The conversion of Hamilton Wheeler

Front matter

The Conversion of

Hamilton Wheeler

A Voluntary Contribution to The National Mental Hygiene Movement

Chapter I

Introduction to the star character. Well born and ideally reared by an ideal mother. Reflection of ideal parental example. Ideal residence location. Early intimacy with the Hunts. Superior educational advantages. Removal to Van Cortlandt Park section of New York. Change to a boy's school. Athletic sports and physical development, followed by sedentation. Over stress of school work. Perplexity on choice of alternatives. Anxiety to meet economic stress 29-36

CHAPTER IT.

Acceptance of invitation to attend revival. Religious bringing up. Hamilton's religious status. Primary attitude toward Evangelist. Ludicrous impressions. Contrast between Evangelist and Rector. Aftermath agitation and emotion. Revival experience of hymn momentum abruptly ending in an immobile state, coupled with intense excitement. Emotionally rocked to and fro by vicissitudes of the service. Production of tensional state followed by a glow of passionate emotion. Impelling character of the besetting emotional impulses. Outward expressions of release of pent up emotions in the departing congregation. Exuberance of erotic emotions among young people. Indecorous conduct. Coquetry. Initial experience of unsophisticated suitors. Mutual yielding to amorous emotions of religious origin. Mental confusion over relation of religion and lust, and over irreconcilable contrasts between Evangelists and other clergy. Remorse and anxiety engendered by and disturbance of mind following revival experience ,37-45

Chapter III

Visit of Mrs. Wheatcroft. Outpouring of self-made troubles. Example of feminine discontent and unrest. Economic problems born of war conditions. Deliberations on the subject of divorce. Economic relations of wedded life. Example of bad influence on children. Dissatisfaction over age disparity. Differences in taste. Self-love and self-pity. Vanity. Hatred born of dissatisfaction. Super-egoism. Expression of religious feeling. Expression of unmeant vituperation. Unchristian-like acts of the Christian contrasted with the ethical behavior of the unbeliever. Dangers of suffrage movement. Selfish character of religious expressions. Ritualism and Evangelism contrasted. The sense of religious experience as an emotion. The hyperesthetic and hysterical type portrayed in Mrs. Wheatcroft. Hereditary effect of inebriety. Political, social, and domestic expression of revival emotionalism. Mrs. Wheatcroft's besetting sin. Impatience, unendurance, and intolerance. Hallucinations of persecution. Sudden changes of emotional expression. Argument and reason of no avail 46-57

Chapter IV

Hamilton exhibits restlessness and goes out for a walk. Meets Tom Young. Yields to pressure to attend revival again. Acquaintanceship with two girls. Fixation of the attention by hymns. Dogmatic and emphatic affirmations of Evangelist. Fatigue following Evangelist with eye and ear. Spellbound rigidity of auditors. Struggle for venting of emotions while yet transfixed. Progression of emotional stress. Breathlessness. Contagious influence of movement forward crystalized by oral suggestions and example. Card signing. Exit from Tabernacle. Accompanying the girls home. Exhibition of amatory excitement. Transition of religious emotion. Complete surrender to temptation. Remorse, anxiety. Hamilton's return home. A sleepless night. Irritable repulses. Change in disposition and moral demeanor. First interest in girls noticed. Complete change in character to the typical features and attributes of the hyperesthetic....58-67

Chapter V

Previous worry over effects of overwork augmented by second revival experience, causes Mrs. Wheeler to consult Dr. Austin. The Evangelist's motive. Pathological effects produced. A social and physical crime. Effects depressive, followed by exaltation reaction and motor release. Hesitation to believe wrong could come from religious practices. The converted remain slaves to the church. Ignorance of crowd psychology. Production of Hyperesthesia. Permanent reduction of resistance. Advice to intercept the follow-up agents. Disturbance of mental balance and poise. Instability the forerunner of manic-depressive insanity. Exampled production of biologic tetanus. Reaction tetanies of Evangelist's bombardments. Confusion and defect of ideation from excessive sense stimuli. Mental confusion, discontinuity, and in-coordination, from jumbles of vagaries and mysticisms. Perception in inverse ratio to emotional expression. Falsifications of ideas from intense emotions of sorrow and fear. Confusion and defect of perceptions from intense emotions. No religious significance of surrender of conversions. Other relations. Pure perception. Motor disproportion of perceptive excesses. Thrills. Evangelistic instability and emotionalism. Produced predisposition. Relegation of hysteria to faith-healing cults. Hysteric characteristics. America, the land of revivals and neurasthenia. Co-relation between corruption, vices, and religious emotionalism.

