I
Early in the history of the Society for Psychical Research, Von Helmholtz speaking to Professor Barrett, of telepathy, said, “Neither the testimony of all the Fellows of the Royal Society, nor even the evidence of my own senses, could lead me to believe in the transmission of thought from one person to another independently of the recognized channels of sensation. It is clearly impossible.” Many have followed the example of the psychologist Wundt, in holding that “no man of science, truly independent and without parti pris, could be interested in occult phenomena.” Stranger still, as reported by William James, “An illustrious biologist told me one day that even if telepathy were proved to be true, the savants ought to band together to suppress and conceal it, because such facts would upset the uniformity of nature, and all sorts of other things without which the scientists cannot carry on their pursuits.” Dogmatic skepticism, veiled or overt contempt, and an unreasoning aversion—such was the attitude of the scientific world in general toward the men who, in the early eighties of last century, first seriously grappled with the problems of the weird and the uncanny; while the great majority of educated laymen, almost equally under the spell of the preponderating materialism of the age, heartily endorsed the verdict of the scientists.
Things have not much changed in the years that have passed. It is true that there have been numerous accessions to the ranks of the “psychical researchers” from the scientific world itself. Many men of science—some among them even eminent men of science—have scandalized their fellows by adopting Newton’s ridiculous point of view—“To myself I seem to have been as a child playing on the seashore, while the immense ocean of Truth lay unexplored before me”—and by deeming psychical research not unworthy their personal participation. Crookes, Lodge, James, Richet, Flammarion, Flournoy, Bergson, Lombroso, Morselli, are a few names that instantly flash into mind. And from some great thinkers of non-scientific training, but justly esteemed for their intellectual powers, has come an endorsement of Gladstone’s appreciation: “Psychical research is the most important work which is being done in the world—by far the most important.” But scientists and laymen, so far as concerns the great mass, are still over-eager to deride and belittle the delvers into the occult—who, so their critics say, have been laboring all these years to no purpose whatever, and whose labors, no matter how long continued, can have only futile or mischievous results.
This widespread conviction of the futility of psychical research is evinced in many ways. It is seen in the jesting or scornful comments of writers in the periodical press; it is continually cropping out in the half-contemptuous, half-pitying smile that greets any sympathetic reference to “ghosts” or “telepathy”; it manifests in petulant outbursts from “orthodox” scientists, akin to the outburst of Von Helmholtz, as when our genial friend, the excellent Professor Münsterberg, heatedly proclaims, “As to spirit communications, there are none, and there never will be any.” Perhaps most striking of all is the almost complete indifference with which the published reports of the various psychical research organizations now in existence are regarded by instructors and students alike in many, if not all, institutions for higher education. In one great American university, to the writer’s personal knowledge, the many volumes of the Proceedings and Journal of the English Society for Psychical Research, and of the younger American Society for Psychical Research, are seldom removed from the library shelves except to be dusted. Truth-seekers in this university, it would seem, have no time to waste on the “bosh,” “rot,” and “rubbish” which these silly publications contain.
Now, it may be true—though a number of really learned men believe otherwise—that those engaged in psychical research have not as yet demonstrated scientifically either telepathy or survival; and it may be true that they have set themselves a hopeless task in endeavoring to establish communication between this world and the next. But it decidedly is not true that their investigations have been entirely fruitless. On the contrary, it is safe to say that no other scientific movement ever set on foot has, in the same length of time, contributed so much toward the advancement of knowledge as has psychical research.
Few will dispute that psychology today is the most conspicuous and most promising of the “recognized” sciences. Its marvellous growth during the past quarter of a century is quite generally attributed to the increasing application of the laboratory methods devised by Wundt and his pupils. In reality a large part of the credit—perhaps the larger part—must be given to those “dabblers in the occult,” who, like Sidgwick, Myers, and Gurney, in England, and Janet and Richet in France, thought it not beneath their dignity to study table-tipping, alleged telepathy, and the disputed phenomena of the hypnotic trance. To them, incontrovertibly, we owe the foundation-laying of abnormal psychology, with its manifold practical implications to the physician, the criminologist, and the educator; to them, as will hereinafter be shown, we chiefly owe the opening up of vistas of progress undreamed in the days before scientific psychical research began.
The men who enrolled under Sidgwick in 1882 to form the English Society for Psychical Research, were not the fanatical, credulous “ghost-hunters” they are commonly supposed to have been. Their first task, they saw clearly, was to determine whether the alleged facts adduced in support of the soul doctrine were really facts; and, if facts, whether they were not susceptible of adequate explanation on a wholly naturalistic basis. In the words of Frank Podmore, one of the earliest and most active members of the Society (The Naturalization of the Supernatural, p. 2):
The title which I have chosen for the present book, The Naturalization of the Supernatural, describes in popular language the object aimed at. The facts which the Society proposed to investigate stood, and some still stand, as aliens, outside the realm of organized knowledge. It proposed to examine their claim to be admitted within the pale. And it is important to recognize that whether we found ourselves able to accept the credentials of these postulants for recognition, or whether we felt ourselves compelled to reject them as undesirables, the aim which the Society set before itself would equally be fulfilled. In undertaking the inquiry we did not assume to express any opinion beforehand on the value of the evidence to be examined. Whatever the present bias of individual members toward belief or disbelief, it will not, I think, be charged against us, by any one who dispassionately studies the results ... that any private prepossessions were allowed to pervert the methods of the inquiry. To ascertain the facts of the case, at whatever cost to established opinions and prejudices, has been the consistent aim of the Society and its workers.
In this spirit the Society for Psychical Research attacked the whole strange medley of occult phenomena, from hypnotism to premonitions and hauntings. To most readers of these pages it may seem almost incredible that so short a time ago hypnotism was still outside the pale of science, and was pretty generally regarded as imaginary or supernatural, according to one’s temperament and training. But, prior to the founding of the Society for Psychical Research, only a few inquirers of established reputation—such as Esdaile, Braid, Liébeault, and Charcot—had deemed it a proper and desirable subject of investigation; the scientific brotherhood would have none of it, and frowned on its exponents as self-deluded simpletons or impudent charlatans. As late as 1875 a writer in the Grand Dictionnaire Encyclopédique des Sciences Medicales, summing up in a few words all that was to be said about hypnotism, brushed it aside as non-existent. It was because they questioned dogmatic utterances like this, and because they hoped through hypnotism to gain fresh light on the problem of the soul, that the members of the English Society for Psychical Research listed the study of hypnotism among their principal activities.
The result was not merely the confirmation and correction of much that Esdaile and other earlier inquirers had noted, but also an impressive, and in some respects startling, extension of knowledge concerning the processes of the human mind. Bearing out these discoveries, moreover, came the findings of sundry French savants—Janet, Binet, Féré, etc.—who, about the same time as the English investigators, and in the same spirit of open-minded research, sought to ascertain the true inwardness of hypnotism. On the one hand, the work of the Englishmen and the Frenchmen, between the years 1882 and 1890, made it certain that in hypnotism psychology possessed a wonderful instrument for experimentation. And, on the other hand, their own experiments with hypnotism revealed the various mental faculties—perception, attention, memory, and the rest—in entirely new aspects; paved the way to a correct understanding of hitherto obscure and baffling maladies; nay, even made necessary a radical readjustment of the scientific concept of human personality itself.
In this productive study of the phenomena of hypnotism two names stand supreme—the names of Pierre Janet and Edmund Gurney. Janet, who still is with us, deservedly enjoys today a worldwide fame for the part he has played in the inception and development of psychopathology, or medical psychology. Gurney to most people is not even a name. Yet in the brief period of experimentation that preceded his untimely death, he achieved so much as to suggest that had he lived he would probably have won a place in contemporary science fully as high as that held by Janet. More than one medical psychologist, in all likelihood, has been inspired by Gurney’s researches to specialize in that fascinating and important branch of the healing art—as was Morton Prince, on his own statement to the writer. It was not for medical purposes, however, that Gurney himself experimented with hypnotism: medical psychology was then in embryo, and Gurney was only secondarily interested in its possibilities. His great aim was to ascertain the nature of the hypnotic state, and the condition of the mind during hypnosis.
