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Title: Genius and degeneration
A psychological study
Author: William Hirsch
Release date: August 7, 2026 [eBook #79296]
Language: English
Original publication: London: William Heinemann, 1897
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/79296
Credits: Sean (@parchmentglow)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GENIUS AND DEGENERATION ***
GENIUS AND
DEGENERATION
_A PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDY_
BY
DR. WILLIAM HIRSCH
Translated from the Second Edition of
the German Work
LONDON
WILLIAM HEINEMANN
1897
[_All rights reserved_]
Dedicated,
WITH THE AUTHOR’S AFFECTIONATE ESTEEM, TO
DR. E. MENDEL,
PROFESSOR OF NERVOUS AND MENTAL DISEASES AT
THE ROYAL UNIVERSITY OF BERLIN.
PREFACE.
It is a special trait of recent times that science, particularly
the natural sciences, have assumed an international character. All
civilized nations are equally interested in the great problems of
the day, and they all contribute in greater or less degree to the
mighty structure of modern science. Nevertheless, the mutual exchange
of ideas is sometimes impeded by differences of language, and this
difficulty is increased when not only the external form but also the
presentation of the subject bears the stamp of a peculiarly national
characteristic. I felt myself confronted by such a difficulty when I
concluded to place the present work before an English-speaking public.
The anthropological questions treated here have made it necessary to
undertake a psychological analysis of certain individuals, and to
attempt to penetrate as far as possible to the depths of their mental
processes. It was natural that in the original production of this
work the intellectual heroes of the German people should have been
selected, and it is evident that the appreciation of their traits and
work is more perfect among their own people than among foreign nations.
Nevertheless, I am sure that the characters selected for analysis, from
whose life and works I have attempted to arrive at a correct conception
of both genius and degeneration, are sufficiently well known to the
English reader.
The purpose of this publication was to aid in the elucidation of
certain anthropological moot-questions and to clear up certain notions
that were apt to create confusion not only in medical circles but also
in the wider field of the cultured laity. It can hardly be necessary to
disclaim any personal motives in my criticisms of the views of other
writers on this subject. Nor was it my object to enter into a critique
of the artistic value of the productions of those whose works I have
examined, and I trust the reader will bear these facts in mind while
perusing the polemical portions of the book. If I have contributed in
some measure to a clearer view of the truth of the questions discussed,
the purpose of this work will be fulfilled.
W. H.
_August, 1896._
CONTENTS.
PAGE
Introduction 1
The Limits of Insanity 6
The Psychology of Genius 18
Genius and Insanity 71
Degeneration 118
Influence of Education upon Genius 147
Secular Hysteria 170
Art and Insanity 199
Richard Wagner and Psychopathology 249
Conclusion 320
INTRODUCTION.
Psychiatry, or the science of mental diseases, is one of the fruits of
the century now drawing to its close. It was only in 1792 that Pinel
struck the fetters off the patients at the Bicêtre and began to treat
them humanely; and as late as 1818 Esquirol reported to the ministry
that criminals, not to say brutes, were better treated in France than
were the insane. The progress of this youthful science within the last
decades may, however, be contemplated with some degree of satisfaction,
and with a strong confidence that the stream of knowledge will be
poured out in still fuller volume in the years to come.
Maturer studies and better-reasoned treatment are gradually enlarging
the class of mental disorders that are curable. Society has also to
thank modern researchers into the causes--the etiology--of those
diseases. By this study we are enabled to oppose the production and
spread of those maladies; and general information about their causes
will directly contribute to the well-being of the community.
Derangement of mind has in all ages had no inconsiderable influence
upon the course of history and the development of civilization; there
is much in society that is mentally unwholesome and many crazes that
psychiatry can show how to avoid. That insanity is a disease of a
particular organ, biologically indistinguishable from a somatic
disorder, was, in former times, not understood. The notion of madness
was mixed up with religious faiths and metaphysical theories. Thousands
were burned at the stake simply because men were not so far enlightened
as to recognise that their victims were mentally sick, instead of
being, as they imagined, bewitched or possessed by devils. Think,
too, of the multitudes of entirely sane and innocent persons who were
sent to the rack and the stake upon the accusations of madmen--mere
crazy delusions! Along with such dreadful results of ignorance, and
contributing to them, we find, in ages widely separated, men’s general
conceptions of the course of nature influenced by superstitions and
religious enthusiasms fostered by the behaviour of the insane, and
accepted largely in deference to teachings of bewildered minds.
About the end of the eighteenth century the sad veil of superstition
began to be lifted. Yet the pathway of knowledge was still a thorny
and difficult one. Many an obstacle remained to be removed. Many a hot
fight had to be fought out. Often and often, even in this nineteenth
century, theologians set their traps to render the scientific pathway
personally perilous. Even as elevated a mind as Heinroth declared that
the cause of insanity was sin.
Alienists to-day no longer regard mental and bodily maladies as
distinct. In the majority of bodily diseases some affection of the
mental powers is observable; so that no scientific physician will
overlook the importance of psychical influences. On the other hand,
bodily symptoms occur in by far the greater proportion of cases
of insanity. We can sometimes predict a severe and almost fatal
derangement of the mind, at a time when hardly any aberration has yet
appeared, on the strength of somatic symptoms that no ordinary person
would remark. Thus, mental and bodily disease are quite inseparable;
and a rational treatment of psychoses must be based upon a solid
foundation of general medical skill.
In spite of all these facts, attempts are still made to withdraw the
care of the insane from the hands of physicians and to intrust it to
the clergy. At a meeting of the German Union of Evangelical Curates of
the Insane, the Rev. von Bodelschwingh, while admitting that “modern
medico-scientific psychiatry had done good service in the recognition,
treatment, and cure of the insane,” yet censured it as “at bottom
materialistic and temporal.” “It leaves,” he said, “sin and grace,
conscience and guilt, quite out of sight, and does not recognise that
forgiveness of sins brings life and spiritual health.” He continued
as follows: “Speaking broadly, the less the bodily physician uses his
_materia medica_ in mental maladies, the better. Such things, for the
most part, only damage body and soul. The bodily physician may be
helpful in the care of the insane, but the prime thing is the treatment
of the sick soul; and this should not be intrusted to the physician in
the main.”[1]
Such utterances are, of course, merely the efforts of the clergy to
extend their power. But inasmuch as they tend to injure patients, not
to say society itself, the interests of civilization call upon men of
science to combat them.
Nor is it by the clergy alone that attacks upon psychiatry are made.
Various causes have conspired to create of late years some distrust
of this branch of medicine. The general public is naturally liable to
misinterpret cases of insanity in which the symptoms are not so obvious
that no onlooker can mistake them, and where the practised eye of the
specialist is required to detect their real nature. Then, too, the not
infrequent differences of opinion among experts in insanity, leading,
as they often do, to contrary judgments about the nature of individual
cases, are cited as so many proofs that psychiatry is an illusory
science, and that its practitioners are not to be trusted to decide
upon the fate of a man.
But this is altogether fallacious. Similar objections would lie against
any other practical science. Name, if you can, the branch of clinical
medicine in which doubtful cases do not occur, or where divergences
of opinion are less frequent than in psychiatry itself. No science
whatsoever is perfect or infallible. In every field our knowledge and
skill have their limits, and there are disputed marches between the
completed conquests of science and the regions her armies have not yet
invaded. Cases in law, as everybody knows, are continually arising
concerning which the greatest jurists pronounce diametrically contrary
opinions. Yet the ideas and terms with which the lawyer has to deal
are, from the nature of things, susceptible of more rigidly exact
definition than those which form the stock of the alienist.
In point of accuracy, psychical pathology simply stands upon the
general level of other branches of clinical medicine. There are
cases upon the border line between insanity and mental sanity, and
concerning them differences of opinion are unavoidable. But how can
that be considered to detract from the value of the general science?
Mistakes occur wherever human judgment has to be exercised. Indeed,
every remarkable advance of human knowledge is secured at the cost of
temporary errors.
No doubt many tendencies in modern psychiatry spring from erroneous
conceptions. The very purpose of this book is to contribute something
toward the clearing up of certain psychological and psychiatrical
notions which have already occasioned not a few disputes and
misunderstandings.
The wisdom of early ages burned the insane as witches and sorcerers,
or, at best, incarcerated them in dismal dungeons and loaded them with
chains. Down to the very beginning of this century insanity was hardly
recognised as a branch of medical science. But now the pendulum has
swung the other way, and there are efforts in many quarters to narrow
more and more the boundaries of mental sanity, until every mind,
decidedly unlike those we daily come in touch with, or manifesting any
extraordinary characteristics is labelled as diseased. Not only are the
less gifted--particularly criminals--frequently considered as insane,
but eminent writers go so far as to pronounce every mind whose capacity
greatly surpasses the average to be a pathological subject.
Such doctrines are examples of a class of errors which frequently
arise from the gradual modification of the meanings of scientific
terms that had never been distinctly apprehended. Among such terms are
those of Genius and Degeneration; and to analyze these conceptions
is the purpose of this work. Their psychological and psychiatric
significations have, as we shall find, been most diversely conceived,
and this has led to many misunderstandings.
Before we enunciate our proper theses it will be convenient briefly
to consider the main symptoms of insanity, so that we may be able
to estimate how far we are in a condition to draw any sharp line of
demarcation between mental sanity and mental disease.
THE LIMITS OF INSANITY.
The symptoms of psychical disorders resemble those of the body in this:
that they are not phenomena absolutely unlike those of the normal
state, but are mere modifications of the latter. In the vast majority
of instances they consist in a relative augmentation or diminution of
healthy conditions, so that for every symptom of insanity we are able
to point out an analogous normal process of the mind.
Considering that even in somatic medicine, with the aid of all the
appliances there at our command, we can not always draw the line
between health and disease, we certainly ought not to expect to do so
in every case presented to psychiatry, concerned as this branch is with
a far more complicated organism than any other department of medicine.
Nor should we draw the limits of health too narrowly; we have to allow
sufficient room for all varieties of minds.
Let a sane man undergo a mental shock, say the death of a near
relative. He will experience an intense depression of feeling, and will
very likely be overwhelmed with grief. The events of the world around
him will pass unnoticed, and things that had excited his interest in
the highest degree will fail to make upon him the slightest impression.
The intensity of this condition will vary with different men. One will
be more susceptible to psychical pains than another. One will be able
to fight down his feelings with his reason, while another will give
himself over to unbridled grief. But whether in greater degree or
less, in some measure, in the circumstances supposed, the sane man
will always experience such grief. Complete psychical anæsthesia, or
insensibility, is a symptom of psychical disease. We observe it in the
most diverse forms of insanity.
On the other hand, it is not unusual to find persons in whom such a
depression of spirits as we have described is brought on by quite
trifling causes. The refusal of a new dress or seal-skin sack, rainy
weather which interferes with a projected picnic, and things of that
description, may suffice to bring on a shower of tears and to conjure
up a state of despair, or at least of deep mental perturbation. In
fact, this is the regular result with children. But in adults we
call it excessive sensitiveness, or psychical hyperæsthesia. It is
especially met with in hysterical and degenerate individuals.
Finally, the same state of deep depression and complete apathy is also
found without the slightest outward reason, being brought on by inward
conditions. In that case we diagnose a grave psychical malady--to wit,
melancholia.
It is the same with the cheerful emotions. Any sound man may, upon
a particularly joyful occasion, as upon the successful passage of
an examination, or the winning of a lottery prize, give way to an
exuberance of behaviour which a hysterical or degenerate subject will
exhibit upon the most trifling occasion. But if such a state is brought
on without any external reason whatever, it betokens a form of disease
which may pass into foaming rage; and this we term mania.
It is just the same with anger, vexation, fear, anxiety, and other
emotions. From the normal psychical action we pass through successive
exaggerations of emotion to a rage quite without reason but determined
by inward conditions.
Even irrational emotion is not without its analogue within the latitude
of the normal state of our spirits. Almost every man has his ups and
downs of spirits, his greater or less mental tone. One day, he knows
not why, he is in good condition for work; another day he has to force
himself to his duty. An artist says, “It is of no use; I am in no trim
for work to-day; I am not in the mood for it.” If we imagined curves to
be drawn of these moods in different men, we should find waves of small
amplitude even in the most solid and stolid men of business; while
passing to the artists, and from them to the Skimpoles, and from them,
again, to persons usually called hysterical, the oscillations would be
greater and greater. The slight spontaneous irregularities of temper
of the perfectly sane man will be manifest only to his most intimate
companions; for he will contrive to give his moods a factitious backing
of reason, though this may perhaps deceive no close observer. But the
hysterical, and those who abandon self-government, will in the wildest
fashion give rein to every freak, quite forgetful of the company in
which they may be. We can, however, assign no accurate limits to
healthy variations. We can not say, At this point precisely sanity ends
and madness begins. There is no such boundary in Nature. The difference
between a particular disposition and insanity is but a question of more
or less.
All our impressions, whether of the external world or of ourselves, are
conveyed to us by the sensory-nerves. The excitation of a sensory-nerve
terminal results in a sensation at the central end of the peripheral
nerve, in the brain. Hence the excitation is propagated to the cortex,
or outer part of the brain, where is the terminus of the sensory tract;
and here the sensation, brayed, as it were, with the residua of former
impressions, is converted into a perception. Every sensation that has
once been worked up into a perception is capable of being spontaneously
or voluntarily excited anew. The re-excitation or reminiscence of an
image which has so arisen, whether by a peripheral excitation, or
spontaneously, or voluntarily, brings along with it the recollection
of other images. Those connecting nerve fibres, by means of which
associated sensations are produced, are termed associational tracts.
The aggregate of a great multitude of reminiscential images belonging
to different organs of sense makes what we call a perceptual idea, or
percept (_Vorstellung_). For example, let the word _bell_ be mentioned.
What does it mean? It brings up the optical image of a certain cubic
curve, the form of the outline of the bell; it brings up the four
letters b e l l; it brings up the sound the instrument produces; and,
finally, it brings up the sonorous syllable which we are accustomed
to fancy resembles that sound. All these images (and mind, that in
psychology we speak of auditory, olfactory, and other reminiscences as
_images_) are recalled, and with them traces of other things associated
with bells--some merry sleighing-party of the hearer’s youth; his
wedding-day, perhaps; the dreadful summons of the people on some
occasion of a fire or of anticipated invasion; and, possibly, some
well-remembered funeral. All these things come welling up to us, like
the swelling of the sound produced by interferences. Language has no
word more vividly significant than _bell_, because the more memorial
images cluster about an idea, the clearer will it be, and the easier
reproduced, or, in other words, the more it clings to the memory. If
you have to remember a name you ask to have it written down, because
the auditory image will be more readily reproduced if once associated
with the visual image.
The more intense and extraordinary an original impression of sense, the
more distinctly will it be reproduced. But after a while the reproduced
image loses its distinctive characters. It becomes vague, and in
that sense weaker. The remembered sound of the cannon of a distant
battlefield, though not perhaps less loud, is less distinguished from
other remembered sounds, unless, indeed, more recent experiences
refresh our memory.
The period of time within which a memorial stimulus of given power can
excite a recollection of given definiteness varies through a wide range
with different individuals. Within the latitude of health there are
good and bad memories, and memories of different kinds. In pathological
cases, this action of the cortex may sink almost or quite to zero, or
be exaggerated surprisingly.
As a multitude of impressions are worked together into an image,
and a multitude of images into a perceptual idea, so a complexus of
perceptual ideas has for its resultant a _thought_, wherein there
is a representation of the way events happen, in general, and of
the relation of our ego to the macrocosm. Such general conception
of the relation between the inner and outer world makes what the
psychologist means by self-consciousness--or, as it has been called,
the consciousness of consciousness, or superintending-consciousness
(_Oberbewusstsein_).
The procedure of thought is perfected in an arrangement of ideas
in sequence. In the waking state there is a ceaseless flow of
percepts--that is, a continual thinking-process takes place in the
brain. Those percepts are occasionally excited by the peripheral
organs, or they are supplied by inward excitations following the tracts
of association.
The sequence of percepts may be determined either involuntarily by
spontaneous associations and outward impressions, or by the active
exercise of attention.
Stimuli from the peripheral organs of sense may be called _centripetal_
actions, the operations of association _intra-central_, and the idea
due to the will _centrifugal_. The function of this centrifugal action
is to bring the ideas into a regular sequence by excluding unsuitable
centripetal percepts, and by strengthening some associations and
weakening others. In common speech we call this centrifugal action
_attention_. It fulfils one of the most important offices of the mind,
since without it thought could not be made purposive.
The power of attention of a sane man has to be considerable, so that he
may hold his ideas in the right order for a long time without fatigue.
In idiots, on the other hand, it is occasionally so completely wanting
that they can not swerve the slow current of their ideas. Between these
two extremes every possible grade of this power is met with. Every
teacher of children knows that some of them concentrate their thoughts
with comparatively little difficulty, while others are at the mercy of
every little presentation in the room or out at the window, as well as
of their own recollections.
The process of association may follow different principles. An idea
may melt into another inwardly allied to it. I hear a musical air,
for example. This sets all sorts of subconscious ideas relating
to music into motion toward the surface of consciousness. Some
circumstance or other, perhaps its recent prominence, gives a clear
outline, let us suppose, to the idea of the Magic Flute before the
others. Now, it is particularly ideas of operatic music whose gradual
movement toward emergence is accelerated. I find myself reviewing
several operas; or, if a number of such ideas emerge at once, a
general conception of operatic music is formed in my mind. Among
these pictures, perhaps one of a grand performance at La Scala may,
by its splendour, obliterate others. By this time my reminiscences
of oratorios, symphonies, chamber music, etc., are sinking back into
slumber, while pictures of various opera houses are crowding up to
the surface. Their multitude prevents my distinctly dwelling upon any
one. The resultant is a general idea of theatrical architecture. Now
memories of other magnificent pieces of architecture begin to take
places in the composite photograph of my imagination, and as, by the
operation of fatigue, the intense assertiveness of the ideas which have
been longer before my mind wanes, perhaps the resultant of those that
remain leaves me thinking of triumphal arches. This is an imaginary
example of a train of association governed chiefly by the principle
called _resemblance_--that is, by the intrinsic affinities of ideas.
Another principle is that called _contiguity_, where an idea, A, calls
up another, B, having no inward affinity for it, because the sequence
of B upon A has an analogy, or inward affinity, with the sequence
of _b_ upon _a_, where _b_ and _a_ are ideas which occurred at some
previous time, _b_ following after _a_. For example, I see a porringer,
let us say, which I remember to have used in my childhood. The whole
scene straightway completes itself in my imagination--the chamber, the
furniture, the nurse, appear before me. Thence my fancy is carried
forward to the day when that nurse was married from the house, and the
image of the man she married is called up. Then follows the picture
of a visit I subsequently made to see how the couple were prospering,
etc. These ideas follow one another because similar ideas did follow
one another upon a former presentation of them. The principles of
resemblance and contiguity may act in conjunction, as they do in the
minds of those who are continually chasing puns and rhymes. Here ideas
the most incongruous may be associated, because the former recalls by
contiguity a word or phrase which by resemblance calls forth another
word, which in its turn reproduces by contiguity the second idea.
We make use of this sort of association in mnemonic verses, such as
“Thirty days hath September,” etc. Countless systems of artificial
memory repose on the same principle; and so does the very natural
method of attending to a general rule observable among certain objects
for the sake of remembering the objects themselves.
The rapidity with which the process of associative reproduction takes
place can be little varied by any effort of the will. It depends upon
the freshness or fatigue of the nervous system at the time. It differs,
too, with different individuals. Under pathological conditions it may
either sink to such a minimum that patients will themselves complain
of their vacuity of mind and mental retardation, or it may become an
abnormal rush of ideas. When the rapidity of the associative process
is slightly increased, the patient feels extremely well. He is in the
mood for brilliant performances, thoughts fly to him, his conversation
sparkles, he improvises, he impresses those about him as being a witty
and clever man. With a still greater rapidity of associative action
there is such a rush of ideas that they tumble over one another, lose
their logical relations, and end in a delirious whirl.
We have thus far considered only cases in which every idea is excited
by a stimulus external or associational. We now come to a different
phenomenon. Almost every man knows what it is, while endeavouring
to think consecutively, suddenly to have an unwelcome image obtrude
itself; perhaps a musical air which he has of late heard too often
repeats itself in his brain without being led up to at all. We often
hear it said, “I can not get that accursed tune out of my head.”
Phenomena of this kind are to be explained by the tendency of some
part of the cortex which has been excessively excited to pass into
the active condition spontaneously. In quite an analogous way the
most complicated percepts may spring up spontaneously, breaking into
the normal current of thought. When an idea thus becomes a continual
hindrance to rational thought, we call it an imperative idea. It forms
a disease inflicting, as a rule, great torment and anguish upon the
patient, and leads to further complications.
We have said that every sense-perception once experienced may be
reproduced without any new stimulus. Now, if, independently of any
associational process, a reminiscential image is excited spontaneously
with extraordinary strength, the vividness, or subjective intensity of
the idea, may be so heightened as to take on every characteristic of
actual perception. Let an excitation run over the path which leads
from the subcortical centre which is the seat of the primary sensation
to the cortical centre of perception, and whether it have a centrifugal
origin, or whether it be centripetally propagated, the result will
ordinarily be the same--namely, that we shall project the percept into
our idea of the outward world. We shall unhesitatingly accept the thing
we see or the language we hear as real external experiences, although
the whole may be nothing but hallucination.
The relative intensity with which a given perception can be reproduced
by a given person depends on the intensity of the original excitation
and the degree of attention that had been originally bestowed upon
it. In different persons the intensity of reproductive power varies
exceedingly. It is low in some minds; while others, especially artists,
possess a very high degree of imagination. Some painters can at will
call up visual images which they proceed to copy upon their canvas
just as if they were painting from Nature; and a successful writer for
the orchestra will seem to hear the effect of a given combination of
instruments, so as to achieve with unerring certainty results that the
greatest theoretician could not rival.
Muscular motions are of three kinds--the automatic, the reflex, and
the voluntary. Automatic motions, such as the beating of the heart and
ordinary respiration, are caused by the action of special centres;
and though they may be influenced by reflex, or even in some measure
by voluntary action, they act, nevertheless, independently. Reflex
motions originate in centres which do not, like the automatic centres,
produce any excitations, but only receive them from sensory nerves.
Examples are the contraction of the pupil of the eye under increased
illumination, and winking upon any touch of the eyelid.
To bring about a voluntary motion, a centripetal impulse is ordinarily
requisite, to stimulate the psychomotor centre. Yet it is possible for
the excitation to arise within that centre. Every man has his peculiar
tricks, unless he has taken pains to conquer them. He pulls his beard,
or sniffs, or bites his mustache, or rubs his hands, or gives some
peculiar twitch, more or less annoying to his neighbours, unconsciously
to himself and without any outward stimulus, simply in consequence
of a chronically excited state of some centre. These excitations are
sometimes sufficient to produce large and co-ordinated motions for
which, in ordinary circumstances, the co-operation of the will would be
requisite. Many people can not sit long still without an uncontrollable
impulse to move about. They jump up from their work, take a turn or two
up and down the room, and then sit down to their work again.
Such excitations as these may likewise be exaggerated to the point of
disease. In mania they are seen in their most extreme form. Patients
yell, rage, strike, and smash, without knowing what they are about.
Among the most important symptoms of psychical maladies, often most
difficult to recognize, are delusions. The general public imagines that
delusions consist essentially in believing something that is utterly
absurd. Nothing could be more erroneous. A delusion may be in substance
quite true, while the sheerest nonsense may be produced in the mind
without any delusion. A person may fancy he has a living creature in
his body, and, though it may in fact be true that he has a tapeworm,
yet, if the opinion is not founded on any sound process of thought, it
certainly is none the less to be classed along with genuine delusions
because it accidentally happens to come true.
Of three so-called “spiritualists,” let one be a simpleton who,
without any logical conviction, has been led--by sheer credulity,
or weak assent to energetic assertion--to admit the phenomena of
mediumship. Let the second be a learned man who has been imposed
upon by legerdemain, and who endeavours to explain what he thinks he
has seen in a scientific way; and let the third be one with whom the
belief is of the nature of an insane delusion. They all believe the
same thing; so that it can not be said that it is the nature of what
is believed that constitutes the insanity. It is rather the mode in
which the belief has come about, its relation to the other operations
of the mind, its mode of expression, its relation to the interests of
the believer, that must be relied upon to determine the alienist to
diagnose a true delusion.
Anomalies of the propensities play a great part in the pathology of
the mind. Like the other symptoms of insanity, abnormal impulses are
but quantitative or qualitative modifications of healthy conditions.
Psychiatry has never discovered any new passion. The appetites vary
greatly in different individuals; and here again we must take care to
allow sufficient latitude to healthy variations. The feeling of hunger,
or the propensity to eat, may in the most diverse psychical disorders
be enormously exalted. This is called hyperorexia. It sometimes goes
so far that the patient tries to devour whatever he can lay hands
on. This is called sitomania. On the other hand, the propensity may
be distinctly lowered in intensity or even lost. This is called
anorexia. Of course, none of these states includes cases in which the
modification of the appetite is caused by derangements of the organs
of digestion. Finally, the desire for food may be directed to strange
substances, as often happens to pregnant women. In the insane this
perversion of appetite will sometimes be so great as to induce them to
eat straw, earth, worms, and even their own filth.
We sometimes find the other propensities equally deranged. The sexual
impulse may be exalted to the highest degree--a state called satyriasis
in men, nymphomania in women. The sexual appetite may be depressed or
lost in total impotence. It may be perverted to one’s own sex or to
other things.
I must apologize for this general description of the symptoms of
insanity, which does not directly concern the subject of this book.
I have entered upon it for the purpose of showing that, in order to
determine the state of mental sanity or insanity, it does not suffice
to produce certain extraordinary or absurd modes of behaviour or
temper; that we can hardly pronounce a man to be insane from any
conduct until we know what his motives are; and, finally, that we are
not to judge from a part of his mental actions, but must get a clear
notion of his whole mental condition. I have further endeavoured to
show that, as far as single symptoms go, no sharp line of demarcation
can be drawn between mental sanity and insanity. Just as there are
physically strong men and physically weak men, men of large bodies and
men of puny bodies, so within the limits of health there are mental
athletes and mental weaklings. Moreover, just as no two men are in
person counterparts the one of the other, so there are no two whose
characters are precisely alike. There are perfectly healthy men with
extraordinary physiognomies or peculiarities of bodily structure; and
in like manner unusual traits of character are to be met with. The
study of such men may be interesting to the psychologist, but it does
not directly concern the pathology of the mind.
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF GENIUS.
It is plain from the nature of psychology, as well as from its
history, that it has to contend with difficulties and perplexities of
a magnitude and character with which no other observational science
is perplexed. An immediate acquaintance with psychical conditions can
only be obtained by self-observation; so that this has always formed
the foundation of the scientific edifice. Nor can any generalization
of observation possibly be attained except by means of the concepts
derived from self-observation. This entails the great disadvantage that
there is wanting to psychology the objectivity of the observation, in
that the subject and object thereof are one person. This is yet further
increased by the impossibility of repeating any observation, so that in
psychology we lack almost entirely one of the most important aids of
natural sciences--namely, experiment.
Our knowledge of the physiology of the human body has been so much
enriched by pathological facts that we may truly say that some branches
of it would, as far as we can see, have remained forever closed
books if the effects of disease had not been observed. So it is with
psychology, in its turn. Since mental disease has been systematically
studied the science of the mind has undergone a veritable revolution.
Psychology and psychiatry are to-day inseparably connected. Neither
could survive, were the bond between them severed.
Psychology began by being largely speculative. It preserved this
character for quite a lengthy period. It has, in more modern times,
passed into paths essentially different, and stands to-day, side
by side with the other positive sciences, upon the solid ground of
critical observation. Partly, though only to a moderate extent, it has
entered upon experimental investigations.
Every observational science, after having effected a preliminary rough
analysis of the ordinary facts, has fastened its scrutiny upon extreme
cases and apparent departures from the uniformities of the matter in
hand. From a study of these varieties and from a comparison of them
with ordinary cases, it brings forth fresh knowledge. Psychologists
are beginning to do this; and especially of late years much attention
has been bestowed upon those extraordinary powers which we ordinarily
indicate by the word genius.
The results of these inquiries are thus far as diverse as possible,
and, just as in former scientific controversies, leading men assume
attitudes of almost flat contradiction. Let us see whether we can
not, with the investigations already at our command, attain a clearer
conception of the concept of genius.
As the etymology of the word, which is derived from _genius_ or
_ingenium_, directly indicates, the ancients believed, according to
their view of the world, that within persons of eminence--those men who
guided the destinies of nations or were able to accomplish phenomenal
deeds in the domains of art or science--a divine spirit dwelt. A
_genius_, for example, spoke to the people through the mediumship of
the Pythian priestess; a divine spirit opened to Socrates the fountains
of knowledge and science, and inspired Homer with divine song,
enabling him to perceive the world as a magnificent fulness of ideals
and beauties. It conducted Miltiades through the tumult of battle to
glorious victory and smoothed for Plato the path to eternal wisdom.
This idealistic method of viewing things has been transmitted from
century to century down to our own time. In the saints of the Middle
Ages we see the idea of the Holy Ghost corporealized. By the mouths
of priests and prophets “God” speaks to the people. Rulers are
invested with “divine right.” They rule by the “divine will.” The
powerful thinkers who guide the world by great discoveries are filled
with “divine grace.” In those who by their art embellish the world
there shone a “divine spark,” a fragment of the Holy Ghost. By their
mouths God spoke to men. Genius was eternal and incomprehensible. Its
knowledge and power were infinite.
Modern science has applied the dissecting knife to this fantastic
web of speculative philosophy, has analyzed the whole matter into
its elementary constituents, stripped the natural phenomena of their
habiliments of superstition and mysticism, and, while thus destroying
many a beloved ideal, acts in the consciousness that it is struggling
after real knowledge and truth.
Psychology, having by self-observation laid down a series of
conceptions, and having attained the knowledge that psychical
processes, like all other phenomena of Nature, are subject to definite
law, made an effort to determine the laws of the mental processes of
genius, and to frame a definition of genius, which should take into
account facts which are now scientifically established.
But these efforts are characterized by the same mighty error and the
same important defect that has ere this provoked many a battle between
scientific men. In vain had philosophers for several ages endeavoured
to say in what genius consisted, until in these latter times some
authors believe they have discovered the philosopher’s stone and have
pronounced genius to be a variety of insanity. Unfortunately, they were
not themselves clear about the definition of genius nor, perhaps, about
that of insanity.
An accurate science ought to provide names only for known phenomena.
It might view a complex of phenomena as one object, and apply to it a
collective name. Having done so, it can again perform specification
within the limits of the _genus_. But science shall always go wrong and
shall exercise itself about phantoms, if it accepts _a priori_ some
word or other as something laid down, so to speak, independently, and
then tries to call forth from the phenomena sufficient material whereby
to explain a notion somehow made inherent in this word.
To so plain a truth one might hesitate to refer. And yet how often
has science sinned against it! Innumerable tomes, for example, have
been written on the inquiry of whether the human will is _free_ or
determined. Quarrels, bitter to the point of persecution, have been
indulged in by high authorities upon this question. Finally, it has
been proved to be merely a contest about “words,” for each individual
combined with the word “will” some different notion regarding which
he himself never for an instant was clear. Nowhere is this error of
science better expressed than in the words of Goethe:
_Student._ But every word must have some sense exact.
_Mephistopheles._ Of course; but let not that your mind distract;
For oft to fill the meaning’s awkward blank,
A serviceable word we have to thank.
With words we gloriously may dispute,
With words a system constitute;
Words will suffice for faith unshaken,
For from the Word shall jot nor tittle e’er be taken.
Many authors make any person endowed with specially excellent mental
powers a genius. Thus Sulzer, in his dictionary,[2] says: “Genius
seems to be ascribed to any man who, in departments for which he
shows a natural turn, displays remarkable skill and a more copious
fertility of mind than other men.... Genius seems at bottom to be
nothing but great general power of mind; so that ‘a great mind’ and
‘a man of genius’ are synonymous terms.” Du Bos[3] defines genius
as “the natural skill by which a man is enabled to perform certain
things well and easily that other men, whatever pains they may take,
can only do ill.” Riedel,[4] Feder,[5] Baumgarten,[6] and others
express themselves to the same effect. Herder[7] says: “Everybody
knows that genius is nothing but the intensive or extensive quantity
of psychical power exerted.” A struggling sort of definition,
conceived in the same strain, is thus formulated by Flögel:[8] “Genius
is unquestionably an attribute of the faculty of cognition, for no
inclination for an art or a science will induce us to say of the
man that feels it that he has genius.” This marvellous utterance is
rendered somewhat more intelligible by the definition of the cognitive
faculty that immediately follows it: “The faculty of cognition is
a tree with many branches. Attention, memory, abstraction, wit,
discrimination, understanding, and reason, by whatever names they may
be called, belong to cognition. Experience shows that these different
branches or parts are not all equally developed, but that one may
in a given man preponderate over another. One man has more wit than
discrimination; another has good sense but a poor memory; a third has
a solid understanding but a deficiency of imagination. Thus, there
is a certain degree of repugnancy between a man’s different cognitive
powers; and it is their proportion which constitutes a man’s genius in
its widest sense. In this sense every man has his genius.” He continues
thus: “We are accustomed to deny genius to numberless men. We deny it
to learned men who have written libraries; and it would be equally
out of place to speak of an author as a genius who had only written a
few pages in which a moderate enthusiasm was displayed. We associate
the term genius with something great, something superior in its way.
Whatever capacity in a man seems great, pre-eminent, of singular force,
distinguishing him from average brains, is called genius, without
qualification. If this superiority belongs to all he does, we say the
man has universal genius; if it is confined to certain directions, we
call it special or peculiar genius.” Wieland[9] divides genius into
three kinds: the genius of pleasing, which operates within the domain
of the graces and consists in a special facility for carrying out the
ideas it prosecutes; philosophical genius, which consists in a capacity
for discovering those truths resulting from correct conceptions which
concern the felicity of mankind; and practical genius, which consists
in a ready activity in availing itself of known facts and in producing
the highest and most prompt resolutions. But there is no psychological
foundation for this arbitrary division of the phenomena. Here, again,
it is the mere greatness and pre-eminence of the achievements, without
reference to their psychical origin, which is made to constitute the
essence of genius. H. Joly[10] says that genius is “creative power,
using this term in the relative sense in which alone it is permissible
to apply it. It is the production of something which the combined
efforts of other men have hitherto been powerless to effect. It is that
which puts at the disposition of humanity either means of expression,
or means of talent and invention, or means of new action, which add
something to the common intelligence and common power.”
The conception of genius of all these authors is even in conflict
with that of ordinary language, for which genius and talent are
qualitatively different. If those authors are right, genius and talent
are merely different degrees of the same quality. However this may
be, according to the above definition, the word genius has, generally
speaking, not much value as a psychological term.
The inadequacy of such a view to meet the popular notion being
recognised, efforts have been made to find something specially
characteristic of genius. A great many philosophers have taken
originality to be such a characteristic. Weise[11] says: “All writers
upon genius agree that invention is its essential mark.” Many authors
seem quite to forget that the point is to establish a psychological
conception, proceeding rather as if they had to accord a title or order
for some special service. Thus Alexander Gerard[12] adopts the view
that everybody who makes an invention, whether valuable or useless,
and everybody who has an original idea of any description, must be
a genius. According to this, any fool who gives birth to original
absurdities must be reckoned as a genius. In conflict with those
passages is the subsequent remark of the same author, that “invention
is the capacity of producing new beauties in works of art and new
truths in matters of science.” Apart from the arbitrary character of
this definition of the word “invention,” it is in distinct conflict
with the above extract, which does not harmonize with such a definition.
Many authors express substantially the same opinion. Flögel,[13] for
example, says: “Down to Newton the colorific effects of prisms had
probably been looked upon as a pretty amusement for children, unworthy
the attention of philosophers; but that great mind founded upon these
phenomena that acute theory of colours which by itself would have
sufficed to win for him the title of genius had he been great (?) in
nothing else.” The author talks as if genius were a rank like that of
major or privy counsellor. Kant,[14] too, quotes with approval the
definition of genius as the “exemplary originality of a man’s talent.”
Hagen[15] says: “Originality, therefore, constitutes genius.... To me,
accordingly, genius is the synonym of mind, but with the implication
that the mental idiosyncrasy of the super-eminent individual is
intended.... Now, in so far as every man has a mental individuality,
he has a mind distinct from every other and is an original thinker. He
has a mind of his own.... By genius, in the narrow and ordinary sense,
we mean a mind of the first order endowed with a high originality of
conception, of discovery, and of creative impulse.”
This conception of genius may, perhaps, accord better with common
language than the previous one. At any rate, it furnishes the requisite
qualitative distinction between genius and talent. Our present study,
however, is not ordinary language. We are inquiring whether this
definition creates a precise psychological concept of scientific value.
Now, the concept of originality has nothing to do with psychical
characteristics; it refers exclusively to outward facts. Originality
may be produced by the most diverse psychical processes; and the
same dispositions of mind may in one case lead to originality and in
another not; since this is in no small measure an accident of the
outward situation. A child is original at the period when its mind is
awakening, when the more complex ideas of the world have not yet been
apprehended, but primitive images are in his artless fashion fused
together. That is why the speeches of children so often seem witty
and excite smiles on the faces of the grown people who hear them.
When we say a man is an “original” we often mean to imply that he is
weak-minded and deficient in perception, not clearly understanding
situations, and all his life long a foreigner to the world. So are
those conceited fools original who, because their behaviour and
propensities depart widely from commonsense, live in perpetual
astonishment at their own genius. For example, the author of a recent
book, intended to convince society that clothes should be discarded
and men and women should go naked, was a genius, according to Gerard’s
definition. A man publishes far and wide that he can cure all the ills
that flesh is heir to by simply making people walk about barefoot over
wet meadows. What a genius! And the prophet’s success, too, as regards
the main chance, shows that the multitude honor him as a genius.
As we have seen, it has not taken long to learn that originality
does not _per se_ constitute genius. Hence common consent has agreed
more accurately to define and limit the “originality of genius.” But
in doing this, merely the outward phenomenon is treated; and in the
most favorable circumstances some symptom only comes to be considered,
instead of the causes and source of the fact being reached. To
originality is added the further condition that “beauties” and “truths”
(as Gerard said) must be produced to entitle it to the name of genius.
So Weise[16] says: “Genius is the immediate attraction of an individual
in the harmonious concurrence of his mental and physical powers to the
production of an ideal and typical work of intellect.” Many authors
require that genius shall be “epoch-making,” that its achievements
shall be “agreeable” or “useful,” etc. Gerard demands that artistic
genius shall “please” and shall “gratify the taste”: “Objects and
circumstances unfit to please, either do not at all occur to the artist
or, being perceived at a glance to be unfit, are immediately rejected.”
Dr. Blair says in his Lectures on Rhetoric (written about 1760),
Lecture III:
“Genius always imports something inventive or creative, which does not
rest in mere sensibility to beauty where it is perceived, but which
can, moreover, produce new beauties, and exhibit them in such a manner
as strongly to impress the minds of others.”
Thus, instead of returning to psychical causes, in such attempts to
particularize the conditions, authors depart further and further from
those causes, and dwell more and more upon the invention of others. Is
there anything “beautiful” or “good” _per se_? Do these words express
anything but a conformity to the ideas that are in fashion, but which
at different periods vary monstrously? Is taste anything more than a
personal preference? If the term genius is to be made contingent upon
such wavering standards and the variable feelings of others, it must
follow that many an individual will at certain periods of history be
pronounced a genius to whom other generations will deny the epithet.
So genius will lose all meaning as a psychological term; for if it
is to be any character of the mind, the conception of it must be
constructed and defined from within, and not be dependent upon outward
circumstances.
Upon such outward circumstances originality is in part essentially
dependent. Many great and useful discoveries and inventions have
been due to accident solely. Many investigators have by a happy
concatenation of circumstances been led into a line of study which
has brought them to discoveries which have remained hidden from much
higher minds. When the microscope was first discovered it was only
necessary to apply it to any tissue of living matter to make great and
important discoveries. So, too, as a matter of fact, a large number
of discoveries are ascribed to persons who, under conditions other
than those under which they were made, might perhaps in no way have
particularly distinguished themselves. The possibility of originality
is in many branches of art narrowly limited; and the chance of being
original depends very much upon how far precursors have exhausted the
department. In practical music we speak of a “brilliant rendering”
(_geniale Auffassung_). Now, I ask whether a musician who executes
a sonata of Beethoven according to his conception of it, is less a
genius because others before him have had the same idea of it. Or is
a musician a genius because, in his desire to be original and to be
applauded as a genius, he does not reproduce the work of the composer,
but rather a parody upon it? Often enough this is actually done
nowadays.
Those inquirers who have sought to penetrate to the psychological laws
of genius, and have sought to explain its phenomena upon recognised
psychological principles, have been obliged at last to acknowledge
that they had to do with the most diverse psychical conditions, which
have been promiscuously labelled as genius. Even Gerard, in his
psychological analysis, found himself at last compelled to recognise
two essentially different varieties of genius--“genius for science” and
“genius for the arts.”[17] But he shows very plainly the error into
which he had fallen. Instead of recognising that these two classes
refer to utterly unlike psychical conditions, he again resorts to
external circumstances to explain their difference, saying: “Some
difference between genius for science and genius for the arts arises
necessarily from the very diversity of their ends.”[18] This is
obviously putting the cart before the horse. He ought rather to say,
“The diversity of their ends arises from different sources--genius for
science and genius for the arts.”
Helvetius[19] likewise comes to the conclusion that different kinds
of genius differ psychologically. “Few men have perceived that these
metaphors (fire, inspiration, etc.), applicable to certain kinds of
genius, such as that for poetry and for eloquence, are not at all so to
the genius for reflection, such as that of Locke and Newton.” But, in
spite of his quite correct view that the psychical conditions requisite
for a man of science and a poet are utterly different, he nevertheless
endeavours to frame a definition which shall include both these
dissimilar cases.[20] Instead, therefore, of accounting for phenomena
in scientific concepts, he avails himself of a loose usage of speech
as the guide of his inquiries, and so comes to the conclusion that
“invention” and the “making of an epoch” are the kernel of all genius.
Radestock,[21] to mention one more among many, expresses a similar
opinion: “And yet there are certain characteristics common to all
genius--to wit, originality and the height of creative power. Different
kinds of genius are only distinguished in a secondary manner by their
objects and the spheres within which they are exercised.” Here is the
same inversion of cause and effect as in Gerard.
Investigation having made it clear that common language throws together
under the one head of genius elements the most heterogeneous, science
reaches this parting of the ways--either to discard the concept
entirely as scientifically useless, or to limit it to one definitely
describable combination of psychological conditions.
Kant and Schopenhauer, recognising this fact, restricted genius to art.
Schopenhauer[22] showed that totally different psychical conditions
would make an artist on the one hand, and a man of learning on the
other; so that it was not admissible to call them both by the same
name. Here is one of his remarks: “The work of genius has always been
regarded as an inspiration, as the word itself implies, as the work
of a superhuman being different from the person and only periodically
taking possession of him. Experience shows, too, that the greatest
artistic geniuses have no capacity for mathematics. There never lived
a man distinguished in both particulars. Alfieri relates that he never
could advance beyond the fourth proposition of Euclid. Goethe has
been reproached enough with his lack of mathematical knowledge. Thus,
also, is explained the notorious want of artistic sensibility in all
distinguished mathematicians. A great French mathematician, on hearing
the Iphigénie of Racine, exclaimed, ‘What does that prove?’ Great
genius is seldom combined with predominance of reason; on the contrary,
men of genius are particularly subject to overpowering sentiments and
irrational passions.”
It must be confessed that the limitation of genius to artistic power
has met with general disapprobation among the later authors who have
written upon the subject. Jürgen Bona Meyer[23] assures us that there
is such a thing as scientific genius; and so do other authors who
have not reconciled themselves to this limitation of the common mode
of speech. Since Kant and Schopenhauer, people continue to attribute
genius to scientists, just as they did before.
Thus the question whether the popular word genius can be used as
a scientific term can only be decided by a psychological analysis
of those poets, composers, painters, virtuosos, actors, scholars,
statesmen, and generals who have generally been reckoned as geniuses.
That analysis performed, comparison will show whether they have any
common characteristic, such as justifies us in comprehending such
persons under one psychological concept.
Famous poets, observant of their own inward conditions, have often said
that their works were composed as in a dream, unknown to themselves;
that, instead of being deliberately constructed, their ideas have, as
it were, flown to them.
Goethe says: “There is a sense in which it is true that poets, and
indeed all true artists, must be born, not made. Namely, there must
be an inward productive power to bring the images that linger in the
organs, in the memory, in the imagination, freely, without purpose or
will, to life. The ideas must unfold themselves, grow, extend, and
accumulate in order to become no longer fugitive diagrams, but living
pictures.”
Voltaire, on seeing one of his tragedies performed, exclaimed: “Was it
really I who wrote that?” Lamartine said: “It is not I who think, but
my ideas which think for me.” Of Werther, Goethe said: “Having written
this little book somewhat unconsciously, like a sleepwalker, I could
not help wondering, in lately reading it over, whether I should find
anything in it to alter and improve.”
Schiller writes to Körner: “It is not well in works of creation that
reason should too closely challenge the ideas that come thronging to
the doors. Taken by itself, an idea may be highly unsuitable, even
venturesome, and yet in conjunction with others, themselves equally
absurd alone, it may furnish a suitable link in the chain of thought.
Reason can not see this unless it carefully considers the idea in its
connections. In a creative brain reason has withdrawn her watch at the
doors, and ideas crowd in pell-mell.”
Bettinelli says: “The happy moment for the poet may be called a
dream--dreamed in the presence of the intellect, which stands by and
gazes with open eyes at the performance.”
“Schiller,” says Vischer, in his treatise upon Esthetics,[24]
“annotating a passage in Schelling, energetically requires that the
poet should begin his work unconsciously, and says that he ought
to consider himself fortunate if, after a consecutive and distinct
consideration of what he is about, he does not find himself set back,
or if he finds his finished work as good as the obscure but powerful
impression from which he set out. Schiller himself, who fluttered
midway between thought and intuition, complains that theory and
criticism quench his ardour, and that when he sees himself at work
creating and constructing, his imagination is embarrassed, and does not
perform with the same freedom as it had done when nobody was looking
over its shoulder.”
Jean Paul Richter had, perhaps, the above passage of Goethe in his mind
when he wrote:[25] “Genius is, in more senses than one, a sleepwalker,
and in its bright dream can accomplish what one who woke could never
do. It mounts every height of reality in the dark; but bring it out
of its world of dreams, and it stumbles.” The last clause contains
an observation that Goethe also had made upon himself and which he
describes as follows: “It had happened to me so often that I would
repeat a song to myself and then be unable to recollect it; that
sometimes I would run to my desk and, without taking time to lay my
paper straight, would, without stirring from my place, write out the
poem from beginning to end, slopingly. For the same reason I always
preferred to write with a pencil, on account of its marking so readily.
On several occasions, indeed, the scratching and spluttering of my pen
awoke me from my somnambulistic poetizing and distracted me so that it
suffocated a little product in its birth. I had a particular reverence
for such pieces, like a hen for her brood of chickens pipping around
her.”
Klopstock says himself that he got many of the ideas of his Messiah in
dreams.
Voltaire wrote to Diderot:[26] “It must be confessed that in the arts
of genius instinct is everything. Corneille composed the scene between
Horatius and Curiatius just as a bird builds its nest, except that the
bird always builds well, while with us poor feeble little creatures
that is not the case.”
Upon what does this instinctive creating, this unconscious poetizing,
this spontaneous emerging of thought, that we meet with in so many
great poets, depend?
In our first chapter we recognised two different kinds of processes
of thought--voluntary thinking, in which the sequence of ideas is
determined by the will, and involuntary thinking, which takes place
in a purely associative way. This last we may term _fancy_. The two
processes have, in truth, no sharp delimitation. We may conceive the
process of thought to be an action of fancy with varying activity of
the will, from the weakest to the strongest grade. So Wundt[27] speaks
of an active and a passive fancy. “Our fancy,” says he, “is passive
when we allow the play of ideas to go as it will, beginning with any
complete idea. It is active when our will sifts out the ideas that
are produced, and thus purposively brings about a new whole.” In the
present work we shall use the word _fancy_ without qualification to
denote a passive involuntary train of ideas; while a purposive sequence
of ideas, or voluntary thought, shall be termed _intellectual function_
(_Verstandesthätigkeit_).
Involuntary thought is frequently described by the poets as
unconscious. That can not be accurate, for “unconscious thought” is a
contradictory phrase. Not even a dream can be said to be unconscious,
whether it be purely ideal, like most dreams, or produce action, as in
sleepwalking. In such a state self-consciousness alone is suspended,
not consciousness itself. It is true that § 51 of the German criminal
code pronounces actions performed unconsciously to be unpunishable;
but that is psychologically incorrect. A person is unconscious in a
deep swoon or occasionally in a stupor. But actions are never performed
without being connected with ideas; this it is that distinguishes
them from automatic and reflex motions. Now, ideas form a part of
consciousness. Ideas without consciousness are therefore inconceivable.
The paragraph of the criminal code ought to read: “Actions performed
while self-consciousness is suspended shall not be punished.” So
when a poet tells us he has composed verses while in a state of
unconsciousness or as in a dream, similar considerations show how we
are to understand his language.
Fancy stands half-way between dreaming and active intellectual
function. The latter depends directly on the will, while in the former
the will is in total abeyance. Purposive thought is like a ship with
a strong rudder which follows every turning and winding and can be
carried through the narrowest straits. A dream is a rudderless hulk
wandering hither and thither, the play of the winds and waves. Fancy is
a ship which, with its sails set, wends its way over the deep, moving
like a ghost with no visible impulse, yet directed toward its destined
port. The will takes part in fancy, but behaves more passively than
actively. It removes all hindrances which might confuse the thoughts
and prevent ideas from forming a harmonious whole.
All men exercise the above-described action of fancy. In ordinary
men it makes daydreams, which everybody recognises to be opposed
to purposive thought. All that fancy produces depends on former
impressions of sense. It is powerless to create anything new; its
products are mere combinations in memory of the residua of former
impressions. They may be unlikely enough, and in that sense it may be
true that its products are “original.” But this does not conflict with
the facts alleged.
As in a kaleidoscope a relatively small number of bits of broken glass
can enter into most manifold combinations and produce the most diverse
images, so the residua of former impressions of sense can, by means
of fancy, combine into the most variegated mixture of original ideas.
If a kaleidoscope contains only a small number of morsels of glass of
tolerably large size, the images will be relatively monotonous and
small in variety; but if it contains smaller and more numerous pieces
of glass, the images will be more manifold and more variegated. In an
analogous way, a rich fancy, as we call it, is able to dissect the
sense-impressions that are received into their smallest constituents,
and to fuse them together into infinitely numerous new shapes. If
this faculty is combined with a great facility of association and
imagination, it will result in that lively and creative action of fancy
which we find in the poet.
The daydreams of ordinary men are mostly uninteresting. But in
a man with a cultivated and refined fancy, daydreams will bring
those creative thoughts of genius, in which fancy reveals itself _a
posteriori_ to his knowledge. Hence it is that he seems to himself to
have created his ideas unawares. He seems, like an objective spectator,
to see the poem spring up within him.
This state of fancy, which depends upon an ordinary psychical process,
not qualitatively different from the mental process of common men, but
only differing quantitatively, is that which gave rise to mystical
explanations and to the belief in supernatural processes. Kant
remarks: “The reason why exemplary originality of talent receives
that mystical title is that the subject of it can not himself explain
its eruptions, or that he finds himself in possession of an art
which he could not have learned and which he can not comprehend. For
invisibility (the cause of an effect) is an attribute of the mind (a
genius with which the gifted person is endowed from his birth) whose
inspiration, as it were, he only follows.” So Vischer says: “We apply
to it the name of inspiration, an expression recalling a mystical
idea, the flow of which only begins here to grow into a river in its
further advance. The ancients, for whom the unknown upon the limits of
self-knowledge appeared so strange as to be the work of God, thought
it was really inspiration. The poet is inflated with the Muse, he is
ἔνθεος, θεόπνευστος, κατεχόμενος, ἐκστατικός, he is snatched away by
the goddess ὑπὸ θείης ἐξαλλαγῆς, out of himself, ἔξω ἑαυτοῦ, he is
breathed upon, ἐπίπνοια.”
It is this creative and somewhat independent power of fancy which lends
to the work of art its character of originality; and hence it is that
many inquirers have found in that the essence of genius.
Garve[28] expresses himself emphatically upon this point. “Nothing,”
he says, “is harder to ascertain than the peculiarity of a particular
mind, especially of a great mind, and most of all of a genius. All
perfections of the mind consist in certain perfections of thoughts;
or, rather, we only know as many differences and superiorities of
capacities and powers as we find of differences and grades of eminence
in the ideas. There is hardly any way to describe the character of a
capacity except by describing the origin and mode of formation of the
thoughts which are peculiar to that faculty. This can only be done in
so far as these thoughts follow other thoughts--i. e., are reflections
and after-thoughts. But when they seem to spring immediately out of
the power of the soul, when the higher or previous suggesting thoughts
are not to be found even by the man who had the idea in question,
our inquiry comes to an end, as inquiries always do when, in place
of tracing one effect from another, we are brought up to the actual
force. Now, thoughts of that kind are precisely such as are ascribed to
genius, a word signifying the source of those ideas which have not been
gradually elaborated, but have sprung up in a night from the soil of
the soul.”
Jürgen Bona Meyer says: “Talent, being self-conscious, knows the why
and wherefore of its conclusions and principles. But for genius all
that is in darkness. Nothing is more unconscious and involuntary than
the process of thought of genius.”
Although, as we shall soon see, this creative fancy is not sufficient
by itself to produce a poetic genius, and, as we shall at the same
time see, the degree of its development is not always proportional to
the greatness of the poet, yet it must be granted that the action of
fancy is an indispensable psychical ingredient of every poet. We are
confirmed in this opinion by the fact that those poets who only possess
it in small or inconsiderable amounts themselves lament the want of
it as a misfortune. When Lessing confesses there is no living spring
within him which wells up fresh, rich, and pure, but that everything
has to be pumped up with straining and groaning, he simply denies his
own possession of the proper organ of poesy. Schiller complained that
theory and criticism had damaged the free play of his fancy. When
Wieland had once reproached him with want of facility he wrote: “While
I am at work I feel only too keenly that he is right; yet I feel, too,
where the fault lies, and I hope that I shall be able to improve very
much in that respect. Ideas do not flow richly enough to me, however
luxuriant my works turn out; and until I write them down my ideas are
not clear.”
Here, then, is a very important mental difference between poets of
high rank. While in Goethe the mainstay of his artistic power was
the free play of fancy, with Schiller the turning point was a power
of intellectual function which, in his own words, often choked the
luxuriance of his fancy.
From this fact we can draw the corollary that however indispensable
to a poet fancy may be, it is not a synonym of poetic greatness; for
Schiller is undeniably a greater poet than many another whose fancy is
under no such intellectual inhibition.
The psychological analysis of famous poets will show that the
intellectual function is no whit less important a factor of poetic
genius than fancy itself, although the latter is the one immediately
employed in the act of composition. We have seen that creative
fancy works with the material which former impressions of sense have
left behind as their remains or residua. The more comprehensive the
knowledge of the poet, therefore, and the more he is in condition to
assimilate and compact the impressions the world conveys to him, and
the sounder and truer his judgments of persons and situations, and the
more methodical his thought and the better his memory, by so much the
more will his fancy display luxuriance, and by so much more various
will be his creations.
Lessing[29] falls into error when he says: “It is permitted to genius
not to know a thousand things that every schoolboy knows; for it is not
the provision with which his memory is stored, but what he can bring
forth out of his own feeling, that constitutes his wealth.” On the
contrary, the really great poet is usually marked by solid erudition
and thorough comprehension of the world. Of course, there are fools
enough who fancy they need learn nothing, that their genius has only
to walk forth naked in its own stately form, and that erudition would
be but a detriment to its creativeness. But these are unfortunates, of
whom we shall treat in another chapter of this book. Goethe hit them
off in the following epigram:
Says Zigzag, in his latest book,
“Within no school have I a nook;
From living wight no thoughts I’ve took;
Still less to dead men do I look.”
He means, unless I’ve much mistook,
“I’m just a crank on my own hook.”[30]
Kant, too, says that genius must undergo the “constraint of the school”
(_Zwang des Studiums_). “To free imagination from this constraint and
to allow one’s peculiar talent to rove about in wild disorder, contrary
to the laws of Nature, might betoken, perhaps, a great original
madness.”
Goethe very clearly pictures the sources from which his own rich fancy
drew the materials of its creations. “The greatest genius would be
worthless without external aids. For what, after all, is genius but
the capacity to seize every opportunity, to make use of everything
that falls in our way, to impart form and life to whatever matter may
be put within its reach, to take here marble, there earth, and out of
them to build a lasting monument? Where, for example, should I be, or
what would be left of me, if that sort of appropriation should cast
a prejudice upon genius? What have I done? I have gathered and used
whatever I have seen, heard, or observed. I have laid claim to the
works of Nature and of man. To every one of my writings a thousand
persons and a thousand different things have contributed. Old and
young, gentle and simple, wise and foolish have brought their quotas.
Mostly without being aware of it, they have bestowed upon me their
thoughts, their faculties, and their experiences, sowing the grain that
I have reaped. My work is an assemblage of essences which have been
derived from the course of Nature. This bears the name of ‘Goethe.’...
Foolish men! They remind me of a certain philosopher of my part of the
country who fancied that if he were to imprison himself in his study
for thirty years, and there sift and beat out the ideas which he would
draw from his own poor brain, he would obtain a wonderful mine of
originality! What came of it, think ye? Clouds, and only clouds!... I
was long enough so silly as to grieve over these absurdities; but now
in my old age I may be permitted to make merry over them and laugh at
them.”[31]
Another psychical phenomenon, besides fancy and intellectual function,
surprises us in famous poets--to wit: a refinement of the feelings,
heart, and moods. We often find these qualities developed in great
poets to a point we can scarcely imagine. The mere contemplation of a
work of art may move them to tears. In Heine, music produced a peculiar
mood which excited him to versification. Alfieri described his mood
while writing poetry as a sort of soft fever. When Goethe read in
Schiller’s family for the first time the scene between Hermann and his
mother under the pear tree, in Hermann und Dorothea, he burst into
tears, saying, as he dried his eyes, “One melts over one’s own fire.”
Schiller wrote to Goethe: “At first my sensations have no definite
object; that is formed later. First comes a certain musical sensation,
and after that, follows the poetical idea.”
What is described here is, as fancy, not a new, independent, or
mystical condition, peculiar to certain individuals, but is merely
a refinement of a certain part of the psychical organism, and
consequently a mere alteration of intensity of a phenomenon observable
in all men.
Our whole mental action, the train of ideas, voluntary or involuntary,
is accompanied with a certain state of temper, best termed a _mood_
(_Stimmung_), to which I have referred in the first chapter. As we
are not ordinarily conscious of any feelings produced by our internal
organs, so, in spite of their continuous presence, we are not commonly
aware of our moods. We recognise them only as they vary. Different
authors are at variance in regard to the connection between our moods
and our ideas. Some will have the moods dependent upon the ideas,
while others make the content of the ideas follow the mood of the
moment. My own opinion is that neither rule can be maintained, but that
moods and ideas react upon one another, at one time a mood taking the
lead, at another an idea. When sad news is received, a gloomy mood is
plainly a consequence of the ideas; yet it is not to be denied that we
have many ups and downs of mood for which no differences of ideas can
account. Such moods are called _humours_.
It is well known that the multitude of qualitative differences of
sense-perceptions exceeds every finite number. Not only can we perceive
differences in the intensity of lights, but we can distinguish the most
manifold shades of colour. Sounds differ not merely in intensity and
in pitch, but also in the quality of tone. We not only hear upon what
instrument a given note is sounded, but a connoisseur can tell upon
what string of a violin it is drawn. Hence we recognise the voice of
one acquaintance among hundreds.
The quality of a sensation can not be described in words. No doubt, we
have names for the coarsest distinctions; but even these have a value
only when they are brought into connection with previous impressions.
A person blind from birth can in no way whatever get any idea of a
distinction of colour. Nor can a deaf-mute get the most distant notion
of the differences of qualities of sounds.
In strict analogy with sense-perception, the fundamentally different
qualities of moods are likewise too multitudinous to be enumerated.
Neither can they be described in words. We have names for certain
states, and these names may suggest previous experiences of our states
of mind. Compunction, pity, desire, worry, hope, fear, though they have
names, are sensations and moods that no descriptions can paint. If a
person had never felt pity in his life, you could in no way give him an
idea of that mood.
Persons whose psychical organism is highly refined in this respect
will have qualities of moods that there are no words to express. Just
as the musically gifted can distinguish timbres that ordinary people
can not, so those persons have mood-feelings for which the average
man is incapable, and for which common language has no designations.
Alfieri’s “soft fever” and Schiller’s “a certain musical mood of the
heart” are obviously attempts to convey some notion of such refined
mood-feelings.
Another trait remarkable in famous poets is an instinctive and
invincible impulse to express the ideas and feelings within them. In
consequence of this impulse the work of genius is not a voluntary
labour, but the involuntary product of a psychical need. It is not
a hankering after applause and success, nor a regard for his other
interests, which induces the man of genius to perform his task. It is
solely a passion to give shape and form to the idea that exists in his
fancy. The true poet does not versify because he would, but because he
must. Goethe has painted the poetic impulse in Tasso:
_Alfonso._ I beg of thee to break this habit up!
The poet’s loss will be the man’s success.
_Tasso._ I’ve struggled day and night against this need;
I’m worn out trying to shut up my breast.
’Tis useless! Sing I must; else life’s not life.
Prohibit the poor silkworm’s industry
On pain of death, yet still he’ll keep right on
Drawing the costly web from his entrails,
Nor cease until his golden cerecloth’s wove.--Act V, scene 2.
This impulse of the poet of genius is again merely an exaggerated case
of a purely physiological phenomenon found in all men. In every man
strong emotions and powerful motions of the heart exercise a great
influence upon his whole mental conduct. But the effects of emotions
are not limited to the mind. They are centrifugally communicated to
the other organs. They have spasmodic and paralytic effects upon the
blood vessels, which are shown by blanching and blushing, cold down
the back (shivers and gooseflesh), etc. The beating of the heart may
be increased to the highest point or may be completely suspended.
Glandular secretions, sweat, and tears are influenced by moods. The
emotions are alleviated by such processes. The mood becomes calmer,
the whole state of mind more agreeable. A decided relief is brought
to great mental pain by tears, and a person may even speak of having
“a good cry.” Anger is softened by “having it out,” be it even on a
lifeless thing. Hysterical subjects and children strike or kick the
object against which they may have struck. Cheerful emotions also seek
“vent.” A comical emotion sets the laughing muscles in motion, and this
is followed by a calmer mood.
