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  THE OPEN MIND LIBRARY

  BEING A SERIES OF WORKS DEALING WITH
  QUESTIONS AS HANDLED BY DIFFERENT
  SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT, IN RELIGION,
  ETHICS, PHILOSOPHY & PSYCHOLOGY

        RELIGION & SEX

   STUDIES IN THE PATHOLOGY
   OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT
       BY CHAPMAN COHEN

    T. N. FOULIS, PUBLISHER
  LONDON, EDINBURGH, & BOSTON

_Published October 1919_

_Printed by_ MORRISON & GIBB LIMITED, _Edinburgh_

THE LIST OF CHAPTERS

     I. SCIENCE & THE SUPERNATURAL              _page_ 1

    II. THE PRIMITIVE MIND & ITS ENVIRONMENT          35

   III. THE RELIGION OF MENTAL DISEASE                51

    IV. SEX & RELIGION IN PRIMITIVE LIFE              89

     V. THE INFLUENCE OF SEXUAL & PATHOLOGIC
         STATES ON RELIGIOUS BELIEF                  120

    VI. THE STREAM OF TENDENCY                       145

   VII. CONVERSION                                   169

  VIII. RELIGIOUS EPIDEMICS                          205

    IX. RELIGIOUS EPIDEMICS--(_concluded_)           226

     X. THE WITCH MANIA                              243

    XI. SUMMARY & CONCLUSION                         269

PREFACE

In spite of all that has been done in the way of applying scientific
principles to religious ideas, there is much that yet remains to be
accomplished. Generally speaking science has only dealt with the subject
of religion in its more normal and more regularised forms. The last
half-century has produced many elaborate and fruitful studies of the
origin of religious ideas, while comparative mythology has shown a close
and suggestive relationship between creeds and symbols that were once
believed to have nothing in common. But beyond these fields of research
there is at least one other that has hitherto been denied the attention
it richly deserves. When the anthropologist has described those
conditions of primitive culture amid which he believes religious ideas
took their origin, and the comparative mythologist has shown us the
similarities and inter-relations of widely separated creeds, religious
beliefs have yet to submit to the test of a scientific psychology, the
function of which is to determine how far the same principles apply to
all phases of mental life whether religious or non-religious. Moreover,
in addition to the normal psychical life of man, there is that vast
borderland in which the normal merges into the abnormal, and the healthy
state into a pathologic one. That there is a physiology of religion is
now generally admitted; but that there is also a pathology of religion
is not so generally recognised. The present work seeks to emphasise this
last aspect. It does not claim to be more than an outline of the
subject--a sketch map of a territory that others may fill in more
completely.

From another point of view the following pages may be regarded as an
attempt more completely to apply scientific principles to religious
beliefs. And it would be idle to hope that such an attempt could be made
without incurring much hostile criticism. In connection with most other
subjects the help of science is welcomed; in connection with religion
science is still regarded as more or less of an intruder, profaning a
sacred subject with vulgar tests and impertinent enquiries. This must
almost inevitably follow when one has to face the opposition of
thousands of men who have been trained to regard themselves as the
authorised exponents of all that pertains to religion, but whose
training fails to supply them with a genuine scientific equipment. It
should, however, be clear that an attitude of hostility to science,
veiled or open, cannot be maintained. Mere authority has fallen on evil
days, and in all directions is being freely challenged. There is
increasing dislike to systems of thought that shrink from examination,
and to conclusions that cannot withstand the most rigorous
investigation. And if science really has anything of value to say on
this question it cannot be held to silence for ever. Sooner or later the
need for its assistance will be felt, and the self-elected authority of
an order must give way. It is, moreover, impossible for science with its
claim, sometimes avowed, but always implied, to cover the whole of life,
to forego so large a territory as that of religion. For there can be no
reasonable question that religion has played, and still plays a large
part in the life of the race. Whatever be the nature of religion,
science is bound either to deal with it or confess its main task to be
hopeless.

Whether or not it is possible to apply known scientific principles to
the whole of religion will be a matter of opinion; but the attempt is at
least worth making. So much that appeared to be beyond the reach of
science has been ultimately brought within its ken, so many things that
seemed to stand in a class by themselves have been finally brought under
some more comprehensive generalisation, and so become part of the
'cosmic machine,' that one is impelled to believe that given time and
industry the same will result here. And it should never be forgotten
that one aspect of scientific progress has been the taking over of large
tracts of territory that religion once regarded as peculiarly its own;
and just as psychology and pathology were found to hold the key to an
understanding of such a phenomenon as witchcraft, so we may yet realise
that a true explanation of religious phenomena is to be found, not in
some supernatural world, but in the workings of natural forces
imperfectly understood.

The defences set up by theologians against the scientific advance may be
summarised under two heads. It is claimed that the 'facts' of the
religious life belong to a world of inner experience, to a state of
spiritual development which brings the subject into touch with a
super-sensuous world not open to the normal human being, and with which
science, as ordinarily understood, is incompetent to deal. In essence
this is a very old position, and contains the kernel of 'mysticism' in
all ages, from the savage state onward. This position involves a very
obvious begging of the question at issue. It assumes that all attempts
to correlate religious phenomena with phenomena in general have failed,
and that all future attempts are similarly doomed to failure. Of course
nothing of the kind has been shown. On the contrary, the aim of the
present work is to show that no dividing line can be drawn between those
states of mind that have been and are classed as religious, and those
that are admittedly non-religious. For various reasons I have dealt
almost entirely with those conditions that are admittedly pathological,
but I believe it would be possible to prove the same of all normal
frames of mind and emotional states. Any human quality may be enlisted
in the service of religion, but there are none that are specifically
religious. It is a pure assumption that the religious visionary
possesses qualities that are either absent or rudimentary in other
persons. Human faculty is everywhere identical although the form in
which it is expressed differs according to education, the presence of
certain dominating ideas, and the general influence of one's
environment. To admit the claim of the mystic is to surrender all hope
of a scientific co-ordination of life. It is quite fatal to the
scientific ideal and involves the re-introduction into nature of a
dualism the removal of which has been one of the most marked advantages
of scientific thinking.

Moreover, whatever views we may hold as to the ultimate nature of 'mind'
the dependence of all frames of mind upon the brain and nervous system
is now generally accepted. We may hold various theories as to the nature
of mind, we may, with the late William James, treat the brain as merely
a 'transmissive' organ, but even on that assumption--on behalf of which
not a shred of positive evidence has been offered--the frames of mind
expressed are determined by the nervous mechanism, and thus the laws of
mental phenomena become ultimately the laws of the operation of the
nervous system. The 'facts' of the religious life thus become part of
the facts of psychology as a whole. Its 'laws' will form part of
psychological laws as a whole, and religious experiences must be handed
over for examination and classification to the psychologist who in turn
relies for help and understanding on various associated branches of
science.

Closely allied to the claim of the 'mystic' that his experiences bring
him into touch with a world of super-sensuous reality, is the attempt to
prove that science is incapable of dealing with anything but "in the
first place, the endless ascertainment of facts and the physical
conditions under which they occur, and in the second place to the
criticism of error." Well, no one denies that it is part of the work of
science to ascertain facts, or even that its work consists in
ascertaining facts and framing 'laws' that will explain them. But why
are we to limit science to _physical_ facts only? All facts are not
physical. If I have a head-ache, the unpleasant feeling is a fact. If I
feel hot or cold, angry or pleased, think one thing ugly or another
beautiful, my feelings are as much 'facts' as anything else that exists.
Nay, if I fancy I see a ghost, or a vision, these also are 'facts' so
far as my mental state at the time is concerned. So also are my beliefs
about all manner of things, and often the most important facts with
which I am connected. Facts may be objective or subjective. They may
exist in relation to all minds normally constituted, or they may exist
in relation to my own mind only; or, yet again, they may exist only in
relation to certain states of mind, but they do not, nevertheless, cease
to be facts.

Now the business of science is to collect facts--all facts--classify
them, and frame generalisations that will explain their groupings and
modes of operation. It talks of the facts of the physical world, the
facts of the biological world, the facts of the psychological world, and
so forth. This last group comprises all sorts of feelings and ideas,
beliefs and experiences. Some of these facts it calls false, others it
calls true--that is, they are true when they hold good of all men and
women normally constituted, they are not true when they hold good of
isolated individuals only, and can be seen to be the product of
misinterpreted experience, or arise from a derangement--permanent or
temporary--of the nervous system. But true or false they remain facts of
the mental life. They must be collected, grouped, and explained exactly
as other facts are collected, grouped, and explained. They fall within
the scope of science, to be dealt with by scientific methods.

There is really no escape from the position that so far as religious
'facts' are parts of mental life, religion becomes logically a
department of psychology. The substantial identity of all mental facts
is quite unaffected by their being directed to this or that special
object. As mental facts they are part of the material that it is the
work of science to reduce to order. And as mental facts religious
phenomena are seen to follow the same 'laws' that govern mental
phenomena in general. It is perfectly true that we cannot test and
measure the material of psychology with the same definiteness and
accuracy that the chemist applies to the subject-matter of his
department; but that may be due to want of knowledge, or to the extreme
complexity and variability of the matter with which we are dealing. And
if it were true that the same tests could not be applied in psychology
that are applied elsewhere, this would be no cause for scientific
despair. It would only mean that fresh tests would have to be devised
for a new group of facts, as every other science has already, as a
matter of fact, created its own special standard of value.

The second of the two lines of defence consists in the bold assertion
that the religious interpretation of subjective phenomena is itself in
the nature of a true scientific induction. The methods of science are
not repudiated, but welcomed. But it is argued that the non-religious
explanation of religious phenomena breaks down hopelessly, while the
religious explanation fully covers and explains the facts. If this were
true, nothing more remains to be said, and we must accept this dualistic
scheme, however repugnant it may be to orthodox scientific ideas. But is
it true? Is it a fact that the non-religious explanation breaks down so
completely? Hitherto the course of events has been in the contrary
direction. It is the religious explanation that has, over and over
again, been shown to be unreliable, the non-religious explanation that
has been finally established. Insanity and epilepsy, once universally
ascribed to a supernatural order of being, have been reduced to the
level of nervous disorders. All the phenomena of 'possession' are still
with us, it is only our understanding of them that has altered. And
before it is admitted that the phenomena described as religious can
never be affiliated to the phenomena described as non-religious, it must
be shown--beyond all possibility of doubt--that their explanation in
terms of known forces is impossible. As I have said in the body of this
work, the question at issue is essentially one of interpretation. The
'facts' of the religious life are admitted. Science no more questions
the reality of the visions of the medieval mystic than it questions the
visions of the non-mystic admittedly suffering from neural derangement.
The crucial question is whether we have any good reason for separating
the two, and while we dismiss the one as hallucination accept the other
as introducing us to another order of being? I do not think there is the
slightest ground for any such differentiation, and I have given in the
following pages what I conceive to be good reasons for so thinking. And
I hope that the fact of the explanations there offered running counter
to the traditional one will not prevent readers weighing with the utmost
care the proofs that are offered.

RELIGION AND SEX

CHAPTER ONE

SCIENCE AND THE SUPERNATURAL

Accepting Professor Tylor's famous minimum definition of religion as
"the belief in Spiritual Beings," it is safe to say that religious
belief constitutes one of the largest facts in human history. No other
single subject has occupied so large a share of man's conscious life, no
other subject has absorbed so much of his energy. In very early stages
of culture religious belief is universal in the fullest sense of the
word. It shapes all primitive institutions; it dominates life from the
cradle to the grave, and creates a shadow-land beyond the grave from
which the dead continue to influence the actions of the living. At a
later stage of culture we see a distinction being drawn between the
natural and the supernatural, the secular and the spiritual, and the
beginning of an antagonism that is still with us. Of all antagonisms
conceived by the brain of man this is the deepest and the most
irreconcilable. Each feels that the growth of the other threatens its
own supremacy, with the result that advance from either side has been
contested with the greatest obstinacy and determination. And although it
is true that at present the supernatural is very largely "suspect," it
is still powerful. Nor is its influence confined to the lower strata of
European society. It has very many representatives among the higher
culture, disguised it may be under various pseudo-philosophic forms.
Altogether we may say that the supernatural has never been without its
"cloud of witnesses." At all times there have been individuals, or
groups of individuals, who have believed themselves, and have been
believed by others, to be in touch with another order of existence than
that with which people are normally in contact. And apart from these
specially favoured persons, the wide vogue of the belief in good and
evil portents, in lucky and unlucky days, the attraction of the "occult"
in fiction and in fact, all serve as evidence that belief in the
supernatural is still a force with which one has to reckon.

