RELIGIOUS MONOMANIA.
I had no sooner been removed to my own house, than my old acquaintances
and friends came to see me. Mr. Cotton, the stern but well-meaning old
Puritan, who had infinitely more mind and heart than Young America, that
has learned to laugh at him, had indeed died during my absence abroad.
Mr. Winslow and the others whom I have already introduced, remained.
Poor Jack had recovered, not his former gayety, but his health and
tranquillity, and was entirely freed from the vision which had haunted
him, and which I have no reason to believe was any thing more than a
simple hallucination, occasioned by a powerful shock to his nerves,
producing a diseased state of the imagination. He had returned to
Boston, given up mesmerism, confined himself to the law, and had
prospered in his profession. When he heard of the accident which had
befallen me, he came immediately to see me, and to render me such
assistance as his warm heart prompted. He is still my chief nurse, and
declares that he will not leave me as long as my life lasts. I have
remembered him in my will, and bequeathed him the bulk of my estate,
though he knows it not,—a poor compensation for the blight I brought
upon his early hopes.
Mr. Merton, returning to the city about the time of my being wounded,
lost no time, after my removal to my own house, in renewing our former
acquaintance. Mr. Winslow, and Mr. Sowerby, and Leila and her admirer,
who had become husband and wife, and a sober and sensible couple, were
frequently in the sick man’s room. Nobody deserted me; and never in my
life have I had occasion to complain of ingratitude, or the loss of a
friend. The world is bad enough, but after all not so bad as sometimes
represented. I have always been treated infinitely better than my
deserts; and I have found good sense, warm hearts, and noble virtues,
where least I expected them. I have reproaches only for myself. I have
done a world of wrong, and no good; and yet I have found myself, from my
childhood, surrounded by generous and disinterested affection. People,
speaking generally, are far better individually than they are
collectively; and many private virtues may be found, even in bands of
revolutionists, robbers, and assassins,—virtues which do not rise above
the natural order indeed, and have no promise of reward in heaven, but
which nevertheless are virtues. My observation has taught me to distrust
the censorious, those who rail in good set terms at all mankind or
womankind, although no man living was ever further than I am from
believing in the sinlessness of the race, or from joining in the modern
worship of woman, prompted too often by an innate pruriency unconscious
of itself.
As I became able to bear conversation, and to take part in it
occasionally, mesmerism and the Spirit-Manifestations were a frequent
topic of discourse. Jack sturdily maintained that it was all humbug.
There were indeed strange things, some phenomena which he could not
explain, but he set his face against the whole movement, had no belief
in it, and would have nothing to do with it. There was, though he might
be unable to detect it, some cheat or trickery at the bottom.
Mr. Winslow held fast to his belief in the connection between mesmerism
and all the marvellous, prodigious, or miraculous facts recorded in
history. He accepted those facts substantially as related, but did not
accept their usual explanation. The miracles of sacred history, and the
marvellous facts of profane history, were to be explained on natural
principles, by the mesmeric agent, or by whatever other name we might
call it.
Mr. Merton argued that, if the phenomena usually called Satanic,
obsession, possession, witchcraft, black magic, ghosts or apparitions,
clairvoyance and second sight, could be explained without resort to the
supernatural, the other class of facts, the miracles of sacred history,
could be also explained without the supposition of the special
intervention of Divine power. He thought, if we could account for the
former without Satan, we could for the latter without the supernatural
intervention of God.
Mr. Sowerby held with Mr. Winslow as to the reality of the phenomena,
and their natural explanation, but thought they should be divided into
two classes, one good and the other bad, as produced for a good or a bad
purpose. When produced in a good cause, for a good end, they might be
called Divine; when in a bad cause, for a bad purpose, they might be
called Satanic or diabolical. The agent is in both cases the same, and
the difference is in the mind or will that employs it.
Dr. Corning, my physician, who was a distinguished manigraph, and had
written a work, highly esteemed by the profession, on Insanity, was
quite ready to concede the phenomena called spiritual, or rather
demoniacal, and thought we were bound to do so, or to give up all human
testimony. He also conceded the connection contended for by mesmerists
between mesmerism and so-called demonic phenomena,—a connection, in his
judgment, very evident, and wholly undeniable; but he contended, with
the most eminent manigraphs of France, and indeed with the members of
the profession generally, that the marvellous phenomena recorded were
those of mania, monomania, theosophania, nymphomania, demonopathy, and
all to be explained pathologically. He included them all under the
general head of insanity, and regarded their variety only as so many
different sorts of madness. He had himself witnessed the greater part of
them in his practice, and treated them as symptoms of mania.
