Such are the Young-German realists, among whose number I will not

include, as I said before, a sterling author like Gerhart Hauptmann.

They do not know German, are incapable of even observing life, still

more of understanding it; they know nothing, learn nothing, and

experience nothing whatsoever; have nothing to say, have neither a true

sentiment nor a personal thought to express, yet never cease writing;

and their scribbling, in the eyes of a great number, passes as the

sole German literature of the present and future. They plagiarize

the stalest of foreign fashions, and call themselves innovators and

original geniuses. They append on the signboard before their shops,

‘At the Sign of Modernity,’ and nothing is to be found in them but the

discarded breeches of bygone poetasters. If the few lines in which

they mutter about the obscure Socialistic ‘studies’ and ‘works’ of the

hero be excluded from all they have published up to the present time,

there will remain a miserable balderdash, without colour, taste, or

connection with time and space, and which a tolerably conscientious

editor of a newspaper even half a century ago would have thrown into

the waste-paper basket as altogether too musty. They know that very

well, and to be beforehand with those who would reproach them with

their charlatanism, they audaciously attribute it to those respectable

authors whom they cover with their slaver. Thus, Hans Merian dares to

say: ‘Spielhagen makes it appear as though he had drawn the fundamental

ideas and conflicts in his novels from the great questions which are

stirring the present time. But closely examined, all this magnificence

evaporates into a vain phantasmagoria.’ And: ‘To the fabricators of

novels _à la_ Paul Lindau, recently dealing with realism, we address

the reproach of false realism.’[469] And this same Hans Merian finds

that the realism of Max Kretzer and of Karl Bleibtreu is genuine,

and that their Parisian cocotte-stories, transported contraband into

Berlin, and their adventures of mythical waitresses, are ‘drawn from

the great questions of the day’! Is not this the practice of thieves

who scamper away at full speed before a policeman, shouting as they

run louder than anyone else, ‘Stop thief!’ The movement of the Young

German is an incomparable example in literature of that tendency to

form cliques which I described in the first volume of this work. It

began by a foundation in due form. A man arrogated to himself the

rank of captain, and enrolled armed companions in order to repair

with them into the Bohemian forests. The purpose was the same as that

of every other band of criminals--the ‘Maffia,’ the ‘Mala Vita,’ the

‘Mano negra,’ etc., viz., that of living well without working, by

plundering the rich, by blackmailing the poor, by favouring acts of

vengeance by the members on persons whom they envy, hate, or fear, by

satisfying with impunity the leaning to license and crime, kept down

by custom and law. Like the ‘Mala Vita’ and analogous associations,

this band palliates its acts and deeds by stock phrases intended to

secure the favour, or at least the indulgence, of the crowd, incapable

of judgment and easy to move. Brigands always profess that they are

guided by the desire to repair, to the utmost of their power, the

injustice of fate, by relieving the rich of their superfluities, and

by then alleviating the misery of the poor. Thus, this band asserts

that it defends the cause of truth, liberty, and progress, with the

indecent love adventures of tavern-maidservants and prostitutes!

Membership is acquired by formal admission after predetermined tests

have been undergone. He must first publicly bespatter a well-known

and meritorious author with mud. With the predominance of low and bad

emotions in members of the band, they experience more gratification in

maligning a man they envy than in being praised themselves. Next, the

candidate must worship as geniuses one or more members of the band,

and finally give proof, in verse or prose, that he also is able to

express, in the language of a _souteneur_, the ideas of a convict, and

the sensations of a noisome beast. Having undergone these three ordeals

with success, he is received into the band and declared a genius. Just

as the bands of brigands have their haunts, their receivers of stolen

goods, and their secret or affiliated allies among the tradespeople, so

this band possesses its own newspaper, its appointed editors (who, at

first at least, accepted everything from it), and secret understandings

with the critics of respectable papers. Its influence extends even to

foreign countries--a phenomenon frequently observed in the formation of

bands, and expressly confirmed by Lombroso. ‘The Mattoids,’ he says,

‘as opposed to geniuses and fools, are linked together by a sympathy

of interests and hatred; they form a kind of freemasonry so much the

more powerful that it is less regular. It is founded on the need of

resistance to ridicule which is common to all, and inexorably pursues

them everywhere on the necessity of uprooting, or at least combating,

the natural antithesis, which, for them, is the man of genius;

and, in spite of their hating each other, they stand firmly by one

another.’[470]

He who from a height surveys a horizon of a certain extent can easily

observe the labour of the apostles of this international freemasonry.

M. Téodar de Wyzewa, already mentioned, who introduced to the French

the insane Nietzsche as the most remarkable author that Germany has

produced in the second half of this century, speaks in _La Revue bleue_

and in _Le Figaro_ of Conrad Alberti as the ‘poet’ who will dominate

German literature in the twentieth century. The ‘new reviews’ of the

Symbolists and Instrumentists, _La Revue blanche_, _La Plume_, etc.,

translate the ‘Erlebte Gedichte’ of O. J. Bierbaum. On the other

hand, O. E. Hartleben offers the German public the so-called ‘poetry’

of the Belgian Symbolist, Albert Giraud, _Pierrot lunaire_, and H.

Bahr mutters with transport over the Parisian mystics. Ola Hansson is

enthusiastic before German readers over the realists of the North, and

carries into Sweden the good news of Young-German realism, etc.

The actions of the band have not done much good to itself, but they

have caused serious injuries to German literature. It has necessarily

exerted a baneful attraction over the young who have come to the

front in the last seven or eight years. If we consider the enormous

difficulties to which a beginner is exposed, who without protection or

influence, depending wholly on himself, enters into the _Via Crucis_

leading to literary success, we shall find it quite comprehensible that

the tyros should be eager to join themselves to a society possessing

a powerful organization, its own periodicals and publishers, as well

as a definite public, and always ready to take the part of its members

with the unscrupulousness and pugnacity of cut-throats. As members

of the band, they are freed from all the difficulties of beginners.

The most vigorous talents alone--such, for example, as Hermann

Sudermann--disdained to lighten their struggles with the help of such

allies. The others willingly allowed themselves to be affiliated.

The result was, on the one hand, that wholly incompetent lads were

drawn into the profession of authors, who would never have come before

the public if they had not had special depôts to which they could

cart all their rubbish; and, on the other hand, that of procuring for

others, who were perhaps not wholly devoid of talent, periodicals and

publishers for their childish effusions, the appearance of which in

print would have been inconceivable before the formation of the band.

Some threw themselves into the literary profession at an age when

they should have been studying for a long time to come, and thereby

remained ignorant, immature, and superficial; others acquired slipshod

and slovenly habits into which they would never have fallen if, in

the absence of the conveniences which the organization of the band

offered them, they had been obliged to submit to some discipline, and

develop their capacities with care. The existence of this literary

‘Maffia’ assisted the plagiarists against independent minds, the common

herd against the solitary, the scribbler against the artist, and

the obscene against the refined, so powerfully that competition was

almost out of the question. The luxuriant growth of silly, boyish, and

crude book-making is the result of this fostering of incapacity and

immaturity, and this premium granted to vulgarity. I will demonstrate

in one instance only the disastrous effect of the band. The case of

the Darmstadt Gymnasium (public school) boy may be remembered, who

wrote under the pseudonym of Hans G. Ludwigs, and committed suicide in

1892 at the age of seventeen. For two years he had offered incense to

the realist ‘geniuses,’ and published idiotic novels in the official

periodicals of Young Germany, and he committed suicide because, as he

wrote, ‘this cursed boxed-in life,’ _i.e._, the obligation to learn

and work regularly in class, ‘broke down his strength.’ A good many

gymnasium boys write trumpery things and send them to the papers; but

as these are not printed, they gradually recover their reason. Their

heads do not get turned, and they do not come to imagine that they are

much too good to do their lessons, and diligently prepare for their

examinations. Ludwigs would perhaps have been cured of his folly; he

might have lived till the present day, and become a useful man, if the

criminal realist periodicals had not printed his twaddle, and thus

diverted him from his studies, and intensified his unwholesome boyish

vanity into megalomania.

That this invasion by main force, this revolt of slaves into

literature, to use Nietzsche’s expression, was to a certain extent

successful, can be accounted for by the state of Germany. Its

literature after 1870 had, in fact, become stagnant. It could not be

otherwise. The German people had been obliged to exert their whole

strength to conquer their unity in terrible wars. Now, it is not

possible simultaneously to make history on a great scale and lead a

nourishing artistic life; it must be one or the other. In the France

of Napoleon I. the most celebrated authors were Delille, Esménard,

Parseval de Grandmaison, and Fontanes. The Germany of William I., of

Moltke and Bismarck, could not produce a Goethe or a Schiller. This can

be explained without any mysticism. From the mighty events of which

they are witnesses and collaborators the nation obtains a standard of

comparison, by the side of which all works of art shrink together, and

poets and artists, especially those most gifted and conscientious,

feel depressed and discouraged, often even paralyzed, by the double

perception that their compatriots only peruse their works distractedly

and superficially, and that their creations absolutely cannot attain

to the grandeur of the historical events passing before their eyes.

In this critical period of transient mental collapse the Young-German

band made its appearance, and profited greatly by what even honest

and sensible people were obliged to acknowledge as well-founded

attacks--even while they condemned the form of them--on many of the

then reigning literary senators.

But another and weightier ground is the anarchy which reigns at present

in German literature. Our republic of letters is neither governed nor

defended. It has neither authorities nor police, and that is the reason

a small but determined band of evildoers can make a great stir at their

pleasure. Our masters do not concern themselves about their posterity

as used to be the case. They have no sense of the duty which success

and glory impose upon them. Let me not be misunderstood. Nothing

is further from my thoughts than the wish to transform literature

into a closed corporation, and to require the new arrivals to become

apprentices and journeymen (although, in fact, every new generation

unconsciously forms itself on the works of its intellectual ancestors).

But they have not the right to be indifferent to what will come after

them. They are the intellectual leaders of the people. They have their

ear. On them is the task incumbent of facilitating the first steps of

the beginner, and presenting them to the public. By this much would be

obtained--continuity of development, formation of a literary tradition,

respect and gratitude for predecessors, severe and early suppression of

individuals of absolutely unjustifiable pretensions, economy of power,

which in these days a young author must fritter away in order to come

out of his shell. But our literary chiefs have no understanding for

all this. Each one thinks only of himself, and is furiously jealous

of his colleagues and his followers. Not one of them says that in the

intellectual concert of a great people there is room enough for dozens

of different artists, each one of whom plays his own instrument. Not

one takes into consideration that after him new talent will be born,

that this is a fact he cannot prevent, and that he is preparing for

himself a better old age by levelling the paths, instead of viciously

trying to close them to those who, whatever he may do, will still be

his successors in public favour. Who amongst us has ever received

a word of encouragement from one of our literary grandees? To whom

amongst us have they testified their interest and benevolence? Not one

of us owes them anything whatsoever; not one feels obliged to be just

towards them, nor to make himself their champion; and when the band

fell upon them like a lot of brigands, to drive them off with blows,

and put themselves in their place, not a hand was raised to defend

them, and they were cruelly punished for having lived and acted in

isolation and secret mutual hostility, sternly repulsing the young, and

indifferent to the tastes of the people whenever their own works were

not in question.

And as we have no Council of Ancients, so we lack also all critical

police. The reviewer may praise the most wretched production, kill by

silence or drag through the mire the highest masterpiece, state as the

contents of a book things of which there is not the slightest mention,

and no one calls him to account, no one stigmatizes his ineptitude,

his effrontery, or his falsehood. Thus a public that is neither led

nor counselled by its ancients, nor protected by its critical police,

becomes the predestined prey of all charlatans and impostors.

BOOK V.

