"The religious beliefs of the lower races are in no small measure based
on the evidence of visions and dreams, regarded as actual intercourse
with spiritual being. From the earliest stages of culture we find
religion in close alliance with ecstatic physical conditions. These are
brought on by various means of interference with the healthy action of
body and mind, and it is scarcely needful to remind the reader that,
according to philosophic theories antecedent to those of modern
medicine, such morbid disturbances are explained as symptoms of divine
visitation, or at least of superhuman spirituality. Among the strongest
means of disturbing the functions of the mind so as to produce ecstatic
vision, is fasting, accompanied, as it usually is, with other
privations, and with prolonged solitary contemplation in the desert or
in the forest. Among the ordinary vicissitudes of savage life, the wild
hunter has many a time to try involuntarily the effects of such a life
for days together, and under these circumstances he soon comes to see
and talk with phantoms which are to him invisible spirits. The secret of
spiritual intercourse thus learnt, he has thence-forth but to reproduce
the cause in order to renew the effects."[22]
As a means, then, of strengthening and perpetuating a consciousness of
intercourse with the spiritual world, we have to reckon with, not merely
the accidental occurrence of abnormal nervous conditions, but with their
deliberate cultivation. The practice is world-wide, and persists in some
form or other in all ages. Thus we find the Australians and many tribes
of North American Indians use tobacco for this purpose. In Western
Siberia a species of fungi, the 'fly Agaric,' so called because it is
often steeped and the solution used to destroy house flies, is used to
produce religious ecstasy. Its action on the muscular system is
stimulatory, and it greatly excites the nervous system.[23] An early
Spanish observer says of the ancient Mexicans that they used a kind of
mushroom, "which are eaten raw, and on account of being bitter, they
drink after them, or eat with them a little honey of bees, and shortly
after they see a thousand visions."[24] The mushroom was called the
"bread of the gods." The Californian Indians give children tobacco, in
order to receive instruction from the resulting visions. North American
Indians held intoxication by tobacco to be supernatural ecstasy, and the
dreams of men in this state to be inspired. The Darien Indians use the
seeds of the Datura Sanguinea to induce visions. In Peru the priests
prepared themselves for intercourse with the gods by partaking of a
narcotic drink from the same plant. In Guiana the priest was prepared
for his functions by fasting and flagellation, and was afterwards dosed
with tobacco juice.[25] In India the Laws of Manu give explicit
instructions as to the means of producing visions. Chief of these is the
use of the 'Soma' drink. This is prepared from the flower of the lotus.
The sap of this, says De Candolle, would be poisonous if taken in large
quantities, but in small doses merely induces hallucination. Opium and
hashish, a preparation of the hemp plant, have been in general use among
Eastern peoples, as a means of producing ecstasy from remote antiquity.
Opium, it is well known, produces an extraordinary state of exaltation,
intensifying the sense of one's personality, and inducing a pleasurable
consciousness of mental strength and clarity. Under its influence, as De
Quincey said, time lengthens to infinity and space swells to
immensity.[26] Belladonna, a drug much used by medieval witches and
sorcerers, has also had its vogue for purely religious purposes. With
the Greeks the laurel was sacred to Æsculapius. Those who wished to ask
counsel of the god appeared before the altar crowned with laurel and
chewing its leaves. Before prophesying, the Greek priestesses drank a
preparation of laurel water. This contains, although it was, of course,
unknown to them, two toxic substances--prussic acid and the volatile oil
of laurel. The first would induce convulsions, the second, hallucinatory
visions. The two combined were calculated to produce with both subject
and observer a profound impression of spiritual illumination and
possession.
It is unnecessary to multiply examples of the action of various drugs or
herbs on the nervous system, or to cite the people who use them. Enough
has been said to indicate how widespread is the practice, and the
consequences are not hard to foresee. A very moderate development of
intelligence would enable men to associate certain consequences with the
use of particular drugs, but a very considerable amount of knowledge
would be required to explain why these consequences were produced. In a
social environment saturated with superstition the explanation lies
ready to hand, and is accepted without question. A people that sees
spiritual agency in all the familiar phenomena of nature are certainly
not less likely to trace its influence in the mysterious and
unaccountable effects of narcotics and stimulants. And each repeated
experiment provides additional proof. Man thus not only believes himself
to be surrounded by a spiritual world; he is actually able to enter into
communication with it by methods that are defined in the clearest
possible manner. Every repetition strengthens the delusion and even
when the delusion, as such, is exploded, the temper of mind induced by
it persists.
