[170] _Short Exposition of the Gospel_, p. 140.
[171] _Le Roman du Mariage._ Traduit du Russe par Michel Delines.
Paris. _Auteurs célèbres._
[172] Ed. Rod, _Les Idées morales du Temps présent_. Paris, 1892, p.
241.
[173] Raphael Löwenfeld, _Leo N. Tolstoi, sein Leben, seine Werke,
seine Weltanschauung_. Erster Theil. Berlin, 1892, Introd., p. 1.
[174] Lombroso, _Genie und Irrsinn_, p. 256, foot-note.
[175] Löwenfeld, _op. cit._, p. 39.
[176] _Ibid._, p. 276.
[177] Professor Kowalewski, in _The Journal of Mental Science_,
January, 1888.
[178] Griesinger, ‘Ueber einen wenig bekannten psychopathischen
Zustand,’ _Archiv für Psychiatrie_, Band I.
[179] Lombroso, _Genie und Irrsinn_, p. 324.
[180] Sollier, _Psychologie de l’Idiot et de l’Imbécile_.
[181] Löwenfeld, _op. cit._, p. 100.
[182] Löwenfeld, _op. cit._, p. 47.
[183] Legrain, _Du Délire chez les Dégénérés_, pp. 28, 195.
[184] It is not my object, in a book intended primarily for the general
educated reader, to dwell on this delicate subject. Anyone wishing to
be instructed more closely in the morbid eroticism of the degenerate
may read the books of Paul Moreau (of Tours) _Des Aberrations du Sens
génésique_, 2^e édition, Paris, 1883; and Krafft-Ebing’s _Psychopathia
sexualis_, Stuttgart, 1886. Papers on this subject by Westphal (_Archiv
für Psychiatrie_, 1870 and 1876), by Charcot and Magnan (_Archives de
Neurologie_, 1882), etc., are scarcely accessible to the general public.
[185] V. Magnan, _Leçons cliniques sur la Dipsomanie, faites à l’asile
Sainte-Anne_. Recueillies et publiées par M. le Dr. Marcel Briand.
Paris, 1884.
[186] Richard Wagner, _Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft_. Leipzig, 1850. The
numbering of the pages given in quotations from this work refers to the
edition here indicated.
[187] Arthur Schopenhauer, _Parerga und Paralipomena, Kurze Phil.
Schriften_. Leipzig, 1888, Band II., p. 465.
[188] Charles Féré, _Sensation et Mouvement_. Paris, 1887.
[189] _Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft_, p. 169: ‘It is only when the desire
of the artistic sculptor has passed into the soul of the _dancer_,
of the _mimic interpreter_, of him who sings and speaks, that this
desire can be conceived as satisfied. It is only when the art of
sculpture no longer exists, or has followed another tendency than that
of representing human bodies--when it has passed, as sculpture, into
_architecture_--when the rigid solitude of this _one_ man carved in
stone will have been resolved into the infinitely flowing plurality of
veritable, living men ... it is only then, too, that _real plastic_
will exist.’ And on p. 182: ‘That which it [painting] _honestly_ exerts
itself to attain, it attains in ... greatest perfection ... when it
descends from canvas and chalk to ascend to the _tragic stage_....
But landscape-painting will become, as the last and most finished
conclusion of all the fine arts, the life-giving soul, properly
speaking, of architecture; it will teach us thus to organize the
_stage_ for works of the dramatic art of the future, in which, itself
living, it will represent the warm _background_ of _nature_ for the use
of the _living_, and not for the imitated _man_.’
[190] Richard Wagner, _Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtungen_. Leipzig,
1883, Band X., p. 68.
[191] Compare also, in _Das Bühnenweihfestspiel in Bayreuth_, 1882
(_Gesammelte Schriften_, Band X., p. 384): ‘This [the ‘sure rendering
of all events on, above, under, behind, and before the stage’] anarchy
accomplishes, because each individual does what he _wishes_ to do,
namely (?), what is right.’
[192] Edward Hanslick, _Musikalische Stationen_. Berlin, 1880, pp. 220,
243.
[193] Wagner, _Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtungen_, Band VI., p. 3
_ff._
[194] In a book on degeneration it is not possible wholly to
avoid the subject of eroticism, which includes precisely the most
characteristic and conspicuous phenomena of degeneration. I dwell,
however, on principle as little as possible on this subject, and will,
therefore, in reference to the characterization of Wagner’s erotic
madness, quote only one clinical work: Dr. Paul Aubry, ‘Observation
d’Uxoricide et de Libéricide suivis du Suicide du Meurtrier,’ _Archives
de l’Anthropologie criminelle_, vol. vii., p. 326: ‘This derangement
[erotic madness] is characterized by an inconceivable fury of
concupiscence at the moment of approach.’ And in a remark on the report
of a murder perpetrated on his wife and children by an erotic maniac--a
professor of mathematics in a public school--whom Aubrey had under his
observation, he says, ‘Sa femme qui parlait facilement et à tous des
choses que l’on tient ordinairement le plus secrètes, disait que son
mari était comme un furieux pendant l’acte sexuel.’ See also Ball, _La
Folie érotique_. Paris, 1891, p. 127.
[195] Lombroso, _Genie und Irrsinn_, p. 229: ‘When the expression of
their ideas eludes their grasp ... they resort ... to the continual
italicizing of words and sentences,’ etc.
[196] Friedrich Nietzsche, _Der Fall Wagner_. Leipzig, 1889.
[197] _Der Fall Wagner._ _Ein Musikanten-Problem._ 2^{te} Auflage.
Leipzig, 1889.
[198] Sollier, _op. cit._, p. 101.
[199] Lombroso, _Genie und Irrsinn_, p. 214 _et seq._
[200] Wagner, _Ges. Schriften_, Band X., p. 222.
[201] Rubinstein, _Musiciens modernes_. Traduit du russe par M.
Delines. Paris, 1892.
[202] _The Origin and Function of Music: Essays, Scientific, Political
and Speculative._ London: Williams and Norgate, 1883; vol. i., p. 213
_et seq._
[203] E. Hanslick, _op. cit._, p. 233: ‘As the dramatis personæ in
“music-drama” are not distinguished by the character of the melodies
they sing, as in ancient opera (Don Juan and Leporello, Donna Anna
and Zerlina, Max and Caspar), but all resemble each other in the
physiognomic pathos of the tones of their speech, Wagner aims at
replacing this characteristic by so-called _leit-motifs_ in the
orchestra.’
[204] Wagner, _Ueber die Anwendung der Musik auf das Drama_. _Ges.
Schriften_, Band X., p. 242.
[205] Lombroso, _Genie und Irrsinn_, p. 225.
[206] _Ibid._, _op. cit._, p. 226.
[207] Wagner, _Religion und Kunst_. _Ges. Schr._, Band X., p. 307,
note: ‘The author here expressly refers to A. Gleizès’ book, _Thalysia
oder das Heil der Menschheit_.... Without an exact knowledge of the
results, recorded in this book, of the most careful investigations,
which seem to have absorbed the entire life of one of the most amiable
and profound of Frenchmen, it might be difficult to gain attention for
... the regeneration of the human race.’
[208] ‘Alberich’s seductive appeal to the water-sprites makes prominent
the hard, mordant sound of _N_, so well corresponding in its whole
essence to the negative power in the drama, inasmuch as it forms the
sharpest contrast to the soft _W_ of the water-spirits. Then when he
prepares to climb after the maidens, the alliance of the _Gl_ and
_Schl_ with the soft, gliding _F_ marks most forcibly the gliding off
the slippery rock. In the appropriate _Pr_ (_Fr_), Woglinde as it were
shouts “Good luck to you!” (_Prosit_) when Alberich sneezes.’--Cited by
Hanslick, _Musikalische Stationen_, p. 255.
[209] Legrand du Saulle terms the persecutor who believes himself
persecuted, ‘persécuté actif.’ See his fundamental work: _Le Délire des
Persécutions_. Paris, 1871, p. 194.
[210] Wagner, _Das Judenthum in der Musik_. _Ges. Schr._ Band V., p.
83. _Aufklärungen über das Judenthum in der Musik._ Band VIII., p. 299.
[211] Wagner, _Deutsche Kunst und Deutsche Politik_. _Ges. Schr._ Band
VIII., p. 39. _Was ist Deutsche?_ Band X., p. 51 _et passim_.
[212] Wagner, _Religion und Kunst_. _Ges. Schr._ Band X., p. 311.
[213] _Offenes Schreiben an Herrn Ernst von Weber, Verfasser der
Schrift. Die Folterkammern der Wissenschaft._ _Ges. Schr._ Band X., p.
251.
[214] A game of cards to which Teutomaniacs are much addicted.
[215] F. Paulhan, _Le nouveau Mysticisme_. Paris, 1891, p. 104.
[216] Legrain, _op. cit._, p. 175: ‘The need for the marvellous is
almost always inevitable among the weak-minded.’
[217] Sar Mérodack J. Péladan, _Amphithéatre des Sciences mortes.
Comment on devient Mage_. Éthique. Avec un portrait pittoresque gravé
par G. Poirel. Paris, 1892.
[218] Joséphin Péladan, _La Décadence latine_. Ethopée IX.: ‘La
Gynandre.’ Couverture de Séon, eau-forte de Desboutins. Paris, 1891, p.
xvii.
[219] Maurice Rollinat, _Les Névroses_ (Les Ames--Les Suaires--Les
Refuges--Les Spectres--Les Ténèbres). Avec un portrait de l’auteur par
F. Desmoulin. Paris, 1883. Quite as striking is his later collection of
poems, _L’Abîme_. Paris, 1891.
[220] _Humiliés et Offensés_, p. 55; quoted by De Vogüé, _Le Roman
russe_, p. 222, foot-note.
[221] Legrain, _op. cit._, p. 246.
[222] _Journal of Mental Science_, January, 1888.
[223] _Le Délire des Persécutions._ Paris, 1871, p. 512.
[224] Morel, ‘Du Délire panophobique des Aliénés gémisseurs.’ _Annales
médico-psychologiques_, 1871, 2^e vol., p. 322.
[225] Maurice Maeterlinck, _Serres chaudes_. Nouvelle édition.
Bruxelles, 1890.
[226] Lombroso, _Genie und Irrsinn_, p. 322: ‘Walt Whitman, the
poet of the modern Anglo-Americans, and assuredly a mad genius, was
a typographer, teacher, soldier, joiner, and for some time also a
bureaucrat, which, for a poet, is the queerest of trades.’
This constant changing of his profession Lombroso rightly characterizes
as one of the signs of mental derangement. A French admirer of
Whitman, Gabriel Sarrazin (_La Renaissance de la Poésie anglaise_,
1798-1889; Paris, 1889, p. 270, foot-note), palliates this proof of
organic instability and weakness of will in the following manner:
‘This American facility of changing from one calling to another goes
against our old European prejudices, and our unalterable veneration for
thoroughly hierarchical, bureaucratic routine-careers. We have remained
in this, as in so many other respects, essentially narrow-minded, and
cannot understand that diversity of capacities gives a man a very
much greater social value.’ This is the true method of the æsthetic
wind-bag, who for every fact which he does not understand finds
roundly-turned phrases with which he explains and justifies everything
to his own satisfaction.
[227] Walt Whitman, _Leaves of Grass_; a new edition. Glasgow, 1884.
[228] Maurice Maeterlinck, _The Princess Maleine and the Intruder_.
London: W. Heinemann, 1892.
[229] Omitted in the English translation.--TRANSLATOR.
[230] Lisandro Reyes has clearly seen this in his useful sketch
entitled _Contribution à l’Etude de l’État mental chez les Enfants
dégénérés_; Paris, 1890, p. 8. He affirms expressly that among
degenerate children there is no really exclusive ‘monomania.’ ‘Among
them an isolated delirious idea may endure for some time, but it is
most frequently replaced all at once by a new conception.’
