“Hunc igitur terrorem animi tenebrasque necessestNon radii solis neque lucida tela dieiDiscutiant, sed naturæ species ratioque.”[14]
“Hunc igitur terrorem animi tenebrasque necessestNon radii solis neque lucida tela dieiDiscutiant, sed naturæ species ratioque.”[14]
“Hunc igitur terrorem animi tenebrasque necessest
Non radii solis neque lucida tela diei
Discutiant, sed naturæ species ratioque.”[14]
FOOTNOTE:[14]Darkness and terror of the soul are not dispelled by the rays of the sun and glittering shafts of the day, but by the rational aspect of nature.
[14]Darkness and terror of the soul are not dispelled by the rays of the sun and glittering shafts of the day, but by the rational aspect of nature.
[14]Darkness and terror of the soul are not dispelled by the rays of the sun and glittering shafts of the day, but by the rational aspect of nature.
Various authorities in Ethnology and Anthropology concur in their description and testimony as to the superstitious fears that obsess primitive man.
Professor Baldwin Spencer, the anthropologist, writes of the Australian aborigines that they have “an intense belief in evil magic. The natives have no idea of disease or pain as being due to anything but evil magic, except that which is caused by an actual accident which they can see.... Anything they do not understand they associate with evil magic.... You have only to tell a native that he is the victim of evil magic, and he succumbs at once, and can only be cured by the exercise of counter magic.
“The number of supernatural beings feared by aborigines of Australia is exceedingly great. For not only are the heavens peopled with such, but the whole face of the country swarms with them; every thicket, most watering places abound with evil spirits. In like manner, every natural phenomenon is believed to be the work of demons, none of whichseem to be of a benign nature, one and all apparently striving to do all imaginable mischief to the poor black fellow.”
The same is true of the negro. “The negro is wont to regard the whole world around him as peopled with envious beings, to whom he imputes every misfortune that happens to him, and from whose harmful influence he seeks to protect himself by all kinds of magic means.” “The religion of the Bolok (of the Upper Congo River),” writes an observer, “has its basis in their fear of those numerous invisible spirits which surround them on every side, and are constantly trying to compass them in their sickness, misfortune and death; and the Boloki’s sole object in practising their religion is to cajole, or appease, cheat or conquer or kill those spirits that trouble them, by their Nganga (medicine men), their rites, their ceremonies, and their charms. If there were no evil spirits to circumvent there would be no need of medicine men and their charms.... The Boloki folk believe that they are surrounded by spirits which try to thwart them at every twist and turn, and to harm them every hour of day and night.... I never met among them a man daring enough to go at night through the forest that divided Monsembe from the upper villages even though a large reward was offered. Their invariable reply was: ‘There are too many spirits in the bush and forest.’ The spirits whom the people dread somuch are the mingoli, or disembodied souls of the dead; the life of the Boloki is described as ‘one long drawn out fear of what the mingoli may next do to them.’ Those dangerous beings dwell everywhere, land and water are full of them; they are ever ready to pounce on the living and carry them away, or to smite them with disease, and kill them.... The belief in witchcraft affects their lives in a vast number of ways. It regulates their actions, modifies their mode of thought and speech, controls their conduct towards each other, causes cruelty and callousness in a people not naturally cruel, and sets the various members of a family against each other.... Belief in witches is interwoven into the very fiber of every Bantu speaking man and woman; and the person who does not believe in them is a monster, a witch to be killed.”
The fear of evil spirits, the fear of witchcraft, and the fear of malicious spiritual agencies have been the pests of credulous, fear-obsessed humanity in all the ages of its existence. The crusades, and religious wars have shown us the blight suffered by humanity, obsessed by the impulse of self-preservation and the fear instinct.Fearorpretended Loveof the great spirit, under whatever name, is used for the avoidance of fears and evils.
Sir E. F. im Thurn describes the Indian of Guiana as haunted by the omnipresence of malicious ghosts and spirits. “The whole world of the Indian swarmswith these beings. If by a mental effort, we could for a moment revert to a similar mental position, we should find ourselves surrounded everywhere by a host of harmful beings.... It is not therefore, wonderful that the Indian fears to move beyond the light of his camp-fire after dark ... nor is it wonderful that occasionally the air round the settlement seems to the Indian to grow so full of beings, that a sorcerer is employed.”
The Indians of Paraguay “live in constant dread of supernatural beings and if nothing else contributed to make their life miserable, this ever present dread would be in itself quite sufficient to rob it of most of its joys.”
Professor Powell writes of the Indians: “The Indians believed that diseases were caused by unseen evil beings and by witchcraft, and every cough, every toothache, every headache, every fever, every boil and every wound, in fact all their ailments were attributed to such a cause. Their so-called medical practice was a horrible system of sorcery and to such superstition human life was sacrificed on an enormous scale....”
Similarly, the malignant spirits of the Maori are “so numerous as to surround the living in crowds.” The Maori claims: “the spirits throng like mosquitoes, ever watching to inflict harm.” The Melanesian “sees himself surrounded at every step by evil spirits and their influences.” The Papuans“people land and sea with mysterious, malignant powers which take up their abode in stones and trees or in men, and cause all kinds of misfortunes, especially sickness and death.” The Bakua of New Guinea are in constant fear of spirits.... “Of forest spirits the number is infinite; for it is above all in the mysterious darkness, the tangled wilderness of the virgin forests that the spirits love to dwell.... The spirits are never bent on good, they live in evil places. At night-fall the native hears the voices of the spirits, they make inroads into human habitations, and drive man crazy.”
In Java, the people are firmly convinced that “the number of spirits is innumerable, they are a source of fear and anxiety.” The natives of Sumatra are possessed of “fear of unknown powers.... Every misfortune bespeaks the ill-will of hostile spirits. The whole world is a meeting place of demons.” The Batakas “live in perpetual fear of evil spirits.”
