I next try to define the term Religious Insight as I intend it to
be here understood.

And first I must speak briefly of the word Insight. By insight,
whatever the object of insight may be, one means some kind of
knowledge. But the word insight has a certain richness of significance
whereby we distinguish what we call insight from knowledge in general.
A man knows the way to the office where he does his business. But if
he is a successful man, he has insight into the nature and rules of
his business and into the means whereby success is attained. A man
knows the names and the faces of his acquaintances. But he has some
sort of insight into the characters of his familiar friends. As these
examples suggest, insight is a name for a special sort and degree of
knowledge. Insight is knowledge that unites a certain breadth of
range, a certain wealth of acquaintance together with a certain unity
and coherence of grasp, and with a certain closeness of intimacy
whereby the one who has insight is brought into near touch with the
objects of his insight. To repeat: Insight is knowledge that makes us
aware of the unity of many facts in one whole, and that at the same
time brings us into intimate personal contact with these facts {6} and
with the whole wherein they are united. The three marks of insight are
breadth of range, coherence and unity of view, and closeness of
personal touch. A man may get some sort of _sight_ of as many things
as you please. But if we have insight, we view some connected whole of
things, be this whole a landscape as an artist sees it, or as a
wanderer surveys it from a mountain top, or be this whole an organic
process as a student of the sciences of life aims to comprehend it, or
a human character as an appreciative biographer tries to portray it.
Again, we have insight when, as I insist, our acquaintance with our
object is not only coherent but close and personal. Insight you cannot
obtain at second hand. You can learn by rote and by hearsay many
things; but if you have won insight, you have won it not without the
aid of your own individual experience. Yet experience is not by itself
sufficient to produce insight unless the coherence and the breadth of
range which I have just mentioned be added.

Insight may belong to the most various sorts of people and may be
concerned with the most diverse kinds of objects. Many very unlearned
people have won a great deal of insight into the matters that
intimately co