Myth and Science Part 9

There was not death--yet was there nought immortal, There was no confine betwixt day and night; The only One breathed breathless by itself, Other than It there nothing since has been.

Darkness there was, and all at first was veiled In gloom profound--an ocean without light-- The germ that still lay covered in the husk Burst forth, one nature, from the fervent heat.

Then first came love upon it, the new spring Of mind--yea, poets in their hearts discerned, Pondering, this bond between created things And uncreated. Comes this spark from earth, Piercing and all-pervading, or from heaven?

Then seeds were sown, and mighty powers arose-- Nature below, and power and will above-- Who knows the secret? who proclaimed it here, Whence, whence this manifold creation sprang?

The G.o.ds themselves came later into being-- Who knows from whence this great creation sprang?

He from whom all this great creation came, Whether his will created or was mute, The Most High Seer that is in highest heaven, He knows it--or perchance even He knows not."

It is evident that in this hymn, the expression of the moment when human thought was partly freed from the earlier anthropomorphic ideas, the scientific faculty which attempts a rational explanation of the world is shown; and although this is an isolated inspiration of the prophet, yet it shadows forth the conclusions to which the primitive h.e.l.lenic speculation came when it was deliberately exerted to solve the problem of creation. In fact, there is here an intimation of the waters, of the void or deep abyss, as the beginnings of the world; of the breath of the One, the hidden germ of things developed by means of heat; of productive powers as a lower, and energy as a higher form of nature; of conceptions found in the Ionic, the Pythagorean, and the Eleatic philosophies, which all converge into _the one_. All belong to the same Aryan race.

The Vedic composition represents in _Dyavaprthivi_ the close connection between the two divinities, Heaven and Earth, the one considered as the active and creative principle, the other as that which is pa.s.sive and fertilized; the same ideas, more or less worked out, underlie not only the first philosophies, but successive theories and systems. The wors.h.i.+p of water, of fire, and of air involved their personification, and they then became exciting principles, in accordance with the law of evolution which we have laid down. In the Rig-Veda, as well as in the Zendavesta, the waters are collectively invoked by their special name _apas_, and they are termed the _mothers_, the _divine_, which contain the _amrta_ or ambrosia, and all healing powers. In _Agni_ and its Vedic transformations we clearly trace the wors.h.i.+p of fire, and its cosmic value. The Vedic wors.h.i.+p of the air is Vayu, from _va_, to breathe, who is a.s.sociated with the higher G.o.ds, and especially with _Indra_, ruler of the atmosphere: next comes _Rudra_, the G.o.d of storms, accompanied by the _Maruti_, the winds; and in the Zendavesta the air is invoked as an element. Hence we see that a more rational conception of the genesis of the world succeeds to these earlier representations and personifications of the elements; representations which in another form endure throughout the course of human thought.

It is now necessary to consider the other period of the mythical and scientific evolution which had its definitive conclusion in Plato and Aristotle, teachers who even now to some extent influence the two great currents of speculative science. For us, however, it is more important to consider the Platonic teaching as that in which the mythical evolution of the earlier representations has full and clear expression; while in the Aristotelian philosophy an element of dissolution is already at work which throws some light on the illusions of the Platonic school.

We must bear in mind that the spontaneous and even the reflective intellectual faculty gradually a.s.similated special and independent myths into comprehensive types, which referred to all natural objects. Next, the incarnation of spirits produced the earliest forms of polytheism, and these were slowly cla.s.sified into more concentric circles, and finally into a single hierarchical system. Owing to the att.i.tude and ethnic temperament of the Greeks, the glorious anthropomorphism of their Olympus arose in a more vivid form than elsewhere, and it was impersonated in the all-powerful and all-seeing Zeus, ruler of the world, of G.o.ds and men. This process, modified in a thousand ways, was carried on in all races. Hence it resulted that every object had a type, its G.o.d; everything was typically individuated in an anthropomorphic ent.i.ty in such a way that there arose a natural dualism between the phenomena, facts, and cosmic orders on the one side, and on the other the hierarchy of G.o.ds who represented them and over whom they presided.

