Part 105 (1/2)
WHOLESALE HYPNOTISM
We are beginning to see some glimmering of new truth concerning the art of suggestion.
Here is some one with a strong will who imposes upon you a definite idea--”This napkin is a peach; a luscious, ripe peach,” insists the hypnotizer; and the hypnotized bites at the napkin with every appearance of delight.
It is said that those once thoroughly hypnotized, surrendering their own observation and judgement and submitting absolutely to the ideas impressed upon their minds by others, become thereafter less able to think and act for themselves, and more and more open to suggestion.
We begin to see this of the individual mind, but we have not yet seen its application to the race mind.
Suggestion is a force acting upon us all, as is well known to the politician and the advertiser, but it acts most strongly upon the weak and those unaccustomed to using their own minds, as is completely shown in children.
It is the susceptibility to suggestion which makes children so easily swayed by the influence of their companions; so ready to follow the leader who says ”let's play” this or that: nearly all join in, and a group of children used to such leaders.h.i.+p will stand about rather helplessly if deprived of it.
It is that extreme susceptibility which makes the church say ”Give us the first five years of a child's life, and he will never outgrow our influence!” Children, of all people, are most open to the power of suggestion.
Now observe the c.u.mulative action of this power, applied to the youth of humanity, and in each generation further applied to each individual youth. Certain ideas first grasped in ages of dark savagery, or even previous to that, and then believed to be of supreme importance, were forcibly impressed upon the minds of children, all children, generation after generation. To select one simple instance, observe the use of the fear-motive in controlling the young.
Among animals there are two main modifiers of conduct, desire and fear.
They act either to gratify a desire or to avoid a danger.
The young animal does not know his dangers, and it is imperative that he should know them. In those higher species where parental education is developed, the mother shows her young what things are good for it, and teaches it the terror necessary. The little bird or beast must squat and be still, must stay in the cave or lie hid in the gra.s.s; lest the fox, hawk, lion, or whatever enemy is to be dreaded should pounce upon it. And this pre-human method of culture has come down to its through long lines of savages with their real and fancied bugaboos to terrorize the young; through ancient and modern races; through the warrior mothers and nurses using ”Napoleon” or ”The Black Douglas” as the impending danger, to the same primitive, ignorant custom to-day--”The Goberlins 'll git yer, if you don't watch out”!
The ”pain economy” and ”fear economy” of the beast and savage are long left behind, but we preserve and artificially enforce the fear instinct--by suggestion. We hypnotize our children generation after generation, with disciplinary dread, and rely so wholly upon it to enforce good behavior that our citizens see no preventive of crime except fear of punishment.
Similarly we impress on the helplessly receptive minds of our children, whose earliest years are pa.s.sed under the influence of uneducated house-servants, the ancient, foolish prejudices and misconceptions of our dark past. If the expanding mind of the little child could be surrounded by the influences of our highest culture, instead of our lowest; and above all things be taught to _use its own power_--to observe, deduce, and act accordingly, and be carefully s.h.i.+elded from the c.u.mulative force of age-old falsehood and folly, we should have a set of people who would look at life with new eyes. We could see things as they are, and judge for ourselves what conduct was needed, whereas now we see things as we have been taught they are; and believe, because we have been told so, that we cannot alter conditions.
It is not lack of mental capacity which blinds us; not lack of power which chains us; but we are hypnotized--and have been for a thousand thousand years--with carefully invented lies.
”You can't alter human nature.” Who says so? _Is it true?_ Is there no difference between the nature of the modern American and the nature of a Fiji Islander? Do they respond alike under the same conditions?
Are their impulses and governing tendencies the same?
Human nature has altered from its dim beginnings, under the action of changed conditions, just as dog-nature has altered from fierce wolf and slinking jackal to the dear loved companion of mankind.
There are some properties common to all natures; some common to each race and species; some common to special strains and families; but of all ”natures” human nature, the broadest, most complex, most recent, is _most easily_ alterable.
Let that sink in. Be hypnotized the other way for awhile!
You Can Alter Human Nature!
We are naturally displeased with human nature as we see it about us. It so inert--so subservient--so incredibly dull.
Put yourself in the place of a bright youngster, two hundred years hence, looking back at these suffering times. Suppose he is studying ”ancient history,” and has been given pictures and books describing the life of our day. ”But _why_ did they live so?” he will ask. ”Weren't they people like us? Couldn't they see--hear--feel? Hadn't they arms and hands and brains? Here's this--this--what do you call it?
'Overcrowding in cities.' What made them overcrowd?” Then the professor will have to explain. ”It was their belief that governed them. They believed that economic laws necessitated all that kind of thing. Everybody believed it.”
”But how _could_ they believe it? They had intelligence; look at the things they invented, the scientific discoveries they made, the big businesses they managed! What _made_ them believe it?” And unless the professor understands the peculiar effect of race-hypnotism he will be pushed for an answer.