To review adequately the ingenious methods he adopted and the results he obtained, would delay us unduly. Enough to stress the salient fact that, through a brilliant series of experiments full of interest to modern psychology, he demonstrated the existence of a great undercurrent of mental life, in which the most complex processes are carried on without the individual’s conscious knowledge. Already, to be sure, several students of personality—Hamilton and Carpenter, for instance—had recognized the necessity of postulating something of the sort as the only means of rationally explaining certain anomalies and mysteries of human behavior. But to take it for granted was one thing, to demonstrate it was obviously quite another. And it remained for Gurney’s experiments—together with the concurrent experiments of Janet and his French colleagues—to effect the work of demonstration, and, still more, to trace the operations of this mental undercurrent in channels, and with consequences, formerly unsuspected.
Not until Gurney’s and Janet’s time, to be more explicit, had experimental proof been forthcoming of the far-reaching influence of “subconscious ideas” in affecting human conduct, and of the possibility of initiating trains of thought completely cut off, or “dissociated,” from the field of conscious mentation. This was first convincingly revealed by experiments based on the discovery of the fact that commands “suggested” to a hypnotized person would be faithfully executed at a stated moment after the awakening from hypnosis, and this despite the absence, in the normal waking state, of any conscious recollection of the commands in question. That this actually involved mentation beneath the threshold of consciousness was shown by Gurney in a number of experiments made possible by the further discovery that there are some people who can write “automatically”—that is, without conscious control of the words they put on paper, and even without knowing that they are writing anything. Thus Gurney records, in the course of his detailed record of these experiments (Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, vol. iv, pp. 268-323):
On April 20 [P—ll] was told [while hypnotized] that half an hour after his next arrival he was to wind up a ball of string, and to let me know how the time was going. He arrived next evening at 8.30, and was set to the planchette [an instrument then often used to obtain automatic writing] at 8.43. He wrote, “13 minett has passed, and 17 more minetts to pass.” Some more experiments followed, and it so happened that at 9, the exact time when the fulfillment was due, he was in the trance. He suddenly said “Oh!” as if recollecting something, but did not move; he was then woke, and at 9.2 he walked across the room to where some string was lying, and wound it up....
Another day the same “subject” was told that when I coughed for the sixth time he was to look out of the window. He was woke, and I gave at intervals five coughs—one of which, however, was a failure, owing to its obvious artificiality. He was set to the planchette, and the words produced were, “When Mr. Gurney cough 6 times I am to look out.” At this point I read his writing and stopped it. I asked if he had noticed my coughing, and he said, “No, sir”; but this, of course, showed no more than [that] he had heard without attending. He was now hypnotized, told that I wanted to know how often I had coughed, and at once woke. The writing recommenced, “4 times he has cough, and 2 times more he has to cough.” I coughed twice more, and he went to the window, drew aside the blind, and looked out. Two minutes afterward I asked him what sort of a night it was. He said, “Fine when I came in.” I said I thought I had seen him looking out just now, but he absolutely denied it.
Any doubt that the memory oblivion in the waking state was genuine was removed by the interesting circumstance that though the “subjects”—men to whom even small sums of money meant much—were repeatedly offered substantial rewards if they could state what had been said to them during hypnosis, they were invariably unable to do so. Stranger still, Gurney demonstrated that it was entirely possible to develop, in the hypnotic state itself, different sets of memories, each completely independent of the others; so that, so far as concerned the contents of his consciousness, the hypnotized “subject” seemed to possess two or more personalities, each with its own distinct set of memory-images (Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, vol. iv, pp. 515-521). This may be made clearer by giving a sample of the many curious conversations between one of the “subjects” and G. A. Smith (known in the published reports as S.), a hypnotist often employed by Gurney to assist him in his experiments:
A young man named S—t ... after being hypnotized was told in state A that the pier-head had been washed away, and in state B that an engine-boiler had burst at Brighton station and killed several people. He was then roused to state A, when he proved to recollect about the accident to the pier; after which a few passes brought him again to state B.
S. “But I suppose they’ll soon be able to build a new one.”
Had the pier been now present in S—t’s mind, this remark would have been naturally understood to refer to it, as it had formed the subject of conversation a few seconds before. But he at once replied, “Oh, there are plenty on the line”—meaning plenty of engines.
S. “The pile-driving takes time, though.”
S—t. “Pile-driving? Well, I don’t know anything about engines myself.”
A few upward passes were now made, and it at once became clear that the memory had shifted.
S. “If they have plenty more, it doesn’t matter much.”
S—t. “Oh, they can’t put it on in a day; it was a splendid place.”
S. “Why, I’m talking about the engine.”
S—t. “Engine! What, on the pier? I never noticed one there.”
Again, the same “subject” was told in state A that a balloon had been seen passing over the King’s-road. Some passes were made which carried him into state B, when S. said, “But I didn’t see it myself.”
S—t. “What was that?”
He was now told that two large dogs had been having a fight in the Western-road; and a few upward passes roused him to state A.
S. “But it was a good long time in sight.”
S—t. “The balloon?”
S. “No, the dog.”
S—t. “Dog? Why, was there one on it? A dog on a balloon!”
The “subject” is brought down again to state B.
S. “But it didn’t remain in sight long; it soon went up.”
S—t. “What didn’t? What went up?”
S. “Weren’t we talking about balloons?”
S—t. “No; but one of them dogs looked like a busted balloon when he was down.”
A few upward passes, and S. says, “Which one?”
S—t. “Why, there was only one.”
S. “One what?”
S—t. “Balloon.”
S. “I was talking about dogs.”
S—t. “I don’t know nothing of dogs.”
Three days afterward S—t was again hypnotized, and S. said, “What was that you said about the pier?”
S—t. “Oh, about the head being washed away.”
This, it will be seen, was the memory appropriate to state A. Some downward passes were made, and S. said, “A good thing that things don’t often happen like that.”
S—t. “No, they don’t at Brighton; they do on the Northern lines.”
Here we have the engine accident again—the memory appropriate to state B. The balloon over the King’s-road was now strongly suggested to S; but that idea belonging to state A, it could not be recalled in state B.
In all these conversations, in short, it was exactly as if the hypnotist, S., when talking to his subject in state A, and talking to him in state B, were talking to two different persons, each ignorant of facts known to the other. (The profound significance of this, from a practical as well as a theoretical standpoint will be made evident later.) On the other hand, and in sharp contrast, Gurney, in common with the Continental investigators, also demonstrated through hypnotic experimentation that the memory process as a regular thing is almost incredibly retentive, so that under appropriate conditions it is possible to recall happenings, it may be of earliest childhood, which have long since dropped out of conscious recollection—happenings, even, of which one has never had conscious knowledge. But, indeed, credit for the experimental demonstration of this twofold principle of subconscious perception and subconscious memory—which lies at the very root of abnormal psychology—by no means belongs wholly to Gurney and the French hypnotists. Many other pioneers in the systematic study of the “phenomena outside science” had a hand in proving and elucidating it, notably those who made a special study of crystal-gazing.
The average scientist of that time—perhaps it would be true to say the same of the average scientist of today—had about as much interest in the phenomena of crystal-gazing as he had in the “ravings” of the entranced spiritistic “medium.” He well knew that from time immemorial it had been a practice among the mystically minded to employ crystals, mirrors, or other objects with a reflecting surface, for purposes of divination; and that it had been insistently claimed that, by gazing steadily into such objects, hallucinatory pictures often became visible, imparting useful knowledge about people and events outside the crystal-gazer’s ken. But the scientist dismissed this as merely another evidence of the invincible superstitiousness of mankind. It never occurred to him to try crystal-gazing on his own account; or if it did, he shudderingly repelled the idea. The founders of the Society for Psychical Research were not so squeamish; crystal-gazing was approved by them as a fitting subject for investigation; and ere long, their decision was abundantly vindicated.
