Freud - Complete Works (773 page)

   The other opposition has to be
taken far more seriously, and in this instance I feel the liveliest
regret at the inadequacy of my information. I suspect that you know
more about this business than I do and that you took up your
position long ago in favour of Marxism or against it. Karl
Marx’s investigations into the economic structure of society
and into the influence of different economic systems upon every
department of human life have in our days acquired an undeniable
authority. How far his views in detail are correct or go astray, I
cannot of course tell. I understand that this is not an easy matter
even for others better instructed than I am. There are assertions
contained in Marx’s theory which have struck me as strange:
such as that the development of forms of society is a process of
natural history, or that the changes in social stratification arise
from one another in the manner of a dialectical process. I am far
from sure that I understand these assertions aright; nor do they
sound to me ‘materialistic’ but, rather, like a
precipitate of the obscure Hegelian philosophy in whose school Marx
graduated. I do not know how I can shake off my lay opinion that
the class structure of society goes back to the struggles which,
from the beginning of history, took place between human hordes only
slightly differing from each other. Social distinctions, so I
thought, were originally distinctions between clans or races.
Victory was decided by psychological factors, such as the amount of
constitutional aggressiveness, but also by the firmness of the
organization within the horde, and by material factors, such as the
possession of superior weapons. Living together in the same area,
the victors became the masters and the vanquished the slaves. There
is no sign to be seen in this of a natural law or of a conceptual
evolution. On the other hand the influence exercised upon the
social relations of mankind by progressive control over the forces
of Nature is unmistakable. For men always put their newly acquired
instruments of power at the service of their aggressiveness and use
them against one another. The introduction of metals - bronze and
iron - made an end to whole epochs of civilization and their social
institutions. I really believe that it was gunpowder and fire-arms
that abolished chivalry and aristocratic rule, and that the Russian
despotism was already doomed before it lost the War, because no
amount of inbreeding among the ruling families of Europe could have
produced a race of Tsars capable of withstanding the explosive
force of dynamite.

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   It is possible, indeed, that with
our present economic crisis, following after the Great War, we are
only paying the price of our latest tremendous victory over nature,
the conquest of the air. That does not sound very illuminating, but
the first links at least in the chain are clearly recognizable.
English politics were based on the security which was guaranteed by
the seas that washed her coasts. In the moment at which
Blériot flew across the Channel in his aeroplane this
protective isolation was breached; and in the night during which
(in peace-time and on an exercise) a German Zeppelin cruised over
London the war against Germany was no doubt a foregone
conclusion.¹ Nor must the U-boat threat be forgotten in this
connection.

   I am almost ashamed to comment to
you on a subject of such importance and complexity with these few
inadequate remarks, and I know too that I have told you nothing
that is new to you. I merely want to draw your attention to the
fact that the relation of mankind to their control over Nature,
from which they derive their weapons for fighting their fellow-men,
must necessarily also affect their economic arrangements. We seem
to have come a long way from the problem of a
Weltanschauung
, but we shall very soon be back to it. The
strength of Marxism clearly lies, not in its view of history or the
prophecies of the future that are based on it, but in its sagacious
indication of the decisive influence which the economic
circumstances of men have upon their intellectual, ethical and
artistic attitudes. A number of connections and implications were
thus uncovered, which had previously been almost totally
overlooked. But it cannot be assumed that economic motives are the
only ones that determine the behaviour of human beings in society.
The undoubted fact that different individuals, races and nations
behave differently under the same economic conditions is alone
enough to show that economic motives are not the sole dominating
factors. It is altogether incomprehensible how psychological
factors can be overlooked where what is in question are the
reactions of living human beings; for not only were these reactions
concerned in establishing the economic conditions, but even under
the domination of those conditions men can only bring their
original instinctual impulses into play - their self-preservative
instinct, their aggressiveness, their need to be loved, their drive
towards obtaining pleasure and avoiding unpleasure. In an earlier
enquiry I also pointed out the important claims made by the
super-ego, which represents tradition and the ideals of the past
and will for a time resist the incentives of a new economic
situation. And finally we must not forget that the mass of human
beings who are subjected to economic necessities also undergo the
process of cultural development - of civilization as other people
may say - which, though no doubt influenced by all the other
factors, is certainly independent of them in its origin, being
comparable to an organic process and very well able on its part to
exercise an influence on the other factors. It displaces
instinctual aims and brings it about that people become
antagonistic to what they had previously tolerated. Moreover, the
progressive strengthening of the scientific spirit seems to form an
essential part of it. If anyone were in a position to show in
detail the way in which these different factors - the general
inherited human disposition, its racial variations and its cultural
transformations - inhibit and promote one another under the
conditions of social rank, profession and earning capacity - if
anyone were able to do this, he would have supplemented Marxism so
that it was made into a genuine social science. For sociology too,
dealing as it does with the behaviour of people in society, cannot
be anything but applied psychology. Strictly speaking there are
only two sciences: psychology, pure and applied, and natural
science.

