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the anthropoid apes have lost this power, and man also is without it. M. Volz1 states that the different species of gibbons which live in Sumatra are separated by rivers. Their inability to swim makes these a complete barrier. It is probable that the lower races, in this respect, are better endowed than we are. It is said that in the case of negroes, children run to the sea or to rivers almost as soon as they leave the cradle, and learn to swim almost as quickly as to walk. In the case of white people, many find it very difficult to learn to swim, and it is at least certain that swimming is not instinctive as in the case of our animal ancestors. Christmann,3 the author of a treatise on swimming, states that the reason of man is a worse guide than the infallible instinct of the animal. Fear is able to stifle reason and to allow the instinct to come into play. It is known that children or adults may be taught to swim by throwing them into the water. Under the influence. of fear, the instinctive mechanism inherited from animals awakens, and man soon becomes a swimmer. There are some teachers of swimming who use this method successfully. I have myself known an individual who learnt the art in that way, and M. Troubat, librarian at the International Library, has informed me that one of his friends, a journalist who died at Noyon several years ago, bathed in the Seine one evening at Neuilly when he could not swim. Unexpectedly finding himself beyond his depth, a sudden movement of fear saved him. Since then, he said, he knew how to swim.

Just as there are cases in which terror provokes flight,

1 Biologisches Centralblatt, 1904, p. 475.

2 J. de Fontenelle, Nouveau manuel complet des nageurs, Paris, 1837,

3 La natation et les bains, Paris, 1887.

and others in which it causes an arrest of motion, so also fear may do a disservice to a swimmer. Those who employ fear as a means of teaching to swim, know that they must intervene if there is real danger. It is true, none the less, that up to a certain point fear can awaken functions which have been atrophied for numberless generations, and that we can learn from it something as to the evolution of the human race.

III

SOMNAMBULISM AND HYSTERIA AS MENTAL RELICS

Fear as the primary cause of hysteria-Natural somnambulism-Doubling of personality-Some examples of somnambulists-Analogy between somnambulism and the life of anthropoid apes-The psychology of crowds-Importance of the investigation of hysteria for the problem of the origin of man

THE study of fear is interesting in other respects than those with which I have been dealing. It is also a primary cause of the obscure and complicated phenomena of hysteria.

Thus, for instance, amongst twenty-two hysterical women observed by Georget1 the primary causes were: terror, 13 cases; extreme grief, 7 cases; extreme annoyance, one case. A patient of M. Pitres, of Bordeaux, first exhibited hysteria after being extremely terrified. A man with a tame bear had come to the village. The patient went to see the performance and elbowed her way through the crowd until she got to the front row. The bear, whilst dancing, passed so close that its cold muzzle touched the cheek of the young girl. Marie-for that was the patient's name was terri fied. She ran quickly home, and almost on her arrival fell on her bed in an attack of convulsion and extreme delirium. Since then the attacks have been repeated many times, and the delirium associated with them always turns upon the terror caused by the bear touching her.

Quoted by M. Pitres in Leçons cliniques sur l'hystérie, 1891, vol. i.

A hysterical woman at the Salpêtrière is haunted by terrifying dreams. She thinks someone is trying to murder her, or to cut her throat, or that she is falling into water, and she keeps crying for help.1

Some of the most curious phases of hysteria are the paradoxical and extraordinary cases of so-called natural somnambulism, in which the patients, whilst asleep, perform all sorts of acts of which they remember nothing in their waking hours. Cases of duplication of personality are also known, in which the patients live in two different states without, in one of these, having the slightest remembrance of what takes place in the other. One of the most curious observations was that of the somnambulist who became enceinte whilst in her second state. In her first, or normal condition, she was ignorant of the reason of her physical changes, although in the second state she knew about it quite well and spoke freely of it (Pitres, op. cit. II, 215).

In the state of natural somnambulism the patients generally reproduce the normal acts of their daily life which they have acquired the habit of performing unconsciously. Artisans devote themselves to their manual work, sempstresses begin to sew, maid servants brush shoes or clothes, lay the table and so forth. Educated persons devote themselves to intellectual work to which they are accustomed. Clergymen have been known to compose their sermons in the somnambulistic condition, and to read them over to correct mistakes in style or in spelling.

However, besides somnambulists who during slumber simply repeat the usual acts of their life, there are others who do special things to which they are unaccustomed.

1 Bourneville et Regnard, Iconographie photographique de la Salpétrière, 1879-1880, vol. iii, p. 50.

It is these cases which are most interesting from my point of view. I shall take one case which has been specially well reported. A hysterical patient, a girl of 24 years of age, was admitted as an in-patient to the hospital Laënnec. One Sunday, she got up about one o'clock in the morning. The night watchman, who was alarmed, went for the night doctor, who witnessed the following scene. "The patient went to the staircase leading to the nurses' quarters, then suddenly turned round and walked towards the washhouse. The door of that being closed, she then groped for a time and turned towards the women's dormitory in which she had formerly slept. She went up to the top of the house where this dormitory was, and when she got on the landing, opened a window leading to the roof, went out of the window, walked along the gutter, under the horrified eyes of the nurse who followed her and who did not dare to speak to her, went in again by another window and went down the stairs." "It was at this moment that I saw her," said the night doctor; "she was walking noiselessly, her gait was automatic, her arms hanging by her sides, a little bent, the head erect and fixed, her hair disordered, her eyes wide open; she seemed like some strange apparition." This is obviously the case of a hysterical subject, who in a normal condition was not accustomed to climb upon roofs and walk along the gutters.

Another observation, reported by Charcot, related to a young man, seventeen years old, the son of a large manufacturer, and of good address. Tired out by working for his final examination, he had gone to bed early. Some time later he rose from the bed in his college dormitory, 1 Stéphanie Feinkind, Du somnambulisme dit naturel, Paris, 1893,

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