The h.e.l.lenic philosophies prior to Plato, both physical and intellectual, and also the psychological morality of Socrates, had already accomplished the first evolution of this typical stage of universal polytheism, subst.i.tuting for anthropomorphic representations physical and intellectual principles and powers. Thought was educated in its inward exercise, as well as in the observation of facts and ideal representations. But--and this const.i.tuted the first evolution of anthropomorphism in general--these powers all expressed the thing in its general and phenomenal form; it was endowed with merely zoomorphic force, and the world was regarded as physiologically living.

Plato, impelled by the foregoing evolution, and by the large and exquisitely aesthetic character of his genius, accomplished the second and altogether intellectual stage of evolution by inverting the problem; he affirmed that the final and intrinsic result of the exercise of thought was its earlier and eternal essence, extrinsic and objective.

The types which were first fetishes and then polytheistic were transformed into the physical and intellectual principles of the world, divested of all mythical and extrinsic form as far as their material organization was concerned. Plato held that such types were really ideal, as in fact they had unconsciously been from the first; that is, that it was simply a logical conception of species and genera which is natural to human thought; a conception necessary for the spontaneous as well as for the reflex and scientific processes of thought. From the type, the specific idea, the generalization into the idea of each special object was easy, since each object has its psychical representation in the mind. Special and specific ideas were then arranged in a certain order, and those which are more general in a concentric and systematic cla.s.sification; this had been also the case in the earlier polytheistic system, since the process of the intelligence naturally arranges all its representations. But he did not stop here, nor indeed was it possible for him to do so.

We know that the intelligence does not only understand objects, but their relations to each other, by means of its comparative faculty; these relations were, as in the case of animals, at first intuitively perceived by direct observation and the alternate and reciprocal motion of the images, and they were first presented to the imagination and then embodied in speech. We have said in the foregoing chapters that in primitive thought these relations involved an active ent.i.ty, and were in a word entified. Plato, pursuing his intellectual process of reasoning, and the reciprocal properties of ideas, noted the _ideality_ of these relations so far as they are a psychical representation, and hence he was constrained by the unconscious evolution of thought to affirm that an idea was present in every relation, and thus the great, the little, the less, the more, had their ideal representatives in the general construction of his theory. But man is not only an intellectual, but an active, sentient, living being, tending to an object as an individual and a social subject. So that he not only attains to the understanding of ideal truth, but also of the good and the beautiful. According to Plato, the Good and the Beautiful must also necessarily be Ideas of a general character, like those which embrace all ideal relations whatever. Since they are universal, and due to the innate impulse of thought towards concentric ascension, they must rank as the sum and apex of ideas, so that the Good is emphatically _the_ Idea, or G.o.d. On turning to the world of sensations, or of particular objects, ideas are the eternal model (_paradigm_) according to which things are made; these are the images (_idoli_) of which the others are the imperfect copies (_mimesi_). The world of sense is itself only a symbol, an allegory, a figure. As in the sensible world there is a scale of beings from the lowest to the most perfect, that is to the material universe, so in the sphere of intellect, the type of the world, ideas are combined together by higher ideas, and these again by others still higher, and so on to the apex, the ultimate, supreme, omnipotent Idea, the Good which includes and sums up the whole.

Plato holds that matter is not the body, but that which may become the body by the plastic action of the idea, as Weber well expresses it; matter considered in itself is the indefinite (_apeiron_), the indefinable (_aoriston_), and the amorphous, and it is co-eternal with ideas, and inert; from the union of ideas and matter the cosmos had its origin, the image of the invisible deity, G.o.d in power, the living organism (_Zoon_), possessing a body, sense, a definite object, a soul.

The body of the universe has the form of a sphere, the most beautiful which can be conceived; the circle described in revolving is also the most perfect motion.

The stars first had their source in the Idea of Good; first the fixed stars, then the planets, then the earth, _created deities_; the earth produced organized beings, beginning with man, the crowning work and object of all the rest; the fruits of the earth were made to nourish him, and animals were made to become the abode of fallen souls. Man, the microcosm, is reason within a soul, which is in its turn contained in a body. The whole body is organized with a view to this reason. The head, the seat of reason, is round because this is the most perfect form. The breast is the seat of generous pa.s.sions, while the b.e.s.t.i.a.l appet.i.tes are found in the belly and intestines.

