In this lecture we have to finish the subject of Conversion, considering at first those strikinginstantaneous instances of which Saint Paul's is the most eminent, and in which, often amidtremendous emotional excitement or perturbation of the senses, a complete division is establishedin the twinkling of an eye between the old life and the new. Conversion of this type is an important phase of religious experience, owing to the part which it has played in Protestant theology, and itbehooves us to study it conscientiously on that account.
I think I had better cite two or three of these cases before proceeding to a more generalizedaccount. One must know concrete instances first; for, as Professor Agassiz used to say, one can seeno farther into a generalization than just so far as one's previous acquaintance with particularsenables one to take it in.
I will go back, then, to the case of our friend Henry Alline, and quote his report of the 26th ofMarch, 1775, on which his poor divided mind became unified for good.
"As I was about sunset wandering in the fields lamenting my miserable lost and undonecondition, and almost ready to sink under my burden, I thought I was in such a miserable case asnever any man was before. I returned to the house, and when I got to the door, just as I wasstepping off the threshold, the following impressions came into my mind like a powerful but smallstill voice. You have been seeking, praying, reforming, laboring, reading, hearing, and meditating,and what have you done by it towards your salvation? Are you any nearer to conversion now thanwhen you first began? Are you any more prepared for heaven, or fitter to appear before theimpartial bar of God, than when you first began to seek?
"It brought such conviction on me that I was obliged to say that I did not think I was one stepnearer than at first, but as much condemned, as much exposed, and as miserable as before. I criedout within myself, O Lord God, I am lost, and if thou, O Lord, dost not find out some new way, Iknow nothing of, I shall never be saved, for the ways and methods I have prescribed to myselfhave all failed me, and I am willing they should fail. O Lord, have mercy! O Lord, have mercy!
"These discoveries continued until I went into the house and sat down. After I sat down, being allin confusion, like a drowning man that was just giving up to sink, and almost in an agony, I turnedvery suddenly round in my chair, and seeing part of an old Bible lying in one of the chairs, Icaught hold of it in great haste; and opening it without any premeditation, cast my eyes on the 38thPsalm, which was the first time I ever saw the word of God: it took hold of me with such powerthat it seemed to go through my whole soul, so that it seemed as if God was praying in, with, andfor me. About this time my father called the family to attend prayers; I attended, but paid no regardto what he said in his prayer, but continued praying in those words of the Psalm. Oh, help me, helpme! cried I, thou Redeemer of souls, and save me, or I am gone forever; thou canst this night, ifthou pleasest, with one drop of thy blood atone for my sins, and appease the wrath of an angryGod. At that instant of time when I gave all up to him to do with me as he pleased, and was willingthat God should rule over me at his pleasure, redeeming love broke into my soul with repeatedscriptures, with such power that my whole soul seemed to be melted down with love, the burden ofguilt and condemnation was gone, darkness was expelled, my heart humbled and filled withgratitude, and my whole soul, that was a few minutes ago groaning under mountains of death, andcrying to an unknown God for help, was now filled with immortal love, soaring on the wings offaith,<215> freed from the chains of death and darkness, and crying out, My Lord and my God;thou art my rock and my fortress, my shield and my high tower, my life, my joy, my present andmy everlasting portion. Looking up, I thought I saw that same light [he had on more than oneprevious occasion seen subjectively a bright blaze of light], though it appeared different; and assoon as I saw it, the design was opened to me, according to his promise, and I was obliged to cry out: Enough, enough, O blessed God! The work of conversion, the change, and the manifestationsof it are no more disputable than that light which I see, or anything that ever I saw.
"In the midst of all my joys, in less than half an hour after my soul was set at liberty, the Lorddiscovered to me my labor in the ministry and call to preach the gospel. I cried out, Amen, Lord,I'll go; send me, send me. I spent the greatest part of the night in ecstasies of joy, praising andadoring the Ancient of Days for his free and unbounded grace. After I had been so long in thistransport and heavenly frame that my nature seemed to require sleep, I thought to close my eyesfor a few moments; then the devil stepped in, and told me that if I went to sleep, I should lose it all,and when I should awake in the morning I would find it to be nothing but a fancy and delusion. Iimmediately cried out, O Lord God, if I am deceived, undeceive me.
