CHAPTER V

INSPIRATION

THE most abused of all prophetic conceptions is the term inspiration. This is not the place, however, to enter into a theological discussion as to what Biblical inspiration has been taken to mean. An excellent treatise on that subject may be found in " Die Schriftinspiration by P. Dausch, a Roman Catholic writer. Ignoring all religious discussions, Jewish, Patristic, Protestant, both early and later, Roman Catholic and others, we shall investigate only the psychological aspect of the problem. What is inspiration, or divine inspiration, considered as a psychological process? It will be remembered that it was granted that prophets were divinely inspired. We now ask what does that term mean in terms of human consciousness?

We found the prophetic call to be the psychological moment in which the prophet became conscious of his life's mission, and we saw that this was a psychological experience of so profound a nature as to awaken the prophet into a new spiritual life and fit him as national preacher, teacher, statesman, savior. We found pre

monition to be that psychological experience, and we investigated the psychology of premonition. We then found revelation to be the result of deep, profound contemplation, and found that all religious teachers received revelations as a result of silent contemplation, usually in retirement from all surrounding disturbing influences. As a result of silent contemplation came ecstasy, an experience of all religious recluses of which ancient civilizations as well as medieval Europe furnish countless

examples. As a further result of contemplation and revelation came prophetic dream with all its wonderful results in soul life;1 and as another result of ecstasy came vision and audition with their mysterious effects on the spiritual life.

We now ask what is the psychological experience called inspiration or divine inspiration?

From the lowest savage to the highest philosophers of ancient Greece the conception of inspiration was that God or some higher powers occasionally used some men as their instruments through whom they worked, or as the mouth-piece through whom they spoke; that is, the inspired person did things and uttered thoughts not his own but God's.

Josephus makes Balaam excuse himself to Balak in these words: When the spirit of God seizes us, it utters whatsoever sounds and words it pleases without any knowledge on our part, for when it has come into us, there is nothing in us which remains our own.2

"A man

Of Socrates it is said that he was a profoundly religious man, of that bilious melancholic temperament which has in all times been observed in persons of unusual religious fervor, such as is implied in those momentary exaltations of the mind which are mistaken for divine visits; and when the rush of thought came upon him with strange warning voices, he believed it was the gods who spoke directly to him."

Thus Philo says of himself:

"Sometimes, when I have come to my work empty, I have suddenly become full; ideas being in an invisible manner showered upon me, and implanted in me from on high; so that through the influence of divine inspiration, I have become greatly excited, and have known neither the place in which I was, nor those who were present, nor myself, nor what I was saying, nor what I was writing, for then I have been conscious of a richness of interpretation, and enjoyment of light, a most penetrating insight, a most manifest energy in all that was to be done; having

1 Cf. "Sleep," by M. D. Manacéïne, p. 323, where he gives two excellent examples of wonderful results of dreams and shows these to be the "stuff" that prophetic dreams are made of.

2 Smith, Sir W.: "Bible Dictionary."

'Lewes's "Biog. Hist.," p. 167.

such effect on my mind as the clearest ocular demonstration would have on the eyes."1

To be inspired, then, meant to have the gods breathe their spirit into the human being so that he might act more wisely or speak more profoundly than at other times. "We are now so remote from this doctrine of inspiration," says Spencer,

"As to have difficulty in thinking of it as once accepted literally. Some existing races, as the Tahitians, do indeed show us, in its original form, the belief that the priest when inspired 'ceased to act or speak as a voluntary agent, but moved and spoke as entirely under supernatural influence'; and so they make real to us the ancient belief that prophets were channels for divine utterances. But we less clearly recognize the truth that the inspiration of the poet was at first conceived in the same way. 'Sing, O goddess, the destructive wrath of Achilles,' was not, like the invocations of the Muses in later times, a rhetorical form; but was an actual prayer for possession. The Homeric belief was, that 'all great and glorious thoughts . ... come from a god.'"

"Greater deviation in non-essentials has left unchanged the same essentials in the notions current throughout Christendom; beginning with the 'inspired writer,' whose words were supposed to be those of an indwelling holy spirit, and ending with the Pope, who says his infallible judgments have a like origin."

