1955 Berry Street Essay: The Reverend David Rhys Williams

Psychological Approach to the Concept of the Deity
145th Berry Street Essay
Delivered by The Reverend David Rhys Williams
Boston, MA
May 23, 1955

It was in this very room, over forty years ago, that my professional career in the service of the Church was begun.

I was then a theological student in Cambridge when I was engaged by Dr. Charles Edward Park to conduct the Sunday morning service of worship and teach a class of teen-age boys in the Sunday School of this church. I shall always be grateful for the opportunity which Dr. Park gave me and for the kindly patience and understanding he displayed in dealing with the vagaries of a rambunctious youth.

As a member of the Harvard Socialist Club which was then functioning I was accustomed to sign my name on all confidential letters to comrades in the cause – “Yours for the Revolution” – but I was actually afraid that the Revolution would becoming so soon that I wouldn’t be able to graduate in time to take any real part in it. For was not the Revolution already under way? One could hear the rumblings of a violent labor strike taking place at Lawrence, Massachusetts, under the leadership of Ettor and Giovannitti. I felt it my duty to participate in that strike to the extent of publicly raising funds to help the strikers, much to the embarrassment of some of my friends. The social application of religion was then my sole concern. Theology was merely of peripheral importance.

How little did I dream then that some day I might be invited to give a theological essay before my colleagues in the ministry, or if invited there would be any eagerness on my part to accept the invitation. Fortunately or unfortunately, the years intervening have brought about some change in my basic attitudes.

I propose to discuss with you this morning a subject which, in all probability, will command the attention of the human mind when most of what is generally considered important today has long since been forgotten. It does not require any stretch of the imagination to believe that a hundred years hence, or a thousand years hence, men and women will still be talking about the concept of God. Today I shall attempt to identify the Reality which has given rise to this concept.

The problem before us is most clearly stated in the Book of Job. “Then answered Job and said: Oh that I knew where to find him, that I might come even to his seat! Behold, I go forward, but he is not there; and backward, but I cannot perceive him; on the left hand, where he doth work, but I cannot behold him. He hideth himself on the right hand that I cannot see him. He goeth by me and I see him not. He passeth on, also, but I perceive him not.”

Whether you and I believe in God or not, it is a fact that a large portion of mankind, from earliest times down to the present hour, has been convinced that this world is inhabited by a Personality transcending anything that the human eye has ever seen. For thousands of years the spirit of man has been disturbed by a Presence which he has felt, but which he has never been quite able to locate or describe, “Oh that I knew where I might find him,” has been the cry of many a sincere soul, down through the ages,

In spite of all efforts to disillusion him; in spite of all his failures to bring this “Presence” within the compass of one or more of his five senses; in spite of all temporary misgivings and doubts, man has clung tenaciously to the thought that he possesses an unseen companionship in this world — more intimate, more sustaining and more vital than any companionship which he enjoys with his fellow human mortals or with his animal co-residents an this globe. When asked to define this presence, whatever other words he has used, he has always used the word power.

What is this Presence? It is a power which enables him to keep up his courage when his world begins to tumble in on him. It is a power which enables him to resist temptation, and “pass by on the other side.”

It is a power which brings comfort to him in times of sorrow and bereavement;

It is a power which makes him reach out for things which appear to be beyond his grasp;

It is a power which seems at times to be underneath him like an everlasting arm;

It is a power which fills his life with meaning and purpose when he yields his will to its influence.

When asked to locate this power, the mind of man has been bewildered and perplexed. Like Job he says, “Behold, I go forward, but he is not there, and backward but 1 cannot perceive him,”

His prevailing inclination, however, has been to point to some object outside of himself. He has pointed to some belching volcano, and uttered the name of his Deity in awe and reverence, insisting that its cloud of smoke by day and its pillar of fire by night were none other than the fingers of an Almighty One. He has pointed to the Radiant Sun as the seat of the presence which he felt within his own life, and when he drew pictures of the sun he painted friendly hands at the end of the sun’s rays. Some of these pictures adorn the temples in Egypt to this day.