  
¹
I was told of this from trustworthy sources
during the first year of the war.

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   The newly achieved discovery of
the far-reaching importance of economic relations brought with it a
temptation not to leave alterations in them to the course of
historical development but to put them into effect oneself by
revolutionary action. Theoretical Marxism, as realized in Russian
Bolshevism, has acquired the energy and the self-contained and
exclusive character of a
Weltanschauung
, but at the same
time an uncanny likeness to what it is fighting against. Though
originally a portion of science and built up, in its
implementation, upon science and technology, it has created a
prohibition of thought which is just as ruthless as was that of
religion in the past. Any critical examination of Marxist theory is
forbidden, doubts of its correctness are punished in the same way
as heresy was once punished by the Catholic Church. The writings of
Marx have taken the place of the Bible and the Koran as a source of
revelation, though they would seem to be no more free from
contradictions and obscurities than those older sacred books.

   And although practical Marxism
has mercilessly cleared away all idealistic systems and illusions,
it has itself developed illusions which are no less questionable
and unprovable than the earlier ones. It hopes in the course of a
few generations so to alter human nature that people will live
together almost without friction in the new order of society, and
that they will undertake the duties of work without any compulsion.
Meanwhile it shifts elsewhere the instinctual restrictions which
are essential in society; it diverts the aggressive tendencies
which threaten all human communities to the outside and finds
support in the hostility of the poor against the rich and of the
hitherto powerless against the former rulers. But a transformation
of human nature such as this is highly improbable. The enthusiasm
with which the mass of the people follow the Bolshevist instigation
at present, so long as the new order is incomplete and is
threatened from outside, gives no certainty for a future in which
it would be fully built up and in no danger. In just the same way
as religion, Bolshevism too must compensate its believers for the
sufferings and deprivations of their present life by promises of a
better future in which there will no longer be any unsatisfied
need. This Paradise, however, is to be in this life, instituted on
earth and thrown open within a foreseeable time. But we must
remember that the Jews as well, whose religion knows nothing of an
after-life, expected the arrival of a Messiah on earth, and that
the Christian Middle Ages at many times believed that the Kingdom
of God was at hand.

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4777

   There is no doubt of how
Bolshevism will reply to these objections. It will say that so long
as men’s nature has not yet been transformed it is necessary
to make use of the means which affect them to-day. It is impossible
to do without compulsion in their education, without the
prohibition of thought and without the employment of force to the
point of bloodshed; and if the illusions were not awakened in them,
they could not be brought to acquiesce in this compulsion. And we
should be politely asked to say how things could be managed
differently. This would defeat us. I could think of no advice to
give. I should admit that the conditions of this experiment would
have deterred me and those like me from undertaking it; but we are
not the only people concerned. There are men of action, unshakable
in their convictions, inaccessible to doubt, without feeling for
the sufferings of others if they stand in the way of their
intentions. We have to thank men of this kind for the fact that the
tremendous experiment of producing a new order of this kind is now
actually being carried out in Russia. At a time when the great
nations announce that they expect salvation only from the
maintenance of Christian piety, the revolution in Russia - in spite
of all its disagreeable details - seems nonetheless like the
message of a better future. Unluckily neither our scepticism nor
the fanatical faith of the other side gives a hint as to how the
experiment will turn out. The future will tell us; perhaps it will
show that the experiment was undertaken prematurely, that a
sweeping alteration of the social order has little prospect of
success until new discoveries have increased our control over the
forces of Nature and so made easier the satisfaction of our needs.
Only then perhaps may it become possible for a new social order not
only to put an end to the material need of the masses but also to
give a hearing to the cultural demands of the individual. Even
then, to be sure, we shall still have to struggle for an
incalculable time with the difficulties which the untameable
character of human nature presents to every kind of social
community.

