s disorders that might be avoided
were a healthier outlet provided. In this the modern priest is acting
precisely as his savage forerunner acted. As the savage medicine man
associates sexual phenomena with the activity of the tribal ghosts, so
the modern priest often associates the psychological conditions that
accompany adolescence with a supernatural influence. The distinction
between the two is a purely verbal one. In neither case is there a
recognition of the nature of the processes actually at work; in both
cases the phenomena are used to emphasise the reality and activity of
the supernatural. In both cases the social feelings are disguised by
the religious interpretation given, with the result that instead of
adolescence being, as it should be, the period of a conscious entry into
the larger social life, it only too often marks the beginning of a
lifelong servitude to retrogressive forces.

These are the main lines along which, I conceive, the study of the
pathologic elements that enter into the history of religion must be
studied. And so long as we restrict our study to the lower culture
stages the evidence is clear and unmistakable. It is when we reach the
higher stages of civilisation that the problem becomes more difficult.
For although it is possible to detect the same factors at work they are
expressed in a different way, and affiliated to current philosophic and
even scientific ideas. Thus, it would be readily admitted by most people
nowadays that visions seen by a fasting man, or by a taker of drugs, or
by one suffering from some nervous disorder, were wholly inadmissible as
evidence. So far we have advanced beyond the point of view of primitive
races. But the testimony of one who by constantly dwelling upon a single
idea, and by excluding rational and corrective influences, has brought
about a quite abnormal state of mind, is still counted of value by
theologians. Much of the current cant concerning 'mysticism' may be
cited in illustration of this. Exactly what mysticism is no one appears
to know. Definitions are numerous and varied. So far as most mystics are
concerned the definition of Harnack--"Mysticism is rationalism applied
to a sphere beyond reason"--appears to hit the mark, although how reason
can be used in a sphere to which it does not apply is precisely one of
those unintelligible statements that so delights those with yearnings
after the ineffable. The normal mind will probably find more
satis