Various other methods are employed to induce a feeling of religious
exaltation. Prominent among these are dancing and singing. Dancing in
connection with religious ceremonies is now generally outgrown in the
civilised world, but singing is still the vogue. That is, singing is
not, it must be remembered, practised from any desire to cultivate a
love of music, although it may appeal to music-lovers. Still, its avowed
purpose is to induce a feeling of devoutness in the congregation. The
hypnotic consequences of a body of people singing in unison, or the
soothing, mystical effect of certain airs from a choir upon a
congregation, are recognised in practice if not in theory. This is a
phenomenon that is not, of course, exclusively associated with religion.
In this as in other instances religion only utilises the ordinary
qualities of human nature. But in all cases the purpose and the result
are the same. That is, the subject is placed for the time being in a
supernormal condition, and the mild state of passivity or enthusiasm
created makes him more susceptible to the influence brought to bear upon
him. This is true of religious singing and chanting, from the forest
gatherings of the primitive savage down to the more sedate and elaborate
assemblages in church or chapel.
Primitive dancing had both a sexual and religious significance,
although, as will be seen later, in the primitive mind the sexual
functions themselves are very closely associated with supernatural
agency. Tylor is of opinion that originally men and women dance in order
to express their feelings and wishes,[27] but it is certain it very
early and universally became associated with religious ceremonies, and
that because of the ecstasy induced. In some cases drug-taking and
dancing go together. In others, reliance is placed on dancing alone.
This latter is the case with the 'devil dancers' of Ceylon. In Africa
the witch doctor discovers who has been guilty of sorcery by the aid of
inspiration furnished during a dance. The whirling dance of the Eastern
dervish is well known. Dancing also figures in the Bible. The Jews
danced around the golden calf (Ex. xxxii. 19) in a state of nudity.
David, too, danced naked before the Lord. Dancing was also part of the
religious ceremonies attendant on the worship of Dionysos or
Bacchus.[28] Along with the drinking of certain vegetable decoctions,
dancing formed an important part of the witches' saturnalia during the
medieval period. When in a state of frenzy, partly drug induced and
partly the product of exhilaration caused by wild dancing, visions of
Satan followed. In the dancing mania of the fourteenth century, the
sufferers saw visions of heaven opened, with Jesus and the Virgin
enthroned. Dancing was one of the prominent characteristics of the
French Convulsionnaires in the eighteenth century. In more recent times
we have the dancing and singing connected with the Methodist revival. In
modern instances the dancing seems to have been consequent on religious
excitement rather than precedent to it, but in earlier times there is no
doubt that it was deliberately practised as a means of producing a state
of exaltation.
Among the commonest methods of inducing a sense of religious exaltation
is the practice of fasting. In various guises, this is the most
persistent form of religious self-torture. Amongst more civilised people
the reason given for fasting is that it is a form of repentance, the
genuineness of which is attested by voluntary punishment. But originally
there seems little reason to doubt that it was adopted for a different
purpose. It was valued not because the fasting person felt that he had
done anything for which it was necessary to repent, but because it was
believed to bring people into closer touch with the spiritual world.
There is, of course, a very obvious reason for this belief. A lowered
vitality is favourable to hallucinations of every description. A
shipwrecked sailor is placed, by no act of his own, in precisely the
same condition as is the primitive medicine man or the medieval saint by
his own volition. It has always been recognised, and by none more
readily than by the great religious teachers of the world, that a
well-nourished body is inimical to what they chose to term "spiritual
development." The historic Christian outcry against fleshly indulgence
has much more in it than a revolt against mere sensualism. A well-fed
body has been deprecated because it closed the avenue to spiritual
illumination. Hence it is that fasting has found such favour in all
religious systems. The ascetic saw more because, by reducing the body to
an abnormal state, he provided the conditions for seeing more. The Zulu
maxim, "A stuffed body cannot see secret things," really expresses in a
sentence the philosophy of the matter.
