they had not contained the passages bearing upon Christo-
logy , which begin at the conclusion of the fourth sermon. For
we have in them the primary promptings of genuine religious
feeling in its specifically numinous character, excited to a passionate
intensity and directed with all the charm and eloquence of the
Golden-mouthed against the theoretical Aristotelian God of
the schools. All that is non-rational in the feeling of God is
here in conflict with what is rational and capable of rationalization
and threatens to break loose from it altogether.
A strange spectacle! Fordoes not the distinguishing character
of Christianity consist in just this that God is near us, that we
can possess and apprehend Him, and that man himself is His
image and likeness ? And yet we find this Father of the Church
battling passionately, as for something that concerned the very
essence of Christianity, for the view that God is the Inconceiv
able, the Inexpressible, that which gives denial to every notion.
And this he does not do on speculative grounds, with the aid of
the terms and phrases of any school of theology ; it is rather a
184 CHRYSOSTOM on THE
sort of instinct in him that guides him with astonishing assurance
and accuracy to track out and collect the most wonderful texts of
Scripture, so that their full weight becomes felt, as his profoundly
penetrating interpretation explains and applies them.
First and chiefly he takes his stand against Conceiving and
Comprehension in general, against the idea of TO KaraXrjTTTov, and
against the oucetoi Aoyioyxoi (i. e. constructions of the understanding)
which seek to delimit and circumscribe God (-n-tpiypafaLv, TreptAa/x-
ySdvciv). For his opponents had maintained that a conceptual know
ledge of God is possible, definitive and exhaustive, by means of
notions, in fact by a single notion (viz. of dyew^o-t a, unbegottenness),
in a word, that it is possible to know God exactly (/ACT d/cpi/3ei as
eioYvcu). * But we, says Chrysostom, * in opposition to this view,
call Him TOV dveK<pacrTOV, TOV aTTfpivorjTOV 6eov, TOV dopaTOV, TOV aKO.ro.-
AT/TTTOV, TOV vt/cuWa yX(t)TTr)<; BvvafUV avOp<aTrivr)<s, TOV virepfiaivovra
Siavoi as KaTaAi^tv, TOV avf^t^VLao TOV dyyeAois, TOV d$earov ToZs
TOV a.Ka.Tav6r)Tov TOIS XcpovfiLfj,, TOV doparov ap^cus covo-t cus Suva/xecriv,
KCU aTrAoijs Traarf) rrj KTUTCI. l (Migne, p. 721.) He insults God who
seeks to apprehend His essential being (v/Jpi 8e 6 TT;V ova-Lav
avTov Trepiepya^o /xevo?, 714 e), he says, and goes on to urge that God
is incomprehensible even in His works how much more in His
own essential nature ; even in His demeanings (o-vy*aTa/?ao-eis)
how much more in His own transcendent majesty ; even to the
Cherubim and Seraphim how much more to mere humanity
The dfcaTaA^TTTov in this sense is for Chrysostom primarily the
* exceeding greatness of God, which escapes our mental grasp and
compass because of the dorfcVcta TOJV Aoyur/xaiv, the over-short reach
of our faculty of conception. We call it incomprehensibility ,
and distinguish from it the inapprehensibility which springs,
not from the exceeding greatness , but from the wholly other
ness of God (Odrcpov TOV Ociov), from what is alien and remote in
Him, from what we have called the * mysterium stupendum .
And it is instructive to see how for Chrysostom too this latter
sense of dKaTaA^TTTov passes into the former, sometimes blending
with it, sometimes plainly distinguished as something beyond and
1 We call Him the inexpressible, the unthinkable God, the invisible,
the inapprehensible ; who quells the power of human speech and tran
scends the grasp of mortal thought ; inaccessible to the angels, unbeheld
of the Seraphim, unimagined of the Cherubim, invisible to rules and
authorities and powers, and, in a word, to all creation.
INCONCEIVABLE IN GOD 185
higher than it. We have said already that we have the experi
ence of the wholly other , where we come upon something
which not merely overtops our every concept, but astounds us
by its absolute and utter difference from our whole nature.
Chrysostom similarly contrasts the avOp^irirq <vo-is with the 6tla
<vW as being incommensurable with it, and therefore incapable
of understanding it, and his words refer not only to the narrow
ness and meagreness of our understanding, but just to this sheer
difference in quality of the * wholly other .
This sort of apostrophe is common with him : "AvflpuTros &v 6tov
Tro\vTrpa.yfjiovtiS j Apxct yap TO. oi o/iara \ptXa TTJS dyota? $(la.L TIJV
VTrepfioXi jv avOpwrros yjj KOL OTTToSos VTrdp^djv, a-up Kol cu/xa, ^d/yros /ecu
avOos \6prov, <TKIO. Kal /caTrvos Kai /laTcudrr/s (712). 1 And the same
note sounds even more clearly in an exposition of Komans ix. 20,
21 (715). As little as the clay can master or comprehend the
potter because of its essential difference from him, even so little
can man comprehend God. * Or rather, far less, for man the
potter is in the end himself but clay. But the difference between
the being of God and the being of man is of such a kind that no
word can express it and no thought appraise it. His position is
put more unmistakably still in the following passage :
He dwells, says St. Paul, in an unapproachable light. 2 Observe
here the exactitude of St. Paul s ｅxpression. . . . For he says not
merely in an incomprehensible, but (what conveys far more) in an
altogether " unapproachable " light. We say "inconceivable " and
"incomprehensible" of something which, though it eludes con
ception, does not elude all inquiry and questioning. " Unap
proachable ", on the other hand, means something which in
principle excludes the very possibility of inquiry, which is quite
inaccessible by conceptual investigation. A sea into which divers
may plunge, but which they cannot fathom, would represent the
merely " incomprehensible " (aKaroA^Trrov). It would only repre
sent the " unapproachable " (a.7rp6cnTov) if it remained in principle
beyond search and beyond discovery. (p. 721.) And so too in the
fourth discourse (upon Eph. iii. 8) (p. 729) : Ti CO-TIV av^t^yiatrrov ;
firj 8iW/zevov ^rjTr}Orjvai f ov JJLOVOV 8e /IT/ Svi dfjLfvov tvptOrjva.t, dAA* ov&k
1 Dost thon, a man, presume to busy thyself with God ? Nay, the
bare names (of man) suffice to show the extent of this fully ; man that ig
earth and dust,Jlesh and blood, grass and the Jloicer of grass, shadowed
smoke and raniti/.
1 1 Tim. vi. 16 $d>c olnvv an^AtuTov. R.V. unapproachable .
186 CHRYSOSTOM on THE
i.. ( l What is " unsearchable " ? To be beyond searching,
that is, to be such as excludes not discovery only but also
tracing/)
And this line of thought draws him imperceptibly farther. The
bounds of the incomprehensible are extended, and the whole
numinous consciousness is set astir in it, one element in the feel
ing prompting to the others. The mysterium stupcndum passes
directly over into mysterium tremendum and maicstas, so that we
might entitle the Discourses, instead of De Incomprehensibili ,
1 De Numine ac Numinoso .
Specially noticeable in this connexion is the passage in which
Chrysostom brings clearly out the psychological distinction
between numinous and merely rational wonder. He cites that
truly significant text from Ps. cxxxix. 14, which runs in the
Septuagint : * I praise Thee : for that Thou madest Thyself fearfully
wondrous V and then gives a subtle analysis of the feelings there
expressed.
* What does " fearfully " mean here ? Many things move us to
wonder in which there is nothing "fearful" the beauty of a
colonnade, for example ; the beauty of pictures, or bodily loveli
ness. Again, we wonder at the greatness of the sea and its
measureless expanse, but terror and "fear" only seize upon us
when we gaze down into its depths. So, too, here the Psalmist.
When he gazes down into the immeasurable, yawning (agave s)
Depth 2 of the divine Wisdom, dizziness comes upon him and he
recoils in terrified wonder and cries : . . . "Thy knowledge is too
wonderful for me ; it is high, above my power (I am too weak
for it: LXX)." The dizziness and the unique feeling of the
uncanny, which we have called stupor and tremor, are here clearly
noted by Chrysostom. And he rightly cites also the profoundly
numinous exclamation of St. Paul (Rom. xi. 33) : Dizzy before the
unfathomable main and gazing down into its yawning depths, he
recoils precipitately and cries aloud : " O the depth of the riches
both of the wisdom and knowledge of God. . . . " (Migne, p. 705).
The passage on page 733 should be read in close connexion
with this. Nowhere has the awe and even the eerie shuddering
and amazement at the supernatural been more vividly and truly
recaptured in feeling, and nowhere has it been portrayed with
(rot on ()ofpa>s f
5 Reading puOos for the undoubtedly erroneous Trt
INCONCEIVABLE IN GOD 187
a more gripping and constraining power. Expertus loquitur!
This is the voice not of the Platonist or Neo-Platonist ; it is the
voice of antiquity itself, typified in one who had found in Pagan
ism and Judaism and Christianity alike those primal and ele
mental experiences out of which all religion has arisen and
without which no religion is worthy of the name, and who had
made them his very own in all the force of growth sometimes
rank and violent enough which originally characterized them.
Chrysostom describes thus the experience of Dan. x. 5-8, and the
state of ecstasy into which Daniel falls in his encounter with the
Unseen : For just as happens when the charioteer looses hold of
the reins in terror, so that the horses bolt and the chariot over
turns, ... so it befell the Prophet. His affrighted soul could not
bear the sight of the Angel made manifest, could not endure the
supernatural light, and was overwhelmed. It strove to break
free from the bonds of the flesh as from a harness . . . and he lay
there in a swoon. Very similar is the comment on the vision of
Ezekiel. Chrysostom realizes that the aw T e in these experiences does
not find its origin in any self-depreciation of an ethical or rational
sort (e. g. from an uneasy conscience or the like), but that they are
the natural reactions of the creature, of the acr$eveia <vVca;s face to
face with transcendent, unearthly reality, as such. I cite to you
the case of the holy Daniel, the friend of God, who, because of
his wisdom and righteousness, might well have been justly con
fident, just in order that no one may suppose, if I show even him
to you weakening, collapsing, powerless, and overwhelmed before
the presence of the Angel, that this befalls him because of his
sins and his evil conscience, but that this example may throw a
clear light on the impotence of our nature.
Naturally the passage in Genesis xviii. 27 has not escaped him ;
still less the scene in Isa. vi. But let us now leave St. Paul
and the prophets and ascend into Heaven to see if haply any one
there knows what God s essential being is. ... What do we hear
from the Angels ? Do they inquire and reason meticulously
among themselves about God s nature ? By no means. What do
they do? They praise Him. They fall down and worship Him
with a great trembling (p-f.ro. TroXArjs TT)V tfrpiicrfi, p. 707). They
turn their eyes away, and can themselves not endure the vouch
safed revelation of God. Again: Tell me, wherefore do they
cover their faces and hide them with their wings? Why, but
188 CHRYSOSTOM on THE
that they cannot endure the dazzling radiance and its rays that
pour from the Throne ? Nor does he ignore the loci classici of
the tremenda maiestas, viz. Ps. civ. 32 and Job ix. 6 sqq. : He
looketh on the earth and it trembleth : he toucheth the hills and
they smoke.* Ps. cxiv. 3 : * The sea saw and fled : Jordan was
driven back. * iraa-a fj KTICTIS craAeucrcu, Se Soi/ce, rpe/xti. And he
concludes his commentary upon all this with the remark: (I
will conclude, for) thought grows weary, not from the extent of
what I have spoken but from the trembling it brings. For the
soul that concerns itself in these contemplations trembles and is
appalled (iKa/xei TJ/JLLV rj Stavota, ou T<5 TrAry^ct aAAa TTJ (^ptKrj TOJV
i/D77/Avoov. TpffJ.fi. yap Kal e/cTreTrX^KTat rj ij/v^r) CTTI TTO\V rats avo>
IvSiarpifiovcra. $coptais) (p. 725).
Chrysostom, then, is combating the arrogance and overweening
presumptuousness of the human understanding and of the creature
in general in imagining that any escape is possible from the
incomprehensible, supreme, transcendent, and wholly other
nature of God. And it is because he wishes to shatter this human
complacency, to overawe and overwhelm, that he portrays these
aspects of the numinous. But he does not leave out the others or
fail to note the paradox, that this * incomprehensible is at the
same time a fascinans and an intimate and essential possession
of the human soul. Blank amazement is to him at the same time
enraptured adoration ; speechlessness in the presence of the inap
prehensible passes over and only an understanding of the
1 harmony of contrasts can show how into a humble gratitude
that it is so, that it is * fearfully wonderful . He cites again
Ps. cxxxix. 14, and interprets it thus : See here the nobility
of this servant of God (David). " I thank Thee " (evxapurroi crot), he
says in effect, "for that I have a Lord who is beyond comprehen
sion." Tersteegen means the same when he uses the words
A comprehended God is no God to express praise ; as does Goethe,
in the words of the archangels hymn in Faust :
Ihr Anblick gibt den Engeln Starke,
Weil keiner sie ergriinden mag. 1
And SO with Chrysostom : this u.KaTa\r]7rTov is e/ceiVy; /xaKapta ovcrta
a favourite and recurring ｅxpression of his. And we feel that
1 Its (sc. the Sun s) aspect gives the angels strength because none may
fathom it. [The usual reading is wenn, though , for well, because .
Trans.]
INCONCEIVABLE IN GOD 189
this Being is incomprehensible because it is blessed , and
blessed because it is incomprehensible . In the very passion
with which he battles for the unimaginable God, who makes
His worshipper weak and dizzy with awe, there yet glows un-
uttered and unexpressed an enthusiastic sense of the soul
having been carried away in rapture and taken up into the being
of God.
The aKaTdXrjTTTov involves a denial of conceptual designations,
and hence come the negative attributes of deity, which Chryso-
stom frequently employs, singly or in series a negativa thco-
logia in little. But this negative theology does not mean that
faith and feeling are dissipated and reduced to nothing ; on the
contrary, it contains within it the loftiest spirit of devotion, and
it is out of such negative attributes that Chrysostom fashions
the most solemn confessions and prayers. He thereby shows
once more that feeling and experience reach far beyond conceiv
ing, and that a conception negative in form may often become the
symbol (what we have called an * ideogram ) for a content of
meaning which, if absolutely unutterable, is none the less in the
highest degree positive. And the example of Chrysostom at the
same time shows that a negative theology can and indeed must
arise, not only from the infusion of Hellenistic speculation and
nature mysticism , but from purely and genuinely religious roots,
namely, the experience of the numinous.
