Chapter IX: Part 9

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.”