One member of the society, Miss Goodrich-Freer, finding that she possessed the crystal-gazer’s “gift,” sedulously cultivated it for experimental purposes, and made as careful and detailed a record of what she observed as would any scientist employed in the vitally important task of watching and recording the wriggles of a tadpole. A fact which soon made itself evident to her was the frequency with which her crystal-visions represented incidents in her own past life, sometimes incidents dating back to early childhood. On one occasion, she notes, somebody was speaking in her presence, though not to her, of Palissy ware. She happened at the moment to be staring aimlessly at a dark green scent-bottle. At once there appeared in it a picture of a man furiously tearing up garden palings. She was wondering what this meant, when it was followed by a second picture showing, with the greatest distinctness, the library where as a child she had kept her books. Among these, Miss Goodrich-Freer now remembered, was one she had not seen for many years called The Provocations of Madame Palissy. Then she also remembered that one of this lady’s provocations was a bad habit her husband had of using the first material that came to hand as fuel for his furnace; and immediately the meaning of the first picture became clear to her.
Similarly one of her earliest experiences in crystal-vision was a picture of “a quaint oak chair, an old hand, a worn black coat-sleeve resting on the back of the chair—slowly recognized as a recollection of a room in a country vicarage, which I had not entered, and had seldom recalled, since I was a child of ten.” Again, looking in her crystal she saw a copy of a medical prescription for which, a few hours before, she had been vainly hunting. On further inspection she perceived, without being able to read the words, that it was in the handwriting, not of her physician, but of a friend. Acting on the hint she searched through her friend’s letters, and found the medical prescription folded in one of them, where, she had reason to believe, it had been for more than four years. It could have been put there only accidentally, yet it was clear that she must have subconsciously perceived what she was doing when she slipped the prescription into the letter, and that the mechanism of memory had registered an image of her absent-minded act. Many other examples of the memory registration of subconscious percepts are given in Miss Goodrich-Freer’s reports to the Society (Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, vol. v, pp. 486-521; vol. viii, pp. 484-495). For example:
I find in the crystal a bit of dark wall, covered with white jessamine, and I ask myself, “Where have I walked today?” I have no recollection of such a sight, not a common one in the London streets but tomorrow I will repeat my walk of this morning, with careful regard for creeper-covered walls. Tomorrow solves the mystery. I find the very spot, and the sight brings with it the further recollection that at the moment we passed this spot I was engaged in absorbing conversation with my companion, and my voluntary attention was pre-occupied.
To take another example. I had been occupied with accounts; I opened a drawer to take out my banking-book. My hand came in contact with the crystal, and I welcomed the suggestion of a change in occupation. However, figures were still uppermost, and the crystal had nothing more attractive to show me than the combination 7694. Dismissing this as probably the number of the cab I had driven in that day, or a chance grouping of the figures with which I had been occupied, I laid aside the crystal and took up my banking-book, which I certainly had not seen for some months, and found, to my surprise, that the number on the cover was 7694. Had I wished to recall the figures I should, without doubt, have failed and could not even have guessed at the number of digits or the value of the first figure. Certainly, one result of crystal-gazing is to teach one to abjure the verb “to forget,” in all its moods and tenses....
I saw in the crystal a young girl, an intimate friend, waving to me from her carriage. I observed that her hair, which had hung down her back when I last saw her, was now put up in young-lady fashion. Most certainly I had not consciously seen even the carriage, the look of which I knew very well. But next day I called on my friend; was reproached by her for not observing her as she passed; and perceived that she had altered her hair in the way which the crystal had shown.
Next as to sounds not attended to.... A relative of mine was talking one day with a caller in the room next to that in which I was reading, and beyond wishing that they were further I paid no attention to anything they said, and certainly could have declared positively that I did not hear a word. Next day I saw in a polished mahogany table, “1, [Earl’s]-square, Notting Hill.” I had no idea whose this address might be. But some days later my relative remarked, “H. (the caller aforesaid) has left Kensington. She told me her address the other day, but I did not write it down.” It occurred to me to ask, “Was it 1, [Earl’s]-square?” and this turned out to be the case.
From investigators in other departments of psychical research came—and still comes—evidence no less impressively testifying to the marvellous power of the human memory, with its subconscious awareness even for sights and sounds not consciously perceived. It was further discovered that memory-images not infrequently emerge above the threshold of consciousness in the form of spontaneously externalized visual and auditory hallucinations, sometimes of a striking sort. The discovery was also made that, in persons of a peculiar temperament, subconscious memories might be so completely switched off, or “dissociated,” from the field of consciousness that on coming into it again they would be unrecognized, and would give rise to the conviction that they related to matters which could not possibly have been within the range of previous knowledge, conscious or subconscious. Perhaps the best illustration of this curious and important psychological fact is found in a case reported quite recently by Mr. Lowes Dickinson.
Among his friends was a young lady who developed a form of “trance mediumship,” in which she claimed to visit another world and meet and talk with people there, particularly a certain Blanche Poynings, described as an earth-dweller in the time of Richard II. This “spirit,” speaking through the voice of the entranced “medium,” gave as proof of her identity many interesting particulars regarding her sojourn on earth. She had been, it seemed, an intimate friend of Maud, Countess of Salisbury, and much of her talk had to do with that lady, and with the Earl of Salisbury. Odd little incidents in the latter’s life were vivaciously recounted—such as his throwing an image out of his chapel into a ditch, where it was found by a wayfarer, who repainted it and set it up in a bake-house. “Blanche” also commented in an amusing way on the appearance of Joan, “The Fair Maid of Kent,” and other historical personages; told about her own exile from Court; and gave much information respecting the customs and manners of the period.
All this interested and puzzled Mr. Dickinson, because his friend, whose veracity he could not doubt, assured him that she had never made a study of the events of King Richard’s reign, and had not so much as read anything about it. Yet, as he ascertained by patient research among old chronicles, the alleged “spirit” unquestionably possessed accurate and extensive knowledge of the men and women who had been prominent at King Richard’s Court, and of happenings which in some instances were barely mentioned by the annalists. The only logical explanation seemed to be that this was a genuine case of “spirit communication.” But one day, taking tea with his friend and her aunt, Mr. Dickinson made a discovery that placed the affair in an entirely different light.
The subject of automatic writing chanced to come up, and it developed that the “medium” owned a planchette, and often experimented with it. At her investigator’s request it was brought out, she placed her hands on it, and questions were put to it concerning the Blanche Poynings statements. These questions elicited the unexpected announcement, by the automatic writing, that corroboration of every statement made by “Blanche” would be found in a book called Countess Maud, written by Emily Holt. So soon as planchette wrote the name of this book, the “medium” exclaimed that she believed there was a novel with that title, and that she had once read it. Her aunt confirmed this, but neither she nor her aunt could recall anything about its plot or characters, nor even the period with which it dealt. Following the clue thus strangely given Mr. Dickinson soon had Countess Maud in his hands, and found mentioned in it, with corresponding detail, almost every person and every incident given by the “spirit” of Blanche, who, in the novel, was of quite secondary importance. Even then his mediumistic friend could not recall anything about the book, except a vague impression that she had read it as a child.
He now caused her to be hypnotized, and questioned her anew, when he learned to his surprise that she had never actually read Countess Maud herself, but had heard her aunt read it aloud. “I looked at it, and painted a picture in the beginning. I used to turn over the pages. I didn’t read it, because it was dull. Blanche Poynings was in the book; not much about her.” And, in response to a question as to how the Blanche Poynings impersonation really originated, she made the reply, of great interest psychologically, “There was a real person named Blanche Poynings that I met, and I think her name started the memory, and I got the two mixed up.”