_THE TWENTIETH CENTURY._

CHAPTER I.

PROGNOSIS.

OUR long and sorrowful wandering through the hospital--for as such

we have recognised, if not all civilized humanity, at all events the

upper stratum of the population of large towns to be--is ended. We

have observed the various embodiments which degeneration and hysteria

have assumed in the art, poetry, and philosophy of our times. We have

seen the mental disorder affecting modern society manifesting itself

chiefly in the following forms: Mysticism, which is the expression of

the inaptitude for attention, for clear thought and control of the

emotions, and has for its cause the weakness of the higher cerebral

centres; Ego-mania, which is an effect of faulty transmission by

the sensory nerves, of obtuseness in the centres of perception,

of aberration of instincts from a craving for sufficiently strong

impressions, and of the great predominance of organic sensations over

representative consciousness; and false Realism, which proceeds from

confused æsthetic theories, and characterizes itself by pessimism and

the irresistible tendency to licentious ideas, and the most vulgar and

unclean modes of expression. In all three tendencies we detect the

same ultimate elements, viz., a brain incapable of normal working,

thence feebleness of will, inattention, predominance of emotion,

lack of knowledge, absence of sympathy or interest in the world and

humanity, atrophy of the notion of duty and morality. From a clinical

point of view somewhat unlike each other, these pathological pictures

are nevertheless only different manifestations of a single and unique

fundamental condition, to wit, exhaustion, and they must be ranked

by the alienist in the genus melancholia, which is the psychiatrical

symptom of an exhausted central nervous system.

Superficial or unfair critics have foisted on me the assertion

that degeneration and hysteria are the products of the present age.

The attentive and candid reader will bear witness that I have never

circulated such an absurdity. Hysteria and degeneration have always

existed; but 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. Certain micro-organisms engendering

mortal diseases have always been present also--for example, the

bacillus of cholera; but they only cause epidemics when circumstances

arise intensely favourable for their rapid increase. In the same way

the body constantly harbours parasites which only injure it when

another bacillus has invaded and devastated it. For example, we are

always inhabited by staphylococcus and streptococcus, but the influenza

bacillus must first appear for them to swarm and produce mortal

suppurations. Thus, the vermin of plagiarists in art and literature

becomes dangerous only when the insane, who follow their own original

paths, have previously poisoned the _Zeitgeist_, weakened by fatigue,

and rendered it incapable of resistance.

We stand now in the midst of a severe mental epidemic; of a sort of

black death of degeneration and hysteria, and it is natural that we

should ask anxiously on all sides: ‘What is to come next?’

This question of eventuality presents itself to the physician in

every serious case, and however delicate and rash, above all,

however little scientific any prediction may be, he cannot evade the

necessity of establishing a prognosis. For that matter, this is not

purely arbitrary, not a blind leap into the dark; the most attentive

observation of all the symptoms, assisted by experience, permits a

generally just conclusion on the ulterior evolution of the evil.

It is possible that the disease may not have yet attained its

culminating point. If it should become more violent, gain yet more

in breadth and depth, then certain phenomena which are perceived as

exceptions or in an embryo condition would henceforth increase to a

formidable extent and develop consistently; others, which at present

are only observed among the inmates of lunatic asylums, would pass into

the daily habitual condition of whole classes of the population. Life

would then present somewhat the following picture:

Every city possesses its club of suicides. By the side of this exist

clubs for mutual assassination by strangulation, hanging, or stabbing.

In the place of the present taverns houses would be found devoted to

the service of consumers of ether, chloral, naphtha, and hashish. The

number of persons suffering from aberrations of taste and smell has

become so considerable that it is a lucrative trade to open shops for

them where they can swallow in rich vessels all sorts of dirt, and

breathe amidst surroundings which do not offend their sense of beauty

nor their habits of comfort the odour of decay and filth. A number of

new professions are being formed--that of injectors of morphia and

cocaine; of commissioners who, posted at the corners of the streets,

offer their arms to persons attacked by agoraphobia, in order to

enable them to cross the roads and squares; of companies of men who by

vigorous affirmations are charged to tranquillize persons afflicted

with the mania of doubt when taken by a fit of nervousness, etc.

The increase of nervous irritability, far beyond the present standard,

has made it necessary to institute certain measures of protection.

After it has frequently come to pass that overexcited persons, being

unable to resist a sudden impulsion, have killed from their windows

with air-guns, or have even openly attacked, the street boys who have

uttered shrill whistles or piercingly sharp screams without rhyme or

reason; that they have forced their way into strange houses where

beginners are practising the piano or singing, and there committed

murder; that they have made attempts with dynamite against tramways

where the conductor rings a bell (as in Berlin) or whistles--it has

been forbidden by law to whistle and bawl in the street; special

buildings, managed in such a way that no sound penetrates to the

outside, have been established for the practice of the piano and

singing exercises; public conveyances have no right to make a noise,

and the severest penalty is at the same time attached to the possession

of air-guns. The barking of dogs having driven many people in the

neighbourhood to madness and suicide, these animals cannot be kept in a

town until after they have been made mute by severing the ‘recurrent’

nerve. A new legislation on subjects connected with the press forbids

journalists, under severe penalties, to give detailed accounts of

violence, or suicides under peculiar circumstances. Editors are

responsible for all punishable actions committed in imitation of their

reports.

Sexual psychopathy of every nature has become so general and so

imperious that manners and laws have adapted themselves accordingly.

They appear already in the fashions. Masochists or passivists, who form

the majority of men, clothe themselves in a costume which recalls, by

colour and cut, feminine apparel. Women who wish to please men of this

kind wear men’s dress, an eye-glass, boots with spurs and riding-whip,

and only show themselves in the street with a large cigar in their

mouths. The demand of persons with the ‘contrary’ sexual sentiment that

persons of the same sex can conclude a legal marriage has obtained

satisfaction, seeing they have been numerous enough to elect a majority

of deputies having the same tendency.[471] Sadists, ‘bestials,’

nosophiles, and necrophiles, etc., find legal opportunities to gratify

their inclinations. Modesty and restraint are dead superstitions of the

past, and appear only as atavism and among the inhabitants of remote

villages. The lust of murder is confronted as a disease, and treated by

surgical intervention, etc.

The capacity for attention and contemplation has diminished so greatly

that instruction at school is at most but two hours a day, and no

public amusements, such as theatres, concerts, lectures, etc., last

more than half an hour. For that matter, in the curriculum of studies,

mental education is almost wholly suppressed, and by far the greater

part of the time is reserved for bodily exercises; on the stage only

representations of unveiled eroticism and bloody homicides, and to

this, flock voluntary victims from all the parts, who aspire to the

voluptuousness of dying amid the plaudits of delirious spectators.

The old religions have not many adherents. On the other hand, there are

a great number of spiritualist communities who, instead of priests,

maintain soothsayers, evokers of the dead, sorcerers, astrologers, and

chiromancers, etc.

Books such as those of the present day have not been in fashion for

a very long time. Printing is now only on black, blue, or golden

paper; on another colour are single incoherent words, often nothing

but syllables, nay, even letters or numbers only, but which have a

symbolical significance which is meant to be guessed by the colour and

print of the paper and form of the book, the size and nature of the

characters. Authors soliciting popularity make comprehension easy by

adding to the text symbolical arabesques, and impregnating the paper

with a definite perfume. But this is considered vulgar by the refined

and connoisseurs, and is but little esteemed. Some poets who publish no

more than isolated letters of the alphabet, or whose works are coloured

pages on which is absolutely nothing, elicit the greatest admiration.

There are societies whose object it is to interpret them, and their

enthusiasm is so fanatical that they frequently have fights against

each other ending in murder.

It would be easy to augment this picture still further, no feature of

which is invented, every detail being borrowed from special literature

on criminal law and psychiatria, and observations of the peculiarities

of neurasthenics, hysterics, and mattoids. This will be, in the near

future, the condition of civilized humanity, if fatigue, nervous

exhaustion, and the diseases and degeneration conditioned by them, make

much greater progress.

Will it come to this? Well, no; I think not. And this, for a reason

which scarcely perhaps permits of an objection: because humanity has

not yet reached the term of its evolution; because the over-exertion

of two or three generations cannot yet have exhausted all its vital

powers. Humanity is not senile. It is still young, and a moment of

over-exertion is not fatal for youth; it can recover itself. Humanity

resembles a vast torrent of lava, which rushes, broad and deep, from

the crater of a volcano in constant activity. The outer crust cracks

into cold, vitrified scoriæ, but under this dead shell the mass flows,

rapidly and evenly, in living incandescence.

As long as the vital powers of an individual, as of a race, are not

wholly consumed, the organism makes efforts actively or passively

to adapt itself, by seeking to modify injurious conditions, or by

adjusting itself in some way so that conditions impossible to modify

should be as little noxious as possible. Degenerates, hysterics, and

neurasthenics are not capable of adaptation. Therefore they are fated

to disappear. That which inexorably destroys them is that they do not

know how to come to terms with reality. They are lost, whether they are

alone in the world, or whether there are people with them who are still

sane, or more sane than they, or at least curable.

They are lost if they are alone: for anti-social, inattentive, without

judgment or prevision, they are capable of no useful individual effort,

and still less of a common labour which demands obedience, discipline,

and the regular performance of duty. They fritter away their life in

solitary, unprofitable, æsthetic debauch, and all that their organs,

which are in full regression, are still good for is enervating

enjoyment. Like bats in old towers, they are niched in the proud

monument of civilization, which they have found ready-made, but they

themselves can construct nothing more, nor prevent any deterioration.

They live, like parasites, on labour which past generations have

accumulated for them; and when the heritage is once consumed, they are

condemned to die of hunger.

But they are still more surely and rapidly lost if, instead of being

alone in the world, healthy beings yet live at their side. For in that

case they have to fight in the struggle for existence, and there is no

leisure for them to perish in a slow decay by their own incapacity

for work. The normal man, with his clear mind, logical thought, sound

judgment, and strong will, sees, where the degenerate only gropes;

he plans and acts where the latter dozes and dreams; he drives him

without effort from all the places where the life-springs of Nature

bubble up, and, in possession of all the good things of this earth, he

leaves to the impotent degenerate at most the shelter of the hospital,

lunatic asylum, and prison, in contemptuous pity. Let us imagine the

drivelling Zoroaster of Nietzsche, with his cardboard lions, eagles,

and serpents, from a toyshop, or the noctambulist Des Esseintes of

the Decadents, sniffing and licking his lips, or Ibsen’s “solitary

powerful” Stockmann, and his Rosmer lusting for suicide--let us imagine

these beings in competition with men who rise early, and are not weary

before sunset, who have clear heads, solid stomachs and hard muscles:

the comparison will provoke our laughter.

Degenerates must succumb, therefore. They can neither adapt themselves

to the conditions of Nature and civilization, nor maintain themselves

in the struggle for existence against the healthy. But the latter--and

the vast masses of the people still include unnumbered millions of

them--will rapidly and easily adapt themselves to the conditions

which new inventions have created in humanity. Those who, by marked

deficiency of organization, are unable to do so, among the generation

taken unawares by these inventions, fall out of the ranks; they become

hysterical and neurasthenical, engender degenerates, and in these end

their race;[472] but the more vigorous, although they at first also

have become bewildered and fatigued, recover themselves little by

little, their descendants accustom themselves to the rapid progress

which humanity must make, and soon their slow respiration and their

quieter pulsations of the heart will prove that it no longer costs them

any effort to keep pace and keep up with the others. The end of the

twentieth century, therefore, will probably see a generation to whom it

will not be injurious to read a dozen square yards of newspapers daily,

to be constantly called to the telephone, to be thinking simultaneously

of the five continents of the world, to live half their time in a

railway carriage or in a flying machine, and to satisfy the demands

of a circle of ten thousand acquaintances, associates, and friends.