[231] Legrain (_Du Délire chez les Dégénérés_, Paris, 1886) merely
expresses this in somewhat different words, when he says (p. 68),
‘Obsession, impulsion, these are to be found at the base of all
monomania.’
[232] Analyzed in the _Journal of Mental Science_, January, 1888.
[233] J. Roubinovitch, _Hystérie mâle et Dégénérescence_. Paris, 1890,
p. 62.
[234] Legrain, _op. cit._, p. 10.
[235] Lombroso, _Genie und Irrsinn_ (German edition cited in vol. i.),
p. 325.
[236] Dr. Paul Sollier, _Psychologie de l’Idiot et de l’Imbécile_.
Paris, 1890, p. 174.
[237] See on this subject the remarkable treatise of Alfred Binet,
‘On the Psychic Life of Micro-organisms,’ contained in the volume
of extracts: ‘_Le Fétichisme dans l’Amour (Etudes de Psychologie
expérimentale). La Vie psychique des Micro-organismes, l’Intensité
des Images mentales, le Problème hypnotique, Note sur l’Écriture
hystérique._’ Paris, 1890.--A short time before Binet, this
same subject was treated by Verworn in a very deserving manner,
at once original and suggestive, in his _Psycho-physiologische
Protisten-Studien_. Jena, 1889.
[238] ‘Certain [sick] persons enjoy keenly a sense of the lightness of
their body, feel themselves hovering in the air, believe they could
fly; or else they have a feeling of weight either in the whole body, in
many limbs, or in one single limb, which seems to them huge and heavy.
A young epileptic sometimes felt his body so extraordinarily heavy that
he could scarcely raise it. At other times he felt himself so light
that he believed he did not touch the ground. Sometimes it seemed to
him that his body had assumed such proportions that it was impossible
for him to pass through a door. In this last illusion ... the patient
feels himself very much smaller or very much larger than he really
is.’--Th. Ribot, _Les Maladies de la Personnalité_, 3^e édition. Paris,
1889, p. 35.
[239] Sollier, _Psychologie de l’Idiot et de l’Imbécile_, p. 52 _et
seq._
[240] Lombroso, _L’Uomo delinquente_. 3^a edizione. Torino, 1884, p.
329 _et seq._
[241] Lombroso, _Les Applications de l’Anthropologie criminelle_.
Paris, 1892, p. 179.
[242] Th. Ribot, _Les Maladies de la Personnalité_, pp. 61, 78, 105.
[243] Maudsley, _The Pathology of Mind_. London, 1879, p. 287.
[244] See also Alfred Binet, _Les Altérations de la Personnalité_,
Paris, 1892, p. 39: ‘His senses close to outside stimulation; for
him, the external world ceases to exist; he lives no more than his
exclusively personal life; he acts only through his own stimuli, with
the automatic movement of his brain. Although he receives nothing
more from outside, and his personality is completely isolated from
the surroundings in which he is placed, he may be seen to go, come,
do, act, as if he had his senses and intelligence in full exercise.’
This, it is true, is the description of a patient, but what he says of
the latter applies equally, with a difference of degree only, to the
ego-maniac. Féré has communicated to the Biological Society of Paris,
in the séance of November 12, 1892, the results of a great number of
experiments made by him, whence it appears ‘that among the greater
part of epileptics, hysterical and degenerate subjects, cutaneous
sensibility is diminished.’ See _La Semaine médicale_, 1892, p. 456.
[245] Alfred Binet, _Les Altérations de la Personnalité_. Paris, 1892,
pp. 83, 85, _et seq._
[246] ‘The organic, cardiac, vaso-motor, secretory, etc., phenomena
accompanying almost all, if not all, affective states ... far from
following the conscious phenomenon, precede it; none the less they
remain in many cases unconscious.’--Gley, quoted by A. Binet, _Les
Altérations de la Personnalité_, p. 208.
[247] This is not merely a simple hypothesis, but a well-demonstrated
fact. Hundreds of experiments by Boeck, Weill, Moebius, Charrin,
Mairet, Bosc, Slosse, Laborde, Marie, etc., have established that
among the deranged, during periods of excitation and afterwards, the
urine is more toxic, _i.e._, more full of waste and excreted organic
matter, while after the periods of depression it is less toxic, _i.e._,
poorer in disaggregated matter, than among sane individuals, which
proves that, among the former, the nutrition of the tissues is morbidly
increased or retarded.
[248] Dr. Paul Moreau, of Tours, describes perversion (_l’aberration_)
in these somewhat obscure terms: ‘Perversion constitutes a deviation
from the laws which rule the proper sensibility of the organs and
faculties. By this word we mean to designate those cases in which
observation testifies to an unnatural, exceptional, and wholly
pathological change, a change carrying palpable disturbance into the
regular working of a faculty.’--_Des Aberrations du Sens génésique_.
4^e édition. Paris, 1887, p. 1.
[249] ‘The vices of the psycho-physical organization manifesting
themselves by acts prohibited, not only by morality--that aggregate of
necessary rules elaborated by the secular experience of peoples--but
also by their penal codes, are in discord with life in society,
in the midst of which humanity can alone make progress.... A man,
from his birth adapted to social life, can only acquire such vices
as a consequence of certain pernicious conditions, through which
his psycho-physical powers are set in opposition to the necessary
exigencies of social life.’--Drill, _Les Criminels mineurs_, quoted by
Lombroso in _Les Applications de l’Anthropologie criminelle_. Paris,
1892, p. 94. See also G. Tarde, _La Philosophie pénale_, Lyon, 1890,
_passim_; ‘The morally deranged are not true lunatics. A Marquise de
Brinvilliers, a Troppmann, a being born without either compassion or
sense of shame--can it be said of such an one that he is not himself
when he commits his crime? No. He is only too much himself. But his
existence, his person, are hostile to society. He does not feel the
same sentiments which we civilized people regard as indispensable. It
is useless to think of curing him or of reforming him.’
[250] Darwinism explains adaptation only as the result of the struggle
for existence, and of selection which is a form of this struggle. In
one individual a quality appears accidentally, which makes it more
capable of preserving itself and of conquering its enemies than those
individuals not born with this quality. It finds more favourable
conditions of existence, leaves behind it more numerous descendants
inheriting this advantageous quality, and by the survival of the
fittest and the disappearance of the less fit, the whole species comes
into the possession of this advantageous quality. I do not at all deny
that an accidental individual deviation from the type of the species,
which proves an advantage in the struggle for existence, can be a
source of transformations having as their result a better adaptation
of the species to given and unmodifiable circumstances. But I do not
believe that such an accident is the only source, or even the most
frequent source, of such transformations. The process of adaptation
appears to me to be quite otherwise, viz., the living being experiences
in some situation feelings of discomfort from which he wishes to
escape, either by change of situation (movement, flight), or by trying
to act vigorously on the causes of these feelings of discomfort
(attack, modification of natural conditions). If the organs possessed
by the living being, and the aptitude these organs have acquired,
are not sufficient to furnish the counteractions felt and wished for
as necessary to those feelings of discomfort, the weaker creatures
submit to their destiny, and suffer or even perish. More vigorous
individuals, on the contrary, make violent and continuous efforts in
order to attain their design, of flight, defence, attack, suppression
of natural obstacles; they give strong nervous impulses to their organs
to increase to the highest degree their functional capacity, and these
nervous impulses are the immediate cause of transformations, giving
to the organs new qualities, and rendering them more fit to make
the living creature thrive. That the nervous impulse produces, as a
consequence, an increase in the flow of blood, and a better nutrition
for the organ in play, is a positive biological fact. In my opinion,
then, adaptation is most frequently an act of the will, and not the
result of qualities accidentally acquired. It has as premise the clear
perception and representation of the external causes of the feelings
of discomfort, and a keen desire to escape from them, or, again, that
of procuring feelings of pleasure, _i.e._, an inorganic appetite. Its
mechanism consists in the elaboration of an intense representation of
serviceable acts of certain organs, and in the sending of adequate
impulses to these organs. That such impulses can modify the anatomical
structure of the organs, Kant already anticipated when he wrote his
treatise, _Von der Macht des Gemüthes_; and modern therapeutics
has fully confirmed this, by showing that the stigmata of a Louise
Lateau, the healing of tumours on the tomb of the Deacon Paris, the
modifications induced by suggestion on the skin of hysterical subjects,
the formation of birth-marks by eventualities and emotions, are the
effect of presentations on the bodily tissues. It was wrong to laugh at
Lamarck for teaching that the giraffe has a long neck because it has
continually stretched it in order to be able to feed off the topmost
foliage of plants with tall stems. When the animal elaborates the clear
idea that he ought to elongate his neck as much as possible in order
to reach the elevated foliage, this presentation will influence in the
strongest manner the circulation of the blood in all the tissues of the
neck; these will be quite differently nourished from what they would
be without this presentation, and the changes desired by the animal
will certainly take place little by little, if his general organization
makes them possible. Knowledge and will are therefore causes of
adaptation--not the will in the mystical sense of Schopenhauer, but
the will that is the dispenser of nervous impulses. This summary must
suffice for the reader; this is not the place to develop it more, and
to demonstrate in detail how fertile these ideas are for the theory of
evolution.
[251] H. Taine, _Les Origines de la France contemporaine: La
Révolution_, vol. ii., ‘La Conquête jacobine,’ Paris, 1881, pp. 11-12:
‘Neither exaggerated self-esteem nor dogmatic argument is rare in the
human species. In every country these two roots of the Jacobin spirit
subsist indestructible beneath the surface. Everywhere they are kept in
check by established society, and everywhere they try to upheave the
old historical structure which presses on them with all its weight....
At twenty years old, when a young man enters the world, his reason is
hurt at the same time as his pride. In the first place, of whatever
society he may be a member, it is a scandal to pure reason, for it
has not been constructed on a simple principle by a philosophical
legislator; it has been arranged by successive generations according
to their multiple and varying needs.... In the second place,
however perfect institutions, laws, and manners may be, since they
have preceded him he has not assented to them at all; others, his
predecessors, have chosen for him, and have enclosed him, in advance,
in a moral, political, and social mould which pleased them. It matters
little if it displeases him; he is forced to submit to it, and, like a
harnessed horse, he must walk between the shafts in the harness put on
him.... It is not surprising, then, if he is tempted to kick against
the framework in which, _nolens volens_, he is enclosed, and in which
subordination will be his lot. Thence it comes that the majority of
young men--above all, those who have their careers to make--are more or
less Jacobins on leaving college; it is _an infirmity of growth_.’
[252] Dr. Paul Sollier, _Psychologie de l’Idiot et de l’Imbécile_, p.
109 _et seq._: ‘There exists among idiots another instinct which is met
with, nevertheless, to a certain degree among normal children. This
is destructiveness, which shows itself among all children as a first
manifestation of their powers of movement, under the form of a desire
to strike, break, and destroy.... This tendency is much more pronounced
among idiots.... It is not the same with imbeciles. Their malicious and
mischievous spirit drives them to destroy, not only for the purpose of
expending their strength, but with the object of injuring. It is an
unwholesome gratification which they seek.’
[253] Jules Huret, _Enquête sur l’Évolution littéraire_, p. 288.
[254] Théophile Gautier, _Les Grotesques_. 3^{me} édition. Paris, 1856.
[255] _Les Fleurs du Mal_, par Charles Baudelaire, précédées d’une
notice par Théophile Gautier. 2^e édition. Paris, 1869, p. 46.
[256] M. Guyau, ‘L’Ésthétique du Vers moderne,’ _Revue philosophique_,
vol. xvii., p. 270.
[257] Th. Gautier, quoted by M. Guyau, _loc. cit._, p. 270.
[258] Printed in _L’Écho de Paris_, No. 2,972, July 8, 1892.
[259] Théodore de Banville, _Petit Traité de Poésie française_. 2^e
édition revue. Paris, 1880, pp. 54, 64.
[260] M. Guyau, _loc. cit._, pp. 264, 265.
