"By the Apocalypse of Jesus Christ, which God hath given to make known
unto His servants those things which are shortly to be ... I exorcise
you, ye angels of untold perversity.... May all the devils that are thy
foes rush forth upon thee and drag thee down to hell!... May the Holy
One trample on thee and hang thee up in an infernal fork, as was done to
the five kings of the Amorites!... May God set a nail to your skull, and
pound it with a hammer as Jael did to Sisera!... May Sother break thy
head and cut off thy hands, as was done to the cursed Dagon!... May God
hang thee in a hellish yoke, as seven men were hanged by the sons of
Saul!"[44]
Marcus Aurelius mentions as one of his debts to the philosopher
Diognetus that he had taught him "not to give credit to vulgar tales of
prodigies and incantations, and evil spirits cast out by magicians or
pretenders to sorcery, and such kind of impostors."[45] What would have
been the thoughts of the great emperor, could he have revisited the
earth two centuries after his death and seen the then civilised world
enveloped in a mental atmosphere in which such ideas as those above
described could live?
All over Europe for centuries lunatics were whipped, and otherwise
ill-treated, in the hopes of expelling the demons that were troubling
them. The seventy-second Canon of the Church of England still provides
that no unlicensed person shall "cast out any devil or devils" under
pain of penalties prescribed. A Bishop of Beauvais, in the fifteenth
century, not only caused five devils to come out of one person, but
actually induced them to sign a document promising not to molest this
particular sufferer again. Tremendous, again, were the labours of the
Jesuit Fathers of Vienna, who boasted that they had cast out no less
than 12,652 'living devils.' Such arithmetical exactitude silences all
hostile comment. In some parts of Scotland, as late as 1783, lunatics
were left all night in the churchyard, with a holy bell over their
heads. In Cornwall, St. Nun's pool was famous for the cure of lunatics.
The poor devils were tied hand and foot and doused in the water until
they were cured--or killed. Even the embraces of prostitutes, for some
peculiar reason, were recommended as a cure for insanity.[46] In 1788,
in Bristol, a drunken epileptic, one George Larkins, was brought into
church, and seven clergymen solemnly set themselves to the task of
exorcising the possessing demon. Whereupon Satan swore 'by his infernal
den'--an oath, says the chronicler, nowhere to be found but in Bunyan.
Under date of October 25, 1739, John Wesley also relates how he was sent
for and assisted at the expulsion of a demon from the body of a young
girl.
Of all nervous diseases that of epilepsy appears to have been most
favourable to the encouragement of a belief in spiritual agency. One
medical authority whose experience enables him to speak with a peculiar
degree of authority has pointed out that with epilepsy there is often an
exaltation of the religious sentiments.[47] A more recent writer, Dr.
Bernard Hollander, asserts that epileptics are "highly religious."[48]
Sir T. S. Clouston also points out that strong religious emotionalism
often accompanies epilepsy.[49] Another eminent physician, while
pointing out that "a high degree of intelligence, amounting even to
genius, has in some cases been associated with epilepsy," observes that
"the epileptic is apt to be influenced greatly by the mystical and
awe-inspiring, and he is disposed to morbid piety."[50]
Every medical man is acquainted with the close relation that exists
between epilepsy and all kinds of hallucinations and delusions, and it
would be more than surprising if in an environment where the religious
interpretation of things is paramount, or with a patient of strong
religious convictions, these delusions did not take a religious form.
And of all nervous disorders epilepsy seems most favourable for
producing this. Under its influence hallucination attacks every one of
the senses with a varying degree of intensity. "The patient hears
voices, and generally words expressing definite ideas, though he is
often unable to properly refer them to any speaking person. Sometimes
instead of external sounds or voices, the patient has a consciousness of
an internal voice that may be as real to him as any external auditory
perception. At first the voices may be indistinct, but upon constant
repetition and evolution from sub-conscious thought they acquire
intensity, eventually dominating the life of the individual."[51] Dr.