So Brinton tells us:

"Prophets and shamans, evangelists and Indian medicine men, all claim, and claim with honesty, to be moved by the god within, the deus in nobis, and to speak the words of the Lord."

And that this is not meant in any figurative sense we are further assured by Brinton that in these inspired seers and priests of all nations missionaries of higher faiths have ever found their "most resolute foes and successful opponents," and this because "the shaman has himself been face to face with God, has heard his voice and felt his presence. His faith, therefore, is real and cannot be shaken by any argument.'

Apollo also inspires his priests and priestesses by

1 James, W.: "Varieties of Religious Experience," p. 481, New York, Longmans, 1902.

24

Sociology," Vol. I, 237 ff.

speaking his words through their mouths,1 or allows them to see the hidden things of the future which, in this inspired state, they were able to do.

2

"Der Gott, so war der Glaube, faehrt in den irdischen Leib, oder die Seele der Priesterin, von ihrem Leibe 'geloest,' vernimmt mit Geistersinn die goettliche Offenbarungen. Was sie dann mit rasendem Munde' verkuendigt, das spricht aus ihr der Gott; wo sie 'ich' sagt, da redet Apollo von sich und dem was ihn betrifft. Was in ihr lebt, denkt und redet, so lange sie rast, das ist der Gott selbst."

We see then that inspiration was among all peoples taken to mean a process by which God used man as his instrument for doing his work, for speaking his words.

Among the Hebrews also the idea of inspiration was that of a divine force emanating from God and entering the human being, making him thus more skilful in his work, more heroic in action and more eloquent in speech. Thus Israel can speak of skilled workmen as men in whom is "the spirit of God."

The fact is that certain people in certain pathological conditions of mind become so violent and physically powerful that they have always been thought to be "possessed" by evil spirits, and men are not wanting to-day who can cast out devils and the like. In like manner, in certain other pathological conditions, the human mind becomes more active, stronger, more penetrating and in every way more powerful than in normal conditions, and at such times the person is also considered inspired, that is taken hold of by spirits, this time by beneficent spirits, by the divine spirit, by God.3

Most Biblical writers make the distinction that nonIsraelitish prophets delivered their message, as already

1 Cf. Rohde, "Psyche," Vol. II, 58 ff.

2 Ibid., 60-61.

3 Binet, Alf., in “Alterations of Personality," p. 72, tells of a hypnotized subject, who, similar to the possessed or inspired subject, wrote twelve pages of a novel in one hour in the hypnotized state.

mentioned, in a state of unconsciousness, while the Israelitish prophets delivered theirs in the full possession of their mental powers. This distinction is entirely gratuitous. Inspiration is the same mental process wherever manifested. The distinction however that should be made is this: in all early stages of mental development, among all nations, and of course among the Hebrews as well, inspiration meant the unconscious utterances, in a state of trance or similar mental state, or sometimes the mad, violent utterances and actions in certain diseased states of mind; while in higher civilizations, as among the higher prophets of Israel, higher in the sense of more intellectual and moral, inspiration ceased to be connected with those former phenomena, and was taken to mean the no less mysterious but the more profound utterances, the more eloquent products of the highest activities of the deeply moved, stirred, passionate human soul.

James throws the following light on this subject: The great field for this sense of being the instrument of a higher power is of course "inspiration." It is easy to discriminate between the religious leaders who have been habitually subject to inspiration and those who have not. In the teachings of the Buddha, of Jesus, of Saint Paul (apart from his gift of tongues), of Saint Augustine, of Huss, of Luther, of Wesley, automatic or semi-automatic composition appears to have been only occasional. the Hebrew prophets on the contrary, in Mohammed, in some of the Alexandrians, in many minor Catholic Saints, in Fox, in Joseph Smith, something like it appears to have been frequent, sometimes habitual. We have distinct professions of being under the direction of a foreign power and serving as its mouthpiece. As regards the Hebrew prophets, it is extraordinary, writes an author who has made a careful study of them, to see—

In