into His own, and then replaced it. He then explained His design of founding the Order of the Sacred Heart. Ever after, Mary was conscious of a pain in her side and a burning sensation in her chest--two plain symptoms of hysteria.[106] Santa Teresa, who died at the early age of thirty-three, and in whose family more than one case of well-developed neurasthenia can be traced, was favoured with 'messages' at a very early age. She believed some of these were temptations from the devil suggesting an 'honourable alliance.' A nervous breakdown followed directly after entrance into a convent. She was then twenty years of age, was subject to fainting fits and longed for illness as a sign of divine favour. She was subject to convulsions, and soon after taking the veil fell into a cataleptic trance, which lasted three days. She was thought to be dead, but at the end of the time sat up and told those around that she had visited both heaven and hell, and seen the joys of the blessed and the torments of the damned. It is at least suggestive that, in spite of the longing for personal communion with Jesus, her first experience of the ecstasy of divine love was experienced after discovering a 'very realistic' picture of a martyred saint--St. Joseph. The significance of the intense contemplation of a tortured body--possibly made by one whose sexual nature was undergoing a process of suppression--is unmistakable.[107] On these and similar cases Professor William James makes the following comment:-- "To the medical mind these ecstasies signify nothing but suggested hypnoid states, on an intellectual basis of superstition, and a corporeal one of degeneration and hysteria. Undoubtedly these pathological conditions have existed in many and possibly in all the cases, but that fact tells us nothing about the value for knowledge of the consciousness which they induce. To pass a spiritual judgment upon these states, we must not content ourselves with superficial medical talk, but enquire into their fruits for life."[108]