Ball says: "One patient perceives at the beginning of the attack a
toothed wheel, in the middle of which there appears a human face making
strange contortions; another sees a series of smiling landscapes. In
some cases it is the sense of hearing which is affected;--the patient
hears voices or strange noises. Others are warned by the sense of smell
that the fit is going to commence."[52]
Sometimes these hallucinations of sight and hearing are in curious
contrast with each other. "Not rarely," says Dr. Conolly Norman, "a
patient has visual hallucinations of a cheering kind--as of God or
angels; yet his auditory hallucinations are full of blasphemy, mockery,
and insult."[53]
Dr. Maudsley thus describes the general symptoms accompanying an
epileptic attack:--
"The patient's senses are possessed with hallucinations, his ganglionic
central cells being in a state of what may be called convulsive action;
before the eyes are blood-red flames of fire, amidst which whoever
happens to present himself appears as a devil or otherwise horribly
transformed; the ears are filled with a terribly roaring noise, or
resound with a voice imperatively commanding him to save himself; the
smell is one of sulphurous stifling, and the desperate and violent
actions are the convulsive reaction to such fearful hallucinations."[54]
If anyone will bear in mind the numerous descriptions of religious
visions, written in all good faith, and the behaviour of many an assumed
'inspired' character, he will have little difficulty in realising how
easily, to a people unacquainted with the real character of such
phenomena, epilepsy lends itself to a religious interpretation. It must
also be borne in mind that the consequences of vivid hallucinations
experienced during epilepsy do not always disappear with the attack to
which they were originally due.
It is certain that from the earliest times cases of what are undoubtedly
epilepsy have been taken as positive indications of supernatural
influence. "There is," says Emanuel Deutsch, "a peculiar something
supposed to inhere in epilepsy. The Greeks called it a divine disease.
Bacchantic and chorybantic furor were God-inspired stages. The Pythia
uttered her oracles under the most distressing signs. Symptoms of
convulsion were ever needed as a sign of the divine."[55] Much of the
evidence for the supernatural in the New Testament rests upon cases that
are obviously pathological in character. A man brings his son to Jesus
and describes how "ofttimes he falleth into the fire, and oft into the
water" (Matt. xvii. 15), and in another place (Mark ix. 18) the same
patient is described as having a dumb spirit, "and wheresoever he taketh
him, he teareth him; and he foameth, and gnasheth with his teeth, and
pineth away." The response to the father's appeal for help is an
exorcism of the possessing spirit such as one meets with in all savage
culture. Between possession by a malignant spirit and domination by a
god, the difference is clearly one of terminology alone. And at the
side of the New Testament case just cited one may place this account
from Polynesia, written by a very competent observer, and a
missionary:--
"As soon as the god was supposed to have entered the priest, the latter
became violently agitated and worked himself up to the highest pitch of
apparent frenzy; the muscles of the limbs seemed convulsed, the body
swelled, the countenance became terrific, the features distorted, the
eyes wild and strained. In this state he often rolled on the earth,
foaming at the mouth, as if labouring under the influence of the
divinity by whom he was possessed, and in shrill cries, and often
violent and indistinct sounds, revealed the will of the god."[56]
Advancing to a higher culture stage than that indicated in the last
passage, there is much evidence that Mohammed was subject to
hallucinations, and many authorities have indicated epilepsy as their
source. There is a tradition that someone who saw Mohammed while he was
receiving one of his revelations observed that he seemed unconscious and
was red in the face. Mohammed himself said:--
"Inspiration descendeth upon me in two ways. Sometimes Gabriel cometh
and communicateth the revelation unto me, as one man unto another, and
this is easy; at other times it affecteth me like the ringing of a bell,
penetrating my very heart, and rending me as it were in pieces; and this
it is which grievously afflicteth me."
