We have still to examine one question relating to the emotional element alone: is religious emotion a _complete_ emotion? It is worth while lingering over this, since many writers (not to mention those who omit it altogether) set it down as a variety of the intellectual feelings—_i.e._, of the coldest form of emotional life. A complete emotion, as we know, includes, besides the purely psychic state, a somatic resonance, a vibration of the organism, consisting (_a_) of changes in the circulation, the respiration, and the functions in general; (_b_) of movements, gestures and actions which constitute its proper mode of expression. Without these, there is merely an intellectual state. Does religious emotion fulfil these two conditions? (_a._) It has its physiological accompaniment; it penetrates as far into the organism as any other. Since by its very nature it contains, though in varying proportion, two elements, depression and exaltation, let us very briefly survey their physiological relations. Depression is related to fear and under its acute forms has been confounded with it. Does not the worshipper entering a venerated sanctuary show all the symptoms of pallor, trembling, cold sweat, inability to speak—all that the ancients so justly called _sacer horror_? Physical and mental weakness makes us religious through consciousness of human frailty. Austerities, macerations—in short, the asceticism which is an institution in the so-called pessimistic religions—though springing from a multitude of causes which need not here be inquired into, prove at least that the physiological factor is not regarded as indifferent. The Hindoo ascetics of the early ages were able, by their insensate mortification, to dethrone the gods and take their places—gods in their turn. The widespread belief that austerities contribute to salvation is a very much modified form of this. Exaltation is related to love and tends to union, to possession. The history of all ages abounds in physiological procedures made use of for the artificial production of enthusiasm in the etymological sense of the word, which implies having the deity within one’s self. There are inferior forms: the mechanical exaltation produced by dancing, or by the rhythmical music of primitive tribes, which excites them and places them in a favourable mental attitude for inspiration. Toxic exaltation: soma, wine, the Dionysiacs, the Mænads. The sanguinary means so widespread in the cults of Asia Minor: the Bona Dea and Atys, the Corybantes, the Galli, who mutilated and gashed themselves with sword strokes; in the Middle Ages, the Flagellants; and in our own day, Fakirs, dervishes, etc.