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.
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[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.