ad its origin in
perverted sexual feeling, but the constant emergence of curious
religio-erotic sects whose strange mingling of eroticism and religion
has scandalised many, and offered a lesson to all had they but possessed
the wit to discern it.

Although there is an understandable disinclination, amounting with some
to positive revulsion, to recognise the sexual origin of much that
passes for religious fervour, the fact is well known to competent
medical observers, as the following citations will show. More than a
generation since a well-known medical authority said:--

"I know of no fact in pathology more striking and more terrifying than
the way in which the phenomena of the ecstatic--which have often been
seized upon by sentimental theorisers as proofs of spiritual
exaltation--may be plainly seen to bridge the gulf between the innocent
foolery of ordinary hypnotic patients and the degraded and repulsive
phenomena of nymphomania and satyriasis."[93]

Dr. C. Norman also observes:--

"Ecstasy, as we see in cases of acute mental disease, is probably always
connected with sexual excitement, if not with sexual depravity. The same
association is seen in less extreme cases, and one of the commonest
features in the conversation of acutely maniacal women is the
intermingling of erotic and religious ideas."[94]

This opinion is fully endorsed by Sir Francis Galton:--

"It has been noticed that among the morbid organic conditions which
accompany the show of excessive piety and religious rapture in the
insane, none are so frequent as disorders of the sexual organisation.
Conversely, the frenzies of religious revivals have not infrequently
ended in gross profligacy. The encouragement of celibacy by the fervent
leaders of most creeds, utilises in an unconscious way the morbid
connection between an over-restraint of the sexual desires and impulses
towards extreme devotion."[95]

Dr. Auguste Forel, the eminent German specialist, points out that--

"When we study the religious sentiment profoundly, especially in the
Christian religion, and Catholicism in particular, we find at each step
its astonishing connection with eroticism. We find it in the exalted
adoration of holy women, such as Mary Magdalene, Marie de Bethany, for
Jesus, in the holy legends, in the worship of the Virgin Mary in the
Middle Ages, and especially in art. The ecstatic Madonnas in our art
galleries cast their fervent regards on Jesus or on the heavens.