Page:The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis II 1921 3-4.djvu/83

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THE ANAL-EROTIC FACTOR IN HINDU RELIGION 337

as a whole belong for the greater part to the first of the two groups distinguished by Ernest Jones, i For instance, the Englishman, as opposed to the Hindu, exhibits usually an extraordinary individualism as well as a frequently devastating persistence to V ' carry through whatever he may believe to be 'right'. Likewise


 * the Englishman is prone to entertain pedantic notions about


 * • ", 'justice', while the Hindu, altliough he loves the law as a source

' .-^;: of income, has very little liking for it as an instrument of govern-

ment. He ' prefers a flexible and human will which can be turned by prayers, threats or conciliations in money'. ^ The average Englishman revels in attempts to get other people to accept his views on religion, morality and the like, but the Hindu's -■i views on these matters are for private consumption only, or, at

the most, for members of his family. While Englishmen will often display remarkable competency, reliability and thoroughness, Hindus will not. under any provocation, burden themselves with a sustained habit of taking trouble. As Meredith Townsends ob- serves: 'You might as well ask lazzaroni to behave like Prussian officials'. Like most Orientals, Hindus issue orders and punish terribly (or not at all!) if they are not obeyed. As to 'hunting the lY||v ' order down' to its execution, they would not accept life at the

price of such a duty! Again, the English have learnt to make a fetish of 'sanitation'. An Englishman's bath-room, water-closet and laundry form a triad of reaction-formations of his anal erotism be- fore which he will, so to speak, prostrate himself in a rhapsody of adoration. Among the Hindus, reaction-formations of the same type have led to the apotheosis of ceremonial puriiication, but •': hand-in-hand with this goes an indifference to hving under con-

ditions indescribably filthy, especially when the filth is associated with religious worship, a fact to which the holy places of Benares bear ample testimony. Lastly, and perhaps above all, the Englishman possesses a general ability to deal with the concrete objects of the world to an extent to which few other races can aspire. In his introduction to Nietzsche's 'Genealogy of Morals', Alexander Tille* writes as follows: 'A great English scholar whom years

> Ernest Jones: op. cit. . ."■ _

' Meredith Townsend: op. cit. '' -

' Idem: op. cit. •' - •* Friederich Nietzsche: A Genealogy of Morals. Translated by W. Hauss-

mann and J. Gray. Introduction by Alexander Tille, p. xiii.

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