THE LURE OF THE MORBID.

Hokitika Guardian, 4 October 1924, Page 4

THE LURE OF THE MORBID.

(By C. Aveling, Pli.D., I)>Y., D.l). in "Daily Mail”). •'lost people arc interested in minders, and cspccinly in murders of lln type in which sex elements are involved as motives. The mere gruesome ain 1 revolting the details ol the eriire, the stronger is the terrible fascination exerted, on ibe mind, and this lias apparently been true from the earliest days of our civilisation. But .some murders stand out from tin* rest in a very excess oi lascinalion. The livwnters-Tlioinpsun case gripped the imagination of the public .Mahon's statement of the manner of the death and disposal of the remains ul Emily Kaye in the .sheer horror of its detail compelled and liveted attention. Tim Yaqiimr trial fixed nearly every eye in England on tin* court room at Guildford and set every ear astrain to hear the sordid evidence as it was unfolded. "’hat is the reason of this What have we within us I,bat awakes and responds so readily to a recital of siieli crimes? Cor it i.-, not. the* brutal among us only who are the least effected, it at all. On the contrary, it is tilt* highly civilise*,!. tile I'elinot'l.

The courts where such trials take place are besieged by cultured people. The presence of many women is evidence of the horrible attraction which obsesses them. The newspapers print reports in lull—and, indeed, the essential sanity of tin* human race demands

such reports. THE PRIMITIVE IIR PTE. It is not mere intere.st in crime that is the reason, for other crimes leave people cold. Nor is it the intellectual enjoyment of seeing scraps of evidence fitted together and the ultimate detection of the criminal since there are other trials in which the evidence is vastly more intricate and the piecing together of it more ingenious which no one ever attends or no one ever reads. No; it is the crude, unadulterated craving for details of violent death sexually motivated.

This is due to the two most profound instincts at least of human nature — the instinct of self-assertion, which is a form of self-preservation, and the instinct of self-continuation or racial reproduction. Together they constitute the urge of vital continuity. They are the "Will to Live, both in the individual and in the race.

ATost of us, and especially the more refined, live in a world of convention, in which the wild upspring impulse is repressed. But the primitive brute is

still deep down within us, chafing at tlie fetters with which our social codes and we ourselves have hound him. And he finds in a recital of such crimes the vicarious enjoyment of committing them. Everyone has unconsciously committed mental murder so often that he, or she, wants to see a real murderer. Indeed, it might he urged that, interest in crimes of this Uiiul is not altogether morhid or unhealthy: hut that it serves the purpose of securing a certain emotional discharge, and thus relieving mental tentiou. .MURDER AND LOVE. It may lie too that a principle oi •‘heiielicient comparison” lias its place in the mentality of those who crave of much savagery and evil ; hul at least we are not vet so evil and so savage as those in whose crimes no are interested. .Moralists may debate whether the details of sex murders ougliL to Inpublished or not. 'I hey are a dread lul warning, on the one hand, ot the issue of courses of action often lightly entered upon. But, on the other hand have we not the reason lor thinking that the satisfaction obtained by reading the accounts in itsell may la* ethically wrong 'i And is there not always the danger of stimulating the tendency fo imitation , J But, however, the moralists may conclude, human nature will doubtless remain always much the same. And, in the moantime. it is in the common interest, that the law and its working should be widely understood, so that men may come to realise the fundamental justice of the community protecting itself and its members against anarchy. We are reminded by the actual perpetration of such deeds, and by an analysis of the instinctive .springs ol action within us that account for our interest in them, that the tragic is infinitely higher than the comic lrom the point of view oi art. Sophocles’ play Oedipus Tyrannus is a case in point. It is woven around a double theme of murder anil sex. It is one accumulation of horror upon horror. Yet it is magnilicieiit.

And of our own great dramatists finest work it is not Borneo and Juliet, which deals with love alone, nor Macbeth, the plot of which is murder alone, hut Hamlet, in which the two are combined, which grips us ir.os.l.