ILSENBURG

ilsenburg, a village and health resort of germany, in prussian saxony, romantically situated under the north foot of the harz mountains, at the entrance to the ilsethal, 6 m. n.w. from wernigerode by the railway to goslar. pop. (1900) 3868. it has an evangelical church, a modern chateau of the princes of stolberg, with pretty grounds, and a high grade school, and manufactures metal wares, machines and iron screws and bolts. owing to its charming surroundings and its central position in the range, ilsenburg is one of the most frequented tourist resorts in the harz mountains, being visited annually by some 6000 persons. the old castle, schloss ilsenburg, lying on a high crag above the town, was originally an imperial stronghold and was probably built by the german king henry i. the emperor otto iii. resided here in 995, henry ii. bestowed it in 1003 upon the bishop of halberstadt, who converted it into a benedictine monastery, and the school attached to it enjoyed a great reputation towards the end of the 11th century. after the reformation the castle passed to the counts of wernigerode, who restored it and made it their residence until 1710. higher still, on the edge of the plateau rises the ilsenstein, a granite peak standing about 500 ft. above the valley, crowned by an iron cross erected by count anton von stolberg-wernigerode in memory of his friends who fell in the wars of 1813-1815. around this rock cluster numerous legends. see jacobs, _urkundenbuch des klosters ilsenburg_ (halle, 1875); brandes, _ilsenburg als sommeraufenthalt_ (wernigerode, 1885); and h. herre, _ilsenburger annalen_ (leipzig, 1890). image (lat. _imago_, perhaps from the same root as _imitari_, copy, imitate), in general, a copy, representation, exact counterpart of something else. thus the reflection of a person in a mirror is known as his "image"; in popular usage one person is similarly described as "the very image" of another; so in entomology the term is applied in its latin form _imago_ to an insect which, having passed through its larval stages, has achieved its full typical development. the term is in fact susceptible of two opposite connotations; on the one hand, it implies that the thing to which it is applied is only a copy; on the other that as a copy it is faithful and accurate. psychology (q.v.) recognizes two uses of the term. the simplest is for the impression made by an observed object on the retina, the eye; in this connexion the term "after-image" (better "after-sensation") is used for an image which remains when the eye is withdrawn from a brilliantly lighted object; it is called positive when the colour remains the same, negative when the complementary colours are seen. the strict psychological use of the term "image" is by analogy from the physiological for a purely mental idea which is taken as being observed by the eye of the mind. these images are created or produced not by an external stimulus, such as is necessary for a visual image (even the after-image is due to the continued excitement of the same organ), but by a mental act of reproduction. the simplest ideational image, which has been described as the primary memory-image, is "the peculiarly vivid and definite ideal representation of an object which we can maintain or recall by a suitable effort of attention immediately after perceiving it" (stout). for this no external stimulus is required, and as compared with the after-image it represents the objects in perspective just as they might be seen in perception. this is characteristic of all mental images. the essential requisite for this primary image is that the attention should have been fixed upon the impressions. the relation between sense-impressions and mental images is a highly complicated one. difference in intensity is not a wholly satisfactory ground of distinction; abnormal physical conditions apart, an image may have an intensity far greater than that of a sense-given impression. on the other hand, hume is certainly right in holding that the distinctive character of a percept as compared with an image is in all ordinary cases the force and liveliness with which it strikes the mind--the distinction, therefore, being one of quality, not of degree. a distinction of some importance is found in the "superior steadiness" (ward) of impressions; while looking at any set of surroundings, images of many different scenes may pass through the mind, each one of which is immediately distinguished from the impression of the actual scene before the eyes. this arises partly, no doubt, from the fact that the perception has clear localization, which the image has not. in many cases indeed an image even of a most familiar scene is exceedingly vague and inaccurate. in art the term is used for a representation or likeness of an animate or inanimate object, particularly of the figure of a person in sculpture or painting. the most general application of the word is to such a representation when used as an object of religious worship or adoration, or as a decorative or architectural ornament in places of religious worship. the worship of images, or idolatry, from the point of view of comparative religion, is treated in the article image-worship, and the history of the attitude of the christian church, outside the post-reformation church of england, towards the use of images as objects of worship and religion in the article iconoclasts. with regard to the pre-reformation period in england, it is of interest to note that by the constitutions of archbishop winchelsey, 1305, it was the duty of the parish to provide for the parish church, among other objects, the images of christ on the cross, of the saint to whom the church was dedicated, to be placed in the chancel, and of other saints. the injunctions of edward vi., 1547, ordered the destruction of all images that had been the objects of superstitious use, and the act of 1549 (3 & 4 edw. vi. c. 10) declared all such images illegal. this act, repealed in mary's reign, was revived in 