Freud - Complete Works (795 page)

Moses And Monotheism

4936

D

RENUNCIATION OF INSTINCT

   It is not obvious and not
immediately understandable why an advance in intellectuality, a
set-back to sensuality, should raise the self-regard both of an
individual and of a people. It seems to presuppose the existence of
a definite standard of value and of some other person or agency
which maintains it. For an explanation let us turn to an analogous
case in individual psychology which we have come to understand.

   If the id in a human being gives
rise to an instinctual demand of an erotic or aggressive nature,
the simplest and most natural thing is that the ego, which has the
apparatus of thought and the muscular apparatus at its disposal,
should satisfy the demand by an action. This satisfaction of the
instinct is felt by the ego as pleasure, just as its
non-satisfaction would undoubtedly have become a source of
unpleasure. Now a case may arise in which the ego abstains from
satisfying the instinct in view of external obstacles - namely, if
it perceives that the action in question would provoke a serious
danger to the ego. An abstention from satisfaction of this kind,
the renunciation of an instinct on account of an external hindrance
- or, as we say, in obedience to the reality principle - is not
pleasurable in any event. The renunciation of the instinct would
lead to a lasting tension owing to unpleasure, if it were not
possible to reduce the strength of the instinct itself by
displacements of energy. Instinctual renunciation can, however,
also be imposed for other reasons, which we correctly describe as
internal
. In the course of an individual’s development
a portion of the inhibiting forces in the external world are
internalized and an agency is constructed in the ego which
confronts the rest of the ego in an observing, criticizing and
prohibiting sense. We call this new agency the
super-ego
.
Thenceforward the ego, before putting to work the instinctual
satisfactions demanded by the id, has to take into account not
merely the dangers of the external world but also the objections of
the super-ego, and it will have all the more grounds for abstaining
from satisfying the instinct. But whereas instinctual renunciation,
when it is for external reasons, is
only
unpleasurable, when
it is for internal reasons, in obedience to the super-ego, it has a
different economic effect. In addition to the inevitable
unpleasurable consequences it also brings the ego a yield of
pleasure - a substitutive satisfaction, as it were. The ego feels
elevated; it is proud of the instinctual renunciation, as though it
were a valuable achievement. We believe we can understand the
mechanism of this yield of pleasure. The super-ego is the successor
and representative of the individual’s parents (and
educators) who had supervised his actions in the first period of
his life; it carries on their functions almost unchanged. It keeps
the ego in a permanent state of dependence and exercises a constant
pressure on it. Just as in childhood, the ego is apprehensive about
risking the love of its supreme master; it feels his approval as
liberation and satisfaction and his reproaches as pangs of
conscience. When the ego has brought the super-ego the sacrifice of
an instinctual renunciation, it expects to be rewarded by receiving
more love from it. The consciousness of deserving this love is felt
by it as pride. At the time when the authority had not yet been
internalized as a super-ego, there could be the same relation
between the threat of loss of love and the claims of instinct:
there was a feeling of security and satisfaction when one had
achieved an instinctual renunciation out of love for one’s
parents. But this happy feeling could only assume the peculiar
narcissistic character of pride after the authority had itself
become a portion of the ego.

