too meager to enable us to speak in much detail of his mental traits, and the critical questions that still gather around the Gospels involve, to some extent, the interpretation of his mind and of his attitudes. Nevertheless, it can be said with confidence that he represents a reaction against the sacerdotal conception of divine communion, and that, though he appears to have experienced some automatisms that he interpreted as special divine impartations, these were not the staple of his reliance either for himself or for others. That is, of shamanism there are only minor traces even in the records, which are themselves interpretations and not portraits, and sacerdotalism is directly opposed. That he was a wonder-worker, a healer of diseases by what we recognize as suggestion, does not indicate that he occupied the standpoint that I have called shamanism. He healed the people because of his overwhelming sympathy, not as a means of dominating them. How he wrought his cures was obviously insignificant to him, compared with the joyous fact that the people were lifted out of their distresses.

but a servant of the people.

He was not a shaman,

Even if criticism should prove that he held to an in extreme catastrophic view of the coming of the Kingdom; even if we should be obliged to believe that he was ultimately a disillusioned idealist (that is, that he expected to be accepted during his earthly lifetime as the A promised Messiah), what has been said still holds true of his mental traits, and it contains the explanation of his power over men. His simple trust in a Father who understands us and brings good to pass even through seeming ill; his equally simple valuation of human life,

as if ungrudging, unsparing helpfulness were the most natural thing in the world; his penetrating conceptions of right and wrong, as if he simply gazed upon the thing he talked about; a certain moral irresistibility because he reduces the problems of conduct to simple issues of ethical love these are the grounds of his influence. In some important respects his influence resembles that of Lincoln. Jesus had the same homespun feeling for "folks," the same appreciation of friendship, corresponding directness of perception and picturesqueness of speech, quiet courage, a more than full measure of patient endurance, something even of the same humor. This is the sort of leadership that describes itself in the old saying, "We love him because he first loved us."

These examples, though they are drawn from a single stream of religious tradition, are representative of religious leadership as a whole. There are types of leadership, as there are grades of culture. It is a narrow view that thinks to explain the influence of Paul, of Jesus, of the Buddha, or of Mohammed by saying that each was more or less neurotic, or even epileptic, and that the people took his abnormalities for divine possession. In two of these cases at least the neurotic hypothesis rests on slight ground. That Jesus is said to have had a vision or two, and the Buddha a sudden life-enlightening conversion, by no means proves them neurotic in any useful sense of this term. Such experiences come to minds that function so capably that only under the exigencies of some overworked theory can they be called "abnormal." To characterize as neurotic any mind that experiences a well-marked automatism is to make the term "neurotic" scientifically useless. The ultimate

test of mental morbidity, whether of the extreme sorts, called "imbecility" and "insanity," or of the milder sorts, called "neurotic," is one's ability to fulfil one's functions as a member of society. Neurasthenia, for example, is to be classed as a mental disorder, not because it involves a mental process that is peculiar to neurasthenics, but because certain processes that are common to all men are here present in so excessive or one-sided a way as obviously to interfere with the carrying on of life's business in co-operation with others. Neither Jesus nor the Buddha was made weak or inefficient by automatisms that he may have experienced; neither trafficked in them after the manner of the shaman; neither relied upon them as the basis of his certainty of the principles that he taught, but each rested the authority of his teachings either upon analysis of life or else upon the practical self-evidence of basal ethical ideals; neither was separated from men by any mental peculiarity, but each was drawn to men and drew men to him by compassionate helpfulness. Finally, though each was a dissenter from the existing social-religious order, each dissented, especially Jesus, in the interest of a wider and deeper sociality. That the shamanistic features added by tradition to the picture of each of these prophets, and the so-to-say "rabbinical" doctrines that offered themselves as the historical story had influence with succeeding generations, is undeniable. Antagonistic elements mix in any evolutionary process. But the specific ground of the personal influence involved, the reason why tradition selected these particular men as first among the sons of men, cannot have been either a shamanistic or a priestly element in the men themselves, but rather the

element of ethical prophecy, the fresh resort to new and ethically higher sources of religious experience.

Signs of neurotic mental make-up are far more abundant in Paul and Mohammed. Mohammed's visions and auditions were numerous and apparently vivid. A true shamanistic touch appears, moreover, when he has visions that seem as if made to order for the obvious purpose of carrying his point in certain disputes. That these automatisms helped to give him sanctity and authority in the eyes of the people need not be doubted. The remaining question is whether the messages that he uttered had a prophetic character, and, if so, what part they had in making Mohammed the great leader that he became. His general capacity for vigor and persistence in action is sufficiently witnessed by the way in which he organized his followers and led them to victory against great opposition. What is more significant is that he was a religious and social reformer. His message, seen in the light of contemporary religious crudity and social unintegration, was of the prophetic type. It was to a relatively exalted conception of God that he called men, and to certain progressive, though limited, notions of social duty. These, rather than the automatic form that his originality took, are his distinguishing marks. There were ten thousand men who could have visions to one who could conceive such thoughts, but it was this one to whom the people clave.

Our study of what makes one a leader brings us, of course, to a consideration of what it is that the people desire, or at least are ready to follow. That grounds of religious leadership evolve, as we have now seen, implies

that parallel changes occur in the springs of action in the whole religious body. Here opens the wide problem of wherein mental evolution consists. In what sense, if any, does human nature remain the same, and in what sense does it move? Postponing this question to subsequent chapters, let us close the examination of the elements of religious leadership by a word concerning the more obvious relations between the leaders and the led. It is obvious that religious evolution is a movement in which both the leaders and the led are carried along. The notions, once seriously held, that religion was largely invented and imposed upon the people by priestcraft or statecraft, are, as we now see, so unhistorical as to be preposterous. A leader does not manufacture religion any more than a gardener makes a rose. In religion as in floriculture there is a fundamental, spontaneous process which is guided more or less toward specific products by individual action.

To be more specific, there are three sorts of thing that religious leaders may do. First, a leader may embody, focalize, and render effective an already germinating standpoint of the people by bringing it to conscious definition. He makes them see what it is that they already want, or he guides them in a particular procedure for obtaining what they want. The revealing of men to themselves is what gives such apparent self-evidence to the greatest prophetic messages, and this is also one ground of the impression that God himself speaks through the prophet. Secondly, a leader may bring victory to one of two or more competing attitudes, policies, or beliefs of society. He may do it by superior definition, argument, and emotional appeal; or by