The impulse to give expression to emotions and moods is not only shown
in such reflex ways, but also in an intense desire for communication
to other persons. The consequence of “telling all about it” is a
measurable unburdening or relaxation which produces satisfaction. Thus,
all men have a natural impulse to communicate their inward feelings and
sensations. The suppression of it involves a tension, a heightening
of the emotion, and a general uneasiness. A pain which circumstances
forbid us to disclose, especially where tears have to be suppressed, is
felt more intensely. Suppressed anger “gnaws the vitals” all the worse.
The suppression of laughter is very uncomfortable, and for some persons
quite impossible. Everybody knows how hard it is for women (shall we
add for men?) to keep a secret.
When a woman has a piece of news, she “burns” to repeat it. Everybody
suffering from the pangs of love feels much relieved when he has
confessed his passion. Everybody experiences relief, when he bears a
grudge against anybody, on “speaking his mind” about him. Criminals
are not seldom led by an inward impulse to confess offences committed
long before. Thus, this impulse, which I shall term the impulse of
revelation, is a quite normal one, and belongs in some measure to every
man.
In poets of genius, who have such manifold feelings and moods, and
in whose rich fancy so many new thoughts and ideas are continually
springing up, this impulse is proportionately manifest. But since, as
we have seen, the feelings and moods of the poet cannot be described
in simple words, art is required to give utterance to them. Such a
poet no more writes for the sake of making poetry than a rational man
talks for the sake of talking; he creates his work of art solely to
the end that he may give utterance to the sentiments, feelings, and
thoughts with which his soul is burdened. If he finds his work has no
success nor recognition, he of course feels the same pain that any man
would feel who wants to express himself to somebody and is understood
by nobody. But he is incapable of altering anything in his work or
reshaping it for a new edition. He can only be what he is. He feels
himself incapable of creating anything but the embodiment of his ideas
and sentiments.
Such a poet was Goethe. Art was for him only the means of expression
of his sentiments. He expressed in poetic form only what really took
place within himself, what he really lived, felt, and experienced. He
himself said: “All my poems are occasional poems. They were called
forth by real circumstances and have their reason and place therein.
I never valued poems snatched out of the air. A special situation is
universal and poetic, simply because a poet treats of it. What I did
not undergo and what did not concern me I have never sung or expressed.
I never wrote love poems without being in love.” And again he said: “If
I desired for my poems a true basis and reflection, I had to get it in
my own bosom. And so began that habit--from which I have never departed
through life--of converting whatever rejoiced, or worried, or otherwise
concerned me into a poem and so have done with it, and thus at once to
correct my conceptions of outward things and to set my mind at rest.
The gift for doing so could be to nobody more needful than to me; for
my nature was always swaying from one extreme to another. Thus, all I
have published are but fragments of a long confession.”
In Goethe the most diverse moods replaced one another. As he says, he
passed from one extreme to another. To give them expression was the
motive of his artistic production. The matter of his creations was
furnished by his creative fancy, which in its turn took its material
from the world in which he lived and into which he had such an insight
as no other had. Thus, as often as his relations in life altered, he
would alter the plan of his Wilhelm Meister, as he describes it in
the following words: “Its beginnings came from a dim premonition that
though a man may often essay things whose successful performance was
denied to him by Nature, yet perhaps all false steps really carry
him toward a priceless good. This conjecture is in Wilhelm Meister
developed, illustrated, established, and at last expressly enunciated
in the clear words, ‘Thou appearest to me like Saul, the son of Kis,
who went out to fetch his father’s she-asses and found a kingdom.’”
The following is likewise highly instructive: “For this purpose I
collected the elements that I had been turning over in my mind for
a couple of years, and examined the cases which had troubled me the
most and occasioned me the most anxiety. However, nothing seemed to
shape itself. I was in want of an incident or plot in which things
could embody themselves. Finally, I got news of Jerusalem’s death;
and just after the general notice came a precise and circumstantial
account of the event. In an instant the remainder of the plan was
found. Everything closed up on all sides and became a compact mass.
It was like water in a vessel just on the point of freezing, which at
the least joggle becomes a solid lump of ice.” His joys and sorrows,
his desires, his pleasures and pains were exhibited by Goethe in the
heroes of his poems. In their veins flowed his blood, they breathed
with his lungs, and they lived by his life.
Dilthey[32] says: “The poetic process is in most of Goethe’s creations
the same. A state of heart is powerfully experienced in the whole outer
situation, with all the ideas, states, and shapes surrounding it, and
since now the inwardly moved poet meets an outward condition fit to be
made the vehicle of the experiences of his heart, there arises in this
coalescence the nucleus of a poem which at once contains in itself all
characteristic traits, the entire mood, the lines of the whole.”
In giving artistic expression to his own sentiments and his own fancy,
Goethe painted the sentiments and reactions of society. The reason
was that his soul was but the mirror of the world in which he lived.
The greatness of the poet consisted precisely in this accidental
correspondence; and when he painted his own woes and joys he was
painting unawares the woes and joys of humanity. Goethe himself touches
upon this in the following words: “There is all the difference in the
world between the poet’s seeking out the particular to fit the general,
and showing the general in the particular. The former method gives rise
to allegory, where the particular is only an example of the general;
but the latter method is the proper nature of poetry. It expresses a
particular without thinking of the general or referring to it. Whoever
catches the particular in all its life will have set his finger upon
the universal without at first knowing what he has captured.”
This method of poetic creation is not, however, found in all poets. Art
is not always an expression of sentiments and feelings. Poets as famous
as Goethe have worked under totally different psychical conditions,
and have created in an altogether different way.
Such a difference is found in those two men whom the German people
with just pride hold to be the greatest poets of the century. Between
scarcely any two poets have so many parallels been drawn as between
Goethe and Schiller. Critics of to-day often rate Goethe higher than
Schiller, and make him the greater of the two poets. But from the
psychological standpoint we are forced to the conviction that there
is between them a difference other than one of degree. Were Schiller
raised to an ever so much higher power (if an algebraical metaphor may
be permitted), he could never become a Goethe, but he might become a
Shakespeare.
While Goethe took “in his own bosom” the poetic basis of his works,
Schiller placed the germs of his poems in the outer world. While Goethe
conceived poetry as merely the means of utterance of his sentiments,
and hence spoke of his writings as “fragments of a long confession,”
Schiller declares the purpose of poesy to be “none other than the
completest expression of humanity.” While Goethe’s heroes were made
of his own flesh and blood, Schiller’s fancy produced, idealized and
generalized embodiments of characters he had observed and studied in
the outward world. Schiller attached an intrinsic value to the outward
habiliments of poetry, the sonorous and metaphorical language, the
melody of verse, the plot of the drama. Goethe regarded the outward
form as the mere “_Machwerk_”--the make-up--and of course did not
finish and polish his works with the same care as Schiller. Of his
Wallenstein, Schiller said: “Almost everything is cut away from me
by which I might get at this matter in my usual way. Everything has
to be effectuated by a felicitous form.” The construction of the
form sufficed to bring him inspiration, though he could take no real
interest in his personages. Speaking of the same drama in a letter,
he says: “The matter is so alien to me that I can hardly get up an
interest in it. It leaves me well-nigh cold and indifferent. Yet I am
enthusiastic over the work. Two personages excepted, for whom I have
some sympathy, I treat the whole _dramatis personæ_, especially the
leading character, with a mere artistic love, cold as charity; but I
assure you, they shall not turn out any worse on this account.” Goethe
could never have brought himself to write in that fashion. When he had
once given expression to his sentiments in a poetic rough-draught, he
would often neglect it for years before he finished it.
“Goethe,” says Hermann Grimm, “was in his inmost heart of quite the
opposite way of thinking from Schiller. He acknowledged Schiller’s
importance, reverenced his earnest life, esteemed his greatness as
a man. But as for what Schiller called poems, they were in Goethe’s
eyes not poetry at all. Schiller’s poetical creating was foreign to
Goethe. Schiller would begin by casting about for material. Then
he worked it till he had made it plastic. Next, he laid his plans.
These plans he placed before himself, and went to work, so many hours
_per diem_, to construct his work, as a mason would build a palace,
in strict conformity to the plan before him. That done, he took a
contract with himself to put in the painting, the ornaments, and the
furniture; and finally he cleaned the whole thing up, and opened it to
the public. This thorough workmanship was Schiller’s forte. He was a
professional poet, and he excelled all other professional poets. Goethe
appreciated this; but he could not practise it himself. He discussed
the technical questions which are of importance in criticising poetry,
and in producing it, too, with the utmost seriousness, but always as
an outsider. Making verses was for him an inconceivable proceeding.
Whoever applied to Goethe to know whether he ought to go into the
poetical profession came to a fine quarter. Young persons with a turn
for versification have an artless belief that there is somewhere an
Areopagus from which they may obtain a solemn and authoritative
concession to make verses; and that thereupon they may be assured that
their verses will meet with ‘success’--that is, be read and admired.
Goethe was only able to give an answer which threw them back upon a
metaphor--that a silkworm had only to eat leaves, and the silk would
surely not be in default. In short, he replied evasively, dissuasively,
and hesitatingly. But Schiller would answer in good faith. He
criticised the verses inclosed and required, if they would trust to
him, that they should persevere industriously. Naturally, he warned
them that the art of poetry must not be attempted unless the writer was
prepared to dedicate his life to it, with other such admonitions of
good sense.”[33]
Schiller, for his part, considered poems which sprang from the author’s
personal feelings, which included Goethe’s, as not, in the proper
sense of the term, poetry. Concerning the few things he had himself
done in that way Schiller said: “These verses are a mere natural
utterance--a _Naturlaut_, as Herder would say--a note of pain, artless
and comparatively formless. They are too true for the individual, to
be called poetry proper; for in them the individual appeases his need
and alleviates his burden, while in lyrics of another kind, carried
away by a flood, he yields to the need of creating. The present lines
give utterance to the sentiment from which they sprang and, after their
kind, they make no further pretension.”
_These contrasts between the two poets did not rest upon any
differences of principle, nor were they consequences of any divergence
of theoretical views, but were due directly to differences of psychical
mechanism._
Goethe in his prevailing moods was, as he describes himself, “tossed
from one extreme to another.”
Now merry, now heart-cut,
Now thankful to be;
Or dangling uncertain
In flittering pain;
Exulting to heaven,
To death beaten down, etc.[34]
These words picture Goethe’s life. His moods were capable of the finest
gradations. They arose spontaneously; he could give no account of them.
His luxuriant fancy was formed from feelings and moods and pressed
forward to artistic embodiment.
Goethe is often a riddle to himself. He considered his fancy as an
objective spectator. Its variegated mixture became the source of his
poetic ideas. But his strong intellectual power set limits to the
rovings of his fancy, and did not allow it to be subjugated to his
fluctuating moods, but held the mental balance even.
Schiller’s fancy was not excited by spontaneous moods. It was not in
that way that he was urged to artistic expression. His moods depended
upon his ideas. They were produced by ideas and modified by ideas.
Schiller’s fancy no doubt lent poetic ideas to his searching intellect;
but it did not work on its own account as Goethe’s did. It was an
effect of the will. Schiller could never say that his works arose “as
in a dream,” or that he versified “like a sleepwalker.” He did not feel
that he produced “unconsciously.” What he did was the result of the
most deliberate purpose.
Goethe’s impulse to deliver himself, to set forth his sentiments in
artistic form, corresponds to Schiller’s need of producing, to the
exuberance “impelled by superfluity” toward artistic creation. The
turning-point for him lies in the intellect, and this draws from the
outward world and from fancy in order to erect a sublime art temple.
The characters produced by him did not, like Goethe’s, arise from his
own sentiment, but were thoroughly artificial products.
Both Goethe and Schiller felt the gulf between them. After their first
meeting, Schiller wrote to Körner: “His whole nature is laid down on
other lines from mine; he lives in another world, and our modes of
thought seem to be widely remote.”
Knowing that Goethe had in many ways excelled him, Schiller wrote: “It
is true that, in entering this path, I encroach upon Goethe’s domain
and must measure myself against him. It is furthermore certain that
here I will be outstripped by him. But a remainder is left for me,
which is mine, and which he can never attain; so that the preference
given to him will be no shame to me, and I hope that things will about
balance. In my most courageous moments I hope that the public will
class us as different, but will not subordinate one species to the
other, rather co-ordinating us both under a broader idealistic generic
concept.” Thus Schiller justly recognised the difference of their
“species” and had the right feeling that the one species ought not
to be subordinated to the other. Twenty years after Schiller’s death
Goethe said: “Schiller, who had the true poetical nature, but whose
mind inclined to reflection and compelled much by force of reflection,
that ought to spring up in a poet unconsciously and of its own accord,
drew many young men his way who could, after all, only learn his
language.”
The vast difference between these two men showed itself in many
traits of their character. Goethe, who in his poems responded only to
an inward impulse, a natural need, wrote above all for himself, and
asked nothing for the public. Schiller’s efforts were to impose upon
the world, to please the public. He himself says: “The public is now
all with me; it is the subject of my studies, it is my sovereign, my
friend. To the public alone I now belong. I shall submit to no other
tribunal than this. This I fear, and this I respect.” Goethe neither
feared nor honoured the public, and did not concern himself about what
critics said of him, while Schiller often confessed that the critics
had influenced him much. Goethe made no haste to get his works before
the public; while Schiller could not wait till his creation was mature
to commence publication. Thus, he published fragments of “Don Carlos”
in Thalia, long before the poem was completed. But he himself regretted
it later, for he would have liked to have altered something.
As I said above, Shakespeare might be called a Schiller raised to a
higher power. Unfortunately, we have no detailed information about his
life and opinions. But his works sufficiently show that never has poet
been able to paint characters so true to nature and life as he. The
world in its unadulterated genuineness and merest truth was reflected
in the soul of this immortal poet. No theatrical puppets are they to
whom his fancy gave being. They are men and women--living flesh and
blood. They really feel, lament and make merry. But the poet himself
does not speak to us through them. The man Shakespeare we do not know,
nor can we guess what manner of man he was, nor what he felt. In every
word of Goethe it is him we hear, and it is inconceivable that anybody
should love his works without seeing the poet in them, who speaks to
us by them. But with Shakespeare it is only for his characters that we
warm up. With them we can sympathize, but the poet remains a stranger
to us.
Schiller himself tells us that the matter of his poems often left
him cold. His feelings were not engaged. In the whole of Wallenstein
only two persons interested him (probably Max and Thekla). With many
poets we can see that their heroic characters, which mounted their
fancy, exercised a powerful influence upon their poetic hearts. So
Dickens tells us that he sympathized with his favourite heroes; that
he decidedly looked upon them as living persons; that during the
composition he concerned himself about their fate as he would about a
dear friend’s; that, in short, he partook of their sorrows and joys
in his inmost soul. Thus, while with Goethe moods and sentiments were
at the bottom of the production of the work of art, such psychical
conditions were called forth in Dickens in a secondary way by the
productions of his fancy. With Schiller, again, moods seem to have
played neither an active nor a passive part in the creation of his
poems. A poet who, from a psychological point of view, is to be
compared with Goethe--though in a much lower potency, for whom,
however, art was equally a means for expressing his feelings and
sentiments--is Byron, on which account Goethe rated him particularly
high, feeling in him a certain mental affinity to himself.
We see, then, how enormous a difference, from a psychological point
of view, there is between the greatest poets, especially between
those two whom the German people are accustomed to couple together as
inseparable. Nor do these differences consist in one’s being placed
above the other; but those psychical phenomena which for Goethe formed
the main condition of his poetic life are not present at all in
Schiller, but are replaced by different qualities. Yet there is one
element they have in common. I mean creative fancy, without which it is
impossible to conceive of a poet. This creative fancy therefore forms a
common factor of all poetical genius.
Let us now turn to a psychological study of the most famous composers.
We frequently meet with descriptions of the mode of production of their
works, as we do with those of poets of genius. They, too, have the
feeling of unconscious production, of the independent springing up of
their tone-poems. Mozart frequently said the ideas of his creations
came to him as in a dream. Gluck said thoughts flowed to him, and he
knew not whence they came. Haydn believed that a “divine will” had
through him created his greatest work--Die Schöpfung.
Here again, then, we find an independent fancy, such as we have
recognised in poets of genius. In quite an analogous way in painters of
genius fancy sometimes pours out its wealth in an inexhaustible spring.
The imagination bodies forth new shapes unceasingly, and every figure,
every tree, every stream is set forth in its smallest details; and
these ideas weld with others in harmonious ideal images.
The question which presents itself, then, is: Whence comes it that one
fancy expresses itself in poetic production, that in another musical
creations spring up, while in a third painting is the vent of the
creative imagination? The answer to this question leads us to consider
that congenital capacity which is generally called Talent.
What is, for example, musical talent? While at the first hearing of
a concerted piece unmusical persons hear nothing but the flow of the
melody and the general character of the sounds, those who are talented
comprehend the composition in all its divisions. In their apperception
the harmony resolves itself into its parts, and the general effect
of the sound is analyzed. While the sensuous impression called forth
by music quickly passes away in those without talent, with talent a
single hearing suffices to create a lasting memory. Musical talent is
able to make out subtleties which are quite hidden from those who want
it. In musicians of talent not even the direct excitation of musical
reminiscences is needed to suggest auditory images, but they may be
produced associatively from optical centres of apperception. Such
people can, for example, read over a score and acquire as clear an idea
of the composition as if they actually heard it. Though these qualities
be carried to their highest pitch, they still remain matters not of
genius but of talent. Mozart after hearing a mass once was able to
write the whole down; but this is only a proof of vast talent, and does
not depend upon that creative fancy which his compositions bespeak.
We have reason to presume that the causes of talent are to be
attributed to anatomical conditions. For example, the autopsy of the
brain of Gambetta (whose extraordinary oratorical power is well known)
showed an uncommonly great development of the third frontal or Broca’s
convolution--that is to say, of the part of the brain in which the
centre of language is situated. It is to be presumed that musical
talent depends upon a specially refined development of a certain
acoustic centre, although its exact localization at present escapes our
knowledge. Talent is certainly nothing but the material for artistic
creation. It is, so to say, the instrument of the artist, while the
creative power of genius corresponds to the artistic power of drawing
tones from that instrument.
In Mozart the turning point of his artistic production lay in his
inexhaustible fancy, which, according to his family, was in incessant
action. His wife said: “In truth, his head was working all the time,
his mind was ever moving, he composed almost unceasingly.” “In Prague
it once happened that Mozart, while he was playing billiards, was
humming a _motif_, and from time to time would look into a book he had
with him. Afterward he confessed that he had been at work upon the
first quintette of the Zauberflöte.”[35] His sister Sophia described
him as follows: “He was always in good humour, but even at best very
reflective, looking one very sharp in the eye meantime, answering
attentively whether he was cheerful or sad, yet always seeming to
be preoccupied with something else. Even while washing his hands in
the morning he would walk up and down the room; and he never stood
still, but would strike one heel against the other. And he was always
reflecting.”[36] “When he travelled with his wife through a beautiful
country he looked attentively and silently upon the world about him.
His physiognomy, commonly rather self-contained and gloomy than brisk
and free, would gradually become more cheerful, and then he would
begin to sing, or rather to hum, until at last he would exclaim, ‘If
I only had that theme on paper!’ And if she said that it could easily
be done, he would say, ‘Yes, of course, it is a stupid thing that we
must sit down and do our work in the room.’” This remark reminds us of
a passage in a letter of Goethe: “As you may readily imagine, I have a
hundred new things in my head; and now it does not depend on thinking;
it depends on the making. What a thing it would be if we could confine
objects so that they would stay put!”
In his inexhaustible and restlessly working fancy Mozart was very much
like Goethe. His works commonly lay ready-made in his memory when
he began to set them down on paper. He wrote most unwillingly, and
generally waited till the last minute, so that he was commonly behind
time. It is well known that he wrote the overture to Don Juan the night
before the performance of the opera. While we consider creative fancy
to be a part of the action of his genius, his vast musical memory was a
matter of talent, which in Mozart was not less phenomenal. When he once
sent his sister a fugue with a prelude he excused himself for writing
the prelude after the fugue. “The truth is,” said he, “it was while I
was writing down the fugue that I composed the prelude.”[37] Thus his
fancy was able to work undisturbed while he exercised his intellectual
reproductive power. This fact may at first sight seem incredible and
contradictory to common psychical conditions. But it is not so. Here
again is a high refinement of a universal psychical phenomenon. Most
men, while engaged in a mechanical occupation, can give a free rein
to the play of fancy; and even when the mechanical work requires some
attention, many men are able at the same time to think about something
else. Whoever is accustomed to work in a laboratory knows very well
what it is to follow those mechanical operations with attention and at
the same time to be considering some important question. The strange
thing in Mozart’s case is that the writing down from memory of a
fugue--a work which would have required the concentrated attention of a
fairly talented man--was for him a mere mechanical act. We hardly know
which most to admire, his stupendous talent or his creative genius.
Mozart’s rich fancy, like that of Goethe, was directed by a high
intellectual faculty which checked its boilings over, held the ideas
to an ordered sequence, and eliminated disturbing elements. Mozart’s
capacity of concentrating his attention upon what was in his mind, and
of shutting out all disturbing perceptions of sense, was tremendous.
While he was at work social conversation about him was no annoyance,
and even with an orchestra playing in his ears he could calmly follow
out his own fancy. “His eldest sister, Frau Hofer, told Neukomm that
even at the opera,--as anybody who knew him could easily observe by the
restless movements of his hands, by his glance, and by his pursing his
lips to sing or whistle,--he would be completely taken up in following
out his inward train of music.”[38]
But wherever it was worth while to pay attention to the outer world,
and to take in outward impressions of sense, he had an equally high
capacity for that. His fancy received rich aliment from the action of
his intellect. He had studied the old masters perfectly. He himself
said: “Nobody takes so much pains in the study of composition as I.
You could not easily name a famous master in music whom I have not
industriously studied, often going through his works several times.”
Rochlitz reports that he knew the chief works of Händel as well as if
he had all his life been director of the London Academy for the Support
of Old Music.
With all the likeness between Mozart and Goethe there was this
remarkable difference between them, that Mozart was not influenced
by moods. They had no part whatever in the work of his artistic
production. Art was not for him the means of expression of his own
sentiments, as it was with Goethe; he could adapt the play of his
fancy to outward conditions, to motives of the outer world; so that,
in this respect, Mozart strongly reminds one of Schiller. He could set
his fancy any problem he liked, and it would promptly proceed to solve
it. Mozart could compose to order; and many of his works, especially
canons, were produced in that way. In consonance with this was Mozart’s
power of setting foreign texts of operas to music, which corresponded
precisely to the character and mood of the words, although he did not
warm up to them.
In Beethoven, on the contrary, art was solely a means of expression of
his own sentiments and feelings. The immortal creations which sprang
from his artistic fancy enable us to look deeply into the spiritual
life of the great artist. They paint his inner struggles, his anguish,
and his delight.
The ideal that was constantly before him, and which by great struggles
he sought to attain, was that of a strong, active, manly character,
unmoved by any blow of fate and never despondent in the struggle of
life, but keeping up its courage to its last breath. “Courage! However
weak my body, my soul shall rule.” To this boast he always adhered, no
matter how hard his lot. After a joyless youth he had to contend with
the direst need. But worst of all was the defect of his hearing, which
at last amounted to stone-deafness. One can imagine what it meant for
him to be the only one to whom it was not permitted to listen to his
own symphonies. But dreadful as it was, his courage was never broken;
his soul marched victoriously to the strife and held command over his
sufferings.
Such moods as struggle, gloom, hope, pleasure, suffering, burst into
expression in his art of music--the mother tongue of sentiments and
moods. Of every creation of Beethoven we may say, with Goethe, it was
“a fragment of one long confession.”
The fineness of Beethoven’s faculty of sense, the subtilty in the
_nuances_ of his moods, was a no less important factor of his nature
than his rich creative fancy. Words could not describe his sentiments;
only music, the language of the heart, could render them; and his moods
were the motives of the action of his genius.
How little such feelings and sentiments can be described in words is
shown by Richard Wagner in his Programmatische Erläuterungen.[38] In
speaking of the Heroic Symphony he says: “The first movement brings
to a focus all the sentiments of a rich manly nature in restless,
youthful, active emotion. Bliss and woe, delight and suffering, joy
and grief, musing and aspiration, yearning and revelling, daring,
insolence, and indomitable self-feeling jostle so closely upon one
another that while we sympathize with all these sentiments, we can
isolate no one, but are obliged to partake of all as this master of
all sentiments delivers them.” Of the second movement he says: “A
sentiment excited in solemn nuptials and combined with profound pain is
communicated to us in a tone language which takes possession of us; an
earnest, manly sorrow looks forward out of its plaint to soft pathos,
to recollections, to tears of love, to inward elevation, to inspired
summons.” But it is in vain that Wagner strives to reproduce in words
the mood produced by the work or the sentiments of his artistic heart.
He confesses it himself: “But who could paint in words the infinitely
manifold but inexpressible sentiments which pass from pain to the
highest exultation, and from exultation to the softest grief, until
they come to rest in a bottomless pondering? The tone poet alone could
do this in this wonderful composition.” The account closes with the
words: “But only in the master’s tone-speech could that unspeakable
meaning be uttered which my confined words have attempted to describe
with the greatest modesty.”
Thus between these two classics, Mozart and Beethoven, there was a
distinction analogous to that between Schiller and Goethe. Still,
creative fancy is the common and indispensable factor, without which
neither a poet nor a composer of genius can be conceived.
It plays the same important part in the minds of painters. Accordingly,
Humboldt[39] says: “As soon as the painter’s fancy has given birth to
the living image, the masterpiece is completed, though his hand were
that instant to be paralyzed. The actual execution is but the echo of
that decisive moment.” But the same psychological distinction pursues
us. For some painters art was merely the means of expression of their
sentiments and moods. Examples will be mentioned in another chapter.
Let us first turn our attention to representatives of the arts of
execution. I mean musical performers and actors.
We have already analyzed the nature of musical talent, so that we
can come at once to the question, What is the distinction between a
performer of talent and a performer of genius?
Jean Paul[40] speaks of men of “receptive or passive genius” “who are
richer in receptive than in creative fancy,” to whose productions
that radiance of genius is wanting “which only breaks forth from the
consensus of all the powers, and from great powers alone.”
By “receptive fancy,” which is an expression psychologically incorrect,
Jean Paul means that state of heart which is particularly inclined to
be put by a work of art into a responsive mood, a disposition that can
enter into the sentiments of the artist and can fully enjoy his work.
Jean Paul says: “There are men who, endowed with a higher sensibility
than powerful talent in itself confers, but with less power, receive
into a consecrated, open soul the great world-mind, be it in outward
life or in poems and thoughts, and remain constant to it as the tender
woman to the strong man, disdaining the vulgar, and who yet, if they
would express their love, stammer out broken, confused words and say
something different from what they wished to say.” These are people
endowed with extreme delicacy of feeling and sentiment, so that they
are more capable of being absorbed in a work of genius than others,
yet lacking the creative fancy which would enable them to give to
their sensations an independent artistic expression. Let such people
be provided with musical talent which specially fits them for the use
of an instrument, and they will have the opportunity, in playing the
compositions of others, to express their own artistic feelings and
sentiments. They will put their souls into the reproduction of the
work. In short, they will be performers of genius. Schütz[41] says of
Paganini: “The instant he took his instrument a divine spark seemed to
touch him, and celestial fire ran through his being. Every feeling of
weakness departed. He was transformed into a new being; he instantly
became another soul; and so long as he played, his strength was more
than quintupled.” So it is with those actors and singers who in the
performance of a part are completely absorbed in the situation. They
throw into it their artistically excited hearts, and fulfil their
feelings and sentiments.
Other performers of no less talent, or perhaps more, remain cold and
without sensation in the performance of the work of art. With them the
intellectual function alone determines their rendering of the piece.
The effects are calculated, the execution studied, the whole is made
up. However great the talent of such performers, bringing them to the
highest pitch of technical skill, genius will never be attributed to
them by the great public. Thus we see that in artists of execution the
psychical causes of performances of genius have to be sought in the
sphere of feeling and sensation. That faculty which we have recognised
as the chief requisite for the genius of the creative artist--namely,
creative fancy--is never present in the performer of genius.
Thus, in the attempt to reduce genius in different departments to the
same or similar faculties, we are thrown into perplexity. There are
doubtless common factors, but it must be admitted that the psychical
elements which constitute the essence of genius in poets such as
Schiller, and in performers such as Paganini, have nothing in common.
We now pass to the consideration of those famous men who are called men
of scientific genius or scholars of genius. An inquiry into the causes
of scientific genius will show that it has two factors--discovery and
invention. Copernicus, Galileo, Newton distinguished themselves by
many important discoveries. As we have seen above, the success of the
discoverer is partly dependent upon external circumstances; so that we
shall not remain content with the outward facts, but shall endeavour
to probe the matter to the bottom. In short, we shall try to find
psychical circumstances accounting for the discoveries of genius.
When Newton’s friend Halley once asked him how he ever came to make
all those great discoveries, he said it was by incessantly dwelling
on the problems concerned. On another occasion he said that the chief
difference between him and other men was that he had more patience than
others.
Galileo investigated and worked restlessly to his latest years. When he
was blind in both eyes, he wrote, by the hand of another, that in his
darkness his mind was perpetually turning over the problems of nature,
and would not cease its activity, even when he desired rest; so that he
was deprived of his sleep.
These and other sayings of famous men of science about the actions
of their mind and the origin of the ideas of genius have an entirely
different tone from the analogous reports of poets and composers.
Great discoveries, unless they were mere effects of chance, have never
been made “unconsciously,” “as in a dream,” “like sleepwalking,” but,
on the contrary, require the completest wakefulness, self-conscious
thought, and untiring industry. These characters, which we find in
all great investigators and scholars, depend upon the extremest
refinement of that part of the psychical organ which is the vehicle
of the intellectual powers. In the first place, and above all, great
discoverers have great powers of observation. For this, as we know,
undivided attention concentrated upon an exterior process is requisite.
The faculties of perception and ideation are highly refined; the
organs of apperception and reproduction act with the greatest energy.
The ideas obtained in this way are connected into conceptual forms
by that intellectual action which Wundt[42] terms the “inductive
understanding.” Upon the extremest refinement of this faculty depends
the quick and correct recognition of the connections of things which is
met with in great investigators.
We find here, then, essentially different psychical conditions from
those of poets and artists of genius. We may go so far as to say that
they are antagonistic, the one to the other. A rich fancy and a variety
of moods, feelings, and sentiments, which form the main condition of a
productive artist, are not only of no use to a great investigator of
Nature, but they are positively disadvantageous to him. Every human
being possesses fancy, and an absolutely sharp line of demarcation
cannot be drawn between fancy and intellect. Every man, too, is subject
to oscillations of his moods. But to the great investigator it is
absolutely essential that his intellect should possess an iron rule
over all other psychical factors. Schiller says of the poet: “He will
do well not to let his reason keep too severe a guard at the doors
against the incrowding ideas.” But for the investigating scholar it is
not well that a rich fancy should modify the result of his objective
observations or should draw his attention away from the object of his
research.
Those authors who endeavour to find a general psychological basis
for genius, but strive to limit the term to a particular class of
famous men--as, for example, to productive artists--cannot avoid the
incorrect reasoning into which Meyer falls when he says[43]: “Nobody
can dispute that genius, even in science, is only the result of the
creative force of imagination.” In another place the same author says:
“Reflective thought is often prejudicial to the creative power of
genius. Thought must come from itself and conclude according to its
elective affinities.” According to this, all reflective thought must
be prejudicial to the genius of the scholar. But we have learned from
their own words that reflection is requisite to the success of scholars.
Whoever, like Meyer, recognises “creative imagination” and the
“unconscious origination of thoughts” as the essence of genius ought
not to apply that term to the learned. But when Schopenhauer, who gave
a similar meaning to genius, says of generals and statesmen, “It is
ridiculous to talk of genius in such folks,” Herr Meyer protests and
says: “I should rather call it ridiculous to deny that Frederick the
Great was a political and military genius, that Napoleon was a general
of genius, or that Bismarck was a statesman of genius.”
The usage of language alone, irrespective of other considerations, must
determine whether we shall apply the name of genius to generals or
statesmen; but this much is manifest, that the greatness of a military
commander depends upon essentially different psychical conditions
from the greatness of an artist. If we are to conceive of genius as
Meyer does, and are to follow him in declaring that the “how” and
the “wherefore” “remain obscure” for genius, that “nothing is less
conscious,” “nothing less voluntary,” than “a thought of genius,” and
that “reflecting thought is sometimes prejudicial to the creative force
of genius,” then it certainly must seem ridiculous to connect such an
appellation with Frederick the Great, Napoleon, or Bismarck. Imagine a
great statesman for whom the “how” and the “wherefore” remain always
obscure. Think of a Bismarck devoid of “reflective thought.”
The greatness of a general or a statesman is exclusively due to
sharpness of intellect. A power of swift apprehension, an instantaneous
recognition of facts and their connections, a logical and consecutive
reason--these are the qualities which are indispensable to a general of
genius. The great statesman and the great soldier must neither of them
be influenced by varying moods and feelings. All moods and feelings
must be entirely subordinated. An understanding conscious of its
purpose and an iron will must direct and lead the whole action of the
soul. The general of genius is always distinguished by discretion and
cold deliberation; he preserves an imposing calm. At critical moments
he shows a wonderful presence of mind. He never permits any upwellings
of feeling or preponderance of emotion. Hence the greatest statesman
of our age has received the admirable epithet of the Man of Iron. How
utterly is the psychical constitution of such a man unlike the rich and
sensitive heart of the artist of genius! For the substance of the great
statesman of genius iron is required; but it is wax that has to compose
the sensitive artist.
The psychical faculties are not sharply separable. They insensibly
shade into one another. Hence we find a gradual transitional series of
minds bridging over the interval between creative art and inductive
science. It is in this series that we are to place the inventor. For
him a combination of fancy with “inductive intellectual action,” as
Wundt calls it, is what is to be desired. The action of his productive
imagination is essentially different from that of the free, creative
fancy of the artist of genius. In the dreams of the artist the work of
art emerges freely, without that definite, prefigured, foreseen purpose
which is needed in the imagination of the inventor. Well-planned,
systematic thought is for him not less requisite than the productive
faculty. It is the combination of both states, or an intermediate
condition, which we find here.
There are many points of agreement between the psychical conditions
of the creative artist and those of the scientific investigator. But
where art begins science ends. Speculative philosophy used to call for
creative imagination, no doubt; but this department of thought, which
among the ancients was the queen of the sciences, is to-day scarcely
recognised as science at all. Plato was much more a poet than a
representative of science. On the other hand, those poets and novelists
who undertake the construction of characters in objective fashion, on a
basis of research and observation, approximate toward scientific minds.
Perhaps when Meyer says that genius in science is fulfilled only by
the creative force of imagination he means the speculative sciences
of theology and philosophy. But the further science advances toward
its goal of truth, the more it will emancipate itself from fancies;
or, to express the matter more accurately, the less science has to do
with fancy, the more truthful will it become and the higher will be
its value. In the truest of all the sciences, mathematics, fancy will
accomplish very little. Fancy can not solve equations nor enunciate
theorems. Fancy never discovered bacteria, nor has it been successful
as a method of medical diagnosis.
We conclude, then, that _genius in different departments is referable
to the most diverse psychical conditions_. Psychical faculties and
characters which in one case constitute the essence of genius, in
another case are inconsistent with the action of genius. In short,
definite psychical characters common to all genius are not to be found.
One would seek in vain any common psychological explanation of the
greatness of a Paganini and a Bismarck, of a Mozart and a Napoleon.
That which of old connected all genius in the eyes of men and, in
fact, gave rise to the conception, was the idea of the mystical, the
unaccountable, the supernatural. If any such standpoint as that is
to be assumed, of course there remains no difficulty in finding an
unequivocal meaning for the term. Prof. Jürgen Bona Meyer says: “The
ancient Greeks considered poets and artists to be consecrated to God
and inspired of God. When they produced their works the Godhead seized
upon them in sacred madness, and through them spoke to men. Who knows
but that is the very truth? Perhaps God really does lead the world by
these creative souls to the high goal to which it is destined. Perhaps
a philosophy of history might make this significance of the heroes of
spirit and of force manifest, and vindicate the faith which, in the
geniuses of earth, will recognise the immediate agents of God.” If
notions like these are what is meant by ideas of genius, Meyer is
quite right in saying that genius can be introduced into science only
by the creative force of the imagination. Modern science, however, can
not follow Mr. Meyer in these “fancies of genius,” for it is restricted
to objective observation and to actual knowledge.
The foregoing researches will bring the reader to the conviction that
_no psychological meaning can be attached to the word genius_. We can
make out what a poetic genius is, what a composer of genius is, what a
performer of genius is, what a military genius is, what a scientific
genius is, etc.; but to accept genius as a univocal term and attach
one psychological definition to it, to any good purpose, is not to be
done. Undoubtedly all men of genius have common traits; but they are
not traits characteristic of genius; they are such as are possessed by
other men, and more or less by all men. Indeed, in no case is there
anything in the mode of action of genius qualitatively different
from that of other men; there are only different degrees of the same
qualities. We can, for any psychical character, form an unbroken
series of instances from the grade met with in the average man up to
phenomenal genius, and every rung of the ladder will be occupied; so
that it is impossible to say where the line is to be drawn between
ordinary men and men of genius. In psychology every individual man is a
_species sui generis_. To attempt to separate men into disparate kinds,
as we do plants, would be a backward step in biology.
Chemists analyze different kinds of substances, and show that all
contain precisely the same elements; so that no two substances differ,
except in the proportions of their elementary constituents. It is
just as scientifically established that in all men precisely the
same psychical elements occur, and that these may exist in any one
proportion as well as in any other. Mood, fancy, intellectual function,
memory, ideation, apprehension, etc., are characters present in every
man, and into them psychological analysis dissects every man’s
faculties, whether he be a genius or whether he be an ordinary man.
The purpose of these researches and of the conclusions to which they
lead will become apparent in the following chapter. Psychiatrists
have of late been much interested in genius; but before I could
discuss the questions which have been mooted, it seemed incumbent upon
me to ascertain what is meant by genius. Was it a psychologically
definite condition, or was it a loose name for a promiscuous bundle of
phenomena? Having, in what precedes, expressed my opinion upon this, I
now proceed to the principal question.
GENIUS AND INSANITY.
Having come to the conclusion that the designation “genius” does not
express any one psychological concept, that nobody has succeeded in
giving a pregnant definition of genius, nor is likely to do so, and
also that insanity is equally indefinable, that it is impossible to
draw a sharp line between mental sanity and mental derangement, it may
seem useless to attempt to compare two such indefinite quantities.
Still, the comparison--so long as it is a comparison--if we draw our
conclusions with circumspection, can hardly do any harm; and it may
possibly enrich our knowledge and lead us toward a recognition of truth.
It is no new-fangled notion that genius and insanity are somehow
connected. Plato is known to have spoken of a θεῖα μανία, a divine
insanity of poets. Seneca[44] attributes to Aristotle the saying,
“Nullum magnum ingenium sine mixtura dementiæ fuit.” Aristotle[45]
says: “Those who have been eminent in philosophy, politics, poetry, and
the arts have all had tendencies toward melancholia.” Cicero says:[46]
“Negat enim sine furore Democritus quemquam poetam magnum esse posse,
quod idem dicit Plato.” Horace[47] speaks of an _amabilis insania_, and
Wieland of an amiable insanity of the Muses. Dryden[48] has the lines--
Great wits are sure to madness near allied,
And thin partitions do their bounds divide.
One undeniable resemblance of the two phenomena is the relative
infrequency of their occurrence and their divergence from the majority
of mankind. Of old there was a tendency to ascribe everything that was
uncommon and unaccountable to the influence of a supernatural force.
Accordingly, it was believed that famous minds, as well as those that
were darkened with madness, stood under a direct divine influence, or
even formed, themselves, a part of the Godhead. In the Middle Ages
the crazy were held to be bewitched, or possessed of the devil, while
the greatest minds were honoured as graced by the Holy Spirit. Not
infrequently the crazy, too, if their delusions or hallucinations were
of a religious cast, were considered as saints in direct communion
with the Deity. At the same time, eminent men of science, persecuted
by ignorance and superstition, were abhorred as tools of the devil or
burnt as heretics. At all events, genius and insanity--two inexplicable
phenomena and vaguely defined--have been confounded together in various
ages of the world, according to the ideas of those times.
After modern science had got rid of the dross of superstition and
had taken its stand upon sceptical and objective observation, a
revolution of opinion took place. Anciently an unbounded freedom
had been attributed to the play of Nature. This far surpassed those
limits within which rigid laws of Nature allow any such play. That was
supernatural. But in modern times the tendency has been to confine
the action of Nature within much too restricted bounds. All phenomena
must now be brought under a _schema_ artificially erected. Everything
must have just such a measure and just such a weight, and every action
of Nature is regarded as subject to a numerical rule. This method of
investigation may have had beneficial results in physics, chemistry,
and the other sciences that have flourished under it, but such a method
of violent formularization must prove out of place for a science like
psychology, in which we must always be limited to purely empirical
facts, so that our investigations can only be analytical, and can never
proceed synthetically.
As I have repeatedly remarked, psychology must strictly individualize;
and I can imagine nothing more preposterous or unscientific than to
assume a so-called normal man, and to conclude that anything which
widely departs from that norm is diseased. We have seen that all
phenomena of pronounced mental disease arise from the same psychical
elements as the healthy action of the mind. We have further seen that
the mental life of those great men whom we call geniuses presents no
other psychical conditions than those of ordinary men, except for
differences of quantity. “Health and disease,” says Claude Bernard,
“are not two essentially different forms, as the old physicians could
believe, and as many practitioners still believe. They are not to be
regarded as distinct principles, as entities disputing for the living
organism, and making it the theatre of their war. That sort of ideas
belong in the medical lumber room. But, in fact, between any form of
disease and health there are only differences of degree. No disease
is anything more than an exaggeration, or disproportion, or anharmony
of normal phenomena.”[49] This is true of all diseases whatsoever,
whether they be of corporeal or of mental origin. Hence the decision
whether anything is to be considered as a disease or not cannot be
made to depend upon how far the phenomena depart from a norm. The only
question is, whether the vital action of the organism is prejudiced or
the performance of the individual deranged. Take, for example, bodily
deformities or other perturbations of development. The only question
is whether the individual concerned is disabled or not. A woman with
a contracted pelvis, if she be otherwise normal and her organs act
normally, will not be called diseased; but as soon as she becomes
pregnant she becomes a pathological subject, because parturition can
not take place in the normal way. A man whose lungs are ill developed,
so that the slightest exertion produces dyspnœa, must be considered
as ill, while another man with uncommonly large lungs, such as fast
runners generally have, is certainly not to be called diseased on
account of this abnormality.
People with bodily deformities, or anomalies of development, frequently
find themselves in situations in which they cannot fulfil some
requirements of business; and it depends upon the degree of their
incapacity how far their anomalies are to be reckoned as pathological.
The laity are frequently able to decide what can be expected of such
people, and what not. The subjects can often estimate for themselves
what they can undertake. Nobody would accept a dwarf for military
service, and a weak man will be conscious that he is not fit to be a
drawer of stones.
It is the same in regard to mental departures from the average
proportions. Only, people with mental deformities are commonly less
able than those misshapen in body to decide for themselves in regard
to their capabilities, being generally not at all aware of their
defects. Nor are the laity in condition to form a sound judgment of the
mental state of such people. It is therefore for the best interests
of these subjects, as well as for society, that the question of their
accountability and responsibility should be left to experts.
Now, how is it with corporeally overdeveloped men, or giants? According
to the investigations of Lange, Bollinger, Ecker, and Ranke, a number
of those giants who have been exactly described are disproportioned.
“In some cases there is a surprising disproportion between the
relatively small development of the central nervous system and their
overgrown bodies. Most commonly their excessively developed bones are
pathologically brittle, with irregular partial thickenings, curvatures,
or absolute deformities.”[50] Nevertheless, cases do occur, according
to Ranke, in which these men are well proportioned and can fulfil the
requirements of life. The question whether giants, or overgrown men,
are to be regarded as diseased depends entirely upon the proportionate
development of their parts. Gigantic growth _per se_ is surely not
morbid. But if it is carried out in some parts of the body at the
expense of the development of other parts, be it with reference to the
structure of the tissues or to the general growth, we have a deformity
which consists in an anomaly of development analogous to a congenital
crippling or dwarfish growth.
There is no reason for regarding mental giants from a different point
of view. In order to judge of them, we have to inquire whether their
development is proportional, or whether there is an overdevelopment of
one part of the psychical organ at the expense of other parts, so as to
disturb their inward equilibrium and give rise to a morbid state. No
doubt, if we are to assume that whatever does not conform to the norm
is to be considered as diseased, every man mentally famous must be set
down, without further parley, as a pathological subject. This opinion
has found many advocates, who maintain that careful research signally
confirms their theory, and that most, if not all, famous men exhibit
symptoms of mental disease.
The first writer to discuss the subject at length was Moreau de
Tours,[51] who considers genius as a positive disease of the mind,
consequent upon an overexcitation of the brain. “Genius,” he says,
“like every other intellectual condition of dynamism, necessarily has
its material substratum. This substratum is a semi-morbid state of the
brain, a true nervous erethism (orgasm or excited state), the source
of which is from this moment well known....
“Whenever the psychic forces surpass the ordinary limits of
their action, whether we consider them in their most elevated
manifestations--those in appearance the most independent of the
organization--or in their simplest and most rudimentary expression,
whether in the most transcendent operations of the intellect, or in the
unelaborated and almost material fact of sensation--the cause must be
sought in certain neuropathic conditions of the subjects.”
No attempt is made by Moreau to define genius or to attach a
psychological meaning to the term. In his examples he treats all men
as geniuses who have accomplished anything famous in any department,
without regard to their psychical divergencies. He might therefore just
as well have stated his proposition in these terms: All men who have
ever accomplished anything very remarkable were insane. This seems to
be a fair statement of his real position.
This opinion was supposed to have been completely confirmed by the
discovery of the many “morbid symptoms” which men of genius present.
Moreau collected a very considerable number of such cases, which
have been injudiciously accepted by the other authors who have
elaborated the same theme, and have received great accessions from new
discoveries. One of the most comprehensive works in this department
is that of Lombroso, whose book[52] has created a general sensation.
Extensive as it is, its author makes no attempt to define genius, but
seems to regard the meaning of the word as well settled. In the chapter
entitled The Physiology of Genius, in which we might expect to find the
writer’s opinion upon this point set forth, he tells us that men of
genius commonly have cold feet and warm heads, etc., but unfortunately
omits to inform us what he means by a man of genius. Throughout the
book all sorts of men who have ever attained any sort of eminence are
adduced as examples of men of genius. Such characters as Columbus and
Donizetti are treated promiscuously. The greatest men in the history of
art and science are placed cheek by jowl with any weak-minded persons
whose names have by some accident come before the public. Lombroso’s
conclusion is that “between the physiology of the man of genius and
the pathology of the insane there are not a few points of agreement.”
At the same time, in the book of which we are speaking, he says that
there have been men of genius who, “allowance being made for some
eccentricities of sense,” have never become insane. His list of these
“sane geniuses” is “Spinoza, Columbus, Dante, Michel Angelo,” etc.--a
wonderfully harmonious assemblage. But subsequent studies have led this
distinguished writer to modify this last opinion, and he has since
declared that “cases of genuine men of genius in which anomalies are
wanting are probably illusory. In such cases either anomalies have
escaped notice or defective data prevent our knowing of them.”[53] What
a pity that we neither know what he means by “genuine men of genius”
nor by “anomalies”!
Before we go on to examine the numerous “morbid symptoms of genius”
which Moreau and Lombroso are supposed to have discovered, let us
briefly call to mind in what way we have come to specify certain
phenomena as symptoms of mental derangement.
Psychiatry is, more than others, an empirical science. Whatever we
know about it we have learned by experience and observation. As I have
repeatedly insisted, neither in somatic nor in psychical medicine are
there any sharp boundaries between health and disease. In reference to
the body, “feeling well” is the chief mark of health. Everybody who
is sick knows it. Connected with the majority of diseases there are
positive pains, in consequence of which those who are taken ill send
for the doctor. Pain has rightly been called the sentinel of health;
but with the mind it is otherwise. Here there is no such connection
between health and feeling well. The illness gives no pain, at least
not directly; and the patient is in very little condition to say
whether he is well or not. On the contrary, the consciousness of being
deranged is recognised as the most marked symptom of convalescence. The
question has here to be decided in quite other ways. Disease is not an
entity, and no precise definition can be given of it. The chief point
upon which the decision must turn is the person’s ability to do his
duties to society.
We have learned by experience that there are certain typically
recurring forms of a psychical process in which a disorder of
self-consciousness has taken place, so that the persons affected
were deprived of their self-control. We have become acquainted with
well-marked cases in which a general decay of the mental powers
commenced; and this has gone on until the capacity of the patients for
business has sunk to nothing, etc. In this purely experimental way we
have come to recognise classes of mental diseases which are marked by
certain phenomena and by a certain course.
The next step in the progress of science was the comparison of the
psychological conditions of those who were undoubtedly insane with
mentally sane men. Here we had a right to the premises that on the
one side we had minds mentally sound, and on the other minds mentally
deranged. Having studied the psychological distinctions between the
two, psychiatrists came to recognise the so-called symptoms of insanity.
It is important to remark that, although the aggregate of the symptoms
constitutes the disease, yet it was not the symptoms which primarily
presented themselves to our recognition. On the contrary, we first
attained it by the study of the single elements of the diseases. For
example, in early times hallucinations were explained in all sorts of
mystical ways, as seeing ghosts, divine visions, suggestions of the
devil, etc.; but by the study of mental diseases psychiatrists came
to recognise that in such cases hallucinations are extraordinarily
frequent. They thus become accustomed to consider the occurrence of
hallucinations as in every case a morbid symptom. In fact, it became
apparent that wherever there were illusions of the senses, as a rule, a
mental disorder could be made out.
By a further study of the symptoms and of the course of mental
diseases, psychiatrists ultimately became able to diagnose mental
derangements at a time at which ordinary people would have been able
to perceive little or no alteration of the mental processes of the
patients. All this rests solely on experience. Only through experience
has it come to pass that we can now, on recognising a certain set of
symptoms, predict a certain course of the psychical process.
Should our experiences in the department of psychiatry receive an
augmentation, we shall have every reason to be thankful; for, in spite
of all our efforts, we stand upon the threshold of the science. But
every new experience brings new difficulties with it, for it is from
experience that we have to draw our conclusions. Now, new experiences
often wreck our finest theories, in one or other of two ways--namely,
first, by not confirming them, or, secondly, by conflicting with them.
That is the way with unprejudiced tests and objective judgments.
Accordingly, after a great number of mental maladies, such as paranoia,
progressive paralysis, certain forms of melancholia, mania, etc., had
been found to be accompanied by hallucinations as an important symptom,
the discovery was made that a great number of famous men--the so-called
men of genius--were equally subject to deceptions of the senses. What
does that show? Does it show that those men were insane? Such is the
inference drawn by Moreau and Lombroso. But is it logical? Why not
rather conclude that hallucination is not such an unfavourable symptom
as we had supposed?
Moreau and Lombroso take it for granted that hallucinations only occur
in mental disease. How do they prove that? Do not the very facts they
adduce, if they be facts, disprove it?
We find a man full of crazy notions, with his self-consciousness gone,
or with general loss of intelligence; and we mark him as unquestionably
insane, and proceed to study the phenomena of his mind as symptoms of
insanity. We meet another man whose achievements are positively great,
who has, all his life long, excited the admiration and astonishment
of his fellows, and who behaves in the most complete consciousness of
what he is about. Ought we not to reckon him as sane beyond a doubt,
and take his psychological processes as the very type of purely healthy
phenomena?
Charles Lamb[54] says, “It is impossible for the mind to conceive of a
mad Shakespeare.” There is much truth in that. Shakespeare, however,
is only known to us as a poet. Goethe is a better example, because we
know him as a man as well. Indeed, we have a clearer insight into his
inmost feelings than we have into those of almost any man that ever
lived. If we wish to call up the typical idea of a perfect man we
naturally think of Goethe. Whoever came into personal contact with him
was ravished of his soul and inspired by the greatness of his mind.
Heine, the poet of the senses, greets him as a “fiery spirit with eagle
wings, as a genius of the whirlpool from top to toe”; the Christian
enthusiast Lavater terms him a genius whose characteristic was love;
the sensible Jung-Stilling regrets that so few people were acquainted
with the heart of this admirable man with the great, clear eyes, the
beautiful brow, and the stately stature; the forcible Klinger writes
that posterity will be astounded that such a man ever lived; and the
poetical philosopher Jacobi holds it as impossible for any one who had
not seen and heard Goethe to conceive of this extraordinary creation of
God. It is ridiculous to desire that he should think and act otherwise
than he does; that does not mean that no change could make him finer or
better, but that no change would be possible any more than the flower
could bloom otherwise, the grain could ripen otherwise, or the tree
could grow and crown itself otherwise than it does. When he would walk
down the Rhine between Lavater and Basedow--“a prophet to the right, a
prophet to the left, and the world-child in the middle”--there was a
picture of how he understood everybody and had something to proffer to
everybody. It was because he aimed at all-sidedness, at a full and free
humanity; and Wieland acknowledges that never in God’s world did a son
of man show himself who so combined all that was good and all that was
mighty, who so deeply impressed himself upon every soul, and yet who
lived so entirely within himself.
In entering upon the psychological analysis of Goethe, we are justified
in assuming as a premise that we have here a case of a mentally sound
man. Whatever we may find, however uncommon it may be, must be set down
as a healthy condition. If, then, Goethe, as we have seen, was subject
to occasional illusions of sense, it would be illogical to infer that
Goethe was insane. We must rather conclude that we have been in error
if we have been supposing that deceptions of sense occur only in the
insane; and the problem set before us is to ascertain the distinction
between the hallucinations of the sane and the hallucinations of the
insane.
It might be objected that, in spite of Goethe’s greatness of mind,
there was a supervenient morbid condition. But this assumption is
directly contradicted by the fact that deceptions of sense are
relatively frequent among famous men. Hence, even Moreau does not say
that there is a supervenient disease by the side of, and in spite of,
the mental greatness, but holds the latter to be itself a sign of
incipient insanity.
I am therefore of the opinion that the sporadic sense-deceptions of
famous men, like other so-called “morbid symptoms of genius” which we
shall have to consider, can not be regarded as morbid symptoms, but
that they are phenomena of health which it is the task of science to
explain and account for.
The chief condition of mental sanity, as I have already several times
remarked, is a well-proportioned development of the different psychical
factors. But as in the development of the different mental faculties,
so also in their proportion to one another, a certain latitude of
health is to be allowed. In one man fancy is preponderant; in another,
consecutive thought; while a third may have particularly strong
feelings as his characteristic. Yet we have no reason to say that these
minds transgress the border of health. It is the difference in the
relation of the different psychical elements that makes the diversity
of men’s characters. Now we know that there are no two characters in
the world that are precisely alike. It follows that there is no norm
for these relations.
The higher the grade of development of the genius and of the
individual, the more prominent will differences of psychical factors
become, and a correspondingly greater latitude of health must be
allowed. If a sculptor models a small statue, and in doing so makes
a slight error, so that there is a difference between the two
sides, probably it will strike nobody. But let the statuette be five
times larger, and the difference will become prominent, though the
proportions should remain the same. In like manner, for persons of the
highest mental development--the so-called geniuses--we have to use a
larger measure. They appear to us like ordinary men seen through a
magnifying glass.
We now proceed to examine the different symptoms which have been
discovered in great men, and to endeavour to ascertain the distinctions
between these and symptoms of insanity.
Moreau and Lombroso have collected a large catalogue of famous men
who are said to have experienced hallucinations. I will not enumerate
them all, but among them are Napoleon, Luther, Bernadotte, Benvenuto
Cellini, Byron, Cardanus, Cromwell, Socrates, Brutus, etc.
It must be remarked at the outset that all the data are extremely
doubtful. Everybody knows how the lives of great men become daubed
over with anecdotes and tales, how--in part consciously, in part
unconsciously--the facts are enveloped in a tissue of the most
wonderful legends, until each great historical figure becomes
surrounded by a nimbus. These inventions mingle with the real events;
one writer copies them from another; the original documents are lost;
and the tale becomes universally accepted as a fact.
Every psychiatrist is well aware that it is not always an easy matter
to make certain that there are hallucinations, even when the patients
are under our eyes. Neither the testimony of the patients themselves
nor that of their guardians is, as a rule, sufficient to exclude the
possibility of error; and the physician will, in most cases, form his
judgment only upon his own personal observation. When it comes, then,
to a notice, by a writer who has copied from some previous writer,
of some hallucination that somebody is supposed to have had several
centuries ago, the fact cannot but be regarded as dubious. Plutarch,
for example, informs us that during the night before the battle of
Philippi the ghost of murdered Cæsar appeared to Brutus. Are we to
accept this as a case of hallucination, without further information, or
not? We should like to cross-examine the witness; at least to inquire
whence he got his information. But that can not be done. Here is the
whole passage:[55] “It was late one night. The tent of Brutus was dimly
lighted, and a deep silence reigned over the whole camp. He himself was
sunk in thought, when he suddenly thought he heard somebody coming.
He looked toward the door, and saw there a dreadful and extraordinary
sight. It was a dismal, frightful figure which silently stood by him.
He ventured to ask it, ‘Who art thou, man or god? What wouldst thou?
Why comest thou to me?’ The ghost answered: ‘Thy evil spirit, Brutus.
At Philippi thou shalt see me.’ And Brutus without being terrified,
answered, ‘So be it.’”
Plutarch gives no authority for this statement. How can we determine
to-day whether the narrative has any truth in it, or whether Plutarch
has not repeated an unfounded legend? In another place[56] we read:
“During that night the spirit is said to have appeared a second time
before the eyes of Brutus. Its appearance was the same; but this
time it disappeared without uttering a word.” But Plutarch adds: “It
is true that Publius Volumnius, a philosophical man and a follower
of Brutus from the beginning to this battle, does not mention this
portent.” Plutarch thus seems to be himself doubtful about the fact.
But even supposing Brutus really told of it, would that be proof of
a hallucination? Might it not, considering that it happened in the
night, have been a vivid dream which Brutus, excited, as we may easily
imagine him to have been, mistook for a reality?
Of Cromwell, Moreau tells us that once in his youth he was lying tired
on his bed, but not yet asleep, when a woman of gigantic stature
appeared to him and told him that he would be the greatest man of
England. But who shall prove that Cromwell, while he lay on the bed,
had not fallen asleep, so that it was only a dream? Or who will vouch
for it that the worthy Cromwell may not have been partaking of the ale
of merry England?
To prove that Luther was a hallucinant, Lombroso adduces the following
narrative of the great reformer himself: “When, in the year 1521, I
lived in my Patmos, in a room in which nobody except two pages who
brought me my food ever set foot, one evening while I lay in bed I
heard the hazelnuts move in their sack, and quite spontaneously throw
themselves against the roof and all about where I lay. I was scarcely
asleep when I heard a great noise, as if a quantity of nuts had been
poured out. I raised myself and called out, ‘Who art thou? I commit
myself to Jesus Christ.’” Here, then, Luther himself admits that during
the last event he was asleep. This circumstance, certainly significant
to a psychiatrist, is left entirely unmentioned by Radestock, who
reports the fact. Who knows in what form the story will next appear?
Isolated hallucinations occurring at night in bed are, in all cases,
decidedly questionable.
Hagen emphasizes this circumstance in patients: “At the commencement of
insanity, and indeed throughout its course, vivid dreams are narrated
by patients as if they were real events. They will say that they have
been to one place and another during the night, or that they have seen
heaven with all the angels. The true state of things may either be
plain enough or, when patients sophisticate the dream in their memory,
no little pains and penetration may be requisite not to be misled, so
as to take the dream for a subjective perception in the waking state.”
This is a fair sample of the whole material; and I must openly confess
that I should not easily be induced to erect a scientific theory upon
such observations. At the same time, it is desirable to collect as
many data as possible, in order to augment our stock of knowledge of
great men. Yet we must not allow ourselves to be seduced into drawing
positive conclusions from such uncertain facts.
But how sceptically soever we may approach these narratives, which are
certainly in part legendary, they nevertheless contain some facts which
cannot be avoided. That great men, as the example of Goethe shows, have
had illusions of sense is an undeniable fact; and this is a phenomenon
which we must endeavour to explain.
It is to be remarked at the outset that for the correct diagnosis of
a case of hallucinations the most detailed knowledge of the phenomena
of the case is requisite, for there are most diverse varieties of
hallucinations; and their occurrence depends upon the most manifold
psychological conditions. To enter upon all the facts and upon the
different theories is, of course, not possible in this place. For such
information the reader is referred to the extensive literature of the
subject. There are only one or two points that I desire here to touch
upon in order to avail myself of the knowledge of psychiatrists for the
special inquiry now in hand.
Since Esquirol, who first thoroughly investigated the subject,
psychiatrists have distinguished two classes of deceptions of sense.
The first are those which are not suggested by any outward appearance;
these are termed _hallucinations_. In the second there is an outward
object exciting sensations which are misinterpreted in the percept,
and filled out with imaginary details, so as to appear in a falsified
form; these phenomena are termed _illusions_. The two kinds of
phenomena pass gradually the one into the other, so that in many cases
it is impossible to distinguish between them.
It has been remarked above that certain hallucinations of the
insane have their perfect analogue in the reproductive power of
sense-impressions. We can reproduce in the mind any object which we
have often seen. This power is developed in very different grades
in different persons. Usually the reproduced image is decidedly
weaker than its original, both in its outlines and in its colour. In
rare cases we find the reproductive power so much heightened that
the reproduced image is almost equal to the original percept. Thus
Lombroso[57] reports of a painter that “he was able to sketch as
many as three hundred portraits a year. He only needed to look at a
person attentively for half an hour, and after that could call up a
hallucinatory vision of him which he would proceed to copy in painting
with as much distinctness and confidence as if he were looking at a
real person.” This case is nothing but an intensification of a healthy
action, much to the advantage of the artist concerned. It is certainly
offensive to call such a gift by the name of hallucination. That,
however, is a mere question of the usage of language. At any rate, such
a phenomenon ought not to be confounded with insane hallucinations,
for in the painter the action was under his control. He called up
the “hallucination,” if you will call it so, when it served his
purpose to do so, and dismissed it when it had served his turn. The
hallucinations which torment and affright persons of diseased minds
arise spontaneously and will not go at the patient’s bidding.