The human soul, like the soul of the world, contains immortal and mortal elements; the intelligence or reason, and sensuality. The immortality of the soul is also proved by the memory. The subsequent union of life and matter in the production of the universe is the work of an intermediate, equivocal being, the _demiurgos_. Thus Plato opposes the eternity of the intelligence to Ionic materialism, and the eternity of matter to the monistic theory of the Eleatics.

In the genesis of nature we again find the synthetic conception of the elements, which he estimates to be four; to which geometrical forms correspond, and the world was finally organized after its human type. He divides the soul into several distinct and independent powers, which are ever revolving between life and death: they inhabit the stars and depend upon them, since the soul which has been righteous on earth will be happy after death in the star to which it was originally destined; but those who on earth only desire here bodily pleasures will wander as shades round the tombs, or will migrate into the bodies of various animals. He const.i.tutes the stars into contingent and sensible G.o.ds: they have beautiful and immortal bodies of a round form, and are made of fire. He a.s.serts poetic inspiration and madness to be the result of demoniac possession, and says with Socrates that those who deny demoniac powers are themselves demoniacs.

We see from this account the mythical origin of all that concerns the organization and genesis of the world, the destinies and nature of the soul, since these are sublimated myths; the elements are first regarded as deities, and the world is made in the image of man, and considered to be alive; the stars and the earth are endowed with life and intelligence; the fate of souls before and after death, their recollection of a prior existence, their transmigrations and wanderings around the tombs, demoniac possession in inspiration and madness, are all very ancient mythical representations, which form a great part of the theoretical and spiritual cosmogony of savages in all times and places. We have seen that not only relatively civilized peoples, but those which are quite savage divide souls into distinct parts: throughout Africa, America, and Asia, there is a belief in the transmigration of souls into animals, plants, and other objects. The Tasmanians believed that their souls would ascend to the stars and abide there; and all savages hold the demoniac possession of inspired persons, of madmen, and of the sick, which has led to what may be called a diabolic pathology. The general conception of the world as a living animal, with all the tendencies ascribed to it by Plato, is only the primeval fact of the animation and personification of phenomena applied to the general idea of the universe. Hence it is easy to see how much of Plato's physics and psychology are due to the necessary and historic course of myth, and to the schools into which myth had been modified before his time.

We must dwell more particularly on his theory of ideas, since in this the advance made by Plato in the evolution of myth really consists, and it marks a very definite stage which had and still has a powerful influence on subsequent and modern thought.

We have already shown how, by the logical power of thought, this phase in the ideal evolution of myth was reached, and we have traced it in an inchoate form in various rude peoples, as well as in its ultimate modification in Plato. In his writings it takes the form of a complete, vast, and organic theory. The logical conceptions and representative ideas, idols peculiar to the mind, which were at first involved in fetishtic and anthropomorphic images, are now divested of their earlier wrappings, and are cla.s.sified as the intellectual ideas which they really are, and which they have become by the innate and reflex exercise of human thought. But on account of the faculty which ever governs our immediate perception of internal and external things they could not in Plato's time, nor indeed in that of many subsequent philosophers, remain as simple intellectual signs of the process of reason. This faculty influenced these conceptions, these psychical forms, whether particular, specific, or general, and they became living subjects, like phenomena, objects, shades, images in dreams, normal and abnormal hallucinations.

Thus the Ideas in Plato became, reflectively and theoretically, _ent.i.ties_ with an intrinsic existence, eternal, divine, and absolute essences. But the fetish, the anthropomorphic idol, was not only regarded as a living but as a causative subject; the same power was likewise infused into the Ideas, and they were held to be causes of particular things, of which they were the earlier and eternal type. Thus the myth in the Platonic Ideas became scientific, but it continued to be a myth; the substance varied, but the form was the same. The objective phenomena of the world had first been personified, or their fanciful images were a.s.sumed to be objective; now the world of reason was personified, and mythology became intellectual instead of cosmic.

