lture stage. At the beginning
there is nothing but misunderstanding. First in order of time comes the
crude animistic interpretation of almost every phase of human activity.
So far as primitive life is concerned, the evidence of this is simply
overwhelming. Next, as Tylor has pointed out, from believing that the
occurrence of certain mental states provides the conditions of
communication with an unseen world to the deliberate creation of those
states is a natural and an easy step. There is thus set on foot a
deliberate culture of the supernatural. This cultivation of abnormal
states of mind once initiated persists, now in one form, now in another,
but is substantially the same throughout. Whether we are dealing with
the crude practices of the savage, the less crude, but still obvious
methods of solitary living and bodily maceration of the medieval monk,
or the morbid and unhealthy dwelling upon a single idea which remains
one of the conditions of 'illumination' to-day, we are confronted with
the same thing. In every case the object--unconscious, maybe--is the
provision of conditions that render hallucination and illusion a
practical certainty. In connection with non-religious matters the
unhealthiness of mind, distortion of vision, and unreliability of
judgment induced by methods akin to those named is now generally
recognised. We have yet to see the same thing as generally recognised in
connection with religious beliefs. We see in addition that a great many
of those experiences, once accepted as clear evidence of supernatural
communication, are more properly explainable in terms of nervous
derangement. In such cases there is neither celestial illumination nor
diabolic communion, neither--to use Maudsley's phrase--theolepsy nor
diabolepsy, only psycholepsy. In the present chapter we have been
striving to apply this principle to a little wider field than is usual.
We have been studying the misinterpretation, in terms of religion, of
abnormal or pathological states of mind, and observing how far these
have contributed to building up and perpetuating a conviction of the
possibility of supernatural intercourse. We have yet to trace the same
principle of misinterpretation in the sexual and social life of mankind.

FOOTNOTES:

[20] _A Psychological Study of Religion_, p. 234.

[21] _Primitive Culture_, i. p. 501.

[22] _Primitive Culture_, ii. p. 410.

[23] Some very curious information concerning the use of this and o