DIFFICULTIES.
“What you say, Mr. Merton,” said Jack, “may be very plausible, but you
will never convince me that Almighty God, the loving Father of us all,
would ever permit his children to be exposed to Satanic invasion. It
would impeach either his wisdom and love, or his power.”
“Why more than his permission of the same vexations and afflictions by
any other agency?” asked Mr. Merton, very quietly. “The facts, the
phenomena themselves are undeniable, and must be produced by some
agency, and by Divine permission too. While they remain the same, I
cannot see how their production by Satan, any more than their production
by some other created or secondary cause, is incompatible with the
Divine perfection.”
“I do not pretend to be able to say how that is,” replied Jack, “but I
will never believe that God will allow the devil, or any other being
subject to his power, to have such influence over the children he loves.
It is contrary to common sense. It is nonsense, absurdity, blasphemy.”
“I am very much of Jack’s opinion,” interposed Dr. Corning, who had for
a long time ceased to take any part in our conversations. “If there is a
God, a God who is Lord Omnipotent, the devil, if devil there be, must be
subject to him, and unable to do any thing without his permission. Can
any reasonable man believe that God would permit the devil to harass and
afflict, besiege and possess his children? Would a human father permit,
if he could help it, an enemy to exercise a corresponding power over his
own offspring? God is love, and love worketh no ill, and, as far as in
its power to prevent, suffers no ill to be worked to any one.”
“All that,” replied Mr. Merton, “would be very conclusive, if the facts
or phenomena did not exist to give it a flat denial. Here are the facts,
and whatever origin you assign them, they remain, in themselves
considered, the same. You assign insanity as their origin. Be it so. But
would a God who is love, who is wisdom, who is omnipotence, suffer his
children to be afflicted with so grievous a disease as insanity, one so
terrible and so humiliating in its effects? Insanity must be subject to
his dominion; and why then does he suffer any one to become insane?”
“Many of these facts, as you call them, are the result of mere jugglery
and sheer imposture,” answered the Doctor, “and do not deserve a
moment’s consideration.”
“Be it so,” replied Mr. Merton. “But how can God permit such jugglery
and imposture?”
“They are the works of man, and the results of evil passions,” promptly
replied Dr. Corning.
“Very good,” said Mr. Merton; “but whence these evil passions? and how
can God, consistently with his perfections, permit them to produce such
pernicious effects? You see, my dear Doctor, turn which way you will,
take what ground you please, your argument can always be retorted. As
far as the Divine perfection is concerned, it makes no difference, since
the facts really exist, whether you ascribe them to Satanic invasion or
to insanity, to the evil passions of man, or to the elemental forces or
inherent laws of nature; for, on any of these suppositions, you ascribe
them to a created cause, dependent on God as first cause for its very
existence, and therefore a cause that cannot operate without his
permission. The whole question resolves itself into the old question,
then, of the origin of evil. Evil certainly could not exist without the
permission of God; and yet you yourself concede that evil does exist.
How can God, consistently with his perfections, permit it? This is the
question; and, if he can permit it at all, he can as well permit it when
produced by one agent, as when produced by another.”
“But that,” said Dr. Corning, “is a question for you to answer, as well
as for me.”
“Not in the case before us,” rejoined Mr. Merton, “because your
objection concedes the existence of evil, and only denies it as the work
of a particular agent. But let that pass. I can answer the question only
in the light of Christian theology. According to that theology, there is
no real evil but sin; and sin is always voluntary on the part of the
sinner. God chose to create men and angels free moral agents, that they
might be capable of virtue, and of meriting the rewards of obedience. He
could not so create us without making us capable of abusing our freedom,
for obedience is not and cannot be meritorious where there is no power
of disobedience, as disobedience is not culpable where there is no power
of obedience. Hence the saints in heaven, having no longer the power of
disobedience, do not merit by their obedience, and simply enjoy the
rewards of their obedience in their state of probation on earth. If any
do not obtain the rewards of obedience, the fault is their own, and they
have no one to blame but themselves. Their failure is voluntary; they
fail only because they choose to fail.