To what causes are we to attribute the persistence of this belief in the
supernatural? It is useless replying that its persistence is evidence of
its truth. That clearly begs the whole question at issue. Mere social
heredity will doubtless count for much in this direction. Men do not
start their thinking afresh with each generation. It is based upon that
of preceding generations; it follows set forms, and is generally
influenced by that network of ideas and beliefs into which we are born
and from which none of us ever completely escapes. Still that is hardly
enough in itself to account for the persistence of supernaturalism.
Assuming that originally there existed what was accepted as good
evidence for the existence of a supernatural, it is hardly credible that
every subsequent generation went on accepting it merely because one
generation received evidence of its existence. As organs atrophy for
want of exercise, so do beliefs die out in time for want of proof. Some
kind of evidence must have been continually forthcoming in order to keep
the belief alive and active. It is not a question of whether the
evidence was good or bad. All evidence, it is important to bear in mind,
is good to some one. The "facts" upon which thousands of people were put
to death for witchcraft would not be considered evidence to anyone
nowadays, but they were once accepted as good ground for conviction.

What kind of evidence is it, then, that has been accepted as proof of
the supernatural? Or, to return to Tylor's definition of religion,
seeing that the belief in spiritual beings has persisted in every
generation, upon what kind of evidence has this belief been nourished?
Various replies might be given to this question, all of which may
contain some degree of truth, or an aspect of a general truth. In the
present enquiry I am concerned with one line of investigation only, one
that has been strangely neglected, but which yet, I am convinced,
promises fruitful results. In other directions it has been established
that a great aid to an understanding of the human organism in times of
health is to study its activities under conditions of disease. Abnormal
psychology is now a recognised branch of psychology in general, and a
glance through almost any recent text-book will show that the two form
parts of a natural whole. The normal and the abnormal are in turn used
to throw light on each other. And it appears to the present writer that
in the matter of religious beliefs a much clearer understanding of their
nature, and also of some of the conditions of their perpetuation, may be
gained by a study of what has happened, and is happening, in the light
of mental pathology.

To some, of course, the bare idea of there being a pathology of religion
will appear an entirely unwarrantable assumption. On the other hand, the
scientific study of all phases of religions having made so great headway
it is hoped that a larger number will be prepared for a discussion of
the subject from a point of view which, if not quite new, is certainly
not common. Of course, such a discussion, even if the author quite
succeeds in demonstrating the truth of his thesis, will still leave the
origin of the religious idea an open question. For the present we are
not concerned directly with the origin of the religious idea, but with
an examination of some of the causes that have served to perpetuate it,
and to trace the influence in the history of religion of states of mind,
both personal and collective, that are now admittedly abnormal or
pathological in character. The legitimacy of the enquiry cannot be
questioned. As to its value and significance, that every reader must
determine for himself.

One may put the essential idea of the following pages in a
sentence:--Given the religious idea as already existing, in what way,
and to what extent has its development been affected by forces that are
not in themselves religious, and which modern thought definitely
separates from religion?

Under civilised and uncivilised conditions we find religious beliefs
constantly associated with various forces--social, ethical, and
psychological. Very seldom is there any serious attempt to separate them
and assign to each their respective value; nor, indeed, is the task at
any time an easy one. The difficulty is made the greater by the way in
which writers so enlarge the meaning of "religion" that it is made to
include almost everything for which one feels admiration or respect.
This practice is neither helpful nor accurate. Human nature under all
aspects of intellectual conviction presents the same fundamental
characteristics, and a definition to be of value, while of necessity
inclusive, must also be decisively exclusive. It must unite, but it must
also separate. And many current definitions of religion, while they may
bear testimony to the amiability of those who frame them, are quite
destitute of scientific value. In any case, the association of the
religious idea with non-religious forces is a fact too patent to admit
of denial; and the important task is to determine their reciprocal
influence. In actual life this separation has been secured by the
development of the various branches of positive thought--ethics,
psychology, etc., all of which were once directly under the control of
religion. What remains to be done is to separate in theory what has
already been separated in fact, with such additions as a more critical
knowledge may suggest as advisable.

Far more suggestive, however, than the association of religion with what
we may call the normal social forces, is its connection with conditions
that are now clearly recognised as abnormal. From the earliest times we
find the use of drugs and stimulants, the practice of fasting and
self-torture, with other methods of depressing or stimulating the action
of the nervous system, accepted as well-recognised methods of inducing a
sense of religious illumination, or the feeling that one is in direct
communion with a supernatural order of existence. Equally significant is
the world-wide acceptance--right up to recent times--of purely
pathological states as evidence of supernatural intercourse. About these
two sets of facts there can be no reasonable doubt. Over and over again
we can observe how the promptings of disease are taken for the voice of
divinity, and men and women who to-day would be handed over to the care
of the physician hailed as an incarnation of deity. In modern asylums
we find one of the commonest of delusions to be that of the insane
person who imagines himself to be a specially selected instrument of
deity. In such instances the causal influence of pathological conditions
is admitted. On the other hand, we have belonging to the more normal
type the person who claims a supernatural origin for many of his actions
and states of mind. And between these two extremes lie a whole series of
gradations. They exist in all stages of culture, and it is difficult to
see by what rule of logic or of experience one can say where the normal
ends and the abnormal begins. If we assume the inference of the normal
person concerning the origin of his mental states to be correct, it
seems difficult to deny the possibility of those of the insane person
having a similar origin, although distorted by the influence of disease.
If, on the other hand, we say the insane person is wholly wrong as to
the origin of his mental states, may we not also assume that the normal
person has likewise erred as to the cause of his emotions or ideas?

Two considerations may be urged in support of this conclusion. In the
first place, there is the fact of the fundamental identity of human
qualities under all conditions of their manifestation. It is too often
assumed--sometimes it is explicitly claimed--that one with what is
called "a strong religious nature" possesses some quality of mind absent
or undeveloped in those of an opposite type. This assumption is quite
unwarrantable. The religious man is marked off from the non-religious
man, not by the possession of distinct mental qualities, but solely by
holding different ideas concerning the cause and significance of his
mental states. There is no such thing as a religious "faculty," but
only qualities of mind expressed in terms of the religious idea. If I am
conscious of a strong desire to work on behalf of the social betterment
of my fellows, I may account for this either by attributing it to having
inherited a nature modified by generations of social intercourse, or on
the hypothesis that I am an instrument in the hands of a superhuman
personality. But in either case the qualities manifested remain the
same. Love and hatred, fear and courage, honesty and roguery, with all
other human qualities, may be expressed in terms of religion, or they
may be expressed in non-religious terms. It is the cause to which they
are attributed, or the object to which they are directed, that marks off
the religious from the non-religious person.

The second point is that the whole issue arises on a conflict of
interpretations. If I question the reality of the visions or states of
illumination experienced by Santa Teresa, I am not questioning that, so
far as the saint herself was concerned, these states of exaltation were
real. All mental states--whether arising under normal or abnormal
conditions--are quite real to those who experience them. The visions of
the hashish-eater are real, while they last; so are those of the victim
of delirium tremens. All I question is their genuineness as
corresponding to an objective reality. Over the mind of the subject
these visions may exercise an absolute sway. As to their occurrence, he
or she is the final and absolute authority. There can be no question
here. But when we proceed from the occurrence of these visions to the
question of their causation, then we are on entirely different ground.
Here it is not a question of their genuineness, or of their power, but
a question of how we are to interpret them. The honesty and
singlemindedness of these "inspired" characters may be admitted, but
honesty or singlemindedness is no guarantee of accuracy. We do not need
to ask whether the peasant girl of Lourdes experienced a vision of the
Madonna, but we do need to ask whether there was anything in her mental
history, social surroundings, or nervous state that would account for
the vision. All the "facts" of the religious life may be admitted; the
sole question at issue is whether an adequate interpretation of at least
some of them may not be found in terms of a purely scientific
psychology.

Taking, then, the religious idea as already existing, the following
pages will be devoted to an examination of the extent to which this idea
has been associated with forces and conditions that were plainly
pathological. In very many individual cases it will not be difficult to
trace a vivid sense of the supernatural to the presence of abnormal
nervous states, sometimes deliberately induced, at other times arising
of themselves. And it is a matter of mere historical observation that
such individual cases have operated most powerfully to strengthen the
belief in the supernatural with others. The example of Lourdes is a case
in point. All Protestants will agree that the peasant girl's vision was
a sheer hallucination. And yet there can be no question that this vision
has served to strengthen the faith of many thousands of others in the
nearness of the supernatural. And it needs but little effort of the
imagination to realise how powerful such examples must have been in ages
when medical science was in its infancy, and the more subtle operations
of the nervous system completely unknown.

This question, I repeat, is distinct from the much larger and wider
enquiry of the origin of religion. A fairly lengthy experience of the
capacity of the general mind for missing the real point at issue
prevents my being too sanguine as to the efficiency of the most explicit
avowal of one's purpose, but the duty of taking precautions nevertheless
remains. And in elaborating an unfamiliar view of the nature of much of
the world's so-called religious phenomena, the possibility of
misconception is multiplied enormously. Still, a writer must do what he
can to guard against misunderstanding, and in the most emphatic manner
it must be said that it is not my purpose to prove, nor is it my belief,
that religion springs from perverted sexuality, nor that the study of
religion is no more than an exercise in pathology. Nothing is further
from the writer's mind than so essentially preposterous a claim. Neither
sexuality, no matter how powerful, nor disease, no matter how
pronounced, can account for the religious idea. That has an entirely
separate and independent origin. This should be plain to anyone who has
but a merely casual acquaintance with the history of religion. It is,
however, a very different thing to enquire as to the part played in the
history of religion by morbid nervous states or perverted sexual
feeling. That is an enquiry both legitimate and desirable; and it is one
that promises to shed light on aspects of the subject otherwise very
obscure. And certainly, if so-called religious feelings do not admit of
explanation in terms of a scientific psychology, nothing remains but to
recognise religion as something quite apart from normal life, to hand
it over to the custody of word-spinning "Mystics," and so surrender all
possibility of a rational understanding of either its nature or its
history.

In saying what I have concerning the probability of misconception, I
have had specially in mind the attack made by the late Professor William
James on what he called the "medical materialists." In that remarkable
piece of religious yellow-journalism, _The Varieties of Religious
Experience_, Professor James says of those who take up the position that
a great deal of what has been accepted by the world as religious
inspiration or exaltation can be accounted for as the products of
disordered nervous states or perverted sexual feeling, "We are surely
all familiar in a general way with this method of discrediting states of
mind for which we have an antipathy. We all use it in some degree in
criticising persons whose states of mind we regard as overstrained. But
when other people criticise our own exalted soul-flights by calling them
'nothing but' expressions of our organic disposition, we feel outraged
and hurt, for we know that, whatever be our organism's peculiarities,
our mental states have their substantive value as revelations of the
living truth; and we wish that all this medical materialism could be
made to hold its tongue." Again, "Few conceptions are less instructive
than this re-interpretation of religion as perverted sexuality.... It is
true that in the vast collection of religious phenomena, some are
undisguisedly amatory--_e.g._ sex deities and obscene rites in
polytheism, and ecstatic feelings of union with the Saviour in a few
Christian Mystics. But then why not equally call religion an aberration
of the digestive functions, and prove one's point by the worship of
Bacchus and Ceres, or by the ecstatic feelings of some other saints
about the Eucharist?" Or, seeing that the Bible is full of the language
of respiratory oppression, "one might almost as well interpret religion
as a perversion of the respiratory function." And if it is pointed out
that active interest in religion synchronises with adolescence, "the
retort again is easy.... The interest in mechanics, physics, chemistry,
logic, philosophy, and sociology, which springs up during adolescent
years along with that in poetry and religion, is also a perversion of
the sexual instinct."[1]

Excellent fooling, this, but little else. I do not know that anyone has
ever claimed that religion took its origin in sexual feeling, or that
this would alone provide an explanation of historical religion. All that
anyone has ever urged is that a deal of so-called religious feeling,
past and present, can be shown to be due to unsatisfied or perverted
sexual feeling--which is a very different statement, and one of which
the truth may be demonstrated from Professor James's own pages. But
between saying that certain feelings are wrongly interpreted in terms of
an already existing idea, and saying that the idea itself is nothing but
these same feelings transformed, there is an obvious and important
difference. In every case the religious idea is taken for granted. Its
origin is a quite different subject of enquiry. But once the idea is in
existence there is always the probability of evidence for its truth
being found in the wrong direction. The analogy of the digestive and
respiratory organs is clever, but futile. The belief that much which
has passed for religious feeling is perverted sexuality is not based
merely upon the language employed. The language is only symptomatic. The
terminology of respiration and digestion when used in connection with
religion is frankly and palpably symbolic. That of sexual love is as
often frankly literal, and can be correlated with the actual state of
the person using it. Digestion and respiration must go on in any case;
but it is precisely the point at issue whether with a different sexual
life these so-called religious ecstatic states would have been
experienced. When we find religious characters of strongly marked
amorous dispositions, but leading an ascetic life, using toward the
object of their adoration terms usually associated with strong sexual
feeling, it does not seem extravagant to find here a little more than
what may be covered by mere symbolism. Would the medieval monk have been
tempted by Satan in the form of beautiful women had he been happily
married? Would Santa Teresa or Catherine of Sienna have used the
language they did use to express their relations to Jesus had they been
wives and mothers? Such questions admit of one answer, which is, in its
way, decisive. Professor James admits that modern psychology holds as a
general postulate "there is not a single one of our states of mind, high
or low, healthy or morbid, that has not some organic process as its
condition."[2] The 'medical materialist' can ask for no more than this.
But this being granted, on what ground are we to be forbidden finding in
these same organic processes the condition of the visions and ecstatic
states with which _The Varieties of Religious Experience_ is so largely
concerned?

