§ 5 The Beliefs of Immature Minds
All these grounds and causes of belief, evidentiary and non-evidentiary (except Logic and Science) are common to both mature and immature minds: but their proportional influence with individuals or with societies is very different at different stages of development; and in immature minds and in the lower stages of culture, the power of the non-evidentiary causes is excessive. Probably the chief cause of the growth of common sense in the generality of men is an increasing regularity of social life, as (notably) in the bloom of the classical civilisations and in the last four hundred years.
Perception, in normal circumstances, is accepted by all as a matter of course or, rather, of necessity: it controls the activities of practical life in hunting and in industry, in making weapons, hoeing the ground, building houses: however, these labours may sometimes be modified or interrupted by the intrusion of beliefs derived from other sources. If a savage sings a spell to his prey, or weapon, or tool, or keeps the head of a slain enemy on a shelf that his victim’s soul may assist him as a slave, he may thereby increase his own confidence in the work of hunting or gardening; but, otherwise, if his work be no better, neither need it be the worse for such fancies. The properties of matter exact practical recognition, without which nothing can be done. Even magical practices presuppose a sane perception of the central facts: as who is acting, for what purpose, when and where, with what and toward whom. Upon this basis there may be an astonishing superstructure of imagination-belief; but there are limits to the effectiveness of such beliefs.
M. Levy-Bruhl, indeed, in a very interesting book, maintains88 that, under the influence of social ideas (représentations collectives), the primitive mind actually perceives things differently from what we do. Whilst we succeed in attaining an objective presentation, eliminating subjective associations, with primitives propriétés mystique, forces occultes are integral qualities of the object. He grants that, in certain cases of immediate practical interest, we find them very attentive and able to discriminate slight impressions, and to recognise the external signs of an object on which their subsistence or even their life depends; but holds that, in a very great majority of cases, their perceptions are over-weighted by subjective elements. This doctrine reverses (I venture to think) the real relations between perceptions and other causes of belief and their proportionate influence in savage life. It is not only where subsistence or life is at stake that backward peoples see things as they are: in merely experimental tests, Dr. Rivers found amongst both Papuans and Todas, that, as to suggestibility in perception, they showed a high degree of independence of judgment.89 Their confidence in perception is not, like imagination-belief, occasional, modifiable for convenience, liable to lapse in course of time, dependent on the assent of a crowd. So far as occult or mystical attributes are by a savage assigned to things, such as magical force to a weapon, they constitute a secondary, imaginary integration with the percept. Such imaginary attributes cannot, like perception attributes, be verified by sensation: compare the hardness of a spearhead with its magical force.
The peculiarity of savage beliefs is due, not to corrupt and clouded perception, but to the influence of desire and anxiety upon their imagination, unrestrained by self-criticism and reinforced by the popular consensus. The savage’s imagination is excited by the pressing needs of his life in hunting, love, war, agriculture, and therefore by hunger and emulation, hate and grief, fear and suspicion. Imaginations spring up in his mind by analogy with experience; but often by remote or absurd analogies; and there is no logic at hand and not enough common sense to distinguish the wildest imaginative analogies from trustworthy conclusions. The same pressing needs and the same emotional storms often affect a whole tribe, and simultaneously stimulate every one’s imagination; and originating (no doubt) in ancient times and slowly accumulating and condensing, there grows up a mass of public imagination-beliefs, which are inculcated into every individual by tradition and common ceremonies. Such beliefs embodied in stories and formulæ, and associated with rites and customs, have for a long time the strength of custom in governing the behaviour of individuals and in tribal respect; but they prove at last to be weaker than custom, inasmuch as the observances may continue whilst the beliefs are forgotten or replaced by others, as the progress of culture makes it necessary to think of the old rites in a different way. In their flourishing period they extensively influence practical affairs, sometimes helpfully or harmlessly, sometimes injuriously and disastrously. In general, imaginations are prevented by biological necessity from modifying a tribe’s conduct beyond certain limits; but, exceptionally, they result in tribal insanity, tending toward, if not accomplishing, the tribe’s destruction, as in extreme cases of the practice of human sacrifice or of the ordeal by poison.
