I
The impression forces itself upon one that men measure by false
standards, that everyone seeks power, success, riches for himself and
admires others who attain them, while undervaluing the truly precious
things in life. And yet, in making any general judgement of this kind
one is in danger of forgetting the manifold variety of humanity and its
mental life. There are certain men from whom their contemporaries do
not withhold veneration, although their greatness rests on attributes
and achievements which are completely foreign to the aims and ideals of
the multitude. One might well be inclined to suppose that after all it
is only a minority who appreciate these great men, while the majority
cares nothing for them. But the discrepancy between men’s opinions and
their behaviour is so wide and their desires so many-sided that things
are probably not so simple.
One of these exceptional men calls himself my friend in his letters
to me. I had sent him my little book which treats of religion as an
illusion and he answered that he agreed entirely with my views on
religion, but that he was sorry I had not properly appreciated the
ultimate source of religious sentiments. This consists in a peculiar
feeling, which never leaves him personally, which he finds shared by
many others, and which he may suppose millions more also experience. It
is a feeling which he would like to call a sensation of ‘eternity’, a
feeling as of something limitless, unbounded, something ‘oceanic’. It
is, he says, a purely subjective experience, not an article of belief;
it implies no assurance of personal immortality, but it is the source
of the religious spirit and is taken hold of by the various Churches
and religious systems, directed by them into definite channels and
also, no doubt, used up in them. One may rightly call oneself religious
on the ground of this oceanic feeling alone, even though one reject all
beliefs and all illusions.
These views, expressed by my friend whom I so greatly honour and
who himself once in poetry described the magic of illusion, put me
in a difficult position. I cannot discover this ‘oceanic’ feeling
in myself. It is not easy to deal scientifically with feelings. One
may attempt to describe their physiological signs. Where that is
impossible—I am afraid the oceanic feeling, too, will defy this
kind of classification—nothing remains but to turn to the ideational
content which most readily associates itself with the feeling. If I
have understood my friend aright, he means the same thing as that
consolation offered by an original and somewhat unconventional writer
to his hero, contemplating suicide: ‘Out of this world we cannot
fall’.[1] So it is a feeling of indissoluble connection, of belonging
inseparably to the external world as a whole. To me, personally, I may
remark, this seems something more in the nature of an intellectual
judgement, not, it is true, without any accompanying feeling-tone,
but with one of a kind which characterizes other equally far-reaching
reflections as well. I could not in my own person convince myself of
the primary nature of such a feeling. But I cannot on that account deny
that it in fact occurs in other people. One can only wonder whether
it has been correctly interpreted and whether it is entitled to be
acknowledged as the _fons et origo_ of the whole need for religion.
I have nothing to suggest which could effectively settle the solution
of this problem. The idea that man should receive intimation of his
connection with the surrounding world by a direct feeling which aims
from the outset at serving this purpose sounds so strange and is so
incongruous with the structure of our psychology that one is justified
in attempting a psycho-analytic, that is, genetic explanation of such a
feeling. Whereupon the following lines of thought present themselves.
Normally there is nothing we are more certain of than the feeling of
our self, our own ego. It seems to us an independent unitary thing,
sharply outlined against everything else. That this is a deceptive
appearance, and that on the contrary the ego extends inwards without
any sharp delimitation, into an unconscious mental entity which we
call the id and to which it forms a façade, was first discovered
by psycho-analytic research, and the latter still has much to tell
us about the relations of the ego to the id. But towards the outer
world at any rate the ego seems to keep itself clearly and sharply
outlined and delimited. There is only one state of mind in which it
fails to do this—an unusual state, it is true, but not one that can
be judged as pathological. At its height the state of being in love
threatens to obliterate the boundaries between ego and object. Against
all the evidence of his senses the man in love declares that he and
his beloved are one, and is prepared to behave as if it were a fact.
A thing that can be temporarily effaced by a physiological function
must also of course be liable to disturbance by morbid processes. From
pathology we have come to know a large number of states in which the
boundary lines between ego and outer world become uncertain, or in
which they are actually incorrectly perceived—cases in which parts of
a man’s own body, even component parts of his own mind, perceptions,
thoughts, feelings, appear to him alien and not belonging to himself;
other cases in which a man ascribes to the external world things that
clearly originate in himself, and that ought to be acknowledged by him.
So the ego’s cognizance of itself is subject to disturbance, and the
boundaries between it and the outer world are not immovable.
Further reflection shows that the adult’s sense of his own ego cannot
have been the same from the beginning. It must have undergone a
development, which naturally cannot be demonstrated, but which admits
of reconstruction with a fair degree of probability.[2] When the
infant at the breast receives stimuli, he cannot as yet distinguish
whether they come from his ego or from the outer world. He learns
it gradually as the result of various exigencies. It must make the
strongest impression on him that many sources of excitation, which
later on he will recognize as his own bodily organs, can provide him
at any time with sensations, whereas others become temporarily out
of his reach—amongst these what he wants most of all, his mother’s
breast—and reappear only as a result of his cries for help. Thus
an ‘object’ first presents itself to the ego as something existing
‘outside’, which is only induced to appear by a particular act. A
further stimulus to the growth and formation of the ego, so that
it becomes something more than a bundle of sensations, _i.e._
recognizes an ‘outside’, the external world, is afforded by the
frequent, unavoidable and manifold pains and unpleasant sensations
which the pleasure-principle, still in unrestricted domination, bids
it abolish or avoid. The tendency arises to dissociate from the ego
everything which can give rise to pain, to cast it out and create a
pure pleasure-ego, in contrast to a threatening ‘outside’, not-self.