[261] Compare with the above Tolstoi’s opinion on the same subject:
‘He is violently hostile to all rhymed verse. Rhythm and rhyme chain
down thought, and all that is opposed to the most complete formation
possible of the idea is an evil.... Tolstoi ... regards the decline
in our esteem for poetry in verse as a progress.’--Raphael Löwenfeld,
_Gespräche über und mit Tolstoi_. Berlin, 1891, p. 77.
[262]
‘Prince, je mens. Sous les Gémeaux
Ou l’Amphore, faire en son livre
Rimer entre eux de noble mots,
C’est la seule douceur de vivre.’
[263] Eugène Crépet, _Les Poètes français_, vol. iv., p. 536: study by
Charles Baudelaire of Théodore de Banville.
[264] ‘No human sobs in the poets’ song!’
[265] Jules Huret, _op. cit._, pp. 283, 297.
[266] F. Brunetière, ‘La Statue de Baudelaire,’ _Revue des deux
Mondes_, September 1, 1892, vol. cxiii., p. 221.
[267] _Les Fleurs du Mal_, par Charles Baudelaire, précédées d’une
notice par Théophile Gautier. 2^e édition. Paris, 1869, p. 22.
[268] Baudelaire, in the work quoted by Eugène Crépet, _Les Poètes
français_, vol. iv., pp. 541, 542.
[269] Franz Brentano, _Das Schlechte als Gegenstand dichterischer
Darstellung_. Vortrag gehalten in der Gesellschaft der Litteratur
freunde zu Wien. Leipzig, 1892, p. 17.
[270] Fr. Paulhan, _Le nouveau Mysticisme_. Paris, 1891, p 94. See, in
addition, all the chapter ‘L’amour du mal,’ pp. 57-99.
[271] Oswald Zimmermann, _Die Wonne des Leids_. _Beiträge zur
Erkenntniss des menschlichen Empfindens in Kunst und Leben._ 2te
umgearbeitete Auflage. Leipzig, 1885, p. 111. This book is without
value in point of ideas, for it reproduces, in language deliberately
inflated, and visibly aspiring to ‘depth,’ the most imbecile drivel of
the trio, Edward von Hartmann, Nietzsche and Gustave Jäger. But the
author, who is well read, has carefully compiled some useful materials
in certain chapters, particularly in that entitled, ‘Association of
Voluptuousness and Cruelty’ (p. 107 _et seq._). (The case of Jeanneret,
first published by Chatelain in the _Annales médico-psychologiques_,
has also been quoted by Krafft-Ebing, _Lehrbuch der gerichtlichen
Psychopathologie_. 3te Auflage. Stuttgart, 1892, p. 248.)
[272] Sollier, _op. cit._, p. 123: ‘The imbecile is refined in his
persecutions, and that knowingly. He loves to see suffering. He skins
a bird alive, laughs on hearing its cries and seeing its struggles.
He tears off the feet of a frog, looks at its suffering for a moment,
then abruptly crushes it, or kills it in some other way, as one of
the imbeciles at Bicêtre does.... The imbecile is as cruel to his
fellow-creature as to animals, and that even in his jesting. Thus he
will laugh maliciously and mock at a comrade who has become crippled.’
[273] Paul Bourget, _Essais de Psychologie contemporaine_. Paris, 1883,
p. 28.
[274] _Ibid._, pp. 12, 13.
[275] Verworn employs the word ‘chemotropism.’
[276] Sainte-Beuve, _Causeries du Lundi_, vol. xiv., p. 70. Article on
the complete poems of Théodore de Banville. October 12th, 1857.
[277] Barbey d’Aurevilly, _Goethe et Diderot_. Paris, 1882.
[278] J. K. Huysmans, _A Rebours_. 4ème mille. Paris, 1892, p. 251.
[279] Paul Bourget, _op. cit._, p. 6: ‘He is a libertine, and depraved
visions amounting to Sadism disturb the very man who comes to worship
the raised finger of his Madonna. The morose orgies of the vulgar
Venus, the heady fumes of the black Venus, the refined delights of
the learned Venus, the criminal audacity of the bloodthirsty Venus,
have left their memories in the most spiritualized of his poems. An
offensive odour of vile alcoves escapes from these ... verses....’ And
p. 19: ‘... It is not so with the mystic soul--and that of Baudelaire’s
was one. For this soul did not content itself with a faith in an
idea. It _saw_ God. He was for it not a word, not a symbol, not an
abstraction, but a Being, in whose company the soul lived as we live
with a father who loves us.’
[280] Théophile Gautier, who was himself a member of a hashish club,
tries to make us believe (_Les Fleurs du Mal_, p. 57 _et seq._), that
Baudelaire was addicted to the use of narcotic poisons only with the
object of ‘physiological experiment’; but we know the tendency of
the degenerate to represent the impulsions of which they are ashamed
as acts of free will, for which they have all sorts of palliating
explanations.
[281] Dr. E. Régis, _Manuel pratique de Médecine mentale_. 2e édition.
Paris, 1892, p. 279.
[282] _Les Fleurs du Mal_, p. 5--‘le culte de soi-même.’ This is
Théophile Gautier’s own term.
[283] Paul Bourget, _op. cit._, p. 31.
[284] Ch. J. J. Sazaret, _Etude sur la Simulation de la Folie_. Nancy,
1888. This pamphlet by a beginner, which contains a useful collection
of clinical observations, is particularly amusing, in that all the
observations cited by the author demonstrate exactly the reverse of
what he proposes to prove. After having himself asserted (p. 22)
that ‘the victims of hysteria are much given to simulate all sorts
of maladies,’ he says (p. 29): ‘Persons mentally affected now and
then simulate madness; the case is rare, but it has nevertheless been
verified, and if it has not been oftener recorded, it is, we believe,
that observers have limited themselves to a superficial examination,
and certain actions have not been analyzed.’ The case is so far from
rare that it is pointed out in every observation quoted by the author.
In the case of Baillarger (2nd observation), the so-called simulatrix
had been in a lunatic asylum eight years before, as a fully confirmed
madwoman; in the case of Morel (4th observation), the simulator ‘had a
nervous attack at the sight of a lancet,’ which is clearly aichmophobia
and a certain stigma of degeneration; in the 6th observation Morel
admits that ‘the extravagance of the subject, his fear of poison’
(thus a case of pronounced iophobia), ‘and the fact of picking up
filth, indicate a possible mental disorder’; the case of Foville (10th
observation) ‘had a certain number of insane in his family’; the case
of Legrand du Saulle (18th observation) was ‘the son of a hysterical
woman and grandson of a madman’; the case of Bonnet and Delacroix
(19th observation) ‘numbers some insane among his ancestors’; the
case of Billod (22nd observation) ‘has often manifested disturbance
and delirium,’ etc. All these supposed simulators were insane quite
unmistakably, and the fact that they intentionally exaggerated the
symptoms of their delirium was only a further proof of their alienation.
[285] Fr. Paulhan, _op. cit._, p. 92: ‘While affecting the faith of a
seminarist, he [Villiers] delighted in blasphemy. He considered the
right to blaspheme as his peculiar property.... This Catholic Breton
loved the society of Satan more than that of God.’
[286] Joséphin Péladan, _Vice suprême_. Paris, 1882, p. 169.
[287] _Les Fleurs du Mal_, p. 244:
‘Tête-à-tête sombre et limpide
Qu’un cœur devenu son miroir!
Puits de vérité, clair et noir,
Où tremble une étoile livide,
‘Un phare ironique, infernal,
Flambeau des grâces sataniques,
Soulagement et gloire uniques,
--La conscience dans le Mal!’
[288] _Les Fleurs du Mal_, pp. 17, 18.
[289] _Les Fleurs du Mal_, pp. 17, 18.
[290] J. K. Huysmans, _A Rebours_. 4^{me} mille. Paris, 1892, p. 49.
[291] Henri Kurz, in his introduction to the ‘Simplician’ writings of
Grimmelshausen. Leipzig, 1863, 1st part, p. li. See also his remarks on
the German of Grimmelshausen (author of _Simplicissimus_), p. xlv. _et
seq._
[292] Paul Bourget, _op. cit._, p. 24.
[293] The sacculus is a cirripedia which lives in the condition of a
parasite in the intestinal canal of certain crustacea. It represents
the deepest retrograde transformation of a living being primarily of
a higher organization. It has lost all its differentiated organs, and
essentially only amounts to a vesicule (hence its name: little bag),
which fills itself with juices from its host, absorbed by the parasite
with the help of certain vessels, which it plunges into the intestinal
walls of the latter. This atrophied creature has retained so few marks
of an independent animal that it was looked upon for a long time as a
diseased excrescence of its host’s intestines.
[294] Maurice Barrès, _Trois Stations de Psycho-thérapie_. Paris, 1892.
‘Deuxième Station.’
[295] _Ibid._, _Un Homme libre_. 3e édition. Paris, 1892.
[296] _Ibid._, _Le Jardin de Bérénice_. Paris, 1891, p. 37 _et seq._
[297] _Ibid._, p. 245 _et seq._
[298] _Ibid._, _L’Ennemi des Lois_. Paris, 1893, pp. 63, 88, 170.
[299] Maurice Barrès, _Examen de trois Idéologies_. Paris, 1892, p. 14.
[300] _Examen de trois Idéologies_, p. 36.
[301] _Ibid._, p. 46.
[302] _L’Ennemi des Lois_, p. 285.
[303] Oscar Wilde, _Intentions_. London, 1891, p. 197.
[304] Schiller also says:
‘Ewig jung is nur die Phantasie;
Was sich nie und nirgends hat begeben,
Das allein veraltet nie.’--_An die Freunde._
‘Forever young is fantasy alone;
That which nowhere ever has existed,
That alone grows never old.’
But Schiller did not mean by this that Art should disregard truth and
life, but that it must discriminate between what is essential, and
consequently lasting, in the phenomenon, and that which is accidental,
and therefore ephemeral.
[305] Compare this with Kant’s _Kritik der Urtheilskraft_
(_herausgegeben und erlautert von J. H. v. Kirchmann_); Berlin,
1869, p. 65: ‘All interest spoils the judgment in matters of taste,
and deprives it of its impartiality, especially if it does not, as
rational interest does, make the feeling of utility paramount to that
of pleasure, but bases it upon the latter, which always happens in
an æsthetic judgment in so far as a thing causes pleasure or pain.’
Modern psycho-physiology has recognised this notion of Kant’s as
erroneous, and has demonstrated that ‘the feeling of pleasure’ in
itself is originally a feeling of organic ‘utility,’ and that ‘judgment
in matters of taste’ does not exist at all without ‘interest.’
Psycho-physiology makes use of the terms ‘organic tendency’ or
‘proclivity,’ instead of ‘interest.’ Moreover Wilde, who does not mind
contradicting his own loose assertions, says (p. 186): ‘A critic cannot
be fair in the ordinary sense of the word. It is only about things that
do not interest one that one can give a really unbiased opinion, which
is no doubt the reason why an unbiased opinion is always absolutely
valueless. The man who sees both sides of a question is a man who sees
absolutely nothing at all.’ Hence Hecuba must be something to the
critic, that he may be able to criticise at all.
[306] See in my _Paradoxe_ the chapters ‘Inhalt der poetischen
Literatur’ and ‘Zur Naturgeschichte der Liebe.’
[307] S. A. Tokarski’s article on ‘Myriachit’ in the _Neurologisches
Central-Blatt_ for November, 1890. Tokarski in this article also
informs us that this word should be written _meriatschenja_, and not
_myriachit_.
[308] Edmund R. Clay, _L’Alternative_. _Contribution à la Psychologie._
_Traduit de l’anglais par A. Burdeau_; Paris, 1886, p. 234: ‘Sympathy
is an emotion caused in us by that which seems to us to be the emotion
or the sensation of others.’
[309] Helmholtz, _Die Lehre von den Tonemfindungen_. 4 Aufl.
