A well-known alienist, Professor Pelman of Bonn, in a recently published
work, advanced the assertion that the literary taste of the day pointed
to a considerable decline of the intellectual health of the present
generation. To him who assumes with Pelman some causal foundation of this
state of affairs, it is indeed an alarming sight to pass in review the
show windows of our great book centres Leipsic and Berlin and to discover
the great number of editions that the products of the literature of a
certain class are passing through.
Among the books that are at present all the vogue, Tolstoï’s “Kreutzer
Sonata” stands in the front rank. Numberless articles in the newspapers
and the magazines have already made this wonderful work the subject of
discussion, both from the æsthetical and from the moral point of view.
Now comes a physician, who discusses the psychological aspect of the
story, and discusses it in a manner which must claim our interest and to
which in the main points it emphasises we cannot deny our assent.
Dr. H. BECK has published at the house of Rauert and Rocco of Leipsic,
a brochure bearing the title _Des Grafen Leo Tolstoï Kreutzer Sonate
vom Standpunkte des Irrenarztes_, and arrives on the basis of a careful
analysis at the result that Tosdnischew is a decidedly neuropathical
character. Now as Tolstoï, on his own express declaration in his
concluding remarks, places his own views in Tosdnischew’s mouth, this
judgment respecting the principal character of the story also holds
good in great measure of its author. Generally, indeed, Beck is very
considerate towards Tolstoï’s person, in the expression of his opinions;
but he is nevertheless very plainly outspoken when he says at the
conclusion of his little book: “Let us characterise this monstrous
product, the ‘Kreutzer Sonata,’ as that which it appears to every person
of sound sentiments—as the emanation, namely, of a diseased brain, of a
degenerated Psyche.”
The Munich physician Dr. Puschmann, who in the year 1873 in a special
treatise represented Richard Wagner, then still alive, as psychically
diseased, has thus found, as we see, in a certain sense a successor
in Dr. Beck. But while Puschmann’s pamphlet, having been occasioned
by certain conditions of affairs in Munich, was written in a hostile
spirit, and while the little book of Beck’s makes no secret of its
author’s aversion to Tolstoï and his works, a notorious representative
of unhealthy “young Germany,” the novelist Wilhelm Walloth, meets at
other hands with an uncommonly tender treatment. There is indeed nothing
remarkable in this, for if anyone is in need of tender treatment it is
a man who is sick. But it is very remarkable that the diseased state of
a nervous system should be accredited to the writer Walloth as a great
poetic excellence.
G. LUDWIGS, the author of the treatise _Wilhelm Walloth_, Leipsic, 1891,
Verlag von Wilhelm Friedrich, had in so far the advantage of Puschmann
and Beck, that he was not placed under the necessity of originally
demonstrating what the actual state of the nervous system of his hero
was, from his works. This condition had already been established by
expert physicians in a much talked of trial before the District Court of
Leipsic for circulating obscene publications. Ludwigs was able therefore
to proceed immediately with his problem of ascertaining the extent to
which a diseased state of the nervous system had effect in Walloth’s
novels and poems. His discussion of this last question possesses great
interest for the psychologist, although the reader will find considerable
difficulty in accommodating his thoughts to Ludwigs’s occasionally very
singular style. Setting aside the odd expressions of Ludwigs, we may
say that there is exhibited in a pre-eminent degree in the writings of
Walloth, first, what the physicians call hyperæsthesia, and by this
is meant not only an excessive sensitiveness of the senses but also—a
condition that is connected with the last—an extraordinary intensity of
the emotional activity. Secondly, are found numberless bold associations
of ideas which are much better known to the physician than to the
æsthetician.
Unfortunately Walloth is not the only one of the representatives of
“young Germany,” in whose works the characters of disease appear in such
intensity, and the circumstance that books of this class are bought in
such numbers and read in still greater, places the tastes and sentiments
of a large portion of the educated German public in a questionable light.
If we turn our glance away from the sensational phenomena of literature
to the phenomena of ordinary life, which are not uncommonly enacted in
the halls of justice, it is in first rank the incorrigible swindlers and
sharpers that excite our attention. We have received on this subject from
Dr. ANTON DELBRUECK, a physician of a Swiss insane asylum, an interesting
little work bearing the title _Die pathologische Lüge und die psychisch
abnormen Schwindler_, Stuttgart, 1891, Verlag von Ferdinand Enke. In
this book the author makes an investigation of the gradual transition of
a normal psychological process into processes exhibiting pathological
symptoms, and shows, in so doing, by ample material, that in every kind
of intentional deception the consciousness of intention can exhibit very
different degrees of intensity and can imperceptibly sink in a succession
of cases to zero. As a matter of course, Delbrück’s treatise is primarily
of interest to medical experts and lawyers, but it will also be of
interest in a secondary degree to all circles that devote their attention
to psychological studies generally, particularly so to educators who
have not infrequently to do with pathological lies, as G. Stanley Hall
quite recently pointed out in a very instructive article in _The America
Journal of Psychology_ on the lying of children, and as is developed in
the work of Dr. Sollier, before mentioned in _The Monist_, entitled _La
psychologie de l’idiot et l’imbécile_, which is also to be had in a very
good German edition, translated by Paul Brie, under the title _Der Idiot
und der Imbecille_, published by Leopold Voss of Hamburg.
