ous interest is something much less
mysterious than James's supposed workings of the "higher powers"
through our subliminal selves, and is also something much more
universally human {48} than is the opportunity to come under the
influence of any one revelation. Men who never heard of Christianity,
and men who have never felt conscious of any external revelation from
above, as well as men who have had no such sudden uprushes from their
own subconscious natures as James's "religious geniuses" have
reported, are able to win a genuine religious interest, to be aware of
an intense need for salvation, and to set before themselves, in
however inarticulate a fashion, the very ideal of life which I have
been trying in my own way to formulate. The need and the ideal can
come into sight in a manner that indeed does not in the least either
exclude or require a belief in one or in another reported revelation,
but that links both the need and the ideal to our ordinary personal
experience by ties which are not at all mysterious. Let me show you,
then, better than my time permitted in the former lecture, how an
individual may naturally experience what I have called his need of
salvation.

Nothing is more obvious about the natural course of our lives than is
the _narrowness_ of view to which we are usually subject. We are not
only the victims of conflicting motives, but we are often too narrow
to know that this is true. For we see our various life interests, so
to speak, one at a time. We forget one while we are living out
another. And so we are prone to live many lives, seldom noting how ill
harmonised they are. Home life, for instance, may {49} be one thing;
business life in principle another; sport or social ambition another.
And these various lives may be lived upon mutually inconsistent
plans. We forget one part of ourselves in our temporary absorption in
some other part. And if, as our naturally complex and often
conflicting motives determine, these our various lives are out of
harmony with one another, we constantly do irrevocable deeds that
emphasise and perpetuate the results of this disharmony. And as we
grow older our motives alter; yet because of our natural narrowness of
interest, we often do not recognise the change. Our youth consequently
lays a poor foundation for our age; or perhaps our mature life makes
naught of the aspirations of our youth. We thus come to spend a great
part of our days thwarting ourselves through t