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 AEsculapius. 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 AEsculapius, 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 meditation, a propitiation: hence medicine fell into the hands of monks and anchorites, who assumed to themselves, exclusively, the power of interpreting all natural phenomena as indications of the Divine Will, and pretended to possess some occult and supernatural means of curing disease."[38] Reversing the natural order of things, the physician was replaced by the priest. The supernaturalistic theory was revived, and held its own for well on a thousand years. For every complaint the Church provided a specific in the shape of a charm, an incantation, or a saint. St. Apollonia for toothache, St. Avertin for lunacy, St. Benedict for stone, St. Clara for sore eyes, St. Herbert for hydrophobia, St. John for epilepsy, St. Maur for gout, St. Pernel for agues, St. Genevieve for fevers, St. Sebastian for plague, etc.[39] The height of absurdity was reached when, in spite of the monopoly of the treatment of disease by the priesthood, the Council of Rheims (1119) actually forbade monks to study medicine. This was followed by the Council of Beziers (1246) prohibiting Christians applying for relief to Jewish physicians, at a time when practically the only doctors of ability in Christendom were Jews. In 1243 the Dominicans banished all books on medicine from their monasteries. Innocent III. forbade physicians practising except under the supervision of an ecclesiastic. Honorius (1222) forbade priests the study of medicine; and at the end of the thirteenth Century Boniface VIII. interdicted surgery as atheistical. The ill-treatment and opposition experienced by the great Vesalius at the hands of the Church, on account of his anatomical researches, is one of the saddest chapters in the history of science.[40]

When the sight of bodily disease strengthened and confirmed belief in the supernatural, mental disease must have offered still more convincing evidence. Among uncivilised people we know that this is so. To quote again from the indispensable Tylor:—

"The possessed man ... rationally finds a spiritual cause for his sufferings.... Especially when the mysterious unseen power throws him helpless on the ground, jerks and writhes him in convulsions, makes him leap upon the bystanders with a giant's strength and a wild beast's ferocity, impels him with distorted face and frantic gesture, and voice not his own nor seemingly even human, to pour forth wild incoherent raving, or with thought and eloquence beyond his sober faculties to command, to counsel, to foretell—such a one seems to those who watch him, and even to himself, to have become the mere instrument of a spirit which has seized him or entered into him, a possessing demon in whose personality the patient believes so implicitly that he often imagines a personal name for it, which it can declare when it speaks in its own voice and character through his organs of speech."[41]

It was this conception of insanity, universally current in the uncivilised world, that was revived with fearful intensity in the early Christian Church, and which certainly served its purpose in intensifying the genuine belief in supernaturalism. Jesus had given His followers power to expel demons "In My name," and this power of exorcism was one upon which the early Christians specially prided themselves. It is with unconscious sarcasm that Dean Trench puts the question, If one of the disciples "were to enter a madhouse now, how many of the sufferers there he might recognise as 'possessed'?"[42] One may safely say that he would regard all as under the dominion of evil spirits. No other cause of insanity appears to have been recognised, and the Church devised the most elaborate formulae for casting out demons. The assumed demoniac was prayed over, incensed, and evil-smelling drugs burned under his nose. A set form of objurgation then followed:—

"Thou lustful and stupid one.... Thou lean sow, famine-stricken and most impure.... Thou wrinkled beast, of all beasts the most beastly.... Thou bestial and foolish drunkard.... Thou sooty spirit from Tartarus.... I cast thee down, O Tartarean boor, into the infernal kitchen.... Loathsome cobbler ... filthy sow ... envious crocodile.... Malodorous drudge ... swollen toad ... lousy swineherd," etc. etc.[43]

Then followed the exorcism proper:—

"By the Apocalypse of Jesus Christ, which God hath given to make known unto His servants those things which are shortly to be ... I exorcise you, ye angels of untold perversity.... May all the devils that are thy foes rush forth upon thee and drag thee down to hell!... May the Holy One trample on thee and hang thee up in an infernal fork, as was done to the five kings of the Amorites!... May God set a nail to your skull, and pound it with a hammer as Jael did to Sisera!... May Sother break thy head and cut off thy hands, as was done to the cursed Dagon!... May God hang thee in a hellish yoke, as seven men were hanged by the sons of Saul!"[44]

Marcus Aurelius mentions as one of his debts to the philosopher Diognetus that he had taught him "not to give credit to vulgar tales of prodigies and incantations, and evil spirits cast out by magicians or pretenders to sorcery, and such kind of impostors."[45] What would have been the thoughts of the great emperor, could he have revisited the earth two centuries after his death and seen the then civilised world enveloped in a mental atmosphere in which such ideas as those above described could live?

