homely and most lofty reactions to the universe, might take to
themselves the plain words of Thomas à Kempis: "Thou art a man and not
God, thou art flesh and no angel."

Since my subject is not the splendor of historic sanctity but the normal
life of the Spirit, as it may be and is lived in the here-and-now, I
have done my best to describe the character and meaning of this life in
the ordinary terms of present day thought, and with little or no use of
the technical language of mysticism. For the same reason, no attention
has been given to those abnormal experiences and states of
consciousness, which, too often regarded as specially "mystical," are
now recognized by all competent students as representing the unfortunate
accidents rather than the abiding substance of spirituality. Readers of
these pages will find nothing about trances, Ecstasies and other rare
psychic phenomena; which sometimes indicate holiness, and sometimes only
disease. For information on these matters they must go to larger and
more technical works. My aim here is the more general one, of indicating
first the characteristic experiences--discoverable within all great
religions--which justify or are fundamental to the spiritual life, and
the way in which these experiences may be accommodated to the
world-view of the modern man: and next, the nature of that spiritual
life as it appears in human history. The succeeding sections of the book
treat in some detail the light cast on spiritual problems by mental
analysis--a process which need not necessarily be conducted from the
standpoint of a degraded materialism--and by recent work on the
psychology of autistic thought and of suggestion. These investigations
have a practical interest for every man who desires to be the "captain
of his soul." The relation in which institutional religion does or
should stand to the spiritual life is also in part a matter for
psychology; which is here called upon to deal with the religious aspect