abnormal excitement of my
brain" covers the ground. Of course, there is always the easy retort
that saints and mystics did not use chloroform to produce their visions.
True, but chloroform is not the only agent by means of which a person
may be thrown into an abnormal state. Other means may be used; and as a
matter of fact, the use of herbs and drugs, as methods of producing
ecstatic states, have obtained in religious ceremonies from the most
primitive times. As we shall see later, tobacco, hashish, coca, laurel
water, and similar agents have been largely utilised for this purpose.
And when this plan is not adopted--although very often the two things
run side by side--we find fasting and other forms of self-torture
practised because of the abnormal conditions produced.

It is not argued or implied that in all this there was of necessity
deliberate imposture. That would imply the possession of greater
knowledge than actually existed. But it was known that ecstatic states
followed the use of certain drugs, or were consequent on certain
austerities, and they were valued because they were believed to bring
people into communion with a hidden spiritual world. In this way there
has always been going on a more or less deliberate culture of the
supernatural, in more primitive times by crude and easily recognisable
means, later by methods that are more subtle in character and more
difficult of detection. But the method of inducing a sense of
"spiritual" illumination by means of practices alien to the normal life
of man remains unchanged throughout. The collation of the conditions
under which mystical states of mind are experienced among savages with
similar experiences among the higher races, proves at once that this
statement contains no exaggeration of the facts.

The continuity of the phenomena is, indeed, of profound significance,
and is too often ignored. It is often asserted that we have to explain
the lower by the higher, and we can only understand the significance of
religion in its lower forms by bearing in mind the higher
manifestations. This is sheer fallacy. In nature the higher develops out
of the lower, of which it is compounded. In biology, for example, it is
now generally conceded that the secret of animal life lies in the cell.
This may be modified in all kinds of directions, the resulting organic
structure may be of the utmost complexity, but the basis remains
unchanged. So, too, with a great deal of so-called