The Faith of the Millions | Page 8

supernatural order which permeates but does not of itself interfere with the natural. But over and above what, relatively to our observation, we call the "ordinary" course, there is the extraordinary, whose interference with it is apparent, though of course not absolute or real--since nothing can be out of harmony with the first and highest law, which is God Himself. And to the category of the extraordinary must be assigned such inspirations and direct will-movements as we here speak of. [5]
Yet not altogether; for in the natural order, too, we have the phenomenon of instinct to consider--both spiritual and animal. Giving heredity all the credit we can for storing up accumulated experience in the nervous system of each species, there remains a host of fundamental animal instincts which that law is quite inadequate to explain; those, for example, which govern the multiplication of the species and secure the conditions under which alone heredity can work. Such cannot be at once the effect and the essential condition of heredity; and yet they are, of all instincts, the most complex and mysterious. Indeed, it seems more scientific to ascribe other instincts to the same known and indubitable, if mysterious, cause, than to seek explanation in causes less known and more hypothetical. In the case of many instincts, it would seem that the craving for the object precedes the distinct cognition of it; that the object is only ascertained when, after various tentative gropings, it is stumbled upon, almost, it might seem, by chance. And this seems true, also, of some of our fundamental spiritual instincts; for example, that craving of the mind for an unified experience, which is at the root of all mental activity, and whose object is ever approached yet never attained; or, again, there is the social and political instinct, which has not yet formed a distinct and satisfying conception of what it would be at. Or nearer still to our theme, is the natural religious instinct which seeks interpretations and explanatory hypotheses in the various man-made religions of the race, and which finds itself satisfied and transcended by the Christian revelation.
In these and like instances, we find will-movements not caused by the subjects' own cognitions and perceptions, but contrariwise, giving birth to cognitions, setting the mind to work to interpret the said movements, and to seek out their satisfying objects.
This is quite analogous to certain phenomena of the order of grace. St. Ignatius almost invariably speaks, not, as we should, of thoughts that give rise to will-states of "consolation" or "desolation," but conversely, of these will-states giving rise to congruous thoughts. Indeed, nothing is more familiar to us than the way in which the mind is magnetized by even our physical states of elation or depression, to select the more cheerful or the gloomier aspects of life, according as we are under one influence or the other; and in practice, we recognize the effect of people's humours on their opinions and decisions, and would neither sue mercy nor ask a favour of a man in a temper. In short, it is hardly too much to say, that our thoughts are more dependent on our feelings than our feelings on our thoughts. This, then, is one possible method of supernatural guidance which we shall call "blind inspiration"--for though the feeling or impulse is from God, the interpretation is from the subject's own mind. It is curious how St. Ignatius applies this method to the determining of the Divine will in certain cases--as it were, by the inductive principle of "concomitant variation." A suggestion that always comes and grows with a state of "consolation," and whose negative is in like manner associated with "desolation," is presumably the right interpretation of the blind impulse. [6] And perhaps this is one of the commonest subjective assurances of faith, namely, that our faith grows and declines with what we know intuitively to be our better moods; that when lax we are sceptical, and believing when conscientious.
Another species of will-guidance recognized by saints, is not so much by way of a vague feeling seeking interpretation, as by way of a sort of enforced decision with regard to some naturally suggested course of conduct. And this, perhaps, is what is more technically understood by an inspiration; as, for example, when the question of writing or not writing something publicly useful, say, the records of the Kings of Israel, rises in the mind, and it is decided for and in the subject, but not by him. Of course this "inspiration" is a common but not essential accompaniment of "revelation" or "mind-control,"--in those cases, namely, where the communicated information is for the good of others; as, also, where it is for the guidance of the practical conduct of the recipient. Such "inspiration" at times seems to be