Emanuel Deutsch, although, in a passage already cited, recognising the
religious significance attached to epilepsy, has the following curious
comment:--
"Mohammed was epileptic; and vast ingenuity and medical knowledge have
been lavished upon this point as explanatory of Mohammed's mission and
success. We, for our own part, do not think that epilepsy ever made a
man appear a prophet to himself or even to the people of the East; or,
for the matter of that, inspired him with the like heart-moving words
and glorious pictures. Quite the contrary. It was taken as a sign of
demons within--demons, 'Devs,' devils to whom all manner of diseases
were ascribed throughout the antique world."
This seems very largely to miss the point at issue. Of course, no one
would claim that Mohammed's success was due to epilepsy, or even that
the very severe forms of epilepsy were favourable to inducing a
conviction of revelation. But the disease assumes various forms, and in
some cases it is expressed in the form of a period of mental excitement
and general irritability. All that is claimed is that, given the
complaint in its less severe forms in one with whom religious beliefs
are strong, there are present all the conditions for attributing the
resulting hallucinations to personal revelation or ecstatic vision. And
it is also true that while some patients after emerging from a fit of
epilepsy are in a dazed or confused condition, others have a very clear
recollection of all they have seen and heard. Mohammed simply took the
current explanation of cases of nervous derangement, and being a man of
strong religious feeling, naturally gave his visions a religious
interpretation. All the rest has to be explained in terms of the innate
genius of the man and of the circumstances of his time.
A similar case to the above is that of Emanuel Swedenborg. His followers
naturally resent the ascription of his visions and voices to a
pathologic origin, and point to his pronounced mental ability. And
certainly no one who is at all acquainted with the writings of
Swedenborg will question his great mental power, amounting at times to
positive genius. But here, again, we have strong religious conviction in
alliance with pathological conditions. Swedenborg's communications with
celestial beings were of a more frequent and more ordered character than
Mohammed's, but there is the same general likeness between them. Of his
first revelation he writes:--
"At ten o'clock I lay down in bed and was somewhat better; half an hour
after I heard a clamour under my head; I thought that then the tempter
went away; immediately there came over me a rigor so strong from the
head and the whole body, with some din, and this several times. I found
that something holy was over me. I thereupon fell asleep, and at about
twelve, one, or two o'clock in the night there came over me so strong a
shivering from head to foot, as if many winds rushed together, which
shook me, was indescribable, and prostrated me upon my face. Then, while
I was prostrated, I was in a moment quite awake, and saw that I was cast
down, and wondered what it meant. And I spoke as if I was awake, but
found that the word was put into my mouth, and I said, 'Omnipotent Jesus
Christ, as of Thy great grace Thou condescendest to come to so great a
sinner, make me worthy of this grace!' I held my hands together and
prayed, and then came a hand which squeezed my hands hard; immediately
thereupon I continued in prayer."[57]
Swedenborg confessed to repeated walks and talks with celestial
visitants, and, of course, all thought of imposture must be put on one
side. What one has to consider is whether we are to accept these
experiences as hallucinations or not. On the one side no further
evidence seems possible than the profound faith of the man himself, his
recognised mental ability, and the belief of his followers. And against
this it must be urged that the most complete honesty is no guarantee
against self-deception, while ability and even genius are not at all
incompatible with a pathologic strain. And in addition it must be borne
in mind that these hallucinations are, after all, part of a very large
class. Men of very little ability and influence experience substantially
the same visions; they occur all over the world, under all conditions of
culture, and always express the personal idiosyncrasies of the subject
and reflect the character of his social environment. One may safely say
that had Swedenborg lived a century later, while he might still have
gone through the same mental and physical experiences, he himself would
have given a very different interpretation of them.
St. Paul, Professor James points out, "certainly had once an epileptoid,
if not an epileptic seizure." One needs to add to this that the seizure
occurred at the one critical moment of his life which eventuated in his
conversion from Judaism to Christianity. Mary Magdalene, the first who
brought tidings of the resurrection, had been delivered of seven
devils. Luther's religious opinions were, of course, quite apart from
his physical state, sound or unsound. Still, even with him the reality
of supernatural intercourse became intensely vivid as a result of
nervous affections. His latest biographer points out that as a youth
while in the monastery he was seized with something that might well have
been an epileptic fit, and that although there is no record of a return
of this, he did suffer from ordinary fits of fainting.[58] He confesses
to have been much troubled, at twenty-two years of age, with giddiness
and noises in the ear, which he attributed to the devil. And right
through his life he attributed similar experiences to the same source.
