The Varieties of Religious Experience - Penn State University

The Varieties of Religious ExperiencePure anachronism! says the survival-theory;—anachronism forwhich deanthropomorphization of the imagination is the remedyrequired. The less we mix the private with the cosmic, the more wedwell in universal and impersonal terms, the truer heirs of Sciencewe become.earthworms, the usnia, or mossy growth on the weathered skull of a hangedcriminal, and other materials equally unpleasant—the whole preparedunder the planet Venus if possible, but never under Mars or Saturn. Then,if a splinter of wood, dipped in the patient’s blood, or the bloodstainedweapon that wounded him, be immersed in this ointment, the wounditself being tightly bound up, the latter infallibly gets well—I quote nowVan Helmont’s account—for the blood on the weapon or splinter, containingin it the spirit of the wounded man, is roused to active excitementby the contact of the ointment, whence there results to it a full commissionor power to cure its cousin-german the blood in the patient’s body.This it does by sucking out the dolorous and exotic impression from thewounded part. But to do this it has to implore the aid of the bull’s fat, andother portions of the unguent. The reason why bull’s fat is so powerful isthat the bull at the time of slaughter is full of secret reluctancy and vindictivemurmurs, and therefore dies with a higher flame of revenge abouthim than any other animal. And thus we have made it out, says this author,that the admirable efficacy of the ointment ought to be imputed,not to any auxiliary concurrence of Satan, but simply to the energy of theposthumous character of Revenge remaining firmly impressed upon theblood and concreted fat in the unguent. J. B. Van Helmont: A Ternary ofParadoxes, translated by Walter Charleton, London, 1650.—I muchabridge the original in my citations.The author goes on to prove by the analogy of many other natural factsthat this sympathetic action between things at a distance is the true rationaleof the case. “If,” he says, “the heart of a horse slain by a witch, takenout of the yet reeking carcase, be impaled upon an arrow and roasted,immediately the whole witch becomes tormented with the insufferablepains and cruelty of the fire, which could by no means happen unlessthere preceded a conjunction of the spirit of the witch with the spirit ofthe horse. In the reeking and yet panting heart, the spirit of the witch iskept captive, and the retreat of it prevented by the arrow transfixed. Similarlyhath not many a murdered carcase at the coroner’s inquest suffered afresh haemorrhage or cruentation at the presence of the assassin?—the442