of pleasure in which such dependents sometimes play a part.
Aside from persons in the early stages of progressive illness, one finds throughout the nation, and probably over the world, a horde of citizens who stoutly maintain beliefs regarded as absurd and contrary to fact by society as a whole. Often these people indulge in conduct that to others seems unquestionably irrational.
For example, the daily newspapers continue to report current gatherings in many states where hundreds of people handle poisonous snakes, earnestly insisting that they are carrying out God’s will.{*} Death from snakebite among these zealous worshippers does not apparently dampen their ardor. Small children, too young to arrive spontaneously at similar conclusions concerning the relation between faith and venom, are not spared by their parents this intimate contact with the rattler and the copperhead.
It is, perhaps, not remarkable that prophets continually predict the end of the world, giving precise and authoritative details of what so far has proved no less fanciful than the delusions of patients confined in psychiatric hospitals. That scores and sometimes hundreds or even thousands of followers accept these prophecies might give the thoughtful more cause to wonder. Newspaper clippings and magazine articles before the writer at this moment describe numerous examples of such behavior.
In a small Georgia town twenty earnest disciples sit up with a pious lady who has convinced them that midnight will bring the millennium. An elderly clergyman in California, whose more numerous followers are likewise disappointed when the designated moment passes uneventfully, explains that there is no fault with his divine vision but only some minor error of calculation which arose from differences between the Biblical and the modern calendars. During the last century an even more vehement leader had thousands of people, in New England and in other states, out on the hillsides expecting to be caught up to glory as dawn broke. Indeed, conviction was so great that at sunrise many leaped from cliffs, roofs, and silos, one zealot having tied turkey wings to his arms the better to provide for flight. Those who had hoped to ascend found gravity unchanged, the earth still solid, and the inevitable contact jarring.245, 258
Few, if any, who prophesy on the grounds of mystic insight or special revelation come to conclusions more extraordinary than those reached by some who profess, and often firmly believe, they are working within the methods of science. A notable example is furnished by Wilhelm Reich, who is listed in American Men of Science and whose earlier work in psychopathology is regarded by many as valuable.25 Textbooks of high scientific standing still refer to his discoveries in this field.79, 112, 165
It is indeed startling when such a person as this announces the discovery of “orgone,” a substance which, it is claimed, has much to do with sexual orgasm (as well as the blueness of the sky) and which can be accumulated in boxes lined with metal. Those who sit within the boxes are said to benefit in many marvelous ways. According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, the accumulation of this (to others) non-existent material is by Reich and his followers promoted as a method for curing cancer.52 A recent report of the Council of the American Medical Association lists the orgone accumulator with various quack nostrums under “Frauds and Fables.” The presence of any such material as “orgone” impresses the physician as no less imaginary than its alleged therapeutic effects. The nature of such conclusions and the methods of arriving at them are scarcely more astonishing than the credulity of highly educated and intellectual people who are reported to give them earnest consideration.25
Even in the 1940’s, crowds estimated as containing twenty-five thousand or more persons, some of them having travelled halfway across the United States, stood in the rain night after night to watch a nine-year-old boy in New York City who claimed to have seen a vision which he described as “an angel’s head with butterfly wings.”
A clergyman of the Church of England during World War II confirmed as a supernatural omen of good the reported appearance of a luminous cross in the sky near Ipswich. In our own generation a man of profound learning has expressed literal belief in witchcraft and approved the efforts of those who, following the Biblical injunction, put thousands to death for this activity.279
These headlines from a daily newspaper deserve consideration:
NOW IN MENTAL HOSPITAL,
ACCUSED OF TREASON, HELD INSANE,
EZRA POUND GIVEN TOP POETRY PRIZE
*****
My interest in such news is not based on a certainty that it is impossible for a psychotic man to write good poetry.
The headlines emphasize, however, what sometimes seems to be a rapt predilection of small but influential cults of intellectuals or esthetes for what is generally regarded as perverse, dispirited, or distastefully unintelligible.5, 34, 73, 102 The award of a Nobel Prize in literature to Andre Gide, who in his work fervently and openly insists that pederasty is the superior and preferable way of life for adolescent boys, furnishes a memorable example of such judgments.92, 174 Renowned critics and some professors in our best universities158, 256 reverently acclaim as the superlative expression of genius James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake, a 628-page collection of erudite gibberish indistinguishable to most people from the familiar word-salad produced by hebephrenic patients on the back wards of any State Hospital.
Let us illustrate briefly with the initial page from this remarkable volume:
riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.
Sir Tristram, violer d’amores, fr’over the short sea, had passencore rearrived from North Armorica on this side the scraggy isthmus of Europe Minor to wielderfight his penisolate war: nor had topsawyer’s rocks by the stream Oconee exaggerated themselse to Laurens County’s gorgios while they went doublin their mumper all the time: nor avoice from afire bellowsed mishe mishe to tauftauf thuartpeatrick: not yet, though venissoon after, had a kidscad buttended a bland old isaac: not yet, though all’s fair in vanessy, were sosie sesthers wroth with twone nathandjoe. Rot a peck of pa’s malt had Jhem or Shen brewed by arclight and rory end to the regginbrow was to be seen ringsome on the aquaface.
The fall (bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerron-ntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoooohoordenenthurnuk!) of a once wallstrait oldparr is retaled early in bed and later on life down through all Christian minstrelsy. The great fall of the offwall entailed at such short notice the pftjschute of Finnegan, erse solid man, that the humptyhillhead of humself prumptly sends an unquiring one well to the west in quest of his tumptytumtoes: and their upturnpikepointandplace is at the knock out in the park where oranges have been laid to rust upon the green since devlinsfirst loved livvy.135
The adventurous reader will, I promise, find any of the other 627 pages equally illuminating. It is not for me to say dogmatically that Finnegan’s Wake is a volume devoid of meaning. Nor could I with certainty make such a pronouncement about the chaotic verbal productions of the patient on the back ward of a State Hospital.
It is the interrelation of viewpoints and evaluations necessary in combination to make such headlines as those about Ezra Pound quoted above that evokes some wonder and brings some scholars to an almost worshipful admiration of Finnegan’s Wake.
Graduates of our universities and successful business men join others to contribute testimonials announcing the prevention of hydrophobia, the healing of cancer, diphtheria, tuberculosis, wens, and broken legs, as well as the renting of rooms and the raising of salaries, by groups who reportedly work through “the formless, omnipresent God-substance” and by other metaphysical methods. One group publishes several magazines which