In the German edition of Sollier’s book Professor Pelman, whom we have
above mentioned, has written an introduction in which he speaks of the
work in words of praise similar to those expressed by Lucien Arréat in
_The Monist_. “Sollier,” says he, “has put us into the possession of a
psychology of mental imbecility, in a completeness in which hitherto
it was not at our disposal.” Then follows another passage which we
will also quote, as it forms an important supplement to the remarks
of Arréat. It is this: “Imbecility had remained the step-child of the
science of psychiatry and has not by any means met with the consideration
which in view of its social importance is due to it. If we go through
the works, as great in number as they are in voluminousness, which
have been published in the style of Lombroso on criminals and their
peculiar characteristics, we shall be unable to escape the impression
produced in our minds that the characteristics of imbeciles portrayed by
Sollier recur point for point in the typical criminal. Here as there,
the same insufficiency of all ethical development, the same frivolity,
and the same incapacity for being of use in society exist. That which
in Sollier’s explanation decides the whole anthropological position of
the imbecile—his anti-social, society-hostile attitude—is emphasised by
all writers as the characteristic trait common to all criminals, and
the description of imbeciles and criminals coincides as completely in
this respect as if the same individual had sat for both pictures. The
conclusions that follow from this can only enlist new adherents in the
ranks of the anthropological school, and this result also I should place
to the profit-account of the present book.”
However profitable and necessary employment with the diseased states of
the human soul may be, personally at least it is an unpleasant subject
for us, and we are glad therefore that we may abandon this domain for the
present letter.
The occasion of this is afforded by a valuable gift from Prof. W. PREYER,
formerly of Jena, now of Berlin. Professor Preyer has presented us with
a rather large volume bearing the title _Wissenschaftliche Briefe von
Gustav Theodor Fechner und W. Preyer. Nebst einem Briefweschsel zwischen
K. von Vierordt und Fechner sewie mehreren Beilagen. Mit dem Bildnisse
Fechner’s und vier Holzschnitten_. Hamburg und Leipsic, 1890. Verlag
von Leopold Voss. The work contains a correspondence extending from the
year 1873 to the year 1883, in which the two distinguished scientists
discuss (chiefly) myo-physical and psycho-physical questions, and will
be of great interest to many readers of _The Monist_, especially as it
makes its appearance simultaneously with the issuing of a new edition of
Fechner’s _Elemente der Psychophysik_ by Wilhelm Wundt.
The much fought over and much disputed province of psycho-physics has
also been entered on by a younger psychologist, who has already acquired
a considerable name,—by Hugo Münsterberg, docent at the university of
Freiburg in Baden. In his _Beiträge zur experimentellen Psychologie_,
which are published in parts at indefinite periods by Mohr of Freiburg in
Baden—three parts have already been published—Münsterberg raises, in the
first place, a vigorous protest against Wundt; repudiating on the basis
of the results of independent experiment the apperception hypothesis
which has been propounded by the scientist mentioned, and producing proof
that all kinds of so-called apperception are reducible to associations
of the representative activity. Secondly, he offers us in the third part
a new foundation on which to base psycho-physics. It is, of course,
impossible, in so difficult a subject, to reproduce briefly yet clearly
the developments to which Münsterberg devotes one hundred and twenty-two
pages. But we will at least supply a few hints with regard to what this
new foundation of psycho-physics is.
In the first place, Münsterberg rejects the notion that prevails with
Fechner and his school, that a powerful sensation is a multiple of a
weaker one, by which the first can be measured. The stronger sensation
is, says he, in comparison with the weaker one something wholly new;
for, accurately considered, the intensity of a sensation is also of a
qualitative nature. However, we are not by any means at liberty to infer
from this that the measurement of psychical quantities is impossible.
To appreciate this, it is first requisite that we should get clear
ideas with respect to the psychological foundation of our physical
measurements. The only foundation of these last is our muscular feeling,
to this extent, that all measurement is founded on the measurement of
quantities of space, time, and mass, and any estimate of the latter is
only possible on the basis of the muscular feeling that enters as a
factor in the conceptions involved. All physical measurement rests on the
establishment, and therefore reproduction, of _like_ muscular sensations;
on exactly the same foundation rests also all measurement of psychical
quantities, of intensities of sensation, and since this foundation is
the same, for this very reason the same justification is due to the
measurement of psychical intensity as is due to physical measurements.
This is the foundation on which the psycho-physics of Münsterberg is
raised, which for a fuller view must be studied in the third part of the
“Beiträge” itself.