mental. bodily health is injured by making it the object of constant much thought. And if this is true of the bodily functions, it is more the much more so of the mental ones, which are more susceptible of modification as the result of circumstances, and more liable to spontaneous variations, than the bodily functions: and for those reasons more liable to morbid perversions. The quadrumana (apes and monkeys), which of all animals approach the nearest to Man in their bodily structure, are according to Darwin those which most nearly resemble him in their mental character also: and the well-known mischievousness of monkeys, so like that of Mental self-willed children, appears to be a dawning of the same sinful nature which is more fully developed in mankind. nature of monkeys. It is often said that in nature all is beautiful, but in the actions and works of man all is perverse: but this is greatly exaggerated. There are moral anomalies even in the animal world: I do not now speak of monkeys, which probably have a dawning self-consciousness, but of insects, which show no signs thereof:2 and though there is much deliberate perverseness in human actions, yet it cannot be true that all human works are perverse, unless it is true that all works of inventive (as distinguished from imitative) art are ugly and no one will seriously maintain this. The difference between the works of nature and those of man in this respect is one of degree but it is, notwithstanding, enormous. It is not true, as was formerly believed, that the contrast is between Divine and human works. The intelligence which becomes conscious in the brain of the higher animals and conscious of itself in the brain of man, is the same with that which guides the formation of the vegetable and animal organisms, and acts in the wonderful instincts of insects.3 Intelligence is an Contrast attribute of all life. The contrast between the works of unconnature and those of man, is that between intelligence scious intelligence acting unconsciously and consciously :-unconsciously in in nature nature, consciously in the mind. In organic and instinc- and contive life, intelligence acts unconsciously, and for the most telligence 1 See Darwin on the Origin of Man. 2 Page 216. 3 Page 215. between scious in in Man. Contrast between natural human art. part harmoniously and rightly: in mental life self-consciousness has been awakened, and the first effect of this is to set intelligence wrong, causing it to produce ugliness in art, systematic error in science, perversity in conduct, and sin in morals. The contrast will become most clearly visible by comparing the forms of the organic creation with those of the beauty and human arts whereof the object is beauty. As a rule, though not without exceptions, everything in the organic world is beautiful: and there are structures whereof the purpose appears to be beauty, just as in the decorative arts of man: I mean such structures as the tail-feathers of the peacock, the crests of many kinds of humming-birds, and the extraordinary developments of ornamental feathers in the various birds of Paradise. The purpose of these has been attained they are beautiful. How different is human art! Men spontaneously admire beauty: a delicate discrimination of its refinements is perhaps always the result either of culture or of some peculiarly happy organization: but in a child before the dawn of self-consciousness the sense of beauty is healthy in so far as it exists at all. But art cannot arise in this absence of self-consciousness: before there can be art, the attention must be voluntarily and consciously directed to beauty as an object of thought: and the sense of beauty, thus becoming an object of selfconsciousness, is at least in danger of being perverted. I do not now speak of the hideous idols which are still worshipped: these are perhaps in all cases symbolic, and though they are even a stronger instance of the sinfulness of man's nature than purely artistic monstrosities, they are Savage not quite so direct a proof. I speak of such customs as perversi- that of tattooing, which according to some travellers is ornament. really ornamental on the back and round the waist, but must be hideous on the face: and the still more unac ties in 1 If any one says that there is no standard of beauty; that the facts mentioned here prove that there is none: and that beauty and ugliness are only names for what we like and dislike: I reply that, independently of any other arguments, the unquestionable fact that there is a science of musical harmony affords a presumption almost amounting to certainty that there must be equally assured principles of the harmonies of form and colour. countable perversity among some savages, of flattening the heads of their children by bandages. It is not always easy to ascertain how far unnatural practices of this class are due to a perverted sense of beauty, and how far merely to morbid instincts. Mr. Wallace, the eminent naturalist who has explored the Malay Archipelago, remarks that the practice of shaving some part of either the head or the face is so general among mankind that it must be due to an instinct if so, the instinct must be a morbid one: and there Morbid instincts. is perhaps some reason for thinking that the practice of compressing the waist, which is so common among European women and not unknown among European men, is not altogether due to a perverted sense of beauty and refinement, but becomes an easily acquired morbid instinct. 