These, then, were some of the first-fruits of systematic psychical research: Proof that percepts may be subconsciously, as well as consciously acquired, and that, as Pierre Janet so tersely put it, “Whatever has gone into the mind may come out of the mind”; proof that the emergence of subconscious memories may be in the form of self-induced hallucinations; proof that such memories sometimes develop a dynamic force, impelling the individual to seemingly inexplicable conduct; proof that the personality itself may be artificially dislocated, so that whole areas of memory sink temporarily below the threshold of consciousness; proof that, even below the threshold, intelligent mentation continues in a fashion similar to the mentation consciously directed by the waking will; and, finally, proof that in hypnotism, crystal-gazing, and automatic writing, invaluable means are available for exploring the remotest nooks and corners of “the subconscious.” From one point of view their establishment of such facts as these was, indeed, disconcerting to the “psychical researchers,” for it obviously made increasingly difficult the demonstration of the survival of the soul on evidence afforded by phenomena like apparitions, hauntings, and mediumistic utterances. But it also marked an enormous advance in man’s knowledge of himself, and in his control of his development here on earth.
The first to appreciate this—at any rate, the first to turn it to practical account—were the Frenchmen who, like Gurney, had attacked with special vigor the problems raised by hypnotism. Sharing to the full the belief of their English colleagues that here was a subject which science ought to have investigated long before—many of them, in fact, expressing their sympathy with the general purposes of the Society for Psychical Research by becoming members of it—the French savants’ motive in invading the realm of the occult had in most cases been intellectual curiosity rather than any ardent desire to prove life after death. They were not so much concerned with the possible bearing of hypnotic phenomena on the soul problem, as with their possible bearing on man’s earthly welfare. And no sooner was it borne in on them that hypnotism did have practical uses, than the majority concentrated their efforts on ascertaining what these uses were, and to what extent, and with what consequences, the phenomena of the hypnotic state were paralleled in everyday life.
The leader in this movement—which, with Gurney’s experiments in England, may be said to constitute the beginning of abnormal psychology—was Pierre Janet, who, in 1881, at the early age of twenty-two, had been appointed professor of philosophy in the college of Chateauroux, and soon afterward received a similar appointment in the College of Havre. At Havre, Janet took up in earnest the investigation of things psychical, studying mediumistic phenomena, and making a series of experiments in hypnotic telepathy that brought him into mutually helpful relations with Gurney, Myers, and other active workers in the Society for Psychical Research. But from the first he was specially interested in the peculiarities of the mind in hypnosis, and his interest in this particular problem became all-absorbing when he observed that even the most bizarre hypnotic phenomena were sometimes spontaneously produced. Perhaps most influential in determining the future course of his life-activities was his discovery that hypnotization was not always necessary to effect the strange dissociation of personality evinced in, for instance, the case of Gurney’s “subject,” S—t, cited above.
Janet himself, experimenting with Madame B., the peasant wife of a charcoal-burner, had been astonished to find that when hypnotized she developed a personality markedly different from that of her normal waking life. The waking Madame B. was a timid, dull, ignorant woman; the hypnotized Madame B. (who called herself Léontine) was bright, vivacious, even inclined to be mischievous. Between the two personalities, again, there was an absolute cleavage of memory; each knew nothing of the other’s thoughts and actions. And after a time, to Janet’s profound astonishment, the Léontine personality began to manifest spontaneously. In an article contributed to the Revue Philosophique, for March, 1888, he records (translation by Frederic Myers):
She had left Havre more than two months when I received from her a very curious letter. She was unwell, she said, worse on some days than on others, and she signed her true name, Madame B. But over the page began another letter in a very different style, and which I may quote as a curiosity, “My dear good sir, I must tell you that B. really, really makes me suffer very much; she cannot sleep, she spits blood, she hurts me; I am going to demolish her, she bores me, I am ill also, this is from your devoted Léontine.” When Madame B. returned to Havre I naturally questioned her about this singular missive. She remembered the first letter very distinctly ... but had not the slightest recollection of the second.... I at first thought that there must have been an attack of spontaneous somnambulism between the moment when she finished the first letter and the moment when she closed the envelope.... But afterward these unconscious, spontaneous letters became common, and I was better able to study their mode of production. I was fortunately able to watch Madame B. on one occasion while she went through this curious performance. She was seated at a table, and held in her left hand the piece of knitting at which she had been working. Her face was calm, her eyes looked into space with a certain fixity, but she was not cataleptic, for she was humming a rustic air; her right hand wrote quickly, and, as it were, surreptitiously. I removed the paper without her noticing me, and then spoke to her; she turned round, wide awake, but surprised to see me, for in her state of abstraction she had not noticed my approach. Of the letter which she was writing she knew nothing whatever.
To Janet this strange occurrence, when viewed in conjunction with phenomena manifested by two or three other of his “subjects,” was chiefly significant as hinting at the possibility that the same mechanism which produced the various phenomena of the hypnotic state—from hallucinations, loss of memory, and automatic execution of “suggestions” given during hypnosis, to the production of blisters, paralyses, and other physical effects of hypnotic suggestion—might be operant in, and responsible for, the protean manifestations of that baffling disease hysteria, with which Madame B. and the other subjects were known to be afflicted. On this theory, hysteria—which until then had been generally assumed to have a physical basis—would be essentially a mental malady; and its fundamental characteristic would be some degree of dissociation of personality.
Already, as Janet was aware, Charcot had demonstrated the inadequacy and downright error of the prevalent medical notions concerning hysteria, and had also rendered a splendid service to humanity by compelling recognition of the fact that sufferers from hysteria often develop symptoms—paralyses, growths, etc.—all too easily mistaken for the symptoms of some really organic disease perhaps incurable, or curable only by the aid of the surgeon’s knife. But while he had thus revealed the wholly functional character of hysteria, and had saved countless sufferers from useless and unnecessary operations, Charcot had thrown little or no light on its causation and mechanism, and this was the problem which Janet now undertook to solve, removing from Havre to Paris, and associating himself with Charcot in the latter’s clinic at the Salpétrière Hospital.
Observing, experimenting, recording—with a truly catholic mind profiting from the observations and experiments of other workers, including his fellow-members in the Society for Psychical Research—he gradually achieved his epoch-marking demonstration of the rôle played by “dissociated memories” in the causation, not alone of hysteria, but of all functional nervous and mental troubles. He showed that severe emotional shocks—frights, griefs, worries—might be, and frequently were, completely effaced from conscious recollection, while continuing to be vividly remembered in the depths of the subconscious; he showed that thence they might, and frequently did, exercise a baneful effect on the whole organism giving rise to disease-symptoms, the particular types of which were determined by the victim’s “self-suggestions” (just as Mr. Dickinson’s “medium” suggested to herself the Blanche Poynings impersonation); and he showed how important it was, as a preliminary to effecting a permanent cure, to get at these dissociated memories and drag them back to the full light of conscious recollection.
To get at them he made use, as medical psychologists all over the civilized world are today making use, of hypnotism, of automatic writing, even of the “mystical” crystal-gazing, the use of which for medical purposes was directly suggested to him by the experiments of Miss Goodrich-Freer. Janet himself, it should perhaps be added, would be the last to disavow the assistance he received in one way or another from the “psychical researchers” of England; indeed, he has not forgotten that everything he has accomplished is the outgrowth of his early studies in the “occult” phenomena of hypnotism. It is to be regretted that many of his present-day fellow-workers in the domain of scientific psychotherapy are not equally appreciative of the fact that every “cure” they put to their credit—every hysteric, neurasthenic, or psychasthenic patient whom they send on his or her way rejoicing in a restoration to health—is a living witness to the beneficial results that have flowed from the patient labors of the courageous pioneers, who, at the risk of their scientific reputations, so boldly adventured into the psychical thirty years ago.
We shall have more to say in a later article on what society owes to psychical research.
THE WAR
BY A HISTORIAN
When for slight reason a continent shakes with the tread of marching battalions, it is easy to fall into moral despair. We seem to confront a world-order that limits the sway of reason between nations, and gives full scope only to the hatreds and destructive ingenuities of mankind. In the wholesale deliberate slaughter of multitudes of men of good will, workers, lovers, husbands, fathers suddenly dedicated to systematic homicide of their fellows, piling up in blood and travail grievous burdens for their own children’s children—in such a spectacle the thoughtful mind at first finds only nightmare. And nightmare intolerable it is, if to the end of time a few out of pride or fear or sheer incapacity shall thus be able to decree the last sacrifice and swift death to the many.
