of the character, 195, 261 ff., 279.
Empirical method, 18, 327 ff., 443.
Enemies, love your, 278, 283.
Energy, personal, 196;
mystical states increase it, 414.
Environment, 356, 374.
Epictetus, 474.
Epicureans, 143.
Equanimity, 284.
Ether, mystical effects of, 392.
Evil, ignored by healthy‐mindedness, 88, 106, 131;
due to _things_ or to the _Self_, 134;
its reality, 163.
Evolutionist optimism, 91.
Excesses of piety, 340.
Excitement, its effects, 195, 266, 279, 325.
Experience, religious, the essence of, 508.
Extravagances of piety, 339, 486.
Extreme cases, why we take them, 486.
Failure, 139.
Faith, 246, 506.
Faith‐state, 505.
Fanaticism, 338 ff.
Fear, 98, 159, 161, 263, 275.
Feeling deeper than intellect in religion, 431.
FIELDING, 436.
FINNEY, 207, 215.
FLETCHER, 98, 181.
FLOURNOY, 67, 514.
Flower, 476.
FOSTER, 178, 383.
FOX, GEORGE, 7, 291, 335, 411.
FRANCIS, SAINT, D’ASSISI, 319.
FRANCIS, SAINT, DE SALES, 11.
FRASER, 454.
Fruits, of conversion, 237;
of religion, 327;
of Saintliness, 357.
FULLER, 41.
GAMOND, 288.
GARDINER, 269.
Genius and insanity, 16.
Geniuses, see Religious leaders.
Gentleman, character of the, 317, 371.
GERTRUDE, SAINT, 345.
“Gifts,” 151.
Glory of God, 342.
GOD, 31;
sense of his presence, 66‐72, 272, 275 ff.;
historic changes in idea of him, 74, 328 ff., 493;
mind‐curer’s idea of him, 101;
his honor, 342;
described by negatives, 417;
his attributes, scholastic proof of, 439;
the metaphysical ones are for us meaningless, 445;
the moral ones are ill‐deduced, 447;
he is not a mere inference, 502;
is _used_, not known, 506;
his existence must make a difference among phenomena, 517, 522;
his relation to the subconscious region, 242, 515;
his tasks, 519;
may be finite and plural, 525.
GODDARD, 96.
GOERRES, 407.
GOETHE, 137.
GOUGH, 203.
GOURDON, 171.
“Grace,” the operation of, 226;
the state of, 260.
GRATRY, 146, 476, 506.
Greeks, their pessimism, 86, 142.
Guidance, 472.
GURNEY, 527.
GUYON, 276, 286.
HADLEY, 201, 268.
HALE, 82.
HAMON, 367.
Happiness, 47‐49, 79, 248, 279.
HARNACK, 100.
Healthy‐mindedness, Lectures IV and V, passim;
its philosophy of evil, 131;
compared with morbid‐mindedness, 162, 488.
Heart, softening of, 267.
HEGEL, 389, 449, 454.
HELMONT, VAN, 497.
Heroism, 364, 488, note.
Heterogeneous personality, 169, 193.
Higher criticism, 4.
HILTY, 79, 275, 472.
HODGSON, R., 524.
HOMER, 86.
HUGO, 171.
Hypocrisy, 338.
Hypothesis, what make a useful one, 517.
HYSLOP, 524.
IGNATIUS LOYOLA, 313, 406, 410.
Illness, 113.
“Imitation of Christ,” the, 44.
Immortality, 524.
Impulses, 261.
Individuality, 501.
Inhibitions, 261 ff.
Insane melancholy and religion, 144.
Insanity and genius, 16;
and happiness, 279.
Institutional religion, 335.
Intellect a secondary force in religion, 431, 514.
Intellectual weakness of some saints, 370.
Intolerance, 342.
Irascibility, 264.
JESUS, HARNACK on, 100.
JOB, 76, 448.
