_Paranoia Religiosa_.--Not infrequently the first hint of their supposed greatness comes to such patients suddenly in a dream or in a vision; when their expansiveness takes a religious turn, this is especially apt to be the case. They may believe themselves to be especially chosen by the Almighty, a new Messiah or even Christ Himself, come once more to earth. Such people may retain much of their rationality on most of the points relating to practical life, and yet have this {291} hallucination as to their close relationship with the divinity. Not only may they retain their mental equilibrium on other points, but they may even give decided manifestations of great genius. This is, I suppose, one of the most interesting features of this form of mental disease, but it is well illustrated in the lives of many modern founders of religious sects, even in our own generation. Such religious reformers as Mahomet and Swedenborg seem undoubtedly to have been afflicted with this third stage of expansive paranoia. In our own day there is no doubt that many of the founders of new religious sects, many of the heaven-sent apostles or reincarnations of patriarchs and prophets, the miraculous healers and the like, are afflicted in this same way. It is useless and entirely contrary to the known facts to put such people aside as mere imposters. Imposters they are, but they have imposed on themselves as well as on their followers. They are sincere as far as they go, and the mental twist that gives them their power has occurred in the midst of the manifestation of the intellectual faculties of a highly practical character and of executive ability, with wonderful capacity for the direction of complex affairs. A prominent neurologist said, not long ago, that the most interesting feature of Christian Science is to contemplate in the study of the movement how near people may come to insanity and yet retain their faculty to make and handle money and even accumulate fortunes. _Paranoia Erotica_.--After the _paranoia religiosa_, the most common form of the disease is the _paranoia erotica_. There are authorities in mental diseases who do not hesitate to say that an excess of religiosity and of erotic sentimentality are more or less interchangeable. This declaration represents, however, the unconscious exaggeration of a mind unsympathetic towards religious ideas. But it must not be lost sight of that the two forms of excesses, erotic and religious, are more nearly related than would be ordinarily supposed, and that erotic manifestations may be confidently looked for in patients who have been afflicted by a too highly wrought religious sentimentality. St. Theresa seems to have realised this very well and has touched on the subject in one of her letters. {292}