In such moments of natural dejection, the mind must rally to its own defence. We live after all in a moral world. Intelligence has persisted and grown through worse occultations. The future may hold out hopes of a world-order in which the nightmare of the present cannot repeat itself. Meanwhile if we face the thing steadily in the light of its underlying causes, considering the moral issues involved, looking forward to the just retributions that the world will surely require of those who have shattered its peace, we may reëstablish in ourselves the sense of an overruling moral order, toward which we may each in his degree work. Such an inquiry into the responsibility for the war will lift the obsession of universal, insensate violence. Even the offenders are obeying race loyalty, and responding to certain obsolete ideals which yet are deeply grounded in history, while the defenders are vindicating the cause of the world’s peace by the only course left open to them. Against the brute law of strongest battalions, they have been forced to fight, that ideals of forbearance, comity, and honor may still be held among nations.
On the broader moral issue of the war, mankind has already spoken. The military isolation of Austria and Germany is no more marked than their moral isolation. In the history of warfare, has there ever been so uniform a verdict of the human race? Though instinctive and rapid, the sentiment may also be rationally grounded. Let us test it by an examination of the causes of the war.
What made the war possible is the fixed antipathy between impatient, ruling Germans and restless, subject Slavs. Such racial discord is naturally most acute in Austria, where a domineering Teuton minority holds in uneasy subordination the Slavs of Bohemia, Austrian Poland, and the Balkan and Adriatic range; but it is a distinct factor also in Prussia, where an embittered and losing campaign against Polish national feeling in the Posen region has long been waged. These disharmonies are an inevitable incident of expansion without the consent of the annexed peoples. The part of wise statesmanship is to bear much of this sort of opposition, trusting to healing process of just government and time. In Austria and Germany, however, these antipathies, were deliberately fomented by the war clique. The surest way of getting huge army appropriations is to show a foe or a rebel in being. In 1908 the unrest of all the Balkan Slavs was increased by Austria’s assuming permanent tenure of Bosnia and Herzegovina, where by treaty she had been exercising a temporary, police jurisdiction. The annexation extinguished national hopes, and while it undoubtedly established order, did so in arbitrary and oppressive fashion. The fact that Germany supported the annexation, intimidating the natural ally of the Balkan Slavs, Russia, accentuated the racial feud. The recent heroic struggle in the Balkans, which resulted in the aggrandizement of the Slavic powers of Servia, Bulgaria, and Montenegro, naturally excited the Slavs under Austrian domination. Austria, on the other hand, had maintained a persistent hostility to her southern neighbors, and after the war, had by diplomatic means, and again aided by Germany, frustrated many of the legitimate hopes of Servia and Montenegro. An illogical and already derelict Albania, is the chief result of Austria’s dog in the manger policy. Her smouldering resentment against Servia was raised to an intense pitch by the deplorable assassination of the Crown Prince and his wife. It was an act as foolish as heinous, but it was also a natural product of arrogant and oppressive rule. Though the deed was done on Austrian soil, the assassins were Slavs, and the plot traceable to Belgrade, and this gave Austria the chance to hold Servia nationally responsible for the crime. She issued an ultimatum in which Servia was virtually required to avow responsibility for the outrage, to investigate and punish anti-Austrian agitators, and in such proceedings to admit Austrian officials. In effect, Servia was asked to plead guilty, on penalty of invasion, and to place her case in the hands of Austria as both prosecutor and judge.
The ultimatum of July 23, was outrageous, such as no state ever dreams of issuing to an equal. Weakened by two wars and apparently menaced by overwhelming force, Servia drank the cup, hesitating only at the last dregs. With the bulk of the Austrian demands she complied, demurring only to the waiver of her own national estate implied in alien interference with her police. Even this humiliating stipulation she offered to arbitrate. The reply of Austria was to set 300,000 troops across the Danube, and to shell the undefended city of Belgrade. The history of war has shown few more baseless aggressions. Austria had reckoned on Servia’s weakness, and on the willingness and ability of Germany, as in 1908, to hold off Russia. Austria unwittingly reckoned with forces to which Russia and Germany are small. The analogy of the Bosnian annexation was false. There the deed had been carefully prepared and delay had blunted the effect of the final move. This time Austria suddenly and without preparation outraged the moral sense of the world. The official plea is that in some mysterious way the Austro-Hungarian Empire was threatened in its very existence by the machinations of the Serbs at home and in the newly annexed Austrian provinces. That plea is hollow. Austria was neither more nor less in peril than she has been for sixty years; she was merely enduring a slight, however sensational, exaggeration of the chronic difficulties of dominion over alien and unwilling races. The reality is that Austria was incensed by the prosperity of the new Slavic nations in possessions that she had prospectively marked out as her own. To confuse ulterior ambitions with immediate rights is characteristic of the mentality of neo-Imperialism.
So far, for convenience, I have spoken of Austria and other powers as units, and with the usual rhetorical personification. The practice is misleading. When we say Austria, in the political sense, we mean a mere handful of high administrative and military officers, a few diplomats and journalists, a portion of a small and exclusive aristocracy, a pack of manufacturers of arms and military contractors, a rabble of speculators hoping out of troubled waters to fish extraordinary profits—that is political Austria, that with slight differences is the permanent war party in every nation. The peace of the world ultimately hangs on the nod of a few hundred individuals—men at best of intense, narrow, and backward-looking vision; at worst basely interested in the destruction of their fellow beings, accustomed to regard carnage as normal business. The problem of insuring the world’s peace is that of putting such men out of control, and replacing them by men who think the thoughts and feel the feelings of modern civilization. Incapacity to grasp the modern man, is the defect of the war caste everywhere. It indulges mediæval alarms, appeals to factitious loyalties, speaks an obsolete tongue. Politically Austria is still very much where Metternich left her. A crafty balancing off of the aspirations of new nationalities has been the method of consolidating the artificial sway of the Emperor. There has been a constant disregard, perhaps ignorance, of the generous motives that move in modern society. The aged and afflicted Emperor has many times shown himself to have an insight superior to that of his counsellors. Had the present emergency not caught him infirm in body and spirit, I believe the event would have been very different. Free from his controlling hand, the war machine has worked almost automatically its fitting product.
When we say Austria and Germany, we must distinguish clearly between the peasants of many tongues, the thrifty tradesmen, the ingenious manufacturers and hardy artisans, the scientists and scholars, the keen students of public betterment, the artists and musicians,—between these socially useful people with their women and children, upon whom falls the actual burden of this war,—and a little, complacent, opinionated minority, miseducated, aloof from the generous instincts of humanity, dead to the kindling enthusiasms of the new century,—a little complacent, pitiful, minority which from any outcome of the worst war reaps its private harvest of profit, promotion, and prestige. Any genuine representation of the real Austria and Germany would have made this war impossible, any adjustment looking to permanent peace must include the elimination of the misrepresentative administrators who have frivolously plunged a continent into war.
In a moral analysis of the causes of the war, the single ambiguous term is Russia. On the face of it she promptly rallied to the support of her fellow Slavs in Servia, by diplomatic protests at Berlin and Vienna and by mobilizing on the Austrian border. Humanitarian and political motives combined to force some kind of intervention. Without denying the bond of race, Russia could not permit any Slavic nation to be ruthlessly overborne. Honor in the highest sense and policy combined to dictate some such course as Russia actually took. The official statements of Austria and Germany waver between two attitudes. On the whole, the Austrian apologists condemn the Russian move as merely defective and unhappy in form. Had Russia not mobilized, the Servian situation might have been adjusted diplomatically. As things went, the provocative moves of Russia, forced similar precautions first on Austria, then on Germany, with the unforeseen result of a general war. The speech of the German Chancellor, however, echoes that of the Kaiser, in charging Russia with deliberately provoking Germany and Austria into war.
