The Forerunner Part 105

WHOLESALE HYPNOTISM

We are beginning to see some glimmering of new truth concerning the art of suggestion.

Here is some one with a strong will who imposes upon you a definite idea--"This napkin is a peach; a luscious, ripe peach," insists the hypnotizer; and the hypnotized bites at the napkin with every appearance of delight.

It is said that those once thoroughly hypnotized, surrendering their own observation and judgement and submitting absolutely to the ideas impressed upon their minds by others, become thereafter less able to think and act for themselves, and more and more open to suggestion.

We begin to see this of the individual mind, but we have not yet seen its application to the race mind.

Suggestion is a force acting upon us all, as is well known to the politician and the advertiser, but it acts most strongly upon the weak and those unaccustomed to using their own minds, as is completely shown in children.

It is the susceptibility to suggestion which makes children so easily swayed by the influence of their companions; so ready to follow the leader who says "let's play" this or that: nearly all join in, and a group of children used to such leadership will stand about rather helplessly if deprived of it.

It is that extreme susceptibility which makes the church say "Give us the first five years of a child's life, and he will never outgrow our influence!" Children, of all people, are most open to the power of suggestion.

Now observe the c.u.mulative action of this power, applied to the youth of humanity, and in each generation further applied to each individual youth. Certain ideas first grasped in ages of dark savagery, or even previous to that, and then believed to be of supreme importance, were forcibly impressed upon the minds of children, all children, generation after generation. To select one simple instance, observe the use of the fear-motive in controlling the young.

Among animals there are two main modifiers of conduct, desire and fear.

They act either to gratify a desire or to avoid a danger.

The young animal does not know his dangers, and it is imperative that he should know them. In those higher species where parental education is developed, the mother shows her young what things are good for it, and teaches it the terror necessary. The little bird or beast must squat and be still, must stay in the cave or lie hid in the gra.s.s; lest the fox, hawk, lion, or whatever enemy is to be dreaded should pounce upon it. And this pre-human method of culture has come down to its through long lines of savages with their real and fancied bugaboos to terrorize the young; through ancient and modern races; through the warrior mothers and nurses using "Napoleon" or "The Black Douglas" as the impending danger, to the same primitive, ignorant custom to-day--"The Goberlins 'll git yer, if you don't watch out"!

The "pain economy" and "fear economy" of the beast and savage are long left behind, but we preserve and artificially enforce the fear instinct--by suggestion. We hypnotize our children generation after generation, with disciplinary dread, and rely so wholly upon it to enforce good behavior that our citizens see no preventive of crime except fear of punishment.

Similarly we impress on the helplessly receptive minds of our children, whose earliest years are pa.s.sed under the influence of uneducated house-servants, the ancient, foolish prejudices and misconceptions of our dark past. If the expanding mind of the little child could be surrounded by the influences of our highest culture, instead of our lowest; and above all things be taught to _use its own power_--to observe, deduce, and act accordingly, and be carefully shielded from the c.u.mulative force of age-old falsehood and folly, we should have a set of people who would look at life with new eyes. We could see things as they are, and judge for ourselves what conduct was needed, whereas now we see things as we have been taught they are; and believe, because we have been told so, that we cannot alter conditions.

It is not lack of mental capacity which blinds us; not lack of power which chains us; but we are hypnotized--and have been for a thousand thousand years--with carefully invented lies.

"You can't alter human nature." Who says so? _Is it true?_ Is there no difference between the nature of the modern American and the nature of a Fiji Islander? Do they respond alike under the same conditions?

Are their impulses and governing tendencies the same?

Human nature has altered from its dim beginnings, under the action of changed conditions, just as dog-nature has altered from fierce wolf and slinking jackal to the dear loved companion of mankind.

There are some properties common to all natures; some common to each race and species; some common to special strains and families; but of all "natures" human nature, the broadest, most complex, most recent, is _most easily_ alterable.

Let that sink in. Be hypnotized the other way for awhile!

You Can Alter Human Nature!

We are naturally displeased with human nature as we see it about us. It so inert--so subservient--so incredibly dull.

Put yourself in the place of a bright youngster, two hundred years hence, looking back at these suffering times. Suppose he is studying "ancient history," and has been given pictures and books describing the life of our day. "But _why_ did they live so?" he will ask. "Weren't they people like us? Couldn't they see--hear--feel? Hadn't they arms and hands and brains? Here's this--this--what do you call it?

