imaginative writings--in which, by the way, he was continually able,
within certain limitations, to sublimate his own complex. Indeed, it
was not by his novels but by a study of his letters that I, personally,
was led in the first instance to attempt the diagnosis. In the letters
we must look chiefly for autobiographical indications rather than for
the emergence of the unconscious wisdom that enriches the novels,
but would be checked by the realisation of addressing a particular
individual.
The first of them that attracted my attention was the adulatory tone
of the letters begging for patronage, written just before the release
from Siberia. One regrets, in reading them, that genius could so bemean
itself. The common excuse for the tone of them is that Dostoevsky
was ill and over-tried by his recent experiences, but it is just in
such circumstances as these that one looks for the expression of
the dominant individuality. In any case I prefer the pathological
explanation. Then we come to the consideration of his jealousy of
Turgenev, and of the unfortunate meeting of the two men in Switzerland.
All Dostoevsky's resentment and his behaviour at the meeting in
question are readily explicable by the theory of his neurosis, but the
need for impartiality demands that we should ask if a perfectly normal
explanation is forthcoming. Personally I have failed to find one that
is consistent with an unprejudiced interpretation of Dostoevsky's
general character. Apart from his prepossession, he exhibits traits of
gentleness, affection, and tolerance that do not appear to me consonant
with his treatment of Turgenev. He did not seek to belittle his other
contemporaries. But, in this instance, like the hero of _Notes from
Underground_, he could not resist the unconscious desire to try and
jostle his superior from the pavement.[23]
[23] Cf. _op. cit._, pp. 87, _et seq._
For our present purpose, however, it is not necessary to prove that
Dostoevsky himself was the victim of a particular neurosis--although
the argument is slightly strengthened if that hypothesis be
admitted--since it is primarily only my intention to show that certain
morbid conditions of mind, now clearly indicated and with obvious
limitations explained by the psycho-analysts, may be artistically
treated in the best fiction. Another instance of this, which may
be briefly referred to, is that afforded by the writings of D. H.
Lawrence, who in all his novels has demonstrated with the passionate
conviction that is a witness to his genius the strange and occasionally
dissociated workings of the unconscious mind. In this case we are
confronted with just such a sex obsession as delights the faithful
disciples of the Vienna school, but the particular type of complex is
not of any importance in this connection.
II
The result of our preliminary examination may be summarised as the
posing of two deductions: the first, that the deliberate, intellectual
use in the pages of a novel of the teachings of psycho-analysis
produces an effect upon the reader that may be variously irritating,
unconvincing, and negligible, but is rarely, if ever, psychologically
valuable; the second, that a writer of genius such as Dostoevsky has,
in one sense, forestalled the conclusions of this branch of psychology
and used them to the benefit of literature. At first sight these two
deductions may appear to disclose an inherent contradiction, namely,
that the theories of psycho-analysis can and cannot be used for the
purposes of fiction; but this apparent contradiction is instantly
resolved by a consideration of the manner of treatment. Briefly we may
assume that, according to precedent, a true form of self-expression
must bear the impress of spontaneity, and hence that a novelist's
learning is comparatively valueless to him until it has been so
assimilated and transmuted as to become a personal experience and
conviction.
This last proposition, however, opens the second phase of our thesis,
presenting as it does the obvious deduction that such a theory as that
of psycho-analysis properly comprehended and applied may become a
powerful influence in the novel of the future. But to decide that we
must consider, first, how far the theory is a new one, and, secondly,
in what respects it illuminates the problems of normal psychology.
The answer to the first question can be stated quite briefly. The
knowledge of the facts upon which Freud's pathological method was
founded are as old as folk-lore. Certain symbols that the modern
practitioner recognises as having a peculiar significance in the
dreams of his patient are the same symbols that were used not only in
Greek and Norse mythologies, but also in the most primitive rites of
the savage. What is new is primarily the pathological method by which
the unconscious mind may be induced to reveal its dangerous secrets;
but from the study of this method there is arising the outline of a
new psychology for which we have no true precedent. Glimmerings and
faint foreshadowings there may have been, but no sure recognition or
understanding; and the answer to our second question involves some
inquiry into what this new psychology implies.
Let me begin by saying that psycho-analysis throws very little light
on the problem of the survival of the personality, and Dr. Jung, in
his address to the Society for Psychical Research last April, refused
to admit the probability of any authentic message having been received
from departed spirits. We are able, therefore, to confine ourselves
strictly to the study of humanity in its normal, that is to say, in its
terrestrial, condition, and find our main point of convergence from
older psychologies in the intensive observation of that element of our
make-up which is now commonly spoken of as "the unconscious."
