Pathological aspects of religions

Front matter

Glass

Book

Copyright N°.

CHAPTER II. The Emotional Element in Religion

The role love plays in religion, 15

Love an efflorescence of the sexual impulse, .... 15

Examples of the influence of sex on religion, .... 16

Brinton and others on the relationship between sex and religion, 18

President Hall's parallelisms between love and religion, . . 20

Phallicism, its origin, 22

Pathological degenerations of phallicism, . , ... 25

Renunciation and Restraint, its motives, . . . . . 30

Hate and anger, their roles in the religious life, . . . . 33

Thugism, 35

Religious suicides, 38

Pity, its role in the religious life, 38

The true pedagogy of pity, 40

The Jains and Doukhobors, 41

Fear, an important element in the religious experience, . . 42

President Hall's study of various fears, 43

Morbid fears, 45

The Great Awakening, . 47

The Kentucky Revival, 51

Jumpers, 55

The Conversion of Children, 56

Human Sacrifices, 59

Generalizations, 65 iv Table of Contents.

Pages.

CHAPTER III. Mysticism

Definitions, 69

Mystics criticised, 71

Critics criticised, 72

Mysticism found in all religions, ....... 73

Brahmanism, 74

Sufism, 76

Christian Mysticism, 80

Mysticism among primitive peoples, 123

Analysis of mysticism, 125

CHAPTER IV. Symbolism, Fetichism, and Interpretation

Origin, meaning, and importance of symbolism, . . . 130

Degeneration of symbolism, 132

Sacred relics, . 132

Fetichism, . 134

Buddhist Praising Wheels, 136

Water and fire baptismal rites, 138

James on ritual worship, 138

Carlyle on pathological symbolism, 139

Symbolism in the Russian Church, 140

Total absence of symbolism is bad, 140

Interpretation and Bibliolatry among the Jews, .... 141

Extracts from the Talmud, 142

The Qabala, 160

Christianity owes its birth to degeneration of Judaism, . . 168

Christian bibliolatry and interpretation, 169

CHAPTER V. The Intellectual Element in Religion

Religion not wholly a matter of the intellect, .... 174

The meaning of belief, 175

Normal and abnormal beliefs differentiated, .... 176

Beliefs concerning disease, 177

Diseases ascribed to demons, 178

The Church's methods of curing diseases, . . . . . 179

The Church's hostility to medicine, 180

The Church's medical science, doctrine of signatures, relics,

charms, etc., 181

The Church's hostility to Jewish physicians, .... 183

Early Protestant beliefs concerning disease, .... 184

Table of Contents.

Warfare waged against inoculation, vaccination, and use of anaesthetics, ......

Persecution of Jews during pestilences, History of beliefs in miracle cures, Christian Science and kindred sects, Normal and abnormal doubt differentiated, . Four types of doubters, .....

Renan's and James's 'Will to Belive,' Work, a cure for doubt, ....

Doubting, an adolescent phenomenon, Evils of bad religious training,

Scientism and apathy,

Attitude of atheist, scientist, and apathist toward religion

Pages.

CHAPTER VI. The Volitional Element in Religion

The r61e that will plays in the religious experience, . . . 213

Fanaticism analyzed and described, 215

Value of uniformity in religious observances, .... 221

John Calvin, his character and work, 222

Church organizations, their origin and development, . . . 226

Distinction between individual and institutional religions, 227

Importance of institutional religion, 231

Asceticism and monasticism, . . . . . . . 233

Four types of 'other-worldists,' 234

Active and passive asceticism, 235

Origins of asceticism, and resultant attitudes towards life, . 238

Selfishness and inhumanity of ascetics, 241

Sketch of St. Macarius of Alexandria, 245

Sketch of St. Simeon of Stylites, 246

Sketch of St. Theodosius, 247

Sketch of St. Stephen of Crandmont, . . . . . . 248

Sketch of St. Peter Damiani, .249

The Flagellants, 253

False ascetics, 255

Monasteries become hotbeds of vice, 256

Only abnormal religious experiences have been catalogued and

studied, 259

Index, 261

INTRODUCTORY NOTE.