The insistence upon the inconceivable and incomprehensible
in God did not cease to be a point of honour in Christian theology
with Chrysostom. The forms this protest took did indeed vary :
it appears as the assertion at one time that God stands above
the reach of all possible predication whatever, and so is Nothing
ness and the * Silent desert ; at another, that He is dvoWu/xos,
TravoWyxo?, o/zaw/xos ; at another, that He can indeed be made the
subject of predication, but only in so far as all attributes are mere
1 nomina ex partc intcllectus nostri ; or again, the sternest form
of all, it reproduces the line of thought of Job, as can be seen
now and then in Luther in his notion of the deus absconditus
the thought, namely, that God Himself is not only above every
human grasp, but in antagonism to it. 1
1 Compare also Luther s Short Form of the Ten Commandments, the
Cited, and the. Lord s 1 raytr (1520) : 1 venture to put my trust in the one
God alone, the invisible and incomprehensible, who hath created Heaven
and Earth and is alone above all creatures.
190 CHRYSOSTOM on THE
All these doctrines are preserving a heritage passionately won
against the opposition of ancient errors. They do so, certainly,
at the cost of a one-sided emphasis, for the meaning Christians
attach to the word * God is indubitably also a profoundly rational
one, the basis indeed of all reason. Yet this is bound up with a
still profounder meaning, which, as we have seen, is beyond and
above all conception.
With the discourse of Chrysostom we may compare Gregory of
Nyssa, Contra Eunomium (Migne, S. Gr. 45). What stirs Chryso
stom passionately as a matter of the first moment is indeed only
of secondary importance in Gregory, incidental to his dogmatic
inquiries. But even so he, too, can write (p. 601) : t Se TIS
airaiTOLr) rrjs Octets oucrias tp/xr/veiav nva Kal inroypa^v Kal c^rj-yrjcriv,
d/A<z0as ctvat rrj<s TOKIVTT?? cro^t as OUK apvrycro/xe^a . . . on OVK CCTTI TO
aopLcrrov Kara rr]v tfrvanv eTrivoia Ttvi prjfj.dr(t)v Bia\r)<f>67Jvau tTrei ovv
KpeiTTOv eaTi /cat vij/rjXorfpov rrj<s 6vofJ.acmKrjs o-^jaao-i as TO eiov
says the Latin translator] auoTrrj Ti/mv ra vrrep Xoyov re Kal
fjiefjiaOijKafjLfv. ( But if one asks for an interpretation or description
or explanation of the divine nature we shall not deny that in such
a science as this we are unlearned. . . . For there is no way of
comprehending the indefinable as it is by a scheme of words. For
the Divine is too noble and too lofty to be indicated by a name :
and we have learned to honour by silence that which transcends
reason and thought. )
But another, long before Chrysostom the heretic Marcion
writing in a different situation, not within but on the fringe
of the Church, had experienced the inconceivable aspect of the
numinous and extolled it in words of an almost intoxicated fervour:
O it is a marvel beyond marvels, enravishment, power, and
wonder, that one can say nought about the Gospel, and think
nought about it and compare it to nothing.
It is remarkable to see how the several moments of the numinous
in experience are constantly compounded and blended afresh so as to
produce quite special and peculiar types of religion. In Marcion
the original moment tremendum is silenced before the consoling
power of the Gospel, in fulfilment of the word Perfect love casts
out feai . But there remains strongly and profoundly felt the
* wholly other , the ineffable and inconceivable, in his strange
God , and in the first words of his treatise, whose * violent fer
ment (in Harnack s phrase) reveals the element of fascination .
INCONCEIVABLE IN GOD 191
The sense of the august lives in the feeling of distance in face
of the strange God , and in that too we detect a light thrill that
is the awe of the tremcndum reawakened and returning in a nobler
form. 1
APPENDIX II
THE NUMINOUS IN POETRY, HYMN, AND LITURGY
Example of numinous poetry.
From Bhagavad-Glta, Chapter XI (Barnett s translation slightly
altered).
IN the Bhagavad-Gitft, Krishna, the embodiment of Vishnu
Vishnu himself in human form instructs Aryuna in the deepest
mysteries of his religion. Aryuna then desires to behold God
himself in his own form, and his petition is granted. And now
in Chapter XI there follows a theophany of terrific grandeur, which
seeks to give a feeling of the unapproachable essence of the Divine
before which the creature trembles and falls, by embodying the
human and natural means of terror, majesty, and sublimity.
Aryuna stands in his war-chariot, about to enter the carnage of
the battle against his brother Yudhishthira s enemies. Krishna
is his charioteer. Aryuna tells him his request. Show to me
thy changeless Self, Sovran of the Rule. Krishna-Vishnu answers
him :
7. Behold now, O Wearer of the Hair-Knot, the whole universe,
moving and unmoving, solely lodged in this my body, and
all else that thou art lain to see.
8. But for that thou canst not see Me with this thine own eye,
I give thee a divine eye ; behold my sovran Rule.
9. Thus speaking, Hari (i. e. Vishnu), the great Lord of the Rulo,
then showed to Pritha s son his sovran form supreme,
10. of many mouths and eyes, of many divine ornaments, with
uplifted weapons many and divine ;
11. wearing divine flower-chaplets and robes, with anointment of
divine perfumes, compound of all marvels, tha boundless
god facing all ways.
1 See Harnack, Marcion, 1921, p. 138.
192 THE NUMINOUS IN POETRY,
12. If the light of a thousand suns should of a sudden rise in the
heavens, it would be like to the light of that mighty
being. . . .
14. Thereupon the Wealth- Winner (i.e. Aryuna), smitten with
amazement, with hair standing on end, bowed his head,
and with clasped hands spake to the God. . . .
17. I behold Thee bearing diadem, mace, and disc, massed in
radiance, on all sides glistening, hardly discernible, shining
round about as gleaming fire and sun, immeasurable. . . .
20. For this mid-space between heaven and earth and all the
quarters of the sky are filled with Thee alone. Seeing
this Thy fearful and wonderful form, O great-hearted one,
the threefold world quakes.
21. These hosts of Suras come unto Thee; some, affrighted, praise
with clasped hands. With cries of " Hail ! " the hosts of
Great Saints and Adepts sing to Thee hymns of abounding
praise.
22. All the Spirits and Divine Powers that live in heaven and
earth, in clouds and winds, in air and water, Daemons,
Manes, Asuras, Saints, and Adepts, all gaze on Thee in
amazement.
23. Looking upon Thy mighty form of many mouths and eyes,
of many arms and thighs and feet, of many bellies, and
grim with many teeth, O mighty-armed one, the worlds
and I quake.
24. For as I behold Thee touching the heavens, glittering, many-
hued, with yawning mouths, with wide eyes agleam, my
inward soul trembles, and I find not constancy nor peace,
O Vishnu.
25. Seeing Thy mouths grim with teeth, like to the fire of the
last day, I recognize not the quarters of the heavens, and
take no joy ; Lord of Gods, home of the universe, be
gracious !
26. These sons of Dhritarashtra all, with the hosts of kings,
Bhishma, Drona, and the Charioteer s son yonder, and
likewise the chief of our warriors,
27. hasting enter into Thy mouths grim with fangs and terrible ;
some, caught between the teeth, appear with crushed heads.
28. As many currents of rivers flow to meet the sea, so these
warriors of the world of mankind pass into Thy blazing
mouths.
29. As moths with exceeding speed pass into a lighted fire to
perish, so pass the worlds with exceeding speed into Thy
mouths to perish.
HYMN, AND LITURGY 193
30. Thou devourest and lickest up all the worlds around with
flaming mouths ; filling the whole universe with radiance,
grim glow Thy splendours, O Vishnu !
31. Relate to me who Thou art in this grim form. Homage to
Thee, chief of gods ; be gracious ! I would fain know Thee
as First Being. . . .
Thereupon Vishnu reassumes his friendly Krishna-form. Ar-
yuna s petition to comprehend the incomprehensible is not granted
him. It is forbidden to man, as Luther says, to soar into the
height of Majesty : he must confine himself to the Word of
gracious Promise. Such a word is imparted. The tremendous
chapter closes with the words which expositors take as the sum
and epitome of the whole Glta :
65. * He who does what he does for Me alone ; who is given over
to Me, who is devoted to Me, void of attachment, without
hatred to any born being, O son of Pandu, comes to Me.
TJie Numinous in Hymn and Liturgy.
A comparison of two poems may indicate the difference between
a merely rational glorification of the Godhead and one that also
prompts to a feeling of the non-rational, the numinous, in its
aspect of mysterium tremendum . Gellert can sing of The
Honour of God from Nature powerfully and finely enough
Die Himmel riihmen des Ewigen Ehre,
Ihr Schall pflanzt seinen Namen fort.
Here everything is bright, rational, and intimate up to the last
verse :
Ich bin Dein Scho pfer, bin Weisheit und Glite,
Ein Gott der Ordnung und Dein Heil.
Ich bin s ! Mich liebe von ganzem Gemtite,
Und ii i in in an meiner Gnade teil.
But, beautiful as this hymn is, we do not encounter there the
1 honour of God in all its fullness. Some element is missing, and
what this is we feel at once when we compare with this hymn
that composed at an earlier date by E. Lange, To the Majesty of
God :
Vor Dir erbebt der Engel Chor,
Sie schlagen Aug und Antlitz nieder,
So schrecklich kommst Du ihnen vor
Und davon schallen ihre Lieder. . . .
O
194 NUMINOUS IN POETRY, HYMN, AND LITURGY
Denn Dein ist Kraft und Ruhm,
Das Reich und Heiligtum,
Da mich Entsetzen niir entreisset.
Bei Dir ist Majestat
Die iiber alles geht,
Und heilig, heilig, heilig, heisset.
That goes farther than Gellert. And yet even here there is still
something lacking, something that we find in the Song of the
Seraphim in Isaiah vi. Even Lange, despite his numb amaze
ment , sings ten long stanzas ; the angels sing a bare two lines.
And he incessantly speaks to God in the second person singular ;
whereas the angels speak before Yahweh in the third person. 1
A liturgy unusually rich in numinous hymns and prayers is
that of Yom Kippur, the great Day of Atonement of the Jews.
It is overshadowed by the Holy, Holy, Holy of the Seraphim
(Isa. vi), which recurs more than once, and it has prayers in it as
wonderful as the ubelcen ten pachdeM :
1 So then, let Thy fear, O Yahweh our God, come over all Thy
creatures, and reverent dread (emateka) of Thee upon all that
Thou hast made, that all Thy creatures may fear Thee and every
being bow before Thee and that they may all become bonded
together to do Thy will with all their heart, even as we know, O
Yahweh our God, that Thine is the lordship, that might is in Thy
hand and power in Thy right hand and Thy name exalted above
all that Thou hast created.
APPENDIX III
ORIGINAL NUMINOUS SOUNDS
FEELINGS and emotions, as states of mental tension, find their
natural relaxation in uttered sounds. It is evident that the
numinous feeling also, in its first outbreak in consciousness, must
1 In point of fact one cannot always speak to God as Thou , and
sometimes not at all. St. Theresa addresses God as Eternal Majesty ,
and the French readily use Vous for Tu . And Goethe came very near
to the tremendum mysterium -when he said to Eckermann (Dec. 31,
1823) : People treat the name of God as though the inconceivable and
wholly incomprehensible supreme Being were not far more than such as
they. Else they would not say : " The Lord God," " the dear God," " the
good God." Were they penetrated through and through by a sense of
His greatness, they would be dumb and unable to name Him for very
veneration.
ORIGINAL NUMINOUS SOUNDS 195
have found sounds for its ｅxpression, and at first inarticulate
sounds rather than words ; but it is improbable that it devised
special and peculiar sounds for itself. Analogous as it is to other
feelings, it no doubt adopted the already familiar sounds expressive
of the emotions of terror, amazement, joy, and the like. But it
could, and sometimes did, put, as it were, a special stamp upon
sounds coined for a different use. The German interjection Hu I ,
for instance, expresses to-day invariably and exclusively, not
terror in general, but terror accompanied by shuddering, i.e.
numinous terror . So, too, whereas hus in vulgar Arabic is, I
am told, a sound expressive of soothing in general, the correspond
ing Hebrew sound has is only found in a numinous context. (Cf.
Amos vi. 10 : Hold thy tongue (7ms), for we may not make men
tion of the name of the Lord. Zeph. i. 7: Hold thy peace at
the presence of the Lord God. Hab. ii. 20; Judges iii. 19;
also Amos viii. 3.) Such a specialization of a common interjection
has very possibly often come about. When the ecstatic Dervishes
of Islam bring their Zikr to an end, they break into ejaculations,
such as Allah Akbar , which end finally in a protracted groan
ing Hu. This IlQ has indeed been explained on rational grounds
as the Arabic personal pronoun of the third person, He , i.e.
Allah. But any one who has actually heard these ejaculations
finds it hard to think of them simply as pronouns. Rather we
have the impression that in this sound the numinous feeling is
seeking to discharge itself.
This specialization is perhaps the clue to the understanding
of the Sanskrit word atcarya, to which reference has been made
more than once. Its derivation has been hitherto an enigma ;
but one may conjecture that the explanation is in fact very simple,
and that the word is just a compound of the two words as and
carya. Carya = agendum , that which is done or is to be done ;
while as is a primitive sound to express the stupendum , the
long protracted open vowel of wonder (a, oh, ha), combining
with the sibilant, which in all languages is used to express or
produce a terrified silence (cf. Hist! Sh ! Sst !). An fe-carya l
would not then be properly and primarily anything conceptual
at all, nor even a marvel , but simply that in the presence
1 Compare the exactly parallel forms a-kfira, ahan-kdra: and vide
Soderblom, Da$ Werden des (Jottcsglaubens, 1916, p. 90, on the Manitu of
the Indians.
o 2
196 ORIGINAL NUMINOUS SOUNDS
of which we must exclaim " as ! as! ". If this interpreta
tion is correct, we can detect in this word just the original
shudder of numinous awe in the first and earliest form in which
it expressed itself, before any figure of speech, objective represen
tation, or concept had been devised to explicate it ; it bursts
forth crudely and vehemently in this primal cry and is unable to
name its object otherwise than as a something before which such
sounds must involuntarily be uttered. Professor Geldner has
kindly sent me a reference to a passage in the Kena-Upanishad
(iv. 29) which seems to me to be an excellent confirmation of this
and at the same time to illustrate how the primal numinous feel
ing did originally emerge as pure feeling, before any concept or
concrete representation of it had come into being. The fine,
nal ve old Kena-Upanishad aims at making perceptible to the
disciple that before which * all words turn back , and proceeds
just as we do, by trying to produce in him an appropriate feeling-
reflex by means of a simile. The lines run :
This is the way It (sc. Brahman) is to be illustrated :
When lightnings have been loosened :
aaah !
