from the merry-go-round. Jan Binder told them that there was no charge, and dismissed them, converted and uplifted. And when towards four o’clock the mothers and children and the old pensioners were taking their afternoon walk between Zlichov and Smichov, the orchestrion again began to play, and the earth once more went flying round, and again Jan Binder brought everybody safe on to the deck of the merry-go-round and calmed them with a suitable address. At six o’clock people came from their day’s work, sweethearts emerged at eight, and at ten the pleasure-seekers left the public-houses and picture-palaces; all of them in turn were overcome by the dizzy whirling of the earth, brought to safety in the embrace of the merry-go-round, and strengthened for their future life by the apt exhortations of Jan Binder.
After a week of this hallowed work, Binder’s merry-go-round forsook Zlichov and went roaming along the bank of the Vltava up to Chuchle and Zbraslav, and so reached Stechovice. It had been working in Stechovice for four days with tremendous power, when an incident of a somewhat mysterious character took place.
Jan Binder had just finished his sermon and dismissed his new disciples with a blessing. At that moment there approached out of the darkness a black and silent body of people. At their head walked a tall, bearded man, who went straight up to Binder.
“Now then,” he said, trying to master his excitement, “pack up at once, or——”
Binder’s adherents heard this and returned to their teacher. Conscious of having his people at the back of him, Binder declared firmly, “Not till it rains.”
“Control yourself, sir,” said another excited man. “It’s Mr. Kuzenda speaking to you.”
“Leave him to me, Mr. Hudec,” cried the bearded man. “I’ll soon settle with him myself. I’m telling you for the second time; clear out with that thing or, in the name of the Lord, I’ll smash it up for you.”
“And as for you,” said Jan Binder, “get out of here or, in the name of the Lord, I’ll knock the teeth out of your head.”
“God Almighty!” shouted Brych, the stoker, forcing his way through the crowd to the front. “Just let him try!”
“Brother,” said Kuzenda soothingly, “let us first try to settle it quietly. Binder, you are carrying on foul witchcraft here, and we’ll not put up with it so close to the sacred shrine of our dredge.”
“Your dredge is a fraud!” said Binder decisively.
“What did you say?” cried Kuzenda, cut to the quick.
“Your dredge is a fraud!”
What happened next it is hard to disentangle into any logical sequence. It seems that the first blow was struck by the baker from Kuzenda’s camp, but Binder landed him a blow on the head with his fist. The gamekeeper struck Binder on the chest with his gunstock, but directly afterwards he lost his gun, and some Stechovice youth from Binder’s camp used it to knock out Brych’s front teeth and smash Mr. Hudec’s hat in. Kuzenda’s postman tried to throttle a youth on Binder’s side. Binder leaped forward to help the boy, but a girl from Stechovice flung herself on him from behind, and bit him in the arm just where he had had the Bohemian lion tattooed. One of Binder’s party drew a knife, and Kuzenda’s followers seemed to be falling back, but a smaller group of them dashed on to the merry-go-round and broke off the deer’s antlers and the elegantly arching neck of one of the swans. The merry-go-round gave a deep groan and heeled over, its roof falling right upon the struggling mob. Kuzenda was struck by a pole and knocked unconscious. It all happened in darkness and silence. When people came rushing up, Binder had a broken collar-bone, Kuzenda lay there unconscious, Brych was spitting out teeth and blood, and the girl from Stechovice was sobbing hysterically. The rest had fled.
XII
DOCTOR BLAHOUS
That youthful savant Doctor Blahous, Ph.D., only fifty-five years of age, and now Lecturer in Comparative Religion at the University of Prague, rubbed his hands as he sat down before his quarto sheets of paper. With a few swift strokes he set down his title—“Religious Phenomena of Recent Times”—and began his article with the words: “The controversy over the definition of the idea of ‘religion’ has lasted ever since the days of Cicero”; then he gave himself up to his thoughts.
“I’ll send this article to the Prague Times,” he said to himself, “and just you wait, my revered colleagues, and see what a stir it will make! It’s lucky for me that this religious epidemic has broken out just now! It will make it a very topical little article. The papers will say, ‘That youthful savant, Dr. Blahous, has just published a penetrating study,’ etc. Then I’ll be given the Assistant Professorship, and old Regner will burst with fury.”
Whereupon the youthful savant rubbed his wrinkled hands until the bones cracked blithely, and again began to write. When towards evening his landlady came to inquire what he would like for supper, he was already on the sixtieth page, among the Fathers of the Church. At eleven o’clock (and page 115) he had arrived at his own definition of the idea of religion, which differed from his predecessor’s by precisely one word. After this he dealt succinctly with the methods of the exact science of religion (with a few shrewd hits at his opponents), and so brought to an end the brief introduction to his little article.
Shortly after midnight our lecturer wrote the following passage: “It happens that quite recently various phenomena of a religious and occult character have occurred which deserve the attention of the exact science of religion. Although its main purpose is undoubtedly to study the religious customs of nations long since extinct, nevertheless even the living present can afford the modern [Dr. Blahous underlined the word] student numerous data which mutatis mutandis throw a certain light on cults long vanished, which can only be the subject of conjecture.”
Then, with the aid of newspaper reports and evidence given verbally, he gave a description of Kuzendism, in which he found traces of fetish-worship and even totemism (the dredge being made a sort of Totem God of Stechovice). In the case of the Binderians, he worked out their relationship to the Dancing Dervishes and ancient orgiastic cults. He touched upon the phenomena witnessed at the opening of the Power Station, and deftly showed their connection with the fire-worship of the Parsees. In Machat’s religious community he discovered the characteristics of the fakirs and ascetics. He cited various examples of clairvoyance and miraculous healing, which he compared very aptly to the magic practised by the old negro tribes of Central Africa. He went on to deal with mental contagion and mass-suggestion, introducing historical references to the Flagellants, the Crusades, Millenarianism, and “running amok” among the Malays. He threw light upon the recent religious movement from two psychological points of view, ascribing it to pathological cases in degenerate hysterical subjects, and to a collective psychical epidemic among the superstitious and mentally inferior masses. In both cases he demonstrated the atavistic occurrence of primitive forms of worship, the tendency to animistic pantheism and shamanism, a religious communism reminiscent of the Anabaptists, and a general surrender of reasoning power in favour of the grossest impulses of superstition, witchcraft, occultism, mysticism, and necromancy.
“It is not for us to decide,” Dr. Blahous went on writing, “to what extent this is due to quackery and imposture on the part of individuals bent on exploiting human credulity; a scientific inquiry would doubtless show that the alleged ‘miracles’ of the thaumaturgists of to-day are only old and well-known devices of trickery and suggestion. In this connection we would recommend the new ‘religious communities,’ sects, and circles now daily springing into existence to the attention of our police authorities and psychoanalysts. The exact science of religion confines itself to establishing the fact that all these religious phenomena are at bottom nothing but examples of barbaric atavism, and a hotchpotch of the most rudimentary forms of worship still subconsciously active in the human imagination. It has only needed a few fanatics, charlatans, and notorious swindlers to revive among the peoples of Europe, under the veneer of civilization, these prehistoric elements of religious belief.”
Dr. Blahous got up from his desk. He had just finished the three hundredth and forty-sixth