Religion & Sex: Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development

by Chapman Cohen

In the present enquiry we are not concerned with a disproval of the religious idea, but with an examination of the conditions of its expression; less with the varieties of religious experience than with the nature of its manifestations. How far may religious experience be explained as a misinterpretation of normal non-religious life? To what extent have pathological

nervous states influenced the building up of the religious consciousness? There can be no question that the last-named factor is an important one. This is admitted by Professor James in the following passage:—

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

The fact is unquestionable, but the question remains, In what sense were these people exalted? Did their exalted sensibility really bring them into touch with a form of existence hidden from persons of a coarser fibre? Or did it belong to a class of cases which in a more violent form comes within the province of the physician? The subjects, says Professor James, "actually feel themselves played upon by powers beyond their will. The evidence is dynamic; the god or spirit moves the very organs of their body.... We have distinct professions of being under the direction of a foreign power, and serving as its mouthpiece."

Of course we have, but for diagnostic purposes such professions are quite valueless. What these people are conscious of, and all they are conscious of, is a series of feelings of a more or less unusual kind. Equally convinced was the medieval demoniac that a spirit moved the very organs of his body. Equally convinced is the modern spiritualist medium that his body is controlled by a disembodied spirit. It is not a question of the actuality of certain states, but of their origin. The intense conviction of the subject of the seizure is, as evidence, quite irrelevant. The subjective state is always real, whether it belongs to a saint in ecstasy or a drunkard in delirium tremens. There are no states of mind more "real" while they last than those due to opium or hashish. But it is never suggested that this is evidence of their veracity. In such cases the testimony of a skilled outsider is of far greater value than the conviction of the visionary. We are bound to appeal to Paul, and Loyola, and Fox, and Wesley to know what their feelings were, because here they are the supreme authorities. But we must consult others to discover why they experienced these feelings. An illusion is no more than a false interpretation of a real subjective experience; although many are inclined to treat the rejection of the interpretation as equivalent to a charge of imposture or deliberate lying.

It is also a matter of demonstration that these religious experiences are strictly determined by environmental conditions. Thousands of Christians have been favoured with visions of Jesus or of the Christian heaven in their dying moments. Millions of Jews and Mohammedans have lived and died without any such

experience—the very persons to whom, from an evidential point of view—such visions would be most useful. The spiritual experience is determined by the pre-existing religious belief. When belief in a personal devil was general, visions of Satan were common. The evidence for personal conflicts with Satan is of precisely the same nature and strength as is the evidence for intercourse with deity. When the belief in Satan died out, visions and conflicts with him ceased. How can we discriminate between the two classes of cases? Why should the testimony of a great Christian character that he is conscious of intercourse with deity be more authoritative than the testimony of, perhaps, the same person on other occasions, of conflict with a personal devil? Moreover, visions and a sense of contact with a super-normal world are not peculiar to the religious character. It is a common feature of a general psychopathic condition. Medical works are filled with such instances. And it is only to be expected that when the psychopath is of a deeply religious nature the affection will find a religious expression. What is clearly needed is an explanation that will cover the phenomenon as it appears in both a religious and a non-religious form.

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

"I saw, in the full use of my senses, and (after I had got the better of the fright which at first seized me,

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