Some aspects of the life of Jesus from the psychological and psycho-analytic point of view

Preface

It is not the object of this work to repeat what has already been said, and well said, by others. It makes no attempt to follow that fashion of modern erudition which delights in reopening questions that have been settled in order to settle them again with a great parade of impressive citations. Nor does it attempt either to raise or to solve all the theological, critical, or practical problems which the Life of Jesus presents. Its aim is at once more modest and quite different.

Having had occasion to investigate, during a course of lectures at the University of Geneva, some aspects both of the so-called primitive religions and of the Oriental re¬ ligions that invaded the Roman Empire at about the same period as Christianity, the author was much struck with the unexpected light which the new methods in psychology cast upon these religions and with the very suggestive re¬ semblances between them which these methods brought to the surface. Since then a deeply cherished inclination has impelled him to attempt to apply these methods to that great event which, for nearly twenty centuries, and because it ordains and directs the evolution of the human con¬ science, has dominated the history of the world.

In the face of the deformations to which the churches themselves have only too often subjected Christianity, it is supremely interesting to return once more to the original documents which we possess concerning Christ and to focus upon this great figure all the lights of modern science. It is obvious that researches in this domain must be coniv PREFACE

ducted with great prudence and with the utmost humility.

There are some minds that will perhaps fail to find in these pages what they are seeking: a re-statement, a sift¬ ing, and a solution, in the traditional scholastic manner, of the questions raised by the theologians. This is not because the author is unaware of the value of the exegetical and critical method of work, or because he attaches small importance to it. On the contrary, he will avail himself of it in large measure wherever this labour has arrived at certainties, or at least at conclusions that have a high degree of probability; but it has seemed to him that there is a better course than to retrace forever the beaten paths. On such a subject no source of investigation ought to be neglected. Beside theology there is room for psychology. The author will therefore attempt to apply the method and the discoveries of the latter to certain aspects of the life of Jesus, not with any pretence of arriving at definite con¬ clusions, but rather with the less ambitious hope of under¬ standing a little better a history which, for the very reason that it interests us in the highest degree, distresses us at times because it still contains, as many feel, so much that is obscure and remote.

The following pages were not planned with the intention of publication. They formed the subject of a course of lectures delivered at the University of Geneva during the winter term of 1917 and the summer term of 1919. To this is due their rather abrupt and informal character. When one’s desire is not so much to produce a definitive work as to arouse reflection, to invite corrections and to stimulate the production of more complete works, it is better to give one’s thoughts immediately to the public rather than to await indefinitely the sacred hour when irrefutable conclusions will detach themselves from it as ripe fruit falls from a withering tree. It is by passing from hand to hand

PREFACE v that the torch of life keeps its flame; by retaining it too long one runs the risk of handing on to those who come after one nothing but a few ashes and a little burned-out rosin. With these feelings, the author offers the present volume to souls who seek, love, and labour, in the hope that their researches, their love, and their labour may ex¬ tend its lines and fill in some of its lacunas.

May he be permitted to recall, with great respect, these words of a master whose last lectures he had the privilege of hearing:

“Our theology in the French tongue takes particular de¬ light in the external sphere of material and historical fact, either in order to defend it with the arguments of authority or to attack it with the arguments of critics; it tends to avoid the inner world; one would say it was not familiar with this world, that it did not feel at home there.

“It must be brought back to it, acclimated in it, made fast to it. It must understand the nature of that faith which is not sight, that faith which is based on the inward aspira¬ tions, the primordial conditions of the spiritual life, the feeling of personality, of life, of plenitude, of glory. To move in this world of faith is to find it more real, more living, much more real, more living than the other; and by moving in it, by surveying it, by investigating it one reaps as much edification as enjoyment. Let us turn our re¬ ligious and theological thought in this direction. But if we are to advance here we must desire neither to be or¬ thodox nor to be liberal; we must desire to be intrinsically Christian , that is to say theologians to whom nothing that is inward and true in orthodoxy is alien but whose method remains that of a sovereign liberalism. I mean by this last word the truly independent liberalism of a spirit that has freely arrived and firmly taken its stand at the heart of things, and that has not allowed itself to be turned aside

VI

PREFACE either by fanatics or by literal-minded detractors. May I be allowed, in closing, to wish such a spirit for the younger generation!” 1

1 Bouvier, Aug., Dogmatique chretienne, publiee d’aprts le cours manuscrit et les notes de l’ auteur par Edouard Montet. Paris, Fischbacher, 1903,, vol. II, pp. 122-123.