Those who opposed Plato's theory of ideas said that he realized abstractions, or personified ideas; but no one, as I think, perceived the natural process which led him to do so, nor explained the faculty by which he was necessarily influenced. Plato's theory was only an ultimate phase of the evolution of the vague and primitive animation of the world, which had pa.s.sed through fetis.h.i.+sm, polytheism, and the wors.h.i.+p of the elements of nature, and had reached the entification and subjectivity of ideas, which was also attained by natural science, after pa.s.sing through its mythical envelopment. We have noted the causes, which in the case of the earlier philosophers happened to be objective, while they were in Plato's case subjective, owing to the character and temperament of his mind; both conduced to the development and aesthetic splendour of this teaching among the Greeks. The teaching of Plato, which had more or less influence on all the earlier civilized peoples, of his own and subsequent times, and which was also involved in the mythical representations of later savages, a.s.sumed an aspect which varied with the special history, the ethnic temperament, the geographical and extrinsic conditions of different peoples; but considered in itself, it is always the same, and is the necessary result of the evolution of myth and of thought. Since the evolution of myth leads to the gradual genesis of science, which becomes more rational as myth is transformed from the material to the ideal, ideas are subst.i.tuted for myths, and laws, as Vico well observes, for the canons of poetry.

This n.o.ble and more rational theory of eternal and causative Ideas resembles anthropomorphic polytheism in concentrating into one supreme Idea the intellectual Zeus, the Being of beings, according to another mythical and scientific representation by Aristotle, and it was afterwards combined with the Semitic idea of the Absolute. This was fused with the Logos, the Platonic demiurgos of Messianic ideas, and afterwards produced the universal philosophy and religion of Catholicism, which dominated and still dominates over thought with vigorous tenacity, and extends into all the civilized world inhabited by European races. We do not only trace the same thought, modified, cla.s.sified, and perfected in the Fourth Gospel, in the Councils, the Fathers, and the schoolmen, but also in independent philosophies. In our own time it has a.s.sumed new forms, derived from the rapid progress made in cosmic and experimental sciences, even in those which are apparently the most rationalizing. It is manifest in Hegel, Fichte, and Sch.e.l.ling, nor is it difficult to trace it in the latest and artificial theories of the schools of Schopenhauer and Hartmann. In all these cases the entification of logical conceptions is evident; in all there is an arbitrary personification of a conception or of a fundamental Idea.

In order fully to understand the evolution of thought in myth and science, it is necessary to consider the other schools which arose in Greece, prior to, and contemporaneously with, Plato, as we shall thus obtain a more comprehensive idea of the course of such a development. In addition to the natural and partly ideal schools, the Ionic, the Eleatic, the Pythagorean and the Platonic, there arose those of Leucippus, Democritus, and Epicurus, which might be called mechanical, and that of Aristotle, which takes a middle course between the idea and the fact, between the dynamic and the mechanical explanation of the universe.

In an intellectual people like the Greeks there arose, in addition to the speculative theories already mentioned, other opinions which were derived from minds singularly free from mythical ideas; the world was considered as a concourse of independent atoms; its genesis thus became more conformable with abstract mathematical calculation, effected by this combination of simple bodies and the evolution of elements. This was what Leucippus, Democritus, and Epicurus undertook to teach, pa.s.sing beyond the natural and ideal myths, in order to take their stand on the movement of isolated parts as the maker of the universe. Hence followed the theory of atoms, and the mechanical construction of the world, of bodies and souls, their continual composition and decomposition. Since, however, these were mere speculations, not supported by experimental methods and adequate instruments, mythical forms were confounded with the mechanical explanation of the world, such as the altogether anthropomorphic conception of G.o.ds who were dissolved and formed again; the sensible effluvium from images, an effluvium which revealed the ancient belief in the normal and abnormal personification of imaginary forms, and of ideas. Yet the character of this teaching was progressive and rational in comparison with the mythical and ideal theory of Plato, and with the schools and religions which emanated from him, even up to our time, and thought was strongly stimulated in its opposition to the continuance of myth.

