DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.42067#0012
2
Preface
influenced by mental conditions. Hence our hesitating wonder at
the phenomena of hypnotism and suggestion in which these lines
seem no longer sharply drawn. Our cultural environment has im-
pressed this view upon our minds so deeply that we assume
as a fundamental fact that material phenomena, particularly out-
side of the field of human behavior, can never be influenced by
mental, subjective processes. Still, every ardent wish implies the
possibility of fulfilment and prayers for objective benefits or for
help do not differ in principle from the attempts of primitive man
to interfere with the uncontrollable course of nature. The credulity
with which fantastic theories bearing upon health are accepted, the
constant rise of religious sects with abstruse dogmatic tenets, as well
as the fashions in scientific and philosophic theory prove the weak-
ness of our claim to a rational view of the world.
Anyone who has lived with primitive tribes, who has shared their
joys and sorrows, their privations and their luxuries, who sees in
them not solely subjects of study to be examined like a cell under
the microscope, but feeling and thinking human beings, will agree
that there is no such thing as a “primitive mind”, a “magical” or
“prelogical” way of thinking, but that each individual in “primitive”'
society is a man, a woman, a child of the same kind, of the same
way of thinking, feeling and acting as man, woman or child in our
own society.
Investigators are too apt to forget that the logics of science,—
that unattainable ideal of the discovery of pure relations of cause
and effect, uncontaminated by any kind of emotional bias as well
as of unproved opinion,—- are not the logics of life. The feelings
underlying taboo are everpresent among us. I remember that as a
boy, when receiving instruction in religion,— that is in dogma,— I had
an insuperable inhibition against uttering the word “God”, and I
could not be brought to answer a question that required the answer
“God”. If I had been older I should have searched for and found
a personally satisfying explanation for this inhibition. Everyone
knows by experience that there are actions he will not perform^
Preface
influenced by mental conditions. Hence our hesitating wonder at
the phenomena of hypnotism and suggestion in which these lines
seem no longer sharply drawn. Our cultural environment has im-
pressed this view upon our minds so deeply that we assume
as a fundamental fact that material phenomena, particularly out-
side of the field of human behavior, can never be influenced by
mental, subjective processes. Still, every ardent wish implies the
possibility of fulfilment and prayers for objective benefits or for
help do not differ in principle from the attempts of primitive man
to interfere with the uncontrollable course of nature. The credulity
with which fantastic theories bearing upon health are accepted, the
constant rise of religious sects with abstruse dogmatic tenets, as well
as the fashions in scientific and philosophic theory prove the weak-
ness of our claim to a rational view of the world.
Anyone who has lived with primitive tribes, who has shared their
joys and sorrows, their privations and their luxuries, who sees in
them not solely subjects of study to be examined like a cell under
the microscope, but feeling and thinking human beings, will agree
that there is no such thing as a “primitive mind”, a “magical” or
“prelogical” way of thinking, but that each individual in “primitive”'
society is a man, a woman, a child of the same kind, of the same
way of thinking, feeling and acting as man, woman or child in our
own society.
Investigators are too apt to forget that the logics of science,—
that unattainable ideal of the discovery of pure relations of cause
and effect, uncontaminated by any kind of emotional bias as well
as of unproved opinion,—- are not the logics of life. The feelings
underlying taboo are everpresent among us. I remember that as a
boy, when receiving instruction in religion,— that is in dogma,— I had
an insuperable inhibition against uttering the word “God”, and I
could not be brought to answer a question that required the answer
“God”. If I had been older I should have searched for and found
a personally satisfying explanation for this inhibition. Everyone
knows by experience that there are actions he will not perform^