Braunschweig, 1877.
[310] Pietro Blaserna, _Le Son et la Musique_, followed by _Causes
physiologiques de l’Harmonie musicale_, par H. Helmholtz. 4^e édition.
Paris, 1891.
[311] E. Brücke, _Bruchstücke aus der Theorie der bildenden Künste_.
Leipzig, Intern. wissensch. Bibl. (The French edition of Brücke’s works
contains also Helmholtz’s _L’Optique et la Peinture_.)
[312] Henry Joly, _Les Lectures dans les Prisons de la Seine_. Lyon,
1891. See also Lombroso, _L’Uomo delinquente_. Turin, 1884, p. 366 _et
seq._, and p. 387 _et seq._
[313] Pitrè, _Sui Canti popolari italiani in Carcere_. Firenze, 1876.
See also the portrait-group of the three brigands of Ravenna in
Lombroso, _op. cit._, Plate XV., facing p. 396.
[314] _Raskolnikow_, Roman von F. M. Dostojewskij, Nach der vierten
Auflage des russichen Originals; _Prestuplenie i Nakazanie_, übersetzt
von Wilhelm Henckel. Leipzig, 1882, Band I., pp. 122-128.
[315] The knowledge of this fact is as old as æsthetic science itself.
It is well expressed, as by others, so by Dr. Wilh. Alex. Freund, in
his _Blicken ins Culturleben_; Breslau, 1879, p. 9: ‘Idealization
consists ... in the removal of accidental accessories disturbing the
true expression of the essential;’ p. 11: ‘All [eminent artists]
raise that which they see to a purified image, purged of all that is
unessential, accidental, disturbing; from that image springs up in
all of them the idea lying at the base of the vision;’ p. 13: ‘He
[the artist] comprehends the essential ... from which the accidental
disturbing accessories of the external phenomenon fall off like
withered leaves, so that to his inner eye the truth appears as a living
idea,’ etc.
[316] See foot-note to p. 38.
[317] Wilhelm Loewenthal makes the feeling and need of religion spring
from the same presentient emotion. For the author of _Grundzüge einer
Hygiene des Unterrichts_, religion is the form assumed in man’s
consciousness by the ideal, _i.e._, the presentient knowledge of the
aim of evolution. ‘The instinct of development--the indispensable
base of all life and all knowledge--is identical with the religious
need.’ Thus he writes in a memoir, unfortunately only ‘printed as a
manuscript,’ but most worthy of being made accessible to all the world.
[318] NORA (_the children talk all at once to her during the
following_). And so you have been having great fun? That is splendid.
Oh, really! you have been giving Emmy and Bob a slide, both at once!
Dear me! you are quite a man, Ivar. Oh, give her to me a little, Mary
Ann. My sweetheart! (_Takes the smallest from the nurse, and dances it
up and down._) Yes, yes; mother will dance with Bob, too. What! did
you have a game of snowballs as well? Oh, I ought to have been there.
No, leave them, Mary Ann; I will take their things off. No, no, let
me do it; it is so amusing. Go to the nursery for awhile, you look so
frozen. You’ll find some hot coffee on the stove. (_The nurse goes to
the room on the left._ NORA _takes off the children’s things and throws
them down anywhere, while she lets the children talk to each other and
to her_.) Really! Then there was a big dog there who ran after you all
the way home? But I’m sure he didn’t bite you. No; dogs don’t bite dear
dolly little children. Don’t peep into those parcels, Ivar. You want
to know what there is? Yes, you are the only people who shall know.
Oh, no, no, that is not pretty. What! must we have a game? What shall
it be, then? Hide and seek? Yes, let us play hide and seek. Bob shall
hide first. Am I to? Very well, I will hide first.--_A Doll’s House_,
Griffith and Farran, p. 30.
[319] RANK (in NORA’S and HELMER’S room). [He has that day discovered a
symptom in himself which he knows is an infallible sign of approaching
death.] Yes, here is the dear place I know so well. It is so quiet and
comfortable here with you two.
HELMER. You seemed to enjoy yourself exceedingly upstairs, too.
RANK. Exceedingly. Why should I not? Why shouldn’t one get enjoyment
out of everything in this world? At any rate, as much and as long as
one can. The wine was splendid.
HELMER. Especially the champagne.
RANK. Did you notice it, too? It was perfectly incredible the quantity
I contrived to drink.... Well, why should one not have a merry evening
after a well-spent day?
HELMER. Well spent? As to that, I have not much to boast of.
RANK (_tapping him on the shoulder_). But I have, don’t you see.
NORA. Then, you have certainly been engaged in some scientific
investigation, Dr. Rank.
RANK. Quite right....
NORA. And am I to congratulate you on the result?
RANK. By all means you must.
NORA. Then the result was a good one?
RANK. The best possible, alike for the physician and patient--namely,
certainty.
NORA (_quickly and searchingly_). Certainty?
RANK. Complete certainty. Ought not I, upon the strength of it, to be
very merry this evening?
NORA. Yes, you were quite right to be, Dr. Rank.... I am sure you are
very fond of masquerade balls.
RANK. When there are plenty of interesting masks present, I certainly
am....
HELMER. ...But what character will you take [at our next masquerade]?
RANK. I am perfectly clear as to that, my dear friend.
HELMER. Well?
RANK. At the next masquerade I shall appear invisible.
HELMER. What a comical idea!
RANK. Don’t you know there is a big black hat--haven’t you heard
stories of the hat that made people invisible? You pull it all over
you, and then nobody sees you.... But I am quite forgetting why I came
in here. Helmer, just give me a cigar--one of the dark Havanas....
Thanks. (_He lights his cigar._) And now good-bye ... and thank you for
the light.
[_He nods to them both and goes._--_A Doll’s House_, pp. 96-100.]
[320] Frau Alving is speaking with Pastor Manders, and is just relating
that she was one day witness to a scene in the adjoining room which
proved to her that her departed husband was carrying on an intrigue
with her maidservant. In the next room are Oswald, her son, and Regina,
the offspring of the intercourse of her husband with the maidservant.
[_From within the dining room comes the noise of a chair overturned,
and at the same moment is heard_:
REGINA (_sharply, but whispering_). Oswald, take care! Are you mad? Let
me go!
MRS. ALVING (_starts in terror_). Ah! (_She stares wildly towards the
half opened door_; OSWALD _is heard coughing and humming inside. A
bottle is uncorked._)
MANDERS (_excited_). What in the world is the matter? What is it, Mrs.
Alving?
MRS. ALVING (_hoarsely_). Ghosts! The couple from the conservatory have
risen again!--_Ghosts, The Pillars of Society, and other Plays_. By
Henrik Ibsen, Camelot Series, p. 150.]
[321] Frau Helseth has in vain sought for Rosmer and Rebecca in the
house.
MADAME HELSETH (_goes to the window and looks out_). Oh, good God! that
white thing _there_!--My soul! They’re both of them out on the bridge!
God forgive the sinful creatures--if they’re not in each other’s arms!
(_Shrieks aloud_) Oh--down--both of them! Out into the mill-race! Help!
help! (_Her knees tremble, she holds on to the chair-back, shaking all
over, she can scarcely get the words out._) No. No help here. The dead
wife has taken them.--_Rosmerholm._ London, Walter Scott, p. 144. The
last sentence is not a happy one. It is commonplace, upsetting the mood
of the hearer or reader.
[322] Hjalmar has passed the night away from home, having learned that
his wife before her marriage with him had had a _liaison_ with another.
He returns in the morning, crapulous and hipped. He is bombastic and
melodramatic, while his wife is calm and practical:--
GINA (_standing with the brush in her hand, and looking at him_). Oh,
there now, Ekdal; so you’ve come after all?
HJALMAR (_comes in and answers in a toneless voice_). I come--only to
depart again immediately.
GINA. Yes, yes; I suppose so. But, Lord help us, what a sight you are!
HJALMAR. A sight?
GINA. And your nice winter coat, too! Well, that’s done for.... Then,
you are still bent on leaving us, Ekdal?
HJALMAR. Yes; that’s a matter of course, I should think.
GINA. Well, well.... (_Sets a tray with coffee, etc., on the table._)
Here’s a drop of something warm, if you’d like it. And there’s some
bread and butter and a snack of salt meat.
HJALMAR (_glancing at the tray_). Salt meat! Never under this roof!
It’s true I haven’t had a mouthful of solid food for nearly twenty-four
hours; but no matter.... Oh no, I must go out into the storm and the
snow-blast--go from house to house and seek shelter for my father and
myself.
GINA. But you’ve got no hat, Ekdal. You’ve lost your hat, you know,
etc.--_The Wild Duck_, Act V.
[323] Auguste Ehrhard, Professor à la Faculté des Lettres de
Clermont-Ferrand, _Henrik Ibsen et le Théâtre contemporain_, Paris,
1892, p. 233: ‘Ibsen’s characters may in general be divided into two
categories--those in which the moral element, the life of the soul,
dominates, and those in which the animal prevails. The first are, for
the most part, mouthpieces of the theories dear to the poet.... They
have their primary origin in the brain of the poet.... It is he who
gives them life.’
[324] Right out here so early--eh?... Well, did you get safe home
from the quay--eh? Look here. Let me untie the bow--eh? etc.--_Hedda
Gabler._ London, W. Heinemann, pp. 7-9.
[325] NORA. Yes, I really am now in a state of extraordinary happiness.
There is only one thing in the world that I should really like.
RANK. Well, and what’s that?
NORA. There’s something that I should so like to say--but for Torvald
to hear it.
RANK. Then, why don’t you say it to him?
NORA. Because I daren’t, for it sounds so ugly....
RANK. In that case I would advise you not to say it. But you might say
it to us, at any rate.... What is it that you would like to say in
Helmer’s presence?
NORA. I should like to shout with all my heart--Oh, dash it all!--_A
Doll’s House_, _op. cit._, pp. 26, 27.
[326] Auguste Ehrhard, _op. cit._, p. 270.
[327] Dr. R. von Krafft-Ebing, _Psychopathia sexualis mit
besonderer Berücksichtigung der conträren Sexualempfindung_. _Eine
klinisch-forensische Studie._ Dritte vermehrte und verbesserte Auflage.
Stuttgart, 1888. See (p. 120) the observation relative to the young
nobleman who was erotically excited by his ‘boot-thoughts.’ I cite this
single case only, but it would be possible to instance dozens of cases
where nightcaps, shoe-nails, white aprons, the wrinkled head of an old
woman, etc., have excited sensuality in the highest degree.
[328] _A Doll’s House_, p. 112:
HELMER. To forsake your home, your husband, and your children! And only
think what people will say about it.
NORA. I cannot take that into consideration. I only know that to go is
necessary for me....
HELMER. ... Your duties to ... your children?
NORA. I have other duties equally sacred ... duties towards myself, etc.
[329] _Ghosts_, p. 170: OSWALD. At last he said, ‘You have been
worm-eaten from your birth.’ ... I didn’t understand either, and begged
of him to give me a clearer explanation. And then the old cynic said,
‘The father’s sins are visited upon the children.’ And p. 194: OSWALD.
The disease I have as my birthright (_he points to his forehead, and
adds very softly_) is seated here.
[330] _The Wild Duck_, Act III.:
GREGERS. Besides, if I’m to go on living, I must try and find some cure
for my sick conscience.
WERLE. It will never be well. Your conscience has been sickly from
childhood. That’s an inheritance from your mother, Gregers--it is the
only inheritance she left you....
RELLING. But, deuce take it, don’t you see the fellow’s mad, cracked,
demented!
GINA. There, you hear! His mother before him had mad fits like that
sometimes.
[331] _The Wild Duck_, Act II.:
HJALMAR. She is in danger of losing her eyesight.
GREGERS. Becoming blind?
HJALMAR. ... But the doctor has warned us. It’s coming, inexorably.
GREGERS. What an awful misfortune! How do you account for it?
