According to them, God has personally revealed to them the new truth in which they believe, and has appointed them as prophets. Erotic images are generally associated with their system. One of them, whose system is astronomical, divides the planets into males and females. Another, a lunatic, describes the pathological sexual sensations by the term of "psycho-sexual contact by action at a distance." These are phenomena which we meet with at each step in psychiatry, and which give the clue to what follows. =The Historical Role of Mental Anomalies which are Not Very Apparent and Border on Genius. Their Influence on Religious Eroticism.=--These persons are not always afflicted with paranoia or other grave psychoses, but often hereditary and constitutional psychopaths who are only half-crazy or simply hysterical, and who may, in spite of this defect, possess a certain degree of intellectual power, an energetic will and the fire of enthusiasm. Things then take an essentially different course, even when they rest on an analogous basis. The prophet combines with his exaltation a logic which is often very concise in its details, although applied on a morbid basis. Moreover, he clothes his utterances in fine and poetical language, and in this way succeeds in rallying round him, not a flock of Panurge's ignorant sheep, but more elevated people and even a considerable proportion of the surrounding society. In this case pathological exaltation may be united to a high moral and intellectual ideal, which is very apt to veil the bizarre fancies of the prophet. We thus meet with the astonishing but undeniable fact that certain great historical personalities who have exercised a powerful influence on humanity were of more or less pathological nature. We discover among them erotico-religious traits, more or less marked, often even as the leading threads of their arguments. This important category of individuals constitutes a whole series of transitions between the insane prophets of whom we have spoken and well-balanced men of genius. It is often very difficult to understand and interpret the series of intermediate forms, so graduating and so variable, which exist between insanity and genius. It is necessary to guard against any exclusive generalization in one way or the other. In any case, the fact that many men of genius are of pathological nature does not authorize us to regard every person of genius or originality as insane, whether he attacks the routine and prejudices of his contemporaries, or whether he opens up new horizons and goes out of the beaten track. Let me cite a few examples.