All over Europe for centuries lunatics were whipped, and otherwise ill-treated, in the hopes of expelling the demons that were troubling them. The seventy-second Canon of the Church of England still provides that no unlicensed person shall "cast out any devil or devils" under pain of penalties prescribed. A Bishop of Beauvais, in the fifteenth century, not only caused five devils to come out of one person, but actually induced them to sign a document promising not to molest this particular sufferer again. Tremendous, again, were the labours of the Jesuit Fathers of Vienna, who boasted that they had cast out no less than 12,652 'living devils.' Such arithmetical exactitude silences all hostile comment. In some parts of Scotland, as late as 1783, lunatics were left all night in the churchyard, with a holy bell over their heads. In Cornwall, St. Nun's pool was famous for the cure of lunatics. The poor devils were tied hand and foot and doused in the water until they were cured—or killed. Even the embraces of prostitutes, for some peculiar reason, were recommended as a cure for insanity.[46] In 1788, in Bristol, a drunken epileptic, one George Larkins, was brought into church, and seven clergymen solemnly set themselves to the task of exorcising the possessing demon. Whereupon Satan swore 'by his infernal den'—an oath, says the chronicler, nowhere to be found but in Bunyan. Under date of October 25, 1739, John Wesley also relates how he was sent for and assisted at the expulsion of a demon from the body of a young girl.

Of all nervous diseases that of epilepsy appears to have been most favourable to the encouragement of a belief in spiritual agency. One medical authority whose experience enables him to speak with a peculiar degree of authority has pointed out that with epilepsy there is often an exaltation of the religious sentiments.[47] A more recent writer, Dr. Bernard Hollander, asserts that epileptics are "highly religious."[48] Sir T. S. Clouston also points out that strong religious emotionalism often accompanies epilepsy.[49] Another eminent physician, while pointing out that "a high degree of intelligence, amounting even to genius, has in some cases been associated with epilepsy," observes that "the epileptic is apt to be influenced greatly by the mystical and awe-inspiring, and he is disposed to morbid piety."[50]

Every medical man is acquainted with the close relation that exists between epilepsy and all kinds of hallucinations and delusions, and it would be more than surprising if in an environment where the religious interpretation of things is paramount, or with a patient of strong religious convictions, these delusions did not take a religious form. And of all nervous disorders epilepsy seems most favourable for producing this. Under its influence hallucination attacks every one of the senses with a varying degree of intensity. "The patient hears voices, and generally words expressing definite ideas, though he is often unable to properly refer them to any speaking person. Sometimes instead of external sounds or voices, the patient has a consciousness of an internal voice that may be as real to him as any external auditory perception. At first the voices may be indistinct, but upon constant repetition and evolution from sub-conscious thought they acquire intensity, eventually dominating the life of the individual."[51] Dr. Ball says: "One patient perceives at the beginning of the attack a toothed wheel, in the middle of which there appears a human face making strange contortions; another sees a series of smiling landscapes. In some cases it is the sense of hearing which is affected;—the patient hears voices or strange noises. Others are warned by the sense of smell that the fit is going to commence."[52]

Sometimes these hallucinations of sight and hearing are in curious contrast with each other. "Not rarely," says Dr. Conolly Norman, "a patient has visual hallucinations of a cheering kind—as of God or angels; yet his auditory hallucinations are full of blasphemy, mockery, and insult."[53]

Dr. Maudsley thus describes the general symptoms accompanying an epileptic attack:—

"The patient's senses are possessed with hallucinations, his ganglionic central cells being in a state of what may be called convulsive action; before the eyes are blood-red flames of fire, amidst which whoever happens to present himself appears as a devil or otherwise horribly transformed; the ears are filled with a terribly roaring noise, or resound with a voice imperatively commanding him to save himself; the smell is one of sulphurous stifling, and the desperate and violent actions are the convulsive reaction to such fearful hallucinations."[54]

If anyone will bear in mind the numerous descriptions of religious visions, written in all good faith, and the behaviour of many an assumed 'inspired' character, he will have little difficulty in realising how easily, to a people unacquainted with the real character of such phenomena, epilepsy lends itself to a religious interpretation. It must also be borne in mind that the consequences of vivid hallucinations experienced during epilepsy do not always disappear with the attack to which they were originally due.

It is certain that from the earliest times cases of what are undoubtedly epilepsy have been taken as positive indications of supernatural influence. "There is," says Emanuel Deutsch, "a peculiar something supposed to inhere in epilepsy. The Greeks called it a divine disease. Bacchantic and chorybantic furor were God-inspired stages. The Pythia uttered her oracles under the most distressing signs. Symptoms of convulsion were ever needed as a sign of the divine."[55] Much of the evidence for the supernatural in the New Testament rests upon cases that are obviously pathological in character. A man brings his son to Jesus and describes how "ofttimes he falleth into the fire, and oft into the water" (Matt. xvii. 15), and in another place (Mark ix. 18) the same patient is described as having a dumb spirit, "and wheresoever he taketh him, he teareth him; and he foameth, and gnasheth with his teeth, and pineth away." The response to the father's appeal for help is an exorcism of the possessing spirit such as one meets with in all savage culture. Between possession by a malignant spirit and domination by a god, the difference is clearly one of terminology alone. And at the side of the New Testament case just cited one may place this account from Polynesia, written by a very competent observer, and a missionary:—