A scholarly history designed to collate the main facts of man's
attitude towards and tentative realisations of his own duality
would make uncommonly interesting reading; but outside religion and
imaginative literature no real attempt was made to _characterise_ the
unconscious mind until Freud began to practise a pathology that relied
upon the interpretation of dreams as an essential part of the method
of diagnosis. In the past the oneirocritic was solely concerned with
the significance of the dream in so far as it foretold the future; the
Freudian analysis, before Jung restored the balance of factors, was
equally single-minded in relating it to the past. And this change of
attitude--so startling in its implications that it almost makes a break
in the continuity of thought--tended very quickly to crystallise a host
of speculations that had awaited a unifying hypothesis. For this method
of interpreting the dream, supported as it was by verifiable results
in the patient's nervous, mental, and physical condition, could only
signify that we are endowed with a double consciousness, and that under
a suitable stimulus the deeper consciousness could be examined and,
as I have said, characterised. We are, in short, confronted with the
theorem of a dual personality[24] in every human being, in which the
second person has peculiar and essential functions, both in connection
with our sanity and with our physical well-being. What precisely is
the scope of these functions we are not yet in a position to say, but
we can formulate with reasonable certainty various characteristic
activities, tendencies and modes of expression, common to this second
personality, that are of the greatest importance to modern psychology.
[24] In using the term "dual personality" I beg an
essential question for the sake of a convenient image;
but it must not be assumed that what I describe
hereafter as a second personality is recognised
as such by psychologists. It is possible that the
unconscious bears some such relation to the conscious
as desire bears to purpose, instinct to reason, or
reflexive to deliberative action. But see also in this
connection _De l'Inconscient au Conscient_, by Dr.
Gustave Geley, Paris. 1919.
We must, for example, face the deduction that the unconscious can
suffer from a queer and hitherto unrecognised form of ill-health.
A sudden fright, for instance, more particularly in childhood, has
apparently the effect of breaking the liaison in this one particular
relation between the conscious and the unconscious minds. The shock
itself, whatever it may be, is not remembered by the conscious mind,
and this failure of contact between the unconscious and objective
reality seems to produce a condition comparable to nervous worry.
Speaking figuratively, one may say that the second personality becomes
the victim of a growing obsession, and begins to concentrate its
efforts more and more upon signalling its message of distress. And
surely the strangest of all the strange facts that have recently
been described concerning this amazing partnership of ours is that
the second personality cannot communicate with the first except in
the language of symbol. The means by which that vital message can
be transmitted is, generally, in the first instance by a dream. But
this dream does not picture the actual circumstances of the original
shock, but seeks to describe it by a method that Dr. Maurice Nicoll
has compared to that of the political cartoon. Night after night the
message of distress is delivered with diligent ingenuity in a picture
language the images of which are frequently taken from casual and
unimportant experiences of the dreamer's waking life, such experiences
being presented in the form of an allegory which, rightly interpreted,
has a bearing on the urgent cause of distress. When this mode of
communication fails, more drastic steps are taken and the physical
actions of the body may be influenced in the form of a mania. A youth
or a young woman shocked by a sudden sexual experience or revelation to
the point of conscious forgetfulness of the incident in question may
develop a mania for the continued cleansing of the hands--again, be it
noted, the message being conveyed by a symbol. Or the effect may be the
development of a phobia that in extreme cases may cause the death of
the patient.
Now, the points of immediate interest in this amazing process are,
firstly, what may be called the anxiety of the unconscious to
communicate its distress; and, secondly, the inability to convey
its message by any means other than that of symbol. From the former
observation it may perhaps be inferred, _inter alia_, that it is vital
to the functions of the unconscious that it should have universal touch
with the objective realities of its partner; from the second, that
the existence of a trauma causing a breach between the two minds is
of such a nature that direct communication becomes impossible along
that particular circuit. For, although it is true that the majority
of dreams emerge in this form, they also contain now and then plain
statements that solve a perplexity; and it is difficult to understand
why in cases of such vital urgency, an image of the conditions
responsible for the original trauma should not be directly presented,
unless there is some nervous dissociation--it may be an actual physical
displacement or temporary rearrangement of cell tissue--producing a
restricted amnesia in the conscious mind.
Proceeding now with the characterisation of the unconscious, we come
to that aspect of it which has above all others tickled and excited
the popular imagination. In this aspect the unconscious figures as
the crouching beast of desire, the primitive immoral instigator of
all the animal passions, a thing of wonderful abilities and capable
of amazing physical dexterities, but before all else unethical and
uncivilised. But sorry as I am to destroy so romantic and intriguing
a creation, I must admit that Dr. Jung's researches do not uphold
this view of the unconscious as a universal type. It is, indeed, well
established in the mythologies and appears as the serpent, a favourite
symbol, in the second chapter of Genesis; but the individual may at
once put away the fear, or the hope, that he himself is harbouring so
fearful a beast. For, if we may argue from those abnormal instances
that furnish the bolder illustrations of tendency, we have excellent
grounds for following Jung in the assumption that the unconscious
is the complement of the conscious. Is a man brutal, then he is
suppressing the urgency to gentleness that wells up--an uncertain and
impeded flow, no doubt--from the depths of his being; and we remember
the callous murderer exhibiting a tender solicitude for some feeble
animal. Is he a miser, he is occasionally tortured by promptings to an
absurd generosity. Is he a loose-liver, he suffers from an unappeasable
longing after chastity. The saint is tempted by his unconscious being
to sin: the sinner to renounce the devil and all his works. In short,
the character of the unconscious is as various as the character of
man; although in this civilised world of ours, in which the dominant
restrictions of society are in the direction of sex and decency, we
are naturally inclined towards a generalisation that presents the
unconscious as a creature of immodesty and lust....