Meantime it is very doubtful whether the artist’s recollected image was
really as distinct and definite as the original percept. To determine
that would require evidence of a widely different kind from the report
of the writer Ball, who was Lombroso’s informant. The fact that the
painter was able to distinguish the recollected image from an object of
direct visual perception, and did not mistake the face recollected for
a face really there, would seem to show that his image differed from
a perceived image somewhat in the same manner as do the recollections
of ordinary people. But however that may be, such a phenomenon is
certainly in no wise a morbid symptom.
Goethe describes the same faculty in himself. “My sensuous,
apprehensive power is of so unusual a sort that I retain all outlines
and forms most sharply in my memory; but I am moved in the most
lively way by misshapen and defective forms.... Without that capacity
for sharp apprehension and impression I could not have produced my
characters so vividly and sharply individualized. This distinctness
and precision led me, for many years, to entertain the delusion that I
possessed a vocation and talent for drawing and painting.”
If we consider Goethe, as above suggested, as an ordinary man whose
mental powers are seen under a magnifying glass, we shall find it quite
a matter of course that the intensity of his reproduced images should
be increased relatively to the intensity of his directly perceived
images in the same proportion as all the other psychical factors.
Hence, if we find that the distinctness of his perception is not
exceeded by that of his memory, this is a phenomenon which differs
as widely as possible from an insane hallucination, and it betokens
rashness and want of good sense to call his condition morbid.
In another passage Goethe describes a state dependent partly upon
an excitation of the retina and partly upon heightened ideation, so
falling into the class, not of hallucinations, but of illusions: “If I
shut my eyes and, letting my head hang down, thought of a flower in
the middle of my field of vision, it did not endure an instant in its
first shape, but separated, and from its interior a new flower unfolded
itself of coloured and also green leaves. It was not a natural flower,
but a fantastic yet regular one, like the conventionalized rosettes of
the carver. It was impossible to fix the sprouting creation; yet it
lasted as long as it was pleasing to me, without fading and without
brightening. I could produce the same effect by thinking of the
ornament of a variegated disk; and this immediately underwent a change
starting at the middle and proceeding to the periphery, just like the
subsequently invented kaleidoscope.”
Just as sense-impressions can be simply called back to memory, so also
new combinations arise by fancy, which therefore have the character
of original creations. In persons whose fancy is powerful, the images
of fancy, altogether in the same way as those of memory, can become
so clear and distinct as to be very near to actual percepts. Lombroso
reports: “The painter Montina thought he saw his pictures before him
before he had painted them. When one day somebody stood between him and
the place where he thought he saw his picture he bade him stand aside,
so as to let him see what he was painting from.”[58]
Here again the image was voluntarily excited, so that a doubt must
remain as to whether it equalled a real sense image in clearness. The
painter’s bidding anybody who stood in the way to step aside was quite
a matter of course. When we wish to reproduce a former impression of
sense we try first to shut out all other impressions of that sense.
When we wish to call up the image of a person we always shut our eyes.
With open eyes most people are, however, capable of making such a
reproduction, provided that none but lifeless objects are in the field
of vision. But in talking to one person and fixing the traits of his
countenance, few people are able to call up the image of another person
at the same time. In the same way, very few can recall one melody while
another is heard.
Such phenomena are by no means rare among artists of lively fancy.
They have nothing in common with the hallucinations of insanity.
Hagen, therefore, calls them pseudo-hallucinations, Baillarger
psychical hallucinations, and Kahlbaum apperceptional hallucinations.
Von Krafft-Ebing[59] says: “Among artists this gift is found both in
a simply reproductive and also in a fancifully deforming mode. The
striking art of delineation of many an eminent dramatic artist, the
plastic power of description of a Goethe, Ossian, or Homer, suggest
such an endowment. Among some composers, too, the fineness of the
instrumentation and the timbre of their tone poems lead us to suspect
a specially fine and lively faculty of reproduction of their acoustic
memory. Persons extraordinarily gifted in sensuous faculties can create
hallucinations more easily than do those who are poor in fancy and who
live in the realm of abstract ideas. This will readily be admitted.
Even their recollections can sometimes be voluntarily raised to a
plastic distinctness approaching hallucination.”
So far, we have only considered cases in which deceptions of sense
were voluntarily called up, whether by a specially strong faculty of
reproduction or by a play of fancy. The subjects were quite aware that
the object before them was fantastic and not real.
On the other hand, it is recorded of a considerable number of famous
men in different departments that they have had deceptions of the
senses which arose independently of their will, and were consequently
genuine hallucinations. Among these we must place many religious
visions, such as those of St. Paul and other saints. Luther insists
that he often saw the devil; and on one celebrated occasion he threw
the inkstand at him.
Whether such deceptions of sense are to be regarded as morbid or not
opinions differ. Many psychiatrists speak of hallucinations, and
consider them compatible with complete health. Others hold that they
are always symptoms of mental disorder. Hagen[60] occupies a peculiar
position on this question, for he takes hallucinations to be invariably
morbid symptoms, yet not symptoms of mental disease. This is connected
with his theory that hallucination is a phenomenon of convulsion of
certain blood vessels which I cannot here further set forth.
There is a quite arbitrary separation of psychical and somatic
conditions at the bottom of this view. What Hagen means is, that the
cause, or somatic concomitant, of the hallucination is a convulsion.
It is presumable that every mental process whatever has a somatic
concomitant, or “cause,” in the organic vehicle of the soul.
Hallucinations may have different somatic concomitants from other
mental processes, but they cannot be supposed to be peculiar in merely
having somatic concomitants. There are some diseases of the brain
which are accompanied by no symptoms of derangement of the mind, and
are therefore exclusively somatic diseases. But just as soon as the
stimulation of a path of sense enters into a psychical metamorphosis,
we have to do with a mental process. If this is morbid, we have to do
with a symptom of mental disease.
That which determines Hagen to pronounce hallucination under all
circumstances to be a proof of a morbid state is its relative
infrequency. “Hallucination is in every case a condition departing from
the norm.” But if everything which “departs from the norm” is to be
called morbid, then we return to the proposition that genius is morbid,
since it “departs from the norm”; for the “normal” man is a tradesman
and no “genius.” But I can only meet Hagen with his own maxim, “Quod
sola affirmatione affirmatur, sola negatione negatur.”
It is a fact of daily observation that hallucinations can be produced
by suggestion, and that not only in hypnosis but in the ordinary
condition. If a woman who has never been electrified, and is therefore
somewhat nervous, has the electrodes of a galvanic battery placed
upon her head without the circuit being closed, while the faradic
apparatus is caused to sound, she will not seldom imagine she feels the
current distinctly, and perhaps complain that it is too strong. Though
there is no current, the woman is positive she feels it. Every inward
excitation, especially every emotion, favours such deceptions.
A timid or superstitious person is liable, in crossing a churchyard
at night, to see figures, hear voices, etc. These deceptions may be
of the class of illusions, shadows of trees being taken for ghosts,
and the noise of the foliage for spiritual voices; or they may be pure
hallucinations, the pseudo-perceptions not being formed by any outward
sensations. An interesting case is described by H. Moore:[61]
“A whole ship’s crew were thrown into consternation by the ghost of
the cook, who had died a few days before. He was distinctly seen by
all of them walking on the water with a peculiar gait by which he was
distinguished, one of his legs being shorter than the other. The cook,
so plainly recognised, was only a piece of an old wreck.”
A child endowed with a rich fancy, whose mother has died, may, in the
emotion of the pain and the excitement, see her image in heaven or
hear her voice. Such phenomena are by no means rare. They depend upon
a rich and vivid fancy and a powerful emotion of the heart. This play
of fancy, called forth by emotions and moods, has never been better
described, in its external resemblance to insanity, than by Shakespeare
in the Midsummer Night’s Dream:
Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends.
The lunatic, the lover, and the poet,
Are of imagination all compact:
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold--
That is the madman: the lover, all as frantic,
Sees Helen’s beauty in a brow of Egypt:
The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven,
And, as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
Such tricks hath strong imagination;
That, if it would but apprehend some joy,
It comprehends some bringer of that joy;
Or, in the night, imagining some fear,
How easy is a bush supposed a bear.
Deceptions of sense arising in this way have their origin in the most
central part of the organ of mind. They are consequences of ideas. Such
hallucinations occur, of course, in the insane, and to distinguish
them from those of peripheric origin--that is, from those that are
independent of the thoughts that immediately preceded them--Kahlbaum
terms them centrifugal hallucinations, or phantasms.
As an example of such a phantasm we may instance a well-known
hallucination of Goethe, who, when he was once riding to Gesenheim,
saw his own counterpart riding toward him. “I saw myself coming along
the same path on horseback toward me, dressed, as I had never been, in
pike-gray and gold. I shook myself out of the dream, and the figure
was gone. But it is singular that eight years later, not at all by
choice but only by chance, I found myself riding over the same path
in the very direction my visionary self took, and clad in just those
clothes, being again on my way to Frederica. Whatever the explanation
of these things may be, the wonderful phantom gave me at that moment of
separation some alleviation.”
The emotion excited by the separation from Frederica was enough, with
Goethe’s lively fancy, to produce the phantom. Goethe himself judged
his condition quite correctly. He recognised the shape as a fallacious
one and said, “I shook myself out of this dream, and the figure was
gone.” It is very characteristic of the condition that Goethe should
himself class it along with dreams. Obviously, the actual impressions
of sight were, at the time of hallucination, not apperceived; and all
that Goethe thought he saw at that moment was a painting of fancy,
parts of the hallucination being superposed upon and congruent with the
objects that had been seen an instant before. Goethe further says that
the phantom gave him consolation and relief. It thus evidently answered
to his thoughts; and we can presume that his fancy prefigured to him
the moment when he should again visit Frederica.
The circumstance of hallucinations being recognised as such by the
subject or not, is no more decisive for the diagnosis of the case
than is the simple occurrence of deception of sense. Whether the
hallucination is recognised as such or not depends more upon its
contents and upon the metaphysical opinions, religious turn of mind,
and superstition of the subject. Luther believed in the existence of a
personal devil. His hallucination was the outcome of this belief--that
is, of his ideas. Consequently his holding the fallacious object to be
real was no insane opinion, but was in consonance with his metaphysics.
So it is with the visions of saints and prophets. We may admit that
a considerable number of them were insane, but the hallucinations
do not suffice to prove that every one of them was so. He who has
devoted his whole life to religious meditations and tendencies and
is fully convinced of the truth of his faith, who is penetrated with
belief in the presence of a personal God, personal angels, tutelary
spirits, etc., may, on an occasion of strong emotion, with a moderately
lively fancy, have visions and hear voices, and hold them for real,
without in the slightest degree justifying a suspicion of insanity.
Such hallucinations, called forth by _suggestion_ or auto-suggestion,
occur less infrequently in men endowed with fancy. While Benvenuto
Cellini was praying that God would once more let him see the sunlight
a hallucination came to him. It was that of a landscape with the sun
shining upon it. Napoleon, before important events, battles, etc.,
saw his star in the sky. Pascal, in consequence of a great fright,
saw a precipice before him. If we are to accept Plutarch’s story, the
hallucination of Brutus is explicable in the same way.
The question whether hallucinations always betoken some unsoundness
of mind can not be answered from a theoretical standpoint. Like the
whole of psychiatry, it is a question of experience. Should experience
show that hallucinations occur only among those whose minds are
disordered, then we should be right in considering them as symptoms
of derangement. But it is not so. Experience shows that sane persons,
especially men of lively fancy, like great artists and poets, are
subject to hallucinations; and though such phenomena are exceptional,
and in that sense may be called not “normal,” yet nothing could be
more preposterous than to regard all those great men as subject to
occasional disorders of mind, or as approaching insanity in any way.
I have shown above what an influence emotion can exert upon all the
organs of the body. A permanent acceleration of the pulse is, as
we know by experience, always a morbid symptom. But would it ever
occur to a pathologist to pronounce a person diseased because some
emotion--such as fright, anxiety, or joy--made his heart beat faster?
Emotion may produce in one man beating of the heart, in another
vasomotor phenomena, such as blushing or blanching, and in a third any
one of manifold nervous states, without there being anything morbid
in those effects. In men of uncommonly strong fancy the emotion may
sometimes call up supervenient hallucinations. But that is merely a
phenomenon analogous to the beating of the heart, which we observe
every day, except that it is relatively infrequent.
Hallucinations that are held to be true always make us fear for the
preservation of an unclouded self-consciousness and of an unfalsified
reaction between the ego and the outer world. In deciding whether, in a
given case, hallucinations are to be denominated morbid, the decisive
circumstance will be whether and how far the self-consciousness and
free will have been influenced, and whether and how far responsibility
for actions has been diminished.
Besides hallucinations, other phenomena connected with the rich fancy
of famous poets and artists have many points of similarity with
symptoms of insanity, and in many cases may lead to actual insanity.
Although we have seen that in Goethe’s case the gushing fancy was
always in harmony with the high faculty of his intellect, and that, in
spite of the apparent independence of his fancy, it was nevertheless
directed by the purpose of an intellectual will, yet in many poets
we find this harmonic interaction seriously disturbed and the inward
equilibrium deranged. Alfieri calls his condition during composition
a fever. He says:[62] “That part of composition which I have called
creation is a fever, and during its access one feels nothing else.” And
in another passage: “The whole day I pondered as I always do as soon
as the fever by means of which I begin and carry through a work seizes
me, I know not how.”
Byron owns that his poetry is the dream of sleeping passions. If he
be awakened, he can not speak its language, which he only knows while
sleepwalking. Any shock or effort awakens the elasticity of his mind
and always makes him what he must be. Of the third canto of Childe
Harold, he says: “It is a fine piece of poetical desolation, and
my favourite. I was half mad, during the time of its composition,
between metaphysics, mountains, lakes, love inextinguishable, thoughts
unutterable, and the nightmare of my own delinquencies. I should, many
a good day, have blown my brains out but for the recollection that it
would have given pleasure to my mother-in-law.”[63] His biographer,
Moore, says that Byron saw only the reflection of his own brilliant
ideas in every new object.
Although such conditions are not quite pathological, yet they stand
hard by the borders of insanity, and certainly indicate a decided
disposition to mental derangement. Byron often fell into a state of
melancholia, and showed manifest defects of a moral kind.
One of the most peculiar symptoms of some deranged minds is lying. All
authors, without exception, who have treated of hysteria, emphasize
lying as one of the most characteristic symptoms of that malady.
Charcot[64] is astonished at the perseverance and energy with which
hysterical patients understand how to deceive those about them.
Numerous examples of the same phenomenon are recorded by Morel[65],
Lasègne,[66] and others. Delbrück[67] has described a special form
of morbid lying, and has proposed for it the designation “pseudologia
phantastica.” As a general rule, this lying is not motived by personal
interest, as, for example, to escape punishment or to attain some
advantage; but it is some creation of fancy which is narrated as a
true event. Such patients, mostly weak-minded, possess, in consequence
of their small intellectual powers, a fancy very rich in proportion
to their intellectual function. Such persons sometimes narrate whole
romances as true occurrences, and may, upon superficial consideration,
be taken for intellectual. Dr. Paul Sollier[68] also paints this
symptom: “Among imbeciles, in opposition to idiots, an ungoverned
imagination is often observed. This shows itself in their love of
grotesque comparisons, which prove that they are capable of associating
disparate ideas only remotely related to one another. This tendency is
sometimes carried to an extraordinary pitch, and gives them a false
air of being bright. On the other hand, we know how mendacious they
are. They are all more or less so. They do not content themselves with
simply denying anything of which they are accused. They invent a story
quite different from the truth. Some of them do not stop at distorting
the facts, but insert additional details, or make a story out of whole
cloth. They not only do this to clear themselves, or to throw the blame
on their comrades, but even when it is to their disadvantage--boasting
of tricks they have not played, for the purpose of exciting interest
and admiration.”
While in imbeciles this impulse to express such pictures of fancy is
to be regarded as a consequence of a degradation of intelligence, a
similar condition is found in poetical men, owing to an overdevelopment
of the ideation and the fancy. Hence it becomes interesting to trace
out this phenomenon of “pseudologia phantastica” in the childhood of
poets. Delbrück adduces as examples Goethe and Gottfried Keller, both
of whom themselves remarked this symptom of their childhood. Goethe
tells how he narrated to his schoolmates histories drawn from his
fancy as actual events, and how he himself often wondered at their
believing him. Later he passes this judgment: “Had I not gradually, in
conformity with my nature, learned to convert these forms of air and
empty boastings into artistic productions, such swaggering beginnings
would certainly not have been without bad consequences to me. If this
impulse be accurately observed, there may be recognised in it the same
pretension with which the poet, as such, sets forth dictatorially the
most improbable thing and requires the reader to take for true what in
any sense appears true to him, the inventor.”
In the previous chapter a characteristic of great poets and artists was
described under the name of the impulse to expression, whose analogue
in great men of a different constitution of mind, especially in those
who follow science, takes the form of a creative impulse. This impulse
which prompts the true artist to abandon himself unselfishly to his art
and to produce what nobody has demanded, and spurs the scientific man
to untiring research and opens to him new paths, is the most important
mark of the truly great man. Hagen[69] says: “Just as the instinct
of the beast impels him to certain actions though they cost him his
life, so is it originally far less a conscious purpose than a force
of nature which impels genius to producing, versifying, endeavouring.
He is filled with one idea, and divided interests are impossible for
him. A heroic genius, an Alexander or a Napoleon, conquers continually,
not from mere desire of glory or of rule, but because it is his
nature to make war upon others, and because continual victory is his
natural need. In like manner the scientific genius knows no rest, but
forever places before itself a new problem. It must equally always
be conquering. The artist must ever be producing. Each man’s action
appears to him to be free choice. In reality it is so only in a very
narrow sense. Genius acts less because it would than because it must.”
So says Schopenhauer:[70] “Everything comes at last to this question,
Where does the first motive--the _Ernst_--of the man lie? For almost
everybody it lies exclusively in his own well-being and that of those
that belong to him. Hence he is able to further that and nothing else,
for no deliberate purpose, no voluntary and intentional excitation, can
borrow the true, deep, personal _Ernst_, nor produce it, nor rightly
replace it; for such a purpose is an attempt to wrench Nature; nor
without _Ernst_ can anything be but half willed. For the same reason,
persons of genius look out ill for their own well-being. As a leaden
counterpoise will always bring a body back to the situation which
its centre of gravity requires, so the true _Ernst_ of the man ever
carries the force and attention of his intellect back to where it lies;
everything else the man desires without true _Ernst_. Hence only those
rare abnormal men, whose true _Ernst_ does not lie in the personal and
practical but in the objective and the theoretical, are able to embrace
the essences of things and of the world as the highest truths, and to
render them again. For such an _Ernst_, falling without the individual
in the objective, is something foreign to human nature--something
unnatural and supernatural. Yet by that alone is man great. And in
accordance with that is what he does ascribed to something different
from himself--namely, to his genius, which takes possession of him.
Such a man has no ulterior purpose behind his images, his poems, or his
thoughts; and everything personal is but means to those as end. Other
men seek the main chance, and generally know how to advance themselves,
for they insinuate themselves with their contemporaries, ready to
subserve their needs and whims. Hence they live, for the most part, in
good circumstances, while the externally centred man is in misery. For
he sacrifices his well-being to his objective end. He can not help it.
There lies his _Ernst_. With them it is the reverse; and that is why
they are small and he is great. His work is for all time, though the
recognition of it generally begins in future ages. But they live and
die with their day.”
This _Ernst_ of the man of which Schopenhauer here speaks corresponds
exactly with the above-described impulse to expression and to creation.
The neglect of personal interests, the entire abandonment to his work,
the restless strife for an ideal, are characteristics of the great man.
Here again we remark a surprising similitude between the so-called
genius and many forms of insanity. But it is merely a similitude, and
not an affinity, as Lombroso, Hagen, and others take it to be. For
affinity supposes a community of essence deeper than mere similitude of
external phenomena. It is this latter alone that we meet with here. The
causal conditions are separated by the whole diameter of being.
In great artists and scholars on the one hand, and in the insane on
the other, there is a great irresistible impulse which fills them
to overflowing and makes them forget all personal considerations.
But while in the former the restless compulsion to create, the hot
aspiration, is the kernel of the highest and noblest perfection of
man, in the latter there is a morbid impulse which is usually directed
to the silliest things. Formerly such a state was called a monomania,
since this irresistible impulse seemed to be the only pathological
symptom; but careful observation has shown that there is always a
more general psychical malady, usually the consequence of arrested
development. It is perfectly astonishing with what tenacity and
untiring persistence such patients go to work. Trélat[71] reports a
suitable example as follows:
“M. de W. is forty-five years old. He lives almost all the time shut up
in his room, where he is supposed to be carrying on serious studies.
He is seldom seen, and when he is seen complains of headache caused
by overwork and the fatigue of his continued night labours. He has an
amiable and accomplished wife. People talk to her about the health of
her husband, and how wrong it is for him to misuse his forces, and
beg her to influence him to pursue his studies with less ardour. She
answers sadly that all her endeavours are vain; but she does nothing
to shake the conviction of his friends, although she knows very well
what she has to endure in this difficult situation. The poor lady is
absorbed by her attempts to maintain the sense and dignity of her
husband.
“In fact, he employs the whole time passed in his room in counting how
often the same letter--_s_, or _t_, or _g_, or _z_--occurs in Genesis,
in Exodus, in Leviticus, in Numbers, in Deuteronomy, in the books of
Kings, in the books of Chronicles, in the book of Jesus the Son of
Sirach, in the Song of Solomon, in the book of Revelation, etc. How
many pages in one book begin with a _p_, with a _b_, with an _a_; how
many end with a _t_, with a _c_, etc.
“Other studies of such seriousness as to cause this man of science
to pass a fortnight without any attention to his toilette, or even
washing himself, consist in counting all the contradictions he can find
in the same author. Having passed one, two, or three years without
interruption in these works, this indefatigable worker throws himself
with the same ardour into taking his watch to pieces, down to its
minutest parts, and putting it together again. During six months he
undoes every morning what he had completed the night before. Everybody
who calls upon him receives the invariable answer, Monsieur is too busy
to be disturbed. Everybody thinks that this writer is too modest to
publish his book, and will leave behind Titanic works. The poor wife
alone contrives to procure to so utter a nonentity honour and esteem to
the last day of his life.”
Here is a state of compulsory counting termed arithmomania. A great
variety of such symptoms are distinguished. These interest us less
as such, at present, than does the way in which they come about, the
complete absorption of the mental action in the impulse, which shows
much resemblance to the creative impulse of men of genius.
Those patients exhibit the same phenomena who may be termed inventors
and Utopians. They not seldom sacrifice their means and bring
themselves and their families to ruin by their unconquerable desire
of making inventions and discoveries. They are fully convinced, in
their folly, of the epoch-making importance of their improvements,
and all pains are lost to cause them to desist from their ridiculous
performances.
Morel had a patient who thought he could alter the weather and bring on
rain. Lombroso reports the case of a patient who wrote a book entitled
Dominatmosphere, in which he undertook to teach husbandmen how to
get two annual harvests, and to put sailors in possession of a means
of blowing the winds out of their way. The alchemists, who forfeited
their lives in trying to make gold, the searchers for the philosopher’s
stone, were, for the most part, weak-minded persons of this sort.
In modern times perpetual motion has been one of the great objects
of crazy inventors. Trélat knew a man who had brought his family to
want by his discoveries and inventions. He asserted that in order to
bring a wheel into perpetual motion nothing was wanted but a supply of
still water. In every discussion he objected to the competence of his
opponent. To put an end to this, the physician of Bicêtre carried him
to Arago, who proved to him that his inventions would not work. The
poor devil was taken aback for an instant and burst into tears; but in
a moment he raised his head and exclaimed with confidence, “No matter!
Arago is mistaken!”
We have seen in the preceding chapter how important a part feelings and
moods play in the psychical processes of great artists. In opposition
to students, in whom the turning point of their mental action lies in
the understanding, in artists moods and feelings are often the starting
point of their productions. Hence we find that in them this part of
the mental organ has not infrequently an enormous development. As with
the other psychical characters, so likewise here we find that the high
refinement of a single factor--always, however, in just proportion
to the total action of the organ--produces outward phenomena having
some similarity with those states which are due to disturbed inward
equilibrium, and which we often have occasion to observe in the insane.
“Exulting to heaven, to death beaten down,” expresses a temperament not
uncommon among great poets and artists, causing those oscillations of
moods which justify that reproach of caprice which is often addressed
to them. This is one of the commonest symptoms of mental disease, above
all of hysteria. But the similarity between the phenomena is merely
external. They are rooted in widely divergent causal conditions. The
practised psychiatrist will distinguish without difficulty between
changes of mood such as Goethe observed in himself, which had their
origin in the highest refinement of the psychical organism, and the
capriciousness of a hysterical woman at whose bidding there stands
always ready, in case of need, a rich well of tears, whose sluices have
but to be opened to allow the never-drained stream to flow.
The restless energy of great men--who, with a new goal before their
eyes, press ceaselessly forward, and who, as soon as they have climbed
one height of science or of art, see new heights rise before them yet
to be essayed--keeps them in continual discontent with themselves and
their performances.
Fate such a bold, untrammelled spirit gave him
As forward, onward ever must endure;
Whose over-hasty impulse drave him
Past earthly joys he might secure.
Dragged through the wildest life will I enslave him
Through flat and stale indifference;
With struggling, chilling, checking, so deprave him
That to his hot, insatiate sense,
The dream of drink shall mock, but never lave him;
Refreshment shall his lips in vain implore.
Had he not made himself the devil’s, naught could save him,
Still were he lost forevermore![72]
In this destiny of Faust, Goethe painted his own sensations, and, like
a genuine poet, in the particular touched the general. Goethe felt
within him the restless mind which “drave him past earthly joys.”
He himself acknowledged that he could scarce call four weeks of his
life happy. His feeling of misery incited him sometimes to thoughts
of suicide, though he was always able to master it. He says: “Among a
fine collection of arms I possessed a costly and sharp poniard. This
I always placed beside my bed, and before I put out the light I would
consider whether it would suit me to strike the sharp point a couple of
inches into my breast or not; but since it never did suit, I laughed
myself out of the habit, and, casting aside hypochondriacal grimaces,
concluded to live.”
Happiness and contentment are feelings denied to truly great men. And
hence, as Aristotle says, those who have been eminent in philosophy,
politics, poetry, and art have been predisposed to melancholy. But
this kind of melancholy is as different as possible from pathological
melancholia. Far from being of a morbid nature, it is an inevitable and
eminently sane consequence of the psychical constitution of such men.
In contrast to it stands the self-satisfied good humour of degenerate
simpletons, who are always convinced of their own merits and live in
the most comfortable self-conceit. The dissatisfaction of the great
man, which finds no relief but in creation and in ceaseless endeavour,
is the noblest mainspring of the human race, to which all civilization
is due.
In the mode of life of great men we shall find much that departs from
the everyday habits of the conventional son of Adam. The Philistine, to
whom all that is unusual appears unsuitable, is often heard to remark
that great artists and scholars are all a little crazy. He says so
because he unthinkingly confounds the uncommon with the irrational.
The thinker will judge otherwise. The psychologist’s business is to
ascertain the causes of these phenomena.
Lombroso has, in his psychological researches into genius, adduced
many such phenomena, and has dwelt upon their incontestable similarity
with the symptoms of many insane patients. “What is observed in the
insane has been asserted of the man of genius--that he walks solitary
in the world, and solitary departs from it, a stranger to the warmth
of family life and untouched by the charms of society.”[73] But this
is not precisely the fact. History sufficiently assures us that great
men are frequently by no means strangers to family feeling. But what
is observable in great men is that they are relatively indifferent to
everything which does not answer to their inward endeavours, that the
ideas of which they are full absorb their attention, and that they
consequently seem uninterested in what goes on about them. For this
reason the genius, like the madman, has been called a stranger to the
world.
As we have already said, such egotism as often characterizes the
insane is in the great man impossible. Self-forgetfulness is the first
condition of true greatness. Nor is it accurate to call the poet or
artist a stranger to the world. We have seen that Goethe had a rare
insight into the world; nor can we conceive of a true poet without
knowledge of the world. Jürgen Meyer is quite right when he says: “A
poet who should sing what he had not seen and heard, but what he freely
imagined without any experience of life, must sing without vitality.
Creative fancy requires supplies from life, and can not draw its
wondrous threads from out of its own body as a silkworm does.”[74]
Here, as before, the similarity is merely external, and the determining
causes are essentially different.
If the conduction of impressions over the nerves of sense is impaired
or destroyed, so that the individual concerned is in a measure cut off
from the external world, his attention will naturally be more directed
to his inner life. Hence it is that people who become deaf or blind are
apt to seem selfish. But without any defect of the conduction of the
nerves a loss of perceptions may be brought about by a weakening of
the perceptive centres or of the paths of association. Such weakening,
which, in degenerate subjects, is not seldom very considerable, will,
of course, result in a preponderance of inward perceptions. If there
is a concurrent want of power of concentration of the attention upon
outward things, as there generally is, we have the type of a person of
weak mind, who is unable to comprehend the relations of things about
him, who, occupied with himself, remains a stranger to the world, and
who displays a characteristic selfishness and vanity.
No doubt poets and artists, as well as scholars, often exhibit an
outward appearance of self-absorption and of indifference to their
surroundings. This is common to them with many of the insane.[75] But
how disparate are the causes underlying these phenomena! With the
weak-minded it is the want of power to concentrate the attention which
renders them uninterested and indifferent to the outward world; but
with poets and scholars it is, on the contrary, the high degree of that
power which brings about similar phenomena. As we know, the centrifugal
condition which we term attention not only extends its power to the
organ of sense whose action is emphasized, but it must also be able to
order off all the rest of the impressions of sense. The great thinker
appears uninterested in surrounding things because his whole attention
is directed to the well-ordered sequence of his logical thoughts, to
which end, with fullest consciousness, the outward impressions are
ordered off. The weak-minded man is present at a performance. The
sounds of the words of the orator ring in his ears, but the slightest
outward or inward impression suffices to make his attention wander. His
thoughts ramble. They are everywhere and nowhere. The mentally gifted
man, on the contrary, constantly has his mind on the matter in hand. If
he wishes to concentrate his thoughts upon an outward object, nothing
that takes place is able to escape him. His attention is stronger than
the promiscuous spontaneous suggestions; and outward impressions of
sense which do not relate to the matter in hand will not be apperceived.
The average man, when he walks the street, perceives all the
impressions that strike his senses. He meets, we will say, two persons
whom he knows, both of whom look him full in the face and fail to
recognise him. They pass him by, and at the next crossing are nearly
run over because they do not hear or see a coming vehicle. One of them
is an idiot. His attention is not concentrated upon anything. He is
drowsy, his thoughts breed lawlessly around, without being directed
by his will. The second is a learned man who is occupied in solving a
scientific problem. He is deep in his logical train of thought, and the
requisite attention has ordered off all outward impressions of sense.
We see, then, that we have here a phenomenon common to the idiot and
the genius. Yet how contrary are the causes of the two phenomena!
Lombroso sets up insensibility to heat and cold, to hunger and thirst,
as a phenomenon common to genius and insanity. He brings forward this
example:
“When Beethoven had sat down to compose, and Newton to study a
mathematical problem, they so completely forgot the needs of the
stomach that they would scold the servant who brought them a meal,
under the impression that they had already eaten.”
To explain this abstractedness Lombroso says:
“The unnatural tension of the power of sensation, and the consequent
drain of all the forces and faculties, is undoubtedly the cause of this
surprising behaviour found equally among men of genius and among the
insane.”
I do not think it is accurate to refer these peculiarities of genius to
a “draining” or exhaustion. On the contrary, I would rather explain
it by the heightening of the mental action. In the concentration of
the attention upon inward conditions, in which, as we have seen, the
impressions of all organs of sense not directly concerned are ordered
off, the feeling of hunger will not be perceived. Nor need one be
either a genius or a fool to forget eating and drinking over an arduous
work. Moreover, in extreme idiots, who are unable to concentrate their
attention at all, as a rule a bestial impulse to eat is observable.
The insane refuse to take nourishment, or forget their bodily needs,
from a great variety of causes. In one case, like that of a sane
man immersed in his work, the attention may be directed to inward
processes, and all the other impressions of sense may be ordered off.
Only, the patient’s inward process, instead of consisting in an ordered
sequence of thoughts, is composed of hallucinations, which foster his
whole attention; or he may have religious visions which so completely
absorb all his senses that he not only feels no hunger but is
insensible to all physical pain whatever. Another patient may decline
food because he thinks himself persecuted, and believes the food is
poisoned. A hallucinatory subject refuses to eat because a voice from
heaven has forbidden him to do so. A victim of melancholia does not eat
because he thinks himself too great a criminal to receive God’s gift.
A hypochondriac imagines his stomach is not in condition to digest
food, and will not take food for that reason. Another may be unable
to assign any reason for not eating, but still he will not do so. The
outward effect is the same in all these cases. It is the business of
the psychiatrist to trace out the causes, and thus diagnostically to
estimate the symptom.
We thus see that neither the psychologist nor the psychiatrist ought
to be content to observe behaviour superficially, but must trace out
the motive of it in order to draw any inference from it. The most
absurd conduct sometimes has reasons consistent with health, while
conduct which would not surprise a layman at all may be regarded by a
psychiatrist as a well-recognised symptom of insanity.
A further explanation of many peculiarities of men of genius is to be
sought in their relations to the society in which they live. A man
with a reputation for high talents, distinguished from his youth for
his superiority and genius, always has his circle of admirers with its
proportion of flatterers. If he had the misfortune to be a precocious
child he will have been accustomed from his earliest youth to the idea
that his genius is far above ordinary men and above the rules that
apply to those men. If such a man is, in later years, attacked by a
competent critic upon this or that point, or if schools and parties are
formed unfavourable to his method, whether in art or in science, he
will, of course, react otherwise than a man would do who was accustomed
to opposition of every description. He will, perhaps, regard his just
critic as a personal enemy; he will complain that he is misunderstood
by his contemporaries, and his passion may go so far that the public at
large, and superficial observers among psychiatrists, may consider him
to be the victim of a delusion of persecution.
Peculiar inclinations and other mental idiosyncrasies of men of
genius can mostly be very readily explained. Everybody accustomed
psychologically to study and dissect those whom he meets, so far
as opportunity is afforded, is familiar with the remark that each
individual of the human race has his peculiarities, more or less odd,
his “weaknesses,” his _locus minoris resistentiæ_, as we say in somatic
medicine.
The ordinary man, if he has the least breeding, has been accustomed
from his youth up to hold in check one inclination or another which
violates the usages of society, or even perhaps of good morals. He
has learned to attend sufficiently to his own conduct not to allow
habits to take root which might appear unusual or be disagreeable to
others. But the man of genius is far too much governed by his inward
processes, his fancy, and his work, to pay attention to trifling
details of manner. He therefore appears what he really is, while the
average man would not do this. Consequently chance peculiarities and
special inclinations appear in the former more than in the latter.
Thus it is that the behaviour of great men is not to be measured by
the same standard as that of others, that we have to take account of
the motives of their actions, and that the psychical conditions must
be kept in view if we are to draw any trustworthy inferences from
their behaviour. Those mighty natures must be judged from their own
organization, and not from the Philistine standpoint of the so-called
average man.
As a further proof of the affinity of genius to insanity it has been
alleged that a great number of eminent men have actually had attacks of
insanity. Among poets are mentioned Lucretius, Tasso (who suffered from
periodical melancholia with hallucinations and fits of excitement),
Lenau, Swift, and Reinhold Lenz (who died insane). Hölderlin was
thoroughly mad during the greater part of his life. Lessmann suffered
from melancholy and committed suicide. Von Sonnenberg, Southey, and
Ben Jonson were likewise attacked by insanity. Molière had repeated
fits of melancholy. Rousseau suffered during much of his life from
insanity.[76] Gutzkow and Cowper were insane; also the French poets
Berthes, Dubellay, Duboys, Bataille, Baudelaire, and Guy de Maupassant.
Kleist, Merk, Raimund, Stieglitz, Louise Brachmann, and Nerval
committed suicide.
Insane students of nature were Swammerdam (who was attacked with
_melancholia religiosa_, thinking he had insulted God, and therefore
burned his writings) and Albrecht von Haller (who was also melancholy).
The mathematician Bolyai, Cardan, and Johann Georg Zimmermann were
likewise insane. So was the celebrated physiologist Johannes Müller,
who committed suicide.
Among insane philosophers may be mentioned Auguste Comte and Engel.
Of composers who were attacked by insanity, Schumann and Donizetti are
examples. Gounod had a superinduced insanity.
Insane painters were van Goes, van Leyden, Wiertz, Carlo Dolce, etc.
The question whether we are justified, from the alleged frequency of
insanity among famous men, to draw any conclusion whatever--as, for
example, in regard to a predisposition to insanity among great minds,
more than among average men--or that there is an intimate connection
between genius and insanity, can only be answered from the standpoint
of experience.
That is to say, it can only be based upon severely critical
statistics. But we are very far from possessing any data that are even
approximately sufficient. If we are to go to work scientifically, of
what use can a list of famous men who have been insane be to us? Even
were the number of examples multiplied by ten, what could be inferred?
The question is not whether there have been great men who were insane,
but whether the proportion of those who have at some period of their
lives been attacked by insanity of different types has been markedly
greater or less among famous personages than among the general run of
mankind.
In order to decide this, we should be in a condition to state with
exactitude what the percentage of insane among the total population
was at a given period of history, how many men of genius there were
at that time, and how many of these were insane? Such researches
must be repeated at different times of history; then, if they were
irreproachably exact and sufficient, it would be possible that some
conclusion might be drawn. But we can not even make such comparisons
for the present day, far less for bygone ages. The most we can do
to-day is to count the inmates of asylums. But extremely few of those
insane geniuses who have been reported were ever confined in asylums.
Most of them belonged to that class of deranged persons who are cared
for by their family. Manifestly, then, sufficient statistics fail us,
even for the present time. Everybody will see, without going further,
how futile it is to make a list of insane poets from the early Roman
literature to the end of the nineteenth century, and to offer this as
supporting any assertion of the kind. Do but consider how hard it is
for us to attain any reliable conclusions upon matters much more within
our control. For a long time there has been a serious dispute among
psychiatrists as to whether there is any connection between syphilis
and general paresis. Both are accurately limited and well-defined
terms, and not, like genius and insanity, two terms, neither of which
can be defined. They are perfectly typical and exactly characterized
forms of disease. Yet all the researches of the two parties have been
powerless to settle the question. The most diverse theories about the
matter still find numerous defenders.
There has also been an attempt to trace a connection between genius and
insanity through facts of heredity. In spite of some valuable works
in this department,[77] it must be admitted that the observations
hitherto adduced are still far from sufficient to have any scientific
value. The fact that in several families of eminent men insanity has
occurred in no wise justifies us in drawing any conclusion. In order to
do that we must, as in the former case, be in a condition to establish
statistical comparisons which shall be _absolutely exact_ between the
proportionate occurrence of insanity in the families of men of genius
and those of ordinary men. The past must therefore be left altogether
out of account; nor is it any exaggeration to say that the difficulties
of establishing the facts for the present time with absolute exactitude
are unconquerable. Independently of all else, the flexibility and
indeterminacy of the terms of the question--genius and insanity--give
room for inexactitude in the conclusions.
Every disinterested observer must be struck with the contradictions and
inadequacy of the investigations that have been made in this field.
Lombroso, for example,[78] says: “Galton and Ribot remark that genius
is as hereditary as insanity, and that especially the gift for music,
which drives so many into the madhouse, is transmitted from parents to
children. Palestrina, Benda, Düssek, Stiller, Mozart, and Eichhorn all
had musically gifted children. The Bach family presented to the world
eight generations of musicians, and among them fifty-seven individuals
distinguished themselves not a little. Among painters of renown, von
der Weld, von Eyck, Murillo, Veronese, Bellini, Caracci, Correggio,
Mieris, Bassano, Tintoretto, Caliare (uncle, father, and son), all
sprang from families which were more or less occupied with their art.
Among poets, Æschylus had two sons and two grandsons who were poets;
Swift was the nephew of Dryden; Lucian was Seneca’s grandson or nephew;
Torquato Tasso was the son of Bernardo Tasso; Ariosto’s brother and
nephew were poets; two sons of Aristophanes were dramatists; Corneille,
Racine, Sophocles, Coleridge, were each the father or grandfather of
a not insignificant poet.” But in flat contradiction to this stands
the following assertion of Lombroso:[79] “Moreover, the inheritance of
genius does not occur so easily as it otherwise would for the reason
that men of genius are often childless and often have degenerate
offspring, as we see in the lines of noble houses.” Thus he amply
refutes his own previous proposition, and saves other people the
trouble of doing so. To prove his last point he says: “Schopenhauer,
Descartes, Leibnitz, Malebranche, Comte, Kant, Spinoza, Michel Angelo,
Newton, Foscolo, and Alfieri were unmarried; and those great men who
did not shrink from the bonds of wedlock, like Shakespeare, Dante,
Arzolo, etc., found no happiness in that life.” As if celibacy, or
an unhappy marriage, could have no other cause than impotence! Other
psychiatrists have remarked the sterility of great men. Thus, Arndt
says:[80] “Hence we often see, I might say without exception, that
genius makes the summit of the family tree, or at least is the last
living twig of one branch, which bears many flowers and fruits, but
loses its capacity of putting forth new shoots in creating genius.
Thereafter it buds but scantily, or even loses the power of doing even
that, but comes to an end without progeny.”
This opinion is somewhat exaggerated, as Lombroso’s own report
shows; and we should lay ourselves open to the charge of inexcusable
superficiality were we to attempt to erect a scientific theory upon
such a foundation.
It is true that between famous men--the so-called geniuses--and the
insane many resemblances may be traced. Nevertheless, they are, as
we have seen, mere resemblances, not real affinities. Just as every
symptom of mental disease has its analogue in health, so has it also an
analogue in genius. But, owing to the entire mental action being higher
than in average men, the states analogous to morbid symptoms here come
out more markedly. Genius resembles insanity as gold resembles brass.
The similarity is merely in the appearance. When we go deeper into
the facts we find the two states so widely disparate that we are not
justified in saying that they are allied; still less, with Moreau,
that genius is a morbid condition.
Finally, let the fact be considered that most of the great men, both
of art and of science, were misunderstood by their contemporaries,
and were only appreciated after they were dead. In recognition of
this truth, Goethe pronounces that a genius is in touch with his
century only by virtue of his defects, only in so far as he shares the
weaknesses of his times. The genius of the truly great man outstrips,
with its great wing strokes, the rest of the flock. Those who can not
keep up with him can not comprehend him. They are puzzled at first,
and finally set him down as a fool. In short, they confound genius and
insanity.
DEGENERATION.
The riddle of heredity is yet unsolved. The seed corpuscles and
the _ovum_--the male and female germinal substances--through the
coalescence of which the new individual is created, not only transmit
bodily characters from progenitors to progeny, but psychical
peculiarities too, and thus convey family traits from forefathers to
posterity. Of the fact experience assures us, but as to its biological
causes nothing has been disclosed.
In the great catalogue of diseases, somatic and psychical, heredity
plays an important part. This has been undisputed since Hippocrates. In
most cases, however, it is not a definite disease which is inherited,
but a diathesis, a predisposition, a want of resistance to all baleful
influences of the direct exciting causes of disease.
In this way heredity is an important element in all pathogeneses,
or origins of disease; and it is especially so for derangements of
the mind. The inheritance may either be a direct one--from parent
to offspring--or an indirect one. In the latter case it is either
atavism, or reversion to the characters of grandparents, or there is a
collateral inheritance from an uncle or aunt.
Essentially distinct from heredity is gradual and progressive
_degeneration_--a phenomenon first profoundly studied by Morel de
Rouen.[81] Morel schematizes it as follows:
_First Generation:_ Nervous temperament; moral depravity; excesses.
_Second Generation:_ Tendency to apoplexy and severe neuroses;
alcoholism.
_Third Generation:_ Mental derangements; suicide; intellectual
incapacity.
_Fourth Generation:_ Hereditary imbecility; deformities; arrested
development. With this last generation the race comes to an end by
sterility.
Besides a long list of mental symptoms, Morel has collected a number
of stigmata, or bodily marks, which he has observed in degenerate
subjects. These are many kinds of deformities, want of equality in the
two halves of the face or other bilateral parts, irregularities of
the skull, protruding or unlike ears, overgrown ear-laps, squinting,
stuttering, deformed teeth, too few or too many fingers, atrophies or
abnormal formations of the organs of sex, etc.
Morel called these phenomena phenomena of _dégénérescence_. This
has been translated into German by the term _Entartung_. The German
word implies etymologically a departure from the _Art_--that is, the
species, the normal form--and might be applied to any chronic disease,
whether somatic or psychic. It need not imply, as _degeneration_ does,
a progressive pining away of the race till it is extinct.
In the course of time, however, this point has fallen out of sight.
Modern writers, and especially the French author, Magnan, who has
very industriously worked upon the subject, leave almost unnoticed
the question of progressive pining ending with the extinction of the
race, and place the whole emphasis upon the heredity. Magnan employs
the terms _dégénérés_, _héréditaires dégénérés_, _héréditaires_,
indifferently. Möbius directly declares that it is convenient to
replace the expression _hereditary_ by _degenerate_.[82]
Thus it is that at present the expressions _Belastete_ (afflicted),
_Hereditarier_ (hereditary), and _Entartete_ (degenerate) are used
promiscuously. The fact that such diversity of expression reigns is
due, in this department as elsewhere in science, to the habit of
quarrelling over words instead of making their meaning clear. So von
Krafft-Ebing, for example, terms paranoia exclusively a psychosis of
degeneration, and, in order to refute Mendel,[83] who questions the
degenerative significance of the disease, advances the argument that
paranoia is only found among the “afflicted.”[84] Now, “affliction” and
“degeneration” are two entirely different things, which have few, if
any, common features. Many paranoiacs have perfectly sane children, and
therefore in Morel’s sense they can not be called degenerate. Paranoia
is likewise found in perfectly sane persons at an advanced age; and in
them there can be no _Entartung_ or _degeneration_.
_The term “hereditary affliction” means, in psychopathology, merely
that disorders of the nervous system existed among the person’s
progenitors._ The man himself may thus not be deranged at all. In fact,
great numbers of the hereditarily afflicted are perfectly healthy. As
I have said, hereditary affliction plays an important part not only in
degeneration, but in the majority of mental diseases; and consequently
we shall do well to keep the terms “heredity” and “degeneracy” distinct.
The forms of disease described by Morel under the name of
_dégénérescence_ are referred by him and his adherents, especially
Falret, exclusively to hereditary affliction; and a “hereditary
insanity” without qualification has been spoken of. But we have seen
that, on the one hand, a pathogenic significance belongs to heredity
in most psychoses; while, on the other hand, it has been proved that
the so-called “hereditary insanity” or “_dégénérescence_” is found in
persons who have had no insanity in their families; so that there would
be here a “hereditary insanity” without heredity.
These facts shatter the very essence of Morel’s doctrine; and so
it came about that want of clearness of terms has led to many
misunderstandings and much diversity of expression. If, then, we are
to hold fast to the term _degeneration_, or _Entartung_, _this must
be understood to embrace all cases of defective development of the
psychical organ_. Degenerates are mental monstrosities; degeneration
κατ’ ἐξοχήν is idiocy.
The causes of degeneration--that is, in good English, of
_degeneracy_--may be divided into three classes, as follows:
1. _Degenerative Hereditary Transmission._--This concept is essentially
different from the above-described simple form of inheritance. In
_simple_ heredity nothing is transmitted but a predisposition, the
individual being radically sane. _Degenerative_ hereditary transmission
implies a diseased germinal substance, which may lead to progressive
degeneration of the posterity. The disease of the germinal substance is
in many cases due to actual poisoning, more especially by alcohol. Many
authors insist that chronic intoxication is not requisite, but that if
drunkenness supervenes during the act of copulation, it suffices to
transmit a degenerate state to the offspring.[85]
2. _Intra-uterine Disturbances of Development._--Here are to be placed
infectious diseases of the mother during pregnancy; bad nutrition of
the embryo in consequence of cachectic states of the mother, such as
rickets, etc.; deformities of the pelvis, and consequent compression
of the skull; injuries to the head in delivery by instruments, and in
consequence of accidents to the mother during pregnancy, etc.
3. _Extra-uterine Disturbances of Development._--Such are injuries to
the head, infectious diseases, and the like, in early childhood.
As regards the clinical portrait of degeneration, there have been many
attempts to divide it into classes and to establish specific forms
of disease under this genus. Morel divides the degenerate into four
classes, as follows:
The first embraces all those persons in whom there are no particular
anomalies, whether of the intellect or the heart, but who are
characterized by a so-called nervous temperament. Among them are
neurasthenics, hysterical women, and people who, while very eccentric,
are fully conscious of their own state.
In the second class are those persons who, while their intellectual
powers are unimpaired, display a decided disturbance of their feelings
and impulses, and consequently great defects and perversity in morals.
The third class contains imbeciles whose mental weakness is limited to
the intellect, so that the instincts hold sway over their understanding.
In the fourth class are found idiots in whom the whole mental
development is extremely low.
This and other classifications are purely arbitrary. These classes
gradually pass into one another, and single examples show the most
diverse combinations. In consequence of the disturbances of development
in degeneracy the quintessence of the malady is to be sought in the
disproportion in which the mental factors stand to one another. Thus
Magnan[86] says of the degenerate: “Doubtless the essential thing is
the discord, the want of balance of the mind.” Hence, in diagnosing the
mental state, it is not enough to inquire into the degree of general
mental development that the intellect, for example, may have attained,
for there are some men who are dull, as well as those who are bright.
But one main problem must be to determine the proportions which the
different mental factors bear to one another. A short-legged man is
just as healthy as a long-legged man, but if the relative development
of the two legs is different, one being longer than the other, there is
a state of disease, though each leg singly be sound. So it is with the
mental powers. If the feelings and moods are relatively more strongly
developed than the other mental characteristics, so that the latter
depend too much upon the former, there will be a relatively hysterical
condition. With a disproportionate development of the fancy, delusions
and hallucinations may occur; while an excessive development of the
impulses, at the expense of the sensations, joined with intellectual
weakness, may lead to moral insanity, since here the characteristics
known as conscience, pity, etc., do not exist. Of course, these are not
universal, unyielding rules, for every case has its singularities and
must be studied and diagnosed for itself.
The clinical morbid picture of these degenerates may be very manifold.
As might be expected on theoretical grounds, there is scarcely a
symptom in psychiatry which may not occasionally be observed in the
degenerate, since the disproportion of the single mental powers among
one another may produce the most diverse combinations.
That which distinguishes degeneracy from other diseases of the mind is
precisely the absence of any type in the occurrence and history of its
symptoms. While in chronic paranoia a systematized fabric of delusions
is found to which patients adhere in its unaltered form, and which only
at the end becomes mollified in the general death of the intellectual
powers, in the history of the degenerate, on the other hand, we find
the most variegated medley of symptoms wildly succeeding one another.
At one time there are imperative ideas, imperative impulses, and other
such supervenient states; then we see delusions emerge in them; but,
unlike those of the mad, they do not arise and remain systematically,
but are only temporary, and are characterized by the absence of any
marked type. “The fabric of delusions,” says Magnan, “has in the
degenerate particular marks. Whether it be delusion of greatness, or
delusion of persecution, or religious, or hypochondriacal delusion,
or whatever other variety, it appears without preparation, is often
multiform, and whether it lasts a longer or a shorter time, it never
goes through a series of determinate periods.”[87]
Manifold diseased sensations and impulses play a great part in
degeneracy, and are often motives to the most surprising behaviour.
Magnan has described a great many impulses and antipathies or
syndromes, and terms them the mental stigmata of degeneracy. The most
important are the following: The mania for asking questions; the mania
for subtleties; the mania of doubt; aichmophobia, or fear of points,
in which needles and all pointed objects put the patients into agony;
agoraphobia, or fear of public squares; claustrophobia, or fear of
inclosed places; dipsomania or periodic passion for drink; sitiomania,
or irresistible longing to eat; pyromania, or the impulse to set
things on fire; kleptomania, or the passion for stealing; oniomania,
or the impulse to make purchases; zoöphilomania, or morbid love of
animals; onomatomania, or compulsion to seek for a particular word;
arithmomania, or compulsion to count, etc. These diseased impulses and
antipathies, whose number is very great, never occur singly, so as
to form a proper variety of insanity, as was erroneously assumed in
former times, thus giving rise to the term monomania. On the contrary,
they always form a mere partial phenomenon of a diseased state of the
nervous system, consequent upon the discord of its several factors.
Here, too, belong the numerous sexual anomalies described at length by
von Krafft-Ebing. These, too, never constitute a disease proper, but
are mere symptoms of a general malady. If, therefore, it is required
of a psychiatrist to ascertain whether an act which conflicts with
morals and with law is to be considered as pathological or not, he
must not consider that act by itself. He will have to find out whether
or not the mental conduct of the person who committed it is insane
independently of that act.
The morbid symptoms of degeneracy are, as we have said, of the most
various description, and cases in which the symptoms are decided can be
diagnosed without difficulty. Since such cases strike even the general
public as insane, the relatives of such patients call in medical aid.
The consequence is that those degenerates that are known to practising
physicians are, for the most part, those of typical imbecility,
perverse sensations, etc.
It is very different with those _dégénérés supérieurs_, in whom no
direct phobias, manias, imperative ideas, delusions etc., are present,
but in whom there is merely a disturbance of the mental equilibrium,
so that Magnan terms them simply _unbalanced_, _déséquilibrés_. In
such a person every single mental faculty may have attained a degree
of development which surpasses the average; and yet the proportion of
the different mental factors to one another may be so abnormal that the
mental balance is destroyed; and thus the discord may be so prominent
that the person in question, in spite of his seemingly high mental
development, may be mentally deranged.
An acquaintance with this class of degenerates is important, not alone
for the mad-doctor, but for every physician, every jurist, every
historian, every art critic, every pedagogue. In short, every person
whose duty it is to pass judgment upon men should interest himself
in this form of degeneracy, for men thus afflicted have at all times
exercised great influence upon the arts, the politics, and the whole
civilization of their countries--all the more so that the public
have not recognised that they were insane, but have allowed them not
infrequently to play parts in social life.
One of the characteristic marks of these degenerates is their highly
emotional nature and the incalculable oscillations of their mood.
Although in great men, in consequence of the extreme refinement of
their mental organism, the moods and feelings are capable of very wide
modulation, so that Goethe said of himself that he passed in his moods
from one extreme to the other, yet in them this phenomenon is strictly
limited to their subjective sensation. Men of undisturbed mental
balance remain ever masters of themselves, and do not allow themselves
to be hurried into irrational acts. In spite of all the oscillations
of his inward state of heart, Goethe, as seen from without, was always
the same distinguished, consistent, imposing figure. This marked the
greatness of his character, the proportionate development of his
different mental factors, his pure harmony of soul. In spite of the
bold leaps of his luxuriant fancy, in spite of the great exaltations
and depressions of his moods and feelings, the great _ensemble_ of his
psychical organism was governed by his forceful thought; his every act
was guided and determined by his intellect.
In the degenerate, on the other hand, sudden gusts of passion and
fluctuations of moods not infrequently lead to the most singular and
eccentric acts. Their intellectual action is not able to set limits
to their impulsive feelings. Inward excitement runs unbridled into
outward manifestation. Irritable to the highest degree, touched by the
slightest impressions, they frequently react in the most passionate way
upon the most insignificant occasion. No occurrence is too indifferent
or insignificant to excite an emotion in them which hurries them into
the most incredible acts.
The circumstance that, with the degenerates, the emotion leads to a
total superseding of the intellectual capacity, and may then drive
them, in their utter irresponsibility, into acts of violence and crime,
has often led to the opinion that there was something morbid in that
emotion itself. But this is a superficial view, not in consonance with
the facts.
A man capable of no emotion, whom no mental stimulus is able to get
out of the common ruts, is like a stupid mule that keeps on its way
undisturbed, without regard for the strokes of the whip, and with
unmoved composure, though a cannon were discharged by its side. Such
dulness is found among a class of degenerates, including the idiots.
The sane man is usually capable of emotion, but he knows how to govern
and curb it by the action of his intellect. Emotion in the sane man as
an expression of a legitimate sentiment is beautiful, at times even
sublime. This is true even of anger. The blushing maiden repelling
unworthy propositions, the anger of the man whose honour is assailed
and who seeks satisfaction, have of a surety nothing unwholesome,
and will hardly be confusible with the uncalled-for passion of the
degenerate.
A phenomenon frequently observed among degenerates is an abnormally
lively fancy, which appears in childhood, and renders any purposive
thought impossible. Such children are inclined to dreaminess and
so-called thoughtlessness. Their mental powers are sometimes pretty
well developed, but they can make no use of them because their
dreaminess permits no persistent logical thought. They have to be
incessantly shaken up. At school they are inattentive and never
follow the matter in hand. In their earliest childhood they have
lively dreams, often wake up with a dreadful shriek, in what is
called _pavor nocturnus_, and sometimes have deceptions of sense.
Proneness to invent stories is a characteristic of these children
gifted with fancy, and their tales are narrated as actual occurrences.
This is the _pseudologia phantastica_ of Delbrück. At the age of
puberty they are often attacked by that kind of self-nursed anguish
which the Germans called _Weltschmerz_. They indulge in sentimental
effusions, and often perpetrate all sorts of eccentric follies. In
later life they fall into that class of minds whom we call dreamers,
enthusiasts, Utopians, and mystics. Their luxuriant fancy, directed by
no purposive will or intellectual plan, attracts them to whatever is
occult, incomprehensible, and wonderful. From his youth up such a man
is not habituated to look plain facts in the face, but gives himself
up to building castles in the air and to useless trifles. He lives
in dream-land; his metaphysics (for every man has a metaphysics or
general conception of the universe, a _Weltanschauung_) is not built
upon outward experience, but is the outcome of his peculiar experience,
which is one of mystical notions spun from the body of his fancy.
In this class belong these religious fanatics, the prophets, the
founders of sects, and the like, who in earlier times were able to
exercise no little influence upon the course of history. Religious
enthusiasm and the fanaticism of religious sects, which linger yet in
North America and in Russia, are in great part phenomena of psychical
degeneration. But in our days the fantastics and Utopians have
largely turned aside from the early forms of religious enthusiasm to
spiritualism, occultism, and other varieties of mysticism. Most of what
is written to-day upon spiritualism, prophetic dreams, clairvoyance,
second sight, and such matters springs from morbid, degenerate brains,
in which the creations of fancy take the lead, and the intellectual
action is too weak to exercise a rational criticism. We meet such
persons in every department of life. They make their appearance as
philanthropists and as political agitators, discoursing with pathos
and fervour upon the subjects they least understand, inciting one
class of society against another, and setting up as champions of
labour and as apostles of freedom. Though they themselves understand
nothing about the matters of which they speak and write, being utterly
incapable of subjecting their fancies and mysticisms to logical
criticism, yet they are thoroughly impressed with their own merit and
greatness. Their gift of clothing the absurdest notions in fine words
enables them to infatuate the masses, and they often collect about
them a mob of admirers. The untenable and contradictory character
of their doctrines and promises little disturbs the silly multitude
that applauds them, although their imbecility is readily detected by
rational thinkers and close observers.
Sometimes it happens that the defective development of the intellect
in such persons affects only one part of it, while some intellectual
characteristics are highly cultivated. Degenerates are found who
have remarkably good memories and good capacity for learning. They
may even acquire vast erudition, although they have no capacity for
turning their knowledge to account. Their fancy gets the better of
their intellect, and throws the manifold residua of former impressions
of sense into a promiscuous and confused heap. They lack the power
of concentrating their attention exclusively upon one object. The
procedure of their thought reminds one of a rudderless craft given over
to the caprices of the winds and waves. The extent of their erudition
may, upon a slight acquaintance, lead one to think them bright and
intelligent. But, owing to their lack of power of arranging their
ideas logically, they will never be able to accomplish anything of
any consequence, and the instability of their mental conduct will not
escape the expert observer.
History is rich in examples of such individuals. The Roman emperor
Claudius, whose imbecility is beyond question, acquired, in spite of
his intellectual weakness, a solid mastery of the Greek tongue, and
possessed marked talent as an orator. He also composed an extensive
history. Apart from these powers, he was a typical degenerate. Before
he became emperor he had a mania for hearing lawsuits as a judge, and,
owing to his simplicity and inability to reason logically, he was
generally the butt of the lawyers. On one occasion his written decision
read that “he gave his vote for those who had spoken the truth.”[88]
In still other degenerates we find a well-developed action of the
intellect combined with an almost total absence of feeling. The
moral sense, sympathy, pity, love, etc., are conditions utterly
strange to such people. They act from cold calculation. Selfishness
and heartlessness mark all their acts. Those curmudgeons whose sole
satisfaction is the heaping up of wealth, to whose life all ideal
features are foreign, who stick at no legal means of attaining their
selfish ends, who are not only without feeling for the sufferings of
their fellow-men, but are even cold and indifferent to their nearest
family, belong to this category of mental degeneration.
This unfeeling nature, combined with certain proportions of other
mental factors, will result in the so-called moral insanity, and when
prudence is deficient or circumstances push to it, produce the worst
criminals. We often find not merely a deficiency of feeling, but a
positive perversion of sentiments and feelings. Acts which other men
perform with anguish and horror occasion them delight and contentment.
Where others feel pain and sympathy they feel pleasure and a glow of
comfort. Such mental states may lead to bestial cruelty and to an
incredible pitch of brutality.
History affords numerous examples of this. The Roman emperor Nero
had evil inheritances from both parents. Insanity and epilepsy were
prevalent in both families. His father, Domitius Ahenobarbus, was so
low in the moral scale that it was said of him that he would have been
the worst man of his age if his son Nero had not lived. Suetonius
reports that when they wished him joy at the birth of Nero he remarked,
“The offspring of me and of Agrippina can only be a monster who will
scourge the world.” Everybody knows that the inclination of Nero
for cruelty, lust, and dissipation passed all bounds. His behaviour
when he had Rome set on fire, admired the spectacle from afar, and
recited verses painting the destruction of Troy, is quite typical of
a degenerate. Yet he was not without talents of an intellectual kind.
The vanity which led him first to appear in Naples as an actor, singer,
and charioteer, and later carried him to Olympia, whence he returned
richly adorned with prizes, was decidedly characteristic of his mental
degeneracy.
Moral insanity in its furthest extreme is illustrated in the later
Emperor Commodus. As a youth he displayed a lust and cruelty which
amounted to mad fury. His whole pride was in his extraordinary bodily
strength. To imitate Hercules, he often appeared clad in a lion’s skin
and armed with a club. He appeared as a gladiator seven hundred and
thirty-five times. His joy in murder knew no bounds. He often had the
companions of his orgies slain from simple delight in bloodshed. It was
a pleasure to him to bleed a man.
We not infrequently find degenerates who, in spite of their defective
development, have brilliant talents in special directions; and such
persons may attain high consideration on account of their achievements.
