Part 11

To ascribe this tendency to a special instinct would be to disclose a faulty appreciation of mob psychology and the Laws of Suggestion. These panics, orgies and frenzies of violence, and similar vindictive or enthusiastic mob tendencies, are simply the natural response to mass or cosmic suggestion, as we shall see later.

The final and precipitate cause of these outbreaks is frequently the personal magnetism, or more correctly the suggestion, of one man. The qualities necessary for the exercise of this power--the secret of successful demagogy--are not, as might be supposed, the possession of a dominant will and a constructive, purposive or tenacious intellect. It may be, indeed, that a great man of action, a Napoleon or Caesar, arises, and by these sterling qualities dominates the masses and their attendant sycophants and demagogues; but more usually the essentials are a gift for facile and frenzied oratory and the power of evoking emotional presentations, qualities possessed, par excellence, by madmen and fanatics, the Kerenskys, Lenins and visionaries of all times. Their powers are the more irresistible, it is true, if combined with a shrewd knowledge of correct methods of propaganda and lavish adulation, for the obvious reason that, as we have seen, the strongest suggestion is the one that is most acceptable to the subject and most in accord with his predilections. Nothing would be truer than to say that only the rarest individuals can actively withstand the onslaught of cosmic suggestion. It is significant that the greatest human type, the true genius, who appears most often in the great philosopher, less often in the great artist, and who possesses a superabundance of dominant will-power and constructiveness, is far less powerful than the great conqueror or politician; for he commands intellect rather than emotion, and the world is governed by emotion.

It is not sufficiently realized that many so-called geniuses, imaginative, histrionic and poetical, can never deserve the highest place, for they are the sounding-boards of the world; their superlative quality is receptivity; they are instruments, not players; they voice the great masses, and they share with publicists and politicians a desire to be incriminated in the movement of their surroundings. Wieninger, in his "Sex and Character," emphasizes the dependence of publicists and tribunes of the people upon the masses they would lead. The politician, like the prostitute, has to court the populace; she is a woman of the streets--he is a man of the streets. For this reason he denies to the great politician and the man of action the quality of true greatness. "The man of action shares with the epileptic the desire to be in criminal relation to everything around him, to make them appanages of his petty self. The great man feels himself defined and separate from the world, a nomad amongst nomads, and as a true microcosm he feels the world already within him."

The really great men, the Kants, the Descartes, Leibnizs or Spencers, and the greatest artists are wholly creative, purposive, dynamic; they owe no allegiance to the masses, for they are greater than the masses; they realize all without reflecting all; they seek nourishment where they will, and they spew out what they will; this perfect freedom is necessary for the attainment of truth. Truthfulness is a necessary attribute of genius, but not of statecraft or government, or of poetical effusions of the imagination.

While we are dealing with the subject of instincts it may not seem out of place to refer to the widely held belief that maternal impressions during pregnancy have a direct influence on the temperament of the child, and are often responsible for inducing definite tendencies of aversion and attraction and even physical resemblances. Although such acquired tendencies, admitting their existence, cannot strictly be classed with the instincts or tendencies inherited from former generations, since they are acquired after the inception of, and by, the new individual; yet they have a resemblance in that they are both pre-natal acquirements, and are manifested in the same way. Writers on heredity and biology are apt to dismiss the subject as unworthy of serious consideration, and to account for any instances of the sort attributed to this cause as based on pure coincidence. It is, however, significant that the great majority of mothers who have given the matter any thought are, as a rule, firmly convinced of the reality of pre-natal influences. When the principles of suggestion are applied to the case, it will be seen that the conditions of pre-natal existence are favourable for the reception by an unborn child of strong telepathic suggestions from its mother. The embryo mind is entirely receptive; any violent psychic disturbance in the mother must react upon the child. Most people know of some instance which points to the "impression" theory, and which it would be impossible to account for in any other way.

There appear to be no reasonable grounds for denying that maternal impressions may sometimes be held accountable for temperamental tendencies, not easily attributable to heredity, although it would, of course, be absurd to attempt to account for all abnormalities in the same way. The naturally greater receptivity and suggestibility of women, shown by their quick response to emotional suggestion, their credulousness, and the fact that women are the best mediums, becomes very much more marked during pregnancy. At such times some women, normally distinguished by their vigour and initiative, become conspicuously impressionable; they become, in fact, ready "conductors" of suggestion. It follows that the influences that bear strongest upon them also bear upon the child.

Greater importance should not be attached to the psychic environment of a child than to its inherent hereditary qualities, which irrevocably determine its native tendencies and the limits of its ultimate possibilities. Environment may modify or enhance a child's inherent characteristics in an infinite variety of ways, but cannot nullify them or transcend by one iota the limit of its potential development.