To me the issue, though evidently a crucial one,—for if Russia is deliberately making a war, most of the European world is being dragged into devil’s work,—is set in such technical fashion by the German manifestoes, that their own sincerity is open to doubt. It remains a somewhat interesting academic question what a Russian protest without mobilization might have effected. The obduracy of Germany in the face of more formidable military preparations by France and England, seems to indicate that a wholly pacific intervention by Russia would have effected little. On an alternative theory, Germany and Austria are fighting solely on a point of technical honor. They couldn’t “take a dare” from a threatening neighbor. Doubtless some of the arbiters of war in Germany and Austria did honestly so feel. But in so feeling they were parrotting the phrases and indulging the alarms of forty years ago.
The figment of a ruthlessly expansive Russia has today little reality behind it, but for militaristic ends it is still a most useful bugbear. Twice in a generation Russia has tasted the bitter fruits of heedless aggression. Today she is overtaxed, not merely by the arrears of these wars, but also by the great task of assimilating her present subjects. Her political situation at home is one of instability. Direct gain from venturing to support Servia, Russia had none to hope for. Twice she has stood aside while her sphere of influence in the Balkans was being repartitioned. In short, there is no conceivable reason why Russia should have invited war at this time, and every reason why she should have desired peace. Her mobilization must be interpreted in that light. Ostensibly it was done pari passu with similar preparations in Austria and Germany, but suppose she began first. Mobilization means just what those who order it mean. It is not per se an offence, much less a cause of war. Russia made most solemn protestations that she would fight only in the last resort. All the world except the Germans and Austrians believed these assurances.
What weakens the Austrian case is the unduly spectacular demonstration she made on the Danube. Ostensibly she was engaged in a punitive expedition which might have been satisfied with the occupation of the offending capital, and an indemnity. It is probable that Russia and the world, rather than hazard a general war, would have tolerated a reprisal, which however inherently excessive, did not transcend the usual bounds of such enterprises. But Austria hurled half her effective force into Servian territory. Surely she had given ground for the inference that no argument unaccompanied by show of force would deter her. In our day we shall probably not know what Austria actually intended towards Servia, but it is plain enough that, granting the whole thing was a merely punitive move, it was exaggerated with the insolent thick-headedness characteristic of military bureaucracies. At best it can only be said that Austria needlessly blundered into a demonstration that must be alarming to Europe and most offensive to Russia, without correctly calculating either the moral reaction of Europe or the limits of Russia’s forbearance. It must be conceded, however, that the Austrian militarists had been grievously exasperated by the murder of their Prince, and the impulse to seek somewhere some sort of vengeance was, however mistaken, entirely natural.
So much cannot be said for the conduct of Germany. Her grievance was remote and indirect, her public sentiment relatively calm and tractable. A word from her would have checked Austria at any time. Accordingly upon Germany falls the heaviest responsibility for the war. From her power and detachment she was doubly in a position to play the peacemaker. There are those who think that the Kaiser and his counsellors foresaw the whole outcome and deliberately hastened it. I am unwilling to think such baseness of any human being, and find the evidence for such a suspicion as yet lacking; the whole transaction seems to show a blundering from step to step, making each decision not on principles of common sense, but under some esoteric code of military honor, honor soon being forgotten in the pursuit of military success. Germany’s official attitude, as voiced by her Chancellor, is that she was forced to mobilize under menace at her Russian and French borders. This is the best construction that can be put on her case. Whether one accepts this plea or not, will depend on his view of the motives that prompted the Russian and French mobilization. Would France and Russia have waited quietly during long negotiations, or were they awaiting the favorable moment for an invasion? Did they want peace or war? Considering the little advantage and the certain sacrifice that each nation finds in this war, the answer can hardly be in doubt. There is not the slightest indication that either had any intention of invading Germany, or anything to gain by it. But the militaristic mind is trained to see in every movement of foreign troops a direct threat, and it is credible enough that the Kaiser’s counsellors were intellectually incapable of grasping the idea of a mobilization in the interest of peace. For years they have propounded the axiom that to negotiate without show of force, is fruitless waste of time, and now they add the paradoxical corollary, “But Germany will not treat with any nation that makes a show of force.” Obviously Germany could have mobilized while continuing to treat. There were evidences that Austria, had her face been saved, would have reconsidered her rash move. From the British “White Paper” it is plain that, had Germany effected any slight modification of the Austrian demands, England would have stood out of the war. The fact that three weeks after the declaration of war Russia was hardly ready for an advance shows that Germany was not immediately menaced by the Russian mobilization. The German ultimatum which cut short both the direct negotiations between Vienna and St. Petersburg and Lord Grey’s promising plan of mediation was a crime against civilization—and stupid military policy as well.
The German attitude may again and most simply be construed as blindly loyal support of an ally right or wrong. It is a purely technical duty that Italy very sensibly repudiated. In the sense that Germany had unquestionably countenanced the ultimatum to Servia, she would seem committed. But such committals are subject, after all, to humanity and common sense, and to the conduct of the ally to whom support has been engaged. No nation is bound to risk its very existence for a rash ally. Yet on the theory of pundonor, that is where Germany finds herself today. The stern unreasoning maxims of a military caste must have counted for much in Germany’s obduracy. No motive of interest, immediate or remote, would at all justify or account for the assumption of a hazard involving the continuance and integrity of the Empire itself.
It is certain that Germany underestimated the hazard. A dynastic war with Russia she was willing to accept and almost courted. The contingent hostility of France she apparently did not fear. For securing the neutrality of England she had a most plausible programme. The explicit warnings from London she believed to be bluff. She probably counted on a servile Belgium. How badly she had misconceived her world, the event promptly proved. England and France were as ready to make the last sacrifice for ideals of international moderation and good faith as Germany for mediæval punctilio; industrial Belgium was capable of heroic resistance.
All the official statements of Germany abound in technicalities which to common sense are negligible. The precise amount and chronology of French and Russian provocation at the border, the amount of infraction of Belgian neutrality implied in the secret presence of French officers—all these matters are weighed with the solemnity and exactness of the seven degrees of the lie. The very language is that of the tiltyard or fencing floor. Such a move implies another; to the thrusts of Russia and France, Germany always parries in the forms. This was throughout the temper of the Wilhelmstrasse and of the German ambassadors at the danger points, Vienna and St. Petersburg. Had the Germans wanted the war, they could not have acted a whit otherwise. It is entirely possible that the secret memoirs of the future, will show that the whole clumsy transaction was merely the Kaiser’s parody of the astute machinations of Bismarck in 1870.
The position of France was in all main regards a defensive one, although she was bound as well by treaty to support Russia. Against unavowed German military movements, France openly reinforced her frontier, meanwhile seeking a diplomatic solution. Germany once more took the ground that she would not negotiate with a foe in process of mobilization, and precipitated the rupture by an ultimatum. In a larger sense France is defending her own civilization and her own influence among nations against the pretension of Teutonic preponderancy in Europe.
England’s participation in the war was required, first, by her naval agreement with France; next, by her determination to maintain the neutrality of the small nations Luxembourg and Belgium. For several years the English in the North Sea and Channel and the French in the Mediterranean, have mutually engaged to defend each other’s interests in those respective waters. This meant that imminent war found the French fleet in southern waters, and her northern and western coast open to Germany’s attack. Sir Edward Grey in his first statement before Parliament promised that England would live up to her bargain, and if necessary undertake the naval defense of the French coast. This was the frank acknowledgment of a minimum obligation, to break which, Mr. Asquith later justly remarked, would have utterly discredited a private individual. England’s next move was determined by the appeal for aid of neutralized Belgium. England demanded a statement of Germany’s intentions as regards Belgium and the other neutralized powers, and when the note was answered by the hastening of the invasion of Belgium, declared war.