It will know how to find its ease in the midst of a city inhabited

by millions, and will be able, with nerves of gigantic vigour, to

respond without haste or agitation to the almost innumerable claims of

existence.

If, however, the new civilization should decidedly outstrip the powers

of humanity, if even the most robust of the species should not in the

long-run grow up to it, then ulterior generations will settle with

it in another way. They will simply give it up. For humanity has a

sure means of defence against innovations which impose a destructive

effort on its nervous system, namely, ‘misoneism,’ that instinctive,

invincible aversion to progress and its difficulties that Lombroso has

studied so much, and to which he has given this name.[473] Misoneism

protects man from changes of which the suddenness or the extent would

be baneful to him. But it does not only appear as resistance to the

acceptation of the new; it has another aspect, to wit, the abandonment

and gradual elimination of inventions imposing claims too hard on man.

We see savage races who die out when the power of the white man makes

it impossible for them to shut out civilization; but we see also some

who hasten with joy to tear off and throw away the stiff collar imposed

by civilization, as soon as constraint is removed. I need only recall

the anecdote, related in detail by Darwin, of the Fuegian Jemmy Button,

who, taken as a child to England and brought up in that country,

returned to his own land in the patent-leather shoes and gloves and

what not of fashionable attire, but who, when scarcely landed, threw

off the spell of all this foreign lumber for which he was not ripe,

and became again a savage among savages.[474] During the period of the

great migrations, the barbarians constructed block-houses in the shadow

of the marble palaces of the Romans they had conquered, and preserved

of Roman institutions, inventions, arts and sciences, only those

which were easy and pleasant to bear. Humanity has, to-day as much

as ever, the tendency to reject all that it cannot digest. If future

generations come to find that the march of progress is too rapid for

them, they will after a time composedly give it up. They will saunter

along at their own pace or stop as they choose. They will suppress the

distribution of letters, allow railways to disappear, banish telephones

from dwelling-houses, preserving them only, perhaps, for the service

of the State, will prefer weekly papers to daily journals, will quit

cities to return to the country, will slacken the changes of fashion,

will simplify the occupations of the day and year, and will grant the

nerves some rest again. Thus, adaptation will be effected in any case,

either by the increase of nervous power or by the renunciation of

acquisitions which exact too much from the nervous system.

As to the future of art and literature, with which these inquiries are

chiefly concerned, that can be predicted with tolerable clearness. I

resist the temptation of looking into too remote a future. Otherwise

I should perhaps prove, or at least show as very probable, that in

the mental life of centuries far ahead of us art and poetry will

occupy but a very insignificant place. Psychology teaches us that the

course of development is from instinct to knowledge, from emotion to

judgment, from rambling to regulated association of ideas. Attention

replaces fugitive ideation; will, guided by reason, replaces caprice.

Observation, then, triumphs ever more and more over imagination and

artistic symbolism--_i.e._, the introduction of erroneous personal

interpretations of the universe is more and more driven back by an

understanding of the laws of Nature. On the other hand, the march

followed hitherto by civilization gives us an idea of the fate which

may be reserved for art and poetry in a very distant future. That which

originally was the most important occupation of men of full mental

development, of the maturest, best, and wisest members of society,

becomes little by little a subordinate pastime, and finally a child’s

amusement. Dancing was formerly an extremely important affair. It was

performed on certain grand occasions, as a State function of the first

order, with solemn ceremonies, after sacrifices and invocations to

the gods, by the leading warriors of the tribe. To-day it is no more

than a fleeting pastime for women and youths, and later on its last

atavistic survival will be the dancing of children. The fable and the

fairy-tale were once the highest productions of the human mind. In them

the most hidden wisdom of the tribe and its most precious traditions

were expressed. 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 stimulations

of rhythmically functioning subordinate organs, in association 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. From all these examples,

it is fair to conclude that 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.

But, as I have said, I merely venture on these passing hints as to

their yet remote destinies, and will confine myself to the immediate

future, which is far more certain.

In all countries æsthetic theorists and critics repeat the phrase that

the forms hitherto employed by art are henceforth effete and useless,

and that it is preparing something perfectly new, absolutely different

from all that is yet known. Richard Wagner first spoke of ‘the art-work

of the future,’ and hundreds of incapable imitators lisp the term after

him. Some among them go so far as to try to impose upon themselves and

the world that some inexpressive banality, or some pretentious inanity

which they have patched up, is this art-work of the future. But all

these talks about sunrise, the dawn, new land, etc., are only the

twaddle of degenerates incapable of thought. The idea that to-morrow

morning at half-past seven o’clock a monstrous, unsuspected event will

suddenly take place; that on Thursday next a complete revolution will

be accomplished at a single blow, that a revelation, a redemption, the

advent of a new age, is imminent--this is frequently observed among

the insane; it is a mystic delirium. Reality knows not these sudden

changes. Even the great revolution in France, although it was directly

the work of a few ill-regulated minds like Marat and Robespierre, did

not penetrate far into the depths, as has been shown by H. Taine and

proved by the ulterior progress of history; it changed the outer more

than the inner relations of the French social organism. All development

is carried on slowly; the day after is the continuation of the day

before; every new phenomenon is the outcome of a more ancient one,

and preserves a family resemblance to it. ‘One would say,’ observes

Renan with quiet irony, ‘that the young have neither read the history

of philosophy nor Ecclesiastes: “the thing that hath been, it is

that which shall be.”’[475] The art and poetry of to-morrow, in all

essential points, will be the art and poetry of to-day and yesterday,

and the spasmodic seeking for new forms is nothing more than hysterical

vanity, the freaks of strolling players and charlatanism. Its sole

result has hitherto been childish declamation, with coloured lights and

changing perfumes as accompaniments, and atavistic games of shadows and

pantomimes, nor will it produce anything more serious in the future.

New forms! Are not the ancient forms flexible and ductile enough to

lend expression to every sentiment and every thought? Has a true poet

ever found any difficulty in pouring into known and standard forms

that which surged within him, and demanded an issue? Has form, for

that matter, the dividing, predetermining, and delimitating importance

which dreamers and simpletons attribute to it? The forms of lyric

poetry extend from the birthday-rhyming of the ‘popular poet of the

occasion,’ who works to order and publishes his address in the paper,

to Schiller’s _Lay of the Bell_; dramatic form includes at the same

time the _Geschundener Raub-ritter_ (The Highwayman Fleeced), acted

some time ago at Berlin, and Goethe’s _Faust_; the epic form embraces

Kortum’s _Jobsiade_ and Dante’s _Divina Commedia_, Heinz Tovote’s

_Im Liebesrauche_ and Thackeray’s _Vanity Fair_. And yet there are

bleatings for ‘new forms’? If such there be, they will give no talent

to the incapable, and those who have talent know how to create

something even within the limits of old forms. The most important thing

is the having something to say. Whether it be said under a lyric,

dramatic, or epic form is of no essential consequence, and the author

will not easily feel the necessity of leaving these forms in order to

invent some dazzling novelty in which to clothe his ideas. The history

of art and poetry teaches us, moreover, that new forms have not been

found for three thousand years. The old ones have been given by the

nature of human thought itself. They would only be able to change if

the form of our thought itself became changed. There is, of course,

evolution, but it only affects externals, not our inmost being. The

painter, for example, discovers the picture on the easel after the

picture on the wall; sculpture, after the free figure, discovers high

relief, and still later low relief, which already intrenches in a

way not free from objection on the domain of the painter; the drama

renounces its supernatural character, and learns to unfold itself in

a more compact and condensed exposition; the epos abandons rhythmic

language, and makes use of prose, etc. In these questions of detail

evolution will continue to operate, but there will be no modification

in the fundamental lines of the different modes of expression for human

emotion.

All amplifications of given artistic frames have hitherto consisted in

the introduction of new subjects and figures, not in the invention of

new forms. It was an advance when, instead of the gods and heroes which

till that time alone had peopled the epic poem, Petronius introduced

into narrative poetry (_The Banquet of Trimalchio_) the characters of

contemporary Roman life, or when the Netherlanders of the seventeenth

century discovered for painting--which knew of naught save religious

and mythological events, or great proceedings of state--the world of

fairs, popular festivals, and rustic taverns. Quevedo and Mendoza,

who represent the beggars in the ‘Picaresque’ novel--the model of the

German Grimmelshausen writings--Richardson, Fielding, J. J. Rousseau,

who take as the subject of their novels, instead of extraordinary

adventures, the reflections and emotions of ordinary average beings;

Diderot, who in _Le Fils naturel_ and _Le Père de Famille_ places

his townspeople on the arrogant French stage, which till then had

only known insignificant people as figuring in comedies and farces,

but in serious drama, kings and great lords alone--all these authors

invented, it is true, no new forms, but gave to old forms a different

content from that of tradition. We observe also an advance of this

kind in the poetry and art of our own day. They have given to the

proletariat the rights of citizenship in art and literature. They

show the labourer, not as a coarse or ridiculous figure, not with

the object of producing a comic or coarse effect, but as a serious,

frequently tragic being, worthy of our sympathy. Art is hereby enriched

in the same way as it once was by the introduction of rascals and

adventurers, of a Clarissa, a Tom Jones, a Julie (_Nouvelle Héloïse_),

a Werther, a Constance (_Le Fils naturel_), etc., into the circle of

its representations. Nevertheless, when many people in bewilderment

exclaim hereupon, ‘The art of to-morrow will be socialistic!’ they

utter unfathomable nonsense. Socialism is a conception of the laws

which ought to determine the production and distribution of property.

With this, art has nothing to do. Art cannot take any side in politics,

nor is it its business to find and propose solutions to economic

questions. Its task is to represent the eternally human causes of the

socialist movement, the suffering of the poor, their yearning after

happiness, their struggle against hostile forces in Nature and in

the social mechanism, and their mighty elevation from the abyss into

a higher mental and moral atmosphere. When art fulfils this task,

when it shows the proletariat how it lives and suffers, how it feels

and aspires, it awakens in us an emotion which becomes the mother of

projects for alteration, transformation, and reform. It is in exciting

such fruitful emotions, and by them the desire to heal the hurt, that

art co-operates with progress, and not by socialist declamations, and

perhaps still less by executing pictures of the state and the society

of the future. Bellamy’s patchwork, _Looking Backward_, is outside art,

and the twentieth century will surely not favour books of this quality.

The glorification of the proletariat by a Karl Henckell, who practises

with regard to the fourth estate a more shocking Byzantinism than

was ever displayed by a tail-wagging courtier to a king, is entirely

incapable of awakening interest and sympathy for the working man.

Neither is true and useful emotion to be expected either by such false

nonsense as, for example, Ludwig Fulda’s _Verlorene Paradies_,[476] or

Ernst von Wildenbruch’s _Haubenlerche_.[477] A brave woman like Minna

Wettstein-Adelt,[478] who obtains employment as a daily workwoman in a

factory, and simply relates what she experienced there; a plucky man

of sound sense and a warm heart like Gœhre, who depicts the life of a

factory-hand according to his own experience;[479] a Gerhart Hauptmann,

too, with his closely-observed details in _Die Weber_, do more for the

proletariat than all the Emile Zolas, with their empty theorizing in

_Germinal_ and _L’Argent_, than all the William Morrises, with their

high-flown rhymings on the noble workman, who becomes under their

pen a caricature of the ‘noble savage’ so much laughed at in the old

novel-writers on the primeval forests, and yet more still than all the

scribblers who strew their pottage with socialist phrases by way of

‘modern’ seasoning. Mrs. Beecher-Stowe’s _Uncle Tom’s Cabin_ did not

preach against slavery, nor risk projects in favour of its suppression.