The influence of this school was confirmed by the Aristotelian teaching; if on the one side Aristotle inclined towards the mythical ent.i.ties of Plato, and the old zoomorphic conception of the world, on the other his theory of perception and of ideas, his amazing observations in physiology and anatomy, and his natural cla.s.sification of the animal kingdom, induced a positive tendency of thought, an _a posteriori_ method of observation, which awakened the intelligence and predisposed it to a more rational and scientific evolution. His geocentric ideas of cosmogony, his logical forms, the human architecture of the world, his conception of the Being who was the end and cause of motion in all things, were indeed obstinately maintained by the philosophy of Catholics and schoolmen, and served as an obstacle to the real progress of science; but on the other hand, his general method of observing nature, the discoveries which he made, and the tendency of his researches, as well as the importance he a.s.signed to consciousness in the formation of ideas, did much to foster independent inquiry in the history of human thought; and coupled with the earlier mechanical schools, he prepared the way for the evolution of modern science. This is not the place for tracing the simultaneous course of the evolution of the ideal and mechanical schools during the ages which separate us from their origin; and while the influence of the one gradually waned, the other gained strength, although in a sporadic way, first among privileged minds, and then more generally.

It necessarily happened that as the evolution of thought went on, impelled by its early tendencies, both mechanical and positive, the ideal system was also modified, and gave place to sounder and truer theories. This great fact, the ultimate evolution of our own time, was effected on the one side by psychological a.n.a.lysis, and on the other by the direct and experimental observation of nature. Setting aside the gradual preparation which led up to this point, we can consider Descartes and Galileo as the representatives of these two great factors; since the one by the a.n.a.lysis of thought, the other by natural experiments, overthrew the mythical ideas, although without being aware that the achievement would produce such grand results.

The Platonic Ideas were objective to the mind, and independent of it, since they were regarded as a divine, concrete, absolute world in themselves. The earlier evolution of myth and science relied upon this and were resolved into it. But we know that the process of thought is continuous in historic races, and that myth is gradually divested of its personality and a.s.sumes a more intellectual form in the mind. Thus the material Idea pa.s.sed into an intellectual conception; that which first appeared in an objective and extrinsic form became subjective and intrinsic, a transition which was effected by the nominalists. This gave rise to a cognition which was altogether psychological; at first reality was wholly objective, and the ideas were only a sublime intellectual myth, but now the objective world disappeared, and the intellect which formulated the conception was the only real thing. In virtue of the faculty of entification, only the mind and its ideas were real, the world and all which it contained had a doubtful existence. This tendency had its ultimate expression in Fichte, who created the universe by means of the Ego, thus transforming the earlier objective myth into one which was wonderfully subjective. Descartes doubted about everything beyond the range of his own thought, and was the first to overthrow the former ideal realism, and to lead the way to science, and to more rational a.n.a.lysis. To him the teaching of Spinoza and Kant was really due, as well as the English schools which had so much to do with the destruction of the earlier mythical edifice of ideas.

But, as I have already observed, if this great rational progress were important on the one side, on the other it produced a more spiritualized form of myth, namely the subjective, which became still more powerful in the philosophy of Kant. While some thinkers sought to resolve and dissolve the objective myth, they did it in such a way as to add strength to the subjective form of myth and science, for which Descartes had prepared the way; the theory of Spinoza and of the German school in general fundamentally consists in the subst.i.tution of entified forms and dialectics of the mind for the earlier objective forms of ideas. A great error was rectified, and the former phase of the intellectual evolution of myth disappeared, in favour of another which, although still erroneous, was more rational and independent.

The subjective and still mythical representations, either of the mind or of external objects, were afterwards reduced to true science by positive and experimental methods, aided by instruments, and confirmed by the discoveries of Galileo and of his disciples throughout the civilized world. He was in modern times another great factor of the dissolution of myth, so far as it is definitive. Nature was made subordinate to weight and measure, and to their mathematical and mechanical proportions in various phenomena; these were deduced from experiment and the use of instruments, the factors which in the hands of Galileo and his great successors in all civilized nations, destroyed and are still destroying the old mythical conception of the world. In astronomy they overthrew the catholic tenet of the geocentric const.i.tution of the heavens; they shattered the spheres in which they were confined, opened infinite s.p.a.ce, and peopled it with an infinite number of stars, and in the attraction of gravity they discovered the universal law of motion in the firmament. Thus all the mythical representations of the system of the world, whether Aristotelian, Ptolemaic, or Biblical, vanished for ever, and the great zoomorphic body of the universe was dissolved; to be replaced by worlds circulating in infinite s.p.a.ce, subject to the laws of number and of geometry.

