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
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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 are eagerly read in almost every town in the United States. Nearly 200 centers are listed where “prosperity bank drills” and respiratory rituals are advocated. Leaders solemnly write, “the psychical body radiates an energy that can at times be seen as a light or aura surrounding the physical, especially about the heads of those who think much about Spirit.”81
The following are typical testimonial letters, and these are but three among many hundreds:
“I wrote to you somewhat over a week ago asking for your prayers. My trouble was appendicitis, and it seemed that an operation was unavoidable. However, I had faith in the indwelling, healing Christ and decided to get in touch with you. Well, as you might expect, the healing that has taken place borders on the so-called miraculous. I spent an hour each day alone with God, and I claimed my rightful inheritance as a child of God. Naturally the adverse condition had to disappear with the advent of the powerful flow of Christ-life consciously directed towards this illness.”
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“You will be interested to know that just about the time when my prosperity-bank period was up I went to work in a new position, which not only pays a substantially higher salary but… [etc.]. I should probably not have had sufficient faith and courage to trust Him had it not been for the Truth literature.…”
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“Thank you for your beautiful and effective ministry. I have had five big demonstrations of prosperity since I had this particular prosperity bank. Last week brought final settlement of a debt owed me for about seven years,”217
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Not a few citizens of our country read, apparently with conviction, material such as that published by the director of the Institute of Mental Physics, who is announced as the reincarnation of a Tibetan Lama. This leader reports, furthermore, that he has witnessed an eastern sage grow an orange tree from his palm and, on another occasion, die and rise in a new body, leaving the old one behind. Many other equally improbable feats of thaumaturgy are described in eyewitness accounts.{†}
The casual observer has been known to dismiss what many call superstition as the fruit of ignorance. Nevertheless, beliefs and practices of this sort are far from rare among the most learned in all generations. A recent ambassador to the United States, generally recognized as a distinguished scholar, died (according to the press) under the care of a Practitioner of Christian Science.
Even a doctor of medicine has written a book in which he attests to the cure of acute inflammatory diseases and other disorders by similar methods. But let him speak directly:
“At another time I examined a girl upon whom I had operated for recurrent mastoiditis. At the time of my examination she was showing definite signs of another attack.… Absent treatments stopped her trouble in two days. To one who had never seen anything of the kind before, the rapidity with which the inflammation disappeared would have seemed almost a piece of magic.”241
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“A third case is that of a woman who carried a bad heart for years. About a year ago she experienced an acute attack accompanied by pain, nausea, and bloating caused by gas. Her daughter telephoned to a practitioner of spiritual healing and explained the trouble to her. The reply was that an immediate treatment would be given. In ten minutes the trouble was gone, and there has been no serious recurrence since.”241
The more one