SECTION I. ECSTATIC INTUITION. LANGUAGE being accounted a possession far exceeding the powers of human invention or manufacture, was, until lately, thought to be a ready-made faculty specially conferred on man by divine grace. It is true that other inventions which he had undoubtedly achieved by his own perfecting efforts through the ages-such, for example, as the discovery and uses of fire, the cultivation of wheat, the production of wine from the grape-were also believed at one time to have been obtained respectively by the favour of special gods, no people having believed otherwise in its early stages of development; therefore the opinion of a supernatural cause of natural things had been discarded in many cases, and discredited more and more in direct proportion to the decrease of the number of gods and to the increase of knowledge of natural Nevertheless, that experience did not hinder causes. men from jealously keeping language in the sacred category of God-conferred endowments, and pronouncing it the high and special distinction of man which separated him immeasurably from all other living creatures. As it was with language, and is still in some quarters, so has it been and still is in many quarters with regard to a certain class of ideas. Always since man began to think of the mysteries of his being-to ask, in self-conscious wonder, the why, whence, and whither of himself-he has had a suspicion or an actual conviction of a higher source of knowledge than sense and experience. Impatient of the slow and uncertain growth of natural knowledge and of its narrow bounds, and resenting the humility of its methods of tedious attainment, he has yearned for the completeness and certainty of a supernatural knowledge, and aspired after an intuitive and superior method of obtaining it; and his yearning aspirations have found vent and satisfaction in a variety of theories concerning a supernatural world, and in the exultant consecration of a high and special source of such supersensual knowledge. The various means by which, in different ages and places, the supernatural has been diversely revealed to different people, may be grouped roughly into three principal classes: first, the visible appearance of the god, or of his messenger or angel, who revealed directly to the favoured person, by visible signs or articulate voice, that which he was chosen to know, each people having its own god or gods, whose revelations answered the demands and fitted the measure of its intellectual growth and moral aspirations; secondly, a mysterious and overpowering possession, by the god, of the individual, who, thrown thereby into violent agitations of body and mind, or into trance-like unconsciousness of surrounding things, poured forth unconsciously, or in obedience to irresistible impulse, utterances that were sometimes quite incoherent and unintelligible, requiring a special interpreter or prophet to make known the meaning of them, sometimes sufficiently coherent to take their place, when written down, as holy scriptures; thirdly, the exaltation of the individual into a spiritual ecstasy, during which, rapt from things of sense and transported out of himself into direct communion with God, he discerns reason-transcending * * "The Australian native doctor is alleged to obtain his initiation by visiting the world of spirits in a trance of two or three days' duration; the Khond priest authenticates his claim to office by remaining from one to fourteen days in a languid and dreamy state, caused by one of his souls being away in the divine presence; the Greenlander angekok's soul goes forth from his body to fetch his familiar demon; the Turanian sharman lies in lethargy while his soul departs to bring hidden wisdom from the land of spirits. The literature of more progressive races supplies similar accounts." See Tylor's Primitive Culture, vol. i. p. 439, who quotes a multitude of authorities. |