Measure, weight, and proportion were applied to all celestial and terrestrial phenomena, and physics, chemistry, and all the organic sciences became the manifestation of facts, of observed and calculated laws, arranged in a natural order, and in this way an immense advance was made in all branches of science. The history of mankind, first regarded as the arbitrary arrangement of a superior being, as it was formulated in the teaching of Judaism and Christianity, had its own laws in the facts of which it consisted, and thus the mythical conception which endowed it with personal life was dissolved. The origin of things was explained by this method of observation, and by these positive conceptions; the records which had hitherto been regarded as a divine, extrinsic revelation came to be considered as simple doc.u.ments, in which truth was to be separated from the myth which obscured and encompa.s.sed it. So by degrees, from fact to fact, from a.n.a.lysis to a.n.a.lysis, by observation, experiment, and decomposition, the rational, mechanical explanation arose and gathered strength. The generation of things, the variety of phenomena and their order, were derived from the primitive chemical atom, and from the various changes of form and rapidity of motion to which they are subjected. The old conception of atoms, which had never been forgotten, and which had unconsciously swayed and influenced the minds of men, reappears; but it reappears transformed by observation, by weight and measure and experiment, and it has become a science instead of a simple speculation. The atomistic evolution of the ancients, accepted by one school of speculative thought, which sought to overthrow the mythical representation of the world, was only an isolated antic.i.p.ation of a few philosophers; it has now become a scientific evolution, common to all modern civilization. The theory of descent, transformation, and the general evolution of species, followed as a necessary corollary and immediate result of the dissolution of Plato's mythical conception of specific ideas, and of all the generic but material personifications with which nature had been peopled. When such conceptions of the ideal world were dissipated, those of the actual world of nature soon followed, and this de-personification of natural, mythical species in the vast organic kingdom is one of the most splendid intellectual achievements of the age.

This victory of the natural sciences has reacted on those which are psychological, and on the theory of the mind, and has subjected them to the necessities and form of this new phase of the evolution of thought.

The subjective had been subst.i.tuted for the objective myth and had created the forms of mind, its logical laws and intrinsic process, the objective synthesis of the world, and it was now influenced by the stupendous discoveries and a.n.a.lyses of other sciences, so that psychology was in its turn transformed into a science, not only of observation, but of experiment. Measure, weight, numerical proportion, in short the experimental method, took possession of the facts, acts, and processes of the mind, as of every other object and subject of nature. In addition to the great names of modern psychologists in England, we may mention among other experimental psychologists in Germany, Fechner, Wundt, Lotze, Helmholtz, Weber, Kammler, etc.; ill.u.s.trious men in France and elsewhere might also be cited to show what progress has been made and is about to be made in this field. The destruction of myth and of the subjective myths of psychology is always going on, and a positive science of mental phenomena has arisen, like that of natural phenomena. The ultimate phase of myth is so near its end that it has been possible to create a psychology implying the absence of a soul. The scientific faculty has now indeed a complete ascendency over the mythical representation with which it was originally coeval.

Yet we do not mean to say that myth is extinct. In the case of the great majority of the human race, a small and elect portion excepted, myth and all the superst.i.tions which proceed from it persist in an ideal, cosmic, spiritual, or religious form, and these are only slowly disappearing among the common people, and even among the educated cla.s.ses. Owing to the primordial and innate necessity which it is so difficult to overcome, science itself still nourishes myths within its pale, although unconsciously and in their most rational form. Within our own recollection _the imponderable_ was a tenet of physics, and this was indeed, in spite of all the enlightenment of science, a mythical entification of forces. The same mythical entifications were found in physiology, in chemistry, in nearly all the sciences. Undoubtedly these scientific myths had no anthropomorphic value, yet they are notwithstanding truly mythical entifications, inasmuch as they virtually personify laws, or mere modes of motion.