Professor M. Williams writes of the Hindoos: “The great majority of the inhabitants of India are, from the cradle to the burning ground, victims of a form of mental disease which is best explained by the termdemonophobia. They are haunted and oppressed by a perpetual dread of demons. They are firmly convinced that evil spirits of all kinds, from malignant fiends to mischievous imps and elves, are ever on the watch to harm, harass and torment them, to cause plague, sickness,famine, and disaster, to impede, injure and mar every good work. The worship of at least ninety per cent of the people of India in the present day is a worship of fear. The simple truth is that evil of all kinds, difficulties, dangers and disasters, famines, diseases, pestilences and death, are thought by an ordinary Hindoo to proceed from demons, or more properly speaking, from devils, and from devils alone.” “The underlying principle (of the religion of the Kacharis of Assam) is characteristically one of fear or dread.”
“The Thibetans,” writes an observer, “are thorough-going demon worshippers. In every nook, path, big tree, rock, spring, waterfall and lake there lurks a devil,—for which reason few individuals will venture out alone after dark. The sky, the ground, the house, the field, the country, have each their special demons; and sickness is always attributed to malign demoniacal influence.”
The Burmese, the Laosians of Siam, the Thay of Indo-China are in all their activities controlled by the fear instinct which is at the bottom of all their beliefs. “The Thay cannot take a single step without meeting a demon on the path.... Spirits watch him, ready to punish negligence, and he is afraid.Fear is not only for him, the beginning of wisdom, it is the whole of his wisdom.”
The Koreans may be regarded as the most superstitiouspeople among the Orientals. Before me lies a Korean book full of superstitions which can only be matched in their absurdities with those of Australian aborigines who, in their savage culture, belong to the paleolithic period. The whole course of the Korean’s life is controlled to the very minutiae by the terrors and horrors of demoniacal, invisible, deadly, malignant powers of demons, spirits, ghosts, hobgoblins, specters, and witches. According to the Korean belief the earth is a pandemonium in which witches and evil spirits hold high carnival.
J. M. de Groot writes “In Korean belief, earth, air, and sea are peopled by demons. They haunt every umbrageous tree, shady ravine, spring and mountain crest.... They make a sport of human destinies. They are on every roof, ceiling, oven and beam. They fill the chimney, shed, the living room, the kitchen, they are on every shelf and jar. In thousands they waylay the traveler as he leaves his home, beside him, behind him, dancing in front of him, whirring over his head, crying out upon him from air, earth, and water. They are numbered by thousands of billions, and it has been well said that their ubiquity is an unholy travesty of Divine Omnipresence. This belief, and it seems to be the only one he possesses, keeps the Korean in a perpetual state of nervous apprehension, it surrounds him with indefinite terrors, and it may betruly said of him that he passes the time of his sojourning here in fear.... The spirits keep the Korean in bondage from birth to death.”
Im Bang, a Korean writer on Korean beliefs, has a characteristic story of a poor relative of some Korean dignitary. This poor relative of the high official once a year gathered hundreds of thousands of spirits whom he checked off, so as to keep their malignant disposition under control. And this gentleman was but one of the many clerks; he was but one census man of the vast bureaucratic spiritistic machinery for the regulation and control of evil demons.
The same holds true of the other tribes in Asia. Thus the Gyliaks think that all the places on earth are filled with malicious demoniacal agencies. Similarly, the Koryaks on the Amoor are terrorized by the malignancy of evil spirits that dog their steps. W. Jochelson tells of the Koryaks that “when visiting the houses to cause diseases and to kill people, they (the spirits or demons) enter from under the ground.... They are invisible to human beings, they are sometimes so numerous in houses that they sit on the people, and fill up all corners.... With hammers and axes they knock people over their heads and cause headache. They bite, and cause swellings. They shoot invisible arrows which stick in the body causing death. The demons tear out pieces of flesh from people, thuscausing sores and wounds to form on the body.” The same spirit of fear of the invisible and of the mysterious, fear of evil powers, controlling the fate of man, constitutes the central belief of almost every primitive tribe, semi-civilized, ancient, as well as modern nation. They are all controlled by the fundamental instinct of life—the fear instinct.
The Semitic scholar, R. H. Harper, writes of the Assyrians and Babylonians as follows: “There is no place in the universe where evil spirits can not penetrate. Every manner of evil and disaster is ascribed to them, from pestilence, fever, and the scorching wind of the desert, down to the trifles of life,—a quarrel, a headache, a broken dish, or a bad dream. They walk the street, slip into the door, get into the food, in short, are everywhere, and the danger from their presence is always imminent.... Corresponding to a widespread belief in demons was a similar belief in witchcraft. It was not at all strange that the demons, who worked in every possible corner of the universe, should take possession of human beings....”
The tablets excavated in the imperial library of Ashurbanipal show the spirit of the people even of the highest classes debased with delusions and religious hallucinations due to self-preservation and fear instinct, so dominant in man who, when common-sense departs from him, may be regarded as theirrational animal par excellence.
We may give the following illustration taken from one of the many tablets of the Shurpu series:
“The evil spirits like grass have covered the earth. To the four winds they spread brilliancy like fire, they send forth flames. The people living in dwellings they torment, their bodies they afflict. In city and country they bring moaning, small and great they make to lament. Man and woman they put in bonds, and fill with cries of woe. Man they fall upon and cover him like a garment. In heaven and earth like a tempest they rain; they rush on in pursuit. They fill him with poison, his hands they bind, his sides they crush.”
According to the ancient rabbis, a man should not drink water by night, for thus he exposes himself to the Shavriri, demons of blindness. What then should he do if he is thirsty? If there be another man with him, let him rouse him up and say: “I am thirsty,” but if he be alone, let him tap upon the lid of the jug (to make the demon fancy there is some one with him), and addressing him by his own name, let him say: “Thy mother bid thee beware of the Shavriri, vriri, riri, ri.” Rashi, a mediaeval commentator, says that by this incantation the demon gradually contracts and vanishes as the sound of the word Shavriri decreases.
The ancient rabbis instruct that “no one should venture out at night time on Wednesday or Saturday, for Agrath, the daughter of the demon Machloth,roams about accompanied by eighteen myriads of evil demons, each one of which has power to destroy.” The rabbis claim that the air, land and sea are full of demons, all bent on evil and destruction of man. In this respect the learned rabbis differ but little from the superstitious Koreans and Australian savages. The rabbis warn the pious Jew that “should he forget to fold his prayer cover, he is to shake it thoroughly next morning, in order to get rid of the evil spirits that have harbored there during the night.” The evil spirits are infinite in number. Thus the Talmudic authorities are in full accord with the ancient Babylonians, Assyrians, and with the lowest savages, ancient and modern, obsessed by the fear of spirits, by Demonophobia.
