by experimental results and inner
quality, in judging of values--who does not see that we are likely to
ascertain the distinctive significance of religious melancholy and
happiness, or of religious trances, far better by comparing them as
conscientiously as we can with other varieties of melancholy,
happiness, and trance, than by refusing to consider their place in any
more general series, and treating them as if they were outside of
nature's order altogether?

I hope that the course of these lectures will confirm us in this
supposition. As regards the psychopathic origin of so many religious
phenomena, that would not be in the least surprising or disconcerting,
even were such phenomena certified from on high to be the most precious
of human experiences. No one organism can possibly yield to its owner
the whole body of truth. Few of us are not in some way infirm, or even
diseased; and our very infirmities help us unexpectedly. In the
psychopathic temperament we have the emotionality which is the sine qua
non of moral perception; we have the intensity and tendency to emphasis
which are the essence of practical moral vigor; and we have the love of
metaphysics and mysticism which carry one's interests beyond the
surface of the sensible world. What, then, is more natural than that
this temperament should introduce one to regions of religious truth, to
corners of the universe, which your robust Philistine type of nervous
system, forever offering its biceps to be felt, thumping its breast,
and thanking Heaven that it hasn't a single morbid fiber in its
composition, would be sure to hide forever from its self-satisfied
possessors?

[8] I may refer to a criticism of the insanity theory of genius in the
Psychological Review, ii. 287 (1895).

If there were such a thing as inspiration from a higher realm, it might
well be that the neurotic temperament would furnish the chief condition
of the requisite receptivity. And having said thus much, I think that I
may let the matter of religion and neuroticism drop.

The mass of collateral phenomena, morbid or healthy, with which the
various religious phenomena must be compared in order to understand
them better, forms what in the slang of pedagogics is termed "the
apperceiving mass" by which we comprehend them. The only novelty that
I can imagine this course of lectures to possess lies in the breadth of
the apperceiving mass. I may succeed in discussing religious
experienc