"As soon as the god was supposed to have entered the priest, the latter became violently agitated and worked himself up to the highest pitch of apparent frenzy; the muscles of the limbs seemed convulsed, the body swelled, the countenance became terrific, the features distorted, the eyes wild and strained. In this state he often rolled on the earth, foaming at the mouth, as if labouring under the influence of the divinity by whom he was possessed, and in shrill cries, and often violent and indistinct sounds, revealed the will of the god."[56]

Advancing to a higher culture stage than that indicated in the last passage, there is much evidence that Mohammed was subject to hallucinations, and many authorities have indicated epilepsy as their source. There is a tradition that someone who saw Mohammed while he was receiving one of his revelations observed that he seemed unconscious and was red in the face. Mohammed himself said:—

"Inspiration descendeth upon me in two ways. Sometimes Gabriel cometh and communicateth the revelation unto me, as one man unto another, and this is easy; at other times it affecteth me like the ringing of a bell, penetrating my very heart, and rending me as it were in pieces; and this it is which grievously afflicteth me."

Emanuel Deutsch, although, in a passage already cited, recognising the religious significance attached to epilepsy, has the following curious comment:—

"Mohammed was epileptic; and vast ingenuity and medical knowledge have been lavished upon this point as explanatory of Mohammed's mission and success. We, for our own part, do not think that epilepsy ever made a man appear a prophet to himself or even to the people of the East; or, for the matter of that, inspired him with the like heart-moving words and glorious pictures. Quite the contrary. It was taken as a sign of demons within—demons, 'Devs,' devils to whom all manner of diseases were ascribed throughout the antique world."

This seems very largely to miss the point at issue. Of course, no one would claim that Mohammed's success was due to epilepsy, or even that the very severe forms of epilepsy were favourable to inducing a conviction of revelation. But the disease assumes various forms, and in some cases it is expressed in the form of a period of mental excitement and general irritability. All that is claimed is that, given the complaint in its less severe forms in one with whom religious beliefs are strong, there are present all the conditions for attributing the resulting hallucinations to personal revelation or ecstatic vision. And it is also true that while some patients after emerging from a fit of epilepsy are in a dazed or confused condition, others have a very clear recollection of all they have seen and heard. Mohammed simply took the current explanation of cases of nervous derangement, and being a man of strong religious feeling, naturally gave his visions a religious interpretation. All the rest has to be explained in terms of the innate genius of the man and of the circumstances of his time.

A similar case to the above is that of Emanuel Swedenborg. His followers naturally resent the ascription of his visions and voices to a pathologic origin, and point to his pronounced mental ability. And certainly no one who is at all acquainted with the writings of Swedenborg will question his great mental power, amounting at times to positive genius. But here, again, we have strong religious conviction in alliance with pathological conditions. Swedenborg's communications with celestial beings were of a more frequent and more ordered character than Mohammed's, but there is the same general likeness between them. Of his first revelation he writes:—

"At ten o'clock I lay down in bed and was somewhat better; half an hour after I heard a clamour under my head; I thought that then the tempter went away; immediately there came over me a rigor so strong from the head and the whole body, with some din, and this several times. I found that something holy was over me. I thereupon fell asleep, and at about twelve, one, or two o'clock in the night there came over me so strong a shivering from head to foot, as if many winds rushed together, which shook me, was indescribable, and prostrated me upon my face. Then, while I was prostrated, I was in a moment quite awake, and saw that I was cast down, and wondered what it meant. And I spoke as if I was awake, but found that the word was put into my mouth, and I said, 'Omnipotent Jesus Christ, as of Thy great grace Thou condescendest to come to so great a sinner, make me worthy of this grace!' I held my hands together and prayed, and then came a hand which squeezed my hands hard; immediately thereupon I continued in prayer."[57]

Swedenborg confessed to repeated walks and talks with celestial visitants, and, of course, all thought of imposture must be put on one side. What one has to consider is whether we are to accept these experiences as hallucinations or not. On the one side no further evidence seems possible than the profound faith of the man himself, his recognised mental ability, and the belief of his followers. And against this it must be urged that the most complete honesty is no guarantee against self-deception, while ability and even genius are not at all incompatible with a pathologic strain. And in addition it must be borne in mind that these hallucinations are, after all, part of a very large class. Men of very little ability and influence experience substantially the same visions; they occur all over the world, under all conditions of culture, and always express the personal idiosyncrasies of the subject and reflect the character of his social environment. One may safely say that had Swedenborg lived a century later, while he might still have gone through the same mental and physical experiences, he himself would have given a very different interpretation of them.