JOHN, SAINT, OF THE CROSS, 304, 407, 413.
JOHNSTON, 258.
JONQUIL, 476.
JORDAN, 347.
JOUFFROY, 176, 198.
Judgments, existential and spiritual, 4.
KANT, 54, 448.
Karma, 522.
KELLNER, 401.
Kindliness, see Charity.
KINGSLEY, 385.
LAGNEAU, 285.
Leaders, see Religious leaders.
Leaders, of tribes, 371.
LEJEUNE, 113, 312.
LESSING, 318.
LEUBA, 201, 203, 220, 246, 506.
Life, its significance, 151.
Life, the subconscious, 207, 209.
LOCKER‐LAMPSON, 39.
Logic, Hegelian, 449.
Louis, Saint, of Gonzaga, 350.
Love, see Charity.
Love, cases of falling out of, 179.
Love of God, 276.
Love your enemies, 278, 283.
LOWELL, 65.
Loyalty, to God, 342.
LUTFULLAH, 164.
LUTHER, 128, 137, 244, 330, 348, 382.
Lutheran self‐despair, 108, 211.
Luxury, 365.
LYCAON, 86.
Lyre, 267.
Mahomet, 171.
See MOHAMMED.
MARCUS AURELIUS, 42, 44, 474.
MARGARET MARY, see ALACOQUE.
Margin of consciousness, 232.
MARSHALL, 503.
MARTINEAU, 475.
MATHER, 303.
MAUDSLEY, 19.
Meaning of life, 151.
Medical criticism of religion, 413.
Medical materialism, 10 ff.
Melancholy, 145, 279;
Lectures V and VI, passim;
cases of, 148, 149, 157, 159, 198.
Melting moods, 267.
Method of judging value of religion, 18, 327.
Methodism, 227, 237.
MEYSENBUG, 395.
Militarism, 365‐367.
Military type of character, 371.
MILL, 204.
Mind‐cure, its sources and history, 94‐97;
its opinion of fear, 98;
cases of, 102‐105, 120, 123;
its message, 108;
its methods, 112‐123;
it uses verification, 120‐124;
its philosophy of evil, 131.
Miraculous character of conversion, 227.
MOHAMMED, 341, 481.
MOLINOS, 130.
MOLTKE, VON, 264, 367.
Monasteries, 296.
Monism, 416.
Morbidness compared with healthy‐mindedness, 488.
See, also, Melancholy.
Mormon revelations, 482.
Mortification, see Asceticism.
MUIR, 482.
MULFORD, 497.
MÜLLER, 468.
MURISIER, 349.
MYERS, 233, 234, 466, 511, 524.
Mystic states, their effects, 21, 414.
Mystical experiences, 66.
Mysticism, Lectures XVI and XVII, passim;
its marks, 380;
its theoretic results, 416, 422, 428;
it cannot warrant truth, 422;
its results, 425;
its relation to the sense of union, 509.
Mystical region of experience, 515.
Natural theology, 492.
Naturalism, 141, 167.
Nature, scientific view of, 491.
Negative accounts of deity, 417.
NELSON, 208, 423.
NETTLETON, 215.
NEWMAN, F. W., 80.
NEWMAN, J. H., on dogmatic theology, 434, 442;
his type of imagination, 459.
NIETZSCHE, 371, 372.
Nitrous oxide, its mystical effects, 387.
No‐function, 261‐263, 299, 387, 416.
Non‐resistance, 281, 358, 376.
Obedience, 310.
OBERMANN, 476.
O’CONNELL, 257.
Omit, 296.
“Once‐born” type, 80, 166, 363, 488.
Oneness with God, see Union.
Optimism, systematic, 88;
and evolutionism, 91;
it may be shallow, 364.
Orderliness of world, 438.
Organism determines all mental states whatsoever, 14.
Origin of mental states no criterion of their value, 14 ff.
Orison, 406.