Sound national policy as well as honor forced the decision. England could not take the risk of Germany at Antwerp. And German assurances to respect the sovereignty of Belgium had been proved worthless in advance by Germany’s violating the neutrality she was pledged to maintain. It is significant that the bullying sophisms with which Germany had confronted her Continental neighbors were not even hinted at in the case of England. There was no longer any disinclination to confer with a power in a state of martial preparation. There were numerous suggestions by which England might defend France passively, there was even a hint that the violated neutralities would be respected, for a consideration. In any case the evident preparedness of the British fleet was not regarded as disqualifying England as a negotiatory power, though as a matter of fact the bounds of Germany were never more effectively attacked than when sealed orders were issued to Admiral Jellicoe. Germany could, when she wished, deal with a potential foe in arms,—deal patiently and at length. The point of honor raised against France and Russia should be interpreted in the light of the repeated offers to buy off England.
England had the good fortune to take the clearest and most disinterested stand of all the embroiled powers. She was bound by a special obligation, which she could not dishonor, but which, had the Germans engaged not to attack France or her colonies by sea, might have left England a neutral. She was driven to arms by the ruthless molestation of neutral Belgium. It was the cause of civilization. In no particular have international law and world peace been more developed than in the neutralization of states. To attack this is to attack in perhaps its most vital spot the progress of the world. It is at best the act of a barbarian and an outlaw, and when committed upon a people who have offended in nothing but in asserting the right that the aggressor himself has guaranteed, it is the act of a savage. That there is a penalty for violating a neutralized state, the presence of England in this war is most exemplary evidence. She has truly taken up arms in the cause of peace.
Reviewing the motives of the combatants, Austria and Germany are fighting for the prerogatives and ideals of a politico-military hierarchy; Russia is fighting for a little nation of kindred blood and identical faith which had been outrageously attacked; France is fighting in self defense and for her treaty obligations; England is explicitly fighting for the principle of neutralization. In a larger sense the various motives of the powers embattled against Austria and Germany merge in the need of a gigantic police enterprise. We have on a tremendous scale the attempt to chastise two criminally aggressive powers, which Mr. Norman Angell proposed, on a smaller and less ruinous scale, as a means towards securing peace. The spirit that animates the European coalition against the two central Empires is that a small nation should not be brutally entreated by a stronger by reason of its greater strength, nor a neutralized nation be molested by violation of its soil and slaying of its citizens. If we hold clearly in mind this police aspect of the war, we are in a position to weigh some of the possibilities.
The success of Austria and Germany would mean the extinction of what little international law and morality has been painfully built up through the centuries, the impact of the mailed fist throughout Europe, the rigid rule of a pedantic and tyrannical bureaucracy, the diminution of the variety and vitality of western civilization, the clamping upon the world for an indefinite future the most unendurable bonds of militarism. Fortunately there is small reason to dread so dire a disaster for humanity. The stars fight in their courses against those who would undo the work of time.
The success of the Triple Entente, may, as it is directed, take us far towards permanent peace, or once more establish a military tension that in its turn must produce new wars. What is all important is that the police character of this war should not be lost sight of. It is always easy for the most generous causes to sink to a level of immediate small interests—the Crusaders forgetting the Holy Sepulchre while Constantinople is being looted. Such temptations will beset the Triple Entente in the event of a triumph. Meanwhile, it may be the part of France and England to restrain the bitterness of Russia, who is engaged in a war essentially racial. It is necessary that the lesson administered to Germany and Austria be complete and convincing. Their best wishers can only desire for them a prompt and sharp chastisement. The peace of the world requires either the reduction of Germany to military impotence or a change in the arrogant temper of her ruling class.
Since the war has been occasioned by the stubborn folly of a military and diplomatic caste, the minimum of reform, is that that caste should be deposed in Austria and Germany. France set an example over forty years ago. Such deposition to be effective would apparently involve such constitutional changes that it is difficult to see how either the Hapsburg or Hohenzollern dynasty could logically survive the revolution. In the light of history neither would be missed.
Historically, the notion of a central European Empire has meant nothing but harm. Through the Middle Ages the cheap parodists of the Cæsars trafficked when they might, and fought when they must, claiming territory at large, setting race against race, and pontiff against king, raiding and looting rich neighboring lands rather than waging war, fomenting religious persecution, opposing by trickery and force the development of the new races and nationalities. Such was for centuries the record of the Holy Roman Empire. For Europe its legend has ever been baleful. Everybody knows that the House of Hapsburg inherits by direct descent this tradition, and Austria with its loose hold over many races is today a simulacrum of the Mediæval Empire, owing her new lease of life, after the Imperial idea had discredited itself, to the suppression of Hungary with the aid of Imperial Russia. In the Emperor Franz Josef we have an individual superior to his origins, but he inevitably inherited the diplomatic and military caste of advisors and administrators who have brought Austria to the present pass. The mentality of this hierarchy was fixed after the Napoleonic wars, at the moment when reaction was exaggerated, and has not changed with changing times.
At least the Austrian Empire and its ruling caste had the warrant of tradition. In Germany the tradition was recently made to order by the genius of Bismarck. The mediæval caste which Austria inherited, Germany deliberately created for herself. The Empire rose out of no instinctive need of the race, from no demand of the numerous small states and free cities, but as the clever utilization of a brilliant military triumph. What war gave, war could take away. The Empire that was proclaimed at Versailles might be terminated at Potsdam. The offence of the Empire is not its title and form but in the changing for the worse of the German character. Governments are worth just what they produce in national character. The German temper is naturally genial, thrifty, deliberate, patient, scholarly and musical. Official Germany has developed an intolerable arrogance that threatens the whole world. The Kaiser has mediævalized Germany’s ruling caste, and is the symbol of that process.
Personally I do not believe that the Triple Entente will be called upon to dispose of the Hapsburg and Hohenzollern dynasties, any more than in 1871, Germany was burdened with the disposition of Napoleon III. Like causes produce like effects, and when Austria and Germany shall have awakened from red dreams of conquest, to the gray reality of defeat, they may be trusted to call to account these responsible for their humiliation.
With an Imperial Austria and Germany, the Triple Entente could only deal most sternly, always along those modern lines of penology which do not avenge the offence, but see to it that the offender be not allowed to repeat it. On the theory that the present administration of Germany and Austria is to be perpetuated, nothing less than the crippling of those powers could guarantee even a few years of peace. With a reorganized Germany and Austria, the allies could and should deal far more generously than Germany did with the bantling French Republic. Belgium, for violated neutrality should obviously be made Germany’s preferred creditor.
Into more speculative matters I will only briefly inquire. There will naturally be some readjustment of the central European map to make political and racial lines more nearly coincident. Many of the historic states which have been whipped or cajoled into the two Empires may reëmerge. A number of small neutralized states in central Europe is among the possibilities. How much of such a process the loosely articulated Austrian Empire can stand is problematical. Some kind of a coherent Germany should emerge from the disaster, and all that is most certainly and valuably German will be preserved. German victory would overwhelm it under militarism. The intellectual primacy of Germany has never depended on the legend of the Empire. It was acknowledged before the Empire was dreamed of, and would survive if the Empire were only an unblest memory. The real Germany has today only friends in the world. To many of us she is an intellectual foster mother and very dear. We hope to see her relieved of disguising mediæval frippery, and once more her radiant and edifying self. In the Kaiser’s proclamation he protests against world wide jealousy and hatred of Germany. Without mincing words, it may be admitted that the world is justly hostile to him and what he represents. He identifies himself and what he represents with Germany. When she shall have set that misunderstanding straight, she will find in the world only friends and sympathizers.
Looking to the future, and especially to the cause of peace, the war suggests certain reflections. If the war results only in a consciously suppressed Germany and Austria kept in order by the armies of the Triple Entente, nothing much will have been done. If the ruffian temper of German officialdom persists, Europe will merely have lavished once more her treasure, tears and blood in the old inconclusive way. The hope lies in a solution so just that the defeated nations may accept it, so wise that it may safely include a general reduction of armaments. The cause of peace is already the gainer by a sensational demonstration of the fallacy of the stock sophism that the only guarantee of peace is competitive arming. The way in which the little spark struck on the Danube overran Europe proves that competitive arming is not merely the ready occasion of war, but of war on the most costly and disastrous terms.
