Tito Vignoli - Myth and Science
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Tito Vignoli >> Myth and Science
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In the waking state, the whole body and all its organs of relation and
movement are in tension. The cerebro-spinal axis virtually excites the
whole muscular and peripheral system in such a way that relaxation or
relative repose becomes impossible. But the brain, with all its
dependencies and appendices, is not only the organ of thought, but it
stimulates and directs our whole system, as numerous experiments have
shown. In the waking state both these functions are exercised equally,
as far as the impulses and functions of the body are concerned, and as
long as the psychical and organic characteristics of the waking state
continue. But in sleep the exciting influence of the brain is
diminished, and the brain transmits much less of the normal excitement
and normal tension to the spinal axis with its ramifications in the
afferent and efferent nerves; in the waking state an external impression
is promptly conveyed to the centres, whence it returns in corresponding
movements with the usual connection and rapidity, whether reflex or
deliberate. Since in sleep the relative condition is flaccid and torpid,
this action no longer takes place. For if the brain be affected by
strong impressions, and these are followed by corresponding movements
due to reflex action, as is often the case, even in sleep, the dreamer
is only obscurely conscious of them, and they almost wholly depend on
the spinal axis, and the peripheral ganglia.
As we have said, the function of the brain is duplex; it stimulates and
directs, and it is also sentient and conscious, and this second function
is persistent in dreams. Although the brain is no longer directed by a
power which dictates psychical acts and phenomena, yet its automatic
action is not destroyed, and to this the apparent reality of images
seen is owing, since there is no longer any distraction from the
external world, or, at all events, its impulses are so attenuated as to
be unobserved. In such conditions past images recur with an appearance
of reality owing to the mnemonic and automatic action of the brain; such
a tendency exists in the waking state, and the images are associated and
dissociated in a thousand ways, by means of analogies, resemblances,
former combinations of facts, and series of facts analogous to those of
the waking state, and are modified by suggestive impulses. We have
experimental proof, to which I can add my own irrefragable witness, that
the stimulating influence exerted by the brain in the waking state is
dormant in sleep, and that only its automatic act of representation
remains active, with the occasional exercise of an aroused and conscious
will.
The following strange and unpleasant phenomenon generally occurs to me
once or twice a year. All at once, in the midst of a deep sleep, I
become wide awake; I am fully conscious of myself, of the place where I
am, of my position and the like, and wish to move like a person who is
fully awake. Yet for some time this is impossible; the psychical,
cerebral faculty is perfectly awake, and master of itself, but not the
stimulating faculty, so that the limbs do not respond to the first
impulse of the will. All my efforts are unsuccessful; I only succeed in
escaping from this unpleasant situation by uttering with great
difficulty some inarticulate sound, which acts as a shock, and I thus
obtain the mastery of my body, for the nerves of speech and the muscular
movements of articulation also fail to answer to my will. If this occurs
when I am alone, the struggle is severe, and there is a violent shock to
the whole body before its equilibrium is restored and the motor function
of the brain resumes its office.
It is therefore manifest that the stimulating function of the brain is
dormant in sleep and dreams, but its automatic, psychical function
persists; it sometimes happens that the stimulus of the will is awakened
before the stimulus of motion, and that the brain may be aroused to
consciousness for some moments before it has resumed its normal
functions as a stimulating organ, which were attenuated and relaxed in
sleep. The abnormal condition of paralysis proves and confirms this
fact.
Let us now ascertain the cause of the various psychical and
physiological conditions which aim at and often succeed in presenting to
the mind a mere representative sign as a substantial and real image.
What is the cause of the apparent reality of dreams? The image is
clearly a psychical phenomenon, containing a sensible element of which
we are conscious; the fundamental faculty of the perception is exerted
on it as on a real object, and the immediate results are precisely
identical. The reader will remember that we have shown that a
phenomenon involves the intuitive idea of an active subject, so that the
image also, in accordance with the innate faculty of perception, must
normally appear to the mind as such. When this is not the case, it is
because the normal effect of natural phenomena, to which our attention
is constantly directed, and our mental education and hereditary
influence, have accustomed us to distinguish at once between the mere
idea and the real object, and thus we discern the difference between the
normal action of thought and sense, and illusions, hallucinations, and
dreams. But since these psychical and physiological conditions lose
their force when the habit and actions of our waking state are dormant,
the primitive and innate entification of the image quickly recurs, as we
can plainly see from the previous analysis.