Emotion a physical manifestation. Causes. Disequilibrium between mental and physical functions. The simplest form of response phenomena. Inequalities. Fear of knowledge disturbing to beliefs. Progression because of survival 68-86

Chapter VI

Late retirement necessitated by mental disability in schoolwork. A sleepless night. An intruder in the apartment. Captured at the pistol's mouth. Identification of Tom Young. Disarming. The wrong apartment. The heart to heart talk. The product of multiple conversion. The religiousness of the criminal. The yeggman oath and its sanctity. A yegg from youth. The confession. The confidential talk. The conditional freedom. Yegg fraternal benevolences. Yeggmen's political and social relations. Gangmen's political functions. Obligations of yeggs. The solemn oath. The departure. The aftermath prostration. The verification of the paradoxical relation of religion and crime 87-99

Chapter VII

Wanderlust possesses Hamilton to seek another revival adventure and a companion. Beating the rush to the Tabernacle. The intimidation of the unchurched. Energy release of singing. Respiratory conformation to hymn rhythm. Disturbance of respiratory rhythm. The rapid fire of the Evangelist. Intimidation by pointed invective. Oppression and disturbances of breathing and allied symptoms. Emotional depression. Symptoms of respiratory and general distress. Increase of frequency of Evangelist's bombardment. Helplessness to accommodate to the imposed conditions. Varieties of emotions successively excited. Universal condemnations. Sensations of anguish, giddiness, and faintness. Stumbling and sobbing breathing. Mental clouding. Drunken symptoms. Final collapse. Removal to the Tabernacle hospital. Accompanied home in taxi. Dr. Austin called next morning. The recital. General symptoms of hyperesthesia 100-109

Chapter VIII

Perfect physical and mental specimen of young manhood at beginning of Revival. Temporary depletion only, afforded the necessary susceptibility to conversion. The man-destroying revival crime. Induced super-susceptibility to future religious emotionalism. Human amenability to crowd psychology which caters only to the senses. Mad stampedes of animals. Stampeding of human crowds to mad acts. Wars, outrages, and crimes of fanaticisms. Agitators rather than the crowds to blame. Need of severe penal laws. Erroneous concepts of products of mental function. Thought not a spiritual or divine entity, not a projection but a reaction. Wilfulness versus the will. The will, consciousness, and attention. Misinterpretation of physical-motive force. Violence of impulsive, rash, and criminal acts. Insane exhibition of strength. Violent stimulus of evangelistic effects. Peculiarity of conversion. Its vicarious expression of vented energy. The determining direction of fixed delusions. The influence of simple suggestion on the converted. Delusion* attained by prolonged fixation of religious ideas. Veritable delusions of religious convictions and "experiences." Puberty the predominant age of conversions. Induced delusion of sexual impulse. Special susceptibility and liability of children to emotions. Low tissue density as the basic factor. Taking advantage of the young. Religion and lust. Special susceptibility of adolescence. Children should keep away from revivals. Motive to inculcate convictions and prejudices when least competent to judge.

Theologian Professor advises harvest of the young. Medical authority warns against tampering with emotions of youth, lest religious fervor reappears as sexual immorality. Leading position of the Evangelist in American Churchdom. Complete surrender of clergy to the Evangelist. Morbidity of any action that disturbs the equilibrium. Subnormal status of what passes as supernatural. Morbidity and viciousness of all that unbalances and disturbs mental equilibrium. The normal man well balanced and self-controlled. Instability increases when cases progress despite treatment. Super-sensitiveness and reaction violence typical expressions of tissue softness of sedentary habits. Restlessness. Paroxysmal and spasm-like reaction. Prone to tetany. Tissue density basis of emotion. Emotionalism a status of incapacity, not of excess of motor force. Exhausting waste of energy. Convulsions, a status of broken integrity of tonic contraction. Absurd definitions of emotion. Impulsive expressions of emotion. Explosive attributes. Antithesis of thought and emotion. Emotion and digestion. Piety and biliousness. Intelligence a product of nutrition. Emotional discontinuity of thought. Delusional index of lunacy. Morbid manifestations not Providential or Divine. Revivals make business for the saloon and brothel, and inmates for insane asylums. The Evangelist the prototype of the charlatan. Contagion of emotion from the Evangelist. Designed accentuation of emotion for contagious effect. Evangelist pays the price of his own emotionalism. Effect of physical fixation on its mental reproduction. Extraordinary methods of holding attention of congregation. Object and effect of great revival choirs. Copyrighted hymns of highest emotional quality. Fixed eye and bated breath. Importance of stimulation minus reaction pending outburst of the overwrought. The silent struggle kinship to stage hypnotism. The false interpretation 110-133