1604 (1 james i. c. 25) and is still in force. the present effect of this unrepealed act, as stated in _boyd_ v. _philpotts_ (l.r. 6 p.c. 449), is that it only referred to the images then subject to abuse, which had been ordered to be removed, and did not refer to the subsequent use or abuse of other images. in article xxii. of the articles of religion it is laid down that "the romish doctrine concerning ... worshipping and adoration as well of images as of reliques ... is a fond thing mainly invented and grounded on no warranty of scripture, but rather repugnant to the word of god." the law in regard to images, which in this connexion include pictures and stained-glass windows, but not sculptured effigies on monuments or merely ornamental work, is contained in various judicial decisions, and is not defined by statute. the effect of these decisions is thus summarized in the report of the royal commission on ecclesiastical discipline, 1906: "such images are lawful as objects of decoration in a church, but are unlawful if they are made, or are in danger of being made, objects of superstitious reverence, contrary to article xxii. against the worshipping and adoration of images. in accordance with this view, crosses, if not placed on the holy table, and also crucifixes, if part only of a sculptured design or architectural decoration, have been declared lawful. the question whether a crucifix or rood standing alone or combined with figures of the blessed virgin and st john can, in any circumstances, be regarded as merely decorative, has given rise to a difference of judicial opinion and appears to be unsettled." speaking generally, articles of decoration and embellishment not used in the services cannot lawfully be introduced into a church without the consent of the ordinary given by a faculty, the granting of which is subject to the judicial discretion of the chancellor or commissary, sitting as judge of the bishop's court. by section 8 of the public worship regulation act 1874, complainants may take proceedings if it is considered that "any alteration in, or addition to, the fabric, ornaments or furniture has been made without legal authority, or that any decoration forbidden by law has been introduced into such church ... provided that no proceedings shall be taken ... if such alteration or addition has been completed five years before the commencement of such proceedings." the following are the principal cases on the subject: in _boyd_ v. _philpotts_, 1874 (l.r., 4 _ad. & ec._ 297; 6 p.c. 435), the exeter reredos case, the privy council, reversing the bishop's judgment, allowed the structure, which contained sculptures in high relief of the ascension, transfiguration and descent of the holy ghost at pentecost, together with a cross and angels; in _r._ v. _the bishop of london_, 1889 (23 _q.b.d._ 414, 24 _q.b.d._ 213), the st paul's reredos case, the bishop refused further proceedings against the legality of a structure containing sculptured figures of christ on the cross and the virgin and child. in _clifton_ v. _ridsdale_, 1876 (1 p. & d., 316), a metal crucifix on the centre of the chancel screen was declared illegal as being in danger of being used superstitiously, and in the same case pictures or rather coloured reliefs representing the "stations of the cross" were ordered to be removed on the ground that they had been erected without a faculty, and were also considered unlawful by lord penzance as connected with certain superstitious devotion authorized by the roman church. image worship. it is obvious that two religious votaries kneeling together before a statue may entertain widely different conceptions of what the image is and signifies, although their outward attitude is the same. the one may regard it as a mere image, picture or representation of the higher being, void in itself of value or power. it is to him, like the photograph hung on a wall of one we love, cherished as a picture and no more. but the other may regard it, as a little girl regards her doll, as an animated being, no mere picture, but as tenement and vehicle of the god and fraught with divine influence. the former is the attitude which the latin church officially inculcates towards sacred pictures and statues; they are intended to convey to the eyes of the faithful, especially to the illiterate among them, the history of jesus, of the virgin and of the saints. the other attitude, however, is that into which simple-minded latin peasants actually lapse, as it is also that which characterizes other religions ancient or modern which use pictures or sculptures of gods, demons, men, brutes, or of particular parts and organs of the same. with the latter attitude alone does the present article deal, and it may conveniently be called idolatry or image worship. for the history of the use of images in christian worship see iconoclasts. the image or idol differs from the fetish, charm, talisman, phylactery or miraculous relic, only in this, that either in the flat or the round it _resembles_ the power adored; it has a prototype capable of being brought before the eye and visualized. this is not necessarily the case with the worshipper of _aniconic_ or unshaped gods. the semite or savage who sets up a sacred stone or bethel believes indeed that a divine power or influence enters the stone and dwells in it, and he treats the stone as if it were the god, kisses it, anoints it with oil, feeds the god in it by pouring out over it the blood of victims slain. but he is not an idolater, for he has not "made unto himself any graven image, nor the likeness of anything that is in heaven above or in the water beneath or in the water under the earth." the question arises: must the stage of aniconic gods historically precede and lead up to that of pictures and images? are the latter a development of the former? in the history of human religions can we trace, as it were, a law of transition from sacred stock and stone up to picture and image? is it true to say that the latter is