One cannot help agreeing with the English anthropologist, Frazer, who after his study of the subject, arrives at the following conclusion: “In India from the earliest times down to the present day the real religion of the common folk appears always to have been a belief in a vast multitude of spirits of whom many, if not most, are mischievous and harmful. As in Europe beneath a superficial layer of Christianity a faith in magic and witchcraft, in ghosts and goblins has always survived and even flourished among the weak and the ignorant (and apparently cultivated) so it has been and so it is in the East (and we may say also inthe West). Brahmanism, Buddhism, Islam may come and go, but the belief in magic and demons remains unshaken through them all, and, if we may judge of the future from the past, it is likely to survive the rise and fall of other historical religions. For the great faiths of the world, just in so far as they are the outcome of superior intelligence, of extraordinary fervor of aspiration after the ideal, fail to touch and move the common man. They make claims upon his intellect and his heart, to which neither the one nor the other is capable of responding. With the common herd who compose the great bulk of every people, the new religion is accepted only in outward show.... They yield a dull assent to it with their lips, but in their heart they never abandon their old superstitions (and fears of evil and mysterious miraculous agencies); in these they cherish a faith such as they can never repose in the creed which they nominally profess; and to these, in the trials and emergencies of life, they have recourse as to infallible remedies.” And he quotes Maxwell to the effect that “The Buddhists in Ceylon, in times of sickness and danger ... turn to demons, feared and reverenced in the same way as do ‘the Burmese, Talaings, and Malays.’”
The Jews firmly believed in demoniacal agencies. “When the even was become, they brought unto Him many that were possessed with devils; and He cast out the spirits with His word, and healed allthat were sick.” “And in the synagogue there was a man which had a spirit of an unclean devil; and he cried out with a loud voice.” “And devils also came out of many ..., and He rebuking them suffered them not to speak.” “And there was a herd of many swine feeding on the mountains.... Then went the devils out of the man, and entered into the swine, and the herd ran violently down a steep place, and were choked.” “Casting out devils” was a sure proof of divine mission.
Perhaps a quotation from the Talmud will make clear the fear of demons which obsesses the Jew: Abba Benjamin says, “if the eye were permitted to see the malignant spirits that beset us, we could not rest on account of them.” Abai, another sage, says: “They outnumber us, they surround us as the heaped up soil in our garden plots.” Rav Hunna says: “Every one has a thousand on his left side and ten thousand on his right.” Rava claims: “The crowding at the schools is caused by their (demons) pushing in; they cause the weariness which the rabbis experience in their knees, and even tear their clothes by hustling against them. If one would discover traces of their presence, let him sift some ashes upon the floor at his bedside, and next morning he will see their footmarks as of fowls on the surface. But if one would see the demons themselves, he must burn to ashes the after-birth of a first born black kitten, the offspring of a first-born black cat, and thenput a little of the ashes into his eyes, and he will not fail to see the demons.”
In the words of Lord Avebury, the archeologist, “the savage is a prey to constant fears.... Savages never know but what they may be placing themselves in the power of these terrible enemies (the demons); and it is not too much to say that the horrible dread of unknown evil hangs like a thick cloud over savage life and embitters every pleasure.”
In our modern times the preachers, the revivalists, the pulpit, appeal to fear and to hell in order to keep their flock in the fold. Fear of eternal damnation for infidels is the war cry of religion.
Professor Dreslar elicited from 875 California normal school students four-fifths of whom were young women, 3225 confessions of belief in superstitions.... “How thin is the veneer of culture over that great mass of irrational predisposition which in the hour of fear and excitement resumes control of the popular mind, and leads on to folly and ruin!” (Ross).
Buckle is right in pointing out the significant fact that superstition is found in any walk of life in which risk or danger predominates. Sailors are more superstitious than landsmen, while farmers and business people, especially gamblers and speculators, are more superstitious than industrial workers. Similarly Cumont is right in ascribing the superstitions of soldiers as due to risks and dangers of war.
After the great world war one notices the rise of all sorts of superstitions. Superstitions and fear are close companions. A modern historian does not hesitate to declare that “Europe is held in hate, because the nations fear each other.... What sentiment has dug the ditch separating Russia from the rest of the world? It is fear. The states of Western Europe, which the Soviets regard as their persecutors, think themselves menaced in their turn by the Soviet republic.” The Great War was produced by self-preservation and fear. The world is still in the grip of the fear instinct.
The Bible claims: Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. The Latin poet declares:Primus in orbe deos fecit timor. The real state of things is:Self and fear are the Lords of life, individual and social.
Bacon in his essay “On the Wisdom of the Ancients,” with his clear insight has stated the matter succinctly: “In the Panic terrors there is set forth a very wise doctrine; for by the nature of thingsall living creatures are endued with a certain fear and dread, the office of which is to preserve their life and existence, and to avoid or repel approaching mischief. But the same nature knows not how to keep just measure,—but together with salutary fears ever mingles vain and empty ones; insomuch thatall things (if one could see into the heart of them) are quite full of Panic terrors; humanthings most of all; so infinitely tossed and troubled as they are with superstition (which is in truth nothing but a Panic terror), especially in seasons of hardship, anxiety, and adversity.”
Superstitious terrors are by no means confined to race; they are common to all races. For example, among the aborigines of Australia a native will die after the infliction of even the most superficial wound, if he is scared by the suggestion that the weapon which inflicted the wound has been sung over, and thus endowed with magical virtue. He simply lies down, refuses food, and pines away.
Similarly among some of the Indian tribes of Brazil, if the medicine-man predicted the death of anyone who had offended him, “the wretch took to his hammock instantly in such full expectation of dying, that he would neither eat nor drink, and the prediction was effectually executed.”
