Despite that testimony, various attempts have been made to trace a psychological development in Paul which could have led to the conversion. Paul was converted through a vision of the risen Christ. According to the supernaturalistic view that vision was a "vision," not in any specialized meaning of the word, but in its original etymological meaning; Paul actually "saw" the risen Lord. According to the modern naturalistic view, which rejects any direct creative interposition of God in the course of nature, different in kind from His works of providence, the vision was produced by the internal condition of the subject, accompanied perhaps by favorable conditions without--the heat of the sun or a thunder storm or the like. But was the condition of the subject, in the case of Paul, really favorable to a vision of the risen Christ? If the vision of Christ was an hallucination, as it is held to be by modern naturalistic historians, how may the genesis of this pathological experience be explained? In the first place, a certain basis for the experience is sought in the physical organism of the subject. According to the Epistles, it is said, the apostle was subject to a recurrent malady; this malady is spoken of in 2 Cor. xii. 1-8 in connection with visions and revelations. In Gal. iv. 14, where it is said that the Galatians did not "spit out" when the apostle was with them, an allusion is sometimes discovered to the ancient custom of spitting to avoid contagion. A combination of this passage with the one in 2 Corinthians is thought to establish a diagnosis of epilepsy, the effort being made to show that "spitting out" was particularly prevalent in the case of that disease. The visions then become an additional symptom of the epileptic seizures.[32] [32] See Krenkel, _Beiträge zur Aufhellung der Geschichte und der Briefe des Apostels Paulus_, 1890, pp. 47-125. But the diagnosis rests upon totally insufficient data. The visions are not regarded in 2 Corinthians as part of the buffetings of the angel of Satan; on the contrary, the two things are sharply separated in Paul's mind; he rejoices in the visions, but prays the Lord that the buffetings may cease. It is not even said that the visions and the buffetings came close together; there is no real basis for the view that the buffetings consisted in nervous exhaustion following the visions. In Gal. iv. 14, the "spitting out" is probably to be taken figuratively, and the object is "your temptation in my flesh." The meaning then is simply, "You did not reject me or spue me out"; and there is no allusion to the custom of "spitting out" for the purpose of avoiding contagion. It is unnecessary, therefore, to examine the elaborate argument of Krenkel by which he sought to show that epilepsy was particularly the disease against which spitting was practised as a prophylactic measure.