Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death Part 16

Of course, all that was needed for such simple calculations was close attention to easy rules; but this was just what the waking mind was unable to give, at least without the help of pencil and paper. If we lay this long and careful experiment side by side with the accounts already given of the solution of problems in somnambulic states, it seems clear that there is yet much to be done in the education of subliminal memory and ac.u.men as a help to supraliminal work.

Important in this connection is Dr. Dufay's account of help given to an actress in the representation of her _roles_ by hypnotisation.[86] It seems obvious that stage-fright is just the kind of nervous annoyance from which hypnotisation should give relief. Somewhat similarly I believe some persons can secure a cheap subst.i.tute for genius on stage or platform, evoking by suggestion or self-suggestion a helpful subliminal uprush. Here again, the hypnotisation is a kind of extension of "secondary automatism,"--of the familiar lapse from ordinary consciousness of movements (walking, pianoforte-playing, etc.), which have been very frequently performed. The possibilities thus opened up are very great: no less than the combination by mankind of the stability of instinct with the plasticity of reason. There seems no reason why man's range of automatism should not thus be largely increased in two main ways: many things now unpleasant to do might be done with indifference, and many things now difficult to do might be done with ease.

And now let us pa.s.s on from these specialised influences of suggestion on certain kinds of attention to its influence on attention generally, as needed, for instance, in education. If we can arrest the s.h.i.+fting of the mental focus to undesired ideational centres in at all the same way as we can arrest the ch.o.r.eic or fidgety s.h.i.+ftings of motor impulse to undesired motor centres, we shall have done perhaps as much for the world's ordinary work as if we had raised the average man's actual intelligence a step higher in the scale. We shall have checked waste, although we may not have improved quality. The well-known case of Dr.

Forel's warders,[87] who were enabled by hypnotic suggestion to sleep soundly by the side of the patients they had to watch, and wake only when the patients required to be restrained, shows us how by this means the attention may be concentrated on selected impressions and waste of energy be avoided in a way that could hardly be compa.s.sed by any ordinary exercise of the will.

How far, indeed, we can go in actually _heightening_ intelligence by suggestion we have yet to learn. We must not expect to add a cubit to intellectual any more than to physical stature. Limitations at birth must prevent our developing the common man into a Newton; but there seems no reason why we should not bring up his practical achievements much nearer than at present to the maximum of his innate capacity.[88]

In pa.s.sing on from the influence of suggestion on _attention_ to its influence on _will_, I am not meaning to draw any but the most every-day distinction between these two forms of inward concentration. The point, in fact, which I wish now to notice is rather a matter of common observation than a provable and measurable phenomenon. I speak of the energy and resolution with which a hypnotic suggestion is carried out;--the _ferocity_, even, with which the entranced subject pushes aside the opposition of much more powerful men. I do not, indeed, a.s.sert that he would thus risk very serious injury; for I believe (with Bramwell and others) that there does exist somewhere within him a knowledge that the whole proceeding is a mere experiment. But, nevertheless, he actually risks something; he behaves, in short, as a confident, resolute man would behave, and this however timid and unaggressive his habitual character may be. I believe that much advantage may yet be drawn from this confident temper. We can thus inhibit the acquired self-distrust and shyness of the supraliminal self, and get the subliminal self concentrated upon some task which may be as difficult as we please;--which may, if we can adjust it rightly, draw out to the uttermost the innate powers of man.

It has been supposed that the mere fact of being hypnotised tended to weaken the will; that the hypnotised person fell inevitably more and more under the control of the hypnotiser, and even that he could at last be induced to commit crimes by suggestion. In his article "What is Hypnotism?"[89] Dr. Milne Bramwell shows on how small a foundation of fact these fanciful theories have been erected. It may suffice to say here that nothing is easier, either for subject or for hypnotiser, than to _avert_ undue influence. A trusted friend has only to suggest to the hypnotised subject that _no one else_ will be able to affect him, and the thing is done. As to the crimes supposed to be committed by hypnotised persons under the influence of suggestion, the evidence for such crimes, in spite of great efforts made to collect it and set it forth, remains, I think, practically _nil_.

This fact, I must add, is quite in harmony with the views expressed in the present chapter. For it implies that the higher subliminal centres (so to term them) never really abdicate their rule; that they may indeed remain pa.s.sive while the middle centres obey the experimenter's caprice, but are still ready to resume their control if such experiment should become really dangerous to the individual. And this runs parallel with common experience in the spontaneous somnambulisms. The sleeper may perform apparently rash exploits; but yet, unless he be suddenly awakened, serious accidents are very rare. Nevertheless, both in spontaneous and in induced somnambulism, accidents _may_ occur; nor should any experiment be undertaken in a careless or jesting spirit.