Speaking of certain African races Major Leonard observes: “I have seen more than one hardened old Haussa soldier dying steadily and by inches, because he believed himself to be bewitched; so that no nourishment or medicines that were given to him had the slightest effect either to check the mischief or to improve his condition in any way, and nothing wasable to divert him from a fate which he considered inevitable.
“In the same way, and under very similar conditions, I have seen Kru-men and others die, in spite of every effort that was made to save them, simply because they had made up their minds, not (as we thought at the time) to die, but that being in the clutch of malignant demons they were bound to die.”
The gregarious individual must obey the master leader on pain of death. In gregarious life the whole pack attacks the disobedient individual for challenging the chief, king, priest, the god-man, the lord of the horde. Obedience is a virtue, disobedience is a mortal sin, affecting the whole horde, hence a horrible death of the sinner is the sole punishment. The independent personality is inhibited, the individual falls into a state of social somnambulism, and the will-less, self-less subconscious, a semblance of personality, charged with self-preservation and fear instinct, obeys the commands of the master leader who is often a brutal type, a Nero, a Domitian, a Caracalla, a Caligula, a John the Terrible.
In a society where the socio-static press is always at work, where political pressure is far stronger than even in the ancient despotic monarchies, where a class government is in possession of all modern improvements, where gray uniformity and drowsy monotony reign supreme, obedience must be the rule. Blind, stupid obedience, that slavish obedience whichis peculiar to somnambulic subjects, characterizes such societies.
Servility is well illustrated by the following historical incident: Prince Sougorsky, ambassador to Germany in 1576, fell sicken routein Courland. The duke of the province often inquired as to his health. The reply was always the same: “My health matters nothing, provided the sovereign’s prospers.” The duke, surprised, said, “How can you serve a tyrant with so much zeal?” He replied, “We Russians are always devoted to our Czars, good or cruel. My master (Ivan the Terrible) impaled a man of mark for a slight fault, who for twenty-four hours, in his dying agonies, talked with his family, and without ceasing kept repeating, ‘Great God, protect the Czar!’”
The same is true of modern class societies where the Demos is the despot. God preserve the Demos! When the business demon of the Demos requires sacrifice, self immolation, anticipate his order. Pray for the Demos; Great God, protect the greedy Demos! The Demos is my Lord, to him is due my servile loyalty.
It is interesting to observe that the superstitious, the savage, the negro, and the soldier are excellent subjects for hypnotic purposes. Soldiers as experiments show, have a strong predisposition to hypnotic states. I was told by Professor Münsterberg that the hypnotic predisposition was strongly developedin the German soldier. M. Liebault experimented on ten hundred and twelve persons, and found only twenty-seven refractory. Berenheim remarks on this that “It is necessary to take into account the fact that M. Liebault operates chiefly upon the common people.”
The great pressure exerted on the lower social strata, and especially on soldiers, the dull monotony of their life, the habit of strict obedience to command, predisposes them to social subconscious automatisms,—to the formation of mobs, clubs, unions, lodges, associations, parties, clans, sects, mobocracies. In all such organizations there is present the same servile spirit—the impersonal self and the gregarious fear instinct—the basis of subconscious, social somnambulism.
Man is a social somnambulist, he lives, dreams, and obeys with his eyes open. Whenever the impulse of self-preservation gets a special grip on the gregarious individual, when he becomes wild with terror in the bosom of the herd, then he may be regarded as a psychopathic victim.
The historian of the future will represent our age as dark, barbaric, savage, an age of the cruel Napoleonic wars, of commercial crises, financial panics, religious revivals, vicious, brutal, savage world wars,—mobs, crazes, plagues, social pests of all sorts and description....
A herd of sheep stand packed close together, looking stupidly into space.... Frighten them,—and if one begins to run, frantic with terror, the rest are sure to follow,—a stampede ensues, each sheep scrupulously reproduces the identical movements of the one in front of it. This susceptibility to imitation is but what we, in relation to man, term suggestibility, which consists in the impressing on the person of an idea, image, movement, however absurd and senseless, which the person in his hypnotized state reproduces like an automaton,—although he or she thinks it is done quite voluntarily. Suggestibility is natural to man as a social animal. Under specially favorable conditions this suggestibility which is always present in human beings may increase to an extraordinary degree, and the result is a stampede, a mob, an epidemic.
It is sometimes claimed that somnambulic persons are asleep. Sleep and somnambulism have been identified. This is a misuse of words since there are a whole series of subconscious states in which not one symptom of sleep appears.Extreme susceptibility to suggestions and mental automatisms are the chief traits of the subconscious.
Gregarious men and women carry within themselves the germs of the possible mob, or of mental epidemics. As social creatures men and women are naturally suggestible. When this susceptibility orsensitivity to suggestions becomes abnormally intense, we may say that they are thrown into a social subconscious, somnambulic state.
We know by psychological and psychopathological experiments that limitation of voluntary movements and inhibition of free activities induce a subconscious state. This subconscious state is characterized by inhibition of the will power,—memory remains unaffected; consciousness appears intact; the subject is aware of all that goes on.
Keeping this in mind, we can understand social life, and especially morbid, social movements, mob life of all ages.
A subconscious state is induced in the organized individual by the great limitation of his voluntary activities and by the inhibition of his free critical thought. Bound fast by the strings of tradition and authority, social men and women are reduced to subconscious automata. The subconscious rises with the growth of organized civilization, while the critical, independent powers of the individual correspondingly fall. Hence the apparent social paradox that the growth of society tends to destroy the mental forces which helped to build up civilization.
In such societies the individual staggers under the burden of laws and taboos. Individuality is stifled under the endless massive excretions of legislators. Recently even the lawgivers or law manufacturers began to object to the labor involved inthe work on the ever growing mass of bills introduced into the legislature of one state alone. Thus a senator of a Western state complained that inoneyear over 1700 bills passed through the mill of his Legislature. Multiply that figure by the number of states, add the municipal edicts, and the endless laws turned out by the Federal Government, and one can form some faint idea of the vast burden laid on the shoulders of the individual citizen.
The Los Angeles Times, which no one will accuse of radicalism, pointedly remarks: “The State has just issued a reference index to the laws of California since 1850—it is of itself a bulky volume of more than 1300 pages. When it takes a book of that size merely as anindexit would seem that the lawmakers had about done their worst.”