Again, it may be granted that adolescence brings with it an awakening of
the whole mental life, not of religion alone. But the analogy goes no
further, and, in any case, it begs the question. The full significance
of the connection will be seen when we come to deal with initiation in
primitive times and conversion in the modern period. At present it
suffices to point out that the interest in art, in science, in
literature, in sociology, are ends in themselves, and one need go no
further than the developing mental life for an explanation. But the
essential question here is whether this growing life can or cannot find
complete satisfaction quite apart from religion. A developing interest
in the larger social life is common to all, and to some extent this is
secured by the pressure of forces that are simply inescapable. On the
other hand, an interest in religion only exists with some, and then it
may usually be traced to a conscious direction of their energies.
Moreover, those who show no special interest in religion evince no lack
of anything--save in religious terms. In every respect they exhibit the
same mental and emotional qualities as their fellows. The only
discernible difference is that while in the one case adolescent nature
is expressed in terms of religion, in the other case it is expressed in
terms of a larger social life.

The question here might be put thus: Given a generation not taught to
express its growing life in terms of religion, could adequate and
satisfactory expression be found in the social life to which adolescence
is unquestionably an introduction? Many would answer unhesitatingly,
yes. They would argue that what are called the religious feelings, are
normal social feelings exploited in the interests of the religious idea.
They would deny that there is any such thing as a religious quality of
mind. Any mental quality may be directed to a religious end, but all may
find complete expression and satisfaction in a non-religious social
life. This is the real question at issue, and yet Professor James never
once, in the whole of his 500 pages, addresses himself to it.

Apart from sex, there is the important question of the relation between
abnormal and morbid nervous states and religious illumination. How far
has the one been mistaken for the other? To what extent have people
accepted the outcome of pathological conditions as proofs of intercourse
with an unseen spiritual world? There is no doubt that among uncivilised
people this is usually, if not invariably, the case. And our knowledge
of the relations between the nervous system and mental states--imperfect
as it still is--is so recent, that it is not surprising that fasting,
self-torture, solitary meditation, etc., because of the states of mind
to which they give rise, have been universally valued as aids to the
religious life. Dr. D. G. Brinton says:--

"When I say that all religions depend for their origin and continuation
directly upon inspiration, I state an historic fact. It may be known
under other names, of credit or discredit, as mysticism, ecstasy,
rhapsody, demoniac possession, the divine afflatus, the gnosis, or, in
its latest christening, 'cosmic consciousness.' All are but expressions
of a belief that knowledge arises, words are uttered or actions
performed not through conscious ideation or reflective purpose, but
through the promptings of a power above or beyond the individual
mind."[3]

The connection between very many, at least, of these inspirational moods
and pathological states is too obvious to be ignored. Professor James
admits that "we cannot possibly ignore these pathological aspects of the
subject." His notice of them, however, reminds one of the preacher who
advised his hearers to look a certain difficulty boldly in the face--and
pass on. No serious attempt is made to deal with them. A huge mass of
"religious experiences" is thrown at the reader's head without any
adequate explanation. It is a glorified revival meeting in an expensive
volume. The testimony of a crowd of religious enthusiasts of all ages is
accepted at practically face value. Thus, a religious writer who
experiences the fairly common feeling of exaltation during a storm at
sea, and explains his carelessness of danger as resulting from his
"certainty of eternal life,"[4] is gravely cited as evidence of the
working of the religious consciousness. What, then, are we to make of
those who experience a similar feeling, but who are without the
certainty of eternal life? The declaration of St. Ignatius that a single
hour of meditation taught him more of the truth of "heavenly things than
all the teachings of the doctors" is given as evidence of mystic
illumination.[5] So with numerous other cases. We are even informed that
"nitrous oxide and ether, especially nitrous oxide, when sufficiently
diluted with air, stimulate the mystical consciousness in an
extraordinary degree."[6] There seems no reason why the same claim
should not be made on behalf of whisky. If one were not assured to the
contrary, one might conclude that Professor James wrote this volume to
poke fun at the whole tribe of mystics and their followers.

The use made by Professor James of his long list of cases is the more
remarkable, since he quite correctly points out that there are no
religious feelings, only feelings directed towards a religious end. But
if this be so, how are we justified in taking the accounts of religious
visionaries as correct descriptions of the nature of their own mental
states? Clearly, we need a study of these cases quite apart from the
mystical interpretation of them. Instead of a study Professor James
presents us with a catalogue--useful from a documentary point of view,
but useless to any other end. And he is so averse to subjecting his
examples to analysis that, when the extravagance of certain cases are
glaring, he warns us that it is unfair to impute narrowness of mind as a
vice of the individual, because in "religious and theological matters he
probably absorbs his narrowness from his generation."[7] Granted; only
one would like to know what reason there is for not deriving virtues as
well as vices from the same source? And, deeper enquiry still, may not
the religious interpretation itself be a product of the special
environment of the period?

The study of religious phenomena from the point of view above indicated
is of first-rate importance. But although much has been said,
parenthetically and inferentially, on the subject by various writers,
the enquiry has never been exhaustively or systematically pursued. This
is not due to any lack of material; that is abundant among both savage
and civilised peoples. Perhaps it is because, while it has been
considered permissible to point out that certain individuals have
mistaken their own morbid states for evidence of divine illumination,
too much ill-will would have been aroused had the powerful part played
by this factor in religious development as a whole been pointed out.
Still less admissible would it have been to point out, as will be done
in succeeding chapters, that the deliberate culture of abnormal states
of mind has been a part of the ritual of religions from the most
primitive to the most recent times. In this connection it is worth
noting that a very clear and shrewd essay on the connection between love
and religious devotion by Isaac d'Israeli, which appeared in the first
issue of the _Miscellanies of Literature_, was quietly eliminated from
subsequent editions.

My purpose, therefore, is to give Professor James's query--"Under just
what biographic conditions did the sacred writers bring forth their
contributions to the holy volume? and what had they exactly in their
several individual minds, when they delivered their utterances?"[8]--a
wider scope. What are the conditions, biographic and social, under which
certain persons have imagined themselves, and have been believed by
others, to be specially favoured with divine illumination? The majority
of people, it may safely be said, are conscious of no such experience.
In what respect, then, do the favoured few differ from their fellows?
Must we assume that by some rare quality of natural endowment, or by
some unusual development of faculty, they are brought into touch with a
wider and deeper reality? Or are we to seek a less romantic explanation
with the aid of known tendencies and forces in human nature? And,
further, as this minority are not conscious of divine illumination all
the time, what is it that differentiates their normal state from their
abnormal condition?

These are pertinent questions, and demand answer. But no answer of real
value will be found in ordinary religious writings. Rhapsodical eulogies
of religion tell us nothing; less than nothing that is useful, since
theories that obtain in such quarters are based upon the absolute
veracity of the phenomena under consideration. We may gather from this
direction what religious people say or do, but not why they say or do
these things. A description of the states of mind of religious people,
such as is given by Professor James, is interesting enough, but it is
their causation that is of fundamental importance. And their causation
is only to be understood by associating them with other and more
fundamental processes. Within recent years psychology owes much of the
advance made to a closer study of the physiology of the nervous system,
and if genuine advance is to be made in our understanding of religious
phenomena we must adopt the same plan of investigation. We do not, for
example, understand the nature of demoniacal possession by a mere
collation of cases. It is only when we put them side by side with
similar cases that now come under the control of the physician, and
associate them with certain peculiar nervous conditions, and a
particular social environment, that we find ourselves within sight of a
rational explanation. Without adopting this plan we are in the position
of one trying to determine the nature of a locomotive in complete
ignorance of its internal mechanism. Yet this is precisely the position
of the professional exponent of religion. As a student the budding
divine has his head filled with historic creeds, and texts, and dogmas,
and doctrines, none of which can possibly tell him anything of the real
nature of religion. On the contrary, they act as so many obstacles to
his acquiring real knowledge in later life. And it is a striking fact
that while the professional astronomer, biologist, or physicist each
adds to our knowledge of the subject that falls within his respective
department, we owe little or nothing of our knowledge of the nature of
religion to the professional theologian.

To put the whole matter in a sentence, the study of religion must be
affiliated to the study of life as a whole. If possible, we must get at
the determining factors that lead one person to expend his energy on
religion and see supernatural influence in a thousand and one details of
his life, while another person, with apparently the same mental
qualities, finds complete satisfaction in another direction, and is
conscious of no such supernatural influence. It is scientifically
inadmissible to posit a "religious faculty" organically ear-marked for
religious use. Something of this kind is evidently in the minds of those
who explain Darwin's agnosticism as due to atrophy of his religious
sense, consequent on over-absorption in scientific pursuits, and who
also argue that the "religious faculty," like a physiological structure,
increases in efficiency with use and atrophies with disuse. There is no
reason for believing that, had Darwin been profoundly religious, his
mental qualities would have been different to what they were. They would
have been expressed in a different form, that is all. As I have already
said, there are no such things as specifically religious qualities of
the mind. There may be hope or fear or love or hatred or terror or
devotion or wonder in relation to religion, but they are precisely the
same mental qualities that meet us in relation to other things. The old
"faculty" psychology is dead, and the religious faculty must go with
it.[9] Mental qualities may be roused to activity in connection with a
belief in the supernatural, or they may be expressed in connection with
mundane associations. Even the belief in the supernatural is only an
expression of the same qualities of mind that with fuller knowledge
result in a scientific generalisation. Whatever be the exciting cause,
mental qualities themselves remain unchanged.