St. Paul, Professor James points out, "certainly had once an epileptoid, if not an epileptic seizure." One needs to add to this that the seizure occurred at the one critical moment of his life which eventuated in his conversion from Judaism to Christianity. Mary Magdalene, the first who brought tidings of the resurrection, had been delivered of seven devils. Luther's religious opinions were, of course, quite apart from his physical state, sound or unsound. Still, even with him the reality of supernatural intercourse became intensely vivid as a result of nervous affections. His latest biographer points out that as a youth while in the monastery he was seized with something that might well have been an epileptic fit, and that although there is no record of a return of this, he did suffer from ordinary fits of fainting.[58] He confesses to have been much troubled, at twenty-two years of age, with giddiness and noises in the ear, which he attributed to the devil. And right through his life he attributed similar experiences to the same source. Bunyan confesses that even during childhood the Lord "did scare and affright me with fearful dreams, and did terrify me with dreadful visions." George Fox, founder of the Society of Friends, describes how, in the middle of winter, when approaching Lichfield, "the Word of the Lord was like a fire in me," and as he went through the town, "there seemed to me to be a channel of blood running down the streets, and the market-place appeared like a pool of blood." Reflecting on the meaning of the vision, he remembered that, "In the Emperor Diocletian's time a thousand Christians were martyred at Lichfield. So I was to go without my shoes through the channel of their blood in the market-place, that I might raise up the blood of these martyrs which had been shed above a thousand years before."[59]

In none of these cases could it be fairly claimed that the religious conviction, as such, was the consequence of the hallucinations experienced. But it can scarcely be questioned that these served to strengthen it to an enormous extent. These trances, ecstasies, visions, were accepted by the subjects as proofs of their 'divine mission,' and were so accepted by multitudes of their followers. In their absence religion would most probably have failed to be the fiercely irruptive force in life that it has been. The religious idea has, so to speak given hallucination a standing and an authority in life it would not have possessed in its absence. In the case of men of ordinary capacity these visions possess little authority. But in the case of men of extraordinary capacity, men like Luther, Mohammed, Fox, Swedenborg,—who must in any case have stood superior to their fellows,—these hallucinations are then under favouring social conditions invested with enormous authority. And there is no doubt about the fact that religious leaders have been peculiarly subject to these psychical variations. This is pointed out by Professor James in the following passage:—

"Even more perhaps than other kinds of genius, religious leaders have been subject to abnormal psychical visitations. Invariably they have been creatures of exalted emotional sensibility. Often they have led a discordant inner life, and had melancholy during a part of their career. They have known no measure, been liable to obsessions and fixed ideas; and frequently they have fallen into trances, heard voices, seen visions, and presented all sorts of peculiarities which are ordinarily classed as pathological. Often, moreover, these pathological features in their career have helped to give them their religious authority and influence."[60]

Well, in what way are we to discriminate between the visions of a religious person, admittedly of an abnormal disposition, subject to fits of melancholy, etc., and presenting "all sorts of peculiarities ordinarily classed as pathological," and the hallucinations of an admittedly pathologic subject? Why should the ordinary classification break down at this point? Dr. Granger, dealing with this aspect of the question, says: "The religious genius is not proved to be morbid by the extent to which he diverges from the average type."[61] Quite so, genius must depart from the average type in order to be genius. But the statement is quite beside the point at issue. It is not a mere divergence from the average type that warrants one in assuming that much passing for divine illumination owes its origin to pathological conditions, but the fact that it is possible to affiliate certain cases of religious exaltation with these conditions. Hallucinations are common to all forms of ecstasy, and ecstasy is not confined to religion. Given a one-sided mental activity, intense concentration on one or a few analogous ideas, combined with a lowered nervous sensibility, and we have all the conditions present favourable to hallucination.[62] These hallucinations may occur in connection with any topic that engrosses the subject's mind. In every other direction their true nature is recognised and admitted. In connection with religious belief alone, it is held that they bring the subject into touch with a supersensual world of reality. What possible scientific warranty is there for any such distinction?

Let us take, as an example, one of James's own cases, which he admits is 'distinctly pathological,' but without allowing this admission to disturb his general conclusion. The case is that of Suso, a famous fourteenth-century mystic. As a young man he wore a hair shirt and an iron chain next the skin. Later he had made a leathern garment studded with one hundred and fifty nails, points inward. The garment was made very tight, and he used it to sleep in. To prevent himself throwing it off during sleep he procured a pair of leather gloves studded with tacks, so that if he attempted to get rid of the dress the tacks would penetrate his flesh. Next he had made a wooden cross, with thirty protruding nails, to emulate the sufferings of Jesus. He procured an old door to sleep on. In winter he suffered from the frost. His feet were full of sores, his legs became dropsical, his knees bloody and seared, his loins covered with scars, his hands tremulous. During twenty years he fed scantily upon the coarsest food, slept in the most uncomfortable places, and during the whole of the time never took a bath. No wonder that after his fortieth year he was favoured with a series of visions from God. Would not one be surprised if any other result than this had been achieved? And Suso's case is only one of thousands, many of not so extreme a character, others quite as bad.