Over‐beliefs, 513;
the author’s, 515.
Over‐soul, 516.
Oxford, graduate of, 220, 268.
Pagan feeling, 86.
Pantheism, 131, 416.
PARKER, 83.
PASCAL, 286.
PATON, 359.
PAUL, SAINT, 171, 357.
PEEK, 253.
PEIRCE, 444.
Penny, 323.
PERREYVE, 505.
Persecutions, 338, 342.
Personality, explained away by science, 119, 491;
heterogeneous, 169;
alterations of, 193, 210 ff.;
is reality, 499. See Character.
PETER, SAINT, OF ALCANTARA, 360.
PHILO, 481.
Philosophy, Lecture XVIII, passim;
must coerce assent, 433;
scholastic, 439;
idealistic, 448;
unable to give a theoretic warrant to faith, 455;
its true office in religion, 455.
Photisms, 251.
Piety, 339 ff.
Pluralism, 131.
Polytheism, 131, 526.
Poverty, 315, 367.
“Pragmatism,” 444, 519, 522‐524.
Prayer, 463;
its definition, 464;
its essence, 465;
petitional, 467;
its effects, 474‐477, 523.
“Presence,” sense of, 58‐63.
Presence of God, 66‐72, 272, 275 ff., 396, 418.
Presence of God, the practice of, 116.
Primitive human thought, 495.
PRINGLE‐PATTISON, 454.
Prophets, the Hebrew, 479.
Protestant theology, 244.
Protestantism and Catholicism, 114, 227, 330, 461.
Providential leading, 472.
Psychopathy and religion, 22 ff.
PUFFER, 394.
Purity, 274, 290, 348.
Quakers, 7, 291.
RAMAKRISHNA, 361, 365.
Rationalism, 73, 74;
its authority overthrown by mysticism, 428.
RATISBONNE, 223, 257.
Reality of unseen objects, Lecture III, passim.
RÉCÉJAC, 407, 509.
“Recollection,” 116, 289.
Redemption, 157.
Reformation of character, 320.
Regeneration, see Conversion;
by relaxation, 111.
REID, 446.
Relaxation, salvation by, 110.
See Surrender.
Religion, to be tested by fruits, not by origin, 10 ff., 331;
its definition, 26, 31;
is solemn, 37;
compared with Stoicism, 41;
its unique function, 51;
abstractness of its objects, 54;
differs according to temperament, 75, 135, 333,
and ought to differ, 487;
considered to be a “survival,” 118, 490, 498;
its relations to melancholy, 145;
worldly passions may combine with it, 337;
its essential characters, 369, 485;
its relation to prayer, 463‐466;
asserts a fact, not a theory, 489;
its truth, 377;
more than science, it holds by concrete reality, 500;
attempts to evaporate it into philosophy, 502;
it is concerned with personal destinies, 491, 503;
with feeling and conduct, 504;
is a sthenic affection, 505;
is for life, not for knowledge, 506;
its essential contents, 508;
it postulates issues of fact, 518.
Religious emotion, 279.
Religious leaders, often nervously unstable, 6 ff., 30;
their loneliness, 335.
“Religious sentiment,” 27.
RENAN, 37.
Renunciations, 349.
Repentance, 127.
Resignation, 286.
Revelation, the anæsthetic, 387‐393.
Revelations, see Automatisms.
Revelations, in Mormon Church, 482.
Revivalism, 228.
RIBET, 407.
RIBOT, 145, 502.
RODRIGUEZ, 313, 314, 317.
ROYCE, 454.
RUTHERFORD, MARK, 76.
SABATIER, A., 464.
Sacrifice, 303, 462.
SAINT‐PIERRE, 83.
SAINTE‐BEUVE, 260, 315.
Saintliness, Sainte‐Beuve on, 260;
its characteristics, 272, 370;
criticism of, 326 ff.
Saintly conduct, 356‐377.
