General Examples of the Power of Imagination

There are very common examples of this communication of imagination in children with respect to their fathers, and even more in daughters with respect to their mothers; in servants with respect to their masters, and in maidservants with respect to their mistresses; in schoolboys with respect to their tutors, in courtiers with respect to kings, and generally in all inferiors with respect to their superiors, provided however that fathers, masters and other superiors have some strength of imagination, for without that it could happen that children and servants would receive no considerable impression from the weak imagination of their fathers or masters.

There are also effects of this communication in persons of equal condition; but this is not so common, because there is not found between them a certain respect that disposes minds to receive without examination the impressions of strong imaginations. Finally, there are effects of this in superiors with respect to their inferiors, and these latter sometimes have an imagination so vivid and so dominant that they turn the minds of their masters and superiors as they please.

It will not be too difficult to understand how fathers and mothers make very strong impressions on the imagination of their children, if one considers that these natural dispositions of our brain that lead us to imitate those with whom we live, and to enter into their sentiments and passions, are still much stronger in children with respect to their parents than in all other men. Several reasons can be given for this. The first is that they are of the same blood. For just as parents very often transmit to their children dispositions to certain hereditary diseases, such as gout, stone, madness, and generally all those that have not occurred to them by accident, or that do not have as their sole and unique cause some extraordinary fermentation of humors, like fevers and some others; for it is visible that these cannot be communicated; so they imprint the dispositions of their brain in that of their children, and give to their imagination a certain turn that renders them entirely susceptible to the same sentiments.

The second reason is that ordinarily children have very little commerce with the rest of men who could sometimes trace other traces in their brain, and in some way break the continual effort of the paternal impression. For just as a man who has never left his country ordinarily imagines that the morals and customs of foreigners are entirely contrary to reason because they are contrary to the custom of his city, to the torrent of which he lets himself be carried away; so a child who has never left the paternal home imagines that the sentiments and manners of his parents are universal reason: or rather he does not think that there could be some other principle of reason or virtue than their imitation. He therefore believes everything he hears them say, and does everything he sees them do.

But this impression of parents is so strong that it acts not only on the imagination of children, it acts even on the other parts of their body. A young boy walks, speaks, and makes the same gestures as his father. A daughter likewise dresses like her mother, walks like her, speaks like her; if the mother lisps, the daughter lisps; if the mother has some irregular turn of the head, the daughter takes it. Finally, children imitate their parents in all things, even in their faults and grimaces, as well as in their errors and vices.

There are still several other causes that increase the effect of this impression. The principal ones are the authority of parents, the dependence of children, and the mutual love of one for the other: but these causes are common to courtiers, to servants, and generally to all inferiors as well as to children. We shall explain them by the example of courtiers.

There are men who judge of what does not appear by what does appear; of the greatness, strength, and capacity of the mind, which are hidden from them, by the nobility, dignities and riches that are known to them. One often measures one by the other; and the dependence one has on the great, the desire to participate in their greatness, and the sensible splendor that surrounds them, often lead men to render to men divine honors, if I may speak thus. For if God gives princes authority, men give them infallibility; but an infallibility that is not limited to some subjects nor to some occasions, and that is not attached to some ceremonies. The great naturally know all things; they are always right, although they decide questions of which they have no knowledge. It is not knowing how to live to examine what they advance: it is losing respect to doubt it. It is to revolt, or at least to declare oneself foolish, extravagant and ridiculous to condemn them.

But when the great do us the honor of loving us, it is no longer simply obstinacy, stubbornness, rebellion; it is also ingratitude and perfidy not to yield blindly to all their opinions; it is an irreparable fault that renders us forever unworthy of their good graces; which makes courtiers, and by a necessary consequence almost all peoples, engage without deliberation in all the sentiments of their sovereign, even to the point that in the truths of religion they very often yield to his fantasy and caprice.

England and Germany furnish us only too many examples of these disordered submissions of peoples to the impious wills of their princes. The histories of recent times are full of them; and one has sometimes seen persons advanced in age who have changed religion four or five times because of the various changes of their princes.