'Overcrowding in cities.' What made them overcrowd?" Then the professor will have to explain. "It was their belief that governed them. They believed that economic laws necessitated all that kind of thing. Everybody believed it."

"But how _could_ they believe it? They had intelligence; look at the things they invented, the scientific discoveries they made, the big businesses they managed! What _made_ them believe it?" And unless the professor understands the peculiar effect of race-hypnotism he will be pushed for an answer.

What indeed makes us believe that so many human beings have to remain inferior to so few; that this kind of animal cannot be improved and elevated like any other kind? What makes us believe that because one man is inferior to another, therefore the other must take advantage of him? What makes us believe that while the wide earth responds submissively to our modifying hand; while we master arts and sciences, develop industries, probe mysteries, achieve marvels; we are, and must ourselves remain a set of helpless, changeless undesirables?

"But," the professor will say to the child, "they _felt_ thus and so, you see." "Felt!" that st.u.r.dy son of the future will say, "Didn't they know that feeling could be changed as easy as anything?"

It will be hard indeed, when human nature is altered a little more, to make it patient with the besotted conviction of unalterableness that paralyzes it now.

A baby's opening mind should be placed among the most beautiful and rational conditions, specially arranged for easy observation and deduction. It should be surrounded by persons of the best wisdom now ours; and whatever it may lack of what we do not yet know to be true, it should be religiously guarded from what we do know to be false.

Every college should have its course in Humaniculture, and the most earnest minds should be at work to steadily raise the standard of that new science.

New concepts, broad and beautiful, should be implanted in each young mind; this mighty power of suggestion being used by the highest, to lift us up, instead of by the lowest, to keep us down.

What a simple process! What a blessed change! At present the child mind is entrusted to the most ignorant, and taught the oldest lies.

Soon we shall entrust it only to the most wise and teach it the newest truths.

[Unt.i.tled]

Sit up and think!

The life in you is Life--unlimited!

You rose--you'll sink-- But Life goes on--that isn't dead.

THE KITCHEN FLY

The ills that flesh is heir to are not all entailed.

We used to think that diseases were special afflictions sent by G.o.d, to be borne with meek endurance. Now we have learned that some of them grow in us like plants in a garden, that some we give to one another as presents, and some we keep as pets.

Many little go-betweens we have discovered, with legs and wings, who operate as continual mischief-makers, and among these at last looms large and deadly, that most widespread and intimate of pests--the Common Fly.

The House Fly is his most familiar name, but that should be changed. He is not of his own nature a parlor fly, nor a library fly, nor a bedroom fly; an attic fly nor a hall and stair fly; but he is _par excellence_ the Kitchen Fly.

Flies are not perennial bloomers. They have to be born--hatched from eggs, and the resultant larva have to have a Congenial Medium to be born in. The careful mother fly does not leave her little flock on a mahogany center table. Flies have to eat; they eat all the things we do, and many that we don't!

There are two main nurseries for the Common Fly in all our cities, yes, and in our country homes as well--the Stable and the Kitchen.

Unless stables are kept with the most absolute cleanliness flies are bred there.

Unless kitchens are kept in the most absolute cleanliness flies are bred there--or therefrom! Moreover the smell of hot food draws flies from afar; a kitchen even though spotless and screened is a constant bait for flies.

I was once visiting in a fine clean summer camp in the Adirondacks, where friends in combination did the work. In the main room of this place was a wide long window--one great picture, framing the purple hills. It was a good deal of work to clean that window, and we took turns at it. One day this window was laboriously polished inside and out by an earnest gentleman of high ideals. Then--in the kitchen--some one cooked a cabbage. Forthwith that front-room window was black with flies--big, b.u.mping, buzzing, blue-bottle flies. To slay them was a carnage--and they were carried out by the dustpanful.

In the country, by screening every window and door, by constant watch upon each article of food to keep it covered, one may keep one's own flies b.u.mping vainly on the outside of one's own house--except when people go in and out, and the ever-ready buzzer darts in before the swing-door shuts.

But in the city, where a million homes maintain their million fly-baiting kitchens, and each kitchen maintains its garbage pail, the problem becomes more serious.