Consider a picture of the Madonna.  Minds at different levels may find in this pure representation, Bible history, theology, aesthetic satisfaction, spiritual truth.  The peasant may see in it the portrait of the Mother of God, the critic a phase in artistic evolution; whilst the mystic may pass through it to new contacts with the Spirit of life.  We shall receive according to the measure of what we bring.  Now consider the parallel case of some great dramatic liturgy, rich with the meanings which history has poured into it.  Take, as an example which every one can examine for themselves, the Roman Mass.  Different levels of mind will find here magic, theology, deep mystery, the commemoration under archaic symbols of an event.  But above and beyond all these, they can find the solemn incorporated emotion, of the Christian Church, and a liturgic recapitulation of the movement of the human soul towards fullness of life:  through confession and reconciliation to adoration and intercession—­that is, to charity—­and thence to direct communion with and feeding on the Divine World.

To the mind which refuses to yield to it, to move with its movement, but remains in critical isolation, the Mass like all other ceremonies will seem external, dead, unreal; lacking in religious content.  But if we do give ourselves completely and unselfconsciously to the movement of such a ceremony, at the end of it we may not have learnt anything, but we have lived something.  And when we remember that no experience of our devotional life is lost, surely we may regard it as worth while to submit ourselves to an experience by which, if only for a few minutes, we are thus lifted to richer levels of life and brought into touch with higher values?  We have indeed only to observe the enrichment of life so often produced in those who thus dwell meekly and without inner conflict in the symbolic world of ceremonial religion, and accept its discipline and its gifts, to be led at least to a humble suspension of judgment as to its value.  A whole world of spiritual experience separates the humble little church mouse rising at six every morning to attend a service which she believes to be pleasing to a personal God, from the philosopher who meditates on the Absolute in a comfortable armchair; and no one will feel much doubt as to which side the advantage lies.

Here we approach the next point.  The cultus, with its liturgy and its discipline, exists for and promotes the repetition of acts which are primarily the expression of man’s instinct for God; and by these—­or any other repeated acts—­our ductile instinctive life is given a definite trend.  We know from Semon’s researches[126] that the performance of any given act by a living creature influences all future performances of similar acts.  That is to say, memory combines with each fresh stimulus to control our reaction to it.  “In the case of living organisms,” says Bertrand Russell, “practically everything that is distinctive both