With this memoir Clark University begins the publication of monograph supplements to its most recently established Journal.

This thesis of Dr. Moses marks one of the very earliest attempts to treat of the abnormal side of religious life. While it is generally admitted that religious experience may become pathological, no one has attempted before to trace perversions, excesses and aberrations over so wide a field. Hence, this treatise merits special leniency on the part of the reader, which pioneer work can always justly claim, It is often hard to draw a clear line of demarkation between the normal and the abnormal, and in doing this no doubt individual judgments would differ. None of the topics are treated exhaustively, but the effort throughout has been to do suggestive work with the conviction that this domain is almost sure to be far more cultivated later. The writer has spent much time for three years upon his theme, has written and rewritten nearly every page and believes that were he to continue his work for a decade or two his conclusions would continue to undergo transformation.

It is a very important lesson for our times and one that should impress itself upon every one interested in the phenomena of religious life that it is not exempt from disease any more than is every tissue and organ of the body. It hardly need be added that what is herein contained involves no disparagement of true religion and ought to be heartily welcomed by every one who desires to see it kept pure and undefiled.

Finally, it should not be forgotten that wide as is the field here covered, there are many other topics that might very properly be included under its title that are not here touched upon.

G. Stanley Hall.

Clark University,

September, 1906.

Preface

Pathological aspects of religions ! The very title is sufficient to produce a variety of reactions in the different individuals who will read or hear it, and, as in the case of so many other titles and phrases, we may expect it soon to be roundly abused by all parties. Those atheistically inclined will perhaps hail it with delight, and apply it indiscriminately to everything in all religions ; the religious will recoil from it, but those who belong to no sect or party, and who are therefore unprejudiced, will draw no hasty conclusions, but will calmly seek for its true scope and meaning, and, we hope, be rewarded in some measure for their pains. Certainly the last is the only proper attitude to assume in the study of this subject, as it is in all others.

The mine, here opened up with crude implements, is not altogether a new one. At least two other pioneers have dug in it and brought forth much valuable ore. One of these was M. Ernest Murisier, a young French savant whose early death was a great loss to the scientific world. His work 1 is a little masterpiece of psychological analysis, but its scope is limited to three chapters: Mysticism, Fanaticism, and Emotional Contagion. The other is Prof. Wm. James, whose more ambitious production 2 is already familiar to every one. The value of his labor is unfortunately minimized because he considered all his curious specimens pure ore and failed to see that the majority of them contained much dross and but little of the pure metal. Had he named his work l 'Varieties of Abnormal Religious Experience," and studied his materials from that point of view, it would have been undoubtedly the best so far produced on the subject. As it is, the work is confusing, distorted and objectionable to a large class of readers who prefer to consider many if not most of the experiences he has collected and analyzed distinctly pathological rather than mere exaggerations of normal religious experiences.

1 Les Maladies du Sentiment Religieux, Paris, 1901.

2 Varieties of Religious Experience.

2 Preface.

There is an important difference between disease and excessive strength or weakness.

Besides these two there have been many alienists who have noted religious aberrations of various sorts among their patients, and anthropologists who have carefully described scattered cases of pathological religious beliefs, rites, ceremonies, customs, etc., among primitive, ancient, and modern peoples, but no attempt has been made to collect, analyze, and classify these cases psychologically.

The present study modestly undertakes to do this. Its author has drawn all his materials, and many of his explanations from the works of alienists, anthropologists, missionaries, historians, and biographers ; has studied these as impartially and classified them as best he could. He makes no claim to originality, except perhaps in method of treatment, and is conscious of its very many lacunas and deficiencies. He has only sorted the crude ore, leaving to more expert hands to do the smelting and refining.

The work is intended to parallel and complement in some measure the labors of Leuba, Starbuck, Coe, and others who have done so much to tell us the true psychological meaning of many of the normal religious experiences. For while dealing altogether with pathological religious experiences it throws considerable light indirectly upon those normal experiences of which they are the degenerations, and furnishes us a better and more complete picture of the birth, development, and decay of religion in the race and in the individual than the former could alone. It is also hoped that this study will be of service to religious pedagogues, in that it endeavors to mark with buoys the hidden rocks and reefs on which so many religious ships in the past have foundered.