Over-production of laws is one of the great evils of modern civilization. Civilized society is apt to be obsessed by a state of law-mania which is a danger and a menace to the free development of the individual citizen.
The Roman legal thinkers left us two significant sayings:Ex Senatus consultis et plebiscitis, crimina execrentur,—(Senatorial decisions and popular decrees give rise to crimes) and:Ut olim vitiis, sic nunc legibus laboramus,—(As we formerly suffered from vices and crimes so we suffer at present from laws and legislation)....
In describing the gregariousness of the Damaraoxen Francis Galton writes: “Although the ox has so little affection for, or interest in, his fellows, he cannot endure even a momentary severance from his herd. If he be separated from it by stratagem or force, he exhibits every sign of mental agony; he strives with all his might to get back again, and when he succeeds, he plunges into the middle to bathe his whole body with the comfort of closest companionship. This passionate terror is a convenience to the herdsman.” ... When an animal accustomed to a gregarious life is isolated from the herd, it is agitated with extreme terror. The same holds true of man who is a social animal. Man must go with the herd or with the pack, and he is terrified to stand alone, away from the crowd,—and still more terrorized when the crowd disapproves of him. Man is gregarious, and as such he must go with the mass, with the crowd. He is in mortal fear of social taboo. As a gregarious animal man lives in fear of external danger, and is in terror of social authority.
As Galton writes: “The vast majority of persons of our race have a natural tendency to shrink from the responsibility of standing and acting alone: they exalt thevox populi, even when they know it to be the utterance of a mob of nobodies, into thevox Dei; they are willing slaves to tradition, authority and custom. The intellectual deficiencies corresponding to these moral flaws are shown by the rarenessof free and original thought as compared with the frequency and readiness with which men accept the opinions of those in authority as binding on their judgment.” This slavish obedience is intimately bound up with one of the most fundamental of all instincts,—the fear instinct.
The individual is so effectively trained by the pressure of taboo based on self and fear, that he comes to love the yoke that weighs him down to earth. Chained to his bench like a criminal galley slave, he comes to love his gyves and manacles. The iron collar put around his neck becomes a mark of respectability, an ornament of civilization. Tarde finds that society is based on respect, a sort of an alloy of fear and love, fear that is loved. A respectable citizen is he who is fond of his bonds, stocks, and shekels, and comes to love his bonds, stocks, and shackles offears and taboos.
Human institutions depend for their existence and stability on the impulse of self-preservation and its close associate,—the fear instinct.
The psychology of mysticism and conversion is a fascinating subject. This is not the place to go into detail or even adequately cover the subject which is as extensive as it is important. I can only touch the matter in a superficial way—enough to answer the present purpose.
The state of mysticism is essentially a hypnoidal trance state, and its traits are the characteristics of the hypnoidal consciousness. Like the hypnoidal state, that of the mystic state may pass into waking, sleep, or into the hypnotic condition.
James marks off mystic states, by the traits of Ineffability, Transciency, Passivity, and Noetic Quality. These traits are just the ones found in the deeper states of the hypnoidal consciousness, especially the ones which approximate and pass into the hypnotic condition. In the mystical state, as in the hypnoidal state, there is a delicious languor, a lack of tension to the stimulation of the external environment which retreats in the distance; there isthe instability of the hypnoidal consciousness which soon passes into the other forms such as sleep, hypnosis, or waking. There is also present the refreshing, invigorating condition of the whole individuality on emerging from those peculiar subconscious states. The lethargic and cataleptic states often present in states of ecstasy, in which the mystics fall, depend entirely on states of the hypnoido-hypnotic trance.
The mystic consciousness and the hypnoidal one are not identical. The mystic consciousness is a species of the hypnoidal consciousness. What are then its special features? In the first place, the mystic consciousness has a negative and a positive aspect, depression and exaltation. In the second place, mysticism expresses a definite reaction of the individual to the conditions of his external environment. This reaction is one of retraction from the miseries and fears of life.
If we examine closely the type of consciousness characteristic of the state preceding the onset of the mystic condition, we find that it is essentially that of suffering, of misery, of disappointment, of despair, of inability to meet fairly, squarely, and courageously the experiences of life. There is a strong feeling of insecurity, a feeling of anxiety as to self and the world. A feeling of intense anguish seizes on the individual that he and the world are going to perdition, that on such terms life is not worth living. The instinct of fear penetrates everypore of his being, and inspires the individual with dread, horror, and terror. Terrorized by the wild evils of life, the personality becomes benumbed and paralyzed, and ready to succumb. This state of intense depression is not simply related to fear,it is fear. It is thestatus melancholicusoften preceding states of exaltation. The individual reaches a critical condition where life becomes impossible. The whole universe holds for him nothing but terrors and horrors.
Carlyle expresses this attitude when he makes Teufeldroeckh say: “I live in a continual, indefinite, pining fear; tremulous, pusillanimous, apprehensive of I know not what: it seems as if things, all things in the heavens above and the earth beneath would hurt me; as if the heavens and the earth were but boundless jaws of a devouring monster, wherein I, palpitating, lie waiting to be devoured.”
In this state of agony of fear, the individual looks for salvation in fleeing from the terrors of the world to the arms of the divinity.
In his terror the individual passes through a second stage, he becomes “converted,” he turns with prayers to the divine power to which he looks for shelter from the dangers of life. He appeals to the divinity for protection from the evils of the day and from the terrors of the night. This second stage is often preceded by a period of subconscious incubation which sometimes gives rise to sudden consciousexplosions, conscious conversions, or sudden onset of mystic state of ecstasy.