When that has made the eyes to be closed
aaah !
So far concerning Deity (devata).
What, then, is the devata, the Brahman? It is an a-caryam,
i. e. that in whose presence we must exclaim "aaah ! " And one
cannot * illustrate the numinous character of this aaah by any
better analogy than that of the lightning here given. The
unexpectedness and suddenness of the lightning-flash, its dreadful
weirdness, its overpoweringness and dazzling splendour, the fright
and the delight of it, give it an almost numinous impressiveness,
and indeed often do produce an actual numinous impression on
the mind.
This reference of Professor Geldner s seems to me all the more
significant from the fact that it appears to me to adumbrate quite a
new method of solving the old puzzle of the Brahman , and what it
means. For this task philosophical speculation is too elevated, mere
etymology too insufficient, a method. What is necessary in order
really to get at the heart of the matter is to have rediscovered and
recaptured the feelings which this word originally connoted and
which thrill through it. And for this we have again a very
ORIGINAL NUMINOUS SOUNDS 197
instructive passage in that which, immediately preceding the one
just quoted (Kena, iii. 15). at the same time serves to elucidate it.
It is where the Devas catch for the first time an intimation of the
Brahman . They ask, in amazement, and yet obviously also in
extreme eagerness : Kim idamydksam ? of which Deussen s trans
lation What marvellous thing (Wunderding) is this? is too tame
a rendering. It is more exactly: What un-thing (Unding) is
this? in the sense in which this ｅxpression is popularly used for
a thing of which no one can say what it is or whence it comes,
and in whose presence we have the feeling of the uncanny.
Yaks a , like Unding , is sometimes a word for a ghost, and is
originally the unyehcucr , monstrous , in the sense of the un
canny, e<-rie, apparition , or spectre. And it is just as such
that the Brahman* in this passage behaves. It does the things
goblins and magical creatures usually do, vanishing suddenly like
a true phantom at the climax of the transaction. Such feelings,
which we meet at the commencement of the great Mysticism
of Brahman, attend its course continually, and he who cannot
recognize and detect their presence there cannot do more than
reconstruct the meagre skeleton of concepts they have left behind.
And the same thing, mutatis mutandis, holds good also for Western
Mysticism.
Another original sound in which the numinous feeling is
articulated is certainly the holy syllable t om\ It likewise has
no sort of conceptual connotation. Like the particle as, it is
simply an articulated sound no word, nor even a complete
syllable, for the m in which it ends is not an ordinary m , but
simply the long protracted nasal continuation of the deep o
sound. It is really simply a sort of growl or groan, sounding up
from within as the quasi-reflex ｅxpression of profound emotion
in circumstances of a numinous-magical nature, and serving to
relieve consciousness of a felt burden, almost physical in its
constraining force. And this constraint and compulsion to
ｅxpression are still recoverable to our feeling when we recapture
this mood of submergence and absorption in the wholly other .
This Om is exactly parallel to the similar sound in Sanskrit,
Hum like it, nothing but a numinous ejaculation, with probably
no further significance.
It would be a task for the history and psychology of religion
alike to examine the innumerable nainea of gods and demons, anJ
198 ORIGINAL NUMINOUS SOUNDS
perhaps also the various designations for ghost, soul, and spirit,
with a view to seeing whether many of them may not simply
have arisen from original numinous sounds and thus be parallels
to the name d&carya, already considered. 1
APPENDIX IV
SPIRIT AND SOUL AS NUMINOUS ENTITIES
THE non-rational which we were looking for in the Idea of the
divine was found in the numinous, and in our recognition of this
we came to see that rationalistic speculation tends to conceal the
divine in God, and that before God becomes for us rationality,
absolute reason, a personality, a moral will, He is the wholly
non-rational and * other , the being of sheer mystery and marvel.
We had to turn to the feelings of horror and shudder and spectral
haunting in order, by means of these caricatures of the authentic
numinous emotions, to break through the hard crust of rationalism
and bring into play the feelings buried deep down in our religious
consciousness.
Now what is true of our apprehension of the divine is true also
of its counterpart in the creature soul and spirit. Gregory of
Nyssa well says : Since one of the signs of the Divine Nature is
its essential incomprehensibility, in this also must the copy be
like the original. For were the nature of the copy comprehended,
when the original was above comprehension, the copy would be
a mistaken one. But, inasmuch as the nature of our spirit is
above our understanding, it has here an exact resemblance to the
all-sublime, representing by its own unfathomableness the incom
prehensible Being of God. Here, too, we need to break up anew
1 K. Miiller suggests that the divine name Yah, Yahu, may have had
this origin. Euoios , the secondary name of Bacchus, may also denote
simply him in whose presence one ejaculates Euoi . He could cite in his
support Jelaleddin, who says in Divan 31. 8: I know no other than
Yahu. This is here certainly nothing but one of the most familiar
dervish cries (as the translator adds in a note, p. 282), and will then
mean, in accordance with the usual rendering, he , or, as we rather
suspect, simply hu\ Nicholson puts Yahweh in brackets, without
further justification. Cf. R. A. Nicholson, Selected Poems from the Divani
Sharnsi Tabriz, Cambridge, 1898.
SPIRIT 1 AND SOUL AS NUMINOUS ENTITIES 199
our hardened and crusted feelings and to withstand the intellec-
tualizing tendency to which we are so prone in our doctrine of the
soul and its creation in God s image. For this divine image in
man also does not merely consist in the fact that he is reasonable,
moral, intelligent, and a person, but primarily in the fact that in
its profoundest depths his being is indeed for religious self-con
sciousness something numinous that the soul is mystery and
marvel. This is ho\v Mysticism apprehends it, and we can
understand at once why this is so from our definition of Mysticism
as the tendency to stress up to an extreme and exaggerated point
the non-rational aspect of religion. And what was already stir
ring in crude fashion at the earliest and lowest stage of numinous
feeling recurs at the most exalted level of Mysticism with after
effects that colour the whole experience. In the mystic s praise
of the soul, and in that fundus animae of which he tells the
mysteries, there echoes the stupor before the wholly other
that characterized the primitive belief in souls and even primitive
feeling of the presence of ghosts.
We said above (p. 124) that the most interesting point in the
primitive idea of soul is not the form given to it in fantasy,
multifarious in its variations, but the element of feeling stupor
which it liberates, and the character of mystery and wholly
otherness which surrounds it. This fact is obscured in the
measure in which the soul becomes later the subject of myth,
fairy story, and narrative, speculation and doctrine, and finally of
psychological investigation. It then becomes more and more
something entirely rational ; its origin in magic and mystery
becomes overlaid with concepts, scholastic terms, and classifica
tions. The Doctrine of souls or * Atman of the Indian Sankhya
system is the best example of this. But even this cannot entirely
conceal the fact that Soul or Atman is properly the thing of
marvel and stupefaction, quite undefinable, outsoaring all concep
tions, wholly alien to our understanding. And this finds
wonderful ｅxpression in the verses of the Glta, 2. 29, which we
transcribe here of intention in the original :
AScaryavat paSyati kaScid enam.
AScaryavad vadati tathaiva can yah.
AScaryavac cainam an yah Srinoti,
Srutva pyenam veda na caiva kaScit.
The sound of these verses suggests a magic formula, almost a
200 SPIRIT AND < SOUL
conjuration, especially when they are heard intoned in the
peculiar sacred sing-song in which such lines are commonly
recited. The note of magic and mystery is very palpable in them.
As for the translation, it is usual to render Ascaryam by strange ,
* wondrous , * a thing of wonder or marvel ; but we should
perhaps catch the emotional accent in the lines more exactly as
follows :
As wholly other doth one gaze upon it (sc. Atman).
He speaketh of the * wholly other , who speaketh of the Atman.
Something wholly other hath he learned, who hath learned
the Atman.
Yet none, albeit he hath learned it, may come to know it.
But, however they be rendered into another language, there is
living in these old phrases a profoundly numinous self-feeling,
which still retains a trace of the stupor before an apparition of
spirits. And it is continued where the Glta (2. 25) designates the
Atman the acintya , i. e. that which is incomprehensible by
thought. In this it is exactly like the fundus animae , the
* spark , i Synderesis , or * Inner Abyss of our own Western
mystics. In both cases we have, surviving in an ennobled form,
the primal awe and shrinking before the presence of dscaryam
and adbhutam , the haunting presence that prompts the earliest
numinous feelings. For, as an old mystic tells us, the soul and
its bottommost depth lie hidden away, ineffable as God himself
so that no human skill ever attains to be able to know what the
Soul is in its bottommost depth. For that a supernatural skill is
needed. It is what is without a name. And the heights and
depths which are disclosed in these Men can be grasped by no
human sense or reason, for they surpass in their profundities all
understanding - 1
Finally, it may be said that we catch a last reflection of the
numinous wonder in the wonder, one might almost say in the
eager curiosity, with which Augustine roves through the chambers
of the soul, even when he is pursuing * psychological discussion.
He feels that he has a story of marvel to tell when he describes
the soul. His psychology is half nurninology . Cf. Confessions,
x. 6-27.
The clearer insight into the inmost marvel of the soul is not set
free as a sort of reflex : it comes in the experience as an uprush,
1 Greith, pp. 70 and 80.
AS NUMINOUS ENTITIES 201
an irruption, a burst of illumination, * like a flash , in the English
phrase, as a sudden aper?u , in Goethe s. And so it easily shows
the two elements ; on the one hand there is an entry or penetra
tion into consciousness of inspiration, sudden, unmeditated, once
and for all achieved ; and on the other hand there is a reminis
cence (anamnesis), a recollection of something that was a familiar
possession in the obscurity of feeling even before the moment of
insight. Both of these elements are indicated in the old Kena-
Upanishad, when (iv. 30), after speaking of the Brahman in the
significant verses we have already considered (p. 196), the text
goes on at once to speak of the Atman, in words which may be
rendered thus :
Now in respect to the Atman:
It is as though something forces its way into consciousness
And consciousness suddenly remembers
Such a state of mind illustrates the awakening of knowledge
of the Atman.
We may compare the saying of Plato, already quoted (p. 98 n.);
and, finally, the words of Meister Eckhart :
Upon this matter a heathen sage hath a fine saying in speech
with another sage: " I become aware of something in me which
flashes upon my reason. I perceive of it that it is something,
but what it is I cannot conceive. only meseems that, could I
conceive it, I should comprehend all truth." (W. Lehmann,
Meister Eckhart, Gottingen, 1917, p. 243.)
And the obscure Heracleitus says: Thou canst not discover
the bounds of the soul albeit thou pacest its every road: so deep
is its foundation.
APPENDIX V
THE SUPRA-PERSONAL IN THE NUMINOUS
WE said above that the feeling of the wholly other gives rise
in Mysticism to the tendency to follow the via negationis , by
which every predicate that can be stated in words becomes
excluded from the absolute Numen i. e. from Deity till finally
the Godhead LJ designated aa nothingness and nullity , bearing
202 THE SUPRA-PERSONAL
in mind always that these terms denote in truth immeasurable
plenitude of being. Now this is also the origin of that tendency
to let the conception of personality and the personal also be sub
merged in the same nothingness , a tendency which is in appear
ance so irreligious. We need not dispute that the denial of
personality to God does often in fact denote a wholly irreligious
attitude ; mostly it is simply a disguised form of atheism, or
betokens a desperate attempt to equate faith in God with belief in
natural law and with naturalism. But it would be a huge error to
suppose that anything of this kind is in the minds of the mystics
when they set themselves to oppose the idea of personality in God.
We shall be in a better position to understand what they are
contending for if we take Mysticism following our previous
definition as meaning the preponderance in religious conscious
ness, even to the point of one-sided exaggeration, of its non-
rational features. What we have, then, is a sort of antinomy,
arising from the inner duality in the idea of the divine and the
tension of its more rational and its more non-rational elements.
(The non-rational assumes thus an apparently irrational character.)
It is the wholly other aspect of the numen, resisting every
analogy, every attempted comparison, and every determination ;
so that it is here really true that omnis determinatio est
negatio .
Now this holds good not only in the case of the most lofty and
reverent feelings, in which devotion and worship reach their con
summation, but also in the case of that primary and elemental awe
of which we spoke on pages 129-132. Let us glance once more at
the experience given in the story of Jacob at Bethel, there cited (Gen.
xxviii. 16-17). If we use as a clue to it our own power of imagina
tive sympathy, introspection will show that even this experience
contains a clear antinomy, a conflict of opposites. We said that
the pure elemental awe mirrored in Jacob s first words, How
dreadful is this place ! , is rendered explicit in the words that fol
low. The simple experience of avvefulness is intej-pretcd all but
instinctively, and apart from reflection and the interpretation is,
in the English phrase, a presence , a real, present, and personal
being. Now though we certainly feel that such an interpretation
is needed and in some sense right, and that we should in Jacob s
place have found no other to explicate our feeling, yet we are no
less certainly conscious of a counter-impulse in us which resists
IN THE NUMINOUS 203
it, suggesting that, when all is said, such ｅxpressions as Being ,
1 Person , Thou , He , are strangely alien and repugnant to the
very import of tho experience. Does this Power that impresses us
with such awe admit of being comprised in such a firm outline,
admit of question and answer in the second person ? Is not this
interpretation at first glance distinctly anthropomorphic? The
abstract English ｅxpression, a presence , is itself a good indica
tion of this for a presence is simply felt, and the English
usage of words is chary of saying anything more specific. The
Personalism of the later developed mythology and the later
developments of ordered worship (mostly practised on a wholly
personalist basis) have tended more and more to extrude this
authentic and sensitive element of feeling from the religious
experience; and the daemon or god , which they both con
tributed to shape, is not richer but poorer in content than the
object of that primal awe , corresponding only to certain sides
and aspects of it. Before the gods were the hard-outlined,
clear-featured goda of the myths, they were numina , and, though
the numcn certainly gains something from subsequent mythology
in definitenoss and fixity of representation, it also certainly loses
something of its original wealth of meaning in the process. In
drawing more near to earth and to humanity, it comes itself to
acquire human traits, and, that this tendency may not be carried
too far, it is necessary now and then to melt down, as it were,
the human lineaments of God in the more elemental entirety of
the original experience. Tho numen has, no doubt, in itself per
sonal features, which somehow enable the worshipper to refer to
it by a pronoun, as he or she . But, while the limits of the
personal are at this stage still fluid, they cannot (any more than
in the case of the more definite figure of the God ) quite com
prise the full import of the inapprehensible and unnameable,
which presses out beyond them.