HJALMAR (_sighs_). Hereditary, no doubt.
Again, Act IV.:
MRS. SÖRBY. ... He (Werle) is going blind.
HJALMAR (_with a start_). Going blind? That’s strange--Werle, too,
becoming blind!
[332] Dr Prosper Lucas, _Traité philosophique et physiologique de
l’Hérédité naturelle dans les États de Santé et de Maladie du Système
nerveux_, etc. (The title occupies seven lines more!) Paris, 1847, 2
volumes, t. i., p. 250. (It appears that Montaigne had this inherited
horror of doctors.)
[333] Lucas, _op. cit._, t. i., pp. 391-420: _De l’hérédité des modes
sensitifs de la vue_. On page 400 he tells of a family in which the
mother became blind at the age of twenty-one years, and the children at
sixteen and seventeen respectively, etc.
[334] August Weismann, _Ueber die Vererbung_. Jena, 1883.
[335] F. Galton, _Natural Inheritance_. London, 1888.
[336] Page 136:
MRS. ALVING. I know one who has kept both his inner and his outer self
unharmed. Only look at him, Mr. Manders.
[337] Krafft-Ebing, _Psychopathia sexualis_, p. 139. The author here
cites all the features in question as characteristic of the first stage
of general paralysis: ‘Libidinous talk, unconstraint in intercourse
with the opposite sex, plans of marriage.’
[338] _Rosmersholm_, p. 23:
REBECCA (_to Brendel_). You should apply to Peter Mortensgaard.
BRENDEL. _Pardon, Madame_--what sort of an idiot is he?
See the flat travesty in _An Enemy of the People_ (Act IV.) of the
forum scene in Shakespeare’s _Julius Cæsar_, and the characterization
of the ‘crowd,’ in _Brand_ (Act V.).
[339] Herbert Spencer, _The Man_ versus _the State_, 1884, p. 78.
[340] In the German text, ‘only of themselves and their
families.’--TRANSLATOR.
[341] Edward Westermarck, _The History of Human Marriage_. London:
Macmillan, 1892. See especially the two chapters on ‘The Forms of Human
Marriage,’ and ‘The Duration of Marriage.’
[342]
‘At leve--er Kamp med Trolde
J Hjertet og Hjernens Hvaelv;
At digte--det er at holde
Dommedag over sig selv.’
[343] Dr. Wilhelm Griesinger, _Pathologie und Therapie der psychischen
Krankheiten für Aerzte und Studirende_. 5te Auflage. Gänzlich
umgearbeitet und erweitert. Von Dr. Willibald Levinstein-Schleger;
Berlin, 1892. (See p. 143, on ‘Diseased Impulses’; and p. 147, on
‘Excessive Energy of Will.’)
[344] Griesinger, _op. cit._, p. 77: ‘Retardation of thought may
be produced ... by the state of constriction following a mental
depression, by complete inertia extending to the arrest of thought.’
[345] Rationalized in the English version cited, as follows (p. 25):
‘Yes, perhaps I am a little delicate.’--TRANSLATOR.
[346] Rationalized in the English version by ‘now soon,’ being rendered
as ‘nearly.’--TRANSLATOR.
[347] ‘True’ is omitted in the English version quoted.--TRANSLATOR.
[348] Bracketed clause not in English version.--TRANSLATOR.
[349] Griesinger, _op. cit._, p. 176. He names the coining of words
‘phraseomania.’ Kussmaul gives the name _Paraphrasia vesana_ to the
coining of incomprehensible words, or the using of known words in a
sense wholly foreign to them.
[350] Dr. A. Marie, _Études sur quelques Symptômes des Délires
systématisés et sur leur Valeur_; Paris, 1892, chap. ii.:
‘Eccentricities of language. Neologisms and conjuring incantations.’
Tanzi cites, among others, the following examples: A patient used
continuously to repeat, ‘That is true, and not false’; another began
every phrase with, ‘God’s Word’; a third said, ‘Out with the vile
beast!’ making at the same time a sign of benediction with the right
hand; a fourth said unceasingly, ‘Turn over the page’; a fifth cried,
in a tone of command, ‘Lips acs livi cux lips sux!’ etc. One of
Krafft-Ebing’s patients (_op. cit._, p. 130) constructed, among others,
the following words: ‘Magnetismusambosarbeitswellen, Augengedanken,
Austrahlung, Glückseligkeitsbetten, Ohrenschussmaschine,’ etc.
Krafft-Ebing, _op. cit._, pp. 130, 131.
[351] Vicomte E. M. de Vogué, ‘Les Cigognes,’ _Revue des deux
Mondes_, February 15, 1892, p. 922: ‘Ibsen would have won our trust,
were it only by certain axioms [?] which appeal to our actual
distrusts, such as this ... in _Rosmersholm_: “The Rosmer view of
life ennobles, but it kills happiness.”’ I am convinced that, unless
previously told that they emanated from confined lunatics, these
‘comprehensives’ would, without difficulty, understand and interpret
the expression ‘little-cupboards-of-appetite-of-representation’
(_Vorstellungs-Appetitschränkchen_), freely used by one of Meynert’s
lunatic patients, or the words of a patient under Griesinger’s care
(_op. cit._, p. 176) that ‘the lady superior was establishing herself
in the military side-tone and in the retardation of her teeth.’
[352] Tanzi, _I Neologismi in rapporta col Delirio cronico_. Turin,
1890.
[353]
‘Vi vil gjöre det om igjen raditalere,
Men dertil sordres baade Maend og Talere.
J sörger sor Vandflom til Verdensparken,
Jeg laegger med Lyst Torpedo under Arken.’
Observe the purely mystic vapours of this thought. The poet wishes to
destroy everything, even the ark which shelters the saved remnants
of terrestrial life, but sees himself placed beyond the reach of the
destruction, and hence will survive the annihilation of everything else
on earth.
[354] Georges Brandes, _op. cit._, pp. 431, 435, 438, etc.
[355] J. Cotard, _Études sur les Maladies cérébrales et mentales_;
Paris, 1891. In this book the _délire des négations_ is for the first
time recognised and described as a form of melancholia. The Third
Congress of French Alienists, which sat at Blois from the 1st to the
6th of August, 1892, devoted almost the whole of its conferences to
the insanity of doubt. In a work by F. Raymond and F. L. Arnaud, ‘Sur
certains cas d’aboulie avec obsession interrogative et trouble des
mouvements’ (_Annales médico-psychologiques_, 7^e séries, t. xvi.),
we read, p. 202: ‘The invalids occupy themselves with questions
intrinsically insoluble, such as the creation, nature, life, etc. Why
the trees are green? Why the rainbow has seven colours? Why men are not
as tall as houses?’ etc.
[356] Lombroso and B. Laschi, _Le Crime politique et les Révolutions
par rapport au Droit, à l’Anthropologie criminelle et à la Science du
Gouvernement. Traduit de l’Italien par H. Bouchard_. Paris, 1892, t.
i., p. 195.
[357] Auguste Ehrhard, _op. cit._, p. 412: ‘He [Ibsen] assigns
himself a _rôle_ to acquaint us in a direct manner with his own
disillusionings.... He presents himself in the fantastic and tormented
character of Ulric Brendel. Let us not be deceived by the disguise
in which he veils himself. Ulric Brendel, the fool, is no other than
Henrik Ibsen, the idealist’(?).
[358] Auguste Ehrhard, _op. cit._, p. 120: ‘With admirable frankness
Ibsen, in his latest works, points out the abuse which may be made
of his ideas [!]. He counsels reformers to extreme prudence, if not
to silence. As for himself, he ceases to excite the multitude to the
pursuit of moral and social progress [!]; he entrenches himself in his
disdainful pessimism, and in aristocratic solitude enjoys the serene
vision of future ages.’
[359] Henrik Jaeger, _Henrik Ibsen og haus Vaerker. En Fremstilling i
Grundrids_. Christiania, 1892, _passim_.
[360] G. R. S. Mead, _Simon Magus_. London, 1892.
[361] Ehrhard, _op. cit._, p. 94.
[362] W. Roux, _Ueber den Kampf der Theile des Organismus_. Leipzig,
1881. Since the appearance of Roux’s work, the theory of phagocytose,
or the digestion of weaker cells by the stronger, has been considerably
extended. This, however, is not the place to cite the numerous
communications bearing on this subject which have appeared in the
_Zeitschrift für wissenschaftliche Zoologie_, in Virchow’s _Archiv_, in
the _Biologische Centralblatt_, in the _Zoologische Jahrbücher_, etc.
[363] Jacoby, _La Folie de Césars_. Paris, 1880.
[364] Alfred Binet, _Les Altérations de la Personnalité_, Paris,
1892, p. 23, communicates the case (observed by Bourru and Burot,
and often cited) of Louis B., who united in himself six different
personalities--six ‘I’s’ having not the slightest knowledge of each
other, each possessing another character, another memory, other
peculiarities of feeling and movement, etc.
[365] ‘Suicidal’ is here not a mere rhetorical expression. If the
tyrannical power of instinct always ends by leading the individual
in the long-run to his destruction, it sometimes does this directly.
Instinct, namely, may have for its direct object suicide or
self-mutilation; and the ‘free’ man obeying his instinct has then the
‘liberty’ of mutilating or killing himself, although that so little
tallies with his real wish that he seeks in others a protection from
himself. See Dr. R. von Krafft-Ebing, _Lehrbuch der gerichtlichen
Psychopathologie_. Dritte umgearbeitete Auflage. Stuttgart, 1892, p.
311.
[366] Herbert Spencer, _The Individual versus the State_. London, 1884.
[367] Dr. Ph. Boileau de Castelnau, ‘Misopédie ou Lésion de l’Amour
de la Progeniture’ (_Annales médico-psychologiques_, 3^e série,
7^e volume, p. 553). In this work the author communicates twelve
observations, in which the natural feeling of the mother for her
children was transformed by disease into hatred.
[368] G. Ferrero, ‘L’Atavisme de la Prostitution,’ _Revue
scientifique_, 50^e volume, p. 136.
[369] R. von Krafft-Ebing, _Psychopathia sexualis_, etc., 7^{te}
Auflage, p. 89 (the third edition of this book, from which I have
made my previous citations, contains nothing on masochism), and
_Neue Forschungen auf dem Gebiete der Psychopathia sexualis eine
medicinisch-psychologische Studie_, Zweite umgearbeitete und vermehrte
Auflage, Stuttgart, 1891, p. 1 _ff._ Krafft-Ebing gives this
explanation of his word (p. 1 _et seq._): ‘By masochism I understand
a peculiar perversion of the psychic _vita sexualis_, consisting in
this, that the individual seized with it is dominated in his sexual
feeling and thought by the idea that he is wholly and unconditionally
subjected to the will of a person of the opposite sex, who treats
him imperiously, humiliates and maltreats him.’ The word is formed
from the name Sacher-Masoch, because ‘his writings delineate exactly
typical pictures of the perverted psychic life of men of this kind’
(_Neue Forschungen_, etc., p. 37). I do not look upon this designation
as a happy one. Krafft-Ebing himself shows that Zola and, long before
him, Rousseau (he might have added Balzac in Baron Hulot in _Parents
pauvres_, part i.: _La cousine Bette_) have embodied this condition
quite as clearly as Sacher-Masoch. Hence I prefer the designation
‘passivism,’ proposed by Dimitry Stefanowsky. See _Archives de
l’Anthropologie criminelle_, 1892, p. 294.
[370] Ehrhard, _op. cit._, p. 88.
[371] Persian for Zoroaster.