Ether, according to our present conception of it, differing in its laws and influences from the atoms which const.i.tute the world, and working among and above them, is perhaps only a grand myth like that of the imponderable, which has been exploded; that is, it is held to be a material ent.i.ty, while it may be only another modification of the elementary matter in a state differing from the three already known to us; some of Crooke's late experiments on one condition of extremely gaseous matter leads to this a.s.sumption. The divided forces of matter, and the dualism which still survives, are also mythical conceptions.

Although so much progress has been made in a rational direction, and truth is widely diffused, yet the old mythical instinct constantly reappears in some form or other. I must be permitted to say that this is an evident proof of the truth of my theory. Unless myth were due to an intrinsic psychical and organic law, it would not so persistently reappear. As soon as men are rationally conscious of this entifying faculty and its immediate effects on knowledge, the illusion will cease.

Myth will be destroyed in every kind of facts and phenomena, and science, no longer the unconscious victim of this illusion, will advance with caution and a.s.surance.

CHAPTER VIII.

OF DREAMS, ILLUSIONS, NORMAL AND ABNORMAL HALLUCINATIONS, DELIRIUM, AND MADNESS--CONCLUSION.

In the preceding chapters, I have shown, as I believe, the genesis of myth, the fundamental faculty in which it necessarily originates, and its evolution in man, particularly in the Aryan and Semitic races. We have seen that the primitive and universal fact consists in the immediate and spontaneous entification of natural phenomena and of the ideas themselves; and we have resolved this fact into its elements, from which all the generating sources of myth issue, that is, from the immediate effects of the perception. Putting man out of the question, we ascertained that the same innate necessity was common to the animal kingdom.

In order to complete the theory, we must consider some other facts and psychical phenomena, both normal and abnormal, so as to ascertain whether these are not due to the same cause, as far as respects their intrinsic forms; namely, the belief in the reality of images seen in dreams, as well as in those which appear in illusions, in normal hallucinations of the senses, and in those which are abnormal, in ecstasy, in delirium, in madness, in idiocy, and dementia. In all these mental conditions, we ascribe a body and material existence to images which for various causes appear to be really presented to our senses.

If we are able to show that all such appearances are believed to have a real existence in virtue of the same law and faculty of perception which generated myth in its earliest manifestation, we shall have succeeded in establis.h.i.+ng a common genesis for all these various psychical phenomena, thus affording no contemptible contribution to psychology in general, and to the science of human thought.

To dream is not merely a normal act of man, but, as it appears from many witnesses, it is common to all animals. In dreams the ordinary laws of time and s.p.a.ce are strangely modified, and images of all kinds appear, sometimes confusedly, sometimes in a rational order, often in accordance with the laws of a.s.sociation, while the voluntary exercise of thought may be said to be dormant. This is, speaking generally, the condition and nature of dreams, which we must presently consider adequately with more subtle and exact a.n.a.lysis.

Before we trace the cause of the apparent reality of these images, and the laws which govern it, let us consider man in his waking condition, so as to ascertain at once the likeness and the difference between these two states. We must first inquire whether the waking is absolutely distinct from the dreaming state as far as the appearance of the images, their nature, and mode of action are concerned. It has been observed by many psychologists and physiologists that in the waking state, when images do not arise from the immediate presence of objects, or are not directed by the will to a definite aim, they appear, group themselves, and disperse by the immediate a.s.sociation of ideas, and the measurements of time and s.p.a.ce are modified just as they are in dreams. These observations are correct, and the phenomena may be verified by every one for himself.

In this waking state, which really resembles that of dreams, only the a.n.a.logy of form has been perceived; the ideas of the objects present to the mind have resembled those of images seen in dreams, but they have continued to be mere ideas, presented to the imagination, whereas in dreams the things seen have been supposed to have a real existence. In this respect the a.n.a.lysis is partly true and partly false; it is not, as we shall see, perfect and exact.

