Conscience & Fanaticism: An Essay on Moral Values

by George Henry Lane Fox Pitt-Rivers

V THE LAWS OF SUGGESTION AND "SUBJECTIVE MIND"

It has long been recognized that ideas rule the world, and that Power is the translation of ideas into material force, but the real nature of world forces and the elementary laws of their operation have been obscured by superstition and prejudice, and little attempt has been made to recognize their true significance.

The great world war has indeed emphasized the immense power of ideas. We hear much of propaganda and ideals. In medicine we hear more of "psychotherapy," or the treatment of disease by persuasive and hypnotic methods. We are aware, too, that our merchants have long known the practical and tangible value of advertisement, that is, the insistent repetition of a coloured statement until it is believed to be true, and that our priests, teachers and politicians have for centuries relied on this method alone. But for the most part these people have little real knowledge or understanding of the power they are using, and of which they are themselves the mere puppets. A supreme illustration is the real impotence of the various belligerent governments to direct or cope with the immeasurable psychic forces now pursuing their cataclysmic course, and their inability to foretell the direction in which they are leading a bewildered world. Nowhere is this more graphically apparent than in Russia, whose kaleidoscopic upheavals have baffled all prophets.

I do not suggest that the causal origin of the European War is purely psychic in character, it may with greater certainty be found years before its disastrous developments, in the steadily increasing pressure of population, assisted by the gradual elimination of the natural checks[41] among the indigent and unfit[42] and the proportionate increase in the burdens of the fit, due chiefly to the growth of democratic ideas and trend of religious influences; this pressure found expression in policies of expansion among the more prolific nations, and in the case of Germany, where relief could not adequately be found in colonization, as a natural consequence engendered assiduous military and bellicose propaganda, which was bound eventually to culminate in a world war.

In order to facilitate a brief analysis of mob-psychology and public opinion, and to examine their rightful place in the science of psychodynamics and their relation to the hypnotic "law of suggestion," I have introduced the term Cosmic Suggestion. There are few thinkers who would attempt to deny that the same factors, processes and influences are observable in the formation of all classes of opinion, whether they are called religious, moral, political or artistic. It is, unfortunately, equally evident that reason, except in the case of scientific opinion, usually plays the smaller and emotion and desire the greater part in their formation. We say that this is unfortunate because emotion never brings us nearer the truth. Poets and ecstatic visionaries have sung the praises of emotion because to them emotion alone was real and the normal medium of truth. On the other hand the investigator is bound to arrive at a different conclusion. "Emotion" has nothing whatever to do with the attainment of truth. That which we prize under the name of "emotion" is an elaborate activity of the brain, which consists of feelings of like and dislike, motions of assent and dissent, impulses of desire and aversion. It may be influenced by the most diverse activities of the organism, by the cravings of the senses and the muscles, the stomach, the sexual organs, etc. The interests of truth are far from promoted by these conditions and vacillations of emotion; on the contrary, such circumstances often disturb that reason which alone is adapted to the pursuit of truth, and frequently mar its perceptive power. "No cosmic problem is solved, or even advanced, by the cerebral function we call emotion."[43]

From the earliest times shrewd observers have commented on the ease with which the passions of men are inflamed and united, often by the least worthy of objects. Dr. Samuel Johnson, describing the progress of an agitator bidding for adherence, tersely remarks, "ale and clamour unite their powers, the crowd, condensed and heated, begins to ferment with the leaven of sedition."[44]

Before proceeding further, it may be well to make a brief examination of the hypothesis most in accord with the results of recent psychological research and ascertainable fact.

It has gradually come to be recognized in scientific circles that recent advances in psychology have made it impossible to pursue that science any longer entirely on a physiological, anatomical and histological basis. It is now also hardly likely to be disputed that not only is consciousness not the sum total of man's psychic activities but that the greater part of them are subconscious or unconscious. Thus, according to Professor James Ward, "our threshold of consciousness must be compared to the surface of a lake, and subconsciousness to the depths beneath it, and all the current terminology of presentations rising and sinking implies this or some similar figure."

Another writer in a recent publication makes use of an analogous illustration by describing human personality as an iceberg, the great bulk of which is always invisible and submerged.[45]