“That,” said Mr. Merton, “would be very satisfactory, if the limits of
madness or insanity were well defined, and if physicians could never
mistake, and treat as insane one who is only possessed or obsessed by
the devil. To include the marvellous facts of history under the head of
insanity, without having first established their pathological character,
and settled it that there is no generic or specific difference between
them and acknowledged pathological symptoms, is not to explain them. How
do you prove that a person, otherwise in perfect health, with no
disturbance of the pulse, of the digestive, or any other organs to be
detected, who on all subjects speaks rationally, but who tells you that
a spirit has possession of him, speaks through his organs, throws him
down, and otherwise maltreats him, is insane? I do not say that such a
man is not insane, but how do you prove him insane?
“Why, he exhibits the symptoms of insanity, for none but an insane man
would utter such nonsense.”
“Perhaps so, and perhaps not so. He exhibits symptoms of what you are
pleased to _call_ insanity; but how do you know that you have not called
insanity what you ought to call by another name, possession, for
instance?”
“I do not believe in possession.”
“Precisely, and therefore when you meet what is called possession or
obsession, you call it insanity. That is a convenient way of reasoning,
and not uncommon with learned physicians and physicists; but it is a
begging of the question, not its solution. You reason from a foregone
conclusion. As you yourself and all the profession treat insanity as a
disease, as symptomatic of some lesion or alteration of the physical
system, or of the organs on which the manifestations of the mind depend,
I should suppose it necessary to establish the fact of such lesion or
alteration, before concluding the presence of actual insanity.”
“Insanity, in such case, would be found to be very rare.”
“Very possibly, and perhaps it is much rarer than is commonly supposed.
It is not impossible that a large proportion of those you call insane,
and treat as lunatics, are as sound of body or mind as you or I. Where
we find, physically considered, all the symptoms of health, we cannot,
from purely mental phenomena, infer disease. That the vulgar have often
regarded as under the influence of Satan persons who were merely
epileptic, cataleptic, or insane, is no doubt very true; but it is not
impossible that the learned and scientific have committed not
unfrequently a contrary mistake, and regarded as insane, cataleptics, or
epileptics, persons who were totally free from all pathological
symptoms. How will you, dear Doctor, explain by insanity a case taken
from a thousand similar ones, which I chanced to be reading this
morning, and which is well attested. Allow me to relate it as given by
Dr. Calmeil, one of your own profession, a learned and highly esteemed
manigraph, author of a work, _De la Folie_,[4] and who entertains the
same views that you do. Missionaries who now, says M. Calmeil,[5] cross
the seas to shed the light of faith in the New World, are frequently
surprised to meet energumenes among their neophytes, whilst they
acknowledge that it is seldom that the devil takes possession of the
faithful in the mother country. The letter which I am about to report,
addressed to Winslow, a celebrated physician, in 1738, by a _worthy_
missionary, proves that the delirium of demonopathy may everywhere
become the lot of feeble and timorous souls.
-----
Footnote 4:
Paris, Chez Balliere, 1845. 2 vol. gr. in-8vo.
Footnote 5:
T. 2, p. 417.
-----
“I cannot refuse, at your earnest request,” writes the missionary
Lecour, to write you a detailed account of what took place in the case
of the Cochin-chinese who was possessed, and of whom I had the honor to
speak to you. In May or June, 1733, being in the province of Cham, in
the kingdom of Cochin China, in the church of a burgh called Cheta,
about half a league distant from the capital of the province, there was
brought to me a young man from eighteen to nineteen years of age, and
who was a Christian. His parents told me that he was possessed by a
demon. A little incredulous, I might say to my confusion, quite too much
so, in consequence of my little experience at that time in such things,
of which I had never seen an example, although I had often heard other
Christians speak of them, I examined them to ascertain if there were not
simplicity or malice in their statement. The substance of what was
gathered from them was, that the young man had made an unworthy
communion, and after that had disappeared from the village, had retired
to the mountains, and called himself only the traitor Judas.”