1 practice. There are other perversities of practice which cannot be Other perdue to perversions of the sense of beauty: among which versities of may be mentioned the custom, which I believe is, or was, widely spread among barbarous races, of cutting the flesh so as to make the blood flow, in real or pretended paroxysms of joy or sorrow. Kindred with these are practices of mutilation; the best known of which, though by no means the only one, is the painful and revolting rite of circumcision. Many savage perversities of practice may no doubt be explained as results of intellectual error. shall have to speak of this subject further on. But this is certainly not true of all. It would appear indeed as if those practices which are most irrational and unnatural are the sign and expression of a lawless revolt against nature of that power in man which afterwards attains to true freedom and self-government.3 We thought conscious Thought is a function which is eminently liable to Derangebe deranged by making it the subject of self-conscious- ment of ness. This may be instanced in its simplest form by the by selfwell-known fact that by letting the mind dwell for some time on the most familiar word, it will come to seem strange and unmeaning. Reasoning is generally sound so long as it is unaccompanied with self-consciousness. 1 See 1 Kings xviii. 28. 2 See Note A at end of chapter. It is ness. thus that animals think. Thought in that unconscious and spontaneous state is able to reach but a little way, but so far as it goes it is mostly right and true. It must attain to self-consciousness before it can attain to any high development: but the first results of self-conscious thought consist in its following logic at the expense of reason and truth, and in being enslaved by language, which ought to have been its servant. It is by reason of the disturbing effect of self-consciousness on thought that men often find it easier to believe truly and to act rightly than to state accurately the reasons for their belief and their actions. Every one has heard of the advice of the lawyer to his friend who had to act as a judge without knowing anything of law. "Decide according to your common sense, and you will be right but give no reasons, or you will be wrong." It is no doubt necessary that the grounds of belief should be analysed: but it is not necessary that every man should do this for himself. In other words, logic and philosophy must be studied, but it is not needful that they should be studied by all. And if young men are taught that they have no right to believe or to do anything which they cannot justify in words, the effect will be to make them. not truthful and accurate thinkers, but plausible talkers. But the most remarkable errors of self-conscious thought belong to a more primitive mental state than ours, and are to be found in those early systems of thought where Mytho- religion and philosophy are not yet separated. All mythology, how produced. logy belongs to this class of error. Mythology, says Max Müller, is a disease of language: that is to say, it is produced by the power of language on the mind in causing it to mistake words for things and metaphors for facts. To mention a single instance-what a world of misconception has been caused by the notion that chance, which is really nothing more than a name for the impossibility of certainty, must, because it has a name, have actual existInstance: ence and be an agent: and, with the Romans, even a Deity! of chance. (Fortuna.) But, as Mr. Tylor has remarked in his work deification 1 This instance is mentioned by Archbishop Whately: I think not by Müller. on Primitive Culture, mythology in this sense of the word is probably. a secondary formation:-that which is Animism. most probably the first stratum of superstition consists of what he calls Animism, or the theory which ascribes 1 tional. life and soul to all things. This idea is worked out by Primitive philosophy savages into a complete philosophy of the universe, in a is logical way which is perfectly logical, that is to say consistent but irrawith itself: but utterly irrational, that is to say inconsistent with the truth of things. In the instincts of animals there is no conscious reasoning, but they are perfectly rational, that is to say adapted to the nature of the world around: it is the introduction of consciousness into reasoning which is the source of error among men. One of the most curious instances of this clinging to logic in defiance of reason is the very general practice of supplying the dead with food and other articles for their use in the spiritworld. This is consistent and logical: the spirits of the dead are supposed to use the spirits or ghosts of the food, clothing, and weapons left in their graves: for the Animistic faith, or philosophy, of primitive man recognizes a spirit in everything, animate and inanimate alike. But the strangest, and to our ideas the most unintelligible, instances of the irrational logic of primitive thought probably belong rather to custom and law than to religion or philosophy. One of these is stated in Note C at the end of this chapter. self-con But the most direct effect of self-consciousness in pro- Effect of ducing sinful tendencies is probably when it is directed to sciousness the appetites. When the pleasures of eating and drink- on the ing become the subjects of self-consciousness, so as to be appetites. thought of when they are not present, the effect is a temptation to excess. The love of stimulants appears to be in some way connected with this, though I do not mean that their use is sinful when in moderation. It is remarkable and perhaps significant that the quadrumana, which are name. 1 This doctrine is what Comte calls Fetichism-a very inappropriate Animism is a much better word. Comte's theory that this was the earliest religious or philosophical doctrine among men is amply confirmed by Mr. Tylor's researches. |