§ 3. On Vain Observance

567. DEFINITION. Vain observance "is superstition by which, through some disproportionate means not instituted by God, some effect is procured, for example health, knowledge" (III, 14). It is called observance because it is some veneration or worship with respect to the demon; and it is called vain because those effects are either not obtained, or often are harmful rather than salutary.

But because there are not lacking those who think that hypnotism, employed for curing certain diseases, is to be numbered among vain observances, we shall speak: 1. of vain observance in general; 2. of hypnotism in particular.

Vain observance does not differ specifically from divination; because in the genus of morals it does not matter whether knowledge of a hidden thing is sought from the demon, or some external effect. By reason of material object, it is threefold: 1. the notorious art, or the art of acquiring knowledge without labor; 2. the art of healings, or the art of healing by various signs or sacred things, as efficacious for this as from the work worked; 3. observance of events, by which from consideration of some chance event it is conjectured what favorable or unfavorable thing will be.

568. PRINCIPLE. Vain observance is a mortal sin from its whole genus. "It cannot be excused from mortal sin from smallness of matter: because simply and in every matter the power proper to God is usurped" (III, 15). Yet it can be excused from mortal sin from imperfection of the act (cf. n. 560, 563).

Vain observance is perceived from various signs: 1. From insufficiency of the cause employed for producing the effect; namely if it has neither natural force for the intended effect, nor is the supernatural legitimately established.

2. From addition of a false or vain circumstance, for example apocryphal words, a certain hour, a certain number, foreign characters, etc. 3. From the effect itself, if this at once vanishes. 4. From infallible expectation of the effect, the insufficient cause being posited.

This can especially be observed in certain modes of curing diseases (magical medicine). The remedies employed are commonly touchings, ointments whose elements and healing force lie hidden under mystery; sometimes prayers, ridiculous adjurations, are added; finally even that sympathy alone, or magnetic force which is said to pass from the operator into the sick person, is employed. It cannot be said a priori that vain observance is present in all these things. For it is certain that in certain families there remains secret knowledge of certain plants, together with the composition of some remedy. It is also certain that the grace of healings can also be conferred by God upon an uneducated man: for it is one of the graces gratuitously given. But this grace of healings is personal and does not use vain means. Therefore if he who pretends that he possesses this grace says that he received the art from others, employs wonderful signs, and firmly believes that the force of curing exists in the signs themselves, he is not to be given credence. Cf. Ami du Cl., 1909, p. 1146, General Table, v. Healers; Noldin, II, 159 and 162.

From these things you will resolve: 1. Those are guilty of vain observance: a) Who wear amulets or bindings marked with certain characters. b) Who invoke certain unknown names, or employ a certain number of crosses or prayers for healing wounds, for rendering themselves invulnerable, etc. c) Who spread certain chains of prayers to be written by one's own hand and sent to others, or wear certain prayers to St. Bridget, or other prayers, expecting an entirely infallible effect from them. d) Who hold certain days as favorable, but others as unfavorable, as, for example, Tuesday or Friday, and order their actions according to this credulity. e) Who refuse to sit at table in the number thirteen, as if this were a sign of death; etc. (III, 17; Croix, l. 3, P. I, n. 29).

2. But it is not vain observance: a) To observe the moon or the times more suitable for gathering herbs or cutting trees. b) Nor to wear sacred things or words of Sacred Scripture in honor of God or of the Saints. c) Nor to swallow little paper images of the Blessed Virgin Mary dissolved in water or wrapped in the manner of a pill, for obtaining health. From this use practically every appearance of vain observance is removed if the faithful are admonished that honor and love toward the Mother of God are thus expressed, and that it is in no way a question of receiving communion of the Blessed Virgin Mary, or of obtaining an effect infallibly (cf. Decree of the Holy Office, July 2, 1903, in A. S. S., 37, p. 237; Linz Quart. Schr., 1906, p. 361 and 1907, p. 253; Ami du Cl., 1899, p. 359; 1908, p. 574).

PRACTICAL RULES. 1. Superstition is contagious; wherefore a prudent parish priest or catechist should have discourse only concerning those superstitions which are known in the region.

2. In many vain observances there is good faith, and therefore rude persons are sometimes to be left in their simplicity, since they are with difficulty drawn away from that which in good faith they received from their ancestors.

3. Let the parish priest see whether the matter can be turned to a good sense, or changed into another, almost similar, but pious and good use. Very appositely to the matter: "When you are pressed by miseries and troubles," says St. Alphonsus (Inst. cat., P. I, c. 1, n. 54), "have recourse to the most holy Sacrament, to the Crucified, to the Virgin Mary, to Blessed Anthony of Padua, to Blessed Vincent Ferrer; use the oil of their lamps; use little papers with figures of Mary Immaculate or of some Saint; and in this mode, without sinning, you will be able to obtain grace. If you act otherwise, you will not obtain grace, and you will sin." Cf. Linz. Quart. Schr., 1907, p. 517.