In a previous chapter we discussed the view of those who regard moral judgment as an emotion or intuition of the "good" and the "right," and who find justification for our rules of conduct by referring them to the Divine Will, which is supposed to inspire them by means of the "moral organ" or conscience. We believe that a correct appreciation of psychology makes it abundantly clear that although there are many impulsive, instinctive and emotional factors totally unconnected with any rational or intellectual process which do, indeed, affect our moral judgments and give rise to ethical conventions, these factors can give no validity to moral codes; and that, stripped of the sentiments and emotions with which they are obscured, moral systems must be judged by principles of utility, while they are enforceable according to the universality with which they are desired. It is, moreover, equally absurd to look upon moral values as ultimate and irreducible categories of good and evil, irrevocably codified by an omniscient Deity for the conduct of humanity for all time, and supposedly accessible to the intelligence of all who consult their conscience. This latter position, which is maintained by Theistic "Rationalists," leads to precisely the same "conclusion" as the arguments of the "Intuitionalists," the only difference between them being that the conscience of the "Rationalists" is a thinking and intellectual organ, while the conscience of the Intuitionalists is an emotional and instinctive organ. But this amicable convergence is not accidental but a sine qua non, since in either case the object aimed at is identically the same, that object being the establishment of conscience, dependent on morality, on a pinnacle of ethical omniscience and infallibility, where its authority shall be unquestionable and absolute. They may well be left to their quarrel, which in reality amounts to little more than verbal quibbling.

Instinct, as we have seen, must inevitably play a very large part in the evolution of public morality and the moral impulse of every individual. Careful statistics have shown that criminal tendencies make their appearance with unfailing persistency in selected degenerate families. The genealogical record of one family may show a murderer in every generation; pauperism, prostitution and drunkenness are characteristics of another, and so on. Heredity will primarily determine a man's inherent characteristics--his instincts, temperament, disposition and, eo facto, his "conscience." Other factors, above all his immediate psychic environment, may, indeed, modify these tendencies for better or worse, but under the most favourable conditions Cosmic Suggestion, in its aspect of "public conscience," can never altogether supplant strong inherent tendencies. Those who believe in the conscience myth sometimes object that the voice of conscience always calls in the right direction, but that a man may, throughout a long life of crime, stifle and inhibit that "still small voice," yet in the end (perhaps when faced with the extreme penalty of the law) the wretched sinner will exhibit the symptoms of the most genuine and heartfelt remorse and express the greatest horror of his evil deeds. This type of explanation shows a total failure to interpret psychological processes. It may, indeed, be a common occurrence for a condemned criminal, brought suddenly face to face with the prospect of plenary punishment, to experience real sorrow and shame at his conduct. The emotion will probably be perfectly genuine. The prisoner, with little hope of enjoying the fruits of his felony and removed from the direct counter-influence of a criminal environment, will be in the best possible frame of mind to respond to the right cosmic suggestion--universal horror and detestation of his deed. Such a suggestion, reacting upon the instinct of self-preservation, will readily kindle emotions of remorse, self-horror and sorrow. Penitence need have nothing to do with any true ethical appreciation of the action of which it is supposed to be the object. Many cases have been recorded of miserable old women accused of witchcraft, who, learning for the first time at their trial of the crimes they were supposed to have committed, have become convinced of their guilt, and suffering the keenest pangs of remorse have died with penitence and resignation.

Fear is the chief element of remorse: fear of our fellow-men, vague fears for the future, or in the most literal sense the fear of Divine retribution or God. Racine dramatizes this emotion in the famous confession of Athalie: filled with dread at the words of warning uttered by the ghost of her mother Jezebel, she recalls her vision:

Tremble, m'a-t-elle dit, fille digne de moi; Le cruel Dieu des Juifs l'emporte aussi sur toi. Je te plains de tomber dans ses mains redoutables, Ma fille.

(2) THE FACTOR OF EMOTION

Unfortunately for the attainment of truth, nothing has a greater influence on the formation of human opinion and character, and is therefore more inextricably bound up with all questions of politics, religion, morality and art, than the complex mental state we call emotion. Nothing affects the well-being, health and happiness of mankind more directly.

Emotion may perhaps be defined as a continuity of complex presentations manifested in organic sensation. In a sense, emotion is feeling, which is the wider term; it is an effect, which therefore cannot exist without its cause, though the same cause under different circumstances may produce many varied emotions, both in quality and degree.

