of their physical and mental behaviour is bound up with this persistent influence of the past”:  and most actions and responses “can only be brought under causal laws by including past occurrences in the history of the organism as part of the causes of the present response."[127] The phenomena of apperception, in fact, form only one aspect of a general law.  As that which we have perceived conditions what we can now perceive, so that which we have done conditions what we shall do.  It therefore appears that in spite of angry youthful revolts or mature sophistications, early religious training, and especially repeated religious acts, are likely to influence the whole of our future lives.  Though all they meant to us seems dead or unreal, they have retreated to the dark background of consciousness and there live on.  The tendency which they have given persists; we never get away from them.  A church may often seem to lose her children, as human parents do; but in spite of themselves they retain her invisible seal, and are her children still.  In nearly all conversions in middle life, or dramatic returns from scepticism to traditional belief, a large, part is undoubtedly played by forgotten childish memories and early religious discipline, surging up and contributing their part to the self’s new apprehensions of Reality.

If, then, the cultus did nothing else, it would do these two highly important things.  It would influence our whole present attitude by its suggestions, and our whole future attitude through unconscious memory of the acts which it demands.  But it does more than this.  It has as perhaps its greatest function the providing of a concrete artistic expression for our spiritual perceptions, adorations and desires.  It links the visible with the invisible, by translating transcendent fact into symbolic and even sensuous terms.  And for this reason men, having bodies no less surely than spirits, can never afford wholly to dispense with it.  Hasty transcendentalists often forget this; and set us spiritual standards to which the race, so long as it is anchored to this planet and to the physical order, cannot conform.

A convert from agnosticism with whom I was acquainted, was once receiving religious instruction from a devout and simple-minded nun.  They were discussing the story of the Annunciation, which presented some difficulties to her.  At last she said to the nun, “Well, anyhow, I suppose that one is not obliged to believe that the Blessed Virgin was visited by a solid angel, dressed in a white robe?” To this the nun replied doubtfully, “No, dear, perhaps not.  But still, you know, he would have to wear something.”