a sister
or a brother will announce a message that has been delivered by some
unseen spirit, whereupon all the hearers leap and dance with redoubled
vigour.

To-day, even as a hundred years ago, the "Shakers" affirm, not without
reason, that Heaven and Hell are within ourselves, and that that is why
we must live honestly and well in order to share in the heavenly
kingdom from which sinners are excluded. Just so do Christian
Scientists declare that we may be led by faith towards heaven,
happiness and health.

Even murder, that most extreme perversion of all moral feeling, has
been adopted as a means of salvation by several Russian sects as well
as by the Hindus, evolving in widely contrasted environments. The
general desire to gain, somehow or other, the favour of the "Eternal
Principle of Things," thus expresses itself in the most varied and the
most unlikely forms, one of the most striking being that of the
"religion of murder," which throws a lurid light upon the hidden
regions of man's subconscious mind.

CHAPTER II

THE RELIGION OF MURDER

There are certain periodical publications which as a rule are neither
examined nor discussed. Yet their existence dates back for many years,
and in this age of filing and docketing they must by now provide a
regular gold-mine for the study of human psychology. What increases
their value is that they avoid all attempt at "literary effect." No
picked phrases, no situations invented or dramatised to suit the taste
of the author; nothing but facts taken from real life and recorded by
the functionaries of His Majesty the Emperor of India. We are
referring to those very interesting _Reports of the Indian Government_
to which we owe practically all our knowledge of fakirism and its
miracles, of the artificial conservation of human life in the tomb, and
of the strangulation rites of the Thugs. They are indeed a valuable
contribution to the study of the perversions of religious faith--that
most alluring and yet least explored section of psychology.

A librarian at the British Museum showed me some years ago one of the
most suggestive documents that the art of cartography has ever
produced. It was the famous map prepared by Captain Paton, about 1890,
for the British Government, showing the various neighbourhoods in which
the Thugs had strangled and buried their victims. Drawn up according
to precise information furnished by several leaders of the sect, it
indicated e