"I then closed my eyes for a few minutes, and seemed to be refreshed with sleep; and when Iawoke, the first inquiry was, Where is my God? And in an instant of time, my soul seemed awakein and with God, and surrounded by the arms of everlasting love. About sunrise I arose with joy torelate to my parents what God had done for my soul, and declared to them the miracle of God'sunbounded grace. I took a Bible to show them the words that were impressed by God on my soulthe evening before; but when I came to open the Bible, it appeared all new to me.
"I so longed to be useful in the cause of Christ, in preaching the gospel, that it seemed as if Icould not rest any longer, but go I must and tell the wonders of redeeming love. I lost all taste forcarnal pleasures, and carnal company, and was enabled to forsake them."[120]
[120] Life and Journals, Boston, 1806, pp. 31-40, abridged.
Young Mr. Alline, after the briefest of delays, and with no book-learning but his Bible, and noteaching save that of his own experience, became a Christian minister, and thenceforward his lifewas fit to rank, for its austerity and single-mindedness, with that of the most devoted saints. Buthappy as he became in his strenuous way, he never got his taste for even the most innocent carnalpleasures back. We must class him, like Bunyan and Tolstoy, amongst those upon whose soul theiron of melancholy left a permanent imprint. His redemption was into another universe than thismere natural world, and life remained for him a sad and patient trial. Years later we can find himmaking such an entry as this in his diary: "On Wednesday the 12th I preached at a wedding, andhad the happiness thereby to be the means of excluding carnal mirth."The next case I will give is that of a correspondent of Professor Leuba, printed in the latter'sarticle, already cited, in vol. vi. of the American Journal of Psychology. This subject was anOxford graduate, the son of a clergyman, and the story resembles in many points the classic case ofColonel Gardiner, which everybody may be supposed to know. Here it is, somewhat abridged:-"Between the period of leaving Oxford and my conversion I never darkened the door of myfather's church, although I lived with him for eight years, making what money I wanted byjournalism, and spending it in high carousal with any one who would sit with me and drink itaway. So I lived, sometimes drunk for a week together, and then a terrible repentance, and wouldnot touch a drop for a whole month.
"In all this period, that is, up to thirty-three years of age, I never had a desire to reform onreligious grounds. But all my pangs were due to some terrible remorse I used to feel after a heavy carousal, the remorse taking the shape of regret after my folly in wasting my life in such a way--aman of superior talents and education. This terrible remorse turned me gray in one night, andwhenever it came upon me I was perceptibly grayer the next morning. What I suffered in this wayis beyond the expression of words. It was hell-fire in all its most dreadful tortures. Often did I vowthat if I got over 'this time' I would reform. Alas, in about three days I fully recovered, and was ashappy as ever. So it went on for years, but, with a physique like a rhinoceros, I always recovered,and as long as I let drink alone, no man was as capable of enjoying life as I was.
"I was converted in my own bedroom in my father's rectory house at precisely three o'clock inthe afternoon of a hot July day (July 13, 1886). I was in perfect health, having been off from thedrink for nearly a month. I was in no way troubled about my soul. In fact, God was not in mythoughts that day. A young lady friend sent me a copy of Professor Drummond's Natural Law inthe Spiritual World, asking me my opinion of it as a literary work only. Being proud of my criticaltalents and wishing to enhance myself in my new friend's esteem, I took the book to my bedroomfor quiet, intending to give it a thorough study, and then write her what I thought of it. It was herethat God met me face to face, and I shall never forget the meeting. 'He that hath the Son hath lifeeternal, he that hath not the Son hath not life.' I had read this scores of times before, but this madeall the difference. I was now in God's presence and my attention was absolutely 'soldered' on tothis verse, and I was not allowed to proceed with the book till I had fairly considered what thesewords really involved. Only then was I allowed to proceed, feeling all the while that there wasanother being in my bedroom, though not seen by me. The stillness was very marvelous, and I feltsupremely happy. It was most unquestionably shown me, in one second of time, that I had nevertouched the Eternal: and that if I died then, I must inevitably be lost. I was undone. I knew it aswell as I now know I am saved. The Spirit of God showed it me in ineffable love; there was noterror in it; I felt God's love so powerfully upon me that only a mighty sorrow crept over me that Ihad lost all through my own folly; and what was I to do? What could I do? I did not repent even;God never asked me to repent. All I felt was 'I am undone,' and God cannot help it, although heloves me. No fault on the part of the Almighty. All the time I was supremely happy: I felt like alittle child before his father. I had done wrong, but my Father did not scold me, but loved me mostwondrously. Still my doom was sealed. I was lost to a certainty, and being naturally of a bravedisposition I did not quail under it, but deep sorrow for the past, mixed with regret for what I hadlost, took hold upon me, and my soul thrilled within me to think it was all over. Then there crept inupon me so gently, so lovingly, so unmistakably, a way of escape, and what was it after all? Theold, old story over again, told in the simplest way: 'There is no name under heaven whereby ye canbe saved except that of the Lord Jesus Christ.' No words were spoken to me; my soul seemed tosee my Saviour in the spirit, and from that hour to this, nearly nine years now, there has never beenin my life one doubt that the Lord Jesus Christ and God the Father both worked upon me thatafternoon in July, both differently, and both in the most perfect love conceivable, and I rejoicedthere and then in a conversion so astounding that the whole village heard of it in less than twenty-four hours.
