[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.