Chapter I. The Birth Of Jesus . 95

1. The Date . 95

2. The Place . 97

3. The Circumstances . 99

4. Psycho-analysis and the Study of Myths and Legends 105

5- Application of the Two Methods of Psycho-analytic

Interpretation to the Accounts of the Birth of Christ 123

Chapter IX. The Resurrection . 270

1. The Documents . . 271

2. The Event . 280

APPENDIX. THE POETRY OF JESUS . 295

INDEX . . 325

Most of the Lives of Jesus which have been published begin with more or less lengthy considerations of the ante¬ cedents of the gospel history. They try to envisage the life of Christ from a double point of view, that of the his¬ tory of religions and that of the history of Israel. We shall disregard here everything that concerns Judaism and the religion of the Old Testament, not because we do not con¬ sider that it presents a problem, and a most important problem, but simply because the question has been very satisfactorily and adequately treated and because its ele¬ ments are easily accessible to those who wish to investigate it.1

For the same reason we do not consider it incumbent on us to write a detailed historical treatise on the religions which ended and, as it were, reached their summit in Chris¬ tianity. It has seemed to us more interesting to give our special attention to the Greco-Roman paganism under the form which it had assumed at the moment when Chris¬ tianity entered into direct relations with it, that is to say the Mystery-Religions. Here again we have no intention of describing in detail the vast movement of thought and affectivity which took shape in Hellenistic syncretism and the Mystery-Religions.2 We shall confine ourselves to indicat¬ ing in a note the sources from which one may draw in order

\ Cf. the various Lives of Jesus in French, German and English (bibliography at the end of the volume).

2 Such a description, to be interesting, would require considerable space. We have made it the subject of a course of lectures which might serve in a way as an introduction to this book but which we cannot think of transcribing here.

to form an idea of it, and we shall assume that our readers are familiar with the principal aspects of that great current which, in the first centuries of our era, came to mingle its waters with those of the Christian current.

It may be added that if we have been led to dwell on the Mystery-Religions it is not because of the historical influence they may have had on Christianity, but rather because of the identity of the psychological development that one observes in both these movements.

As a matter of fact, almost everything has already been said that can be said about history and historical influences. On the other hand, a great deal remains to be said about the psychology of paganism as well as that of Christianity, and about their relations. Here the question is not so much one of reciprocal influences as of a similarity in psycho¬ logical processes, a question of analogy and parallelism in development. If, as Tertullian said, “the soul is naturally Christian,” one should find the traces of this “nature” in paganism itself, and it appears indeed as if this might be the case. It is therefore a psychological and not a historical interest that has led us to insert in this introduction a sec¬ tion on the Mystery-Religions; and this quite special direc¬ tion of our interest suffices also to explain and justify the omissions of which we have already spoken.

Chapter I

§ I. THEOLOGY

Until about the middle of the nineteenth century, it was the custom to consider religion and the different religions as so many intellectual verities the grounds of which were to be demonstrated or rejected by means of logic. Christian theologians sought to prove the superiority of Christianity to the other religions by establishing the superior value of its dogmas, supporting the truth of these dogmas on proofs of an intellectual order. Save for a few exceptions (for example, those mystic souls who insisted and have always insisted upon the life and the reasons of the heart) every one believed that the essential thing in religion was to remain convinced of the legitimacy of certain intellectual beliefs. Such is the dogmatic conception of religion. aAll the religions which preceded Christianity are false and in¬ ferior,” said the theologians, “because their dogmas, their rites, their beliefs, their ceremonies are either ridiculous or cruel, or bear the stamp of superstition, or are morally false.” The variations on this theme were, to be sure, very numerous and of many shades, but they all led back, con¬ sciously or unconsciously, to the same leitmotiv: religion, and every religion, is an assemblage of truths or errors which reveal themselves as true or false to an intelligence that is sufficiently skilled to judge them.

Let it not be supposed that this conception has been alto¬ gether abandoned even to-day. It remains that of the great mass of the people; it is undoubtedly still maintained

by many ministers and preachers; it forms the basis of all sorts of apologetical efforts which, though often clumsy, are very well-intentioned. We may add that it is responsi¬ ble for the ruin of many sincere lives which have run aground on this rock of intellectualism in the sphere of religion and which, unable to arrive at an intellectual syn¬ thesis of their personal experiences and the dogmas of Christianity, have made it a matter of conscience to relin¬ quish a faith which they have not always been able to un¬ derstand.