This is so much the case, that some savage peoples even now find it hard
to distinguish real events from those of dreams, and this is owing to a
defect in their memory or to the imperfection of their language. In
fact, all civilized and barbarous peoples in the world have without
exception believed, and still believe, in the reality of images seen in
dreams, and their personification has been the source of an immense
number of myths. Even now, with all our civilization and advanced
science, not only the common people, but many of those in fashionable
and tolerably cultivated society, believe in the reality of dreams and
in their hallucinations, and derive from them fears, hopes, and warnings
for their future life.
I will give one instance in a thousand to prove the innate tendency even
in the act of dreaming to transform the image into a real object. It
appeared to me that I was in a large room filled with acquaintances and
strangers, who discussed an event which had really occurred in the city
a few days before. All at once I raised my eyes to the wall of the room,
and saw a large picture, representing a landscape with distant
mountains, streams, cottages, and animals. As I looked, the picture was
gradually transformed into a real object, and I found myself, together
with the company before mentioned, in the midst of the fields, on the
bank of the river, and within one of the cottages.
In another dream, I appeared to be conversing with an old soldier on the
shores of a lake; after some incoherent talk, he began to describe a
bloody battle in which he had taken part; he had not gone far before the
narrative was changed for an actual occurrence, and I was in the midst
of a real battle, such as the soldier had undertaken to describe.
Another night I dreamed that I was reading a tragic poem, relating
terrible deeds of blood and rapine, and suddenly I seemed to have become
an actor or real spectator of that which I had at first read in a book.
In another strange dream I was going over a difficult pass in a hired
carriage, and I seemed to see before me a friend from whom I had parted
on the previous day, when he got into an omnibus to return to the
country. I soon saw in the distance a large coach-builder's
establishment, a vast enclosure with sheds and carriages, and in the
_piazza_ I saw the manager, a man I knew, who had really some
appointment in a carriage manufactory; the building recalled by
association the familiar appearance of the high chimneys which rose
above the roof, and while thinking of those chimneys with my eyes fixed
on the manager, he appeared to me to be changed into a very high
chimney, still bearing a human face. Finally, not to multiply examples,
I remember a dream in which I was present at a popular disturbance,
where one woman, more furious than the rest, came to blows with her
husband, and called him a dog. Suddenly the scene changed, and I was
transported to a courtyard in which there were poultry, pigs, and a fine
dog of my acquaintance, called Lightning. Again the scene changed, and I
found myself in a country district with some friends, exposed to a
violent storm of thunder and lightning.
We clearly see from these facts that whatever may be presented to the
imagination is transformed into a real object in the dream itself, so
that it might be called a dream within a dream, and in the last instance
the transmutation passes through three images and consecutive objects.
This transmutation not only consists in the transition from our waking
thoughts to the image of our dreams, but it takes place in the act of
dreaming; such is the power of the faculty of perception, in which we
find the first origin of myth in man, and its roots also in the animal
kingdom. Thus the genesis of myth, as far as the entification of the
image is concerned, is the same as that of dreams.
The normal illusions of the senses, which are believed to be real by
primitive men, and by those ignorant of physical laws, have a similar
origin. The objection of such phenomena as a mirage, or the tremulous
effect produced in tropical regions by the refraction and reflection of
light on trees, rocks, and mountains, so well described by Humboldt, is
due to ignorance of the laws of nature, and this is in fact an
entification of the phenomenon, occasioned by the innate tendency to
animation which is proper to the perception. In this it is easy to trace
the genesis both of myth and dreams. The fact of hallucination is more
complex, even in its normal state, that is, in those general conditions
of mind and body in which reason has complete command over us.