Bunyan confesses that even during childhood the Lord "did scare and
affright me with fearful dreams, and did terrify me with dreadful
visions." George Fox, founder of the Society of Friends, describes how,
in the middle of winter, when approaching Lichfield, "the Word of the
Lord was like a fire in me," and as he went through the town, "there
seemed to me to be a channel of blood running down the streets, and the
market-place appeared like a pool of blood." Reflecting on the meaning
of the vision, he remembered that, "In the Emperor Diocletian's time a
thousand Christians were martyred at Lichfield. So I was to go without
my shoes through the channel of their blood in the market-place, that I
might raise up the blood of these martyrs which had been shed above a
thousand years before."[59]
In none of these cases could it be fairly claimed that the religious
conviction, as such, was the consequence of the hallucinations
experienced. But it can scarcely be questioned that these served to
strengthen it to an enormous extent. These trances, ecstasies, visions,
were accepted by the subjects as proofs of their 'divine mission,' and
were so accepted by multitudes of their followers. In their absence
religion would most probably have failed to be the fiercely irruptive
force in life that it has been. The religious idea has, so to speak
given hallucination a standing and an authority in life it would not
have possessed in its absence. In the case of men of ordinary capacity
these visions possess little authority. But in the case of men of
extraordinary capacity, men like Luther, Mohammed, Fox, Swedenborg,--who
must in any case have stood superior to their fellows,--these
hallucinations are then under favouring social conditions invested with
enormous authority. And there is no doubt about the fact that religious
leaders have been peculiarly subject to these psychical variations. This
is pointed out by Professor James in the following passage:--
"Even more perhaps than other kinds of genius, religious leaders have
been subject to abnormal psychical visitations. Invariably they have
been creatures of exalted emotional sensibility. Often they have led a
discordant inner life, and had melancholy during a part of their career.
They have known no measure, been liable to obsessions and fixed ideas;
and frequently they have fallen into trances, heard voices, seen
visions, and presented all sorts of peculiarities which are ordinarily
classed as pathological. Often, moreover, these pathological features in
their career have helped to give them their religious authority and
influence."[60]
Well, in what way are we to discriminate between the visions of a
religious person, admittedly of an abnormal disposition, subject to fits
of melancholy, etc., and presenting "all sorts of peculiarities
ordinarily classed as pathological," and the hallucinations of an
admittedly pathologic subject? Why should the ordinary classification
break down at this point? Dr. Granger, dealing with this aspect of the
question, says: "The religious genius is not proved to be morbid by the
extent to which he diverges from the average type."[61] Quite so, genius
_must_ depart from the average type in order to be genius. But the
statement is quite beside the point at issue. It is not a mere
divergence from the average type that warrants one in assuming that much
passing for divine illumination owes its origin to pathological
conditions, but the fact that it is possible to affiliate certain cases
of religious exaltation with these conditions. Hallucinations are common
to all forms of ecstasy, and ecstasy is not confined to religion. Given
a one-sided mental activity, intense concentration on one or a few
analogous ideas, combined with a lowered nervous sensibility, and we
have all the conditions present favourable to hallucination.[62] These
hallucinations may occur in connection with any topic that engrosses the
subject's mind. In every other direction their true nature is recognised
and admitted. In connection with religious belief alone, it is held that
they bring the subject into touch with a supersensual world of reality.
What possible scientific warranty is there for any such distinction?
