and suppressed by those who succeed them. The first century of the
Hegira saw the extermination of the relations and friends of Mahomet by
those who pretended to confiscate for their own profit the revolution
he had created. In the Franciscan movement the true friends of Saint
François d'Assisi, were, after a generation, regarded as heretics and
as dangerous men, and were led to the stake by hundreds."
An idea in the first days of creative activity proceeds with giant
steps, and we can say, the movement once begun continues by virtue of
the law of inertia always to increase; its originator falls behind, and
becomes an obstacle to his own idea which persists in moving forward
in spite of him. The Ebionites who gave to Christianity its first
start became after a century a scandal to the church; their doctrine a
blasphemy.[77]
[77] Renan. _L'Eglise chrétienne._
It is this very tendency, caused by the arousing of passion, that makes
all revolutions abortive, that causes them through their own excesses
to be the authors of their own destruction, and which neutralises or
much decreases the progress made by revolutions.
The gravest objection against misoneism constitutes, accordingly, the
strongest proof of it. Like the plant, the animal, and the stone, man
remains motionless, unless a disturbance of his state occurs through
other forces, and through the law of inertia itself, which after having
at first rendered him immovable afterwards drives him to opposite
excess, but to replunge him anew into immobility.
The most potent cause is that of physical environment, change of
climate. Next comes the crossing of one race with another, and it is to
this we owe in great part the marvellous productions of Greek art that
arose in Magna Grecia. Then, often, the influence of climate is active,
to which is owing the transformation of the Jew; so persecutions, and
the great calamities which races experience and which determine the
selection of the strongest. And to this result contribute above all the
impulses impressed by geniuses and by mattoids, who, as I have already
pointed out in my work on "Genius" alone possess an intense love for
the new, for the very reason that their organisation is different from
that of other people. The intensity of individual violence and power
here unbalances the tendency to immobility; but almost always—and I
show it in the work referred to—when that intensity is not favored
by circumstances, when it does not arise as the final synthesis of
a general desire, a latent and universal necessity, but simply as a
pathological phenomenon, it becomes again valueless, for the very
reason that it is individual. It is owing to this that the efforts
of a madman like Cola de Rienzi, and of such geniuses as Alexander,
Napoleon, Pombal, and Peter the Great, result in nothing. To beneficent
geniuses, as Bolivar, the Gracchi, etc., are attributed all the merit
of revolutions which triumph because they were prepared long before
by history and by circumstances, and which were only precipitated by
them and summed up in them. It suffices to note that the genius of
Garibaldi, of Cavour, and of Mazzini, has been able to give us nothing
more than Italy as it now is, in order to comprehend that in spite of
geniuses and, up to a certain point, in spite of circumstances the
work of revolution is durable only when the circumstances that have
commenced it persist, and men are profoundly modified by it.
However, the law of inertia always prevailing, (since primitive
tendencies always concern it,) these changes are but very slow and, as
we have seen, give place to easy relapses; they become fixed and swell
to new movements only when the causes which provoke them continue and
become more intense.
In fine, philoneism, progress, also sometimes triumphs—at least with
the white race and frequently with the yellow races; but it is not the
result of a sudden movement or of a natural human tendency, but the
effect of external physical forces, whether social, historical or the
like, which have caused the law of inertia to change its direction. It
is therefore the slow result, we might say, of the small and sensible
variations peculiar to men according to their condition, added to
grander movements, as well as momentarily barren ones, of geniuses and
forces, and to those more powerful ones of the physical and historical
environment. Of the resulting product we see only the effects, because
without the telescope of history and of sociology we do not perceive
the slowness with which they have reached us, and the smallness of the
efforts which contribute to it. It is thus that we do not imagine that
the great Coral Islands can be the work of billions of small zo-ophytes
accumulated the one on the other during thousands of years. The organic
kingdom, like the social, is made up of the sum total of slow and small
efforts.
The idea of the Christ and that of Buddha, the way for which had been
prepared for several centuries by other geniuses less fortunate than
they, miscarries among the people in which it was conceived, and
becomes fruitful elsewhere. But dating from the epoch in which its
votaries, nihilists of the reverse type, began to multiply and spread,
in the lowest and least intelligent strata of society, employing as
arms not violence but gentleness, more than three centuries elapsed
before it was tolerated and officially recognised. For two hundred and
fifty years the plebeians fought at Rome for their liberty. Yet they
always heard the Senators say, "Your propositions are too novel." And
liberty was granted by the one, and acquired by the others, only soon
to be lost, first, in anarchy, then under the dictatorship, and then
under the empire.