Thus already, at the cutset, w find in the numen of primitive
religious feeling that tension between the personal and the supra-
personal which recurs again in the maturer stages of the developing
experience of God. It is to be found next in the comparatively
low level of the daemonic , where it is disclosed in an actual
difference in the verbid forms employed. The Greek Baip^v is
indisputably a single, concrete, personal Being ; the SaifMoviov,
that, for example, of Socrates, is certainly none of these neither
204 THE SUPRA-PERSONAL
concrete, nor personal, and hardly even to be called a being or
individual entity. Yet in the impressiveness and devout awe
which it suggests Sou/toi/iov is, if anything, the richer of the two
terms. In Indian terminology rdksds is the concrete, personal,
and masculine Daemon , but a transposition of the accent to the
first syllable gives raksas (the neuter), t the daemonic , or rather
demonic ; a word, perhaps, more charged with terror than is
raksas ; and the fact that the difference is merely one of accent
shows very clearly how easily the one meaning passes into the
other. But exactly the same thing is seen again at that highest
stage, at which the unfolding of the numinous consciousness
reaches its climax in India : brahman is the everlasting Lord and
God, the personal Brahma ; while brahman is the divine Absolute,
the supra-personal Brahma, an It rather than a * He . And the
two are bound together in indissoluble union as the two essential
poles of the eternal unity of the Numen. And here, again, the
closeness of their interconnexion is emphatically shown by the
fact that they are denoted by one and the same word and
distinguished by a mere change of accent and gender.
Now it is generally supposed that there is something peculiarly
and specifically oriental in this characteristic of Indian religion.
But this is by no means the case. on the contrary, one may
venture to assert that all gods are more than mere (personal) gods,
and that all the greater representations of deity show from time
to time features which reveal their ancient character as numina
and burst the bounds of the personal and theistic. This is
obviously the case where the experienced relation of the worshipper
to his god does not exclusively take the form of contact with a
* beyond and transcendent being, but comes somehow as the
experience of seizure and possession by the god, as being filled by
him, an experience in which the god wholly or partially enters
the believer and dwells in him, or assimilates him to his own
divine nature, commingling with his spirit and becoming very
part of him ; or, again, where the god becomes the sphere in
which we live and move and have our being . And what god has
not in some sense had this character ? It is certainly true of the
personal Isvara of India, who, besides his personal character,
pervades his Bhakta as antaryamin , the immanent Indweller;
it is true of Ahura-maeda, who by his spirits does the same ; and
it is true of Dionysus, Apollo, and Zeus. No less than the mere
IN THE NUMINOUS 205
crude daemon can the god become 7rvef/ia and permeate the
soul of man. And in so far the notion of a god passes beyond
the sphere of social and personal ideas and breaks through the
confines of the merely personal. Persons cannot strictly inter
penetrate, cannot become one inclusive of another. Such relations
experienced between man and deity become altogether irrational,
if we judge them by the standard of personality.
The Yahweh of the Old Testament is also more than a god in
the merely personal sense, for though it is a sign of his superior
value to all tribal gods, that the personal traits are so incompar
ably more strongly marked in him, yet other and non-personal
features are not lacking. We come up against these in groping
fashion in the comparison made between God s dealings with men
and the working of an inexplicable force spontaneously released.
But the second name of Yahweh, * Elohim , is also a proof of their
existence. Elohim is gods , in the plural ; and * in the begin
ning created (sing.) " gods" heaven and earth . Our way to-day,
when we try to escape from the too narrow confines of the notion
of unitary personality applied to God, is to use either an abstract
noun, deity (die Gottheit), or an adjectival neuter ｅxpression,
the divine (das gottliche). In Israel the same groping instinct
had recourse to the adoption or adaptation of a plural substantive
form, which was yet made to govern a verb in the singular !
There cannot be a more uncompromising ｅxpression of what we
called the antinomy or conflict of opposites in the experience of
the numinous. It is very similar when later Shamayim, l Heaven ,
becomes a name for God to be used once as such also in the
Gospel. It does not in the least signify an abstract way of
conceiving God ; but rather the feeling that endeavours to escape
from any too anthropomorphic conception. Above all does the
God of Job burst the bounds of interpretation by mere persona
lity, as we have already seen. Moreover, Yahweh also is the
nuinen which, blowing in the form of spirit, enters as ruach
and TTveu/za into his chosen, mingling with their spirit, an
antaryamin in full completion.
And so, when we turn to the New Testament, we see that the
Pneumatology and doctrine of Immanence in Paul and John,
which give such unmistakable ｅxpression to the supra-personal
aspect of the divine as the Light and the Life , do not mean
a sudden irruption into religion of a wholly novel and alien
206 THE SUPRA-PERSONAL
element, but merely the complete realization of what was all the
while potential in the character of Yahweh in his essence as a
numen.
And what of the loftiest of all Christian claims, God is Love ?
Usually we hear this saying without remarking how extraordinary
it is. If we think of God in strictly and narrowly personal terms,
He can indeed be He that loves , the loving one . But the God
who is Love, who pours Himself out as love and becomes the love
whereby Christians love, is something more even than this. 1 In
fine, even our GOD is more than merely god . And, when
Meister Eckhart says that one must stand apart from God in order
to find deity, his error is certainly grave, but it is one which we
can easily conceive as springing from the very heart of religion. 2
But it is very evident that the religious attitude in face of this
supra-personal aspect of the numen must be different from the
ordinary attitude in personal intercourse by petition, prayer,
colloquy. These have all assuredly pertained to the essence of
religion from the earliest times, yet from the beginning they were
not the only forms of intercourse. The numen on its side has
intercourse with man in attracting him to it, seizing upon him,
possessing him, breathing upon him, filling and permeating him.
Its function is fvepytio-Oai, and on his side the man, the eve/ryov/x.ei os,
is filled, possessed, made one with the numen. And what is true
at the lower levels is true also at the highest. The Divine,
1 There is an echo of this antinomy in the dispute of the Scholastics
whether the love whereby we love is the Spiritus Sanctus ,i.e. Godllimself,
or merely His donum .
8 We have seen that it is an indication of its superiority that in the
Biblical conception of God the pole of the personal rather than of the
impersonal is altogether preponderant. Taoism stands at the opposite
extreme ; but it too is genuine and deeply felt religion, moving as it does
wholly in the numinous. H. Hackmann says of it: Taoism originates
in the contemplative speculation upon the secret of the world, the
mystery of existence. Its basic instinct is to pay reverent and surmiseful
heed to the marvellous forces operative in our phenomenal life, which
give to its particular details system and connexion with the great unknown
background of the universe. The word " mystery" the mysterhtm tre-
mendum occupies a more central position in Taoism than in almost any
other religion. . . . Here sounds a genuine note in the prodigious symphony
of that life of the Boul the religious life which searches and surmises
a deeper unity and a firm foundation in the beyond behind the happenings
upon earth. (H. Hackmann, Die Monchsregeln des Klostertaoismus ,
Ostasiatische Zeitschrift, .yii. p. 170.) For this whole question cf. the
same author s essay : Uber Objekt und Gebietsumfang der Religion,
in Nieuto Theologisch Tijdschrift, 1918.
IN THE NUMINOUS 207
experienced as light , fire , and TTVCV/IO, cannot properly accost
or be accosted. It is a penetrating glow and illumination, fulfil
ment, transfiguration most of all where it is experienced as
* Life , or (what is but the intensification of this) as very Being .
One can make a petition for life, but not to life. one is simply
quickened through and through by it ; one cannot address it as
Thou . And so intercourse with the numen comprises a way
other than that of personal intercourse, that of the mystic .
Each of the two, the personal and the mystical, belongs to the
other, and the language of devotion uses very naturally the phrases
and ｅxpressions of both commingled. They are not different
forms of religion, still less different stages in religion, the one
higher and better than the other, but the two essentially united
poles of a single fundamental mental attitude, the religious atti
tude. In Luther s conception of faith they are found in this
relation openly manifested, where fides denotes both fiducia
or trust a term implying personal intercourse and adhaesio ,
or intimate contact, a term essentially mystical.
It is in the light of this primal fact of religion that we must
seek an answer to the question as to the general place of Per-
sonalism and Supra-personalism in religious history, and only
so are we likely to avoid confounding this question with the
question of Theism and Pantheism, with which it has nothing in
common. In my books Vishnu-Narayana (pp. 59, 63) and Sid-
dhanta dc* Ilamanuja (pp. 2, 80) I have referred further to the
subject. And I have shown in a paper, Neues Singen (Christ-
liche Welt, 1919, No. 48), its important practical bearings for
religious conduct and its ｅxpression in prayer and hymn. I
reproduce the relevant passage :
Our usual Prayers and Hymns confine themselves to the
region which I call the "rational". They lack that element
which I call the non-rational or the " numinous ". But this is
the other half of religion, its profounder and more mysterious
background and basis. Yet only seldom has hymnody hitherto
done justice to it. Consequently we are very deficient in the
great and impressive "Hymns of Reverence ", the hymns of the
(grammatical) third person, and our hymns are almost entirely in
the second person, " Thou ", not " He ". Now there is something
lacking in this constant, direct, obvious mode of accosting God
in the second person singular. The Seraphim in Isaiah vi do not
venture on such an address, and many a glorious Ekteny and
Litany of the older Liturgies follows their example. The creature
208 THE SUPRA-PERSONAL IN THE NUMINOUS
is simply unable to stand face to face with the Eternal without
interruption ; his vision cannot bear the perpetual sight of Holi
ness without an occasional screen. He needs sometimes the
oblique as well as the straight, frontal approach, the indirect
relationship with face half averted and covered, as well as the
direct ; and consequently his utterance should not be so continu
ally in the form of an address to God as to exclude prayerful and
thoughtful discourse about Him. The same holds good of prayer
in general, not merely of hymns. " Third person " hymns in
this sense are not necessarily less, but under certain conditions
may even be more genuine and first-hand utterances than those
which address God as "Thou ". There is a further consequence.
It is often thought that the designations of deity in impersonal,
neuter terms (" It "), rather than in terms of person and masculine
pronoun ("He", "Thou"), are too poor and too pale to gain a
place in our Christian thought of God. But this is not always
correct. Frequently such terms indicate the mysterious overplus
of the non-rational and numinous, that cannot enter our " concepts "
because it is too great and too alien to them ; and in this sense
they are quite indispensable, even in hymns and prayers. It is a
defect in our devotional poetry that it hardly knows any other
image for the eternal mystery of the Godhead than those drawn
from social intercourse and personal relationship, and so it tends
to lose sight of just the mysterious transcendent aspect of deity.
Assuredly God is for us " Thou " and a Person. But this Per
sonal character is that side of His nature which is turned man-
ward it is like a "Cape of Good Hope", jutting out from a
mountain range which, as it recedes, is lost to view in the " tene-
brae aeternae " only to be expressed by the suspension of speech
and the inspiration of sacred song.
So far we have spoken of the personal and supra-personal as
applied to the supreme, spiritual Being. But what is true here is
no less true of that which was created in its image, our own
human soul or spirit. In us too all that we call person and per
sonal, indeed all that we can know or name in ourselves at all, is
but one element in the whole. Beneath it lies, even in us, that
wholly other , whose profundities, impenetrable to any concept,
can yet be grasped in the numinous self-feeling l by one who has
experience of the deeper life.
1 We say numinous self -feeling , not numinous self -consciousness , as
Schleiermacher called it, who may be said to have re-discovered it. The
ambiguity of his nomenclature, however, does not detract from the
importance of his discovery.
209
APPENDIX VI
THE MYSTICAL ELEMENT IN LUTHER S
CONCEPTION OF FAITH
IN connexion with the discussion of Luther s conception of
faith on page 107, I would refer to my book, Die Anschauung vom
Heiligen Gciste bei Luther, the chapter Geist und Glaube (pp. 25-46),
which includes the inquiry into Luther s conception of Faith and
how far Faith for him is not merely confidence and trust (confidere,
fiducia), but also a * cleaving to God in feeling and will (adhaerere
Deo). And then let the reader study the noble little work of
Johann von Kastl, De Adhacrcndo Deo, to recognize the inner
connexion of Luther with Mysticism in regard to his conception
of faith, especially the 12th chapter, De Amore Dei quod efficax
sit. Luther says nothing of the impelling power of Faith to
bring to new birth, to justify and to sanctify, that is not also said
in this chapter of the * Amor Mysticus .
* Solus amor est, quo convertimur ad Deum, transformamur in
Deum, adhaeremus Deo, unimur Deo, ut simus unus spiritus cum
eo, et beatificemur cum eo. *
Here * amor is the potent, active, creative thing that changes
us and brings us to new birth . * Love , too, like Faith, is the
affect that knows no quiescence.
* Proinde nihil amore acutius, nihil subtilius, aut penetrabilius.
Nee quiescit, donee universaliter totam amabilis penetravit virtu-
tern et profunditatem ac totalitatem, et unum se vult facere cum
amato. Vchcmenter tendit in eum et ideo nunquam quiescit, donee
omnia transeat et ad ipsuin in ipsum veniat. 2
The effect of this adhaesio is thus exactly that which Luther
also frequently describes :
Quippe qui Deo adhaeret, versatur in lumine . . . qua ex re est
1 It is Love alone whereby we are turned to God, and changed into the
form of God, whereby we cleave to God and are made one with God, so
that we are one spirit with Him and are beatified with Him.
* For nothing is keener, nothing more subtle or more penetrating, than
Love. Nor does it rest until it has penetrated the whole power and depth
and entirety of its object, and its will is to make itself one with the
loved one. It strives towards him with vehemence and so never has rest
until it has passed through all things and reached him and entered into
him.
210 THE MYSTICAL ELEMENT IN
hominis in hac vita sublimior perfectio, ita Deo uniri, ut tota
anima cum omnibus potentiis suis et viribus in Dominum Deum
suum sit collecta, et unus fiat spiritus cum eo. l
Luther calls this, in a still more violent ｅxpression, mit Gott
ein Kuche werden (to become kneaded into one cake with God).
