he rose aloft or even with the conviction of his disciples, that they, being in an ecstasy, saw him do so.  There is no reason to doubt the subjective reality of well-authenticated visions and as motives and stimuli to action they may have real objective importance.  Miracles of healing are not dissimilar.  A man’s mind can affect his body, either directly through his conviction that certain physical changes are about to take place or indirectly as conveying the influence of some powerful external mind which may be either calming or stimulating.  That some persons have a special power of healing nervous or mental diseases can hardly be doubted and I am not disposed to reject any well-authenticated miraculous cure, believing that sudden mental relief or acute joy can so affect the whole frame that in the improved physical conditions thus caused even diseases not usually considered as nervous may pass away.  But though there is no reason to discredit miracles of healing, it is clear that they are not only exaggerated but also distorted by reporters who do not understand their nature.  Those who chronicle the cures supposed to be effected at Lourdes at the present day keep within the bounds of what is explicable, but a Hindu who had seen a cripple recover some power of movement might be equally ready to believe that when a man’s leg had been cut off the stump could grow into a complete limb.

The miraculous events recorded in the Pitakas differ from those of later works, whether Mahayanist literature or the Hindu Puranas and Epics, chiefly in their moderation.  They may be classified under several heads.  Many of them are mere embroidery or embellishment due to poetical exuberance, esteemed appropriate in those generous climates though repugnant to our chilly tastes.  In every country poetry is allowed to overstep the prosaic borders of fact without criticism.  When an English poet says that—­

  The red rose cries She is near, she is near: 
  And the white rose weeps She is late: 
  The larkspur listens, I hear, I hear: 
  And the lily whispers, I wait—­

no one thinks of criticizing the lines as absurd because flowers cannot talk or of trying to prove that they can.  Poetry can take liberties with facts provided it follows the lines of metaphors which the reader finds natural.  The same latitude cannot be allowed in unfamiliar directions.  Thus though a shower of flowers from heaven is not more extraordinary than talking flowers and is quite natural in Indian poetry, it would probably disconcert the English reader[715].  An Indian poet would not represent flowers as talking, but would give the same idea by saying that the spirits inhabiting trees and plants recited stanzas.  Similarly when a painter draws a picture of an angel with wings rising from the shoulder blades, even the very scientific do not think it needful to point out that no such anatomical arrangement is known or probable, nor do the very pious maintain that such creatures exist.