Saints, dislike of natural man for, 371.
Salvation, 526.
SANDAYS, 480.
SATAN, in picture, 50.
SCHEFFLER, 417.
Scholastic arguments for God, 437.
Science, ignores personality and teleology, 491;
her “facts,” 500, 501.
“Science of Religions,” 433, 455, 456, 488‐490.
Scientific conceptions, their late adoption, 496.
Second‐birth, 157, 165, 166.
SEELEY, 77.
Self of the world, 449.
Self‐despair, 110, 129, 208.
Self‐surrender, 110, 208.
SÉNANCOUR, 476.
SETH, 454.
Sexual temptation, 269.
Sexuality as cause of religion, 10, 11.
“Shrew,” 347.
Sickness, 113.
Sick souls, Lectures V and VI, passim.
SIGHELE, 263.
Sin, 209.
Sinners, Christ died for, 129.
Skepticism, 332 ff.
SKOBELEFF, 265.
SMITH, JOSEPH, 482.
Softening of the heart, 267.
Solemnity, 37, 48.
Soul, 195.
Soul, strength of, 273.
SPENCER, 355, 374.
SPINOZA, 9, 127.
Spiritism, 514.
Spirit‐return, 524.
Spiritual judgments, 4.
Spiritual states, tests of their value, 18.
STARBUCK, 198, 199, 204, 206, 208‐210, 249, 253, 258, 268, 276, 323, 353,
394.
STEVENSON, 138, 296.
Stoicism, 42‐45, 143.
Strange appearance of world, 151.
Strength of soul, 273.
Subconscious action in conversion, 236, 242.
Subconscious life, 115, 207, 209, 233, 236, 270, 483.
Subconscious Self, as intermediary between the Self and God, 511.
Subliminal, see Subconscious.
Sufis, 402, 420.
Suggestion, 112, 234.
Suicide, 147.
Supernaturalism its two kinds, 520;
criticism of universalistic, 521.
Supernatural world, 518.
Surrender, salvation by, 110, 208, 211.
Survival‐theory of religion, 490, 498, 500.
SUSO, 306, 349.
SWINBURNE, 421.
SYMONDS, 385, 390.
Sympathetic magic, 496.
Sympathy, see Charity.
Systems, philosophic, 433.
Taine, 9.
TAYLOR, 246.
Tenderness, see Charity.
TENNYSON, 383, 384.
TERESA, SAINT, 20, 346, 360, 408, 411, 412, 414.
Theologia Germanica, 43.
Theologians, systematic, 446.
“Theopathy,” 343.
THOREAU, 275.
Threshold, 135.
Tiger, 164, 262.
Tobacco, 270, 290.
TOLSTOY, 149, 178, 184.
TOWIANSKI, 281.
Tragedy of life, 363.
Tranquillity, 285.
Transcendentalism criticised, 522.
Transcendentalists, 516.
TREVOR, 396.
TRINE, 101, 394.
Truth of religion, how to be tested, 377;
what it is, 509;
mystical perception of, 380, 410.
“Twice‐born,” type, 166, 363, 488.
TYNDALL, 299.
“Unconscious cerebration,” 207.
Unification of Self, 183, 349.
“UNION MORALE,” 272.
Union with God, 408, 418, 425, 451, 509 ff.
See lectures on Conversion, passim.
Unity of universe, 131.
Unreality, sense of, 63.
Unseen realities, Lecture III, passim.
Upanishads, 419.
UPHAM, 289.
Utopias, 360.
VACHEROT, 502.
Value of spiritual affections, how tested, 18.
VAMBÉRY, 341.
Vedantism, 400, 419, 513, 522.
Veracity, 7, 291 ff.
VIVEKANANDA, 513.
VOLTAIRE, 38.
VOYSEY, 275.
War, 365‐367.
Wealth‐worship, 365.
WEAVER, 281.
WESLEY, 227.
Wesleyan self‐despair, 108, 211.