It should at the same time be noted that in Johann von Kastl
this amor is already permeated through and through by Faith,
Trust, Comfort, and the longing for certitude, and that for him no
less than for Luther the Remission of Sins stands as the first
step in the ordo salutis , the order of salvation. Thus :
Sic scilicet in Domino Deo de omni sua necessitate audcat
plene totaliter confidere. Hoc ipso facto in tantum Deo complacet,
ut suam ei gratiam largiatur et per ipsam grutiam veram sentiat
caritatem et dilectionem, omnemque ambiguitatem et timorem expel-
lentem in Deoque confidenter sperantem 2 (op. cit, ch. 5).
And so adhaesio may come about just as well by means of
* faith : sed tantum fide et bona voluntate adhaerere Deo 3
(ch. 6).
Here, too, are freedom from care and the assurance of consola
tion the things to be prized : et eius consolatione suaviter
reficitur 4 (ch. 7).
And the whole series of religious experiences, so often recurring
in Luther, are already displayed in Johann von Kastl in their
characteristic order:
. . . peccatorum remissio, amaritudinis expressio, collatio
dulcedinis et securitatis, infusio gratiae et misericordiae, attractio
et corroboratio familiaritatis atque abundans de ipso consolatio,
firmaque adhaesio et unio. 5
1 He indeed who cleaves to God abides in light. . . . Wherefore is it
man s loftier perfection in this life to be so united to God that the whole
soul with all its strength and all its powers is gathered into its Lord and
God and becomes one spirit with Him.
2 So then let (the soul) of its very necessity make the venture to trust
wholly and completely in the Lord God. In this very wise is the soul so
pleasing to God, that He bestows His own grace upon it, and by that
very grace it comes to feel the true love and affection which drives away
all doubt and all fear and hopes confidently in God.
3 but only to cleave to God in faith and good will.
* and by his consolation is (the soul) sweetly restored.
B The forgiveness of sins, the expelling of bitterness, the bestowal of
sweetness and security, the inpouring of grace and of mercy, the attraction
and the strengthening of friendship with Him and abundant comfort in
Him, and a firm cleaving to Him and union with Him.
LUTHER S CONCEPTION OF FAITH 211
But a complete judgement upon Luther s connexion with Mysti
cism will only be possible when all the manuscript remains of the
popular mystical preaching of his time become known, which as
yet lie undisturbed in our libraries. They will show the back
ground and setting of Luther s thought and phraseology, the soil
out of which they grew, and how many similarities and analogues
there are to the feelings to which Luther gives ｅxpression. Were
we unaware that the pamphlet Of the Liberty of a Christian
was by Luther, we should probably count it among these writings.
And in any case there are to be found within the limits of the so-
called mystical literature contrasts in mental attitude that go
farther than that between this work of Luther s and that of
Johann von Kastl from which we have been quoting. And
Luther is really far more akin to such a mystic as Meister
Eckhart in his attitude than are either Plotinus on the one
hand or, on the other, the crowd of God-enamoured monks
and nuns, the doctores ecstatici and seraphici , such as
Ignatius and John of the Cross, Theresa and Madame Guyon.
But such comparisons as this are illuminating not only upon the
question of the historical relation between Lutheranism and mystical
religion, which is, after all, not a very important issue, but also
upon the question as to the connexion between the two in their
essential nature. It has been said that for a Protestant to love
Mysticism is mere dilettantism : if he is in earnest, he must
become a Catholic. But then Mysticism is an ambiguous term.
If we mean by it the melting transport of a transcendent quasi-
nuptial rapture, then the assertion may be justified. But the really
typical moments of mysticism creature-feeling and union
are not less but more possible upon the basis of Luther s fides
( faith as fiducia and adhaesio ) than upon the basis of the
amor mysticus .
Johann Arndt says at the commencement of his Four Books of
True Christianity (ch. 5) : By this heart-felt confidence and heart
felt trust man gives his heart to God utterly, reposes only in God,
surrenders himself and attaches himself to Him, unites himself
with God, becomes a sharer in all that is of God and of Christ,
becomes one God with God. This is simply Luther s doc
trine (his fides as fiducia and adhaesio ), clarified and raised
to a higher power. These ｅxpressions might well be found in
Luther s Of the Liberty of a Christian indeed their meaning is
p 2
212 THE MYSTICAL ELEMENT IN LUTHER
to be found there. St. Paul says the same, only more forcibly
still, in Gal. ii. 20 and 1 Cor. vi. 17.
But this question of the possibility of the transition from
fides to the experience of union is not to be definitely decided
by a citation of texts from Luther or from the Bible, but by a
consideration of what Faith is in essence. Faith is more than
a conviction of the truth of the eternal verities. It is a deeply
felt state of tension with regard to them and of absorption in
them ; and, as trust , it is the most intimate feeling of nearness.
But in all this it contains in itself the core of that which is meant
by mysterious terms like union , something that is more than
the knowledge or the love of the earlier mystic schools. And
this becomes still plainer to any one who has clearly recognized
by deeper contemplation the profoundly non-rational elements to
be found in the very act of faith.
APPENDIX VII
SIGNS FOLLOWING
(I GIVE here a passage from my Leben und Wirken Jesu rele
vant to this subject, touched upon on p. 176.)
Jesus begins his work on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, and
the Gospels present us with its main features unmistakably. He
preaches in the synagogues, in the houses of his friends, on every
sort of occasion at table and under the open sky, now sojourning
in one spot, now journeying from place to place. His fame is
spread abroad especially by means of the mysterious gift of healing
which is active in him.
What are we to say of this ? The Jesus who works the miracles
in the Synoptic narrative is, as we saw above, not the wonder
worker par excellence, of whom we read in St. John s Gospel or
whom the traditional view presents to us. But even in those
passages which can be least impugned by criticism there is some
thing incommensurable with our rational standards in the setting
in which we see his figure, and this gift of healing is an example
of it. The narratives of these acts of healing stand out with such
SIGNS FOLLOWING 213
an assured and plain simplicity, with a clarity so wellnigh
disconcerting, that they cannot be the fabrications of legend. We
have only to read the sober account it is almost like an official
report of the healing of Peter s wife s mother (Mark i. 29-31), or
that of the healing of the man with the palsy (Mark ii. 1-12),
with its concreteness of detail. And it is the same with many
other cases. The story of the centurion of Capernaum, and Jesus
astonished wonder at the faith of this Gentile ; the story of the
woman of Canaan, and of how Jesus, at first reluctant, comes to
be inwardly won over ; this is not the way of imagination and
legend. Moreover, there is the fact that we encounter exactly
similar occurrences among the early Christian communities.
Even if we are ready to impugn the accounts of Jesus s miracles of
healing in the Gospels, we cannot impugn the accounts in the
Pauline epistles of the same thing as happening among the
Corinthians, Galatians, and Romans, and to Paul himself. Here
they stand in the full light of history and with the fullest testi
mony of history. It is quite evident that both Paul and the first
Christian communities were firmly convinced that they had the
charismata , the gifts , among them. St. Paul gives, in 1 Cor.
xii. 4-11, a formal catalogue of these, in which the gifts of healing
the sick and of the exercise of super-normal physical power and
other abnormal psychical gilts take their place alongside the gifts
of tongues and prophecy. No doubt he says (1 Cor. xiii) that
something is higher and more precious than all gifts , namely,
the simple Christian virtues of Faith, Hope, and Love, and Love
the greatest among these . But it is implied thereby that those
other gifts too are a reality and a present possession. He has
them in himself and frequently exercises them, and in every
Christian congregation they make their appearance. In fact we
have sure historical warrant for holding that gifts of this kind
were in evidence for a long time beyond the borders of the early
Church just as, for that matter, we have similar warrant for
recognizing that analogous phenomena have been since observed
in other than Christian surroundings. Will this mysterious
region one day be clearly revealed to us ? We can at any rate
say this: that our procedure is very uncritical if we propose to
rule it out as non-existent simply because it does not square with
our current conceptions of agreement with the natural order .
Now tho fewer the preconceptions which we bring to our reading
214 SIGNS FOLLOWING
of the narrative-material of the Gospels, as reviewed and guaran
teed by a thorough criticism, the stronger becomes the impression
that in Jesus these powers were present with a rare potency. We
have in a sense a key to the matter in the peculiar predisposition
and endowment for their calling which marked the great prophets
of the Old Testament. What characterized them really was not
omniscience and not the capacity of predicting a future many
hundred years distant : it was beyond question in many cases a
unique power of forefeeling and foreboding impending super
normal occurrences that threatened to break in upon the natural
course of events. This gift we have held to be not something
* supernatural and miraculous in the old sense of the word, i. e.
something that falls altogether outside all analogies of what
happens elsewhere ; on the contrary, analogies in plenty for this
extraordinary prophetic gift are to be found in the phenomena of
clairvoyance, presentiment, second-sight, &c. Now it is possible
that the gift of healing of Jesus which appears so puzzling was
merely a heightened and intense form of capacities which lie
dormant in human nature in general. But for a manifestation of
the influence exerted by the psychical upon the physical we need
in fact go no farther than the power of our will to move our body
the power, that is, of a spiritual cause to bring about a mechani
cal effect. There assuredly is an absolutely insoluble riddle, and
it is only the fact that we have grown so used to it that prevents
it from seeming a miracle to us. But, this granted, who can
pronounce beforehand what intenser and heightened manifesta
tions of this power may not be possible ? Who can presume to
determine what direct results a will may not achieve which,
wholly concentrated and at one with itself, rests altogether upon
God ? We have had in recent years many indications of parallels
and analogies to the miraculous power of Jesus in the newly-
discovered methods of suggestion and hypnotism, in telepathy,
action at a distance , and (in my opinion) animal magnetism. All
these suppositions may be accepted without misgiving, only with
this addition, that what Jesus did passed gradually far beyond
anything known to us in these fields ; and moreover, that Jesus
whole power grew out of his consciousness of his mission, and his
will, unusually strong as it was, drew its strength only from his
religious and moral consciousness, from the fact that he was
rooted and grounded in God.
SIGNS FOLLOWING 215
If it be granted that Jesus really had an abnormal power in
action, it is evident that this very fact would stimulate rumour
and imagination to exaggeration and embellishment and invention
of miraculous incident. It is evident that we may quite properly
approach the miracle narratives with a certain expectation of
finding such features in them ; and that it will not do, in face
of some sheer prodigy, to rest content with the mysterious
gift as a solution to every difficulty. Thus a raising from
the dead, as that of Lazarus, or a changing of water into wine
(both stories only in St. John), is excluded from the region of
the historically conceivable and admissible. And there is in the
Synoptists also matter enough that passes these limits, e. g. the
walking on the sea, the feeding of the five thousand, the tale
of the Gadarene swine. When such stories have been deducted,
then practically all that is left in the Synoptic narrative are cases
of healing, though of course some of these are of an astonishing
character. There are also two cases of raising from the dead
that of Jairus s daughter and that of the young man of Nain.
Criticism will be inclined to reject these. It must, however, be
granted that there is a real difference between these stories and
that in St. John of the raising of Lazarus. Jairus s daughter had
not lain three days in the grave, like Lazarus ; she had only lost
consciousness a short time before the miracle. Where is the
margin that divides complete death from the last faint glow of
the spark of life, very likely already passed into unconsciousness?
May not he who by his will had power to restore a consciousness
confused by madness have had also the power to arrest a con
sciousness just vanishing over the borders of life, and even
awaken again in the body one that has but just vanished ? Here
the account is strikingly concrete. Even the very words Jesus
uses to awaken the girl as uttered in Aramaic Talitha Cumi
are still given in the Aramaic form by the Greek narrator.
There is nothing grandiose or theatrical, as is customarily the
case with a miracle designed for display. Jesus only admits
the most intimate even of his disciples, and the whole incident
closes with the soberly practical injunction to give the newly
restored child food, and with the direct prohibition to talk
further about the event. We have only to compare with this the
raising of Lazarus ; here is the exact opposite, a genuine miracle
of display. The wonder-worker designedly delays his arrival, so
216 SIGNS FOLLOWING 1
that a miracle becomes necessary ; the whole proceeding, with its
solemn mise en-scene, takes place in public, and is accompanied by
a prayer, which is at the same time a sort of address to the sur
rounding spectators. The act is to be performed expressly
* because of the people which stand by . This is how a miracle-
narrative looks when it is the offspring of literary art. The
raisings from the dead given in St. Mark are quite other than this,
and consequently a circumspect criticism may perhaps in their
case suspend judgement.
APPENDIX VIII
SILENT WORSHIP
Still-born Silence, thou that art
Flood-gate of the deeper heart.
I TAKE these lines 1 from a little Quaker book on Silent Worship" 2
which, recently translated into German, should give the German
public a good impression of the worship of silent waiting upon
God which has been a feature of the Quaker community from the
days of George Fox up to the present day. It is the most spiritual
form of divine service which has ever been practised, and contains
an element which no form of worship ought to be without, but
which, as has been hinted on a former page, is unduly neglected
in our Protestant devotional life. We must learn it once again
from the Quakers, and thereby restore to our divine service a
spirit of consecration the loss of which has cost it dearly.
Devotional Silence may have a threefold character. There is
the numinous silence of Sacrament, the silence of Waiting, and the
silence of Union or Fellowship.
1. The first of these is that silence meant in the verse of the
Prophet (Hab. ii. 20), Let all the earth keep silence before him.
1 They are quoted from Charles Lamb s essay, A Quakers Meeting ,
(Trans.)
2 Silent Worship : The Way of Wonder, by Violet Hodgkin.
SILENT WORSHIP 217
Such impressive moments of silence were known not only in the
worship of Israel but in that of other peoples. They are the
culminating sacramental point in the worship, denoting as they
do the instant when God is in the midst , experienced as
numen praesens . All the preceding part of the service is but
a preparation for this, a preparation for the moment of which the
words hold good, Das Unzuliingliche, hier wird s Ereignis, the
Insufficient here becomes Event . For what was previously only
possessed in insufficiency, only longed for, now comes upon the
scene in living actuality, the experience of the transcendent in
gracious intimate presence, the * Lord s Visitation of His people .
Such a realization is Sacrament, and what occasions it, attends,
or prepares for it, must be termed sacramental. Such a silence
is therefore a sacramental silence. It was found in the forms of
worship of ancient Israel, and it is found to-day in the Roman
Mass, in the moment of transubstantiation*.
