fundamental characteristics, and a definition to be of value, while of necessity

inclusive, must also be decisively exclusive. It must unite, but it must also separate. And many current definitions of religion, while they may bear testimony to the amiability of those who frame them, are quite destitute of scientific value. In any case, the association of the religious idea with non-religious forces is a fact too patent to admit of denial; and the important task is to determine their reciprocal influence. In actual life this separation has been secured by the development of the various branches of positive thought—ethics, psychology, etc., all of which were once directly under the control of religion. What remains to be done is to separate in theory what has already been separated in fact, with such additions as a more critical knowledge may suggest as advisable.

Far more suggestive, however, than the association of religion with what we may call the normal social forces, is its connection with conditions that are now clearly recognised as abnormal. From the earliest times we find the use of drugs and stimulants, the practice of fasting and self-torture, with other methods of depressing or stimulating the action of the nervous system, accepted as well-recognised methods of inducing a sense of religious illumination, or the feeling that one is in direct communion with a supernatural order of existence. Equally significant is the world-wide acceptance—right up to recent times—of purely pathological states as evidence of supernatural intercourse. About these two sets of facts there can be no reasonable doubt. Over and over again we can observe how the promptings of disease are taken for the voice of divinity, and men and women who to-day would be handed over to the care of the physician hailed as an

incarnation of deity. In modern asylums we find one of the commonest of delusions to be that of the insane person who imagines himself to be a specially selected instrument of deity. In such instances the causal influence of pathological conditions is admitted. On the other hand, we have belonging to the more normal type the person who claims a supernatural origin for many of his actions and states of mind. And between these two extremes lie a whole series of gradations. They exist in all stages of culture, and it is difficult to see by what rule of logic or of experience one can say where the normal ends and the abnormal begins. If we assume the inference of the normal person concerning the origin of his mental states to be correct, it seems difficult to deny the possibility of those of the insane person having a similar origin, although distorted by the influence of disease. If, on the other hand, we say the insane person is wholly wrong as to the origin of his mental states, may we not also assume that the normal person has likewise erred as to the cause of his emotions or ideas?

Two considerations may be urged in support of this conclusion. In the first place, there is the fact of the fundamental identity of human qualities under all conditions of their manifestation. It is too often assumed—sometimes it is explicitly claimed—that one with what is called "a strong religious nature" possesses some quality of mind absent or undeveloped in those of an opposite type. This assumption is quite unwarrantable. The religious man is marked off from the non-religious man, not by the possession of distinct mental qualities, but solely by holding different ideas concerning the cause and significance of his mental

states. There is no such thing as a religious "faculty," but only qualities of mind expressed in terms of the religious idea. If I am conscious of a strong desire to work on behalf of the social betterment of my fellows, I may account for this either by attributing it to having inherited a nature modified by generations of social intercourse, or on the hypothesis that I am an instrument in the hands of a superhuman personality. But in either case the qualities manifested remain the same. Love and hatred, fear and courage, honesty and roguery, with all other human qualities, may be expressed in terms of religion, or they may be expressed in non-religious terms. It is the cause to which they are attributed, or the object to which they are directed, that marks off the religious from the non-religious person.

The second point is that the whole issue arises on a conflict of interpretations. If I question the reality of the visions or states of illumination experienced by Santa Teresa, I am not questioning that, so far as the saint herself was concerned, these states of exaltation were real. All mental states—whether arising under normal or abnormal conditions—are quite real to those who experience them. The visions of the hashish-eater are real, while they last; so are those of the victim of delirium tremens. All I question is their genuineness as corresponding to an objective reality. Over the mind of the subject these visions may exercise an absolute sway. As to their occurrence, he or she is the final and absolute authority. There can be no question here. But when we proceed from the occurrence of these visions to the question of their causation, then we are on entirely different ground. Here

it is not a question of their genuineness, or of their power, but a question of how we are to interpret them. The honesty and singlemindedness of these "inspired" characters may be admitted, but honesty or singlemindedness is no guarantee of accuracy. We do not need to ask whether the peasant girl of Lourdes experienced a vision of the Madonna, but we do need to ask whether there was anything in her mental history, social surroundings, or nervous state that would account for the vision. All the "facts" of the religious life may be admitted; the sole question at issue is whether an adequate interpretation of at least some of them may not be found in terms of a purely scientific psychology.

Taking, then, the religious idea as already existing, the following pages will be devoted to an examination of the extent to which this idea has been associated with forces and conditions that were plainly pathological. In very many individual cases it will not be difficult to trace a vivid sense of the supernatural to the presence of abnormal nervous states, sometimes deliberately induced, at other times arising of themselves. And it is a matter of mere historical observation that such individual cases have operated most powerfully to strengthen the belief in the supernatural with others. The example of Lourdes is a case in point. All Protestants will agree that the peasant girl's vision was a sheer hallucination. And yet there can be no question that this vision has served to strengthen the faith of many thousands of others in the nearness of the supernatural. And it needs but little effort of the imagination to realise how powerful such examples must have been in ages when medical science was

in its infancy, and the more subtle operations of the nervous system completely unknown.

This question, I repeat, is distinct from the much larger and wider enquiry of the origin of religion. A fairly lengthy experience of the capacity of the general mind for missing the real point at issue prevents my being too sanguine as to the efficiency of the most explicit avowal of one's purpose, but the duty of taking precautions nevertheless remains. And in elaborating an unfamiliar view of the nature of much of the world's so-called religious phenomena, the possibility of misconception is multiplied enormously. Still, a writer must do what he can to guard against misunderstanding, and in the most emphatic manner it must be said that it is not my purpose to prove, nor is it my belief, that