In the present enquiry we are not concerned with a disproval of the
religious idea, but with an examination of the conditions of its
expression; less with the varieties of religious experience than with
the nature of its manifestations. How far may religious experience be
explained as a misinterpretation of normal non-religious life? To what
extent have pathological nervous states influenced the building up of
the religious consciousness? There can be no question that the
last-named factor is an important one. This is admitted by Professor
James in the following passage:--

"You will in point of fact hardly find a religious leader of any kind in
whose life there is no record of automatisms. I speak not merely of
savage priests and prophets, whose followers regard automatic utterance
and action as by itself tantamount to inspiration, I speak of leaders of
thought and subjects of intellectualised experience. St. Paul had his
visions, his ecstasies, his gifts of tongues, small as was the
importance he attached to the latter. The whole array of Christian
saints and heresiarchs, including the greatest, the Bernards, the
Loyolas, the Luthers, the Foxes, the Wesleys, had their visions, voices,
rapt conditions, guiding impressions, and 'openings.' They had these
things because they had exalted sensibility, and to such things persons
of exalted sensibility are liable."[10]

The fact is unquestionable, but the question remains, In what sense were
these people exalted? Did their exalted sensibility really bring them
into touch with a form of existence hidden from persons of a coarser
fibre? Or did it belong to a class of cases which in a more violent form
comes within the province of the physician? The subjects, says Professor
James, "actually feel themselves played upon by powers beyond their
will. The evidence is dynamic; the god or spirit moves the very organs
of their body.... We have distinct professions of being under the
direction of a foreign power, and serving as its mouthpiece." Of course
we have, but for diagnostic purposes such professions are quite
valueless. What these people are conscious of, and all they are
conscious of, is a series of feelings of a more or less unusual kind.
Equally convinced was the medieval demoniac that a spirit moved the very
organs of his body. Equally convinced is the modern spiritualist medium
that his body is controlled by a disembodied spirit. It is not a
question of the actuality of certain states, but of their origin. The
intense conviction of the subject of the seizure is, as evidence, quite
irrelevant. The subjective state is always real, whether it belongs to a
saint in ecstasy or a drunkard in delirium tremens. There are no states
of mind more "real" while they last than those due to opium or hashish.
But it is never suggested that this is evidence of their veracity. In
such cases the testimony of a skilled outsider is of far greater value
than the conviction of the visionary. We are bound to appeal to Paul,
and Loyola, and Fox, and Wesley to know what their feelings were,
because here they are the supreme authorities. But we must consult
others to discover why they experienced these feelings. An illusion is
no more than a false interpretation of a real subjective experience;
although many are inclined to treat the rejection of the interpretation
as equivalent to a charge of imposture or deliberate lying.

It is also a matter of demonstration that these religious experiences
are strictly determined by environmental conditions. Thousands of
Christians have been favoured with visions of Jesus or of the Christian
heaven in their dying moments. Millions of Jews and Mohammedans have
lived and died without any such experience--the very persons to whom,
from an evidential point of view--such visions would be most useful. The
spiritual experience is determined by the pre-existing religious belief.
When belief in a personal devil was general, visions of Satan were
common. The evidence for personal conflicts with Satan is of precisely
the same nature and strength as is the evidence for intercourse with
deity. When the belief in Satan died out, visions and conflicts with him
ceased. How can we discriminate between the two classes of cases? Why
should the testimony of a great Christian character that he is conscious
of intercourse with deity be more authoritative than the testimony of,
perhaps, the same person on other occasions, of conflict with a personal
devil? Moreover, visions and a sense of contact with a super-normal
world are not peculiar to the religious character. It is a common
feature of a general psychopathic condition. Medical works are filled
with such instances. And it is only to be expected that when the
psychopath is of a deeply religious nature the affection will find a
religious expression. What is clearly needed is an explanation that will
cover the phenomenon as it appears in both a religious and a
non-religious form.

We may take as illustrative of what has been said the following case as
given by Dr. W. W. Ireland. It is that of a Berlin bookseller who placed
on record a clear description of his impressions while in ill-health,
and which entirely ceased on recovery. His delusions mostly took the
form of human figures; of these he says:--

"I saw, in the full use of my senses, and (after I had got the better of
the fright which at first seized me, and the disagreeable effects which
it caused) even in the greatest composure of mind, for almost two
months, constantly and involuntarily, a number of human and other
apparitions--nay, I even heard their voices. For the most part I saw
human figures of both sexes; they commonly passed to and fro, as if they
had no connection with each other, like people at a fair where all is
bustle. Sometimes they appeared to have business with one another. Once
or twice I saw amongst them persons on horseback, and dogs and birds;
these figures all appeared to me in their natural size, as distinctly as
if they had existed in real life, with the several tints on the
uncovered parts of the body, and with all the different kinds and
colours of clothes."[11]

Here we have the case of a man who was under no misconception as to the
nature of his visions. But it is safe to say that had he been of a less
practical and analytic turn of mind, had he been, moreover, deeply
interested in religious matters, we might have had an altogether
different presentation of the facts.

In the next instance, also given by Dr. Ireland, we have a religious
explanation given of somewhat similar experiences:--

"A poor woman complained to me that she was continually persecuted by
the devils who let loose at her all sorts of blasphemies, and, indeed,
all the worse the more she exerted herself not to attend to them; but
often, also, when she was talking and active. She had already been to a
clergyman who should exorcise the devil, and who had judiciously
directed her to me. I asked in which ear the devil always talked to her.
She was surprised at the question, which she had never started for
herself, but now recognised that it always occurred in the left ear. I
explained to her that it was an affection of the ear which now and then
occurs, but she was doubtful."[12]

Here we have a distinctly physical affection ascribed to supernatural
agency. In this case the inference is promptly corrected by the
physician. But given a different environment, an atmosphere permeated
with a belief in the supernatural, an absence of adequate scientific
advice, and the more primitive explanation is certain to prevail. In the
next instance--that of Martin Luther--we have just this conjuncture of
circumstances, with the inevitable result. Writing of his experience in
1530, Luther says:--

"When I was in Coburg in 1530, I was tormented with a noise in my ear,
just as though there was some wind tearing through my head. The devil
had something to do with it.... When I try to work, my head becomes
filled with all sorts of whizzing, buzzing, thundering noises, and if I
did not leave off on the instant I should faint away. For the last two
or three days I have not been able to even look at a letter. My head has
lessened down to a very short chapter; soon it will be only a paragraph,
then only a syllable, then nothing at all. The day your letter came from
Nuremberg I had another visit from the devil.... This time the evil one
got the better of me, drove me out of my bed, and compelled me to seek
the face of man."[13]

There is no need to quote more of this class of cases, at least for the
present. Their name is legion. One could, in fact, construct an
ascending series of cases, all agreeing in their symptom, and differing
only in the explanation offered. The series would commence with the
explanation of a possessing spirit, and end with that of a deranged
nervous system. Ignorant of the nature, or even of the existence, of a
nervous system, primitive man explains abnormal mental states as due to
a malignant spirit. Martin Luther, George Fox, or John Bunyan, living at
a time when the activity of evil spirits was a firmly held doctrine,
attribute their infirmities to satanic influence. We are in the true
line of descent. To-day we have with us every one of the phenomena on
which the satanic theory rested, but they are described, and prescribed
for, in medical works instead of manuals of exorcism. The
supernaturalist theory gives way to that of the expert neurologist. The
exorcist is replaced by the physician. Instead of expelling an intruding
demon, we have to repair a deranged system. We cannot argue that while
these affections remain constant in character their causes may have been
different in other ages from what they are now. That is pure absurdity.
To claim that the religious mystic is in moments of exaltation brought
into contact with a "deeper reality" is to invite the retort that one
might make a similar claim on behalf of the inmates of a lunatic asylum.
We cannot, with any pretence to rationality, accept the verdicts of both
the neurologist and the exorcist. If we agree that certain states of
mind to-day have their origin in neural disorder, on what ground can we
believe that similar mental states occurring a thousand or two thousand
years ago were due to supernatural stimulation? We may be told that
there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our
philosophy. This may be true, and while it is an observation that would
not occur to a fool, it needs no supreme wisdom for its excogitation,
and as generally used it is an excuse for idle speculation and grotesque
theory. Far more useful is the lesson, sadly needed, that there are few
things in heaven or earth that will not yield their secret to a method
of investigation that is sanely conceived and diligently employed.

The utter uselessness of accepting at its face value anyone's
explanation of the nature of his subjective experience, is well shown by
the once universal belief in witchcraft. If there is a single belief on
behalf of which a mass of apparently unimpeachable evidence could be
produced, it is this one. It has run its course throughout the whole
world. It is still accepted by probably half the human race. In our own
country eminent men, not alone theologians, but doctors, lawyers,
statesmen, and men of letters, have given their solemn testimony in its
favour. Thousands of people have been bewitched, and their symptoms
described by thousands of others. More remarkable still, those accused
have often enough confessed their guilt. Every possible corroboration
has been given to this belief, and yet it is now scouted by educated
persons all over the civilised world. Even religious teachers accept the
explanation that these witchcraft cases were due to distinctly
pathological conditions, and to the power of suggestion operating upon
uninformed minds during an unenlightened age. But communications with
spiritual beings rest on no better foundation than communication with
Satan. Whether the alleged illumination be diabolic or angelic, the
evidence for either, or both, is the same. The testimony of a man like
the Rev. R. J. Campbell that he is conscious of a divine influence in
his life is of no greater value than that of the medieval peasant who
felt himself tormented by Satan. The one person is no better authority
than is the other on such a topic. Both are the heirs of the ages,
inheritors of a superstition that goes back to the most primitive ages
of mankind, only modified in its expression by the culture of
contemporary life.

There is nothing new under the sun, and human nature remains
substantially unchanged generation after generation. All the phenomena
on which the belief in witchcraft was based, remain. Cases of delusion
are common, and the power of suggestion is an established fact in
psychology. All that has happened is this: taking the facts on which the
belief was based, modern science has shown them to be explainable
without the slightest reference to the supernatural. And this is the
principle that must be applied in other directions. Old occurrences must
be explained in the light of new knowledge. This is the accepted rule in
other directions, and it is of peculiar value in relation to religious
beliefs. To know what religious people have thought and felt and said
gives us no more than the data for a scientific study of the subject. To
know _why_ they thought and felt and spoke thus is what we really need
to understand. But if we are to do this we must relate phases of mind
that are called religious to other phases of a non-religious character.
I believe it is quite possible to do this. From medical records and from
numerous biographies it is possible to parallel all the experiences of
the religious mystic. We can see the same sense of exaltation, the same
conviction of illumination, the same belief that one is the tool of a
superior power. Take, as merely illustrative of this, the case of J.
Addington Symonds, as narrated by Professor James, who cites it as an
example of a "mystical experience with chloroform." Symonds tells us
that until he was twenty-eight years of age he was liable to extreme
states of exaltation concerning the nature of self. (It is worth while
pointing out that Sir James Crichton-Browne expresses the opinion that
Symonds's higher nerve centres were in some degree enfeebled by these
abnormal states.) In addition to this confession he placed on record an
interesting experience while under the influence of chloroform. He
says:--

"After the choking and stifling had passed away, I seemed at first in a
state of utter blankness; then came flashes of intense light,
alternating with blankness, and with a keen sense of vision of what was
going on in the room around me, but no sensation of touch. I thought
that I was near death; when suddenly my soul became aware of God who was
manifestly dealing with me, handling me, so to speak, in an intense
personal reality. I felt him streaming in like light upon me.... I
cannot describe the ecstasy I felt. Then, as I gradually awoke from the
influence of the anæsthetic, the old sense of my relation with the world
began to return, the new sense of my relation to God began to fade....
Only think of it. To have felt for that long dateless ecstasy of vision
the very God, in all purity, tenderness, and truth, and absolute love,
and then to find that I had after all had no revelation, but that I had
been tricked by the abnormal excitement of my brain."

With a slight variation of expression this confession might have come
direct from the lips of the most pronounced mystic. There is no question
of the intense reality of the experience. That was as vivid as anything
that ever occurred to any saint in the calendar. Still, no one will
dream of claiming that the way to get _en rapport_ with the higher
mysteries is by way of a dose of chloroform. The distinction here is
that Symonds knew and described the cause of his experience. And no one
will question that the phrase "tricked by the abnormal excitement of my
brain" covers the ground. Of course, there is always the easy retort
that saints and mystics did not use chloroform to produce their visions.
True, but chloroform is not the only agent by means of which a person
may be thrown into an abnormal state. Other means may be used; and as a
matter of fact, the use of herbs and drugs, as methods of producing
ecstatic states, have obtained in religious ceremonies from the most
primitive times. As we shall see later, tobacco, hashish, coca, laurel
water, and similar agents have been largely utilised for this purpose.
And when this plan is not adopted--although very often the two things
run side by side--we find fasting and other forms of self-torture
practised because of the abnormal conditions produced.

It is not argued or implied that in all this there was of necessity
deliberate imposture. That would imply the possession of greater
knowledge than actually existed. But it was known that ecstatic states
followed the use of certain drugs, or were consequent on certain
austerities, and they were valued because they were believed to bring
people into communion with a hidden spiritual world. In this way there
has always been going on a more or less deliberate culture of the
supernatural, in more primitive times by crude and easily recognisable
means, later by methods that are more subtle in character and more
difficult of detection. But the method of inducing a sense of
"spiritual" illumination by means of practices alien to the normal life
of man remains unchanged throughout. The collation of the conditions
under which mystical states of mind are experienced among savages with
similar experiences among the higher races, proves at once that this
statement contains no exaggeration of the facts.