Moses And Monotheism

4937

   What help does this explanation
of the satisfaction arising from instinctual renunciation give us
towards understanding the processes that we want to study - the
elevation of self-regard when there are advances in
intellectuality? Very little, it seems. The circumstances are quite
different. There is no question of any instinctual renunciation and
there is no second person or agency for whose sake the sacrifice is
made. We shall soon feel doubts about this last assertion. It can
be said that the great man is precisely the authority for whose
sake the achievement is carried out; and, since the great man
himself operates by virtue of his similarity to the father, there
is no need to feel surprise if in group psychology the role of the
super-ego falls to him. So that this would apply too to the man
Moses in relation to the Jewish people. As regards the other point,
however, no proper analogy can be established. An advance in
intellectuality consists in deciding against direct
sense-perception in favour of what are known as the higher
intellectual processes - that is, memories, reflections and
inferences. It consists, for instance, in deciding that paternity
is more important than maternity, although it cannot, like the
latter, be established by the evidence of the senses, and that for
that reason the child should bear his father’s name and be
his heir. Or it declares that our God is the greatest and
mightiest, although he is invisible like a gale of wind or like the
soul. The rejection of a sexual or aggressive instinctual demand
seems to be something quite different from this. Moreover, in the
case of some advances in intellectuality - for instance, in the
case of the victory of patriarchy - we cannot point to the
authority which lays down the standard which is to be regarded as
higher. It cannot in this case be the father, since he is only
elevated into being an authority by the advance itself. Thus we are
faced by the phenomenon that in the course of the development of
humanity sensuality is gradually overpowered by intellectuality and
that men feel proud and exalted by every such advance. But we are
unable to say why this should be so. It further happens later on
that intellectuality itself is overpowered by the very puzzling
emotional phenomenon of faith. Here we have the celebrated
‘
credo quia absurdum
’, and, once more, anyone
who has succeeded in this regards it as a supreme achievement.
Perhaps the common element in all these psychological situations is
something else. Perhaps men simply pronounce that what is more
difficult is higher, and their pride is merely their narcissism
augmented by the consciousness of a difficulty overcome.

Moses And Monotheism

4938

   These are certainly not very
fruitful considerations, and it might be thought that they have
nothing at all to do with our enquiry as to what has determined the
character of the Jewish people. That would only be to our
advantage; but a certain connection with our problem is betrayed
nevertheless by a fact which will concern us still more later on.
The religion which began with the prohibition against making an
image of God develops more and more in the course of centuries into
a religion of instinctual renunciations. It is not that it would
demand sexual
abstinence
; it is content with a marked
restriction of sexual freedom. God, however, becomes entirely
removed from sexuality and elevated into the ideal of ethical
perfection. But ethics is a limitation of instinct. The Prophets
are never tired of asseverating that God requires nothing other
from his people than a just and virtuous conduct of life - that is,
abstention from every instinctual satisfaction which is still
condemned as vicious by our morality to-day as well. And even the
demand for belief in him seems to take a second place in comparison
with the seriousness of these ethical requirements. In this way
instinctual renunciation seems to play a prominent part in the
religion, even if it did not stand out in it from the first.

   This is the place, however, for
an interpolation, in order to avoid a misunderstanding. Even though
it may seem that instinctual renunciation and the ethics founded on
it do not form part of the essential content of religion, yet
genetically they are most intimately connected with it. Totemism,
which is the earliest form of a religion which we recognize,
carries with it, as indispensable constituents of its system, a
number of commands and prohibitions which have no other
significance, of course, than as instinctual renunciations: the
worship of the totem, which includes a prohibition against injuring
or killing it, exogamy - that is, renunciation of the passionately
desired mothers and sisters in the horde - the granting of equal
rights to all the members of the fraternal alliance - that is,
restricting the inclination to violent rivalry among them. In these
regulations are to be seen the first beginnings of a moral and
social order. It does not escape us that two different motives are
at work here. The first two prohibitions operate on the side of the
father who has been got rid of: they carry on his will, as it were.
The third command - the granting of equal rights to the allied
brothers - disregards the father’s will; it is justified by
an appeal to the necessity for permanently maintaining the new
order which succeeded the father’s removal. Otherwise a
relapse into the earlier state would have become inevitable. It is
here that social commands diverge from the others which, as we
might say, are derived directly from religious connections.

   The essential part of this course
of events is repeated in the abbreviated development of the human
individual. Here, too, it is the authority of the child’s
parents - essentially, that of his autocratic father, threatening
him with his power to punish - which calls on him for a
renunciation of instinct and which decides for him what is to be
allowed and what forbidden. Later on, when Society and the
super-ego have taken the parents’ place, what in the child
was called ‘well-behaved’ or ‘naughty’ is
described as ‘good’ and ‘evil’ or
‘virtuous’ and ‘vicious’. But it is still
always the same thing - instinctual renunciation under the pressure
of the authority which replaces and prolongs the father.