[372] Dr. Hugo Kaatz, _Die Weltanschauung Friedrich Nietzsche_: Erster
Theil, ‘Cultur und Moral’; Zweiter Theil, ‘Kunst und Leben.’ Dresden
und Leipzig, 1892, 1 Th., p. vi.: ‘We are accustomed, especially in
matters concerning the deepest problems of thought, to a finished,
systematic exposition.... There is none of all this in Nietzsche. No
single work of his forms a finished whole, or is wholly intelligible
without the others. Each book, moreover, is totally wanting in organic
structure. Nietzsche writes almost exclusively in aphorisms, which,
filling sometimes two lines, sometimes several pages, are complete
in themselves, and seldom manifest any direct connection with each
other.... With proud indifference to the reader, the author has
avoided cutting even _one_ gap in the hedge with which he has closely
surrounded his intellectual creations. Access to him must be gained
by fighting,’ etc. In spite of its seeming obscurity, Nietzsche has
himself given such pointed information concerning his method of work
as amounts to an avowal. ‘All writing makes me angry or ashamed; for
me, writing is a necessity.’ ‘But why, then, do you write?’ ‘Yes, my
dear friend, let me say it in confidence: I have hitherto found no
other means of _ridding_ myself of my thoughts.’ (The italics are
Nietzsche’s.) ‘And why do you wish to rid yourself of them?’ ‘Why
I wish? Do I so wish? I must.’ _Die fröhliche Wissenschaft._ Neue
Ausgabe, p. 114.
[373] Dr. Max Zerbst, _Nein und Ja!_ Leipzig, 1892.
[374] Robert Schellwien, _Max Stirner und Friedrich Nietzsche_,
_Erscheinungen des modernen Geister und das Wesen des Menschen_.
Leipzig, 1892.
[375] I refuted this silly sophism before Nietzsche propounded it in
the passages above quoted from _Zur Genealogie der Moral_, p. 66, and
_Jenseits von Gut und Böse_, p. 228. See _Die conventionellen Lügen
der Kulturmenschheit_, 14 Aufl., pp. 211, 212: ‘This expression [of
Proudhon’s, that property is theft] can be regarded as true only from
the sophistical standpoint that everything existing exists for itself,
and from the fact of its existence derives its right to belong to
itself. According to this view, forsooth, a man steals the blade of
grass he plucks, the air he breathes, the fish he catches; but, then,
the martin, too, is stealing when it swallows a fly, and the grub when
it eats its way into the root of a tree; then Nature is altogether
peopled by arch-thieves, and, in general, everything steals that
lives, _i.e._, absorbs from without materials not belonging to it,
and organically elaborates them, and a block of platinum, which does
not even pilfer from the air a little oxygen with which to oxidize
itself, would be the sole example of honesty on our globe. No; property
resulting from earning, that is, from the exchange of a determined
amount of labour for a corresponding amount of goods, is not theft.’
If, throughout this passage, ‘theft’ be substituted for the word
‘exploitation,’ used by Nietzsche, his sophism is answered.
[376] _The Sacred Books of the East._ Translated by various Oriental
scholars, and edited by F. Max Müller. The Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1st
series, vol. x.: _Dhammapada_, by F. Max Müller; and _Sutta-Nipâta_, by
V. Fausböll.
[377] _The Sacred Books of the East_, etc., vol. xix.:
_Fo-sho-hing-tsan-king_, by Rev. S. Beal.
[378] Charles Darwin, _The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to
Sex_; London, J. Murray, 1885, p. 101: ‘All the baboons had reascended
the heights, excepting a young one, about six months old, who, loudly
calling for aid, climbed on a block of rock, and was surrounded.
Now one of the largest males, a true hero, came down again from the
mountain, slowly went to the young one, coaxed him, and triumphantly
led him away, the dogs being too much astonished to make an attack.’
[379] Friedrich Nietsche, _Zur Genealogie der Moral_. _Eine
Streitschrift._ Zweite Auflage. Leipzig, 1892, § 80.
[380] Gustav Freytag, _Bilder aus der deutschen Vergangenheit_. Erster
Band, aus dem Mittelalter. Leipzig, 1872, p. 42 _ff._: ‘The Roman
Consul, Papirius Carbo ... denies the strangers [the Cimbrians and
Teutons!] the right of sojourn because the inhabitants are enjoying the
rights of hospitality of the Romans. The strangers excuse themselves by
saying they did not know that the natives were under Roman protection,
and they are ready to leave the country.... The Cimbrians do not seek
a quarrel; they send to Consul Silanus, and urgently entreat him to
assign them lands; they are willing in return for it to serve the
Romans in time of war.... Once more the strangers do not invade Roman
territory, but send an embassy to the Senate and repeat the request
for an assignment of land.... The victorious Germans now sent a fresh
embassy to the leader of the other army, for the third time, to sue for
peace and ask for land and seed-corn.’
[381] _Zur Genealogie der Moral_, p. 79.
[382] _Ibid._, p. 73.
[383] Charles Darwin, _op. cit._, p. 98: ‘As soon as the mental
faculties had become highly developed, images of all past actions
and motives would be incessantly passing through the brain of each
individual; and that feeling of dissatisfaction, or even misery, which
invariably results ... from any unsatisfied instinct, would arise as
often as it was perceived that the enduring and always present social
instinct had yielded to some other instinct, at the time stronger,
but neither enduring in its nature nor leaving behind it a very vivid
impression. It is clear that many instinctive desires, such as that
of hunger, are, in their nature, of short duration, and, after being
satisfied, are not readily or vividly recalled,’ etc.
[384] _Zur Genealogie der Moral_, p. 9.
[385] _Ibid._, p. 48.
[386] _Jenseits von Gut und Böse_, p. 91: ‘The criminal is, often
enough, not grown to the level of his deed: he dwarfs and traduces it.
The legal defenders of the criminal are rarely artists enough to turn
the beautiful terribleness of the deed to the profit of the doer.’
[387] ‘A people is the detour of nature, in order to arrive at six
or seven great men.’ See also: ‘The essential thing in a good and
healthy aristocracy is, that it should feel itself to be _not_ the
function, but the _end_ and justification, be it of royalty or of
the commonwealth--that it should, therefore, with a good conscience,
suffer the sacrifice of a countless number of men who, _for its
sake_, must be humbled and reduced to imperfect beings, to slaves, to
instruments.’--_Jenseits von Gut und Böse_, p. 226.
[388] The following are a few examples, which could easily be centupled
(literally, not hyperbolically)--_Jenseits von Gut und Böse_, p. 63:
‘It is the Orient, the deep Orient.’ p. 239: ‘Such books of depth
and of the first importance.’ p. 248: ‘Deep suffering ennobles.’ ‘A
bravery of taste, resisting all that is sorrowful and deep.’ p. 249:
‘Any fervour and thirstiness which constantly drives the soul ... into
the bright, the brilliant, the deep, the delicate.’ p. 256: ‘An odour
quite as much of depth [!] as of decay.’ p. 260: ‘To lie tranquilly
like a mirror, so that the deep heaven might reflect itself in them.’
p. 262: ‘I often think how I may make him [man] stronger, wickeder,
and deeper.’ _Also sprach Zarathustra_, pt. i., p. 71: ‘But thou Deep
One, thou sufferest too deeply even from little wounds.’ Pt. ii., p.
52: ‘Immovable is my depth; but it sparkles with floating enigmas and
laughters’ (!!). p. 64: ‘And this for me is knowledge: all depth should
rise--to my height.’ p. 70: ‘They did not think enough into the depth.’
Pt. iii., p. 22: ‘The world is deep, and deeper than the day has ever
thought it.’ Pt. iv., p. 129: ‘What says the deep midnight?... From a
deep dream am I awakened. The world is deep, and deeper than the day
thought. Deep in its woe. Joy--deeper still than sorrow of heart. All
joy ... wishes for deep, deep eternity,’ etc.
[389] _Zur Genealogie der Moral_, p. 167.
[390] _Jenseits von Gut und Böse_, p. 159: ‘Our virtues? It is probable
that we, too, still have our virtues, albeit they are no longer the
true-hearted and robust virtues for which we hold our grandfathers in
honour--though at a little distance.’ p. 154: ‘The man beyond good and
evil, the master of his virtues ... he ought to be the greatest.’ So
then, ‘beyond good and evil,’ and yet having ‘virtues’!
[391] _Zur Genealogie der Moral_, p. 79: ‘As a premise to this
hypothesis concerning the origin of the evil conscience [through the
‘transvaluation of values’ and the ‘revolt of slaves in morality’]
belongs the fact ... that this transformation was in no way gradual, or
voluntary, and did not manifest itself as an organic growing into new
conditions, but as a rapture, a leap, a compulsion.’ Hence, not only
was that good which had previously been evil, but this ‘transvaluation’
even occurred suddenly, ordered one fine day by authority!
[392] _Jenseits von Gut und Böse_, p. 232: ‘Slave-morality is
essentially a utilitarian morality.
[393] _Die fröhliche Wissenschaft_, p. 32: ‘In reality, however, evil
instincts are just as purposive, as conservative of the species, and
as indispensable as the good, only they have a different function.’
_Zur Genealogie der Moral_, p. 21: ‘At the root of all ... noble
races lies the beast of prey ... this foundation needs from time to
time to disburden itself; the animal must out, must hie him back to
the desert.’ This means that it is essential to his health, and,
consequently, of utility to him.
[394] _Zur Genealogie der Moral_, p. 6: ‘To what disorders, however,
this [democratic] prejudice can give rise, is shown by the infamous
[!] case of Buckle. The plebeianism of the modern spirit, which is
of English origin, once more breaks forth ... there.’ _Jenseits von
Gut und Böse_, p. 212: ‘There are truths that are best recognised
by mediocre heads.... We are driven to this proposition since the
intellect of mediocre Englishmen--I may mention Darwin, John Stuart
Mill, and Herbert Spencer--acquired preponderance in the mean region of
European taste.’
[395] _Die fröhliche Wissenschaft_, p. 43.
[396] See, in my novel, _Die Krankheit des Jahrhunderts_, Leipzig,
1889, Band I., p. 140, Schrötter’s remarks: ‘Egoism is a word. All
depends upon the interpretation. Every living being strives for
happiness, _i.e._, for contentment.... He [the healthy man] cannot be
happy when he sees others suffer. The higher the man’s development, the
livelier is this feeling.... The egoism of these men consists in their
seeking out the pain of others and striving to alleviate it, in which,
while combating the sufferings of others, they are simply struggling to
attain to their own happiness. A Catholic would say of St. Vincent de
Paul or of Carlo Borromeo, He was a great saint; I should say of him,
He was a great egoist.’
[397] _Die fröhliche Wissenschaft_, p. 48.
[398] Dr. Hugo Kaatz, _op. cit._, Thiel I., Vorrede, p. viii.
[399] Robert Schellwien, _Max Stierner und Friedrich Nietzsche_.
Leipzig, 1892, p. 23.
[400] _Also sprach Zarathustra_, pt. i., p. 84: ‘The “thou” is
proclaimed holy, but not yet the “I.”’
[401] _Zur Genealogie der Moral_, p. 43.
[402] _Die fröhliche Wissenschaft_, p. 222.
[403] _Jenseits von Gut und Böse_, pp. 78, 106.
[404] C. Lombroso and R. Laschi, _Le Crime politique et les
Révolutions_. Paris, 1892, t. i., p. 142.
[405] R. Schellwien, _op. cit._, p. 7: ‘The literary activity of the
two thinkers [!] is separated by more than fifty years; but great as
may be the difference between them, the agreement is not less, and thus
the essential characters of systematic individualism are presented with
all the more distinctness.’
[406] See, in my _Paradoxe_, the chapter ‘Wo ist die Wahrheit?’
[407] ‘With what magic she lays hold of me! What? Has all the world’s
repose embarked here?’ ‘What use has the inspired one for wine? What?
