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.

Clark University,
September, 1906.

G. STANLEY HALL.

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

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 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. 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 "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.

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 lacunæ 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