characteristic of a later and higher stage of religious development? it was perhaps the facility with which a pillar of stone or wood can be turned into an image by painting or sculpturing on it eyes, ears, mouth, marks of sex and so on, which led anthropologists of an earlier generation to postulate such a law of development; but facts do not bear it out. in the first place, what we are accustomed to call higher religions deliberately attach greater sanctity to aniconic gods than to iconic ones, and that from no artistic incapacity. the jews were as well able as their neighbours to fashion golden calves, snakes and the minor idols called teraphim, when their legislator, in the words we have just cited, forbade the ancillary use of all plastic and pictorial art for religious purposes. and of our own christianity, robertson smith remarks as follows: "the host in the mass is artistically as much inferior to the venus of milo as a semitic _masseba_ was, but no one will say that medieval christianity is a lower form of religion than aphrodite worship." here then in the most marked manner the aniconic sacrament has ousted pictures and statues. it is the embodiment and home of divine personality and power, and not they. equally contradictory of any such law of development is the circumstance that the greeks of the 5th and 4th centuries b.c., although pheidias and other artists were embodying their gods and goddesses in the most perfect of images, nevertheless continued to cherish the rude aniconic stocks and stones of their ancestors. if any such law ever operated in human religious development, how can we explain the following facts. in the shadowy age which preceded the stone age and hardly ended later than 10,000 b.c., the cave-dwellers of the dordogne could draw elks, bisons, elephants and other animals at rest or in movement, with a freshness and realism which to-day only a landseer can rival. and yet in the european stone age which followed, the age in which the great menhirs and cromlechs were erected, in which the domestication of animals began and the first corn was sown, we find in the strata no image of man or beast, big or little. whence this seeming blight and decay of art? salomon reinach, guided by the analogy of similar practices among the aborigines of australia, and noticing that these primitive pictures represent none but animals that formed the staple food of the age and place, and that they are usually found in the deepest and darkest recesses of the caves where they could only be drawn and seen by torchlight, has argued that they were not intended for artistic gratification (a late motive in human art), but were magical representations destined to influence and perhaps attract the hunter's quarry. in a word this earliest art was ancillary to the chase. it is a common practice in the magic of all ages and countries to acquire control and influence over men and animals by making images of them. the prototype is believed to suffer whatever is done to the image. reinach, therefore, supposes that in the stone age which succeeded, pictorial art was banned because it had got into the hands of magicians and had come to be regarded as inevitably uncanny and malefic. this is certainly the secret of the ordinary mahommedan prohibition of pictures and statues, which goes even to the length of denying to poor little arab girls the enjoyment of having dolls. it is felt that if you have got a picture of any one, you have some power of harming him through it; you can bind or loose him, just as you can a djinn whose name you have somehow learned. it is as dangerous for your enemy to have a picture of you as for him to know your name. the old hebrew prohibition of graven images was surely based on a like superstition, so far as it was not merely due to the physical impossibility for nomads of heavy statues that do not admit of being carried from camp to camp and from pasture to pasture. possessing no images of yahweh the jews were also not exposed to the same risk as were idolaters of having their gods stolen by their foes and used against them. lastly, the restriction to aniconic worship saved them from much superstition, for there is nothing which so much stimulates the growth of a mythology as the manufacture of idols. the artist must indeed start with imaginative types, revealed to him in visions or borrowed from current myths. but the tendency of his art is to give rise to new tales of the gods. there is perpetual action and reaction between picture and myth; and a legislator desiring to purify and raise his countrymen's religion must devote no less attention to their plastic art than to their hymnology. motives drawn from homoeopathic magic may thus explain the occasional disuse and prohibition of pictorial and plastic art in cult; they may equally explain its genesis and rise in certain ages and countries. prayer is much more hopeful and efficacious for a worshipper who has means of bringing near to himself, and even coercing the god he worships. an image fashioned like a god, and which has this advantage over a mere stock and stone that it declares itself and reveals at a glance to what god it is sacred, must surely attract and influence the god to choose it as his home and tenement. and having the god thus at hand and imprisoned in matter, the simple-minded worshipper can punish him if his prayers are left unanswered. dr e. b. tylor accordingly (in his chapter on "idolatry" in _primitive culture_, ii. 170), reminds us of "the negro who feeds ancestral images and brings them a share of his trade profits, but will beat an idol or fling it into the fire if it cannot give him luck or preserve him from sickness." so augustus caesar, having lost some ships in a storm, punished neptune by forbidding his image to be carried in procession at the circensian games (sueton. _aug._ 16). in certain cases the wish to carry elsewhere the cult of a favourite or ancestral cult, may have dictated the manufacture of images that declare themselves and