I am on a "Scare Me" trip. It's not so bad that I can't sleep, and I am not afraid that the clown will eat me.
My problem is that I have just discovered a reference to a letter written by a writer and philosopher that my academic studies have taught me was one of the profound "thinkers" of his time. The letter was written by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. It was written in response to a letter by Augustus Montague Summers. In his letter, Rousseau may have confirmed the existence of vampires!
Jean-Jacques Rousseau was born on June 28, 1712 in Geneva, Switzerland. Rousseau left Geneva at 16, wandering from place to place, finally moving to Paris in 1742. He earned his living during this period, working as everything from footman to assistant to an ambassador. This background prepared him to be a man who could "speculate" about a broad spectrum of "life". Rousseau's profound insight can be found in almost every trace of modern philosophy today. Somewhat complicated and ambiguous, Rousseau's general philosophy tried to grasp an emotional and passionate side of man which he felt was left out of most previous philosophical thinking.
Augustus Montague Summers (10 April 1880 - 10 August 1948) was an eccentric English author and clergyman. He is known primarily for his 1928 English translation of the medieval witch hunter's manual, the Malleus Maleficarum, as well as for several studies on witches, vampires, and werewolves, in all of which he professed to believe. Augustus Montague Summers was according to the Times of London: "in every way a 'character' and in some sort a throwback to the Middle Ages."
Rousseau's ideas about education have profoundly influenced modern educational theory. He minimizes the importance of book learning, and recommends that a child's emotions should be educated before his reason. He placed a special emphasis on learning by experience.
Perhaps Rousseau's most important work is "The Social Contract" that describes the relationship of man with society. In his early writing, Rousseau contended that man is essentially good, a "noble savage" when in the "state of nature" (the state of all the other animals, and the condition man was in before the creation of civilization and society), and that good people are made unhappy and corrupted by their experiences in society. He viewed society as "artificial" and "corrupt" and that the furthering of society results in the continuing unhappiness of man.
Rousseau was one of the first modern writers to seriously attack the institution of private property, and therefore is considered a forebear of modern socialism and Communism.
Summers cultivated his reputation for eccentricity. The Times of London wrote he was "in every way a 'character' and in some sort a throwback to the Middle Ages." In the introduction to his book on The History of Witchcraft and Demonology he writes: "In the following pages I have endeavored to show the witch as she really was – an evil liver: a social pest and parasite: the devotee of a loathly and obscene creed: an adept at poisoning, blackmail, and other creeping crimes: a member of a powerful secret organization inimical to Church and State: a blasphemer in word and deed, swaying the villagers by terror and superstition: a charlatan and a quack sometimes: a bawd: an abortionist: the dark counselor of lewd court ladies and adulterous gallants: a minister to vice and inconceivable corruption, battening upon the filth and foulest passions of the age".
The fact that Summers wrote hagiography (on Saint Catherine of Siena) and studies on the lives of writers such as Jane Austen, before turning to the occult, helps give some validity to the two men being in communication. There were some common interests, and, it also indicates that Summers was not a total nut job. In his letter, Summers wrote:
- Throughout the vast shadowy world of ghosts and demons there is no figure so terrible, no figure so dreaded and abhorred, yet dight with such fearful fascination, as the vampire, who is himself neither ghost nor demon, but yet partakes the dark natures and possesses the mysterious and terrible qualities of both.-- Rev. Montague Summers
In response Rousseau wrote:
"If there is in this world a well-attested account, it it that of the vampires. Nothing is lacking: official reports, affadavits of well-known people, of surgeons, of priests, of magistrates; the judicial proof is most complete. And with all that, who is there who believes in vampires?" - Rousseau
The truth is out there! Nothing is lacking!
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The Swamp Thing was a creature originally conceived as Alec Holland mutating into a vegetable-like creature, a "muck-encrusted mockery of a man". However, under writer Alan Moore, Swamp Thing was reinvented as an elemental entity created upon the death of Alec Holland, with Holland's memory and personality intact. He is described as "a plant that thought it was Alec Holland, a plant that was trying its level best to be Alec Holland."
Alan Moore's Swamp Thing had a profound effect on mainstream comic books, being the first horror comic to approach the genre from a literary point of view since the EC horror comics horror comics of the 1950's, and broadened the scope of the series to include ecological and spiritual concerns while retaining its horror-fantasy roots.
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