But this book has drawn tears from millions of readers, and caused

negro slavery to be felt as a disgrace to America, and thus contributed

essentially to its abolition. Art and poetry can do for the proletariat

what Mrs. Beecher-Stowe has done for the negroes of the United States.

They cannot and will not do more.

It is not unusual at present to meet this sentence: ‘The art and

poetry of the future will be scientific.’ Those who say this assume

extraordinarily conceited attitudes, and consider themselves

unmistakably as extremely progressive and ‘modern.’ I ask myself in

vain what these words can mean. Do the good people who mean so well by

science imagine that sculptors will in the future chisel microscopes

in marble, that painters will depict the circulation of the blood, and

that poets will display in rich rhymes the principles of Euclid? Even

this would not be science, but merely a mechanical occupation with the

external apparatus of science. But this will surely not occur. In the

past a confusion between art and science was possible; in the future

it is unimaginable. The mental activity of man is too highly developed

for such an amalgamation. Art and poetry have emotion for their object,

science has knowledge. The former are subjective, the latter objective.

The former work with the imagination, _i.e._, with the association of

ideas directed by emotion; the latter works with observation, _i.e._,

with the association of ideas determined by sense-impressions, of which

the acquisition and reinforcement are the work of attention. Province,

object, and method in art and science are so different, and in part

so opposed, that to confuse them would signify a retrogression of

thousands of years. One thing only is correct: the images issuing from

the old anthropomorphic conception, the allusions to obsolete states of

things and ideas which Fritz Mauthner has called ‘dead symbols’--all

this will disappear from art. I think that in the twentieth century

it will no longer occur to any painter to compose pictures like

Guido Reni’s _Aurora_ in the Rospigliosi Palace, and that a poet

would be laughed at who should represent the moon looking amorously

into a pretty girl’s room. The artist is the child of his times, the

conception dominant in the world is his also, and in spite of all

his tendency to atavism his method of expression is that with which

contemporary culture furnishes him. No doubt the art of the future will

avoid more than hitherto the great errors in universally recognised

doctrines of science, but it will never become science.

The feelings of pleasure which a man receives from art result from the

gratification of three different organic inclinations or tendencies. He

needs the incitement which the variety offers him; he takes pleasure

in recognising the originals in the imitations; he represents to

himself the feelings of his fellow-creatures, and shares in them. He

finds variety in works transporting him into wholly different scenes

from those he knows, and which are familiar to him. The pleasurable

feeling of recognition he obtains by the careful imitations of familiar

realities. His sympathy makes him share with lively personal emotions

every strongly and clearly expressed emotion of the artist. There

will always be in the future, as heretofore, amateurs of works of

imagination, which transport the reader or spectator into remote times

and countries, or relate extraordinary adventures; others will prefer

works in which the faithful observation of the known will prevail; the

most refined and the most advanced will find pleasure only in those

in which a soul, with its most secret feelings and thoughts, reveals

itself. The art of the future will not be wholly romantic, wholly

realistic, or wholly individualistic, but will appeal from first to

last as much by its story to curiosity, as by imitation to the pleasure

of recognition, and by the externalism of the artist’s personality to

sympathy.

Two tendencies which have long been rivals will presumably contend

still more violently in the future for supremacy, viz., observation

and the free flight of imagination, or, to speak more briefly, though

more inaccurately, realism and romanticism. Good artists, doubtless,

in consequence of their higher mental development, will always be more

prone and more apt accurately to perceive and accurately to interpret

the phenomena of the world. But the crowd will no less certainly demand

of artists in the future something different from the average reality

of the world. Among creators, the desire for realism will exist, as

among recipients, the need of romanticism. For--and this seems to be

an important point--the task of art in the coming century, will be

to exert over men that charm of variety which reality will no longer

offer, and which the brain cannot relinquish. All that is called

‘picturesque’ will necessarily disappear more and more from the earth.

Civilization ever becomes more uniform. The distinctive is felt as an

inconvenience by those who are marked by it, and got rid of. Ruins

delight a foreigner’s eye, but they inconvenience the native, and he

sweeps them away. The traveller is disgusted at seeing the beauty of

Venice profaned by steamers, but for the Venetian it is a benefit

to cover long distances quickly for ten centesimi. Soon the last

Redskin will wear a frock-coat and tall hat; the regulation railway

buildings will display their prosaic outlines and hues along the great

wall of China and under the palm-trees of Tuggurt in the Sahara; and

Macaulay’s celebrated Maori will no longer contemplate the ruins of

Westminster, but a trashy imitation of the palace at Westminster will

serve as a Maori House of Parliament. The unique Yosemite Park, which

the Americans in their very wise foresight wish to preserve intact in

its prehistoric wildness, will not satisfy the craving for something

new, different, picturesque, romantic, which humanity demands, and

the latter will claim from art what civilization--clean, curled, and

smart--will no longer offer.

I can now sum up in a few words my prognosis. The hysteria of the

present day will not last. People will recover from their present

fatigue. The feeble, the degenerate, will perish; the strong will

adapt themselves to the acquisitions of civilizations, or will

subordinate them to their own organic capacity. The aberrations of

art have no future. They will disappear when civilized humanity shall

have triumphed over its exhausted condition. The art of the twentieth

century will connect itself at every point with the past, but it will

have a new task to accomplish--that of introducing a stimulating

variety into the uniformity of civilized life, an influence which

probably science alone will be in a position to exert, many centuries

later, over the great majority of mankind.

CHAPTER II.

THERAPEUTICS.

IS it possible to accelerate the recovery of the cultivated classes

from the present derangement of their nervous system?

I seriously believe it to be so, and for that reason alone I undertook

this work.

No one, I hope, will think me childish enough to imagine that I can

bring degenerates to reason by incontrovertibly and convincingly

demonstrating to them the derangement of their minds. He whose

profession brings him into frequent contact with the insane knows

the utter hopelessness of attempting by persuasion or argument to

bring them to a recognition of the unreality and morbidness of their

delusions. The only result attained is that they regard the physician

either as an enemy and persecutor, and fiercely hate him, or as a

blockhead devoid of reason on whom they vent their derision.

It is equally vain to preach to fanatics of the insane tendencies

of fashions in art and literature, on their enthusiasm for error

and foolishness. These fanatics, without being actually momentarily

diseased, are yet on the border-line of insanity. They do not and

cannot believe it. For the works, the madness of which is at the

first glance apparent to every rational being, actually afford them

feelings of pleasure. These works are an expression of their own mental

derangement, and of the perversion of their own instincts. In the

perusal, or contemplation of these productions, the half-witted fall

into a state of excitation which they hold to be æsthetic, but which is

really sensual; and this sensation is so genuine and immediate, they

are so sure of it, that they can feel only annoyance at or pity for him

who would make it plain to them that these works evoke no pleasure,

but only disgust and contempt. To an habitual drinker it is possible

to prove that absinthe is pernicious, but it is absolutely impossible

to convince him that it has a disagreeable taste. To him, indeed, it

tastes seductively delicious. It is in vain that the psychiatrical

critic assures the patient that this book, that picture, are horrible

deliriums; the invalid will in good faith reply: ‘Deliriums? That may

be. But abhorrent? That I can never believe. I know better. They move

me deeply and delightfully, and nothing you can say can prevent their

doing so!’ Those whose minds are more unhinged go still further, and

say bluntly: ‘We feel in all our nerves the beauty of these works. You

do not; so much the worse for you. Instead of perceiving that you are a

barbarian, devoid of intelligence, and an obtuse Philistine, you wish

to argue us out of our most positive sensations. The only delirious

person here is yourself.’

The history of civilization teaches to satiety, that delusions awaken

ardent enthusiasm, and during hundreds or thousands of years obtain

an invincible mastery of the thought and feeling of millions, because

they vouchsafe a satisfaction, unhealthy though it be, to an existing

instinct. Against that which procures feelings of pleasure for man, the

objections of reason are unavailing.

Those degenerates, whose mental derangement is too deep-seated, must be

abandoned to their inexorable fate. They are past cure or amelioration.

They will rave for a season, and then perish. This book is obviously

not written for them. It is, however, possible to reduce the disease

of the age ‘to its anatomical necessity’ (to use the excellent

expression of German medical science), and to this end every effort

must be directed. For in addition to those whose organic constitution

irrevocably condemns them to such a fate, the present degenerate

tendencies are pursued by many who are only victims to fashion and

certain cunning impostures, and these misguided ones we may hope to

lead back to right paths. If, on the other hand, they were to be

passively abandoned to the influences of graphomaniacal fools and their

imbecile or unscrupulous bodyguard of critics, the inevitable result of

such a neglect of duty would be a much more rapid and violent outspread

of the mental contagion, and civilized humanity would with much greater

difficulty, and much more slowly, recover from the disease of the age

than it might under a strong and resolute combat with the evil.

Those persons, on whose minds it is above all necessary to impress the

fact that the current tendencies are a result of mental degeneration

and hysteria, are the slightly affected and the healthy, who allow

themselves to be deluded by cunningly-devised catch-words, or who,

through heedless curiosity, flock where they see a crowd. Certain

critics have thought to intimidate me into speechlessness by saying:

‘If the indications cited are a proof of degeneration and mental

disease, then is art and poetry in general the work of fools and

degenerates, even such as has, without reservation, been hitherto

admired, for in this likewise there are to be met the marks of

degeneration.’ To which I reply: If scientific criticism, which tests

works of art according to the principles of psychiatry and psychology,

should result in showing that all artistic activity is diseased, that

would still prove nothing against the correctness of my critical

method. It would only be the acquisition of fresh knowledge. It would,

doubtless, destroy a charming delusion, and prove painful to many;

but science ought not to be checked by the consideration that its

results annihilate agreeable errors, and frighten the easy-going out

of comfortable habits of thought. Faith, again, is another sovereign

besides art; it has rendered quite other services to humanity at a

certain stage of evolution, has otherwise consoled and raised it, given

it other ideals, and advanced it morally in a different way from even

the greatest geniuses of art. Science, nevertheless, has not hesitated

to pronounce faith a subjective error of man, and would, therefore,

suffer far fewer scruples in characterizing art as something morbid

if facts should convince it that such was the case. Moreover, not all

that is morbid is necessarily ugly and pernicious. The expectoration

of a sufferer from lung disease is quite as much a diseased secretion

as the pearl. Is the pearl made more ugly or the expectoration more

beautiful by the fact that they have the same origin? The toxine of

sausage-meat is the excretion of a bacterium, that of ethyl-alcohol the

secretion from a fungus. Is the similarity of genesis the condition

of equal value for enjoyment in a poisoned sausage and a glass of old

Rhine wine? It would prove nothing in regard to Tolstoi’s _Kreutzer

Sonata_ or Ibsen’s _Rosmersholm_ if it were of necessity admitted

that Goethe’s _Werther_ suffers from irrational eroticism, and that

the _Divina Commedia_ and _Faust_ are symbolic poems. The whole

objection, indeed, proceeds from a non-recognition of the simplest

biological facts. The difference between disease and health is not one

of kind, but of quantity. There is only one kind of vital activity

of the cells and of the cell-systems or organs. It is the same in

disease and in health. It is sometimes accelerated, and sometimes

retarded; and when this deviation from the rule is detrimental to

the ends of the whole organism, we call it disease. As it is here a

question of more or less, it is impossible to define their limits

sharply. Extreme cases are naturally easily recognised. But who shall

determine with accuracy the exact point at which deviation from the

normal, _i.e._, from health, begins? The insane brain performs its

functions according to precisely the same laws as the rational brain,

but it obeys these laws either imperfectly or excessively. In every

human being there exists the tendency to interpret sense-impressions

falsely. It is diseased only when exhibited in extraordinary strength.