Among the Blackfoot Indians of North America, when a boy reaches puberty
he is sent away from his father's lodge in search of a spiritual
protector or totem. Seeking a secluded spot, he abstains from food until
he is favoured in a dream with a vision of some animal or bird, which is
at once adopted by him.[29] This custom obtains with most of the North
American tribes. Among these tribes, also, the soothsayer prepares
himself by fasting for the ecstatic state in which the spirits give
their messages through him. The ordinary member of the tribe who wants
anything will fast until he is assured in a dream that it will be
granted him. Similarly, the Malay, to procure supernatural intercourse,
retires to the jungle and abstains from food. The Zulu doctor prepares
for intercourse with the tribal spirits by spare diet or solitary fasts.
Fasting is part of the ordinary regimen of the Hindu yogi. Of certain
Indian tribes we are told that before proceeding on an expedition they
"observe a rigorous fast, or rather abstain from every kind of food for
four days. In this interval their imagination is exalted to delirium;
whether it be through bodily weakness or the natural effect of delirium,
they pretend to have strange visions. The elders and sages of the tribe,
being called upon to interpret these dreams, draw from them omens more
or less favourable to the success of the enterprise; and their
explanations are received as oracles, by which the expedition will be
faithfully regulated."[30] Amongst the Samoans, when rain was required,
the priests blackened themselves all over, exhumed a dead body, took the
skeleton to a cave and poured water over it. They had to fast and remain
in the cave until it rained. Sometimes they died under the experiment,
but they generally chose the showery months for their rain-making.[31]
In both the Old and New Testaments fasting figures largely. The
encounter of Jesus with Satan is preceded by a forty days' fast. St.
Catherine of Sienna began regular fasts at a very early age. Santa
Teresa kept lengthy fasts every year. The fasting of the monks and nuns
during the epidemic period of monasticism is too well known to call for
more than a mere reference. Perhaps the most curious religious reason
given for fasting is that cited by a writer from a monkish chronicler:--
"As a coach goes faster when it is empty, a man by fasting can be better
united to God; for it is a principle with geometers that a round body
can never touch a plane except in one point.... A belly too well filled
becomes round, it cannot touch God except in one point; but fasting
flattens the belly until it is united with the surface of God at all
points."[32]
George Fox, the founder of the Society of Friends, confesses that he
"fasted much" and "walked abroad in solitary places," and "frequently in
the night walked about mournfully by myself." After much brooding and
fasting, he heard a voice which said, "There is one, even Jesus Christ,
that can speak to thy condition." Such an experience is not at all
surprising, seeing the method pursued to acquire it. Less fasting and
brooding, with more genial intercourse with his fellows, might easily
have prevented Fox, as it has prevented others, hearing heavenly voices
proffering him counsel. Such an experience is well within the reach of
anyone who cares to acquire it. Tylor has well said that "So long as
fasting is continued as a religious rite, so long the consequences in
morbid mental exaltation will continue the old savage doctrine that
morbid phantasy is supernatural experience. Bread and meat would have
robbed the ascetic of many an angel's visit; the opening of the
refectory door must many a time have closed the gate of heaven to his
gaze." No one will question the truth of this principle, so long as we
are dealing with uncivilised mankind. Many, however, shrink from
acknowledging that the practices current in more civilised times are
disguised illustrations of the same principle of interpretation, which
descends direct from savages, and but for them would never have existed.
Commenting on the practices of certain savage medicine-men, a missionary
remarks:--
"It always appeared probable to me that these rogues, from long fasting,
contract a weakness of brain, a giddiness, a kind of delirium, which
makes them imagine that they are gifted with superior wisdom, and give
themselves out for physicians. They impose upon themselves first, and
afterwards upon others."[33]
This is shrewdly said, and is a good example of the readiness with which
obvious truths are recognised when they do not clash with religious
prepossessions. The difficulty for others is to discern any real line of
demarcation between the practices of civilised and uncivilised. So far
as one can see, the only real distinction is that the method employed by
savages is open. That followed by civilised people is more or less
disguised. But derangement of function is derangement of function, no
matter how produced. And if we decline to believe that a savage holds
genuine intercourse with a spiritual world, as a consequence of this
derangement, in what way are we justified in accepting the testimony of
a Christian visionary to similar intercourse, when the derangement is in
his case no less clear? It is a case of accepting both, or neither. The
sane and scientific conclusion seems to lie in the following from Dr.