In the library of Ashburbanipal, king of Assyria, there are found “penitential psalms” much alike to our own, but some millenniums older than the Biblical psalms. These Assyro-Babylonian penitential psalms, inscribed in cuneiform script on clay tablets, clearly express the attitude of the worshipper or suppliant:
“O Goddess, in the anguish of my heart have I raised cries of anguish to thee; declare forgiveness.May thy heart be at rest.May thy liver be pacified.The sin which I have committed I know not.The Lord in the anger of his heart hath looked upon me.The goddess hath become angry and hath stricken me grievously.I sought for help, but no one taketh my hand.I wept, but no one cometh to my side.I utter cries, but no one harkens to me.I am afflicted, I am overcome.Unto my merciful god I turn.I kiss the feet of my goddess.How long, known and unknown god, until the anger of thy heart be pacified?How long, known and unknown goddess, until thy unfriendly heart be pacified?Mankind is perverted, and has no judgment,Of all men who are alive, who knows anything?They do not know whether they do good or evil.O Lord, do not cast aside thy servant!He is cast into the mire; take his hand.The sin which I have sinned turn to mercy!Known and unknown goddess, my sins are seven times seven;Forgive my sins!Forgive my sins, and I will humble myself before thee.May thy heart, as the heart of a mother who hath borne children, be glad!As a father who hath begotten them, may it be glad!”
“O Goddess, in the anguish of my heart have I raised cries of anguish to thee; declare forgiveness.May thy heart be at rest.May thy liver be pacified.The sin which I have committed I know not.The Lord in the anger of his heart hath looked upon me.The goddess hath become angry and hath stricken me grievously.I sought for help, but no one taketh my hand.I wept, but no one cometh to my side.I utter cries, but no one harkens to me.I am afflicted, I am overcome.Unto my merciful god I turn.I kiss the feet of my goddess.How long, known and unknown god, until the anger of thy heart be pacified?How long, known and unknown goddess, until thy unfriendly heart be pacified?Mankind is perverted, and has no judgment,Of all men who are alive, who knows anything?They do not know whether they do good or evil.O Lord, do not cast aside thy servant!He is cast into the mire; take his hand.The sin which I have sinned turn to mercy!Known and unknown goddess, my sins are seven times seven;Forgive my sins!Forgive my sins, and I will humble myself before thee.May thy heart, as the heart of a mother who hath borne children, be glad!As a father who hath begotten them, may it be glad!”
“O Goddess, in the anguish of my heart have I raised cries of anguish to thee; declare forgiveness.
May thy heart be at rest.
May thy liver be pacified.
The sin which I have committed I know not.
The Lord in the anger of his heart hath looked upon me.
The goddess hath become angry and hath stricken me grievously.
I sought for help, but no one taketh my hand.
I wept, but no one cometh to my side.
I utter cries, but no one harkens to me.
I am afflicted, I am overcome.
Unto my merciful god I turn.
I kiss the feet of my goddess.
How long, known and unknown god, until the anger of thy heart be pacified?
How long, known and unknown goddess, until thy unfriendly heart be pacified?
Mankind is perverted, and has no judgment,
Of all men who are alive, who knows anything?
They do not know whether they do good or evil.
O Lord, do not cast aside thy servant!
He is cast into the mire; take his hand.
The sin which I have sinned turn to mercy!
Known and unknown goddess, my sins are seven times seven;
Forgive my sins!
Forgive my sins, and I will humble myself before thee.
May thy heart, as the heart of a mother who hath borne children, be glad!
As a father who hath begotten them, may it be glad!”
In this respect we agree with Ribot. “Depression,” says Ribot, “is related to fear.... Does not the worshipper entering a venerated sanctuary show all the symptoms of pallor, trembling, cold sweat, inability to speak—all that the ancients so justly calledsacerhorror? The self abasement, the humility of the worshipper before the deity supposed to be possessed of magic power, is essentially one of fear.” With the anthropologist we may refer this awe or fear to the terror which the savage mind feels in the presence of the magician, the witch, the medicine man, the man-god, and the woman-deity.
The Mithraic religion, which for some time has been the great rival of Christianity for the salvation of the individual from the terrors of the world, played a great rôle in the mystic ceremonies of the cult. In fact, the dying and the resurrection of a god-man for the salvation of the worshippers constituted a cardinal principle in the actual practices or rites of barbarous nations and savage tribes. The man-god or woman-deity had to die, had to besacrificed by the community. The sins of the savages were redeemed by the divine flesh and blood of “the man-god.”
In describing the life and theological doctrines of St. Paul, Professor Pfleiderer says: “Perhaps Paul was influenced by the popular idea of the god who dies and returns to life, dominant at that time in the Adonis, Attis, and Osiris cults of Hither Asia (with various names and customs, everywhere much alike). At Antioch, the Syrian capital, in which Paul had been active for a considerable period, the main celebration of the Adonis feast took place in the spring time. On the first day, the death of ‘Adonis,’ the Lord, was celebrated, while on the following day, amid the wild songs of lamentations sung by the women, the burial of his corpse (represented by an image) was enacted. On the next day (in the Osiris celebration it was the third day after death, while in the Attis celebration it was the fourth day) proclamation was made that the god lived and he (his image) was made to rise in the air. It is noteworthy that the Greek Church has preserved a similar ceremony in its Easter celebration down to our own day.
“During the joyous feast of the resurrection of the god in the closely related Attis celebration, the priest anointed the mouths of the mourners with oil, and repeated the formula:
‘Good cheer, ye pious! As our god is saved,So shall we, too, be saved in our distress.’
‘Good cheer, ye pious! As our god is saved,So shall we, too, be saved in our distress.’
‘Good cheer, ye pious! As our god is saved,
So shall we, too, be saved in our distress.’
“The rescue of the god from death is the guarantee of a like rescue for the adherents of his cult. In the mysteries of Attis, Isis, and Mithra, the fact that the worshippers partook of the god’s life by the mystical participation in his death, was visualized by such rites, which employed symbols showing the death of the initiate, his descent into Hades, and his return. Hence, this ceremony was called the ‘re-birth to a career of new salvation,’ a ‘holy birthday.’ In one Mithra liturgy, the newly initiated pray: ‘Lord, reborn, I depart; in that I am lifted up, I die; born by that birth which produces life, I will be saved in death, and go the way which thou hast established, according to thy law and the sacrament which thou hast created.’”
In all those mysteries the central note is the salvation of the worshipper from the “perils of the soul.”