Indeed, so violent and tyrannous is the power of superstitious beliefs in many cases, that it may be difficult to understand how they are almost entirely born of the imagination. In a civilised country there are always current some beliefs as imaginative and absurd as any to be found in the middle of Africa; but surviving amidst a greater mass of perception-beliefs and positive ideas about industry and commerce, they have lost much of their driving power; and when the imaginative character of any belief has been recognised, it passes into the region of fine art or mythology, or even of ridicule. If such things have any place in our life, we turn to them of personal choice in the intervals of affairs. Under the influence of the fine arts or of literature treating of such things, our emotional states may be intense; but they are dissociated from action, exist for their own sake, have an appropriate tone (æsthetic) which marks their lack of energy, so that they require only an imaginary satisfaction. With a backward people there is much less “positive” opposition to their imaginative prepossessions and pursuits; what seems to us absurd, seems to them necessary; the actions and observances that express their beliefs are not performed as a matter of personal choice, but of public custom; the ends to be obtained (they think) are the same as those of what we call “business.” And it must be so. Considering the function of superstition in promoting political evolution, it is plain that primitive man must have been capable of believing and doing those things which (within certain limits) had so much biological and social value.
To understand how the magical and religious beliefs of savages and the play-beliefs of civilised man, having a common source in imagination, are (in spite of strong contrasts) closely allied, we must call to mind the many degrees of intensity of play-belief in ourselves, varying from the momentary entertainment of playing with a child, through many grades of fiction or ceremony, down to a deeply serious frame of mind, a profound movement of dread or compassion that may long outlast our play. A child’s absorption in such beliefs is more intense than ours; but circumstances prevent his attaining to the solid faith of a savage. The child of civilised people has little or no support in tradition (except from nursemaids); he is not driven by the desires and anxieties of subsistence; and he is frequently interrupted by his seniors. The savage has an overwhelming tradition and authority, pressing anxieties and no seniors. Until the civilised sceptic reaches his shores, there is, for the average tribesman, nothing but tardy experience or social fatigue to check his vagaries. His imagination vies with the sense of reality, often overpowers it; yet his beliefs show many signs of their insecure foundations.
It is not only the influence of society and tradition that renders imagination-beliefs coercive to a savage; in the immature mind of the individual there are certain conditions favourable to their prevalence.
(a) The process of imagination itself, the memory and the picture-thinking of savages, seems to be more vivid, sensuous, stable, more like perception than our own normally is. “The Australians,” says Spencer and Gillen, “have the most wonderful imagination.”90 They often die of it; and so do Hindoo peasants, Maories, Fijians, Negroes and others, if they know they have been cursed or have broken a taboo. With the Melanesians, says Dr. Coddrington, thinking is like seeing;91 and Dr. Rivers has confirmed this statement. Hence there is a tendency to accept imaginations as perceptions are accepted; and to believe in the efficacy of rites, because the mere performing of them with an imagined purpose makes their purpose seem to be accomplished. When a man of intense and excited imagination makes an image of an enemy, and stabs it, that his enemy may suffer, his action gratifies the impulse to stab, as if he wounded the enemy himself, and revenge seems to be a present fact. Similar intensity of imagination is found in civilised children—greater than in ordinary adults. Savages, again, seem to dream more vividly and convincingly than is usual amongst ourselves, and are said to be more liable to hallucinations. Physiological conditions of the immature brain (childish or savage), in which excitement does not rapidly spread through many associated neurones, may be the basis of the vividness of imagination, dreaming and hallucination.