Moses And Monotheism

4939

   A further depth is added to these
discoveries when we examine the remarkable concept of holiness.
What is it really that seems to us ‘holy’ in preference
to other things that we value highly and recognize as important? On
the one hand, the connection of holiness or sacredness with what is
religious is unmistakable. It is insisted upon emphatically:
everything religious is sacred, it is the very core of sacredness.
On the other hand, our judgement is disturbed by the numerous
attempts to apply the characteristic of sacredness to so many other
things - people, institutions, functions - which have little to do
with religion. These efforts serve obvious tendentious purposes.
Let us start from the prohibitive character which is so firmly
attached to sacredness. What is sacred is obviously something that
may not be touched. A sacred prohibition has a very strong
emotional tone but has in fact no rational basis. For why, for
instance, should incest with a daughter or sister be such a
specially serious crime - so much worse than any other sexual
intercourse? If we ask for a rational basis we shall certainly be
told that all our feelings rebel against it. But that only means
that people regard the prohibition as self-evident and that they
know of no basis for it.

   It is easy enough to show the
futility of such an explanation. What is represented as insulting
our most sacred feelings was a universal custom - we might call it
a usage made holy - among the ruling families of the Ancient
Egyptians and of other early peoples. It was taken as a matter of
course that a Pharaoh should take his sister as his first and
principal wife; and the later successors of the Pharaohs, the Greek
Ptolemies, did not hesitate to follow that model. We are compelled,
rather, to a realization that incest - in this instance between a
brother and sister - was a privilege which was withheld from common
mortals and reserved to kings as representatives of the gods, just
as similarly, no objection was taken to incestuous relations of
this kind in the world of Greek and Germanic legend. It may be
suspected that the scrupulous insistence upon equality of birth
among our aristocracy is a relic of this ancient privilege and it
can be established that, as a result of the inbreeding practised
over so many generations in the highest social strata, Europe is
ruled to-day by members of a single family and a second one.

Moses And Monotheism

4940

   Evidence of incest among gods,
kings and heroes helps us as well to deal with another attempt,
which seeks to explain the horror of incest biologically and to
trace it to an obscure knowledge of the damage done by inbreeding.
It is not even certain, however, that there
is
any danger of
damage from inbreeding let alone that primitive peoples can have
recognized it and reacted against it. The uncertainty in defining
the permitted and forbidden degrees of kinship argues just as
little in favour of the hypothesis that a ‘natural
feeling’ is the ultimate basis of the horror of incest.

   Our construction of prehistory
forces us to another explanation. The command in favour of exogamy,
of which the horror of incest is the negative expression, was a
product of the will of the father and carried this will on after he
had been removed. Hence come the strength of its emotional tone and
the impossibility of finding a rational basis for it - that is, its
sacredness. We confidently expect that an investigation of all the
other cases of a sacred prohibition would lead to the same
conclusion as in that of the horror of incest: that what is sacred
was originally nothing other than the prolongation of the will of
the primal father. This would also throw light on the hitherto
incomprehensible ambivalence of the words which express the concept
of sacredness. It is the ambivalence which in general dominates the
relation to the father. [The Latin] ‘
sacer
’
means not only ‘sacred’, ‘consecrated’, but
also something that we can only translate as
‘infamous’, ‘detestable’ (e.g.
‘
auri sacra fames
’). But the father’s will
was not only something which one might not touch, which one had to
hold in high respect, but also something one trembled before,
because it demanded a painful instinctual renunciation. When we
hear that Moses made his people holy by introducing the custom of
circumcision we now understand the deep meaning of that assertion.
Circumcision is the symbolic substitute for the castration which
the primal father once inflicted upon his sons in the plenitude of
his absolute power, and whoever accepted that symbol was showing by
it that he was prepared to submit to the father’s will, even
if it imposed the most painful sacrifice on him.