In the case of Catherine of Sienna the austerities began earlier than with Suso. As a child she flogged herself, and was favoured with visions before she reached her teens. Santa Teresa, as a young woman, prayed to God to send her an illness, and describes how she remained for days in a trance, during which time her tongue was bitten in many places. She describes how, during these trances, her body became to her light, and she remained rigid. "It was altogether impossible for me to hinder it; for my world would be carried absolutely away, and ordinarily even my head, as it were, after it."[63] These are typical examples from a very large number of cases. The annals of monasticism are filled with accounts of self-inflicted tortures, with the one end in view, and in serious belief that their experiences brought them into touch with a reality denied them under normal conditions. The practice not only quickened their own sense of the reality of religion, it served the same purpose for thousands of others pursuing the course of ordinary social existence. "Religious teachers," says Francis Galton, "by enforcing celibacy, fasting, and solitude, have done their best towards making men mad, and they have always largely succeeded in inducing morbid mental conditions among their followers."[64]

The phenomenon is thus continuous and, in its essentials, unchanging. From the most primitive times there has been a close association between the belief in divine illumination and spiritual intercourse, and mental states that are unquestionably pathological. Following this there has been a more or less deliberate cultivation of these states in the desire to renew communion with a spiritual world hidden from man's normal senses. In this there need be no deliberate imposture. When imposture does occur, it would be at a later culture stage. At the beginning there is nothing but misunderstanding. First in order of time comes the crude animistic interpretation of almost every phase of human activity. So far as primitive life is concerned, the evidence of this is simply overwhelming. Next, as Tylor has pointed out, from believing that the occurrence of certain mental states provides the conditions of communication with an unseen world to the deliberate creation of those states is a natural and an easy step. There is thus set on foot a deliberate culture of the supernatural. This cultivation of abnormal states of mind once initiated persists, now in one form, now in another, but is substantially the same throughout. Whether we are dealing with the crude practices of the savage, the less crude, but still obvious methods of solitary living and bodily maceration of the medieval monk, or the morbid and unhealthy dwelling upon a single idea which remains one of the conditions of 'illumination' to-day, we are confronted with the same thing. In every case the object—unconscious, maybe—is the provision of conditions that render hallucination and illusion a practical certainty. In connection with non-religious matters the unhealthiness of mind, distortion of vision, and unreliability of judgment induced by methods akin to those named is now generally recognised. We have yet to see the same thing as generally recognised in connection with religious beliefs. We see in addition that a great many of those experiences, once accepted as clear evidence of supernatural communication, are more properly explainable in terms of nervous derangement. In such cases there is neither celestial illumination nor diabolic communion, neither—to use Maudsley's phrase—theolepsy nor diabolepsy, only psycholepsy. In the present chapter we have been striving to apply this principle to a little wider field than is usual. We have been studying the misinterpretation, in terms of religion, of abnormal or pathological states of mind, and observing how far these have contributed to building up and perpetuating a conviction of the possibility of supernatural intercourse. We have yet to trace the same principle of misinterpretation in the sexual and social life of mankind.

FOOTNOTES:

[20] A Psychological Study of Religion, p. 234.

[21] Primitive Culture, i. p. 501.

[22] Primitive Culture, ii. p. 410.

[23] Some very curious information concerning the use of this and other fungi is given by Dr. J. G. Bourke in his Scatologic Rites, pp. 69-75.

[24] Cited by Bourke, p. 90.

[25] Tylor, ii. pp. 417-9.

[26] For a clear account of the effects of hemp preparations, calculated to produce a feeling of religious ecstasy, the reader should consult Dr. Hale White's Text-Book of Pharmacology, 1901, pp. 318-22. The effects of opium are thus described by another writer: "Opium, in those who are capable of stimulation by it, gives rise to a pleasurable feeling, something like that which is produced by wine in not excessive doses; but the excitement derived from it, instead of tending to some highest point, remains stationary for hours, and in place of the slight incoherence of thought always present in those who are exhilarated with wine, the most perfect harmony is established among all the conceptions. There is an extraordinary stimulation of the pure intellect, and not merely of the power of expression. The opium-eater seems to have had the eyes of his spirit opened, to have acquired a gift of insight into things that to mere mortals are inexplicable. The most remote parts of consciousness come into clear light; the finer shades of personality, those that had been unknown even to the opium-eater himself, are brought into view and become distinct; the smallest details of the things around take new significance, and are seen to be profoundly important; their analogies with other phenomena of nature are revealed. It is the same with the moral as with the intellectual being; that also becomes indefinitely exalted. An absolute balance of the faculties seems to have been attained. The whole man is what in his ordinary state he only tends to be; he has realised the highest perfection of which he is capable; only his 'best self' now remains; his lower self has been left behind without need of the purgatorial fire of contention with the environment to destroy it."—T. Whittaker, Essays and Notices, Psychological and Philosophical, p. 367.

[27] Anthropology, p. 296.

[28] For a general account of religious dances, see Major-General Forlong's Faiths of Man, art. "Dancing."

[29] Catlin, North American Indians, i. p. 36.

[30] Cited by Frazer, Taboo and the Perils of the Soul, p. 161.

[31] Turner's Samoa, p. 345-6.

[32] Brady, Clavis Calendaria, vol. i. p. 223.

[33] Cited by Tylor, Primitive Culture, ii. pp. 412-3.

[34] Natural Causes and Supernatural Seemings, p. 277.

[35] A very good account of the methods followed in these places will be found in Miss Hamilton's Incubation, or the Cure of Diseases in Pagan Temples and Christian Churches, 1906.

[36] Grote, History of Greece, vol. i. p. 359 and vol. v. p. 232.