WHITEFIELD, 318.
WHITMAN, 84, 395, 396, 506.
WOLFF, 492, 493.
WOOD, HENRY, 96, 99, 117.
World, soul of the, 449.
Worry, 98, 181.
Yes‐function, 261‐263, 299, 387.
Yoga, 400.
YOUNG, 256.
FOOTNOTES
1 As with many ideas that float in the air of one’s time, this notion
shrinks from dogmatic general statement and expresses itself only
partially and by innuendo. It seems to me that few conceptions are
less instructive than this re‐interpretation of religion as
perverted sexuality. It reminds one, so crudely is it often
employed, of the famous Catholic taunt, that the Reformation may be
best understood by remembering that its _fons et origo_ was Luther’s
wish to marry a nun:—the effects are infinitely wider than the
alleged causes, and for the most part opposite in nature. It is true
that in the vast collection of religious phenomena, some are
undisguisedly amatory—e.g., sex‐deities and obscene rites in
polytheism, and ecstatic feelings of union with the Saviour in a few
Christian mystics. But then why not equally call religion an
aberration of the digestive function, and prove one’s point by the
worship of Bacchus and Ceres, or by the ecstatic feelings of some
other saints about the Eucharist? Religious language clothes itself
in such poor symbols as our life affords, and the whole organism
gives overtones of comment whenever the mind is strongly stirred to
expression. Language drawn from eating and drinking is probably as
common in religious literature as is language drawn from the sexual
life. We “hunger and thirst” after righteousness; we “find the Lord
a sweet savor;” we “taste and see that he is good.” “Spiritual milk
for American babes, drawn from the breasts of both testaments,” is a
sub‐title of the once famous New England Primer, and Christian
devotional literature indeed quite floats in milk, thought of from
the point of view, not of the mother, but of the greedy babe.
Saint François de Sales, for instance, thus describes the “orison of
quietude”: “In this state the soul is like a little child still at
the breast, whose mother, to caress him whilst he is still in her
arms, makes her milk distill into his mouth without his even moving
his lips. So it is here.... Our Lord desires that our will should be
satisfied with sucking the milk which His Majesty pours into our
mouth, and that we should relish the sweetness without even knowing
that it cometh from the Lord.” And again: “Consider the little
infants, united and joined to the breasts of their nursing mothers,
you will see that from time to time they press themselves closer by
little starts to which the pleasure of sucking prompts them. Even
so, during its orison, the heart united to its God oftentimes makes
attempts at closer union by movements during which it presses closer
upon the divine sweetness.” Chemin de la Perfection, ch. xxxi.;
Amour de Dieu, vii. ch. i.
In fact, one might almost as well interpret religion as a perversion
of the respiratory function. The Bible is full of the language of
respiratory oppression: “Hide not thine ear at my breathing; my
groaning is not hid from thee; my heart panteth, my strength faileth
me; my bones are hot with my roaring all the night long; as the hart
panteth after the water‐brooks, so my soul panteth after thee, O my
God.” _God’s Breath in Man_ is the title of the chief work of our
best known American mystic (Thomas Lake Harris); and in certain non‐
Christian countries the foundation of all religious discipline
consists in regulation of the inspiration and expiration.
These arguments are as good as much of the reasoning one hears in
favor of the sexual theory. But the champions of the latter will
then say that their chief argument has no analogue elsewhere. The
two main phenomena of religion, namely, melancholy and conversion,
they will say, are essentially phenomena of adolescence, and
therefore synchronous with the development of sexual life. To which
the retort again is easy. Even were the asserted synchrony
unrestrictedly true as a fact (which it is not), it is not only the
sexual life, but the entire higher mental life which awakens during
adolescence. One might then as well set up the thesis that the
interest in mechanics, physics, chemistry, logic, philosophy, and
sociology, which springs up during adolescent years along with that
in poetry and religion, is also a perversion of the sexual
instinct:—but that would be too absurd. Moreover, if the argument
from synchrony is to decide, what is to be done with the fact that
the religious age _par excellence_ would seem to be old age, when
the uproar of the sexual life is past?