In no department of education are the need and importance of sound pedagogical principles so great as in religion, for no other has a subject which touches deeply so many sides and interests of human life. Religion is perhaps the oldest product of human feeling and thought, so old at any rate that many consider it one of the fundamental instincts. Its influence on the evolution of the race and on the life of the individual is simply incalculable, and therefore any error made in the inculcation of its principles is fraught with untold consequences. One poorly trained in mathematics, physics, languages, etc., is not nearly so dangerous a member of society as one poorly trained in religion, for the former

Preface. 3

are recent, accessory acquirements which do not begin to shape the character and conduct of the individual to the degree and extent that the latter does. A study of this sort should therefore be full of suggestions to those to whom the religious training of the young is intrusted. Its aim throughout is not to destroy but to fulfill, and the thought so well expressed by Dean Farrar has been constantly in the mind of its author : " We study the past not to denounce it, not to set ourselves above it, not to dissever ourselves from its continuity, but to learn from it, and to avoid its failures. It has much to teach us by way of solemn warning. If we shall have to dwell upon its mistakes it is only that we may have grace to avoid them, and to be on our guard against similar tendencies . " 1

It is the opinion of the writer that the future will not be non-religious, as an ever-increasing number of scholars predict it will, but will possess a religion which will appropriate and assimilate the good of all the religions of the past and present, and will harmonize with its stage of development and satisfy the peculiar needs which only a religion of some sort can satisfy. It is already a platitude that each age has the religion which it deserves, but during transition periods it happens that progress is made along some lines much more rapidly than along others, and the difficulty of making proper adjustments is so great that impatient spirits grow restless and strive to force the adjustment even if they have to eliminate one or two important factors entirely. If old religion and the new science cannot immediately come to terms the enthusiastic but short-sighted partisans of the latter are ready to sacrifice the former, while the religious enthusiasts are equally eager to disparage and even annihilate all science. Fortunately, these individuals are few and their power relatively small. The race moves slowly and cautiously, regardless of the goading of the few, and instinctively refuses to lose anything that may be of value to it.

That of all things it will not leave Religion, the grandest legacy of the ages, behind, no one who is conversant with Volk-psychology and the trend of the present age will deny. Science is already halting in its mad and disappointing rush, and beginning to suspect that the promised land it was so eagerly « ' making for ' ' is but a mirage or the phantom of an overwrought brain. Philosophy is bending all her energies

1 Hist, of Interpretation, p. 14.

4 Preface.

to reconcile Science and Religion, knowing that the alliance will be extremely beneficial to both, in that it will save them from pessimism, despair, and deterioration.

Clifford's Cosmic Consciousness, the Panpsychism of Fechner, Stout, Strong, and others, the Pure Experiences of James, the new Humanism of Schiller, and the Pragmatism of the Chicago School, are all efforts, I take it, to bring about this reconciliation ; that is, they are tendencies away from materialism and the crude conception of law which were the offspring of an immature science toward a new idealism which is always the closest ally of religion.

It is, perhaps, another instance of the irony of fate that Science should wittingly or unwittingly become Religion's greatest benefactor. She has pruned the religious tree of all its dead and superfluous twigs and branches, has cleaned it of its many deathly parasites, so that now it is much more beautiful and healthy than it ever was, and the future may well hope to enjoy fruits, richer and more luscious than were ever possessed by the past.

I gladly take this opportunity to acknowledge my very great indebtedness to President G. Stanley Hall, who first suggested the subject to me, and without whose continued help, encouragement, and inspiration, this study, crude and imperfect as it is, could not have been completed.

J. M.

Wokcestek, Mass., July, 1905.

CHAPTER I. Definitions of Religion

It is evident that just as in medicine, psychiatry, art and ethics, we must know physical and mental health, beauty, and goodness, in order to clearly understand disease, ugliness, and evil ; so too, in religion, a knowledge of its healthy normal condition, is a prerequisite to a knowledge of its abnormal, pathological condition. The one is as important as the other, and both must be kept constantly in countenance of each other, in order that each may shed light upon the other. In order, therefore, to determine what pathological religion is we must first determine what normal religion is.

