Hearn laid emphasis on the unity of the past and present, a fundamental principle of psychoanalysis. Hearn saw this idea in Buddhism and hence became attached to the philosophy of this creed, and his reconciliation of it with the theory of evolution is no mere idle dream. Leading Buddhist scholars before Hearn saw the similarity between the theory of heredity as taught by evolution and the doctrine of Karma or transmigration of character. This doctrine of Karma explains also that a man has pernicious unconquered evil instincts because he is allied to ancestors who possessed them strongly. Buddhism taught the theory found in evolution and psychoanalysis, that we contain in ourselves every moral tendency and psychic attribute of millions of people and animals from whom we have descended. We are full of shreds of our ancestors' emotions and characteristics which are buried in our unconscious.
II
Why does Hearn harp on this idea of unconscious memory throughout his work and in his correspondence? Why was he attracted to the question of the eternal persistence of life even before he accepted the philosophy of Buddhism. His pet theory was that nothing could be lost in the universe. In one of his finest essays, "Reverie," in Kotto, he gives us the secret of his life. He tells that the mother's smile will survive everything, for life can never disappear finally from the universe. He first states the materialistic position which assumes that eventually all life will die and naught will be left of our labours and struggles, and then he gives the Buddhistic idea, which holds that nothing is lost in the universe. I think in this essay we have the keynote to Hearn's philosophy. He lost faith in Christianity early and with it a belief in the immortality of the individual soul. At the age of six, he lost his mother, whom he loved, and his scepticism on the subject of immortality made him feel that his mother was gone from him eternally. This was painful to him and He accepted the philosophy of Buddhism as a solace, for it taught something that was not repugnant to his scientific sense; that life can never die out entirely, for the universe always would exist and even if life died out on our planet, those conditions that made it prevail here would reign either in some other part of the universe or at a later time. Hence we all would contribute to that life as our ancestors contribute to our lives. In fact, Hearn once wrote he would not object to being transformed into an insect. So if life went on forever he would still know that mother's smile he had lost in infancy. The Reverie essay is the result of his Œdipus Complex.
In fact, Hearn formulated the idea of the Eternal Recurrence in 1880 before Nietzsche did, who wept when he discovered this by no means new theory in August, 1881, at Silas Maria, 6,500 feet above sea. Hearn's essay on Metempsychosis appeared in the New Orleans Item and was included in a collection published called Fantastics and Other Fantasies. But Nietzsche became intensely pessimistic as the result of his discovery, since it meant all life's tragedies would also recur. Hearn, no doubt, abandoned the theory as a literal possibility after he read Spencer, but he retained his belief in some of the main features of it.
When we recall that Buckle, who was a free thinker in religious matters, still clung to the idea of immortality of the soul because he could not tolerate the thought of never meeting his dead mother; when we remember that scientists like Wallace and Fiske, who were among the pioneers of the theory of evolution, finally embraced spiritualism as a compensation for their lost faith in religion, it should not appear fantastic to trace Hearn's views on unconscious inherited memory and on the Buddhistic conception of Metempsychosis, to his loss of both his mother and his religion; for in his new belief he could meet his mother and still not sacrifice his intellect to his belief.
Psychoanalysis might be applied to other phases of Hearn's writings,—his interest in the gruesome and exotic. It can explain his interest in other races like the coloured people and the Japanese; his passion for physical beauty and his shyness. One thing that impresses the lover of Hearn is the seeming impersonality of his work. Yet though he says little of himself directly, you can see the sensitive, half-blind sufferer throughout the work. For his ideas studied and traced to their source reveal of themselves the reasons why he embraced them.
He has described ideal love, such no doubt as he must have felt, in Karma in Lippincott's Magazine, May, 1890. This story has been only recently published in book form.
His affinity for Poe and his adoption of the name The Raven in his letters to Mr. Watkins is seen in the projecting of himself upon that unhappy genius with whom he had so much in common. He, like Poe, suffered from poverty, from following aristocratic traditions in intellectual pursuit, in a devotion to physical beauty, in a love for French literature, in an interest in extreme suffering, in the divesting of art from morals and in wandering about from city to city.