But the role of the hypnotiser, as our command over hypnotic artifice increases, is likely to become continually smaller in proportion to the role played by the subject himself. Especially must this be so where the object is to strengthen the subject's own power of will. All that can be done from _without_ in such a case is to imbue the man's spirit with the sense of its unexhausted prerogatives,--the strength which he may then employ, not only to avert pain or anxiety, but in any active direction which his original nature itself admits.

These last words may naturally lead us on to our next topic: the influence of suggestion on _character_,--on that function of combined attention and will, which is, of course, also ultimately a function of the possibilities latent in the individual germ.

First of all, then, and going back to the evidence already given as to the cure of the victims of morphia, we may say with truth that _there_ we have seen as tremendous a moral _lift_--as sudden an elevation from utter baseness to at least normal living--as can be anywhere presented to us.

Here, then, the question arises as to the possible range of such sudden reformations. Did we succeed with the morphinomaniac only because his was a _functional_, and not an _organic_, degradation?

And may it not be a much harder task to create honesty, purity, unselfishness in a brain whose very conformation must keep the spirit that thinks through it nearly on the level of the brute? The question is of the highest psychological interest; the answer, though as yet rudimentary, is unexpectedly encouraging. The examples given in Appendix V. B show that if the subject is hypnotisable, and if hypnotic suggestion be applied with sufficient persistency and skill, no depth of previous baseness and foulness need prevent the man or woman whom we charge with "moral insanity," or stamp as a "criminal-born," from rising into a state where he or she can work steadily, and render services useful to the community.[90]

I purposely limit my a.s.sertion to these words. We must still work within the bounds of natural capacity. Just as we cannot improvise a genius, we cannot improvise a saint. But what experience seems to show is that we can _select_ from the lowest and poorest range of feelings and faculties enough of sound feeling, enough of helpful faculty, to keep the man in a position of moral stability, and capable of falling in with the common labours of his kind.

And here we approach a point of much interest. Hypnotic suggestion or self-suggestion is not an agency which stands wholly alone. It melts into the suasion of ordinary life. Ministers of religion as well as physicians have always wielded with authority the suasive power. From the crude animistic dances and ceremonies of the savage up to the "missions" and "revivals" in English and American churches and chapels, we find sudden and exciting impressions on mind and sense called into play for the purpose of producing religious and moral change.[91] Among the lower races especially these exciting reunions often involve both hysterical and hypnotic phenomena. There are sometimes convulsive accesses and there is sometimes the milder phenomenon of a deep restorative sleep. The influence exerted upon the convert is intermediate between hypnotic artifice, dependent on trance-states for access to subliminal plasticity, and ordinary moral suasion, addressed primarily to ordinary waking reason.

Let us pause here to consider the point which we have already reached.

We began by defining hypnotism as the empirical development of the sleeping phase of man's personality. In that sleeping phase the most conspicuous element--the most obvious function of the subliminal self--is the repair of wasted tissues, the physical, and therefore also largely the moral, refreshment and rejuvenation of the tired organism.

But we found reason to believe that the subliminal self has other functions to fulfil during sleep. Those other functions are concerned in some unknown way with the spiritual world; and the indication of their exercise is given by the sporadic occurrence, in the sleeping phase, of supernormal phenomena. Such phenomena, as we shall presently see, occur also at various points in hypnotic practice. To them we must now turn, if our account of the phenomena of induced somnambulism is to be complete.

Yet here, in order to give completeness to our intended review, we shall need a certain apparent extension of the scope of this chapter. We shall need to consider a group of cases which might have been introduced at various points in our scheme, but which are perhaps richest in their ill.u.s.trations of the supernormal phenomena of hypnotism.

_Spontaneous somnambulisms_,--those crude uprushes of incoherent subliminal faculty which sometimes break through the surface of sleep,--seem to occupy a kind of midway position among the various phenomena through which our inquiry has thus far carried us.

The somnambulism often _starts_ as an exaggerated dream; it _develops_ into a kind of secondary personality. The thoughts and impulses which the upheaval raises into manifestations--the psychical output--resemble sometimes the inspirations of genius, sometimes the follies of hysteria.

