life of broader interests and deeper insight than that possessed by the mass. Whatever intellectual advance humanity has made, we owe to these "knowing ones," a large portion of whom have suffered persecution at the hands of the crowd for their deviation from popular forms of belief and spiritual control. In many times and places these knowing few have been obliged to deceive the multitude, to find freedom for themselves by dissembling, by keeping up an appearance of conformity to popular religion, while secretly interpreting their words and behavior differently among themselves. I believe that practically every great religion has had an esoteric intellectualism of this kind.

In our modern Western civilization, with its democratic tendencies and its practical use for certain forms of scientific knowledge, liberalism has been exoteric. The noncomformist has spoken openly. He has on the whole been glad to take as many of his fellows as were interested, into his confidence. There has, of course, been popular opposition to the liberal advance of science, and there still is. But such popular opposition has been greatly weakened, though among ourselves, as always, significant new

truths must still often win their way in the face of popular religious hostility.

The very democratic and exoteric nature of modern liberalism, the habitual attempt to popularize science, the openness of such conflict as there has been between science and religion, the repeated appeal to the reason of the man in the street, together with assurances that scientific progress is to his advantage-all this has tended in a way to bring an element of crowdmindedness into our thinking about the religious significance of scientific culture. It accounts in some measure for the partisan spirit which often manifests itself among religious liberals, also for the attempt to restate old popular religious values in the terminology of science. And finally it would seem that this is why we Westerners have been so slow in turning our attention to the possibility that the whole language of religion may be pure symbolism—symbolism fabricated by the unconscious to express its wish fancies. Doubtless an esoteric liberalism would at once have made this latter approach to the problem-would have treated religious forms as figures of speech and would have sought to penetrate to a knowledge of the mysteries, the secrets. Study of religious history

would strongly suggest that this course has often been followed, and that the mysteries of religion are secrets chiefly to the uninitiated

mass.

II

Modes of Religious Thinking

UR discussion so far has proceeded upon the assumption that the mysteries

of religion are facts which we must

take into account if we are to understand our subject. Furthermore, I have suggested that these mysteries are-for purposes of our study, at least to be regarded as secrets of some sort, half-conscious impulses and inner turnings of the psyche which are for the most part hidden from the full knowledge of the believer. I have expressed the belief that in certain esoteric circles it may all along have been the practice of the "initiated" to explore these inner realities, to seek such self-knowledge as would give to commonly accepted religious ideas and customs meanings which were hidden from the eyes of the populace.

Suppose I am correct in this latter assumption, or "suspicion," if you will-suppose, to bring the discussion home to us, that Chris

tianity has and has had from the beginning such an esoteric meaning. Suppose that the Christian tradition and ceremonies constitute a very carefully elaborated system worked out by successive generations of the most subtle and penetrating minds of the ancient world; suppose that every element in this great religious system is susceptible of more than one interpretation-that, like the ritual of certain secret societies, it all has one obvious meaning for the layman and another and quite different meaning for the inner group who have "attained wisdom."

There are many indications that such may be the case. I will dwell on this fact in a later chapter. If such a supposition is correct, it follows that all attempts to explain, to attack or defend Christianity which take its forms of expression at their face value are quite irrelevant. I do not see how anyone can study the literature of the Apostolic Age and not feel that he is walking over subtly spanned chasms, treading the surface of a deep, dark wisdom which may penetrate to the very depths of human life. And there are moderns who think that the four Gospels are naïve documents written by simple-minded Galilean working