the 'imperfect'1-the former attended with greater formality and involving a more radical change in the social status of the person adopted-and it was freely debated among the learned whether, in the eyes of the jurists, the 'imperfect ' type involved any matrimonial impediment at all. Be that as it may, the supporters of the commoner view, just referred to, were inclined to claim that the re-appearance, in modern legislation, of even the imperfect' Roman type was sufficient to constitute a canonical impediment.

To put the rival theories briefly, we might say that, according to the less common view, the Church canonized the modern law: according to the other, the Roman law exclusively.

Now, as in the case of difference of worship,' these unaccommodated differences of view in regard to the past still furnish ground for friendly and legitimate discussion. The new canon on the subject need not be taken as embodying a decision on any of the old-time controversies. But, again as in the case of difference of worship,' only one view will be tenable for the future. And that view is not the 'commoner' view of the past In deciding whether a canonical impediment arises or not, in connexion with marriages contracted since the Code came into force, we must leave the Roman law out of our reckoning, and be guided exclusively by the effect attached to 'adoption' by modern civil legislation. If the civil law voids or prohibits marriage by reason of adoption,' the Canon law will recognize an impediment-diriment or impedientirrespective, altogether, of the question whether the modern adoption does, or does not, retain the substantial elements of the Roman relationship.

That is the principle expressed in Canon 1080 :

Those who are considered by civil law incapable of contracting nuptials with each other, by reason of legal relationship arising from adoption, are disqualified by Canon law [also] from contracting a valid marriage with each other.

1 The distinction became especially acute after the change effected in the law by the Emperor Justinian (L. 11 c. De Adop.). Cf. Bened. XIV, De Syn., B. 9, c. 10, n. 4.

3 The various authorities are cited by Gasparri, n. 858.

3 So Gasparri, n. 863. See Ferraris, Biblioth, v. ‘matrimonium,' etc. On these rather indefinite principles the decisions given for various countries differed considerably. They favoured the existence of the impediment in France (17th May, 1826), Naples (23rd February, 1853), etc.: not so in Bulgaria (16th April, 1761), China (24th January, 1802), etc.

and, as regards the prohibitive impediment, in Canon

1059:

In those countries in which legal relationship arising from adoption renders nuptials unlawful by civil legislation, marriage is unlawful by Canon law as well.

So the question to be asked for the future is, not whether the adoption in force is substantially the same as the Roman, but whether it constitutes an impediment in the eyes of the modern civil law. That involves an inconvenience strongly emphasized by the supporters of the common view in the past-what gives rise to a diriment impediment in one country may have no effect whatever in another.1 But even that is more than counterbalanced by the advantages of the new regulation. The controversies about the Roman law need trouble us no longer; and we are spared the task of deciding whether a modern law presents the essentials of its classical prototype.

The

On the new principle now formulated, we think that there is no impediment of any kind in this country, and that most of the American States are free as well. ordinary law-books state the matrimonial impediments, diriment and impedient, in great detail, but adoption,' so far as we can see, is never classified among them. On custom and common feeling, as a guide to law, we may appeal to experience. Even the readers of fiction will help us. They can recall no more threadbare theme than that of the wealthy son of the family united at last to the adopted outcast-with the parental blessing and no hint of a violation of law or public decorum.

In confirmation of our view we may quote Father Slater, S.J. He wrote under the old régime, but his statement will apply even under the new :

In England [he stated] adoption exists as a private contract between the parties, but is not otherwise recognized by law, and so in England there is no room for the impediment of marriage arising from legal adoption. In most of the States of the Union there seems to be a form of adoption recognized by law sufficient to make it the basis of the ecclesiastical impediment.

The last statement is confirmed, and amplified, in a 'Note' added by Father Martin, S.J. The test applied,

1 So Gasparri, n. 852, etc.

2 Manual of Moral Theology, ii. p. 305.

Ibid. Cf. article in the Catholic Encyclopedia, i. 148.

however, is the common test of the past-agreement in essentials with the adoption' of the Roman law. For that the principle of Canons 1059 and 1080 must now be substituted. How far the change will affect conclusions is a matter on which the ecclesiastical authorities of the various States are in the best position to decide. We suspect that it will restrict the impediment within even narrower limits than before.1

We might sum up the new legislation by saying that, apart from difference of worship,' the important changes are confined to the canons on relationship.' In each and every one of these, however-whether affecting consanguinity, affinity, propriety, or spiritual or legal relationship-the law has been modified very considerably, in some cases almost beyond recognition.