Henry Maudsley:--
"Now that the mental functions are known to be inseparably connected
with nervous substrata, disposed and united in the brain in the most
orderly fashion, superordinate, co-ordinate, and subordinate--the whole
a complex organisation of confederate nerve centres, each capable of
more or less independent action--a natural interpretation presents
itself. The extraordinary states of mental disintegration evince the
separate and irregular function of certain mental nerve tracts, or
grouped nerve tracts with which goes necessarily a coincident
suspension, partial or complete, of the functions of all the rest; the
supernatural incubus, therefore, neither demoniac nor divine, only
morbid. Thus the strange nervous seizures, with their mental
concomitants, not being outside the range of positive research, but
interesting events within it, become useful natural experiments to throw
an instructive light upon the intricate functions of the most complex
organ in the world--the human brain. Steadily are the researches of
pathology driving the supernatural back into its last and most obscure
retreat; for they prove that in the extremest ecstasies there is neither
_theolepsy_ nor _diabolepsy_, nor any other _lepsy_ in the sense of
possession of the individual by an external power; what there is truly
is a _psycholepsy_."[34]
States of exaltation produced by the aid of drugs, fasting, or other
forms of self-torture come naturally under the category of deliberately
induced states of mind, owing to the conviction that spiritual knowledge
may be gained in this way. But there are other states that arise
naturally and which foster the same conviction. It has already been
pointed out that the generally accepted theory with uncivilised peoples
is that all disease is due to the action of malevolent spirits. There is
no need now to repeat proof of this, and in any case it lies to hand in
any work that deals with uncivilised life. Nor need we go back to
uncivilised times for evidence. One requires only to look but a very
little way into the history of any country to find the supernaturalistic
theory of disease in full swing, and even to-day one may discover
indications of its once general rule. Its importance to the present
enquiry lies in the part it has played in building up in the religious
consciousness a general conviction of religious truth that does not
disappear even when it is seen that the evidence upon which it rests is
faulty. Just as the inhabitants of a Welsh village have their general
belief in religion strengthened by the semi-hysterical speeches of an
Evan Roberts, and the convulsive capers of a whole congregation, so in
all ages people have found endorsement of their belief in a supernatural
world in the existence of cases the pathological nature of which admits
of no doubt. Belief in the supernatural character of specific nervous
conditions or mental states may disappear, but the fact that this
belief has been general for a time leaves behind a certain psychological
residuum in favour of supernaturalism in general.
The connection between the priest and the physician is naturally a very
ancient one. The priest, indeed, is the primitive physician, the belief
that diseases are supernaturally caused indicating him as the agent of
their cure. And it is only to be expected that when the attempt is made
to divert the treatment of disease from priestly hands the effort should
be met with determined opposition. Quite naturally, too, the first
gropings after a scientific theory of disease show a curious mixture of
rationalism and superstition. Thus, in Greece, the temple hospitals
devoted to the mythical Æsculapius, which were situated at Epidaurus,
Pergamus, Cyrene, Corinth, and many other places, served as colleges,
hospitals, and places of worship. Sufferers slept in the temples in the
hopes of receiving messages from the gods, and the priests themselves
professed to have ecstatic visions which enabled them to prescribe for
those afflicted.[35] Great emphasis was placed on bathing, light, air,
and food, and it is pretty clear that the priests had begun to mix both
faith and physic in a most perplexing manner.
The definite separation of medicine from magic and religion begins with
Hippocrates. His theory of disease was simple. He did not deny that
there might be a supernatural side to disease; he insisted that there
was always a natural one, and that this was the side with which we
should be concerned. Each disorder, he said, had its own physical
conditions, and he laid down the rule that we "ought to study the nature
of man, what he is with reference to that which he eats and drinks, and
to all his other occupations and habits, and to the consequences
resulting from each."[36] In Egypt, also, very considerable advance was
made in the same direction. Probably a good deal of their knowledge
resulted from the practice of embalming, in spite of the priestly
interdict on dissection. At all events, there is no doubt that
considerable advance had been made. Herophilus and Erasistratus wrote of
the structure of the heart, and described its connection with the veins
and arteries. The two kinds of nerves, motor and sensory, were
described, and the influence of foods, etc., as influencing health,
dwelt on. Insanity was also dealt with as due to natural and
controllable causes, and the effects of colour and music in dealing with
mania noted.[37] Had this advance been followed, the history of European
civilisation might have been different from what it was. Plagues,
epidemics, and diseases, with their far-reaching social and political
consequences,--consequences that are too little noted, or even
understood, by historians,--might have met with adequate resistance, and
some would never have occurred.