“In regard to the Satanic vexations,” continued Mr. Merton, ”we must
bear in mind that Satan has no power to harm us—not even a hair of our
head—against our free will or deliberate assent. It is always in our
power to resist him, and even to turn his machinations and vexations
against him, and to make them occasions of merit. ‘Count it all joy, my
brethren,’ says the blessed Apostle St. James, ‘when ye fall into divers
temptations,’ that is, trials and afflictions. The evil is not in the
temptation even to sin, but in the free, voluntary assent; it is not in
the vexations and afflictions, obsessions and possessions, but in our
voluntary abuse of them, or failure to turn them to a good account. God
suffers no one to be tempted or tried or harassed beyond what he can
bear. Always is his grace sufficient for all straits. Always stands firm
his promise, ‘My grace is sufficient for thee;’ and this sustains and
consoles us in the midst of our greatest distress, our severest trials,
and our most perfect abandonment. We may always, if we will, come forth
from the furnace of affliction purified as gold tried in the fire. It
depends on our own free will whether the vexations of Satan shall do us
good or harm. If we choose, we can always prevent his wiles from doing
us evil, and derive profit from his malice. This is a sufficient answer
to the objection drawn from the perfection of God. It is no impeachment
of Divine Love to let loose an enemy against us for our good, or to give
us an opportunity to acquire merit, any more than it is to Divine
Justice to permit an enemy to harass us as a punishment for our sins.
Satanic temptations and invasions are sometimes permitted for the one
purpose, and sometimes for the other, and in either case are perfectly
compatible with the attributes of God.”
“I think I can understand that,” I remarked, “and I think also I can see
in it a manifestation of Divine love. God, in permitting these vexations
against the wicked, manifests his justice; but in permitting them
against the good, he manifests his love, and turns the malice of Satan
against himself. What Satan intends shall work our ruin, by the grace of
God is made to work our higher perfection; and thus God overcomes Satan
by educing good from evil.”
“Undoubtedly,” added Mr. Merton, “God often permits Satan to afflict the
faithful, to prove them,—sometimes to humble them, to chastise their
spiritual pride, and to become their occasion of rising to a purer and
loftier virtue; and in such cases we may say he educes good from evil,
and makes the malice of Satan redound to his own glory. In the cases
where he permits Satan to harass by way of penalty, he equally makes the
Satanic malice redound to his glory, for God’s glory is no less
interested, so to speak, in justice than in love. There is no
discrepancy between the Divine attributes; and the manifestation of his
justice is no less essential to his glory, or the good of his creatures,
than the manifestation of his love or mercy. The beginning of love is
the love of justice, equity, right.”
“But be that as it may,” said Jack, “I have heard it contended by
theologians that Satan has been bound since the coming of Christ, and
has no longer any power, since Christ triumphed over him on the cross,
to besiege or to possess men, as it is supposed he had before.”
“I am not answerable,” replied Mr. Merton, “for what you may have heard
theologians maintain. I concede that our Lord, on his part, triumphed
over Satan on the cross; I also concede, that since the coming of our
Lord, and the spread of Christianity, the power of Satan has been
greatly curtailed; but I know no authority for saying that he does not
continue to go about ‘as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour,’ or
that he has not power still to besiege men, and literally take
possession of them. The Church, whether Catholic or Protestant, has a
form of exorcism, and continues to practise it. The faithful are daily
winning victories over him, and if God gives them the grace of
perseverance, they will finally overcome him, and obtain a triumph; but
their warfare with him ceases not so long as they remain in the flesh.
Satan, it is true, has no power to harm us against our deliberate
consent, and it is far easier to resist him now, than it was before our
Lord died on the cross, because grace is more abundant; but still he may
besiege and actually possess the holiest of men, the most devoted
followers of the Lord, at least so far as it is given to men to judge.
He cannot harm us without our own fault; but he may vex, afflict, even
possess us, without any blame on our part, as a man may become sick, or
even insane, without any fault of his own.
“Out of the Christian society,” continued Mr. Merton, “where there are
wanting the means which Christians have to defend themselves against his
approaches, and to drive him away, his power is, no doubt, far greater.
Among Mahometans, and among the pagan tribes of Asia, Africa, and
America, inhabiting a land which has, so to speak, never been baptized,
or sprinkled with holy water, his power is still very great; and, if we
may credit the well-attested reports of our missionaries, almost as
great as ever. He recovers his power, too, in Christian nations in
proportion as they recede from the faith and piety of the Gospel, and
fall anew into heathenism.”
