extraordinary conscientiousness is merely a matter of
overinstigated nerves. William's melancholy about the universe
is due to bad digestion--probably his liver is torpid. Eliza's
delight in her church is a symptom of her hysterical
constitution. Peter would be less troubled about his soul if he
would take more exercise in the open air, etc. A more fully
developed example of the same kind of reasoning is the fashion,
quite common nowadays among certain writers, of criticizing the
religious emotions by showing a connection between them and the
sexual life. Conversion is a crisis of puberty and adolescence.
The macerations of saints, and the devotion of missionaries, are
only instances of the parental instinct of self-sacrifice gone
astray. For the hysterical nun, starving for natural life,
Christ is but an imaginary substitute for a more earthly object
of affection. And the like.[1]

[1] As with many ideas that float in the air of one's time, this
notion shrinks from dogmatic general statement and expresses
itself only partially and by innuendo. It seems to me that few
conceptions are less instructive than this re-interpretation of
religion as perverted sexuality. It reminds one, so crudely is
it often employed, of the famous Catholic taunt, that the
Reformation may be best understood by remembering that its fons
et origo was Luther's wish to marry a nun:--the effects are
infinitely wider than the alleged causes, and for the most part
opposite in nature. It is true that in the vast collection of
religious phenomena, some are undisguisedly amatory--e.g.,
sex-deities and obscene rites in polytheism, and ecstatic
feelings of union with the Savior in a few Christian mystics.
But then why not equally call religion an aberration of the