more seriously than it has hitherto been willing to consider it. For practical life at any rate, the _chance_ of salvation is enough. No fact in human nature is more characteristic than its willingness to live on a chance. The existence of the chance makes the difference, as Edmund Gurney says, between a life of which the keynote is resignation and a life of which the keynote is hope.(363) But all these statements are unsatisfactory from their brevity, and I can only say that I hope to return to the same questions in another book.
INDEX.
Absolute, oneness with the, 419.
Abstractness of religious objects, 53.
ACHILLES, 86.
ACKERMANN, MADAME, 63.
Adaptation to environment, of things, 438; of saints, 374‐377.
Æsthetic elements in religions, 460.
Alcohol, 387.
AL‐GHAZZALI, 402.
ALI, 341.
ALLEINE, 228.
ALLINE, 159, 217.
Alternations of personality, 193.
ALVAREZ DE PAZ, 116.
AMIEL, 394.
Anæsthesia, 288.
Anæsthetic revelation, 387‐393.
ANGELUS SILESIUS, 417.
Anger, 181, 264.
“Anhedonia,” 145.
Aristocratic type, 371.
ARISTOTLE, 495.
Ars, le Curé d’, 302.
Atman, 400.
Attributes of God, 440; their æsthetic use, 458.
AURELIUS, see MARCUS.
Automatic writing, 62, 478.
BALDWIN, 347, 503.
BASHKIRTSEFF, 83.
BEECHER, 256.
BEHMEN, see BOEHME.
Belief, due to non‐rationalistic impulses, 73.
BESANT, MRS., 23, 168.
Bhagavad‐Gita, 361.
BLAVATSKY, MADAM, 421.
BLOOD, 389.
BLUMHARDT, 113.
BOOTH, 203.
BOUGAUD, 344.
BOURGET, 263.
BOURIGNON, 321.
BOWNE, 502.
BRAINERD, 212, 253.
BROOKS, 512.
BROWNELL, 515.
BUCKE, 398.
Buddhist mysticism, 401.
BULLEN, 287.
BUNYAN, 157, 160.
BUTTERWORTH, 411.
CAIRD, EDWARD, 106.
CAIRD, J., on feeling in religion, 434; on absolute self, 450; he does not prove, but reaffirms, religion’s dicta, 453.
CALL, 289.
CARLYLE, 41, 300.
CARPENTER, 319.
Catharine, Saint, of Genoa, 289.
Catholicism and Protestantism compared, 114, 227, 336, 461.
Causality of God, 517, 522.
Cause, 502.
CENNICK, 301.
Centres of personal energy, 196, 267, 523.
Cerebration, unconscious, 207.
Chance, 526.
CHANNING, 300, 488.
CHAPMAN, 324.
Character, cause of its alterations, 193; scheme of its differences of type, 197, 214.
Causes of its diversity, 261; balance of, 340.
Chastity, 310.
Chiefs of tribes, 371.
Christian Science, 106.
Churches, 335, 460.
CLARK, 389.
CLISSOLD, 481.
COE, 240.
Conduct, perfect, 355.
Confession, 462.
Consciousness, fields of, 231; subliminal, 233.
Consistency, 296.
Conversion, to avarice, 178.
Tolstoy’s, 184; Bunyan’s, 186; in general, Lectures IX and X, passim; Bradley’s, 189; compared with natural moral growth, 199; Hadley’s, 201; two types of, 205 ff.; Brainerd’s, 212; Alline’s, 217; Ratisbonne’s, 223; instantaneous, 227; is it a natural phenomenon? 230; subliminal action involved, in sudden cases, 236, 240; fruits of, 237; its momentousness, 239; may be supernatural, 242; its concomitants: sense of higher control, 244, happiness, 248, automatisms, 250, luminous phenomena, 251; its degree of permanence, 256.
Cosmic consciousness, 398.
Courage, 265, 287.
Crankiness, see Psychopathy.
Criminal character, 263.
Criteria of value of spiritual affections, 18.
CRUMP, 239.
Cure of bad habits, 270.
DAUDET, 167.
Death, 139, 364.
DERHAM, 493.
Design, argument from, 438, 492 ff.
Devoutness, 340.
DIONYSIUS AREOPAGITICUS, 416.
Disease, 99, 113.
Disorder in contents of world, 438.
Divided Self, Lecture VIII, passim; Cases of: Saint Augustine, 172, H. Alline, 173.
Divine, the, 31.
