A Criminal History of Mankind by Colin Wilson

Author:Colin Wilson
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: Violent crimes, History, Sociology, Social Science, True Crime, Violence, Crime and criminals, Violence in Society, General, Murder, Psychological aspects, Murder - General, Crime, Espionage, Criminology
ISBN: 9780881846461
Publisher: Carroll & Graf
Published: 1990-09-13T20:00:00+00:00

It becomes possible to see why reformers all over Europe were longing for the downfall of the Church. It was not simply that it had become corrupt - that could be remedied. It was that the Church had nothing whatever to do with religion. Rodrigo Borgia was not a particularly bad man. Apart from conniving at the murder of a few cardinals, he did nothing very wicked. But he had no more to do with the teaching of Jesus than Tiberius had. He was simply an updated Caesar. The Church was on to a good thing, and he knew it.

We have seen that history seems to be a story of the pendulum-swings of the human spirit between evolutionary purpose and mere materialism - that is, between religion and crime. Man needs material prosperity; it is basic to his survival. But when he has achieved material security, he finds himself oddly dissatisfied and confused. An instinct tells him that it is now time to turn to more important matters. This instinct aims ultimately at control: control of his own conscious processes. He recognises intuitively that such control can only be achieved if he can attach himself to some greater purpose, like a water-skier to a speedboat. And, absurdly enough, that he could achieve this aim more satisfactorily in a monastery cell or on a mountain top than in a palace. This is why Petrarch and Boccaccio became famous all over Europe, in spite of the fact that their books had to be copied by hand. Petrarch is remembered as the first man who climbed to a hilltop merely to look at the view. And when Boccaccio described his young men and women telling their risque stories in the midst of trees and flowers, he was giving expression to a new form of human longing - the same longing that had swept the Mediterranean world thirteen centuries earlier when the preacher from Nazareth announced the end of the world and a ‘new deal’ for the human race. What man wanted instinctively was a ‘new deal’. The plague only focused and intensified that longing. And the soul of man could begin to grasp its meaning on mountain tops or in the midst of woods and streams. Yet no one could deny the practical need for palaces - and hovels.

It must have seemed to these men of the late Middle Ages that the Persian prophet Mani was obviously right when he said that man consists of two warring principles, body and spirit. And this is why movements like the Cathars were so dangerous to the Church, and were stamped out with such murderous ferocity. To us, it seems obvious that the Cathars had oversimplified the problem to the point of absurdity. We know that man does possess two egos, that they appear to be associated with the double-brain, and that their purpose is to co-operate with each other like two lumberjacks at either end of a double-handed saw. The Cathars believed that the two

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