But it is unnecessary for the purposes of this article that I should
elaborate any further the larger inferences of the psycho-analysts
with regard to the personal traits, influences, and functions of this
astonishing partner of ours. All that I wish to demonstrate is that
such a partner almost certainly exists and has an immense influence
upon our impulses, our thoughts, and our actions. And the critical
question we have to face is whether the agency of the unconscious,
recognised now both by the philosophers and the psychologists,
can possibly be kept out of the novel. Personally, I believe that
neither the distaste of the reviewer nor that more influential
factor the distaste of the public will avail to bar the conclusions
of psycho-analysis from the fiction of the future. We are coming
inevitably to a new test in our judgments upon human action and
thought, a test that has been proved to be valid by many thousands of
well-authenticated experiments. I am willing to admit that through all
the ages genius has anticipated laboratory and clinical methods, and
that the basis of the psycho-analytical theory was firmly established
in literature before Freud applied it as a pathological method. But
once such a theory as this is established--a probability one can hardly
escape--how can any serious novelist afford to neglect the illumination
it throws upon the subtle problems of human impulse? Is it not already
tending to become a touchstone of the author's powers of observation
and understanding, helping us to evaluate the intellectual productions
of the writer, whether realist or romantic, who relies upon the
evidence of his eyes and ears rather than upon his personal emotions
and experience?
I am aware that such a postulate as this contradicts in some respects
certain implications I have previously made. But it must be remembered
that while the novelist's best material undoubtedly comes from his
personal contacts, almost infinitely extended by his powers of entering
with an emotional sympathy into the experiences of other lives either
presented or recounted, he cannot entirely neglect the precedents
afforded by learning. Such precedents may only serve him as a test
and a formula for correction, but should he overlook them altogether
he will be liable to fall into the error of regarding his personal
equation as a universal standard and generalise from the atypical.
And, finally, I would submit that we are at this moment passing through
a new phase of evolution that must have a characteristic effect on the
fiction of the future--if the form of the novel survives the change.
We may study the first evidences of this strange partnership of ours
in the lower animals. In the wild what we call the unconscious appears
to be the single control. It represents the genius of instinct, swift,
feral, and unethical. In animals, such as the dog and the horse,
age-long companions of man, we can trace the incipient rivalry of what
in ourselves we regard as the representative consciousness. The horse
and the dog have already learnt the meaning of conscious inhibition.
At our command they can deny the spontaneous impulses of their natural
desire. In civilised man that ability has been cultivated until he is
able to present to the world and himself so complete an entity that we
and he regard it as his proper expression. But, meanwhile, we cannot
now doubt that his hidden partner has evolved with him. The impulses of
the unconscious are no longer simply feral and animal. We are, a trifle
unwillingly, coming to the conclusion that it is this other shadowed
self that is responsible for all that is best and most permanent in
literature. It is being associated with genius on the one hand, and on
the other with the highest dexterity in games of skill. And is it not
possible that with our growing realisation of this co-operation the
"education of the subconscious"--as Varisco, the Italian philosopher,
calls it--will proceed ever more rapidly? And to what end, unless it be
that in the strange process of our earthly evolution this artificial
shell of the conscious will be gradually broken and absorbed to reveal
the single and relatively perfect individual that has been so steadily
developing underground?
