Mass Psychology (Penguin Modern Classics) by Sigmund Freud
Author:Sigmund Freud [Freud, Sigmund]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2004-12-02T07:00:00+00:00
Notes
1. [A disease of the nervous system caused by advanced syphilis.]
2. [Wahnidee, whereas ‘illusion’ is Illusion.]
VII
Having acknowledged that the teachings of religion are illusions, the further question immediately arises: are not other parts of our cultural inheritance, parts that we hold in high esteem and allow to dominate our lives, of a similar nature? Could it be that the premises governing our state institutions must likewise be termed illusions, could it be that relations between the genders in our culture are clouded by one or a number of erotic illusions? Our misgivings once aroused, we shall not even shrink from asking whether our own conviction (that by applying observation and thinking in scientific work we can learn something of external reality) is any more firmly grounded. Nothing must be allowed to prevent us from approving the application of observation to our own being and the use of thinking in the service of its own critique. A series of investigations opens up here, the outcome of which would inevitably have a crucial effect on the structure of a ‘way of viewing the world’.1 We also sense that the effort will not be wasted and that it will at least partially justify our suspicion. However, the author’s competence balks at so huge a task; he has no choice but to confine his essay to tracing just one of those illusions – that of religion.
Here our opponent shouts ‘Stop!’ We are about to be called to account for our forbidden conduct. This is what he tells us: ‘Archaeological interests are entirely laudable, no doubt, but no one starts an excavation if it is going to undermine the dwellings of the living, making them collapse and burying people under the rubble. The teachings of religion are not just another object to be pored over. Our culture is based on them, it is a condition of the preservation of human society that the vast majority of people believes in the truth of those teachings. If people are taught that there is no all-powerful, all-righteous God, no divine world order, and no life after death, they will feel under no obligation to obey the rules of culture. Everyone will follow his anti-social, egoistical drives without fear or inhibition, seeking to assert his power; the chaos that we banished through many millennia of cultural endeavour will return. Even if it were known and could be proved that religion is not in possession of the truth, nothing must be said and people should behave in the way that the ‘as if’ philosophy requires. In the interests of everyone’s preservation! Also, apart from the danger of the enterprise, it constitutes pointless cruelty. Innumerable human beings find no other consolation than the teachings of religion; only with their aid do such folk find life bearable. An attempt is being made to rob them of that support without giving them anything better in its place. Admittedly, science has not come up with much so far, but even if it was a great deal more advanced it would not satisfy the human race.
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