What is religion ? The history of the attempts that have been made to answer this question forms a long and tedious chapter in the history of human thought. Almost every writer on the subject, from the earliest times down to the present, has offered a different definition, no one being quite content with those offered by the others. The old adage, " Quot homines tot sententise " holds nowhere more true than here. A collection and classification of some of these definitions may not be without interest.

1. A great many writers, both ancient and modern, have, as Prof. Brinton points out, 1 looked upon the religious state, 'inse' as pathological, "a symptom of a diseased brain." Thus, Empedocles in the fifth century B. C, declared it to be "a sickness of the mind, ' ' and Feuerbach, about fifty years ago, stigmatized it as "the most pernicious malady of humanity." Prof. Sergi, in his recent book, L'Origine dei Fenomeni Psichici, 2 says point blank that all religions, the highest as well as the lowest, are pathological. They all spring from desire for protection against evils, present and future, and inasmuch as the protection is foolishly sought from supernatural, and therefore unnatural sources which never existed, the desire cannot be satisfied, and therefore, all forms of prayer, worship, sacrifices, in short, all religious

1 Religions of Primitive Peoples, p. 41 ff. 2 Ch. 15, pp. 264-298.

beliefs and practices are a waste of time, productive of fatalism, and harmful to progress. Religion, he hopes, will in the future be supplanted by science, which will offer natural explanations of the causes of all the ills to which humanity is subject, and furnish natural remedies for them.

2. A similar view, quite prevalent in all ages, is that religion is superstition. Hobbes defines it somewhere as ' ' superstition sanctioned by the State ' ' and tells us that it was born of fear and ignorance. Lucretius declared it was born of a dream, while Guyau and other contemporaries tell us that it is at best only a product of the childhood of the race, which we will soon outgrow.

3. A third view is that religion is a fraud invented by priests and rulers to frighten the masses into subjection. This was a favorite view about the time of the French Revolution. In England, Shelley championed this view and declared it to be one of his missions ' ' to unveil the religious frauds by which nations have been deluded into submission." These three groups of theories and definitions may be characterized as antagonistic definitions ; definitions not of religion, but against religion. They are the favorites of atheists.

4. Still another view holds that at some far-distant time the Creator revealed himself to our forebears thereby causing Religion to be born full-grown in their souls. Present religions are mere reminiscences and degenerations of that perfect religion which was the parent of them all. Religion has not, like language, art, science, government, etc., developed according to the laws of evolution ; her's was a Minerva-like birth.

Closely akin to this view is that which holds that religion is an expression of the ' inner light ' that ' light which lighteth every man who cometh into the world ' disclosing unto him the existence of God and the fact of his soul. " When I say that all religions depend for their origin and continuance directly upon inspiration," writes Dr. Brinton, " I state an historic fact. It may be known under other names, of credit or discredit, as mysticism, ecstasy, rhapsody, demoniac possession, the divine afflatus, the gnosis, or in its latest christening, 'cosmic consciousness. ' All are but expressions of a belief that knowledge arises, words are uttered or actions performed not through conscious ideation or reflective purpose but through the promptings of a power above or beyond the individual mind. " 1 It is interesting to note in passing, Dr. 1 Religions of Primitive Peoples, p. 52 ff.

Definitions of Religion. 7

Brinton 's earlier view of the matter. « < Religions, ' ' this author tells us in another work, "are the unaided attempts of man to find out God ; they are the efforts of the reason struggling to define the infinite ; they are the expressions of that ' ' yearning after the gods ' ' which the earliest of poets discerned in the hearts of all men. " 1

Again, there are the views of narrow-minded sectarians who hold that the only religion worthy of the name is their own ; all others are base superstitions and idolatries. This view has received its best expression in Milton's Paradise Lost, and is not uncommon even to-day.

Prof. Leuba, in one of his excellent articles, 2 has collected a number of scientific and philosophical definitions, and classified them into three groups as follows :

In the first group, which may be called the Noetic group, " a specific intellectual element is given as the essence, or as the distinguishing mark of religion."