Without entering into any analysis of the various forms of hallucination
of which many able psychologists and physicians of the insane have
treated, let us turn to the more ordinary cases in which an image of the
mind is projected on the external world so as to appear real. The roots
of such a phenomenon are strictly organic, and belong to the centres in
which the image is formed, as we have already observed; this image
sometimes stands out in such vivid relief on the psychical space that it
seems to be an external, not, as it usually appears in less vivid form,
an internal intuition. The hallucinations which Nicolai describes
himself to have experienced may be taken as a classical example. When
Andral was returning from an autopsy, he clearly saw the corpse
stretched before him as he entered his room. Goethe, Byron, and many
others, have been affected in the same way. I myself have occasionally
had hallucinations of the kind when in a perfectly healthy condition of
mind and body; one, in particular, of a very vivid character, occurred
when I awoke one morning and seemed to see a tall and venerable priest
entering my chamber. It is needless to multiply examples; similar facts
abound in classic books in English, French, German, and other languages.
Let us rather study the phenomenon and trace its origin.
It is clear on the one side that the images of the hallucinations of
sight or hearing appear to have a real existence, so that they may be
observed and studied with ease; and it is also certain that this image
has no external existence, and is simply a cerebral fact, due to the
organs adapted for perception. Without considering the cause of the
external projection, to which I have already alluded, since perhaps its
physiological and psychical genesis is not yet fully understood, we
must consider the image, so far as it is believed to be real.
In cases of normal hallucination the reason is intact, and the observer
is conscious of the illusion, yet notwithstanding this positive judgment
the image has an appearance of complete reality. The cause of this
illusion is evidently the same as that of the illusions of dreams, and
of the origin of myth; namely, that everywhere and always the mental or
natural phenomenon and its image are respectively entified. In the
normal waking state, habit and other causes on which we have touched
render our ideas of things altogether immaterial, as merely psychical
forms and representative signs, but when the excitement of the organs
increases, so as to present them to the consciousness as objective
images, then, owing to the interruption of the ordinary process, they
are suddenly entified, and appear as an external phenomenon.
Hallucinations are therefore explained by our theory, and it is further
confirmed by the hallucinations of animals, and especially by the
delirium of dogs and other animals affected by hydrophobia, or by
cerebral excitement artificially produced by alcoholic and exhilarating
drugs.
If a man is habitually subject to many and various hallucinations, and
his sane judgment esteems them to be such, they are undoubtedly unusual
phenomena, but they do not in any way injure the rational exercise of
the mind. It is only when he believes the images to be real that the
abnormal state begins, termed delirium if it is of short duration, and
madness if it is permanent. We must examine hallucination under these
new conditions.
In the delirium of fever, or in various forms of disease, the cerebral
excitement is so great that not only the deliberate exercise of reason,
but the power of estimating external objects is lost, and the organs of
the senses are so completely altered, that the perceptions themselves
are exaggerated and confused. In this state hallucination reaches its
highest point, and the patient sees, hears, and feels, directly or
indirectly, strange and terrible things: wild beasts, enemies of all
kind, torments; or again, pleasing and agreeable images. Independently
of the alteration in various sensations produced by the morbid
alteration of the special organs which induce them, the real cause of
this phenomenon consists in the objection of mental sensations and
images. Such an objection of images or sensations, considered in the act
which transforms them into a reality, depends on the same cause as all
other acts of perception; there is always an entification of the
phenomenon, which in this case is a vivid internal image, appearing to
be external and real.
The entification of images is still more direct and powerful because in
this morbid crisis the necessary corrections made by reason cannot take
place, since the sick man is for the time deprived of it, and he is in
fact a dreamer, whose condition is intensified by abnormal excitement.