Kings and even queens have in England the government of all the estates of their kingdoms, whether ecclesiastical or civil, in all causes. It is they who approve the liturgies, the offices of feasts and the manner in which one must administer and receive the sacraments. They ordain, for example, that one should not adore Jesus Christ when one communicates, although they still oblige one to receive him kneeling according to ancient custom. In a word, they change all things in their liturgies to conform them to the new articles of their faith, and they also have the right to judge of these articles with their parliament, as the pope with the council, as one can see in the statutes of England and Ireland made at the beginning of the reign of Queen Elizabeth. Finally one can say that the kings of England have even more power over the spiritual than over the temporal of their subjects; because these miserable peoples and these children of the earth care much less for the preservation of faith than for the preservation of their goods, they easily enter into all the sentiments of their princes, provided their temporal interest is not contrary to it [19].

The revolutions that have occurred in religion in Sweden and Denmark could still serve us as proof of the force that some minds have over others; but all these revolutions have still had several other very considerable causes. These surprising changes are indeed proofs of the contagious communication of imagination, but proofs too great and too vast. They astonish and dazzle minds rather than enlighten them, because there are too many causes that concur in the production of these great events.

If courtiers and all other men often abandon certain truths, essential truths, truths that it is necessary to uphold or to be lost for eternity; it is visible that they will not risk defending abstract truths, uncertain and little useful. If the religion of the prince makes the religion of his subjects, the reason of the prince will also make the reason of his subjects; and thus the sentiments of the prince will always be in fashion: his pleasures, his passions, his games, his words, his clothes, and generally all his actions will be in fashion; for the prince is himself as it were the essential fashion, and it almost never happens that he does something that does not become fashionable. And as all the irregularities of fashion are only agreeablenesses and beauties, one must not be surprised if princes act so strongly on the imagination of other men.

If Alexander inclines his head, his courtiers incline their heads. If Dionysius the tyrant applies himself to geometry upon the arrival of Plato in Syracuse, geometry immediately becomes fashionable, and the palace of this king, says Plutarch, is immediately filled with dust by the great number of those tracing figures. But as soon as Plato becomes angry with him, and this prince becomes disgusted with study and abandons himself again to his pleasures, his courtiers immediately do the same. It seems, continues this author, that they are enchanted, and that a Circe transforms them into other men. They pass from inclination for philosophy to inclination for debauchery, and from horror of debauchery to horror of philosophy [20].

It is thus that princes can change vices into virtues and virtues into vices, and that a single one of their words is capable of changing all their ideas. Only a word, a gesture, a movement of the eyes or lips is needed for them to make science and erudition pass for base pedantry; temerity, brutality, cruelty, for greatness of courage; and impiety and libertinism, for strength and freedom of mind.

But this, as well as all that I have just said, supposes that these princes have a strong and vivid imagination; for if they had a weak and languid imagination, they could not animate their discourses, nor give them that turn and force that submits and invincibly overcomes weak minds.

If the force of imagination alone and without any help of reason can produce such surprising effects, there is nothing so bizarre nor so extravagant that it cannot persuade when it is supported by some apparent reasons. Here are proofs of this.

An ancient author reports that in Ethiopia courtiers made themselves lame and deformed, cut off some members and even put themselves to death, to make themselves resemble their princes. One was ashamed to appear with two eyes and to walk upright in the train of a one-eyed and lame king; just as one would not dare at present appear at court with a ruff and a cap, or with white boots and gilt spurs.

This fashion of the Ethiopians was very bizarre and very inconvenient, but however it was the fashion. It was followed with joy, and one thought less of the pain one had to suffer than of the honor one did oneself by appearing full of generosity and affection for one’s king. Finally, this false reason of friendship, sustaining the extravagance of fashion, made it pass into custom and law that was observed for a very long time.

