This, however, opens up the enquiry, previously indicated, as to how far the whole range of human life may be satisfactorily explained in the complete absence of religion or supernaturalism. And with this we are not now directly concerned. What we are concerned with is to show that from one direction at least supernaturalism has derived strength from a misinterpretation of the facts. These facts, once interpreted as clear evidence for supernaturalism, are now seen to be susceptible to a different explanation. But they have nevertheless played their part in creating as part of the social heritage a diffused sense of the reality of supernatural intercourse. It is not, then, a question of religion losing power because it has contented itself with commonplace motives, and because these have now found satisfaction in ordinary life. It is rather a question of the adequacy of science to deal with facts that have been taken to lie outside the scientific order. Has science the knowledge or the ability to deal with the extraordinary as well as with the ordinary facts of life? I believe it has. The facts we have passed in review _are_ amenable to scientific treatment, for the reason that they belong to a class with which the physician of to-day finds himself in constant contact. And it is too often overlooked that the belief in the existence and influence of a supersensible world is itself only a theory put forward in explanation of certain classes of facts, and like all theories it becomes superfluous once a simpler theory is made possible. FOOTNOTES: [93] Article in _The Lancet_, Jan. 11, 1873. [94] Article in Tuke's _Dictionary of Psychological Medicine_. [95] _Inquiries into Human Faculty_, pp. 66-7. [96] _The Sexual Question_, pp. 354-5. [97] Cited by Havelock Ellis, _Psychology of Sex_, pp. 233-4. [98] _Conduct and its Disorders_, pp. 368-9. [99] _Psychopathia-Sexualis_, pp. 9-11. [100] _Lost and Hostile Gospels_, Preface. [101] Cited by James, _Varieties_, pp. 345-6. [102] Inge, _Christian Mysticism_, pp. 201-9. [103] See Ellis, _Psychology of Sex_, pp. 240-2. [104] Parkman's _Jesuits in North America_, p. 175. [105] Krafft-Ebing, _Psychopathia-Sexualis_, p. 8. [106] See L. Asseline's _Mary Alacoque and the Worship of the Sacred Heart of Jesus_. [107] See _St. Teresa of Spain_, by H. H. Colvill, and _Saint Teresa_, by H. Joly. [108] _Varieties_, p. 413. [109] _Varieties_, p. 413. [110] Cited by J. F. Nisbet, _The Insanity of Genius_, p. 248. [111] _Pathology of Mind_, p. 144. Also Mercier, _Sanity and Insanity_, pp. 223, 281.