In some ages, when asked to locate the Reality which has come to be called by the name of God, man has nodded in the direction of the sea, and uttered the name of Neptune. Or he has looked up to the moon and the stars in the heavens, or be has confidently ushered his inquirer into the presence of some Totem Pole, or graven image; or he has taken him into some Temple of imposing architecture, and pointed to an altar with its consecrated bread and vine; or he has looked vaguely in all directions and said, “God is everywhere.”

Each and every one of these efforts to locate Deity has satisfied the human mind at various periods in history, and millions of people throughout the world today are still satisfied with one or more of them. The modern mind, however, finds them all unsatisfactory. We understand now that physical energy is behind the belching of the volcano, and the radiating warmth of the sun. We know today the chemical composition of the moon and stars. Our most powerful telescopes have searched out every corner of the heavens, and cannot find there any evidence of a spiritual companion to man. Al1 that our astronomers can see are molten suns and whirling stars and immense masses of luminous vapors — nothing but matter and the evidence of physical energy, and vast inter-stellar spaces with apparently nothing in them, not even matter or the marks of physical energy.

There is Force there in the heavens — there is awe-inspiring Space there — there is inexorable Law there, but surely there is nothing there even remotely resembling the intimate and friendly spiritual qualities which man has ever associated with deity — at least, nothing there that can be identified as such. There is no ethical personal power there — nothing worthy of man’s love and devotion. Such a power may be really there, but if so, it is completely hidden from us.

Where then is God? If we cannot find him with the telescope in the vast realm of infinite space, perhaps we can find him with the microscope in the realm of the infinitesimal. Perhaps we can locate him in the physical laboratory. But no, all efforts of scientist to date have failed to uncover any evidence of Deity in the world of the microscopic. There are chemical and physical changes there; there are whirling points of energy there; there are complex patterns of matter there, but who can feel inspired to bow down and worship before complex patterns of matter and whirling points of energy?

There then is God? Is he to be found in the providential bounty of Mother Earth? In the variegated life of the changing seasons? Isn’t there a companion in the hills, “from whence cometh our help? Is God in any of the striking phenomena of Nature? No, says John Burroughs, “nature has dealt with man upon the same terms as with other forms of life. She has shown him no favor. I see hostile germs in the air he breathes, in the water he drinks, in the soil he tills. I see the elemental forces as indifferent toward him as toward ants and flies, Man has taken his chances in the clash of blind matter and in the warfare of living forms. He has been the pet of no God, the favorite of no power on earth or in heaven. The sun Shines and the rain descends on the just and the unjust alike.” There seems to be no partiality for moral or spiritual values in the ways of nature.

Where then did man get the notion of a Deity who is at all interested in him? How did he come to hit upon the idea that he possessed the companionship of an unseen Presence? Have such astute minds as Job and Isaiah, Plato and Maimonides, Augustine and Roger Bacon been completely deceived by their own imagination? Has religion been talking and organizing all these centuries about something that has no basis in fact? Is God nothing but a passing fancy of the mind of man — an illusion of wishful thinking? Or is there some solid Reality in the experience of- the human race to which he can point as the unmistakable source of his God idea?

To answer these questions we must first ask, “What is it that we are looking for?” “What kind of Presence is it that we are endeavoring to locate?” Surely it is something spiritual, is it not? Something that is other than ourselves; something that is greater than ourselves; something creative and purposive; something which cares for moral and spiritual values, which is able to support us when everything else fails; something which is able to offer us companionship when all others desert us.

Can such a Spiritual Power be found anywhere in the universe? I believe the answer to be an affirmative one. In man himself there is a Dual Life between which, in his more discerning moments, he is able to differentiate. There is a Life which he identifies as himself, in referring to which he uses the first personal pronoun, and another Life which he identifies as something other than himself, though directly apprehended by himself, in referring to which he feels he must use the third personal pronoun, except when he addresses it directly, when he inclines to the use of the second person.