Thus, Martineau defines religion as, "a belief in an Everliving God, that is, in a Divine mind and will ruling the universe and holding moral relations with mankind."

Romanes : ' ' Religion is a department of thought having for its objects a self-conscious and intelligent Being. ' '

d'Alviella: Religion is, "The belief in the existence of superhuman beings who interfere in a mysterious fashion in the destiny of man. ' '

Hegel: Religion is, "The knowledge possessed by the finite mind of its nature as absolute mind. "

In the second, or Feeling and ^Esthetic group, " it is one or several specific feelings which are singled out as the religious differentiae. ' '

Schleiermacher : "Religion cannot and will not originate in the pure impulse to know. It is neither thinking nor acting, but intuition and feeling." Later he wrote: "Religion is a feeling of absolute dependence. "

Herbart : « ' Sympathy with the universal dependence of men is the essential natural principle of all religion.' '

Goethe, in Faust :

x The Myths of the Kew World, p. 15.

2 Intro, to a Psychological Study of Religion, Monist, Jan., 1901. The reader will find here a good collection and criticism of definitions.

Sabatier : ' ' That which we call religion in a man is the sentiment of the relation in which he stands and wants to stand to the universal principle upon which he knows himself to be dependent, and to the universe itself of which he finds himself a part. "... A filial feeling towards God and a fraternal feeling towards man is what makes the Christian."

Upton : " It is the felt relationship in which the finite self-consciousness stands to the immanent and universal ground of all being, which constitutes religion."

In the third, or Volitional and Ethical group, * « the active principle, the cravings, the desires, the impulses, the will, take the place occupied by the intellect or the feelings in the other classes."

Bradley : * « Religion is the attempt to express the complete reality of goodness through every aspect of our being."

Feuerbach : ' ' The origin, nay, the essence of religion is desire ; if man possessed no needs, no desires, he would possess no gods. "

Marshall : « ' The restraint of individualistic impulses to racial ones (the suppression of our will to a higher will) seems to me to be of the very essence of religion ; the belief in the Deity, as usually found, being from the psychological point of view an attachment to, rather than the essence of, the religious feeling. ' '

The Golden Rule, found in so many of the ancient religions may be cited here as emphasizing this element to the exclusion almost, of all the others. When a Gentile came to Rabbi Hillel with the challenge, "Proselytize me, but on condition that thou teach me the whole law whilst I stand upon one leg, ' ' the latter converted him by replying, ' ' That which is hateful to thyself, do not do to thy neighbor. This is the whole law, all the rest is its commentary. ? ' Similarly, the Apostle James : '« What doth it profit though a man say he hath faith, and have not works ? Can faith save him ? ' ' Right willing and acting, rather than mere believing, is for him the essence of religion.

That these definitions are all more or less one-sided, need hardly be pointed out. Each one as we should expect, finds in religion that which is predominant in his own soul. Goethe could not have possibly been true to himself and said anything else than, ' ' Name it what you will, for me it is all feeling. " Spencer, Romanes, and other investigators were, by their natures, compelled to define it in terms of the intel-

Definitions of Religion. 9

lect, and likewise the men of action like James and Bondaref were compelled to define it in terms of will and conduct. Such definitions are valuable more for the light they shed on individual psychology, than for their aid in the solution of the question * What is religion ? ' The other writers whom we have quoted, deluded by the fatal faculty-psychology, endeavored, either by analyzing and comparing the different historical religions, to arrive at the origin, the seed from which they all sprang, or, by eliminating all that is characteristic of the different species to discover the one quality or essence common to all ; a 4 summum genus ' from which, as a starting point, they might construct a religious tree a la Haeckel.