[37] "The ancient Egyptians and Greeks," says Dr. Maudsley, "used humane and rational methods of treatment; it was only after the Christian doctrine of possession by devils had taken hold of the minds of men that the worst sort of treatment, of which history gives account, came into force" (Pathology of Mind, p. 523). For a general account of Egyptian medicine see the chapter on Egypt in Dr. Berdoe's Origin and Growth of the Healing Art.

[38] Meryon, The History of Medicine, vol. i. p. 67.

[39] Ibid., vol. i. p. 104.

[40] See Sir Michael Foster's Lectures on the History of Physiology, chap. i.

[41] Primitive Culture, ii. 124.

[42] On the Miracles, p. 168.

[43] Cited by White, who gives original authorities, Warfare of Science with Theology, ii. 107.

[44] White, ii. 108.

[45] Meditations, bk. i.

[46] Fort's Medical Economy during the Middle Ages, p. 345.

[47] Dr. Howden, Medical Superintendent of the Montrose Lunatic Asylum, in Journal of Mental Science, 1873.

[48] First Signs of Insanity, p. 293.

[49] Clinical Lectures on Mental Diseases, p. 428. The whole of chapter xi. is very pertinent.

[50] Dr. R. Jones, in Allbutt's System of Medicine, vol. viii. p. 335

[51] Dr. Hollander, First Signs of Insanity, pp. 64-5.

[52] Cited by Ireland, The Blot on the Brain, p. 39.

[53] Allbutt's System of Medicine, viii. 395.

[54] Physiology of Mind, p. 251. See also Dr. Mercier's The Nervous System and the Mind, p. 55.

[55] Literary Remains, p. 83.

[56] W. Ellis, Polynesian Researches, ii. 235-6.

[57] Dr. H. Maudsley has gone fully into the case of Swedenborg in an article in the Journal of Mental Science for July and October 1869, since reprinted in his Body and Mind.

[58] See Luther, by H. Grisar, 1913, vol. i. pp. 16-7.

[59] For other cases, and a general account of the relations between pathologic states and religious delusion, see Lombroso, Man of Genius, chap. iv. pt. iii.

[60] Varieties of Religious Experience, pp. 6-7.

[61] The Soul of a Christian, p. 13.

[62] See Parish's Hallucinations and Illusions, pp. 38-9.

[63] Saint Teresa, by H. Joly, pp. 25, 26, and 58.

[64] Inquiries into Human Faculty, 1883, p. 68.



CHAPTER FOUR

SEX & RELIGION IN PRIMITIVE LIFE

The connection between sexual feeling and religious belief is ancient, intimate, and sustained. It has impressed itself on many observers who have approached the subject from widely different points of view. Some have treated the connection as purely accidental, and as having no more than a mere historical interest. Others have used it as illustrating the way in which so sacred a subject as religion may suffer degradation in degenerate hands. Others of a more scientific temper have dealt with the relations between sexualism and religion as illustrations of a mere perversion. A deal may be said in favour of this last point of view. We know, as a matter of fact, that such cases of perversion do exist, in what form and to what extent will be discussed later. We are also aware that strong feeling which cannot find vent in one direction will secure expression in another. The annals of Roman Catholicism contain accounts of numerous persons who have sought refuge in a monastery or a nunnery as the result of disappointment in love, and it would be foolish to conclude that strong amorous feelings are annihilated because there is a change in the object to which they are directed. Paul was not a different man from the Saul of pre-conversion days, but the same person with his energies directed into a new channel. Protestantism is without the obvious outlets for unsatisfied sexual feeling such as is provided by Roman Catholicism, but it provides other outlets. Religious service as a whole remains, and intense religious devotion may very often owe its origin to sources undreamt of by the devotee.

Between religious beliefs and sexual feelings the connection is, however, wider and deeper, than the relation expressed by mere perversion. Neither is the relation one of mere accident. An examination of the facts in the light of adequate scientific knowledge, combined with a due perception of primitive human psychology and sociology, have shown that the two things are united at their source. One eminent medical writer asserts that "in a certain sense, the history of religion can be regarded as a peculiar mode of manifestation of the human sexual instinct."[65] Another writer substantially endorses this by the remark that "in a certain sense the religious life is an irradiation of the reproductive instinct."[66] How easily one glides into the other very little observation of life or study of history will show. The language of devotion and of amatory passion is often identical, and seems to serve equally well for either purpose. The significance of this fact is often obscured by our having etherealised the conception of love, and so losing sight of its physiological basis. And, having hidden it from sight, we, not unnaturally, fail to give it due consideration. This is, in its way, a fatal blunder. The sex life of man and woman is too large a fact and too pervasive a force to be ignored with safety. Ignorance combined with prudery conspires to perpetuate what ignorance alone began; and the sex life, in both its normal and abnormal manifestations, has been perpetually exploited in the interests of supernaturalism.