Entification is now displayed in its nude and native state, and serves
to explain the constant mental process, and the true nature of the
representations of the intellect. The transition is easy from delirium
to madness, for although an insane person is not always delirious, but
sometimes calm and composed, yet there is a fundamental resemblance to
delirium in the change in his states of consciousness and its relative
organs, which imply a constant hallucination. The most famous and acute
physicians of the insane estimate that eighty out of a hundred insane
persons are subject to hallucinations. The morbid condition which
generates them is also produced by debility, by anaemia, and the senile
decay of the cerebral organs, since they occur in dementia, idiocy, and
old age, and the physiological and mental causes are the same; the power
of fixing the attention and governing the thoughts is diminished, owing
to the weakening of the vivid consciousness of the external world,
produced by a torpidity of the afferent organs. In these cases the
recollections which are not altogether lost sometimes reappear as
hallucinations. The hallucinations of madness, in its various forms of
dementia, idiocy, and dotage, are all, apart from their morbid and
organic conditions, derived from the same source which produces myths,
dreams, and normal hallucinations; the objective entification of images
is due to the innate faculty of the perception, which leads to the
immediate personification of any given phenomenon. We have shown that,
given a sensation, there naturally arises the implicit notion of a
subject and a cause, and this natural impulse is further developed by
the influence of heredity; both in man and animals the constant and
powerful sense of individual life is infused into the phenomenon
perceived.
The various forms of madness throw a clearer light on this necessary and
primitive fact of human and animal perception. The act of sensation may
then be said to be under its own direction, and generates itself in the
automatic exercise of the brain, as in dreams, without the explicit,
disturbing, and modifying influence of reflection, and the habit of
rational analysis. The act of sensation is spontaneously completed and
developed in and with its own constituents, and since it is isolated
from other modes and exercises of thought, its real nature appears. The
hallucinations of madness, produced by the mental realization of images,
either detached or in association, prove that all our mental images or
ideas have a tendency in themselves to become real objects of
consciousness; with this difference, that a sane man recognizes these
mental entifications by their mobility and incessant alterations, which
contrast with the fixity and permanence of external and cosmic
phenomena.
The following considerations will confirm the truth of these facts. In
our advanced state of civilization, thought may, after so many ages'
exercise, almost be said to have become part of the organism by the
indisputable effect of heredity; and the phenomenon of the recurrence to
memory of past facts and distant places is obvious and intelligible,
since our judgment of them is never subject to illusion, or only in rare
instances and in abnormal conditions. But this judgment is less obvious
and easy in the case of primitive savages who have advanced little
beyond the innate exercise of the intelligence. The rational analysis of
the states of consciousness has not been made, and hence their special
and general distinctions are seen with difficulty or not seen at all.
Consequently the primitive and natural amazement of man must have been
great, when by day, and still more in the lonely silence of night,
persons, places, and his own past acts recurred to his mind, and he was
able to contemplate them as if they were actually present. He was
incapable of giving an explanation of this marvellous fact in the
rational and reflective manner which is possible to psychologists and to
all civilized men. This revival of the past appeared to him as a fact in
its simple and spontaneous reality; he made no attempt to explain it,
but it was presented to his consciousness like all other natural facts.
The only explanation of the phenomenon appeared to him to be that these
images did not recur to the mind by the necessary action of the brain,
but that by their own spontaneous power they were recalled to take
their part within his breast: he supposed the phenomenon to be
objective, not subjective.
Prophecy, for instance, was often supposed to be a recollection, and
some primitive accounts of the genesis of things, handed down by
tradition, were reputed to be inspired, and objectively dictated to the
mind. The Platonic theory of reminiscence relies on these conceptions.
The power which recalled the images to memory was supposed to be
external, and identical with that which raises up the images of dreams;
primitive man traced a fanciful identity between the phenomena of memory
and of dreams, and the distinction between them was not supposed to
consist in the actual images, but in the modes of their appearance in
the waking or sleeping state. The images assumed in the memory a
relative reality, somewhat resembling those of dreams. In fact, some
savages do not clearly distinguish between the images of these states,
and see little difference between the spontaneous recollection of
things, the fancy, and dreaming. This also occurs in children, who at a
very early age often call by name absent persons and things which recur
to their memory; and on the other hand they do not distinguish the facts
of real life from those of dreams. I have observed this fact in several
children.
Among primitive peoples it often happens that an object with which they
are unfamiliar, but which has some analogy with those with which they
are acquainted, becomes associated with the latter, and is constituted
into a compound being, endowed with life. The Esquimaux believed the
vessels commanded by Ross to be alive, since they moved without oars.