And, finally, the spontaneous sleep-waking state itself is manifestly akin to hypnosis,--is sometimes actually interchangeable with the induced somnambulisms of the hypnotic trance. The _chain of memory_ which repeated spontaneous somnambulisms gradually form,--while lying quite outside the primary or waking memory,--will often be found to form a part of the _hypnotic_ memory, which gradually accretes in similar fas.h.i.+on from repeated hypnosis.

For one form of sleep-waking capacity we are already prepared by what has been said in Chapter IV. of the solution of problems in sleep. This is one of the ways in which we can watch the gradual merging of a vivid dream into a definite somnambulic act. The solution of a problem (as we have seen) may present itself merely as a sentence or a diagram, constructed in dream and remembered on waking. Or the sleeper (as in various cases familiar in text-books) may rise from bed and _write out_ the chain of reasoning, or the sermon, or whatever it may be. Or again, in rarer cases the somnambulic output may take the form of oratory, and edifying discourses may be delivered by a preacher whom no amount of shaking or pinching will silence or, generally, even interrupt. This, so to speak, is genius with a vengeance; this is a too persistent uprush of subliminal zeal, co-operating even out of season with the hortatory instincts of the waking self.

The group of sleep-waking cases which we may next discuss ill.u.s.trates a natural evolution of the faculty of the sleeping phase of personality.

The subliminal self, exercising in sleep a profounder _influence_ over the organism than the supraliminal can exert, may also be presumed to possess a profounder _knowledge_ of the organism--of its present, and therefore of its future--than the supraliminal self enjoys.

There are cases[92] in which the somnambulic personality is discerned throughout as a wiser self--advising a treatment, or at least foreseeing future developments of the disease with great particularity. Of course, in such a case prediction is often simply a form of suggestion; the symptom occurs simply because it has been ordained beforehand. In the case of cures of long-standing disease the sagacity which foresees probably co-operates with the control which directs the changes in the organism.

The next stage is a very important one. We come to the manifestation in spontaneous sleep-waking states of manifestly supernormal powers,--sometimes of telepathy, but more commonly of clairvoyance or telaesthesia. Unfortunately, these cases have been, as a rule, very insufficiently observed. Still, it appears that in spontaneous somnambulism there is frequently some indication of supernormal powers, though the observers--even if competent in other ways--have generally neglected to take account of the hyperaesthesia and heightening of memory and of general intelligence that often accompany the state.

Before leaving this subject of spontaneous sleep-waking states I ought briefly to mention a form of trance with which we shall have to deal more at length in a later chapter. I speak of trance ascribed to _spirit-possession_. As will be seen, I myself fully adopt this explanation in a small number of the cases where it is put forward. Yet I do not think that spirit-agency is necessarily present in all the trances even of a true subject of possession. With all the leading sensitives--with D. D. Home, with Stainton Moses, with Mrs. Piper and with others--I think that the depth of the trance has varied greatly on different occasions, and that sometimes the subliminal self of the sensitive is vaguely simulating, probably in an unconscious dream-like way, an external intelligence. This hypothesis suggested itself to several observers in the case especially of D. D. Home, with whom the moments of strong characterisation of a departed personality, though far from rare, were yet scattered among tracts of dreamy improvisation which suggested only the utterance of Home's subliminal self. However we choose to interpret these trances, they should be mentioned in comparison with all the other sleep-waking states. They probably form the best transition between those shallow somnambulisms, on the one hand, which are little more than a vivid dream, and those profound trances, on the other hand, in which the native spirit quits, as nearly as may be, the sensitive's organism, and is for the time replaced, as nearly as may be, by an invading spirit from that unseen world.

This brief review of non-hypnotic somnambulisms has not been without its lessons. It has shown us that the supernormal powers which we have traced in each of the preceding chapters in turn do also show themselves, in much the same fas.h.i.+on, in spontaneous sleep-waking states of various types. We must now inquire how far they occur in sleep-waking states experimentally induced.

And here the very fact of _induction_ suggests to us a question specially applicable to the hypnotic state itself. Is hypnosis ever supernormally induced? Can any one, that is to say, be thrown into hypnotic trance by a telepathic impact? or, to phrase it more generally, by any influence, inexplicable by existing science, which may pa.s.s from man to man?