“On this statement, and after some difficulties,” resumes the
missionary, “I went to the hospital where the young man was detained,
fully resolved to believe nothing, unless I saw marks of something
superhuman. I began by questioning him in Latin, a language of which I
knew he had not the least tincture. Extended as he was on the ground,
frothing at his mouth, and violently shaken, he rose immediately on his
seat, and answered me very distinctly, _Ego nescio loqui latine_. I was
so astonished and frightened that I withdrew, with no courage to
question him any further....
“However, some days after, I recommenced with some probationary
commands, taking care to speak always in Latin, of which the young man
was ignorant. Among other commands, I ordered the demon to throw him
forthwith upon the floor. I was instantly obeyed, but he was thrown down
with so much violence, all his limbs being stretched out and rigid as a
crowbar, that the noise was rather that of a falling beam than of a man.
Wearied and exhausted, I thought I would follow the example of the
Bishop of Tilopolis on a similar occasion. In the exorcism, I commanded
the demon, in Latin, to bear him to the ceiling of the church, feet up
and head down. Forthwith his body became stiff, he was drawn into the
church to a column, his feet joined together, his back set against the
column, and, without the aid of his hands, he was run up to the ceiling
in a twinkling, as if drawn up by a pulley, without any act or motion of
his own, suspended with his feet glued to the ceiling, and his head
hanging downwards. I made the demon confess, as I intended to confound
and humble him, and to compel him to quit his hold, the falsity of the
pagan religion. I made him confess that he was a deceiver, and at the
same time compelled him to acknowledge the sanctity of our religion. I
held him suspended in the air, his feet adhering to the ceiling and his
head down, for more than half an hour, but not having sufficient
constancy, so much was I frightened at what I saw, to continue him there
for a longer time, I ordered the demon to place him at my feet without
harming him. He forthwith cast him down, as a bundle of dirty linen, but
without his receiving the least injury. From that day the young man,
though not entirely delivered, was much relieved, and his vexations
daily diminished, especially when I was in the house, and after about
five months he was wholly released, and is now perhaps the best
Christian in Cochin China.”
“Pass over the effect of the exorcism, if you please,” resumed Mr.
Merton, “and tell me what you think, Doctor, of the facts in this case,
which Dr. Calmeil concedes, and which, if he did not, it would not
amount to any thing, for this is only one case out of a thousand.”
“I will say,” replied the Doctor, “with M. Calmeil, that I am very much
obliged to the good missionary for not withholding his account, for he
has described, without knowing it, the phenomena of religious
monomania.”
“It strikes me,” replied Mr. Merton, “that Dr. Corning has not well
examined the case. That some of the phenomena may be regarded as
symptoms of insanity, I do not question, but if I understand insanity,
it is a derangement, an access of what properly belongs to one in his
normal state, but not the accession of something preternatural. It may,
in some respects, sharpen the senses, revive the memory, and render the
faculties, or at least some of them, morbidly active; but I have never
understood that it could enable a man to understand and speak a language
which he had never learned, and of which, in the full possession of all
his faculties, he knew not a word. I can easily understand that in
delirium a man may fancy that he is possessed, and act on the conviction
that he is, but I do not understand how delirium alone can enable a man,
however agile, to climb to the ceiling of a church, his back against a
column, with his feet fastened together, and without using his hands or
arms, and to remain by the simple application of his feet to the ceiling
for one half an hour with his head down, carrying on all the time a
close controversy in this very inconvenient position, and finally
dropping upon the pavement without the least injury. Such a delirium
would, to say the least, be very extraordinary, and I suspect the Doctor
has never found a similar delirium amongst any of his numerous patients
who were unquestionably insane. I will venture to say that however
striking the delirium, the thing is absolutely impossible without
superhuman aid.”
“Part of it is hallucination,” replied the Doctor.
“Whose hallucination? The young man’s, or the missionary’s?” asked Mr.
Merton. “Not the missionary’s, for there is no pretence that he was
insane; and not the young man’s, because the question turns not on what
he saw, or fancied, or imagined, but on what another person, the
missionary, saw.”
“Probably the facts are much exaggerated,” replied Dr. Corning. “The
missionary confesses that he was greatly frightened, and being so, he
may, without impeachment of his honesty, have failed to be strictly
accurate as to the details.”