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4778

   Ladies and Gentlemen, - Allow me
in conclusion to sum up what I had to say of the relation of
psycho-analysis to the question of a
Weltanschauung
.
Psycho-analysis, in my opinion, is incapable of creating a
Weltanschauung
of its own. It does not need one; it is a
part of science and can adhere to the scientific
Weltanschauung
. This, however, scarcely deserves such a
grandiloquent title, for it is not all-comprehensive, it is too
incomplete and makes no claim to being self-contained and to the
construction of systems. Scientific thought is still very young
among human beings; there are too many of the great problems which
it has not yet been able to solve. A
Weltanschauung
erected
upon science has, apart from its emphasis on the real external
world, mainly negative traits, such as submission to the truth and
rejection of illusions. Any of our fellow-men who is dissatisfied
with this state of things, who calls for more than this for his
momentary consolation, may look for it where he can find it. We
shall not grudge it him, we cannot help him, but nor can we on his
account think differently.

4779

THE ACQUISITION AND CONTROL OF FIRE

(1932)

4780

Intentionally left blank

4781

THE ACQUISITION AND CONTROL OF FIRE

   In a footnote to my
Civilization and its Discontents
I mentioned - though only
incidentally - a conjecture which could be formed on the basis of
psycho-analytic material, about primal man’s acquisition of
control over fire. I am led to take up this theme again by Albrecht
Schaeffer’s contradiction (1930) and by Erlenmeyer’s
striking reference in the preceding paper to the Mongolian law
against ‘pissing on ashes’.¹

   For I think my hypothesis - that,
in order to gain control over fire, men had to renounce the
homosexually-tinged desire to put it out with a stream of urine -
can be confirmed by an interpretation of the Greek myth of
Prometheus, provided that we bear in mind the distortions which
must be expected to occur in the transition from facts to the
contents of a myth. These distortions are of the same sort as, and
no worse than, those which we acknowledge every day, when we
reconstruct from patients’ dreams the repressed but extremely
important experiences of their childhood. The mechanisms employed
in the distortions I have in mind are symbolic representation and
turning into the opposite. I should not venture to explain
all
the features of our myth in this fashion; apart from the
original set of facts, other and later occurrences may have
contributed to its content. But the elements which admit of
analytic interpretation are, after all, the most striking and
important - viz. the manner in which Prometheus transported the
fire, the character of his act (an outrage, a theft, a defrauding
of the gods) and the meaning of his punishment.

  
¹
This refers no doubt to hot ashes, from
which fire can still be obtained, and not to ashes which are quite
extinct. - The objection raised by Lorenz (1931) is based on the
assumption that man’s subjugation of fire only began when he
discovered that he could produce it at will by some sort of
manipulation. As against this, Dr. J. Hárnik refers me to a
remark made by Dr. Richard Lasch (in Georg Buschan’s
compilation
Illustrierte Völkerkunde
, 1922, 1, 24), who
writes: ‘Presumably the art of
conserving
fire was
understood long before that of
kindling
it; we have evidence
of this in the fact that, although the present-day pygmy-like
aborigines of the Andamans possess and conserve fire, they have no
indigenous method of kindling it.’

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4782

   The myth tells us that Prometheus
the Titan, a culture-hero who was still a god¹ and who was
perhaps originally himself a demiurge and a creator of men, brought
fire to men, having stolen it from the gods, hidden in a hollow
stick, a fennel-stalk. If we were interpreting a dream we should be
inclined to regard such an object as a penis symbol, although the
unusual stress laid on its hollowness might make us hesitate. But
how can we bring this penis-tube into connection with the
preservation of fire? There seems little chance of doing this, till
we remember the procedure of reversal, of turning into the
opposite, of inverting relationships, which is so common in dreams
and which so often conceals their meaning from us. What a man
harbours in his penis-tube is not fire. On the contrary, it is the
means of
quenching
fire; it is the water of his stream of
urine. This relationship between fire and water then connects up
with a wealth of familiar analytic material.