All the various theories concerning the origin of religion are nothing more than mere idle guesses in the dark. Its roots lie so deeply and intricately imbedded and enmeshed in the past of the race that it has now become almost an instinct, which, in its proper time, and under normal conditions, sprouts forth spontaneously from the dark and impenetrable regions of the individual's sub-consciousness. To say that religion was born of the emotions, or the intellect, or the will is to arbitrarily partition the soul into three air-tight compartments, a procedure which flagrantly violates the truth and for which there is absolutely no justification. The soul is an organic unity of inseparable parts, which develop, ripen, and decay concomitantly and covariantly. When in its gradual evolution it finally reached the mature chrysalis state and was beginning to emerge into a beautiful butterfly, i. e., when our simian ancestors were becoming more human than ape, then many wonderful changes must have taken place and new conditions pregnant with future possibilities were born. It was then that the veil was lifted from the eyes of our ancestors ; they beheld the wonders and mysteries of the starry heavens, and the forces of nature playing about them ; they caught a glimpse of God, were filled with wonder, admiration, awe, curiosity, and fear ; the bud unfolded itself, and the beautiful flower, religion, was born in the world. This, figurative and fanciful as it is, is probably the most that can be said concerning its birth. The Dutch botanist, Hugo de Vries, maintains that new types can arise suddenly. Great variations, not small, as Darwin thought, are, according to him, the condition of evolution through the struggle for life. If religion be the product of some such sudden mental variation, the futility of trying to trace it back to an instinct, or feeling, or will-act, would be all the more manifest.

Of the essence of religion we can likewise make no dogmatic statement. There are no two religions, we venture to say, whose essences are precisely the same. Indeed, we may go even further and say that as many men, so many religions. We should more accurately speak of religions than of religion which exists only as an abstract term or idea. The attempt to reduce all religions to one common denominator is as futile as that of the ancient School of Miletus, to find in water, the infinite atmosphere, breath, the first and fundamental principle of the whole universe.

Instead of vainly endeavoring to discover the origin or essence of religion, several recent writers have wisely undertaken to ascertain the psychological meaning and value of the religions which the different peoples, primitive, barbarous, and civilized, now possess and the influence they exert upon their lives. Here we may mention among others, the following definitions :

Eliza Ritchie: "When we speak of a religious man or race, we have in view a certain temper of mind, a certain way of conceiving the facts of existence, a doctrine of some sort. But we also know that a doctrine itself, however elaborate it may be, does not constitute a religion. When the doctrine affects the tone and color of the individual's emotional life, and has a determining influence upon his conduct, then the individual may be said to be religious. Whether the creed be low or lofty, simple or complex, it must be felt; whether its outer expression consist in ceremony or ritual, moral precepts or ethical principles, philanthropic work or fanatical persecutions, some effect it must have on the emotional and practical life ; if either of these factors be wholly absent, the phenomenon is not that of religion. ' ' 1

Pfleiderer : ' * In the religious consciousness all sides of the whole personality participate. Of course we must recognize that knowing and willing are here, not ends in themselves, as in science and morality, but rather suboidinated to feeling as the real centre of religious consciousness. This is not simply a feeling, but a combination of feelings of freedom and dependence. ' '

!The Essentials of Religion, Phil. Rev., Jan., 1901.

Definitions of Religion. 11

Caird : ' i Without as yet attempting to define religion, we may go as far as to say that a man 's religion is the expression of his ultimate attitude to the Universe, the summed-up meaning and purport of his whole consciousness of things. "

Tolstoi: "True religion is a relation, accordant with reason and knowledge, which man establishes with the infinite life surrounding him, and it is such as binds his life to that infinity, and guides his conduct. ' ' 1

James: "Religion means, for the purpose of these lectures, the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine." 2

The phrase, "in their solitude," limits the definition to the passive, subjective type of individuals, such as the mystics, monastics, and ascetics, and eliminates that much larger class of individuals in whom the religious fervor is at its highest pitch only when they are in a group or crowd, when they are laboring for their unfortunate fellow-beings, for the general welfare of the race; or, if fanatics, when they are warring against heretics and the enemies of their God.

As definitions, it is not difficult to raise objections against each of the above, but the point which they emphasize, namely, that religion is an experience which is the combined effect of all the activities of the psyche, — beliefs, emotional responses, and volitional acts of various kinds, — and which shapes in large measure the lives and conduct of men, evinces a deeper and broader knowledge of the true nature of religion and its relation to life than any of the previous ones.