Dog, 281.
DOWIE, 113.
Drink, 268.
Drummer, 476.
DRUMMOND, 262.
“Dryness,” 204.
DUMAS, 279.
Dyes, on clothing, 294.
Earnestness, 264.
Ecclesiastical spirit, the, 335, 338.
ECKHART, 417.
EDDY, 106.
Effects of religious states, 21.
Effeminacy, 365.
Ego of Apperception, 449.
ELLIS, HAVELOCK, 418.
ELWOOD, 292.
Emotion, as alterer of life’s value, 150; 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.
Epictetus, 474.
Epicureans, 143.
Equanimity, 284.
Ether, mystical effects of, 392.
due to _things_ or to the _Self_, 134; its reality, 163.
Evolutionist optimism, 91.
Excesses of piety, 340.
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.
Feeling deeper than intellect in religion, 431.
FIELDING, 436.
FINNEY, 207, 215.
FLETCHER, 98, 181.
FLOURNOY, 67, 514.
Flower, 476.
FOSTER, 178, 383.
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.
Greeks, their pessimism, 86, 142.
Guidance, 472.
GURNEY, 527.
GUYON, 276, 286.
HADLEY, 201, 268.
HALE, 82.
HAMON, 367.
HARNACK, 100.
Healthy‐mindedness, Lectures IV and V, passim; its philosophy of evil, 131; Heart, softening of, 267.
HELMONT, VAN, 497.
Heroism, 364, 488, note.
Heterogeneous personality, 169, 193.
Higher criticism, 4.
HODGSON, R., 524.
HOMER, 86.
HUGO, 171.
Hypocrisy, 338.
Hypothesis, what make a useful one, 517.
HYSLOP, 524.
Illness, 113.
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.
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.
Luxury, 365.
LYCAON, 86.
Lyre, 267.
Mahomet, 171.
See MOHAMMED.
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.
Lectures V and VI, passim; Melting moods, 267.
Method of judging value of religion, 18, 327.
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; 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.
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.
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.
Nitrous oxide, its mystical effects, 387.
Obedience, 310.
OBERMANN, 476.
O’CONNELL, 257.
Omit, 296.
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‐soul, 516.
Oxford, graduate of, 220, 268.
Pagan feeling, 86.
PARKER, 83.
PASCAL, 286.
PATON, 359.
PAUL, SAINT, 171, 357.
PEEK, 253.
PEIRCE, 444.
Penny, 323.
PERREYVE, 505.
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.
Poverty, 315, 367.
Prayer, 463; its definition, 464; its essence, 465; petitional, 467; its effects, 474‐477, 523.
“Presence,” sense of, 58‐63.
Presence of God, the practice of, 116.
Primitive human thought, 495.
Prophets, the Hebrew, 479.
Protestant theology, 244.
Providential leading, 472.
Psychopathy and religion, 22 ff.
PUFFER, 394.
Quakers, 7, 291.
its authority overthrown by mysticism, 428.
Reality of unseen objects, Lecture III, passim.
RÉCÉJAC, 407, 509.
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; 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.
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.
ROYCE, 454.
RUTHERFORD, MARK, 76.
SABATIER, A., 464.
SAINT‐PIERRE, 83.
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; Scientific conceptions, their late adoption, 496.
SEELEY, 77.
Self of the world, 449.
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.
394.
Strange appearance of world, 151.
Strength of soul, 273.
Subconscious action in conversion, 236, 242.
Subconscious Self, as intermediary between the Self and God, 511.
Subliminal, see Subconscious.
Sufis, 402, 420.
Suicide, 147.
Supernaturalism its two kinds, 520; criticism of universalistic, 521.
Supernatural world, 518.
Surrender, salvation by, 110, 208, 211.
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.
Theologia Germanica, 43.
Theologians, systematic, 446.
“Theopathy,” 343.
THOREAU, 275.
Threshold, 135.
Tiger, 164, 262.
Tobacco, 270, 290.
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.
TYNDALL, 299.
Unification of Self, 183, 349.
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.
Veracity, 7, 291 ff.
VIVEKANANDA, 513.
VOLTAIRE, 38.
VOYSEY, 275.
War, 365‐367.
WEAVER, 281.
WESLEY, 227.
WHITEFIELD, 318.
WOLFF, 492, 493.
World, soul of the, 449.
Worry, 98, 181.
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.
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.
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.