Now this Other Life within man is the Reality which has given rise to his concept of Deity. It embraces the whole spiritual phenomena which are involved in the process of faith.

Where others use the expression “Faith in God” I would say “Faith is God.” I make bold to identify deity with the power of faith which projects ideal ends on the screen of man’s imagination and then impels man to reach out and endeavor to make those ideals real.

The affirmation that Faith is God was inspired by Professor William James of Harvard. I was reading one day his description of the mountain climber who had worked himself into a position from which the only escape was by a terrible leap across a yawning abyss. He showed how Faith made a real difference in the facts of life. The mountain climber was able to believe that he could make the terrible leap and his feet were thereby nerved to its accomplishment. If he had disbelieved, but in a moment of despair had launched himself, he would have gone down into the abyss. “Our faith beforehand in an uncertified result is the only thing that makes the result come true.”

When I read this and its implications dawned on me, it flashed as a revelation to my mind. Here is God– here in the very act of Faith is the Creative Factor of the universe. Here is the power that changes possibilities into actualities, here is the dynamic that makes something out of nothing. Hers is the wondrous originator of that which is new, which makes a difference in the facts of life.

Furthermore, it seemed logical to me to hold that God can not be the object of Faith — God must be the Fact of Faith. The object of Faith is not a Fact but always a possibility. If God were the object of Faith, he would have to be a possibility and not a present reality.

 No, what we are looking for is a Spiritual Creative Power acting in the present. Here in the phenomena of Faith itself, it seems to me we have that Reality which we are looking for. In other words, the mysterious power which we experience as Faith is none other than the Deity at work within us.

 Nowhere does Professor William James make this precise identification as far as I can learn. Several poets and hymn writers seem to do so, such as Martineau, Longfellow, Hosmer and Scudder. But most philosophers and theologians fail to make this identification, and their failure is due, in my judgment, to the fact that the world has long been accustomed to think of Faith as a faculty of the human mind which can be exercised or not at will. Consequently the philosophers and theologians have been reluctant to identify such a power with Deity. It would amount to saying that Man is God and this would be equivalent to saying that there no God at all. But the obstacle in our path is in thinking of Faith as a faculty of the human mind.

 Professor William James speaks of the “will to believe.” The Christian Church during the Middle Ages hounded people to death for their failure to believe. The Christian Church still holds people accountable for their beliefs. Even Jesus chided the people of his day for possessing little faith, as though faith were an achievement of the will. But I submit to you that wherever belief amounts to faith, it is not something that men can deliberately lay held of and use at their discretion, but something that lays hold on them and uses them for its own ends. It is not something which serves them but something which they must serve.

 That is to say, if one really believes in something, there is an appropriate reaction, but if there is no reaction then there has been no real belief. Belief and behavior, faith and works are so intimately and vitally related as cause and effect that for all practical purposes they are one and the same. Now at this point I want to make a distinction between Faith on the one hand and Fancy on the other. Faith and Fancy are poles apart. Let me employ a homely illustration [1].

When I was about nine years of age, I was taken ill with a severe case of measles and with the measles came an anvil-chorus headache. It was so bad that it seemed that my head was going to split apart. My parents comforted me with the announcement that the Best Doctor in the city, famous Dr. Sloan, was on his way to see me. I had heard about Dr. Sloan from my playmates and I certainly awaited his arrival with almost breathless expectation.

When he appeared by my bedside, he greeted me in a quiet but reassuring voice and then ceremoniously placed a strange looking little glass tube into my mouth. I know now that it was nothing more than a thermometer for reading temperatures.

But since that was my first experience with a thermometer, certainly the first I can remember, I thought it was the magic wand that was to make me well again. And marvelously enough, as Dr. Sloan placed it gently into my mouth, my headache magically disappeared. My faith was so complete that it must have brought about an immediate relaxing of my nervous and muscular tension, which in turn relieved the pain in my head.