Chapter IX

Determination of material basis of revival operations. Revivalism mass hypnotism, the audience the crowd, subject to crowd impressions and contagion. Low level of crowd psychology. The individual swallowed up in the crowd. Evangelical adaptation of hypnotism. Its success and harm. Importance of direction of effect on the will. Religious versus medical hypnotism as to breaking down the will. Revival conversion an introduction into the subnormal, not the supernatural. Emotion revered as religious experience. Over-reaction of low density tissues of the organs of special sense. Contractile tissue tetany from violent sense impressions, as physical basis of subconscious states. Analogous phenomena of hypnotism. Inhibition of deliberation. Typical cases analogous to hypnotised subject. Individual subordination to crowd consciousness. Catalepsy. Impulse untempered or controlled by reason productive of criminal and unethical conduct. Dissociation of conscious-

Pages ness. Double personalities. Subconscious awe and veneration leading to inhibition. Theory of panorganism seat of mentality. Recapitulation. Excessive recoils. Motor expression precedes deliberation. Hyperesthetics and hysterics in general are rash actors. Examples of undeliberated behavior 134-147

Chapter X

All factors of mental morbidity predispose to religion. Exemplification of the great war. Emotional release of tetany of grief. Emotional grief merges into emotional religion. Emotional identity of various tvpes. Pan-emotionalism of conversion. Morbidity of process of religious conversion. Artificial mental aberration. Morbid evangelical exciting cause superimposed upon known predisposing causes of morbidity. Subconscious automatons of perfect military machines. Absence of morality of subconscious subwaking ego. Psychology of the Germans in peace and war. Criminal attributes of the subconscious automaton as illustrated in the German soldier. Equalled only by the subject of religious zeal and fanaticism. History's chamber of horrors. Emotionalism, the bane of American politics. Duty of medical profession. Governments, like crowds, less moral and ethical than individuals. Physical basis of decadence of princely and aristocratic governments. Breaking the will of soldiers. Basis of brutality. Confusion a factor of mental deficiency. Importance of mental differentiation and definition. Deceptions and hallucinations. Discrimination. Importance of fluctuations of superficial circulation. Analogy of hyperemia and flush of religious exaltation. Religious hallucinations. Too sacred for reason. Evangelists as champions of public morals and uplift. The relation of the cardinal sins to historical religion. Dancing as a religious rite. Christian Science. Discussion of the physical basis of revival hymnology.

The oxygen factor. Choir psychology. The rhythmic factors. The emotion as an effect. Collective and universal emotion. Psychology of repetition of affirmation. Motor element of emotion. The singing congregation. Repetition of recitation. Psychology of hymn verses and music. Large choirs of revivals. Elements of mental sweeping. The Choir Master's spin of the human top. The explosive instability goal of Evangelist. Special susceptibility of the musical to evangelism. The unemotional not musical. Evil psychic- influence of evil Virtuosi. Former proscription of music in churches. Superficial innocence of singing hymns. Supposition of wholesomeness of everything presented in the name of religion. The curse of what unfits man and is not recognized as such. Present demands for supreme fitness. The military unfitness of the hyperesthetics from various causes. Inability to withstand modern warfare. Early mental collapse of excessive reactions and lack of stamina. Cowardice of innate timidity. Lack of resolution and courage. Unreliablity of natural disloyalty and treacheries. Restlessness and discontent as elements of disaffection. Vacillation. Unscrupulousness and malingering. Unreliability of bad veracity. Incompetence of general weakness of character. Incapacitation by insomnia. As a factor of mental breakdown. Incapacity to conform to mass action. Similarity to revival order of symptoms. Wisdom of Gen. Funston in prohibiting emotionalizing of troops. Many rendered militarily unfit by revival 148-179