"But a time of trouble was yet to come. The day after my conversion I went into the hay-field tolend a hand with the harvest, and not having made any promise to God to abstain or drink inmoderation only, I took too much and came home drunk. My poor sister was heart-broken; and I felt ashamed of myself and got to my bedroom at once, where she followed me weeping copiously.
She said I had been converted and fallen away instantly. But although I was quite full of drink (notmuddled, however), I knew that God's work begun in me was not going to be wasted. Aboutmidday I made on my knees the first prayer before God for twenty years. I did not ask to beforgiven; I felt that was no good, for I would be sure to fall again. Well, what did I do? Icommitted myself to him in the profoundest belief that my individuality was going to be destroyed,that he would take all from me, and I was willing. In such a <219> surrender lies the secret of aholy life. From that hour drink has had no terrors for me: I never touch it, never want it. The samething occurred with my pipe: after being a regular smoker from my twelfth year the desire for itwent at once, and has never returned. So with every known sin, the deliverance in each case beingpermanent and complete. I have had no temptation since conversion, God seemingly having shutout Satan from that course with me. He gets a free hand in other ways, but never on sins of theflesh. Since I gave up to God all ownership in my own life, he has guided me in a thousand ways,and has opened my path in a way almost incredible to those who do not enjoy the blessing of atruly surrendered life."So much for our graduate of Oxford, in whom you notice the complete abolition of an ancientappetite as one of the conversion's fruits.
The most curious record of sudden conversion with which I am acquainted is that of M.
Alphonse Ratisbonne, a free-thinking French Jew, to Catholicism, at Rome in 1842. In a letter to aclerical friend, written a few months later, the convert gives a palpitating account of thecircumstances.[121] The predisposing conditions appear to have been slight. He had an elderbrother who had been converted and was a Catholic priest. He was himself irreligious, andnourished an antipathy to the apostate brother and generally to his "cloth." Finding himself atRome in his twenty-ninth year, he fell in with a French gentleman who tried to make a proselyte ofhim, but who succeeded no farther after two or three conversations than to get him to hang (halfjocosely) a religious medal round his neck, and to accept and read a copy of a short prayer to theVirgin. M. Ratisbonne represents his own part in the conversations as having been of a light andchaffing order; but he notes the fact that for some days he was unable to banish the words of theprayer from his mind, and that the night before the crisis he had a sort of nightmare, in the imageryof which a black cross with no Christ upon it figured. Nevertheless, until noon of the next day hewas free in mind and spent the time in trivial conversations. I now give his own words.
[121] My quotations are made from an Italian translation of this letter in the Biografia del sig. M.
A. Ratisbonne, Ferrara, 1843, which I have to thank Monsignore D. O'Connell of Rome forbringing to my notice. I abridge the original.
"If at this time any one had accosted me, saying: 'Alphonse, in a quarter of an hour you shall beadoring Jesus Christ as your God and Saviour; you shall lie prostrate with your face upon theground in a humble church; you shall be smiting your breast at the foot of a priest; you shall passthe carnival in a college of Jesuits to prepare yourself to receive baptism, ready to give your life forthe Catholic faith; you shall renounce the world and its pomps and pleasures; renounce yourfortune, your hopes, and if need be, your betrothed; the affections of your family, the esteem ofyour friends, and your attachment to the Jewish people; you shall have no other aspiration than to follow Christ and bear his cross till death;'--if, I say, a prophet had come to me with such aprediction, I should have judged that only one person could be more mad than he--whosoever,namely, might believe in the possibility of such senseless folly becoming true.