It sometimes happens, owing to special circ.u.mstances and conditions of mind, or to peculiar temperaments, that the ideas of things do not remain as mere _thoughts_ in the thinker's mind, but that they become so intense that they are for the moment held to be real, precisely as in a dream.

I do not here speak of abnormal or pathological conditions, or of extraordinary phenomena, but of a normal and common condition. If there is any novelty in the a.s.sertion, it is owing to a want of observation and reflection, and to not attempting to trace the real nature of the phenomena in which we take part, and which occur every day. The habitual inaccuracy of observation has led to the use of many proverbs and aphorisms in the interpretation of things which have been transmitted from one generation to another, and are now accepted as indubitable axioms. These are to be found in every branch of knowledge, and we have an instance in the popular and scientific aphorism that in dreams images appear to be real, and that in the waking state they always continue to be mere thoughts and ideas.

This is not the fact, since, putting illusions and hallucinations out of the question, thoughts and ideas sometimes a.s.sume the character and nature of real objects, just as they do in dreams. This fact const.i.tutes the link and gradual a.s.similation of the two states, since in no series of phenomena _natura facit saltum_.

When, for instance, as often happens, we abandon ourselves to a train of thought, and our perception of surrounding objects is weakened by inattention, we become as it were unconscious, and are only intent on the thoughts and ideas which move us. Since no definite object constrains the will to rule and guide these thoughts and ideas, that condition of mind is established which we have shown to be identical in form with the act of dreaming, for in this case also thoughts and ideas have their origin in a.s.sociation alone. In this condition a phenomenon peculiar to dreams may also occur which may be termed the suggestive impulse; a sound or some sudden sensation produces an immediate transformation of the image itself, and a new dream arises in conformity with the nature of the new impression. Every one must, consciously or unconsciously, have experienced such a phenomenon, and this special characteristic of dreams may also take place in the waking condition which I have described. I myself can bear witness to this fact, and will mention one among several instances: I was once reading inattentively, seated at my ease in a lounging chair, and my thoughts took quite another direction, wandering vaguely from one thing to another. All at once some people entered an adjoining room talking together; I heard what they said indistinctly, but the word Florence reached my ears, and I soon imagined myself to be in that city, and going on from one a.s.sociation to another I continued for some time to see again the places, monuments, and people I had known there. Yet I was fully awake, and from time to time I brushed the flies from my face and glanced at the clock on the chimney-piece, since I had to go out at three o'clock.

It appears from this fact, which will be confirmed by many of my readers, that some waking states resemble those of dreams in form, and moreover they are sometimes even alike in substance. Ideas and thoughts in the conditions just indicated may not only be latent, active, combined, or transformed by suggestive impulses, but ideas are represented by images in such vivid relief that, until the observer recollects himself, they are seen and felt by him with the same sense of reality as in a dream. This mental transformation is however so habitual, that the implicit conviction of being really awake, does not allow us to observe what the actual nature of the phenomenon is, since there is an immediate transition from an implicit perception of the image as real to the habitual form of simple thought, without distinguis.h.i.+ng the difference between these two states of consciousness.

Any one who has long practised himself in the observation of such distinctions will, however, be able to understand the psychical process and to estimate its value.

It has often occurred to myself, in circ.u.mstances a.n.a.logous to the above, when thinking of persons or places at a distance, to see them imaged before me in such vivid relief that I have been startled as if by a morbid hallucination. Once, in pa.s.sing through my chamber, my attention was so strongly fixed on an absent person that I was not only vividly conscious of his form, but also of his voice and gestures, so that I was amazed by the lively image brought before me. I could adduce other instances from my own experience and that of others to show that in a waking and altogether normal state we may believe in the reality of the image as we do in dreams.

This vivid and momentary realization of images is very common in the lower cla.s.ses, who often talk to themselves, and use gestures which show that they are conversing at the moment with imaginary persons, who stand before them, as if they were really there, in the same manner as in dreams. Indeed, every one has experienced this phenomenon for himself, especially when strongly excited by anger, sorrow, or hope. If it were possible to reflect on the process of thought at the time we should distinctly understand that we were dreaming while still awake.