The traveller in a railway carriage has an illusory perception of

the landscape flying by him while he is sitting still. The sufferer

from the delusion of persecutions imagines that someone is wafting

him evil odours, or hurling currents of electricity at him. Both of

these ideas rest on sense-illusions. Are both for that reason marks

of insanity? The traveller and the paranoist commit the same error

of thought, and, nevertheless, the former is perfectly sane, and the

latter deranged in mind. It may therefore with perfect security be

affirmed that certain peculiarities--such as intense emotionalism,

the tendency to symbolism, the predominance of imagination--are to

be met with in all true artists. That all should be degenerates is

very far from being a necessary consequence of this. It is only the

exaggeration of these peculiarities which constitutes a disease. The

sole conclusion justified by their regular appearance in artists would

be that art, without being properly a disease of the human mind, is yet

an incipient, slight deviation from perfect health; and I should raise

no objection to this conclusion, the less so because it in no way helps

the case of real degenerates and their distinctly diseased works. But

it is not enough to prove that mysticism, ego-mania, and the pessimism

of realism are forms of mental derangement. All the seductive masks

must be torn from these tendencies, and their real aspect be shown in

its grinning nakedness.

In opposition to healthy art, which they deride as musty and

antiquated, they pretend to represent youth. An ill-advised criticism

has actually been caught by their lime, and emphasizes their youth

with constant irony. What clumsiness! As if any effort in the world

could deprive of its charm the word ‘young,’ this essential notion

of all that is blooming and fresh, this note of the dawn and the

spring, and transform it into a term of reproach and insult! The truth

is, however, that degenerates are not only not young, but that they

are weirdly senile. Senile is their splenetic calumniation of the

world and life; senile are their babblings, drivellings, ravings and

divagations; senile their impotent appetites, and their cravings for

all the stimulants of exhaustion. To be young is to hope; to be young

is to love simply and naturally; to be young is to rejoice in one’s

own health and strength, and in that of all human beings, and of the

birds of the air and the beetles in the grass; and of these qualities

there is not one to be met with among the youth-simulating, decayed

degenerates.

They have the name of liberty on their lips when they proclaim as their

god their corrupt self, and call it progress when they extol crime,

deny morality, raise altars to instinct, scoff at science, and hold

up loafing æstheticism as the sole aim of life. But their invocation

of liberty is shameless blasphemy. How can there be a question of

liberty when instinct is to be almighty? Let us remember Count Muffat

in Zola’s _Nana_ (p. 491): ‘At other times he was a dog. She threw her

scented handkerchief to the end of the room for him, and he had to run

on all fours to pick it up with his teeth. “Fetch it, Cæsar!... Look

out; I’ll give it to you if you’re lazy!... Very good, Cæsar! mind!

nicely!... Sit up!” And as for him, he loved his abasement, revelled

in the joy of being a brute. He wanted to sink still lower; he cried:

“Hit harder.... Bow wow! I am mad; hit me then!”’ That is the liberty

of one who is ‘emancipated’ in the sense of the degenerates! He may

be a dog, if his crazed instinct commands him to be a dog! And if the

‘emancipated’ one is named Ravachol, and his instinct commands him to

perpetrate the crime of blowing up a house with dynamite, the peaceable

citizen sleeping in this house is free to fly into the air, and fall

again to the ground in a bloody rain of shreds of flesh and splinters

of bone. Progress is possible only by the growth of knowledge; but this

is the task of consciousness and judgment, not of instinct. The march

of progress is characterized by the expansion of consciousness and

the contraction of the unconscious; the strengthening of will and the

weakening of impulsions; the increase of self-responsibility and the

repression of reckless egoism. He who makes instinct man’s master does

not wish for liberty, but for the most infamous and abject slavery,

viz., enslavement of the judgment of the individual by his most

insensate and self-destructive appetites; enslavement of the inflamed

man by the craziest whims of a prostitute; enslavement of the people

by a few stronger and more violent personalities. And he who places

pleasure above discipline, and impulse above self-restraint, wishes not

for progress, but for retrogression to the most primitive animality.

Retrogression, relapse--this is in general the ideal of this band who

dare to speak of liberty and progress. They wish to be the future.

That is one of their chief pretensions. That is one of the means by

which they catch the largest number of simpletons. We have, however,

seen in all individual cases that it is not the future but the most

forgotten, far-away past. Degenerates lisp and stammer, instead of

speaking. They utter monosyllabic cries, instead of constructing

grammatically and syntactically articulated sentences. They draw and

paint like children, who dirty tables and walls with mischievous hands.

They compose music like that of the yellow natives of East Asia. They

confound all the arts, and lead them back to the primitive forms they

had before evolution differentiated them. Every one of their qualities

is atavistic, and we know, moreover, that atavism is one of the most

constant marks of degeneracy. Lombroso has convincingly demonstrated

that many peculiarities of the born criminals described by him are

also atavisms. Over-hasty critics believed that they had discovered a

very subtle objection when, with a smile of self-satisfaction, they

objected: ‘You assert that criminal instinct is at once degeneracy

and atavism. These two dicta are mutually exclusive. Degeneracy is

a pathological state; the most convincing proof of this is, that

the degenerate type does not propagate itself, but becomes extinct.

Atavism is a return to an earlier state, which cannot have been

diseased, because the men who existed under those conditions have

developed themselves and progressed. Return to a healthy, albeit

remote, state cannot possibly be disease.’ All this verbiage has its

source in the stubborn superstition which sees in disease a state

differing essentially from that of health. This is a good example

of the confusion which a word is capable of producing in muddled or

ignorant brains. As a matter of fact there exists no activity and

no state of the living organism which can in itself be designated

as ‘health’ or ‘disease.’ But they become these in respect of the

circumstances and purposes of the organism. According to the time of

its appearance, one and the same state may very well be at one time

disease and at another health. In the human fœtus, at the sixth week,

hare-lip is a regular and healthy phenomenon. In the newly-born child

it is a malformation. In the first year of its life the child cannot

walk. Why? Because its legs are too weak to support it? Decidedly

not. The well-known experiments of Dr. L. Robinson on sixty new born

infants have proved that they are able to hang by their hands from a

stick for thirty seconds, a performance implying muscular strength

quite as considerable, relatively to their respective ages, as is

possessed by the adult. It is not from weakness that they are unable

to walk, but because their nervous system has not yet learned so to

regulate and combine the activity of the different groups of muscles,

as to produce a purposive movement. Infants cannot yet ‘co-ordinate.’

Incapacity of co-ordination of muscular activity is called by medical

science ataxy. Hence in infants this is the natural and healthy

condition. But ataxy precisely is a serious disease when it appears in

adults, as the chief symptom of inflammation of the spinal cord. The

identity of the ataxy of spinal disease with healthy infantine ataxy

is so complete, that Dr. S. Frenkel[480] was able to found upon it a

treatment of spinal ataxy, which consisted, essentially, in teaching

the patients anew, like children, to walk and stand. It is seen,

then, that a state may be at the same time diseased and yet the mere

return to what was primitively a perfectly healthy state of things;

and it was with culpable frivolity that Lombroso was reproached with

contradiction because he saw in criminal instincts at once degeneracy

and atavism. The disease of degeneracy consists precisely in the fact

that the degenerate organism has not the power to mount to the height

of evolution already attained by the species, but stops on the way at

an earlier or later point. The relapse of the degenerate may reach to

the most stupendous depth. As, in reverting to the cleavage of the

superior maxillary peculiar to insects with sextuple lips, he sinks

somatically to the level of fishes, nay to that of the arthropoda, or,

even further, to that of rhizopods not yet sexually differentiated; as

by fistulæ of the neck he reverts to the branchiæ of the lowest fishes,

the selacious; or by excess in the number of fingers (polydactylia)

to the multiple-rayed fins of fishes, perhaps even to the bristles of

worms; or, by hermaphrodism, to the asexuality of rhizopods--so in the

most favourable case, as a higher degenerate, he renews intellectually

the type of the primitive man of the most remote Stone Age; or, in the

worst case, as an idiot, that of an animal far anterior to man.

This is the subject in regard to which it is our duty untiringly and by

every means to enlighten the weak in judgment, and the inexperienced.

The fine names appropriated to themselves by degenerates, their

imitators, and their critical hirelings, are lies and deceit. They are

not the future, but an immeasurably remote past. They are not progress,

but the most appalling reaction. They are not liberty, but the most

disgraceful slavery. They are not youth and the dawn, but the most

exhausted senility, the starless winter night, the grave and corruption.

It is the sacred duty of all healthy and moral men to take part in

the work of protecting and saving those who are not already too deeply

diseased. Only by each individual doing his duty will it be possible

to dam up the invading mental malady. It is not seemly simply to shrug

the shoulders and smile contemptuously. While the easy-going console

themselves by saying, ‘No rational being takes this idiocy seriously,’

madness and crime are doing their work and poisoning a whole generation.

Mystics, but especially ego-maniacs and filthy pseudo-realists, are

enemies to society of the direst kind. Society must unconditionally

defend itself against them. Whoever believes with me that society is

the natural organic form of humanity, in which alone it can exist,

prosper, and continue to develop itself to higher destinies; whoever

looks upon civilization as a good, having value and deserving to be

defended, must mercilessly crush under his thumb the anti-social

vermin. To him who, with Nietzsche, is enthusiastic over the

‘freely-roving, lusting beast of prey,’ we cry, ‘Get you gone from

civilization! Rove far from us! Be a lusting beast of prey in the

desert! Satisfy yourself! Level your roads, build your huts, clothe and

feed yourself as you can! Our streets and our houses are not built for

you; our looms have no stuffs for you; our fields are not tilled for

you. All our labour is performed by men who esteem each other, have

consideration for each other, mutually aid each other, and know how to

curb their selfishness for the general good. There is no place among us

for the lusting beast of prey; and if you dare return to us, we will

pitilessly beat you to death with clubs.’

And still more determined must the resistance be to the filth-loving

herd of swine, the professional pornographists. These have no claim

to the measure of pity which may still be extended to degenerates

properly so called, as invalids; for they have freely chosen their

vile trade, and prosecute it from cupidity, vanity, and hatred of

labour. The systematic incitation to lasciviousness causes the gravest

injury to the bodily and mental health of individuals, and a society

composed of individuals sexually over-stimulated, knowing no longer

any self-control, any discipline, any shame, marches to its certain

ruin, because it is too worn out and flaccid to perform great tasks.

The pornographist poisons the springs whence flows the life of future

generations. No task of civilization has been so painfully laborious as

the subjugation of lasciviousness. The pornographist would take from

us the fruit of this, the hardest struggle of humanity. To him we must

show no mercy.

The police cannot aid us. The public prosecutor and criminal judge

are not the proper protectors of society against crime committed

with pen and crayon. They infuse into their mode of proceeding too

much consideration for interests not always, not necessarily, those

of cultivated and moral men. The policeman is so often compelled to

intervene in the service of a privileged class, of the insupportable

arrogance of administrations, of the assumption of infallibility of

ministers and other government officials of the most unworthy byzantism

and of the most stupid superstition, that he does not dishonour the

man on whose shoulder he lays his heavy hand. Hence it comes to this,

that the pornographist must be branded with infamy. But the punitive

sentence of a judge does not with certainty have this effect.