The limits of this primitive pleasure-ego cannot escape readjustment
through experience. Much that the individual wants to retain because
it is pleasure-giving is nevertheless part not of the ego but of an
object; and much that he wishes to eject because it torments him yet
proves to be inseparable from the ego, arising from an inner source. He
learns a method by which, through deliberate use of the sensory organs
and suitable muscular movements, he can distinguish between internal
and external—what is part of the ego and what originates in the outer
world—and thus he makes the first step towards the introduction of
the reality-principle which is to control his development further.
This capacity for distinguishing which he learns of course serves a
practical purpose, that of enabling him to defend himself against
painful sensations felt by him or threatening him. Against certain
painful excitations from within the ego has only the same means of
defence as that employed against pain coming from without, and this is
the starting-point of important morbid disturbances.
In this way the ego detaches itself from the external world. It is
more correct to say: Originally the ego includes everything, later
it detaches from itself the external world. The ego-feeling we are
aware of now is thus only a shrunken vestige of a far more extensive
feeling—a feeling which embraced the universe and expressed an
inseparable connection of the ego with the external world. If we may
suppose that this primary ego-feeling has been preserved in the minds
of many people—to a greater or lesser extent—it would co-exist like
a sort of counterpart with the narrower and more sharply outlined
ego-feeling of maturity, and the ideational content belonging to it
would be precisely the notion of limitless extension and oneness
with the universe—the same feeling as that described by my friend as
‘oceanic’. But have we any right to assume that the original type of
feeling survives alongside the later one which has developed from it?
Undoubtedly we have: there is nothing unusual in such a phenomenon,
whether in the psychological or in other spheres. Where animals are
concerned we hold the view that the most highly developed have arisen
from the lowest. Yet we still find all the simple forms alive to-day.
The great saurians are extinct and have made way for the mammals, but
a typical representative of them, the crocodile, is still living among
us. The analogy may be too remote, and it is also weakened by the fact
that the surviving lower species are not as a rule the true ancestors
of the present-day more highly developed types. The intermediate
members have mostly died out and are known to us only through
reconstruction. In the realm of mind, on the other hand, the primitive
type is so commonly preserved alongside the transformations which have
developed out of it that it is superfluous to give instances in proof
of it. When this happens, it is usually the result of a bifurcation in
development. One quantitative part of an attitude or an impulse has
survived unchanged while another has undergone further development.
This brings us very close to the more general problem of conservation
in the mind, which has so far hardly been discussed, but is so
interesting and important that we may take the opportunity to pay it
some attention, even though its relevance is not immediate. Since the
time when we recognized the error of supposing that ordinary forgetting
signified destruction or annihilation of the memory-trace, we have
been inclined to the opposite view that nothing once formed in the
mind could ever perish, that everything survives in some way or other,
and is capable under certain conditions of being brought to light
again, as, for instance, when regression extends back far enough. One
might try to picture to oneself what this assumption signifies by a
comparison taken from another field. Let us choose the history of the
Eternal City as an example.[3] Historians tell us that the oldest Rome
of all was the _Roma quadrata_, a fenced settlement on the Palatine.
Then followed the phase of the Septimontium, when the colonies on the
different hills united together; then the town which was bounded by
the Servian wall; and later still, after all the transformations in
the periods of the republic and the early Caesars, the city which the
Emperor Aurelian enclosed by his walls. We will not follow the changes
the city went through any further, but will ask ourselves what traces
of these early stages in its history a visitor to Rome may still find
to-day, if he goes equipped with the most complete historical and
topographical knowledge. Except for a few gaps, he will see the wall of
Aurelian almost unchanged. He can find sections of the Servian rampart
at certain points where it has been excavated and brought to light. If
he knows enough—more than present-day archaeology—he may perhaps trace
out in the structure of the town the whole course of this wall and the
outline of _Roma quadrata_. Of the buildings which once occupied this
ancient ground-plan he will find nothing, or but meagre fragments,
for they exist no longer. With the best information about Rome of the
republican era, the utmost he could achieve would be to indicate the
sites where the temples and public buildings of that period stood.
These places are now occupied by ruins, but the ruins are not those of
the early buildings themselves but of restorations of them in later
times after fires and demolitions. It is hardly necessary to mention
that all these remains of ancient Rome are found woven into the fabric
of a great metropolis which has arisen in the last few centuries since
the Renaissance. There is assuredly much that is ancient still buried
in the soil or under the modern buildings of the town. This is the way
in which we find antiquities surviving in historic cities like Rome.
