satisfies the utmost desires of heart and mind.  The spiritual impulse must not be allowed to become the centre of a group of specialized feelings, a devotional complex, in opposition to, or at least alienated from, the intellectual and economic life.  It must on the contrary brim over, invading every department of the self.  When the mind’s loftiest and most ideal thought, its conscious vivid aspiration, has been united with the more robust qualities of the natural man; then, and only then, we have the material for the making of a possible saint.

We must also remember that, important as our primitive and instinctive life may be—­and we should neither despise nor neglect it—­its religious impulses, taken alone, no more represent the full range of man’s spiritual possibilities than the life of the hunting tribe or the African kraal represent his full social possibilities.  We may, and should, acknowledge and learn from our psychic origins.  We must never be content to rest in them.  Though in many respects, mental as well as physical, we are animals still; yet we are animals with a possible future in the making, both corporate and individual, which we cannot yet define.  All other levels of life assure us that the impulsive nature is peculiarly susceptible to education.  Not only can the whole group of instincts which help self-fulfilment be directed to higher levels, united and subdued to a dominant emotional interest; but merely instinctive actions can, by repetition and control, be raised to the level of habit and be given improved precision and complexity.  This, of course, is a primary function of devotional exercises; training the first blind instinct for God to the complex responses of the life of prayer.  Instinct is at best a rough and ready tool of life:  practice is required if it is to produce its best results.  Observe, for instance, the poor efforts of the young bird to escape capture; and compare this with the finished performance of the parent.[79] Therefore in estimating man’s capacity for spiritual response, we must reckon not only his innate instinct for God, but also his capacity for developing this instinct on the level of habit; educating and using its latent powers to the best advantage.  Especially on the contemplative side of life, education does great things for us; or would do, if we gave it the chance.  Here, then, the rational mind and conscious will must play their part in that great business of human transcendence, which is man’s function within the universal plan.

It is true that the deep-seated human tendency to God may best be understood as the highest form of that out-going instinctive craving of the psyche for more life and love which, on whatever level it be experienced, is always one.  But some external stimulus seems to be needed, if this deep tendency is to be brought up into consciousness; and some education, if it is to be fully expressed.  This stimulus and this education, in normal cases, are given by