   Secondly, the acquisition of fire
was a crime; it was accomplished by robbery or theft. This is a
constant feature in all the legends about the acquiring of control
over fire. It is found among the most different and widely
separated peoples and not merely in the Greek myth of Prometheus
the Bringer of Fire. Here, then, must be the essential content of
mankind’s distorted recollection. But why is the acquisition
of fire inseparably connected with the idea of a crime? Who is it
that was injured or defrauded by it? The Promethean myth in Hesiod
gives us a straight answer; for, in another story, not itself
directly connected with fire, Prometheus so arranged the sacrifices
to the gods as to give men the advantage over Zeus. It is the gods,
then, who were defrauded. We know that in myths the gods are
granted the satisfaction of all the desires which human creatures
have to renounce, as we have learnt from the case of incest.
Speaking in analytic terms, we should say that instinctual life -
the id - is the god who is defrauded when the quenching of fire is
renounced: in the legend, a human desire is transformed into a
divine privilege. But in the legend the deity possesses nothing of
the characteristics of a super-ego, he is still the representative
of the paramount life of the instincts.

  
¹
Heracles, at a later time, was a demi-god,
and Theseus wholly human.

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4783

   Transformation into the opposite
is most radically present in a third feature of the legend, in the
punishment of the Bringer of Fire. Prometheus was chained to a
rock, and every day a vulture fed on his liver. In the fire-legends
of other peoples, too, a bird plays a part, and it must have
something to do with the matter; but for the moment I shall not
attempt an interpretation. On the other hand, we feel on firm
ground when it comes to explaining why the liver was selected as
the location of the punishment. In ancient times the liver was
regarded as the seat of all passions and desires; hence a
punishment like that of Prometheus was the right one for a criminal
driven by instinct, who had committed an offence at the prompting
of evil desires. But the exact opposite is true of the Bringer of
Fire: he had renounced an instinct and had shown how beneficent,
and at the same time how indispensable, such a renunciation was for
the purposes of civilization. And why should the legend treat a
deed that was thus a benefit to civilization as a crime deserving
punishment? Well, if, through all its distortions, it barely allows
us to get a glimpse of the fact that the acquisition of control
over fire presupposes an instinctual renunciation, at least it
makes no secret of the resentment which the culture-hero could not
fail to arouse in men driven by their instincts. And this is in
accordance with what we know and expect. We know that a demand for
a renunciation of instinct, and the enforcement of that demand,
call out hostility and aggressiveness, which is only transformed
into a sense of guilt in a later phase of psychical
development.

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4784

   The obscurity of the Prometheus
legend, as of other fire myths, is increased by the fact that
primitive man was bound to regard fire as something analogous to
the passion of love - or, as we should say, as a symbol of the
libido. The warmth that is radiated by fire calls up the same
sensation that accompanies a state of sexual excitation, and the
shape and movements of a flame suggest a phallus in activity. There
can be no doubt about the mythological significance of flame as a
phallus; we have further evidence of it in the legend of the
parentage of Servius Tullius, the Roman king. When we ourselves
speak of the ‘devouring fire’ of love and of
‘licking’ flames - thus comparing the flame to a tongue
- we have not moved so very far away from the mode of thinking of
our primitive ancestors. One of the presuppositions on which we
based our account of the myth of the acquisition of fire was,
indeed, that to primal man the attempt to quench fire with his own
water had the meaning of a pleasurable struggle with another
phallus.

