that the Blessed Sacrament was not reserved. The parish priest declared it was, but on her continued protest, he opened the Tabernacle, and then discovered that owing to his neglect, the Sacred Species had become corrupted.

We have given these two cases of abnormal recognition of external reality to show that in certain extraordinary cases, the act of faith is transcendant as well as immanent, it has the element of vision. The faith of the Carmelite nun, of the little sick child, went out in its fullness to an external Reality, but it could not find this Reality. This class of experience, of course, belongs to the mystical order, but it is, nevertheless, an experience of faith. These abnormal cases enable us to see in quasi-isolation certain psychic elements latent in the ordinary processes, and thus have a certain value for the psychologist. In normal psychology, these limit cases are usually morbid, and Ribot justifies their consideration. La maladie est en effet une experimentation de l'ordre le plus subtil, instituée par la nature elle même dans des circonstances bien detérminées et avec des procédés dont l'art humain ne dispose pas : elle atteint l'inacessible."1 religious psychology we find a similarly useful class of cases in the records of mystical experience. There we find the act of faith at its extreme intensity, and can see, as it were, the reflection in consciousness of other psychic elements than those normally attainable by introspection.

In

This dim quasi-intuition in an intense act of faith seems to point to the existence of a psychic region normally beyond consciousness, yet, in certain privileged cases, dimly penetrable by consciousness. This is the ground or depth of Tauler, the apex mentis of Blosius, the fine point de l'esprit of St. Francis de Sales, the intelligentia of Blessed Albertus Magnus-the names vary for this ultra-violet region of mental vision. St. Paul would seem to refer to it in 1 Thessalonians (v. 23) and Hebrews (iv. 12), where the distinction of πνεῦμα, ψυχὴ and σῶμα is rather psychological than ontological.

Body, soul and spirit are aspects of the whole man rather than physical constituents. The division of soul and spirit is a well-known mystical experience in the prayer of quiet.2

If we posit, then, the existence in this supra-conscious region of a metanoetic element, constituting part of the given

1 Quoted in De la Vaissière, Elements de Psych. Exp., p. 27. See also James, Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 22.

2 Cf. St. Teresa, Interior Castle, IV, chap. i. 8, etc.

of faith, and forming in itself that higher synthesis to which all seeming contradictions in the facts of faith can be referred, and in which they can all be reconciled, we have an adequate cause, given, of course, the will-to-believe, for that absolute unity and consistency of belief, for that unalterable firmness of adhesion, for that sense of indefectible certitude, which are the psychological notes of Catholic faith. As psychologists, we claim to infer its existence from the facts of experience, from the normal phenomena of Catholic spiritual life, and from the more recondite experience recorded by great descriptive mystics like St. Teresa. We are but doing in psychology what Adams and Leverrier did in astronomy, infer the nature and position of the invisible from the perturbations observed in the visible.

We are not here considering the possible reinforcement of the will-to-believe by some higher principle as it does not affect the psychological character of the act of faith. The supernaturalization of the voluntary factor in faith is, of course, of the first importance, from the point of view of the theologian, the influx of grace affecting the whole act, as it is the product of intelligence and will, but it does not concern the psychologist to any such extent. 'Cum autem fides sit perfectio intellectus, illud per se ad fidem pertinet, quod pertinet ad intellectum; quod autem pertinet ad voluntatem, non per se pertinet ad fidem; ita quod per hoc fidei habitus possit diversificari; distinctio autem fidei formatae, et informis est secundum id, quod pertinet ad voluntatem, idest secundum charitatem, non autem secundum illud, quod pertinent ad intellectum; unde fides formata, et informis non sunt diversi habitus.'1 Thus, in the actus fidei informis, we must look for its specific character, as we have done, on the intellectual rather than on the voluntary side, otherwise it is very difficult to see any psychological distinction between an act of Catholic faith, and an act of purely natural or 'scientific' faith. In the actus fidei formatae, the supernaturalization of the will-to-believe by charity may have some interest for the psychologist studying certain mystical experiences; but we must remember, charity is ever more hidden than faith. 'Omnia haec tractavi in corde meo, ut curiose intelligerem ; sunt justi atque sapientes et opera eorum in manu Dei: et tamen nescit homo utrum amore an odio dignus sit' (Ecclesiastes ix. 1).

1 Summa Theologiae, D. Thomas, IIa, IIae, Q. 4 a. 4 c. ad finem.

We can see in the classic instance of Theodore Jouffroy that the will-to-believe cannot save the psychic sphere of faith from total collapse. We have his own account of the crisis of his perversion-psychose :

I will never forget that December night when the veil was rent which concealed my unbelief from my own self. I can still hear my steps in that small unfurnished room when, long after bedtime, I used to walk up and down; I can still see that moon shining through the clouds on to its floor. The night hours passed unnoticed by me; I was anxiously pursuing the train of thought which passed from level to level to the very depths of my consciousness, clearing away, one after another, the illusions which hid it from me until that moment, making all its details clearer at every instant. Vainly I clung to those last beliefs as to a plank in shipwreck; vainly, in terror at the unknown void beneath, I flung myself for the last time with them on my childhood, my family, the place where I was born and bred, on all that was holy and dear to me; the current of thought was too strong to be diverted; I had to abandon all, parents, family, memories, beliefs; the search proceeded with greater obstinacy and severity as it approached the goal and ceased only when it reached it. I was an unbeliever, but I hated unbelief; it was that which decided the bent of my life. Unable to endure doubt on the riddle of human destiny, having no longer the light of faith to solve it, only the lights of reason were left for the problem.1

We see here a crisis, sudden, overwhelming, total, yet with the will-to-believe persisting in a measure after doubt had made a total wreck of the mass of interlocked assents which formed the psychic sphere of faith. A will-to-believe in general as in this case, is not necessarily a will-to-believe in each particular instance, were it so of course the doubt might be repelled and faith remain intact. The case is instructive as showing that where the general will-to-believe is not applied to all, where it fails in but one, there collapse of the whole is possible. But the destructive act, that which nips off the tail of the Rupert's drop, is an act of the intellect; 'dissentire autem, qui est proprius actus infidelitatis, est actus intellectus, sed moti a voluntate, sicut et assentire.'"