(b) But more important than any intensity of picture-thinking to the growth and persistence of imagination-beliefs, is the want of a mental standard, by which they might be discredited. It is true that even at a low level of culture individuals are found for whom common sense constitutes a private standard, and who are sceptics in relation to their tribal beliefs.92 But such a private standard cannot be communicated, and for the great majority of the tribesmen common sense is no confident guide; and perhaps they are even incapable of effectively comparing their ideas. At any rate, one reason why we believe our memories and not our imaginations is that, whilst in both cases the images (or elements of images) entering into them are derived from experience, in memory the relations of images in place, time and context are also derived directly from experience; whereas in imagination images (or their elements) are reconstructed in relations in which they have never been experienced, by analogies of experience (often distorted) or by condensations the most capricious. Therefore, to make imaginations credible to us, even in play, the relations of experience must be faithfully imitated, as (e. g.) in Robinson Crusoe; or else our emotions must be so strongly excited as to possess our minds with the fiction to the exclusion of all criticism. But with immature minds observation of fact, outside the practical, repetitive, necessary course of life, is not exact and coherent; and, accordingly, their memories are not coherent, especially as to time-relations; so that, by comparison with such memories, irregular imaginations suffer little. There is not enough orderly memory or general knowledge to discredit even absurd imaginations; for so far as observation and memory are disorderly, generalisation, conscious or unconscious, is impossible. Hence not only traditionary myths may be monstrous and arbitrary, but occasional tales of private invention, amongst both children and savages, usually exhibit disconnected transitions and impossible happenings. Yet they satisfy the immature mind.
(c) There are certain other conditions of the immature mind that hinder the comparison of ideas and, therefore, the criticism of beliefs. About every imperative need, such as success in hunting, with its desires and anxieties, rites and ceremonies grow up to gratify imaginatively the desires and relieve the anxieties; and ideas of these observances form relatively isolated systems. To us these ideas usually seem absurd and irrelevant when compared with the savage’s own experiences and his other practices. We see a hunter, for example, endeavour to gain his ends by two distinct series of actions. In one he fasts, enchants his weapons, casts spells upon his expected prey; in the other he carefully prepares his weapons, patiently tracks his prey, warily approaches and slays it. The latter series we approve and appreciate as causation; the former we ridicule as hocus-pocus, contributing objectively nothing to the event (though probably it increases his confidence); and we pity “the heathen in his blindness.” And, indeed, he may be said to be mind-blind; for in observing the rites, his attention is so occupied by means and end, and caught in the circuit in which these ideas revolve, and he is so earnest in carrying out the prescribed actions, that he cannot compare them with the really effective actions, so as to discover their absurdity and irrelevancy. In short, a state of mental dissociation is established for the system of magical ideas. So far does illusion go that he seems to regard the rites as the most important part of his proceedings. But that is not really his deepest conviction: he trusts in Magic and keeps his bowstring dry.
(d) In the case of children we may assume, and in the more backward races of men we may suspect, that the comparison of judgments is difficult, or sometimes even impossible, because of the imperfect development of the cerebral cortex. There must be some structural conditions of the free flow of energy through all organs of the brain, corresponding with the associability and comparability of all ideas. We may doubt if these conditions are complete even in good cultivated minds; since everybody finds one or another study or art especially difficult for him, or the freeing of himself from this or that sort of prejudice especially repugnant. And it is not only deliberate comparison that is hindered in the immaturity of the brain, but also that automatic process (more or less unconscious) of assimilation and discrimination to which (I think) we owe most of the results of abstraction and generalisation that may seem to have required purposive comparison. Such imperfections of structure, greatest at the lowest levels of organisation, and gradually decreasing as ideal rationality is approached, we may call “incoördination”; and, so far as it obtains, the results must be somewhat similar to the discoördination, the breaking down or interruption of organic efficiency, that occurs in hysteria, hypnosis and some forms of insanity. One of the results probably is suggestibility—the tendency to accept what is told, or insinuated, without examination; for freedom from this common liability depends (apart from the contra-suggestible disposition) upon the rapidity and definiteness with which one can compare that which is suggested with present fact or with one’s knowledge and former experience; and this is hindered by incoördination.
Effective incoördination may, however, be merely functional for want of practice in thinking; and it exists often enough in civilised people, because they have not even the desire to be consistent. In either case, whether from defective structure or from the dull inertia of disuse, there will be failure of comparison and, therefore, of criticism, and also (we may suppose) a greater intensity of imagination and of dreaming and a liability to hallucination, such as is said to be frequently the case with immature minds.