74 Science Religion and Reality 



anticipations of hope, dictated by the emotion of passion so 

 strongly felt. 



The man under the sway of impotent fury or dominated by 

 thwarted hate spontaneously clenches his fist and carries out 

 imaginary thrusts at his enemy, muttering imprecations, casting 

 words of hatred and anger against him. The lover aching for 

 his unattainable or irresponsive beauty sees her in his visions, 

 addresses her, and entreats and commands her favours, feeling 

 himself accepted, pressing her to his bosom in his dreams. The 

 anxious fisherman or hunter sees in his imagination the quarry 

 enmeshed in the nets, the animal attained by the spear ; he utters 

 their names, describes in words his visions of the magnificent 

 catch, he even breaks out into gestures of mimic representation 

 of what he desires. The man lost at night in the woods or the 

 jungle, beset by superstitious fear, sees around him the haunting 

 demons, addresses them, tries to ward off, to frighten them, or 

 shrinks from them in fear, like an animal which attempts to save 

 itself by feigning death. 



These reactions to overwhelming emotion or obsessive desire 

 are natural responses of man to such a situation, based on a universal 

 psycho-physiological mechanism. They engender what could be 

 called extended expressions of emotion in act and in word, the 

 threatening gestures of impotent anger and its maledictions, the 

 spontaneous enactment of the desired end in a practical impasse, 

 the passionate fondling gestures of the lover, and so on. All these 

 spontaneous acts and spontaneous words make man forecast the 

 images of the wished-for results, or express his passion in uncon- 

 trollable gestures, or break out into words which give vent to desire 

 and anticipate its end. 



And what is the purely intellectual process, the conviction 

 formed during such a free outburst of emotion in words and deeds ? 

 First there surges a clear image of the desired end, of the hated 

 person, of the feared danger or ghost. And each image is blended 

 with its specific passion, which drives us to assume an active 

 attitude towards that image. When passion reaches the breaking 

 point at which man loses control over himself, the words which 

 he utters, his blind behaviour, allow the pent-up physiological 

 tension to flow over. But over all this outburst presides the image 

 of the end. It supplies the motive-force of the reaction, it 

 apparently organises and directs words and acts towards a definite 



