These impulses, at first vague and incomprehensible, arising from the sensations which are awakened by organs which were previously undeveloped, are accompanied by a powerful excitation of the emotions. The psychological reaction of the sexual impulse at puberty expresses itself in a multitude of manifestations which have in common only the mental condition of emotion and the impulse to express in some way, or render objective, the strange emotionality. Religion and poetry lie close to it, which, after the time of sexual development is past and these originally incomprehensible feelings and impulses have cleared up, receive powerful incentives from the sexual sphere. He who doubts this has only to think how often religious enthusiasm occurs at the time of puberty; how frequent sexual episodes are in the lives of the saints;[12] how powerfully sensuality expresses itself in the histories of religious fanatics; and in what revolting scenes, true orgies, the religious festivals of antiquity, no less than the “meetings” of certain sects in modern times, express themselves,—to say nothing of the lustful mysteries which characterized the cults of the ancients. On the other hand, we see that unsatisfied sensuality very frequently finds an equivalent in religious enthusiasm.[13] This relation between religious and sexual feeling is also shown on the basis of unequivocal psycho-pathological states. It suffices to recall how intense sensuality makes itself manifest in the clinical histories of many religious maniacs; the motley mixture of religious and sexual delusions that is so frequently observed in psychoses (_e.g._, in maniacal women, who think they are or will be the Mother of God), but particularly in masturbatic insanity; and, finally, the sensual, cruel self-punishments, injuries, self-castrations, and even self-crucifixions resulting from abnormal sexual-religious feeling. Any attempt to explain the relations between religion and love has difficulties to encounter. Many analogies present themselves. The feeling of sexual attraction and religious feeling (considered as a psychological fact) consist of two elements. In religion the primary element is a feeling of dependence,—a fact which Schleiermacher recognized long before the later studies in anthropology and ethnography, founded on the observation of primitive conditions, had led to the same conclusion. It is only at a higher stage of culture that the second and essentially ethical element—love of God—enters into religious feeling. In the place of the evil spirits of the primitive peoples came the two-faced—now kind, now angry—creations of the more complicated mythologies, until, finally, the God of love, as the giver of eternal happiness, is reverenced, whether this be hoped for from Jehovah, as a blessing on earth; from Allah, as a physical blessing in Paradise; from Christ, as eternal bliss in heaven; or as the Nirvana of the Buddhists.