THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BELIEF. 221 



peasant girl, who has exhibited the curious phenomenon of 

 " stigmatization," — that is, a spontaneous periodical bleeding, 

 without any actual wounds, from the hands and feet, the forehead 

 and the side, which were pierced in the crucified Saviour. By 

 Catholics, this occurrence (like previous cases of the same kind) 

 has been trumpeted as miraculous ; while by Protestants, it has 

 been denounced as an imposture. Here we at once see how 

 completely the antecedent condition of each mind has determined 

 the response ; the external testimony as to the facts of the case 

 which satisfies the former, being altogether repudiated by the 

 latter, on account of what they regard as its inherent improb- 

 ability. But to the physiologist who has carefully studied the 

 local effects which concentrated attention can exert on bodily 

 organs, especially when coupled with a strong expectation of a 

 certain result (such expectation being peculiarly efficacious when 

 coupled with strong religious emotion), the case presents no 

 difficulty whatever. The testimony of the numerous and com- 

 petent medical witnesses, fully on their guard against sources of 

 fallacy, and determined to detect the cheat, if cheat there were, 

 affords as strong a body of external evidence as could be brought 

 to prove the reality of any occurrence whatever. And so far 

 from finding any inherent improbability in their narrative^ I can 

 only say for myself, that its internal evidence is to my mind quite 

 as strong as its external. The subject of it was obviously one of 

 that class of young women who are known to every medical 

 practitioner as peculiarly liable to " possession " by dominant 

 ideas ; and this possession manifested itself in a periodical 

 "ecstasy," a form of natural somnambulism, in which the mind, 

 entirely closed to the external world, is given up entirely to its 

 own contemplations. Her current of thought and feeling in this 

 state uniformly ran in the direction of the Saviour's Passion, the 

 whole scene of which seemed to pass before her mind, as might 

 be judged from her expressive actions ; and a strong evidence of 

 the reality of the condition was afforded by the fact that, accord- 

 ing to the testimony of the medical witnesses, each fit terminated 

 in a state of extreme physical prostration, which could not have 

 been simulated — the pulse being scarcely perceptible, the breath- 

 ing slow and feeble, and the whole surface bedewed with a cold 