Cf. Coconnier, L'hypnotisme franc; Antonelli, Med. past., II, c. II; Lehmkuhl, I, n. 502; Genicot, I, n. 272; Schneider, L'hypnotisme; D'Annibale, Noldin, etc.

Hypnotism differs from magnetism only in name. The latter has Mesmer (d. 1815) as its inventor, from whom it is also sometimes called mesmerism, and is the art of producing certain phenomena which appear prodigious insofar as a cause proportioned to the effects cannot be assigned.

569. NOTIONS. Hypnotism, considered in general, is defined: The art of producing a sleep in which the hypnotized person, by obeying the hypnotizer, effects things plainly singular.

DIVISION. By reason of comparison instituted with the powers of nature, hypnotism is rightly accustomed to be divided into scientific, namely if a positive doubt can be present that all things proceed from a natural cause; and into prodigious, namely when such a doubt is not given.

1. Scientific hypnotism can be defined: The art of producing a sleep in which the hypnotized person obeys the hypnotizer only in those things which are suggested to him through oral suggestion; or, it is the art of obtaining a sleep by which someone becomes fit to be so affected by an image suggested to him by words that he has it as objective, and translates into practice, more or less perfectly, what is represented by it (Coconnier, l. c., p. 257). It is called scientific because, as a remedy in therapeutic science, it is employed by those physicians who are led only by "licit study of science," as the Encyclical Letter of the Holy Office, Aug. 4, 1856, has it (A. S. S., I, p. 177).

Therefore two things must be distinguished: the sleep and the phenomena which accompany it. - As regards the SLEEP, a great controversy rages among experts whether it must be called simple artificial sleep or a nervous disease. Yet it is certain that in that sleep the functions of the brain are interrupted, consciousness of self ceases, and blind obedience is easily furnished. - As regards the PHENOMENA, behold the principal things which are commonly and certainly noted, yet not all in every subject nor all in the same degree: a) the absolute relation of the hypnotized person to the hypnotizer, whom the former believes altogether and obeys, while he seems to perceive the rest standing by neither with eyes nor ears, nor in any way to be affected by them. This fact always happens; b) hallucinations, whether positive, if the hypnotized person sees by imagination things which are not, or negative, if he does not see those things which are present; c) illusions, namely the hypnotized person confounds objects, taking one for another, or considers in them qualities or properties which are lacking; by this reason all the senses can be disturbed, immobility, insensibility of members, whether partial or of the whole body, can be obtained; suggestions can also be given as regards the person of the hypnotized one, which he has as reporting the truth, for example that he is a soldier, priest, old man, young man, etc.; d) suggestions which must obtain their effect only after a fixed time, for example after several months; e) effusion of blood, or of humor, in that part of the body which the hypnotizer shall have suggested, etc.

2. Prodigious hypnotism can be defined: The art of producing a sleep in which the hypnotized person obeys the hypnotizer not only in those things which are orally suggested to him, but also furnishes other things which, suggestion being omitted, are asked of him by way of consultation and certainly go beyond the powers of nature.

To scientific hypnotism it adds portentous facts certainly pertaining to divination, as, for example, at the nod of the hypnotizer to foresee future things, disclose things unknown and far away, solve most difficult questions concerning physiology or mathematics, speak an unknown language, and other things of this kind which certainly surpass the powers of nature. We say: which certainly surpass; for facts only doubtfully preternatural, until their nature is established, are to be ascribed to scientific hypnotism and, a protestation having been premised, can licitly be produced, as we said n. 560, 2.

570. PRINCIPLES. I. Prodigious hypnotism is altogether illicit. For the phenomena which it contains are altogether preternatural and are to be attributed only to the demon. Whence the Holy Office in the Encyclical Letter, Aug. 4, 1856, against the abuses of magnetism: "Hence by the tricks of somnambulism and of clear intuition, as they call it, those little women ... babble that they see all invisible things ... presume by rash daring to disclose unknown and distant things, and to exercise other superstitious things of this kind ... In all these things, whatever art or illusion they finally use, since physical means are ordered to effects not natural, there is found a deception altogether illicit and heretical." And on July 26, 1899: Experiments of hypnotism, "if it is a question of facts which certainly go beyond the powers of nature, are not licit" (Nouv. Rev. Theol., 31, p. 699).

II. Scientific hypnotism, exercised with the due conditions, is licit. Thus the more common opinion, which, besides almost all physicians, even Catholic ones, many theologians also uphold. Cf., besides those alleged, Tanquerey, II, n. 133, 906; Ami du Cl., years 1899, 1900; Willems, Inst. phil., II, n. 322.