When Cook touched at New Zealand, the inhabitants supposed his ship to
be a whale with sails. The Bosjesmanns ascribed life to a waggon, and
imagined that it required the nourishment of grass. When an Arauco saw a
compass, he believed that it was an animal; and the same belief has been
held by savages of musical instruments, such as grinding organs, which
play tunes mechanically. Herbert Spencer mentions similar behaviour in
some men belonging to one of the hill tribes in India; when they saw Dr.
Hooker pull out a spring measuring tape, which went back into its case
of itself, they were terrified and ran away, convinced that it was a
snake. From these facts, which might be multiplied indefinitely, it not
only appears that everything is spontaneously animated by man, but also
that the images of his memory are fused with those which are actually
present, since their respective factors are esteemed to be equally real.
This primitive objection of the images of the memory also occurs in the
mythical representations of dreams, which, as the images of absent
objects, have much in common with the images of the memory. In fact, all
peoples, as we have seen, have believed in the reality of dreams.
The North American Indians believe in the existence of two souls, one of
which remains in the body while the other wanders at pleasure during
the dream. The New Zealander supposes that the dreamer's soul leaves his
body, and that he meets the things of which he dreams in the course of
his wanderings. The Dyak also believes that the soul is absent during
sleep, and that the things seen in dreams really occur. Garcilasso
asserts that this was likewise the Peruvians' belief. A tribe in Java
abstains from waking a sleeper, since his soul is absent in dreams. The
Karens say that dreams are what the _la_ or soul sees during sleep. This
theory is also found among more civilized peoples, as for instance in
the Vedic philosophy and the Kabbala, and it has come down to our days
among the common people, and even among those of some culture.
One belief connected with dreams, generally diffused among all savage
and civilized peoples, is that of the appearance of dead men, or of
their ghosts. Of this all the traditions and popular myths in the world
are full. Such a belief, first excited by the vision of the dead in
dreams, is easily aroused in the savage or uneducated mind, even when he
recalls to memory while he is alone, and especially at night, the image
of one whom he loved in life. Affection, and the lively emotion of
sorrow and desire give such a life-like appearance to these images that
they become objectively present to the mind, to console the mourner, or,
on the other hand, to threaten the murderer. I have more than once heard
persons of all classes, after the death of children, of a husband or
wife, whom they have injured or imagine that they have injured, either
during life or by not fulfilling their last wishes, declare in all good
faith that the form of the dead is often present to their memory and
visible while they are awake; thus implying that the dead mercifully
appear to comfort their mourning friends, or else to reproach them for
not fulfilling their promises. In a word, these images did not seem to
them to be subjective, and an ordinary phenomenon of the memory, but
objective and personal apparitions within the soul. The cases are not
rare in certain dispositions of mind, in which the projection of these
images on the memory gradually produces madness. We must not forget that
psychical phenomena in general are very differently regarded by the
savage and the civilized man, since the latter is accustomed to
analysis, and to the real distinctions of things. If this canon is
forgotten we shall fall into grave errors in the attempt to interpret
the evolution and primitive history of thought and of humanity.
We shall more readily understand the nature and genesis of all these
hallucinations, and of normal and abnormal illusions, if we study
another phenomenon of frequent occurrence which I myself have often had
occasion to observe. I mean the illusion or hallucination which does not
consist in the absolute projection of an internal image with an external
semblance of reality, but which presents it in the twilight as an
object of uncertain form, either in a room or out of doors. It often
happens, as I and others have experienced from childhood, that a dress
or other object lying by chance on a chair, or on the ground, or hanging
on a piece of furniture or a peg, seen in connection with the other
things near it, is transformed into a person or animal, in a sitting or
standing posture or lying at full length, as if it had been a spectre or
phantasm; somewhat like the figures which we all take pleasure in
tracing in the strange and mobile forms of clouds. The fantastic figure
sometimes appears instantaneously and at the first glance, sometimes it
is only gradually made out; but in both cases, as we shall see, its
genesis is the same. Although in the former case that which in the
latter is gradually developed _appears_ to be developed all at once, yet
in reality it passes through the same stages.
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