Page:The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis II 1921 3-4.djvu/81

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THE ANAL-EROTIC FACTOR IN HINDU RELIGION 335

and the impulse to 'give out', it is by -no means unlikely that herein lies the answer to the riddle as to the origin of many of those striking idiosyncrasies of the Hindu character which not only mark him off from the rest of mankind but leave him with a habit of mind that is antipathetic, if not actually repellent, to his fellow- men of other religious persuasion. Ernest Jones i has shewn how the end-product of the character of an individual will depend on the detailed interplay of the attitudes distinctive of each phase and on the extent to which the individual may react to each by devel- oping either a positive sublimation or a negative reaction-form- ation. Jones has also shewn that some of the most valuable qualities are derived from this complex, as well as some of the most disadvantageous. He cites as belonging to the first group individualism, determination and persistence, love of order and power of organisation, competency, reliability and thoroughness, generosity, the bent toward art and good taste; the capacity for unusual tenderness, and the general ability to deal with concrete objects of the material world. In the second group he includes the incapacity for happiness, irritability and bad temper, hypo- chondria, miserhness, meanness and pettiness, slow-mindedness and proneness to bore, the bent for tyrannising and dictating and obstinacy. A glance at the character traits summarised in the second group is sufficient for any one at all acquainted with the Hindu character and temperament to recognise that most, if not all, of them are eminently those of Hindus. To begin with, an incapacity for happiness is one of their most notorious peculiarities. There is '

nothing a Hindu fears more than life. The very essence of his life is fear — fear of the unknown result which may follow upon error, '

either in conduct, in faith or in ceremonial. Moreover, the bugbear of the Hindu is his behef in metempsychosis. An average Hindu sees very little to enjoy in life. Such a phrase as 'la joie de vivre* is to him nothing more nor less than a contradiction in terms. *

A Hindu who could say with Thoreau that he enjoyed his life to %

marks: 'The wish to be rid of consciousness either by annihil- ation or absorption in the Divine, is the strongest impulse he (the Hindu) can feel'. In this feeling probably lies the source of that detestation in which both Islam and Christianity are held by Hindus.
 * the core and rind' is unthinkable! As Meredith Townsend^ re-

' Ernest Jones: op. cit.

« Meredith Townsend: Asia and Europe, p. 35. ' • • - . /

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