Chapter XI

Dr. Austin introduces his fellow alienist : Dr. McLean. Inordinate cost of maintenance of institutional insane, and the great tax infliction on an innocent public made necessary by permitting the production of human derelicts. Necessity for allaying all apprehension of patient. Early American Revivals. Present Evangelist simulates the insane Davenport. Complete and careful examination of the entire body and physical reactions. Mental and emotional causation of most serious diseases. Sad error of public concept that diseases of mental causation are necessarily trivial, or are curable simply by change of mental attitude or religious belief. Danger of inciting fear, especially in children. Craving for rest and peace of converts leads them to Faith-healing cults in large numbers. Prospects of benefit from faith-healing. Hypnotic revival methods most potent, yet less so than those of subwaking hypnotism. The effect of fear and terror

Pages in vacating the blood vessels of the superficial tissues and thus asphyxiating them. Ignorance of faithhealers. Characteristics of modern Evangelists. Ear-splitting violence and reaction traumatism. The sense of conviction of sin one of depression. Sunday accredited the most successful sin convincer. Remarkable capacity of sense organs to withstand violence. Reaction tissues beyond tetanized by same degree of sensorial violence. Physical basis of abeyance of deliberative faculties from violence of sense impulses. Separation of upper and lower levels of consciousness. Dual personalities. Intercommunication of separated egos. Latent impressions of subconscious groups. The planchette and hypnotism instruments of exploration. Law of inverse proportion of emotion and reason. Great crime of fostering emotion and inhibiting intellection. Especially pernicious to Democracies. Especial need of reason in Democracies. Menace to communities of individuals bereft of reason. Amenability of the over-credulous to the sway of demagogues. Especial susceptibility of women. Impulsive loquacity. Intuition pictured as a divine faculty. Parallelism of intuition and impulsive expression. Analogy of the alcoholic. Role of immature perceptions in subsequent deliberation. High velocity of transmission of violent sense impressions of defective mentality. Imperfect perceptions of every imperfect deliberation are provided to interact with and modify future mental operations. The same inherent defect is responsible for imperfectly modified perceptions and imperfect intellection utilizing such imperfect perceptions. Either acting singly produces the 1 same effect 180-206

Chapter XII

Indivisibility of the attention. Integrity of the attention dependent upon unity. Functionally incapacitated to the extent that it is broken or dismembered. Clouding of the mental processes corresponding to confusion or distraction of the attention. The attention the center of convergence. Concentration of the attention a focus and unification of attention. Serious import of mental diversions and digressions. Mental acts composites of current sense impressions and past ones

The Conversion of Hamilton Whezler

coordinated. Virtue of singleness of theme, of the attention, and of consciousness. The vice of disruption. Short-comings of weak sense impressions attaining only subconscious levels. Conscious representations dependent upon dynamic reaction force. Weak representations attain outward expression during periods of abeyance or inhibition of stronger ones. Conscious mentality the group occupying the attention. All conscious thoughts attain head inversely to the exclusion of others. Latent influence of subconscious groups. Abnormal supremacies of subconscious groups in outward expression. Objective and subjective operations. Personifications and deifications of the mind as an entity, instead of a function. Confusing terminology of "subconscious mind" and "objective and subjective mind." Non-recognition of representations of inadequate strength. Misinterpretation of subconscious representations first commanding the attention. Forcible impression of false perceptions and irrational ideas. Confusion of perception and incoherence of ideas. Discontinuity of thought. Equal applicability to the mind of the laws of matter. Unification and integrity of integration. The mind as a functional product of animal matter. Dependence of progress in morbid psychology upon recognition of underlying factors. New emphasis upon the fact of unity in mental functions. Special sense hyperesthesia as a typical factor. Amnesia as a developed type. Producible by shock and traumatism. The mental levels of the conscious and subconscious groups. Superior and inferior standards. Weak perceptions not reaching the conscious attention not modified and qualified. Subconscious impressions gained by singing hymns. Insidious subconscious impressions. Process of "queering." Subconscious opinions subordinated to full conscious reason. On freewill. Disciplinary repression to subconsciousness. Blindness to sequence. Subordination by subconscious automatonization. Potency of influence of multiplicity of repetition of subconscious impressions. Exemplification in children of unconscious impressions. Religious applications and uses in competitive applications. Possibility of great wrongs. German applications. Subordination of the question of prerogative. Intrigue versus fear. Religious hysteria and fanaticism menace of peace. Motive for crime. Religious devotion parallel with status as menace to community. The millenium when religion shall be purged of supernaturalism. The religion and institutions of the future. The new lectureship teachers. Disappearance of hyperesthesia and anti-social classes with the establishment of institutions of this world to supersede the degradations of present religions of supernaturalism. Disappearance of international conflicts - 207-230

