seems to have been remarkably sensitive to odor. Certain smells were so offensive to him that they brought on attacks of convulsions. The scents in which the Mohammedan revels are not always those which are most pleasant to Occidental nostrils, but the Mohammedan Paradise is fragrant with roses and perfumes, while the houri who await the faithful in that fragrant country “are made of pure musk, and odoriferous exhalations of the same perfume regale the nostrils of the faithful throughout eternity." 1 Olfactory imagery plays so great a part in the experiences of medieval mystics that there are cases, apparently well established, of olfactory hallucination. The following is an extract from the report of the trial of Joan of Arc: "Did you ever kiss or embrace Saint Catherine or Saint Margaret?" "I have embraced them both." "Did they smell sweet?" "It is good to know that they smelled sweet." 2 It is said of Saint Catherine of Genoa that "she perceived, on the (right) hand of her confessor, an odor which penetrated her very heart," and "which abode with her and restored both mind and body for many days." It is also said that "the Bread from heaven, having within it all manner of delight, is already connected in her mind with an impression of sweet odour."3 Saint Bernardino, in a sermon, pictured Mary in heaven, "surrounded by angels, apostles, martyrs, and confessors, all of whom encircle and envelop her with sweet odours." Many more instances of odors involved in the God-experience and related experiences might be given, such as the foul smells that Swedenborg describes as associated with his strange visions, or the fairy visions of Saint Rose of Lima," who found the flowers opening that they might praise God by scenting the air. In the finer imagery of the more highly developed devotional literature smell is less conspicuous. Perhaps as civilization advances the sense of smell is modified. But we can still appreciate Rutherford when he says: "How sweet is the wind that blows out of the quarter where Christ is!" or the hymn. writer who writes of "the incense of the heart," or of "Sharon's dewy rose." 1 Woods, In Spite of Epilepsy, New York, 1913, p. 96. James, Grace, Joan of Arc, New York, 1910, p. 262, also p. 75. Von Huegel, op. cit., Vol. II, p. 17 f., also Vol. I, p. 184. Thureau-Dangin, Life of Saint Bernardino of Siena, p. 193. Knuth, Thesis, University of Iowa, 1909; The Dreams of Swedenborg, p. 38. • Underhill, op. cit., p. 313. 'Connell, op. cit., p. 296. 6 VI Thermal Sense Experiences IN CONSIDERING temperature we come closer to the inner springs of feeling experiences. In various emotions the body responds by vascular changes which are accompanied by thermal sensations. There are two distinguishable types of thermal experiences with Thermal reference to God: those in which heat or cold is objectified as Experi- external to ourselves, and those in which the temperature elements ences are felt to be within us and not externalized. The latter experiences may deeply affect our reactions to other elements in the Godexperience, and are probably actually fundamental to the experiences involved in externalized temperature. Illustrations of religious systems in which God is represented under the figure of fire are familiar to all. A large proportion of the Jewish children and college students who have reported on their conception of God have an image of fire, sometimes of "a mountain in fire." In these cases and those of many who think of God as being surrounded by intensely bright light, there is doubtless a mixture of visual and thermal elements, to say nothing of other factors in the complex. One student distinctly describes warmth and also a “white radiation" as coming from God. That imagery of this sort has been very significant in religion is seen in a great variety of Biblical imagery, in the Vedic pictures of the Stormgods, "blazing in their strength, brilliant like fires," and in the vivid imagery of medieval mystics. That a feeling of cold may be involved, directly or indirectly, in the God-experience, may be indicated by the case of one young woman in whom a dread of death seems to involve a fear of being cut off from the warmth of life. At any rate, Maeterlinck, writing of that mystical conception, the plane of reality in which union with God takes place, describes a wierdly cold region: "Here we stand suddenly at the confines of human thought, and far beyond the Polar circle of the mind. It is intensely cold here; it is intensely dark; and yet you will find nothing but flames and light. But to those who come without having trained their souls to these new perceptions, this light and these flames are as dark and as cold as if they were painted. Swedenborg's visions included various regions of heat and cold. In one place he describes a place so far away from the divine source of warmth that the inhabitants "must labor and split wood to acquire warmth.” Warmth An experience of inner warmth seems to characterize a large proportion of the introspections of advanced students. This may be like a steady flame, "neither flaring up or dying down, but remaining constant," or it may be contingent upon one's mood, as Experiin the case of a young woman who says: "I often have a feeling of ences of warmth within after something pleasant has happened, and often after I have had the blues for a long time, I gradually begin to have a feeling that God is near, and the sad feeling passes away and a feeling of comfort and warmth takes its place." Two men report a