The continuity of the phenomena is, indeed, of profound significance,
and is too often ignored. It is often asserted that we have to explain
the lower by the higher, and we can only understand the significance of
religion in its lower forms by bearing in mind the higher
manifestations. This is sheer fallacy. In nature the higher develops out
of the lower, of which it is compounded. In biology, for example, it is
now generally conceded that the secret of animal life lies in the cell.
This may be modified in all kinds of directions, the resulting organic
structure may be of the utmost complexity, but the basis remains
unchanged. So, too, with a great deal of so-called religious phenomena.
The story is not only continuous, but the same elements remain unchanged
with only those modifications initiated by a changed environment. And
just as we are driven back to the cell to explain organic structure, so
for an understanding of the phenomena under consideration we must study
their primitive elements. Analysis must precede synthesis here as
elsewhere.

A survey of the subject is not at all exhausted by a study of abnormal
conditions, so far as these have entered into the life of religion.
There still remains the study of perfectly normal frames of mind that
are misinterpreted and diverted into religious channels. The importance
of this will be seen more clearly when we come to deal with the subject
of conversion. That "conversion" is a phenomenon of adolescence is now
settled beyond all reasonable doubt. Statistics are conclusive on this
point. But the advocate of revivalism quite misses the true significance
of the fact. Current religious literature is full of quite meaningless
chatter concerning the change of view, the larger and more unselfish
activities, that arise as a consequence of conversion. There is really
no evidence that the changes indicated have any connection with
conversion. All that does happen can be more simply and more adequately
explained as resulting from physiological and psychological changes in
terms of racial and social evolution. The whole significance of
adolescence lies in the bursting into activity of feelings hitherto
dormant, and the quickening of a desire for communion with a larger
social life. The individual becomes less self-centred, more alive to,
and more responsive to the claims of others; he displays tendencies
towards what the world calls self-sacrifice, but which mean, in the
truest sense, self-realisation. That these changes are often expressed
in terms of religion is undeniable. This, however, may be no more than
an environmental accident, quite as much so as was the case when
epilepsy was explained in terms of possession.

So far as one can see, there are no feelings or impulses characteristic
of adolescence that could not receive complete satisfaction in a
rationally ordered social life. To-day it usually happens that the
strongest expressed influences brought to bear upon the individual are
of a religious kind, with the result that adolescent human nature is
most apt to express itself in religious language. It must always be
borne in mind that we are all as dependent upon our environment for the
form in which our explanation of things is cast, as we are for the
language in which we express those ideas. The whole enquiry opened is a
very wide one, with which I can only deal parenthetically. It is really
an enquiry as to how far the religious theory of human nature rests upon
a wrong interpretation of perfectly normal feelings, or to what extent
supernaturalistic ideas are perpetuated by the exploitation--innocent
exploitation, maybe--of man's social nature. It is extremely probable
that a deeper knowledge, a more accurate analysis of human qualities,
will disclose the truth that man is a social animal in a much more
profound sense than has usually attached to that phrase, and the
expression of these qualities in terms of religious beliefs, or in terms
of non-religious beliefs, is wholly determined by the knowledge current
in the society in which he moves.

I conclude this chapter with one more attempt to avoid misunderstanding.
For purposes of clarity it will be necessary to consider various factors
out of relation to other factors. But it should hardly need pointing out
that in actual life such a separation does not obtain. The organism
functions as a whole; each part acts upon and is acted upon by every
other part. Life in action is a synthesis, and one resorts to analysis
only for the purpose of more adequate comprehension. It is not,
moreover, pretended that any one of the factors described in the
following pages will explain religion, nor even that all of them
combined will do so. The origin of the religious idea is a quite
different enquiry, and is adequately dealt with in the writings of men
like Tylor, Frazer, Spencer, and other representatives of the various
schools of anthropologists. My present purpose is of a more restricted
kind. It is that of tracing the operation of various processes, some
normal, but most of them abnormal, that have in all ages been accepted
as evidence for the supernatural. That the religious idea has been
associated with these processes, and that for multitudes they have
served as strong evidence of its truth, cannot be denied. And an
examination of this aspect of the history of religion ought not to be
ignored, however unpalatable such a study may be to certain
supersensitive minds.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] _Varieties of Religious Experience_, pp. 11-3.

[2] _Varieties_, p. 14.

[3] _Religions of Primitive Peoples_, p. 50.

[4] Page 288.

[5] Page 410.

[6] Page 387.

[7] Page 370.

[8] _Varieties_, p. 4.

[9] "The hypothesis of faculties ... must be regarded as productive of
much error in psychology. It has led to the false supposition that
mental activity, instead of being one and the same throughout its
manifold phases, is a juxtaposition of totally distinct activities,
answering to a bundle of detached powers, somehow standing side by side,
and exerting no influence on one another. Sometimes this absolute
separation of the parts of mind has gone so far as to personify the
several faculties as though they were distinct entities."--Sully,
_Outlines of Psychology_, p. 26.

[10] _Varieties_, p. 478.

[11] _The Blot upon the Brain_, p. 4.

[12] _The Blot upon the Brain_, p. 16.

[13] Cited by Dr. Ireland, p. 49.

CHAPTER TWO

THE PRIMITIVE MIND & ITS ENVIRONMENT

Ever since the time of Aristotle it has been an accepted truth that man
is a social animal. Not only is individual human nature such that it
craves for intercourse with its kind, but it can only be effectively
understood in the light of those thousands of generations of associated
life that lie behind us all. As an isolated object, considered, that is,
apart from his fellows, man is more or less of a myth. At any rate, he
would not be the man we know and so may well be left out of account. Man
as we know him is essentially a member of a group; he is a part of a
really organic structure inasmuch as the characteristics of each part
are determined by its relations to the whole, and the characteristics of
the whole determined by a synthesis of the qualities of the parts.

But while there is agreement in the fact, there is a considerable
divergence of opinion as to its nature. What is the nature of this fact
of sociability? What is the character of the force that binds the
members of a group so closely together? By some, the cause of
sociability is found in the pressure exerted upon all by purely external
forces. The need for protection, it is said, drives human beings
together, and thus in course of time the feeling of sociability is
developed. This seems much like mistaking a consequence for a cause. It
certainly leaves unanswered the question _Why_ should people have drawn
together in the face of danger? Most certainly collective action
strengthens the capacity for defence; and it also increases the
certainty of obtaining the means of subsistence. Such consequences
furnish a justification, so to speak, of group life, but they disclose
neither its nature nor its cause. And most certainly they do not bring
us into touch with the fundamental qualities of _human_ society. The
need for food, shelter, or protection will not differentiate the
gregarious from the non-gregarious forms of life, nor the social from
the merely gregarious. All forms of life require food, protection, and
shelter; they are part of animal economics. There is nothing
specifically human about them.

We may reach what I conceive to be the truth in another way. Environment
is to-day almost a cant word. It is very largely used, and, as one might
expect, largely misunderstood. Without actually saying it in so many
words, a vast number of people seem to conceive the environment as
consisting of the purely material surroundings of man. This is to
overlook a most important fact. Even in the lowest stages of human
society, where man's power over natural forces is of the poorest kind,
it is not an exact statement of the case, and it is profoundly untrue
when we take society in its higher developments. If we take the lowest
existing savage race we find that its attitude towards life, what it
does, and what it refrains from doing, is the product of a certain
mental attitude, which is itself the outcome of a number of inherited
ideas and customs. A number of white people, placed in exactly the same
material environment and faced with exactly the same external
circumstances, bring a different psychological inheritance into play,
and act in an entirely different manner. If we transport a Chinaman into
England, or an Englishman into China, we find that both of them possess
the same biological and material needs whether in their native country
or elsewhere. Yet this community of needs does not make the Chinaman a
member of English society, nor an Englishman a member of Chinese
society. They are one in virtue of certain broad human characteristics;
they are divided by certain qualities characteristic of their special
groups. Each society is marked by the possession of certain
psychological characteristics--a number of specific beliefs and
emotional developments--without which its distinctive group character
disappears. This is true of groups within the State; it is true of the
State as a whole; it is true, on the most general scale of all, of the
race.

In other words, the distinguishing feature of human society is the
possession of a psychological medium. The adaptations that the human
being must make are mainly of a psychological character. Their _form_
may be partly determined by external conditions, but this does not
affect the general truth. Whether we take man in a civilised or in an
uncivilised state we find the important thing about him to be his
relations to his fellows. He is not merely a member of a tribe or a
society, but he thinks that society's thoughts, he feels their emotions,
his individual life is an expression of the psychical life of the group
to which he belongs. And his transactions with nature are an expression
of the ideas and beliefs current in the society of which he is a part.

The recognition of this truth was one of the outstanding contributions
of Herbert Spencer to the science of sociology. Whereas other writers
had stressed the power of the environment, as a purely material thing,
in shaping human institutions, Spencer placed chief stress upon the
emotional and intellectual life of primitive man as determining their
beginnings. He showed how man's feelings and beliefs about himself, and
about his fellows, and about the world of living forces with which he
believed himself to be surrounded, were the all-important factors of
social evolution. And the subsequent history of society has been such
that scientific sociology is very largely the study of the growth and
elaboration of an essentially psychical environment. The lower animal
world--except so far as we allow for the operation of instincts--has,
broadly, only the existence of other animals and the physical
surroundings for its environment. With man it is vastly different. Owing
primarily to language, the environment of the man of to-day is made up
in part of the ideas of men who lived and died thousands of years ago.
The use of clothing and the invention of tools would alone make mind a
dominant fact in human life. But apart from these things, the great fact
of social heredity, in virtue of which one generation enjoys the
acquired culture of preceding generations, and without which
civilisation would have no existence, is a great and dominant _mental_
fact. Our institutions, our customs, are transmitted to us as so many
psychic facts. Every new invention, every fresh culture acquisition, is
helping to strengthen and broaden the psychical environment of man. Each
newcomer is born into it; it moulds his nature and determines his life,
as his own career and his own acquisition help to mould the life of his
successors. Whether the phenomena be simple or complex, whether we are
dealing with man in a civilised or in an uncivilised state, there is no
escape from the general truth that man is everywhere under the
domination of his mental life.

So far as this enquiry is concerned, we need only deal with one aspect
of the psychological medium in which primitive human life moves. And so
far as primitive mankind seeks to control the movements of social life,
there can be no question that this is done under the impulsion of that
class of beliefs which we call religious. The operation of religious
belief in savage society is neither spasmodic nor local. It is, on the
contrary, universal and persistent. It influences every event of daily
life with a force that the modern mind finds very difficult to
appreciate. In almost every action the savage feels himself to be in
touch with a supersensual world of living beings that exert a direct and
inescapable influence. And any study of human evolution that is to be of
real value must take this circumstance into consideration to a far
greater extent than is usually done. Professor Frazer, dealing with the
origin of various social institutions, rightly observes that "we are
only beginning to understand the mind of the savage, and therefore the
mind of our savage forefathers who created these institutions and handed
them down to us," and warns us that "a knowledge of the truth may
involve a reconstruction of society such as we can hardly dream of." He
also warns us that we have at all times, in dealing with social origins,
to "reckon with the influence of superstition, which pervades the life
of the savage and has contributed to build up the social organism to an
incalculable extent."[14]

In emphasising this it must not be taken to imply that because social
institutions and human actions are in primitive times moulded by
religious beliefs, they stand to them in a relation of complete
dependence. It only means that the psychological medium is of such a
character that supernaturalistic reasons are found for doings things
that are susceptible to a totally different explanation. The facts of
life are expressed in terms of supernaturalism. Birth, marriage, death,
social cohesion, leadership, health and disease, are all natural facts,
and the mere play of social selection determines the weeding out of
practices that are sufficiently adverse to tribal well-being to threaten
its security. But in primitive times all these facts are allied with
religious beliefs, and to the primitive mind the religious belief
becomes the chief feature connected with them. As a matter of fact, this
is far from an uncommon feature of social life to-day. The amount of
supernaturalism current is still very large; and one still finds people
explaining some of the plainest facts of social life in terms of
supernaturalistic beliefs. It is all part of the truth that man is
always under the domination of the psychological forces.

