VIII.
Revivals.
Of the three factors that go to make up man—body, intellect, and the spiritual faculty, the last has been allowed somewhat to fall into neglect in the present age, when special stress has been laid on the education and development of the intellect. Nevertheless it is a factor that must not be ignored, and it is one that is likely to revenge itself for neglect by abnormal action.
In the Middle Ages it was the reverse; under the preponderating influence of the Church, the spiritual faculty was cultivated to extreme of mysticism, and the intellect on one side, and the body on the other, hardly received sufficient recognition. When an ascetic would neither think out a problem nor keep himself clean, he exhibited a monstrosity, not as repulsive, but as certainly a monstrosity, as one of the gladiators depicted on the pavement of the Baths of Caracalla—this latter, a man cultivated to the highest point of animal strength and physical activity. It is probable that a purely intellectual man without idealism, without religiosity, is as much a monster as either of the other, though not in the nineteenth century as repugnant to us as they are.
A religion that is good for anything must not only be one that is intelligible and reasonable, but must satisfy the spiritual cravings, and also exercise moral control over the animal nature. At the same time, it is liable to undue stress in each direction; it may become a mere theological speculation, mere mysticism, or resolve itself into exterior formalism. Whenever it manifests a preponderating tendency in one or other of these directions—the element in man that is not given its adequate scope will revolt, and fling itself into an opposite scale.
The function of the reason in religion is to act as the balance wheel of the spirit. Reason is not the mainspring, not the motive power of religion; it is its controlling, moderating faculty.
Throughout the history of mankind we are coming continually upon phenomena of a spiritual nature, outbursts of the spiritual faculty in strange and often in very repulsive manifestations, and it may not be amiss to look at some of these and to learn what is their real nature.
Among the primitive races which at this day represent the earliest phases of psychological development, the savage man has a vague apprehension of the existence of a spiritual world, haunted by the souls of the dead which have not been absorbed into the universal spirit from which they emanated. He has no definite belief, he has only an apprehension. In the spiritual world, the existence of which he suspects, there is no system; concerning it he has no doctrine. Its existence implies no responsibilities.
Even the idea of an all-pervading spirit is inchoate. All that man is confident about is that he is surrounded by and subject to the influences of spirits, now beneficent, then malevolent, always capricious, that have to be humoured and propitiated, and that allow themselves to be consulted.