JOHN DONNE
By ROBERT LYND
Izaak Walton in his short life of Donne has painted a figure of almost
seraphic beauty. When Donne was but a boy, he declares, it was said
that the age had brought forth another Pico della Mirandola. As a
young man in his twenties, he was a prince among lovers, who by his
secret marriage with his patron's niece--"for love," says Walton,
"is a flattering mischief"--purchased at first only the ruin of his
hopes and a term in prison. Finally, we have the later Donne in the
pulpit of St. Paul's represented, in a beautiful adaptation of one of
his own images, as "always preaching to himself, like an angel from a
cloud, though in none; carrying some, as St. Paul was, to Heaven in
holy raptures, and enticing others by a sacred art and courtship to
amend their lives." The picture is all of noble charm. Walton speaks
in one place of "his winning behaviour--which, when it would entice,
had a strange kind of elegant irresistible art." There are no harsh
phrases even in the references to those irregularities of Donne's
youth, by which he had wasted the fortune of £3000--equal, I believe,
to more than £30,000 of our money--bequeathed to him by his father, the
ironmonger. "Mr. Donne's estate," writes Walton gently, referring to
his penury at the time of his marriage, "was the greatest part spent
in many and chargeable travels, books, and dear-bought experience." It
is true that he quotes Donne's own confession of the irregularities of
his early life. But he counts them of no significance. He also utters
a sober reproof of Donne's secret marriage as "the remarkable error
of his life." But how little he condemned it in his heart is clear
when he goes on to tell us that God blessed Donne and his wife "with
so mutual and cordial affections, as in the midst of their sufferings
made their bread of sorrow taste more pleasantly than the banquets of
dull and low-spirited people." It was not for Walton to go in search of
small blemishes in him whom he regarded as the wonder of the world--him
whose grave mournful friends "strewed ... with an abundance of curious
and costly flowers," as Alexander the Great strewed the grave of "the
famous Achilles." In that grave there was buried for Walton a whole
age magnificent with wit, passion, adventure, piety, and beauty. More
than that, the burial of Donne was for him the burial of an inimitable
Christian. He mourns over "that body, which once was a Temple of the
Holy Ghost, and is now become a small quantity of Christian dust," and,
as he mourns, he breaks off with the fervent prophecy, "But I shall
see it re-animated." That is his valediction. If Donne is esteemed
three hundred years after his death less as a great Christian than
as a great pagan, this is because we now look for him in his writings
rather than in his biography, in his poetry rather than in his prose,
and in his _Songs and Sonnets_ and _Elegies_ rather than in his _Divine
Poems_. We find, in some of these, abundant evidence of the existence
of a dark angel at odds with the good angel of Walton's raptures. Donne
suffered in his youth all the temptations of Faust. His thirst was
not for salvation but for experience--experience of the intellect and
experience of sensation. He has left it on record in one of his letters
that he was a victim at one period of "the worst voluptuousness, an
hydroptic immoderate desire of human learning and languages." Faust
in his cell can hardly have been a more insatiate student than Donne.
"In the most unsettled days of his youth," Walton tells us, "his bed
was not able to detain him beyond the hour of four in the morning; and
it was no common business that drew him out of his chamber till past
ten; all which time was employed in study; though he took great liberty
after it." His thoroughness of study may be judged from the fact that
"he left the resultance of 1400 authors, most of them abridged and
analysed with his own hand." But we need not go beyond his poems for
proof of the wilderness of learning that he had made his own. He was
versed in medicine and the law as well as in theology. He subdued
astronomy, physiology, and geography to the needs of poetry. Nine Muses
were not enough for him, even though they included Urania. He called
in to their aid Galen and Copernicus. He did not go to the hills and
the springs for his images, but to the laboratory and the library,
and in the library the books that he consulted to the greatest effect
were the works of men of science and learning, not of the great poets
with whom London may almost be said to have been peopled during his
lifetime. I do not think his verse or correspondence contains a single
reference to Shakespeare, whose contemporary he was, being born only
nine years later. The only great Elizabethan poet whom he seems to have
regarded with interest and even friendship was Ben Jonson. Jonson's
Catholicism may have been a link between them. But, more important
than that, Jonson was, like Donne himself, an inflamed pedant. For
each of them learning was the necessary robe of genius. Jonson, it is
true, was a pedant of the classics, Donne of the speculative sciences;
but both of them alike ate to a surfeit of the fruit of the tree of
knowledge. It was, I think, because Donne was to so great a degree a
pagan of the Renaissance, loving the proud things of the intellect more
than the treasures of the humble, that he found it easy to abandon the
Catholicism of his family for Protestantism. He undoubtedly became
in later life a convinced and passionate Christian of the Protestant
faith, but at the time when he first changed his religion he had none
of the fanaticism of the pious convert. He wrote in an early satire
as a man whom the intellect had liberated from dogma-worship. Nor did
he ever lose this rationalist tolerance. "You know," he once wrote to
a friend, "I have never imprisoned the word religion.... They" (the
churches) "are all virtual beams of one sun." Few converts in those
days of the wars of religion wrote with such wise reason of the creeds
as did Donne in the lines:
To adore or scorn an image, or protest,
May all be bad; doubt wisely; in strange way
To stand inquiring right, is not to stray;
To sleep or run wrong is. On a huge hill,
Cragged and steep, Truth stands, and he that will
Reach her, about must and about must go;
And what the hill's suddenness resists, win so.
This surely was the heresy of an inquisitive mind, not the mood of a
theologian. It betrays a tolerance springing from ardent doubt, not
from ardent faith.