In some cases the terrorized individual is driven to the mystic state. He falls into a sort of trance. The world of fears becomes veiled from him, and recedes in a mist, and even completely disappears from his view. He finds repose in his god. This is the positive stage of mental exaltation, of ecstasy; it figures as “the union” of the worshipper with his god or goddess. It is this oblivion in the depths ofthe hypnoidal and the hypnotic states, it is this relapse into the regions of the subconscious that brings about relief from all fears of life. The bliss felt in these dim regions of mental life refreshes and invigorates the wearied soul. The coming in contact with new vast stores of subconscious reserve energy may once more vitalize and supply with new energy the fear stricken personality. This is the inspiration of those who have experienced the mystical power of “conversion.”
In a later chapter I take up the subject of subconscious reserve energy advanced by James and myself, independently. Meanwhile, we may say that the phenomena of prayer, conversion, and especially of mysticism belong fundamentally to the manifestations of self-preservation and the fear instinct on the one side and to subconscious reserve energy on the other.
Of course, we must add the fact that certain historical and social conditions are apt to give rise to phenomena of mysticism, the conditions of social unrest being especially favorable. When social life begins to decay, when the protection of society is weakened, and the individual is set loose, and left to stand alone, something that especially terrorizes the social brute, then nothing is left to the individual bereft of his social stays and social stimulants, but to turninwardandupward, that is to turn mystic. In his states of desolation and fear-obsession theindividual is inclined to turn to the stimulating, narcotizing influence of the deity which puts the soul in a state of transcendental bliss, thus hiding the terrorized soul in a misty and mystic cloud, so that he no longer sees the terrors and horrors of life.
Such mystic states are found in periods of social and moral decay. Instance the decaying Roman empire, the Hellenistic period, the Middle Ages, and in fact, any period in which security, safety, and social stability are on the ebb, while fears and perils are on the increase. Mysticism, Salvation of the soul, under all their guises, are interrelated with the primordial fear instinct which dominates the hunted beast and the terror-stricken neurotic patient.
If we turn to philosophical and metaphysical speculations, we find, on examination from a pragmatic point of view, that their essential differences revolve on thesecurity and safety of the world scheme. From Plato and Aristotle to Seneca, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, down to Schopenhauer, Hegel, and our American thinkers Royce and James, as well as from the Bible to Brahmanism and Buddhism, we find the same valuation of world safety, based on the vital impulse of self-preservation and its fundamental fear instinct. TheSalvationof the World and the Individual is the fundamental keynote of theological metaphysics and metaphysical religion.
Professor Royce, the representative of transcendental,monistic idealism in America, thus summarizes his philosophical and religious attitude: “It is God’s true and eternal triumph that speaks to us ‘In this world ye shall have tribulations. But fear not; I have overcome the world.’” This reminds one of the ancient Assyrian cuneiform oracles addressed to the Assyrian kings: “To Esarhaddon, king of countries, Fear not! I am Ishtar of Arbela. Thine enemies I will cut off, fear not!” “Fear not, Esarhaddon, I, Bel, am speaking with thee. The beams of thy heart I will support.” “Fear not, you are saved by Faith. Fear thy Lord only, He is your Rock and Salvation,” says the Bible. “Fear not!” teaches the Buddhist, “Nirvana, the Absolute, is your refuge.”
Professor James in his inimitable way summarizes the difference between his pluralism and idealistic monism: “What do believers in the Absolute mean by saying that their belief affords them comfort? They mean that since in the Absolute finite evil is ‘overruled’ already, we may, therefore, whenever we wish, treat the temporal as if it were potentially the eternal, be sure that we can trust its outcome, and, without sin, dismiss our fear and drop the worry of our finite responsibility.... The universe is a system of which the individual members may relax their anxieties....” James contrasts his empirical, pragmatic pluralism with the idealistic monism.
In another place James says: “Suppose that theworld’s author put the case before you before creating, saying: ‘I am going to make a world not certain to be saved, a world, the perfections of which shall be conditioned merely, the condition being that each several agent “does his level best.” I offer you the chance of taking part in such a world. Its safety, you see, is unwarranted. It is a real adventure, with real danger, yet it may win through.... Will you join the procession? Will you trust yourself and trust the other agents enough to face the risk?’ Should you in all seriousness, if participation in such a world were proposed to you, feel bound to reject it as not safe enough? Would you say that rather than be part and parcel of so fundamentally pluralistic and irrational a universe, you preferred to relapse into the slumber of nonentity from which you had been aroused by the tempter’s voice?
“Of course, if you are normally constituted, you would do nothing of the sort. There is a healthy-minded buoyancy in most of us which such a universe would exactly fit.... The world proposed would seem ‘rational’ to us in the most living way.
“Most of us, I say, would, therefore, welcome the proposition, and add ourfiatto thefiatof the creator. Yet perhaps some would not; for there are morbid minds in every human collection, and to them the prospect of a universe with only a fighting chance of safety would probably not appeal. There are moments of discouragement in us all, when weare sick of self, and tired of vainly striving. Our own life breaks down, and we fall into the attitude of the prodigal son. We mistrust the chance of things. We want a universe where we can just give up, fall on our father’s neck, and be absorbed into the absolute life as a drop of water melts into the river or the sea.
“The peace and rest, the security desiderated at such moments is security against the bewildering accidents of so much finite experience.
“Nirvana means safety from this everlasting round of adventure of which the world of sense consists. The Hindoo and the Buddhist, for this is essentially their attitude, are simplyafraid, afraid(my italics) of more experience, afraid of life....
“Pluralistic moralism simply makes their teeth chatter, it refrigerates the very heart within their breast.”
Thus we find that at the bottom of philosophical, metaphysical, and religious speculations there are present the same primitive impulse of self-preservation and fear instinct.
While there are some other important factors in that theological and metaphysical problem which has agitated humanity for ages, a problem which I expect to discuss some other time in another place, there is no doubt that James with his great psychological genius has laid his finger on fundamental factors of human life,—self-preservation and the fear instinct.
In my psychopathological and clinical work of the various manifestations and symptoms of psychopathic and functional diseases I come to the conclusion that the principal cause of all those morbid affections is the fear instinct, rooted in the very impulse of life, the impulse of self preservation. Fears are not secondary effects, they are due to one of the most fundamental of all instincts, the instinct of fear which is primary and elemental.