“Then you question the relation. That alters the case. Let us take,
then, the case, also well attested, of the nuns of Uvertet, which, about
1550, caused for a long time so much astonishment in Brandenburg,
Holland, Italy, and especially in Germany. The nuns were at first
awakened and startled by plaintive moanings.... Sometimes they were
dragged from their beds, and along the floor, as if drawn by their
legs.... Their arms and lower extremities were twisted in every
direction.... Sometimes they bounded in the air and fell with violence
upon the ground.... In moments in which they appeared to enjoy a perfect
calm, they would suddenly fall backwards and be deprived of speech....
Some of them, on the contrary, would amuse themselves in climbing to the
tops of trees, when they would descend, their feet in the air and their
heads down. These attacks began to lose their violence after a duration
of three years. A very singular madness this, which, as the
_Dictionnaire des Sciences Médicales_ says, ‘extended over _all_ the
convents of women in Germany, particularly in Saxony and Brandenburg,
and gained even Holland,’ and it might have added, also, Italy. ‘All the
miracles,’ it continues, ‘of the Convulsionaires, or of Animal
Magnetism, were familiar to these nonnains, who were regarded as
possessed. They all foretold future events, leaped and capered, ran up
the sides of walls, spoke foreign languages, &c.’ You may read the
fourteen well authenticated cases recorded by Cotton Mather in his
Magnalia, and you will find that all these, and similar phenomena, were
exhibited by the bewitched or possessed in Massachusetts near the close
of the seventeenth century, and known under the name of ‘Salem
witchcraft,’ though only a portion of them occurred in that famous town.
Do you include all these under the head of insanity?”
“Cotton Mather was a pedant, vain, arrogant, and ambitious of power, and
I did not expect to hear him cited as an authority,” replied the Doctor,
in evident vexation.
“Cotton Mather,” Mr. Merton replied, “was one of the most learned and
distinguished men in New England in his time, and, though I am of
another parish, I respect his memory. I do not cite his opinions; I
merely cite him as the recorder of facts which either he himself had
witnessed with his own eyes, or which had been confessed or proved
before the courts of the colony, and thus far at least his authority is
sufficient. But I will ask you to explain on your hypothesis the
phenomena exhibited by the Ursuline Nuns of Loudun, France, in the
seventeenth century, and the authenticity of which both Bertrand and
Calmeil, as well as others, admit were triumphantly vindicated.”
“I know the case to which you refer,” answered Dr. Corning. “It is the
case of a certain number of nuns who took it into their heads that they
were bewitched by one Urban Grandier, whom they had refused to accept as
their director,—a man of a scandalous life, a great criminal, who
deserved to be executed as he was, if not for sorcery, at least for his
crimes. I see nothing in this case but the usual symptoms of
demonopathy, or religious monomania.”
“The physicians of the time thought differently, and there were then and
there physicians of great eminence who were consulted, and required to
make to the authorities twenty-five or thirty elaborate reports on the
case. But let us recall some of the facts.
“Shortly after, Grandier, a bad priest, was refused by these ladies as
their director; he passed by the convent, and threw a bouquet of flowers
over the wall, which was taken up and smelt of by several of the nuns.
From that moment the disorder commenced. Up to that moment all these
ladies were in the enjoyment of the most perfect health, and strictly
correct in their deportment. They were all connected with families of
distinction and of high birth, and had been carefully brought up, and
yielded to none in their education, their intelligence, their piety,
their virtues, and their accomplishments.
“After some weeks of silence, in which they had sought relief from their
vexations by religious exercises, prayers, fasts, and macerations,
without avail, recourse was had to exorcism. The phenomena then assumed
gigantic proportions. One religious, lying stretched out on her belly,
and her arms twisted over her back, defied the priest who pursued her
with the Holy Sacrament; another doubled over backwards, contrived to
walk with the nape of her neck resting on her heels; another still,
shook her head in the most singular and violent manner. The exorcist
says he had _frequently_ seen them bent over backwards, with the nape of
their neck resting on their heels, walk with surprising swiftness. He
saw one of them, rising from that posture, strike rapidly her shoulders
and breast with her head. They cried out as the howlings of the damned,
as enraged wolves, as terrible beasts, with a force that exceeds the
power of imagination. Their tongues hung out black, swollen, dry, and
hard, and became soft and natural the moment they were drawn back into
the mouth.
