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