It is in this sense, that revolutions at the start can be the work
of a small number, but they represent, they are the sign of a latent
universal sentiment; this is why they grow in direct proportion to time
(and time is very long) and gain partisans among their own adversaries.
The apostles of Christ numbered only twelve, but a hundred and fifty
years later, at Rome alone, there were in the catacombs 737 tombs of
Christians; and Renan calculates that at the time of Commodus 35,000
Christians existed. We know that Saint Paul himself was one of the
bitterest adversaries of the Christians.
The English revolution, up to the time Charles I. sought to cause the
arrest of the four parliamentarians, was anti-republican, and strictly
royalist even; but ultimately revolutionary ideas spread throughout
all England, and the zealous but not blind partisans of the king were
the first to turn against him after his excesses and his treasons.
In the revolution of Flanders, the chief citizens and a great part
of the nobility, held aloof from the movement for a long period; but
all possessed in embryo the feeling uttered by the first apostles and
pioneers of the movement. Time, in its slow development, gives rise to
the complete expansion of the latent sentiments expressed by misoneism.
For example let us now transfer ourselves to another field; I wish to
speak of the abolition of classical studies. There are perhaps actually
five or six of us in Italy who proclaim without fear its absolute
necessity; as we were only three when we proclaimed the necessity of
changing the penal laws and of bringing them to examine the criminal
rather than the crime.
The first statesman who should attempt to carry out our ideas would
fall amid universal scandal; and yet these very ideas are entertained
by all who are not blinded by archæological and academic misoneism. But
they have not the courage to avow them and still less to realise them.
In a few years these ideas will no longer admit even of discussion.
That is revolution. Let us look, on the other hand, at the ideas of
the anarchists; they are in the heads, and unfortunately in the hands
of certain diseased persons, but they are not in the thought of the
majority; consequently all their agitation will be in vain, and result
only in isolated commotions and frays.
That is revolt, insurrection. And let no one say that philoneism and
progress are found as proportional reaction to misoneic action, an
oscillation of the pendulum excluding the law of inertia. The pendulum
itself does not oscillate, but remains perpetually motionless until
moved; and its oscillations, even the smallest, are produced the most
often by external causes entirely accidental. And the law of inertia is
here also so constant, that if it did not find in the friction of the
atmosphere a cause of impediment the movement once begun would continue
_ad infinitum_. So a ball flies and rebounds, when a force propels
it; and here also if friction did not retard it, it would continue
forever the motion once commenced. Inertia is the rule, and mutations
are produced by special external incidents, which being usually less
persistent, less tenacious, change more the appearance than the
reality. And these modifications which are very slow and proceed from
external causes, are produced not only among men and among animals, but
are met with even in the inorganic world; it is thus that the salts
of copper and of lime, in certain conditions of a warm medium, change
their color but not their nature nor their molecular arrangement, and
always give the same chemical reactions.
CESARE LOMBROSO.
THE QUESTION OF DUALITY OF MIND.
It is certainly conceded by all who come in general estimation within
the category of thinkers, that psychology, as formerly studied, without
basis in physiology, was most unfruitful, as compared with the modern
study of it upon that basis. It is therefore quite remarkable to find
in quarters of repute, where psychological problems are discussed, some
into which enter, even inferentially, either momentary obliviousness,
or temporary disregard of truths that are held indisputable by
modern thinkers within the lines of the subjects indicated. Yet such
contradiction and conflict are found in the constantly recurring
attempted demonstration of the dual nature of the mind or the soul,
call the entity what one will. That man has within his organisation
tendencies which are relatively higher or lower than others within
himself, is not to be disputed; but that such mixture of nature is to
be regarded as constituting him of dual mental nature, is a proposition
untenable coincidently with the maintenance of the proposition that he
is in nature physiologically single. It has been maintained lately,
that he is physiologically double, but this view has not met with
any acceptance worthy of the name. In short, it would seem, from all
that we know, that in every individual, psychical being must bear
the same relation to physiological that the latter does to physical,
and that they are all interdependent. And if this be true, the same
relations must hold good when the physical and physiological nature
degenerate into the pathological, and we find by observation that
they do hold good. So far, therefore, as the lesson inculcated by
Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde presents to the popular mind
the idea of dual mental nature in man, it is false. Viewed from the
scientific standpoint, the case exhibits nothing more or less than a
phase of physical, physiological, and psychical action, terminating in
pathological manifestations. Gradually, the physical, physiological,
and psychical natures suffer, _pari passu_, and the whole being
exhibits profound retrograde metamorphosis, through the continuous
degenerations that have been so often and so ably described by Dr.