“During the intervals of repose, the afflicted ladies sought to return
to their religious exercises, to resume their industry and the
deportment proper to their rank and their state. But on the arrival of
the exorcist nothing was any longer heard but blasphemies and
imprecations. Then the nuns would rise, pass their feet over their
heads, throw their legs apart, with entire forgetfulness of modesty.
Then came what Dr. Calmeil calls hallucinations, which made them
attribute their state to the presence and obsession of evil spirits. The
Abbess, Madame Belfiel, while replying to the questions of the exorcist,
heard a living being speaking in her own body, as it were a foreign
voice emanating from her pharynx. They all heard a voice distinctly
articulated, proceeding from within them, stating that evil angels had
taken possession of their person, and indicating the names, the number,
and the residences of the demons.
“In the month of August, 1635, Gaston, Duke of Orleans, brother of Louis
the Thirteenth, wishing to judge for himself of the state of the
Ursulines, went to Loudun, and was present at several sessions of the
exorcists. The Superioress at first worshipped the Holy Sacrament,
giving all the signs of a violent despair. The Abbé Surin, the exorcist,
repeated the command he had given her, and forthwith her body was thrown
into convulsions, running out a tongue horribly deformed, black, and
granulated as morocco, and without being pressed at all by the teeth.
Among other postures they remarked an extension of the legs, so great
that there were seven feet from one foot to the other. The Superioress
remained in this position a very long time, with strange trembling,
touching the ground only with her belly. Having risen from this
position, the demon was commanded again to approach the Holy Sacrament,
when she became more furious than ever, biting her arms, &c. Then, after
a little time, the agitation ceased, and she returned to herself, with
her pulse as tranquil as if nothing extraordinary had happened.
“The Abbé Surin himself, while he was speaking to the Duke, and about to
make the exorcism, was attacked and twice thrown upon his back, and when
he had risen and proceeded anew to the combat, Père Tranquille demanded
of the supposed demon wherefore he had dared attack Père Surin. He
answered with the organs of the latter, and as if addressing him: ‘I
have done so to avenge myself on you.’ Was the Abbé Surin insane? or did
he simulate delirium?
“The Superioress, at the end of the exorcism, executed an order which
the Duke had just communicated secretly to the exorcist. In a hundred
instances it appeared that the energumenes read the thoughts of the
priest charged with the exorcism. They answered in whatever language
they were addressed, in Greek, Latin, Spanish, Italian, and Turkish.
They even answered M. de Launay de Razelly in the dialects of several
tribes of American savages, very pertinently, and revealed to him things
that had passed in America. Urban Grandier, when commanded by his bishop
to take the stole and exorcise the Mother Superior, who he said knew
Latin, refused, although challenged to do it, to question her in Greek,
and remained quite confused. Also, the Mother Superior remained for some
considerable time suspended in the air, at an elevation of about two
feet above the ground. In about three months of exorcism the trouble
ceased, and the Ursulines were restored, and resumed in peace their
pious exercises and their usual labors.”
“I see no reason to change my opinion,” remarked the Doctor, at the
conclusion of this recital. “It was a case of monomania, if the facts
were as stated.”
“The facts,” replied Mr. Merton, “are unquestionable. They have all the
authenticity that facts can have, and there is not the least ground for
suspecting the good faith of the parties. They were all in perfect
health, with no symptoms of any disease about them. Now, as insanity, of
whatever variety, cannot render a man more than human, I demand, if
these facts can all be brought within the humanly possible? Does
insanity enable one to assume such difficult postures as are described?
Does it enable one to bend over backwards and walk rapidly with the nape
of the neck resting on his heels; to have the extraordinary extension of
legs mentioned; to read the thoughts of others not expressed; to tell
what is passing fifteen hundred leagues off; to understand and speak
languages never learned or before heard; and to remain for some time
suspended unsupported in the air? And, above all, is insanity or madness
cured by exorcisms? No, no, Doctor. The facts in the case, that is, if
you take not one or two, but _all_ of them, are certainly inexplicable
without the presence of a superhuman power.”
The Doctor was not at all pleased with this conclusion, which he would
by no means admit. He said the conversation, if continued, might injure
his patient, and giving me a few directions, took his hat and cane and
departed, apparently in a very unpleasant humor, and muttering something
about superstition, Salem witchcraft, and the absurdity of educated men
in the nineteenth century believing in such nonsense.