This being granted, the enquiry immediately presents itself, How comes
it that the facts of social life should be expressed in terms of
supernaturalism? Why do these facts not immediately present themselves
in their true nature? To answer this question one must bear in mind a
yet further truth. This is that the explanation which man offers to
himself or to others of phenomena must always be in terms of current
knowledge. A modern called upon to explain a storm, an eclipse, or a
disease, does so in terms of current physical or biological science.
This is done in virtue of a mass of prepared knowledge, slowly
accumulated by preceding generations, and which forms part of his social
heritage. Primitive man likewise explains things in terms of current
knowledge, but in his case the amount of reliable information is of a
very scanty and generally erroneous description. The inherited knowledge
which enables a modern schoolboy to start life with what would have been
an outfit to an ancient philosopher, had yet to be created. Instead of
finding, as we find, tools ready to hand, replies prepared to questions
that may arise, primitive mankind must create its own tools and prepare
its own answers. And in consequence of this the social environment,
which at all times determines the form of man's mental output, is with
primitive man radically different from our own. But however the form
varies there is agreement on this one point--in both cases phenomena are
explained in terms of known forces; the reasoning of each is determined
by the knowledge of each. The laws of mental life remain the same in all
stages of culture. The brain functions identically whether we take the
savage or the scientist. In a general way the savage intelligence is as
rational as that of a modern thinker. The difference is dependent upon
the accuracy and extent of the information possessed by each. Hence the
vital difference in the conclusions reached. Hence, too, the dominance
of supernaturalism in primitive times.

The great distinction between primitive and scientific thinking may be
expressed in a sentence--the modern mind explains man by the world,
primitive thought explained the world by man. In the one case we move
from within outward, in the other from without inward. We are not now
concerned with semi-metaphysical idealistic theories that would reduce
the "whole choir of heaven and furniture of earth" to the creation of
mental activity, but with the plain, understandable truth that the
human organism is fashioned by the environment in which it dwells. And
there is amongst those capable of expressing an authoritative
opinion--an agreement supported by evidence that has simply nothing
against it--that the world of primitive man is overpoweringly animistic.
In the absence of that mass of scientifically verified knowledge which
forms part of our social heritage, humanity commences its intellectual
career by endowing natural forces with the qualities possessed by
itself. The forces conceived are living ones. They are to be dreaded
exactly as human beings are to be dreaded; to be appeased or
circumvented by the same methods that man applies to his fellows. The
problem before the savage is thus a very real one. In essence it is the
problem that is ever before humanity--that of subjugating forces to its
own welfare. Primitive man is not, however, concerned with the
elaboration of theories; nor is he consumed with vague 'spiritual
yearnings.' His difficulty is how to control or placate those invisible
but very real powers upon which he believes everything depends. He would
willingly ignore them if he could, and would cheerfully dispense with
their presence altogether if he believed that things would proceed as
well in their absence. But there they are, inescapable facts that have
to be reckoned with.

The general outlook of the primitive mind is well put by Miss Mary
Kingsley in the following passage:--

"To the African the Universe is made up of matter permeated by spirit.
Everything happens by the direct action of spirit. The thing he does
himself is done by the spirit within him acting on his body ...
everything that is done by other things is done by their spirit
associated with their particular mass of matter.... The native will
point out to you a lightning-stricken tree and tell you that its spirit
has been killed. He will tell you, when the earthen cooking pot is
broken, it has lost its spirit. If his weapon fails him, it is because
someone has stolen its spirit or made it weak by means of his influence
on spirits of the same class.... In every action of his life he shows
you how he lives with a great spirit world around him. You see him
before he starts out to fight rubbing stuff into his weapon to
strengthen the spirit that is in it; telling it the while what care he
has taken of it.... You see him leaning over the face of the water
talking to its spirit with proper incantations, asking it when it meets
an enemy of his to upset his canoe and destroy him.... If a man is
knocked on the head with a club, or shot by an arrow or a bullet, the
cause of death is clearly the malignity of persons using these weapons;
and so it is easy to think that a man killed by the falling of a tree,
or by the upsetting of a canoe in the surf, or in a whirlpool in the
river is also a victim of some being using these things as weapons. For
a man holding this view, it seems both natural and easy to regard
disease as a manifestation of the wrath of some invisible being, and to
construct that intricate system which we find among the Africans, and
agree to call Witchcraft, Fetish, or Juju."[15]

Miss Kingsley is here dealing specifically with West Africa, but her
description applies in a general way to uncivilised people all over the
world. There is much closer resemblance between the beliefs of
uncivilised peoples than between civilised ones, because the conditions
are much more alike. And under substantially identical conditions the
human mind has everywhere reached substantially identical conclusions.
The philosophy of the savage is simple, comprehensive, and, given the
data, logical. He does not divide the world into the natural and the
supernatural; it is all one. At most, he has only the seen and the
unseen. The supernatural, as a distinct category, only appears when a
definite knowledge of the natural has arisen to which it can be opposed.
He has no such distinction as that of the material and the immaterial;
so far as he thinks of these things, the invisible is only a finer form
of the visible. Of one thing, however, he is perfectly convinced, and
this is that he is at all times surrounded by a host of invisible
agencies to which all occurrences are due, and with whom he must come to
terms. Even death wears a different aspect to the primitive mind from
that which it presents to the modern. To us death puts a sharp and
abrupt termination to life. To the primitive mind death involves no such
ending.[16] Death is no more of a break than is sleep; and at all times
the conception of an annihilation of personality requires a marked
degree of mental power. So with the savage--the 'dead' man simply goes
on living. He may be incarnated in some natural object, or he may simply
go on living as one of the innumerable company of tribal ghosts. But he
remains a force to be reckoned with, and the need for dealing with these
ghostly personages is one of the ever-present problems of primitive
sociology, and brings us very near the beginnings of all religious
beliefs and ceremonies--if it does not form their real starting-point.

On one point all modern schools of anthropologists are agreed. This is
that man's first conception of the supernatural--or what afterwards
ranks as such--is derived from a purely mistaken interpretation of
natural phenomena. In this they have returned to the standpoint of
Hobbes, that "fear of things invisible" forms the "natural seed of
religion." One source of origin of this belief in a supernatural world
is certainly found in the phenomena of dreaming. To the savage his
dreams are as real as his waking experiences. He does not _dream_ he
goes to distant places; he goes there during his sleep. He does not
_dream_ that people visit him; they actually come. If a West African
wakes up in the morning with a tired, bruised feeling, this arises, as
Miss Kingsley says, from his 'soul' having been out fighting and got
ill-treated. The only philosophy of dreaming amongst savage races is
that of the excursions and incursions of a 'soul' or double.

Another powerful factor in the development of belief in the supernatural
is that of man's attempt to explain natural happenings. Why do things
happen? Why does the sun rise and set, why does rain fall, thunder
crash, rivers flow? Note the way in which a child answers similar
questions, and one is on the track of the primitive intelligence. If
man's own movements are caused by a 'soul' or double, then other things
must also move because they possess a 'soul.' If an answer is to be
found at all, it is only along these lines that the primitive mind is
able to find it. And, once the answer is given, there are a thousand
and one things occurring that lend it apparent support. Resemblances in
nature, coincidences, echoes, shadows, etc., all give their support to
this primitive hypothesis--the only one possible in the circumstances,
and the one still endorsed by the majority of the world's population.

Particularly strong endorsement of this belief is supplied by disease
and abnormal nervous states. Instances to illustrate this are
innumerable, but from the numerous cases cited by Spencer I select the
following: Among the Amazulus convulsions are believed to be caused by
ancestral spirits. With Asiatic races epileptics are regarded as
possessed by demons. With the Kirghiz the involuntary muscular movements
of a woman in childbirth are believed to be caused by a spirit taking
possession of the body. The Samoans attribute all madness to possession.
The Congo people have the same notion of epilepsy. The East Africans
believe that falling sickness is due to spirits.[17] In Rajputana, says
Mr. W. Crooke, disease is generally attributed to Khor or the agency of
offended spirits. The Mahadeo Kolis of Ahmadnagar believe that every
malady or disease that seizes man, woman, or child, or cattle, is caused
either by evil spirits or by an angry god. The Bijapur Veddas have a
yearly feast to their ancestors to prevent the dead bringing sickness
into the house.[18] "A Catholic missionary," says Professor Frazer,
"observes that in New Guinea the _nepir_, or sorcerer, is everywhere....
Nothing happens without the sorcerer's intervention; wars, marriage,
death, expeditions, fishing, hunting, always and everywhere the
sorcerer."[19]

In Ancient Egypt, Chaldea, and Assyria there is ample evidence that the
same belief flourished. Everywhere we find the exorcist and the
witch-doctor existing as natural consequents of the belief that disease
has a supernatural origin. We see it in both the teaching and practice
of the early Christian Church. That great father of the Church, Origen,
says: "It is demons which produce famine, unfruitfulness, corruption of
the air, and pestilence." St. Augustine said that "All diseases of
Christians are to be ascribed to demons." The Church of England still
retains in its Articles an authorisation for the expulsion of demons;
and a number of charms yet in wide use amongst civilised nations show
how persistent is this belief. For centuries there existed all over
Europe sacred pools, wells, grottos, etc., all bearing eloquent witness
to the deep-seated belief that disease was of supernatural origin, and
was to be conquered by supernatural means.

Enough has been said to indicate the kind of environment in which
primitive man moves, and also to understand why ideas concerning the
supernatural exert such an enormous influence in early society. In a
world where everything was yet to be learned, man's first attempts at
understanding himself and his fellows were necessarily blundering and
tentative. His first attempts at explanation are expressed in terms of
his own nature. He sees himself, his own passions, strengths, and
weaknesses reflected in the nature around him. This is the outstanding,
dominating fact in primitive life. Leave out this consideration and
primitive sociology becomes a chaos. Admit it, and we see the reason why
social institutions assumed the form they took, and also a key to much
that happens in subsequent human history. In primitive life religious
beliefs are not something separate from other forms of social life; so
far as man seeks consciously to shape that life they are to him an
essential part of it. And the mistake once made is perpetuated. The
initial blunder once committed, daily experience seems to give it
constant justification. In the absence of knowledge concerning natural
forces every event,--particularly if unusual,--every case of disease,
endorses and strengthens the mistake made. A psychological fatality
drives the human race along the wrong path of investigation, and only
very slowly is the mistake rectified. One cannot see how it could have
been otherwise. The only corrective is knowledge, and knowledge is a
plant of slow growth. This psychological first step was man's first
attempt to frame a theory of things satisfactory to his intellect--an
attempt that, beginning in the crude animism of the savage, ends in the
verifiable laws of modern science.

From the point of view of our present enquiry two things are to be
noted. The first is that man's conviction of the nearness of a
supernatural world began in his lack of knowledge concerning the nature
of natural forces. Of this there can be little doubt. One can take all
the facts upon which primitive mankind built, and still builds, its
theories of supernaturalism, and show that they may be explained in a
quite different manner. The movements of the planets, the rush of
comets, the presence of disaster, the thousand and one operations of
natural forces no longer suggest to educated minds the action of
personal beings. The whole data of the primitive theory of things have
been rejected. The premises were false, and the conclusions necessarily
false also.

The second point is that from the earliest times one of the strongest
proofs of human contact with a supernatural world has been found in the
existence of abnormal or pathological states of mind. These may have
sometimes arisen quite naturally; at other times they have been
deliberately induced. How much the perpetuation of religious beliefs as
a whole owes to this factor has never yet been adequately realised. That
it has had a very great influence seems beyond dispute. For it seems
certain that had not "proofs" of a supernatural world been offered in
the shape of visions, ecstatic states, etc., religious beliefs would
hardly have exercised the power that has been theirs. The number of
people who are able to maintain a strong consciousness of the truth of
religion, merely looking at it as a philosophy of existence, is
naturally very few. The great majority require more tangible evidence if
their belief is to be kept alive and active. And curiously enough, the
very growth of a naturalistic explanation has driven a great many to
find the evidence they desired in those abnormal states of mind that
seemed to defy scientific analysis. In succeeding chapters evidence will
be given to show to what extent this kind of evidence for the
supernatural has been offered and accepted. It will be seen, as
Professor Tylor points out, that the line of religious development is
continuous. The latest forms stretch back in an unbroken line to the
earliest. And if this proves nothing else, it at least proves that
consequences do not always die out with the conditions that gave them
birth. It was the world of the savage that gave birth to the
supernatural. But the supernatural is still with us, even though the
world that gave it birth has disappeared. We retain conclusions based on
admittedly false premises.