The best of our Protestant theologians, however, have already appealed for another method and centred their hopes upon its appearance.1 Gaston Frommel, speaking of a special point in the Christian experience, exclaims: “A great deal might be said on this point; there are many ob¬ servations that might be made about it which, alas, have not yet been made, made, I mean, with due method and rigour. In these matters Christian theology is still on trial. It has never done what the natural sciences have done: it has not profited by the treasure of the experiences of eighteen centuries of faith which have made Christianity a part of humanity. It has remained doctrinaire, speculative or cau¬ tiously historical, instead of becoming inductive. It has not yet arrived at the exact and rigorously scientific results which it might have reached if it had made use of the accumulated riches of the hundreds and thousands of Chris¬ tian lives that have been lived from the first centuries down to our own day. As a result, lacking the records and the carefully attested, verified, and classified facts, it is obliged, when it enters this domain (which is that of the theology of the future), to take its stand upon commonplace gener¬ alities or those mere instinctive presuppositions which can always be disputed. . . .”

1 Schleiermacher was the first to open the way, but his efforts were necessarily tentative.

And he adds that this work will be accomplished, not in a day or by one man, but by hundreds working together.2

§ 2. PSYCHOLOGY

At the moment when Frommel uttered these words a movement was already taking shape that was to meet the desire which he expressed and supply the want which he was pointing out. This movement was born almost at the same time in several different countries and set out to ap¬ proach religious phenomena in a different fashion from that which had been employed hitherto. In Germany, Wundt and his school were beginning to study the religious modes and customs of primitive peoples as a branch of ethnology.

In America, James, Leuba, Stanley Hall, and others who followed them, adopting a more individualistic method, were gathering observations of all sorts, grouping them, analysing them and, while taking great pains to avoid any preconceived theory in regard to them, claiming their right to describe them in the same way and as of the same general character as other psychic phenomena. Little by little the Psychology of Religion was taking form; it was creating its own method of investigation and demanding its rights. It has now come forward with a sufficient list of works to its credit, and works whose value is sufficiently substantial for us to give this new science serious consider¬ ation.

Now the whole character of these books and their gen¬ eral tendency have contributed to give the cultivated public a new idea of religion. In the light of these works religion to-day appears to us as a branch of the mental activity of humanity. We can no longer separate it from the general

2 G. Frommel. La verite humaine. St.-Blaise, Foyer solidariste, 1910, II, p. 252.

field of psychic experiences. When this word religion is pronounced in our presence we no longer see a group of dogmatic ideas, doctrines, or truths which are isolated from others and the verity of which must be demonstrated by means of reason; rather it suggests to us individual or col¬ lective psychic phenomena, such as conversion, regenera¬ tion, religious awakenings, mass movements, etc., which are to be observed and described dispassionately and with as much exactitude as possible. Religious psychology seems to have given the death-blow to the syllogistic and scholas¬ tic conception of religion. It will become increasingly diffi¬ cult for a mind with any cultivation to hold these antiquated views; less and less shall we be able to consider religion apart from the rest of human life, relegating it to a separate compartment. Henceforward we shall be obliged to ex¬ amine it in its constant relations with all the rest of the mental and physiological life of man.

Religious psychology has revealed to us a fact of the highest importance which we have long divined, namely, that religion, far from being a truth external to man, which he must swallow like a pill, is attached, on the contrary, to the most intimate fibres of his being, that it is closely bound up with all that is deepest in his nature and comes to him from within. Man is a religious being in the same way that he is a being who thinks, wills, and feels. Man becomes religious not because, at a certain moment of his development, he has encountered a certain group of dog¬ matic ideas, doctrines, or formulas which he has been pleased to adopt, but first and foremost because his desires, needs, and feelings — one whole side of his psychic life — impel him in the direction of the religion which he adopts. The religion does not exist in the dogmas, the doctrines, and the ceremonies before it exists in the man himself. It is because it exists first in the psychic life of the individual that he later finds it again, so to speak, and accepts it in the intellectual systems that are presented to him or in the ceremonies and the rites which respond to his conscious or unconscious aspirations.

Psychology differs from theology, then, in that it rests on a scientific basis: the observation and the classification of facts. Theology, on the contrary, has as a rule quite another foundation: it is based on the admitted truth of certain beliefs, certain doctrines, a theory that is precon¬ ceived or accepted by virtue of an act of faith, and it seeks to demonstrate the truth and the soundness of this theory.

A Christian theologian, for example, will approach the person of Jesus with the design of demonstrating that he is indeed the Saviour to whom the faith of the Church clings, and that she is right in considering him as such, that he fulfils the prophecies concerning the Messiah, and other related questions.

A psychologist, on the other hand, will not concern him¬ self with these questions at all. He will approach the religious manifestations of such and such a hero or founder of a religion as he would approach those of any other man; he will seek to analyse them as facts, to relate them to other similar facts, to compare the one series of facts with the other; then, if any conclusion results from these analyses and comparisons, he will accept it and range it in its proper place among the data which he has acquired, whether it contradicts or whether it confirms the faith of this or that religious group.

