rom which
man has as yet by no means freed himself, is one to provide
considerable food for reflection for those who study the psychology of
crowds in general, and of religious mania in particular.

The case of Schlatter is not a difficult one to diagnose. He suffered
from "ambulatory automatism," the disease investigated by Professor
Pitres of Bordeaux, and was a wanderer from his childhood up.
Incapable of resisting the lure of vagabondage, he thought it should be
possible to perform miracles because it was "God his Father" who thus
forced him to wander from place to place. "All nature being directed
according to His Will," said Schlatter, "and nothing being accomplished
without Him, I am driven to warn the earth in order to fulfil His
designs."

Being simple-minded and highly impressionable, the first cure that he
succeeded in bringing about seemed to him a direct proof of his
alliance with God. As Diderot has said, it is sometimes only necessary
to be a little mad in order to prophesy and to enjoy poetic ecstasies;
and in the case of Schlatter the flower of altruism which often
blossoms in the hearts of such "madmen" was manifested in his complete
lack of self-seeking and in his compassion for the poor and suffering
which drew crowds around him. As to his miracles, we may--without
attempting to explain them--state decisively that they do not differ
from those accomplished by means of suggestion. The cases of blindness
treated by Schlatter have a remarkable resemblance to that of the girl
Marie described by Pierre Janet in his _Psychological Automatism_.

This patient was admitted to the hospital at Havre, suffering, among
other things, from blindness of the left eye which she said dated from
infancy. But when by means of hypnotism she was "transformed" into a
child of five years of age, it was found that she saw well with both
eyes. The blindness must therefore have begun at the age of six
years--but from what cause? She was made to repeat, while in the
somnambulistic state, all the principal scenes of her life at that
time, and it was found that the blindness had commenced some days after
she had been forced to sleep with a child of her own age who had a rash
all over the left side of her face. Marie developed a similar rash and
became blind in the left eye soon afterwards. Pierre Janet made her
re-live the event which had had so terrible an effect upon her, induced
her to believe that the child had no