And yet that folly is at present my only wisdom, my sole happiness.
"Coming out of the cafe I met the carriage of Monsieur B. [the proselyting friend]. He stoppedand invited me in for a drive, but first asked me to wait for a few minutes whilst he attended tosome duty at the church of San Andrea delle Fratte. Instead of waiting in the carriage, I entered thechurch myself to look at it. The church of San Andrea was poor, small, and empty; I believe that Ifound myself there almost alone. No work of art attracted my attention; and I passed my eyesmechanically its interior without being arrested by any particular thought. I onlyrememberanentir(over) ely black dog which went trotting and turning before me as I mused.(can) In aninstant the dog had disappeared, the whole church had vanished, I no longer saw anything, . . . ormore truly I saw, O my God, one thing alone. "Heavens, how can I speak of it? Oh no! humanwords cannot attain to expressing the inexpressible. Any description, however sublime it might be,could be but a profanation of the unspeakable truth.
"I was there prostrate on the ground, bathed in my tears, with my heart beside itself, when M. B.
called me back to life. I could not reply to the questions which followed from him one upon theother. But finally I took the medal which I had on my breast, and with all the effusion of my soul Ikissed the image of the Virgin, radiant with grace, which it bore. Oh, indeed, it was She! It wasindeed She! [What he had seen had been a vision of the Virgin.]
"I did not know where I was: I did not know whether I was Alphonse or another. I only feltmyself changed and believed myself another me; I looked for myself in myself and did not findmyself. In the bottom of my soul I felt an explosion of the most ardent joy; I could not speak; I hadno wish to reveal what had happened. But I felt something solemn and sacred within me whichmade me ask for a priest. I was led to one; and there alone, after he had given me the positiveorder, I spoke as best I could, kneeling, and with my heart still trembling. I could give no accountto myself of the truth of which I had acquired a knowledge and a faith. All that I can say is that inan instant the bandage had fallen from my eyes, and not one bandage only, but the whole manifoldof bandages in which I had been brought up. One after another they rapidly disappeared, even asthe mud and ice disappear under the rays of the burning sun.
"I came out as from a sepulchre, from an abyss of darkness; and I was living, perfectly living.
But I wept, for at the bottom of that gulf I saw the extreme of misery from which I had been savedby an infinite mercy; and I shuddered at the sight of my iniquities, stupefied, melted, overwhelmedwith wonder and with gratitude. You may ask me how I came to this new insight, for truly I hadnever opened a book of religion nor even read a single page of the Bible, and the dogma of originalsin is either entirely denied or forgotten by the Hebrews of to-day, so that I had thought so littleabout it that I doubt whether I ever knew its name. But how came I, then, to this perception of it? Ican <222> answer nothing save this, that on entering that church I was in darkness altogether, andon coming out of it I saw the fullness of the light. I can explain the change no better than by thesimile of a profound sleep or the analogy of one born blind who should suddenly open his eyes tothe day. He sees, but cannot define the light which bathes him and by means of which he sees theobjects which excite his wonder. If we cannot explain physical light, how can we explain the light which is the truth itself? And I think I remain within the limits of veracity when I say that withouthaving any knowledge of the letter of religious doctrine, I now intuitively perceived its sense andspirit. Better than if I saw them, I FELT those hidden things; I felt them by the inexplicable effectsthey produced in me. It all happened in my interior mind, and those impressions, more rapid thanthought shook my soul, revolved and turned it, as it were, in another direction, towards other aims,by other paths. I express myself badly. But do you wish, Lord, that I should inclose in poor andbarren words sentiments which the heart alone can understand?"I might multiply cases almost indefinitely, but these will suffice to show you how real, definite,and memorable an event a sudden conversion may be to him who has the experience. Throughoutthe height of it he undoubtedly seems to himself a passive spectator or undergoer of an astoundingprocess performed upon him from above. There is too much evidence of this for any doubt of it tobe possible. Theology, combining this fact with the doctrines of election and grace, has concludedthat the spirit of God is with us at these dramatic moments in a peculiarly miraculous way, unlikewhat happens at any other juncture of our lives. At that moment, it believes, an absolutely newnature is breathed into us, and we become partakers of the very substance of the Deity.
