innate instinct for God, but also his capacity for developing this
instinct on the level of habit; educating and using its latent powers to
the best advantage. Especially on the contemplative side of life,
education does great things for us; or would do, if we gave it the
chance. Here, then, the rational mind and conscious will must play their
part in that great business of human transcendence, which is man's
function within the universal plan.

It is true that the deep-seated human tendency to God may best be
understood as the highest form of that out-going instinctive craving of
the psyche for more life and love which, on whatever level it be
experienced, is always one. But some external stimulus seems to be
needed, if this deep tendency is to be brought up into consciousness;
and some education, if it is to be fully expressed. This stimulus and
this education, in normal cases, are given by tradition; that is to say,
by religious belief and practice. Or they may come from the countless
minor and cumulative suggestions which life makes to us, and which few
of us have the subtlety to analyze. If these suggestions of tradition or
environment are met by resistance, either of the moral or intellectual
order, whilst yet the deep instinct for full life remains unsatisfied,
the result is an inner conflict of more or less severity; and as a rule,
this is only resolved and harmony achieved through the crisis of
conversion, breaking down resistances, liberating emotion and
reconciling inner craving with outer stimulus. There is, however,
nothing spiritual in the conversion process itself. It has its parallel
in other drastic readjustments to other levels of life; and is merely a
method by which selves of a certain type seem best able to achieve the
union of feeling, thought, and will necessary to stability.

Now we have behind us and within us all humanity's funded instinct for