2. Next there is the silence of Waiting. The meaning of this
is primarily other than sacramental. When the Quakers assemble
for a quiet time together, this is first and foremost a time of
waiting, and it has in this sense a double value. It means our
submergence, i. e. inward concentration and detachment from the
manifold outward distractions ; but this again has value as a
preparation of the soul to become the pencil of the unearthly
writer, the bent bow of the heavenly archer, the tuned lyre of
the divine musician. This silence is, then, primarily not so much
a dumbness in the presence of Deity, as an awaiting His coming,
in expectation of the Spirit and its message. But it passes over
naturally into the Sacramental Silence of which we have spoken.
And in fact Silent Worship may remain without words from
first to last it may exclude all utterance of the Spirit s message
in vocal form, and in that case the worshippers part, as they
met, without any audible exhortation or thanksgiving. Yet the
worship need not have been in any way defective, for the silence
may have been a direct numinous experience, as well as a wait
ing upon God. Tho Eternal was present in the stillness and His
presence was palpable without a word spoken. The solemn
observance of silence became a Sacrament.
3. The consummation of the Sacrament is the achievement of
unity, i. e. fellowship and Communion. This third silence is the
completion of the waiting and the sacramental silences. The Silent
218 SILENT WORSHIP
Worship of the Quakers is in fact a realization of Communion in
both senses of the word inward oneness and fellowship of the
individual with invisible present Reality and the mystical union
of many individuals with one another. In this regard there is
the plainest inward kinship between the two forms of worship
which, viewed externally, seem to stand at the opposite poles of
religious development, viz. the Quaker meeting and the Roman
Catholic Mass. Both are solemn religious observances of a
numinous and sacramental character, loth are communion, loth
exhibit alike an inner straining not only * to realize the presence
of God, but to attain to a degree of oneness with Him.
II
Silent Worship , in the fully-formed character in which the
Quakers practise it, is not possible in a Church , as we under
stand the word to-day, but only within the narrower limits of a
more intimate * Brotherhood of the Spirit . May God grant that
such a brotherhood may one day arise among us, not as a sect or a
Church alongside our other Churches, but as a circle of self-
dedicated enthusiasts, who have rediscovered the ancient heritage
of the early Church the Spirit and its sevenfold gifts !
But if the Quaker Silence is excluded, still less is any imitation
of the Sacramental Silence in the form of the Catholic Mass
possible in our Protestant services. All that tends in this direc
tion is bound to go astray. The Communion Service does, it is
true, celebrate Christ s Passion, that event which in all world
history is the numinous event par excellence, the entry of the
divine in fullest and loftiest presence upon the human scene. But
the Communion Service is emphatically not a Mass, and the Mass
has grown to be a distortion of its true form. The Communion
Service is, in the original intention of its first celebration or insti
tution, not a piece of public ceremonial at all, far less a drama to
be performed by one or at most a few participants in the presence
of spectators, but a tender mystery, restricted to a fellowship of
brothers, pertaining to a special time and hour, and needing
particular preparation in short, something that should be pre
cious and rare. For Protestants it is to be kept entirely apart from
the regular and congregational Divine Service, and should be
reserved for particular feasts, for celebration at evening or in the
SILENT WORSHIP 219
night stillness. It ought to be withdrawn .altogether from the use
and wont of every day and become the most intimate privilege
which Christian worship has to offer.
But though these two means are excluded, it is yet possible to
find another way to introduce Silent Worship into our ordinary
Sunday services, and so to give these a consecration which is as
yet lacking to them. We can make the service culminate and
find its climax in a short period of silence, which shall be at once
the silence of sacrament and the silence of waiting, and which
may become, at least for the more practical, also a realization of
union. Wo may devise an opportunity of silent dedication which
will avoid the ceremonial apparatus and mythology of the doctrine
of Traiisubstantiation. , and yet in its simplicity and pure
spirituality may be more deeply sacramental than the Mass, for
which many are again beginning to crave. We have only to
follow the indications afforded by the example of the Silent
Worship of the Quakers.
Whore lies the essence of the sacramental ? It is in fact in
the ｅxpression of the English High Churchmen the real pre
sence , the real presence of the transcendent and holy in its very
nature in adoration and fellowship, so as to be laid hold of and
enjoyed in present possession. No form of devotion which does
not offer or achieve this mystery for the worshipper can be per
fect or can give lasting contentment to a religious mind. And it
is just because our usual Divine Services fall short in this that we
see to-day again quite comprehensibly such a ferment and
stirring of all sorts of uneasy High Church , * Ritualistic , and
4 Sacramental movements.
But we may well be asked has it any meaning to ask for
the presence of the divine ? Does not that Sacramental idea at
once cancel itself, when thought out? Is not God omnipresent
and really present always and everywhere ?
Such a view ia often put forward, and with a confident air of
assurance which is in sharp conflict with the testimony of genuine
religious experience; so much so, indeed, that one is tempted to
venture a very blunt reply to it. We say, then, that this doctrine
of the omnipresence of God as though by a necessity of His being
He must be bound to every time and to every place, like a natural
force pervading space is a frigid invention of metaphysical
speculation, entirely without religious import. Scripture knows
220 SILENT WORSHIP
nothing of it. Scripture knows no * Omnipresence , neither the
ｅxpression nor the meaning it expresses ; it knows only the God
who is where He wills to be, and is not where He wills not to
be, the deus mobilis , who is no mere universally extended
being, but an august mystery, that comes and goes, approaches
and withdraws, has its time and hour, and may be far or near in
infinite degrees, closer than breathing to us or miles remote
from us. The hours of His visitation and His return are rare
and solemn occasions, different essentially not only from the
profane life of every day, but also from the calm confiding
mood of the believer, whose trust is to live ever before the face of
God. They are the topmost summits in the life of the Spirit.
They are not only rare occasions, they must needs be so for our
sakes, for no creature can bear often or for long the full nearness
of God s majesty in its beatitude and in its awefulness. Yet there
must still be such times, for they show the bright vision and com
pletion of our sonship, they are a bliss in themselves and potent
for redemption. They are the real sacrament, in comparison with
which all high official ceremonials, Masses, and rituals the world
over become the figurings of a child. And a Divine Service would
be the truest which led up to such a mystery and the riches of
grace that ensue upon the realization of it. And if it be asked
whether a Divine Service is able to achieve this, let us answer
that, though God indeed comes where and when He chooses, yet
He will choose to come when we sincerely call upon Him and
prepare ourselves truly for His visitation.
221
APPENDIX IX
A NUMINOUS EXPERIENCE OF JOHN RUSKIN
MY attention has been called by Professor Deutschbein to the
following passage in Ruskin, in which he recounts experiences of
his youth that repeatedly recurred. They are purely numinous
in character and wellnigh all the moments which we discovered
reappear here quite spontaneously. I give the passage without
detailed comment :
Lastly, although there was no definite religious sentiment
mingled with it, there was a continual perception of Sanctity in
the whole of nature, from the slightest thing to the vastest ; an
instinctive awe, mixed with delight ; an indefinable thrill, such
as we sometimes imagine to indicate the presence of a disembodied
spirit. I could only feel this perfectly when I was alone ; and
then it would often make me shiver from head to foot with the
joy and fear of it, when after being some time away from hills I
first got to the shore of a mountain river, where the brown water
circled among the pebbles, or when I first saw the swell of distant
land against the sunset, or the first low broken wall, covered with
mountain moss. I cannot in the least describe the feeling ; but I
do not think this is my fault, nor that of the English language,
for I am afraid no feeling is describable. If we had to explain
even the sense of bodily hunger to a person who had never felt it,
we should be hard put to it for words ; and the joy in nature
seemed to me to come of a sort of heart-hunger, satisfied with the
presence of a Great and Holy Spirit. . . . These feelings remained
in their full intensity till I was eighteen or twenty, and then, as
the reflective and practical power increased, and the " cares of this
world" gained upon me, faded gradually away, in the manner
described by Wordsworth in his "Intimations of Immortality ".
{Modern Painters, Popular Edition, vol. iii, p. 309. George Allen.)
Schleiermacher calls such an experience intuition and feeling of
the infinite ; wo give it the name divination . Schleiermacher
was right in saying that even greater than all this divination in
the sphere of nature is divination in the sphere of history. Will
not a Ruskin arise to divine and reveal the non-rational and
numinous character of our own epoch?
222
APPENDIX X
THE ｅxpression OF THE NUMINOUS IN ENGLISH 1
ALTHOUGH it could hardly be disputed that the German philo
sophical vocabulary is superior to the English both in fullness and
in precision, in regard to the subjects discussed in this book our
language does not seem to be altogether at a disadvantage.
Indeed, the English wealth of synonyms has presented the trans
lator with an embarrassment at the very outset. In place of the
single German adjective lieilig, with its derivative noun and verb,
we have the words sacred and holy, sacredness, holiness and sanctity,
hallow and sanctify. G-ottheit again gives us a triad of synonyms,
deity, divinity, Godhead. Each of these alternatives is probably
the most appropriate rendering in some special context, and in
choosing any one of them we are bound to sacrifice subtle differ
ences in meaning which would be suggested by the others, and
which are perhaps implicit in the single German equivalent. The
deciding factor in the choice of holy rather than sacred as the
regular rendering of lieilig was the fact that it is the Biblical word,
found especially in those great passages (e. g. Isaiah vi) of which
this book makes repeated use, and which seem central to its argu
ment. Holy will be felt, I believe, to be a distinctly more
1 numinous word than sacred : it retains about it more markedly
the numinous atmosphere. And although, as is urged in the text
with perhaps still more reason of its German equivalent, it refers
mainly to the higher levels of religious experience at which the
numinous has been interpreted in rational and moral terms, and
therefore means to us mainly goodness, the word holy is found
also in contexts where this more exalted meaning is excluded, and
where it is simply the numinous at an early and savage stage of
development. The well-known lines from Coleridge s Kulla Khan
give an example of such a use :
A savage place ! as holy and enchanted
As e er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover !
This is a finely numinous passage, but it is the numinous at the
primitive, pre-religious, * daemonic level : it conveys nothing of
1 Added by the translator.
ｅxpression OF THE NUMINOUS IN ENGLISH 223
sanctity. For, while the daring use of holy in this context may
be just permissible, we reserve sanctity , if I mistake not, for the
more restricted and elevated meaning.
Apart from these words it would appear that the English lan
guage is in general rich in numinous terms. Dr. Otto has him
self noted (p. 14) that the English awe has a numinous suggestion
lacking in the German scheu , and (p. 131 n.) that haunt has no
precise German equivalent in all its range of significance. And
besides uncanny (a more or less exact rendering of unlicimlich)
I have made use of words like weird and eerie, which convey the
indefinable numinous atmosphere unmistakably. The old word
freit (a supernatural intimation or sign) may be another such ;
and possibly the obsolete verb-form oug, which gives us ugly,
may have conveyed originally a suggestion of unnatural, uncanny,
daunting or repulsion. It should be noticed that these numinous
words are all (except awe ) concerned primarily with the cruder
and more primitive forms of the experience : they are not in the
first instance religious words in the higher sense, though, unlike such
words as gnte, grisly, and ghastly, they can be used with a
loftier and more ennobled, as well as with a lower and more
primitive meaning. And it can, finally, be hardly an accident
that they all, or nearly all, are northern in origin. A peculiar
susceptibility to numinous impressions what Dr. Otto would call
a peculiarly sensitive faculty of divination would seem, indeed,
to be a characteristic of the North British. Such phenomena as
those of Clairvoyance and Second-sight would seem to make for the
same conclusion.
Apart from the expressiveness of single English words, it would
be easy to amass from English poetry and prose alike passages
(like that from Coleridge already quoted) illustrative of the different
elements in numinous apprehension which have been discussed in
this book. I venture to give three further citations.
On page 193 the contrast between the piety in which the
rational moments predominate and that in which a more
numinous feeling is to be noted is illustrated from two German
hymns of praise.
The same antithesis could hardly be shown more clearly than
by the contrast between two poems familiar to every English
reader, Addison s hymn based on Psalm xix, and Blake s poem
The Tyger . Both poets are hymning the Creator as revealed in
224 THE ｅxpression OF THE
his creation, but the difference of temper is unmistakable. on the
one hand there is the mood of tranquil confidence, serene dignity,
thankful and understanding praise ; on the other, a mood of
trepidation, awed surmise, the hush of mystery, in which rings
none the less a strange exultation.
The spacious firmament on high
With all the blue ethereal sky,
And spangled heavens, a shining frame,
Their great Original proclaim.
The unwearied sun, from day to day,
Does his Creator s power display
And publishes to every land
The work of an Almighty hand.
Soon as the evening shades prevail
The moon takes up the wondrous tale
And nightly to the listening earth
Repeats the story of her birth ;
While all the stars that round her burn,
And all the planets in their turn,
Confirm the tidings as they roll
And spread the truth from pole to pole.
What though in solemn silence all
Move round the dark terrestrial ball ;
What though no real voice or sound
Amid their radiant orbs be found ?
In reason s ear they all rejoice,
And utter forth a glorious voice ;
For ever singing as they shine :
The hand that made us is Divine.
This is, confessedly, rational piety ; it is reason that listens to
nature s hymn of praise. As such it is characteristic not only of
a certain type of mind, but of the particular age in which it was
written. And the contrasted numinous note can hardly be missed
in Blake s wonderful verses :
Tyger, Tyger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry ?
In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire ?
What the hand dare seize the fire ?
And what shoulder and what art
Could twist the sinews of thy heart ?
And, when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand and what dread feet?
NUMINOUS IN ENGLISH 225
What the hammer? What the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain ?
What the anvil ? What dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp ?
When the stars threw down their Bpears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee ?
Tyger, Tyger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry ?
The remark of the author on page 221 suggests my last quota
tion. Wordsworth, in the tenth book of The Prelude, recounts
the profound impression made upon him by the terrific events in
which the French Kevolution culminated. Then, as now, out
ward convulsion and catastrophe had their inward counterpart in
spiritual tumult and overthrow, in widespread disillusionment
and despair. And Wordsworth tells us in effect how the very
tremendousness of the time, its portentousness , became to him
a revelation of the sustaining presence of the holy and the divine
(see The Prelude, x. 437-4G9) :
. . . So, with devout humility be it said,
So, did a portion of that spirit fall
On me uplifted from the vantage-ground
Of pity and sorrow to a state of being
That through the time s exceeding fierceness saw
Glimpses of retribution, terrible,
And in the order of sublime behests :
But, even if that were not, amid the awe
Of unintelligible chastisement,
Not only acquiescences of faith
Survived, but daring sympathies with power,
Motions not treacherous or profane, else why
Within the folds of no ungentle breast
Their dread vibration to this hour prolonged ? . . .