In the first place one may say that of the anti-mesmeric schools of opinion, the "purely physiological" school has on the whole failed, the "purely suggestive" school has triumphantly succeeded. The school of Nancy, reinforced by hypnotists all over Europe, has abundantly proved that "pure suggestion" (whatever that be) is the determining cause of a very large proportion of hypnotic phenomena. That is beyond dispute; and the two other schools, the "pure physiologists" and the "mesmerists"

alike, must now manage to prove as best they can that their favourite methods play any real part in the induction of any case of hypnosis. For to the pure suggestionist, monotonous stimulation and mesmeric pa.s.ses are alike in themselves inert, are alike mere facilitations of suggestion, acting not directly on the patient's organism, but rather on his state of mental expectation.

I reply that there is absolutely no need to go as far as this. In admitting suggestion as a _vera causa_ of hypnosis, we are recognising a cause which, if we really try to grasp it, resolves itself into _subliminal operation, brought about we know not how_. So far, therefore, from negativing and excluding any obscure and perhaps supernormal agency, the suggestion theory leaves the way for any such agency broadly open. Some unknown cause or other must determine whether each suggestion is to "take" or no; and that unknown cause must presumably act somehow upon the subliminal self. We should have something like a real explanation of suggestion, if we could show that a suggestion's success or failure was linked with some telepathic impact from the suggester's mind, or with some mesmeric effluence from his person.

I know well that in many cases we can establish no link of this kind. In Bernheim's rapid hospital practice there seems no opportunity to bring the hypnotist's will, or the hypnotiser's organism, into any effective _rapport_ with the subject. Rather, the subject seems to do all that is wanted for himself almost instantaneously. He often falls into the suggested slumber almost before the word "_Dormez!_" has left the physician's mouth. But on the other hand, this is by no means the only type of hypnotic success. Just as in the mesmeric days, so also now there are continual instances where much more than the mere command has been needed for effective hypnotisation. Persistence, proximity, pa.s.ses--all these prove needful still in the practice even of physicians who place no faith at all in the old mesmeric theory.

The fact is, that since the days of those old controversies between mesmerists proper and hypnotists proper, the conditions of the controversy have greatly changed. The supposed mesmeric effluence was then treated as an entirely isolated, yet an entirely physiological phenomenon. There was supposed to be a kind of radiation or infection pa.s.sing from one nervous system to another. It was of this that Cuvier (for instance) was convinced; it was this theory which Elliotson defended in the _Zoist_ with a wealth of ill.u.s.tration and argument to which little justice has even yet been done. Yet it was hard to prove _effluence_ as opposed to _suggestion_, because where there was proximity enough for effluence to be effective there was also proximity enough for suggestion to be possible. Only in some few circ.u.mstances,--such as Esdaile's mesmerisation of a blind man over a wall,[93]--was it possible to claim that the mesmeric trance had been induced without any suspicion whatever on the subject's part that the mesmerist was trying to entrance him.

Since those days, however, the evidence for _telepathy_--for psychical influence from a distance--has grown to goodly proportions. A new form of experiment has been found possible, from which the influence of suggestion can be entirely excluded. It has now, as I shall presently try to show, been actually proved that the hypnotic trance can be induced from a distance so great, and with precautions so complete, that telepathy or some similar supernormal influence is the only efficient cause which can be conceived.

I subjoin one of a series of experiments in this "telepathic hypnotism."

(See Appendix V. C.) These experiments are not easy to manage, since it is essential at once to prevent the subject from suspecting that the experiment is being tried, and also to provide for his safety in the event of its success. In Dr. Gibert's experiment, for instance, it was a responsible matter to bring this elderly woman in her dream-like state through the streets of Havre. It was needful to provide her with an unnoticed escort; and, in fact, several persons had to devote themselves for some hours to a single experiment.

I have cited first this experiment at a distance, without attempting to a.n.a.lyse the nature of the suggestion given or power employed by the hypnotist. Of course it is plain that if one can thus influence unexpectant persons from a distance there must be sometimes some kind of power actually exercised by the hypnotiser;--something beyond the mere tact and impressiveness of address, which is all that Bernheim and his followers admit or claim. Evidence of this has been afforded by the occasional production of organic and other effects in hypnotised subjects by the unuttered will of the operator when near them. The ingenious experiments of Gurney[94] in the production of local rigidity and anaesthesia were undertaken to test whether the agency employed were more in the nature of an effort of will or,--as the early mesmerists claimed,--of an emission of actual "mesmeric fluid" or physical effluence of some sort. Gurney was inclined to think that his results could not be explained solely by mental suggestion or telepathy, because the physical proximity of the operator's hand seemed necessary to produce them, and he thought it probable that they were due to a direct nervous influence, exercised through the hand of the operator, but not perceptible through the ordinary sensory channels. Mrs. Sidgwick's experiments[95] of the same kind, however, in which success was obtained when the operator was standing with folded arms several feet away from the subject, removed Gurney's main objection to the telepathic explanation. The fact that a thick sheet of gla.s.s over the subject's hands did not interfere with the results also afforded some presumption against the hypothesis of a physical influence; and Mrs. Sidgwick pointed out that the delicate discrimination involved in the specific limitations of the effects is much more easily attributable to mental suggestion, through the action of the operator's mind on that of the subject, than to any direct physical influence on the latter's nerves.