Their endowments are, however, always one-sided, and, whatever their
capacity, they are wanting in logical thought, energy, and force
of will. Whether in these cases the hypertrophy or overgrowth of
some parts, with consequent talents in certain departments, is to
be regarded as a consequence of the general disturbance of the
development--this partial capacity being gained at the expense of
the development of other parts--or whether we have a highly refined
organism in which particular parts are atrophied or backward in their
development, we are at present unable to decide. Each opinion has
something to support it from a theoretical standpoint, and it may be
that both cases occur in fact, so that different causes lead to the
same effect.
Sometimes such a partial development--limited, it may be, to a single
intellectual capacity--is found in a mind that is otherwise a blank.
There have been high-grade idiots who have had a decided talent for
music or painting, and who have now and then accomplished something
remarkable in one of these directions. An interesting example of an
idiot with an enormous development in a narrow, intellectual line is
that of the calculator Dase.
A partial gigantic growth is the somatic analogue of that partial
mental development. Of this Ranke says:[89] “A light is thrown upon the
morbid affinities of gigantic growth by the numerous cases in which
partial gigantic growth has been observed. Single parts of the body,
especially the extremities, sometimes attain immoderate dimensions. In
rare cases, one entire half of the body has had a gigantic development.
At other times a single limb, or only one hand or one foot, or even
only one finger or one toe, has been affected.” Ranke explains partial
gigantic growth, as well as partial dwarfing, as deformities due to
perturbations of development during fœtal life. Here, then, is a
perfectly exact somatic analogue of mental degeneracy. The same discord
between single parts, the same disturbance of equilibrium, is due to
the same general cause--disturbances of development during fœtal life.
It is well known that injuries to the heads of children originally
sane produce mental degeneracy, and even complete idiocy. Many writers
teach that such injuries have not infrequently caused hypertrophies
of single mental faculties. Lombroso reports as follows: “Cases are
by no means rare in which accidents, such as usually result in mental
derangement, injuries of the brain, and fractures of the skull,
have converted a perfectly commonplace soul into a man of genius.
Giovambattista Vico in his youth fell to the ground from a high ladder,
and was taken up with a fractured brain pan. Goetry, originally a
simple chorister, became a great composer after a heavy beam had fallen
on his head. Mabillor, who possessed very small capacities, attained
all his greatness in consequence of a wound in his head. Hall, who
narrates this, knew a Dane who was in his youth semi-idiotic, and who
showed great talent after he had fallen from a ladder and had struck
the ground headforemost.”[90]
The term “genius” appears to be applied by Lombroso, here as
elsewhere, in a pretty broad sense. Moreover, in many such cases it is
impossible to ascertain whether the mental development took place by
reason of, or in spite of, the injuries of the head. It is certainly
possible, according to the general analogies of degeneration, that a
partial hypertrophy was occasioned by the accident. This seems the
more presumable since analogous cases have been observed in somatic
medicine. Thus Ballinger reports a case observed by von Buhl. It is
that of the giant Thomas Hasler: “Thomas grew quite normally,” says
Ballinger, “up to his ninth year. About that time he was kicked by a
horse in the left cheek. He soon began to grow monstrously. He ate a
great deal, particularly of butter and other fat fare, common enough in
his country in the Bavarian mountains. At eleven Thomas was so large
that he had to leave off going to school because the seats were not
large enough. Gradually the bones of the skull and face thickened,
and that not merely on the side where he had been kicked. After he
was full-grown he ate little. Every motion he made involved effort
and fatigue. He attained the age of twenty-five, the weight of three
hundred and forty-one pounds, and the height of seven feet three
inches.”[91]
The one-sided mental development of the degenerate, the brilliant
gifts in special directions at the expense of the development of other
psychical powers, is generally called “genius”; and this confusion of
ideas, this confounding of those powerful minds whose high capacity
of achievement consists in a general refinement of the psychical
organism with those individuals of whom instability and mental discord
are the characteristics, and whose partial mental overdevelopment is
a consequence of derangements of growth, has, in no slight measure,
contributed to the belief that there is a real affinity between genius
and insanity--that is, that those great men who have always decided the
fate of mankind are results of morbid conditions.
Between the instability or disturbance of the mental balance and
the so-called normal average man there is, as we know, a gradual
transition. No sharp line can be drawn here between mental health
and mental disease. There is also a gradual series connecting fully
endowed men of genius and those partially developed degenerates. But to
establish any affinity between them on that account would necessitate
an equal affinity between “normal average men” and common degenerates.
The same reasoning would conclude an affinity between the Philistine
and the degenerate who suffers from moral insanity or imbecility.
If we are to give the name of genius to the great men in different
departments we might very well term a degenerate with partially
conspicuous development a _pseudo-genius_ (_pseudogenie_). But to
accomplish anything really great, a partial mental development is not
enough. A correct combination and balance of all the mental faculties
are needed to thread that thorny path and to climb the steep heights
which lead to immortality. Those characteristics with which we have
become acquainted in great men, that of concentrating undivided
attention upon an object, indomitable energy and staying power, the
unselfish, self-forgetting compulsion to create--these qualities are
found in the degenerate either not at all, or in insufficient measure.
In those partially gifted degenerates, those pseudo-geniuses, certain
typical characteristics are hardly ever wanting. In childhood they
already show that vanity and self-sufficient arrogance, that foolhardy
conceit which never leave them through life. While they are still
schoolboys they speak contemptuously of the greatest men of art and
science. Raphael and Titian were bunglers in their estimation. They
compassionately shrug their shoulders over the “Philistine Schiller,”
who ought long ago to have passed into oblivion. Goethe is no longer
“up to the times,” and his creations have been “greatly overrated.”
Such is the trash which they utter as boys. They learn nothing at
school, partly because they are incapable and slothful, and partly
because they are so convinced of their genius that they hold learning
to be for them superfluous. They are of the opinion that much knowledge
might damage their originality, their genius, and that their high
inward merit needs no adventitious augmentation. They leave school as
soon as convenient, but not to learn a trade or, by the study of years,
to train themselves to any specialty. They enter the world at once as
accomplished poets, writers, painters, or musicians. With the most
secure self-confidence, which is never wanting to these subjects, they
devote themselves to the most difficult departments. They write dramas,
novels, and romances, paint, compose, feel themselves to be judges of
art and critics, and write about matters far above their mental horizon.
Often enough their works carry the stamp of the silly and ridiculous.
In place of the renown and applause upon which they had calculated,
scorn and ridicule are their portion. But that will not shatter their
faith in their own merit and genius. They rather complain that their
fellow-men do not appreciate them or else envy their powers too much
to acknowledge them. The truly great man who is in advance of his age
and is not understood by his contemporaries feels an unaffected pain
at that; but he wends his way as best he may, and perseveres in his
endeavours as long as good sense permits him to do so, and very often
longer. The degenerate, on the other hand, is soon discouraged by
failure. He retires from society, considers himself a “misunderstood
genius,” looks upon every man as his enemy, and develops in later years
a decided mania of greatness and persecution.
Other degenerates have, partly by their higher gifts, partly by the
want of discrimination of the community in which they live, greater
success with their works. Their so-called “originality of genius,”
which often enough deserves to be called original madness, is able to
infatuate the multitude who fancy that the gabble of these persons
makes a “new departure” in art and the beginning of a new epoch.
Well says Kant of this class of men: “But one guild of these so-called
_men of genius_ (better, monkeys of genius) is placed under this shop
sign; they speak the language of minds extraordinarily favoured by
Nature, declare laborious learning and research to be dull-minded, and
profess to have seized the spirit of all science at one clutch, and to
dispense it in small doses, concentrated and strong. This race, cousins
of the quacks and criers at fairs, is very prejudicial to progress
in scientific and moral culture. They pronounce in decisive tones
upon religion, politics, and morals, as if they were illuminated and
adepts, envoys from the throne of wisdom, while their secret object all
the time is to conceal the real poverty of their minds. What else is
there to be done but to laugh and continue patiently at our industry,
without regard to those mountebanks?”[92]
Not infrequently the perverse impulses and sensations of the degenerate
are reflected in their artistic production. The Roman Emperor Commodus
had a rough animal strength. He also had an impulse to bestial cruelty,
and received pleasure and satisfaction from bloodletting and from
the sufferings of others. Now, that impulse, that pleasure, and that
satisfaction were marked in that strength of his. In like manner,
degenerate writers have similar impulses and sentiments; and they give
expression to them in their writings. Many modern literary men love to
wallow round in sloughs and puddles, to sweep forward what is dirty and
vulgar, and to amuse themselves with such things. This preference may
in many cases be accounted for by such a perversion of the feelings and
by a mental degeneracy. Other abnormal impulses, especially of a sexual
origin, appear in the works of degenerates.
Instability and want of mental equilibrium hold the higher degenerates
in a continual unrest. Of patience and perseverance they have
next to none at all. They precipitate themselves with zeal into a
subject, and very soon give it up. They are mostly occupied with
themselves. The world and all it contains only so far interests them
as it is the vehicle of their precious selves and what can hurt or
help them. In everything they betray the same egoism. It is typical
and characteristic of their souls. Nobler sentiments, demanding
self-forgetfulness and self-sacrifice, are alien to the degenerate.
Hence they are unacquainted with the ideal feelings of friendship and
love. Cicero says: “Amicitia non esse potest nisi inter bonos,” and
he might well have added “et mente sanos.” Never among degenerates
can such a bond of friendship be found as is frequent among great
men. Conformably to the proverb, “Birds of a feather flock together,”
degenerates are often attracted to one another. But their intercourse,
rooted as it is in mere selfish interests and morbid impulses, is more
like that of the inmates of a monkey’s cage than the self-forgetful and
ideal friendship of men.
The degenerate ever remains a stranger in the world. To comprehend what
goes on in the world, to understand and appreciate the acts of his
fellow-men, one must be able to feel with them. But the degenerate is
either wanting in the intellectual power necessary to comprehend what
is taking place, or, if that be not his defect, then his feelings and
sentiments are too narrow to enable him to make use of his perceptions.
Hence, when the degenerate poet undertakes to paint the world, it is
not the world we live in that he brings before us, but a fantastic
invention of his brain, the counterpart of his morbid ideations. In
case he belongs to the subjective class of poets, who embody in art
their own sentiments and feelings, he gives us a peep into an abyss of
aberrations and morbid sufferings.
It were vain to attempt an exhaustive description of the clinical
appearances of degeneracy. The morbid symptoms are too manifold, the
characteristics too diverse, the combinations of mental factors in
disturbed equilibrium too numerous, and new phenomena are perpetually
presenting themselves to the most experienced psychiatrist.
As an example of a degenerate painter who attained some consideration
and was even the originator of a “new departure” in painting may serve
the Frenchman Courbet, often called the “first realist.” According to
Rosenberg,[93] who gives a somewhat detailed account of him, he had
a very defective schooling, although his father sent him to Paris at
the age of twenty to study law. His spelling was atrocious. “The sight
of a book excited his anger, and he recoiled from the presence of an
inkstand.” In the genuine imbecile style he ventured the following
judgment upon the old masters while he was yet a student:
“Veronese was a superior man, a painter without weakness and without
exaggeration, an honest painter. Rembrandt bewitches the intelligent
and astounds the simple. Titian and Leonardo da Vinci are impostors. If
one of these two were to come back to earth and were to pass through
my studio, I should go for my knife. Ribera, Zurbaran, and Valasquez
before all excite my admiration. Ostade and Craesbeek seduce me.
Holbein I revere. As for Mr. Raphael, he has undoubtedly painted some
interesting portraits, but I can find no thought in him.”
He possessed a quite monstrous self-love, and loved best to paint
his own portrait. “He imagined he had an Assyrian profile, and
that imperative idea only strengthened his preference for his own
physiognomy.” A visitor to an exhibition of his pictures remarks:
“With three or four exceptions, all the rest represent Courbet
himself--‘Courbet bowing,’ ‘Courbet promenading,’ ‘Courbet standing
still,’ ‘Courbet lying down,’ ‘Courbet seated,’ ‘Courbet dead,’ Courbet
everywhere. Nothing but Courbet was to be seen.”
In his morbid vanity he endeavoured, in spite of his slight mental
capacity, to get himself talked about in reference to every possible
subject. Rosenberg reports: “In his immoderate vanity he boasted that
since the cross of Christ no other cross had been so much talked about
in the world as his own.” His letter to the minister,[94] which had
been composed for this illiterate man by one of his friends, he had
concluded with bombastic phrases which sufficed to crown him, in the
eyes of the Irreconcilables, with the civic garland of an incorruptible
republican. “I am fifty years old,” he wrote, “and I have ever lived
a free man. Let me end my life in freedom. When I am dead, it must be
said of me: This man never belonged to a school, nor to a church, nor
to an institution, nor to an academy--above all, never to a government,
not even to the government of liberty.”
Courbet played an extremely ridiculous part in the year 1870, as a
member of the Commune, at the pulling down of the column of the Place
Vendôme.
“Before the court-martial, the poor, vain soul did all he could to
repel or at least to mollify the charge brought against him. He was
punished with that with which he had erred. He was not a bad man
but a mere simpleton, whom his intolerable self-love had led into
a path where he did not belong. He regarded himself as a universal
man, when he was at best only a painter. His too highly rated and too
much disparaged works had made him known and had enabled him to live
comfortably. His absolute want of fancy, the insurmountable difficulty
which he felt of ‘composing’ a picture, had brought him to found
the so-called ‘realism’--that is to say, the exact reproduction--of
natural objects, without distinction, without choice, as they presented
themselves to view. Men attacked the ideas of Courbet. His pictures
were sent back from the _Salon_. He proclaimed himself a martyr,
sincerely considered himself to be persecuted, and so became a great
man. People were wrong; they should have left him a free field and not
tried to render innocuous the revelations of an undoubtedly imperfect,
yet in many respects interesting talent. Courbet became a sort of
leader of a school, or, rather, head of a sect. Many nobodies flocked
about him and recognised him as their master. By the side of these
naïve persons, who dreamed of wishing to paint without having learned
to paint, were grouped banterers who liked to laugh, and for whom
Courbet was a standing source of delight. They flattered the vanity
of this heavy-witted peasant, who replaced wit with malignity, drove
him to all sorts of follies, told him he was a national economist, a
moralist, a philosopher, and a statesman, and encouraged him to speak,
while they drank the beer to which he treated for the sake of finding
listeners.” Again: “The painter was of the opinion that the glory of
the emperor interfered with his own, for his pictures seemed to him
more important than victories, than the _concordat_, or than the _code
civil_.”
After he had been condemned by the court-martial to six months’
imprisonment for the overthrow of the column of the Place Vendôme and
had served out his time, he often called out boastingly in the streets
and on other occasions: “I destroyed your column. I will pay for it.”
Finally he was taken at his word, and again accused. He was obliged to
flee. After long negotiations an agreement was reached between him and
the Government, according to which he was to pay annually ten thousand
francs. He soon after died suddenly.
Here, then, was a mental degenerate who, in spite of his pathological
action of mind, possessed unquestionable talent, but, owing to lack of
ideas of his own, and his incapacity to produce anything independent,
had to content himself with reproducing what he saw.
This art of mimicry in itself, joined to that kind of “realism”
which endeavours to elevate the ugly and to suppress the beautiful,
necessarily produced, for a time, the illusion of originality, with
some, perhaps, of genius. Thus it came to pass that Courbet was almost
the founder of a school.
A great number of degenerates are found in literature. Lombroso
has collected a list of such cases and given them the name of
_graphomaniacs_. This is not a very happy designation, for,
according to the analogy of the other manias--kleptomania, pyromania,
etc.--_graphomania_ ought to mean the irresistible passion to write.
It would refer to the physical action, and would depend upon the
quantity of writing performed. But the majority of Lombroso’s cases are
distinguished by the peculiar contents of the writing, and a special
compulsion to write much only appears in a few cases.
The passion for writing is found in different forms of disease, and
there are frequent opportunities to see it in the asylums. A patient
whom I myself had occasion to observe, a woman suffering from paranoia,
had formed a system of delusions upon which a new religion was to be
founded. She was constantly occupied in the erection of churches and
schools, and wrote about these things almost all day. During several
years she had filled a great number of _cahiers_, and wrote ceaselessly
letters to magistrates, personages of high position, etc., in which she
frequently covered the inside of the envelopes with characters. What
made the case particularly interesting was that she had constructed her
own language and her own characters, of which she commonly made use.
Another case, which was that of a mathematician, was a worn-out
_hebephrenia_, or insanity of youth, which had passed over into
terminal dementia. The patient answered all questions with a few
stereotyped phrases. Going into his room, you would usually find
him working at his table. He had, in the course of years, written a
stately number of blank books full, and that in so small a hand that
a magnifying glass was necessary to make them out. He sometimes wrote
mathematical formulæ which for the most part could not be deciphered.
The common symptom of these cases might very well be termed
_graphomania_. Of course, like the other manias, it is only a symptom,
a partial phenomenon of the disease, for we know by experience that no
monomania exists. Such a mania can not form a disease _sui generis_.
Lombroso, who repeatedly speaks of “monomaniacs,” describes
“graphomania” as an independent malady. He says: “A sort of mental
disorder which I might call graphomania forms the link between the fool
of genius, the sane man, and the insane proper.”
Both Lombroso’s “fools of genius” and “graphomaniacs” are mental
degenerates. In all these people there is a disturbance of the mental
balance, a disproportion between impulse and intellect, and in most
cases a marked lowering of intelligence, a general weakness of mind.
Lombroso divides his graphomaniacs into different classes. Of one he
says: “These are given to excesses, whether of abstemiousness or of
unbridled appetite for food also to the most singular sexual excesses,
which I have cursorily noticed in my work upon Insane Love (paradoxal,
ideological, zoölogical love). They also have singular fondness for
dogs, cats, birds, etc., and still more singular inclinations to tear
up and destroy, say, costly ornaments. They throw themselves from
moving railway trains. They shun the light and only go about at night,
and not even then unless provided with a sunshade. They fear abode in
closed rooms so much that they faint if they hear doors shut; or else
they hate being in the open air, and refuse to cross public squares,”
etc. Further on we read: “These men are often overmastered by a hatred
of their fellow-beings. They withdraw into remote regions, and flee all
contact with men (claustrophilia). Others, again, although they prolong
existence in an evil life, crave society, whose cancers they are;
long for the admiration of others, be it only such as can be excited
by the most insignificant things, such as collections of buttons and
of umbrellas. They let slip no means, however ridiculous, to draw
attention to themselves. They write love-letters to themselves and read
them publicly, or smoke Trabucos while they suffer hunger. They strive
for the first places in the _cafés_ and in the political clubs. They
found little literary societies, and the more ignorant they are of the
matter in which for the moment they are engaged, the warmer is their
apostleship. Sometimes they are, from their youth up, incorrigibly
cruel, hypocritical, and thievish, make swindling and thieving their
pleasure, and are amazed when they are punished, although they
perfectly know the terms of the law. But the vanity of these men is
almost incredible. They commit crimes to satisfy this vanity, and they
do not care that what they do destroys their whole credit, nor that it
does not bring them the honour of which they are so desirous.” This is
a picture of typical cases of mental degeneracy, as we have already
learned. The symptom of graphomania is, according to Lombroso’s own
picture, not even particularly marked. There is a general imbecility
which may express itself in the most various ways. Of another class
of cases Lombroso says: “The intellectual fools are tireless talkers
who are often unable to bring their own flow of speech to an end. They
speak without logical connection, and almost always reach conclusions
contradicting something else that they had said. This happens more on
some days than on others.” Of these subjects Lombroso says: “I may add
that they are mostly incurable, since their malady is congenital. They
have the morbid and eccentric elements of genius, without its judgment
and creative power.”
He then describes another category of subjects, the “foolish
graphomaniacs.” Of the only case he adduces he says: “Stewart, the
remarkable author of the New System of Physical Philosophy, who
struggled through the world in order to discover the cynosure of truth,
asserted that all kings and potentates of the earth had entered into a
solemn pact to annihilate his work. Hence he sent his friends copies
of it with the request that they would bury them, well packed, in
secret places, and only reveal the localities on their deathbeds.” In
all probability there was in this case a system of delusions; and, so
far as one can found a diagnosis on these few words, it would seem to
be a case of paranoia. How Lombroso can call it a special disease,
above all a “foolish graphomania,” is not comprehensible. The same
thing is true of the following case, which is either one of paranoia
or of imbecility: “Martin William was the brother of Jonathan, who, in
a fit of insanity, set fire to the cathedral of York, and likewise of
that John, who invented a new method of painting. He published numerous
works to demonstrate the possibility of perpetual motion. Having
convinced himself by thirty-six experiments that no perpetual motion
was possible, he experienced in a dream that God had elected him to
discover the principle of all things and the perpetual motion, which
subject he again treated in numerous writings.” Lombroso continues:
“These people would not appear to be insane were it not that, along
with the appearance of thoroughness and of resolute persistency in
one and the same pursuit (characteristics which they share alike with
monomaniacs and with men of genius), their writings never renounce
absurdities, continual contradictions, loquacious, foolish verbosity,
and another tendency--which we have found to be the strongest of all
in insane men of genius--I mean boundless vanity.” This is as much
as to say that these people would not appear insane if they were not
what they are; for, according to Lombroso’s own description, they are
degenerate, imbecile, weak-minded men. That they share a characteristic
with men of genius is not accurate, for, as Lombroso says, their
thoroughness and perseverance are only a false appearance, while genius
really possesses these qualities.
If we are to attempt a division of degenerates into classes, the only
way will be to follow the plan of Morel and use the psychological
disproportion as our _directrix_, and thus bring degenerates with
deficient intelligence, with excessive or perverted impulses, fancy,
feeling, etc., under separate heads. To divide them upon the ground of
a not distinctly prominent symptom would be a regress rather than a
progress in our science. Perhaps the course which impels Lombroso to
select the particular symptom of writing much may be that this symptom
is the only one which can be communicated through those writings to
posterity and to the researcher in its whole extent, while others--such
as the numerous manias, weaknesses of mind, perversities, and other
weaknesses--require direct observation.
Lombroso’s designations, “intellectual fools,” “foolish
graphomaniacs,” “fools of genius,” and “foolish geniuses” lead only
to misunderstandings and confusion of ideas, while it should be our
task to make our terms as precise as possible and keep them sharply
distinguished from one another.
However various the clinical picture of the degenerate may be, yet,
in consequence of its common cause in all cases--namely, mental
instability, discord of the mental faculties--the cases always have
something to characterize them, and they give to the competent
observer no occasion to confound them with great, fully developed, and
harmonious minds.
INFLUENCE OF EDUCATION UPON GENIUS.
It is a known fact that the higher an animal stands in the scale of
development, the more helpless and dependent it is immediately after
birth. The lowest of all classes of animals, the _Amœba_, as soon
as it comes into separate existence by partition, possesses all the
properties and faculties which are requisite to its life, or which it
ever can attain. The higher the genus is, the longer the time after
the commencement of individual life before the animal is capable of
caring for itself independently. The highest class, the Mammal, needs
maternal nourishment longer than any other being. The highest organized
creature, Man, develops more slowly and needs parental care longer
than anything that lives on earth. Among men, again, the rapidity of
individual development is in inverse proportion to the general state of
civilization of the people from whom that individual springs. Savages
develop faster than children among civilized peoples, and the woman
comes to maturity earlier than the male.
The rapidity of development can afford no indication of the later
mental powers. A child which at seven years of age is uncommonly large
does not necessarily continue to grow in the same proportion. On the
contrary, it may turn out a short man; and we often see boys who are
small up to sixteen develop into tall men. Quite as little can we
predict that a precocious child will show distinguished ability when
it grows up; and backward children sometimes develop remarkable minds.
Linnæus, the great botanist, in his youth so neglected his classical
studies that his parents intended, on account of his poor progress at
school, to apprentice him to a shoemaker. But a physician remarked the
boy’s talent, and induced them to send him to the gymnasium.[95] Newton
was a dreamy child and for a long time was at the foot of his class.
Far more important than the rapidity of mental development--upon
which vain parents are unfortunately apt to lay too great stress, to
the detriment of the child--is the uniformity of formation of the
different psychical factors. We have seen that mental degeneracy
does not necessarily imply a small degree of general development. It
mostly consists of a defective proportionality of the different mental
elements, and a disturbance of inward balance.
The correct proportion of the impulses to the inhibiting intellect; the
equilibrium between the understanding and the feelings, between the
will, the attention, and the unconscious action of the brain, of the
fancy; a faculty of apprehension and memory in concord with the other
mental functions; a corresponding action of association--all these are
conditions for sane mental action.
Sollier[96] rightly remarks that the state of the idiot is neither
like that of the child nor like that of the animal, for in the
child, as well as in the animal, the mental characters are suitably
proportionate, and the expression of the soul shows nothing morbid.
A rational education must therefore aim chiefly at a uniformity of
mental development. Especially must it attend to this in the treatment
of children that have shown at home a defect of mental balance. There
are children that from earliest youth have disproportionately strong
impulses. There are others in whom there is a particularly strong
development of feeling and an unusually tender heart. If such children
do not receive suitable treatment, their state, which as a rule is
somewhat exalted of itself, may easily pass into hysteria. On the other
hand, many children have very little feeling. In common parlance, they
are “cold natures.” In others, again, the faculty of concentrating
their thoughts is more weakly developed than their other qualities.
It is a moot question what influence education can have upon character,
especially how far it is able to correct disturbances of the process
of growth, and thus to prevent the occurrence of mental diseases. An
opinion defended by many is, that education has no influence whatever
upon the formation of character. It is said that genius, under all
circumstances, be the education good or bad, will “force its way.” On
the other hand, “born criminals,” it is said, in spite of the best
education, are destined to become criminals. All this I hold to be
absolutely false. But the contrary opinion, which makes the character
a product of education alone, and the whole mental life to depend upon
nothing but the experiences of the individual concerned, is a downright
absurdity. This is maintained by a schoolmaster, Gustav Hauffe,[97] who
takes for his motto, “Man is mentally only what education has made him
to be.” Dressed out in vestments of the most fashionably scientific cut
(his first part is entitled “Analytical and Synthetical Psychology”),
the author communicates his discovery that at birth the mind of man is
a _tabula rasa_ and that the diversity of its later development is to
be referred exclusively to differences of education and of experience.
Were it possible to educate two men exactly alike, they must, he
thinks, grow up precisely alike. Were a child to receive precisely
the same education and the same impressions as fell to the lot of
Goethe, he would necessarily become just as great a man. The doctrine
is that the whole mental action is analyzable into impressions of
sense, their associations, and ideas due to associative suggestion.
From this discovery the author undertakes to demonstrate the theorem
that “Schiller could never have written Laura am Klavier if no piano
and no Laura had existed.” To examine such nonsense would be a waste
of time. A windmill can not make meal unless it is fed with grain, as
every child knows, but, nevertheless, it is not the grain that runs
the mill, but the wind. Were all impressions withheld from a man as
far as possible, as in the case of Caspar Hauser, it is certain that,
even in a man capable of developing genius, mental action would be
at a standstill. But for all that, impressions by themselves could
effect nothing were there no mental powers to react upon them. The best
education can not convert a dullard into a sage nor an idiot into a
genius.
To treat of the importance of education and set forth its psychological
principles in full would be the theme of a large book. I limit myself
here to some considerations which lead me to regard education as of
great importance for the development of character, particularly in the
case of a genius.
A child that from its earliest childhood is accustomed to suffer
want and to see vice and cruelty necessarily has its feelings
dulled. How far in later life heart and sentiment may appear will
depend upon the proportion which the evil influence may bear to its
original and natural disposition. A child in which the exercise of
the intellect is altogether neglected will, at all events, be in
later years less strong than if it had had a solid training of the
understanding. The same thing, _mutatis mutandis_, is true for the
other mental characteristics--attention, the power of apprehension,
memory, the action of association and suggestion, fancy, will, energy,
perseverance, etc. All these powers are capable of being greatly
affected by exercise and custom.
Experience shows that even with ordinary men impressions received in
youth are the most durable, and in many respects may have a momentous
influence upon the whole life. In a child endowed with genius this must
be true in much higher measure, for such a child, even in its earliest
years, observes surrounding events with marvellous acuteness; it
assimilates its impressions much more thoroughly, and infers much more
from them than an ordinary child. Moreover, owing to its lively fancy,
it will be much more affected by all influences, whether good or bad.
Thus Nohl[98] says of Mozart: “Even as a child he was full of fire and
life; and without the admirable education which his earnest and strict
father gave him, he might have become the most reckless miscreant, so
sensitive was he to every excitation to whose good or bad influence
he was of an age to respond.” When Goethe in his sixth year heard of
the great earthquake at Lisbon, in which sixty thousand persons were
swallowed up in the twinkling of an eye, religious doubt arose for the
first time within him, and his faith in the goodness of Providence was
shattered.
Great men have in most cases shown uncommonly high mental capacity in
their tenderest years. But this is not true without exception, for
there have been geniuses who were quite ordinary children. On the
other hand, it is a fact that frequently children that have matured
early and seemed to be highly gifted have not in later years fulfilled
the promise of their childhood. In part this may be a purely natural
phenomenon, due to no outward causes. But in many cases the outward
circumstances are traceable; and in particular a bad education has
been to blame for the loss to the world of the fruits of, perhaps, an
important genius.
Education is the foundation upon which the whole man is built up.
Youthful impressions are not only decisive in their effect upon the
development of character, but they may even induce a predisposition to
diseases of the nerves and of the mind. It is altogether probable that,
among the innumerable cases which are set down as hereditary nervous
diseases, a considerable percentage is due less to actual inheritance
than to the impressions which a child has received from a hysterical
mother or from a father given to drink, combined with a defective
education.
Von Krafft-Ebing[99] says: “Next to the organization of his brain,
a man has to thank his education for the idiosyncrasy of his mental
existence. Sometimes organization and education co-operate in calling
forth psychopathic predispositions, for parents not only in procreation
transmit an unfortunate organic constitution, but also upon the ground
of this organization afflicted with morbid passions, moral faults, and
eccentricities, further communicate their eccentricities and moral
transgressions to their children by their bad example and by mistaken
education.”
Griesinger[100] says: “We agree with Ideler in thinking that there
are cases of so-called hereditary insanity which are not principally
due to the transmission of an organic disposition. A later psychical
propagation of characteristic peculiarities takes place. The child
imitates the example of certain eccentricities and of certain bizarre
and perverse tendencies and views of life; and this hinders the
commencement of the development of a healthy soul harmonizing with the
outward world. In this way hysteria may be communicated from a mother
to a daughter. So, too, may foolish or half-foolish parents infect
their children with mental distortions; and so passionateness and evil
inclination may set their impress upon young minds. It is to be added
that by such a state of the parents family life is often discomposed,
and thus the co-operation of those happy circumstances which are
essential requisites for the harmonious development of the child’s
character is destroyed.”
It is not of the first consequence in education, especially with
precocious children, what and how much the child shall learn; for the
lacunæ of knowledge can, by the exercise of energy, always be filled
up. But the faculty of apprehension, the capacity for logical thought,
attentive concentration, close observation, etc., are things which
must be exercised from youth up; and it is very difficult to make good
in later years any deficiency which education may have left in these
respects.
Care must be taken that the bodily training does not lag behind the
mental. This is specially requisite for precocious children. Their
ambition must be restrained within limits. They must not be allowed
to give themselves over to enthusiastic dreamings. Conceit and
vanity should be checked by hard facts. Moreover, such children are
particularly liable to a too early awakening of sexual impulses and
other sexual irregularities which require the closest attention from
their tutors. It is of great importance that children should early
appreciate the fundamental conceptions of morals, love of truth, the
obligation of a promise, unselfishness, etc. Yet too great an emphasis
upon these things is to be avoided, since the contrary effect may
easily be produced, inasmuch as for the attainment of the desired
result love and faith on the part of the child are requisite above
all. Of the greatest importance for the formation of character are the
development of the heart, refinement of feeling and sentiment, which
must be implanted in the child from its earliest childhood. “Much
can be effected under unfavorable circumstances by an intelligent
education. This must be adapted to the individual and free from
pedantry. It should be directed not to the formation of the intellect
alone, but also to that of the heart. This is the point in the
importance of which pedagogy, rightly conceived and treated, joins
with the doctrine of heredity.”[101]
On children of lively fancy and fine feelings stories about fabulous
things and supernatural phenomena often have a bad effect, above all
when they are made use of to put children into a fright. In some
dispositions such methods of education may induce severe hysterical
states. “This detestable method of bringing up,” says Mosso,[102] “has
not yet disappeared; children are to this day agonized with stories
of Knecht Ruprecht, of fabulous monsters, werewolves, magicians, and
sorcerers. Every minute somebody says to children: ‘He will eat you
up’; ‘This bites you’; ‘Call the dog’; ‘There is the chimney-sweep’;
and a hundred other terrors which bring them to tears and deform their
friendly character by distressing them with constant threats, by a
system of torture which makes them timid and weak.”
Children that are inclined to dreaminess, in whom fancy is active
and threatens to dispossesses the pure intellectual action, require
particular care, so that the child may as early as possible receive a
strong impression of the realities of life, and that there is in those
realities a stern and inflexible order, and as truthful a general
idea of what that order is like as possible. Pains must be taken to
prevent nurses’ tales, religious mysticism, and mythological fictions
from overexciting the fancy. It is in the knowledge of real things and
facts--first, the sense that there is a reality altogether different
from fancies; second, that it is undeviating in its order; third,
something of what that order is like--this must be the turning point of
education for imaginative children. If these precautions are not taken
by their parents, those children of fancy will be filled with images
utterly foreign to the real nature of things. Then, in later years,
when life presents itself to them in its naked truth, and castles in
the air come tumbling over their heads, they will find themselves
astray in the world, with nothing to protect them but fine words
unintelligible to the citizens, and will be hooted at and run down as
cranks and monkeys of genius.
While the superintendence of the scientific education is the affair of
the father and of the pedagogue, it is the mother’s duty to look after
the formation of the heart and the sentiments. And what a momentous
charge is this! Think what that is to a man! Think what it is to a man
of genius! And what wonder is it that it should be popularly believed
that all great men were remarkably influenced by their mothers? Alas!
Alas! How many of the women of to-day see in this holy duty their
highest throne, their completest royalty? Modern economy compels many
women to work, and therefore to economize their intercourse with their
children. In such a case the fault lies with our social institutions
and not with the poor mothers, although there are even hard working
women, who somehow contrive to care for the corporal well-being of
their children, and for their spiritual health and nourishment too.
But how is it with well-to-do ladies, who have time and means enough
to spend upon their children? Do they, for the most part, see in the
education of their children the great purpose of life? Do they feel
their highest bliss in self-forgetful, loving surrender of themselves
to this natural office? Yes, there are such mothers; and the number
of them measures the vitality of our civilization. They receive the
supreme homage which is their due. They receive it in their persons,
and it is extended to every woman who can be presumed to fulfil that
function or to be about to fulfil it. The vulgar throng of women are
not of that sort. Many women are honest enough to confess that the
education of their children is burdensome to them and that they find
no pleasure in it. They shift the irksome burden to the shoulders of
a stranger. Some mothers are foolish enough to think that a mother’s
love could be replaced by money. They believe that they fulfill their
duty by seeing that their children’s food is wholesome and their
clothes handsome. Perhaps they hire accomplished governesses or send
their children to expensive boarding-schools. But can a stranger ever
replace a true mother’s heart? No, never. Children who have lost a
mother are to be pitied. But children whose mother lives and is only
such a guardian to them as those above mentioned are in far worse
plight. The former can at least carry in their hearts the ideal of a
mother’s love; but for the latter even this is torn to rags, and with
it one of the anchors of life is lost. Many mothers use their children
to satisfy their personal vanity. From this motive they rig them out
like monkeys and flaunt around with them; they teach them speeches like
parrots, so as to be able to boast of them and occupy attention with
them, and that they can tell themselves that they have been doing their
children some good. It is not the ennobling of the childish heart that
is the motive of such mothers’ action, but the satisfaction of their
own petty vanity.
I have already said that with children of high mental gifts and
with precociously developed power of apprehension the influence of
youthful impressions, as well as their whole education, is of uncommon
importance for their after-life. Let us cast a glance upon the youth
and education of some super-eminent men.
Of Goethe it is said:
“Seldom has a boy exhibited such completeness of human faculties.
The multiplied activity of his life is prefigured in the varied
tendencies of his childhood. We see him as an orderly, somewhat formal,
inquisitive, reasoning, deliberative child, a precocious learner, an
omnivorous reader, and a vigorous logician who thinks for himself--so
independent that at six years of age he doubts the beneficence of the
Creator, at seven doubts the competence and justice of the world’s
judgment. He is inventive, poetical, proud, loving, volatile, with a
mind open to all influences, swayed by every gust, and yet, while thus
swayed as to the direction of his activity, master over himself.”[103]
One sees from this short picture what enormous influence education and
the impressions of childhood must have had upon his after-life. His
mind was “open to all influences, swayed by every gust.” The careful
education which young Goethe received aided in no small degree in the
unfolding of his mighty genius. His father conducted the education with
strictness and conscientiousness, and the scientific instruction was
systematically arranged.
His excellent mother knew how to mould her child’s tender heart in
its early childhood, how to bring his fancy into exercise, and how
to impress him with a sense of the noble and the beautiful. Her
relations with her children are truly touching. She herself reports
how she told stories every evening to little Wolfgang and his sister
Cornelia: “I could not be tired of telling them as long as he was
not tired of listening. I represented Fire, Water, Earth, and Air
as beautiful princesses, and gave a meaning to all that goes on in
Nature. I believed in it myself more implicitly than my listeners did;
and when we pretended there were roads between the stars, and that
we should some time live in stars, and thought what great spirits we
should meet up there, nobody was ever more eager than I for the hour of
story telling with the children, nor more vexed when some invitation
I had received prevented it. There sat I, and there was he devouring
me with his great black eyes; and if the fate of any favourite did
not go right according to his sense, I could see how the angry vein
would swell in his forehead and how he would choke down his tears.
Many a time he would interfere before I could bring about the turn of
affairs, and would say, ‘I hope, mother, that the princess will not
marry the accursed tailor even if he did slay the giant?’ Then if I
made a halt and put off the catastrophe to the next evening, I could
be sure that he would repeat everything aright up to that point, and
where my imagination fell short it would often be patched out by his.
Then, if I took up the threads of fate on the next evening and turned
them according to his plan and said, ‘You guessed it! that is what
happened!’ he would be all fire and flame, and his little heart could
be seen to beat under his ruffle. He was his grandmother’s pet, and to
her he would confide all his ideas of how the story would go; and from
her I would learn how it must run to conform to his wishes; and in this
way there was a secret diplomatic transaction between us which neither
of us betrayed to the other. So I had the satisfaction of continuing
my tales to the delight and astonishment of my auditor, who, without
recognising that he was the author of all my marvellous occurrences,
saw with glowing eyes events fall out according to his keenly desired
plans, and greeted the finishing of it with enthusiastic applause.”
What unspeakable thanks Goethe owed this mother, who so completely gave
herself up to the care and love of her children!
Schiller, according to the accounts of his biographers, had in his
youth no extraordinary mental qualities, though his capacity was good
and his diligence intense. “The boy,” we read, “felt that without
diligence no mastery can be won.” His education, which his strict
father most conscientiously superintended, was exceedingly solid
and thorough. His extremely rich-hearted--or, as the Germans say,
_gemüthvolle_--mother surrounded him with an atmosphere of love. She
had plainly a great share in his education. Scharffenstein, a youthful
friend of Schiller, says of her: “Her son was the image of her in
figure and physiognomy. Her dear face was very feminine and mild.
Never was there seen a more admirable, domestic, and feminine woman.”
Körner, in his biography, says of Schiller: “In many respects he was
a backward child, and certainly was not one of those who gratify the
vanity of their parents by precocious acquirements and talents. But
even in his childhood his soft heart, combined with a firm will, his
good faith, and his attachment to those who had won his love, together
with his easily roused fancy, were plainly discernible.” His remarkably
intelligent father and his warm-hearted mother supplied him with a
superior education. “He had from childhood a ruling bent for poetry;
but his father considered his own duty to be merely to tolerate his
son’s first essays, not to encourage them. He had too lofty an ideal of
art to permit himself, in a case so near to him, not to exercise due
care lest a mere inclination should be mistaken for an avocation.”
Raphael, though he lost his mother in his eighth and his father in
his eleventh year, received a good education and rounded development.
Galileo, Newton, Linnæus, Fénelon, Arago, early showed acute
understanding, and all were liberally educated. Haydn, though born in
narrow circumstances, received an exceptional and loving education. He
expressed his gratitude for it in later years, and was most strongly
attached to his mother, who had always most tenderly cared for his
well-being. Liszt was brought up with the utmost love and care. His
father early recognised his genius, and once exclaimed: “You are elect
of destiny, and will realize that ideal of art which cast a vain
glamour over my youth. In you I wish to rejuvenate and propagate my
soul.” Franz was a weakly child in body and was in need of a good deal
of parental concern, and it was prodigally bestowed. His father kept a
diary devoted to him “with the minute and anxious punctiliousness of a
tender father.” Washington’s father, dying when George was eleven years
old, had such confidence in the highly intelligent and prudent mother,
that he gave her, by his will, full control of all the property of the
children until they should come of age. This lady fulfilled every duty
of a mother with the utmost love and tenderest concern, and gave them
an excellent education. Kant said: “I shall never forget my mother, for
she planted and tended the first germs of good in me. She opened my
heart to the impressions of Nature. She awakened and expanded my ideas;
and her teachings have had an enduring and wholesome influence upon my
life.”
Heine had an admirable mother, whose only endeavour it was to transmit
to her children the excellent education that she had herself received
in her father’s house. Her favourite authors were Goethe and Rousseau.
The reading of Emile had made education rather a hobby of hers.
She herself taught the boys to read and write, and most carefully
superintended their instruction. “To her,” we read in a biography of
Heine, “he clung with an affecting child-love. He sang her praises in
charming poems, and referred to her continually in his writings with
the sincerest piety.”
A genius of whom Heine says that “he was one of the greatest German
poets, and among all our dramatists nearest approached Shakespeare,”
was ruined by vice and debauchery. This was Dietrich Grabbe, whose
father was director of a house of correction and of a pawn shop. He
suffered the gloomiest impressions in his childhood, and these were
increased by his neglected and perverse education. A biographer of the
poet accuses his mother of having led him to drink, but Heine defends
the woman from this charge, saying that it is false. Still, even
Heine, in his attempt to rehabilitate the honour of the mother of his
colleague, says: “She was a rough dame, the wife of a turnkey, and in
caressing her wolf cub, Dietrich, she perhaps sometimes scratched him
a bit with the claws of a she-wolf.” What might a genius like Grabbe
not have become if his education had been conducted by a mother like
Goethe’s?
A multiform genius, equally gifted in poetry, music, and painting, was
E. T. A. Hoffmann. His parents separated after a short and unhappy
marriage, and his mother, who with her children was invited to her
mother’s, was prevented by bad health from concerning herself with
their education. It was left to the grandmother and an uncle, and
was so conducted as to exercise in many respects a decidedly unhappy
influence upon the formation of the boy’s character. It dealt with all
that regards the formation of the intellect and the information of the
memory. He received superior instruction in the sciences and the arts.
But the mother’s influence was wanting. The formation of the character
and of the heart was neglected. The pedantic peculiarities of the uncle
served as motive to the boy’s satiric pencil and leaning toward the
bizarre. To the remonstrances which his friend Hippel addressed to him
concerning his disrespectful deportment to his relatives he replied:
“What luck have I had with my relatives? If I had had people like you
for my father and my uncle I would not behave so.” In spite of his
genius, his works show a craziness for which his perverse education is
sufficient to account. At last he gave himself over to drink, and that
not from need or anxiety, with which he had certainly been acquainted,
but just at the time when fortune smiled upon him and he had been
absolved from all sordid cares.
Schopenhauer had a mother mentally gifted indeed, but cold. In his
early youth an antagonism arose between mother and son. When he showed
her his first work--The Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient
Reason--she ironically remarked: “A book for apothecaries, is it not?”
She was herself an authoress, and he replied: “My books will live
after yours have long been relegated to the lumber room.” She retorted:
“Your books will never go to the lumber room, because nobody will buy
them at all.” This want of motherly love may well have had more than a
slight influence upon the character and later life of the philosopher.
Much in his life might have shaped itself otherwise if he had been able
to look back upon a youth beautified by a mother’s love. Perhaps the
repellent coldness of his mother laid the foundation for his subsequent
disparagement of women.
Rousseau’s mother died at his birth. His father was a poor watchmaker
who could not concern himself much about the education of his son.
When the father had to flee on account of an affair of honour, the son
went into a boarding-school, where he was treated hardly and unjustly.
Later he was apprenticed to an engraver, and in that situation he
read during his leisure all the books in a circulating library. Being
ill-treated by his master, he left him, and at the age of fifteen
wandered about Savoy until he was recommended by a Catholic priest to
Madame de Warens. She was a very good-hearted but morally weak woman,
who spoiled her _protégé_ exceedingly, and soon converted him from
an adopted son into a lover. Such youthful impressions must, it is
plain, have had a very disadvantageous influence upon the character of
Rousseau. Many an absurdity of his later life is to be attributed to
his unfortunate youth. How far his bad education, or rather his total
want of education, may have acted upon the later development of the
derangement of his mind is a question not to be decided with certainty.
Byron’s parents having separated, he was educated, or rather not
educated, only by a mother of weak and overemotional character and
an old nurse. The consequence was that he developed a very unstable
character, became addicted to wild excesses, later suffered from
hallucinations; and, in short, his genius did not unfold itself at all
as it otherwise would have done.
These few examples are not offered as an inductive argument to
establish a connection between education and character, as if it were
otherwise unknown to us, as Lombroso, for example, gives lists to show
that men of genius are commonly undersized, etc. They are offered as
illustrations which, when we know what that connection is in ordinary
cases, may disabuse the mind of an unfounded notion that genius is an
exception to the general rule, and which will help us to imagine what
the early life of a genius is, and how he is _more_ and not _less_
influenced by education than another boy would be, agreeably to the
deductive arguments we have already set forth.
The circumstance that there have been men of genius (not so numerous,
perhaps, as is supposed) who, in spite of an education, either
defective or positively baleful, have worked their way to fame and
public usefulness, does not in the slightest degree conflict with our
proposition, for we can never know what degree of perfection they
might have attained with a better education. We do know that some of
those who ultimately impressed themselves upon the minds of their
own age and upon those which succeeded it, had been at one time in
danger of turning out nonentities in consequence of early influences,
and were only awakened by some fortunate chance; and, finally, in
anthropological questions we must not expect to find rules without any
exceptions whatever.
Beethoven developed the greatest musical genius, although his youth was
not cheerful and his education was very faulty. His father, himself
a musician, took care to form his son in music in a thorough manner,
especially as the son’s genius was recognisable in his childhood; but
the moral impressions which he received as a boy were not calculated to
influence happily a young heart or a character in process of formation.
The father was given to drink; and Ludwig’s young friend, Stephan von
Brenning, once saw the drunken father rescued from the police by the
son in the open street. Certainly, such things could not fail to make
their mark upon the still plastic character. Nohl says, “The reticence
and a certain defiant spirit of his youth and manhood must be referred
to such harsh experiences.”
Disadvantageous as a bad education may, even under ordinary
circumstances, be expected to be to a genius, both with respect to
his character and to his intellect, it will be still more fatal in
case he has a strongly marked fancy with but moderate gifts in other
directions. Children in whom inordinate fancy or feelings somewhat
overbalance their other faculties may, nevertheless, by the aid of
an energetic education, with continued training of their memory,
attention, will, etc., be made productive and capable men, while
without a rational education they would fall into the category of
pseudo-geniuses or fools of genius.
Thus we see the enormous importance of education--not merely school
instruction, but the impressions of the family circle upon the child
and the youth. Especially momentous for the child’s later destiny
is the mother’s part in education. Every innovation in our social
habits tending to diminish the mother’s large share in the education
of her children ought to be considered as prejudicial to the progress
of humanity. Public schools answer well enough to teach children
arithmetic and geography, but no institution can for one moment be
thought of as a substitute for the bringing up by a whole-hearted
mother. It is the natural vocation of the woman; and every wife who,
from motives of ease, pleasure, or vanity, tries to shirk that duty,
has, by an unnatural civilization, been brought to a lower moral level
than her cat or her slut, either of which, by instinct, surrenders
itself ungrudgingly to its maternal duties. Oh, mothers, take these
things to heart! Learn to recognise that no higher or nobler task is
presented to a human being than the self-forgetting and love-abounding
education of one’s own children. Nature herself sanctifies this duty,
and upon its performance the destiny of the race depends.
Before I leave this subject, let me animadvert to a phenomenon
interesting in many respects--that of the precocious child. What is a
precocious child? As I have already mentioned, the majority of great
geniuses have shown in their childhood great mental capacities, which,
according to their inborn dispositions, were specially developed in one
direction or another. A child whose capacity in a special branch is so
high that it is able to perform things which “astound the multitude”
is generally called an “infant phenomenon” or precocious child. It
is an established fact of experience that, with very few exceptions,
precocious children are found exclusively in the branch of practical
music. This fact is not so much due to the earlier development of
musical genius, for Raphael, Michel Angelo, and Thorwaldsen equally
showed in their early childhood a very uncommonly great gift for their
art. But were they able “to astound the multitude”? The performance
of a precocious child can only astound when the multitude is able to
compare the fine result with the youth of the performer. A child, be it
never so gifted, is not at the apogee of its ability; but allowances
are made for its years. The performance--unless, indeed, it be a very
incomplex result, like the answer to an arithmetical problem, or a
feat of memory--is in itself hardly to be called extraordinary even
in the most phenomenal cases. But it is the circumstance that it is
done by a child that makes it wonderful. The work of the child-poet or
child-artist, whatever its genius, when abstracted from its authorship,
will not amaze the multitude as a musical performance will do. The poem
or picture endures, and thus can be subjected to criticism irrespective
of the personality of the artist, whether the author be boy or man.
It is different with musical execution. In the concert-hall the
personality of the male or female artist exercises upon the public no
inconsiderable influence of that kind which is generally designate by
the term _suggestion_.
As I have already said, the artistic performance of a child is, in
itself considered, always slighter than that of an accomplished artist.
But to see a little seven-year-old boy seat himself at a piano before a
vast or distinguished audience and play it with his little hands, that
is what, as a natural phenomenon, not as a work of pure art, astounds
the multitude.
Opinions may differ as to whether art institutions and associations
ought to confine themselves strictly to striving after the highest pure
art, in the faith that thereby the sentiment and heart of the nation
may be ennobled, or whether they may admit, as a secondary purpose, the
bringing before the public of anthropological curiosities. For my part,
the circus rather than the concert-hall seems to me their proper place.
Kant says: “A precocious genius of ephemeral existence, like Heinecke
in Lübeck and Baratier in Halle, are departures of Nature from her
rule, curiosities for a naturalist’s cabinet. They cause astonishment
on account of their early age; but they often disappoint those who
bring them forward.” Let everybody choose for himself what class of
entertainments he prefers, and to that end I would send the curiosities
to the curiosity shops.
But there is a rather more serious, not to say solemn, side to the
public exhibition of precocities; and the psychiatrist would neglect a
duty if he failed to refer to it. Remembering what the importance of
education and childish impressions has been seen to be, let anybody
picture to himself what the life of an “infant phenomenon” is, and what
are the impressions that are made upon it. A wise education, in such a
case, would primarily be directed to avoiding the evil consequences of
vanity and of a deadening self-consciousness. But this poor victim of
the crowd and of money-getting is covered every night with medals and
decorations from shoulders to waist, and is exposed to the stupendous
plaudits of a brilliant assemblage. His childish heart needs forming;
all that is noxious should be screened from his imagination; but
instead of that, newspaper puffs and the nauseously indiscriminate
praise of society blunt his feeling and nip his nobler sentiments in
the bud. The consequence of this--bad education, as I was about to
call it, but that is not the word for it--this wicked ill-treatment,
is the destruction of the genius of almost every such child. They
are not taught that not even genius can climb the rugged steeps of
Parnassus without diligence and labour. They are told that they are
perfect, and that their performances are above criticism. But when,
at last, they have to appear, no longer in the child’s stockings and
black velvet frock, but in the man’s dress-coat, that nimbus round the
phenomenon melts away; and then it is perceived that the development
of their genius has undergone mischievous perturbations. The character
is unformed; the mental balance all out; and, in short, the wonderful
child is, after all, nothing but a fool. No empty theory is this, but
manifold experience. Such fools, who in their childhood were driven
about the world to the sound of drum and trumpet, are numerous. It is
high time that judicious men should protest against the unspeakable
outrage which vain and mercenary parents and unscrupulous impressarios,
who look upon a child of genius as nothing but an article of trade,
commit upon these precocities.
The defenders of this abuse tell us that Mozart, Beethoven, and
Mendelssohn were all infant prodigies. But what of that? If a physician
recommends that our children should eat wholesome food and breathe good
air, will you retort, “Pshaw! I know of several children that ate the
most unwholesome things, were exposed to all sorts of bad influence,
and yet they grew up all right and are marvels of rugged health; so
you see it makes no difference how children are brought up?” Besides,
Mozart and Mendelssohn were not treated like the youthful prodigies
of to-day. I have already mentioned what an intelligent father Mozart
had, and how, in spite of his son’s public appearance, in accordance
with the morals of those days, he gave him a superior education.
Mendelssohn’s teacher, old Zelter, always had it at heart to preserve
his scholar’s childlike modesty and to guard him against self-conceit.
And then, how much, after all, did these children play in public
compared with the professional tours of the precocious child of to-day?
Yet, notwithstanding the comparative infrequency of the performances,
those art journeys certainly had no happy influence either upon Mozart
or upon Beethoven. Mozart lived all his life in a highly wrought state
of the nerves, and died at the meridian of life with a fatally diseased
brain. The sad influence of the dreary youth of Beethoven upon the
development of his character has already been noticed.
We hear it said that precocious children in poor circumstances have
no other way of getting the money requisite for a rational education
than by such concert tours. Were this assertion verified, it would be
time that such a shocking state of things were put to an end. In the
“land of the Almighty Dollar,” as it is called, besides a “Society for
the Protection of Animals” there is a “Society for the Protection of
Children,” invested with certain powers by law; and not long ago, when
a precocious child had been sent over from Germany to win dollars,
the doors of the hall were closed by the authority of that society,
and, much to the disgust of the Herr Impressario, whose business was
damaged, public performances were prohibited. The wonderful child
was sent home by a philanthropist, and with the child was sent a
considerable sum of money, this being intrusted to the father, under
the condition that the child should be provided with a thorough
education and should not appear in public until he was grown up. It is
to be hoped that the time is now not far distant when the destruction
of a genius for the sake of material interests shall belong to the
barbarities overthrown by civilization.
SECULAR HYSTERIA.
Hitherto mental states of individuals have been our chief study in
this book. But collective phenomena of mental disturbance are likewise
met with at several distinct periods of history. The influence which
the insane have exerted upon different branches of human production
and upon the general development of humanity has been already pointed
out. We have particularly referred to the influence of individuals,
such as weak-minded benefactors of the people, mad prophets, and the
imbecile Roman emperors who displayed what is called moral insanity.
But besides such individual phenomena there is a form of mental disease
the peculiarity of which is that it attacks not isolated individuals,
but epidemically entire communities, and in that way influences the
development and metaphysical conceptions (_Weltanschauung_) of whole
nations.
A correct recognition of such states will be of no slight value for
the community; for along with the recognition comes, as we shall see,
an indication of the way to improvement and remedy. Thus it becomes
the task of modern psychiatry not only to treat individual patients,
but also to observe society, and especially to keep guard against that
phenomenon which ought to be termed Secular Hysteria (_Zeithysterie_).
It is a pretty widespread opinion that nervous diseases, and especially
hysteria, have alarmingly increased during the last decades, and that
they are about to increase much more. In all civilized countries,
we are told, and in every stratum of the population, a weakness of
the nervous system manifests itself of which our forefathers had no
knowledge. Neurasthenia and hysteria spread wider and wider, like a
devastating epidemic, attacking not merely the lower classes but just
the “upper ten thousand.” It is educated society which is threatened
with total overthrow by utter derangement of the nerves. “Whither is
this to lead, and how is it to end?” lament some solicitous prophets
who already see yawning before them the gulf by which the enervated
human race is about to be swallowed up.
Let us weigh the reasons which occasion this apprehension. What real
proof is there of this enormous increase of nervous diseases and of
the continually progressive degeneration of civilized man? First of
all, there are the statistics. “Numbers,” we have been told, “can not
lie.” Perhaps not; but those who collect them may fasten upon them very
seriously mistaken labels.
The assiduous statistician ascertains that the insane asylums contain
more women than men. So far, so good. But if he tells us that more
women are insane than men, he labels those numbers erroneously,
for the inequality is really due to the fact that insane males die
off, while insane females survive, relatively speaking. Suppose the
statistics of different countries do show that the number of inmates
of insane asylums is increasing out of all proportion to the growth of
the general population, would it not be superficial in the extreme to
conclude, without further data, that insanity was upon the increase?
At present these statistics mean nothing more than that the number of
patients in such institutions has considerably increased. But when we
consider what great advances have been made in the diagnosis of mental
diseases, and consider also that a great number of such cases, which
were formerly treated unsuccessfully at home, are now treated in such
institutions with good results, because there they are removed from the
detrimental influences of familiar surroundings, while the proper means
and methods for rational treatment are at hand, we shall find that the
seemingly enormous increase of mental disturbances need not cause us
uneasiness.
Other extensive statistical material for nervous diseases is afforded
by the numerous dispensaries of the great cities; but no extended
experience is required to teach that a large proportion of such
cases would not appear if the patients had to pay fixed fees, and
round ones, as they had to do in the good old times when physicians
saw comparatively little of nervous diseases. Our grandmothers had
their “headaches” and their “twitchings in the limbs” like the women
of to-day; but they never dreamed of calling a doctor or going to
the dispensary for such things, so that they were not “statistical
material.”
In the dispensaries for nervous diseases there are numerous chronical
patients who, becoming discouraged in one place, think they would like
to try another doctor; and some of them make a round of sojourns in
different hospitals. Each of them is counted as many times over in the
statistics as there are places where he is treated. This perceptibly
increases the numbers.
These considerations give some idea, though but a slight one, of the
extreme difficulty of making even rough approximate inferences from
sanitary statistics.
But certain observers tell us that exact enumeration is not required.
Hysteria and degeneration of the race stare us, as they aver, daily
in the face. In every department of human activity disorders of the
nervous system are seen. The very style and methods of the art and
literature of the day proclaim a general nervous prostration.
Max Nordau is the protagonist of this widespread opinion. In his eyes,
mental degeneration has seized upon the majority of civilized men to
such a degree that “the upper strata of urban population” form but a
“suffering hospital.” The art, the poetry, the fiction, the philosophy
of the day present the most manifold embodiments of degeneration and
of secular hysteria.
Nordau admits, of course, that degeneration and hysteria have always
existed. “But,” says he, “they formerly showed themselves sporadically,
and had no importance in the life of the whole community. It was only
the vast fatigue which was experienced by the generation on which the
multitude of discoveries and innovations burst abruptly, imposing upon
it organic exigencies greatly surpassing its strength, which created
favourable conditions under which these maladies could gain ground
enormously and become a danger to civilization.”[104] The conception of
secular hysteria which advances epidemically and attacks whole classes
is therefore, according to Nordau, only applicable to the present time;
and of this he says: “We stand now in the midst of a severe mental
epidemic; of a sort of black death of degeneration and hysteria.”[105]
But in declaring that in former times hysteria was but of sporadic
occurrence and attained no importance for the life of society as a
whole, Nordau falls into a grave error. Mental diseases, and especially
hysteria, have, from the earliest times to the present, exercised a
tremendous influence upon the current _Weltanschauung_ or metaphysical
conception of the universe and upon the whole mental development, and
that precisely because they not only occurred sporadically, but, as
we shall soon see, attacked the masses in the form of epidemics, and
so became of the highest significance and importance for the life of
society as a whole.
Religious enthusiasm and proneness to the mystic and the occult
formed, even in the highest antiquity, an important factor of those
degenerate and hysterical individuals who entertained the delusion that
they were in communication with good or with bad spirits, and who by
that channel influenced the masses not a little. A great number of
the priestesses who delivered oracular responses to the Greeks “with
strong quakings of their body” were psychopathic subjects undergoing
the hysterical convulsions well known to us to-day. Hence epilepsy,
which in those days was not discriminated from hysterical cramps,
came to be called the _morbus sacer_, or sacred disease. Plutarch,
in his description of the Pythian priestess, delineates the typical
image of a hysterical subject who, in ecstatic convulsion, stammered
unintelligible words, into which the priests injected some sense.
But hysteria, with its inclination to religious enthusiasm, was not
limited to separate persons. On the contrary, we meet with it among all
peoples and in all periods of history; and among all peoples we meet
with it in the form of epidemics of various kinds. But never did this
disease find a better or more fertile soil in which to thrive than in
the Middle Ages of northern Europe, marked as they were by ignorance
and superstition; and, accordingly, we find that epidemics of hysteria
then assumed dimensions surpassing those of any similar outbursts in
other centuries. A great many fine books have been written about the
individual and epidemic crazes of those ages. The French have made
particularly careful researches into the matter. Let it suffice here to
adduce a few examples in order to show how great an influence hysteria,
in its collective manifestation, exercised upon the social relations
and entire development of civilization of those times.
Calmeil[106] describes a great number of hysterical epidemics of
different forms. One of the principal eruptions in Germany was
demonomania, or _Teufelswahn_. “In the year 1549,” says Calmeil, “a
delusion called _Vaudoisie_ prevailed in Artois, that the devils
carried many secretly in the night to the assemblies, where compacts
were made with Satan and where carnal intercourse took place. Without
knowing how, the participants of the nocturnal meetings found
themselves next morning back in their dwellings. At the place of
assemblage is a devil of human form whose face, however, is seen by
none. He reads his commands to them, and then every one has to offer
an indecent salute; and he gives them money, wine and food in great
quantities. Thereupon each takes a woman--for there are women and men
together there--the light is extinguished, and they carnally converse.