Give the mole wings and proud imaginings?’ ‘In so far as he says Yes
to this other world, what? must he not then say No to its counterpart,
this world?’ ‘Round about God all becomes--what? perhaps world?’ ‘A
pessimist ... who says Yes to morality ... to _læde-neminem_-morality;
what? is that really--a pessimist?’ ‘Fear and pity: with these feelings
has man hitherto stood in the presence of woman. What? Is there now
to be an end of this?’ I will content myself with these examples, but
let it be remarked once for all, that all the specimens I adduce here
for the purpose of examining Nietzsche’s mental state could easily be
multiplied a hundredfold, as the characteristic peculiarities recur in
him hundreds of times. On one occasion he plainly becomes conscious of
this living note of interrogation, always present in his mind as an
obsession. In _Also sprach Zarathustra_, pt. iii., p. 55, he calls the
passion for rule, ‘the flashing note of interrogation by the side of
premature answers.’ In this connection, this expression has absolutely
no sense; but it at once becomes intelligible when it is remembered
that the insane are in the habit of suddenly giving utterance to the
ideas springing up in their consciousness. Nietzsche plainly _saw_
in his mind ‘the flashing note of interrogation,’ and suddenly, and
without transition, spoke of it.
[408] ‘A Greek life, to which he said, No.’ ‘A pessimist who not
merely says, No, wishes No [!] but who ... does No’ [!!]. ‘An inward
saying No to this or that thing.’ ‘Free for death, and free in death,
a holy No-sayer.’ Then as a complementary counterpart: ‘Pregnant with
lightnings, who say, Yes! laugh Yes!’ ‘While all noble morality grows
to itself out of a triumphant saying Yea.’ (He feels himself to be
something) ‘at least saying Yea to life.’ ‘To be able to say Yea to
yourself, that is ... a ripe fruit.’ (Disinterested wickedness is felt
by primitive humanity to be something) ‘to which conscience valiantly
says Yea.’ We see what use Nietzsche makes of his saying ‘Nay’ and
‘Yea.’ It stands in the place of nearly all verbs joining subject with
predicate. The thought ‘I am thirsty’ would, by Nietzsche, be thus
expressed, ‘I say Yes to water.’ Instead of ‘I am sleepy,’ he would
say, ‘I say Nay to wakefulness,’ or, ‘I say Yes to bed,’ etc. This is
the way in which invalids in incomplete aphasia are in the habit of
paraphrasing their thoughts.
[409] Dr. Hermann Türck, _Fr. Nietzsche und seine philosophischen
Irrwege_, Zweite Auflage. Dresden, 1891, p. 7.
[410] B. Ball, _La Folie érotique_, Paris, 1888, p. 50: ‘I have
sketched for you the picture of chaste love (amorous lunacy, or
the erotomania of Esquirol), where the greatest excesses remain
enclosed within the limits of feeling, and are never polluted by
the intervention of the senses. I have shown you some examples of
this delirium pushed to the extreme bounds of insanity, without the
intermixture of a single idea foreign to the domain of platonic
affection.’
[411] In one passage of _Zur Genealogie der Moral_, p. 132, Nietzsche
speaks of the ‘species of moral onanists and self-indulgers.’ He
does not apply the expression to himself; but it was unquestionably
suggested by an obscure suspicion of his own state of mind.
[412] Dr. R. von Krafft-Ebing, _Neue Forschungen_, u. s. w., p. 45
_ff._: ‘The complete contrary of masochism is Sadism. While in the
former the subject desires to suffer sorrows, and to feel himself in
subjection to violence, in the latter his aim is to cause sorrows, and
to exercise violence.... All the acts and situations carried out in the
active part played by Sadism constitute, for masochism, the object of
longing, to be attained passively. In both perversions these acts form
a progression from purely symbolic events to grievous misdeeds.... Both
are to be considered as original psychopathies of mentally abnormal
individuals, afflicted in particular with psychic _Hyperæsthesia
sexualis_, but also, as a rule, with other anomalies.... The pleasure
of causing sorrow and the pleasure of experiencing sorrow appear only
as two different sides of the same psychic event, the primary and
essential principle in which is the consciousness of active and passive
subjection respectively.’ See Nietzsche, _Also sprach Zarathustra_, pt.
i., p. 95: ‘Thou art going to women? Forget not the whip!’ _Jenseits
von Gut und Böse_, p. 186: ‘Woman unlearns the fear of man,’ and thus
‘exposes her most womanly instincts.’
[413] Krafft-Ebing, _Neue Forschungen_, u. s. w., p. 108. (A
sexual-psychopath thus writes): ‘I take great interest in art and
literature. Among poets and authors, those attract me most who describe
refined feelings, peculiar passions, choice impressions: an artificial
(or ultra-artificial) style pleases me. In music, again, the nervous,
stimulating music of a Chopin, a Schumann, a Schubert[!], a Wagner,
etc., appeal to me most. In art, all that is not only original, but
bizarre, attracts me.’ P. 128 (another patient): ‘I am passionately
fond of music, and am an enthusiastic partisan of Richard Wagner, for
whom I have remarked a predilection in most of us [sufferers from
contrary-sexual-feeling]; I find that this music accords so very much
with our nature,’ etc.
[414] See, in _Paradoxe_, the chapter on ‘Evolutionistische Æsthetik.’
[415] Dr. Max Zerbst, _Nein und Ja!_ Leipzig, 1892, p. vii.: ‘It is
not impossible that this little book may fall into the hands of some
who are nearly connected with the invalid ... whom every indelicate
treatment of his affliction must wound most deeply.’ The very last
person having the right to complain of indelicate treatment, and
to demand consideration, is surely a partisan of Nietzsche’s, who
claims for himself the ‘joy in wishing to cause woe,’ and ‘grand
unscrupulousness’ as the ‘privilege of the over-man’! Zerbst calls
his book a reply to that by Dr. Hermann Türck; but it is nothing but
a childishly obstinate and insolent repetition of all Nietzsche’s
assertions, the insanity of which has been proved by Dr. Türck. It
is exceedingly droll that Zerbst, appealing to a feeble compilation
by Ziehen, wishes to demonstrate to Türck that there are no such
things as psychoses of the will. Now, Türck has not said a single word
about a psychosis of the will in Nietzsche; but Nietzsche, indeed, in
_Fröhliche Wissenschaft_, p. 270, does speak of ‘monstrous disease of
the will,’ and of a ‘will-disease.’ Zerbst’s objection, therefore,
applies, not to Türck, but to his own master--Nietzsche.
[416] Dr. Hugo Kaatz, _op. cit._, pt. i., p. 6.
[417] Ola Hansson, _Das junge Skandinavien. Vier Essays._ Dresden und
Leipzig, 1891, p. 12.
[418] Albert Kniepf, _Theorie der Geisteswerthe_. Leipzig, 1892.
[419] Dr. Max Zerbst, _op. cit._, p. 1: ‘O, this modern natural
science! these modern psychologists! Nothing is sacred to them!’
‘When a man, grown up in the school of sickly “idealism,” confronts
a cruel savant of this kind ... this godless man takes a small piece
of chalk in his hand,’ etc. He ‘turns to the nonplussed idealist,’
and the latter somewhat timidly answers, and ‘adds something
sorrowfully,’ whereupon ‘the young psychologist replies, with a
gentle shrug of his shoulders.’ Quite so! the ‘cruel,’ the ‘godless,’
the ‘shoulder-shrugging’ young psychologist is himself, Zerbst; the
whimpering idealist, the ‘timid’ and ‘sorrowful’ speaker and questioner
is his opponent, Dr. Türck!
[420] Kurt Eisner, _Psychopathia spiritualis. Friedrich Nietzsche und
die Apostel der Zukunft._ Leipzig, 1892.
[421] Ola Hansson, _Materialisimen i Skönlitteraturen,
Populär-vetenskapliga_ [scientific!] _Afhandlingar_. Stockholm,
undated, pp. 28, 50. In this brochure Hansson also designates the
author of _Rembrandt als Erzieher_ as a ‘genius’!!
[422] _Revue politique et littéraire_, année 1891.
[423] ‘During his sojourn of several years in the solitary mountainous
district of Sils Maria ... he was in the habit ... of lying on a
verdant neck of land stretching into the lake. One spring he returned,
to find, on the consecrated [!] spot, a seat, on which trivial folk
might rest, in the place hitherto peopled only by his most secret
thoughts and visions. And the sight of this all too human [!] structure
was enough to render the beloved place of sojourn insupportable to him.
He never set foot there again.’--Ola Hansson, quoted from Dr. Hermann
Türck, _op. cit._, p. 10.
[424] Dr. Wilhelm Griesinger, _op. cit._, p. 77.
[425] Dr. von Krafft-Ebing, _Lehrbuch der Psychiatrie auf klinischer
Grundlage für praktische Aertze und Studirende_. Vierte theilweise
umgearbeitete Auflage. Stuttgart, 1890, p. 363 _ff._
[426] Translator.
[427] Dr. Hermann Türck, _op. cit._, s. 59.
[428] _Jenseits von Gut und Böse_, pp. 198, 201.
[429] _Die fröhliche Wissenschaft_, p. 130.
[430] _Jenseits von Gut und Böse_, p. 147.
[431] _Also Sprach Zarathustra_, pt. iii., p. 74.
[432] _Paris unter der dritten Republik_, Vierte Auflage. Leipzig,
1890. _Zola und Naturalismus Ausgewählte Pariser Briefe_, Zweite
Auflage. Leipzig, 1887. ‘Pot Bouille, von Zola.’
[433] Jules Huret, _Enquête sur l’Évolution littéraire_, p. 135.
[434] J. H. Rosny, _Vamireh: Roman des Temps primitifs_. Paris, 1892.
[435] Ferdinand Brunetière, _Le Roman naturaliste_, nouvelle édition.
Paris, 1892, p. 285.
[436] Thirty years before realism began to create a disturbance in
Germany, with its mania for description, the Swiss novelist, Gottfried
Keller, with a curious premonition, ridiculed it. See _Die Leute von
Seldwyla_, Auflage 12, Berlin, 1892, Band II., p. 108. (The hero of
the story entitled _Die missbrauchten Liebesbriefe_ [the misused
love-letters] suddenly conceives the notion of becoming an author.)
‘He laid aside the book of commercial notes, and drew forth a smaller
one provided with a little steel lock. Then he placed himself before
the first tree he came to, examined it attentively, and wrote: “A
beech-trunk. Pale gray, with still paler flecks and transverse stripes.
Two kinds of moss cover it, one almost blackish, and one of a sheeny,
velvety green. In addition, yellowish, reddish and white lichen, which
often run one into another.... Might perhaps be serviceable in scenes
with brigands.” Next he paused before a stake driven into the earth,
on which some child had hung a dead slow-worm. He wrote: “Interesting
detail. A small staff driven into the ground. Body of a silver-gray
snake wound round it.... Is Mercury dead, and has he left his stick
with dead snakes sticking here? This last allusion serviceable,
above all, for commercial tales. N.B.--The staff or stake is old and
weather-beaten; of the same colour as the snake; in places where the
sun shines upon it it is covered with little silver-gray hairs. (This
last observation might be new, etc.),”’ etc.
[437] Edmond et Jules de Goncourt, _Manette Solomon_. Paris, 1876, pp.
3, 145, 191.
[438] F. Brunetière, _op. cit._, p. 153.
[439] F. Brunetière, _op. cit._, p. 156.
[440] ‘Everything is a mystery. Everything is a semblance. Nothing
really exists.’ The saying of one of Arnaud’s patients afflicted with
the mania of negation. See F. L. Arnaud, ‘Sur le Délire des Négations,’
_Annales médico-psychologiques_, 7^e série, t. xvi., p. 387 _et seq._
[441] I would lay humanity on a white page, all things, all beings,
a work which would be a vast ark.’--E. Zola, preface to _La Faute de
l’Abbé Mouret_, edition of 1875. ‘Throw yourself into the commonplace
current of existence.’ ‘Choose for your hero a person in the simplicity
of daily life.’ ‘No hollow apotheoses, no grand false sentiments, no
ready-made formulæ.’--E. Zola, _Le Roman expérimental_, _passim_.