The condemnation of works trading on unchastity must emanate from men

of whose freedom from prejudice and freedom of mind, intelligence

and independence, no one entertains a doubt. The word of such men

would be of great weight among the people. There already exists an

‘Association of Men for the Suppression of Immorality.’ Unfortunately

it allows itself to be guided not only by solicitude for the moral

health and purity of the multitude, and especially of the young

but by considerations which to the majority of the people seem to

be prejudices. The association pursues disbelief almost more than

immorality. An outspoken word against revelation or the Church inspires

this association with as much horror as an act of obscenity. To this

narrow-minded confessionalism is it due that its work is less rich

in blessing than it might be. But in spite of this, we can take

this ‘Association of Men’ as a pattern. Let us do what it does, but

without mummeries. Here is a great and grateful task, _e.g._, for

the new ‘Society for Ethical Culture’ of Berlin: Let it constitute

itself the voluntary guardian of the people’s morality. Doubtless the

pornographists will attempt to turn it into ridicule. But the scorn

will soon enough stick in their own throats. An association composed of

the people’s leaders and instructors, professors, authors, members of

Parliament, judges, high functionaries, has the power to exercise an

irresistible boycott. Let the ‘Society for Ethical Culture’ undertake

to examine into the morality of artistic and literary productions.

Its composition would be a guarantee that the examination would not

be narrow-minded, not prudish, and not canting. Its members have

sufficient culture and taste to distinguish the thoughtlessness of

a morally healthy artist from the vile speculation of a scribbling

ruffian. When such a society, which would be joined by those men from

the people who are the best fitted for this task, should, after serious

investigation and in the consciousness of a heavy responsibility, say

of a man, ‘He is a criminal!’ and of a work, ‘It is a disgrace to our

nation!’ work and man would be annihilated. No respectable bookseller

would keep the condemned book; no respectable paper would mention it,

or give the author access to its columns; no respectable family would

permit the branded work to be in their house; and the wholesome dread

of this fate would very soon prevent the appearance of such books

as Bahr’s _Gute Schule_, and would dishabituate the ‘realists’ from

parading a condemnation based on a crime against morality as a mark of

distinction.

Medical specialists of insanity have likewise failed to understand

their duty. It is time for them to come to the front. ‘It is a

prejudice,’ Bianchi most justly says,[481] ‘to believe that psychiatry

must be enclosed within a sanctuary like that at Mecca.’ It is no

doubt meritorious to indurate sections of the spinal cord in chromic

acid, and tint them in a neutrophyllic solution, but this should not

exhaust the activity of a professor of psychiatry. Neither is it

sufficient that he should in addition give a few lectures to jurists,

and publish observations in technical journals. Let him speak to the

mass of cultivated persons who are neither physicians nor learned in

law. Let him enlighten them in general publications and in accessible

conferences concerning the leading facts in mental therapeutics. Let

him show them the mental derangement of degenerate artists and authors,

and teach them that the works in fashion are written and painted

delirium. In all other branches of medical science it is discerned

that hygiene is of more importance than therapeutics, and that the

public health has much more to expect from prophylactics than from

treatment. With us in Germany the psychiatrist alone fails as yet to

concern himself with the hygiene of the mind. It is time that he should

practise his profession in this direction also. A Maudsley in England,

a Charcot, a Magnan in France, a Lombroso, a Tonnini in Italy, have

brought to vast circles of the people an understanding of the obscure

phenomena in the life of the mind, and disseminated knowledge which

would make it impossible in those countries for pronounced lunatics

with the mania for persecution to gain an influence over hundreds of

thousands of electoral citizens,[482] even if it could not prevent

the coming into fashion of the degenerate art. In Germany alone no

psychiatrist has as yet followed this example. It is time to atone

for this negligence. Popularized expositions from the pens of experts

whose prominent official status would recommend them to the reader

would restrain many healthy spirits from affiliating themselves with

degenerate tendencies.

Such is the treatment of the disease of the age which I hold to be

efficacious: Characterization of the leading degenerates as mentally

diseased; unmasking and stigmatizing of their imitators as enemies to

society; cautioning the public against the lies of these parasites.

We in particular, who have made it our life’s task to combat antiquated

superstition, to spread enlightenment, to demolish historical ruins and

remove their rubbish, to defend the freedom of the individual against

State oppression and the mechanical routine of the Philistine; we must

resolutely set ourselves in opposition to the miserable mongers who

seize upon our dearest watchwords, with which to entrap the innocent.

The ‘freedom’ and ‘modernity,’ the ‘progress’ and ‘truth,’ of these

fellows are not ours. We have nothing in common with them. They wish

for self-indulgence; we wish for work. They wish to drown consciousness

in the unconscious; we wish to strengthen and enrich consciousness.

They wish for evasive ideation and babble; we wish for attention,

observation, and knowledge. The criterion by which true moderns may

be recognised and distinguished from impostors calling themselves

moderns may be this: Whoever preaches absence of discipline is an enemy

of progress; and whoever worships his ‘I’ is an enemy to society.

Society has for its first premise, neighbourly love and capacity for

self-sacrifice; and progress is the effect of an ever more rigorous

subjugation of the beast in man, of an ever tenser self-restraint, an

ever keener sense of duty and responsibility. The emancipation for

which we are striving is of the judgment, not of the appetites. In the

profoundly penetrating words of Scripture (Matt. v. 17), ‘Think not

that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets; I am not come to

destroy, but to fulfil.’

FINIS.

BILLING AND SONS, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD

FOOTNOTES:

[1] This passage has been misunderstood. It has been taken to mean

that all the French nation had degenerated, and their race was

approaching its end. However, from the concluding paragraph of this

chapter, it may be clearly seen that I had in my eye only the upper

ten thousand. The peasant population, and a part of the working

classes and the _bourgeoisie_, are sound. I assert only the decay of

the rich inhabitants of great cities and the leading classes. It is

they who have discovered _fin-de-siècle_, and it is to them also that

_fin-de-race_ applies.

[2] ‘My thought I hasten to fulfil.’

[3] A four-act comedy, by H. Micard and F. de Jouvenot, named

_Fin-de-Siècle_, which was played in Paris in 1890, hardly avails to

determine the sense of the word as the French use it. The authors were

concerned, not to depict a phase of the age or a psychological state,

but only to give an attractive title to their piece.

[4] _Traité des Dégénérescences physiques, intellectuelles et morales

de l’Espèce humaine et des Causes qui produisent ces Variétés

maladives._ Par le Dr. B. A. Morel. Paris, 1857, p. 5.

[5] At the instigation of his mistress Ebergenyi, Count Chorinsky

had poisoned his wife, previously an actress. The murderer was an

epileptic, and a ‘degenerate,’ in the Morelian sense. His family

summoned Morel from Normandy to Munich, for the purpose of proving

to the jury, before whom the case (1868) was tried, that the accused

was irresponsible. The latter was singularly indignant at this; and

the Attorney-General also contradicted, in the most emphatic manner,

the evidence of the French alienist, and supported himself by the

approbation of the most prominent alienists in Munich. Chorinsky

was pronounced guilty. Nevertheless, only a short time after his

conviction, insanity developed itself in him, and a few months later he

died, in the deepest mental darkness, thus justifying all the previous

assertions of the French physician, who had, in the German tongue,

demonstrated to a German jury the incompetence of his professional

confrères in Munich.

[6] Morel, _op. cit._, p. 683.

[7] _L’Uomo delinquente in rapporto all’ Antropologia, Giurisprudenza

e alle Discipline carcerarie._ 3ª edizione. Torino, 1884, p. 147 _et

seq._ See also Dr. Ch. Féré, ‘La Famille nevropathique.’ Paris, 1894,

pp. 176-212.

[8] ‘La Famille nevropathique,’ _Archives de Nevrologie_, 1884, _Nos.

19 et 20_.

[9] See, on this subject, in particular, Krafft Ebing, _Die Lehre

vom moralischen Wahnsinn_, 1871; H. Maudsley, _Responsibility in

Mental Disease_, International Scientific Series; and Ch. Féré,

_Dégénérescence et Criminalité_, Paris, 1888.

[10] J. Roubinovitch, _Hystérie mâle et Dégénérescence_; Paris, 1890,

p. 62: ‘The society which surrounds him (the degenerate) always remains

strange to him. He knows nothing, and takes interest in nothing but

himself.’

Legrain, _Du Délire chez les Dégénérés_; Paris, 1886, p. 10: ‘The

patient is ... the plaything of his passions; he is carried away by

his impulses, and has only one care--to satisfy his appetites.’ P. 27:

‘They are egoistical, arrogant, conceited, self-infatuated,’ etc.

[11] Henry Colin, _Essai sur l’État mental des Hystériques_; Paris,

1890, p. 59: ‘Two great facts control the being of the hereditary

degenerate: obsession [the tyrannical domination of one thought from

which a man cannot free himself; Westphal has created for this the good

term ‘Zwangs-Vorstellung,’ _i.e._, coercive idea] and impulsion--both

irresistible.’

[12] Morel, ‘Du Délire émotif,’ _Archives générales_, 6 série, vol.

vii., pp. 385 and 530. See also Roubinovitch, _op. cit._, p. 53.

[13] Morel, ‘Du Délire panophobique des Aliénés gémisseurs,’ _Annales

médico-psychologiques_, 1871.

[14] Roubinovitch, _op. cit._, p. 28.

[15] _Ibid._, p. 37.

[16] _Ibid._, p. 66.

[17] Charcot, ‘Leçons du Mardi à la Salpétrière,’ _Policlinique_,

Paris, 1890, 2^e partie, p. 392: ‘This person [the invalid mentioned]

is a performer at fairs; he calls himself “artist.” The truth is that

his art consists in personating a “wild man” in fair-booths.’

[18] Legrain, _op. cit._, p. 73: ‘The patients are perpetually

tormented by a multitude of questions which invade their minds, and

to which they can give no answer; inexpressible moral sufferings

result from this incapacity. Doubt envelops every possible

subject:--metaphysics, theology, etc.’

[19] Magnan, ‘Considérations sur la Folie des Héréditaires ou

Dégénerés,’ _Progrès médical_, 1886, p. 1110 (in the report of a

medical case): ‘He also thought of seeking for the philosopher’s stone,

and of making gold.’

[20] Lombroso, ‘La Physionomie des Anarchistes,’ _Nouvelle Revue_,

May 15, 1891, p. 227: ‘They [the anarchists] frequently have those

characteristics of degeneracy which are common to criminals and

lunatics, for they are anomalies, and bear hereditary taints.’ See also

the same author’s _Pazzi ed Anomali_. Turin, 1884.

[21] Colin, _op. cit._, p. 154.

[22] Legrain, _op. cit._, p. 11.

[23] Roubinovitch, _op. cit._, p. 33.

[24] Lombroso, _Genie und Irrsinn_; German translation by A. Courth.

Reclam’s _Universal Bibliothek_, Bde. 2313-16. See also in particular,

J. F. Nisbet, _The Insanity of Genius_. London, 1891.

[25] Falret, _Annales médico-psychologiques_, 1867, p. 76: ‘From their

childhood they usually display a very unequal development of their

mental faculties, which, weak in their entirety, are remarkable for

certain special aptitudes; they have shown an extraordinary gift for

drawing, arithmetic, music, sculpture, or mechanics ... and, together

with those specially developed aptitudes, obtaining for them the fame

of “infant phenomena,” they for the most part give evidence of very

great deficiencies in their intelligence, and of a radical debility in

the remaining faculties.’

[26] _Nouvelle Revue_, July 15, 1891.

[27] Tarabaud, _Des Rapports de la Dégénérescence mentale et de

l’Hystérie_. Paris, 1888, p. 12.

[28] Legrain, _op. cit._, pp. 24 and 26.

[29] Lombroso, _Nouvelles recherches de Psychiatrie et d’Anthropologie

criminelle_. Paris, 1892, p. 74.

[30] Axenfeld, _Des Névroses_. 2 vols., 2^e édition, revue et complétée

par le Dr. Huchard. Paris, 1879.