Now let us make the fantastic supposition that Rome were not a human
dwelling-place, but a mental entity with just as long and varied a
past history: that is, in which nothing once constructed had perished,
and all the earlier stages of development had survived alongside the
latest. This would mean that in Rome the palaces of the Caesars were
still standing on the Palatine and the Septizonium of Septimius Severus
was still towering to its old height; that the beautiful statues were
still standing in the colonnade of the Castle of St. Angelo, as they
were up to its siege by the Goths, and so on. But more still: where
the Palazzo Caffarelli stands there would also be, without this being
removed, the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, not merely in its latest
form, moreover, as the Romans of the Caesars saw it, but also in its
earliest shape, when it still wore an Etruscan design and was adorned
with terra-cotta antifixae. Where the Coliseum stands now we could at
the same time admire Nero’s Golden House; on the Piazza of the Pantheon
we should find not only the Pantheon of to-day as bequeathed to us by
Hadrian, but on the same site also Agrippa’s original edifice; indeed,
the same ground would support the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva
and the old temple over which it was built. And the observer would need
merely to shift the focus of his eyes, perhaps, or change his position,
in order to call up a view of either the one or the other.
There is clearly no object in spinning this fantasy further; it
leads to the inconceivable, or even to absurdities. If we try to
represent historical sequence in spatial terms, it can only be done
by juxtaposition in space; the same space will not hold two contents.
Our attempt seems like an idle game; it has only one justification: it
shows us how far away from mastering the idiosyncrasies of mental life
we are by treating them in terms of visual representation.
There is one objection, though, to which we must pay attention. It
questions our choosing in particular the past history of a _city_ to
liken to the past of the mind. Even for mental life our assumption that
everything past is preserved holds good only on condition that the
organ of the mind remains intact and its structure has not been injured
by traumas or inflammation. Destructive influences comparable to these
morbid agencies are never lacking in the history of any town, even if
it has had a less chequered past than Rome, even if, like London, it
has hardly ever been pillaged by an enemy. Demolitions and the erection
of new buildings in the place of old occur in cities which have had the
most peaceful existence; therefore a town is from the outset unsuited
for the comparison I have made of it with a mental organism.
We admit this objection; we will abandon our search for a striking
effect of contrast and turn to what is after all a closer object of
comparison, the body of an animal or human being. But here, too, we
find the same thing. The early stages of development are in no sense
still extant; they have been absorbed into the later features for
which they supplied the material. The embryo cannot be demonstrated
in the adult; the thymus gland of childhood is replaced after puberty
by connective tissue but no longer exists itself; in the marrow-bone
of a grown man I can, it is true, trace the outline of the childish
bone-structure, but this latter no longer survives in itself—it
lengthened and thickened until it reached its final form. The fact
is that a survival of all the early stages alongside the final form
is only possible in the mind, and that it is impossible for us to
represent a phenomenon of this kind in visual terms.
Perhaps we are going too far with this conclusion. Perhaps we ought
to be content with the assertion that what is past in the mind _can_
survive and need not necessarily perish. It is always possible that
even in the mind much that is old may be so far obliterated or
absorbed—whether normally or by way of exception—that it cannot be
restored or reanimated by any means, of that survival of it is always
connected with certain favourable conditions. It is possible, but we
know nothing about it. We can only be sure that it is more the rule
than the exception for the past to survive in the mind.
Thus we are entirely willing to acknowledge that the ‘oceanic’ feeling
exists in many people, and we are disposed to relate it to an early
stage in ego-feeling; the further question then arises what claim this
feeling has to be regarded as the source of the need for religion.
To me this claim does not seem very forcible. Surely a feeling can
only be a source of energy when it is itself the expression of a
strong need. The derivation of a need for religion from the child’s
feeling of helplessness and the longing it evokes for a father seems
to me incontrovertible, especially since this feeling is not simply
carried on from childhood days but is kept alive perpetually by the
fear of what the superior power of fate will bring. I could not point
to any need in childhood so strong as that for a father’s protection.
Thus the part played by the ‘oceanic’ feeling, which I suppose seeks
to reinstate limitless narcissism, cannot possibly take the first
place. The derivation of the religious attitude can be followed back
in clear outline as far as the child’s feeling of helplessness. There
may be something else behind this, but for the present it is wrapped in
obscurity.
I can imagine that the oceanic feeling could become connected with
religion later on. That feeling of oneness with the universe which
is its ideational content sounds very like a first attempt at the
consolations of religion, like another way taken by the ego of denying
the dangers it sees threatening it in the external world. I must again
confess that I find it very difficult to work with these intangible
quantities. Another friend of mine, whose insatiable scientific
curiosity has impelled him to the most out-of-the-way researches and
to the acquisition of encyclopaedic knowledge, has assured me that the
Yogi by their practices of withdrawal from the world, concentrating
attention on bodily functions, peculiar methods of breathing, actually
are able to produce new sensations and diffused feelings in themselves
which he regards as regressions to primordial, deeply buried mental
states. He sees in them a physiological foundation, so to speak, of
much of the wisdom of mysticism. There would be connections to be made
here with many obscure modifications of mental life, such as trance and
ecstasy. But I am moved to exclaim, in the words of Schiller’s diver:
Who breathes overhead in the rose-tinted light may be glad!