ion, surpassent l'effort humain, _et peuvent avoir sur le corps
un retentissement merveilleux et irresistible_." "Au point de vue
doctrinal et objectif, la mystique peut se definir: la science qui
traite _des phenomenes surnaturels_, soit intimes, _soit exterieurs_,
qui preparent, accompagnent, et suivent la contemplation divine." The
time is past, if it ever existed, when such superstitions could be
believed without grave injury to mental and moral health.]

[Footnote 335: This language about the teaching of the Roman Church
may be considered unseemly by those who have not studied the subject.
Those who have done so will think it hardly strong enough. In
self-defence, I will quote one sentence from Schram, whose work on
"Mysticism" is considered authoritative, and is studied in the great
Catholic university of Louvain: "Quaeri potest utrum daemon per turpem
concubitum possit violenter opprimere marem vel feminam cuius obsessio
permissa sit ob finem perfectionis et contemplationis acquirendae." The
answer is in the affirmative, and the evidence is such as could hardly
be transcribed, even in Latin. Schram's book is mainly intended for
the direction of confessing priests, and the evidence shows, as might
have been expected, that the subjects of these "phenomena" are
generally poor nuns suffering from hysteria.]

[Footnote 336: At a time when many are hoping to find in the study of
the obscurer psychical phenomena a breach in the "middle wall of
partition" between the spiritual and material worlds, I may seem to
have brushed aside too contemptuously the floating mass of popular
beliefs which "spiritualists" think worthy of serious investigation. I
must therefore be allowed to say that in my opinion psychical research
has already established results of great value, especially in helping
to break down that view of the _imperviousness_ of the ego which is
fatal to Mysticism, and (I venture to think) to any consistent
philosophy. Monadism, we may hope, is doomed. But the more popular
kind of spiritualism is simply the old hankering after supernatural
manifestations, which are always dear to semi-regenerate minds.]

[Footnote 337: It is, I think, significant that the word "imagination"
was slow in making its way into psychology. [Greek: Phantasia] is
defined by Aristotle (_de Anima_, iii. 3) as [Greek: kinesis hypo tes
aistheseos tes kat energeian gignomene], but it is not till
Philostratus that the creative imagination is o