Let us take, as an example, one of James's own cases, which he admits is
'distinctly pathological,' but without allowing this admission to
disturb his general conclusion. The case is that of Suso, a famous
fourteenth-century mystic. As a young man he wore a hair shirt and an
iron chain next the skin. Later he had made a leathern garment studded
with one hundred and fifty nails, points inward. The garment was made
very tight, and he used it to sleep in. To prevent himself throwing it
off during sleep he procured a pair of leather gloves studded with
tacks, so that if he attempted to get rid of the dress the tacks would
penetrate his flesh. Next he had made a wooden cross, with thirty
protruding nails, to emulate the sufferings of Jesus. He procured an old
door to sleep on. In winter he suffered from the frost. His feet were
full of sores, his legs became dropsical, his knees bloody and seared,
his loins covered with scars, his hands tremulous. During twenty years
he fed scantily upon the coarsest food, slept in the most uncomfortable
places, and during the whole of the time never took a bath. No wonder
that after his fortieth year he was favoured with a series of visions
from God. Would not one be surprised if any other result than this had
been achieved? And Suso's case is only one of thousands, many of not so
extreme a character, others quite as bad.
In the case of Catherine of Sienna the austerities began earlier than
with Suso. As a child she flogged herself, and was favoured with visions
before she reached her teens. Santa Teresa, as a young woman, prayed to
God to send her an illness, and describes how she remained for days in a
trance, during which time her tongue was bitten in many places. She
describes how, during these trances, her body became to her light, and
she remained rigid. "It was altogether impossible for me to hinder it;
for my world would be carried absolutely away, and ordinarily even my
head, as it were, after it."[63] These are typical examples from a very
large number of cases. The annals of monasticism are filled with
accounts of self-inflicted tortures, with the one end in view, and in
serious belief that their experiences brought them into touch with a
reality denied them under normal conditions. The practice not only
quickened their own sense of the reality of religion, it served the same
purpose for thousands of others pursuing the course of ordinary social
existence. "Religious teachers," says Francis Galton, "by enforcing
celibacy, fasting, and solitude, have done their best towards making men
mad, and they have always largely succeeded in inducing morbid mental
conditions among their followers."[64]
The phenomenon is thus continuous and, in its essentials, unchanging.
From the most primitive times there has been a close association between
the belief in divine illumination and spiritual intercourse, and mental
states that are unquestionably pathological. Following this there has
been a more or less deliberate cultivation of these states in the desire
to renew communion with a spiritual world hidden from man's normal
senses. In this there need be no deliberate imposture. When imposture
does occur, it would be at a later culture stage. At the beginning
there is nothing but misunderstanding. First in order of time comes the
crude animistic interpretation of almost every phase of human activity.
So far as primitive life is concerned, the evidence of this is simply
overwhelming. Next, as Tylor has pointed out, from believing that the
occurrence of certain mental states provides the conditions of
communication with an unseen world to the deliberate creation of those
states is a natural and an easy step. There is thus set on foot a
deliberate culture of the supernatural. This cultivation of abnormal
states of mind once initiated persists, now in one form, now in another,
but is substantially the same throughout. Whether we are dealing with
the crude practices of the savage, the less crude, but still obvious
methods of solitary living and bodily maceration of the medieval monk,
or the morbid and unhealthy dwelling upon a single idea which remains
one of the conditions of 'illumination' to-day, we are confronted with
the same thing. In every case the object--unconscious, maybe--is the
provision of conditions that render hallucination and illusion a
practical certainty. In connection with non-religious matters the
unhealthiness of mind, distortion of vision, and unreliability of
judgment induced by methods akin to those named is now generally
recognised. We have yet to see the same thing as generally recognised in
connection with religious beliefs. We see in addition that a great many
of those experiences, once accepted as clear evidence of supernatural
communication, are more properly explainable in terms of nervous
derangement. In such cases there is neither celestial illumination nor
diabolic communion, neither--to use Maudsley's phrase--theolepsy nor
diabolepsy, only psycholepsy. In the present chapter we have been
striving to apply this principle to a little wider field than is usual.
We have been studying the misinterpretation, in terms of religion, of
abnormal or pathological states of mind, and observing how far these
have contributed to building up and perpetuating a conviction of the
possibility of supernatural intercourse. We have yet to trace the same
principle of misinterpretation in the sexual and social life of mankind.