■ CHAPTER XIII.

Drunken delirium producible in alcoholics by violent emotion. Craving alcoholic liquors following strong emotions. Pathologic emotions morbid exaggerations of preambles of normal acts. Important role of alcohol in history of all religions. Miraculous creation of wine by Jesus. Excesses of the Agapae. Free use by church leaders. Renewal of religious ecstacies by alcohol and narcotics. Sensation suspended or extinguished by ecstacy. Visions, hallucinations, and convulsions in morbid train of events. Collateral symptoms. Bellicose methods of hysterio-emotional individuals. Appeals to emotions and passion instead of reason. Conviction by affirmation, repetition, and emphasis instead of by argument. As demagogues and social parasites. Role of alcohol in production of emotionalism. The campaign of education of the medical profession. The elimination of the sensorial causes. Religion as a cause of insanity. Hindering intellectual development and weakening moral character by beliefs that prohibit intelligent inquiry. Beliefs that transcend and contradict reason leading to extravagant delusions. Instability of mind and overthrow of mental balance by religious emotional excitement and extraordinary emotional displays. Ultraviolent evangelism. Sensorial violence and exhaustion. Obscurantism and mysticism, bewilderments and distractions. Violent repressions. "Blessed are the intoxicated." Analogy of religious and alcoholic intoxications. Comparisons between alcoholic and religious insanity.

Religion separate from morals. Defeat of mental coherence and coordination by religious obscurantism, obfuscation, and resulting bewilderment. Sanity as a state of successful adaptation and adaptability. Man's duty to be true to knowledge and fact. Obsessions of false ideas beginnings of unbalanced states. Falsification of senses. Uncontrolled imagination and love of illusion leading to delusion. General expressions of religious intoleranct Fanaticism a degree of insanity. Supernaturalism fosters obliviousness to material fact. Belief in the unreal destroys adaptability to the real. Abolition of differentiation by teaching that the tangible is in* tangible. Lack of initiation due to crushing independent thought by fear. Weakness of independent thought due to persecution of honest individual opinion. Elimination of those who do not progress. The elimination of the fanatical Turk. Results of false perception and conception, of emotionalism, hysteria, fanaticism, and eroticism fostered by religion. All higher mentality dependent upon elaboration. Sustained and complex deliberations necessary to ripe judgment. Ethics and morality versus Emotionalism. Criminal liability of the political and industrial instability of emotional derelicts. Folly of religious emotionalizing of industrial towns. Danger of trusting and obeying the emotions. Crowd emotion of riots. Emotionalism not productive of good citizenship. Fixed ideas of blind dogma. Obsessions supplant reason. Identity of reason and morality. Emotional control of men, women, and children. The terrible price paid for impassioned emotional excitations. Susceptibility not a solace. Religiousness of innate criminals. Predisposition of alcoholics to convulsive conversions. Affinity for Christian Science. Emotional contagion from Evangelist. Evangelism for broken-down sports. Pathology of intensive effort on incoherent and incoordinate narrative. Unbalance from defeated attempts to reason out the unreasonable of Scripture. Obfuscation and obscurantism fatal to acute and subtle minds. The insult to church members of the revival method of recruiting its membership. Broken wills, enfeebled volitions, emotionalism, and proneness to insanity of the victims of the revival harvest. First steps toward the discoordination of the unbalanced state. Paradox of the church as an institution

