Psychological Characteristics of Religious Leaders
There can be no doubt that as a matter of fact a religious life, exclusively pursued, does
tend to make the person exceptional and eccentric. I speak not now of your ordinary
religious believer, who follows the conventional observances of his country, whether it
be Buddhist, Christian, or Mohammedan. His religion has been made for him by
others, communicated to him by tradition, determined to fixed forms by imitation, and
retained by habit. It would profit us little to study this second-hand religious life. We
must make search rather for the original experiences which were the pattern-setters to
all this mass of suggested feeling and imitated conduct. These experiences we can only
find in individuals for whom religion exists not as a dull habit, but as an acute fever
rather. But such individuals are ‘geniuses’ in the religious line; and like many other
geniuses who have brought forth fruits effective enough for commemoration in the
pages of biography, such religious geniuses have often shown symptoms of nervous
instability.
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