“But there are some difficulties, under the point of view of
jurisprudence, in the way of your doctrine of Satanic invasion,”
interposed Jack. “Suppose a man possessed by a devil kills another, or
commits some act which the law regards as a crime, is the man guilty,
and to be punished?”
“You are a lawyer,” replied Mr. Merton, “and nothing is more natural
than that you should ask that question. The difficulties you suggest,
however, are no greater on the supposition of Satanic invasion than on
any other theory. They are the same, whether we contend that the person
is subjected by Satan or by mesmerism, by a primitive or elemental force
of nature, or by what some manigraphs call madness without delirium, or
instinctive insanity. The question turns on the fact whether the man is
involuntarily and completely subjugated, or whether he retains the
exercise of his free will; or, in other words, whether the actions are
really his, or those of the power that oppresses or subjugates him. For
myself, I think our courts are beginning to adopt a very dangerous
doctrine with regard to insanity, and are admitting the plea of insanity
where it ought not to be entertained. In an Eastern city, not long
since, it was gravely contended by counsel, that a man must be held to
be insane and irresponsible, because his crimes were so aggravated.
Under this lies a dangerous principle, which, in its development, will
lead to the conclusion that all great criminals are insane and
irresponsible. But in regard to another class of cases, cases in which
there obviously is no inebriety, ill health, or delirium, and yet in
which the person seems to himself to be irresistibly urged by a foreign
power, against his will, to the commission of horrible acts, I think the
law, or the practice of the courts, is quite too severe. I take a case
cited to my hand by a respectable French writer, that of a father who
killed his young son. The father was an honest, temperate, and
industrious man, of a mild and affectionate disposition, and it is clear
that he loved his son with great tenderness.
“‘The night in which I did the deed,’ says the unhappy father, ‘I was so
agitated, that I trembled in my whole body.... I am unable to conceive
how I could commit a crime so atrocious. I was so agitated, so troubled
in my brain, and felt something within me so irresistible, that I was
_obliged_ to commit the deed. I was fasting. I was not sick; and I am
wholly unable to explain how it was possible for me to do it. Twice
before I had had the horrible inclination to kill my child. The first
time was last winter, about six weeks before Easter. I was at work
making a sledge, and my boy, as usual, was playing near me. In his
playfulness, he climbed upon my back, and clasped me round the neck. My
wife, thinking he would hinder me from working, called him away; but I
loved him so much, that I patiently endured all his frolicsome tricks. I
took him upon my knees to play with him, and in that very moment I
thought I heard a voice within me, saying, ‘You cannot help it. Your
child must die, and you must kill him.’ I was startled, seized with
fear, my heart palpitated, and I instantly set him down, rushed out of
the room, and went to the mill, where I stayed till nightfall, till my
evil thought passed away.
“‘The second time was one morning a few days before Easter. My wife was
busy with the affairs of the house, and I was lying on the bed, with my
child near me. He asked me for some bread, and I gave him a cake, which
he eat with great pleasure. At that moment, as I was watching him with
tender affection, I thought I heard again a voice within me, saying, in
a low tone, ‘You must kill him.’ I shuddered at myself, experienced
violent palpitations, and felt a heavy oppression within my breast. I
instantly jumped from the bed, and ran out of the house. I began saying
my prayers, went to the stable, and busied myself with various labors,
and did all in my power to drive away the evil thoughts that beset me. I
finally succeeded, but not till midday, in regaining the mastery of
myself, and in recovering my tranquillity. In neither of these cases was
I drunk, or had been for many weeks previous; nor was I at the third
access, when I took the life of my child.’[6]
-----
Footnote 6:
_Pneumatalogie des Esprits_, p. 186 _et seq._
-----
“Now here was a man who was not sick, who was not in liquor, who was not
delirious, who was evidently a mild and loving father, and who yet, in
consequence of an impression, killed his child, whom evidently he loved
with all a father’s fondness. This man the courts condemn as a horrid
murderer.”
“And why not?” said Jack. “It is evident his free will remained. Twice
he resisted the temptation, and regained the mastery of himself; and
nothing proves that he might not have done so the third time, if he had
done his best.”