26 E. GURNEY: Phantasms of the Living, i. 384.
28 Letters of Lowell, i. 75.
29 I borrow it, with Professor Flournoy’s permission, from his rich collection of psychological documents.
31 In his book (too little read, I fear), Natural Religion, 3d edition, 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.
46 Lest my own testimony be suspected, I will quote another reporter, Dr. H. H. Goddard, of Clark University, whose thesis on “the Effects of Mind on Body as evidenced by Faith Cures” is published in the American Journal of Psychology for 1899 (vol. x.). This critic, after a wide study of the facts, concludes that the cures by mind‐ cure exist, but are in no respect different from those now officially recognized in medicine as cures by suggestion; and the end of his essay contains an interesting physiological speculation as to the way in which the suggestive ideas may work (p. 67 of the reprint). As regards the general phenomenon of mental cure itself, Dr. Goddard writes: “In spite of the severe criticism we have made of reports of cure, there still remains a vast amount of material, showing a powerful influence of the mind in disease. Many cases are of diseases that have been diagnosed and treated by the best physicians of the country, or which prominent hospitals have tried their hand at curing, but without success. People of culture and education have been treated by this method with satisfactory results. Diseases of long standing have been ameliorated, and even cured...We have traced the mental element through primitive medicine and folk‐medicine of to‐day, patent medicine, and witchcraft. We are convinced that it is impossible to account for the existence of these practices, if they did not cure disease, and that if they cured disease, it must have been the mental element that was effective. The same argument applies to those modern schools of mental therapeutics—Divine Healing and Christian Science.
It is hardly conceivable that the large body of intelligent people who comprise the body known distinctively as Mental Scientists should continue to exist if the whole thing were a delusion. It is not a thing of a day; it is not confined to a few; it is not local.
It is true that many failures are recorded, but that only adds to the argument. There must be many and striking successes to counterbalance the failures, otherwise the failures would have ended the delusion...Christian Science, Divine Healing, or Mental Science do not, and never can in the very nature of things, cure all diseases; nevertheless, the practical applications of the general principles of the broadest mental science will tend to prevent disease...We do find sufficient evidence to convince us that the proper reform in mental attitude would relieve many a sufferer of ills that the ordinary physician cannot touch; would even delay the approach of death to many a victim beyond the power of absolute cure, and the faithful adherence to a truer philosophy of life will keep many a man well, and give the doctor time to devote to alleviating ills that are unpreventable” (pp. 33, 34 of reprint).
47 HORACE FLETCHER: Happiness as found in Forethought _minus_ Fearthought, Menticulture Series, ii. Chicago and New York, Stone, 1897, pp. 21‐25, abridged.
48 H. W. DRESSER: Voices of Freedom, New York, 1899, p. 38.
49 HENRY WOOD: Ideal Suggestion through Mental Photography, Boston, 1899, p. 54.
50 Whether it differs so much from Christ’s own notion is for the exegetists to decide. According to Harnack, Jesus felt about evil and disease much as our mind‐curers do. “What is the answer which Jesus sends to John the Baptist?” asks Harnack, and says it is this: “ ‘The blind see, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead rise up, and the gospel is preached to the poor.’ That is the ‘coming of the kingdom,’ or rather in these saving works the kingdom is already there. By the overcoming and removal of misery, of need, of sickness, by these actual effects John is to see that the new time has arrived. The casting out of devils is only a part of this work of redemption, _but Jesus points to that as the sense and seal of his mission_. Thus to the wretched, sick, and poor did he address himself, but not as a moralist, and without a trace of sentimentalism. He never makes groups and departments of the ills; he never spends time in asking whether the sick one ‘deserves’ to be cured; and it never occurs to him to sympathize with the pain or the death. He nowhere says that sickness is a beneficent infliction, and that evil has a healthy use. No, he calls sickness sickness and health health. All evil, all wretchedness, is for him something dreadful; it is of the great kingdom of Satan; but he feels the power of the Saviour within him.
He knows that advance is possible only when weakness is overcome, when sickness is made well.” Das Wesen des Christenthums, 1900, p.
39.
51 R. W. TRINE: In Tune with the Infinite, 26th thousand, N. Y., 1899.
I have strung scattered passages together.
52 The Cairds, for example. In EDWARD CAIRD’S Glasgow Lectures of 1890‐92 passages like this abound:— “The declaration made in the beginning of the ministry of Jesus that ‘the time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of heaven is at hand,’ passes with scarce a break into the announcement that ‘the kingdom