claimed that the ideal Christ was a better object of cult for Christianity than a historic Christ. "Your letter, accompanying Robertson's Jesus-Myth or History, certainly represents just what I think on that subject, and I am pleased to see how clearly you put it. But there is the other side of the question, the positive history and appeal of the Idea of Christ, which Couchoud feels much more adequately than Robertson, and I was a bit disappointed in finding that Robertson had nothing to add in that direction; nor do the other recent writers he mentions seem to have any new lights. Couchoud is warmer; but on the other hand he does not inspire any confidence, whereas Robertson at least is cautious and reasonable in his conclusions. If I were younger, I should be tempted to write a companion volume, or counterblast, to my Idea of Christ in the Gospel, in the form of Probabilities about Jesus in the Real World. There is hardly any evidence, but there are suggestions that could be sifted and combined, to make a tragic picture. Somebody will doubtless do it some day: but will he be able to be both critical and inspired?" Jean Guitton's testimony after Couchoud's death Couchoud, as a psychiatrist, accepted the idea that a religious movement could originate with psychological events such as visions, interpreted by imagination, very close to the symptoms of some psychiatric diseases. As a matter of psychiatric interest, he wanted to visit a French female "mystic" (mystique), Marthe Robin (1902-1981), not far from Vienne, where he had retired. She was a female peasant, paralyzed since 1928 following undocumented mental traumas, and spending her life in bed, in a dark room, reportedly without food. She had claimed visions of the Virgin Mary, and having received the stigmata in 1930. Jean Guitton (1901-1999), was also a philosophy graduate of the ENS, like Couchoud, and a disciple of Henri Bergson (yet another philosophy graduate of the ENS, and a 1927 Nobel Prize for Literature, 1859-1941). Guitton was a French Catholic philosopher interested in mysticism, and a friend of Couchoud. Guitton interceded with the local archbishop to overcome the resistance of the mystic's Catholic priest who was her "spiritual director" and allow visits by Couchoud. Guitton described his last conversation with Couchoud, discussing the mystic on the quay of the Vienne train station, when Couchoud recited a short poem about