Suddenly every one is back at the place whence he came. On account
of this delusion many persons of Arras, both gentle and simple, were
imprisoned and stretched on the rack.”[107]
A manifestation equally widespread in Germany was anthropophagy--that
is, the delusion that the Devil and his worshippers lived on human
flesh. Men were believed to live in the neighbourhood of Berne and of
Lausanne who had given themselves to the Devil and who ate their own
children. Hundreds of men were for this stretched on the rack or burned
at the stake. Indeed, there were a number of insane persons who thought
that they themselves were in league with the Devil, and that they slew
children. A woman who was executed at Berne testified: “We lie in
wait especially for unbaptized children, but also for those who are
baptized, particularly when they are not protected by the sign of the
cross. We kill them by our words and ceremonies as they lie in their
cradles or by their parents’ sides. So people suppose they have been
stifled or have just died of themselves. Then we secretly steal them
out of the earth and boil them until, after separating the bones, the
whole meat becomes fluid and potable. Of the more solid parts we make
a magic salve for our arts and transformations. We bottle the juice,
and when a neophyte drinks a few drops of it he has a share in our
science.”[108]
The bull of Innocent VIII, which appeared in 1484, showed how
deep-rooted the devil-delusion was in Germany. Everywhere people talked
of how there was a great league with devils whose votaries committed
deeds of shame in their assemblies; of how they were under obligation
to destroy and consume newborn babes before they were baptized. In
one year after the publication of the bull, forty-one women were
executed in Burbia because in their nocturnal assemblies they always
strangled, boiled, and ate a child. Midwives were on the Rhine feared
more than ordinary witches. Since their calling brought them daily
into connection with newborn babes, it must plainly be of the utmost
consequence to the Devil to win them over to his service. A midwife
who was burned alive at Dann, near Basel, accused herself of having
killed more than forty children.[109] Bodin adds that she afterward
by night disinterred the bodies and ate of them, baking the meat in
a stove.[110] Among the persons who were burned in Strassburg, one
woman was distinguished by her insensibility to the most terrible
tortures. She declared that this freedom from pain was due to her
being embrocated with the fat of a newborn child.[111] This sort of
delirium was very widely spread under Innocent III. “The inclination to
worship the Devil appears in many families to be hereditary and in many
localities to be endemic.” The religious delusion was, as is commonly
the case, connected with states of sexual excitement and delusions
belonging thereto.
Toward the middle of the sixteenth century there broke out in many
places in Germany, especially in convents, epidemic convulsions which
exhibited the typical image of _la grande hystérie_ and were connected
with symptoms of religious delusions and of sexual excitement. Calmeil
cites the following report upon the malady in one convent: “The
majority of the nuns had at that time been living for more than fifty
days exclusively upon turnip juice. Their sickness would begin by the
vomiting of a black liquid so sharp and acrid that it would take the
skin off their tongues and lips. Their nights soon became restless.
They would suddenly walk in their sleep. They would think they heard
a sound of human lamentation, and on hurrying to the spot would find
nobody. When they had passed their urine, they immediately afterward
wet the bed or their linen. They often had the sensation of being
tickled on the soles of their feet, and could not keep from laughing.
They were thrown out of bed and rolled on the floor, as if they had
been pulled out by the feet. Their arms and legs were contorted in
every direction, and their faces were convulsively drawn up. They
would leap high and then fling themselves with all their force upon
the floor again. Many bore bruises on their bodies. Often, when they
seemed perfectly quiet and sane, they would suddenly fall down, lose
the use of speech, and remain stretched on the ground as if they had
completely lost consciousness. Then they would throw themselves out of
their apparent immobility convulsively into the air with such violence
and strength that those about could hardly hold them down. Many found
it too hard to keep themselves erect, and crawled on their hands and
knees. Others clambered up to the roof beams, and let themselves hang
head down.”[112]
Such cases of typical hysteria appeared everywhere in the form of
epidemics, and with special frequency in convents. Of one convent
we read: “It was singular that as soon as one nun had her fit, the
others, even in distant parts of the building, would immediately go off
into fits as soon as they heard the noise of a person falling. The nuns
had no power of will at all; they bit themselves, struck and bit their
mates, knocked against one another, and endeavoured vehemently to wound
strangers. Upon any attempt to control the indecency of their conduct,
their tumult and exaltation would become more angry. If they were left
to themselves, they would soon come to biting and wounding without
seeming to feel the least pain.” Such subjects were considered to be
bewitched or possessed of the Devil. They were treated by exorcisms and
conjurations which often increased their sufferings.
Not women alone were attacked by the disease; men were visited in
the same way. Gilles de la Tourette[113] gives an account of such an
epidemic, according to a description by Hecker.[114] We read: “In
Aix-la-Chapelle, in 1574, troops of men and women from Germany were
seen labouring under a common madness and displaying in the streets
and churches this singular spectacle. With clasped hands, and carried
away by an inward compulsion which they could not master, they danced
for hours and kept up the spectacle without being abashed by those
who were about, until they would fall exhausted to the ground. Then
they would complain of their great agony, and would groan as though
they were going to die, until people wrapped their abdomens with linen
cloths, whereupon they would come to themselves and be free for a time
from their sufferings. The object of this was to dispel the wind which
set in after the attack. People often resorted to the simpler method
of planting blows of the fist or kicks upon their abdomens. During
their dance the subjects had visions. They did not see or hear; but in
their imagination they beheld spirits whose names they pronounced, or
rather shrieked out.... In well-developed cases the fits began with
epileptiform convulsions. The subjects fell snorting to the ground
without consciousness, and foamed at the mouth. Then, all at once, they
got up and began their dance with frightful wrenchings. In a few months
this plague extended from Aix-la-Chapelle as far as the Netherlands.”
Like the men and women, children were likewise attacked. Calmeil
adduces the following example: “Toward the end of the winter of 1566
the majority of the foundlings in the hospital of Amsterdam were seized
with convulsions and delirium. Thirty children (other accounts say
seventy) suffered from the malady. They tumbled suddenly to the ground,
rolled from half an hour to an hour upon the floor, as if possessed,
and when they then stood up they awoke as from a deep sleep. They did
not know what had happened. Prayers, conjurations, and exorcisms of
such power that they would certainly have driven out the Devil were
of no avail. After a longer duration of the disease the children
finally began to vomit. They threw up nails, needles, wool, pieces of
linen, bits of skin, and other foreign bodies which they had secretly
swallowed down. They climbed like cats upon the walls and roofs, spoke
in unknown tongues, and had such a terrific look that it scared people.
This was more than sufficient for regarding them as possessed. At the
sight of many women they made peculiar gestures, and such women were
regarded as witches.”[115]
A phenomenon often seen to-day in insane asylums is, that patients
think themselves to be beasts, such as dogs, cats, monkeys, wolves,
etc., and behave accordingly. In the Middle Ages this gave rise to
the superstition of the Werewolf. The word is formed from _wolf_ and
the obsolete word _wër_, in Gothic _vair_, in Latin _vir_, man. Such
persons, who during epidemics were sometimes found in great numbers,
ran about the woods on all fours, lived and behaved exactly like
beasts, fell upon men who might pass by, attacked even riders and
vehicles, and stole children and devoured their flesh. Such things
were known to the ancients too. The Scythians, according to Herodotus,
knew the werewolf; the Greeks, especially the Arcadians, spoke of a
λυκάνθρωπος; and the Romans of the _versipellis_. Toward the end of the
year 1573 the peasants in the vicinity of Dôles were authorized to hunt
werewolves. The parliamentary license ran thus: “In the territories
of Espagny, Salvange, Courchapon and surrounding places, it is known
that for some days a werewolf has been seen. It has secretly stolen
and killed several children, and has also attacked riders who have
escaped it with difficulty. In consideration of all these things, this
court of justice, wishing to avoid greater damage, allows the inmates
and inhabitants of the said places and others, contrary to the edict
concerning hunting, to come together with spears, halberds, pikes,
crossbows, and sticks to hunt and pursue the said werewolf in all
places where they can find him, and to bind him and to kill him without
punishment or revenge.... Given in the council of the said court of
justice this 13th day of September, in the year of grace 1573.”[116] A
man captured as a werewolf confessed that he was changed into a beast,
and asserted that his skin grew inside out so that the fur was not
seen. They cut off his arms and legs, to make sure he spoke the truth,
and he bled to death.
The disease of demonomania continued to spread. According to one
report, a thousand dancers filled the streets of Metz. Young people of
both sexes fled from their parents, and servants from their masters,
and allowed themselves to be carried away by the epidemic, and to take
part in the insane proceedings.[117]
In the electoral see of Trèves, within a few years, six thousand five
hundred men were executed as enchanted and as bewitched.
“In 1609 the Government was informed that all Labourd, the
district approximately coinciding with the present Département des
Basses-Pyrénées swarmed with devil-worshippers. Seven-and-twenty
parishes were attacked by the malady. The difficulty was greatest in
Siboure, St. Jean de Luz, Andage, and the neighbourhood of Bayonne. The
account of this epidemic is a shining contribution to the history of
insanity as a social disease.”[118] All these sufferers were considered
as bewitched and possessed. The ministers of Henry IV held it to be
imperatively requisite to bring the whole power of justice against
witches; and hundreds of human beings were burned or incarcerated. The
judges worked the rack actively in order to get complete confessions
from the bewitched and from those who were sold to the Devil. Often
the victims fell into ecstatic convulsion, and boasted, when they were
tortured nigh unto death, that they felt inexpressible joy at finding
themselves brought near to the Devil, who doubtless stood in their
minds for the great adversary of the court. Many made vain efforts to
utter a word when they were virtually throttled. A report says: “The
Devil sought to vex them so that, even if they wished to confess, they
should be unable to bring out a word. We saw with our own eyes that,
as soon as they had spoken one word of confession, the Devil sprang at
their throat, and that a hindrance mounted from their chest to their
chin, just as when a plug is put before the opening of a cask in order
to hinder the flow of the liquor.” This describes a common symptom of
hysteria which we call _globus hystericus_.
The influence which hysterical subjects exercised upon the whole
metaphysics, or view of the universe (_Weltanschauung_) of those times,
was tremendous. While superstition and fanaticism may truly be called
the best fertilizers to yield a crop of hysteria--and they have vastly
contributed to its extension and large growth--at the same time,
hysteria, in its turn, with its astonishing symptoms, far beyond the
classificatory powers of those ages, has had the effect of enormously
feeding and propagating superstition. In short, the two phenomena,
hysteria and superstition, played into one another’s hands; each was
alternately cause and effect; and between them they called forth
that dismal period in which the human mind was loaded with fetters,
and postponed for centuries its free possession of its heritage. The
author who is capable of saying that before this our time “hysteria
only showed itself sporadically, and had no importance in the life of
the whole community,” is not acquainted with the history of insanity
and the biography of the human race. In order to pass judgment upon
the present times from a psychological point of view, the very first
requisite is an acquaintance with times gone by, and a tracing out of
the path which has brought our culture to its present height.
Before passing on to the study of the present, let us first ask why and
how it was that diseases of the mind took on an epidemic character.
Most of those authors who have made hysteria the subject of deep
investigations agree in this: that _suggestibility_ (using this word
approximately in its psychological sense) is a particular mark of the
state of soul of the hysterical.[119] Every man is to a certain degree
susceptible of _suggestion_. Everyday life shows this. Merely seeing
somebody else laugh, gape, hawk, or cough, makes other people do so;
and so it is with other semi-voluntary acts. Hence it is that people
are accustomed to say that laughing and gaping are “contagious.” In
hysteria, _suggestibility_ is present in greater or less measure,
according to the intensity of the disease. The subjects usually possess
little or no force of will, but are receptive of outward influences.
This characteristic becomes particularly apparent during emotions, such
as anxiety, fear, terror, etc. An infinity of examples shows that grave
states of hysteria are brought on by passionate emotion. Frequently it
is a concatenation of such emotions that results at last in hysteria;
whence the extreme importance of education, and of the collective
impressions of childhood for persons of the sort considered, becomes
apparent. As long as children drew in mystical tendencies with their
mother’s milk, and were kept in fear and terror by the belief in the
apparition of the Devil and in witchcraft, it is self-evident that the
doors for the development of hysteria were opened, and _suggestibility_
and emotivity appeared in full blossom.
Unintermittent religious observances, imaginary converse with
supernatural beings, such as saints and angels, led first to
hallucinations and ultimately to morbid phenomena of hysteria. To look
upon an ecstatical state, or upon a case of hysterical cramps, was
sufficient to excite similar states in a circle of companions much
disposed to the same thing by anxiety and surprise. Physicians who
devote themselves specially to diseases of the nervous system and who
enjoy a large practice know only too well that, when their anterooms
are thronged, as often as one woman goes into a hysterical fit several
others among those who happen to be there are pretty sure to follow
the example. How much more strongly must the _suggestion_ act if the
individual who originates it is supposed not to be diseased, but, on
the contrary, to have driven some astute bargain with Satan or to be
deep in the lore of the Chaldeans, so that the attack is regarded as
an evidence of superiority!
Severe diseases of the mind proper, such as mania and paranoia, have
undoubtedly also played their parts, and no unimportant ones, in the
production of epidemics. All the phenomena of those diseases which are
now speedily confined to asylums, continued in former ages before the
public eye, and fell like sparks upon the magazine of superstition and
mysticism in the people. Those who raved were supposed to be witches;
and weak-minded persons who imagined themselves to be animals, etc.,
were taken for werewolves at least. As for those who were attacked by
religious delusions of greatness, they were rated as holy souls endowed
with the grace of God’s Spirit. The influence of these subjects upon
the mass of the hysterical, with their high-grade _suggestibility_,
must, of course, have been a quite fatal one. Conditions which in the
one were produced by insane ideas and imperative motions were called
forth in the mass of the others by the force of _suggestion_, and were
terribly spread.
The influence of these phenomena--that is to say, of insanity, but
more particularly of endemic eruptions of hysteria, upon the whole
culture--is shown in the literature of that time. Ideas of sorcery, of
the apparition of the Devil, and of witchcraft prevailed not only among
the rude populace, the mass of the people, but also among scholars of
renown and consideration--men who had accomplished great things in
their generation. Bulky tomes were devoted to the discussion of matters
of witchcraft and possession. Pierre Delancre, a councillor of the
Parliament of Bordeaux, wrote three large volumes on the subject; and
his conclusion is, that to spare the life of a single person who is
even suspected of sorcery[120] is a crime.
With the gradual awakening of science and the beginning--or, more
accurately speaking, the restoration--of the doctrine of mental
diseases, the fatal consequences of superstition became milder, and
the extension of hysterical epidemics was narrowed. To recognise that
possession does not imply dealings with the enemy, but is simply
a disease, was to break off the poisoned tip from the arrow of
suggestion, and thenceforward the morbid impulse to imitation of the
insane symptoms lost much of its strength and asserted itself less
frequently.
No doubt hysterical epidemics based upon religion continue even to
this day. The last century was by no means poor in such phenomena.
They are to be met with still. The religious epidemics which broke out
in Sweden in the years 1841 and 1842, and which have been described
by the Swedish psychiatrist Sonden, are good examples.[121] To this
very day, among certain religious denominations--the Methodist Church
of the United States, for instance--phenomena can still be observed
bearing a close resemblance to the mediæval epidemics. I myself had
an opportunity of attending a Methodist camp-meeting, and was there
enabled to assure myself of the overwhelming force _suggestion_ may
exert upon a crowd of thousands of people. Men and women, children
and superannuated persons, behaved for all the world like mad. They
howled and shrieked until they were too exhausted to bring forth a
sound. Here and there one would leap up. He was “inspired,” and would
communicate to the crowd his divine inspirations, drawn in reality from
hallucination or auto-suggestion. I saw one young man climb a tree,
imagining that he saw Christ in it.
The principal causes of the spread of epidemics of insanity and of the
so-called secular hysteria are, then, _suggestibility_, emotionalism,
the impulse to mimicry, and the tendency to mysticism. These important
symptoms form the well-ripened dung heap for the growth of whatever
mushroom crop of occult and supernatural ideas you will, whether from
the spawn of superstition and fanaticism or from that of a lore that
drolly mimics a true and living science. During the _Renaissance_
of literature and art, which was followed by that of science, the
religious fanaticism of the Middle Ages gradually lost its energy. The
corresponding phenomena of our century may be called runners from that
dismal period. But secular hysteria has by this time gradually assumed
a different character. Belief in the devil and witches has faded
quite away. Nowadays phenomena that seem unaccountable are produced
in great variety by the hysteria which still subsists, and lead to
crazy doctrines and errors, but they are new ones. Spiritualism,
which flourished most in the middle part of the century, had such an
origin. All those surprising phenomena that in earlier times had been
referred to the agency of the devil and of witches were now treated as
evidences of spiritual presence, telepathy, etc. Hysteria and religious
superstition had formerly communicated each vitality to the other; now
hysteria and pseudo-science intensified and propagated one another. The
literature to which spiritualism has given rise is perfectly enormous,
and forms a pendant to the old books on witchcraft. Scientific men of
standing write in our times thick books to discuss the evidences of the
most incredible theories about spirits, about veracious dreams, about
prophecies, about telepathy, about clairvoyance, about premonitions,
etc.
Such teachings could not fail to exert a decided influence upon the
_suggestible_ and mystically inclined mob of hysterics. The belief
in ghosts continually spread, spiritualistic societies were formed
everywhere. The social psychological situation was strongly analogous
to that of the Middle Ages in regard to witchcraft. The differences
were chiefly extrinsic, although it must be confessed that they were
not unimportant, for nobody was any longer burned at the stake or
stretched on the rack.
The success of a spiritualistic sitting required that there should be
among the company one strongly stamped morbid case, such as a person
subject to cataleptic seizures or to hallucinations, or something of
the sort. This person, who would have been considered a witch in the
Middle Ages, was now termed a “medium,” a middle term or _tertium
quid_, through which the spirits of the dead could be brought into
communication with the living. The mysterious darkness in which the
sittings were held, the communion hymn that was softly intoned by the
company, the excitement and strain with which the manifestations were
expected, the medium’s voice of awed assurance--these things, together
with physiological conditions to which we need not refer, beclouded
the brain and heightened the already high _suggestibility_ of the
hysterical circle. In this way appearances of ghosts of their lost
ones were _suggested_ to great numbers of persons. To the visions were
joined auditory delusions. They heard the ghosts speak, and conversed
with them; and with actual conversation all remnants of doubt of their
living reality were swept away.
The psychological conditions were thus essentially the same as in
the religious epidemics of the Middle Ages. There appearances of
infernal spirits and of witches were _suggested_; here the ghosts
of dead relatives were seen and heard. Hysteria, with its high
_suggestibility_, accompanied by external circumstances adapted to
excite it, acted as common cause in the two cases.
Transmission of delusions and hallucinations, or, so to say, “psychical
contagion,” is, in the experience of the practising psychiatrist,
by no means a phenomenon of the extremest infrequency. In that form
of mental derangement which goes by the name of _folie à deux_ two
persons share the same hallucinations and deluded ideas. One of them
is usually chronically insane, the other a degenerate, weak-minded, or
hysterical person to whom deluded ideas and deceptions of sense are
suggested by the former. I have myself had opportunities of observing
a number of such cases. Among others, there was a man, chronically
insane, who had erected a completely systematic structure of delusions.
He was the deputy of God on earth. It was his duty to promulgate God’s
will and to better humanity. In consequence of his high mission, he had
to endure many enmities and snares. He was persecuted (so he fancied)
in every possible way. Attempts were even made (he thought) to put
him out of the way. Moreover, his ideas of grandeur and persecution
were nourished by corresponding deceptions of sense. Now, this patient
had a wife. This wife regarded her husband as the delegate of God,
believed every word he said, and was completely inoculated with his
delusion. He _suggested_ to her his hallucinations; so that she
confirmed every assertion he made. She was a weak-minded person, who,
under other outward circumstances, would most likely have exhibited no
peculiarities out of the ordinary.
In company, and still more in large assemblies, the _suggestibility_ of
almost everybody is heightened.
Thus, then, morbid symptoms are propagated in any sort of crowded
meeting, and since at spiritualistic reunions the above-mentioned
outward conditions are particularly favourable to _suggestion_, it
is not necessary that people should be downright weak-minded. It is
only requisite that there should be among them a goodly sprinkling of
_suggestible_ persons of somewhat hysterical disposition; and when
these are once attacked, the strength of _suggestion_ that is brought
to bear upon the remainder of the company will be multiplied.
It has been fully proved, and is generally admitted by spiritualists
themselves, that from the beginning a great deal of trickery--partly
mischievous, partly mercenary or otherwise deliberate--was mingled with
the delusions. Besides, hysterical subjects are apt to be untruthful.
At the same time mere jugglery would not have gone far if it had had
nothing but cold understanding to work upon. Very often fraud was not
present, and still oftener was superfluous. The real cause of the
spiritualistic movement, broadly considered, was mental and nervous
derangement.
Spiritualism has now, in the main, died out nearly as much as religious
superstition and fanaticism have done. It is at present almost entirely
in the hands of swindlers and their weak-minded victims.
With our present knowledge of hysteria, its causes and symptoms, men
of science and all who are enlightened by its teachings are under a
positive obligation, which can not be shaken off, and must not be
shirked, to combat everything which tends to further superstition or
to nourish the inclination of the people toward mysticism. Our duty it
equally is to set our faces against those pernicious practices which
are calculated to favour and augment that fatal symptom of hysteria,
a heightened _suggestibility_. The very first of these practices is
that of hypnotism. The hypnotic state is brought about by _suggestion_
alone. It greatly increases the suggestibility of the subject. A number
of the most eminent authors have become convinced that hypnotism
is always a morbid state closely allied to hysteria. Charcot has
asserted this most decidedly. His most eminent scholar, Gilles de la
Tourette,[122] says: “We believe that with Cathelineau we have shown
by irrefragable proofs that hysteria and hypnotism are two morbid
affections which are closely allied, and, in particular, that hypnosis
is only possible in persons who have a tendency toward hysteria,
although this disease may not have as yet otherwise manifested itself.
It is easily to be conceived, then, what an influence hypnotic
experiments must have upon the calling forth of hysterical phenomena.”
Jolly,[123] too, comes to the conclusion that “habitual hypnotics do
not differ essentially from hysterical subjects.”
Although not all authors accept this conception of hypnotism, to
which, for my part, I give in my full adhesion, yet all do agree
that hypnotism in the hands of the laity, used as an amusement and a
curiosity, may have the most unwholesome consequences. I know one case
in my own experience in which such irresponsible fooling, kept up in
spite of emphatic warnings, was followed by severe hysterical attacks.
It is absolutely revolting that public exhibitions of professional
hypnotizers are allowed to exercise their baleful influence unchecked.
The subjects whom the hypnotizer selects from the audience are persons
of high _suggestibility_, inclined to hysteria. The persons present are
convinced of the real power of the hypnotizer, because the subjects
are people with whom they are acquainted, who perhaps are members of
their own family, so that all collusion and trickery are excluded. But
fathers and mothers ought to reflect that it is a morbid state which
is being induced in their daughters, that they are inoculated with
a dangerous poison whose consequences may be destructive. The young
ladies who are put into a cataleptic condition at the exhibition, who
are made to eat raw potatoes for apples, and the like, are led to show
off a mental weakness, and to be brought into a state of absolute
idiocy to excite the hilarity of the audience. These are the persons
who in spiritualistic _séances_ think they see ghosts of the departed,
and who some centuries ago would have been joining in a wild dance
in the street, or who would have committed actions leading to their
execution, as persons possessed of the devil. Such exhibitions ought to
be prohibited, as they are in France, for their pernicious influence is
beyond question. As for the employment of hypnotism as a therapeutic
agent, that is a question into which I do not here enter.
The above study of the causes and mode of origination of the so-called
secular hysteria shows very clearly that this morbid phenomenon can
be brought about under the most diverse outward conditions, and that,
in fact, we meet with it in history in the most widely separate
fields. The psychological conditions are, however, everywhere the
same--suggestibility, excessive emotionalism, the impulse to mimicry,
and the inclination to mysticism.
It is highly important to recognise public hysterias in good season, in
order to work against the pernicious influence of morbid suggestions.
It is therefore indubitably a service to the public to sound in time
the warning voice, and thus protect humanity against great harm. Such
a duty Nordau thinks that he fulfils when he tells us that we stand
“in the midst of a severe mental epidemic, a sort of black death of
degeneration and hysteria.”
Whether diseases of the nerves, and particularly degeneration and
hysteria, considered as sporadic cases, are at present more frequently
to be observed than in earlier times can not be determined with
certainty. Pertinent statistics are wanting; and, indeed, all but a
small percentage of cases of hysteria and degeneration remain without
medical treatment, and consequently escape all statistics. Some general
remarks of Nordau--as, for example, that people nowadays grow gray
and bald earlier than they used to do, and that we lose our power of
optical accommodation earlier than our forefathers did--seem to be
assertions without one particle of proof. Now, without proof they can
have no weight, unless we are to allow our own opinions to be formed by
_suggestion_.
The chief arguments for Nordau’s opinions are therefore drawn not from
the observation of individuals, but from the social phenomena of the
period, our mental civilization, in which he believes that he detects
the grave malady of universal degeneration and hysteria. Criticisms,
some judicious and some not so, of fashions, dress, furniture, and
the mode of life of modern society, bring him to the conclusion that
while “to the Philistine the current terms--caprice, eccentricity,
affectation of novelty, imitation--afford a sufficient explanation” of
the phenomena, yet to the physician, “especially to the specialist for
diseases of the nerves and the mind,” two definite states of disease
are to be diagnosed: to wit, degeneration and hysteria. I must confess
that I myself must, for that “specialist in diseases of the nerves
and of the mind,” Dr. Nordau, fall into the class of Philistines,
inasmuch as I am unable to perceive that a “thin moustache” or “wild
moustache,” that very short hair or very long hair, afford sufficient
grounds for a diagnosis of degeneration or of hysteria, or that the
_coiffure_ and dress of a modern lady, however eccentric and _outré_,
constitute a morbid symptom, indicating a black death of degeneration.
Nay, I must with shame confess that, far from finding fault with the
fashions, it had appeared to me that the present dress of ladies bore,
in many respects, the marks of sounder sense than the costumes of other
epochs. I recall, for example, the hoop skirts of 1850, or those of the
reign of Queen Anne, before “the age of degeneration and hysteria” had
set in; the side puffs of 1850 extending laterally six inches right
and left from the head, or the vast structures which were carried on
the heads at an earlier period. Another point may be recollected: In
former days--say in 1850, as a time perfectly remembered by many--the
iron rule of fashion was such that every kind of beauty was forced
to decorate itself according to one strict model, while ladies now
follow their own individual tastes and consult their own convenience
much more. Again, that barbaric custom of wounding the female person
in order to stick shiny trinkets into the apertures so effected is
becoming rapidly extinct.
As for the habitations of modern society, or, in Nordau’s phrase, the
“stage properties and lumber-rooms, rag-shops and museums,” where a
“friar’s cowl” or the “red mantle of Fra Diavolo” wraps the master of
the house “like a Jackpudding”--these things, if such things there
be, are shocking enough, I readily grant, to the feelings of an
æsthetician. But, after all, I am unable to detect in them anything
worse than coarse taste and coarse ostentation, qualities which surely
have never ceased to mark the majority of the human race. These
things are heirlooms from our monkey ancestors, not marks of recent
degeneration. When Dr. Nordau declares that the “specialist physician
for diseases of the nerves and of the mind” recognises degeneracy
and hysteria “at first glance” in the passions and tastes of the
“fashionable world,” I do not believe that he speaks for any great
proportion of the profession.
Whether or not there is such a thing as “correct” taste or “incorrect”
taste is a question that has been endlessly disputed in spite of the
sensible proverb, “De gustibus non est disputandum.” If, however, a
certain kind of taste is to be regarded as a symptom of insanity,
it will plainly be necessary to agree first upon some standard of
correct taste. Now, who shall be the arbiter in that matter? Shall it
be the specialist for nervous diseases? If so, what a revolution will
be imperative in our medical schools! Instead of students devoting
their time to anatomy and pathology, they must be busy forming their
tastes, attending lectures on ladies’ dress, and, in short, must give
themselves over to things of that kind. Is it not to be feared lest
after that sort of culture dealings with the insane should offend their
supersensitive organizations? Yet however exclusive their devotion
to aesthetics, differences of artistic opinion would still subsist
among the “specialists in nervous diseases.” Among them might still
be found those who, instead of seeing a “plague of degeneration” in
modern dress, would think it a happy release from the ideas of those
good old times when, in the absence of secular hysteria, men wore
embroidered coats and had their hands half covered with lace, and when
a long-queued bagwig covered their heads.
In short, Nordau does not give a single plausible reason for treating
modern customs and fashions as symptoms of advanced degeneracy and
hysteria. Ever since women became women they have taken pleasure in the
adornment of their persons. That feminine passion has existed at all
times. Nordau does not tell us why, in modern women, it is to be taken
as a sign of an epidemic disease peculiar to our age. The simple truth
is, that he does not like the present fashions; and that is enough to
make him accuse the rest of the civilized population of the globe of
being degenerate and hysterical.
One of the most important symptoms of universal degeneration is,
according to Nordau, incapacity for adaptation, powerlessness to
accommodate one’s self to the existing order of things. Here, as
elsewhere, he goes too far, setting down anarchists and revolutionists
as degenerates, without further examination. He speaks of a “silly need
of being refractory” on the part of the degenerate, a “union against
taking off one’s hat to people.” In this regard Nordau must consider
his own doctrine as the most striking of all the signs of the times, in
supporting its own contention, for he himself not only protests against
pointed beards, partings of the hair, and cuts of the clothes, but
declares the whole population, with the possible exception of those
who share his tastes, to be diseased in mind.
That is what driving the business of psychiatry in Nordau’s wholesale
style comes to. Whoever judges of a state of mind merely by comparison
with his own sentiments and feelings, and treats every opinion which
departs from his own as morbid, simply makes a layman’s diagnosis; and
such, in plain truth, is the psychiatric dilettantism of Nordau’s whole
book. No doubt Nordau finds in his “mentally decayed contemporaries”
all the symptoms of degeneration which Morel, Magnan, and others have
described. But his way of employing the conceptions of psychiatry marks
his complete dilettantism. Every collector who, with a collector’s
passion, buys old bric-a-brac suffers, according to Nordau, from
_oniomania_, or the mania for purchasing. Whoever occupies himself more
with any matter than Dr. Nordau deems fitting has imperative ideas.
Whoever writes what Dr. Nordau does not approve is a graphomaniac.
Whoever composes a drama of love suffers from erotomania. Whoever opens
the discussion of a problem concerning which Dr. Nordau has formed his
opinion suffers from the mania for disputation or the mania for doubt.
In this way it is easy in any given man to detect any given symptom of
insanity.
The reader of Nordau is inclined to regard him as a humourist rather
than as a strictly scientific man. But comical and, in part, diverting
as his psychiatric performances are, even to the professional man,
yet, after all, the matter has its serious side, especially since his
book is addressed to the laity, among whom such dilettantism may have
quite fatal consequences. We shall therefore be unable to leave it
unnoticed, however little pleasure there may be in the discussion of
such unprofessional opinions.
“The severe mental epidemic,” “the black death of degeneration and
hysteria,” finds its principal embodiment, according to Nordau’s
statement, in the art, poetry, and philosophy of the present time.
It may here be objected that artists and poets form only a minute
percentage of the community, and that it is impossible from them, and
nothing more, to conclude anything in regard to the whole population,
and to base on this such a smashing diagnosis. To that Nordau replies
that the degeneration of our time shows itself in art and literature,
and that the great secular hysteria is marked in the influence which
a degenerate art can exercise upon the public. Modern art would
correspond to the witch superstition of the Middle Ages which exercised
its baleful influence upon the masses. It is admitted that the secular
hysteria of the Middle Ages forms but a feeble pendant to our modern
disease, for Nordau expressly assures us that in former times hysteria
had no importance for the general life of society, while it now crushes
down the whole human race. As for that art and literature which are,
in Nordau’s estimation, the embodiment of degeneracy, I shall consider
them in the next chapter. We here concern ourselves only with their
effect upon the masses--that is, with secular hysteria. Nordau takes
as a sample a number of eminent poets and _littérateurs_, and, having
reached the conviction that every one of them is a degenerate, he
hangs some sort of _-ism_ upon each and thinks that in this way he has
produced a new form of disease, in comparison wherewith the demonomany
and lycanthropy of the Dark Ages were innocent phenomena. For instance,
Nordau specifies an Ibsenism, a Tolstoiism, and various other such
_-isms_.
It would, at any rate, be exceedingly interesting if Dr. Nordau could
furnish us with accurate analyses of these _-ism_ diseases, and tell
us in what they consist. But of this there is not one word. He just
mentions the authors, labels each with his cheaply manufactured _-ism_,
and thus the plague of the great secular hysteria receives its names.
To judge by what Nordau tells us, Ibsenism and Tolstoiism are symptoms
of a disease which has attacked the population and which manifests
itself in states of high emotion. Surely, then, since there is supposed
to be a terrible and pestlike malady whose symptoms are Ibsenism,
etc., these phenomena must greatly surpass all previous hysterias of
the masses. But in point of fact there is not the slightest trace of
anything of the sort. Like every new phenomenon, the writers named
have excited public interest in a certain measure; but there never
has been observed any morbid state or affection of the masses due to
the influence of any of those writers. If by Ibsenism, Tolstoiism,
etc., Nordau means morbid conceptions of the world, of art, of social
relations, etc., it only amounts to this: that those authors’ ways of
thinking do not accord with his own. In the place of objective proof of
disease Dr. Nordau leaves a blank.
Anybody acquainted with modern society must agree that the influence of
those poets and writers to whose names Nordau attaches the termination
_-ism_ is a pretty slight one. How many people have ever heard of Ibsen
and Tolstoi? For most persons art is but a pastime. They only go to the
theatre for recreation and distraction. Well-to-do people, especially
in the great cities, may have seen a play by Ibsen. The worthy matron
pronounces that Nora did wrong in running away from her husband and
children. But they trouble their heads very little with any purpose the
writer may have had. That is all the Ibsenism that is prevalent.
As for Tolstoi’s philosophical view’s, they are neither so well known
nor so influential that one can speak even of a school of Tolstoiism.
The unhappy and insane Nietzsche does not represent the way of thinking
of the public, and never attained such importance that we could
conclude from his success that his doctrines represented the general
state of mind.
For an echo of the alleged degenerate art we shall therefore seek
in vain in the mass of mankind; and as for the thence inferred
“putrefaction” of our contemporaries and the “black death of degeneracy
and hysteria,” they are mere phantoms of the pessimistic fancy of Dr.
Nordau and his learned colleagues.
Had Nordau in his sharp critique of existing conditions in the fields
of society, literature, and art made no pretension to any other
standpoint than that of the æsthetician and art critic, his work,
in spite of its many eccentricities and falsities, would undeniably
not have been without service, for he lays the scourge that is their
due upon many a folly and absurdity of our time. But when he wraps
himself in the solemn garb of science and, assuming the position of a
psychiatrist, hurls the ban of degeneracy and hysteria upon everything
that does not meet his approval, he can only be called a psychiatric
_dilettante_.
It may be granted that a sort of secular hysteria really does exist.
No doubt many erroneous doctrines of art and science are propagated
by the _suggestibility_ and emotionalism of the hysterical masses,
and many evils are partly due to these phenomena. At the same time,
it is certain that, thanks to the progress of science, the influence
of mental disorders upon the general culture is decidedly less at
present than in former periods of history, and that to-day hysterias
of the masses, such as broke out in the Middle Ages, are relatively
infrequent. This, however, does not imply that the number of isolated
cases of derangement is less than it formerly was.
ART AND INSANITY.
A psychological judgment of a man demands a double estimation of his
mental action. We have to consider that action, in the first place,
as strictly personal, and in the second place as a link in the great
chain of growing humanity. Every epoch has its errors and falsities,
and every man is subject to the spirit of his times, from which he is
powerless to free himself. Even those mental heroes who outstripped
their age in hardy flight and turned culture into new paths clung in
part to the erroneous views of their contemporaries, and, as Goethe
says, were connected with their century by their defects. We need never
consider the errors and perversities of the time as a morbid symptom,
for then all mankind would always have been mad. What one period of
history has held to be high and holy another has derided and scorned;
and absolute, irrefragable truth no age has been able to bring forth.
The error of the time must not, therefore, be confounded with that
phenomenon which was described in the last chapter under the name of
secular hysteria. In this latter we have a typical image of disease
observable at all times and particularly characterized by definite
sensational ideas. It makes no difference what the matter of the ideas
is; it is rather the whole behaviour--the collective phenomenon of the
persons concerned--by which they are marked as sick. The same persons
who, in the Middle Ages, danced through the streets as bewitched, might
perhaps, in other eras, have become fanatic revolutionists; or they
might hold intercourse with spirits of the departed in spiritualistic
circles, but they would always exhibit the same typical image of
hysteria. On the other hand, the error of the time affects all alike,
the strong-minded as much as the weak-minded. Everybody in the Middle
Ages believed in witches and devils, so they can not be called insane
for that. They simply partook of the universal error of their age. If
Luther had been born in the nineteenth century he probably would not
have believed in a personal devil at all.
It would therefore be absurd to judge of mental sanity by comparing the
subject’s opinions with our own. Our only fixed standard is the body of
society. If a scientifically educated man of our day were to pay divine
honour to a bull, and ascribe to it almighty power, there would be a
plain pathological state. But in early Egypt such a belief would accord
with the universal notion of the universe, and in a subject of Pharaoh
would bespeak only the error of his time and no derangement of mind. A
few centuries ago astrology was practised by even the most eminent men.
How firmly Wallenstein believed in such things is well known. So great
a man as Kepler wrote as follows: “According to the configurations of
the rays of the stars at the birth of a man, life flows to the new-born
in this or that form. If the configuration is harmonic, a fine form of
heart arises, and this builds itself a beautiful habitation. At the
same time the strong are born of the strong, the good of the good.
Single cases stand under the might of God and under his permission
in the strength of the tutelary spirit. If the heart is prepared
for evil, one must endeavour to improve it. Harmony is completeness
of relations. Only the Infinite knows the harmony of the spheres in
their full extent; the earth-ball has but a feeble after-feeling. This
after-feeling animates the earth-soul and makes the man cleverer for
thinking and for every deed.”
Just as we look back upon the errors of the past and consider them as
a weakness of humanity gradually overcome, so will future generations
perhaps look back upon us. What we to-day hold for irrefragable truth,
coming generations may indicate as the mightiest errors. The world has
always erred, and so long as there are men there will be errors.
Es irrt der Mensch, so lang er strebt.
(As long as man strives he errs.)
We grow up in the errors of the time, we have them before us from
childhood, and the average man takes them without consideration as
true. Religion, art, morals, manners--all human culture--have their
inheritance of weakness and error handed down from generation to
generation and from century to century.
Es erben sich Gesetz und Rechte
Wie eine ew’ge Krankheit fort.
(Law and rights are inherited like a disease that never dies out.)
One of the chief characteristics of those powerful natures whom the
world has to thank for its progress and its knowledge of new facts
is, therefore, an absolute doubt of the truth of everything. “He who
does not doubt,” says Hagen,[124] “whether what is known concerning
any matter may not be false, has no capacity for discovery; and for
the finding out of new ways and laws, not only is he unfitted who has
little understanding, but so is he, too, who has merely understanding,
who is unable to conceive how it is possible to think otherwise about
things concerning which the world has long since made up its mind.”
Hagen here quotes an admirable remark of Lichtenberg: “The common man
always conforms to the reigning opinion and reigning fashion. He holds
the state in which things now are to be the only one possible, and
assumes an altogether passive attitude. It does not occur to him that
everything, from the form of the furniture to the finest hypothesis,
has been resolved upon in the great council of men of which he is a
member. The great genius, on the other hand, always asks, Might not
this be untrue?”
While, therefore, we should certainly be guilty of a great error if,
judging of an individual, we were to lay the errors of the time to his
account, yet we should proceed in a thoroughly amateurish way if we
were to regard as deranged those great thinkers who doubt the truth
and the value of existing relations, or who in their sentiments and
views depart from common sense. The great crowd has a way of calling
everything “crazy” which it does not understand or which departs from
its ancient habits, however irrational those ways and habits may be.
But whoever is acquainted with the psychical development of humanity
will see in this only a matter of course--phenomena that are necessary
and that continually occur.
To judge an individual, then, it is not so important to consider _what_
he thinks and does as _how_ he thinks it, or what his motives for doing
it may be. “Duo cum faciunt idem non est idem.” That which in one man
may be the symptom of mental derangement is perhaps in another brought
on by a perfectly healthy and rational mental action. The psychiatrist
must therefore not halt at the outward phenomenon, but will have to
consider the casual connection of the psychical condition, and must
endeavour to find the secret springs of the acts or words in question.
National psychology has to proceed in a similar way in judging of
single phenomena. The spirit of the time, the soul of the people, which
is expressed in the most diverse departments--politics, philosophy,
art, literature--can only be appreciated and correctly understood when
it is considered in its causal connections as a link in the great chain
of historical development. Torn from its connections, no epoch of art
or literature can be comprehended, and such fragmentary data will give
rise to mistakes, while the creations of art as parts of a great
whole, as links of a great chain, shed great light upon the thought and
feeling of their time. An exact knowledge of the way in which single
phenomena have arisen, an ascertainment of the motives of definite
artistic expressions, are absolutely requisite for the correct judgment
of art as a symptom of the contemporary soul of the people, as a
partial manifestation of the spirit of the times. Whoever considers our
modern art relations as things in themselves and leaves unnoticed their
connection with times past and their psychological origin, will surely
fail if he wishes to appreciate the same as material for a judgment
upon the collective spirit of the times.
If one walks through a modern exhibition of paintings and observes
there the viewers of pictures, how they sometimes stand shaking their
heads before this picture or that without being able to make out what
it was at all that the artist was trying to paint; if he considers
the peculiar collections of colours, the glaring contrasts, the vague
outlines, the peculiar ground tone, he will be led to say to himself
that our time has introduced a new method of pictorial representation,
and both the art critic and the psychologist must seek the _raison
d’être_ of the new art.
Nordau says: “All these new tendencies, realism or naturalism,
‘decadentism,’ neomysticism, and their sub-varieties, are
manifestations of degeneration and hysteria, and identical with
the mental stigmata which the observations of clinicists have
unquestionably established as belonging to these.”[125] Certain
peculiarities in painting are explained by Nordau as due to defects
of vision of the painter. “The curious style of certain recent
painters--‘impressionists,’ ‘stipplers,’ or ‘mosaists,’ ‘papilloteurs,’
or ‘quiverers,’ ‘roaring’ colourists, dyers in gray and faded
tints--becomes at once intelligible to us if we keep in view the
researches of the Charcot school into the visual derangements in
degeneration and hysteria.”[125] Vagueness of outline is produced,
Nordau says, by nystagmus, or trembling of the eyeball. Insensibility
of patches of the retina occurs among degenerates. The result must be,
he says, that the subjects do not see distinctly rounded images. If
such a person paints what he sees he will be inclined to put spots,
larger or smaller, side by side, the spots not being united together,
or only imperfectly. Some painters, according to Nordau, are capable of
only certain colour-sensations and perceptions, and sometimes see but
a single hue. This affords his explanation of peculiar colourists, the
preference for particular colours, and the monotone frequent in modern
art. Dun-coloured painting is a consequence of complete absence of the
sensation of colour, or _achromatopsia_.
Some colours have, according to Nordau, peculiar effects upon the
nervous system. Thus red has a “force-producing” or “dynamogenous”
property; and thus, says Nordau, it is easy to understand “that
hysterical painters revel in red, and that hysterical beholders take
special pleasure in pictures operating dynamogenously and producing
feelings of pleasure.” Other colours, especially violet, have an
inhibiting and debilitating effect upon the nervous system. “The sight
of this colour has a depressing effect, and the unpleasant feeling
awakened by it induces dejection in a sorrowfully disposed mind. This
suggests that painters suffering from hysteria and neurasthenia will
be inclined to cover their pictures uniformly with the colour most in
accordance with their condition of lassitude and exhaustion. When the
entire surface of walls in _salons_ and art exhibitions of the day
appears veiled in uniform half mourning, this predilection for violet
is simply an expression of the nervous debility of the painter.”
These remarks of Mr. Nordau may seem to many quite clever. It must
be confessed that the audacity and self-importance with which he
enunciates the most incredible propositions, as if he were giving
information of irrefragable truth, is startling, at least. Nor does he
on any single occasion make the least attempt to bring any evidence
to support his arbitrary assertions, or to prove them by objective
observations. All that Mr. Nordau tells us of impairment of vision
of painters, of the defects of their retinas, of their nystagmus,
etc., is the product of his fancy, of his imagination. Why did he not
actually investigate a number of painters and convince himself how far
his imaginations corresponded with facts before he put them before the
world as new discoveries? Mr. Nordau has nothing to utter but unfounded
assertions. Not only is proof of them entirely wanting, but their
falsity is in every instance capable of ready demonstration. Whoever
has had the opportunity of coming in contact with painters knows that
they are not colour-blind and have no trembling of the eyeball, even if
they belong to new schools of art. With the same logic with which Mr.
Nordau, from the colouring of modern painters, diagnoses a “weakness
of the nerves,” he might, in the great painters of the Renaissance,
who gave expression in their pictures to the religious ideas of the
time, find a general religious insanity. It can hardly be necessary
to examine more closely such superficialities, which ought to make no
pretension to a scientific character.
Before I undertake the psychological analysis of the phenomena of the
world of art of to-day let me be permitted, for the sake of avoiding
misunderstandings, to define certain philosophical concepts which
have been transported into the language of art criticism. I mean the
variously applied designations, Realism, Naturalism, Idealism, and
Romanticism.
By Realism I mean the aim to reproduce everything just as it is
perceived by the eye in colour, form, and light, without adding or
subtracting anything for the sake of beauty. Its contrary is Idealism,
which takes for its task to weed from every fact its most beautiful
aspect, and to suppress the unbeautiful by silence and by cloaking
it, so that beauty may shine forth in all its lustre. Thus these two
terms refer exclusively to the outward form of art, to its mode of
presentation. A centaur playing with a nymph, or any other subject,
can be painted realistically just as well as it can be painted
idealistically. By Naturalism I mean an artistic aim which takes for
its subjects such things as the world of observation (_Natur_) affords,
and renders only actual facts, actual creatures. Romanticism, on the
other hand, gives free rein to fancy, enriches the world with angels
and devils, and draws its subjects from religious or mythological
sources.
These different elements have from of old, and at all periods, played a
great rôle in the history of art. They mostly depended on the spirit of
the times. They answered to the feeling and thought of the people, and
manifested themselves at the same period in different branches of art
in the same way. According to the above definitions, ancient Greek art
was prevailingly romantic. The character of this ideal, myth-forming
people expressed itself distinctly in its art. Gods and heroes were the
subjects of the masterpieces of Greek statuary; gods and heroes were
sung by the poets who inspired the people through the theatre. This
Romanticism was coupled with the Idealism proper to the Greeks. The
beautiful alone seemed to them worthy of being represented. Symmetry
of limb and a bold, courageous eye were to them as indispensable
in sculpture as euphony and rhythm were in the drama. In the rough
presentation of the fights of the Lapithæ and Centaurs, of gods and
giants, they always knew how to vindicate the rights of the beautiful.
By pictorial grouping, by rich drapery of the vestments, by the beauty
of the forms, the agreeable and conciliating were kept constantly
before the sight.
Nevertheless, a certain Realism and Naturalism are discernible even
in Greek art. Among the numerous portrait statues dug up at Olympia
we find not seldom realistical busts whose faces had been abraded or
bruised in boxing. The cherries of Zeuxis, at which the birds picked,
are an example of realistic Naturalism. This aim in art was yet more
active with the Romans, without, however, rising to be the prevalent
tendency.
After Art had gone to sleep in the decadence of Greeks and Romans,
it was reawakened in an age when a new idea and a new metaphysics,
or conception of the universe, filled the minds of the peoples.
Christianity, after a struggle of centuries, had conquered the world,
and it offered a new romantic world to art. Hence arose that art of
the Christian-romantic ages which prevailed until recently. Among
single artists a certain inclination toward Naturalism showed itself
during the whole period; but it could not endure in opposition to
the all-ruling Romanticism which provided its subjects partly from
Christianity and partly from antiquity. It was not until the nineteenth
century that an open warfare broke out between Romanticism and
Naturalism, while Realism at the same time sought to displace Idealism.
What value Realism and Naturalism may have in comparison to Idealism
and Romanticism let professed art critics decide. Our part is only to
examine the phenomena from a psychological standpoint and to discover
the motives which produced those phenomena.
In the course of time, as in all new movements, parties and schools
were formed which waged the fiercest warfare, every man holding his
school and his method to be the only right one. It is easily understood
that in a matter of this kind, in the effort to make one’s own point
of view as important as possible, a contestant will shoot far over the
mark he had originally set before himself. So it happened that the
realists, who in the beginning only opposed idealism in so far as to
say that the task of art is to represent Nature in its truth, without
concealment and without prevarication, were spurred on by opposition to
mark their effort in their work much more strongly than was needful,
so that they not only presented the ugly and disgusting, because they
would not deny the existence of those elements, but went so far as to
seek it out, and at last quite forgot the beautiful and overlooked it
in their attention to the ugly.
It is the same with the Naturalists in their attitude toward
Romanticism. Their zeal to represent real life just as it is went
beyond all measure. The stronger the opposition to the new movement,
the more zealously did they try to bring forward the ugly and common,
while entirely overlooking the good. In this way genuine Realism and
Naturalism were corrupted, and the picture often became little better
than a burlesque.
The inclination, in the pursuit of a new idea, to press it far beyond
what was originally intended is a phenomenon grounded in the normal
human character, and found not merely in art, but in every department
of human production.
Carl Gussow was the founder of the latest Realism in German painting.
His endeavour was to represent Nature, unadorned, in its truth, without
shrinking at any blemish whatever. His peculiar colouring, the new
manner of his technique, his tendency to give special prominence to
ugliness, raised at the first appearance of his pictures in Berlin a
decided and general disapproval. But voices of wrath soon became weaker
and weaker, adherents and admirers began to appear, imitators arose,
and a new school was founded.
Somewhat earlier, but in exactly the same way, a yet more extreme
Realism and Naturalism had been started in France. Manet was the
founder of a new school in which we see a radically new artistic aim.
While hitherto painters had hastily sketched in the open air what they
observed, and afterward in their studios had repainted it, drawing
largely from fancy in the process, and indifferent to the difference of
light, Manet carried on his painting _en plein air_. The image, just as
it presented itself to the sight, and at that very moment, must be put
upon the canvas. Of course, these “impressionists” had voluntarily to
renounce all finer technique. They clutched at the coarsest methods, in
order that they might quickly, and without sophistication, reproduce
the impression seen. The soft transition of colours which the old
masters thought they perceived in Nature did not exist for Manet. For
him every object bore its own abrupt colour. In a landscape illuminated
by a dazzling sun, the green of the fields, the blue of the sky, the
red of the roof tiles, stood unmitigated and abruptly adjacent.
This sort of Realism, combined with a corresponding Naturalism,
called forth a veritable hurricane of censure. Again and again were
the canvases of Manet rejected by the _Salon_, so that he had to
hold an exhibition of his own. Nevertheless, a group of young men
collected about him, and it augmented as time rolled on; so that at
last he became a factor in the history of art. The endeavour to bring
unfalsified Nature upon the canvas led to special studies of light.
Previously the pictures produced in the artist’s studio had a certain
conventional illumination. Now there was an effort to reproduce with
the brush the colours as they were presented to the artist’s sight
under bright sunshine, in the dusk, in bad weather, by artificial
light, etc. Thus arose the dazzling colours which represent the
effects of direct sunlight. The violet landscapes show the attempt
to reproduce the illumination of the dusk; the “wan painting,” as
Nordau calls it, is intended to represent the mist-filled landscape of
the great heats of summer. It is not our part to decide how far the
painters who have pursued this aim have been justified by success.
The only task of psychology is to ascertain the psychical processes
which were the reason of the production of the picture. To criticise
it does not belong to psychological or to psychiatrical science. The
psychiatrist as such is a layman in the department of art, and would
be guilty of transgressing the limits of his competence were he to
undertake to give a judgment of a work of art, especially to draw from
it psychiatric conclusions.
As for the general end of art, we have seen, in considering the
psychology of genius, that fixed rules for it do not exist. The kind of
art considered needs neither a creative fancy nor a refined feeling in
order to express the peculiar moods of the painter in artistic form,
for painters who attempt that are rare. They wend their solitary way,
without following the army of any school.
Nordau sees in the “formation of close groups or schools” a symptom of
degeneration and hysteria.[126] He says: “Healthy artists or authors
in possession of minds in a condition of well-regulated equilibrium
will never think of grouping themselves into an association.... True
talent is always personal. In its creations it reproduces itself, its
own views and feelings, and not the articles of faith learned from any
æsthetic apostle.” This assertion is not true. Nordau confounds genius
and talent; and this shows how important it is to be clear in such
expressions. Simple talent by no means possesses the properties stated
by Nordau.
Jean Paul Richter[127] drastically styles the man of talent “the
gaily imitating ape of genius.” Men of talent to whom Nature has
denied creative power have from of old formed groups and schools. Even
Schiller became the founder of a school, although Goethe said his
scholars could learn no more than his language. In the formation of
schools nobody ever before saw a morbid symptom. But does Mr. Nordau
see what he is doing when he classes as degenerate and hysterical
all painters who possess only talent and are wanting in the creative
power of genius? His great saint, Lombroso, to whom he has consecrated
himself, says that “if in the nature of a genius signs of an abnormal
disposition are wanting, there must be some deceptive circumstance.”
Yet Nordau holds those artists to be degenerate who have only talent
and not genius. According to this, we must come to the conclusion that
if a man has genius he is insane, and if he has only talent he is
degenerate. Here the great doctrine blossoms out into its essential
absurdity. But as for groups and schools, in what department are they
worse nuisances than in science, and in particular in those branches to
whose advocates Mr. Nordau appeals by preference?
In realistic and naturalistic movements some great painters, I admit,
were concerned; and these embodied their own intuitions and sentiments
in their art. But they are scattered sparsely, rising like rocks here
and there out of the dead level of the ocean.
Böcklin was a painter whose pictures contain the sentiments and moods
of an artist. He tried by colouring and by the peculiarity of his
colour tones to lend to his pictures a mood which should affect the
spectator like the tones of music, like the harmonies of an organ. In
this idealistic garment of painting he wrapped, as a rule, a romantic
subject. His figures are centaurs, nymphs, satyrs, bacchantes,
mermaids, etc. He does not trouble himself much about the correctness
of his drawing, so that the grossest errors in that respect are
common enough with him. All he aimed at was to embody certain moods
in painting, and this he fully succeeded in doing in his Isle of the
Dead, his Elysian Fields (Die Gefilde der Seeligen), his Leviathan
(Meerungeheuer), and his Prometheus Bound. Böcklin is justly called
a poet in painting. He knew how to speak in colour tones and how to
awaken the most diverse kinds of moods. In spite of all enmities, he
soon found adherents and imitators, who have had no slight influence on
the subsequent development of art.
Let these brief sketches suffice to describe the mode of psychological
origination of modern phenomena in this department. What we have here
seen are but repetitions of facts often to be observed in history. New
ideas, especially when they emerge suddenly and without preparation,
and, above all, if they contain great departures from ancient customs,
have always a rough fight to make. They have generally excited a storm
of abuse and an apparently invincible opposition. It may be said that
just those ideas which later appeared to have opened the paths of
advance the most met at first the most stubborn resistance. It is in
human nature to hold fast to the ancient inheritances and to turn away
from them unreadily. Hence we must deduce the proposition that all
novelties ought to be met in as fair a spirit as possible, and that we
must always reflect that we are apt to have an unconscious prejudice
against new ideas which depart from our habits.
But there is another class of men who, on the contrary, think
everything new to be sublime and beautiful. Since they really
understand neither the new nor the old, they cherish the vague
feeling that the more strange and unintelligible a proposition is,
the more judicious and “profound” it must be. They speak in raptures
and ecstasy of the new art, and think it extremely clever to throw
out as many technical terms as they may have picked up without
precisely understanding them. Nordau terms these “persons of superior
intelligence who look down with pity upon the Philistine” who can not
rise to their genius for understanding art, as all hysterical. I can
not share this conception. It seems to me rather a characteristic due
to social conditions and to imperfect education. The ostentation and
vanity which so often show themselves in externals, such as furniture,
etc., are still more manifest in men’s acting and thinking. Many
parents educate their children, not for the sake of making of them
well-prepared and serviceable men, but for the sake of being able to
make a show with them. Not the happiness of their children, but their
own vanity, is, unfortunately, but too often the leading motive.
Children are taught music, not to form their heart in the beauty of
art and to ennoble their sense, but from vanity, to bring them forward
as trained monkeys. This vanity, this passion to appear more than they
are, is inculcated into many children of so-called good society from
their childhood up. They have to dazzle by their many-sided capacity,
by their understanding of art and learning. Evidently, it is for the
most part hollow, and if the thin covering of superficiality is raised,
nothing but a desert void is found. But they show well, and that is the
main point. In society, it of course belongs to good tone to chat about
philosophy, literature, and art, whether one knows anything or not.
Indeed, the more strange and unintelligible anything is, the more they
feel obliged to surround themselves with an appearance of intelligence.
If the question is about painting, they prate about the powerful
“mood”; in music the “working up of the counterpoint” impresses them,
without their having the slightest understanding of such things.
I should never think of declaring anybody diseased on account of such
traits of character as these, nor should I excuse his silliness in
that way. No, it is not hysteria, but simply bad education that is in
question. Educate your children to candour and integrity, impress upon
them that truth is the most indispensable of all virtues, that there is
nothing more contemptible than the wish to appear to be more than one
really is, and thus clear the world of such fools!
The sort of men whom I have here described are in their inculcated
superficiality of course aware of no inclination to take up a serious
calling. They would like to be imposing and to make themselves spoken
of; that is their highest ambition, and often the highest ambition
of their pretentious parents for them. Some feel themselves called
upon to become actors; others, musicians; others, painters; others,
to delight the world with their literary performances. No serious
study is contemplated, of course. With a certain enthusiasm they range
themselves with any new aim in art. They do not comprehend the spirit
of it, but they mimic the externals of the masters.
How he hawks and how he spits,
To spy that out they’ve used their wits!
When they have daubed a canvas violet or dark blue they think that they
have created a mood. If they can handle a brush like a broomstick and
smear about with it so that one can not tell whether the picture is
upside down or right side up, they call themselves, with pride, modern
realists and naturalists.
Undoubtedly there are a number of hysterical and degenerate subjects
among this class of people. But, in order to establish this, it is
necessary thoroughly to investigate every single case, since this
trait of character alone does not constitute disease. It would also be
extremely fallacious to reason from this sort of men to the population
in general. They are, at all events, exceptional individuals. Moreover,
such people have existed at all periods of history. We have seen that
Kant painted them in 1788 as a well-known category of society, calling
them the “monkeys of genius.” And in no age can the existence of such
persons escape the sharp observer.
The phenomena whose acquaintance we have made in the department of
painting have their analogues in modern literature. Here, too, the
Romanticism and Idealism of an earlier period of art are, in accordance
with our scientific metaphysics, displaced by Naturalism and Realism.
Thus the historical drama, whose subjects poets used to take from
prehistorical times and whose characters they altered and idealized
at will, as well as the romantic drama, in which the fantastical and
supernatural came to expression, belong to times gone by. The modern
poet draws his subjects not from early ages, but from the present. He
does not create his characters, but seeks to reproduce what he has
himself observed. He does not conceal any defect or weakness of his
stage heroes, but deals out equal justice to the good and the bad, the
beautiful and the ugly. The language of which he avails himself is not
poetical, sonorous, or metaphorical. His heroes spout no iambics, but
speak, for all the world, like all of us. In short, we are living in
the Bessemer-metal age of literature, and poetry sounds ridiculous to
us.
This realistic and naturalistic impulse in literature, which for its
outward form uses the novel as well as the drama, first found vent in
France. It has very often shot far beyond its mark, just as it has
done in painting. Anxiety not to conceal ugliness in a weak preference
for beauty, and to tell the truth that evil as well as good exists,
has egged on writers to hunting up whatsoever things were hideous and
whatsoever things were revolting, and has made them lose sight of the
beauty and the good that really do exist.
Other motives, however, may contribute to this effect. A number
of writers prefer to paint whatever is unlovely, and especially
immoralities, not in the above-described and half-involuntary way,
but for the sake of the moral. They do not look upon their art as
descriptive merely, but as partly rhetorical. That is to say, they do
not paint life truthfully without having an ulterior design. They do so
because the truth must awaken the moral sense of the people and their
aspirations for a better life. While the idealist, in the pursuit of
the same object, paints man in a lofty and scarce realized perfection,
the realist points out the shortcomings and feebleness of what actually
exists. He paints vice, not with the false glamour which an inclination
for it would shed upon it, but in the true hideousness of its details,
so that the contemplation of it may excite horror.
It is not my task to pass judgment upon the value and justification
of the different aims of art. I only analyze them psychologically. I
therefore pass at once to another class of writers, who have the same
preference for painting immoralities from a third motive.
These are those same uneducated and unintelligent ignoramuses whom
we mentioned above; for literature, too, is reduced to hack work in
their hands. Many persons whose capacities were sufficient to make
them good artisans, who might have been taught, perhaps, to make a
really good pair of shoes, or otherwise to fulfil a useful function in
the world, stick to the pen, because a bad writer is more respectable
than a good mechanic. They write, not because they have any calling
for literature, but because they know no other trade. These factotums
of the great literary army, shooting up like toadstools from the dung
heap, seize upon every dripping of filth that they can smell out, and
ask themselves, “How much money can I make with this production?” The
question, “What is the literary value of this fact?” does not occur
to them. That the task of art and literature is to ennoble the taste
of the public they have clean forgotten, even if they ever thought of
it. On the contrary, they speculate on the baser impulses and evil
qualities of the rabble. They have spied out the externals of the
modern Naturalists and Realists without attempting to penetrate into
the spirit of their works. Like senseless monkeys, they wade through
vulgarities and obscenities in order to excite the hankerings of the
great crowd, in order to be known as writers of the modern school,
and in order to succeed in a financial sense. The shameful influence
of this sort of authors--or, rather, writers--upon the population
is rooted in the disproportions of modern society. A reform in this
respect can only come from their gradual removal and from the elevation
of the culture and taste of the people.
Here, again, we meet, too, those unfortunate degenerate subjects who
possess a certain literary gift, but whose whole mental action is
morbid. They often show that marked inclination for every kind of
vileness and coarseness which is called moral insanity. This can not
fail to betray itself in their writings. The frivolous and vulgar
attract them, because they answer to their own thought and feeling. The
more obscene and indecent is the subject with which they deal, the more
they feel themselves in their own free element. But we must not reason
from the character of these last writers to that of authors as a whole.
It is not they who give literature in general its purpose. They only
ape the form of genuine authorship without being able to comprehend its
purpose.
Thus the Realism and Naturalism which are found in all departments
of modern art and literature are not, as Nordau thinks, marks of a
universal putrescence and nervous prostration, a “pestilential malady
of degeneration and hysteria.” Though those endeavours often overshoot
their mark, they are simply signs of that universal spirit of the times
that desiderates truth and fact, and gives the lie to all that is
mystical and supernatural.