We have now to trace out, as far as we are able, the general outlines of the psychic process involved in a conversion to the Catholic faith. We can only take the very broadest outlines, for the cases present such a vast variety of types, that it is impossible to regard any one as the type. We have every shade of view, from agnosticism to ultraAnglicanism, as the intellectual terminus a quo, we have every

1 Jouffroy, Nouveaux Mélanges Philosophiques, p. 114, quoted in article on Jouffroy in the Dict. des Sciences Philosophiques, Hachette, 1885, p. 828. 2 Summa, IIa, IIae, Q. 10 a. 2 c.

mode, from the slow tentative steps of a Newman to the conversion on the road to Damascus' of Alphonsus Ratisbonne and Mother Digby; we have all sorts and conditions of men, from hardened sinner to blameless respectability.

We are not concerned here with conversions involving a moral rather than a doctrinal change, as we have already dealt with the psychological aspects of such transformations. The 'road to Damascus' type of conversion to the Catholic faith, as exemplified in the conversion of Père Ratisbonne, or Mother Digby, or the case related by Huysmanns in Les Foules de Lourdes, where an infidel was not only cured, but converted in the same moment, exhibits such manifest abnormalities as to baffle any psychological explanation which respects the integral fact. De Fursac, who would equate such conversions to the Evan Roberts' Revival type, dismisses the Ratisbonne case in a footnote : Alphonse Ratisbonne, a Jew, converted to Catholicism in a manner absolutely instantaneous (in appearance at least) in the Church of St. André delle Fratte at Rome. The conversion was accompanied by a visual hallucination. There is an account of this event in the little book of the Baron Bussierre: The Child of Mary-One Brother more. It has been reproduced by M. Frank Abauzit in his translation of W. James' book.' The weak point in this psychologic assimilation is not so much the denial of the miraculous, or its reduction to hallucination, that is an a priori necessity of thought for the agnostic, but the equation of the result of the crisis, the creation of the psychic sphere of Catholic faith, a new mentality, a new intellectuality, with merely personal moral changes, however great and impressive, which do not involve a new intellectual attitude to God and His Church. Unless we are prepared to regard the Catholic faith as a permanent hallucination, a form of chronic mental disease, we cannot bring its sudden genesis as a complete and enduring psychic factor in every circumstance of life within the categories of agnostic psychology. We may reform our morals by well-directed efforts; we may modify our views by study within limits; but we cannot take a new global attitude towards integral truth-our assent cannot be coerced. If we conclude that a dogma is contrary to our reason, how can we possibly accept it gladly save in the light of a reason higher than our own, in which we can implicitly trust? If this attitude of absolute confidence comes suddenly, against the grain of all past experience-comes with crushing force, sweeping into

oblivion past convictions to the contrary-we must either recognize it as the finger of God, or take refuge in pure medical materialism.

The more gradual forms of conversion will suit our purpose as psychologists better than these rare and extraordinary types; yet, their study is not free from difficulties. The material at our disposal, biography, letters and diaries, narratives of spiritual experience, though most ample, often fails to give us those psychological details which we require. Narratives are often written long after the events take place, and allowance has to be made for the present prepossessions of the writers when reviewing their own past. Very few have St. Teresa's clarity of internal vision and power of expressing the finer shades of psychic experience. Most of the documents available need to be examined and classified from the standpoint of psychology, and there is an immense field here, practically untilled, for students of positive psychology. Spiritual biography, on its ascetical side, has been well dealt with, but very little has been done, apart from mystical theology, to study the operations of the human soul as revealed in Catholic spiritual narratives. The positive study of the conversion-psychose among non-Catholics is much ahead of the positive psychology of Catholic conversions, as has been well pointed out by Père Mainage in his Introduction à la Psychologie des Convertis.1

We have two processes in these gradual conversions, the putting off of the old man by the break-up of the old convictions, and the putting on of the new by the formation of the new psychic sphere of faith. There is a disintegration and reintegration of the field of consciousness, but there is a new element in the reformed field. The break-up may come from some nascent idea, some intellectual difficulty which finds an appropriate centre of instability. Retté's agnosticism was first disturbed by his being asked by some Socialist comrades: 'You see, citizen, we know there is no good God; that's understood. Since the world has not been created, we want to know how everything began. Science must know all about it, and we want you to tell us clearly what it says we are to think about the matter.' He confesses he had

2

1 Paris: Lecoffre, 1913, p. 7. In his subsequent volumes, La Psychologie de la Conversion and Le Témoignage des Apostats, Père Mainage has done much to supply this deficiency. Père Huby's La Conversion may also be consulted with profit.

* Adolphe Retté, Du Diable à Dieu. Paris: Messein, 1912, p. 10.