The evidence that may be adduced in favour of what has been said is vast, and covers a wide range. Historically it covers such facts as the relations between primitive religious beliefs and the sexual life, and the multiplication of sects of a markedly erotic character during periods of religious enthusiasm. "Even the most casual students of religion," says Professor G. B. Cutten, "must have observed an apparently intimate connection between religious and sexual emotions, and not a few have read with amazement the abnormal cults which have had the sexual element as a foundation for their denominational dissent."[67] A phenomenon so striking as to force itself on the notice of the most 'casual students' raises the presumption that the relation between the two sets of facts is rather more than that of 'apparent' intimacy. When in the course of history two things appear together over and over again, one is surely justified in assuming that there is some underlying principle responsible for the association. The search for this principle leads to the next class of evidence—the psychological. In this we are concerned with the relation between the sexual feelings and the religious idea, an association not always expressed through the comparatively harmless medium of language. And, finally, we have the evidence derived from pathology, where we are able to discern a perverted sexuality masquerading as religious fervour.

In a previous chapter there has been pointed out the kind of mental environment in which primitive man moves. As one of the earliest forms of systematised thinking, religion dominates all other forms of mental activity. In savage culture there is hardly a single event into which religious considerations do not enter. The savage does not merely believe in a supernatural world, he lives in it; it is as real to him as anything around him, and far more potent in its action. Above all, it is important to bear in mind that although one is compelled to speak of the natural and the supernatural when dealing with early beliefs, no such separation is present to the primitive intelligence. The division between the natural and the supernatural in the external world is the reflection of a corresponding division in the world of thought, and this arises only at a subsequent stage. What is afterwards recognised as the supernatural pervades everything. In a sense it is everything, since most of what occurs is by the agency or connivance of animistic forces.

In such a world, where even the ordinary events of life have a supernatural significance, the strange and sometimes terrifying phenomena of sexual life carry peculiarly strong evidences of supernatural activity. Events which are to the modern mind the most obvious consequences of sex life are to the primitive mind proofs of supernatural or ghostly agency. Nothing, for example, would appear less open to misconception than the connection between sexual relations and the birth of children. Yet, on this head, Mr. Sidney Hartland has produced a mass of evidence, gathered from all parts of the world, and leading to the conclusion that in the most primitive stages of human culture, conception and birth are ascribed to direct supernatural influence. Setting out from a study of the world-wide vogue of the belief in supernatural birth—contained in the author's earlier work, The Legend of Perseus—Mr. Hartland finds in this a survival of a culture stage in which all birth is believed to be supernatural. Survivals of this belief that birth is a phenomenon independent of the union of the sexes are found in the existence of numerous semi-magical devices to obtain children, still practised in many parts of Europe, and which were practised on a much more extensive scale during the medieval period; in the ignorance of man concerning physiological functions in general, the existence of Motherright which appears to have universally antedated Fatherright—the origin of which he traces to economic causes, and to the animistic nature of primitive beliefs in general.[68]

Such a conclusion is not without verification from the beliefs of existing savages. The Bahau of Central Borneo have no notion of the real duration of pregnancy, and date its commencement only from the time of its becoming visible. The Niol-Niol of Dampier Land in North-Western Australia hold birth to be independent of sexual intercourse. It is engendered by a pre-existing spirit through the agency of a medicine man. The North Queenslanders have a similar belief. They believe a child to be sent in answer to the husband's prayer as a punishment to his wife when he is vexed with her. On the Proserpine River the Blacks believe that a child is the gift of a supernatural being called Kunya. In South Queensland the Euahlayi believe that spirits congregate at certain spots and pounce on passing women, and so are born. On the Slave Coast of West Africa the Awunas say that a child derives the lower jaw from the mother; all the rest comes from the spirits. Among these people and others that might be named paternity exists in name, but it implies something entirely different to what it afterwards connotes. Mr. Hartland gives numerous instances of this curious fact, and points out that "the attention of mankind would not be early or easily fastened upon the procreative process. It is lengthy, extending over months during which the observer's attention would be inevitably diverted by a variety of objects, most of them of far more pressing import.... The sexual passion would be gratified instinctively without any thought of the consequences, and in an overwhelming proportion of cases without the consequence of pregnancy at all. When that consequence occurred it would not be visible for weeks or months after the act which produced it. A hundred other events might have taken place in the interval which would be likely to be credited with the result by one wholly ignorant of natural laws."

There seems, therefore, fair grounds for Mr. Hartland's conclusion that:—

"for generations and aeons the truth that a child is only born in consequence of an act of sexual union, that the birth of a child is the natural consequence of such an act performed in favouring circumstances, and that every child must be the result of such an act and of no other cause, was not realised by mankind, that down to the present day it is imperfectly realised by some peoples, and that there are still others among whom it is unknown."

This, however, is but one of the ways in which supernatural beliefs become associated with sexual phenomena. In truth, there is not a stage of any importance in the sexual life of men and women where the same association does not transpire. There is, for example, the important phenomenon of puberty—important from both a physiological and sociological point of view. Pubic ceremonies of some kind are found all over the world, and in all forms, from those current amongst savages up to the contemporary practice of confirmation in the Christian Church. At all stages the period of puberty is the time of initiation. With uncivilised peoples a very general rule is the separation of the sexes, with fasting. Mr. Stanley Hall in his elaborate work on Adolescence has dealt very exhaustively with these customs, with which we shall be more closely concerned when we come to deal with the subject of conversion. At present it is only necessary to point out that the governing idea is that at puberty the boy and the girl are brought into special relationship with the tribal spirits, the proof of which relationship lies in the sexual functions originated.