Henry Maudsley, in which all will-power passes away, the whole being
becomes involved, and direful death of all higher attributes finally
ensues. That, during the struggle in this decadence between the will
and the instincts it is natural that it should seem to the outside
uninstructed view, and even to the individual sufferer himself, that
the phenomenon witnessed is evidence of a dual nature of mind, is not
surprising; but it is surprising to find any one of the present day who
deems himself scientific, implying that the observed changing mental,
moral, and bodily manifestations are not witnesses to co-ordinated
change; it is surprising that any scientific inquirer should lend the
slightest countenance to the belief that changed psychical phenomena
are possible without changed physical and physiological conditions, and
yet that is what we often see proclaimed through maintenance of the
proposition of the duality of mental nature.
The point mentioned belongs to the most flagrantly unscientific view of
the relations and effects of the forces in play under the conditions
discussed. But there may be in the inclusive subject-matter of the
question minor points as to which erroneous views are sometimes
presented to the public as emanating from sources otherwise scientific.
Such a one it is my intention to make the principal subject of this
paper. In the October number of _The Monist_, in the article "The Magic
Mirror," Max Dessoir, the author, says, pages 111 and 112:
"The theory from which I shall proceed in attempting an
explanation, has already been frequently touched upon in the
course of this article; for certain observations indicated it
so clearly that mention of it was not to be avoided. It is
the doctrine of the double consciousness of the human soul.
Acts are done in the course even of our every-day life, which
presuppose for their origin and execution all the faculties
of the soul, yet nevertheless occur without the knowledge of
the individual; they require a sort of consciousness and a
separate memory beyond the _cognisance_ of the normal person.
One of the most frequent cases in practical experience is
where the thoughts of a person reading aloud wander and become
occupied with an entirely different subject; and where despite
this aberration the person in question reads correctly with
the proper emphasis and expression, turns the leaves, and in
short performs acts which without intelligent control are
hardly conceivable. An English psychologist, Mr. Barkworth,
has acquired such expertness in the practice of this, that
during an animated debate he can rapidly and correctly
add long columns of figures without having his attention
diverted in the least. This points not only to an unconscious
intelligence, but—which is of still greater consequence—to
an unconscious memory. Mr. Barkworth must keep two series of
figures in his mind in order to obtain from them a third;
this latter sum he is again obliged to retain in order to
add to it a newly acquired fourth; and so on. The latter
chain of memories, let it be remarked, performs its office
entirely independently of that upon which the recollection
of the debate is constructed; and it may therefore be
reasonably maintained that there exists beyond the cognisance
of the individual, both consciousness and memory; and if
the essential components of the ego are found in these two
last-mentioned factors, then every person conceals within
himself the germs of a second personality. I designate the
two halves of consciousness that thus operate in greater or
less independence of each other,—in a figurative sense of
course,—as super-and sub-consciousness, and comprehend the
whole as the doctrine of double consciousness or the double
ego."
No one will at this late day, it is to be presumed, dispute
the existence in the same individual of subconsciousness, as
contra-distinguished from superconsciousness; superconsciousness
being that which is more familiarly known as self-consciousness, and
subconsciousness as that latent consciousness of which we are not at
all conscious, and which yet receives impressions which may or may not
rise soon, late, or at all into the sphere of self-consciousness; an
impress which cannot be summed into self-consciousness by an effort
of will, for the obvious reason that the memory has yet taken no
cognisance of them. That this subconscious function of the brain is
simply a phenomenon dependent upon cell-storage of the brain, the
product of which may or may not ever reach self-consciousness, is
proved by many circumstances attested by our memory of collated facts
concerned in our waking and dream life. Sir Walter Scott, in his
story of the "Tapestried Chamber," gives an admirable account of its
working under the lead of a sleeper's unconscious cerebration risen
to self-consciousness, for let it be here parenthetically noted that
it is absurd, as is sometimes attempted, to rule dream-thoughts out of
the realm of self-consciousness, the individuality of the dreamer never
being lost, however modified the mental and moral ideation of that
individuality may be.
But Max Dessoir evidently confounds subconsciousness with unconscious
cerebration. He makes subconsciousness, in the intellection described,
a primary factor in execution. Now subconsciousness is the mere
tablet, as it were, upon which impressions are made, and unconscious
cerebration that faculty of the brain which, without immediate, and
perchance future, cognisance of self-consciousness, may evolve from all
brain-impressions, whether subconsciously or self-consciously received,
thought of which not even the individual himself becomes aware that
he is the possessor until it is presented to him as a free gift. This
proceeds during sleep as well as during waking, sometimes anticipating,
coincidently with waking, the routine subject of thought for the
day. It sometimes in sleep, as well as in waking moments, presents
itself with the startling effect of a revelation. Subconsciousness,
therefore, is a condition of passivity, and unconscious cerebration one
of activity, although, of course, of even unknown existence unless a
product of it reaches self-consciousness. They are not to be crudely
conceived of as different manifestations of the same thing, any more
than an emotion is to be thought of as another aspect of the sensation
which produced it, the emotion being qualitatively an entirely new
departure from the sensation. Both sensation and emotion represent
conditions of activity, whereas, so far as self-consciousness is equal
to differentiating them, subconsciousness and unconscious cerebration
respectively represent passivity and activity.