duality of experiences which seems to run through all their imagery. Each sustains two very different attitudes toward God, corresponding to the two conceptions of God; as a kindly, fatherly friend, and as a strict and uncompromising judge. One attitude involves a feeling of inner warmth, the other an indifferent feeling or a sense of cold. Experiences of inner warmth appear to approach an abnormal extreme in some of the mystics, for example, Saint Catherine of Genoa, who suffered from a nervous disease to which she and her contemporaries gave the significance of a God-experience. Her biographer writes of "that feeling of mostly interior, but later on also of exterior, warmth, indeed often of intense heat and burning, which comes to her, the first as though sunshine were bathing her within and without, the second sometimes as though a great fire were enveloping her, and sometimes as though a living flame were piercing her within.” 2 But such extreme cases owe their significance to their relation to normal experiences. In general a vital God-experience has involved a feeling of warmth, which we express by such terms as "warm hearts," or "fervent desires." Rolle tells of "the soul with love set afire," and the mind being "kindled in Love Everlasting," while the writer of the classic hymn, the Stabat Mater, prays: 1 Underhill, op. cit., p. 405. 2 Von Huegel op. cit., Vol. I, p. 178. "Make my soul to glow and melt." Our modern hymns preserve the same imagery when they sing of incense flames arising from the altar of the heart, or of love that is pure, warm, and changeless, or describe prayer as "The motion of a hidden fire That trembles in the breast." In the preceding chapters the complexity of the experiences which we commonly identify as relating to single senses has been shown. That which we call a visual experience with relation to Summary God has been found to involve other factors, the reactions of the intimate senses being of greatest significance as giving value to the entire complex. A similar relativity has been discovered in the case of auditory experiences, although the auditory element is biologically and functionally nearer the intimate senses and hence admits of a more immediate organic response to stimulation. The tactual sense has been found to be inextricably interwoven with other sense functions, its significance in the God-experience being chiefly in these intimate connections. Gustatory and olfactory experiences have been significant in earlier times, and, in a more completely sublimated form, are probably still more meaningful for us. Thermal elements lie close to the more deeply intimate senses, although they have a decided objective reference. Further allusion to thermal experiences will be made in a later chapter, showing their relation to the heart and the vascular system. The fundamental element in all these experiences is not their objective report so much as their connection with the more general organic and kinesthetic functions which contribute to the feelings of value and meaning. In the following chapters will be discussed some of the complexes in which the reactions of the organic and kinesthetic senses are more clearly seen. VII Experiences in Which Organic Reactions Involv and System It is not without reason that the heart is the physical symbol for the soul, for the heart and all the functions controlled by the vasomotor system are most intimately involved in the God-experience. To say that our hearts are warm or full or heavy is not to use a Experimere figure of speech. The rapidity of the heart-beat, the tensions ences of arterial muscles, and many more phenomena of the vascular ing the system contribute noticeably to condition all our states of conscious- Heart ness, and especially those involved in unusually feelingful reactions. VasoApparently the limitations of language have forced the ex- motor pression of certain heart experiences in the language common to tactual experiences. Certain characteristic tensions and relaxations in the heart muscles doubtless have a large part in these experiences, and there may be blended with them sensations originating in the tissues about the stomach and lungs, which are referred to the heart. The significant fact is that there are sensations which affect these experiences, and that these sensations or related images or both are important in the God-experience. Hard hearts or soft hearts symbolize attitudes toward God, in both Hebrew and Christian literature, and actual strains in the heart muscles may have been involved in the history of these terms. Likewise there may be sense elements involved in the figures of heart purification, the heart being washed and made clean. In the hymns there is frequent mention of hearts of stone and stubborn or hard hearts. Bodily temperature being very closely related to metabolism and pulse-rate, which are stimulated in the processes of emotion, it is not strange that the descriptions of the God-experience frequently involve temperature feelings in connection with the heart Vascular and blood vessels. Thus the two disciples at Emmaus exclaimed: Experi "Did not our hearts burn within us?" Both Biblical and later Christian writers have described hearts melting like wax, and Rolle insists that his heart, in a mystical experience, grew warm, "truly, not imaginingly, but as it were with a sensible fire." Throughout our Christian devotional literature one may find many references to cold or warm hearts in descriptions of attitudes toward God. Thermal ences |