To go on pilgrimage is an instinct which appears in most religions and at all ages.  The idea underlying the practice seems to be that God is more nigh in some spots than in others, the desire to seek Him in a place where He may be found:  for where God is, there men hope to win remission of sins.  So widespread is this sentiment that both in Catholic Europe and in Asia it is not possible to travel far without coming upon sites invested in this way with a special holiness.  The objects which draw men to peregrinate may be divided into three classes:  natural features which are in themselves remarkable; places difficult of access, which can only be reached at cost of risk and effort; and sites which have been rendered holy by the visitation of God or the preservation of sacred relics.  But this classification is not always clearly defined; for the same object of pilgrimage often falls into two categories at once.

Of striking natural features—­self-created objects of veneration, as the Hindus call them—­many kinds are found.  There are chasms from which issue mysterious vapours, stimulating prophecy, such as Delphi, or Jwala Mukhi, sacred to Hindus and Sikhs, or the Grotta del Cane, near Naples.  Caves with their dreadful gloom inspire a sense of supernatural presence.  Such are the cave of Trophonius in Boeotia, St. Patrick’s cave in Ireland, the grotto of Lourdes, Mariastein near Basle, and the great fissure of Amarnath in Kashmir, with its icy stalactite which is the special object of worship.  Some of these add to their sanctity by difficulty of access:  St. Patrick’s cave is on an island in Lough Derg; Mariastein lies over the edge of a steep cliff; Amarnath is hidden among lofty mountains at 17000 feet above the sea.

Enormous stones, too, are apt to acquire holiness, arousing interest by their vast mass; as though they could hardly have been brought into independent existence, detached from the great earth, without some direct intervention of divine power.  Such are the stone at Delphi, or the great rock, now enshrined in a Muhammadan mosque, which no doubt caused men to go up to Jerusalem in Jebusite days, before Israel came out of Egypt. (It is thought by pious Muhammadans to rest in the air without support; their tradition being that at the time of Muhammad’s ascension into heaven this stone, which was his point of departure, sought to accompany him but was detained by an angel.  To the Hebrews it was sacred as the rock on which Abraham was ready to offer Isaac; and also as a stone which kept down within the earth the receded waters of the Flood.) Meteoric stones have a sanctity as having fallen from heaven:  for example, the lingam of Jagannath at Puri, and the famous black stone at Mecca.  Wells also, for obvious reasons, tend to attract worship.