Last August when I was rushed to a hospital in this city, because of a heart attack, I had a severe pain in the region of my heart and arms. Even after morphine injection, it was so severe that when the head-nurse came to take my temperature the next morning, I suddenly recalled my childhood experience and resolutely decided to recapture the naive faith of my childhood, if possible. I made a conscious effort to believe that the thermometer would at least make some difference. But when it was placed in my mouth, did anything happen? Nothing at all! There was no magic release of pain. I really didn’t expect that there would be.

In the first instance, my childhood belief was real. It was not an act of my will. It amounted to Faith. It was therefore a dynamic factor, which brought about an appropriate reaction.

In the second instance, my belief was not real. It was an act of deliberation and it amounted to a passing Fancy, and nothing more — a dilettante attitude — and therefore brought about no change in my physical state.

Just so, I contend there is a vast difference between a Dynamic Religious Faith on the one hand and a Dilettante Fancy on the other. Whether God be clothed with the attributes of personality, or viewed as a spiritual principle, he must be accorded objective existence within the human imagination before he can become a relevant factor in our lives.

This process of objectification necessarily takes place within the human imagination, but it is never a deliberate effort of the imagination. It is something that goes beyond our conscious knowledge but never against our conscious knowledge. The moment man becomes aware of the fact that the God he worships has been created by his own imagination, that moment he ceases to worship. Man must be possessed with the conviction that the God he worships exists objectively, otherwise he can not accord him supreme allegiance and devotion. He may let his fancy play with thoughts of the good, the true and the beautiful. He may conjure up in his mind a wondrous ideal. He may even go through all the forms and ceremonies of outward religious worship. He may audibly voice the name of God over and over again, but unless God or the Good and the True and the Beautiful are viewed a shaving a validity apart from himself, then his belief is not a dynamic experience, and there is no compelling hand laid upon his will and emotions todo something about it.

Therefore, we are not to judge whether men have a vital religious faith or not by either their professions or their denials. Men are not always aware of what it is they do or do not believe. The acid test is their conduct. “By their fruits ye shall know them.”

We can not say, let us go to now — we are going to believe such-and-such. Try it and you will see that it doesn’t work.

No, wherever Faith is genuine it seems to be a thing apart from ourselves. Its power is felt within us. It takes place within us — it functions within us. We do not possess it — we are possessed by it. It is not at our beck and call. Like the wind, it bloweth where it listeth. We can not consciously bring it into being. We can only await its visitation and then obey or refuse to obey its promptings.

If we obey, life is filled with meaning and purpose, for this is the power that creates all values. This is the power that enables men to hold certain ideal ends as more precious than their very lives, which arms the crusader for a holy cause within exhaustible courage, so that one man is able to chase a thousand and the voice crying in the wilderness is able to defy the might of empires. It is the power which impelled a Jesus to go to the cross and an Albert Schweitzer to give up a successful medical practice and proceed to the heart of darkest Africa to serve a benighted people whom he had never seen before.

This is the reality which sends forth the prophet and the saint to champion well-nigh hopeless ventures, which enables some men and women at this very moment to strive for peace among the nations in spite of the almost insurmountable obstacles that seen to be in the way.

Yes, this is the power which sustains us every day of our lives, even when we are least aware of its presence.

Men buy and sell by faith; the forges burn,

The drays are laden, countless mill-wheels turn,

Greatships are chartered, trains run to and fro;

Though faith directs them all, they scarcely know

This spirit of the life of every day.

Will she desert them when they seek to pray?

A day — a single day — if faith were dead,

No field were sown, no oven fired for bread. Faith is the handmaid in a toiler’s guise

Of all the world of workers. To tired eyes

With solace she appears at close of day

To lift their burdens when they seek to pray.