But pacificists should not press their momentary advantage beyond the bounds of common sense. There is already a fanatical tendency to denounce war as such, instead of seeking out and denouncing those who have made war without just cause. Of course war abstractly is just as much and just as little moral or immoral as a cyclone. It would be quite as logical to meet and pass resolutions against the earthquake that filled peaceful Messina with human carrion, as to denounce wholesale this or any war. The case of Belgium suggests that it is not the moment for any sensible person to waste his time in working for complete disarmament. Had she trusted solely to the treaties that protected her, how complete would have been her humiliation! Belgium also shows most instructively that the maintenance of an effective military morale does not imply militarism. None of the Belgian officers who held the cordon of Liege had been taught that his honor as a soldier might at any moment require him to sabre an unarmed civilian. Yet the Belgian officers gave a sufficiently good account of themselves against those who had been trained in the bullying tradition. With Belgium still in view, and recalling what would have been her fate had she trusted solely in the treaties that protected her, no sensible person could now advise any nation to disarm below the reasonable requirements of defense. It is possible however that these limits may be greatly reduced by right thinking among nations. Already the individual is measurably free to criticise his own country when engaged in a war that he deems unjust. How great a liberty that is few of us realize. The next step is freedom for large bodies of individuals to refuse to serve their country in a war waged without popular consent and palpably unjust. A people thus minded would be the greatest check on that interested bureaucracy that any military establishment, however, moderate, involves. How far we still are from that, the rallying of the socialists to all the colors shows plainly.
Perhaps the most fertile notion arising from the situation is that of an international police function to be exercised by the most enlightened nations. Something of this there was, though motives were badly mixed, in the Spanish-American war; the notion has plainly governed President Wilson’s Mexican policy. Indeed this police right has at all times been pretty freely claimed by strong powers against weak. It is a tremendous moral gain to see the principle asserted against strong powers who are imperilling the good order of the world,—and this irrespective of the outcome of the war.
A most valuable demonstration has been made of the validity of the principle of neutralization. Since small neutralized states are not for the future to be abandoned to any strong aggressor, they may safely be multiplied. Here may be a solution of the problem of racially varied central Europe. Everything depends upon England and France holding their representative function loyally to the end, and avoiding the national egotism that war in the past has usually aroused. If they are faithful to the charge they have explicitly undertaken, a new era may open for humanity.
The part of pacificists is to avoid phrases, and deal with facts. In the long run there can be no peace so long as individuals put their lives at the disposal of any kind of leader who waves the flag in any kind of cause. So long as nations are unreasoning mobs the moment the trumpet sounds, it will be idle to depose military castes; others will promptly form, and in their turn prevail. Accordingly the educational campaign of the pacificists must continue,—continue, however, with the frank admission that the sword has often in the past been drawn for ulterior righteousness and peace, and that if the time ever comes when from mere horror of war men decline to draw the sword in a clearly righteous cause, so exanimate a world will enjoy precisely the peace it deserves. We must beware of considering peace and war as respectively bonum and malum in se. In the present case, to have yielded to Germany would, in the lowering of the moral tone of Europe, have been more disastrous than the unhappy war that has resulted from a single outrageous move: for submission would have meant that the world was content to continue in the twentieth century the ethics of Metternich and Bismarck, while the fact of the war means that the twentieth century world is prepared, at whatever cost, to repudiate the neo-mediævalism that paradoxically imposed itself upon the international politics of the nineteenth century—prepared to work out a better ethics and politics, looking to a more peaceful future. Meanwhile the present task of civilization is to avert an imminent Prussian Peril, and to humble the new Tamerlane who has thrust a continent into war. Should he win, no nation is safe.
THE WAR
BY AN ECONOMIST
It is early to hold inquest upon European civilization. But to attempt to forecast the findings of the historian-crowners of the next period of peace, is neither presumptuous nor premature. Experience has taught us much of the evolution of the written record of a war. After our Civil War we had two distinct historical traditions, Northern and Southern. Nearest the event, personalities, deified and damned, loomed portentously. “If Lincoln’s character had been different—if Jeff Davis had been more forceful”—why, perhaps there might have been no war, or its issue might have been other than it was. In a later stage, Civil War history, though still sectional, accepted the obligation to set forth and make plausible the motives animating either side. Finally, sectionalism is fading from Civil War history, at least in so far as the work of the trained writer is concerned. Whether we are Northerners or Southerners, we see in the great war the natural outcome of the irreconcilable conflict between two economic and social systems, each seeking expansion to the detriment of the other. A particular personality may have worked to bring some of the contending forces to a focus; a particular political movement may have hastened, another may have retarded, the final appeal to arms. Given, however, the underlying social economic situation, given, too the existing limitations upon the political intelligence, North and South, and the appeal to arms was inevitable. Neither party, to be sure, can be absolved from the charge of wrong-doing, or even of crime. But it is not now so important to strike a balance of guilt as it is to determine the conditions that made wrong seem right in the eyes of otherwise moral men.
When the present war is over there will be a flood of nationalistic histories. The literary representatives of each party will endeavor to roll the whole blame upon the enemy. Vast significance will be attached to personalities; emperors and kings, statesmen, prelates, journalists, will stand forth in light supernal or infernal, according to the point of view. Were the Servian authorities in league with the assassins of the Archduke? Did the German emperor dictate the terms of the Austrian ultimatum? Was the Czar preparing war while pretending peace? Was Sir Edward Grey watching for an opportunity to crush the German fleet? In a later stage impersonal political forces will assert their claim to the foreground of history: the expansive tendencies of Russia; the fatal pride of armed Germany; the pretensions of England to the empire of the seas. Ancient antagonisms of race and nationality, of culture and religion, will aid in explaining what would otherwise remain inexplicable.
No one will dispute the fact that certain individuals in positions of power worked actively to bring on the present crisis, nor that acts were committed that deserve the execration of mankind. It will not be denied that ancient political and cultural antagonisms essentially conditioned the present war; but for such antagonisms the peace would have remained unbroken. Still, these forces are, in a sense, static, and hence not adequate to explain change. The Russian is not more aggressive, the German is not more arrogant, nor the Englishman more intent upon naval dominance, than they were twenty years ago. Pride of race and intolerance of religion have been with us always, and there is no evidence of their recent intensification. What chiefly needs explanation is that for a generation the consciousness of Europe has been filling up with fighting concepts. The fact has been noted by all serious students of European international relations. It is forcibly demonstrated by the enthusiasm with which the several nations, each with a reason of its own, has entered the present conflict. Desperate efforts have been making, for years, to prepare for the struggle that was regarded as inevitable.
Accordingly we can impute to the acts of particular persons little more than the choice of time and occasion for the outbreak of hostilities. The time may have been inauspicious; the occasion may have been one that will not look well in history. For the underlying forces working cumulatively toward an issue, we must, however, look elsewhere than to personal volition.
The greed of the armament industries and the incessant playing upon popular opinion by their subsidized organs have often been assigned to a chief rôle in the drama of international discord. Competitive military preparations, drawing to themselves an increasing share of the intellectual energies of a nation, have long been regarded as a menace to the peace of the world. Every organ seeks to exercise a function. The Crown Prince of Germany, in his panegyric of militarism, expresses poignant regret that all the splendid military forces of the Empire should be expended futilely, in peaceful show. Professional warriors want war, and will work to bring it about.
The future historian will doubtless give weight to the above mentioned forces, as well as to many others that can not here be touched upon. But he will assign vastly more importance than we of today, to the national antipathies engendered by the scramble for colonial possessions, and to the motives giving rise to it. It may be worth our while, even now, to fix our attention upon this aspect of the question. Not only for the light that may be thrown upon the fundamental causes of the present conflict, but also for the grounds we may discern for conjectures as to the international relations of the future.