The foregoing inquiries show that the same phenomena in art may
be produced in ways most diverse psychologically. It is the most
unscientific levity to treat them summarily and to say, as Nordau does,
that whoever paints violet pictures has weak nerves, or whoever paints
in the manner of Manet has lesions of the retina, etc. In a psychiatric
diagnosis it is requisite strictly to individualize; and thus we are
brought to a question of the highest importance for the psychiatrist:
_How far can we, from a work of art or literature, diagnose a mental
disease of its author?_
The influence of derangements of the mind upon the action of the
subjects depends, in the first place, upon the kind of disease. In a
great number of cases the disease does not manifest itself at all in
action. In others, in consequence of diminished efficiency, the value
of the work is diminished, and finally positively insane ideas may be
manifest in products of the insane.
In an acquired disease accompanied with gradual decay of intelligence,
as in general paresis, the disease may be detected by comparison with
previous performances, and occasionally the typical perversities in the
works of these patients lead to recognition of their misfortune. In the
congenital weakness of mind of degenerate artists and _littérateurs_
case is different. The example of Courbet shows that a weak-minded
man may paint very nice pictures while sane persons sometimes mine
out the vilest stuff. For this reason the value of a work of art is
not decisive in the diagnosis of the mental condition. Nor, as I said
before, is the psychiatrist, as such, competent to express an opinion
concerning the value of such a work.
Sometimes delusions make their appearance in everything the
insane person does. A painter may, in consequence of religious
delusions, paint nothing but pictures of saints. But to maintain the
converse--that whoever paints nothing but saints is suffering from
religious insanity--would be ridiculous. No diagnosis, therefore, of
insanity can be made from a painting or similar work of art, nor from
a musical composition. A musician under melancholia may, owing to his
morbid mood, compose only elegies and funeral marches; but that does
not authorize us to presume that because a composer only writes elegiac
music he is probably insane. The assertion of certain supersubtile
minds that certain compositions of Schumann’s betray his morbid state
of heart rests upon mere words, and deserves no notice.
But with writers it is quite otherwise. Their action is much more
comprehensive, and commonly affords a much deeper insight into the
psychical life of the author than a painting can do. It is within the
power of a poet or a writer to disclose in his creations a mirror of
his whole inner life, his sentiments, and his thoughts. Hence we shall
sometimes be quite able to diagnose the insanity of a _littérateur_
from his works.
But even here we must proceed with the utmost caution and reserve.
The descriptions of the poet can only attain a diagnostic value when
they have express reference to his own individuality. The objective
description of situations and characters can usually afford no
inference concerning the psychical life of the poet, and we should
commit a gross error were we, without any particular information, to
identify him with a character created by him. Elegiac and melancholy
verses, even when they bespeak the sentiments of the poet, can not,
taken by themselves, justify us in presuming a pathological condition.
We have seen how Goethe frequently grieved nigh unto death, and really
contemplated suicide, yet we should not be justified in assuming
melancholy in the psychiatric sense.
Where manifest delusions are described we can, in many cases, state
positively that the writer is insane. We shall do so with all the
greater certainty when it is not merely insanity in general that is
indicated, but the description takes on the type of a well-known morbid
form.
Rousseau is a good instance in point. His Confessions and Dialogues
afford proof positive of insanity. A typical delusion of persecution is
manifest in his saying that “the Kings of Russia, England, and France,
all nobles, the women, the priests, and mankind in general,” wounded
by some statements in his works, “had banded themselves together and
declared a dreadful war” upon him. A full examination of the insanity
of Rousseau, with special reference to the above works, has been
undertaken by Möbius.[128]
Tasso, who suffered from _melancholia agitata_ complicated with
hallucinations, wrote in a letter: “My sadness is so deep and
persistent that people often think me crazy, and I am forced to assent
to the opinion myself when I am not able to shut my thoughts up within
my breast, but break out into long monologues. My hallucinations are
human and demoniac. The human express themselves in shouts and cries,
such as men, and particularly women, utter, and in bestial laughter.
The demoniac express themselves in songs, etc. I take a book in my
hand to gain some information, and at once voices sound in my ears and
I distinguish the names of Paolo and Fulvia.” A quite typical example
of a modern poet whose insanity can be determined from his works is
Strindberg with his passionate misogyny and his other absurdities. A
comprehensive account of the state of mind of this author as betrayed
in his writings would fill a volume. I will therefore merely note the
most important points in a single writing which fully suffice to render
the diagnosis of his insanity certain.
In Die Beichte eines Thoren (The Confession of a Fool) Strindberg
describes his ten years of married life. His wife had been divorced
from her first husband, a baron. The book is, in substance, a serious
complaint against this wife, whom he accuses of infidelity. If a sane
man thinks himself betrayed by his wife, he will either leave her or
forgive her. But in either case, both for the sake of his own honour
and for that of the children--and Strindberg had several--he will
endeavour, as far as possible, to screen such family affairs from
publicity, and will rather lead the public to suppose the fault is his
than call the mother of his children a harlot before all the world.
True, departure from, this principle is not of itself a symptom of
insanity; yet it must be admitted that it is at least very surprising
that a man should write a book for no other purpose than to accuse his
married wife, the mother of his children, of infidelity.
Let us, however, consider the grave charges which Strindberg publicly
makes against his wife. From the moment the woman left her first
husband in order to marry him he becomes suspicious and believes she
has intercourse with other men. He does not suspect any individual in
particular, but every single man with whom she comes in contact for
a long series of years awakens his doubt and jealousy. Though he is
never able to adduce one single real fact by way of proof, he is yet
unceasingly tortured by the idea of the infidelity of his wife. She
not only has illicit relations with other men, but even extends her
unnatural desires, in _amor lesbicus_, to her own sex. She can not
make a call, nor even kiss a young girl, but he believes he detects
an unlawful, sexually contranatural act; and in his mind’s eye he
continually sees his wife in prison for her infractions of the moral
law, etc. In spite of it all, he loves his wife, and can not leave her.
Though he is fully convinced of her crime and depravity, yet the sight
of her “foot in its black stocking,” or even of her “garter,” is enough
to make him fall at her feet and, “with tears in his eyes,” implore her
pardon. Still the pangs of jealousy torment him anew. No less than six
times he “escapes,” and that into distant countries. But scarcely is
he away when desire seizes upon him. He is “shackled, not with chains
of iron, which he might break, but with chains of India rubber, which
draw him back.” He either returns or has his wife and children follow
him. There is a _Wiedersehen_ with great emotion, and straightway
new pangs of jealousy. Every waiter in the hotel, the _concierge_, a
lieutenant who comes to the _table d’hôte_, are objects of his wife’s
love. Once he was with his wife in a boat which was managed by a sailor
who wore very high boots. His wife looked at the boots, and forthwith
he was beside himself, detecting in that look a sexual aberration. The
same pangs of jealousy were excited by any intercourse of his wife
with any female. Thus he describes an old “devilish-looking person”
whom he says his wife hugged and kissed in a “lustful” way. Once when
his wife came to him she seemed to him to have the face of “that old
devil’s dam,” and he at once concluded that she had been with her,
and had committed illicit acts. Thus, no matter whether it were man
or woman, young or old, ugly or beautiful, in every living being he
detected a partner of his wife’s sin, and was driven by continual
pangs of jealousy into that desperation in which he wrote the book. It
ends with the words, “This, beloved, is my vengeance.” Such is his own
account. The _audiatur et altera pars_ may here be dispensed with. It
is a manifest case of jealous insanity. The image of the disease is,
however, essentially completed by the nature of his description. The
satisfaction with which he speaks of himself, the self-glorification
which appears in all his descriptions, is either one of the signs of
mental degeneration or, what is more probable, there is a delusion
of grandeur. He always speaks of himself as the “great poet,” the
“renowned scholar,” etc. In one place he says that people are jealous
of his great talent, and therefore might put him out of the way, which
is a characteristic manifestation of the delusion of persecution.
Among the most important symptoms of such maladies are the so-called
referential ideas. The patients refer all that goes on about them to
themselves. In every look, in every harmless remark of a stranger, they
fancy they detect a hidden slight intended for them. Whatever is said
in their hearing they connect with their own individual selves, and
find in the simplest things strong confirmation of their delusions. If
people stand up in a shop, it is because they are present. If anybody
in the street spits, he means to do it at them. All the articles in the
newspaper are meant to apply to them. In short, everything that happens
has reference to them.
This symptom is strongly marked throughout Strindberg’s book. He
misunderstands the most harmless remarks of his wife. In travelling,
if anybody speaks to him, either they do it to mortify him or to make
advances to his wife. The most ordinary counsels of those about him he
takes for cunning traps.
It would, of course, carry me too far to inquire into all the
particulars set down in this bulky book in reference to this morbid
phenomenon. It may suffice here to mention one marked example of such
referential ideas. When Strindberg first read Ibsen’s Wild Duck, he
immediately thought the whole piece was intended for him and was only
written on his account. He expresses himself as follows:
“It was a drama of the famous Norwegian spy, the inventor of equality
madness. How the book fell into my hands I could not say. But now
everything was clear, and gave occasion to the worst suspicions
concerning the reputation of my wife. The plot of the drama was as
follows: A photographer (a nickname I had earned by my novels drawn
from real life) has married a person of doubtful repute, who had
formerly been the mistress of a great proprietor. The woman supports
the household from a secret fund which she derives from her former
paramour. In addition to that, she carries on the business of her
husband, a good for nothing who spends his time drinking in the
society of persons of no consequence. Now, that is a misrepresentation
of the facts committed by the reporters. They were informed that Maria
[Strindberg’s wife] made translations, but they did not know that it
was I who gratuitously corrected them and paid over to her the sums
received for them.
“Matters become bad when the poor photographer discovers that the
adored daughter who comes before her time into the world is not his
child, and that the wife has warned him when she induced him to marry
her. To complete his disgrace, the husband consents to accept a large
sum as indemnity from the former lover. By this I understand Maria’s
loan upon the baron’s security, which I indorsed after my wedding. But
as for the birth of the daughter, I can see no trace of analogy, for my
daughter was not born until two years after the wedding. But hold! The
dead girl! There, I am on the track! The dead child which forced us to
a marriage which otherwise would not have taken place!
“I prepared a great scene for the afternoon. I wished to catch Maria
in cross-examination, to which I wished to give the form of a defence
for us both. We had been equally attacked by the scarecrow of the
masculinists, who had been paid for the pretty job.”
This is a perfect example of such a referential idea, than which
nothing more typical can be imagined. Let it be observed how every
detail of Ibsen’s play is made use of in order to establish a
connection with the delusion. I have therefore no doubt at all that
Strindberg was insane. His malady took a well-known form, called
_paranoia simplex chronica_.
Such patients are, in the true sense of the words, dangerous to
society. Strindberg himself tells how one day, “without direct
occasion,” without being able himself to account for his act, but
following a sudden impulse, he fell upon his wife unawares and beat
her unmercifully, so that she only escaped further abuse by the cries
of the children, who came running to her. Immediately after this
conduct he surrendered himself to full sensuous love for this wife. He
remarks himself that it is a peculiar union in which one drubs his wife
by day and enjoys her embraces at night.
That a psychiatrical diagnosis is not to be based on isolated facts,
under pain of error, but that the underlying motives of the suspicious
behaviour must be examined most thoroughly, has been repeatedly said
above. I do not know how I can better render my position clear than
by placing into juxtaposition with the above case, in which I myself
diagnose insanity, one or two others in which I can not accept such
diagnoses. These will illustrate the extreme errors into which one
may be led either by an insufficient examination or by an arbitrary
delimitation of the latitude of health, and by accepting a definite
type as the normal man.
That Dante had epileptic fits, is announced by Lombroso in a recent
paper.[129] “In the Divina Commedia, Dante himself describes several
fits in which he fell headlong and lost consciousness.” The passages
referred to are two, as follows: After Charon had driven together the
apostates from God, in order to carry them over the river, and Virgil
had described the terrors which awaited them, Dante says:[130]
He ceased. The gloomy region shook amain!
Still its mere memory bathes with sweat my brow.
Rumbled that land of tears with moaning wind;
A light, vermilion-coloured, flashed from hell;
And, wholly vanquishing my palsied mind,
Even as a man whom sleep o’ertakes, I fell.
_Parson’s Translation._
Another passage is as follows:
Meanwhile he moaned so much, compassion took
My sense away, and like a corse I dropped.
_Parson’s Translation._
Lombroso thinks himself forced by these passages to diagnose epilepsy
in Dante! Are we to take this seriously? If one of the comic papers
had undertaken to parody psychiatry, how could it have been more
extravagant? It would seem to me almost ludicrous to pay attention to
such assertions and to parley with them. Lombroso, however, is not only
a professor of psychiatry, but he is the founder of a “school,” and has
many adherents, not to say warm advocates. He is said to be “one of the
loftiest mental phenomena of the century.” He has “poured a veritable
flood of light, which those alone have not perceived who obdurately
close their eyes or who are too shortsighted to derive benefit from any
enlightenment whatsoever.”[131]
Lombroso thinks, then, that Dante, in the verses quoted, describes
an actual state in which he found himself. But what justifies
such a presumption? To be logical, he ought to take all the other
descriptions in the Divina Commedia for actual events. He ought to
suppose that Dante actually saw and heard everything he describes in
hell and in purgatory; in other words, he ought to consider Dante to
be an hallucinant. Why does he not infer this from such lines as the
following?
A leopard, glittering in a dappled hide,
That would not flee, though light and full of speed,
Hindering my way, before me I descried,
And often turned, as doubtful to proceed.
_Parson’s Translation._
On the same principles, we ought here to diagnose hallucinations,
imperative ideas, or consecutive delusion. Dante addresses this
supplication to Virgil:
Behold yon monster in my road, whose rage
Thrills through my veins until my pulses quake;
Defend me from her, thou illustrious sage!
_Parson’s Translation._
Why does not Lombroso infer from the “rage which thrills through
the veins” that Dante had hallucinations of sensation? All this is
inferable by the same logical principle as the epilepsy. The verses
from which he infers epilepsy only describe the crushing sensations
which the sight of the terrors of hell occasion in him.
In the Purgatorio, Dante describes three phenomena which he saw in a
dreamlike state.
To the next cornice we had come; here fled
All power of speech, mine eyes were ravished so.
For, seized with ecstasy, I seemed to be
Rapt in a sudden vision of a crowd
Met in a temple.
_Parson’s Translation._
Soon as my mind, that from itself had swerved,
Came back to true things that outside it lie,
I knew my dreams false, but their truth observed.
My leader then, who could perceive that I
Walked like a man by somnolence unnerved,
Said: “Come! what ails thee that thou canst not keep
Thy footing straight, but more than half a league
Hast moved with faltering steps, as if by sleep
Or wine o’ercome, and eyes that show fatigue?”
_Parson’s Translation._
Lombroso says: “It will be seen that the fits in the Purgatorio take
more of the dreamy, somnambulic cast; those of the Paradiso more of the
ecstatic.” Such a state he infers from the following:
So steadfast and attentive were mine eyes
In satisfying their decennial thirst,
That all my other senses were extinct,
And upon this side and on that they had
Walls of indifference, so the holy smile
Drew them into itself with the old net.
_Longfellow’s Translation._
If from such poetical expressions a somnambulic condition is
presumable, then all poets suffer from that malady. Not only poets, but
all ordinary human beings make use of expressions equally somnambulic.
They say: “I did not know whether I was on my head or my heels,” “I was
senseless with joy,” “The world swam before my eyes,” “I saw blood,”
“I can give no account of what I did, but when I came to myself I was
miles away.” Just such terms, clothed in poetic garb, are adduced by
Lombroso as evidences of a somnambulic or ecstatic state. So he quotes
the following:
At this voice saw I many little flames
From step to step descending and revolving,
And every revolution made them fairer.
Round about this one came they and stood still,
And a cry uttered so loud a sound
It here could find no parallel, nor I
Distinguished it, the thunder so o’ercame me.
So did my mind, among those aliments
Becoming larger, issue from itself,
And that which it became can not remember.
_Longfellow’s Translation._
Such are the evidences upon which “Master Lombroso” rests his thesis
that Dante had epilepsy accompanied with somnambulic and ecstatic
states. His disciples say that only the “obdurate” and the “imbecile”
can fail to perceive the great wisdom of this new doctrine.
In his chapter on Examples of Insane Genius in his Genio e Follia,
Lombroso adduces Schopenhauer as a case in point. Let us consider
upon what this diagnosis rests. Lombroso says: “Schopenhauer suffered
from melancholy. Dread of smallpox scared him away from Naples; the
idea that he had used poisoned snuff ousted him from Verona. From
Berlin he fled before the cholera, having once before left the same
capital because of a levy of soldiers.” No evidence whatever is
adduced that Schopenhauer suffered from melancholia. On the contrary,
Schopenhauer had all his life long an enormous self-conceit, while
genuine subjects of melancholy are marked by the absence of that
trait, considering themselves rather as bad and incapable. Unless
it be proposed to identify an earnest and pessimistic temperament
with melancholy, there is no reason for saying that Schopenhauer
had melancholy. As for timidity about smallpox, cholera, and the
conscription, it is not a symptom of insanity. Lombroso enlarges
upon his great feeling of anxiety, his fear of men, etc. But these
are phenomena found in all neurasthenic subjects, and are not in
the least indicative of mental disease. “He hated Jews, women, and,
above all, philosophers. Dogs, on the other hand, he loved so that he
remembered them in his will.” If hatred of Jews is to be taken as a
morbid symptom, the world is in a bad way! Schopenhauer’s hatred of
philosophers can readily be explained. His essay on women is eccentric
and passionate. But is that insanity? Lombroso himself, in his own
book on women,[132] has far overtrumped Schopenhauer on this point; so
that he ought to be cautious about considering misogyny as a morbid
symptom. “Everything,” continues Lombroso, “was for him an object of
reflection and of earnest discussion. He sought after the causes of
the most insignificant things, such as his own excellent appetite, of
moonlight, etc.” The only peculiarity here is the juxtaposition of
his appetite and moonlight, which is not Schopenhauer’s doing. Then we
read: “He believed in the table communications of the spiritualists,
was convinced that his dog’s crooked leg could be straightened by
magnetism, that he could recover his hearing in the same way.” I
know nothing about Schopenhauer’s belief in spiritualism. As far as
I know, he wrote nothing about it. Lombroso ought to elucidate this,
and state his authority for the assertion. But what I do know is that
Lombroso himself was so befooled by a spiritualistic she-swindler that
he wrote: “I heartily repent and am ashamed that I have so stubbornly
contested the spiritualistic facts.”[133] There is nothing additional,
except matters which may be called little _traits_ of character, but
are certainly not morbid symptoms. “He who so often suffered from
the intolerance of others, raised against Moleschott and Büchner the
most grievous and unjustifiable menaces. He hid his joy from nobody
when he learned that they had been forbidden to teach.” Just because
Schopenhauer had suffered so much at the hands of his adversaries,
he became malicious and filled with hate against them. We further
read: “He also considered himself as the object, as the victim of a
widely disseminated conspiracy of professors of philosophy directed
peculiarly against him, that they had come to an agreement in Gotha not
to mention his works, but to kill them by silence. On the other hand,
he feared that they would express an opinion on his works.” But this
opinion of Schopenhauer, whether quite true or not, had a sane reason
in the hostile attitude of the university professors toward him. It
would therefore be a great mistake to diagnose from that a delusion of
persecution, especially since the whole mode of manifestation of the
idea had nothing in common with a clinical symptom. Thus Lombroso’s
data afford no presumption that Schopenhauer was at any time mentally
diseased, and I can but pronounce the attempt to range him in the
category of insane genius to be distinctly unsuccessful.
Nordau, for whom every assertion of Lombroso’s is an oracle, goes a
step further, and pronounces that “the congregation of Schopenhauer
is made up of the degenerate and insane.” Of the man himself he
says: “Imagine a Schopenhauer who had written no astonishing books,
and we should have before us only a repulsive _lusus naturæ_, whose
morals would necessarily exclude him from all respectable society,
and whose fixed idea that he was a victim of persecution would point
him out as a subject for a madhouse.” Now, quite independently of the
gross blunder about the delusion of persecution, this proposition is
psychologically entirely incorrect. At best it amounts only to this:
that had Schopenhauer not been Schopenhauer, then he would have been
another man than he was. I have shown, in speaking of the psychology
of genius, that the little peculiarities of character and manners were
readily explained by the peculiar mental action of men of genius. It is
therefore illogical, to say the least, to subtract his genius and leave
his peculiarities as a remainder.
The special diagnoses that Nordau sets forth from the writings or art
works of famous men are quite of a piece with his judgment of the
population generally, and form a fit pendant to Lombroso’s diagnosis of
the epilepsy of Dante. But Nordau considerably surpasses the method of
his master. Lombroso limits his efforts to the discovery of symptoms
of insanity, and proceeds according to the well-known method, “was
nicht herausinterprätiert werden kann, das wird hineininterprätiert,”
or what can not be made out by exegesis is to be made in by inegesis.
Nordau, on the other hand, is an æsthetic critic. With the professional
omniscience of his craft, he criticises whatever falls within the
domains of philosophy, literature, music, and painting, and as soon
as the criticism turns out unfavourable to the author, down comes the
diagnosis of degeneration. Thereupon, by Lombroso’s method, a list of
symptoms are _hineininterprätiert_, or made in, and the justice of the
verdict is beyond all cavil. The boyishness and amateurishness of such
a proceeding need scarcely be pointed out.
Zola, as everybody knows, is the founder of modern Naturalism in
literature. His “Naturalism” is, however, not Naturalism in the sense
defined above, though perhaps the definition may agree with his
theoretical views. But practically his Naturalism is that which--in
its endeavour to exhibit life without any sort of falsehood, without
ignoring all that is grievous and base in it, nor pretending that
there is more of the agreeable and the elevated than there really
is--so widely overshoots its mark as to search out the vile and the
degraded. He does not fairly sample human life upon the average; the
characters he paints do not afford a type of the time in its general
character. On the contrary, all his novels describe the members of one
degenerating family which is subject to extreme deficiencies, mostly
of morals. Upon this aim of Zola’s Nordau pours out the critic’s
bitterest vials, and in fact he flies into a rage with the founder of
Naturalism. “He,” says Nordau, “who ridicules the ‘idealists’ as being
narrators of ‘exceptional cases,’ of that which ‘never happened,’
has chosen for the subject of his _magnum opus_ the most exceptional
case he could possibly have found--a group of degenerates, lunatics,
criminals, prostitutes, and ‘mattoids,’ whose morbid nature places them
apart from the species, who do not belong to a regular society, but
are expelled from it, and at strife with it; who conduct themselves as
complete strangers to their epoch and country, and are, by their manner
of existence, not members of any modern civilized people whatever, but
belong to a horde of primitive wild men of bygone ages.”[134] Does
the reader not see against what an enormous and crass contradiction
Mr. Nordau here bumps his head? What! He who, in most self-sufficient
fashion and in his most resonant chest tones, proclaims that for the
last half century the good society of all civilized countries has been
in a progressive mental dissolution, a state of “putrefaction,” and
that we are now “in the midst of a grave endemic, a species of black
plague of degeneration and hysteria”--_he_ asserts all at once that the
degenerate, the weak-minded, the criminal, “are the most exceptional
case” that could be found, that degenerates not only belong to no
regular society, but that they only “belong to a horde of primitive
wild men of bygone ages!” Well, well! Why, wherein does Zola conflict
with Nordau? Zola describes a group of degenerate persons, and, being
a naturalist, he is understood to imply that this is a type, a fair
sample, a representative of a family of our times. Is not this a Nordau
in the shape of a novelist? Nordau’s purpose is to instruct us that the
society of our time is in a state of putrefaction and that we are in a
black plague of degeneration. Anybody can see that he is Zola dressed
up like a scientific man. But when Nordau looks in the glass and sees
his own caricature grinning him in the face he loses his temper and
declares that such a society, just as he himself had painted it, is,
of all things that exist, “the most exceptional case.” Nordau, like
the witch of the fairy tale, has unwittingly passed judgment upon
himself, and has destroyed his whole theory with his own hand. But here
as everywhere he exaggerates beyond all bounds. To say that Zola’s
degenerate family naturally belongs to some “horde of primitive wild
men of bygone ages,” is for its inaccuracy and its screaming tone on
a par with his “black plague of degeneration.” Nordau thus takes up
a peculiar attitude, for he declares that “Zola’s novels do not prove
that things are badly managed in this world, but merely that Zola’s
nervous system is out of order”;[134] and his reason is that Zola
fancies he sees in a degenerate family a type of modern society, which
seems to be precisely what Nordau himself says.
But the way in which Nordau, in order to support the correctness of
his diagnosis from Zola’s novels, endeavours to refer all possible
symptoms of insanity to the author is the most comical thing that ever
was. Even Lombroso, though he is utterly unjustified in using the
fancies of the poet as data, does nevertheless adhere to what Dante’s
language, taken literally, expresses, for Dante does say, “_I_ fell
down,” etc. Nordau, however, without the slightest reason, identifies
the novelist with his quite objectively described characters. Although
Nordau himself finds their originals in the Karangal family, yet he
saddles the author with all the faults of the degenerate personages of
his novels. Thus he says: “Zola is affected by _Coprolalia_ to a very
high degree.” Coprolalia means an involuntary utterance of maledictions
and vulgar speech. It belongs to the series of imperative acts and is
often observed in degenerates. Zola himself is adjudged to exhibit this
symptom because he puts curses and dirty language into the mouths of
the degenerates described by him. From his pictures of prostitutes and
narratives of sexual perversities and exacerbations Nordau, without
further information, concludes that Zola himself is sexually insane.
Because Zola, in his naturalistic endeavour to paint everything
unfalsified, minutely indicates the various smells, Nordau presumes
that he has a morbidly developed sense of smell. “He shows at times an
unhealthy predominance of the sensations of smell in his consciousness
and a perversion of the olfactory sense which make the worst odours,
especially those of all human excretions, appear to him particularly
agreeable and sensually stimulating.” “Smellers among degenerates,”
says Nordau, “represent an atavism going back, not only to the primeval
period of man, but infinitely more remote still, to an epoch anterior
to man. Their atavism retrogrades to animals among whom sexual activity
was directly excited by odoriferous substances, as it is still at the
present day in the musk deer, or who, like the dog, obtained their
knowledge of the world by the action of their noses.”[135] To this
category Zola belongs, because his novels have many mentions of smells!
What should we come to were we to judge all poets according to this
example, and identify them with their creations?
A phenomenon, interesting in many respects, which has given occasion
to various psychiatric discussions, is that of Tolstoi. Both poet and
philosopher, he is of most interest to us in our present inquiry in his
quality as philosopher. Already in early years the writings of Tolstoi
displayed, besides a remarkable gift of graphic description and notable
psychological character study, also a struggle for a metaphysics
which might appease the doubts and contradictions born in his soul.
That civilization which consists in bringing pleasure and joy to a
slender minority at the expense of the mass of humanity seemed to him
worthless, and property the source of all evils. In The Cossacks and
Cholstomêr he gave expression to these views. Later he became engrossed
with the problem of death--the connection between being and non-being.
In Three Deaths he paints the disparity between Nature and civilization
in respect to death. The solution of this problem gradually absorbed
him more and more. New doubts continually arose, until he at last
came to deny every end of life, and suffered, according to his own
narrative, unspeakable anguish about it.
In My Confession he describes how for a long time he sought in vain to
answer the question, “Wherefore do I live?” Whatever he undertook, this
question pressed forward--“To what end, and what then?” If at death all
ceases, he asked himself, to what end are we producing and working?
What is the use of being respected and renowned? “Any day disease and
death may come to those I love and to me, and nothing but putrefaction
and worms will be left. My actions, however great they may be, will all
be forgotten--whether sooner or later is indeed indifferent. The chief
matter is that I will no longer be in existence. To what end, then,
are all these cares? That a man should see this, and seeing it, go on
living, is indeed a matter for astonishment.”
Powerfully does he describe his sensations in the following words:
“It is now a long, long while since that Oriental tale was told of the
traveller in the desert who is pursued by an animal that has grown
wild. In order to escape it he jumps into a waterless well, at whose
bottom, however, a dragon is lying, with open jaws, ready to devour
him. The unfortunate man dares not creep out, lest he be torn to pieces
by the savage animal; and he also does not dare to jump down to the
bottom of the well for fear of being devoured by the dragon. So he
remains clinging to the branch of a wild shrub which has taken root in
a rift of the well. But his hands begin to get tired, and he feels that
it will soon be quite impossible for him to escape the destruction that
awaits him on either hand; nevertheless, he still holds on, but now
sees that two mice--a black one and a white one--are running about the
trunk of the very shrub to which he is clinging and nibbling it away.
Soon--aye, soon!--will the shrub break off and precipitate him to the
bottom of the well into the jaws of the monster. The traveller sees
this and knows full well that he is irrevocably doomed to death; yet,
while he still clings to the shrub, he looks about him and discovers
drops of honey on its leaves. He reaches out to these with his tongue
and licks them.
“Just in the same way do I hold on to the branch of life. I know that I
can not escape the dragon of death, who is waiting, ready to rend me,
and I can not comprehend why I have been condemned to this torture. I
try to suck the honey which in earlier years gave me comfort, but it
delights me no longer, and the white and the black mouse gnaw day and
night at the branch to which I am clinging. I see the dragon quite
clearly, and the honey is no longer sweet on my lips. These alone I
do indeed see plainly--the unavoidable dragon and the mice--and I can
not turn my gaze away from them. This is no fairy tale, but a real,
irrefutable truth which is comprehensible to every one.
“The earlier delusion caused by the joys of life, which made me forget
the horror of the dragon, cheats me no longer. They may say to me as
often as they like: ‘You are not able to comprehend the meaning of
life; do not think about it--live.’ I can not do that any more, because
I have done so indeed too long already. Now, it is no longer possible
for me to avoid seeing the days and the nights which are hurrying by
and carrying me toward death. I see only this because it is the truth.
Everything else is untruth. Those two drops of honey which more than
anything else diverted my eyes from the horrible truth--the love of my
family and love of writing, which last I called ‘art’--seem no longer
sweet to me.”
In vain had he endeavoured to gain enlightenment from science on the
question that tormented him, “Wherefore do I live?” And so he sought to
find the solution in life itself: “And I found that the people of my
class have four ways of getting out of this dreadful position in which
we all are situated.
“The first way out is that of ignorance. It consists in this: that one
does not need to know, does not need to understand, that life is an
evil and devoid of sense. The persons belonging to this category--who
for the most part are women or very young or stupid men--have not yet
comprehended that question of life which Schopenhauer, Solomon, and
Buddha set before themselves. They see neither the dragon that is
awaiting them nor the mice that are gnawing at the shrubs to which they
are clinging, and they lick the drops of honey....
“The second way out is that of the epicurean. It consists of this: that
having come to see the hopelessness of life, one simply enjoys the good
it offers, looking neither at the dragon nor the mice, and sucks up
carefully every drop of honey, especially if there is a great deal of
it....
“The third way out is that of the strong and energetic. It consists in
destroying life as soon as the knowledge is attained that life is an
evil and devoid of meaning....
“The fourth way out is that of the weak. It consists in this: that,
in spite of the fact that the evil and its lack of meaning are
comprehended, one does not cease to live, though knowing that nothing
will be attained in the end. The persons who form this group know that
death is better than life, but lack the courage to act rationally by
making an end of the deception as quickly as possible and taking their
own lives. Yet they act as if they still expected something. That is
the way out of the weak; for why do I not procure myself the greater
good, which I know full well, and which lies within my grasp?... To
this group it was that I belonged.”
In his further researches, Tolstoi arrived at the conclusion that
“rational knowledge” could only extend to that which we are in a
position to apprehend.
“What did I do when I sought for an answer in the philosophical
sciences? I studied the thoughts of those who found themselves in the
same position as I, but they had no answer to the question, Wherefore
do I live? It is obvious that I, too, could not learn anything more
than what I already knew--that one is not able to know anything.”
He came to this conclusion: that “rational knowledge” can apply
only the finite to the finite and the infinite to the infinite, and
that it is therefore impossible to find in “rational knowledge” any
answer to his question. Only the assumption of something which is
beyond our capacity of apprehension, and therefore not capable of
being established by rational knowledge, can give an answer to his
question, and that something is the joining of the finite with the
infinite--faith. “Thus I inevitably came to see that in addition to
the rational knowledge, which at an earlier time I had considered to
be the only thing, all mankind possesses still another knowledge, an
irrational one--faith, which makes life possible.” Thus it was that
Tolstoi, at the age of fifty-five, returned to the orthodox Christian
faith in which he was originally trained, and in which he now again
found that calm and contentment after which he hankered.
Nordau does not agree with Tolstoi’s philosophy, therefore Tolstoi is a
degenerate. Now, unless the conception of psychical degeneration is to
be completely turned upside down, it can not be assumed that a person
can suddenly become a degenerate in the fifty-fifth year of his life.
One may get an attack of mental disease at any age, but degeneration
means disturbances of development; and therefore if a person has
not manifested any disturbances of this kind before his fifty-fifth
year, he is not a degenerate. If it is to be assumed that Tolstoi’s
views were caused by some diseased mental process, then it ought to
be proved that he had become mentally diseased, that he had suffered
from delusions or other phenomena of the same kind, or psychical
disturbances must be found in his whole past life.
Nordau does none of these things. He contents himself, in his customary
manner, merely with criticising Tolstoi’s philosophy, and sets up his
own infallible, sole, proper metaphysics in opposition to it, and
the degree of deviation from his opinion defines the degree of the
“degeneration” of the other.
This is not the place, nor do I feel any special inclination, to
undertake a discussion of Nordau’s philosophy; but, as he fancies that
he sees a symptom of disease in every deviation from his own opinion,
it will be as well for us to consider at least its principal points.
Tolstoi was tormented by the question, “Wherefore do I live?” That is
in Nordau’s eyes a sign of degeneration, for he considers this question
a superfluous one, since it can be answered quite satisfactorily
without any special difficulty. The man who has faith, says Nordau,
will have no occasion to ponder over this question. “The unbeliever,
who is convinced that his life is a particular instance of the
universal life of Nature, that his individuality has blossomed into
existence as a necessary law-governed operation of eternal, organic
forces, knows also very well not only ‘wherefore,’ but also ‘what for,’
he lives. He lives because, and as long as, life is to him a source of
gratification--that is to say, of joy and happiness.”[136] According to
this view, life ought to be for all living people a source of joy and
happiness, since, as Nordau says, one lives only so long as this is the
case. But does this view correspond with the facts? Do not thousands
of persons live who have no faith, whose life is to them anything but
a source of joy and happiness? Any one who really knows the world in
which we live will know that there are thousands of persons devoid
of faith whose life gives them nothing but unspeakable suffering,
torments, and misery, and who would yet not voluntarily leave this
world. We often see persons who have been deprived by incurable and
painful disease of every joy and hope yet clinging to life with every
fibre of their being. Joy and happiness, therefore, are not the causes
of our continuing to live. It is a powerful instinct residing in all
living beings which lies at the root of our clinging to life--the
instinct of self-preservation. This instinct is compounded of a number
of impulses and sensations, such as the impulses to eat, drink, sleep,
etc. It is the satisfying of these impulses, which in the case of
human beings are refined to a high degree, as we have seen in another
place, that forms the joys of life. The latter, therefore, are only the
results of our continuing to live, and not, as Nordau maintains, its
causes, in which light the instinct alone can be regarded.
Quite apart from its general incorrectness, therefore, Nordau’s
explanation is no answer to Tolstoi’s question, “Wherefore do I live?”
Our instincts form one cause of our existence. It is not, however, into
this, but into the aim that Tolstoi inquires. If, nevertheless, the
satisfying of the impulses--that is, the joys--of which Nordau speaks
is considered to be the aim of life, if consequently it is maintained
that we live in order to eat, while we yet eat in order to live, then
one is guilty of a voluntary perversion of the facts.
The question as to the aim and meaning of life has occupied many
philosophers before Tolstoi, and will continue, in spite of Nordau, to
be frequently a subject of reflection, and no symptom of degeneration
need be seen therein. Nordau, of course, according to his well-known
method of perverting and misusing scientific terms, calls this
investigation of the philosopher a “mania of doubt and brooding
thought.” He says: “It is not, then, the noble desire for knowledge
which forces Tolstoi to be ceaselessly occupied with questions
concerning the aim and meaning of life, but the degenerative mania
of doubt and brooding thought, which is barren, because no answer,
no explanation, can satisfy them; for it is obvious that be the
‘therefore’ ever so exhaustive, it can never silence the mechanically
impulsive ‘wherefore’ proceeding from the unconscious.”[137] Does
Nordau really consider his “therefore” clear and exhaustive? That
the real mania of doubt of the degenerate can never be satisfied is
perfectly true, but it would be ridiculous to turn this proposition
around and say that every one who fosters doubts for which he is unable
to find any satisfactory explanation is a degenerate. Besides, Nordau
has here once more defeated his own ends, for Tolstoi did after all
find satisfaction, and that in religious faith.
I freely concede that it is psychologically a peculiar phenomenon that
any one who has occupied himself so much with natural sciences as
Tolstoi has should suddenly become an orthodox believer; but if the
nature and manner in which he has come to this do not correspond with a
clinical form of disease, then faith as such does not entitle us in any
way to assume a pathological process. Religious faith can be reconciled
with the metaphysics of the present day, and is to be considered as a
symptom of disease only when it manifests itself, as in paranoia, as a
delusive idea.
Nordau is an optimist, and therefore declares the whole system of
pessimism in philosophy to be a symptom of disease. His interpretation
of the riddle of life “explains optimism and pessimism simply as
an adequate or inadequate vitality, as the existence or absence of
adaptability, as health or illness.”[138] He overlooks completely the
fact that optimism and pessimism in philosophy are entirely the results
of intellectual action, that it is in an objective manner that the
philosopher attains his conclusions, and that these are independent
of his subjective sensation, or exert only a secondary influence upon
it. Schopenhauer, in spite of his pessimism, desired a long life.
What Nordau means, what he designates as health and disease, refers
entirely to subjective sensation, and therefore to the love of life and
weariness thereof. That philosophical pessimism may in many cases be
the result of a diseased feeling of weariness can be conceded without
further discussion, but this is by no means invariably the rule, and
therefore here also, as always is the case in psychiatry, there is
need of a rigid individualization. Were Nordau less superficial he
would know that subjective optimism--the love of life--may be just
as complete a symptom of disease as the weariness of life. The power
of easy endurance in the insane paretic who finds himself in a happy
state of mind, and to whom the world appears in its rosiest aspect,
is a classical symptom of this disease. The weak-minded person whose
imbecility prevents him from reflecting on the seriousness of life,
and who is imbued with a sense of his own importance and greatness,
generally feels himself happy and contented, whereas, as we have seen
in our discussion about the man of genius, great, powerful minds
are just those that are always discontented and dissatisfied. That
optimism and pessimism are to be conceived of as health and disease, is
therefore another of those arbitrary assertions of Nordau which lack
all scientific foundation.
In his researches into the subject of morality it was especially
modern marriage which occupied Tolstoi, and he endeavoured to study
its nature and right of existence from all sides. The Kreutzer Sonata,
in which he developed his views upon this point, very soon gained a
world-wide reputation, and gave rise to the most violent discussions
and misunderstandings. The conclusion to be extracted from this work
(which, in fact, has been extracted therefrom) is that, according to
his moral teaching, the destruction of the human species should be
brought about by absolute continence, and that mankind should die out
with the present generation. On the strength of this theory there were
people who fancied that they recognised in Tolstoi a sexual psychopath,
and traced to this fact his surprising doctrines. In consequence of
these misunderstandings Tolstoi was induced, after repeated requests,
to explain in a special commentary what had been his real intention in
writing the Kreutzer Sonata.
After a detailed examination of matrimonial and extra-matrimonial
sexual intercourse in its sanitary and social relations, he sets up
absolute continence as an ideal worth striving for. To the objection
that in carrying out this ideal the human race would become extinct he
rejoins: “Apart from the fact that the destruction of the human race is
no new idea for the inhabitants of our world, that it is in the case of
religious persons an article of faith, and in the case of scientists an
inevitable conclusion from the observations regarding the cooling of
the sun, there lies in this objection a widespread and ancient error.
It is said that if mankind attains the ideal of perfect chastity it
destroys itself, and that therefore this ideal is not a true one. But
those who speak in this way confuse intentionally or unintentionally
two distinct subjects--the direction or precept and the ideal.
Chastity is not a precept or direction, but an ideal, or a preliminary
condition thereto. But an ideal remains an ideal only so long as its
accomplishment is possible solely in the idea, in the mind, so long as
it appears to be attainable solely in eternity, and consequently so
long as the possibility of an approach thereto is infinite. Could the
ideal be attained (if we can conceive of its accomplishment), then it
would cease to be an ideal.”
Accordingly, Tolstoi merely attacks sexual immorality, and neither this
nor his other doctrines of morality, in which he preaches the love
of one’s neighbour and the equal rights of all men, contains any new
feature.
In questions of philosophy, of metaphysics and morality, in which we
are still very far from being able to establish absolute truths, we
ought therefore, more than on any other subject whatever, to practise
toleration toward our antagonists. Every one must be free to criticise
his opponent, and Nordau may say of Tolstoi that his “theory of life,
the fruit of the despairing mental labour of his whole life, is
therefore nothing but a haze, a failure to comprehend his own questions
and answers and hollow verbiage. His ethics--on which he himself lays a
far greater stress than on his philosophy--is not in much better case
than the latter.”[139]
So long as Nordau confines himself to simple criticism, freedom must be
accorded to him to pass sentence on Tolstoi. But every one will have
the same right with reference to Nordau’s ethics and metaphysics. To
deduct, however, a condition of disease from a deviation from one’s own
particular opinion is, and must always be, unscientific.
Many persons would without doubt judge Nordau’s philosophy and ethics
in a similar manner as he does Tolstoi’s. Take, for example, what
he says about marriage: “Marriage, moreover, was not instituted for
the man, but for the woman and the child. It is a protective social
institution for the benefit of the weaker part. Man has not yet
conquered and humanized his polygamous animal instincts to the same
extent as woman. It would, for the most part, be quite agreeable to him
to exchange the woman he possesses for a new one.”[140] If every one
who does not agree with this view, as well as with very many others of
Nordau’s contentions on this point, is a degenerate, there would not, I
fancy, be many sane persons in this world besides Mr. Nordau.
If marriage, as he maintains, was instituted, not for the man, but only
for the woman and child; if the man enters into an agreement for his
whole life, not from ideas of self-interest, but merely from ideas of
compassion, and in order to give “protection” to the “weaker part,”
then marriage as a whole would have neither title nor moral foundation.
An agreement only holds so long as it is founded on legitimate mutual
interests. When these fail, the agreement must be dissolved, and no
power in the world will be able to uphold it.
The idea that Nature intended man to be polygamic but the woman not,
is not original with Nordau. It has been frequently brought forward,
and has in later times found upholders in Hartmann[141] and others. I
have never been able to see in this idea anything beyond an endeavour
to furnish a scientific excuse for the immorality and excesses of the
stronger sex. Even though it should be assumed that in general the
sexual instinct is stronger in men than in women, would this justify a
morality which permits the man to do what he likes, even to indulge in
the most dissolute debauchery, while the woman, on the contrary, who
lacks the strength even only once to withstand an impulse, is branded
as deeply fallen? Is this the protection which the “stronger” sex gives
to the “weaker”?
But Nordau’s opinion--that man originally did not have stronger
sexual instincts than the woman, but that he has “not yet conquered
and humanized his polygamous animal instincts to the same extent as
woman”--is certainly new. Therefore, according to him, the “weak
woman,” who requires the protection of the strong man, stands higher on
the ladder of development than the strong man himself. What wisdom we
do invent to palliate our own weaknesses!
Nordau’s chief fault and error are that he considers himself justified
in drawing a psychiatric conclusion from his purely subjective
criticism of a work of art. The art-critic’s point of view toward a
work of art must be an essentially different one from that of the
psychologist or psychiatrist. The first merely considers the work as
such according to its value; the latter, on the other hand, seeks to
ascertain from the work of art the psychical processes of the author.
It is evident that to do this it is indispensable to get at the purpose
of the artist or writer which lies at the root of his work. Nordau,
however, exercises criticism primarily, and troubles himself little
about the real purpose of the writer.
In the same way he judges, among others, also Ibsen. The literature
with reference to this writer is enormously large, and opinions about
his purpose are very diverse. By many Ibsen is not generally regarded
as a Naturalist, but it is fancied that in his characters are to
be found symbolical incorporations of poetical and philosophical
ideas. That his later writings, in particular the Master Builder,
are to be regarded in an allegorical light, seems, indeed, pretty
well established. Nordau, however, treats them throughout as purely
naturalistic productions, criticising the individual characters without
at the same time reflecting whether it was at all the writer’s purpose
to describe real characters taken from life.
It would carry me too far if I were to indulge here in further
researches as to whether the view Nordau has adopted regarding Ibsen’s
writings corresponds with that writer’s intention. In any event,
Nordau’s psychiatric judgment of Ibsen is again entirely based on a
purely subjective criticism of his works.
How important it is for the psychologist and psychiatrist, in judging
a work of art, primarily to ascertain the purpose of the artist--the
motive which lies at the basis of his work--I will make clear by an
example, which shows to sufficiency into what errors one may fall
when, in forming psychiatric expert opinions, he confines himself to
subjective criticism of a work of art, instead of investigating the
psychological sources to which it owes its origin. This example is
that of Richard Wagner, who has already given manifold occasion to
psychiatric errors. As this case is instructive for many reasons, and
at the same time of general interest, I shall investigate it a little
more in detail, and treat of it in a separate chapter.
RICHARD WAGNER AND PSYCHOPATHOLOGY.
It is beyond the scope of this work to give anything like a connected
biography of Wagner, even though it would conduce largely to a better
understanding of our researches. I must therefore refer the reader to
the copious literature which exists on the subject of Wagner’s life,
and especially to his own statements, in his Gesammelte Schriften und
Dichtungen. I shall confine myself here simply to calling attention to
those points in his life which are requisite for an explanation of the
psychical processes to which his artistic creations owe their origin.
My treatment of the latter will not aim at anything like an artistic
critical study, but will proceed wholly from a psychological point of
view in so far as may be requisite for the formation of a psychological
analysis.
Wagner was born at Leipsic on May 22, 1813. His father is described
as a clever and intelligent man, by occupation a clerk of police, who
died as early as November, 1813--that is to say, half a year after the
birth of his son. Shortly afterward the child’s mother married a friend
of her late husband, Louis Geyer, an actor, painter, and poet, who
died when Wagner was only seven years of age. The latter’s education,
consequently, was chiefly directed by his mother, who devoted herself
to this duty with all love and conscientiousness. He attended the
Dresden school of art and later the Nicolai school in Leipsic.
Wagner was no infant prodigy. Yet even at an early age he gave evidence
of a lively fantasy, indulging in manifold poetical attempts; but
it was not until the period of his youth that he first displayed any
decided talent for music. It was at the Gewandhaus concerts in Leipsic
that he first came to know Beethoven’s compositions, which made a
strong impression on his youthful mind. With ardent zeal he buried
himself in the study of Beethoven, and Dorn thus expresses himself with
regard to him: “I doubt whether there has ever been a young composer
who was more conversant with Beethoven’s works than Wagner was at the
age of eighteen.”
Even in the years of his youth that impulse made itself felt in Wagner
which we have learned to recognise as a characteristic of great
men--the creative impulse. He himself was perfectly aware of it, and
put it in a poetical form when he said that a fairy had stood beside
his cradle and granted him a gift that is frequently disdained--“The
spirit that is ne’er content, which always thinks of something new.”
This impulse to create was manifested during the period of Wagner’s
artistic development in two different ways. Two opposing elements
struggled in him for the mastery; sometimes the one gained the upper
hand, sometimes the other, until, tried by this struggle, he followed
his true artistic nature and remained true to it to the end. These two
elements were the impulse to give expression to his artistic sensations
and feelings, which impulse we have found to have been the guiding
principle of all the creations of Goethe, and the objectively formed
craving to create, which was excited from without.
After a number of minor attempts in the way of writing poetry and
composing, Wagner put together a libretto called the Fairies, the
idea of which was borrowed from one of Gozzi’s tales. He says, to be
true: “What I constructed was certainly nothing else than just what I
wanted--namely, a libretto; and I set it to music in accordance with
the impressions that Beethoven, Weber, and Marschner had made upon
me.”[142] But he adds: “And yet, not the suitability for a libretto
which I had discovered in Gozzi’s tale alone drew me toward it, but the
subject itself touched me to the quick.” In the poetical subject of the
fairy who gave up her immortality that she might possess the man she
loved, Wagner had unconsciously given artistic expression to the mood
within him.
At the same time an impulse had made itself felt in his case which
perfectly harmonized with his age and the external influences working
upon him--an impulse toward a brilliant artistic career, an ardent
longing for fame and honour. “An impulse grew within me, amounting in
intensity to a consuming yearning, to rise above the littleness and
wretchedness of the circumstances that controlled me. This impulse,
however, had only a secondary influence on my actual life itself;
primarily, it aimed at a brilliant career as an artist.”[143]
While in this state of mind Wagner wrote a second opera--Forbidden
Love, or the Novice of Palermo--for which he had adapted the plot
of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure. In the summer of 1834 he had
accepted the post of musical director at the theatre of Magdeburg.
With reference to this he says: “My remarkable converse with singers
behind the scenes and before the footlights entirely corresponded with
my inclination toward diverse forms of amusement.”[144] During this
period he completed the composition of Forbidden Love. His sole purpose
was to please, to win fame and approbation. “For a holiday performance
on New Year’s day, 1835, I hastily prepared some music which generally
pleased. Easily-won successes like this confirmed me very strongly in
the view that, in order to please, one ought certainly not to consider
too scrupulously the means at one’s command. And it was upon this
principle that I proceeded with the composition of my Forbidden Love.”
We perceive an essential difference between the origin of the Fairies
and that of Forbidden Love. Wagner himself recognised this, and says on
the subject: “If this subject is compared with that of the Fairies, it
will be noticed that the possibility was open to me to develop myself
according to either of two fundamentally different tendencies; to the
sacred earnestness of my original sentiment there opposed itself a
bold tendency, nourished by the impressions of my life, toward wild,
sensuous impetuosity, toward a saucy joyousness, which seemed to
contradict the former most emphatically.”[145] Farther on he says:
“Whoever chooses to compare this composition with the Fairies will
hardly be able to comprehend how so marked a conversion of tendencies
could be brought about in so short a time. My path led me in the first
instance to utter frivolity in my opinions about art; this was the
case during the first period of my entry upon the practical career of
musical director at the theatre. The rehearsing and direction of those
very pliant fashionable French operas, the piquant and daring elements
in their orchestral effects, gave me many a childish joy when I could
send them out into the audience from my director’s desk.”[146]
In the autumn of 1837 Wagner went to Riga to take the post of first
musical director of the theatre there. Here he found excellent material
for his opera, and applied himself “with much love to using it.” He
composed for the singers several interpolations for various operas,
and also made up the text for a two-act comic opera, the Happy Bear
Family, the subject of which he had borrowed from a narrative in the
Thousand and One Nights. He had already composed one part of this when
he became filled with disgust at the work and turned away from it with
aversion. He now determined “to do something really great--to write
an opera, for the production of which only the most important forces
should be appropriate,” so that he might not be tempted to bring it
before the public in the limited circumstances in which he happened to
be. It should be to him an incentive to exert himself to the utmost to
get out of the conditions that were so loathsome to him.
In this state of mind he sketched out the plan of a great tragic opera
in five acts--Rienzi, the Last of the Tribunes--the material for which
he had borrowed from Bulwer Lytton’s story. He strove in this to
create something great and brilliant, which would satisfy his artistic
ambition. “Even here, in the composition of the text, there was in
my mind really nothing else than to write an effective libretto. The
Grand Opera, with all its scenic and musical splendour, its effectful,
passionate musical fulness, loomed up before me; and it became the
desire of my artistic ambition not merely to seek to imitate it, but to
surpass all it had offered hitherto with unbounded lavishness.”
One portion of this opera had already been completed when Wagner
resolved to break with his present life. Without means, without
preparation, without any prospects, he straightway betook himself from
Riga to Paris. During the sea voyage, which lasted four weeks and in
the course of which he visited the coast of Norway, there recurred
to him the legend of the Flying Dutchman, with which at an earlier
period he had become familiar. This legendary figure now made a deep
impression upon his mind. “He gained spiritual power from my own
peculiar situation; from the storms, the billows, the rocky northern
shore and the activity of the sailors, he got physiognomy and colour.”
When Wagner reached Paris and became dazzled by the brilliancy of its
musical world, the figure of the Flying Dutchman was at first blotted
out again, and his efforts seemed once more wholly directed toward
the opera that should make an impression. “When I was present at the
brilliant performances of the Grand Opera, an event, by the way, which
did not happen frequently, a voluptuous, wheedling warmth mounted up in
me, and gave me the wish, the hope--nay, the certainty--that I would
yet be able to triumph here. This magnificence of accessories, applied
with enthusiastic artistic purpose, seemed to me to be the zenith
of art, and I felt myself not in the least incapable of attaining
this zenith. Moreover, I recollect that I was quite willing to find
inspiration in all phases of that artistic world which appeared to bear
in any way upon my aim; what was meretricious and unsubstantial was
concealed from my sight by a brilliancy of sensuous externals such as I
had never seen before.”[147]
This mood, this striving after fame and splendour, was not, however,
destined to dominate the soul of the artist for any length of time, but
soon became transformed into a most profound contempt for this artistic
tendency. There arose in him an unspeakable yearning which he was
himself frequently unable to judge correctly. To this were added the
unfortunate material circumstances in which Wagner happened to be at
that time, which constrained him to grasp at the humblest means to gain
his livelihood. In order to be introduced by singers into the salons of
Paris, he composed several French romances, declared himself ready to
compose the music for a vulgar vaudeville for one of the theatres of
the boulevards, and finally had to occupy himself with the arrangement
of arias from “favourite operas” for the _cornet-à-piston_. In these
circumstances, the yearning in him assumed a more and more definite
shape; the artistic world with its brilliancy and glitter, as he now
saw it, and the great Parisian opera filled him with disgust and
aversion, and from this moment he longed to leave it all for a dimly
perceived ideal of intelligent affection. While in this state of mind,
the Flying Dutchman again occurred to him. In this mythical character’s
unspeakable longing for unselfish love, Wagner saw the reflected image
of his inmost soul. The “woman” after whom the Dutchman hankered, and
who unselfishly sacrificed herself for him, represented that ideal
human love of which the artist himself stood in need. “It was this
Flying Dutchman who so repeatedly and with such irresistible power of
attraction sprang up within me out of the quagmires and billows of my
life; it was the first national poem which made any deep impression on
my heart and urged me, as artist, to interpret and mould it into a work
of art.”[148]
It was in this mood that the poem and music of the Flying Dutchman were
brought into being. Wagner compares the legend with that of Odysseus
longing for his domestic hearth, and of the Wandering Jew. But in the
case of the Dutchman, the woman he desired was no longer the actually
existing woman at home, but an ideal which did not yet exist but only
was perceived--the ideal of that human love which sought no recompense.
“The yearning of Odysseus for his home, hearth, and wife had, after
having been nurtured by the sufferings of the Wandering Jew into a
desire for death, been strengthened into the craving after something
new, unknown, not yet visibly present, but already felt.”
Wagner fancied that he would be able to find the satisfaction of his
yearning in Germany rather than in Paris, and while he was busy with
the composition of the Flying Dutchman, the object for which he longed
assumed the shape of home--not the home, of course, that he had left,
but an ideal home, one still to be expected. “A delicate, longing
patriotism took possession of me, of whose existence I had hitherto
not had the slightest suspicion. This patriotism was free from all
political colouring, for even at that time I was well aware that
political Germany, as opposed in any way to political France, did not
possess for me the least power of attraction. It was the feeling of
homelessness in Paris that awakened in me the yearning for my German
home; this yearning, however, did not have a reference to anything that
I had known of old, which could be gained back, but to something felt
and desired, new and unknown, which I was to win for the first time,
and about which I only knew that I would certainly not find it here in
Paris. It was the yearning of my Flying Dutchman for the woman--not, as
I have said, Odysseus’s housewife, but the woman who brought salvation,
whose features did not occur to me in any definite shape, but who
merely hovered before my eyes as the incarnation of the female element.
And this element assumed the appearance of home--that is, of closest
companionship.”
In the Flying Dutchman that artistic tendency had triumphed in Wagner
which corresponded with his true nature, and from this time forward
he remained true to it to the last. No longer were splendour and fame
the aims of his artistic creation; art became to him solely a means of
expression, a means of communicating his inmost feelings and moods,
and his only wish was to be understood--that is to say, to awaken by
his art in others the same sensations to which it owed its origin.
It was no longer his aim to gain admiration and create astonishment.
“One thing kept me up--my art, which was for me a means not for the
acquisition of fame and money, but for the communication of my views to
sensitive hearts.”[149] All his artistic creations were henceforth,
as it were, the mirror of his soul; his art was the proclaimer of his
inmost sensations.
Just as we perceived in the case of the objective poet, Shakespeare,
two easily distinguishable factors in the artist and his work, so we
saw in every line of the subjective Goethe the poet himself in his
most intimate personality. As I have already said in another place, we
could not for this reason love Goethe’s poems without also esteeming in
them the personality of the poet, for poet and artistic work are there
blended into one indissoluble whole. From this point of view alone was
Goethe able to comprehend art, and he therefore said: “One must be
something in order to make something. It is the personal character of
the writer which makes him important in the eyes of the public, and not
the products of his talent.”
Wagner had the same experience in this regard as Goethe; he also is a
subjective artist who can not be separated from his art; every one of
his artistic creations also forms “a fragment of a great confession.”
His art forms a portion of his personality, and is therefore no more
separable from him than speech is from man. He could therefore hope
to be understood only where people felt and experienced with him, not
merely where they were ready to consider a work of art in an objective
manner. They must be able to penetrate with fullest sympathy into
his personal sensations and moods. Wagner therefore says: “As such
[that is to say, as his friends, by whom alone he could hope to be
understood] I can not, however, regard those who pretend to love me
as an artist and yet think it right to deny me their sympathy as a
man. If the separation of the artist from the man is something just
as unthinkable as the divorce of the soul from the body, and if it is
established that an artist can never be loved, that his art can never
be comprehended unless he be also (at all events, unconsciously and
involuntarily) loved as a man, and unless his life also be understood
along with his art, so much the less, as things are at the present
day, and considering the despicably bad condition of our public
artistic conditions, can an artist of my tendency be loved, and his
art consequently be under, stood, unless this understanding and that
possible love be founded before everything upon sympathy--that is to
say, upon compassion and fellow-feeling with the most human part of
his life.”[150] Wagner was perfectly right in this, though only with
reference to “an artist of his tendency,” and he agrees in this opinion
with Goethe; but we have seen that there is also an objective art to
which this opinion would not apply. Wagner, however, from his point of
view, could not come to any other judgment; he felt that he could only
be understood in those cases in which people felt and experienced with
him. His art appealed not to the intellect, but to the feelings. “The
artist appeals to the feelings and not to the intellect; if an answer
is given him from the side of the intellect, it may be said that he
has not been understood, and the criticism amounts in truth to nothing
else than the confession of a lack of understanding of the work of art,
which can only be understood with the feelings.”[151]
Wagner saw, as Goethe expressed it, “the general in the particular,”
and it was in this that his artistic gifts lay. In giving artistic
expression to his own aspirations he unconsciously touched the feelings
of humanity. He felt that he could only be understood by those who
could feel artistically with him, “who happened to be in a more or less
similar position with the artist, developed under similar conditions
of life, and who could sympathize with him from the bottom of their
nature and heart, so that they were, under certain circumstances, in
a position to assume his view as their own, and were able to take the
required intense interest in the effort to give them expression.”
With a view to giving artistic expression to his feelings, Wagner felt
himself drawn toward a form of art which permitted him to appeal in the
most unlimited manner possible to the receptive sensations, and this
form of art was the musical drama. Of course this form of art had to be
very different from the opera which had existed up to this time, so as
to be in conformity with the difference between their respective aims.
The aim of the opera of that day was the satisfaction of the prevailing
artistic taste of an unintelligent mob, the satisfaction of a longing
for diversion and amusement. The opera had to do justice to all these
requirements. The dominating factor of the opera was the music, to
which everything else was subordinate. To create “fine melodies” was
the duty of the composer; the libretto was a secondary consideration,
and sound and word had no intimate connection with each other. There
was no desire for anything like “sense” in a libretto; the words were
always merely the handmaids of the music, to suit which they were
put together. Just in the same way as the poet was, so to speak, the
train-bearer of the musician, the musician became the slave of the
interpreter. Airs and duets were composed in order to give the singers
the opportunity of displaying their artistic skill; composers had no
hesitation in writing for particular singers, and in letting them
prescribe the nature of their work, in order to attain as “powerful an
effect” as possible.
Between productions of this kind and a form of art whose single aim
it was to give expression to the emotions and feelings of the artist,
there must naturally be a fundamental distinction. In Wagner’s eyes
music was nothing further than a means of expression which in a
co-ordinate manner stood opposed to the other factors of the work as
a whole, of the drama. The meaning of the music begins at the point
where that of the words no longer suffices. Temperaments and passions
may be described in every case by the spoken words, but they can not
be immediately brought to expression. Music, on the other hand, is
the immediate proclaimer of the sensations; the words appeal to the
intellect, the music appeals to the feelings.
Wagner felt very well that he had begun his true artistic career with
the Flying Dutchman. “At that point my career as a poet begins where
I left that of a composer of librettos.” His works of art originated
thereafter no longer in reflection, but in the impulse to communicate
moods that were present in him. “My treatment was new; it was suggested
to me out of my inmost mood, and forced upon me by the impulse to
communicate this mood. In order to deliver myself of what was in
me--that is to say, in order to obey the inward pressure to communicate
with persons feeling like me--I had as an artist to enter upon a path
that had certainly not been suggested to me by outward experience,
and that which impels a man hereto is necessity, a deeply felt,
constraining necessity, though one not known to the practical mind.”
The Flying Dutchman was finished. The indefinite yearning of the artist
assumed a more and more tangible form in the longing for home:
’Tis strange, methinks, to give its name
To every land to which I roam;
But not to find that dearest land
For which I burn--the land called home.[152]
It was in this state of mind that Wagner left Paris in the spring of
1842. Meanwhile his Rienzi had been accepted for the court theatre at
Dresden; the Flying Dutchman was to be produced at Berlin; the future
smiled upon the artist with rosy serenity, and with happy, joyous
heart he set out for home. “For the first time I saw the Rhine, and
with bright tears in my eyes I, poor artist that I was, swore eternal
fidelity to my German Fatherland.”[153] In due course he reached
Dresden, where he was received with love and sympathy. Rienzi was
produced and proved a brilliant triumph. “After a long struggle amid
paltry circumstances,” so Wagner writes, “after hard-fought battles,
sufferings, and condemnation amid the loveless Parisian artistic and
social life, I quickly found myself in surroundings that acknowledged
me, helped me, and frequently met me in the most affectionate spirit.”
