The Hebrews named this impulse Nabi נבוא, (plural Nebiim,) “to approach or enter,” on the surmise that the spirit pervaded the prophets, who were called Roeh הרואה, or Seeing, hence Seers.
Plato divided enthusiasm into four classes. I. The Poetical, inspired by the Muses. II. The Mystic, under the influence of Bacchus. III. The Prophetic, a gift of Apollo; and IV. The Enthusiasm of love, a blessing from Venus Urania. This immortal philosopher was not the visionary speculatist which some writers have represented him; his logic did not consist of frivolous investigations, but embraced the more useful subject of correct definition and division, as he sought to reconcile practical doctrines of morality with the mysticism of theology by the study of Divine attributes. Whatever some of the Eclectic philosophers might have asserted, Plato considered that our ideas were derived from external objects, and never contemplated the extravagant doctrine of imbodying metaphysical abstractions, or personifying intellectual ideas.
To this day, the attentive observer will find Plato’s classification of enthusiasm to be correct. The ecstatic exaltation of religion and of love are not dissimilar; only the latter can be cured, the former seldom or never admits of mitigation: the fantastic visions of the lover may be dispelled by infidelity in the object of his misplaced affection; the phantasies of fanaticism can only yield to an improbable state of infidelity. Shaftesbury has justly observed, “There is a melancholy which accompanies all enthusiasm, be it of love or religion; nothing can put a stop to the growing mischief of either, till the melancholy be removed, and the mind be at liberty to hear what can be said against the ridiculousness of an extreme in either way.”
Our poet Rowe has beautifully pointed out the facility with which a noble and martial soul can free itself from love’s ignoble trammels.
Rouse to the combat,
And thou art sure to conquer; war shall restore thee:
The sound of arms shall wake thy martial ardour,
And cure this amorous sickness of thy soul,
Begot by sloth, and nurs’d by too much ease.
The idle God of Love supinely dreams
Amidst inglorious shades and purling streams;
In rosy fetters and fantastic chains
He binds deluded maids and simple swains;
With soft enjoyment woos them to forget
The hardy toils and labours of the great:
But if the warlike trumpet’s loud alarms
To virtuous acts excite, and manly arms,
The coward Boy avows his abject fear,
On silken wings sublime he cuts the air,
Scar’d at the noble horse and thunder of the war.
The only trumpet that can arouse the religious enthusiast from his ascetic meditations is the war-whoop that calls him to destroy all those who impugn his doctrines in a battle-field, where each champion seeks pre-eminence in cruelty, and rancorous persecution.
When we contemplate the miseries that have arisen from fanaticism, or fervid enthusiasm, although it is but a sad consolation, yet it affords some gratification in our charitable view of mankind, to think, nay to know, that this fearful state of mind is a disease, a variety of madness, which may in many instances be referred to a primary physical predisposition, and a natural idiosyncrasy. It is as much a malady as melancholy and hypochondriacism. In peculiar constitutions it grows imperceptibly. Lord Shaftesbury has made the following true observation: “Men are wonderfully happy in a faculty of deceiving themselves whenever they set heartily about it. A very small foundation of any passion will serve us not only to act it well, but even to work ourselves in it beyond our own reach; a man of tolerable goodnature, who happens to be a little piqued, may, by improving his resentment, become a very fury for revenge.”
Thus it is with enthusiasm, a malady which in its dreadful progress has been known to become contagious, one might even say epidemic. Vain terrors have seized whole populations in cities and in provinces; when every accident that happened to a neighbour was deemed a just punishment of his sins, and every calamity that befel the fanatic was considered the hostile act of others. Jealousy and dark revenge were the natural results of such a state of mind, when the furious fire of bigotry was fanned by ambition until monomania became dæmonomania of the most hideous nature, and every maniac bore in his pale and emaciated visage the characteristic of that temperament which predisposes to the disease. Seldom do we observe it in the sanguineous temperament, remarkable for mental tranquillity, yet determined courage when roused to action. The choleric and bilious, impetuous, violent, ambitious, ever ready to carry their point by great virtues or great crimes, may no doubt rush into a destructive career; but then they lead to the onset the atrabilious, men saturated with black bile, and constituting the melancholy temperament. Here we behold the countenance sallow and sad; the visage pale and emaciated, of an unearthly hue; gloom, suspicion, hate, depicted in every lineament; the mirror of a soul unfitted for any kind sentiment of affection, pity, or forgiveness. Detesting mankind, and detested, they seek solitude, to brood upon their wretchedness, or to derive from it the means to make others as miserable as themselves. Such do we usually find the enthusiastic monomaniac. His ideas are concentrated into a burning focus, which consumes him like an ardent mirror. His life of relation is nearly extinguished. His external senses are rendered so obtuse and callous that he becomes insensible to hunger and thirst, to heat and cold however intense; and bodily injuries, which would occasion excruciating agonies in others, he bears without any apparent feeling. On this subject of religious enthusiasm the remarks of Evagrius are worthy of notice. “Contrarieties,” he says, “are in themselves so tempered, and the grace of God maketh in them such an union of discordant things, that life and death, which are in essence so opposite to each other, seem to join hands and dwell together in them. Happy are they while they live, and happier still when they depart.” It has been known amongst these rigid ascetics that when a stranger visited them, they mortified themselves by entertaining him and partaking of the good cheer. Thus inventing a novel kind of fasting—eating and drinking against their will.
It is related of St. Macarius, that one day having killed a gnat that had stung him, he was struck with such compunction at the sight of blood, that by way of atonement, he threw off his clothes, and remained in a state of nudity for six months in a marsh exposed to the bites of every noxious insect. Sozomen in praising this mortification, assures us that this exposure to the inclemency of the weather, did so harden and tan him that his beard could not make its way through the skin.
It has been erroneously supposed that such individuals, being hostile to mankind, are prone to do evil,—this is not generally the case; they seem satisfied with their own sufferings, and only seek to inflict them upon others when roused from their concentration by fanaticism.