THE LURE OF THE MORBID

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXV, Issue 4757, 29 September 1924, Page 3

THE LURE OF THE MORBID

\ PRIMITIVE INSTINCT. (Bv ,F. Aveling, Ph.D., D.Sc„ D.D., Reader in Psychology, King’s College, University of London, in “The Daily Mail.”) Most people are interested in murders, and especially in murders of the type in which sex elements are in- ' volved as motives. The more gruesome and revolting the details of the crime the stronger is the terrible fascination exerted on the mind, and this 'has apparently been true from the earliest days of our civilisation. But some murders stand out from the rest in a very excess of fascination. The Bywaters-Thompson case gripped the imagination of the public. Mahon’s statement of the manner of the death and. disposal of the remains of Emily Kaye in the fl sheer horror of its detail compelled and riveted attention. The Vaquier trial fixed nearly every eye in England on the court room at Guildford, and set every ear astrain to hear the sordid evidence as it was unfolded. What is the reason of this? What have we within us that awakes and responds so readily to a recital of such crimes ? For it is not the brutal among us only who are affected in this way. Indeed, the brutal are the least affected, if at all. On the. contrary, it i?s the highly civilised, the refined. The courts where such trials take place are besieged by cultured and educated people. The. presence of many women is evidence of the horrible attraction which obsesses them. The newspapers print reports in full —and, indeed, the essential sanity of the human race demands such deports.. THE PRIMITIVE BRUTE. It is not mere interest 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 picein ing together of it more ingenious, ’■ which nd one ever attends ' and of which 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 ra*be. ' Most of us, and espeieally the more - refined, live in a world of convention, in- which the wild upsurging of ”in- . stinctive impulse is repressed. But the primitive brute is still deep down within us, chafing at the fetters with which our social codes and We our f selves have bound 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 g, lie- or she, wants to see. a real mur- . derer. indeed, it might be urged that interest in crimes of this kind 1 is not al morbid or unhealthy ; but that it serves the purpose of securing a certain emotional discharge, aild thus relieves mental tension. •MURDER AND LOVE. It may. be, too, that a principle of "beneficient comparison” has its place in the mentality of those who crave for the Each of us is capable of much savagery and evil; but at least we are not yet so evil and so savage as those in whose crimes we are interested Moralists-may debate whether the details of sex murders ought to be published or not. Th'ey are a dreadful warning, on the one hand, of the possible issue of courses of action ■ often lightly entered upon. But, on "the other hand, have we not reason for thinking that thte, satisfaction obtained by reading the accounts in itself may be ethically wrong ? And is there not always the danger of stimulating .the tendency to imitation ? But. however, the. moralists may conclude, human nature will doubtless remain always much the same. And, in the , meantime, it is in the common interK' est that the law and its working should ba 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 suclr deeds, and by an analysis of the instinctive springs, of action within us that account for pur interest in them, that the tragic is ■ infinitely higher than the comic from the point of view of art. Sophocles’s play “Oedipus Tyrannus” is a case in point. It is woven around a double , tlienie of murder - hnd of sex. It is one accumulation of horror upon hor- / ror Yet it is magnificent. And of our own great dramatist's finest work it is not Romeo and Juliet, which deals with love alone, nor Macbeth, the plot of which is murder alone, but Hamlet, in which both themes are combined, which grips us most.