IT IS PROVED: For scientific hypnotism involves neither superstition nor anything else intrinsically evil; and from elsewhere, the inconveniences which can be feared are wholly removed through the conditions applied. Therefore there is nothing by which it becomes illicit.

1. It involves no superstition. This would have to be proved certainly. But this has not been done up to now.

The adversaries contend that the note of superstition is demonstrated from the defect of the nexus of causality between the means and the effects.¹ Hypnosis, they say, arises and ends by means altogether inept, produces most diverse and portentous phenomena which seem to transcend the efficacy of the cause. It is answered: a) Although the intrinsic reason of hypnotic sleep is not yet perfectly known, various indications nevertheless suggest that it does not proceed by preternatural force. For it is sometimes produced without the intervention of a hypnotizer and is more easily induced in some than in others, indications which bear before themselves nothing certainly preternatural.² b) The Doctors assign as a likely cause of the phenomena the imagination most vehemently excited by the words of the hypnotizer.³ See many more things in Antonelli (Med. past., II, n. 22). - Nor from the fact that in the phenomena of hypnotism preternatural facts sometimes are mixed in can it be deduced that the cause of all the phenomena is preternatural.

2. Nor does it admit anything else intrinsically evil. For of the various elements which are distinguished in hypnotism, none can be called evil: neither suggestibility, nor suggestion, nor exaltation of the imagination, nor likewise the momentary suspension of the use of reason and liberty; otherwise chloroformization, which is reproved by no one, would be illicit.

The absolute dependence of the hypnotized person upon the will of the hypnotizer, which seems to be repugnant to right reason, could raise a difficulty. But it is answered: a) This dependence, according to some, is not so absolute: "Most of the hypnotized resist suggestions displeasing to them. Natural or acquired inclination is as it were a primordial suggestion, which impedes subsequent suggestions" (Schneider, l. c., p. 376). b) The sole dependence which is had in hypnosis is dependence of the imagination, but not of liberty. But man is not bound always to exercise dominion over his own imagination; otherwise it would not be licit to be occupied with natural sleep, since in it the imagination frequently forms several images which induce various motions of the soul and actions even altogether unusual, as in sleepwalkers.

3. All dangers are removed. Dangers of dishonesty are removed by the conditions indicated below; dangers of health are not those which are exaggerated by some. Cf. Antonelli (l. c., 44, 51).⁴

The REQUIRED conditions and cautions to be employed are several: 1. On the part of the cause, it is required that this be relatively grave, because in hypnosis there is privation of the use of reason and a certain abdication of one's own will, and for this to be licit a grave cause is demanded. Of this kind will be: a) a disease which cannot be cured in another way, or is of such a nature that by this remedy solace can be obtained, as is, according to Willems, hysteria, rheumatism; b) an evil propensity which impels a man to crimes more or less necessarily (for example alcoholism, masturbation), and which can be removed or diminished by hypnotism; c) the progress of sciences, for example of medicine or psychology, to be promoted by these experiments. It will not be licit, of itself, for the sake of joke or gain to make experiments of hypnotism or assist at them. 2. On the part of the hypnotized person, full consent is required; for it is not licit to deprive anyone unwilling of the use of reason and liberty. 3. On the part of the hypnotizer, let the physician be skilled in this matter, for forestalling inconveniences which otherwise could come to the health of the hypnotized person; let him be conspicuous in probity for removing the dangers threatening morals; and besides, if it is a question of facts which doubtfully go beyond the powers of nature, let him premise a protestation that he wishes to have no part in preternatural facts, as the Holy Office decreed, July 26, 1899. 4. On the part of the hypnotization, it is required that hypnosis be obtained by licit and honorable means; that suggestions be honorable and adapted to the end licitly intended; and that hypnotization and suggestions be made before a third person honorable and trustworthy, for example before a parent, by which caution all dangers of dishonesty will be wholly driven away. Yet sometimes this assistance can be superfluous, namely if the physician's probity is certainly established.

THE WHOLE THESIS IS CONFIRMED: 1. From the Encyclical Letter of the Holy Office, Aug. 4, 1856. For the Sacred Congregation well distinguishes between licitness and illicitness, use and abuse of magnetism; it condemns those who, the licit study of science having been neglected, pursuing curious things, boast that they have acquired a certain principle of divining; it renews the rule already handed down on July 28, 1847: "Every error, sortilege, explicit or implicit invocation of the demon being removed, the use of magnetism, namely the mere act of applying physical means otherwise licit, is not morally forbidden." But scientific hypnotism is such.

2. From the Response of the same Congregation given on July 26, 1899, where it is said: experiments of hypnotism, if it is a question of facts about which it is doubted whether they go beyond the powers of nature, a protestation having been premised, are to be tolerated. Therefore the Holy Office implicitly acknowledges that there are given in hypnotism certain phenomena which do not certainly transcend the powers of nature.