[31] Paul Richer, _Études cliniques sur l’Hystéro-épilepsie ou Grande

Hystérie_. Paris, 1891.

[32] Gilles de la Tourette, _Traité clinique et thérapeutique de

l’Hystérie_. Paris, 1891.

[33] Paul Michaut, _Contribution à l’Étude des Manifestations de

l’Hystérie chez l’Homme_. Paris, 1890.

[34] Colin, _op. cit._, p. 14.

[35] Gilles de la Tourette, _op. cit._, p. 548 _et passim_.

[36] Colin, _op. cit._, pp. 15 and 16.

[37] Gilles de la Tourette, _op. cit._, p. 493.

[38] _Ibid._, p. 303.

[39] Legrain, _op. cit._, p. 39.

[40] Dr. Emile Berger, _Les Maladies des Yeux dans leurs rapports avec

la Pathologie général_. Paris, 1892, p. 129 _et seq._

[41] _Traité clinique et thérapeutique de l’Hystérie_, p. 339. See

also Drs. A. Marie et J. Bonnet, _La Vision chez les Idiots et les

Imbéciles_. Paris, 1892.

[42] Alfred Binet, ‘Recherches sur les Altérations de la Conscience

chez les Hystériques,’ _Revue philosophique_, 1889, vol. xxvii.

[43] _Op. cit._, p. 150.

[44] Ch. Féré, ‘Sensation et Mouvement,’ _Revue philosophique_, 1886.

See also the same author’s _Sensation et Mouvement_, Paris, 1887;

_Dégénérescence et criminalité_, Paris, 1888; and ‘L’Énergie et la

Vitesse des Mouvements volontaires,’ _Revue philosophique_, 1889.

[45] Lombroso, _L’Uomo délinquente_, p. 524.

[46] ‘Les Nerveux se recherchent,’ Charcot, _Leçons du Mardi_, _passim_.

[47] Legrain, _op. cit._, p. 173: ‘The true explanation of the

occurrence of _folie à deux_ must be sought for, on the one hand,

in the predisposition to insanity, and, on the other hand, in the

accompanying weakness of mind.’ See also Régis, _La Folie à Deux_.

Paris, 1880.

[48] _Journal des Goncourt._ Dernière série, premier volume, 1870-71.

Paris, 1890, p. 17.

[49] Viennese for ‘fop.’--TRANSLATOR.

[50] _Traité des Dégénérescences_, _passim_.

[51] Personally communicated by the distinguished statistician, Herr

Josef Körösi, Head of the Bureau of Statistics at Budapest.

[52] Speech of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Goschen, in the

House of Commons, April 11, 1892.

[53] J. Vavasseur in the _Economiste français_ of 1890. See also

_Bulletin de Statistique_ for 1891. The figures are uncertain, for

they have been given differently by every statistician whom I have

consulted. The fact of the increase in the consumption of alcohol alone

stands out with certainty in all the publications consulted. Besides

spirits, fermented drinks are consumed per head of the population,

according to J. Körösi:

GREAT BRITAIN.

Wine. Beer and Cider.

Gall. Gall.

1830-1850 0.2 26

1880-1888 0.4 27

FRANCE.

1840-1842 23 3

1870-1872 25 6

PRUSSIA.

Quarts.

1839 13.48

1871 17.92

GERMAN EMPIRE.

Litres.

1872 81.7

1889-1890 90.3

[54] In France the general mortality was, from 1886 to 1890, 22.21

per 1,000. But in Paris it rose to 23.4; in Marseilles to 34.8; in

all towns with more than 100,000 inhabitants to a mean of 28.31; in

all places with less than 5,000 inhabitants to 21.74. (_La Médecine

moderne_, year 1891.)

[55] _Traité des Dégénérescences_, pp. 614, 615.

[56] Brouardel, _La Semaine médicale_. Paris, 1887, p. 254. In this

very remarkable study by the Parisian Professor, the following

passage appears: ‘What will these [those remaining stationary in

their development] young Parisians become by-and-by? Incapable of

accomplishing a long and conscientious work, they excel, as a rule, in

artistic activities. If they are painters they are stronger in colour

than in drawing. If they are poets, the flow of their verses assures

their success rather than the vigour of the thought.’

[57] The 26 German towns which to-day have more than 100,000

inhabitants, numbered altogether, in 1891, 6,000,000, and in 1835,

1,400,000. The 31 English towns of this category, in 1891, 10,870,000;

in 1841, 4,590,000; the 11 French towns, in 1891, 4,180,000; in 1836,

1,710,000. It should be remarked that about a third of these 68 towns

had not in 1840 as many generally as 100,000 inhabitants. To-day,

in the large towns in Germany, France, and England, there reside

21,050,000 individuals, while in 1840 only 4,800,000 were living under

these conditions. (Communicated by Herr Josef Körösi.)

[58] Féré, _La Semaine médicale_. Paris, 1890, p. 192.

[59] See, besides the lecture by Hofmann, the excellent book: _Eine

deutsche Stadt vor 60 Jahren, Kulturgeschichtliche Skizze_, von Dr.

Otto Bähr, 2 Auflage. Leipzig, 1891.

[60] In order not to make the footnotes too unwieldy, I state here

that the following figures are borrowed in part from communications

made by Herr Josef Körösi, in part from a remarkable study by M.

Charles Richet: ‘Dans Cent Ans,’ _Revue scientifique_, 1891-92; and

in a small degree from private publications (such as _Annuaire de la

Presse_, _Press Directory_, etc.). For some of the figures I have also

used, with profit, Mulhall, and the speech of Herr von Stephan to the

Reichstag, February 4, 1892.

[61] See G. André, _Les nouvelles maladies nerveuses_. Paris, 1892.

[62] Legrain, _op. cit._, p. 251: ‘Drinkers are “degenerates”;’ and

p. 258 (after four reports of invalids which serve as a basis to the

following summary): ‘Hence, at the base of all forms of alcoholism we

find mental degeneracy.’

[63] _Revue scientifique_, year 1892; vol. xlix., p. 168 _et seq._

[64] Legrain, _op. cit._, p. 266.

[65] Quoted by J. Roubinovitch, _Hystérie mâle et Dégénérescence_, p.

18.

[66] Legrain, _op. cit._, p. 200.

[67] The scientific psychologist will perhaps read with impatience

expositions with which he is so familiar; but they are, unfortunately,

not superfluous for a very numerous class of even highly educated

persons, who have never had instruction in the laws of the operations

of the brain.

[68] Mosso’s experiments on, and observations of, the exposed surface

of the brain during trepanning have quite established this fact.

[69] The experiments of Ferrier, it is true, have led him to deny that

a stimulus which touches the cortex of the frontal lobes can result

in movement. The case, nevertheless, is not so simple as Ferrier

sees it to be. A portion of the energy which is set free by the

peripheral stimulus in the cells of the cortex of the frontal lobes

certainly transmutes itself into a motor impulse, even if the immediate

stimulation of the anterior brain releases no muscular contractions.

But this is not the place to defend this point against Ferrier.

[70] A. Herzen is the author of the hypothesis that consciousness

is connected with the destruction of organic connections in the

brain-cells, and the restoration of this connection with rest, sleep,

and unconsciousness. All we know of the chemical composition of the

secretions in sleeping and waking points to the correctness of this

hypothesis.

[71]

‘One tread moves a thousand threads,

The shuttles dart to and fro,

The threads flow on invisible,

One stroke sets up a thousand ties.’

[72] Karl Abel, _Ueber den Gegensinn der Urworte_. Leipzig, 1884.

[73] James Sully, _Illusions_. London, 1881.

[74] Th. Ribot, _Psychologie de l’Attention_. Paris, 1889.

[75] It is possible that an active expansion of the bloodvessels does

not take place, but only a contraction. It has been lately denied that

there are any nerves of vascular dilatation (_inter alia_ by Dr. Morat,

_La Semaine médicale_, 1892, p. 112). But the effect may be the same

in both cases. For through the contraction of the vessels in a single

brain-circuit, the dislodged blood would be driven to other portions of

the brain, and these would experience a greater access of blood, just

as if their vessels were actively dilated.

[76] When I wrote these words I was under the impression that I was

the sole originator of the physiological theory of attention therein

set forth. Since the appearance of this book, however, I have read

Alfred Lehmann’s work, _Die Hypnose und die damit verwandten normalen

Zustände_, Leipzig, 1890, and have there (pp. 27 _et seq._) found

my theory in almost identical words. Lehmann, then, published it

two years before I did, which fact I here duly acknowledge. That we

arrived at this conclusion independently of each other would testify

that the hypothesis of vaso-motor reflex action is really explanatory.

Wundt (_Hypnotismus und Suggestion_, Leipzig, 1892, pp. 27-30), it

is true, criticises Lehmann’s work, but he seems to agree with this

hypothesis--which is also mine--or, at least, raises no objection to it.

[77] _Brain_, January, 1886, quoted by Ribot, _Psychologie de

l’Attention_, p. 68.

[78] Ribot, _op. cit._, pp. 106 and 119.

[79] Legrain, _op. cit._, p. 177.

[80] _Ibid._, p. 156.

[81] In the chapter which treats of French Neomystics, I shall give a

cluster of such disconnected and mutually exclusive expressions, which

are quite parallel with the instances cited by Legrain, of the manner

of speech among those acknowledged to be of weak mind. In this place

only one passage may be repeated from the V^{te} E. M. de Vogué, _Le

Roman Russe_, Paris, 1888, in which this mystical author, unconsciously

and involuntarily, characterizes admirably the shadowiness and

emptiness of mystic diction, while praising it as something superior.

‘One trait,’ he says (p. 215), ‘they’ (certain Russian authors) ‘have

in common, viz., the art of awakening series of feelings and thoughts

by a line, a word, by endless re-echoings [_résonnances_].... The words

you read on this paper appear to be written, not in length, but in

depth. They leave behind them a train of faint reverberations, which

are gradually lost, no one knows where.’ And p. 227: ‘They see men

and things in the gray light of earliest dawn. The weakly indicated

outlines end in a confused and clouded “perhaps.” ...’

[82] ‘It is certain that the Beautiful never has such charms for

us as when we read it attentively in a language which we only half

understand. It is the ambiguity, the uncertainty, _i.e._. the

pliability of words, which is one of their greatest advantages, and

renders it possible to make an exact [!] use of them.’--Joubert, quoted

by Charles Morice, _La Littérature de tout-à-l’heure_. Paris, 1889, p.

171.

[83] Gérard de Nerval, _Le Rêve et la Vie_, Paris, 1868, p. 53:

‘Everything in Nature assumed a different aspect. Mysterious voices

issued from plants, trees, animals, the smallest insects, to warn and

to encourage me. I discerned mysterious turns in the utterances of my

companions, and understood their purport. Even formless and inanimate

things ministered to the workings of my mind.’ Here is a perfect

instance of that ‘comprehension of the mysterious’ which is one of the

most common fancies of the insane.

[84] An imbecile degenerate, the history of whose illness is related by

Dr. G. Ballet, said: ‘Il y a mille ans que le monde est monde. Milan,

la cathédrale de Milan’ (_La Semaine médicale_, 1892, p. 133). ‘Mille

ans’ (a thousand years) calls up in his consciousness the like-sounding

word ‘Milan,’ although there is absolutely no rational connection

between the two ideas. A graphomaniac named Jasno, whose case is

cited by Lombroso, says ‘la main se mène’ (the hand guides itself).