The Pagan schools of medicine came to an untimely, although in some
cases a lingering, end. "The introduction of Christianity," says a
medical writer, "had an undoubted influence on the course of medical
science; for the Christian was taught to recognise, in every bodily
infirmity, the dispensation of the Almighty, and in the calm, abstracted
pursuits of those holy men who passed their time in prayer and
meditation, a propitiation: hence medicine fell into the hands of monks
and anchorites, who assumed to themselves, exclusively, the power of
interpreting all natural phenomena as indications of the Divine Will,
and pretended to possess some occult and supernatural means of curing
disease."[38] Reversing the natural order of things, the physician was
replaced by the priest. The supernaturalistic theory was revived, and
held its own for well on a thousand years. For every complaint the
Church provided a specific in the shape of a charm, an incantation, or a
saint. St. Apollonia for toothache, St. Avertin for lunacy, St. Benedict
for stone, St. Clara for sore eyes, St. Herbert for hydrophobia, St.
John for epilepsy, St. Maur for gout, St. Pernel for agues, St.
Genevieve for fevers, St. Sebastian for plague, etc.[39] The height of
absurdity was reached when, in spite of the monopoly of the treatment of
disease by the priesthood, the Council of Rheims (1119) actually forbade
monks to study medicine. This was followed by the Council of Beziers
(1246) prohibiting Christians applying for relief to Jewish physicians,
at a time when practically the only doctors of ability in Christendom
were Jews. In 1243 the Dominicans banished all books on medicine from
their monasteries. Innocent III. forbade physicians practising except
under the supervision of an ecclesiastic. Honorius (1222) forbade
priests the study of medicine; and at the end of the thirteenth Century
Boniface VIII. interdicted surgery as atheistical. The ill-treatment and
opposition experienced by the great Vesalius at the hands of the Church,
on account of his anatomical researches, is one of the saddest chapters
in the history of science.[40]
When the sight of bodily disease strengthened and confirmed belief in
the supernatural, mental disease must have offered still more convincing
evidence. Among uncivilised people we know that this is so. To quote
again from the indispensable Tylor:--
"The possessed man ... rationally finds a spiritual cause for his
sufferings.... Especially when the mysterious unseen power throws him
helpless on the ground, jerks and writhes him in convulsions, makes him
leap upon the bystanders with a giant's strength and a wild beast's
ferocity, impels him with distorted face and frantic gesture, and voice
not his own nor seemingly even human, to pour forth wild incoherent
raving, or with thought and eloquence beyond his sober faculties to
command, to counsel, to foretell--such a one seems to those who watch
him, and even to himself, to have become the mere instrument of a spirit
which has seized him or entered into him, a possessing demon in whose
personality the patient believes so implicitly that he often imagines a
personal name for it, which it can declare when it speaks in its own
voice and character through his organs of speech."[41]
It was this conception of insanity, universally current in the
uncivilised world, that was revived with fearful intensity in the early
Christian Church, and which certainly served its purpose in intensifying
the genuine belief in supernaturalism. Jesus had given His followers
power to expel demons "In My name," and this power of exorcism was one
upon which the early Christians specially prided themselves. It is with
unconscious sarcasm that Dean Trench puts the question, If one of the
disciples "were to enter a madhouse now, how many of the sufferers there
he might recognise as 'possessed'?"[42] One may safely say that he would
regard all as under the dominion of evil spirits. No other cause of
insanity appears to have been recognised, and the Church devised the
most elaborate formulæ for casting out demons. The assumed demoniac was
prayed over, incensed, and evil-smelling drugs burned under his nose. A
set form of objurgation then followed:--
"Thou lustful and stupid one.... Thou lean sow, famine-stricken and most
impure.... Thou wrinkled beast, of all beasts the most beastly.... Thou
bestial and foolish drunkard.... Thou sooty spirit from Tartarus.... I
cast thee down, O Tartarean boor, into the infernal kitchen....
Loathsome cobbler ... filthy sow ... envious crocodile.... Malodorous
drudge ... swollen toad ... lousy swineherd," etc. etc.[43]