Wagner had already been for some time acquainted with the legend of
Tannhäuser through an old book of folk-tales. On the journey from Paris
to Dresden he visited the Wartburg for the first time, and it was in
this way that this legend, which in the book in question was loosely
connected with the singers’ war, came once more clearly before his
eyes. But in Dresden, where he again took part in the outward pomp
of modern artistic life, this impression gradually faded away. The
extraordinary success of his Rienzi, the veneration and admiration
which fell to his lot, deceived him once again with respect to the
condition of art as it really existed, and caused him to regard it in
an idealistic light. The post of director of the royal opera at Dresden
having at this time been offered to him, it became perfectly clear to
him that the public life of art did not imply any true art such as he
had learned to know it, but only a “self-interest which adorned itself
with an artistic appearance.” But the brilliancy of such a post in the
eyes of others blinded him also, and he became director of the royal
opera.
The production of the Flying Dutchman at Berlin had come to naught;
but, in consequence of the great success which had attended Rienzi,
the director of the court theatre of Dresden decided to have the
Flying Dutchman also produced. The opera was quickly rehearsed under
Wagner’s own direction, but fell entirely flat. The public had expected
something like Rienzi, but this “new tendency” left it perfectly cold
and unsympathetic. His Rienzi was repeated with so much the more
enthusiasm, and it must have been clear to Wagner which path he ought
to tread if he wished to make sure of fame and fortune. Once more
the temptation came to him to be untrue to his real artistic nature.
“The sensuous, luxurious mood,” so he writes, “which had come upon me
by virtue of the complete change in my external circumstances, and
in consequence of the first enjoyment of an assured position, but
especially also of a certain amount of affection and admiration on the
part of the public, became intensified into a pleasurable self-content,
and soon led me more and more deeply into a misunderstanding and
misuse of my true nature as it had hitherto developed itself, with its
necessary consequences.”[154]
Once again the impulse came to Wagner to write a great, brilliant opera
in the style of Rienzi, and he therefore took up a scheme which had
already been sketched out at an earlier period, an historical opera in
five acts--The Saracens--of which Manfred, son of the Emperor Frederick
II, was the hero. But this artistic tendency, which was merely
calculated for splendour and effect and was repugnant to his whole
nature, was bound very soon to fill him with aversion and disgust. He
himself describes this internal struggle: “An impulse, such as in every
person impels toward the immediate present, now determined me, in my
special circumstances as an artist, to a tendency which was bound again
very soon and violently to disgust me. This impulse would only have
been appeased in life if I had also sought as an artist to aspire to
brilliancy and profit by a perfect subordination of my true nature to
the demands of the public taste. I would have had to sacrifice myself
to fashion and to playing upon the public’s taste, and here, at this
point, it was clear to my feeling that in actually entering upon this
tendency I would have to come to naught from sheer disgust.”
In this state of mind Tannhäuser again presented himself to Wagner’s
soul, in his longing henceforth to get out of the world of sensuality
and pleasure:
There’s more than joy affects my heart,
’Midst my delight I seek for smart;
Far from thy realm I must me hie,
O Queen! O Goddess! Let me fly![155]
He turned from this artistic tendency with aversion, and became filled
with a mighty yearning after satisfaction in a higher, nobler element,
which, in antithesis to the sensual world of enjoyment that was about
him and that strove for fame and splendour, must appear to him like a
“pure, chaste, maidenly, unapproachable and intangible loving being.”
“How,” thus proceeds Wagner, “could this yearning for love, the noblest
sensation which, taking into consideration my nature, I could feel, be
anything but the craving after emancipation from the earthly present,
after rebirth into an element of infinite love, such as is not to be
found on earth, but seemed only attainable by death?”
In this internal struggle his true artist nature had once again come
off victorious. Wagner had on many occasions called music his “good
angel”; now he was freed by it through the irresistible impulse to
truer, more unselfish devotion, from the sensuous striving after
external splendour and fame. A sublime, unattainable ideal of the most
unselfish sacrifice, only tangible in death, hovered before him in
the form of a pure, chaste maiden, and within him sounded the words of
redemption:
An angel prayed for thee on earth--
All blissful did she soar o’er thee:
Elizabeth![156]
This was the state of mind to which Tannhäuser owed its origin. How
painfully must it have affected Wagner to be so entirely misunderstood
in his intentions and efforts! He himself says: “How silly must those
critics appear to me who have become ingenious under the influence
of modern loose living, when they try to impute to my Tannhäuser a
specifically Christian, impotently heavenward tendency!”[157]
The figure of Tannhäuser had sprung from his inmost soul; in it his
true feelings and sensations found artistic incorporation. He now
found himself again on the path of the only art which was capable of
satisfying him, yet felt that here he must always deny himself fame and
splendour. But he shunned neither struggle nor conflict; the freedom
of his artistic creation was of more value to him than the sensual
pleasures which had surrounded him.
Nay, I must off the earth to see,
With thee I can a slave but be;
For liberty I still do crave,
For full free liberty I rave;
To toil and strife I must be near,
Though ’tis to die and disappear;
So from thy realm I must me hie--
O Queen! O Goddess! Let me fly![158]
Well did he know what a thorny path he would henceforth have to
traverse, for he says: “In writing this work I signed my own death
warrant. No longer could I now hope for aught from the modern world of
art.” Fully did he feel the curse of Venus:
Thy shame will then dishonour breed;
Expelled and cursed, taunts follow thee;
Crushed and oppressed I see thee come,
Thy dishonoured head with dust defiled.[159]
Nevertheless, bravely and unhesitatingly he went forward upon the only
path that was possible for him.
He felt that on this path he would alienate the public and many friends
who had hitherto honoured him; he knew that he would not be able to
offer an adequate substitute for the amusing and pleasure-giving
popular opera of the day; he recognised that his works were entirely
unfitted for the artistic stage as it then was. Thus he says: “A piece
that is likely to draw good houses, that is likely to be produced
before the public for a lengthy period, or perhaps always, alternated
with other pieces like it, ought not to be derived from any mood,
nor to require for its understanding any particular mood. For this
purpose productions must be taken that are either based on no mood in
particular, or even on no mood at all, and therefore do not aim to
appeal to a particular mood in the public. They should furnish, by the
splendour of representation, and through the sympathy felt for the
performers, a light form of entertainment.”
The directory of the court theatre at Dresden decided upon a
production of Tannhäuser, which by this time had been finished. The
opera was lavishly mounted, and--met with the same fate as the Flying
Dutchman. The public was once more disappointed in its expectations,
and did not hesitate to make known its extreme dissatisfaction.
Wagner was overpowered by a feeling of utter isolation. He had, indeed,
found the means of giving artistic form and expression to his feelings;
he now possessed, indeed, a language by which he could communicate his
sensations, but there was no one who understood this language, who
shared his sensations, who felt and experienced with him. “I had now
become conscious of my perfect isolation as an artistic person to such
an extent that it was only from this very feeling of isolation that
I could draw the impulse and strength to endeavor to speak to those
around me.”[160]
While in this state of mind there occurred to his fantasy a legend
which he had already studied in connection with the Tannhäuser
saga--that of Lohengrin. In Tannhäuser, Wagner had swung himself free
from a world of sensuality, of outward brilliancy and vain aspiration;
he had succeeded in soaring aloft to the desired height of purity
and chastity. He had escaped from the world of weak indulgence to
the lonely height of noblest renunciation. But on this height an
inexpressible yearning filled him to get away from this sunlike
brilliancy of chastest purity to the refreshing warmth of life, to the
complete surrender of unselfish love. He yearned, not to get back to
the life which he had left, but to be in a new ideal life which he had
not yet known. “From this height my longing looks perceived--woman, the
woman for whom the Flying Dutchman yearned from the ocean depth of his
misery; the woman who like a star of heaven directed Tannhäuser from
the dens of sensuality of the Venusberg to the way upward, and who now
drew Lohengrin down from sunny heights to the cherishing bosom of the
earth.”
Lohengrin did not wish to be looked up to and admired by the woman whom
he went to seek, for whose deliverance he had been sent; he wished to
be loved by her. This love was not to consist of a trembling adoration
of a higher being, but was to be experienced in the inmost heart; it
was to rest upon a truer, more intelligent devotion. For this it was
necessary that Lohengrin should conceal his higher origin. For himself
alone was Elsa to love him; nor must she ask who he was or whence he
came:
Ne’er venture to inquire,
Nor proof from me desire,
Whence I my journey trace,
And what’s my name and race![161]
“Thus he desired the woman--thus the human heart.” Upon Elsa’s cry
for help, which echoed up from the midst of humanity to his dreary
isolation, he came to her aid, and saw in her the woman for whom he
craved. Confidingly she gave herself up to her brave hero:
Take me! Hero, saviour mine!
All that I am deem thou as thine![162]
But soon jealousy and envy set to work, and awaken doubt and suspicion
in the soul of the beloved woman. He perceives that she adores but does
not understand him. The confession of his origin is forced from him,
and he is compelled to return, crushed in spirit, to the dreariness of
his isolation.
This is the story of Lohengrin, of which Wagner says: “In the
character and the plight of this Lohengrin I now recognise unmistakably
the symbol of the only tragic material, the only tragic element, in
fact, of modern life.”[163]
He himself felt this tragedy in his inmost soul on the lonely height
upon which he stood, and where he was consumed by ardent longing.
“Here at last I hit the chief point of what is tragic in the situation
of the true artist toward the life of the present time--the same
situation, in truth, which received from me in Lohengrin its artistic
shape. The most necessary and most natural craving of such an artist
is, to be unreservedly accepted and understood by the feeling; and the
impossibility, caused by our modern artistic life, of finding this
feeling in such a state of ingenuousness and undoubting trust as he
asked--to be understood; the necessity of having to communicate himself
almost wholly to the critical understanding only, instead of to the
feelings--this is indeed the first tragical element of his situation.
As an artistic person I had to feel this, and it was destined to affect
me in the course of my further development to such a degree that I
finally broke out in open rebellion against the pressure of this
situation.”[164]
Wagner describes how, during the elaboration of the material, the true
nature of Elsa came more and more clearly before his mind’s eye. He
saw in her not a woman filled with curiosity or jealousy, but “the
longed-for complement of Lohengrin,” which blended with him into one
whole, the “other part of his own nature.” “Elsa is the unconscious,
involuntary element in which the conscious, voluntary nature of
Lohengrin longs to dissolve itself.” The involuntary impulse, the
motive force of his own efforts and creations, Wagner recognised in
this Elsa, before whom “manly egoism even in its noblest shape had
effaced itself totally.” “Elsa, the woman--the woman whom hitherto
I had not understood, but whom now I knew--this most necessary
incarnation of the purest sentient involuntariness--has converted
me into a perfect revolutionist. She was the spirit of the people,
the spirit in which I as an artistic person also longed for my
freedom.”[165]
The home that had been yearned for in the Flying Dutchman, Wagner had
failed to find. He felt a stranger and alone among those that did not
comprehend him. His ideal sense perceived everywhere the limitations
of the human mind by external circumstances, traditional usages, and
convention, and nowhere did he see that free man who stood high above
the trifling manœuvres of modern life, and for whom he craved with a
glowing desire.
While in this state of mind he joined--I might say in an ingenuous
manner--the revolution, as he hoped to see his ideal realized thereby.
Thus he says: “From the degrading yoke of slavery, of general
handicraftship, with its pale soul of money, we will soar up to a
free artistic humanity with its bright universal soul; from wretched,
burdened day-labourers, we will all become beautiful, strong men, to
whom the world belongs as an eternal, inexhaustible source of highest
artistic enjoyment.”[166]
His rebellion was not directed against a governing power but against
a culture that had gone astray; his wrath was not a political but a
purely human matter which had been developed by his individual artistic
nature. When he had to fly in consequence of his share in the uprising,
he said, therefore: “With nothing can I compare the agreeable sensation
which, after I had surmounted the first grievous impressions, pervaded
me when I felt myself free--free of the world’s tormenting, always
unfulfilled wishes, free from the relations in which these wishes had
been my only consuming nourishment! Since no consideration any longer
bound me, the outlaw and fugitive, to any falsehood of any kind
whatsoever; since I had thrown behind me every hope, every expectation
from this now triumphant world, and could publicly and openly shout to
it, with the most unconstrained candidness, that I, the artist, scorned
it from the very bottom of my heart--this world so hypocritical and
apprehensive of art and culture; since I could say to it that not a
drop of really artistic blood flowed in any part of its vital veins,
that it was incapable of pouring out a breath of human civilization,
a whiff of human beauty--I felt myself for the first time in my life
thoroughly and truly free, light, and happy, even though I might not
know where next day I should hide myself that I might breathe the air
of heaven.”[167]
While Wagner’s artistic creations had hitherto sprung from one single
mood, one special situation in life, he was now impelled, as in the
course of time all his sensations and views had assumed a more and
more comprehensible form, to give to this inner life, these thoughts
and feelings, artistic form in a great work of art. To the idea which
chiefly filled him, the yearning after the free man who had raised
himself above culture and civilization, he had given expression
in his writings in the most various ways. Thus he says in Art and
Revolution:[168] “Nature, human nature, will lay down the law to the
two sisters--culture and civilization: So far as I am comprehended in
you, shall you live and bloom; so far as I am not in you, shall you die
and wither!” In another passage he says: “The real man will therefore
not come until his life is formed and governed according to true human
nature, and not by arbitrary political laws.”[169] In Art and Climate
he says: “There is no higher power than that of the communistic man;
there is nothing more lovable than communistic man. Only by the highest
power of love do we, however, attain to true freedom, for there is no
true freedom except that which is common to all men.”[170]
At the time of the Revolution Wagner had already plunged into the study
of German mythology, by which he felt specially attracted. He says:
“In the effort to give artistic form to the desires of my heart, and
in the course of my earnest investigation as to what attracted me so
irresistibly to the original source of the legends, I advanced step
by step deeper into that antiquity where I was finally to find, to my
unutterable joy, and that, too, right in the highest antiquity, the
youthful, beautiful man in the strongest freshness of his power. My
studies in this way led me through the poems of the Middle Ages to the
very foundation of ancient German mythology; one vesture after the
other, which later poetry had thrown around it to its disfigurement,
I was able to sever from it so as finally to see it in its chastest
beauty. What I here saw was no longer the historical conventional
figure, whereof the vesture more than the real form must interest
us, but the real fundamental man, in whom I was able to recognise
every pulsation of the blood, every twitch of the strong muscles, in
unconfined freedom--in short, the true man.”[171]
This “true, free man” it was who hovered before him as the ideal
after which he yearned. He was filled with an internal impulse to
the artistic realization of the “purely human being, free from all
conventionality.” In Siegfried he had found this ideal: “Elsa had
taught me to find this man; he was to me the manly incorporation of
the eternal involuntariness, of the doer of real deeds, of the human
being in the fulness of highest, most direct power, and most undoubted
worthiness of love.”
If, in spite of Wagner’s unmistakable explanations, even his earlier
works were so entirely misunderstood, in which only single moods
were treated, how much more likely was his greatest work, into which
he entered with all his soul, in which he incorporated artistically
his view of the world, to give occasion to misunderstandings! If,
therefore, I discuss this work at greater length, I can only point in
excuse to the fact that, as we shall see later on, mistakes and false
conceptions have given rise to the most momentous results. Let us
therefore proceed to a consideration of the trilogy of the Ring of the
Nibelungs.
The first scene of the Rhinegold shows us the three Daughters of the
Rhine in harmless, playful sport at the bottom of the river. Alberich
approaches them in a wild passion of sensual love. He tries to
overpower them. When one escapes him he pursues the others. It is all
the same to him which one he overtakes, and that one always appears to
him to be the most beautiful whom he happens to hold in his embrace.
In him we see the representative of that sensuality which forms the
antithesis to ideal, unselfish love. While he is thus engaged in
pursuing the Daughters of the Rhine, the gold glitters with a strong
light and delights with its splendour the Daughters of the Rhine, who
artlessly hail it. Alberich stands blinded in amazed embarrassment, and
listens to the proclaiming words of the Daughters of the Rhine:
He gains the world
As his own inheritance,
Who from the Rhinegold
Creates the ring
Which measureless might doth bestow.[172]
It is not in every one’s power, however, to accomplish this miracle:
Only who Love’s might
Doth withstand,
Only who Love’s joys
Drives away,
None but he gets the secret power
The gold to force into a ring.[173]
Now, what is the meaning of this ring, which thus bestows “measureless
might”--nay, the command of the world? In it we must see the sensuous
rendering of that world from which Tannhäuser yearned to escape, from
which he was saved by Elisabeth--the world of sensual enjoyment, the
striving after outward fame and splendour, the all-constraining,
world-ruling power of gold. That the love which he must renounce who
longed to forge this ring, is not sexual love, is indicated by the fact
that Alberich had a son, Hagen; it is, on the contrary, that ideal,
unselfish impulse, that self-sacrificing love--Elisabeth.
The incarnation of sensuality, Alberich, cursed this love, stole the
gold, forged the ring, and won by its means that measureless might
which made him ruler of the world. Everybody had to create and work for
him; his insatiable cupidity craved ever new treasures and wealth; even
his own brother he held in a “degrading yoke of slavery,” and compelled
him to make that wonderful piece of work, the Tarnhelm.[174]
After the ring and the hoard had been stolen from him, Alberich cursed
the gold:
No joy shall please
Him who it holds;
Upon no favourite of fortune shall shine
Its brilliant light;
Who it doth own
Let care devour,
And who has it not,
Let envy gnaw!
All shall strive
For what it brings,
Yet none joy shall reap
Though it is used.[175]
This curse weighed upon the gold from this time on, and brought death
and ruin on those who possessed it.
The central figure of the whole action, in which all that is tragic
in the drama is realized, is the mighty form of the all-governing god
Wotan, the father of gods and men. Wagner writes in an article:[176]
“In my conception of the Ring of the Nibelung I had, unknown to
myself, confessed the truth relative to human affairs. Everything here
is thoroughly tragic, and the will which would form a world after
its wish, can finally attain nothing more satisfactory than its own
dignified destruction.” This will, bereft of freedom and conditioned
and bound down by circumstances, is Wotan. He feels the mighty power
within him, yet can not put it forth. He is bound by stipulations; he
must resist his desire.
In contradistinction to him, the restless, forward-pressing will which
always strives after new aims while it denies itself, stands Erda,
the representative of intellectual knowledge. We meet her first in
Rhinegold, when Wotan deliberates as to whether he shall deliver up the
world-governing ring in order to recover the stolen Freia:
How all was, I know,
How all is,
How all will be,
I see too:
Th’ eternal world
Ur-Wala,
Erda puts in your mind.[177]
Erda, true knowledge, sleeps, and in her place watches Fricka, Wotan’s
spouse. In her we have to see the representative of right based upon
pure convention. She protects the right, not because of its intrinsic
value, or because she has recognised it as such, but because it exists
and is designated as right. She sticks to the letter, and law and
custom are the motives which alone determine her. The deeper emotions
of heart and feeling out of which true right proceeds are strange to
her; she is personified externality, purely arbitrary formality.
The second scene of Rhinegold discloses to us Walhalla, the mighty burg
of the gods, raising heavenward its shining battlements. It signifies
the irresistible will power, the struggle for endless fame. Fricka is
anxious and terror-stricken at sight of the burg. As representative
of the law, of strict right, she first of all bethinks herself of the
bargain that has been made, and of the stipulated reward:
Ready is the burg,
The pledge forfeited:
Dost thou forget what thou didst give?[178]
To the restless, onward striving will the bargain suggests no cause for
anxiety. Wotan rejoices at the sight of the mighty citadel; he breaks
the concluded agreement by which he rules the world, but has to atone
for his guilt, since his will is fettered, bound by law and custom.
To the giants who built the burg, Wotan had promised Freia as a reward.
Fasolt and Faffner now approach to claim their reward, the building of
the burg being completed. Freia is the refreshing ideal, that “artistic
humanity with its bright universal soul,” that love which Alberich
had cursed--the unselfish love of human being for human being. The
partaking of her apples, which she proffers to the gods, gives them
everlasting youthful energy. But if they are withheld from them they
shall wither in joyless, fameless old age. Wotan now recognises his
mistake in sacrificing Freia, and refuses the reward: “I will not sell
Freia.”
While the giants persist in claiming the reward for which they had
bargained, Loge approaches, the representative of cunning, stratagem,
and untruth, who had advised the agreement. Very characteristic of the
signification of Freia and of the Rhinegold is Loge’s account of how he
sought to replace Freia and finally discovered the Rhinegold.
Loge’s narrative arouses the cupidity of the giants. They are ready
to renounce Freia if the Rhinegold is given them in her stead. Very
characteristic of the difference between the Rhinegold and Freia is
the scene in which Fasolt and Faffner exchange her for the hoard.
Even the “awkward giants,” the “rude clowns,” the representatives
of the coarsest materialism, the rough-hewn opposites of delicate
feeling--even they will not sever themselves from the ravishing woman.
To lose the woman,
Be sure, will grieve me sorely:
If then she from my sight must go,
The hoard of metal
Must so be heaped
That from my eyes
It wholly the fair one conceals![179]
With gold he will bury the gentlest higher emotion of the heart:
Alas, still shines
Her glance on me,
Her eye’s bright star
Still lights my way:
Through a small crevice
I must her spy!--
Do I see the dear delicious eyes.
I can not leave this woman fair.[180]
So soon as the giants have gained possession of the hoard, the
Tarnhelm, and the ring, the curse of Alberich becomes fulfilled.
Beset by jealousy and envy, they fall to quarreling, and Fasolt slays
Faffner, his own brother. While the possession of the gold aroused in
Alberich primarily lust of power, it manifests itself in Faffner’s
case as the mere naked desire for possession itself. He does not know
the value and the power of what he possesses; he finds delight merely
in the fact that he possesses it. Through dread that some of it may be
stolen from him, he drags his possession to a cavern, metamorphoses
himself by means of the Tarnhelm into a mighty dragon, and there looks
after his treasure in idle repose. “I lie and hold possession, let me
repose,” are Faffner’s words. If we look around us in our modern world
for Faffners, who seek to possess merely for the sake of possessing, it
will not prove a very difficult task for us to discover a whole series
of them.
The second part of the drama, the Walkyry, represents the hot struggle
between Wotan, the mighty will which struggles for freedom, and Fricka,
the incarnation of inflexible law, convention, and custom. Wotan
recognises the bondage of his will, the impossibility of unfolding
himself freely and unhampered:
I who by pact am a lord,
To the selfsame pact am now slave.[181]
Eternal knowledge, Erda, had predicted his destruction, “an ignominious
end of the eternal.” He must fear Alberich. Should he ever be
successful in acquiring the ring,
Then would Walhall be lost:
Who love did imprecate
He alone
With envy would use
The runes of the ring
Giving the noble
Infinite grief.[182]
To defy the foe, to shield himself and Walhalla, Wotan sent out the
Walkyries to bring heroes, who should fight for him. The Walkyries,
Wotan’s daughters, formed a portion of his personality. They formed the
wish for liberty; they were hostile to Fricka--hostile to her right.
Their origin “in wild love” of itself denotes their opposition to
convention and custom.
But Fricka still reigns. The Walkyries form only a part of Wotan; the
agreements that bind him they are unable to break. They, too, must
submit to Fricka’s will.
Wotan is aware that only a free hero, one who starts up boldly and
unhampered, will be able to defy the foe. Through such a hero he had
hoped to attain what he wished. He betook himself to a noble stock
which itself had sprung from him--the Wälsung. He had thrust a sacred
sword into the trunk of an ash tree in such a way that only the
strongest hero should be able to withdraw it. Siegmund, the Wälsung,
the brave hero, he himself stimulated to the deed. Siegmund felt in
himself the impulse to freedom; unhampered did his defiant spirit
unfold itself. Then he found Sieglinde, his own sister, in the enemy’s
house, married without love, courted without affection by Hunding. The
deepest love was kindled in the young pair; custom and law failed to
separate them; they followed solely the true human feeling which moved
the inmost recesses of their hearts.
How wrongly has this love between Siegmund and Sieglinde been
interpreted! After what has been said before, it requires no further
explanation that here, as in all of Wagner’s creations, love is merely
the symbolical expression of certain sensations; that it was in no
way Wagner’s purpose to glorify in this relationship the impulse of
sensual love or the like, but that the myth was only made use of in
an ingenious way to incorporate artistically that already discussed
antithesis, unfettered human freedom and right based upon custom and
convention.
Fricka, the inflexible law which deviates not from the path of
tradition, the conventional form, the personified externality, is
horrified at this unequalled delinquency. Wotan, the will that strives
for freedom, can not see anything wrong, any misdeed in the act:
What deed so bad
Have these twain done,
Whom spring united in love?
’Twas affection’s charm
Enraptured them;
Why should I blame affection’s might?[183]
Then he continues:
Thou see’st but one thing,
I another see,
And the first is driven from my sight.[184]
They are antagonistic principles--the right that is formed by virtue of
interest and convention, and the right that is based upon a truer, more
purely human experience. The sharply antagonistic elements which are
here dealt with, and are so sharply opposed, one might specially refer
to the moral sphere, and call illegal morality and legal immorality.
Wotan then proceeds:
Unholy
Deem I the oath
Which without love unites;
And of me in truth
Do not require
That by force I hold
What doth not cling to thee.
For where bold powers themselves array,
I must counsel open war.[185]
Fricka knows full well that she must regard the strong, free hero as
her foe; that his triumph means her fall, her destruction, and she
therefore demands of Wotan that he will deny him his countenance. She
gains the day in this struggle with Wotan, and the latter is compelled
to resolve upon Siegmund’s end. He has to give up his own yearning; he
has to will against his wish:
In my own fetters
Am I caught:
I, the least free of all![186]
Such is Wotan’s plaint to Brünhilde, his and Erda’s daughter.
In her, the daughter of Will and Knowledge, Wotan sees his own will,
formed through knowledge, whose free unfolding, however, he fears.
Wotan recognises that in Siegmund he merely sees himself, his own
sword, his own energy, and he therefore determines upon Siegmund’s
death.
Brünhilde, the daughter of Knowledge, knows that Sieglinde bears
already under her heart the greatest hero:
Thy wife trust to me
On account of the pledge,
Which blissful from thee she received.[187]
In her is kindled the struggle between Knowledge and Will; the latter
gets worsted, and she determines to save Siegmund against the will of
Wotan. The fettered will, Wotan, has to will against his own wish,
he has to destroy with his own hand Siegmund, whom he loves. Against
Wotan’s spear, marked with the runes of the contract, his sword breaks,
and Siegmund falls.
Wotan’s wrath, however, is only greater, his passion more headstrong,
his fury more savage at the disobedience of Brünhilde; for he feels
only more deeply his own bondage, his own weakness and impotency.
Thus Wotan casts off his child. But his heart is softened and appeased
by the prayers of the “brave, noble child.” He will not yield her up as
a prize “to the most cowardly man for an easy booty”:
A true bridal fire
Shall burn now for thee,
As ne er hitherto for bride it has burned!
Let flaming glow
Warm the rock around;
With consuming terror
Let it cowards scare;
Let faint heart avoid
Brünhilde’s rock:
For one alone woos the bride,
Who is freer than I, the god![188]
Brünhilde, Wotan’s glorious child, pure, unalloyed, genuine Knowledge,
is sunk in a deep sleep and awaits the strong, free hero, who,
uninfluenced by law and custom, free from human tradition, guided only
by internal impulse to eternal perception and true beauty, shall come
to awaken her.
Wotan, however, the fettered will, the denial of the will to live,
resolves upon his end:
Depart, then,
Imperious pride,
Of divine splendour
Braggart disgrace!
Break all together,
What I have built!
My work I renounce;
There’s but one thing still left:
The end----
The end!--[189]
At this point the tragic element of the drama reaches its climax;
“the will, which would form a world after its own wish,” finds a
fitting destruction. But the world of the artist could not at the
same time attain to a close. Borne on the wings of an artistic and
enthusiastic fantasy, the artist soars in majestic flight to a height
never foreseen. There he has seen it--the daring, free being “with the
bright universal soul”; he has felt it, felt it deeply. In it Wagner
saw the human ideal. It is the free, uninfluenced human being who acts
according to the circumstances of this world without being influenced
or impelled from without, whose actions are not conditioned by custom
and convention, but who strives after what is highest and noblest from
free inward stimulus. He only acts according to the dictates of his
pure discernment, his true knowledge, and his stronger will is able to
triumph over all the obstructions of the world.
Wotan had longed for this hero when he said to Brünhilde:
But one has the power.
Which I ne’er had:
A knight, whom to help
I never inclined;
Strange to the god,
Free from his grace,
Unconsciously,
Without command.
From his own need
With his own weapon
Performed the act,
Which I have to fear,
’Gainst which I gave no warning.
My only wish e’en wished it.[190]
Siegfried was the brave, happy hero, “the real original, human being
in whom every pulsation of the blood, every twitch of the energetic
muscles, was to be recognised in unconfined, fresh action”--the true,
free human being. The myth, which makes him one of twins, is here
symbolically and poetically turned to account; even his origin points
to absolute freedom from custom and convention. Siegfried instinctively
recognises in Mime the enemy, the traitor. In the latter we see
incorporated the lowest human passions--envy, jealousy, and crudest
egoism.
For Siegfried, the strong youth, no glaive was destined, as had been
the father’s case. By his own strength he must form it, weld together
the strong pieces of the divine glaive. The free man who is independent
of conventional morality can, of course, know no fear. He alone has the
courage and strength and activity to mount to the most beautiful ideal,
to true human freedom. The forging of the sword is accomplished by
Siegfried after a fashion quite counter to custom and in violation of
every ancient rule of the craft, and his success greatly amazes Mime.
The character traits with whose representatives, Mime and Faffner,
we have made acquaintance, must disappear with the appearance of the
ideal free man. Hence, in the drama, both are destroyed by Siegfried.
With Nothung, the wonderful glaive, he slays the evil dragon before
the grudge hole (Neidhöhle). The hoard of the Niebelung, and with it
the Tarnhelm and the ring, now belong to Siegfried. He regards them,
however, as useless toys, and does not trouble himself about the
properties of that which he possesses:
What use you are to me
I do not know.[191]
The beautiful, strong, free man, who is artistically embodied in
Siegfried, seeks in his inner worth alone happiness and contentment,
not in the heaping up of external riches and goods.
Siegfried now strides away to the mount that no craven can approach
without being consumed by the blazing fire. His actions are determined
solely by his own will, which strives continually after what is noble.
The restraint of compacts is foreign to him. He does not, therefore,
bow to the spear of Wotan marked with runes of compact, which is held
in his way, and against which the glaive of the father was shattered.
Wotan is not able to withstand his might; he shivers the holy spear
with Nothung, his glaive welded by his own strength. All hindrances,
even the ocean of fire, must yield to his power and his will. So the
hero, who “fears not the point of the spear,” advances, strides through
the fire, his strength quenching the flaming glow, and approaches
Brünhilde to awaken her from her long, inactive sleep. The beautiful,
strong, free man, whom the artist sees in radiant light, awakens the
world from long sleep. True knowledge, pure cognition awakens humanity
to holy bliss. In self-forgetting and self-surrendering love Brünhilde
demands of her lover that he leave her, and that he go out into the
wide world to perform new and lordly deeds.
We now see the strong, free man in connection with the bad world,
surrounded by plots and jealousy, envy and malice. In Hagen we
recognise the representative of those properties for which Mime and
Alberich previously stood. He is the antithesis of Siegfried, and
his nature is shown by his descent. While Siegfried is the issue of a
fiery _liaison_ of love contrary to conventional law, Hagen, the son of
Alberich, owes his existence to a love bought with gold. Hagen says of
himself:
My blood would spoil your drink;
It flows not genuine
And noble as yours,
Stubborn and cold
It curdles in me;
My cheek will not blush,
Wherefore I remain far
From the fiery bond.[192]
Siegfried, in his intercourse with the bad world, acts solely in
conformity with his inner feelings. He believes everybody with whom
he comes into contact open and true like himself. Hence all distrust
is foreign to him, and he acts as the moment suggests. This is the
signification of the drink of forgetfulness. Such a naïve, trustful
behaviour must in the wicked world lead to ruin and destruction.
Reflection, cunning calculation, and accurate recognition of the
wickedness of others are the weapons necessary to self-assertion
in the world. Thus Siegfried falls a sacrifice to hate, cupidity,
and envy. He, to whom the slightest false motion of the heart is an
impossibility, and whose soul is of divine peerage and noblest purity,
becomes in the eyes of the world a criminal. He is accused of perjury,
adultery, fraud, and treason, and intrigue is able to prove its charges
and to require punishment therefor. But the true knowledge--the
knowledge which, standing without the world, is conditioned by
nothing--Brünhilde recognises the eternal and celestial faithfulness of
him she loves.
Truer than he
Swore no man oath;
More loyally than he
Held no man his pacts;
Purer than he
Loved never another.[193]
The ring, laden with the curse of the Nibelung, is restored by
Brünhilde to the daughters of the Rhine. The Walhalla, with the old
world of gods, collapses; but Brünhilde, in radiant accoutrement, bears
Siegfried on high upon Grane, the courageous steed. The strife for
outward glitter and display, for riches and possessions, ceases. The
world, which had been governed by a will bound down to conventional
ideas, collapses; and in its stead the true, free will, bound to
nothing, but associated with pure knowledge and true recognition, is
lord over all.
No more than Wagner intended in his Tannhäuser to teach “a specifically
Christian, impotently heaven-expecting moral,” did he in Parsifal, his
last artistic creation, have specifically religious ideas in view.
Parsifal has rightly been called a continuation of the Nibelungen
trilogy. That free hero, who in the trilogy must be overthrown in
combating the wicked world, but whose final victory is there only
intimated, becomes in Parsifal the real saviour of humanity.
The wardens of the Holy Grail--the sensuous emblem of the highest,
holiest good of humanity, the human ideal, the renunciation of the
sensual life, greedy for wealth, fame, and pleasure--were the knights
of the Grail, who in the holy grove in the Gralsburg, or Grail castle,
far from the ignoble impulses of the world, were dedicated to the
service of the Holy Grail. A pure cup of crystal containing the blood
of Christ was intrusted to the care of Amfortas, the king of the Grail
knights. Klingsor, the representative of the element hostile to the
ideal--that is, of selfishness and lust of power--himself aspired
to the possession of the Holy Grail, not on account of its ideal
graciousness, but from self-interest and cupidity. But it was granted
to the pure alone to find the path to the relic:
Ye, who their service have attained to
By paths no sinners ever gained to,
Ye know ’tis but permitted
The pure to be admitted
’Mid those the Grail’s divinely magic power
With strength for pious work doth dower.[194]
Klingsor, conscious of his incapacity to become the master of sinful
temptations, mutilated himself and so sought to obtain the Grail:
Unable in himself to stifle thoughts of evil,
Quickly turned he his guilty hand,
Resolved to gain the Grail’s command.
But scornfully was by its guardian spurned.[195]
Repulsed by Amfortas, Klingsor built a mighty enchanted palace in the
neighbourhood of the Holy Grail castle, whither he knew how to decoy
the knights of the Grail, and they fell sacrifices to the seductions of
sensuality.
It left Amfortas no peace. He himself sallied forth to fight the
wicked enemy and to free the knights from the danger, whereupon he
himself fell a victim to the seductions of the crafty one:
While near the walls from us the king was taken,
A woman fair as sin has turned his brain;
He lay in transport her enfolding--
The spear escaped his holding;
A deathly cry! I rushed anigh:--
But laughing, Klingsor fled before,
The sacred spear with him he bore.[196]
That holy spear, with which Amfortas might have conquered the enchanter
without trouble, had once shed the blood of Christ. The spear and that
holy vessel, the most precious possession of all, had been conveyed by
angels to Amfortas’s father, the pious Titurel. They were to be guarded
in the holy castle as the holiest of holies--the highest ideals of
humanity. Now Klingsor had succeeded in purloining the holy spear, and
with it had inflicted upon Amfortas a bad wound, which was never to be
healed:
That wound it is, which none may make to close.
Klingsor, being in possession of the mighty and holy weapon, hoped to
exterminate the entire race of knights, and to get the Holy Grail as
well. Sinful humanity, which found poetic shape in Kundry, is without
will power in the hands of the mighty Klingsor, in the grasp of
unconquerable passions. Kundry must do evil against her wish, against
her will. She certainly felt within her an impulse to unselfish
conduct, and sought in constant self-sacrifice to throw off the burden
of her selfish propensities; but, driven as by demoniac power, she is
not mistress of her will. When, struggling with herself, she cries out,
“I will not!” Klingsor answers:
Well wilt thou, for thou must.[197]
The sight of the Holy Grail gives rejuvenated life and renewed strength
to all that are noble and pure; but that which refreshes and quickens
others fills him who is condemned to guard it with ineffable agony.
The pains of the frightful wound are by the holy lustre exacerbated to
insufferable torments; the conscience laden with guilt can not bear the
contemplation of the highest ideal. In vain Amfortas seeks means for
the alleviation of his pain, for relief from his torments. There came
to him one comforting prophecy of the Grail:
Before the plundered sanctuary
In pray’r impassioned lay Amfortas,
Imploring for a sign of safety;
Heavenly radiance from the Grail then floated,
A sacred phantom face
From lips divine did chase
These words, whose purport clearly could be noted:
“By pity lightened,
The guileless fool,
Waits for him
My chosen tool.”[198]
The promised, long-desired redeeming hero, Parsifal, approached, “by
pity knowing, the pure fool.” Solitary, unskilled in arms, he was
attracted to the far desert. As Siegfried had made his glaive, so
had Parsifal himself made his bow. From his mother he went out into
the world, and fighting made his way. Parsifal naively asks: “They
threatened me; were they bad? Who is good?” He has not acquired the
knowledge of good and evil, he can only experience them in the depths
of his human soul, whence they can also resound pure and true, without
being changed by the prejudice of a conventional right. His knowledge
is neither erudite nor recondite, but results from the delicacy and
candour of sense and of sentiment. He approaches the castle and is
present when Amfortas uncovers the Holy Grail. He is deeply seized by
all the pains and torments of the king; except that of the torment of
guilt, which causes those sufferings, he as yet knows nothing. For
that reason Gurnemanz indignantly pushes the “fool” out of the door,
whereupon the latter wends his way to the enchanted palace of Klingsor.
He strikes back with strong arm the knights who oppose him; and the
enticements of the lovely maidens in the odorous flower garden fail to
captivate him. Kundry approaches in the magical beauty wherewith she
once seduced Amfortas himself, and tries under the ban of Klingsor all
her arts upon the lad. She tells him of his mother, how she has died
from love and care for him. Then occurs to him what he has undertaken
with his life thus far. In overpowering pain he sinks at the feet of
the seductive woman:
Woe’s me! woe’s me! What did I? Where was I?
Mother! Sweetest, dearest mother!
Thy son, thy son must be thy murderer?
O fool! Weak and frivolous fool!
Where couldst thou have been, thus to forget her?
Thus--ah! thus to forget thee,
Faithful, fondest of mothers![199]
Kundry essays in this way to force an entry to his heart:
To thee now she sends
Benediction from above,
In this first kiss of love![200]
But he starts up in horror, pressing his hand strongly against his
heart:
Amfortas!
The spear wound! the spear wound!
In me I feel it burning.[201]
Unspeakable sympathy with the torments of the king seizes him; he feels
the pains as though they were his own. By them he knows and recognises
the danger of seduction, which he stoutly withstands. The holy spear
which Klingsor seizes as a last recourse and hurls at him remains
hovering stationary over his head. Parsifal snatches it, and before the
sign of the cross Klingsor’s magical magnificence decays into nothing.
“By pity lightened, the guileless fool” approaches with the holy spear
to bring welfare and redemption. In the baptism of Kundry he purifies
the world, which lies in the bondage of sensual pleasure, and in
closing with the holy spear the wound of Amfortas, he frees the world
from the torment of conscious guilt. The ideal of humanity, the Holy
Grail, which was for a long time secluded, is unveiled anew, with its
radiant lustre reburnished, its glowing light imparting new life and
strength to its reanimated knights.
In contrast to the “understanding that is due to fellow-feeling” stands
the schematic, conventional knowledge based on tradition, sprung from
no penetrating warm sympathy for humanity, but from the frigid letter
and egoistic calculation that strives after an endless accumulation
of stores of knowledge, losing sight of the end of wisdom, which is
the welfare of mankind. In Wagner, the assistant of Faust, Goethe
has scourged this aimless, egotistic, self-admiring knowledge, which
pursues no common human good:
To study’s toil have I with zeal myself addressed.
I do know much: would I might know the rest!
Faust, on the other hand, has come to see that true, serviceable
knowledge must owe its origin to sympathy with mankind. He says:
My bosom, of the science-itch now cured,
Henceforth is closed to no pain that’s endured;
And what to all mankind is parcelled out
I wish with my own heart to know about,
The highest and the lowest Mine to keep,
Every man’s weal and woe upon Me heap,
My private self to Man’s great self expand,
Though I be wrecked, great Man to understand.
With the exception of two, we have now briefly considered all of
Wagner’s music dramas. The two excepted are Die Meistersinger von
Nürnberg and Tristan und Isolde. In the former he has humorously
painted his own position in relation to modern art. The first idea
of the latter occurred to him during the musical composition of the
Nibelungen-Trilogy. It impelled him to paint in a drama of his own the
ideal unselfish love that he had studied in Siegfried and Brünhilde.
Thus Wagner’s poems form a coherent chain, and each of them may
well be termed “a fragment of a great confession.” His moods and
sentiments, vehemently pressing toward artistic embodiment, formed the
spring from which his art productions sprang. Wagner repeatedly and
expressly declares that his art is merely the mirror of his feelings,
and must therefore be all but exclusively interpreted by heart and
sentiment. Hence we find in Wagner that refinement and elaboration of
the heart-life, those moods often inclining toward gloom, with which
we have been familiarized by the study of the subjective poets, and in
particular of Goethe. “Heaven-high exulting, to death cast down,” was
the temperament of Wagner likewise. How often he yearned after death,
and believed his only rescue was to be found in it! Wagner reminds
us of those tears that Goethe shed in reading Hermann und Dorothea,
when he tells us how often “in hot tears” he lamented the unavoidable
severance of Lohengrin from Elsa.[202] Art for Wagner was simply a
means of expression. It was his tongue, in which he endeavoured to
impart himself. Like Goethe, he laughed at the idea of being considered
the founder of a “new school,” or a “new departure,” or a “new aim.”
More than once he poked sarcastic fun at the new “tendency” that was
ascribed to him. In an essay on Opera-poetry, and in Particular on
Opera-composition,[203] he says: “Not so much the study of my works as
their success seems to have led many to follow my ‘tendency.’ What this
consists of has remained a mystery to me. Perhaps of a long-continued
preference for mediæval material. The Edda and the rude North, in
general, were regarded as mines of ‘good texts.’ But the choice and
character of the opera texts seem to be not the only important items
of the alleged ‘new departure’; much else enters into it, especially
‘_Durch Komponieren_,’ and above all the uninterrupted interposition
of the orchestra in the concerns of the singers, a practice which has
been followed the more liberally as a good deal of ‘departure’ has
arisen of late in the instrumentation, harmonization, and modulation of
orchestral compositions.” Interesting is Wagner’s own description[204]
of how music gradually became a mother tongue to him; of how, in
composing, it could not at all be his purpose to invent beautiful
and original melodies or harmonies, but how he simply expressed in
this tongue what he had to say in the only way in which it could be
expressed. The reader will recollect that, in the discussion of the
psychology of genius, I adduced a saying of Goethe in which he gives us
to understand how indispensable the gift of verse was to him, since he
was governed by such manifold feelings and moods and could only find
repose and satisfaction in giving them artistic shape. This impulse to
give artistic shape to his sentiments was felt by Wagner in the same
measure, but neither the nature of his art nor outward circumstances
enabled him so easily to see his artistic creations embodied as those
of the simple poet. A poem, even though its form be dramatic, is a
completed artistic work as soon as it is on paper; but a piece of
music, especially a musical drama, receives life and existence only
when it comes to be performed. Let an artist look upon his art not as
a means of gaining money and fame, but merely as a means of expressing
his sentiments, and if the means of imparting them be taken from him,
as was Wagner’s case, owing to every imaginable obstacle being put in
the way of the performance of his works, or, worse yet, and still more
discouraging, if his works are arbitrarily altered and cut, and, owing
to a defective understanding of them, performed quite disfigured,
so that what was originally intended and felt is quite lost, then
it will be quite psychologically conceivable that he should feel a
just resentment and aversion toward those who, partly from want of
understanding and partly from envy and ill will, deprive him of what to
ordinary men is one of the highest of possessions--human speech.
In spite of all the obstacles placed in his path, Wagner did not let
himself be subjugated by pain, because art held him erect. When he
created his greatest work, the Ring of the Nibelungen, he did not
himself believe that he should ever live to see it performed. It
was not his purpose to gain fame and glory by it, but it afforded
him satisfaction to unburden himself, as it were, by the artistic
incorporation of his ideas, and at any rate to impart them to some
friends, or even only to one. In such mood he wrote to Liszt:
“What I am now creating shall never, or only under quite suitable
circumstances, enter into life. Upon that I will henceforth unite all
my force, and all my pride, and all my resignation. If I die before
these works have been performed, I bequeath them to you, and if you die
without their having attained a worthy performance, burn them. That is
settled.”
The impulse to communicate, in some way or other, with wider circles,
as well as material need and cares, drove Wagner repeatedly into the
literary career. Here it is, from a psychological point of view, of
great interest for us to see how the artist fatigues himself in vain in
debating, from a purely theoretical standpoint, the ideas that filled
him, and how vainly he labours to make himself understood in a language
which is wholly incapable of expressing his meaning; for the only
language of artistic sentiment is art. Would Beethoven ever have been
able to express the sentiments of the heroic symphony in words?
Whoever knows the writings of Wagner, especially his larger works on
Opera and Drama, The Art of the Future, etc., will be acquainted with
his inflated and often unintelligible style; will have been offended by
the many repetitions and apparent contradictions; and will, perhaps,
have had the feeling that what the writer wished to communicate has
actually been left unsaid. He did not consider himself by any means a
writer, but wrote with great reluctance, driven by necessity; and he
himself perfectly recognised the cause of his shortcomings. He knew
that what he had to say could be expressed in one language only--the
language of art. Wagner says: “Here again, and again and again, I have
only been able to express myself through the channel of writing. What
trouble this method of communication gives to me I need not assure
those who know me as an artist. They can see themselves by the style
of the literary works in which I torture myself to express what I
could so tersely, easily, and gracefully render in art, so soon as its
proper sensuous appearance stood as nearly in my power as its technical
notation with pen on paper. But so odious to me is the whole literary
business, and the necessity which has forced writing upon me, that I
would that with this communication I might appear for the last time as
a _littérateur_ before my friends.”[205]
It is not my task here to inquire what the value of Wagner’s art may
be, nor what rank he is destined to take in the history of art. For us,
however, it is important to ascertain to what psychical processes his
works owe their origin, and what psychical processes they produce.
The former question finds its solution in the foregoing considerations.
The latter is an affair of observation and experience. This observation
is, however, not always easy; it is sometimes decidedly difficult. The
success of a work of art, the applause or disapprobation of the public,
establishes but a very limited conclusion in regard to the mood called
forth by it. Too many deceptive factors enter into the phenomenon,
to permit us to trust to unconfirmed appearances. Experience teaches
that only posterity, which allows the work of art to produce its effect
unprejudiced and uninfluenced by personal considerations, is able to
decide the question of the psychical effect. Along with this question
posterity is judge of artistic value. Not theoretical reasons, not
rules and statutes secure to a work of art enduring life, but solely
its psychical effect. If the artist succeeds in exciting with his work
in posterity the intended mood, its value is fixed. If we wish to-day
to account to ourselves for the beauty of Beethoven’s music, we find
nothing more to say than that it is beautiful because we find it so. We
do not ask the why and wherefore, but surrender ourselves, as Lohengrin
desired Elsa to do, to love and pleasure, without inquiring for reasons.
We are to-day the beginning of Wagner’s posterity. Now that the zealous
flame of fanatical Wagnerianism has died out, and--at any rate in the
younger generation--prejudices, personal motives, envy, and malice have
passed away, the moods and sentiments that Wagner’s music is able to
excite come out more clearly, and it is these alone which are to give
definitive judgment upon the value of this art.
Wagner himself tells us how he gradually learned to handle his art as
his vernacular language, so as to communicate his sentiments without
impediment. The public, too, has gradually to learn the language of
the artist, and this it must do, not with the intellect, but with the
heart and sentiment. This circumstance explains many things which will
not escape the close external observer. Most persons who come to this
art unprejudiced declare that the first impression of a given work is
neutral or even repellent; but after frequent repetition the sentiment
becomes greatly augmented, reaching, it may be, to high enthusiasm.
But older persons, especially those who have grown up in another
definite art departure, can not readily habituate themselves to the
“new departure.” They are in the same situation in reference to it as
they would be toward a new language, as compared with young persons and
children.
Wagner, in his earlier works, was, so far as outward form goes,
especially in a musical respect, very much under the influence of
the art impressions under which he had grown up. Gradually and
unconsciously his own temper gained greater and greater relative
emphasis, until at last he was altogether free from external influence,
and stood quite upon his own feet. But the further he departed from
the land of tradition, the harder it necessarily became for the public
to follow him and to learn the new language. Hence his earlier works,
in spite of the antagonisms and difficulties which even they had to
overcome, always had a better reception from the public, and were more
understood, than his later compositions. Down to Lohengrin he was at
all events followed; but his later works excited a veritable storm of
indignation and opposition.
It is human nature to condemn whatever is not understood; and it is
only at a late hour, and very often not at all, that the question
occurs, Might not the cause of the want of understanding be our own
incapacity? Had Wagner lived five hundred years earlier, he might very
likely have been walled up alive or burned as bewitched. But in the
nineteenth century, such proceedings being no longer matters of regular
routine, the modern prescription for making everything clear that is
not understood was applied, and Wagner was declared to be insane. The
rubric was, “Tannhäuser and Lohengrin are very beautiful; but the later
operas are crazy.” Such was the language of the seventies.
Of course, such a diagnosis of insanity, based solely upon the fact
that the subject had created works of art which were unintelligible to
the public, was not a professional one. Nevertheless, the universal
cry, “Wagner is insane!” was destined to penetrate professional
assemblies, until at last a “specialist in psychiatry” was found
who from a scientific standpoint sought to demonstrate Wagner’s
insanity according to all the rules of the art. This “specialist in
psychiatry,” to use the designation which he expressly assumed, was
Dr. Theodor Puschmann, who in the year 1873 published a work with
this design.[206] He says: “This pamphlet is not intended to lead up
to any preconceived doctrine. We are not allied to any party, and are
not ranged either among the adherents or the opponents of Richard
Wagner. We have never held any political or artistic relations with him
whatever, and consider ourselves therefore able to preserve the perfect
objectivity of our judgment, which is a prerequisite to all scientific
investigation.” This general proposition is quite unexceptionable; but
is it a fact that Puschmann displays such objectivity of judgment? Has
he limited himself to making out the psychical processes of Wagner’s
mind? Not at all. On the contrary, he judges of Wagner’s works in
a thoroughly subjective manner, as if he were the final court of
appeal; and then, because Wagner’s art finds no grace in his eyes, he
concludes that Wagner is insane. In short, his procedure differs in
but a single respect from that of a layman--namely, that he styles
himself a “specialist in psychiatry.” Thus he says: “Apart from some
reminiscences of an earlier period, his later works bear the stamp of
mental mediocrity, hurried imperfection, and a wild raggedness. The
Meistersinger, Tristan und Isolde, Rheingold, etc., do not in the least
attain that mental elevation, that inward nobility, which was effused
upon his earlier works. In both matter and form, in words and music,
they are unbeautiful, disjointed, and careless. The world has judged
them with a correct instinct. While Lohengrin and Tannhäuser have won
a place in the hearts of the people, his later works are already
buried before they have come to life.” Is this what Dr. Puschmann calls
“objectivity”? Is it the business of a “specialist in psychiatry” to
render such a judgment as this upon a work of art?
In another place he says: “We have already mentioned above what poverty
of ideas, what increasing mental desolation, Wagner has shown of late
years. All that is beautiful and great in what he has ever accomplished
was devised and completed before he reached the age of fifty. Since
this time an impotent unproductivity has seized upon him. His genius
is extinct, and has given place to a lamentable emptiness of mind. His
wings are crippled; the heaven-storming genius has fallen from his
shining pinnacle, and, like a poor, sick, pitiful bird, chattering
senseless stuff not to be understood, picks up the dusty corns that he
and others once rejected.... The long-forgotten ideas of his youth,
fugitive sketches such as a gifted man often produces and as quickly
tosses into the waste-basket as useless, are now raked out and set
forth with a quantity of _baroque_ peculiarities in words and music
which snatch at originality. To these are added a brain-shattering
instrumentation and the most horrible dissonances; so that, as a
connoisseur says, ear nerves must be thick as cables to go through
such noise undamaged and sound. Along with this is the most unheard-of
prodigality of decoration and machinery, such as only the extravagant
fancy of a madman rioting in transcendentalism could imagine. And
all this Wagner, in his morbid delusion, declares to be such a work
of art as never was, and exacts of the world that it consider this
unnaturalness as genuine art, and insanity as genius.” I will not
“exact” of the respected reader to hear more of Puschmann’s criticisms.
I can only ask again, Is this the needful “objectivity” of the
“specialist in psychiatry”? Every layman must see that the diagnosis
of the mental condition of an artist has nothing to do with deciding
whether his works are “good” or “bad,” and that the sole business of
the psychiatrist is to ascertain the psychical processes by which those
works have been produced. Supposing that Dr. Puschmann really were the
court of last appeal in reference to the artistic value of Wagner’s
art, and the world had to submit to his judgment that the Meistersinger
and Tristan und Isolde contain nothing but “brain-shattering noise” and
“frightful dissonances,” would this be a reason for a real psychiatrist
to diagnose insanity?
Puschmann says: “In Tristan und Isolde we find so many reminiscences
of Offenbach’s Belle Hélène that we might presume an affinity of
soul between the two authors.” Had Herr Puschmann been a “specialist
in psychiatry” in fact, and not merely upon the title-page of his
pamphlet, he would have had no difficulty in conceiving the distinction
between these two states of mind and soul. While we seek in vain in
Puschmann’s mode of passing judgment upon Wagner’s artistic creations
for his boasted “objectivity,” we find that quality still more
distinctly wanting in his mode of quoting Wagner’s writings and his
use of such quotations to support his assertions. Although he puts
the passages between quotation marks, implying that they are given
_verbatim et literatim_ and that their genuineness is guaranteed,
yet he alters both matter and form to suit himself. What is the
name of such a proceeding in plain English? And what becomes of the
“objectivity” of this “specialist in psychiatry”? Without going into
details here, I refer the reader upon this point to a publication which
gives the real and pretended passages from Wagner’s writings in deadly
parallels.[207]
I do not unearth Puschmann’s pamphlet for the sake of refuting it, for
refuted it has been to satiety for twenty years. Besides, it refutes
itself by its contradictions and mendacities. But in considering the
question of how far a diagnosis of insanity can properly be based
upon a work of art, it lay in my way to show into what errors one
might thus be betrayed, and to give an example of how a psychiatrist
should not proceed. Puschmann collects a list of morbid symptoms
which Wagner is said to have suddenly manifested, such as delusion of
grandeur, delusion of persecution, moral insanity, and erotomania.
There really is no disease in which such an abundance of symptoms is
suddenly exhibited. But independently of that, the data upon which
Puschmann rests his “symptoms” are based upon falsehood and error. A
few examples may be given. Referring to the friendship between King
Ludwig and Wagner, Puschmann says: “The man who was so admired did not
use the power which a piece of good luck had afforded him to help his
fellow-men to do any good, or to produce anything great. He did not
justify the confidence of his royal patron, nor did he fulfil the hopes
which the world of art had built upon his gifted youth. Sunk in the
soft velvet of a palace _fauteuil_, he gave himself up to the enjoyment
of a torpid repose. He basked comfortably in the adulation which the
fame of his past procured for him, but created nothing more; at least,
nothing of importance after Lohengrin was worthy of a great master.”
This assertion needs no commentary. Whoever is tolerably familiar with
Wagner’s life and works must see its utter falsity.
Wagner’s “delusion of grandeur” is described by Puschmann in the
following words: “Herr Wagner suffers from a self-conceit beyond all
bounds and measure, a vanity and self-boasting truly morbid, which
blind him to the merits of others, and allow him to regard himself
as the sole embodied ideal of the loftiest wisdom and ability.
The greatest masters of his art fade to nullity in his eyes; the
illustrious musicians Mozart, Gluck, and others have no importance, nor
title to mention in the history of culture, except in so far as they
may have served as his forerunners; and even the immortal Beethoven
is, at best, nothing more than an easel upon which can be displayed
the full-length portraiture of ‘the greatest master of all the ages,’
Richard Wagner.” Whoever has even cast a glance into Wagner’s writings
must recognise the total falsity of this assertion. The masters
mentioned--Beethoven, Mozart, and Gluck--had no more glowing and
enthusiastic worshipper than Wagner. His candid veneration for them
found such oft-repeated expression in his writings that one is amazed
to find the very contrary opinion thus substituted for his. In Opera
und Drama we read as follows: “And here I indicate to you again the
masterly musician, in whom music was quite that which it is able to
be in man, when quite in the fulness of its essentiality it is music
and nothing else than music. Look at Mozart!” This is only one among
numberless examples.
In another place Puschmann says: “But all this was not enough for
his insatiable ambition. The world must kneel suppliant at his feet,
and give him incense like a god.” These are empty phrases with no
basis of truth. This “specialist in psychiatry” rather incongruously
interchanges “ambition” and “delusion of grandeur.” But that is no
excuse for ascribing to Wagner motives from which he was unusually
exempt. Wagner did not wish to be “supplicated” or honoured as a
higher being; he only desired to be understood. For that his soul
thirsted--for understanding and sympathy. It would have sufficed to be
understood by some few friends; to the world at large he was entirely
indifferent. He wrote to Liszt: “I feel myself more than completely
recompensed for all my endeavours, for my operas, and for my art wars,
when I see what impression I have made by them upon you. To be thus
completely understood was my sole desire. To be understood is the
blissful satisfaction of my desire!” This longing to be understood is
so natural, and agrees so well with the psychological _cadre_ of the
artist, that the “specialist,” who should know how to enter into the
psychical processes of the artist, should certainly not take offence
thereat. Equally justifiable and psychologically motived are the
rancour and hatred of the artist for those who, partly from want of
intelligence and partly from personal resentment, envy, and ill will,
work to prevent his being understood.
Wagner’s hatred for the Jews, which is set forth by Puschmann as a
“delusion of persecution,” rests simply upon the fact that Wagner saw
in the Jews, especially those whose endeavours are limited to material
gain, men who had renounced ideal love--in short, his Alberich. This
feeling had no affinity with modern anti-Semitism; for, as can be seen
in his letters to Liszt, along with “the Jews” he always named “the
Philistines,” as he called the Germans who slept away their lives in
slothful dreams, and were glad if people did not disturb them--in
short, the Faffners. To these two he often added the Jesuits. “Let us
flee from this world, where there are nothing but Jews, Philistines,
and Jesuits.”
What Wagner longed for was the free, natural man, whose acts were not
determined by petty personal interests and lower impulses, and whose
life was not passed in thoughtless slumber--that is, Siegfried. There
is no delusion of persecution here; it is only the artist’s ideal. What
characterizes the delusion of persecution is the circumstance that the
patient everywhere scents persecutors, and in the most unreasonable
and typical way regards the benefits that people do him as hostile
persecutions. How grateful and happy, on the other hand, was Wagner if
he only saw that he was understood, or that anybody sympathized with
him! Thus he wrote to Liszt: “When I consider the numerous, extended,
and often very able papers which now proceed from Weimar, and contrast
them with the envious hostility which assaulted me, for example, in the
reviews of Dresden, and remember with what dire consistency they almost
effected a systematic embroiling of the public against me, Weimar seems
to me now as a blissful asylum in whose fresh air I can at last inhale
deeply and give my contracted heart room.” Nobody suffering from the
delusion of persecution writes in that strain. Such a person would have
found in the articles about Lohengrin some deep-laid plot.
Wagner’s “hatred for the Jews” is marked only in a generalized and, I
might say, a symbolized sentiment. It never extended to individuals. In
his personal commerce with men he knew how strictly to individualize,
and was very far from converting his feeling into a principle. The
proof of this is, that he was on terms of friendship with many Jews. He
intrusted the leadership of his play at the opening of the theatre in
Bayreuth to a Jew, which he certainly would never have done if he had
been suffering under the delusion that he was persecuted by the Jews.
Herr Puschmann further thinks that erotomania must be diagnosed from
Wagner’s poems: “His first great _opus_, Das Liebesverbot, glorifies
the triumph of free and open sensuality. Still, he there keeps within
the limits of decent respectability. But in his latest works the
erotic element is put into more undisguised prominence. In Tristan
und Isolde he glorifies ‘adultery,’ in the Walküre ‘incest.’” Whoever
has followed my account of Wagner’s poetry can judge for himself
whether Wagner intends therein to glorify adultery and incest. He will
perceive that in Wagner’s poems the woman never signifies the physical
woman, and that by love he never means sexual intercourse; that there
is merely an artistic embodiment of ideal sentiments, and that only
total misconstruction can lead to such conclusions as those of Herr
Puschmann. Whoever, in spite of all such commentaries, entertains the
slightest doubts upon this point may set them at rest by a passage in
a letter from Wagner to Liszt. Wagner sent his friend the score of
Siegfried after having concluded not to bring it out for a while, and
wrote: “I now impart to you readily and with good courage this poem,
for now you too no longer need to lift your eyes from it to consider
with careful glance your public. You have, for example, no longer any
need of anxiety as to what those people shall say of the ‘woman’ who,
when ‘woman’ is said, always think of their wives, or, if their power
of abstraction mounts so high, of some young lady or other.”
Enough of Herr Puschmann! But let it be added that this pamphlet of
the “specialist in psychiatry,” though it made a sensation in its day
before the public, was never taken seriously in psychiatric circles,
but was always considered as a thoroughly amateurish production. Twenty
years have since elapsed. Wagnerian art has now spread over the whole
globe, and numbers its adherents by the hundreds of thousands. Recently
another specialist in nervous diseases, Herr Nordau, has made the
weighty discovery that Wagner was indeed deranged and a degenerate. The
whole of Puschmann’s nonsense, at which every rational psychiatrist
laughed twenty years ago, has been furbished up anew by Herr Nordau,
and put forth as the greatest wisdom, the newest acquisition of his
scientific investigations.
