[48] LECTURE VI -- Tues., Oct. 18, 1955 Last Thursday we discussed the general nature of symbols in order to prepare our discussion of the special character of the religious language^a. I said that symbols^b have the following characteristics: they point beyond themselves; they participate in the power of that to which they point; they are irreplaceable; they grow and die; they have revealing power and have the power to open up the soul for what is revealed^c to it; they have healing power^d, in the sense that they make us able to find in those levels which they reveal, the power^e of the reunion of our whole being. I was asked about the word "faith-healing" in connection with this remark. This is a very unfortunate term because it is really a healing by magic concentration, either by somebody else upon the patient, or by the patient upon himself. Now in both cases it is a confusion of magic power and faith, so we shouldn't use the term "faith" for this at all. The combination of faith and healing^f has some quite different meaning, namely that IF a human being is in the state of being ultimately concerned, then ALL the elements of his nature are in some way united in this central act of the personality which we call "faith^g." But I cannot go into this now. I will come to it in a very full way in the section on personality development and religion^h--probably not before the next semester. But today I have to deal with the application of this characterization of symbolsⁱ generally, to religious symbols^j. Nothing which belongs to the realm of ultimate concern can be expressed in any other way than a symbolic way. Now you may ask, "Why is this so? Are there not things which are of ultimate concern and which can be described in the ordinary proper sense of the word? For instance, if 'nation' or 'success' have, in an idolatrous^k way, become matters of ultimate concern, then is this not a NON-symbolic kind of speaking? Success, nation, money: why do we need symbolic language for these things?"--This is a very interesting question, and a keen observation of the situation easily gives the answer. Even in such cases, that which IS a matter of unconditional concern is made into a god. If, for instance, the nation is somebody's ultimate concern, the name of the nation becomes a sacred name, and the nation receives