Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 2.djvu/628

608 trembling, followed by a kind of swoon, or rather convulsion, during which perspiration would stream from his forehead in the coldest weather; he would lie with his eyes closed, foaming at the mouth, and bellowing like a young camel. Ayesha, one of his wives, and Zeid, one of his disciples, are among the persons cited as testifying to that effect. They considered him at such times as under the influence of a revelation. He had such attacks, however, in Mecca, before the Koran was revealed to him. Cadijah feared that he was possessed by evil spirits, and would have called in the aid of a conjurer to exorcise them, but he forbade her. He did not like that any one should see him during these paroxysms. His visions, however, were not always preceded by such attacks. Hareth Ibn Haschem, it is said, once asked him in what manner the revelations were made. 'Often,' replied he, 'the angel appears to me in a human form and speaks to me. Sometimes I hear sounds like the tinkling of a bell, but see nothing.' (A ringing in the ears is a symptom of epilepsy.) When the invisible angel has departed, I am possessed of what he has revealed.' Some of the revelations he professed to receive direct from God, others in dreams; for the dreams of prophets, he used to say, are revelations."

Bayle says ("Dictionnaire Historique et Critique," article "Mohammed") that he was subject to the mal cadue (epilepsy), and that he tried to make his wife Cadijah believe that "he only fell into convulsions because he could not sustain the glory of the appearance of the angel" Gabriel, who came to announce many things from God concerning religion.

The following passage is quoted by Moreau (de Tours) from "Gisbert Voctins:"

"Non video cur hoc negandum sit (epilepsia et maniacis deliriis aut enthusiasmis diabolicis Mahommedi ad fuisse energema) si vitami et actiones ejus intueamur." "I do not see how it can be denied (that the fanaticism of Mohammed arose from the maniacal delirium or diabolic enthusiasm of epilepsy), if we look carefully into his life and actions." The inhabitants of Mecca considered him to be a madman and possessed, and his wife thought he was a fanatic deceived by the artifices of a demon.

"By his ecstatic visions" (says Moreau), "had he not become the dupe of his visions, whence sprung the first idea of his divine mission, and then had not these visions become the principal, if not the sole basis of his apostolic works, as well as the source of his audacity, and of his prophetic power over the ignorant and superstitious spirit of his countrymen?"

It seems incredible that a religion which sways the minds of 200,000,000 of the human race at the present day should have no better foundation than the visions and reams of an epileptic.