r it be through bodily weakness or the natural effect of delirium,
they pretend to have strange visions. The elders and sages of the tribe,
being called upon to interpret these dreams, draw from them omens more
or less favourable to the success of the enterprise; and their
explanations are received as oracles, by which the expedition will be
faithfully regulated."[30] Amongst the Samoans, when rain was required,
the priests blackened themselves all over, exhumed a dead body, took the
skeleton to a cave and poured water over it. They had to fast and remain
in the cave until it rained. Sometimes they died under the experiment,
but they generally chose the showery months for their rain-making.[31]

In both the Old and New Testaments fasting figures largely. The
encounter of Jesus with Satan is preceded by a forty days' fast. St.
Catherine of Sienna began regular fasts at a very early age. Santa
Teresa kept lengthy fasts every year. The fasting of the monks and nuns
during the epidemic period of monasticism is too well known to call for
more than a mere reference. Perhaps the most curious religious reason
given for fasting is that cited by a writer from a monkish chronicler:--

"As a coach goes faster when it is empty, a man by fasting can be better
united to God; for it is a principle with geometers that a round body
can never touch a plane except in one point.... A belly too well filled
becomes round, it cannot touch God except in one point; but fasting
flattens the belly until it is united with the surface of God at all
points."[32]

George Fox, the founder of the Society of Friends, confesses that he
"fasted much" and "walked abroad in solitary places," and "frequently in
the night walked about mournfully by myself." After much brooding and
fasting, he heard a voice which said, "There is one, even Jesus Christ,
that can speak to thy condition." Such an experience is not at all
surprising, seeing the method pursued to acquire it. Less fasting and
brooding, with more genial intercourse with his fellows, might easily
have prevented Fox, as it has prevented others, hearing heavenly voices
proffering him counsel. Such an experience is well within the reach of
anyone who cares to acquire it. Tylor has well said that "So long as
fasting is continued as a religious rite, so long the consequences in
morbid mental exaltation will continue the old savage doctrine that
morbid phantasy is supernatural experience. Bread and meat wou