“It is possible,” replied Mr. Merton, “and therefore I do not say the
man was absolutely innocent. But we see he did struggle against the evil
thought, and twice successfully; and he yielded even at last only from
an impression, all but irresistible at the moment, and therefore he
cannot be said to have had the full possession of his freedom. In
proportion as his power of external resistance was diminished by the
impression, or the mysterious influence that acted on him, was
diminished his responsibility. He who yields only to a powerful
temptation, is less guilty than he who does the same deed under only a
slight or feeble temptation. The courts should take cognizance of the
strength of the impression under which the man acts, and take into the
account the more or less resistance that was possible. If the man
succumbs only after a long and severe struggle, that should go to
mitigate his guilt.
“Dr. Cazeauvielh relates the case of a woman who attempted to kill her
infant sleeping in the cradle. ‘I am,’ said she to the doctor, ‘the most
miserable of beings. Never was anybody like me. The other day I
approached the cradle, and I looked upon my darling. Fearing I should do
him harm, I went away to the house of my neighbor. Then, in spite of
myself, I returned, for _something_ seemed to push me. I went near my
infant, and attempted to choke it with my hands, but my legs failed me,
and I became senseless.’ This woman, Dr. Cazeauvielh tells us, loved her
relations and her child, and her intellectual faculties were not
injured. It is true he regards her as insane; but how can there be
insanity, with the full possession of the intellectual faculties? She
struggled against the _something_ that pushed her, and had a horror of
the crime; the law ought, therefore, to treat her with indulgence, yet
it does not, because there really is here no delirium. In the middle
ages, which you regard as so barbarous and cruel, she would not have
been held responsible, because her act would have been explained as the
result of a foreign power, which for the time being overcame her
resistance, and pushed her to do that for which she had a natural
horror.
“Yet a difference should no doubt be made between cases like these,
where the unhappy person commits a deed for which he has a natural
horror, and against which he struggles, and those in which the criminal,
so to speak, has a natural relish for his crime, delights, and persists
in it. Take the case of Gilles Garnier, which occupied the attention of
all France in the reign of Louis the Thirteenth. ‘This man-wolf,’
(_loup-garou_,) says Bodin, ‘carried away a girl from ten to twelve
years of age, killed her with his hands and teeth, and eat the flesh
from her thighs and arms. Some time afterwards he strangled a boy ten
years old, and eat his flesh. Still later he killed another boy, from
twelve to thirteen, with the intention of eating him, but was
prevented.’ He was arrested, convicted, and burnt alive. There was here
no insanity; the horrid deeds were all avowed with the minutest
circumstances, the intention was express, and the crime was repeated and
persisted in. I cannot regard this monster as innocent, for I cannot
discover that he resisted or struggled against the diabolical impulse.
“Take the case of Leger, a recent case, related by Dr. Cazeauvielh, from
the monster’s own confessions. He lived in a cave, and had an unnatural
craving to feed on human flesh. One day he perceived a little girl, ran
to her, passed a handkerchief around her body, threw her upon his back,
plunged into the woods and hastened to his cave, where he killed and
buried her. Arrested three days after, he immediately told his name,
where he lived, and said that having received a blow on his head, he had
left his country and his family. In his prison he related how he had
lived in caverns in the rocks. ‘Wretch,’ said the physician to him,‘you
have eaten the heart of this little girl. Confess the truth.’ He then
answered in trembling, ‘Yes, I did so, but not all at once.’ After that
he sought no longer to conceal his crimes, and with great coolness and
indifference related a long series of horrible deeds which he had
committed. He revealed them, even to the minutest particulars; he
produced the proofs, and pointed out to the court the place of the
crime, and the manner in which it had been consummated. The judge had no
need to question him, for he himself disclosed all of his own accord. On
the trial, his features wore a mild and placid aspect. He seemed quite
unconcerned and insensible, except his face assumed an air of gayety and
satisfaction during the reading of the indictment. After about half an
hour’s deliberation, the court rejected the plea of insanity, and
declared him guilty of homicide, with premeditation and lying in wait.
He heard his sentence with the same placid indifference, and was
executed a few days after. This seems to me to prove that the middle
ages were not more severe than we are to-day.”
