the following lectures the phenomena of religious experience must
be considered. When I handle them biologically and
psychologically as if they were mere curious facts of individual
history, some of you may think it a degradation of so sublime a
subject, and may even suspect me, until my purpose gets more
fully expressed, of deliberately seeking to discredit the
religious side of life.

Such a result is of course absolutely alien to my intention; and
since such a prejudice on your part would seriously obstruct the
due effect of much of what I have to relate, I will devote a few
more words to the point.

There can be no doubt that as a matter of fact a religious life,
exclusively pursued, does tend to make the person exceptional and
eccentric. I speak not now of your ordinary religious believer,
who follows the conventional observances of his country, whether
it be Buddhist, Christian, or Mohammedan. His religion has been
made for him by others, communicated to him by tradition,
determined to fixed forms by imitation, and retained by habit.
It would profit us little to study this second-hand religious
life. We must make search rather for the original experiences
which were the pattern-setters to all this mass of suggested
feeling and imitated conduct. These experiences we can only find
in individuals for whom religion exists not as a dull habit, but
as an acute fever rather. But such individuals are "geniuses" in
the religious line; and like many other geniuses who have brought
forth fruits effective enough for commemoration in the pages of
biography, such religious geniuses have often shown symptoms of
nervous instability. Even more perhaps than other kinds of