The psychology of religion, then, studies facts, not ideas, states of consciousness, not doctrines. It aims to remain scientific; it concerns itself not with religion but with re¬ ligious phenomena, and it seeks to discover the laws by which they arise and develop, disregarding the entire meta¬ physical question and taking cognisance, not of the first

IO cause, but of the secondary causes alone. In this sense we may say that the psychology of religion is much more dis¬ interested than theology; it is not in the service of any creed; it is not in the service of anybody. But we must not look to it for edification; it has nothing of that sort to give. It limits itself to arranging, classifying, observing, and drawing conclusions. It is for the individual to utilize its results as best he may according to his own needs and to discover how they may serve him in clarifying or modifying his personal conceptions.

In his latest book, The Psychology of Religion ,3 one of the best known of the American psychologists, George Coe, touches on a point that interests us particularly inasmuch as it answers the preliminary question implied in the study we are undertaking to-day: “Has psychology the right to concern itself with persons?” The tendency of some psychologists might lead us to suppose that it has not. Considering the insistence with which a number of them lay stress on the fact that we are concerned in psychology only with states of consciousness, one might suppose that the “I,” individuality, is for them something that is non¬ existent or unattainable. Theoretically this point of view may be upheld. It is evident that strict psychological ob¬ servation always has to do with this or that state of mind of which it happens to be examining the conditions, the structure, and the consequences independently of the person who experiences that state of mind. From this one might conclude that the person is non-existent, or at least a neg¬ ligible quantity. Here again it is an American who comes to save us from academic pedantry with his strong common sense and his clear, candid vision of realities. Mr. George Coe distinguishes, in the psychology of religion, two differ¬ ent forms, two types of research:

3 The Psychology of Religion. University of Chicago Press, 1916.

ii

I. Sometimes the problem is one of separating the ele¬ ments of a religious experience which comprises a great num¬ ber of varied psychic data; we then place ourselves at what Coe calls the structural point of view. This, for example, is what Starbuck 4 has done in examining the various states of consciousness which, taken together, constitute conver¬ sion ; it is also what Leuba5 and Delacroix 6 have done in connection with mysticism, and King,7 Pratt,8 and Durckheim 9 in connection with the genesis and the growth of religion in the individual and in the race.

II. But this is not the w7hole story. Religion is not merely an assemblage of states of consciousness of a special kind; it is also a struggle with destiny; it is directed towards an end, towards an aim; the devotee is in search of some¬ thing, he follows a plan. Religion has a certain connection with the evaluating phase of experience, with the side of life which is concerned with the meaning of things. This also we must take into account; and in doing so we find ourselves adopting a new point of view which Coe calls

4 Starbuck, E. D., The Psychology of Religion. 2nd edition, Lon¬ don, Scott, 1901.

5 Leuba, J., Les tendances religieuses chez les mystiques chretiens. Rev. philos., LIV, 1902, pp. 1-36 and 441-487.

Id., The Psychology of the Christian Mystics. Mind, N. S., XIV, pp.

15-27.

6 Delacroix, Essai sur le mysticisme speculatif en Allcmagne au XIVe siecle. Paris, Alcan, 1900.

Id., Etudes d’histoire et de psychologie du mysticisme. Les grands mystiques chretiens. Paris, Alcan, 1908.

7 King, J., The Development of Religion: a Study in Anthropology and Social Psychology. New York, Macmillan, 1910.

Id., A Psychological Theory of the Origin of Religion. New York, Acad, of Sc., 26 Feb., 1906.

8 Pratt, J. B., Concerning the Origin of Religion. Amer. Jour, of Relig. Psych., II, p. 257.

Id., The Psychology of Religious Belief. New York, Macmillan, 1907.

9 Durckheim, E., De la definition des phenomencs religieux. An. sociol., II, pp. 1-28.

Id., Examen critique des systdmcs classiques sur les origines de la pensee religieuse. Rev. philos., LXVII, 1909, pp. 10-15.

Id., Les formes elementaires de la vie religieuse. Le systdme totemique en Australie. Paris, Alcan, 1912.

the junctional point of view. Psychology should adopt this as well, and as a matter of fact it does so. “For,” says Coe, “the concrete experience out of which we abstract the * states of consciousness ’ (we desire to study) is the experi¬ ence of being a personal self. Each sensation, feeling, or other ‘element’ of structural psychology is simply a par¬ ticular discriminable aspect of a self-realising life.” 10 From the psychology of states of consciousness it is in¬ evitable, therefore, that one should proceed to the psychol¬ ogy of persons , of the personal /.

