Page:The Source and Aim of Human Progress.djvu/29

Rh direct and indirect, which tend to awaken and stimulate the uncontrollable, slumbering impulse of self-preservation and fear which are ever ready to awaken and burst the bonds in which they are kept in the subconscious regions by the controlling, rational, personal consciousness. Once self-preservation and fear are aroused they magnify and intensify the pathogenic state of subconscious social activities.

"Intimidation" says Tarde "plays an immense part in society under the name of 'respect.' Every one will acknowledge this, and although the part is sometimes misinterpreted, it is never in the least exaggerated. Respect is neither unmixed fear nor unmixed love, nor is it merely the combination of the two, it is a fear which is beloved by him who entertains it." All taboos, covering the vast field of human life, religion, magic, family, marriage relationships, articles of diet, details of modes of living, rules of behavior, involving the minutiæ of life of primitive societies, savage, barbarian and civilized, all the codes of law, religious, ceremonial, legal, political, all customs and rites and beliefs which control the human race in the course of its evolution, take their origin in self and fear. According to anthropological research all human institutions with all their taboos are based on fears of perils, often of an extremely superstitious nature, perils of soul and body, fears of impending evil of the supernatural before which gregarious man quails in terror of his life. The impulse of self-preservation and the fear-instinct are at the basis of social organized life activities. The taboos, the laws, the rules of gentes, tribes, and nations, from the lowest to the highest, are upheld by a vague terror and sacred awe which society impresses on man by threats of ill-luck, fearful evil, and terrible punishments befalling sinners and transgressors of the tabooed, of the holy and the forbidden, charged with a mysterious, highly contagious, and virulently infective life-consuming energy. As the English anthropologist, Frazer, puts it: "Men are undoubtedly more influenced by what they fear than by what they love." The Bible lays special stress on the fear of God as the font of wisdom. The Biblical love is saturated with fear of the supernatural. Lack of obedience to commandments, in modern religions lack of faith, is threatened with fearful tortures and eternal damnation in hell. Throughout the course of human evolution, through the institutions of gentile savagery and barbarism to political class-civilization, social organization was taboo-intimidation based on self-preservation and fear. Organized society inspires its individual units with abject terror of the least trespass of custom, rule,