“But Leger,” said Dr. Corning, “was evidently a madman. Georget is right
in saying that he was a madman, because none but a madman would say that
he had been led to commit murder by a blind and _irresistible_ will.”
“That might do to say, if we were certain of the truth of the
materialistic doctrines taught at Paris some forty or fifty years ago,
but which are now generally rejected. Dr. Cazeauvielh, however, concedes
that persons of this description, without being deprived by their
madness of free will, are yet carried away, driven onward by an idea, by
something indefinable, which is precisely what theologians mean by
obsession. The court decided correctly, I think, in rejecting the plea
of insanity in the case of the monster Leger, and in condemning him to
death, though evidently under Satanic influence when he committed his
horrible and disgusting crimes—crimes which recall the Ghouls of the
Arabian Nights—because there was no struggle of the human person against
the invading spirit.
“Satan can by Divine permission enter our bodies, compel, as it were,
the human person to stand aside, and use our organs himself, and do
whatever he pleases with them; but he cannot annihilate the human
person, or take from the soul free will. Always is it in the power of
the possessed to resist, morally and effectually, the evil intentions of
the devil. The possessed retains his own consciousness, his own
intellectual and moral faculties unimpaired, and never confounds himself
with the spirit that possesses him. Always, then, does he retain the
power of internal protest and struggle. Wherever this power is
exercised, and there is clearly a struggle, there is no responsibility
attaching to him, whatever the crimes the body, through the possession
of the devil, is made to commit. But it may often happen that this power
to protest is not exercised, and the possessed yields his moral assent
to the crimes committed by the demon that possesses him. He then becomes
a partaker of their guilt. Wherever it is clear that he has not
internally resisted, that he has not struggled against the demon, and
protested against his iniquity, the law should punish him for the crimes
as severely as if there had been no possession at all. The error of
modern jurisprudence is that, not recognizing the fact of possession, it
punishes alike both classes, or it lets off both under the plea of
insanity. In the latter case justice becomes too lax, and the greater
the criminal, the more enormous his crime, the less likely is he to be
punished; in the former case justice is too severe, and persons really
innocent, and meritorious even, are condemned as the basest of
criminals. The law in the middle ages, or before the wonderful progress
of intelligence and humanity in modern times, distinguished between the
two classes, and knew how to acquit the innocent and to punish the
guilty. Now the tendency is either to acquit or to condemn both
indiscriminately.”
Dr. Corning and Mr. Merton, after this, revived their former discussion
of the question of insanity; but as nothing was really added on either
side to what had been previously said, I do not think it necessary to
record their conversation. For myself, it seemed to me that the question
between the theory which explains the phenomena by insanity, and that
which explains them by Satanic invasion, is of immense practical
importance. When the old doctrine was rejected, the law became
excessively severe, and humanity was shocked. Philosophers and
philanthropists sought to mitigate it by asserting the doctrine of
necessity, of materialism, of the inherent goodness of the soul, and by
ascribing all misdeeds to external influences, to the action of nature,
society, government, &c. In other words, they sought to mitigate the law
by denying all moral turpitude.
But latterly the older doctrine of spiritualism, as opposed to
materialism, and of freedom as opposed to necessity, has revived, and
the old severity of the law must return, unless some new way can be
discovered of escaping it. This new way is the plea of insanity. The
tendency now is to make insanity a plea for every crime of some little
magnitude. Our lunatic hospitals are crowded; new ones are constructed,
and no inconsiderable portion of our population are likely to become
their inmates. Physicians, carried away by their false science and
mistaken humanity, discard all the old criteria of lunacy, and the
courts, following them, will soon find that all persons brought before
them for trial are insane and irresponsible. The guilty will go unwhipt
of justice, because no guilt will be recognized. If the phenomena in
question are to be explained by insanity, I do not see what crime it
will not cover.
The subject deserves serious consideration. For my part, I cannot
recognize insanity where the person evidently retains his intellectual
powers underanged or unimpaired, where he retains the faculty of
reasoning and judging correctly, however he may be driven by foreign
influences to this or that crime. When he tells me that he was obliged
by _something_ to do this or that, and that when he did it, it seemed to
him that it was not he, but some power impelling him, I raise no
question of insanity, but simply, as Merton suggests we should, the
question of internal resistance, and measure him by the greater or less
energy and persistence of that internal resistance.