(Faith –Laura Bell Everett)

If man had not known directly and intimately the power of Faith in his own life, the concept of an unseen companion, the idea of a divine guide and counsellor would never have entered his mind. Eliminate this one experience from the human race, and there would have been no such thing as religion. Here is the fact upon which all religions are founded. Here we have isolated the Reality which has put the word God into the vocabulary of man.

That I am not alone in this interpretation of religion, let me you the opinion of such a distinguished thinker as John Dewey. In his volume entitled “A Common Faith” he declares:

“God is the power of man’s ideals to become real in action. It is that activity in man and in nature which brings ideal ends and actual conditions together. It is that which promotes the growth of the ideal and furthers its realization. This ‘God’ is not apprehended by the Intellect, but by the Imagination. Man, through his imagination, obtains a vision of what might be. When this vision takes possession of his total personality, then we have the Reality which men in all ages have described as the ‘power of God’.”

This is the creative factor in the universe, and this is what I Identify with the process of Faith. This is the Reality which Mathew Arnold described as “The Power not ourselves which makes for Righteousness. This is the Divine Summons which led Abraham to pull up stakes and go into a far country, not knowing whither he went. This is the Presence from which the Psalmist could not flee, which inspired him to sing:

“If Iascend up into heaven, thou art there.

If I make my bed in the grave, behold thou art there.

If I take he wings of the morning
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea

Even there shall thy hand lead me
and thy right hand shall hold me.”

This is the power which H. G. Wells describes as the Invisible King. “Until a man has found God and been found by God, he begins at no beginning, he works to no end. He may have his partial loyalties, his scraps of honor, but all these fall into place and life falls into place only with God —–, who stands ready to use

usin his immortal adventure against waste, disorder, cruelty and vice, who is the end, who is the meaning, who is the only King.”

This God, let me repeat, I identify with the Spiritual Power within ourselves which idealizes life and then works unceasingly to make real the ideal, which we call Faith when it gives to a possibility the value of a certainty; which we call Hope when it gives to a possibility the value of a probability; and which we call Love, when it gives to the potentialities of another person’s life the value of present achievement.

In this sense, Faith is something which can not be forced, nor can hope be forced, and if you will let me distinguish between the love which is a matter of good-will and deliberate affection, on the one hand, and the spontaneous love which puts a halo around the character of another, which we often describe as blind, but which is one of the most glorious and wondrous experiences in all life, then we may say, neither can love be forced.

These three powers are essentially one. They constitute the Great Fact which has given rise to all the religions of mankind. To have Faith is to create. To have Hope is to call down blessings. To have Love is to work miracles. To have all these is to experience the full Presence of Deity.

This concept of Deity is the exact reverse of what we have been accustomed to think. It isas antithetical as the Copernican and Ptolemaic theories of the universe. Once we thought that the earth was the center of the universe. It seemed quite obvious that the sun, the moon and the stars pivoted about this earth. The Ptolemaic theory did explain much of the phenomena connected with the changing heavens above. It accounted for the rising and the setting sun and the nightly appearance of the stars. But it did not explain the changing phases of the moon nor adequately account for the eclipses of the sun and many other strange occurrences in the heavens.

The Copernican theory, however, by postulating the sun as the center of a planetary system of which the earth is only one revolving unit among many others, enables us to solve problems which were insoluble on the basis of the previous theory.

By the same token it seems to me that to hold that Faith, Hope and Love pivot about man as a center is to entertain an explanation of spiritual phenomena comparable to the Ptolemaic hypothesis. The only thing to commend it is its apparent plausibility. It, however does not solve some of the psychological problems which have always perplexed us, such, for example, as man’s inability to force his beliefs.

But let man hold that the course of his life is an orbit that swings about Faith, Hope and Love as its spiritual center, then many of his philosophical queries find a satisfactory answer. Or, to use another analogy, to realize that God is the Fact of Faith itself and not the object of Faith, is comparable to seeing that from a given point in space more than one perpendicular can be drawn to a given line, provided we postulate the curvature of space. As many problems can be solved by non-Euclidian geometry which can not be solved by Euclid’s principles, so I make bold to suggest that many problems in man’s spiritual life can find a more satisfactory explanation in giving up the concept that God is the object of Faith.