[442] The family of Kérangal has been the subject of many works, and
is well known in technical literature. The last published work on
them is due to Dr. Paul Aubry: ‘Une Famille de Criminels,’ _Annales
médico-psychologiques_, 7^e séries, t. xvi., p. 429 (reproduced in
_La Contagion du Meurtre_, by the same author; Paris, 1894). See
especially, pp. 432, 433, the curious genealogical tree of the family,
in which Zola’s celebrated genealogical tree of the Rougon-Macquart and
the Quenu-Gradelle can be immediately recognised.
[443] Brunetière, _op. cit._, p. iii.
[444] James Sully, _Pessimism: A History and a Criticism_. London,
1877, p. 411.
[445] Dr. Paul Sollier, _Psychologie de l’Idiot et de l’Imbécile_.
Paris, 1891, p. 95.
[446] Catrou, _Étude sur la Maladie des Tics convulsifs_ (Jumping,
Latab, Myriachit). Paris, 1890.
[447] Lombroso, _L’Uomo delinquente_, etc., pp. 450-480.
[448] His descriptions of impulsive criminals are not really exact. The
laity have greatly admired his description of the assassin Lantier in
_La Bête humaine_. The most competent judge in such matters, however,
Lombroso, says of this character, which has been inspired in M. Zola,
according to his own declaration, by _L’Uomo delinquente_: ‘M. Zola, in
my opinion, has never observed criminals in real life.... His criminal
characters give me the impression of the wanness and inaccuracy of
certain photographs which reproduce portraits, not from Nature, but
from pictures.’--_Le piu recenti scoperte ed applicazioni della
psichiatria ed antropologia criminale. Con 3 tavole e 52 figure nel
testo._ Torino, 1893, p. 356.
[449] Dr. R. von Krafft-Ebing, _Psychopathia Sexualis_, etc., 3^e
Auflage; Stuttgart, 1888. Beobachtung 23, Zippes Fall, s. 55;
Beobachtung 24, Passow’s Fall, s. 56; Aum. zu s. 57, Lombroso’s Fall.
Cæsare Lombroso, _Le piu recenti scoperte_, etc., p. 227: ‘He always
had voluptuous sensations on seeing animals killed, or in perceiving in
shops feminine under-garments and linen.’ The case of which Lombroso
here speaks is that of a degenerate of fifteen years old, who had been
observed by Dr. MacDonald, of Clark University.
[450] Léon Tolstoi, _[Œuvres complètes_, p. 385: ‘He smelt the warmth
of her body, inhaled the odour of her perfumes ... and at this moment
Pierre understood that not only _might_ Hélène become his wife, but
that she _must_ become so--that nothing else was possible.’] It is
related that the King of France, Henri III., married Marie of Cleves
because, at the wedding of the King of Navarre and his sister,
Marguerite of Valois, wishing to dry his face in the chemise wet with
the perspiration of the young princess, he was so intoxicated by the
scent which emanated from it, that he had no rest till he had won her
who had borne it. See Krafft-Ebing, _Psychopathia Sexualis_, p. 17.
[451] Léon Tolstoi, _[Œuvres complètes_, t. ii., p. 385: ‘With him
there had come into the room a strong, but not disagreeable, smell,’
etc.]
[452] Maurice Barrès, _L’Ennemi des Lois_, p. 47.
[453] Edmond de Goncourt, _La Faustin_. Paris, 1882, p. 267.
[454] Alfred Binet, _Le Fétichisme dans l’Amour_, etc., p. 26. This
passage will make the German reader think of the sniffer of souls, G.
Jaeger; I have no occasion to mention him here.
[455] Dr. R. von Krafft-Ebing, _Psychopathie Sexualis_, p. 15,
foot-note, p. 17.
[456] E. Séguin, _Traitement morale, Hygiène et Education des Idiots_.
Paris, 1846.
[457] L. Bernard, _Le Odeurs dans le Romans de Zola_. Montpellier, 1889.
[458] _Le Temps_, N^o du 13 Février, 1892: ‘Current literature ...
is, at present, at an inconceivably low ebb in Germany. From one end
of the year to the other it is becoming an impossibility to discover
a novel, a drama, or a page of criticism worthy of notice. The
_Deutsche Rundschau_ itself recently admitted this in despair. It is
not only the talent and the style which are deficient--all is poor,
weak and flat; one might imagine one’s self in France, in the time of
Bouilly.... Even the desire to rise above a certain level of ordinary
writing seems wanting. One ends by being thankful to any contemporary
German author who is seen to be making ... the simplest effort not
to write like a crossing-sweeper.’ Every German who observes all the
literary productions of his contemporaries will see that this is the
opinion of a spiteful enemy. This opinion, nevertheless, is explained
and justified by the fact that at the present day it is only the
‘realists’ who make enough stir to be heard in certain places abroad,
and that there the natives are delighted to be able to consider them as
representing all the German literature of the day.
[459] Arno Holz--Johannes Schlaf, _Die Familie Selicke_, 3^e Auflage;
Berlin, 1892, p. vi.: ‘In fact, nothing so provokes us to smile ... as
when they, in their anxiety to find models, label us as plagiarists
of the great foreign authors. Let them say it, then.... It will be
acknowledged some day that there has never yet been in our literature
a movement less influenced from without, more strongly originated from
within--in one word, more _national_--than this movement, even at the
further development of which we look to-day, and which has had for its
visible point of departure our _Papa Hamlet_. _Die Familie Selicke_ is
the most thoroughly German piece of writing our literature possesses,’
etc. This passage may serve the reader as a model both of the style
in which these lads write, and of the tone in which they speak of
themselves and their productions.
[460] The complaint of want of money is a constant refrain among the
‘Young Germans.’ Listen to Baron Detlev von Liliencron: ‘You had
nothing to eat again to-day; as a set-off, every blackguard has had his
fill.’ ‘The terror of infernal damnation is--A garden of roses under
the kisses of spring,--When I think of how heart and soul fret,--To be
hourly bitten by the need of money.’ And Karl Bleibtreu: ‘Brass reigns,
gold reigns,--Genius goes its way a-begging.’ ‘To call a ton of gold
one’s own,--Sublime end, unattainable to man!’ etc.
[461] Heinz Tovote, _Im Liebesrausch_, Berliner Roman, 6^e Auflage.
Berlin, 1893.
[462] Hermann Bahr, _Die gute Schule; Seelenstände._ Berlin, 1890.
[463] _Einsame Menschen_; Drama. 1891, p. 84.
[464] Gerhart Hauptmann, _Vor Sonnenaufgang_; Soziales Drama, 6^e
Auflage; Berlin, 1892, p. 14: ‘During the two years of my imprisonment,
I wrote my first book on political economy.’ p. 42: ‘The Icarians ...
share equally all work and all desert. No one is poor; there are no
poor among them.’ p. 47: ‘My fight is a fight for the happiness of
all.... Moreover, I must say that the fight in the interest of progress
brings me great satisfaction.’ (Let it be understood that not the
smallest trace of this famous ‘fight’ is to be seen in the piece!) p.
63: ‘I should like to study the state of things here. I shall study
the position of the miners here.... My work must be pre-eminently
descriptive,’ etc.
[465] Since this book has been published, Hauptmann has put on the
stage two new pieces: _The Beaver Pelisse_, which was an utter fiasco,
and _Hannele, a Dream Poem_, much discussed on account of its strange
mysticism.
[466] Scipio Sighele, _La Folla delinquente_, Turin, 1892; translated
into French, _La Foule criminelle_, Paris, 1893. Fournial, _Essai sur
la Psychologie des Foules_. Lyon, 1892.
[467] Gerhart Hauptmann, _Die Weber_, Schauspiel aus den vierziger
Jahren, 2^e Auflage; Berlin, 1892, p. 39:
BERTHA. Where is father, then? [Old Baumert has gone silently away.]
MOTHER BAUMERT. I don’t know where he can have gone.
BERTHA. Could it be that he’s no longer used to meat?
MOTHER BAUMERT (_beside herself, in tears_). There now, you see--you
see for yourself, he can’t even keep it down. He’ll throw up all the
little good food he has had.
OLD BAUMERT (_returns, crying with vexation_). Well, well, ’twill soon
be all over with me. They’ll soon have done for me. If one do chance to
get something good, one isn’t able to keep it. (_He sits down on the
bench by the stove, weeping._) [All this conversation is written in
Silesian dialect.]
[468] Gerhart Hauptmann, _Der Apostel_, _Bahnwärter Thiel_,
Novellistische Studien. Berlin, 1892.
[469] Hans Merian, _Die sogenannten ‘Jungdeutschen’ in
unsererzeitgenössischen Literatur_, 2^e Auflage. Leipzig, ss. 12, 14.
Undated.
[470] C. Lombroso and R. Laschi, _Le Crime politique_, etc., t. ii., p.
116.
[471] Dr. R. von Krafft-Ebing, _Neue Forshungen_, etc., 2 Auflage, pp.
109, 118. By the same, _Psychopathia Sexualis_, 3 Auflage, p. 65.
[472] Dr. A. B. Morel, _Traité des Dégénérescences_, p. 581, note:
‘The state of arrested development and _sterility_ are the essential
characteristics of beings arrived at the extreme limit of degeneracy.’
[473] C. Lombroso and R. Laschi, _Le Crime politique_, etc., t. i., p.
8 _et seq._
[474] Charles Darwin, _A Naturalist’s Voyage round the World, Journal
of Researches_, etc., chap. x.
[475] Ernest Renan, _Feuilles détachées_. Paris, 1892, Préface, p. 10.
[476] Ludwig Fulda, _Das verlorene Paradies_, Schauspiel in drei
Aufzügen. Stuttgart, 1892. _Cf._ p. 112:
MÜHLBERGER. Rika, Rika; come out!
FREDERIKA. Oh, Lord! will they send me back?
MÜHLBERGER. Here’s my daughter. She must go into the fresh air--into
the fresh air.
FREDERIKA. Father, let me be. I must work.
MÜHLBERGER (_with passionate resolution_). No. No more work--no
more--no more work. You must go out into the fresh air, my child--my
good sick child. (_He holds her in his embrace. Pause. No one present
can escape from the impression of this episode._)
So says the author! I do not think that these sentimental phrases
produce the smallest effect on anybody. Note (in the original) how
Fulda, an author of talent, in no way affiliated to the ‘Young-German
realists,’ is himself sufficiently intimidated by their ranting to seek
for ‘modernity’ by using the Berlin dialect.
[477] Ernst von Wildenbruch, _Die Haubenlerche_, Schauspiel in vier
Akten. Berlin, 1891. _Cf._ p. 134:
AUGUST. Work builds the world. Therefore, it must be executed for its
own sake; it must be loved!... And you--when I have seen you standing
before your tub--with the water-scoop in your hand--in such a way that
the windows flew open--then I thought, Ah! here is one who loves his
tub!...
ILEFELD. Master August, ‘tis as if I had been married to it, to my
tub--that’s how it’s been!
AUGUST. And yet you leave it standing there so that anybody might take
your place? What am I to say to the tub, should it ask after Paul
Ilefeld?
ILEFELD (_sits down heavily and dries his eyes with his hand_).
All the workmen I know would be convulsed with laughing at this
conversation.
[478] Madame Minna Wettstein-Adelt, _Three and a Half Months in a
Factory_, Eine praktische Studie, 2^e Auflage. Berlin, 1892.
[479] Paul Gœhre, _Three Months Factory Hand and Apprentice_, Eine
praktische Studie. Leipzig, 1892.
[480] Dr. S. Frenkel, ‘Die Therapie atactischer Bewegungstörungen,’
_Münchener medizinische Wochenschrift_, Nr. 52. 1892.
[481] A. G. Bianchi, _La Patologia del Genie e gli scienziati
Italiani_. Milano, 1892, p. 79.
[482] Allusion is here made to the political influence exercised in a
number of German electoral districts by the anti-Semite Passchen, a
proved lunatic, with a mania for persecution.--TRANSLATOR.