naturally passive and the intellect feeble; but
in natively strong minds and characters we find quite opposite
results."[109] And when it is further admitted that "the mystical
feeling of enlargement, union, and emancipation has no specific
intellectual content whatever of its own," but "is capable of forming
matrimonial alliances with material furnished by the most diverse
philosophies and theologies, provided only they can find a place in
their framework for its peculiar emotional mood," mysticism seems
reduced to an emotional development on all fours with emotional
development in other directions. It is not peculiar to religious minds
because "it has no specific intellectual content." It is amorphous, so
to speak. And it may form diverse 'matrimonial alliances' precisely
because it does not point to a hidden world of reality, but is merely
indicative of tense emotional moods. In the face of nature the
non-theistic Richard Jeffries experiences all the feelings of mental
enlargement and emotional transports that Mary Alacoque or Santa Teresa
experienced in their visions of the 'Risen Christ.'

It is idle, then, to sneer at 'medical materialism,' and stigmatise it
as superficial. Many people are constitutionally afraid of words, and
there is nothing that arouses prejudice so quickly as a name. But it is
really not a question of materialism, medical or non-medical. It is a
mere matter of applying knowledge and common sense to the cases before
us. Are we to take the subject's explanation of his or her mental states
as authoritative, so far as their nature is concerned; or are we to
treat them as symptoms demanding the skilled analysis of the specialist?
If the former, how can we differentiate between the mystic and the
admittedly hysterical patient? If the latter, what ground is there for
placing the mystic in a category of his own? Rational and scientific
analysis will certainly take far more notice of the nature of the
feelings excited than of the object towards which they are directed.
Here is the case of a young lady, given by Dr. Moreau, in his _Morbid
Psychology_:--

"During my long hours of sleeplessness in the night my beloved Saviour
began to make Himself manifest to me. Pondering over the meditations of
St. Francois de Sales on the _Song of Songs_, I seemed to feel all my
faculties suspended, and crossing my arms upon my chest, I awaited in a
sort of dread what might be revealed to me.... I saw the Redeemer
v