I have time today merely to list what these problems are, without showing their relation to the concept which I have presented. I have in mind such problems as the seeming indifference of the physical universe to moral values; the paradox of determinism and man’s feeling of freedom; the enigma of good and evil side by side; the problem of the one God and the many gods.

It is no wonder that Job was bewildered and perplexed. He was quite confident of an august presence, but when he tried to confront him face to face, he found he could not do so. “Oh that I knew where I might find him,” he cried, “that I might come even to his seat.” “Behold I go forward, but he is not there, and backward, but I cannot perceive him.” The trouble with Job was that he looked for God in every direction except the one in which he could be found, namely, he failed to recognize the Deity within himself.

Now this discovery is open to every one of us. For men and women in all ages have unwittingly testified to a power within themselves which sometimes lifts the mto an exalted plain of living. This power goes with them wherever they go. It expands as their knowledge expands. It cannot be overthrown by any blast from the scientific world, for the first duty of science is to bow down before a fact, and this is a real fact. Though, intangible, it is the most important fact in the universe, without which there would be no scientific imagination and therefore no science at all.

This God cannot be charged with being responsible for the evil in the world, or it is not necessary to attribute either omnipotence or omniscience to him. He is a struggling Deity — starting with things as they are and endeavoring to bring order out of chaos; to change the evil into the good, and the good into the better, and the better into the best. He is an experimenting Deity — constantly trying one method and then another to effect ever higher and higher ends, learning from past failures and building on past achievements.

I am talking not about an abstraction or a mere concept. I am talking about a real presence in the lives of men and women. I am talking about a genuine thing, a fact of human experience, the mystic Power of Faith, of Hope, of Love, which I identify as the creative power of this universe.

Both Humanists and Theists recognize this Creative Power within themselves. The difference between them lies largely in the fact that the Theist is able to personify this Power and say “Thou” whereas the humanist feels more sincere in referring to the same reality in less personal terms. This it seems to me is the basic difference between these two points of view — all others being mere corollaries and commentaries.

As one who was among the original signers of the Humanist Manifesto but who can see no basic contradiction between Humanism and the Theism that postulates an immanent, as over against a supernatural Deity, it has seemed to me that the difference between Humanist and Theist is largely a matter of vocabulary and not of spiritual reality, surely nothing to get unduly excited about.

To say this is not to overlook the importance of vocabulary as it relates to the religious value of sincerity. To be honest in the use of words is, of course, a common obligation upon Theist and Humanist alike, and each should respect the efforts of the other to fulfill this obligation, even though the one in expressing his wonder before the great mystery behind our life can not go so far as to say “Thou” while the other can not stop at merely saying “It.” Sometimes I find myself saying the one and sometimes the other.

On the Spiritual importance of sincerity we should all be agreed. However, not all Humanists and perhaps not all Theists will agree with me from this point on.

From the God within man, identified as the Power of Faith, Hope and Love, I am able to postulate the God without, for it seems to me that since man is inside the whole evolutionary process and not outside, he must be something of a key to the nature of the universe. Hitherto he has largely sought to understand the universe by looking at it from the outside through telescope, microscope, and spectroscope. What be needs is an introscope — some instrument to achieve an inside view of the universe, for if we could get an inside view of the universe as we have of ourselves, instead of being confined to an external view which is our present lot, it is not unreasonable to believe that we might discover in the rest of creation the same Power at work as in ourselves, shaping and remolding even the world of stars and atoms to ideal ends.

But is not man himself that introscope? It seems logical to me. This, however, is something we shall probably never know directly. We can only infer and trust our inference. But an inference is the only thing that can give meaning to the whole evolutionary development of the spangled heavens above and this terrestrial ball we call our home. And so from the God within we postulate the God without.