The plain truth is that to interpret religion one must in the end
look at the immediate content of the religious consciousness. The
moment one does this, one sees how wholly disconnected it is in the
main from the content of the sexual consciousness. Everything about
the two things differs, objects, moods, faculties concerned, and
acts impelled to. Any _general_ assimilation is simply impossible:
what we find most often is complete hostility and contrast. If now
the defenders of the sex‐theory say that this makes no difference to
their thesis; that without the chemical contributions which the sex‐
organs make to the blood, the brain would not be nourished so as to
carry on religious activities, this final proposition may be true or
not true; but at any rate it has become profoundly uninstructive: we
can deduce no consequences from it which help us to interpret
religion’s meaning or value. In this sense the religious life
depends just as much upon the spleen, the pancreas, and the kidneys
as on the sexual apparatus, and the whole theory has lost its point
in evaporating into a vague general assertion of the dependence,
_somehow_, of the mind upon the body.
2 For a first‐rate example of medical‐materialist reasoning, see an
article on “les Variétés du Type dévot,” by Dr. Binet‐Sanglé, in the
Revue de l’Hypnotisme, xiv. 161.
3 J. F. NISBET: The Insanity of Genius, 3d ed., London, 1893, pp. xvi,
xxiv.
4 MAX NORDAU, in his bulky book entitled _Degeneration_.
5 H. MAUDSLEY: Natural Causes and Supernatural Seemings, 1886, pp.
257, 256.
6 Autobiography, ch. xxviii.
7 Superior intellect, as Professor Bain has admirably shown, seems to
consist in nothing so much as in a large development of the faculty
of association by similarity.
8 I may refer to a criticism of the insanity theory of genius in the
Psychological Review, ii. 287 (1895).
9 I can do no better here than refer my readers to the extended and
admirable remarks on the futility of all these definitions of
religion, in an article by Professor Leuba, published in the Monist
for January, 1901, after my own text was written.
10 Miscellanies, 1868, p. 120 (abridged).
11 Lectures and Biographical Sketches, 1868, p. 186.
12 Feuilles détachées, pp. 394‐398 (abridged).
13 Op. cit., pp. 314, 313.
14 Book V., ch. x. (abridged).
15 Book V., ch. ix. (abridged).
16 Chaps. x., xi. (abridged): Winkworth’s translation.
17 Book IV., § 23.
18 Benham’s translation: Book III., chaps. xv., lix. Compare Mary Moody
Emerson: “Let me be a blot on this fair world, the obscurest, the
loneliest sufferer, with one proviso,—that I know it is His agency.
I will love Him though He shed frost and darkness on every way of
mine.” R. W. EMERSON: Lectures and Biographical Sketches, p. 188.
19 Once more, there are plenty of men, constitutionally sombre men, in
whose religious life this rapturousness is lacking. They are
religious in the wider sense; yet in this acutest of all senses they
are not so, and it is religion in the acutest sense that I wish,
without disputing about words, to study first, so as to get at its
typical _differentia_.
20 The New Spirit, p. 232.
21 I owe this allegorical illustration to my lamented colleague and
friend, Charles Carroll Everett.
22 Example: “I have had much comfort lately in meditating on the
passages which show the personality of the Holy Ghost, and his
distinctness from the Father and the Son. It is a subject that
requires searching into to find out, but, when realized, gives one
so much more true and lively a sense of the fullness of the Godhead,
and its work in us and to us, than when only thinking of the Spirit
in its effect on us.” AUGUSTUS HARE: Memorials, i. 244, Maria Hare
to Lucy H. Hare.