M. J. O'DONNELL.

1 Since the above was put in type, we have been favoured with a reply—which we are kindly allowed to quote if occasion arises '--from one of our foremost civil-law experts, James A. Murnaghan, Esq., M.A., LL.D., Professor of Jurisprudence and Roman Law in the National University. His first paragraph, it will be noted, bears on the pre-Code legislation: the English form of 'adoption' was very different from the Roman model. From the standpoint of the Code the second paragraph is the more important: the statement that 'Adoption, is no bar to marriage in English law' effectively disposes of any doubts that might survive the previous assurance that 'Strictly speaking, [adoption] is not an idea in the English system.'

'Adoption [Dr. Murnaghan states] as known in Roman legislation, involving the transfer of parental authority, does not exist in English law. Strictly speaking, it is not an idea in the English system; e.g., an adopted child has no share in the adopter's inheritance upon intestacy. It has however certain consequences, such as this. If I purchase land or stock in the name of a stranger, unless the motive of gift is positively proved, the stock or land belongs to me, and the stranger is a trustee. If, on the other hand, I purchase in the name of a son, the land or stock belongs to the son, even in the absence of proof of gift; and the same rule is applied in the case of purchase in the name of an adopted child-the presumption is that the purchase belongs to him.

'Adoption is no bar to marriage in English law. The only bars are the relationships set out in 1563 in the table attached to the Book of Common Prayer. If you look at this table, you will find that adoption is not touched upon at all. In 1907 the table was altered as regards marriage with a deceased wife's sister."

The 'table' referred to is given, in complicated fashion and with much historical lore, in the more advanced text-books. Most of us will prefer it as it stands in, say, Every Man's Own Lawyer (p. 360, 1916 edition).

NOTES ON THE PSYCHOLOGY OF

RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE

BY JOHN HOWLEY, M.A.

IV

CONVERSION AND THE NEW BIRTH

BEFORE proceeding to discuss the various types of religious conversion considered as a psychological process, we would like to restate very briefly our general position. For the postulates of the sublimenal self and sub-conscious elaboration in which the school of Myers and James seek the answer to the enigma, we would substitute:

(1) The existence in our states of consciousness of certain centres of instability. In the various consolidated groups of sensations, images, passions, concepts and volitions, potential or actual, which form together that complex which we call the field of consciousness, there is some one psychic element or small group of elements, which, being disturbed, the group of which it forms part breaks up, with a more or less general re-arrangement of the whole field as a result.

(2) The psychic dynamism of nascent ideas. By a nascent idea we understand, not a bare concept, but some psychic element, which may even be a complex of sensations, images, passions, concepts, and volitions, yet has a certain unity and simplicity taken as a whole, and which is a novelty in consciousness, either as coming suddenly from without, as in ordinary apprehensions, or from within, from the deeper memory, or by being evolved from the break-up of some psychic complex.

For such nascent ideas we claim a psychic energy far in excess of their force as ordinary elements of consciousness, just as nascent hydrogen is more chemically active than when fully evolved. Some degree of psychic passivity, as in automatic and spontaneous attention, is needed for the full display of this nascent activity which is controlled or controllable by conative attention.

We have now to examine how far these new postulates will serve to account for the phenomena of religious conversion, and we propose to deal first with those types known as evangelical or revivalistic conversions. The conversionpsychose in Protestant religious experience is so sharply marked off by its ordinary phenomena from nearly all types of Catholic experience, as seemingly to belong to another psychic order. There is, of course, a vast mass of Protestant religious experience where the conversion phase appears to be absent and the general gradual line of religious growth seems parallel with the ordinary spiritual development on Catholic lines, psychologically speaking. Starbuck has studied a very large number of such non-conversion cases among American Protestants, and his conclusions rather striking.

are

The result which seemed to be attained in conversion, and that which was working itself out during adolescence among those persons who have not experienced conversion are, at bottom, essentially the same, namely, the birth of human consciousness on a higher spiritual level. This is attended by the awakening of a fuller and keener self-consciousness, and at the same time, by the birth of a social instinct, which leads the person to reach out and feel his life one with that of the larger social, institutional, and spiritual worlds.1

A little further on he says:

But when we follow up the events which mark the trend of life after conversion, the crucial question we have just raised is almost directly answered, for we find that nearly all the persons are, sooner or later, beset with the same difficulties that ordinarily attend adolescent development. Indeed, the percentage of those difficulties in this group of persons is slightly greater than in the case of those whose growth was not attended by conversion.

From this it would appear that James's classification of religious types into the once-born' and the twiceborn' is a division rather of psychic process than of psychic result, and we might consider the conversion-psychose as an adaptation of the Spiritual Exercises a l'Americaine, a sort of religious quick-lunch.

Starbuck in his enquiry has dealt with ordinary cases where the conversion experience was claimed, and has based his results on his statistics of such ordinary cases, quite normal in the various denominations to which the cases belonged, rather than on a few limited and striking cases where the conversion-psychose presents abnormal

1 Starbuck, The Psychology of Religion, 3rd Edition, p. 354.