If you have found it difficult to follow my thought today, you must bear in mind that I am merely in the groping state of exploring what seems to me to be fascinating clue to the meaning and purpose of existence.

God to me is the original ventriloquist. Whenever he speaks authoritatively he seems to speak to us from without, but his is the still small voice that speaks from within.

He is the great magician. He distracts our attention by dreams and visions while he performs his real wonders before our very eyes without our being able to see not only how they are done but even the one who does them.

He is the indispensable catalyst who brings the real and the ideal together into a workable unity without entering into the combination.

He is the master hypnotist who whispers specific directions to our subconscious minds, and then we go forth to carry them out, offering inadequate conscious explanations for the course we feel compelled to pursue.

He is the understanding psychiatrist behind all psychiatry, to whom we turn in private or public confession to help us search our own hearts and straighten out our tangled emotions and conflicting desires.

The majesty of this God is often suddenly revealed to people and in various ways. Sometimes a revelation comes after quiet meditation upon some great truth or under the inspiration of some stimulating personality. Sometimes it comes in hours of solitude, sometimes in the company of a large concourse of people gathered together for an exalted purpose; sometimes in a close call from death or again on the threshold of a challenging opportunity; at other times, when sublime music stirs us to the depths of our being, or when the hush of silence falls upon the house of prayer.

There is no telling when this visitation of Faith and Hope and Love may not come, for it can not be forced. But when it comes, a tide of spiritual energy sweeps over us and we are able to do things which seemed utterly impossible before. We feel lifted up on wings; we are possessed by a sense of wholeness, we are able to face the problems and vicissitudes of life with more courage and confidence than before.

Whoever has had such an experience is entitled to say, “I have found God and been found by Him.”

“Thou life within my life than self more near
Thou veiled Presence, infinitely clear,
From all illusive shows of sense I flee,
To find my center and my rest in Thee.”

 At this point in the manuscript, there are two versions of the next two pages using completely different illustrations. I have chosen to include in the body the two pages not distinguished by circles around the page numbers, since theyrefer to an intense personal experience the prior August; here I have includedthe other illustration, which refers to another experience instead. – PaulSprecher

Let me employ a homely illustration.

My family happens to own a small plot on the shores of Lake Erie at Westfield, New York, where we often spend our summers.

We have a large patch of wild blackberries on the place. One day in August four or five summers ago, I was busily engaged in picking blackberries when I suddenly heard a noise in the thick, tangled underbrush that sounded like rice being shaken in a paper bag. My imagination instantly conjured up the presence of a rattlesnake, and faster than I can tell in words, I was fifty yards away –making a wild dash for the wide-open spaces with a speed that you wouldn’t believe. It was only afterward that I learned that no rattlesnakes had been seen in that locality for at least fifty years. I have since been persuaded that what I heard was not a serpent of any kind, but probably nothing more ominous than a mother bird trying to divert my attention away from her nesting brood. But for a moment, that rattlesnake had an objective existence in my imagination. My belief, in other words, was real, and therefore dynamic. It laid a compelling hand upon my will and drove me to do something about it. It resulted in appropriate action.

Now a few summers later I was again engaged in picking berries in the same general locality when I happened to fix my gaze on the coiled remnants of a dead wisteria vine, wrapped around the base of a nearby tree. In idle reverie, my fancy played with the scene until that coiled vine took on the semblance of a coiled serpent. But since I was aware that this was wholly the work of my own imagination, nothing happened as a consequence. I was momentarily entertained, but not otherwise moved. My heart did not beat faster. No adrenalin was released into my blood stream. I felt no impulse to leap to safety, but went right ahead, picking blackberries as unconcerned as though my fancy had not played with the idea of a coiled serpent.

In the first instance ,Belief was dynamic and real. It resulted in action. In the second instance, Belief was a dilettante fanciful affair. It resulted in nothing but amusement.

Here ends the divergence between the pages of the manuscript.