Then was the truth received into my heart,
That, under heaviest sorrow earth can bring,
If from the affliction somewhere do not grow
Honour which could not else have been, a faith,
An elevation, and a sanctity,
If new strength be not given nor old restored,
The blame ia ours, not Nature s.
226
APPENDIX XI
THE MYSTERIUM TREMENDUM IN ROBERTSON
AND WATTS
A profound ｅxpression of the Mysterium Tremendum may be
found in the sermon of F. W. Robertson on Jacob s Wrestling ;
(Ten Sermons ), point 2, The revelation of mystery.
It was revealed by dive. Very significantly are we told that
the divine antagonist seemed, as it were, anxious to depart as the
day was about to dawn ; and that Jacob held Him more con
vulsively fast, as if aware that the daylight was likely to rob
him of his anticipated blessing : in which there seems concealed
a very deep truth. God is approached more nearly in that which
is indefinite than in that which is definite and distinct. He is
felt in awe, and wonder and ivorsliip rather than in clear conception.
There is a sense in which darkness has more of God than light
has. He dwells in the thick darkness. Moments of tender,
vague mystery often bring distinctly the feeling of His presence.
When day breaks and distinctness comes the Divine has evapo
rated from the soul like morning dew. In sorrow, haunted by
uncertain presentiments, we feel the infinite around us. The
gloom disperses, the world s joy comes again, and it seems as if
God were gone the Being who had touched us with a withering
hand and wrestled with us, yet whose presence, even when most
terrible, was more blessed than His absence. It is true, even
literally, that the darkness reveals God: every morning God
draws the curtain of the garish light across His eternity, and we
lose the Infinite. We look down on earth instead of up to
heaven, on a narrower and more contracted spectacle that which
is examined by the microscope when the telescope is laid aside
smallness, instead of vastness. "Man goeth forth unto his work
and to his labour till the evening " ; and in the dust and pettiness
of life we seem to cease to behold Him : then at night He un
draws the curtain again, and we see how much of God and
Eternity the bright distinct day has hidden from us. Yes, in
solitary, silent, vague darkness, the Awful one is near .
Names have a power, a strange power of hiding God.
THE MYSTERIUM TREMENDUM 227
Who does not know how we satisfy ourselves with the name
of some strange bird or plant, or the name of some new law in
nature? It is a mystery perplexing us before. We get the name
and fancy we understand something more than we did before ;
but in truth we are more hopelessly ignorant : for before we felt
there was a something we had not attained, and so we inquired
and searched now, we fancy we possess it, because we have got
the name by which it is known : and the word covers over the
abyss of our ignorance. If Jacob had got a word, that word
might have satisfied him. . . . God s plan was not to give names
and words, but truths of feeling. That night, in that strange
scene, He impressed on Jacob s soul a religious awe, which was
hereafter to develop not a set of formal ｅxpressions, which would
have satisfied with husks the craving of the intellect and shut up
the soul: Jacob felt the Infinite, who is more truly felt when
least named.
The following hymn of Watts expresses the numinous feeling
more adequately than many that are more familiar.
Eternal Power, whose high abode
Becomes the grandeur of a God,
Infinite length beyond the bounds
Where stars revolve their little rounds :
Thee while the first Archangel sings,
He hides his face beneath his wings ;
And ranks of shining ones around
Fall worshipping and spread the ground.
Lord, what shall earth and ashes do ?
We would adore our Maker too :
From Sin and dust to Thee we cry,
The Great, the Holy, and the High I
Earth from afar has heard thy fame
And we have learned to lisp Thy name ;
But oh the glories of Thy mind
Leave all our soaring thoughts behind.
God is in Heaven, and men below ;
Be short our tunes, our words be few ;
A sacred reverence checks our songs,
And praise sits silent on our tongues.
228
APPENDIX XII
THE RESURRECTION AS A SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE
I "know that my Redeemer liveth * : I lelieve in Jesus Christ,
risen from the dead : such is the Christian s confession.
I know and * I believe or have faith these are not here
mutually exclusive ｅxpressions. This knowing is not that with
which scientific theory is concerned, based upon empirical sense-
knowledge ; it is rather faith-knowledge, and faith-knowledge does
not rely on the evidence of the senses, but is, in the scriptural
phrase, the evidence of things not seen , that is, not presented
to sense-perception ; and it would lose its essential nature and be
transformed into a mere sorry empirical knowledge, if it relied on
any other evidence than the witness of the Holy Spirit , which
is not that of sense-experience. And so we cannot afford to account
Christ s resurrection, and our own, known facts, in this lower
scientific sense of knowledge. The simplest understanding
feels this. To speak of resurrection is to utter a mystery, and
mystery is a subject for faith, not science. And, for Christianity,
how this faith itself comes to be is no less a mystery, indeed the
greatest of all mysteries. But if faith were knowledge, directly
attested by the senses or based upon the tradition of a former
occurrence attested by the senses, this mystery would wholly
disappear.
And so we hold that in endeavouring to account for our assur
ance of the Risen Christ two sorts of interpretation must be
excluded, the naively supernaturalistic and the rationalistic.
The former is that which has recourse to the * Empty Tomb . It
holds that Christ s tomb was proved to be empty by the evidence
of the senses, that the Risen Christ was perceived by the senses,
and that the truth of the facts so certified in sense-experience was
then handed down by human testimony. on this view the con
viction of the resurrection was from the first not faith, but a piece
of empirical knowledge. This is the most serious objection that
can be brought against the naive supernaturalist interpretation,
a more serious objection than the uncertain and legendary char-
RESURRECTION AS A SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE 229
acter of the Empty Tomb narrative or the fact that the earliest
and most authentic witness to the resurrection of Christ that of
St. Paul in 1 Cor. xv makes no mention of the empty tomb,
although there the Apostle is at pains to assemble all possible
reasons for assurance in the reality of the Resurrection.
But the ordinary rationalistic interpretation is equally inad
missible. A deep impression of the person of Jesus had remained,
so it is said, with the disciples and especially with Peter, and from
this impression grew their conviction after His death, Such an
one cannot have remained dead . And this conviction, thus born
in their minds, took imaginative and figurative form in visions,
which must therefore be regarded as purely subjective. But this
explanation is patently forced and unsatisfactory, and seems to us
to miss altogether the uniqueness and coherence of the experience
centring in the Resurrection. The two lines of interpretation
have this in common, however: they both entirely ignore the
fundamental fact about the experience, that it was a mystery ;
both agree in disregarding altogether its mystery character.
We can only get beyond the opposition between supernaturalism
and rationalism by frankly recognizing that the experiences con
cerned with the Resurrection were mystical experiences and their
source the Spirit . It is only * of the Spirit that the higher
knowledge is born. It is the eye of Spirit, not the eye of sense
that beholds the eternal things ; but what it sees is not a mere
insecure, half-w r oven fabric of * convictions , but the adamantine
certainty of the eternal truth itself!
II
To understand the matter truly we need to make clear to our
selves by examples drawn from occurrences in the Bible record to
what more general class of experience those that are concerned
with the Resurrection belong, and then to grasp what the essential
character of this wider class is. Isaiah tells (ch. vi) how in that
mysterious experience in the Temple his inward eye was opened
to behold Yahweh in His holiness and majesty, how he received
His command and became thereby the messenger of Yahweh to
His people. This supreme, mysterious vision becomes thus for
Isaiah his summons and his ordination, and his whole subsequent
activity as prophet in its wider significance is founded upon this
230 THE RESURRECTION AS
experience. And the occurrence is not one without a parallel,
but rather is typical of all the great men who received God s
summons (compare Jer. i, Ezek. i and ii, Amos i, Hosea i).
But what really took place in these mystical experiences ? Has
God a body ? Is He really seated upon a throne, or has He any
place in a physical sense ? Do beings such as the Cherubim and
Seraphim are described surround Him in visible form ? Has He
a voice audible to our actual sense of hearing ? Even those who,
so far as concerns the Resurrection of Christ, think to base their
faith upon an actually perceived Empty Tomb and a Body \vhich,
however transfigured , yet remained an object to see and touch
even they will answer these questions with a decided negative as
regards the vision of Isaiah. Even they will admit that these
forms of imagery, in which the experience of Isaiah clothes itself,
are nothing more than forms of imagery, born of the ideas of the
time and merely a vesture for something seen and apprehended
by other means than by stimulation of the senses, with which it
indeed has nothing to do.
On the other side, the naturalistic rationalist will set up some
sort of plausible psychological * explanation , differing according
to the empirical psychology that is at his disposal ; or, resorting
to a still simpler mode of explanation, he will be inclined to say
that such occurrences never occurred at all. But whoever knows
anything of the Spirit and its miraculous nature, whoever feels
in himself the Spirit active in those mysterious experiences that
build up the Christian s life, will reject such explanations. He
alone has the key to the truth of the matter. Just as the
Scriptures as a whole, as the Christian believes, require the Spirit
if they are to be taught or understood, so too is it with these
occurrences. only a first-hand spiritual experience teaches a man
to see and enables him to estimate a spiritual experience of a
former day. Possession of the Spirit at first hand becomes here
a faculty of retrospective prophecy , which is recognition in the
sense of re-cognition or knowing again for oneself. And so only
on the basis of a first-hand religious experience, of and from the
Spirit, is there any possibility of obtaining a real and genuine
historical knowledge of these things, for only such an experience
is acquainted with and can estimate the effect of all the factors of
the explanation. What the Spirit gives is not a view that tran
scends the historical, but the genuine historical view. And the
A SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE 231
naturalistic view gives on the other hand a falsification of history,
for it has ignored an essential part of the facts it seeks to explain.
Ill
Let us now turn to the New Testament. once we have come
to understand aright, that is, in the Spirit, the experiences of the
great prophets, we can recognize plainly how similar they are to
the narratives of the great visions of Jesus at the outset and at
the full height of His ministry the vision at His Baptism and the
vision at His Transfiguration . As with the prophets, so with
Jesus : these, too, are manifestly spiritual and mystical experi
ences ; but these, too, were objectively real occurrences. And
they are also to be counted as belonging to the same class of
experiences for the reason that they too are manifestly visions of
Call and Ordination. As before, we do not doubt that all that is
recounted in perceptual terms stands upon just the same footing as
the perceptual imagery that invests the mystical experience of
Isaiah, the essential and unshakeable truth of which lies not in
that vesture, but in the knowledge and assurance born of the
Spirit .
And if we pass on to the Resurrection-experience of Paul on the
road to Damascus, do we not at once recognize the same charac
teristic features ? Have we here sense-perception or spiritual
experience ? Paul nowhere describes how and in what form he
beheld the Risen Christ. That does not in itself make it the
less likely that he did see Him in some form, probably as a royal
figure of radiant glory rather than merely as a dazzling light.
The material of his vision was no doubt supplied him by the
current ideas of his time concerning royal splendour and messianic
kinghood, and then his faculty of vision gave this material an
individual and special form. That is but to say that the vision
would have a vesture of outward form just as that of Isaiah did ;
but this does not, for Paul any more than for Isaiah, touch the
inmost import of the experience, which is here : He lives ; He
lives as the accepted of God, the preserved of God, the exalted of
God, the transfigured of God, as the conqueror of Judgement, of
the Cross, and of Death. And at the same time that further
point of resemblance with the occurrences already mentioned is
manifest, which, strangely enough, is here not generally noticed.
232 THE RESURRECTION AS
For this vision of Paul, like those others, is not merely a vision
of the Risen Christ, but again precisely inaugural, a vision of
Calling and Ordination.
At the same time this experience of Paul has its place among
a second class of experiences, which in turn stand fully illumined
in the Pauline writings. For it is but the first link in a whole
chain of spiritual happenings which develop in him and in his
congregations. These are the charismata or gifts of the Spirit ,
and among them is included the gift of horasis * or mystic vision
which Paul himself possessed. And what took place on the road
to Damascus is not only the first link in the chain, but more
fundamental and potent than all that followed. There it was
that the pneuma * first broke through, the Spirit which man
makes not nor can bestow upon himself, which blows whither it
lists, and kindles what it wills, and whose * prick was already
felt in Paul s heart.
Paul puts his experience on a parity with those of Peter and
others, an indication that these also were of the same class as his
own. And we could ourselves recognize as much even without
Paul s express testimony. According to Paul s statement Peter
was the first to receive the new revelation of the Risen Christ,
and what we know otherwise of Peter is in accord with this.
He has the gift of * vision , as the story in Acts x shows, and it
had been manifested more than once while his Master was still
on earth, as at the time of the Transfiguration on Mount Tabor.
And the Synoptic record gives other more general indications of
his rare spiritual endowment. Further, for Peter and the others
to whom the experience came, the vision of the Risen Christ is
once again an inaugural experience of Call and Ordination, as is
indicated in the words, Go ye therefore and teach all nations ,
which we are to take as a spiritual realization of mission just in
the same way as the command of Yahweh to Isaiah : * Go and tell
this people , and which, no less than the experience of the
prophets, attest themselves as having been really * heard in
spiritual perception at a definite place and time. And again in
the case of these original witnesses to the Resurrection, the vision
of the Risen Christ is no more an isolated experience than in the
case of Paul. For Paul and his converts are not the first to
receive the Spirit and its sevenfold gifts. These gifts are the
possession of the earliest Christian community from the first, and
A SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE 233
characterize it, as Paul himself avows, when he justifies his
position as an apostle in showing that he and his converts also
possess the same spiritual gifts which the Christians of Jerusalem
had from the first.
And so the consciousness of the Risen Christ loses its isolated
character and is already manifested as one of a class of spiritual
experiences, a mystical and spiritual apprehension of truth,
beyond the opposition of supernaturalism and rationalism.