The visible manifestation of emotional disturbance need bear no relation to its intensity. People of the greatest nervous sensibility, in whom emotional excitements are most deeply and acutely felt, often keep their emotions best under control. They are not, of course, able to inhibit the involuntary or visceral processes which are affected by emotion: heart, pulse, salivary glands and respiratory system may indeed tell the tale; but the will may prevent the contagion spreading further: the intellect may remain calm, thought and action slow and deliberate, demeanour outwardly cool and collected. The lower the level of will-power and intellectual development, the more closely dependent will all cerebral processes be upon emotional states and reactions; at the same time, the emotions become cruder, less complex and subtle and even less deeply felt. Children and savages are almost entirely emotional, in the sense that they think emotionally and have no power of intellectual detachment.

Professor Ward describes the effect of emotion on thought very clearly as follows: "Emotional excitement--and at the outset the natural man does not think much in cold blood--quickens the flow of ideas.... Familiar associations hurry attention away from the proper topic, and thought becomes not only discursive but wandering; in place of concepts of fixed and crystalline completeness, such as logic describes, we may find a congeries of ideas but imperfectly compacted into one generic idea, subject to continual transformation, and implicating much that is irrelevant and confusing."

There are few people indeed whose views on religion, politics, art, and the rights and relations of the sexes are not chiefly emotional values. We may think that our convictions are based on logical reasonings, but the force of childish impressions and associations, and the unresisted bias of passions and interests, are the processes by which they have been cultivated, and rational thought has been devoted to the task of finding reasons for the convictions that are ready made.

Emotion, as we have said, is a continuity of complex presentations whose elements are manifold; it is a state of feeling subject to constant modification and expansion while experience develops. First among the causal factors which influence emotion are the instincts, others may be intellectual concepts, many more come from the substrata of consciousness, and of these many are strictly physiological in character; for instance, there may be disturbances of the genital, vasomotor or digestive systems, cerebellar disturbances or latent molecular or biochemical nervous conditions, during which the mind responds to stimuli ignored under other or healthier circumstances; but over all it is the inherent disposition of the immaterial psychic or subjective mind which gives the whole its tone and tendency. We must, indeed, admit with James that "a disembodied human emotion is a sheer nonentity."

With the psycho-physical problem as to whether sensory excitation is antecedent to emotional expression, or emotion gives rise to bodily expression, we are not here directly concerned. Since emotion is a continuous condition of experience, it may reasonably be supposed that organic disturbance is both a contributory cause and the reactionary result of emotion. Most people admit that "each emotion is a resultant of a sum of elements," and that some of those elements are functional and organic, without admitting the contention of Professor James and those who insist with him that emotion is but a sum of organic sensations.

Emotional disturbances lead directly to the overthrow of the mental balance, which divides the normal man from the madman and the neurasthenic. Modern psychiatrists lay stress on the emotional character of the latter affection. The underlying features of "functional neurosis" reveal themselves in symptoms denoting the clash of emotional elements within, together with a corresponding lack of adaptability to outer environment, and are characterized by instability and exaggeration of emotion rather than impaired intellect.

The cultivation of the aesthetic, pleasurable and benevolent emotions on the one hand, and the elimination of violent emotional excitements or discordant and morbid emotions on the other, are conditions as essential for the physical health as for the happiness of the individual. Emotional sensibility is a condition necessary for the full appreciation and enjoyment of art, and of all that is pleasurable and beautiful, but when emotion is allowed to colour reason, the mind is closed to truth, knowledge and logic.

Art gratifies the emotions as truth should gratify the intellect. It is not always fully realized how large a part emotional elements, which may embrace every form of sensory and erotic excitation, as well as the whole tone of the subjective mind, play in the most intellectual criticism of an artistic achievement. Of these elements some may be irrelevant as well as irrational, and by no means realized by the critic at the time of writing his appreciation. Elliot Smith and Pear illustrate this point in a way few people would want to dispute. "Let us suppose that a musical critic, after hearing a new symphony by an unconventional composer, immediately writes a lengthy appreciation of the performance. It is clear that nobody would expect him to be able to give off-hand an account of his reasons for every sentence of the criticism. But it is obvious that a single phrase in this account may be but the apex of a whole pyramid of memories emanating from the critic's technical training, his attitude towards the new departure, experiences highly coloured with emotion which a few notes of music may have evoked, and his mental condition at the time he heard the performance. Nobody denies that these may have shaped or even determined his criticism. But who believes either that they were all conscious at the time of writing the article, or that he could resuscitate them without much time and trouble and perhaps the help of a cross-examiner?"