These considerations lead Coe to a manner of looking at things which is interesting in connection with our present plan. In this way he corrects the somewhat narrow out¬ look of a purely scientific psychology that is concerned and desires to be concerned only with the structure of states of consciousness. He regards it as legitimate also to con¬ sider states of mind from the point of view of the value they possess in relation to society, society as a whole. This point of view enables us to establish distinctions not only between this and that state of mind but also between person and person. We are placed in a position to compare and evaluate persons; and this is important in our present inquiry.

It is evident that this point of view adopted by Coe lays itself open to the reproach of not being strictly scien¬ tific, inasmuch as science is concerned with measures and not with values. But to this objection one might reply that the very axioms upon which science rests are dictated by considerations of value. The most disinterested science is built up, in the last analysis, upon an interest; for in order to be able to know we must first pose hypotheses that will render the scientific structure possible: atoms, electrons, etc.

In approaching the great figure who is to form the sub-

10 Coe, The Psychology of Religion, p. ig.

ject of this book we shall first meet with states of mind that have been produced in a very special environment, in the midst of a people with very strongly marked char¬ acteristics and during an epoch far removed from our own. We must study their structure and compare them with other states of mind that are nearer to our own and better known. But we shall not consider ourselves committed to an ob¬ jectivity so strict as to prevent us from taking into account the fact that we are dealing here first and foremost with a person, a person who pursued certain aims and moved in a certain direction, and that, because of and through the intermediation of this person, new currents, new psychic functions have come into being in the world. “Jesus,” says Renan, “had neither dogmas nor a system; he had a fixed personal resolution which, as it surpassed in intensity every other created will, directs to this day the destinies of hu¬ manity.” 11 These are the words of a judge who, in criti¬ cism, did not allow himself to be easily checked. Yet they affirm the existence in Jesus of something, a personal char¬ acter, a fixed personal resolution, which bore and still bears its consequences for humanity.

On the other hand, let us also note that to relate it with other human personalities does not in any way diminish the specific character of this personality. To bring com¬ parative psychology to bear upon Jesus, to relate his states of consciousness, his feelings, his volitions, his impulsions, or his inhibitions with those which take place in all men, is not to solve the whole problem of his origin and his essence. The latter remains exactly as it was before, and for the following reason.

In the natural order, as we know, the same physical ele¬ ments, differently grouped, may produce absolutely different results. Rain, snow, hail, ice are after all nothing but

11 Renan, Vie de Jesus . Paris, Calmann-Levy, p. 48.

water. And yet, in concrete reality, how these things differ one from another in their effects, in their utility, in the use to which we can put them! When we decompose them we always find water; but, meanwhile, the rain has fer¬ tilised my soil, the ice has stopped the decomposition of my food, the snow has killed my friend, the hail has devas¬ tated my crops. “It’s nothing but water, just the same!” a physicist may tell me. But to me, an ordinary man, this makes no difference; it does not interest me; it does not diminish in the slightest way the seriousness of the effects that have been produced.

Let us mount a step and enter psychology. There is no reason why we should be disturbed if, in a soul which we revere, in a person for whom we entertain the greatest respect, the psychological analysis happens to reveal to us a structure of psychic elements analogous to that of the simplest of mortals. As a matter of fact, there appears, under the new form assumed by this group of elements which constitute the originality of this personality, an im¬ ponderable something which is also a force, an energy, though of the spiritual order. From the psychological point of view this person is a human person of the same structure as other human persons; yet that which precisely distin¬ guishes him from others, that something which I can com¬ pare to nothing else because it is peculiar to him, which it is impossible to analyse, which is perceptible only to the moral sense, is enough to confer upon him in my eyes a value, a significance, a place quite apart from that of other human beings. The secret of personality is always a divine secret; one never succeeds in isolating it by merely scientific labour. It will resist the most subtle analyses because it belongs to quite another order of things. We therefore do it no injury when we reduce to its known elements the composition of a human psyche.

i5

To sum up what we have just said and render quite clear the methodological line that Coe has traced, let us formulate as follows the investigation that we are about to undertake:

1. The structural point of view will lead us to approach the life of Jesus, his psychic life, his states of consciousness, from the angle of their resemblance to our own. In this way we shall see in what respects he approximates to our¬ selves; we shall examine the functioning of his mind, his feelings, the hidden logic of his inner development, accord¬ ing to the laws which we have learned by our previous observations. In this way Jesus will appear to us chiefly under the aspect which he shares with men, with all men. We shall feel him living with the fulness of humanity, thanks to the numerous points of resemblance with our own which his psychology presents.