IV
The apostles proclaim their Lord not only as raised from the
dead , but as exalted and ascended* into heaven. That is in
harmony with the picture of the universe which they shared with
antiquity as a whole. But whoever thinks it necessary to retain
the bodily, physical idea in raised from the dead ought to
realize that he is bound to do the same with the ｅxpression
4 exalted . For that also conveys in its literal sense a spatial idea ;
it presupposes the old notion that Heaven , God s eternal realm,
is somewhere high above us in space. This notion was natural
enough in antiquity ; but for us heaven and the eternal world of
God is no more in space or time than God Himself is : it is in
God s eternity, which is apart from space and time. This does
not at all mean that the ｅxpressions resurrection , raising from
the dead , lose their meaning. In contrast to the idea of
immortality , which properly is the denial of any state of real
death, they affirm the restoration from real death to real life, or
rather the admittance for the first time into plenary and genuine
life. Nor have they in the Biblical view reference solely to the
body. It is not the body merely, but the man that dies ; and it
is as soul as well as body that he sinks into the state of death, 1 the
dread night of death , from which he can only be delivered and
1 To die is to lose not being but life. The fleshly body does not cease
at first to be but to exercise the function we call living . . . . And so the
eoul sinks not into not-being, nonentity, but into death, i.e. the cessation
of its living function. Thin state is spoken of in Scripture as passing
into Hades (wrongly rendered Hell ) and is compared to sleep, which
is essentially life whose potentiality has been suspended. A closer analogy
still to the tate of soul-death is that of cataleptic lethargy or impotence.
We have to think of the condition of the soul sundered from the organ
necessary to its essential nature as that of utter impotence, deprivation
of life but not of being.
234 THE RESURRECTION AS
raised up by the power of God. If he is to live, man needs to be
thus awakened, brought up out of Hades and from the shadow of
death, and raised again from the dead . To be sure, according
to Paul s idea, there is combined with this at the same time
a bodily restoration. But, as is often noticed, this is for him not
a raising up of the old body, a * resurrection of the flesh . Rather
he would on his own presuppositions have emphatically rejected
such a notion ; for the flesh which is for him the essence of
antagonism to God is to pass away like the seed of corn sown
in the earth, and the resurrection of the body is for him rather
the bestowal of a new and quite other l spiritual body, provided
and prepared of God. This is also the direction in which our
thought must turn if we are to attempt to represent to ourselves
the new life of the resurrection. We too are unable to think of
the completed perfected life of the Spirit without ascribing to the
Spirit some instrument or organ whereby it realizes itself in
practice. Now l body is the instrument of spirit, and the phrase
spiritual body affirms in an unambiguous manner that this
instrument is not a fleshly body, not even * transfigured flesh a
contradiction in itself but is itself spiritual in kind. And that
implies that it is not bound up with any one point in space or
time, and so is in no sense a physical body, which cannot be
severed from material and spatial determination.
But whatever our thought may be upon this matter, one thing
at any rate holds good : the meaning of the Christian knowledge
that is by Faith lies in this, that Christ Himself who really died
was brought again by God to real life and perfected unto the
glory of the eternal life of God ; and that we live in expectation
of the same with Him. This is a * knowing which, for us to-day
no less than for the apostles, can be born of the Spirit, but only
of the Spirit. Whether the body belongs to the being of this
Christ and to our own completed being is a physiological not a
religious question, and one which pertains not at all to our con
fession of faith. But to any one who has to meet this issue we
would say, the Risen Christ is to be our comfort , not a source
of trouble in our conscientious fidelity to truth ; and for a true
understanding of the experiences bearing on the Resurrection we
would refer him to the nature of spiritual revelation as recounted
in Isaiah vi.
As regards the narratives of the Empty Tomb , we shall
A SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE 235
judge of these as of the narratives of a later date which gathered
about the birth of Jesus, appraising them as a holy legend, in
which the supra-rational relation of the eternal to the temporal
is mirrored in the medium of contemporary thought. They have
an enduring value to us from the incomparable beauty and power
with which they symbolize the essence of the mystery . We
would not be without them in our Bible, nor yet in the pictorial
art of the churches, nor in the hymns that express our devotion.
And we can retain them thus without being false to the obligation
of the most rigid honesty if we remain fully conscious of that
other obligation, without fulfilling which we neither can nor
indeed should have either Biblical instruction or Christian doctrine.
And that is the obligation we are under to train ourselves and the
mind of our time to a sincere and devout understanding of three
things. In the first place we need to realize the fringe of legend
that surrounds the entire narrative of Holy Scripture and recurs
as a constant problem from the first page of the Bible to the last.
Secondly, we need to appreciate the signal value and beauty and
the profound import which distinguish the Biblical narrative, even
where it is of the nature of legend ; and, finally, the fact that
even in the holy saga and legend, shaped and fashioned uncon
sciously by the spirit of a people or a fellowship, there is present
the vt ry same eternal Spirit of God, which Hebrew prophecy and
poetry and history also manifest, that Spirit which, in every form
of its ｅxpression, is the Spirit of revelation and truth.
APPENDIX XIII
RELIGIOUS ESSAYS, A SUPPLEMENT TO l TUE IDEA
OF THE UOLY (O.U.P.)
I. THEOLOGY.
i. What is Sin?
ii. The Battle between Flesh and Spirit,
in. The Christian Idea of Lostness .
iv. The Religious Idea of Original Guilt.
v. The Prophets Experience of God.
vi. The Lord s Supper as a Numinous Fact.
236 RELIGIOUS ESSAYS
vii. Towards a Liturgical Keform.
1. A Form of Divine Service.
2. A Form for Celebrating the Lord s Supper.
II. SCIENCE OF RELIGION.
viu. How Schleiermacher Rediscovered the Sensus Numinis.
ix. The Wholly Other* in Religious History and Theology.
x. Parallels and Convergences in the History of Religion,
xi. A Universal Religion (?).
xn. Darwinism and Religion.
III. APPENDIXES.
xin. The Common Tasks of Protestantism,
xiv. An Inter-religious League.
INDEX
A.
Adbhuta, 133.
Addison, J. (quoted), 224.
Aesthetic judgement, the, 138, 148,
15-2 ff., 165.
Ahndung, 1">0.
Ahura-Uazda, 133, 204.
Allah, numinous character of, 77,
92, 94.
Amor Mys icus, 107-8, 209 ff.
Amos, 115, 141.
Anselm, 55 n.
Aristotle, 97, 93, 119n.
Arndt, Joliann, 108, 211.
Arnold, Gottfried, 108.
Art, ｅxpression of the Numinous
in, 68-73.
Atcarya, 195.
Asura, 132.
Atman, 199ff.
Atonement, the doctrine of, its
numinous character, 56 ff.
Augustine, St., 28 n., 97, 142 n., 200.
B.
Bach, J. S., 72.
Beautiful, the, and the Holy, 138,
148, 152, 165.
Bergson, 112 n.
Bernard, St., of Cluny, 84.
Bt-sant, Mrs., 112.
Bhagarad-Gita, the, 65, 109, 191 ff.,
Blake, Wm. (quoted), 224.
Boehme, Jacob, 38; on wrath of
God, 110 ft".
Brahman, Brahmanism, 133, 196 ff,
204.
Buddha (Gautama), 67.
Buddhism, 30, 89, 69.
C.
Catherine, St., of Genoa, 38.
Chinese art, its numinous character.
69, 71.
Chrysostom, St., 84, 183-90.
Coleridge, 222.
Confucius, 76.
Creature-feeling , 9 ff., 20 ff., 52 ff.,
92 ff.
Cross, the, 177.
D.
Daemon, the daemonic , 15, 16, 28,
126 ff., 129, 203; (in Goethe),
155 ff.
Dead, worship of the, 123.
Determinism, its difference from pre
destination, 92.
Do Wette, W., on Ahndung, 150, 151.
Dionysius the Areopagite, 97.
Divination , as a faculty, 148 ff.
DunsScotus, 100.
Durga, 64, 109.
Eckermann, Talks with Goethe quoted,
154ff., 194 n.
Eckhart, Meister, 110, 111, 201, 206,
211.
Election, doctrine of, its numinous
character, 90 ff.
Elohim, significance of the name, 76,
205.
Epigenesis, 44, 116, 118.
Erasmus, 24, 101.
Evolution, meaning of, 44 ff., 118 ff.,
169.
Eyth, Max (quoted), 83.
Ezt-kiel, 79.
F.
Fairy stories, 126.
Faith, its meaning for Luther, 107-8,
142ff.,207, 209 ff.
Fichte, 24.
Fries, J. P., 150, 151.
Fundus anitnat, 116, 120 n., 199, 200.
G.
Gellert, C. F., 198.
Gerhardt, Joliann, 112.
238
INDEX
Geulincx, 93.
Ghost stories and ghosts, 15, 16,28,
29, 131.
Goethe, 24,40, 112 n. ; < divination of
the daemonic in, 154 ff. ; on God,
194 n. ; (quoted), 1, 41, 153.
Gothic, its numinous character, 70.
Grace , numinous significance of,
32 ff., 145.
Gregory of Nyssa, 190, 195.
Guyon, Madame, 211.
H.
Hackmann, H., on Taoism, 206.
Harnack, A., on Marcion, 190.
Haunted places, 130 ff.
Hegel, 96, 111.
Heracleitus, 201.
Hugo of St. Victor, 52 n.
I.
Ignatius (Loyola), 211.
Isaiah, 52, 63, 65, 78, 177, 207, 227,
228.
Islam, its conception of Allah, 77,
92 ; of predestination, 94 ; of sal
vation, 170.
J.
James, William : The Varieties of Reli
gious Experience (quoted), 10 n., 38,
55 n.
Jel-aleddin, 198 n.
Jeremiah, 177.
Jesus Christ; the paradox of His
gospel, 85 ff. ; the supreme object
of divination , 159 ff., 172 If. ; His
miracles, 212 ff.
Job, The Book of, on the myste
rious , 80 ff., 104, 155, 177, 205.
Johann von Knstl, 209, 210.
John, St., 95, 96, 205.
John Baptist, St., 86.
John of the Cross, St., 109, 211.
K.
Kant, 5, 46 ; Critique of Pure .Reason,
116ff. ; Critique of Judgement, 65,
152 ; Lectures on Psychology (quoted),
120 n.
Kena-Upanishad, the, 196, 201.
Lactantius, 23 n., 99, 111.
Lang, Andrew, 133.
Lange, E., 193.
Leibniz, 90, 119n.
Lucifer, significance of, 110 n.
Luiz, Thomas, 73.
Luther, 15, 100 ; on miracles, 67 ;
on wrath of God, 101 ff., Ill;
His mystery , 104 ff. ; His fasci
nation , 106; meaning of faith
for, 107, 141 ff., 207, 209 ff.; on
deus absconditus , 139; De Servo
Arbitrio, 24, 101 ff. ; on the Liberty of
a Christian, 211 ; Table Talk, 142 n.
M.
Magic, a form of the numinous, 121 ;
in art, 68-70.
Mana, 125.
Marcion, 190.
Marett, R. K. : The Threshold of Religion,
15 n., 20 n., 76 n.
Mass, the, numinous moments in,
67, 72, 218.
Mendelssohn, 73.
Miracles and the miraculous, 65 ff.,
147-8 ; the miracles of Jesus, 176,
212-16.
Mohammed, 67. (See Islam.)
Music, analogy of, with the numin
ous , 49 ff., 72, 75, 76, 155.
Mysticism, what it is, 21 ff., 88 n.,
199, 202; of void and nothingness,
20, 29, 30, 93 ; in Luther, 107 ff.,
211.
N.
Nirvana, 39, 170.
0.
Occasionalists, the, 93.
Orenda, 125.
P.
Paracelsus, 111.
Parker, Theodore, 55 n.
Passion, the, 88, 176.
Paul, St., 37, 88 ff., 139, 167, 172, 205,
212, 229, 230, 232.
Persia, religion of, 170.
Personal, the, and the supra-per
sonal. 201-8.
Peter, St., 230.
Pharisaism, 86.
Plato, 97, 98, 141.
Plotinus, 97, 211.
Pordage, Johann, llln.
Predestination, doctrine of, in St.
Paul, 90 ff.; in Luther, 105; in
Islam, 92 ff.
Primitive Monotheism, 133 ff.
Q.
Quakers, the, 142 n., 216 ff.
INDEX
239
R.
Raphael, 64.
Reeejae, 23.
Redemption, doctrine of, 65, 168 ff.
Resurrection, 2L6 11.
Rig-Veda, the, 13o.
Ritschl, 19, 66, 95.
Ruskin, 221.
S.
Schematization , 46 ff., 144 ff.
Schiller,112n.; (quoted), 65,132, 152.
Schleiermacher, on feeling of abso
lute dependence , 9, 10, 20, 21,
112; on divination and intui
tion , 150-4, 158 ff., 221 ; 36, 91,
1G4, 208 n.
Scholasticism, 27.
Schopenhauer, 24, 51.
Shiva, 109.
Silence, numinous value of, 70 ff.,
216ff.
Soderblom, N., 15 n., 76, 195 n.
Sophocles. 40.
Souls and spirits, primitive belief
in, 27, 124 ; as numinous entities,
198ff.
Spener, P. J., 108.
Spinoza, 90.
Spiritualism, 27 n.
Sublime, the, and the holy, 42, 47,
C5.
Supernatural, the conception of the,
12-2, 148.
Suso, 63 n., 109, 120.
Synteresis, 142n.
T.
Taoism, 69, 206 n.
Tauler, 107.
Tenteegen, 17, 71, 183.
Theosophy, 111.
Theresa, St., 194 n., 211.
Ungtheuer, 41.
r.
V.
Vishnu, 65, 191 ff.
Void , numinous significance of,
80, 89 ; in art, 71, 72.
W.
Wagner, 50.
Wellhausen, 167.
Wordsworth, 225.
Worringer, on Gothic, 70.
Wrath of God, meaning of, 18-19,
23-4, 32, 78, 99, 145 ; in St. Paul,
88 ; in Luther, 102 ff. ; in Boehme,
110.
Wundt, 122.
Y.
Yahweh, 66, 74, 76 ff., 89, 116, 205.
Z.
Zwingli, 92.
OTHER WRITINGS OF RUDOLPH OTTO
NATURALISM AND RELIGION
WESTERN AND EASTERN MYSTICISM
INDIA S RELIGION OP GRACE AND CHRISTIANITY COMPARED
AND CONTRASTED
THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION BASED on KANT AND FRIES
THE KINGDOM OF GOD AND THE SON OF MAN
(English translation in preparation)
DAS GEFUHL DES UBERWELTLICHEN
GOTTHEIT UND GOTTHE1TEN DER ARIER
BHAGAVAD-GITA, DEUTSCHE UBERSETZUNG
KATHA-UPANISHAD, DEUTSCHE UBERSETZUNO
VISHNU-NARAYANA
FEINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. O33TOBD
BY JOHN JOHNSON. PRINTER TO THB UNIVEfiSITY
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