of the many, has instantaneously convinced multitudes of the most erroneous inferences. We need not refer, moreover, to the numerous religious and other mental epidemics which have swept over the face of the world, infecting society with the wildest delusions. From Montanism to camp meetings and revivals in our own day, it has been demonstrated that religious excitement and dominant ideas have spread with astonishing rapidity and power amongst the circles in which they have arisen. In certain states of nervous expectation, false impressions are instantaneously transmitted from one to another in a religious assembly. Dr. Carpenter says: "Moreover, if not only a single individual, but several persons should be 'possessed' by one and the same idea or feeling, the same misinterpretation may be made by all of them; and in such a case the concurrence of their testimony does not add the least strength to it.—Of this we have a good example in the following occurrence cited by Dr. Tuke, as showing the influence of a 'dominant idea' in falsifying the perceptions of a number of persons at once:—'During the conflagration at the Crystal Palace in the winter of 1866-67, when the animals were destroyed by the fire, it was supposed that the Chimpanzee had succeeded in escaping from his cage. Attracted to the roof, with this expectation in full force, men saw the unhappy animal holding on to it, and writhing in agony to get astride one of the iron ribs. It need not be said that its struggles were watched by those below with breathless suspense, and as the newspapers informed us 'with sickening dread.' But there was no animal whatever there; and all this feeling was thrown away upon a tattered piece of blind, so torn as to resemble to the eye of fancy, the body, arms, and legs of an ape!' (Op. cit., p. 44.) Another
example of a like influence affecting several individuals simultaneously in a similar manner is mentioned by Dr. Hibbert in his well-known Treatise on Apparitions:—'A whole ship's company was thrown into the utmost consternation by the apparition of a cook who had died a few days before. He was distinctly seen walking a-head of the ship, with a peculiar gait by which he was distinguished when alive, through having one of his legs shorter than the other. On steering the ship towards the object, it was found to be a piece of floating wreck.' Many similar cases might be referred to, in which the imagination has worked up into 'apparitions' some common-place objects, which it has invested with attributes derived from the previous Mental state of the observer; and the belief in such an apparition as a reality, which usually exists in such cases, unless antagonized by an effort of the reason, constitutes a delusion."(1)
We must maintain indeed that a number of persons assembled under the influence of strong similar ideas, and excited by the same active religious emotion are more likely to be affected by similar subjective impressions to the extent of believing them to be objective than one or two would be. The excitement of each acts upon the whole body, and is itself increased by reaction from the aggregate emotion. Each receives impressions from the other, which are vividly felt even without being verified by personal experience. The most nervous temperament in the assembly gives the final impetus to the excited imagination of the rest. In moments of supreme expectation and doubt, enthusiasm overcomes reason. If one man see, if one man hear, the mental impression is credited with an objective cause, even when unfelt by others, and then a
similar impression is soon carried from the brain to the sensorium of all. This does not involve the supposition of a diseased mind in ordinary cases, and in the instances which we have in view the false perceptions were, obviously, determined and encouraged by foregone conclusions of a nature rarely possible and, when existing, rarely resisted. "There are many persons," adds Dr. Carpenter, "quite sane upon ordinary matters, and even (it may be) distinguished by some special form of ability, who are yet affected with what the writer once heard Mr. Carlyle term a 'diluted insanity;' allowing their minds to become so completely 'possessed' by 'dominant ideas,' that their testimony as to what they declare themselves to have witnessed—even when several individuals concur in giving exactly the same account of it—must be regarded as utterly untrustworthy."(1)
That subjective impressions can, in the opinion of eminent apologists, be recorded by an Evangelist as objective reality, we have already pointed out in connection with the statement of the first Synoptist, that "Many bodies of the saints were raised; and they came out of the sepulchres after his resurrection and appeared unto many." (xxvii. 52 f.) Dean Milman and Canon Farrar explain this by the supposition that the earthquake "seemed to have filled the air with ghostly visitants, who after Christ had risen appeared to linger in the Holy City."(2) It follows as a logical consequence that, as this subjective impression felt by many at once is described in the Gospel as objective, these writers not only admit the possibility of such a mistake on the part
of the observers, but that the Gospel, in adopting that mistake, may be suspected of a similar course in recording the appearances of Jesus.