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gn of a belief remains. It has by that time become part of the intellectual environment. Theories of a quasi-philosophic or quasi-scientific character are elaborated, and give to the original belief something of a rational air. Even to-day the extent to which superstitious practices still gather round the subject of disease is known only to the curious in such matters. Not that the original reason is given for the practice. In nearly every case a different one is invented. To take only a single example. We still find saffron tea largely used in cases of measles. All medical men are aware that it possesses not the slightest curative value. Students of folklore are aware that it has its origin in the theory of sympathetic cures. Its redeeming feature is that it is harmless; so we find it still in common use, and the recovery of a child from measles is often enough attributed to the potency of the concoction. So with the relation of disease to the persistence of the belief in the supernatural. The conclusion that disease--whether bodily or mental--is due to the agency of spirits is one that follows from the existence of the religious idea; but in turn the observed facts react and strengthen the religious belief. Every case of disease becomes to the primitive mind an unanswerable proof in favour of the original hypothesis. The disease is there, and the only explanation possible is in terms of the animistic idea. And all the time the religious idea is becoming more deeply embedded in the social consciousness, more firmly established as a social fact. The next line of evidence is that furnished by what I have called the culture of the supernatural. By some means or other--probably by accident in the first instance--it is discovered that certain herbs and vegetable drugs have a peculiar effect on one's mental state. Those who use them see or hear things other people do not normally hear or see. Abstention from food and other bodily privations produce similar results. What is the inevitable conclusion? The only one possible under the existing conditions is that communication has been set up with an invisible world from which one is shut off under normal conditions. From this to the next step is obvious and easy. If a drug, or a fast, brings one into communication with the supernatural world, one has only to repeat the conditions in order to repeat the experience. And repeated they are in all religions, with, at most, those mod
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