Fasting in excess is a well-recognised means of producing hallucinations; but quite apart from such excesses, fasting in moderation, reducing as it does the vitality sufficiently to overcome any natural demand for spontaneous activities, must clearly aid one very materially to gain that racial inspiration which most easily arises when reactions of individualistic significance are not called for.
It seems to me then that in this fact we have an adequate explanation of the persistence in the race of this custom. Disadvantageous as the fasting habit might be from a purely individualistic point of view, it thus appears to be of advantage to the race in that it tends to conserve and foster that highly serviceable social grouping of which individuals are elements, and this suffices to account for its continued appearance amongst the individual elements of these social groups which are now in process of evolution.
§5. In connexion with the consideration of the habit of fasting our thought is naturally turned to a class of customs expressive of religious fervour which vary greatly in form, and which in any one form are noted amongst only a relatively small number of the race; all of which however have the one characteristic that they involve the voluntary assumption of bodily pain. The tortures of various kinds which have been undertaken for their own sake, and endured willingly and with joy by the saints of the past, need not be enumerated, and I do not think it worth while to treat of any of them in detail.
It would be almost hopeless to attempt to account for these habits, so complex in form, limited in each form to such small numbers, were it not that they are so closely related to the much more uniform habits of religious expression which we have already studied.
As we know them in historic times, among the people whom we think of as civilised, they have become closely connected with the widespread notion that the hope of salvation of the soul lies in the assumption of an attitude of contempt for the mere physical man. But it is apparent that this conception implies a high degree of intellectual development in the people adopting it, and its adoption must therefore have been late in the history of our race; hence it is most probable that this notion was suggested as a rational excuse for the continuance of religious habits already well established, but which seemed to require some explanation in accord with reasonable conceptions.
Here again we are dealing with habits which are in