In addition to the causal, largely emotional, elements might be added a prime determinant in artistic appreciation, namely, cosmic suggestion. In the case of a leading critic, overwhelmingly self-confident and secure of his position, the mere knowledge of the consensus of informed and uninformed opinion being favourable or otherwise might conceivably arouse an equally illogical desire to be esoteric and different at all costs. An antagonistic autosuggestion of this sort unconsciously underlying a critic's attitude would more than negative any body of opinion in one direction. But if such artificial and diverse influences can affect the most highly trained and most honest critic, how much more will they affect the credulous and untrained? Far greater will be the power of authoritative opinion in influencing those whose emotional sensibility is blunt and untrained, who gape in unresponsive perplexity at some artist's canvas, waiting to have the emotions they do not feel suggested to them, and who, when given the lead, infuse by the power of association into the meaningless daub or the subtlest motif alike the same spirit of satisfaction they derive from the garish crudities which alone, unaided, find a responsive echo in their breasts. It is well known that the less tutored the intellect the more real, as a rule, are the creatures of the imagination. Children and savages have a wonderful faculty for believing in the reality of their illusions. Does not this account for the fact that the less clearly a thing is understood the greater is the power of the imagination in supplying a meaning. A certain dimness and mystery or quality of incomprehensibility invariably adds to the respect and awe paid to works of art and their creators, officially labelled as "great." Sometimes mere age or distance produces the requisite dimness. Racine considered this atmosphere of distance a necessary device of stagecraft for the proper presentation of a hero. "On peut dire que le respect que l'on a pour les heros augmente a mesure qu'ils s'eloignent de nous." In the same way the intensity of horror bestowed upon the arch-villain of the piece is increased in proportion to the distance away from which he is regarded; in other words, the less you know about him. But this does not hold good for the heroes of the histrionic stage more truly than for the heroes and arch-villains of the wider stage of the world. The principle can be applied equally to the heroes of art, religion, politics or war. It is not, of course, the dimness or distance per se which magnifies the object of appreciation; unaided that would merely have the opposite effect. The factor of dimness, by placing the object further from the grasp of reason, enables the playwright, politician, or critic, as the case may be, to play with greater ease and certainty upon the emotions of his audience, and by force of suggestion to endue his puppet more completely with the symbolic quality he wishes to present. In spite of Medici prints, oleographic processes and the extension of culture which renders any one liable to receive choice samples of the Italian Masters free with a packet of cigarettes, what William Hazlitt said with reference to Michael Angelo is still literally true. "We know," he writes, "nothing of him but his name. It is an abstraction of fame and greatness. Our admiration of him supports itself, and our idea of his superiority seems self-evident, because it is attached to his name only."

Convention is a very real and wellnigh irresistible power. Not a few of our most cherished valuations--artistic, religious, political and social--are conventional fetishes which have been slowly evolved in the course of a great number of years as the result of determining factors, for the most part accidental and forgotten, and probably called into existence for totally different and unconnected reasons. Yet the appropriate emotional reaction, evoked by the association of an object with such a conventional valuation or sentiment, may be just as keenly and genuinely felt as though it resulted from the awakening of some instinctive or innate law of our nature. Impressionability is not a quality to be despised, but on the contrary to be carefully guarded from contamination. It is by means of emotion that all pleasure and pain, all aversion and attraction, and all sense of the aesthetic is recorded by the senses. Emotional sensibility may be compared to an instrument that may be so finely made that it is capable of registering the most delicate and exact vibrations so that any harsh sound will injure it, while, on the other hand, it may be made of a texture so coarse that it will respond instantly and indiscriminately to any loud and crude noise. This instrument has an inherent quality of excellence with a potentiality of exactness that may be developed in a great variety of directions.

The many factors which play a part in aesthetic appreciation have been abundantly explored by psychological writers. They have traced the great variety of ways in which art can be the means of evoking sympathetic emotions by connecting its subject with the inexhaustible interest in personality. They have cited the part played in inducing pleasurable sensations in music by the association of range, depth of tone and pitch with the expression of human passions; and in pictorial art, the appeal to muscular sensibility by suggested associations with movement and form, or the effect of straight lines and rounded forms in inducing sensations of vigour and repose. More obvious are the appeals to the sexual instincts. There are also associations that give beauty to colours, pleasurableness to those tints that suggest youth, health, vigour and feminine charm.

It is easy to understand the agreeableness of symbols of strength and solidity; the restfulness of economy in presentation, the pleasing effect of contrast and symmetry, variety and unity, of balance and the laws of proportion and musical ratios, or of harmony and regularity. The laws of relativity or comparison and of familiarity and strangeness are factors which play a part in all appreciation. Finally, there is a more exclusively intellectual pleasure in the process of analytical valuation of artistic production.

We cannot acquire truth by means of the emotions, which can but be the means of informing us of our personal relation towards our environment. They may reveal us to ourselves, or may register the reflection of our environment within us; but the consequences of emotion cannot be regarded as ephemeral, for all emotional excitation must have a permanent residual effect upon the tone of the subjective mind.

(3) JUDGMENT OF ENDS