Anything which arouses the fear instinct in the inhibitory or paralyzing stages will necessarily give rise to psychopathic functional psychosis or neurosis. The fear instinct and the impulse of self-preservation, inherent in all life, are the alpha and omega of psychopathic maladies.
The fear instinct is usually cultivated by a long history of events of a fearsome character so that fear instinct and the impulse of self-preservation become easily aroused on various occasions of external stimulation, producing general fear, mental or emotional, and often accompanied by sensory,motor, and intestinal derangements of various organs with their secretions and hormones, as well as with general morbid, functional changes of the central nervous system, sympathetic and parasympathetic systems. This in its turn gradually cultivates a disposition to formation of hypnoidal states, that is, the brief momentary formation of trance states, in which the subconscious becomes through dissociation exposed to fear suggestions or fear stimulations, which arouse in the morbidly cultivated subconscious morbid fear symptoms, motor, sensory, intestinal, emotional in their various combinations and associations.
The cultivated predisposition to lapses into hypnoidal states is a prerequisite of psychopathic disturbances. We may, therefore, say that the three factors, namely, Self-preservation, Fear instinct, Hypnoidal states form the triumvirate of psychopathic, functional neurosis.
Charcot with his sharp eye for observation as well as his long clinical experience observed, in what he termed hystericals, a brooding period which precedes the manifestations of the hysterical attacks and symptom complex of the hysterical manifestations. These brooding periods are of the utmost consequence, although Charcot and his disciples as well as the psychopathologists generally, hardly paid any attention to this important phenomenon.
These brooding periods preceding the onset of themalady afterwards recur regularly before each attack of the malady, only the period is brief, and is hardly noticeable except by the one who looks searchingly. Psychopathologists pass this important stage without noticing its full significance.The period appears as a sort of a psychic aura, a sort ofmomentary attack of epilepticpetit mal. This brooding state is a modification of the hypnoidal state.
It is during such hypnoidal states, when the conditions which I have shown to be requisite for the induction of trance or subconscious states, happen to be specially strong and the hypnoidal state is prolonged, that the unprotected subconscious becomes subject to fear suggestions or to stimuli arousing the fear instinct and the impulse of self-preservation.
“Many patients,” says the famous physiologist and physician, Mosso, “die in the hospital from fear and depression who would probably have recovered had they been tended in their own homes.... In their morning round the physicians find that the serious cases have grown worse, while those who are better beg to be dismissed.... The physician, who has the night watch must walk up and down the whole night, and is kept busy preventing convulsive attacks, or fainting fits.
“Fear attacks nullify every effort of the will.... Even Alexander of Macedon had to count with fear in his courageous army of select Macedonians.In order to insure victory he offered sacrifices to Fear before he joined battle.”
Physical maladies become worse during the night, and especially during the early morning hours when the energy of the body is at its lowest level,—conscious and subconscious fears reaching their highest intensity. This holds specially true of nervous cases, and particularly of psychopathic patients, who are dominated by the impulse of self-preservation and the fear instinct. The fears and worries keep the patient awake, and the subconscious fears become emphasized by concentration of attention, monotony, limitation of field of consciousness, limitation of voluntary movements, and other factors favorable to dissociation and the induction of the hypnoidal state, in which the patient becomes sensitive to the awakening of the fear instinct, with all its horrible fear suggestions.
The symptoms of the disease which are more or less under his control during the day become often so intensified in the dark, that the patients become demoralized with fear, suffering as they do the anxiety and anguish induced by the terrors of the night. Even medical men, professors of medical colleges, who have come under my care, have confessed to me that, when in a state of insomnia, the terrors of the night are so intense that they had to resort to morphine to still the anguish of the fear instinct.
For years I lived in close relation with neurotic, psychopathic patients. I watched them day and night. I have been called by patients for medical aid in the late hours of the night, and more so during the vigil hours of the darkness of the night. I had to relieve and soothe the fears, the terrors of the night. It is in the night, when in a low state of neuron energy that patients feel the grip of horrors oppressing them with nightmares of the relentless and merciless instinct, the fear instinct. To be relieved of the night terrors many patients are willing to risk anything, even the consequence of deadly narcotics, the plagues of mental healers, and the sexual phantasms of Psychoanalysis.
The hypnoidal state is induced artificially, often brought about by intoxication, as in the case of holy Soma drink among the Hindoos, or by fasting, as among the American Indians during the initiation periods, or by dancing, such as the corrobboree among the aborigines of Australia, or by singing, or by praying. All the conditions of disjunction of consciousness with the manifestations of subconscious activities are brought into play, in order to come in contact with demons, spirits, totems, and find among them guides and protectors.
In prolonged hypnoidal states, the fear instinct and the impulse of self-preservation are calmed under appropriate conditions. Illusions and hallucinationswhich easily appeared in the twilight states of hypnoidal subconscious states became manifested as beneficent spirits, as agents favorable to the life existence of the individual, the spirit appearing as the totem, the guardian of the individual. Prayer and singing, which are the most successful of all the methods of inducing subconscious subwaking, twilight states, have survived to our present day.
Of all the methods of utilization of subconscious subwaking, twilight states the most effective is prayer, especially, the individual form of prayer. Prayer admirably fulfills the conditions requisite for the induction of the hypnoidal state and for the getting access to the subconscious activities, the formation of subconscious personalities, subconscious illusions and hallucinations. Such subconscious states have been shown, on experimental evidence, to be not of a sensory, but of a purely delusional character, strong enough to affect the individual with an intense belief in its external reality.
The deluded human mind in its craven fear of the unseen and the mysterious spirit-forces helps itself to any soporific or anaesthetic, narcotic stimulant, to bring about a scission of the conscious self from the subconscious activities. The induction of the hypnoidal state is brought about by all kinds of intoxicants, narcotics, fasting, dancing, self-mortification, sex excesses which exhaust the devotee, andleave him in a state of trance. All such practices and rites seek blindly for some trance-state to still the morbid fear instinct.
The psychoanalysis of Freud, Jung, Adler, Stoekel, with their sexual love, belongs to this category ofnarcotic sexual religionswhich inhibit the critical self.[15]