With boys, once puberty is attained, the sexual development is orderly and unobtrusive. In the case of girls certain recurring phenomena make the essential fact of sex much more impressive to the primitive mind, with far-reaching sociological consequences. "Ignorance of the nature of female periodicity," says A. E. Crawley, "leads man to consider it as the flow of blood from a wound, naturally, or more usually, supernaturally produced."[69] In Siam an evil spirit is believed to be the cause of the wound. Amongst the Chiriguanas the girl fasts, while women beat the floor with sticks in order to drive away "the snake that has wounded the girl." Similar beliefs are found very generally among people in a low stage of culture, and customs and beliefs still surviving among people more advanced point to the conclusion that convictions of the same kind were once fairly universal. It is this function, combined with the function of childbirth, that brings woman into close contact with the supernatural world, makes her an object of fear and wonder to primitive man, accounts for a number of the customs and beliefs associated with her, and finally helps to determine her social position. It is because her periodicity is taken as evidence of her communion with spiritual forces that special precautions have to be taken concerning her. She becomes spiritually contagious. Thus, the natives of New Britain, while engaged in making fish-traps, carefully avoid all women. They believe that if a woman were even to touch a fish-trap, it would catch nothing. Amongst the Maoris, if a man touched a menstruous woman, he would be taboo 'an inch thick.' An Australian black fellow, who discovered that his wife had lain on his blanket at her menstrual period, killed her, and died of terror himself within a fortnight. In Uganda the pots which a woman touches while the impurity of childbirth or menstruation is on her, are destroyed. With many North American Indians the use of weapons touched by women during these times would bring misfortune. A menstruating woman is with them the object they dread most. In Tahiti women are secluded. In some cases she is too dangerous to be even touched by others, and food is given her at the end of a stick. With the Pueblo Indians contact with a woman at these times exposes a man to attacks from an evil spirit, and he may pass on the infection to others.[70]

It is needless to multiply instances; the same general reason governs all, and this has been clearly expressed by Dr. Frazer:—

"The object of secluding women at menstruation is to neutralise the dangerous influence which is supposed to emanate from them at such times. The general effect of these rules is to keep the women suspended, so to say, between heaven and earth. Whether enveloped in her hammock and slung up to the roof, as in South America, or elevated above the ground in a dark and narrow cage, as in New Zealand, she may be considered to be out of the way of doing mischief, since being shut off both from the earth and from the sun, she can poison neither of these great sources of life by her deadly contagion. The precautions thus taken to isolate and insulate the girl are dictated by regard for her own safety as well as for the safety of others.... In short, the girl is viewed as charged with a powerful force which, if not kept within bounds, may prove the destruction both of the girl herself and all with whom she comes in contact. To repress this force within the limits necessary for the safety of all concerned is the object of the taboos in question."

The savage is far too logical in his methods to allow such an idea to end here. If a woman is so highly charged with spiritual infection as to be dangerous at certain frequently recurring periods, she may be more or less dangerous between these periods. As Havelock Ellis says: "Instead of being regarded as a being who at periodic intervals becomes the victim of a spell of impurity, the conception of impurity becomes amalgamated with the conception of woman; she is, as Tertullian puts it, Janua diaboli; and this is the attitude which still persisted in medieval days."[71] This is to be expected from what one knows of the workings of the primitive intelligence, but it is surprising to find Mr. Ellis continue by saying, on apparently good grounds, that "the belief in the periodically recurring impurity of women has by no means died out to-day. Among a very large section of the women of the middle and lower classes of England and other countries it is firmly believed that the touch of a menstruating woman will contaminate; only a few years since, in the course of a correspondence on this subject in the British Medical Journal (1878), even medical men were found to state from personal observation that they had no doubt whatever on this point. Thus, one doctor, who expressed surprise that any doubt could be thrown on the point, wrote, after quoting cases of spoiled hams, etc., presumed to be due to this cause, which had come under his own personal observation: 'For two thousand years the Italians have had this idea of menstruating women. We English hold to it, the Americans have it, also the Australians. Now, I should like to know the country where the evidence of any such observation is unknown.'" Evidently animism is a more persistent frame of mind than most people are inclined to believe.

It is certain, however, that this conception of woman's nature is dominant in the lower stages of culture. She is spiritually dangerous, and the principle of 'taboo' is made to cover a great many of her relations to man. In Tahiti a woman was not allowed to touch the weapons or fishing implements of men. Amongst the Todas women are not permitted to touch the cattle. If a wife touches the food of her husband, among the Hindus, the food is unfit to be eaten. An Eskimo wife dare not eat with her husband. In New Zealand wives were not allowed to eat with the males lest their taboo should kill them. Many tribes are careful to refrain from contact with women before going to fight. They believe that this would rob them and their weapons of strength. Other practices followed by savages before going to war forbid one assuming that this abstention is due to any rational fear of dissipating their energies. Instead of conserving their strength they weaken themselves by the many privations they undergo before fighting, in order to ensure victory. Professor Frazer well says:—