Natural Causes and Supernatural SeemingsThis comprehensive analysis of nineteenth-century spiritual experiments questions our long tradition of encounters with the supernatural, and why it appeared to have declined in influence in the writer's era. Maudsley (1835-1918), a medical psychologist and pioneer psychiatrist, sets out to bring such alleged spiritual phenomena under scientific investigation. Emphasising the natural defects and errors of human observation and reasoning, as well as the prolific activity of the imagination, this inquiry into the causes of belief in the supernatural suggests that much of it can be explained though hallucination, mania, and delusion. The book is divided into three parts: the first section concentrates on the causes of fallacies in the sound mind, while the second considers unsound mental action. The focus of part three is theopneusticism, or the attainment of supernatural knowledge by divine inspiration. |
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ACTIVITY OF IMAGINATION actual ADAM OF ST assent authority believe body brain CAUSES OF ERRONEOUS character Christian consciousness convulsions delirious Demy 8vo disease divine DOWDEN ecstasy effect egoism Emmanuel Swedenborg ERRONEOUS REASONING errors eternal event experience fact faculty faith FALLACIES OF COINCIDENCE Fcap Frontispiece function habit HALLUCINATIONS AND ILLUSIONS heart Holy human Illustrations individual insane inspiration instances intense intuition John Milton kind knowledge Large crown 8vo living LL.B LL.D madness means ment mind moral Naioth nature nervous notion object observation and reasoning omens opinion organic passion PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY perhaps person physical Portrait prayer principle Prof proof rapture relations religion RICHARD GARNETT savage Second Edition sense Small crown 8vo social sort spirits super supernatural superstition theory things Third Edition thought and feeling tion true truth unity Uriel Acosta visions vols words
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