FOOTNOTES:

[14] _Lectures on the Early History of the Kingship_, pp. 36-7.

[15] _West African Studies_, pp. 394-6.

[16] See an interesting article on this point by W. H. R. Rivers on "The
Primitive Conception of Death," in _The Hibbert Journal_ for Jan. 1912.

[17] _Principles of Sociology_, vol. i.

[18] _Popular Religion and Folklore of Northern India_, i. p. 124.

[19] _Golden Bough_, 3rd ed., i. 337.

CHAPTER THREE

THE RELIGION OF MENTAL DISEASE

"It is an interesting problem," says Professor J. H. Leuba, "to
determine what influences have led theologians to anchor their beliefs
upon the proposition that religious experience differs from other forms
of consciousness in that it gives one an _immediate_ knowledge of the
external existence of certain objects of belief, although they do not
fall under the senses, and an immediate knowledge of the truth of
certain historical facts."[20] This is, indeed, an interesting problem,
and, we may add, one of growing importance, since there is a pronounced
tendency on the part of present-day exponents of religion to rest their
case almost entirely upon the immediacy of their religious
consciousness. This conception of a certain order of experience,
however, is not and cannot have always existed. A belief may be so
widely and so generally diffused that it is accepted without resistance,
and, as it would almost seem, in the absence of evidence. But its
intuitive character is only superficial, and disappears on careful
examination. The mere vogue of a belief constitutes in itself a kind of
evidence, and for many people the most powerful kind of evidence. But
the conviction itself has a history, and it is in the unravelling of
that history, in the discovery of the class of facts upon which the
conviction has been built, that the work lies. And when this is done it
will be found that our intuitions are invariably based upon a
continuous--even though partly unconscious--appeal to facts. Sometimes
it will, of course, be found that a renewed and deliberate appeal to the
facts in question will justify the conviction. At other times it will
be found that the facts demand an altogether new interpretation. For
centuries all the observed facts supported a conviction that the earth
was flat. It was a fresh scrutiny of the facts in the light of a new
conception that revolutionised human opinion on the subject.

What, then, is the history, and what are the facts upon which the belief
that religious experience brings man into contact with a kind of
existence not given in ordinary experience, is based? The kind of answer
that will be given to this question has already been indicated.
Religious beliefs are in their origin of the nature of an induction from
an observed order. The induction is not the result of that careful
collection of facts, leading up to an equally careful generalisation and
subsequent verification, which is a characteristic of modern science,
but it is an induction none the less. The primitive mind is not so much
engaged in seeking an explanation of certain experiences, as it has an
explanation forced upon it. To picture the savage as inventing a theory
in the sense in which Darwin propounded the theory of Natural Selection
is to quite misconceive the nature of the savage intelligence. But to
conceive the savage as having a certain explanation suggested by the
pressure of repeated experiences, and that this explanation subsequently
assumes the character of a fixed belief, is well within the scope of the
facts known to us. In this stage of culture the existence of
supernatural beings is as much a deduction from experience as any modern
scientific generalisation. Certain things are seen, certain feelings are
experienced, and the conclusion is that they are the products of
supernatural agency. From this point of view religion is no more than a
primitive science. It is the first stage of that long series of
generalisations which, beginning with crude animism, ends with the
discoveries of a Copernicus, a Newton, a Darwin, or a Spencer. It is a
history that begins with vitalism and ends with mechanism. We commence
with a world in which there exists a chaotic assemblage of independent
personal forces, and end with a universe that is self-acting,
self-adjusting, self-contained, and in which science makes no allowance
for the operation of intelligence save such as meets us in animal
organisation.

Now amongst the facts that suggest to the primitive intelligence the
operation of 'spiritual' forces are those connected with the human
organism itself in both its normal and abnormal states. But it is
important to note--particularly so for the understanding of the part
played by ecstatic religious phenomena in comparatively recent
times--that once the occurrence of a certain state of mind is conceived
as the product of intercourse between man and spirits, there is every
inducement to cultivate these frames of mind whenever renewed
intercourse is desired. This does not imply, at least in the earlier
stages, conscious imposture. Generally the operator imposes on himself
as much as he imposes on others. Noting that privation of body, or
torture of mind, or the use of certain herbs is followed by visions or
ecstasy, it is believed, not that the vision is the product of the
practice, but that the practice is the condition of illumination.

This attitude of mind is fairly paralleled by what takes place at the
ordinary spiritualistic _seance_. Those attending are advised that the
chief condition of a communication with the inhabitants of the other
world is a passive state of mind. This passivity cannot exclude
expectancy, since it is only assumed in order that something may occur.
If nothing occurs, if no communications are received, it is because the
requisite conditions have not been fulfilled, and the sceptic is met
with much semi-scientific jargon as to conditions being necessary to
every scientific investigation. The fact that this passivity and
expectancy, with other attendant circumstances, not the least of which
is the contagious influence of a number of people with a similar mental
disposition, opens the way to self-delusion is ignored. Then when the
expected and desired result follows, the mental attitude cultivated is
taken as the condition of communication with the spiritual world,
instead of its being, in all probability, the true cause of what is
experienced. In this way the story of supernatural intercourse runs
clear and unbroken from primitive savagery to its survival in modern
civilisation. When Professor Tylor says, "The conception of the human
soul is, as to its most essential nature, continuous from the philosophy
of the savage thinker to that of the modern professor of theology,"[21]
he makes a statement that is true of the whole story of supernatural
intercourse in all its varied manifestations.

The chief distinction between primitive and modern man lies in the
consideration that in the first case the blunder is inevitable, in the
latter case the remedy lies to hand. How could primitive man be aware of
the real connection between the use of certain drugs or herbs and an
excitation or depression of the activities of the nervous system? He
does observe consequences, but he is quite ignorant of causes. Even
to-day their full consequences are unknown; and it is absurd to expect
that savage humanity should have been better informed. And even when a
more rational theory exists, the practice persists under various forms.
This is a principle that receives vivid illustration from the history of
religions. The modern believer in mystical states of consciousness no
longer advocates the use of drugs, and even fasting is going out of
fashion. But we still have a continuation of the primitive practice in
the shape of insistence on the cultivation of abnormal frames of mind if
we are to experience a consciousness of communion with an alleged
supersensible reality. That is, we are to achieve by a mental discipline
what the savage or the medieval monk achieved by coarser and more
obvious methods. To withdraw the mind from the normal influence of
everyday life is to expose it to the play of hallucination and delusion.
There is really no vital difference between unhealthy, solitary brooding
on a given subject and drugging the mind with hashish. This class of
modern mystic is one with the savage in an inability to recognise that
the illumination is the product of the discipline, not the mere
condition of its possession. Between the drug of the savage, the fasting
and self-torture of the medieval monk and the prayerful meditation of
the modern mystic, the difference is only that of changed times and
altered conditions. The method is the same throughout.

The truth of this has been well put by Tylor:--

"The religious beliefs of the lower races are in no small measure based
on the evidence of visions and dreams, regarded as actual intercourse
with spiritual being. From the earliest stages of culture we find
religion in close alliance with ecstatic physical conditions. These are
brought on by various means of interference with the healthy action of
body and mind, and it is scarcely needful to remind the reader that,
according to philosophic theories antecedent to those of modern
medicine, such morbid disturbances are explained as symptoms of divine
visitation, or at least of superhuman spirituality. Among the strongest
means of disturbing the functions of the mind so as to produce ecstatic
vision, is fasting, accompanied, as it usually is, with other
privations, and with prolonged solitary contemplation in the desert or
in the forest. Among the ordinary vicissitudes of savage life, the wild
hunter has many a time to try involuntarily the effects of such a life
for days together, and under these circumstances he soon comes to see
and talk with phantoms which are to him invisible spirits. The secret of
spiritual intercourse thus learnt, he has thence-forth but to reproduce
the cause in order to renew the effects."[22]

As a means, then, of strengthening and perpetuating a consciousness of
intercourse with the spiritual world, we have to reckon with, not merely
the accidental occurrence of abnormal nervous conditions, but with their
deliberate cultivation. The practice is world-wide, and persists in some
form or other in all ages. Thus we find the Australians and many tribes
of North American Indians use tobacco for this purpose. In Western
Siberia a species of fungi, the 'fly Agaric,' so called because it is
often steeped and the solution used to destroy house flies, is used to
produce religious ecstasy. Its action on the muscular system is
stimulatory, and it greatly excites the nervous system.[23] An early
Spanish observer says of the ancient Mexicans that they used a kind of
mushroom, "which are eaten raw, and on account of being bitter, they
drink after them, or eat with them a little honey of bees, and shortly
after they see a thousand visions."[24] The mushroom was called the
"bread of the gods." The Californian Indians give children tobacco, in
order to receive instruction from the resulting visions. North American
Indians held intoxication by tobacco to be supernatural ecstasy, and the
dreams of men in this state to be inspired. The Darien Indians use the
seeds of the Datura Sanguinea to induce visions. In Peru the priests
prepared themselves for intercourse with the gods by partaking of a
narcotic drink from the same plant. In Guiana the priest was prepared
for his functions by fasting and flagellation, and was afterwards dosed
with tobacco juice.[25] In India the Laws of Manu give explicit
instructions as to the means of producing visions. Chief of these is the
use of the 'Soma' drink. This is prepared from the flower of the lotus.
The sap of this, says De Candolle, would be poisonous if taken in large
quantities, but in small doses merely induces hallucination. Opium and
hashish, a preparation of the hemp plant, have been in general use among
Eastern peoples, as a means of producing ecstasy from remote antiquity.
Opium, it is well known, produces an extraordinary state of exaltation,
intensifying the sense of one's personality, and inducing a pleasurable
consciousness of mental strength and clarity. Under its influence, as De
Quincey said, time lengthens to infinity and space swells to
immensity.[26] Belladonna, a drug much used by medieval witches and
sorcerers, has also had its vogue for purely religious purposes. With
the Greeks the laurel was sacred to Æsculapius. Those who wished to ask
counsel of the god appeared before the altar crowned with laurel and
chewing its leaves. Before prophesying, the Greek priestesses drank a
preparation of laurel water. This contains, although it was, of course,
unknown to them, two toxic substances--prussic acid and the volatile oil
of laurel. The first would induce convulsions, the second, hallucinatory
visions. The two combined were calculated to produce with both subject
and observer a profound impression of spiritual illumination and
possession.

It is unnecessary to multiply examples of the action of various drugs or
herbs on the nervous system, or to cite the people who use them. Enough
has been said to indicate how widespread is the practice, and the
consequences are not hard to foresee. A very moderate development of
intelligence would enable men to associate certain consequences with the
use of particular drugs, but a very considerable amount of knowledge
would be required to explain why these consequences were produced. In a
social environment saturated with superstition the explanation lies
ready to hand, and is accepted without question. A people that sees
spiritual agency in all the familiar phenomena of nature are certainly
not less likely to trace its influence in the mysterious and
unaccountable effects of narcotics and stimulants. And each repeated
experiment provides additional proof. Man thus not only believes himself
to be surrounded by a spiritual world; he is actually able to enter into
communication with it by methods that are defined in the clearest
possible manner. Every repetition strengthens the delusion and even
when the delusion, as such, is exploded, the temper of mind induced by
it persists.

Various other methods are employed to induce a feeling of religious
exaltation. Prominent among these are dancing and singing. Dancing in
connection with religious ceremonies is now generally outgrown in the
civilised world, but singing is still the vogue. That is, singing is
not, it must be remembered, practised from any desire to cultivate a
love of music, although it may appeal to music-lovers. Still, its avowed
purpose is to induce a feeling of devoutness in the congregation. The
hypnotic consequences of a body of people singing in unison, or the
soothing, mystical effect of certain airs from a choir upon a
congregation, are recognised in practice if not in theory. This is a
phenomenon that is not, of course, exclusively associated with religion.
In this as in other instances religion only utilises the ordinary
qualities of human nature. But in all cases the purpose and the result
are the same. That is, the subject is placed for the time being in a
supernormal condition, and the mild state of passivity or enthusiasm
created makes him more susceptible to the influence brought to bear upon
him. This is true of religious singing and chanting, from the forest
gatherings of the primitive savage down to the more sedate and elaborate
assemblages in church or chapel.