For the unscientific pamphlet of Puschmann there is an excuse. At that
time, twenty years ago, although Wagner already had a great number of
warm adherents, Puschmann might still come to the conclusion that upon
matter-of-fact people Wagner’s music made an impression of absurdity;
that it was not capable of exciting an elevated feeling in anybody,
etc. In a word, he voiced the sentiments of the majority when he
assumed that Wagner’s productions were “_verrücktes Zeug_”--crazy
stuff. But things are different to-day. Understanding of Wagner’s art
is no longer so uncommon, and on every German opera stage Wagner’s
works take the lead. Not only in Germany has this success been
attained, but far beyond her borders, his renown has pressed. Even in
the New World, in far America, there are thousands of enthusiastic
Wagner lovers. How does Nordau get away from this fact? Very simply: he
says all the world is “crazy,” or, at any rate, “hysterical.” “Wagner’s
mighty influence on his contemporaries is to be explained neither
by his capacities as author and musician nor by any of his personal
qualities, ... but by the peculiarities in the life of the present
nervous temperament.... He had the good fortune to endure until the
general degeneration and hysteria were sufficiently advanced to supply
a rich and nutritious soil for his theories and his art.”[208]
From this, one might think that it were time for publishing new
text-books of psychiatry and instructing students that there is only
one “normal man” in the world--to wit, Max Nordau. Everybody who
writes, composes, or paints anything that Max Nordau does not take
a fancy to, is degenerate; and everybody who likes anything that
Herr Nordau does not, is hysterical. So long as this platform is not
universally accepted in psychiatry, Herr Nordau can not expect to
find scientific support. But whoever stands upon the universal ground
of science must admit that Herr Nordau is a perfect amateur in the
department of psychiatry. I can hardly think that anybody, even a
layman in psychiatry, although he be an opponent of Wagner’s art, can
possibly assent to Herr Nordau’s opinions; yet for the sake of justice,
we had better enter upon a brief consideration of the main points of
his deductions.
Nordau’s diagnosis is as follows: “Richard Wagner is himself alone
charged with a greater abundance of degeneration than all the
degenerates put together with whom we have hitherto become acquainted.
The stigmata of this morbid condition are united in him in the
most complete and most luxuriant development. He displays in the
general constitution of his mind the persecution mania, megalomania,
and mysticism; in his instincts vague philanthropy, anarchism,
a craving for revolt and contradiction; in his writings all the
signs of graphomania--namely, incoherence, fugitive ideation, and a
tendency to idiotic punning; and, as the groundwork of his being, the
characteristic emotionalism of a colour at once erotic and religiously
enthusiastic.”[209]
Very indicative of Nordau’s dilettanteism is his incidental way
of throwing in the most important symptoms of developed insanity,
“delusion of persecution” and “delusion of grandeur.” As proof of the
first, he adduces quite briefly the trite stories about the Jews, which
I have already sufficiently considered. Of the latter he simply says:
“His megalomania is so well known through his writings, his verbal
utterances, and the whole course of his life, that a bare reference
to it is sufficient.”[210] Nordau evidently does not know what is
meant by a delusive idea; otherwise, he could not talk so innocently.
According to him, everybody who thinks he is persecuted has a “delusion
of persecution,” and everybody who thinks he can accomplish what nobody
else can has a “delusion of grandeur.” Supposing that Wagner had really
had the degree of self-conceit which is often attributed to him--which,
as I have already shown, is far from having been the case--supposing
it to be true that he believed himself to be the greatest musician of
all the ages, to conclude from this alone a delusion of grandeur would
be unwarranted in the extreme. Overestimation of self and the delusion
of grandeur are widely different things. One may, for instance, make
pretensions to being a thoroughly expert judge of all departments of
art and science--music, painting, philosophy, and what not--so much so
as to declare that every man who dissents from one’s pronouncements
ought to be cared for as insane; yet this does not amount to a delusion
of grandeur--in the psychiatric sense of the term. No such sign of
overrating himself was displayed by Wagner. He respected and honoured
the masters of his art as much as any of his contemporaries ever did.
Which one of the great masters of music was the greatest of all the
ages the psychiatrist, as such, is not competent to say. Whoever it may
have been was probably fully aware of it, and if he ever betrayed that
consciousness, it was not a mark of insanity. But how very far Wagner
was from overestimating himself is shown in his correspondence, which
demonstrates how little he was occupied with what he had attained, and
how entirely with what he had still to strive for.
Just as any artist who leaves the well-trodden roads and breaks new
paths is exposed to every imaginable enmity and misunderstanding,
Wagner had to combat persecutions and hostilities, which, far from
being imaginary or delusive, were so real that it would have been folly
to blind himself to them; and nothing but a rare and precious firmness
of character, and an accurate appreciation of his own inward worth,
could have carried him through all his tribulations to his eventual
triumph.
He left our ruts,
But went on steadily and without deviations.
Only psychiatric amateurs--and not the most observant or wisest of
them either--can possibly mistake the self-consciousness that marks
the developed character for a “delusion of grandeur.” Stories about
boundless “vanity,” a passion for “divine veneration,” “incense,” and
so forth--easily picked up among the valets and secretaries of any
great man--have no foundation but arbitrary distortions or ignorance of
the facts. As I have already proved, Wagner asked as little from the
great public as did Goethe. In his creating alone, in his art itself,
he found satisfaction and contentment. “Believe me implicitly,” he
wrote to Liszt, “when I tell you that the only reason of my continuing
to live as long as I have done is the irresistible impulse to complete
a series of works of art which yet have the strength to live within
me. I accurately know that nothing but this creation and completion
gratifies me; and as for the performance of those works and the seeing
them from without, that I can dispense with well enough.”
The remaining lucubrations of Nordau are limited almost exclusively
to a critique, such as it is, of Wagner’s works, and are shaped by
the principle that whatever Max Nordau does not like is the work of
an insane mind. Wagner’s theoretical writings, one and all, fail to
obtain Nordau’s favour; therefore Wagner is insane. That Wagner himself
recognised that what he had to say could not be expressed by words
alone, that he saw the inflation of his own style, that his different
writings were composed for special objects, and finally that Wagner,
with the greatest “reluctance” and only when “driven by need,” betook
himself to writing--all this has little power to bend the inflexible
critic. The long and short of it is that Wagner’s writings do not
please Nordau. Hence it appears that Wagner was a “graphomaniac.” The
trifling contradiction between a man’s being a “graphomaniac” and his
writing with “reluctance” and only when “driven by need,” is apparent.
Graphomania is pretty nearly the contrary of that. But what difference
does that make? One contradiction more or less is a trifle when one is
as well supplied with them as Herr Nordau. Here is a sample of Herr
Nordau’s manner of employing criticism: Concerning Wagner’s idea of
fusing the different arts into one great whole, the musical drama,
he says: “His art-work of the future is the art-work of times long
past. What he takes for evolution is a retrogression, and a return to
a primeval human--nay, to a pre-human [!] stage.” One wonders what
put this notion into Herr Nordau’s head. Does he really believe that
“pre-human” beings composed musical dramas?
Wagner, in one of his articles, speaks repeatedly of the action of the
“head” in contradistinction to that of the “heart.” He calls speech
the language of the “head” and music that of the “heart.” “The organ
of the heart is music (_Ton_), and its artistically conscious language
is the art of music.” Every schoolboy can see what is meant. A form
of speech common to all ages and all nations denotes the conative
faculties by the term _heart_, as opposed to cold, calculating,
speculative understanding--the action of the brain. But Herr Nordau
feels himself called upon to challenge this figure of speech in the
following terms: “But as his mystically disposed brain was not capable
of clearly grasping the various parts of this intricate idea, and of
arranging them in parallel lines, he entangled himself in the absurdity
of an ‘activity of the brain without activity of the heart’; ... and
finally attains to the pure twaddle of calling ‘sound’ the ‘organ of
the heart.’”[211]
We have already remarked that Nordau, in the department of psychiatry,
is a mere amateur; so that we must not expect any accurate application
of the concepts of the science in his writings. Yet, since he writes
upon the subject, it might have been hoped that he would tolerably
post himself in relation to it, and not publish things in the most
injudicious manner. Now, Herr Nordau assures us that in all Wagner’s
writings there is hardly a single page “which will not puzzle the
unbiassed reader, either through some nonsensical thought or some
impossible mode of expression”; whence one has a right to gather that
Nordau has read those writings. But if that be the fact, how was it
possible that he could totally mistake the purpose of Wagner’s art as
it is expressly and distinctly set forth in numerous places in his
writings? Wagner declares in so many words--not once, but often, very,
very often--that by the “woman” he never meant the physical, sexual
woman; that it gave him pain when anybody attributed a religious moral
to Tannhäuser, etc. But, notwithstanding these explicit declarations,
Herr Nordau sings again the long-worn-out song about the “shameless
sensuality,” and with a bombastic aping of that scientific jargon which
is defensible only so far as it insures precision of ideas, talks
of Wagner’s “erotomania.” Thus he says in one place: “It certainly
redounds to the high honour of German public morality that Wagner’s
operas could have been publicly performed without arousing the greatest
scandal. How unperverted must wives and maidens be when they are in
a state of mind to witness these pieces without blushing crimson and
sinking into the earth for shame! How innocent must even husbands and
fathers be who allow their womankind to go to these representations
of ‘lupanar’ incidents! Evidently the German audiences entertain
no misgivings concerning the actions and attitudes of Wagnerian
personages; they seem to have no suspicion of the emotions by which
they are excited, and what intentions their words, gestures, and
acts denote; and this explains the peaceful artlessness with which
these audiences follow theatrical scenes during which, among a less
childlike public, no one would dare lift his eyes to his neighbour or
endure his glance. With Wagner amorous excitement assumes the form
of mad delirium. The lovers in his pieces behave like tomcats gone
mad, rolling in contortions and convulsions over a root of valerian.
They reflect a state of mind in the poet which is well known to the
professional expert. It is a form of Sadism. It is the love of those
degenerates who, in sexual transport, become like wild beasts. Wagner
suffered from ‘erotic madness’ which leads coarse natures to murder for
lust, and inspires ‘higher degenerates’ with works like Die Walküre,
Siegfried, and Tristan und Isolde.”[212]
While Nordau passes by the most important symptoms of insanity, “the
delusion of persecution” and “the delusion of grandeur,” with startling
levity, satisfying himself with mentioning that they are “known to
everybody,” he tarries to discuss with astonishing thoroughness the
erotic element. Let us here adduce only one or two passages: “Mysticism
is, as we know, always accompanied by eroticism, especially in the
degenerate, whose emotionalism has its chief source in morbidly excited
states of the sexual centres. Wagner’s imagination is perpetually
occupied with woman. But he never sees her relation to man in the form
of healthy and natural love, which is a benefit and satisfaction for
both lovers. As with all morbid erotics (we have already remarked this
in Verlaine and Tolstoi), woman presents herself to him as a terrible
force of Nature, of which man is the trembling, helpless victim.
The woman that he knows is the gruesome Astarte of the Semites, the
frightful man-eating Kali Bhagawati of the Hindoos, an apocalyptic
vision of smiling bloodthirstiness, of eternal perdition and infernal
torment, in demoniacally beautiful embodiment.... Wagner’s Elisabeth,
Elsa, Senta, and Gertrude are extremely instructive manifestations of
erotic mysticism, in which the half-unconscious idea is struggling for
form--viz., that the safety of the sexually crazy degenerate lies in
purity, continence, or in the possession of a wife having no sort of
individuality, no desire and no rights, and hence incapable of ever
proving dangerous to the man. In one of his first compositions, as
in his last, in Tannhäuser as in Parsifal, he treats of the combat
between the man and his corruptress, the fly _versus_ the spider, and
in this way testifies that for thirty-three years--from youth to old
age--the subject has never been absent from his mind.... Siegfried,
Götterdämmerung, Tristan und Isolde, are exact repetitions of the
essential content of the Walküre. It is always the dramatic embodiment
of the same obsession of the terrors of love.”[213]
These passages may suffice. At best, they bespeak at once Nordau’s
total misunderstanding of Wagner’s artistic purpose, and his complete
dilettanteism in psychiatric matters. Of the former truth, scarcely
anybody who does not with might and main shut out the facts and is
not ignorant of Wagner’s own declarations, can be in doubt. Whoever
still insists, after the observations made above, that Wagner, in the
creation of his works of art, was thinking of the sensual, sexual
woman, simply will not understand; and there is no help for it. As to
the latter point, that a man who his whole life long never showed the
slightest indication of sexual anomalies, who lived in happy marriage
and was a tender husband and father, should be called an “erotomaniac”
solely because love is introduced into his dramas, and that “a morbid
state of excitation of his sexual centres” should be diagnosed, is the
grossest and sheerest nonsense that ever was. There is scarcely a poet
in the whole history of art whom one might not by the same token stamp
as an “erotomaniac.”
Herr Nordau might by the same right just as well have diagnosed a
number of other symptoms from Wagner’s poems. Why, for example, does
the great musician not suffer from pyromania on the ground of the magic
fire in the Walküre? Why does Nordau not declare him a kleptomaniac,
in view of the numerous thefts in Rheingold? There would have been
quite as much sense in either diagnosis as in that of erotomania
from Tannhäuser. Perhaps Herr Nordau has overlooked these symptoms,
and perhaps he will do us the pleasure, in the next edition of his
Degeneration, of dishing these up as the latest achievements of his
scientific researches.
Nordau has made the important discovery that Wagner was born to be a
painter, and only missed his vocation in consequence of his morbid
impulses. “Wagner is no comedian,” he says, “but a born painter. If
he had been a healthy genius, endowed with intellectual equilibrium,
that is what he would undoubtedly have become. His inner vision would
have forced the brush into his hand, and constrained him to realize it
on canvas, by means of colour.... He did not understand his natural
impulses. Perhaps, also, with the feeling of his own deep organic
feebleness, he dreaded the heavy labour of drawing and painting, and,
conformably with the law of least effort, his instinct sought vent
in the theatre, where his inner visions were embodied by others--the
decorative painters, machinists, and actors--without requiring him to
exert himself.” Did anybody ever hear more luxuriant nonsense? A man
who thinks the labour of painting too severe, takes up the musical
drama, composing himself both the verse and the music, and thus escapes
hard work! Is it possible to make a serious answer to such silly talk?
Equally astounding is the self-complacency with which Nordau passes
judgment upon Wagner’s music. I, too, am of the opinion that the
judgment of art, especially of those arts which appeal to the sensitive
heart, is not only open to the theorizing professional, but that the
direct sentiment of the unprejudiced layman ought to be its touchstone.
Wagner himself gives expression to this thought in the Meistersinger,
where Hans Sachs says:
Yet once a year I should think it wise
That the rules themselves should be tested
Whether in custom’s stupid rut
Your force and life ye were not losing:
Now whether ye of Nature
Be yet upon the right track
Can tell you only
He who knows nothing of tabulature.[214]
But when a person who “knows nothing of the rules of the mastersingers”
declares both the judgment of an innumerable multitude of experienced
masters and the sentiment of hundreds of thousands to be “morbid,”
solely because he himself thinks and feels otherwise than they, he only
pronounces judgment upon himself.
It is well known that Wagner revolutionized the form of opera music.
He banished the disconnected interpolated arias, put a stop to the
inartistic license of singers in the _recitativo_, introduced a
continuous music corresponding to the dramatical treatment and idea,
and endeavoured through this music to express that for which the spoken
word was inadequate. Of this innovation Nordau says: “It is a product
of degenerate thought; it is musical mysticism. It is the form in which
incapacity for attention shows itself in music.” After having, in the
remainder of his criticism, illuminated in a similar way the theory
of Wagner’s music, the _Leitmotive_, the “unending melody,” etc.,
he reaches the conclusion that Wagner, “in the inmost depths of his
nature, and by virtue of his organic constitution, was not a musician,
but a confused mixture of a poet feeble in style and a painter
lazy of brush, with a Javanese ‘Gamelang’ accompaniment buzzing in
between.”[215]
Concerning the theory of Wagner’s art, others may dispute with Nordau,
if it seems worth their while. But as to the psychiatric lucubrations
by which he reaches the conclusion that Wagner was insane and a
“degenerate,” I believe that I have characterized them sufficiently,
and that I may spare myself a more minute examination thereof.
CONCLUSION.
The idea of a universal sickening of the people, of a progressive
“degeneration” of the civilized nations, has not merely a few
defenders, such as those mentioned in this work. This departure of
modern science has found a multitude of adherents, and the advocates
of this doctrine have made the concept of degeneration a subject
of general popular interest. Beginning with this departure of
psychopathology, the doctrine of a gradual retrogression of mankind,
a deterioration, generation by generation, of the highly civilized
peoples, has extended more and more. Not only in certain professional
circles, but even in the educated lay world, we hear of a universal
derangement of the nervous system, of a widespread nervous prostration,
of mental and bodily deterioration of the present generation as
compared with our ancestors.
Art and literature, which have ever expressed the metaphysics of the
period, and which consequently now correspond in form and meaning to
modern positivism, show of late a decided leaning toward the depicting
of degenerative defects of humanity, especially of insanity, as if they
were a characteristic of modern society. Although, from the time of
Homer to our own, insanity has never dropped from the list of subjects
for artistic and poetical treatment, yet each age has had its own
reasons for doing so, which have always been closely connected with
contemporary metaphysics. In the hallucinatory melancholia of Orestes,
Æschylus painted the rage of the Furies following and tormenting their
victim: “Behold them, like Gorgons clothed in black, surrounded by the
coils of many serpents.”[216] In Ajax Fureus, who, suddenly seized
with a somnambulic delirium, falls upon the herds of the Achæans and
strangles them with their herdsmen, believing that he is killing the
princes of the host, Sophocles exhibits the chastening hand of Athene,
against whom this bold mortal had once risen in audacious defiance. The
ancient poets thus painted mental derangements which obviously they had
observed, and painted them in the colouring of mythology, which was the
popular metaphysics of that age, as a dispensation of a higher power, a
punishment of the angry divinity.
The multitudinous artistic representations of demoniac possession in
the Middle Ages, in myriads of paintings, frescoes, reliefs, carvings
in stone, wood, and ivory, bronzes, ironwork, goldsmith’s-work, etc.,
the manifold scenes of conjurations and diabolic incitements, afford
a clear picture of the insanity of those times. According to Charcot
and Richer,[217] whom we have to thank for their thorough researches
in this field, the dislocations and distortions of those possessed are
quite typical of cases of disease that may be observed to-day.
The first poet who recognised insanity as a disease and painted it as
such is Shakespeare, whose fine power of observation far outstripped
his age. He who could paint the world in all its truth and reality,
who was able to reproduce the most diverse characters, unfalsified and
true to Nature, succeeded also in painting in a masterly way mental
derangements in all their typical phenomena, just as we observe them
to-day, and this at a time at which science was far from a correct
recognition of psychical disorders. In Shakespeare, the derangements
of King Lear, Hamlet, and Lady Macbeth are photographic reproductions
of pure objective experience. They fill out certainly the world of the
poet who painted all human passions with minute fidelity in his plays,
and therefore undertook also to paint according to his observation the
human mind under morbid obscuration. In these characters, therefore,
we have neither the embodiment of any particular conception of the
universe nor an artistic dressing up of any moral or doctrine.
It is very different with the portraiture of insanity in our modern
literature. The doctrine of psychiatry has in the interval grown into
a distinct branch of science, and the observation of the insane is
carried on in an exceedingly thorough and careful manner. In order
to paint a case of insanity according to Nature, an artist no longer
needs, like Shakespeare, to be leagues in advance of his age. He
only need copy a well-reported history of a case, and his purpose is
attained. Consequently the simple description of psychical disease no
longer comes within the domain of the poet; and if we leave out of view
those _littérateurs_ who have in the practice of their art followed
the desire for originality and sensational effects, we do not find in
modern literature insanity exhibited for the direct interest of it, but
only in so far as it affects individual social relations and society
collectively.
The idea of a universal psychical degeneration, as it is put forth by
many psychiatrists, likewise has its literary defenders. I have already
called Zola a “Nordau in the shape of a novelist”; and this is also
true of other writers of similar theories. Frau Alving, in Ibsen’s
Ghosts, says: “We are all ghosts.... I can not take up a newspaper
without seeming to see the ghosts slinking between the lines. Ghosts
must live throughout the land. It seems to me they must be as the
sands of the sea.” We seem to be hearing Herr Nordau pronouncing
upon the immanent _Völkerdämmerung_, upon the gradual coming and
increasing of universal degeneration among mankind. Nordau considers
that those writers who share his own opinions show, precisely by that,
an infallible mark of their being fools and degenerates. His master,
Lombroso, on the other hand, acknowledges that Zola and Ibsen “teach
the same thing” that he himself teaches.[218]
It is not Ibsen’s purpose to paint mental sickenings just as they
really are. They are the mere vehicles of his ideas, especially of
the law of heredity, of the influence of a licentious and dissolute
course of life upon the development of the next generation. Neither
the painting of the maladies nor the selection of those which are
represented as transmitted in procreation correspond to the real facts.
But the writer did not mind that. While Nordau makes this a grave
matter for reproach and even a ground for psychiatric inferences,
Lombroso expressly declares that it is not right to insist upon
scientific accuracy from a poet in his painting of insanity, but that
it is proper for him to proceed _cum grano salis_, so as to give
his idea an artistic embodiment. At any rate, the exhibition of the
clinical picture, as such, is in Ibsen altogether a secondary matter,
the purpose of the poetic use of nervous disorders being the moral.
Oswald, in Ghosts, is the victim of the dissipations of his father. Dr.
Rank, in Nora, says: “My poor innocent spine has to expiate the joyous
lieutenant’s life of my father.” He strongly accentuates the moral:
“And so such an inexorable retribution governs in one way or another
every family.” We thus meet in the poet the same idea that Nordau
proclaims--that of a widespread hereditary sickening--a universal
degeneration.
The circumstance that Ibsen makes a quite arbitrary choice of diseases
to exhibit his concept of heredity and degeneration is not surprising,
and as poet he can the less be reproached for it that he follows
in that respect the doctrines of one school of scientific men. We
may smile at Ibsen’s representing, in Ghosts, general paresis as an
hereditary infliction; in Nora, a disease of the spine, _tabes_; in
The Wild Duck, a disease of the eyes; but, after all, this entirely
agrees with a certain departure which has lately found place in
psychopathology.
The widespread idea of a universal “degeneration” is in great part due
to the belief that every mental disease and most nervous sufferings
are phenomena of “degeneration”--a belief which is not only general
among the laity, but to which many psychiatrists incline. At any
rate, they place psychoses in that category which do not belong there
at all. It would result from this opinion that any decided increase
in the frequency of insanity, disproportionate to the growth of the
population, must be a “degeneration,” since, according to them, almost
all mental diseases are consequences of the process by which a state of
“degeneration” is brought about.
The concept of “degeneration” is, as I have already explained, that
of a morbid condition resulting from perturbations of growth of the
psychical organ. Degenerates are at a low stage of development; the
organic vehicles of their mental action are either merely at that
low stage of growth or are deformed and misshapen. The degeneration
of a whole people would therefore be due to a universal mental
deterioration, an arrest of the psychical organ, and at last,
since the completely degenerate, the extreme idiots, are incapable
of procreation, if the process which gave rise to the state of
degeneration progressed still further, the race would die out. But
the history of insanity shows that the increase of it depends in part
upon the progress of higher civilization. A heightened mental action,
a refinement and elaboration of the psychical organism, has for a
consequence a greater disposition to mental derangements. But to
infer from this heightened mental action, or, what comes to the same
thing, from the increased number of cases of derangement which results
from it, that there has been a universal retrogression of mental
development, resulting in a “degeneration” of the masses, is just as
erroneous as to identify the highest refinement and elaboration of the
psychical organism, or genius, with insanity.
The question of a state of universal degeneration, resulting from a
process of mental decay, must therefore be treated quite independently
from the question of an increase of cases of insanity. Maladies
contracted late in life can not be ascribed to disturbances of growth,
and have nothing to do with degeneration. When Nordau avers that the
diagnosis of degeneration in Baudelaire was “fortified against all
attack” by the fact that he “died of general paresis,”[219] he simply
shows that he does not know what the word degeneration means. Paresis
is a disease occurring most frequently in fully developed men, seldom
in degenerates, and never in idiots. Von Krafft-Ebing[220] says of
its procatarctic cause, “It is seldom congenital, hereditary; mostly
acquired.” If, therefore, we limit the concept of degeneration to
such morbid states as can undoubtedly be referred to perturbations of
growth, an increase of mental diseases does not indicate a progressive
degeneration.
The universal opinion that the sudden revolution in all modes of
life, owing to the great inventions of this century--the railway,
the telephone, etc.--have had a bad influence on the nervous system,
has a certain amount of justification. A number of cases of nervous
exhaustion have arisen owing to this unwonted and overstrained bustle
of modern life. But the importance attributed to these outward causes
is too great by far; and there is especially too much inclination
to exaggerate the sudden change of our modes of life, great as it
undeniably is. From some descriptions of it, one might think that
we had suddenly been carried from the merest sluggard’s life to the
supreme development of higher civilization. When Nordau says that
“the humblest village inhabitant has to-day a wider geographical
horizon, more numerous and complex intellectual interests, than the
prime minister of a petty or even a second-rate state a century
ago,” and that to-day “a cook receives and sends more letters than
a university professor did formerly,”[221] he simply indulges in
ridiculous exaggeration. I know not what intricate mental interests
Herr Nordau has discovered in the “humblest village inhabitant.” When
he tries to prove this by saying that the villager “interests himself
simultaneously in the issue of a revolution in Chili, in a bush war in
east Africa, a massacre in north China, a famine in Russia, a street
row in Spain, and an international exhibition in North America,”[222]
he perhaps overestimates somewhat the mental interests of the “humblest
village inhabitant.” I fancy that the mental interests of the peasantry
to-day, as centuries ago, turn much more on the thriving of their pigs
and calves than on revolutionists in Chili or bushwhackers in east
Africa. At any rate, we may safely assert that the German peasants
are in no present danger of overtaxing their nervous systems by their
“numerous and complex intellectual interests.”
We must confess that life to-day makes higher demands upon the
individual than in the last century; but it is an exaggeration
for Nordau to maintain that every single man does from five to
five-and-twenty times as much work as he would have done half a century
ago. On the whole, more is accomplished now than used to be done,
because, thanks to the great inventions, a workman can now do more in
one hour than ten workmen could do in a whole day a century ago. But
the expenditure of strength of any one man is not very much greater.
The mental work of the “upper ten thousand,” who are now supposed to
be in a state of degeneration, has certainly not been so monstrously
increased as many are disposed to think. Besides, mere work does not
wear out the nervous system nearly so much as the agitations of the
emotions connected with the intensification of the battle of life.
These things have, as I have elsewhere shown, an important influence
upon the bodily functions, especially those of the vascular system,
and thus upon the entire work of nutrition. Wundt[223] says: “Care and
sorrow influence nutrition by enduring limitation of the entrance of
air and blood.” Quiet intellectual work, even if conjoined with great
effort, does far less harm to the nervous system than do such emotions
as affliction and anxiety.
Had we, therefore, any reason to presume a universal degeneration of
the highly civilized nations, the causes of it should be sought, above
all, in the intensification of the daily battle of life, with its train
of depressing emotions and anxieties. The increased impressions of the
senses, and the heightened demands upon the resistance of the nervous
system, occasioned by the sudden revolution--when they do not bring
about serious emotional disturbances, vexations, etc.--may cause some
fatigue, but are matters to which the human organism quickly becomes
habituated by the law of adaptation.
Our social relations undoubtedly draw more upon the powers of the
individual than did those of a century ago. Yet that generation
likewise thought its tasks more difficult than those of its
forefathers. We can not conceive that our grade of civilization
determines the limits of human capacity. The demands which will be put
upon the life of coming generations will probably be far greater yet;
but the human system will contrive to adapt itself to those demands.
The weak will go to the wall; the strong will mount to higher grades of
development. This law of adaptation and of further development always
has operated in Nature, and will still continue to do so.
The arguments of which the sectaries of universal degeneration avail
themselves are, as we have seen in the course of our investigations,
by no means demonstrative. They rest partly upon erroneous doctrines
and partly upon a quite amateurish apprehension of psychological and
psychiatrical concepts. Philosophy, art, and literature, in which
Nordau thinks he sees signs of universal degeneration, are merely the
expression of the modern metaphysics, of religious scepticism, and of
philosophical positivism.
Moreover, by a very remarkable contradiction, Nordau himself destroys
his whole theory. After having characterized modern art as the
principal evidence of universal degeneration, he declares, at the
conclusion of his work, that it constitutes a forward step in human
development. He says: “The fable and the fairy tale were once the
highest productions of the human mind.... To-day they represent a
species of literature only cultivated for the nursery. The verse--which
by rhythm, figurative expression, and rhyme, trebly betrays its origin
in the stimulation of rhythmically functioning subordinate organs, in
associations of ideas working according to external similitudes, and in
that working according to consonance--was originally the only form of
literature. To-day it is only employed for purely emotional portrayal;
for all other purposes it has been conquered by prose, and indeed has
almost passed into the condition of an atavistic language. Under our
very eyes the novel is being increasingly degraded, serious and highly
cultivated men scarcely deeming it worthy of attention, and it appeals
more and more exclusively to the young and to women.”[224] According to
this, we must presume that our art, which has already “conquered” its
earlier form, stands upon a higher grade of development, so that there
can be no question of degeneration in it. But the idea that the poetry
of a Homer, a Dante, a Goethe, has proceeded “from the stimulation of
rhythmically functioning, subordinate organs,” and that it ought to-day
to be considered as in “the condition of an atavistic language,” is as
ridiculous as the contrary thesis of the degeneration of modern art.
No subordinate organs, but the idealistic universe-conception of the
times, dictated the form of art in each period of the world’s history.
When Nordau asserts that--in case his “therapy” is considered and
humanity is thus protected from further arrest and degeneration--“after
some centuries art and poetry will have become pure atavisms, and
will no longer be cultivated except by the most emotional portion of
humanity--by women, by the young, perhaps even by children,”[225]
his assertion rests upon ignorance of the psychical constitution of
those heroes of the mind whom we call geniuses. Whoever does not
persist in the attitude of Moreau and with him stigmatizes genius as a
morbid condition, will see that, with the further mental development
of humanity, creative genius will continue to produce, as it always
has been producing. In discussing the psychology of genius we have
seen that “the artist of genius does not create because he would, but
because he must.” Hence art will continue to subsist as long as there
are men upon the earth.
As to the form which the art of future centuries is to assume,
all possibility of divining it fails us. We know that it is always
dependent upon the contemporary conception of the universe. But how
this will shape itself in the distant future we can not know. It were
therefore a vain proceeding to discuss the subject, or to express any
decided opinion about the matter.
According to our investigations, we must necessarily come to the
conclusion that the authors mentioned have adduced no proof of the
alleged universal degeneration in the highly civilized nations. Mankind
is not in a “black plague of degeneration”; and the world has as
little need to be scared by stories of the _Völkerdämmerung_ as by the
prophecy of Herr Falb about the immanent destruction of our planet.
On the other hand, the further development of mankind will be greatly
benefited if the teachings of science are attended to and the various
baneful influences that act upon the nervous system are combated.
In that way increase of insanity may be prevented, and a sane and
well-developed posterity insured.
INDEX.
Anthropophagy in Germany, 175.
Appetite, abnormalities in insanity, 16.
Art, Nordau’s view of modern styles, 203-205;
various terms defined, 206;
superficial imitation of masters, 214.
Attention, nature, 10.
Beethoven, psychology of his art, 59.
Body, should have due attention in education, 153.
Bogeys, children should not be threatened with, 154.
Brutus, apparition of Cæsar to, 84.
Conceit of youthful degenerates, 135.
Convents, hysteria in, 176.
Courbet, symptoms of degeneracy, 138-141.
Cromwell, vision of a gigantic woman, 85.
Dancing mania, 178.
Degeneration, symptoms according to Morel, 118, 122;
should not be confused with heredity, 119-121;
among writers, 217;
supporters of the idea numerous, 320;
as depicted by Ibsen, 322;
not established by the exactions of modern life, 324-330.
Delusions, nature, 15.
Demonomania in the sixteenth century, 174;
in the beginning of the seventeenth, 180.
Development, rapid, no indication of later powers, 147.
Disease, nature, 73.
Drunkenness, effect on offspring, 121.
Education, should seek uniform development, 148;
influence on character, 149;
imitation of parents’ faults, 152;
physical side not to be neglected, 153;
dangerous fictions, 154;
duty of the mother, 155;
influence in developing or hiding genius, 163;
training for show, 213.
Emotions, seek expression, 43;
effect on the body, 95;
highly developed in poets, 104;
domination in some degenerates, 126;
deficiency or perversion in others, 130;
egoistic in others, 137.
_Ernst_, Schopenhauer on, 100.
Eroticism, ascribed to Wagner by Nordau, 314-316.
Fancy, nature, 34;
its product depends upon its material, 35;
lively in the childhood of some degenerates, 127.
Fashion, more rational than formerly, 192-194.
_Folie à deux_, 188.
Food, refusal to take, by men of genius and the insane, 110.
Generals, nature of their genius, 66.
Genius, meaning, 19-24;
its essential characteristic, 24;
varieties suggested, 29;
involuntary character of its possessor’s work, 31;
impulse to exercise its powers, 43, 45, 49;
in musical performers, 61-63;
scientific, 63, 67;
in the labours of generals and statesmen, 66;
has no definite psychological meaning, 68-70;
alleged nearness to insanity, 71, 75;
accompanied by hallucinations, 79;
excitation of poets during composition, 96;
the man of genius not a stranger to the world, 106;
absorption a frequent characteristic, 108;
often bears criticism ill, 111;
does not hold disagreeable habits in check, 111;
cases of insanity in men of genius, 112;
inheritance, 115;
prominent in youth, 150.
Giants, sometimes disproportioned, 74.
Gigantic growth, 132, 133.
Goethe on poetic genius, 33, 40;
on the poetic impulse, 43, 45;
on the development of Wilhelm Meister, 46;
on the proper nature of poetry, 47;
compared with Schiller, 48-54;
character, 80;
mental condition, 81;
apparition of himself, 93;
story-telling in boyhood, 99;
power of reproducing perceptions, 88;
chronic melancholy, 105;
interest in stories told by his mother, 157.
Graphomania as described by Lombroso, 141-146.
Hallucinations, in the insane and men of genius, 79, 83-85;
distinguished from illusions, 86;
useful, 87;
religious visions, 90;
different opinions as to morbid character, 91, 95;
produced by suggestion, 92;
recognition by percipients, 94.
Heredity, relation to genius, 115;
must not be confused with degeneration, 119-121.
Hypnotism, close relation to hysteria, 189.
Hysteria, secular, defined, 170;
former prevalence, 173-182;
influenced by suggestion, 182;
recent examples, 185;
secular, not so prevalent as Nordau declares, 191-198.
Ibsen, supports the idea of degeneration, 322.
Idealism defined, 206;
conflict with other styles, 207-210;
Böcklin as an example, 211.
Ideas, imperative, 13.
Idiots, cases with high development of one faculty, 132.
Illusions, distinguished from hallucinations, 86.
Imbeciles, story-telling, 98.
Impulse of the genius, 43, 45, 99.
Injuries, check or modify mental development, 132.
Insanity, improved treatment, 1;
misunderstood by theologians, 2, 72;
present treatment not perfect, 3;
symptoms are exaggerations of normal conditions, 6;
ascribed to all men of remarkable powers, 75;
how detected, 78;
vivid dreams in, 85;
impulse to absurd labours, 101;
cases in men of genius, 112;
various manias, 124;
unbalanced development, 125;
wrong inferences from statistics, 171;
must not be confused with errors of the time, 199;
how far shown in productions of artists, 218;
of authors, 219;
Strindberg as an example, 220-225;
ascribed to Schopenhauer, 228-231;
ascribed to Wagner, 300-308;
depicted as a disease by Shakespeare, 321.
Inventors, nature of their genius, 67.
Lessing on poetic genius, 39.
Literature, preference of writers for the ugly, 215.
Lombroso, Cesare, his Genius and Insanity criticised, 76;
on hereditary genius, 115;
diagnoses epilepsy and ecstasy in Dante, 225;
melancholia in Schopenhauer, 228-231.
Luther, alleged hallucination, 85.
Lying, a symptom of mental derangement, 97.
Manias, various, 124.
Marriage, Nordau’s views, 245.
Mind, abnormal, deemed diseased, 75;
proportion of faculties, 82.
Moods, connection with ideas, 41.
Mother, duty, 155;
influence of Goethe’s, 157;
of Schiller’s, 158;
other cases, 159-162;
proper share in education, 164.
Mozart, psychology of his musical creation, 55, 56-59.
Musical performers, distinction between those having genius and those
having talent, 61.
Naturalism, defined, 206;
conflict with other styles, 207-210;
preference for the ugly, 215.
Nordau, Max, on the prevalence of hysteria, 172, 191-195;
his criticisms of current art, literature, and philosophy examined,
196-198;
on degeneration in art, 203-205;
on schools of art, 210;
on insanity in Schopenhauer, 231;
criticises Zola, 232-235;
on degeneracy in Tolstoi, 239-245;
on marriage, 245;
judgment of Ibsen, 247;
pronounces Wagner degenerate, 308-319.
Originality, as a characteristic of genius, 24.
Perceptions, how formed, 8;
reproduced by internal stimuli, 13.
Poesy, relations to fancy and to intellect, 38;
dominated by impulse, 43, 45;
shows the general in the particular, 47.
Precocious children, injurious treatment, 165-169.
Psychiatry, definition, 1;
an empirical science, 77.
Realism, defined, 206;
conflict with other styles, 207-210;
preference for the ugly, 215.
Recollection, nature, 9;
phenomena of associative reproduction, 11.
Referential ideas, 222-224.
Religious fanaticism due to degeneration, 128.
Reproduction of perceptions, 87-90.
Romanticism, defined, 206;
conflict with other styles, 207-210.
Schiller on poetic genius, 32, 38, 41;
compared with Goethe, 48-54.
Science, the work of genius in, 63, 67.
Shakespeare, not visible in his characters, 53;
depiction of insanity, 321.
Spiritualism, successor to the belief in witchcraft, 186.
Statesmen, nature of their genius, 66.
Stories, fictitious, injurious to dreamy children, 154.
Suggestion, influence in hysteria, 182-186;
in spiritualism, 186.
Talent, musical, 55, 61-63.
Theologians, errors concerning insanity, 2, 72.
Tolstoi, speculations on life, 235-239;
his degeneracy in Nordau’s eyes, 239-245.
Vulgarity of many degenerate writers, 137.
Wagner, describes the Heroic Symphony, 60;
early years, 249;
first works, 250-252;
the Flying Dutchman, 253-256;
nature of his artistic tendency, 256-260;
success of Rienzi, 260-262;
the writing of Tannhäuser, 261, 263-266;
Lohengrin, 266-269;
his revolt against the culture of his time, 269-271;
sketch of the Nibelung trilogy, 272-288;
sketch of Parsifal, 288-294;
his art as it appeared to him, 295-297;
irksomeness of writing, 297;
the psychical side of his works, 298-300;
declared insane by Theodor Puschmann, 300-308;
declared degenerate by Nordau, 308-319.
Werewolf superstition, 179.
Zola, criticised by Nordau, 232-235.
_Printed from American Plates_
Ballantyne, Hanson & Co.
_London & Edinburgh_
FOOTNOTES
[1] Compare the report of the yearly meeting of the Association of
German Alienists, at Frankfurt a. M., 1893. Report upon Psychiatry and
the Care of Souls, by Siemens.
[2] Theorie der schönen Künste, 3d ed., 1798. Article, Genie.
[3] L’Abbé Du Bos. Réflexions critiques sur la poésie et sur la
peinture, 2d part, section 1. “On appelle génie, l’aptitude qu’un homme
a reçu de la nature pour faire bien et facilement certaines choses que
les autres ne sauroient faire que très mal, même en prenant beaucoup de
peine.”
[4] Theorie der schönen Künste und Wissenschaften, ed. of 1767, p. 391.
[5] Logik und Metaphysik.
[6] Metaphysica, § 648. “Determinata facultatum cognoscitiuarum
proportio inter se in aliquo est ingenium.”
[7] Ursache des gesunkenen Geschmacks bei den verschiedenen Völkern, da
er geblüht, 1775, p. 62.
[8] Karl Friedrich Flögel. Geschichte des menschlichen Verstandes.
[9] Betrachtungen über den Menschen.
[10] Psychologie des grands hommes. Originally published in the Revue
Philosophique.
[11] Ferdinand Christoph Weise. Allgemeine Theorie des Genies.
[12] An Essay on Genius, 1774. “Genius is properly the faculty of
invention, by means of which a man is qualified for making new
discoveries in science, or for producing original works of art. We
may ascribe taste, judgment, or knowledge to a man who is incapable
of invention, but we can not reckon him as a man of genius. In order
to determine how far he merits this character (!) we must inquire
whether he has discovered any new principle in science, or has invented
any new art, or has carried those arts that are already practised to
a higher degree of perfection than former masters; or whether, at
least, he has, in matters of science, improved upon the discoveries of
his predecessors, or reduced principles formerly known to a greater
degree of simplicity and consistency, or traced them through a train
of consequences hitherto unknown; or in the arts, whether he has
designed some new work different from those of his predecessors,
though not perhaps excelling them (!). Whatever falls short of this
is servile imitation or a dull effort of plodding industry, which, as
not implying invention, can be deemed no proof of genius, whatever
capacity, skill, or diligence it may evidence. But if a man shows
invention, no intellectual defects (!) which his performance may betray
can forfeit his claim to genius. His invention may be irregular, wild,
undisciplined; but still it is regarded as an infallible mark of real
natural genius (!), and the degree of this faculty that we ascribe to
him is always in proportion to the novelty, the difficulty, and the
dignity of his inventions.”
[13] Geschichte des menschlichen Verstandes.
[14] Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht, 1798, § 55.
[15] Ueber die Verwandtschaft des Genies mit dem Irrsinn, in the
Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Psychiatrie, vol. xxxiii.
[16] Ferdinand Christoph Weise. Allgemeine Theorie des Genies.
[17] _Loc. cit._, p. 318.
[18] P. 319.
[19] De l’esprit, 1758. Discours 4me., chap. i.
[20] “To gain an exact definition of the word genius, and in general
of the aggregate of different names given to mind, we must rise to
wider ideas, and for this purpose we must lend an attentive ear to the
judgments of the public.... The public ranks as men of genius alike the
Descartes, the Newtons, the Lockes, the Montesquieus, the Corneilles,
the Molières, etc. The name genius given to men so different supposes
that there is some common quality in which they agree.”
[21] Paul Radestock. Genie und Wahnsinn.
[22] Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, vol. i, Book III, § 36, and
vol. ii, cap. xxxi.
[23] Jürgen Bona Meyer. Genie und Talent, Zeitschrift für
Völkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaften, B. xi.
[24] Friedrich Theodor Vischer. Æsthetik; oder Wissenschaft des
Schönen, 1846.
[25] Vorschule der Æsthetik, § 12, Besonnenheit.
[26] 1773, April 20. “Il faut avouer que dans les arts de génie, tout
est l’ouvrage de l’instinct. Corneille fit la scène d’Horace et de
Curiace comme un oiseau fait son nid, à cela près qu’un oiseau fait
toujours bien, et qu’il n’en est pas de même de nous autres chétifs.”
[27] Grundzüge der physiologischen Psychologie.
[28] Garve. Anmerkungen über Gellert.
[29] Hamburgische Dramaturgie, 34tes Stück.
[30]
Ein Quidam sagt: “Ich bin von keiner Schule;
Kein Meister lebt, mit dem ich buhle;
Auch bin ich weit davon entfernt
Dass ich von Todten was gelernt.”
Das heisst, wenn ich ihn recht verstand:
“Ich bin ein Narr, auf eigne Hand.”
[31] Entgegnung auf Äusserungen Französischer Journalisten.
[32] Wilhelm Dilthey. Ueber die Einbildungskraft der Dichter.
Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft, vol. x.
[33] Hermann Grimm, Goethe.
[34]
Freudvoll und leidvoll
Gedankenvoll sein;
Hangen und Bangen
In schwebender Pein,
Himmelhoch jauchzend,
Zum Tode betrübt ...
[35] Otto Jahn, Mozart, i, 840.
[36] Nissen, Mozart, p. 627.
[37] Jahn, _Op. cit._, ii, 127.
[38] Gesammelte Schriften, vol. v.
[39] Schiller’s Horen, Bd. I.
[40] Jean Paul, Vorschule der Æsthetik.
[41] Leben, Charakter, und Kunst des Ritters Nicolo Paganini.
[42] Wundt. Physiologische Psychologie, ii, 403.
[43] Jürgen Bona Meyer. Genie und Talent.
[44] De tranquilitate animi.
[45] Problemata, 30, 1.
[46] De divinatione, i, 37.
[47] Od. iii, 4.
[48] Absalom and Architophel, i, 63.
[49] Leçons sur la chaleur animale. Paris, 1875, Leçon 19me.
[50] Ranke. Der Mensch.
[51] La psychologie morbide dans ses rapports avec la philosophie de
l’histoire, Paris, 1859.
[52] Genio e follia, 1864.
[53] Lombroso. Neurose bei Dante und Michelangelo. Die Zukunft,
herausgeb. Maxim. Harden, vol. v, No. 12.
[54] The sanity of true genius.
[55] Plutarch. Brutus, chap. xxxvi.
[56] _Ibid._, chap. xlviii.
[57] Genio e follia.
[58] Lombroso. _Op. cit._, p. 19.
[59] Von Krafft-Ebing. Lehrbuch der Psychiatrie.
[60] Zur Theorie der Hallucination. Allgemeine Zeitschrift für
Psychiatrie, Bd. xxv.
[61] The Power of the Soul over the Body, 1845, Part II, chap. vii.
(5th ed., p. 170).
[62] Vita di Vittorio Alfieri scritta di Esso, Epoca 4ta, cap. xv.
[63] Letter to Moore, January 28, 1817.
[64] Charcot. Leçons sur les maladies du système nerveux.
[65] Morel. Études cliniques.
[66] Lasègnes. Les hystériques, leur perversité, leurs mensonges.
[67] Delbrück. Die pathologische Lüge.
[68] Psychologie de l’idiot et de l’imbécile, 1891, chap. viii, p. 216.
[69] Hagen. Ueber die Verwandtschaft des Genies mit dem Irrsinn.
Allgem. Zeitschr. f. Psychiatrie, B. xxxiii.
[70] Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung.
[71] Trélat. La Folie Lucide, quoted by Cullerre.
[72] Bayard Taylor’s Faust. From the scene in Faust’s study just before
the entrance of the student.
[73] Genius and Insanity.
[74] Jürgen Bona Meyer. Genie und Talent.
[75] The Æsthetician Vischer says: “The man endowed with fancy is in
the midst of the world truly solitary, for the one which he at present
peacefully warms in his bosom is his world; and the empirical world
has surrendered all its significance to this microcosm. Thus he is
indifferent to the things about him, and seems to be out of himself.
The reason is, that he is quite within himself, but in such a way
that he does not distinguish subject and object within himself. What
has come upon him is that the object and his subjective life ferment
together; and he now listens unconsciously to this inward singing,
sounding, and weaving.” Vol. ii, p. 345.
[76] See P. Möbius. Krankengeschichte Rousseaus.
[77] Ribot, Heredity; Francis Galton, Hereditary Genius, etc.
[78] _Ibid._, p. 72.
[79] _Ibid._, p. 76.
[80] Lehrbuch der Psychiatrie, p. 197.
[81] Traité des Dégénérescences Physiques, Intellectuelles et Morales.
[82] See the introduction to Psychiatrische Vorlesungen von V. Magnan.
Transl. by P. J. Möbius.
[83] Realencyclopädie der gesamten Heilkunde.
[84] v. Krafft-Ebing. Lehrbuch der Psychiatrie, 4th ed.
[85] Compare von Krafft-Ebing, p. 179: “Wonderful as it is, cases
adduced by von Flemming, Ruer, and Demeaux prove the fact that even
children of otherwise temperate parents, whose copulation took
place in a fateful hour of drunkenness, are extremely disposed to
mental derangement, especially to diseases of the nerves. This bad
interferential effect may show itself from birth as inborn imbecility
(_Schwach und Blödsinn_).”
[86] Psychiatrische Vorlesungen von Magnan. Transl. by P. J. Möbius.
[87] _Op cit._, i, 2.
[88] W. W. Ireland. Herrschermacht und Geisteskrankheit. Stuttgart,
1887.
[89] Ranke. Der Mensch., vol. ii, p. 136.
[90] _Op cit._
[91] Ranke. _Op. cit._, ii, p. 135.
[92] Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht, § 56 (§ 57 in some
editions).
[93] Rosenberg. Geschichte der modernen Kunst.
[94] On his refusal of the cross of the Legion of Honor.
[95] H. Störer. Leben des Ritters Karl von Linné.
[96] Sollier. Der Idiot und der Imbecille.
[97] Gustav Hauffe. Talente und sogenannte besondere Anlagen hat der
Mensch nicht! See Pädagogische Sammelmappe, 1875-’76, 1-6.
[98] Ludwig Nohl. Biographie Mozarts.
[99] Lehrbuch der Psychiatrie.
[100] Pathologie und Therapie der Geisteskrankheiten.
[101] Schüle. Klinische Psychiatrie.
[102] La Peur, Paris, 1886.
[103] G. H. Lewes. The Life and Works of Goethe, 1855, Book I, chap. v.
[104] Degeneration, p. 537.
[105] _Ibid._
[106] Calmeil. Der Wahnsinn in den vier letzten Jahrhunderten. Nach dem
Französischen bearbeitet von Leubusch.
[107] Calmeil, _op. cit._, p. 30. He cites Annales Flandicorum, ed.
Jacob Meyer, lib. xvi; Monstrelet, Chroniques, book ii; Del Rio,
Disquisitiones magicarum, etc., p. 821; J. Wier, Opera Omnia, p. 205.
[108] Nider. In Malleo Maleficarum, vol. i, p. 719.
[109] Sprenger. In Malleo Maleficarum.
[110] Bodin. Démonomanie des sorciers.
[111] Calmeil, _op. cit._
[112] Calmeil, _op. cit._, p. 32.
[113] Gilles de la Tourette. Die Hysterie nach den Lehren der
Salpétrière. Deutsch von Karl Grube.
[114] Annalen für Hygiene und gerichtliche Medicin, 1834, vol. xii.
[115] Calmeil, _op. cit._, p. 84.
[116] Calmeil, _op. cit._, p. 84.
[117] Cf. Richer. Études cliniques sur l’Hystéro-épilepsie ou grande
hystérie.
[118] Calmeil, _op. cit._, p. 139.
[119] The reader is especially referred to G. Guinon’s article on Les
agents provocateurs de l’hystérie. Le Progrès Médical, Paris, 1889.
[120] Delancre. Tableau de l’inconstance des mauvais anges et démons,
Paris, 1613; P. Delancre. L’incrédulité et mécréance pleinement
convaincue, etc., Paris, 1622.
[121] Cf. P. Richer, _op. cit._, p. 712.
[122] Gilles de la Tourette, _op cit._, p. 46.
[123] F. Jolly. Ueber Hypnotismus und Geistesstörung. In the Archiv für
Psychiatrie und Nervenkrankheiten, vol. xxv, Part III.
[124] Hagen. Genie und Irrsinn.
[125] Degeneration, p. 27.
[126] Degeneration, p. 29.
[127] Vorschule der Æsthetik.
[128] Die Krankengeschichte Rousseaus.
[129] Lombroso. Neurose bei Dante und Michelangelo. Die Zukunft, 1893.
[130] Inferno, iii, 130.
[131] See Dr. Nordau’s dedication of Degeneration to Prof. Lombroso.
[132] Lombroso and G. Ferrero. Das Weib als Verbrecherin und
Prostituierte, uebersetzt von Kurella, Hamburg, 1893.
[133] Der Zeitgeist, Berlin, 1892, No. 4.
[134] _Ibid._, p. 499.
[135] _Ibid._, p. 503.
[136] Degeneration, p. 151.
[137] _Ibid._, p. 166.
[138] _Ibid._, p. 150.
[139] _Ibid._, p. 154.
[140] _Ibid._, p. 415.
[141] Ed. von Hartmann. The Philosophy of the Unconscious.
[142] Richard Wagner. Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtungen, iv, p. 312.
[143] _Ibid._, iv, p. 317.
[144] _Ibid._, i, p. 14.
[145] _Ibid._, iv, p. 315.
[146] _Ibid._, iv, p. 316.
[147] _Ibid._, iv, p. 321.
[148] _Ibid._, iv, p. 328.
[149] _Ibid._, vi, p. 372.
[150] _Ibid._, iv, p. 288.
[151] _Ibid._, iv, p. 389.
[152]
Unmöglich dünkt mich’s dass ich nenne
Die Länder alle, die ich fand;
Das einz’ge, nur, nach dem ich brenne,
Ich find’es nicht, mein Heimatland.
[153] _Ibid._, i, p. 24.
[154] _Ibid._, iv, p. 330.
[155]
Nicht Lust allein liegt mir am Herzen,
Aus Freuden sehn’ ich mich nach Schmerzen;
Aus deinem Reiche muss ich flieh’n,
O Königin, Göttin! Lass mich zieh’n.
[156]
Ein Engel bat für dich auf Erden--
Bald schwebt er segnend über dir:
Elizabeth!
[157] _Ibid._, iv, p. 343.
[158]
Doch hin muss ich zur Welt der Erden,
Bei dir kann ich nur Sklave werden;
Nach Freiheit doch verlange ich,
Nach Freiheit, Freiheit dürstet’s mich;
Zu Kampf und Streite will ich stehen,
Sei’s auch auf Tod und Untergehen--
Drum muss aus deinem Reich ich flieh’n--
O Königin, Göttin! Lass mich zieh’n.
[159]
Deiner Schande Schmach blüht dir dann auf;
Gebannt, verflucht, folgt dir der Hohn;
Zerknirscht, zertreten seh’ ich dich nahen,
Bedeckt mit Staub das entehrte Haupt.
[160] _Ibid._, iv, p. 360.
[161]
Nie sollst du mich befragen,
Noch Wissens Sorge tragen,
Woher ich kam der Fahrt,
Noch wie mein Nam’ und Art!
[162]
Mein Held, mein Retter! Nimm mich hin!
Dir gieb ich alles, was ich bin!
[163] _Ibid._, iv, p. 363.
[164] _Ibid._, iv, p. 365.
[165] _Ibid._, iv, p. 369.
[166] Art and Revolution, _ibid._, iii, p. 38.
[167] _Ibid._, iv, p. 406.
[168] _Ibid._, iii, p. 39.
[169] _Ibid._, iii, p. 56.
[170] _Ibid._, iii, p. 266.
[171] _Ibid._, iv, p. 381.
[172]
Der Welt Erbe
Gewänne zu eigen
Wer aus dem Rheingold
Schüfe den Ring,
Der masslose Macht ihm verlieh.
[173]
Nur wer der Minne
Macht versagt,
Nur wer der Liebe
Lust verjagt,
Nur der erzielt sich den Zauber,
Zum Reif zu zwingen das Gold.
[174] Or “mist-hood,” a garment that rendered the wearer invisible and
gave him the strength of twelve men.--Translator.
[175]
Kein Froher soll
Seiner sich freu’n;
Keinem Glücklichen lache
Sein lichter Glanz;
Wer ihn besitzt,
Den sehre sorge,
Und wer ihn nicht hat,
Nage der Neid!
Jeder giere
Nach seinem Gut,
Doch keiner geniesse
Mit Nutzen sein.
[176] On the State and Religion, _ibid._, viii, p. 11.
[177]
Wie Alles war, weiss ich,
Wie Alles wird,
Wie Alles sein wird
Seh’ ich auch:
Der ew’gen Welt
Ur-Wala,
Erda mahnt deinen Mut.
[178]
Die Burg ist fertig,
Verfallen das Pfand:
Vergisst Du, was Du vergabst?
[179]
Das Weib zu missen,
Wisse gemutet mich weh:
Soll aus dem Sinn sie mir schwinden,
Des Geschmeides Hort
Häufe denn so,
Dass meinem Blick
Die blühende ganz er verdeck’!
[180]
Weh’ noch blitzt
Ihr Blick zu mir her,
Des Auges stern
Strahlt mich noch an:
Durch eine spalte,
Muss ich’s erspäh’n!--
Seh’ ich dies wonnige Auge,
Von dem Weibe lass’ ich nicht ab.
[181]
Der durch Verträge ich Herr,
Den Verträgen bin ich nun Knecht.
[182]
Dann wäre Walhall verloren:
Der der Liebe fluchte
Er allein
Nützte neidisch
Des Ringen Runen
Zu aller Edlen
Endloser schmach.
[183]
Was so schlimmes
Schuf das Paar,
Das liebend einte der Lenz?
Der Minne Zauber
Entzückte sie,
Wer büsst mir der Minne Macht?
[184]
Du siehst nur das Eine,
Das And’re seh’ ich,
Das Jenes mir jagt aus dem Blick.
These words are taken from the original draft of the text, as it had
been planned before the scene was written.
[185]
Unheilig
Acht’ ich den Eid,
Der Unliebende eint;
Und mir wahrlich
Mute nicht zu,
Dass mit Zwang ich halte,
Was Dir nicht haftet:
Denn wo kühn Kräfte sich regen,
Da rath’ ich offen zum Krieg.
[186]
In eig’ner Fessel
Fing ich mich:
Ich unfreiester Aller!
[187]
Befiehl mir dein Weib
Um des Pfandes Willen,
Das wonnig von Dir es empfing.
[188]
Ein bräutliches Feuer
Soll Dir nun brennen,
Wie nie einer Braut es gebrannt!
Flammende Glut
Umglühe den Fels;
Mit zehrenden Schrecken
Scheuch es den Zagen;
Der Feige fliehe
Brünhilde’s Fels:
Denn einer nur freie die Braut,
Der freier als ich der Gott!
[189]
Fahre denn hin,
Herrische Pracht,
Göttlichen Prunkes
Prahlende Schmach!
Zusammenbreche,
Was ich gebaut!
Auf geb’ ich mein Werk,
Eines nur will ich noch:
Das Ende----
Das Ende!--
[190]
Nur einer dürfte,
Was ich nicht darf:
Ein Held dem helfend
Nie ich mich neigte;
Der fremd dem Gotte,
Frei seiner Gunst,
Unbewusst,
Ohne Geheiss,
Aus eig’ner Not
Mit der eig’nen Wehr
Schüfe die That,
Die ich scheuen muss,
Die nie mein Rat ihm entriet,
Wünscht sich auch einzig mein Wunsch.
[191]
Was ihr mir nützet
Weiss ich nicht.
[192]
Mein Blut verdärb euch den Trank;
Nicht fliesst mir’s echt
Und edel wie euch,
Störrisch und kalt
Stockt’s in mir;
Nicht will’s die Wange mir röten,
Drum bleib’ ich fern
Vom feurigen Bund.
[193]
Echter als er
Schwur keiner Eide;
Treuer als er
Hielt keiner Vorträge;
Laut’rer als er
Liebte kein and’rer.
[194]
Die seinem Dienst ihr zugesindet
Auf Pfaden, die kein Sünder findet
Ihr wisst, dass nur dem Reinen
Vergönnt ist, sich zu einen,
Den Brüdern, die zu höchsten Rettungswerken
Des Grales heil’ge Wunderkräfte stärken.
[195]
Ohnmächtig, in sich selbst die Sünde zu ertöten,
An sich legt er die Frevlerhand,
Die nun dem Grale zugewandt,
Verachtungsvoll dess’ Hüter von sich stiess.
[196]
Schon nah dem Schloss wird uns der Held entrückt,
Ein furchtbar schönes Weib hat ihn entzückt;
In seinen Armen liegt er trunken,
Der Speer ist ihm entsunken;
Ein Todesschrei!--ich stürm’ herbei:--
Von dannen Klingsor schwand,
Den heil’gen Speer hat er entwandt.
[197] Wohl willst du, denn du musst.
[198]
Vor dem verwaisten Heiligtum
In brünst’gem Beten lag Amfortas,
Ein Rettungszeichen heiss erflehend;
Ein sel’ger Schimmer da endfloss dem Grale;
Ein heilig Traumgesicht
Nun deutlich zu ihm spricht
Durch hell erschauter Wortezeichen Male:
“Durch Mitleid wissend
Der reine Thor,
Harre sein’,
Den ich erker.”
[199]
Wehe! Wehe! Was that ich? Wo, war ich?
Mutter: Süsse, holde Mutter!
Dein Sohn, dein Sohn musste dich morden?
O Thor! Blöder, taumelnder Thor!
Wo irrtest Du hin, ihrer vergessend?
Deiner, deiner vergessend,
Traute treuerste Mutter?
[200]
Als Muttersegens letzten Gruss
Der Liebe--ersten Kuss!
[201]
Amfortas!
Die Wunde!--die Wunde!
Sie brennt in meinem Herzen.
[202] _Op. cit._, iv, p. 368.
[203] _Op. cit._, x, p. 224.
[204] _Op. cit._, iv, p. 387.
[205] _Op. cit._, iv, p. 401. See also Zukunftsmusik, vii, p. 153.
[206] Dr. Th. Puschmann, Practising Physician and Specialist in
Psychology in Munich. Richard Wagner, eine psychiatrische Studie.
[207] Richard Wagner und der “Specialist der Psychiatrie.” Eine
Beleuchtung der Puschmannschen Studie von C. P. Berlin, 1873.
[208] Degeneration, p. 205.
[209] _Ibid._, p. 171.
[210] _Ibid._, p. 172.
[211] _Ibid._, p. 176.
[212] _Ibid._, p. 181.
[213] _Ibid._, p. 188.
[214]
Doch einmal im Jahre fänd’ ich’s weise,
Dass man die Regeln selbst probir’,
Ob in der Gewohnheit trägem G’leise
Ihr’ Kraft und Leben sich nicht verlier’:
Und ob ihr der Natur
Noch seid auf rechter Spur,
Dass sagt euch nur,
Wer nichts weiss von der Tabulatur.
[215] _Ibid._, p. 203.
[216] Æschyli Choëphoræ.
[217] Les démoniaques dans l’art, Paris, 1887.
[218] Ibsen’s Gespenster und die Psychiatrie, Die Zukunft, Berlin,
1893, vol. iv, No. 51.
[219] Degeneration, p. 285.
[220] _Op cit._, p. 670.
[221] Degeneration, p. 39.
[222] _Ibid._
[223] Wilhelm Wundt. Grundzüge der physiologischen Psychologie, third
edition, Leipsic, 1887, ii, p. 457.
[224] Degeneration, p. 543.
[225] _Ibid._
Transcriber’s Notes
Italic text is indicated with _underscores_.
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