It is, however, in my view, by no means improbable that effluences, as yet unknown to science, but perceptible by sensitive persons as the telepathic impulse is perceptible, should radiate from living human organisms. I see no reason to a.s.sume that the varied and concordant statements made by patients in the _Zoist_ and early mesmeric works merely reflect subjective fancies. I have myself performed and witnessed experiments on intelligent persons expressly designed to test whether or no the sensation following the hand was a mere fancy. It seems to me hardly likely that persons who have never experienced other purely subjective sensations, and who are expressly alive to the question here at issue, should nevertheless again and again feel the cla.s.sical tingling, etc., along the track of the hypnotiser's pa.s.ses without any real external cause. To a.s.sume that all which they feel is a mere result of suggestion, may be a premature attempt at simplifying modes of supernormal communication which, in fact, are probably not simpler but more complex than any idea which we have as yet formed of them.

And here at last we arrive at what is in reality the most interesting group of inquiries connected with the hypnotic trance.

We have just seen that the subliminal state of the hypnotised subject may be approached by ways subtler than mere verbal suggestion--by telepathic impacts and perhaps by some effluence of kindred supernormal type. We have now to trace the supernormal elements in the hypnotic _response_. Whether those elements are most readily excited by a directly subliminal appeal, or whether they depend mainly on the special powers innate in the hypnotised person, we can as yet but imperfectly guess. We can be pretty sure, at any rate, that they are not often evoked in answer to any rapid and, so to say, perfunctory hypnotic suggestion; they do not spring up in miscellaneous hospital practice; they need an education and a development which is hardly bestowed on one hypnotised subject in a hundred. The first stage of this response lies in a subliminal relation established between the subject and his hypnotiser, and manifesting itself in what is called _rapport_, or in _community of sensation_. The earlier stages of _rapport_--conditions when the subject apparently bears or feels the hypnotiser only, and so forth--arise probably from mere self-suggestion or from the suggestions of the operator, causing the conscious attention of the subject to be exclusively directed to him. Indications of the possible development of a real link between the two persons may rather be found in the cases where there is provable community of sensation,--the hypnotised subject tasting or feeling what the hypnotiser (unknown to the subject) does actually at that moment taste or feel.

We have thus brought the hypnotised subject up to the point of knowing supernormally, at any rate, the superficial sensations of his hypnotiser. From that starting-point,--or, at any rate, from some supernormal perception of narrow range,--his cognition widens and deepens. He may seem to discern some picture of the past, and may retrace the history of some object which he holds in his hand, or he may seem to wander in spirit over the habitable globe, and to bring back knowledge of present facts discernible by no other means. Perhaps he seems to behold the future, predicting oftenest the organic history of some person near him; but sometimes discerning, as it were pictorially, scattered events to which we can guess at no attainable due. For all this there is already more of positive evidence than is generally realised; nor (I must repeat) is there any _negative_ evidence which might lead us to doubt that further care in developing hypnotic subjects may not at any moment be rewarded in the same way. We have here, in fact, a successful branch of investigation which has of late years been practically dropped from mere inattention to what has been done already,--mere diversion of effort to the easier and more practical triumphs of suggestive therapeutics.[96]

The next group of cases to which I pa.s.s relate chiefly to knowledge of present facts. I may first refer to some experiments in thought-transference with hypnotised persons[97] a.n.a.logous to the experiments with persons in a normal condition recorded in my next chapter. Here the subject seems simply to become aware telepathically of the thoughts of his hypnotiser, the hypnotic condition perhaps facilitating the transfer of the impression. Next come the cases of what used to be called "travelling clairvoyance" in the hypnotic state. These are more like the partially retrocognitive cases in that they cannot be traced with certainty to the contemporary thoughts of any particular person. In travelling clairvoyance we seem to have a development of "invasive dreams,"--of those visions of the night in which the sleeper seems to visit distant scenes and to bring back intelligence otherwise unattainable. These distant hypnotic visions seem to develop out of thought-transference; thus the subject may discern an imaginary picture as it is conceived in the hypnotiser's mind. Thence he may pa.s.s on and discern a true contemporaneous scene,[98] unknown to any one present, and in some few cases there is an element of apparent prevision in the impression.[99]

Our survey of that important, though inchoate, appeal to the subliminal self which pa.s.ses under the name of hypnotism is now nearly as complete--in its brief sketchy form--as the present state of knowledge permits.