The accounts of those who have traveled in the Levant teach us that this custom is kept in several countries, and still some others as contrary to good sense and reason. But it is not necessary to cross the line twice to see laws and unreasonable customs religiously observed, or to find people who follow inconvenient and bizarre fashions; one need not leave France for that. Everywhere there are men susceptible to passions, and where imagination is mistress of reason, there is bizarrerie, and an incomprehensible bizarrerie. If one does not suffer as much pain in keeping one’s bosom uncovered during the harsh freezes of winter, and in compressing one’s body during the excessive heats of summer, as to put out one’s eye or cut off one’s arm, one should suffer more confusion. The pain is not so great, but the reason one has for enduring it is not so apparent; thus, there is at least an equal bizarrerie. An Ethiopian can say that it is out of generosity that he puts out his eye; but what can a Christian lady say who makes a display of what natural modesty and religion oblige her to hide? That it is fashion, and nothing more. But this fashion is bizarre, inconvenient, dishonest, unworthy in all ways; it has no other source than a manifest corruption of reason, and a secret corruption of the heart; one cannot follow it without scandal; it is to openly take the side of the disorder of imagination against reason, of impurity against purity, of the spirit of the world against the spirit of God; in a word, it is to violate the laws of reason and the laws of the Gospel to follow this fashion. No matter, it is fashion; that is to say, a law more holy and more inviolable than that which God had written with His hand on the tables of Moses, and that which He engraves with His spirit in the hearts of Christians.

In truth, I do not know if the French have entirely the right to mock the Ethiopians and the Savages. It is true that if one saw for the first time a one-eyed and lame king followed only by the lame and the one-eyed, one would have difficulty keeping from laughing. But with time one would laugh no more, and one would perhaps admire more the greatness of their courage and their friendship than one would mock the weakness of their mind. It is not the same with French fashions. Their bizarrerie is not supported by any apparent reason; and if they have the advantage of not being so troublesome, they do not always have that of being as reasonable. In a word, they bear the character of a still more corrupt century, in which nothing is powerful enough to moderate the disorder of imagination.

What has just been said of courtiers must also be understood of the greater part of servants with respect to their masters, of maidservants with respect to their mistresses and, to avoid a quite useless enumeration, it must be understood of all inferiors with respect to their superiors, but principally of children with respect to their parents, because children are in a very particular dependence on their parents; that their parents have for them a friendship and tenderness not found in others, and finally because reason leads children to submissions and respects that the same reason does not always regulate.

It is not absolutely necessary, in order to act upon the imagination of others, to have some authority over them and that they depend on us in some way; the sole force of imagination sometimes suffices for that. It often happens that strangers, who have no reputation, and for whom we are not prejudiced by any esteem, have such a force of imagination, and consequently expressions so vivid and touching, that they persuade us without our knowing why, or even of what we are persuaded. It is true that this seems very extraordinary, but however there is nothing more common.

Now this imaginary persuasion can only come from the force of a visionary mind that speaks vividly without knowing what it says, and that thus turns the minds of those who listen to it to believe strongly without knowing what they believe. For most men let themselves go to the effort of the sensible impression that stuns and dazzles them, and drives them to judge by passion of what they conceive only very confusedly. I beg those who will read this work to think of this, to notice examples in the conversations where they will find themselves, and to make some reflections on what passes in their minds on these occasions. This will be much more useful to them than they can imagine.

But one must consider well that there are two things that contribute wonderfully to the force of the imagination of others over us. The first is an air of piety and gravity; the other is an air of libertinism and pride. For according to our disposition to piety or libertinism, persons who speak with a grave and pious air, or with a proud and libertine air, act very differently upon us.

It is true that the former are much more dangerous than the latter; but one must never let oneself be persuaded by the manners of either, but only by the force of their reasons. One can say gravely and modestly foolish things, and in a devout manner impieties and blasphemies. One must therefore examine whether the spirits are of God according to the counsel of St. John, and not trust all kinds of spirits. Demons sometimes transform themselves into angels of light; and one finds persons to whom an air of piety is as it were natural, and whose reputation consequently is ordinarily firmly established, who dispense men from their essential obligations, and even from that of loving God and neighbor, to make them slaves of some Pharisaical practice and ceremony.

But the strong imaginations whose impression and contagion must be carefully avoided are certain spirits in the world who affect the quality of strong minds; which is not very difficult for them to acquire. For now one need only deny with a certain air original sin, the immortality of the soul, or mock some received sentiment in the Church, to acquire the rare quality of strong mind among common men.

These small minds ordinarily have much fire, and a certain free and proud air that dominates and disposes weak imaginations to yield to vivid and specious words, but which signify nothing to attentive minds. They are quite happy in expressions, although quite unhappy in reasons. But because men, as reasonable as they are, much prefer to let themselves be touched by the sensible pleasure of air and expressions, than to fatigue themselves in the examination of reasons; it is visible that these minds must carry it over others, and thus communicate their errors and their malignity, by the power they have over the imagination of other men.