   It may thus well be that, by way
of this symbolic analogy, other elements, of a purely imaginative
sort, have made their may into the myth and become interwoven with
its historical elements. It is difficult to resist the notion that,
if the liver is the seat of passion, its significance,
symbolically, is the same as that of fire itself; and that, if this
is so, its being daily consumed and renewed gives an apt picture of
the behaviour of the erotic desires, which, though daily satisfied,
are daily revived. The bird which sates itself on the liver would
then have the meaning of a penis - a meaning which is not strange
to it in other connections, as we know from legends, dreams,
linguistic usage and plastic representations in ancient times. A
short step further brings us to the phoenix, the bird which, as
often as it is consumed by fire, emerges rejuvenated once more, and
which probably bore the significance of a penis revivified after
its collapse rather than, and earlier than, that of the sun setting
in the glow of evening and afterwards rising once again.

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4785

   The question may be asked whether
we may attribute to the mythopoeic activity an attempt to give (in
play, as it were) a disguised representation to universally
familiar, though also extremely interesting, mental processes that
are accompanied by physical manifestations, with no motive other
than the sheer pleasure of representation. We can certainly give no
decided answer to this question without having fully grasped the
nature of myths; but in the two instances before us, it is easy to
recognize the same content and, with it, a definite purpose. Each
describes the revival of libidinal desires after they have been
quenched through being sated. That is to say, each brings out the
indestructibility of those desires; and this emphasis is
particularly appropriate as a consolation where the historical core
of the myth deals with a defeat of instinctual life, with a
renunciation of instinct that has become necessary. It is, as it
were, the second part of primal man’s understandable reaction
when he has suffered a blow in his instinctual life: after the
punishment of the offender comes the assurance that after all at
bottom he has done no damage.

   A reversal into the opposite is
unexpectedly found in another myth which in appearance has very
little to do with the fire myth. The Lernaean hydra with its
countless flickering serpent’s heads - one of which was
immortal - was, as its name tells us, a water-dragon. Heracles, the
culture-hero, fought it by cutting off its heads; but they always
grew again, and it was only after he had burnt up the immortal head
with fire that he overcame the monster. A water-dragon subdued by
fire - that surely makes no sense. But, as in so many dreams, sense
emerges if we reverse the manifest content. In that case the hydra
is a brand of fire and the flickering serpent’s heads are the
flames; and these, in proof of their libidinal nature, once more
display, like Prometheus’s liver, the phenomenon of
re-growth, of renewal after attempted destruction. Heracles, then,
extinguishes this brand of fire with - water. (The immortal head is
no doubt the phallus itself, and its destruction signifies
castration.) But Heracles was also the deliverer of Prometheus and
slew the bird which devoured his liver. Should we not suspect a
deeper connection between the two myths? It is as though the deed
of the one hero was made up for by the other. Prometheus (like the
Mongolian law) had forbidden the quenching of fire; Heracles
permitted it in the case in which the brand of fire threatened
disaster. The second myth seems to correspond to the reaction of a
later epoch of civilization to the events of the acquisition of
power over fire. It looks as though this line of approach might
take us quite a distance into the secrets of the myth; but
admittedly we should carry a feeling of certainty with us only a
short way.

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4786

   In the antithesis between fire
and water, which dominates the entire field of these myths, yet a
third factor can be demonstrated in addition to the historical
factor and the factor of symbolic phantasy. This is a physiological
fact, which the poet Heine describes in the following lines:-

                                                               
Was dem Menschen dient zum Seichen

                                                               
Damit schafft er Seinesgleichen.

The sexual organ of the male has two
functions; and there are those to whom this association is an
annoyance. It serves for the evacuation of the bladder, and it
carries out the act of love which sets the craving of the genital
libido at rest. The child still believes that he can unite the two
functions. According to a theory of his, babies are made by the man
urinating into the woman’s body. But the adult knows that in
reality the acts are mutually incompatible - as incompatible as
fire and water. When the penis is in the state of excitation which
led to its comparison with a bird, and while the sensations are
being experienced which suggest the warmth of fire, urination is
impossible; and conversely, when the organ is serving to evacuate
urine (the water of the body) all its connections with the genital
function seem to be quenched. The antithesis between the two
functions might lead us to say that man quenches his own fire with
his own water. And primal man, who had to understand the external
world by the help of his own bodily sensations and states, would
surely not have failed to notice and utilize the analogies pointed
out to him by the behaviour of fire.