I have attempted to trace the inevitable _rise_ of hypnotism--its necessary development out of the spontaneous phenomena which preceded and which might so naturally have suggested it. I have shown, nevertheless, its almost accidental initiation, and then its rapid development in ways which no single experimenter has ever been able to correlate or to foresee. I am bound to say something further as to its prospect in the future. A systematic appeal to the deeper powers in man--conceived with the generality with which I have here conceived it--cannot remain a mere appanage of medical practice. It must be fitted on in some way to the whole serious life of man; it must present itself to him as a development of faiths and instincts which lie already deep in his heart. In other words, there must needs be some _scheme of self-suggestion_,--some general theory which can give the individual a basis for his appeal, whether he regards that appeal as directed to an intelligence outside himself or to his own inherent faculties and informing soul. These helps to the power of generalisation--to the feeling of confidence--we must consider now.

The schemes of self-suggestion which have actually been found effective have covered, not unnaturally, a range as wide as all the superst.i.tion and all the religion of men. That is to say that each form of supernatural belief in turn has been utilised as a means of securing that urgently-needed temporal blessing--relief from physical pain. We see the same tendency running through fetichistic, polytheistic, monotheistic forms of belief. Beginning with fetichistic peoples, we observe that _charms_ of various kinds,--inert objects, arbitrary gestures, meaningless words,--have probably been actually the most general means which our race has employed for the cure of disease. We know how long some forms of primitive belief persisted in medicine,--as, for example, the doctrine of _likenesses_, or the cure of a disease by some object supposed to resemble its leading symptom. What is, however, even more remarkable is the efficacy which charms still continue in some cases to possess, even when they are worn merely as an experiment in self-suggestion by a person who is perfectly well aware of their intrinsic futility. Experiments on this subject seem to show that the mere continual contact of some small unfamiliar object will often act as a reminder to the subliminal self, and keep, at any rate, some nervous disturbances in check. Until one reads these modern examples, one can hardly realise how veritably potent for good may have been the savage amulet, the savage incantation.

The transition from fetichistic to polytheistic conceptions of cure is, of course, a gradual one. It may be said to begin when curative properties are ascribed to objects not arbitrarily, nor on account of the _look_ of the objects themselves, but on account of their having been blessed or handled by some divine or semi-divine personage, or having formed part of his body or surroundings during some incarnation.

Thus Lourdes water, bottled and exported, is still held to possess curative virtue on account of the Virgin's original blessing bestowed upon the Lourdes spring. But generally the influence of the divine or divinised being is more directly exercised, as in oracles, dreams, invisible touches, or actual _theophanies_, or appearances of the G.o.ds to the adoring patient. It will be seen as we proceed how amply the tradition of Lourdes has incorporated these ancient aids to faith.

But at this point our modern experience suggests to us a remarkable interpolation in the antique chain of ideas. It is now alleged that departed persons need not exert influence through their dead bones alone, nor yet only by their supposed intermediacy with higher powers.

There intervenes, in fact, the whole topic of _spirit-healing_,--which cannot, however, be treated fully here.

Next in the ascending scale from polytheism to monotheism we come to the "Miracles of Lourdes," to which I have just alluded, where the supposed healer is the Virgin Mary, reverenced as semi-divine. This form of belief, however, retains (as has been said) some affinity with fetichism, since the actual _water_ from the Lourdes spring, supposed to have been blessed by the Virgin, is an important factor in the cures.[100]

Much further removed from primitive belief is the appeal made by Christian scientists to the aid of Jesus Christ;--either as directly answering prayer, or as enabling the wors.h.i.+ppers to comprehend the infinite love on which the universe is based, and in face of which pain and sickness become a vain imagination or even a sheer nonent.i.ty. To the readers of this chapter, however, there will be nothing surprising in my own inclination to include all these efforts at health under the general category of schemes of self-suggestion.

In my view they are but crude attempts at a practical realisation of the essential truth that it is possible by a right disposition of our own minds to draw energy from an environing world of spiritual life.