That the conversion should be instantaneous seems called for on this view, and the MoravianProtestants appear to have been the first to see this logical consequence. The Methodists soonfollowed suit, practically if not dogmatically, and a short time ere his death, John Wesley wrote:-"In London alone I found 652 members of our Society who were exceeding clear in theirexperience, and whose testimony I could see no reason to doubt. And every one of these (without asingle exception) has declared that his deliverance from sin was instantaneous; that the change waswrought in a moment. Had half of these, or one third, or one in twenty, declared it wasGRADUALLY wrought in THEM, I should have believed this, with regard to THEM, and thoughtthat SOME were gradually sanctified and some instantaneously. But as I have not found, in so longa space of time, a single person speaking thus, I cannot but believe that sanctification is commonly,if not always, an instantaneous work."[122]
[122] Tyerman's Life of Wesley, i. 463.
All this while the more usual sects of Protestantism have set no such store by instantaneousconversion. For them as for the Catholic Church, Christ's blood, the sacraments, and theindividual's ordinary religious duties are practically supposed to suffice to his salvation, eventhough no acute crisis of self-despair and surrender followed by relief should be experienced. ForMethodism, on the contrary, unless there have been a crisis of this sort, salvation is only offered,not effectively received, and Christ's sacrifice in so far forth is incomplete. Methodism surely herefollows, if not the healthier-minded, yet on the whole the profounder spiritual instinct. Theindividual models which it has set up as typical and worthy of imitation are not only the moreinteresting dramatically, but psychologically they have been the more complete.
In the fully evolved Revivalism of Great Britain and America we have, so to speak, the codifiedand stereotyped procedure to which this way of thinking has led. In spite of the unquestionable factthat saints of the once-born type exist, that there may be a gradual growth in holiness without acataclysm; in spite of the obvious leakage (as one may say) of much mere natural goodness into the scheme of salvation; revivalism has always assumed that only its own type of religiousexperience can be perfect; you must first be nailed on the cross of natural despair and agony, andthen in the twinkling of an eye be miraculously released.
It is natural that those who personally have traversed such an experience should carry away afeeling of its being a miracle rather than a natural process. Voices are often heard, lights seen, orvisions witnessed; automatic motor phenomena occur; and it always seems, after the surrender ofthe personal will, as if an extraneous higher power had flooded in and taken possession. Moreoverthe sense of renovation, safety, cleanness, rightness, can be so marvelous and jubilant as well towarrant one's belief in a radically new substantial nature.
"Conversion," writes the New England Puritan, Joseph Alleine, "is not the putting in a patch ofholiness; but with the true convert holiness is woven into all his powers, principles, and practice.
The sincere Christian is quite a new fabric, from the foundation to the top-stone. He is a new man,a new creature."And Jonathan Edwards says in the same strain: "Those gracious influences which are the effectsof the Spirit of God are altogether supernatural--are quite different from anything that unregeneratemen experience. They are what no improvement, or composition of natural qualifications orprinciples will ever produce; because they not only differ from what is natural, and fromeverything that natural men experience in degree and circumstances, but also in kind, and are of anature far more excellent. From hence it follows that in gracious affections there are [also] newperceptions and sensations entirely different in their nature and kind from anything experienced bythe [same] saints before they were sanctified. . . . The conceptions which the saints have of theloveliness of God, and that kind of delight which they experience in it, are quite peculiar, andentirely different from anything which a natural man can possess, or of which he can form anyproper notion."And that such a glorious transformation as this ought of necessity to be preceded by despair isshown by Edwards in another passage.
"Surely it cannot be unreasonable," he says, "that before God delivers us from a state of sin andliability to everlasting woe, he should give us some considerable sense of the evil from which hedelivers us, in order that we may know and feel the importance of salvation, and be enabled toappreciate the value of what God is pleased to do for us. As those who are saved are successivelyin two extremely different states--first in a state of condemnation and then in a state of justificationand blessedness--and as God, in the salvation of men, deals with them as rational and intelligentcreatures, it appears agreeable to this wisdom, that those who are saved should be made sensible oftheir Being, in those two different states. In the first place, that they should be made sensible oftheir state of condemnation; and afterwards, of their state of deliverance and happiness."Such quotations express sufficiently well for our purpose the doctrinal interpretation of thesechanges. Whatever part suggestion and imitation may have played in producing them in men andwomen in excited assemblies, they have at any rate been in countless individual instances anoriginal and unborrowed experience. Were we writing the story of the mind from the purelynatural-history point of view, with no religious interest whatever, we should still have to writedown man's liability to sudden and complete conversion as one of his most curious peculiarities.
