But the Church has yet to learn from M. Bergson the alphabet of this new
knowledge, namely, that our senses and our reason are what they are
because of a long evolution in _action_--not in pure thought. We have
got our sight by looking for prey or for enemies, and our hearing by
listening for the movement of prey or of enemies. Our reason, too, is
fashioned out of a long heredity of action, that is to say an immemorial
discipline in an existence purely animal. So powerful is the influence
of this heredity, so real seems to us a physical world which is not
real, so infallible seem to us the senses by which we fail to live
successfully even as animals, that, as Christ said, a man must be born
again before he can enter the Kingdom of God--that is to say, before he
can behold and inhabit Reality.
At the head of this chapter I have set a quotation from a leading
article in _The Times_ on the recent lectures of M. Coue. It is now
eighteen years ago, treading in the footsteps of Frederic Myers, that I
discussed with some of the chief medical hypnotists in London and Paris
the phenomena of mental suggestion. It was known then that
auto-suggestion is a force of tremendous power. It was stated then that
"an immense hope is dawning on the world," but not then, not even now,
is it realised that this awkward term of "auto-suggestion" is merely a
synonym for the more beautiful and ancient words, meditation and prayer.
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