But the admission of the coexistence in the same individual of
unconscious cerebration with self-consciousness does not involve the
concession of the existence of dual mentality, any more than recognised
possession of striped and unstriped, voluntary and involuntary
muscle, involves the concession that man is physically dual in
mechanical motive power. Yet it is upon the basis of the recognised
coexistence of double consciousness in man that Max Dessoir reaches
the conclusion that, figuratively speaking, as he says, there is a
double ego, by means of whose duplex action different mental processes
are simultaneously carried forward. Now, neither figuratively nor
otherwise, as should be clearly apparent from what has been said,
is there in man a double ego. For although while there is life
subconsciousness must exist, and unconscious cerebration proceed,
nothing is more open to observation than that subconsciousness and
unconscious cerebration, although always present, do not always rise
into the sphere of self-consciousness. That, during self-conscious
activity of thought on a particular subject, if continued for a long
time, subconsciousness may, through unconscious cerebration, in a
measure yield tribute to self-conscious thought is undeniable, for
we see their effect sometimes visible in the sudden inspiration of
the orator and the writer, but that they are factors in ordinary
thought-evolution, for immediate use, within very limited spaces of
time, is impossible, for we by definition limit subconsciousness
and unconscious cerebration to pure unguided automatism, while to
self-consciousness we concede the direction of all automatic processes
that represent conceptions of the mind. Obviously, to imagine that we
direct that which may or may not appear at all in the sensorium, to
be directed, and which from its nature, as known from observation,
is not likely to appear within moderate time-limits of special
thought-evolution, is inadmissible, involving the assertion of two
contradictory propositions, for, as matter of experience, we know that
the product of unconscious cerebration, even when it appears clearly
recognisable as such, seldom manifests itself before the lapse of a few
hours.
The simple and complete explanation of the phenomenon observed, in
what are deemed simultaneous mental processes, is that they are not
absolutely simultaneous. The best illustration that can be given of
the manner in which they take place is afforded by the system known as
synchronous multiple telegraphy, in which, by means of an admirable
apparatus, points on discs, representing makes and breaks of electric
current, are, at stations distant from each other, adjusted to
synchronous relations with each other, by means of electro-magnetic
agency, tuning-forks, and self-adjusting varying resistances to
the currents, so that receiving and transmitting proceeds with a
continuousness just short of perfect continuity. I am not attempting
to liken the rapidity of thought to that of electricity, even
when electricity is embarrassed and slowed by mechanism of man's
construction; but otherwise the analogy between so-called simultaneous
mental processes and the results obtained from so-called synchronous
multiple telegraphy, is as perfect as any analogy can be. Thus the
make and break impulses of the will direct the self-conscious flow
of nerve-force in receiving and transmitting impulses of almost
synchronous time upon various subject-matter successively taken up
and dropped. The thought for each is not simultaneous, nor of equal
duration, but so nearly simultaneous as to appear so, and of duration
sufficient for its task. The individual thought-times are not,
therefore, represented, as in the telegraphic instrument described,
by equal spaces of time, but bear due relations to the respective
difficulties of the subject-matter almost synchronously attacked. It is
self-conscious thought that is here involved, whether in sleeping or
waking, that is, will-directed thought, for even in sleep we observe
the will as imperfectly directing; striving, however, always to direct.
As has been admitted, if the process of self-conscious cerebration
last over a long space of time, it is possible that some fragment
derived from unconscious cerebration may contribute to the grand
total of primary flow. This, however, is not of normal occurrence,
seeing that unconscious cerebration often deals with matter entirely
alien to present self-conscious mental occupation. The fruits of
such cerebration are therefore impossible to be counted upon, and
therefore cannot be insisted upon as proving from the experience cited
by Max Dessoir the existence, even figuratively speaking, of double
consciousness construed as forming with self-consciousness a double
self; while the well-known action of subconsciousness, unconscious
cerebration, and conscious cerebration, as related to one another,
amply explain all the phenomena in waking, sleep, and even in hypnotism
if we include in that hysteric diathesis.