Pages of ethical culture. Religion, a foe of Republics. Church allegiance stronger than political. Breaking down of separation of Church and State in America. Unwise repressive laws of ecclesiastical political prestige. Vices of ecclesiastical bodies. Reactionary supremacy. The position of the modern Protestant minister. The restraint exercised by the body politic. The group inferior to the individual minister. The revival the product of the group. How long will it continue? The analogy of the Evangelist and the butcher. The lazy Pastor's method. Religious preferment. The un-American premium on creed and affiliation. Opportunity open for reform. Changes in the capacity of priest and minister. Opening as secular teachers. Need of universal teaching of subjects of higher education. Prostitution of religion to ulterior commercial ends. Religious hypnotism used to separate individuals from their fortunes 231-261

Chapter XIV

Attainment of the goal. Hamilton's triumph in overcoming all drawbacks and graduating. Mrs. Wheatcroft coming to her senses. The disappointment of ambitions of vanity. Late realization that her apparent admirers had not honorable intentions. Religious expression of self-love. Egoism. Dr. Austin admits the real gravity of the ordeal through which Hamilton had now safely passed. Religious indifference where harm is not involved. Necessity of instruction to permit of proper interpretation of religious teaching. Correction of popular errors regarding the use of the imagination. Confusion of imagination and thought. Unmodified imaginations the bane of the world. Christian Scientists as would-be Psychologists. Scientific and educated men Evolutionists. The survival of the fittest. The law of evolution one of Natural Selection. The survival of religion one of Artificial Selection. Many undesirable survivals by Artificial Selection. Survival of religions other than the Christian. Exemplification of Artificial Selection in the history of Christianity. Artificial destruction of unbelievers. Error of interpretation of negative position on immortality. The wish the father of the thought. The first law of Nature. The egoistic desire. The physical basis. The passion of criminals. The position of the medical profession. The obvious deduction regardless of aspirations and ambitions. The wisdom of Bacon and Scripture. Hamilton's regimen. Mrs. Wheeler's anxious moments. Dr. Austin's devotion and skill. The newspapers as imparters of forbidden news. The suicide of Edward Stone counterbalanced by a talk. The crisis with the Hunts. Peril of matrimonial expectations. The external evidences of restored health and vigor. The resealing of the engagement 262-276

APPENDICES Appendix A. Evidence regarding relation of age, puberty,

and conversion 277-278

Appendix B. Kraepelin on delusional ideas of sin 278-279

Appendix C. Evidence of material physical basis of the

mental function- 279-280

Appendix D. Disturbances and dissensions among early New England churches caused by Davenport and other violent and unruly itinerant evangelists 280-282

Appendix E. Source and sustinance of the Shakers from evangelical church revivals. Attractions for the converted 283-285

Introduction

THIS volume is offered as a voluntary contribution to the Mental Hygiene Movement which was begun in 1912, in an "endeavor to reduce the alarming amount of mental impairment in the United States by making public careful statements of the causes of mental diseases, by securing earlier medical treatment, and by preventive social service with individuals threatened with mental breakdown."

In the words of a writer for the movement:

"Mental unsoundness is becoming a serious national handicap and all interested in the welfare of humanity will welcome this opportunity to learn how the mental health of the nation may best be protected."

The chief objects of this commendable movement are:

"To work for the conservation of mental health; to help raise the standard of care for those in danger of developing mental disorder or actually insane; to promote the study of mental disorders in all their forms and relations and to disseminate knowledge concerning their causes, treatment and prevention ; to obtain from every source reliable data regarding conditions and methods of dealing with mental disorders ; to enlist the aid of the Federal Government so far as may seem desirable; to co-ordinate existing agencies and help organize in each State in the Union an allied, but independent Society for Mental Hygiene, similar to the existing Connecticut Society for Mental Hygiene."

The author takes pleasure in adding what, in the published opinion of the Committee on Mental Hygiene of the New York State Charities Aid Society, each person can do in the Mental Hygiene Movement :

1. "Inform yourself thoroughly regarding the causes of mental disease.

2. "Help to make the facts you now possess generally known.

3. "Refrain from those acts and habits which are liable to result in mental disorder.

4. "Speak and think of insanity as a disease not as a crime.

5. "If a relative, friend, or acquaintance seems to be suffering from bad physical or mental habits, take steps to see that he is given the information you possess and receives proper medical care without delay.

6. "Inform yourself of the modern methods of caring for the insane, and lend your voice and influence to all projects which make for better or earlier care of those suffering from mental diseases."