He then begins to speak of ‘semaine’ (week), and continues to play

upon the like-sounding words ‘se mène,’ ‘semaine,’ and ‘main’ (_Genie

und Irsinn_, p. 264). In the book of a German graphomaniac entitled

_Rembrandt als Erzieher_, Leipzig, 1890 (a book which I shall have to

refer to more than once, as an example of the lucubrations of a weak

mind), I find, on the very first pages, the following juxtaposition

of words according to their resemblance in sound: ‘Sie verkünden eine

Rückkehr ... zur Einheit und Feinheit’ (p. 3). ‘Je ungeschliffener

Jemand ist, desto mehr ist an ihm zu schleifen’ (p. 4). ‘Jede rechte

Bildung ist bildend, formend, schöpferisch, und also künstlerisch’ (p.

8). ‘Rembrandt war nicht nur ein protestantischer Künstler, sondern

auch ein künstlerischer Protestant’ (p. 14). ‘Sein Hundert guldenblatt

allein könnte schon als ein Tausendgüldenkraut gegen so mancherlei

Schäden ... dienen’ (p. 23). ‘Christus und Rembrandt haben ... darin

etwas Gemeinsames, dass Jener die religiöse, dieser die künstlerische

Armseligkeit--die Seligkeit der Armen--zu ... Ehren bringt’ (p. 25.),

etc.

[85] Dr. Paul Sollier, _Psychologie de l’Idiot et de l’Imbécile_.

Paris, 1891, p. 153.

[86] _Poems by Dante Gabriel Rossetti._ With a memoir of the author by

Franz Hüffer. Leipzig, 1873, p. viii.

[87] Gustave Freytag, _Bilder aus der deutschen Vergangenheit_, Bd. I.:

‘Aus dem Mittelalter.’ Leipzig, 1872, § 266. H. Taine, _Histoire de la

Littérature anglaise_. Paris, 1866, 2^e édition, vol. i., p. 46.

[88] This is not an arbitrary assertion. One of D. G. Rossetti’s most

famous poems, of which further mention will be made, _Eden Bowers_,

treats of the pre-Adamite Lilith.

[89] J. Ruskin, _Modern Painters_, American edition, vol. i., pp. xxi.

_et seq._

[90] Ruskin, _op. cit._, p. 24.

[91] _Ibid._, p. 26.

[92] ‘BALLADE QUE VILLON FEIT À LA REQUESTE DE SA MÈRE POUR PRIER

NOSTRE DAME.

‘Femme je suis povrette et ancienne.

Que riens ne scay, oncques lettres ne leuz,

Au Monstier voy (dont suis parroissienne)

Paradis painct, ou sont harpes et luz,

Et ung enfer, où damnez sont boulluz,

L’ung me faict paour, l’autre joye et liesse,

La joye avoir faictz moy (haulte deesse)

A qui pecheurs doivent tous recourir

Combley de foy, sans faincte ne paresse,

En ceste foy je vueil vivre et mourir.’

It is significant that the pre-Raphaelite Rossetti has translated this

very poem of Villon, _His Mother’s Service to Our Lady_. _Poems_, p.

180.

[93] Edward Rod, _Études sur le XIX. Siècle_. Paris et Lausanne, 1888,

p. 89.

[94] Rossetti, _Poems_, p. 277.

[95]

‘The springing green, the violet’s scent,

The trill of lark, the blackbird’s note,

Sunshowers soft, and balmy breeze:

If I sing such words as these,

Needs there any grander thing

To praise thee with, O day of spring?’

[96] Rod, _op. cit._, p. 67.

[97] _Poems_, p. 16.

[98] Sollier, _Psychologie de l’Idiot et de l’Imbécile_, p. 184. See

also Lombroso, _The Man of Genius_ (Contemporary Science Series),

London, 1891, p. 216. A special characteristic found in literary

mattoids, and also, as we have already seen, in the insane, is that of

repeating some words or phrases hundreds of times in the same page.

Thus, in one of Passanante’s chapters the word _riprovate_ (blame)

occurs about 143 times.

[99] _Poems_, p. 31.

[100] _Poems_, p. 247.

[101] Algernon Charles Swinburne, _Poems and Ballads_. London: Chatto

and Windus, 1889, p. 247.

[102]

‘The Runic stone stands out in the sea,

There sit I with my dreams,

‘Mid whistling winds and wailing gulls,

And wandering, foaming waves.

I have loved many a lovely child,

And many a good comrade--

Where are they gone? The wind whistles,

The waves wander foaming on.’

[103] William Morris, _Poems_ (Tauchnitz edition), p. 169:

‘And if it hap that ...

My master, Geoffrey Chaucer, thou do meet,

Then speak ... the words:

“O master! O thou great of heart and tongue!”’...

[104] A history of the commencement of this society has been written by

one of the members, Mathias Morhardt. See ‘Les Symboliques,’ _Nouvelle

Revue_ du 15 Février, 1892, p. 765.

[105] Charles Morice, _La Littérature de tout-à-l’heure_. Paris, 1889,

p. 274.

[106] Jules Huret, _Enquête sur l’Évolution littéraire_. Paris, 1891,

p. 65.

[107] Charles Morice, _op. cit._, p. 271.

[108] Huret, _op. cit._, p. 14.

[109] V^{te} E. M. de Vogüé, _op. cit._, p. xix _et seq._

[110] Morice, _op. cit._, pp. 5, 103, 177.

[111] _Rembrandt als Erzieher._ Leipzig, 1890, p. 2.

[112] Edouard Rod, _Les Idées morales du Temps présent_. Paris, 1892,

p. 66.

[113] Paul Desjardins, _Le Devoir présent_. Paris, 1892, pp. 5, 8, 39.

[114] F. Paulhan, _Le nouveau Mysticisme_. Paris, 1891, p. 120.

[115] Pierre Janet, ‘Les Actes inconscients et le Dédoublement

de la Personalité,’ Revue philosophique, December, 1886. Paul

Janet, ‘L’Hystérie et l’Hypnotisme d’après la Théorie de la double

Personnalité,’ Revue scientifique, 1888, 1^{er} vol., p. 616

[116] Morhardt, _op. cit._, p. 769.

[117] See the Catalogue of Scientific Papers compiled and published by

the Royal Society. The first series of this catalogue, covering the

time from 1800 to 1863, comprises six volumes; the second, dealing with

the decade from 1864 to 1873, comprises two volumes, equivalent to at

least three of the first series (1047 and 1310 pages); of the third

series (1874 to 1883) only one volume has been issued as yet, but it

promises to outrun the second by at least one half.

[118] Jules Huret, _Enquête sur l’Évolution littéraire_. Paris, 1891.

[119] Huret, _op. cit._, p. 65.

[120] Paul Verlaine, _Choix de Poësies_. Paris, 1891.

[121] Lombroso, _L’Uomo delinquente_, p. 184.

[122] Lombroso, _op. cit._, p. 276.

[123] Verlaine, _op. cit._, p. 272.

[124] Verlaine, _op. cit._, pp. 72, 315, 317.

[125] Shortly, but not immediately after, the immediate result being a

sense of great relief and satisfaction.

[126] Verlaine, _op. cit._, pp. 175, 178.

[127] Legrain, _Du délire chez les dégénéres_, pp. 135, 140, 164.

[128] Huret, _op. cit._, p. 8.

[129] E. Marandon de Montyel, ‘De la Criminalité et de la

Dégénérescence,’ _Archives de l’Anthropologie criminelle_, Mai, 1892,

p. 287.

[130]

Ah! if these are dream hands,

So much the better, or so much the worse, or so much the better.

[131] Virgil’s ‘lentus,’ when applied to aspects of nature conveys a

very different meaning.

[132] Charles Morice, _La Littérature de tout-à-l’heure_, p. 238.

[133] Huret, _op. cit._, p. 33.

[134] Since these words were written, M. Mallarmé has decided to

publish his poems in one volume. This, far from invalidating what has

been said, is its best justification.

[135] Huret, _op. cit._, p. 55.

[136] Hartmann, _Der Gorilla_. Leipzig, 1881, p. 34.

[137] Dr. L. Frigerio, _L’Oreille externe: Étude d’Anthropologie

criminelle_. Lyon, 1889, pp. 32 and 40.

[138] Lombroso, _L’Uomo delinquente_, p. 255.

[139] Huret, _op. cit._, p. 102.

[140] _Ibid._, p. 106.

[141] _Ibid._, p. 401.

[142] Jean Moréas, _Le Pélerin passionné_. Paris, 1891, p. 3.

[143] Moréas, _op. cit._, pp. 21 and 2.

[144] _Ibid._, p. 43.

[145] Moréas, _op. cit._, p. 311.

[146]

‘O Syrinx! do you see and understand the Earth, and the wonder of this

morning, and the circulation of life!

O thou, there! and I, here! O thou! O me! All is in All!’

[147] Morice, _op. cit._, p. 30.

[148] Morice, _op. cit._, p. 321.

[149] Dr. F. Suarez de Mendoza, _L’Audition colorée: Étude sur les

fausses Sensations secondaires physiologiques_. Paris, 1892.

[150] Alfred Binet, ‘Recherche sur les altérations de la conscience

chez les hystériques,’ _Revue philosophique_, 1889, 27^e vol., p. 165.

[151] Legrain, _op. cit._, p. 162.

[152] Lombroso, _Genie und Irrsinn_. German edition, p. 233.

[153] I may here be allowed to remind my readers that in the year 1885,

and, accordingly, before the promulgation of the professed symbolistic

programme, I laid down in my _Paradoxe_ (popular edition, part ii., p.

253) the principle that the poet must ‘to the majority of his readers

utter the deep saying, “_Tat twam asi!_”--“That art thou!” of the

Indian sage,’ and ‘must be able, with the ancient Romans, to repeat to

the sound and normally developed man, “_Of thee is the fable related_.”

In other words, the poem must be “symbolical” in the sense that it

brings into view characters, destinies, feelings and laws of life which

are universal.’

[154] Hugues Le Roux, _Portraits de Cire_. Paris, 1891, p. 129.

[155] V^{te} E. M. de Vogüé, _Le Roman russe_. Paris, 1888, p. 293 _et

seq._

[156] See, in _War and Peace_ (Leo. N. Tolstoi’s collected works,

published, with the author’s sanction, by Raphael Löwenfeld, Berlin,

1892, vols. v.-viii.), the soldiers’ talk, part i., p. 252; the scene

at the outposts, p. 314 _et seq._, the description of the troops on the

march, p. 332; the death of Count Besuchoi, pp. 142-145; the coursing,

part ii., pp. 383-407, etc.

[157] See, in _War and Peace_, the thoughts of the wounded Prince

Andrej, part i., p. 516; Count Peter’s conversation with the freemason

and Martinief Basdjejeff, part ii., pp. 106-114, etc.

[158] _War and Peace_, the episode of Princess Maria and her suitor,

part i., pp. 420-423; the confinement of the little Princess, part ii.,

pp. 58-65; and all the passages where Count Rostoff sees the Emperor

Alexander, or where the author speaks of the Emperor Napoleon I., etc.

[159] Vogüé, _op. cit._, p. 282.

[160] Count Leo Tolstoi, _A Short Exposition of the Gospel_. From the

Russian, by Paul Lauterbach. Leipzig: Reclam’s Universal-Bibliothek, p.

13.

[161] L. Tolstoi, _Short Exposition of the Gospel_, p. 13.

[162] Tolstoi, _Short Exposition_, etc., p. 172.

[163] More accurately, in Vedântism.--TRANSLATOR.

[164] Tolstoi, _Short Exposition_, etc., p. 128.

[165] _Short Exposition_, p. 60.

[166] De Vogüé, _op. cit._, p. 333.

[167] L. Tolstoi, _Gesammelte Werke_, Berlin, 1891, Band II.: _Novels

and Short Tales_, part i.

[168] Léon Tolstoi, _La Sonate à Kreutzer_. Traduit du Russe par E.

Halpérine-Kaminsky. Paris: Collection des auteurs célèbres, p. 72.