Primitive dancing had both a sexual and religious significance,
although, as will be seen later, in the primitive mind the sexual
functions themselves are very closely associated with supernatural
agency. Tylor is of opinion that originally men and women dance in order
to express their feelings and wishes,[27] but it is certain it very
early and universally became associated with religious ceremonies, and
that because of the ecstasy induced. In some cases drug-taking and
dancing go together. In others, reliance is placed on dancing alone.
This latter is the case with the 'devil dancers' of Ceylon. In Africa
the witch doctor discovers who has been guilty of sorcery by the aid of
inspiration furnished during a dance. The whirling dance of the Eastern
dervish is well known. Dancing also figures in the Bible. The Jews
danced around the golden calf (Ex. xxxii. 19) in a state of nudity.
David, too, danced naked before the Lord. Dancing was also part of the
religious ceremonies attendant on the worship of Dionysos or
Bacchus.[28] Along with the drinking of certain vegetable decoctions,
dancing formed an important part of the witches' saturnalia during the
medieval period. When in a state of frenzy, partly drug induced and
partly the product of exhilaration caused by wild dancing, visions of
Satan followed. In the dancing mania of the fourteenth century, the
sufferers saw visions of heaven opened, with Jesus and the Virgin
enthroned. Dancing was one of the prominent characteristics of the
French Convulsionnaires in the eighteenth century. In more recent times
we have the dancing and singing connected with the Methodist revival. In
modern instances the dancing seems to have been consequent on religious
excitement rather than precedent to it, but in earlier times there is no
doubt that it was deliberately practised as a means of producing a state
of exaltation.

Among the commonest methods of inducing a sense of religious exaltation
is the practice of fasting. In various guises, this is the most
persistent form of religious self-torture. Amongst more civilised people
the reason given for fasting is that it is a form of repentance, the
genuineness of which is attested by voluntary punishment. But originally
there seems little reason to doubt that it was adopted for a different
purpose. It was valued not because the fasting person felt that he had
done anything for which it was necessary to repent, but because it was
believed to bring people into closer touch with the spiritual world.
There is, of course, a very obvious reason for this belief. A lowered
vitality is favourable to hallucinations of every description. A
shipwrecked sailor is placed, by no act of his own, in precisely the
same condition as is the primitive medicine man or the medieval saint by
his own volition. It has always been recognised, and by none more
readily than by the great religious teachers of the world, that a
well-nourished body is inimical to what they chose to term "spiritual
development." The historic Christian outcry against fleshly indulgence
has much more in it than a revolt against mere sensualism. A well-fed
body has been deprecated because it closed the avenue to spiritual
illumination. Hence it is that fasting has found such favour in all
religious systems. The ascetic saw more because, by reducing the body to
an abnormal state, he provided the conditions for seeing more. The Zulu
maxim, "A stuffed body cannot see secret things," really expresses in a
sentence the philosophy of the matter.

Among the Blackfoot Indians of North America, when a boy reaches puberty
he is sent away from his father's lodge in search of a spiritual
protector or totem. Seeking a secluded spot, he abstains from food until
he is favoured in a dream with a vision of some animal or bird, which is
at once adopted by him.[29] This custom obtains with most of the North
American tribes. Among these tribes, also, the soothsayer prepares
himself by fasting for the ecstatic state in which the spirits give
their messages through him. The ordinary member of the tribe who wants
anything will fast until he is assured in a dream that it will be
granted him. Similarly, the Malay, to procure supernatural intercourse,
retires to the jungle and abstains from food. The Zulu doctor prepares
for intercourse with the tribal spirits by spare diet or solitary fasts.
Fasting is part of the ordinary regimen of the Hindu yogi. Of certain
Indian tribes we are told that before proceeding on an expedition they
"observe a rigorous fast, or rather abstain from every kind of food for
four days. In this interval their imagination is exalted to delirium;
whether it be through bodily weakness or the natural effect of delirium,
they pretend to have strange visions. The elders and sages of the tribe,
being called upon to interpret these dreams, draw from them omens more
or less favourable to the success of the enterprise; and their
explanations are received as oracles, by which the expedition will be
faithfully regulated."[30] Amongst the Samoans, when rain was required,
the priests blackened themselves all over, exhumed a dead body, took the
skeleton to a cave and poured water over it. They had to fast and remain
in the cave until it rained. Sometimes they died under the experiment,
but they generally chose the showery months for their rain-making.[31]

In both the Old and New Testaments fasting figures largely. The
encounter of Jesus with Satan is preceded by a forty days' fast. St.
Catherine of Sienna began regular fasts at a very early age. Santa
Teresa kept lengthy fasts every year. The fasting of the monks and nuns
during the epidemic period of monasticism is too well known to call for
more than a mere reference. Perhaps the most curious religious reason
given for fasting is that cited by a writer from a monkish chronicler:--

"As a coach goes faster when it is empty, a man by fasting can be better
united to God; for it is a principle with geometers that a round body
can never touch a plane except in one point.... A belly too well filled
becomes round, it cannot touch God except in one point; but fasting
flattens the belly until it is united with the surface of God at all
points."[32]

George Fox, the founder of the Society of Friends, confesses that he
"fasted much" and "walked abroad in solitary places," and "frequently in
the night walked about mournfully by myself." After much brooding and
fasting, he heard a voice which said, "There is one, even Jesus Christ,
that can speak to thy condition." Such an experience is not at all
surprising, seeing the method pursued to acquire it. Less fasting and
brooding, with more genial intercourse with his fellows, might easily
have prevented Fox, as it has prevented others, hearing heavenly voices
proffering him counsel. Such an experience is well within the reach of
anyone who cares to acquire it. Tylor has well said that "So long as
fasting is continued as a religious rite, so long the consequences in
morbid mental exaltation will continue the old savage doctrine that
morbid phantasy is supernatural experience. Bread and meat would have
robbed the ascetic of many an angel's visit; the opening of the
refectory door must many a time have closed the gate of heaven to his
gaze." No one will question the truth of this principle, so long as we
are dealing with uncivilised mankind. Many, however, shrink from
acknowledging that the practices current in more civilised times are
disguised illustrations of the same principle of interpretation, which
descends direct from savages, and but for them would never have existed.

Commenting on the practices of certain savage medicine-men, a missionary
remarks:--

"It always appeared probable to me that these rogues, from long fasting,
contract a weakness of brain, a giddiness, a kind of delirium, which
makes them imagine that they are gifted with superior wisdom, and give
themselves out for physicians. They impose upon themselves first, and
afterwards upon others."[33]

This is shrewdly said, and is a good example of the readiness with which
obvious truths are recognised when they do not clash with religious
prepossessions. The difficulty for others is to discern any real line of
demarcation between the practices of civilised and uncivilised. So far
as one can see, the only real distinction is that the method employed by
savages is open. That followed by civilised people is more or less
disguised. But derangement of function is derangement of function, no
matter how produced. And if we decline to believe that a savage holds
genuine intercourse with a spiritual world, as a consequence of this
derangement, in what way are we justified in accepting the testimony of
a Christian visionary to similar intercourse, when the derangement is in
his case no less clear? It is a case of accepting both, or neither. The
sane and scientific conclusion seems to lie in the following from Dr.
Henry Maudsley:--

"Now that the mental functions are known to be inseparably connected
with nervous substrata, disposed and united in the brain in the most
orderly fashion, superordinate, co-ordinate, and subordinate--the whole
a complex organisation of confederate nerve centres, each capable of
more or less independent action--a natural interpretation presents
itself. The extraordinary states of mental disintegration evince the
separate and irregular function of certain mental nerve tracts, or
grouped nerve tracts with which goes necessarily a coincident
suspension, partial or complete, of the functions of all the rest; the
supernatural incubus, therefore, neither demoniac nor divine, only
morbid. Thus the strange nervous seizures, with their mental
concomitants, not being outside the range of positive research, but
interesting events within it, become useful natural experiments to throw
an instructive light upon the intricate functions of the most complex
organ in the world--the human brain. Steadily are the researches of
pathology driving the supernatural back into its last and most obscure
retreat; for they prove that in the extremest ecstasies there is neither
_theolepsy_ nor _diabolepsy_, nor any other _lepsy_ in the sense of
possession of the individual by an external power; what there is truly
is a _psycholepsy_."[34]

States of exaltation produced by the aid of drugs, fasting, or other
forms of self-torture come naturally under the category of deliberately
induced states of mind, owing to the conviction that spiritual knowledge
may be gained in this way. But there are other states that arise
naturally and which foster the same conviction. It has already been
pointed out that the generally accepted theory with uncivilised peoples
is that all disease is due to the action of malevolent spirits. There is
no need now to repeat proof of this, and in any case it lies to hand in
any work that deals with uncivilised life. Nor need we go back to
uncivilised times for evidence. One requires only to look but a very
little way into the history of any country to find the supernaturalistic
theory of disease in full swing, and even to-day one may discover
indications of its once general rule. Its importance to the present
enquiry lies in the part it has played in building up in the religious
consciousness a general conviction of religious truth that does not
disappear even when it is seen that the evidence upon which it rests is
faulty. Just as the inhabitants of a Welsh village have their general
belief in religion strengthened by the semi-hysterical speeches of an
Evan Roberts, and the convulsive capers of a whole congregation, so in
all ages people have found endorsement of their belief in a supernatural
world in the existence of cases the pathological nature of which admits
of no doubt. Belief in the supernatural character of specific nervous
conditions or mental states may disappear, but the fact that this
belief has been general for a time leaves behind a certain psychological
residuum in favour of supernaturalism in general.

The connection between the priest and the physician is naturally a very
ancient one. The priest, indeed, is the primitive physician, the belief
that diseases are supernaturally caused indicating him as the agent of
their cure. And it is only to be expected that when the attempt is made
to divert the treatment of disease from priestly hands the effort should
be met with determined opposition. Quite naturally, too, the first
gropings after a scientific theory of disease show a curious mixture of
rationalism and superstition. Thus, in Greece, the temple hospitals
devoted to the mythical Æsculapius, which were situated at Epidaurus,
Pergamus, Cyrene, Corinth, and many other places, served as colleges,
hospitals, and places of worship. Sufferers slept in the temples in the
hopes of receiving messages from the gods, and the priests themselves
professed to have ecstatic visions which enabled them to prescribe for
those afflicted.[35] Great emphasis was placed on bathing, light, air,
and food, and it is pretty clear that the priests had begun to mix both
faith and physic in a most perplexing manner.

The definite separation of medicine from magic and religion begins with
Hippocrates. His theory of disease was simple. He did not deny that
there might be a supernatural side to disease; he insisted that there
was always a natural one, and that this was the side with which we
should be concerned. Each disorder, he said, had its own physical
conditions, and he laid down the rule that we "ought to study the nature
of man, what he is with reference to that which he eats and drinks, and
to all his other occupations and habits, and to the consequences
resulting from each."[36] In Egypt, also, very considerable advance was
made in the same direction. Probably a good deal of their knowledge
resulted from the practice of embalming, in spite of the priestly
interdict on dissection. At all events, there is no doubt that
considerable advance had been made. Herophilus and Erasistratus wrote of
the structure of the heart, and described its connection with the veins
and arteries. The two kinds of nerves, motor and sensory, were
described, and the influence of foods, etc., as influencing health,
dwelt on. Insanity was also dealt with as due to natural and
controllable causes, and the effects of colour and music in dealing with
mania noted.[37] Had this advance been followed, the history of European
civilisation might have been different from what it was. Plagues,
epidemics, and diseases, with their far-reaching social and political
consequences,--consequences that are too little noted, or even
understood, by historians,--might have met with adequate resistance, and
some would never have occurred.

The Pagan schools of medicine came to an untimely, although in some
cases a lingering, end. "The introduction of Christianity," says a
medical writer, "had an undoubted influence on the course of medical
science; for the Christian was taught to recognise, in every bodily
infirmity, the dispensation of the Almighty, and in the calm, abstracted
pursuits of those holy men who passed their time in prayer and