The preparation of such a work as is enclosed between the covers of this book has been attended with many difficulties. The conversational and narrative style of its presentation has been adopted solely as a means to an end, namely of facilitating the presentation of the involved profound problems of biology, physiology, sociology, and religion, in a form easy of comprehension by non-technical readers, and which will perhaps be more realistic, interesting, and attractive than the dry facts would be if presented in a technical scientific treatise.

The clothing with human interest of the facts of the injurious effects upon the converted of evangelistic propaganda, by portraying with some dramatic construction a real life experience, it is hoped may bring their significance and importance home to the reader with a vividness which the didactic works already before the public have apparently failed to do, a conclusion which seems warranted by the fact that evangelists continue their destructive work, ignoring completely the full exposes of their harmful effects which have preceded this one.

Revivalism appears to need an "Uncle Tom's Cabin," as it were, which will so surround the subject with human interest and realism that some degree of compassion may be elicited in behalf of the victims of this nefarious practice. No pretensions are made for this book as a work of fiction.

In view of the difficulties encountered, which have been many, in making of this work a simple presentation of some of the most intricate, complex, and obscured physical processes of psychology and psychiatry, the author craves the patience of the reader, and the limitation of his criticism to the truths set forth and any results that might accrue from a sincere endeavor to elucidate much that heretofore has been relegated to obscurantism and obf uscation by men who have regarded the subject as a kind of "forbidden fruit" and a field "where angels fear to tread."

It is more particularly the recent excesses in this field of the pathology of religion which have led the present author into print, trusting that he may break the ice and be followed by abler pens in this new domain of morbid psychology, which may thus be created as a subject of popular as well as scientific interest.

Perhaps, in the face of efforts at the suppression of public reports of insanity as direct results of revival emotionalism, it will be quite impossible to produce anything like complete statistics, but we have newspaper reports of resulting insanity from Omaha, Neb., Wheeling, Va., Portsmouth, Canton, and Columbus, Ohio, Newcastle and Philadelphia, Pa., and Syracuse, New York. The highest number reported from this list is fourteen distracted from Newcastle, Pennsylvania. At Lima, Ohio, is reported the death from over-excitement, of a Methodist presiding elder on the tabernacle platform, and at McKeesport, Pa., according to report, a former mayor fell dead from the heart failure of over-excitement following his participation in "revival" meetings; Boston and New York are yet to hear from with any completeness.

A noteworthy peculiarity of the reports of these cases is the greater prominence given to the person of the evangelist in the disordered ravings of the insane, than to the thought of God, Christ, or other characters of the Christian theology. A fascination for the personality of the evangelist appears a distinctive and predominant characteristic.

An interesting case reported in the Syracuse Herald of January 3, 1916, was that of Edward H. Buchenau, who, following conversion by Mr. Sunday on January 2nd., murdered his mother. He admitted in his confession to the police that he committed the crime in accordance with Mr. Sunday's teachings, with which he became imbued as a frequent attendant and worker. The following quoted from a book of copyrighted sermons is supposed to be the subject of the morbid obsession :

"I sometimes think, almost, that it might be a Godsend to many a community if it could be swept by typhoid fever or pneumonia or scarlet fever just after a good revival and before people have a chance to backslide." And again : "It is a good thing that I am not God for fifteen minutes. If I were I would fill your newspapers with obituaries and fill freight cars with the dead."

This insane criminal at Syracuse, according to report, confessed:

"When I went to bed last night I was thinking of mother and wondering if it would not be better for me to kill her.

"After breakfast she stood with her back to me and I thought of the heavy day's work before her and the thought came to me that she would be much happier in heaven.

"I suppose I should not have done it, but ever since I hit the trail at the Billy Sunday meetings I have had a different idea of God and life."

The above brief sketch of the more extreme results of revivalism is here presented to show that we have not selected an extreme, but an average case, as the subject of this work.

The very universality and profundity of religion makes it a power in the community. If this power be for evil incalculable harm is done. Government statistics show that nearly forty percent of our total population are enrolled as members of some religious organization, of which perhaps one fourth are active ones. Even admitting that many are children from eight years and upwards, and that many are included in this number who have removed, died, or have drifted away to freethought, or onto the rolls of other churches entailing duplication, the well organized social influence is great, as is also the political.