INTRODUCTION
§ 62. The God-consciousness described in the foregoing occurs as the actual content of a moment of experience only under the general form of self-consciousness, i.e. the antithesis of pleasure and pain.
Note.—Cf. § 5.
- The disposition to the God-consciousness can be represented as a continuous impartation of that consciousness, but only in a degree that is infinitely small; with the consequence that the transition to a definite and perceptible magnitude is always dependent on some other fact of consciousness. Now, were such a transition to take place in our self-consciousness apart from the form of the antithesis, i.e. neither as an advancement nor as an arrestment of the God-consciousness, it would need to be a transition that was continuous and uniform. This is conceivable if, independently of any other fact of consciousness, the God-consciousness were to rise noticeably above the infinitely small degree just referred to. The condition of the God-consciousness in such a case would be one of constant repression, dull uniformity, any emergence of vitality above a very low average being found only among the other facts of consciousness. A constant uniformity in the God-consciousness, however, is conceivable also in a state of existence where an absolute facility existed of evoking it in its absolute strength from every other fact of consciousness, the condition of the God-consciousness in this case would be that of a blessed uniformity of constant predominance. Clearly, however, our religious consciousness is not such that more and less do not apply to it; on the contrary, it oscillates between these extremes, sharing, as it does, the variations of our temporal life. True, this more and less, simply as such, may seem to be of the nature of a fluctuating difference rather than of an antithesis. Still, contrariety of movement creates an antithesis; for a movement from less to more indicates that the disposition to the God-consciousness is developing with increasing freedom, while one from more to less is an arrestment of it and indicates that other impulses are more powerful.
But now in this as in other provinces of experience (as there is no such state as absolute blessedness or as complete abeyance of the God-consciousness) pleasure and pain are by no means to be regarded as so separate from each other that one of them might in some circumstances actually exist without the other. If, then, the determining power of the God-consciousness is felt to be limited, pain is bound up with it, i.e. is present even in the highest pleasure. Whereas, if the consciousness that this power is arrested excites pain, the God-consciousness is nevertheless willed as such a power, and is thereby in and for itself an object of pleasure.
- If, however, our proposition is to be understood as implying that what emerges in actual consciousness, under whichever form of the antithesis, as God-consciousness is always what has already been described, namely, the feeling of absolute dependence, and that no modification of the God-consciousness can be instanced where this feeling might either be absent or have added to it anything except what is related to and constitutes the antithesis in question; and if there is taken along with this our former assertion1 that in the Christian consciousness (the same has always held good, however, of religion moulded by any other form of belief) the feeling of absolute dependence never purely by itself fills a moment of religious experience—then each of the two statements is explained by the other in this way, namely, that what was described in our First Part (taken along with what in other forms of religion develops otherwise out of the fact that, as often as the indwelling God-consciousness really seeks to emerge, it appears either as advanced or arrested in its functioning) likewise constitutes the God-consciousness in its entire range, and that this fact must govern our conception of the whole content of every moment of religious experience, occur where it may. This assertion is challenged mainly on the ground that in our use of the idea of absolute dependence we have annulled every distinction between human freedom and subordinate forms of finite being,2 while yet the God-consciousness surely (if one’s own acceptance of the divine will and one’s love to God form part of the God-consciousness) has a content which relates exclusively to human freedom and presupposes it. These elements, it is held, consequently cannot be derived from the feeling of absolute dependence, and just as little from the antithesis mentioned if it refers solely to that feeling. To dispose of this objection in all its aspects, and thereby to substantiate our assertion with respect at least to all monotheistic forms of faith, lies outside our present task.