The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day

The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day began as the Upton Lectures in Religion delivered by Evelyn Underhill at Manchester College, Oxford in the autumn of 1921. Underhill's premise is direct: the spiritual or mystical life is not primarily a matter of history but of biology — a living current running through all human experience, not a relic of monastic specialists. The eight lectures trace the shape of that current across psychology, institutional religion, the individual, education, and the social order, arguing throughout that the findings of early twentieth-century psychology illuminate rather than dissolve the reality of contemplative experience.

Written at the point when Underhill was shifting from her more eclectic, scholar-perennialist position in Mysticism (1911) toward an explicitly Anglican and liturgical one, the lectures register that transition in the open. Post-WWI congregations appear as her implied audience: people disoriented by the war, tentatively curious about inner life, and suspicious of any claim that the spiritual belonged only to the cloister. Underhill insists the contemplative dimension is available inside ordinary lay existence, grounded in disciplined attention and liturgical participation. The book is less cited than Mysticism but, as Dana Greene and other Underhill scholars note, it is where her transition from academic breadth to pastoral depth first becomes clearly visible.

The spiritual life—or the mystic life, as its more intense manifestations are sometimes called—is to be regarded as primarily a matter of history. It is not. It is a matter of biology.

Chapter I, "The Characters of Spiritual Life"

First lines

This book has been called "The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day" in order to emphasize as much as possible the practical, here-and-now nature of its subject; and specially to combat the idea that the spiritual life—or the mystic life, as its more intense manifestations are sometimes called—is to be regarded as primarily a matter of history. It is not. It is a matter of biology.

Contents

Reception

Less canonical than Mysticism, which became the standard 20th-century English-language survey of Christian mystical tradition; The Life of the Spirit is generally treated as Underhill's bridge work between her academic and pastoral periods. Anglican retreat-house literature continues to reference it. Modern critical scholarship on Underhill (notably Dana Greene's biography) reads it as the place where her institutional Anglo-Catholic commitments first displaced the more eclectic perennialism of her earlier work, a shift that some readers regard as a loss of intellectual range. It has been reprinted several times, including a 1994 Morehouse edition edited by Susan Howatch.

Frequently asked

What is The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day about?

It is a series of eight lectures delivered at Oxford in 1921 in which Evelyn Underhill argues that the spiritual or mystical life is not a historical relic but a living dimension of ordinary human experience. Each lecture examines a different domain — psychology, institutional religion, education, the social order — and shows how the contemplative life can be grounded within it.

How does The Life of the Spirit relate to Underhill's earlier book Mysticism?

Mysticism (1911) is a scholarly survey of the Christian mystical tradition addressed to an educated general reader. The Life of the Spirit is aimed at post-WWI lay congregations and argues that contemplative practice is available inside ordinary professional and family life, not only the cloister. Scholars read it as the point where Underhill's more eclectic perennialism gave way to an explicitly Anglican and liturgical emphasis.

Is The Life of the Spirit still in print?

The 1922 original is in the public domain and freely available via Project Gutenberg and the Internet Archive. A 1994 Morehouse edition edited by Susan Howatch brought it back into print for pastoral audiences; print-on-demand reprints also exist. It has never matched the sustained availability of Mysticism or Practical Mysticism.