(d) Somatic Character-Units.
Section 14. (1) General Considerations.
When we say that the inner condition of men implies some outer
expression, it must follow that there are series of phenomena which
especially mold the body in terms of the influence of a state of mind
on external appearance, or conversely, which are significant of the
influence of some physical uniqueness on the psychical state, or of
some other psycho physical condition. As an example of the first
kind one may cite the well known phenomenon that devotees always
make an impression rather specifically feminine. As an example of
the second kind is the fact demonstrated by
Gyurkovechky[1] that
impotents exhibit disagreeable characteristics. Such conditions
find their universalizing expression in the cruel but true maxim
"Beware of the marked one." The Bible was the first of all to
make mention of these evil stigmata. No one of course asserts that
the bearer of any bodily malformation is for that reason invested
with one or more evil qualities—"Non cum hoc, sed propter hoc."
It is a general quality of the untrained, and hence the majority of
men, that they shall greet the unfortunate who suffers from some
bodily malformation not with care and protection, but with scorn
and maltreatment. Such propensities belong, alas, not only to
adults, but also to children, who annoy their deformed playfellows
(whether expressly or whether because they are inconsiderate),
and continually call the unhappy child's attention to his deformity.
Hence, there follows in most cases from earliest youth, at first a
certain bitterness, then envy, unkindness, stifled rage against the
fortunate, joy in destruction, and all the other hateful similar qualities
however they may be named. In the course of time all of these
retained bitter impressions summate, and the qualities arising
from them become more acute, become habitual, and at last you
have a ready-made person "marked for evil." Add to this the
indubitable fact that the marked persons are considerably wiser
and better-instructed than the others. Whether this is so by accident
or is causally established is difficult to say; but inasmuch as
most of them are compelled just by their deformities to deprive
themselves of all common pleasures and to concern themselves with
their own affairs, once they have been fed to satiety with abuse,
scorn and heckling, the latter is the more likely. Under such
circumstances they have to think more, they learn more than the
others to train their wits, largely as means of defense against physical
attack. They often succeed by wit, but then, they can never
be brought into a state of good temper and lovableness when they
are required to defend themselves by means of sharp, biting and
destructive wit. Moreover, if the deformed is naturally not
well-disposed, other dormant evil tendencies develop in him, which
might never have realized themselves if he had had no need
of them for purposes of self-defense—lying, slander, intrigue,
persecution by means of unpermitted instruments, etc. All this
finally forms a determinate complex of phenomena which is undivorceably
bound in the eyes of the expert with every species of
deformity: the mistrusting of the deaf man, the menacing expression
of the blind, the indescribable and therefore extremely
characteristic smiling of the hump-back are not the only typical
phenomena of this kind.
All this is popularly known and is abnormally believed in, so
that we often discover that the deformed are more frequently
suspected of crime than normal people. Suspicion turns to them
especially when an unknown criminal has committed a crime the
accomplishment of which required a particularly evil nature and
where the deed of itself called forth general indignation. In that
case, once a deformed person is suspected, grounds of suspicion are not
difficult to find; a few collect more as a rolling ball does snow. After
that the sweet proverb: "Vox populi, vox dei," drives the unfortunate
fellow into a chaos of evidential grounds of suspicion
which may all be reduced to the fact that he has red hair or a hump.
Such events are frightfully frequent.[2]
[[ id="n14.1"]]
V. Gyurkovechky: Pathologie und Therapie der männlichen Impotenz.
Vienna, Leipzig 1889.
[[ id="n14.2"]]
Cf. Näcke in H. Gross's Archiv, I, 200; IX, 153.