What, now, must we ourselves think of this question? Is an instantaneous conversion a miracle inwhich God is present as he is present in no change of heart less strikingly abrupt? Are there twoclasses of human beings, even among the apparently regenerate, of which the one class reallypartakes of Christ's nature while the other merely seems to do so? Or, on the contrary, may thewhole phenomenon of regeneration, even in these startling instantaneous examples, possibly be astrictly natural process, divine in its fruits, of course, but in one case more and in another less so,and neither more nor less divine in its mere causation and mechanism than any other process, highor low, of man's interior life?
Before proceeding to answer this question, I must ask you to listen to some more psychologicalremarks. At our last lecture, I explained the shifting of men's centres of personal energy withinthem and the lighting up of new crises of emotion. I explained the phenomena as partly due toexplicitly conscious processes of thought and will, but as due largely also to the subconsciousincubation and maturing of motives deposited by the experiences of life. When ripe, the resultshatch out, or burst into flower. I have now to speak of the subconscious region, in which suchprocesses of flowering may occur, in a somewhat less vague way. I only regret that my limits oftime here force me to be so short.
The expression "field of consciousness" has but recently come into vogue in the psychologybooks. Until quite lately the unit of mental life which figured most was the single "idea," supposedto be a definitely outlined thing. But at present psychologists are tending, first, to admit that theactual unit is more probably the total mental state, the entire wave of consciousness or field ofobjects present to the thought at any time; and, second, to see that it is impossible to outline thiswave, this field, with any definiteness.
As our mental fields succeed one another, each has its centre of interest, around which theobjects of which we are less and less attentively conscious fade to a margin so faint that its limitsare unassignable. Some fields are narrow fields and some are wide fields. Usually when we have awide field we rejoice, for we then see masses of truth together, and often get glimpses of relationswhich we divine rather than see, for they shoot beyond the field into still remoter regions ofobjectivity, regions which we seem rather to be about to perceive than to perceive actually. Atother times, of drowsiness, illness, or fatigue, our fields may narrow almost to a point, and we findourselves correspondingly oppressed and contracted.
Different individuals present constitutional differences in this matter of width of field. Your greatorganizing geniuses are men with habitually vast fields of mental vision, in which a wholeprogramme of future operations will appear dotted out at once, the rays shooting far ahead intodefinite directions of advance. In common people there is never this magnificent inclusive view ofa topic. They stumble along, feeling their way, as it were, from point to point, and often stopentirely. In certain diseased conditions consciousness is a mere spark, without memory of the pastor thought of the future, and with the present narrowed down to some one simple emotion orsensation of the body.
The important fact which this "field" formula commemorates is the indetermination of themargin. Inattentively realized as is the matter which the margin contains, it is nevertheless there,and helps both to guide our behavior and to determine the next movement of our attention. It liesaround us like a "magnetic field," inside of which our centre of energy turns like a compass needle, as the present phase of consciousness alters into its successor. Our whole past store ofmemories floats beyond this margin, ready at a touch to come in; and the entire mass of residualpowers, impulses, and knowledges that constitute our empirical self stretches continuously beyondit. So vaguely drawn are the outlines between what is actual and what is only potential at anymoment of our conscious life, that it is always hard to say of certain mental elements whether weare conscious of them or not.
The ordinary psychology, admitting fully the difficulty of tracing the marginal outline, hasnevertheless taken for <228> granted, first, that all the consciousness the person now has, be thesame focal or marginal, inattentive or attentive, is there in the "field" of the moment, all dim andimpossible to assign as the latter's outline may be; and, second, that what is absolutely extra-marginal is absolutely non-existent. and cannot be a fact of consciousness at all.
And having reached this point, I must now ask you to recall what I said in my last lecture aboutthe subconscious life. I said, as you may recollect, that those who first laid stress upon thesephenomena could not know the facts as we now know them. My first duty now is to tell you what Imeant by such a statement.
I cannot but think that the most important step forward that has occurred in psychology since Ihave bee............