23 Symposium, Jowett, 1871, i. 527.
24 Example: “Nature is always so interesting, under whatever aspect she
shows herself, that when it rains, I seem to see a beautiful woman
weeping. She appears the more beautiful, the more afflicted she is.”
B. de St. Pierre.
25 Journal of the S. P. R., February, 1895, p. 26.
26 E. GURNEY: Phantasms of the Living, i. 384.
27 Pensées d’un Solitaire, p. 66.
28 Letters of Lowell, i. 75.
29 I borrow it, with Professor Flournoy’s permission, from his rich
collection of psychological documents.
30 Mark Rutherford’s Deliverance, London, 1885, pp. 196, 198.
31 In his book (too little read, I fear), Natural Religion, 3d edition,
Boston, 1886, pp. 91, 122.
32 C. HILTY: Glück, dritter Theil, 1900, p. 18.
33 The Soul; its Sorrows and its Aspirations, 3d edition, 1852, pp. 89,
91.
34 I once heard a lady describe the pleasure it gave her to think that
she “could always cuddle up to God.”
35 JOHN WEISS: Life of Theodore Parker, i. 152, 32.
36 STARBUCK: Psychology of Religion, pp. 305, 306.
37 “I know not to what physical laws philosophers will some day refer
the feelings of melancholy. For myself, I find that they are the
most voluptuous of all sensations,” writes Saint Pierre, and
accordingly he devotes a series of sections of his work on Nature to
the Plaisirs de la Ruine, Plaisirs des Tombeaux, Ruines de la
Nature, Plaisirs de la Solitude—each of them more optimistic than
the last.
This finding of a luxury in woe is very common during adolescence.
The truth‐telling Marie Bashkirtseff expresses it well:—
“In this depression and dreadful uninterrupted suffering, I don’t
condemn life. On the contrary, I like it and find it good. Can you
believe it? I find everything good and pleasant, even my tears, my
grief. I enjoy weeping, I enjoy my despair. I enjoy being
exasperated and sad. I feel as if these were so many diversions, and
I love life in spite of them all. I want to live on. It would be
cruel to have me die when I am so accommodating. I cry, I grieve,
and at the same time I am pleased—no, not exactly that—I know not
how to express it. But everything in life pleases me. I find
everything agreeable, and in the very midst of my prayers for
happiness, I find myself happy at being miserable. It is not I who
undergo all this—my body weeps and cries; but something inside of me
which is above me is glad of it all.” Journal de Marie Bashkirtseff,
i. 67.
38 R. M. BUCKE: Cosmic Consciousness, pp. 182‐186, abridged.
39 I refer to The Conservator, edited by Horace Traubel, and published
monthly at Philadelphia.
40 Song of Myself, 32.
41 Iliad, XXI., E. Myers’s translation.
42 “God is afraid of me!” remarked such a titanic‐optimistic friend in
my presence one morning when he was feeling particularly hearty and
cannibalistic. The defiance of the phrase showed that a Christian
education in humility still rankled in his breast.
43 “As I go on in this life, day by day, I become more of a bewildered
child; I cannot get used to this world, to procreation, to heredity,
to sight, to hearing; the commonest things are a burthen. The prim,
obliterated, polite surface of life, and the broad, bawdy, and
orgiastic—or mænadic—foundations, form a spectacle to which no habit
reconciles me.” R. L. STEVENSON: Letters, ii. 355.
44 “Cautionary Verses for Children”: this title of a much used work,
published early in the nineteenth century, shows how far the muse of
evangelical protestantism in England, with her mind fixed on the
idea of danger, had at last drifted away from the original gospel
freedom. Mind‐cure might be briefly called a reaction against all
that religion of chronic anxiety which marked the earlier part of
our century in the evangelical circles of England and America.
45 I refer to Mr. Horatio W. Dresser and Mr. Henry Wood, especially the
former. Mr. Dresser’s works are published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons,
New York and London; Mr. Wood’s by Lee & Shepard, Boston.