reveal at a glance whose they are. thus a phoenician colonist might desire to carry abroad the cult of a certain baal or astarte who lived in a conical stone or pillar. pilgrims visiting paphos, the original home and temple of astarte, could of course be in no doubt about which of the heavenly powers inhabited the cone of stone in which she was there held to be immanent; nor was any semite ever ignorant as to which baal he stood before. it was necessarily the baal or lord of the region. but small portrait statues must surely have been made to be carried about or used in private worship. meanwhile the shapeless cone remained the object of public adoration and pilgrimage. the egyptian writer hermes trismegistus (c. 250), in a work called _asclepius_ (cited by augustine, _de civit. dei_, viii. 26), claims that his ancestors discovered the art of making gods, and since they could not create souls, they called up the souls of demons or angels and introduced them into the holy images and divine mysteries, that through these souls the idols might possess powers of doing good and harm. this was the belief of the pagans, and the christians for centuries shared it with them. not a few christian martyrs sought and won the palm by smashing the idols in order to dislodge the indwelling devil; occasionally their zeal was further gratified by beholding it pass away like smoke from its ruined home. image worship then is a sort of animism. it is a continuance by adults of their childish games with dolls. in the roman religion, on a feast of thanksgiving for a great victory, couches were spread in the temples for the gods, whose images were taken down from their pedestals and laid on the couches, and tables set before them loaded with delicate viands. this was called a _lectisternium_. so marco polo (i. chap. 53) relates how the tatars had each a figure of natigay, the god of the earth, who watched over their children, cattle and crops. the image was made of felt and cloth, and similar images of his wife and children were set on his left hand and in front of him. "and when they eat, they take the fat of the meat and grease the god's mouth withal, as well as the mouths of his wife and children." the old greek statues moved of themselves, shook their spears, kneeled down, spoke, walked, wept, laughed, winked, and even bled and sweated,--a mighty portent. images of christ, of the virgin and saints have achieved many a similar miraculous portent. a figure of christ has been known even to give its shoes to a poor man, and a virgin to drop a ring off her finger to a suppliant. in umbrian villages on easter sunday the images of jesus and his mother are carried in rival processions from their respective chapels, and are made to bow when they meet face to face. the spectators applaud or hiss according as they make their bow well or ill. in antiquity it was a common ceremony to arrange a holy marriage between male and female images, and such unions acted on the earth as a fertility charm. much of a priest's time was given up to the toilet of the god or goddess. thus isis was dressed and coiffed every day by her special attendants according to apuleius (_met._ xi. 9). like the statue of st agatha of catania to-day, her image was loaded with jewels, and an inscription of cadiz (_c.i.l._ ii. 3386) contains an inventory of the jewels with which isis had been endowed by spanish devotees. idolatrous cults repose so largely on make-believe and credulity that the priests who administered them, perhaps oftener than we know, fell into the kind of imposture and trickery of which the legend of bel and the dragon represents a classical example. "thinkest thou not," said king astyages, "that bel is a living god? or seest thou not how much he eateth and drinketh every day? then daniel laughed, and said, o king, be not deceived: for this is but clay within, and brass without, and did never eat or drink anything." in the sequel daniel proves to the king that the priests with their wives and children came in through privy doors and consumed the viands set before the god; and the king, angered at their trickery, slew them all and gave bel over to daniel for destruction. the invectives against idolatry of the early jewish and christian apologists, of philo, minucius felix, tertullian, arnobius, lactantius and others, are very good reading and throw much light on the question how an ancient pagan conceived of his idols. one capital argument of the christians was the absurdity of a man making an idol and then being afraid of or adoring the work of his own hands. lactantius preserves the answer of the pagans so attacked (_de origine erroris_, ii. 2): we do not, they said, fear the images themselves, but those beings after whose likeness they were fashioned and by whose names they were consecrated. few such rites of consecration remain, but they must have been similar to those used in india to-day. there the brahmin invites the god to dwell within the image, specially made hollow to contain him, "performing the ceremony of _adhivasa_ or inhabitation, after which he puts in the eyes and the _prana_, i.e. breath, life or soul."[1] similarly augustine (_de civ. dei_, viii. 23) relates how, according to hermes, the spirits entered by invitation (_spiritus invitatos_), so that the images became bodies of the gods (_corpora deorum_). thus the invisible spirits by a certain art are so joined unto the visible objects of corporeal matter that the latter become as it were animated bodies, images dedicated to those spirits and controlled by them (see consecration). such statues were animated with sense and full of spirit, they foresaw the future, and foretold it by lot, through their priests, in dreams and in other ways. see e. b. tylor, _primitive culture_, ed. 1903 (list of authorities and sources vol., p. 171); l. r. farnell, _the evolution of religion_ (london, 1905); jacob grimm, _teutonic mythology_, translation by j. s. stallybrass. (f. c. c.) footnote: [1] tylor, _prim. culture_, ii. 178.