In the January number of _The Monist_ I mentioned a treatise written
by G. Ludwigs, in which the novels of Wilhelm Walloth were criticised,
and expressed my surprise that in the work discussed a personality
unquestionably diseased was stamped as a poet of almost the first order.
Much that then struck me as strange and was unclear to me, was later
rendered plain and intelligible; and the explanation was not long in
forthcoming.
As the newspapers shortly afterwards announced, Ludwigs was simply the
pseudonym of a sixteen year old gymnasium student of Darmstadt, who had
already attracted the attention of wider circles by the poems he had
written. It happens at times that individualities of this description
bear out in the advanced years of their life the promise of their youth.
Extraordinary things were to be expected, though I cannot say _hoped_,
of Ludwigs; but the expectation was not fulfilled. He, an instance of
real decadence, yet a boy in years, voluntarily took his own life,
deeply mourned by his literary associates, the “Young Germans,” in whose
magazine _Die Gesellschaft_ a brother of the deceased is now publishing
biographical notes and literary remains—novels and poems—all more of a
psychological than literary interest. The biographical notes plainly
mark out a personality smitten with psychosis and suffering in a marked
degree with hyperæsthesia, and the literary remains reflect this mental
condition; light-sensations especially playing an important rôle. His
nervous system was too weak to assert itself permanently against the
outer world. This pressure, which objectively considered was not at all a
powerful one, did not admit of the rise of a powerful sense of life; and
especially oppressive to the precocious youth was the life of the school
in the most varied ways, and in an unexpected moment the flame of his
life went out.
As psychologists, we should find considerable interest in the study
of this phenomenon of Ludwigs. We must admire his abilities and his
capacity for work, which not only enabled him to perform his duties as
a student of the gymnasium, but also left him time enough, in addition
to his literary work, to employ himself with the psychological writings
of Wundt and Münsterberg, which he desired to turn to account in the
field of poetry. We must mourn too his sad fate. But we have no reason to
_glorify_ such a diseased personality, as is done on many sides in the
April number of _Die Gesellschaft_.
But this is a peculiar characteristic of the Young-German writers and
their confrères abroad, that they make the diseased take the place of
the sound, and the ugly of the beautiful, and thus help greatly to
undermine the health of the common mind. There are it is true a goodly
number of trusting souls who believe that we may regard with security and
composure, the endeavors and tendencies of the naturalistic apostles, as
our taste in literature and art—a few cases excepted—can surely not be
reversed into its opposite. On this point, perhaps, those who so think
are not wrong. But the stage may easily be reached where literary taste
no longer remains determinative, and the place of the æsthetical interest
in things is taken by the scientific, before whose judgment-seat no
difference of the beautiful and the hideous exists.
This view is the direct outcome of philosophical materialism. The latter
doctrine may at present, it is true, be regarded in all its main points
as definitively overthrown, so far as philosophy is concerned; but in
the domain of _belles lettres_—a term not quite allowable here—the wave
which it has created still sweeps mightily onward. Two new works seek
to break its force, which have been published in the series _Gegen den
Materialismus_ edited by Dr. Schmidkunz (Stuttgart: Krabbe). The first
treatise bears the title _Materialismus und Æsthetik_ and has no less a
person as author than MORIZ CARRIÈRE; the second treats of _Materialism
in Literature_ and is the production of the northerner OLA HANSSON. I
am unable to say that these two treatises have especially satisfied me.
Both authors look at the subject too one-sidedly from the point of view
of æsthetics, and have not by far given a sufficient recognition to the
psychological aspect of the subject. I recognise indeed with Carrière,
in spite of all the apparent mutability of taste, a normative æsthetics;
but that man bears within him an ideal of life, as the seed does the
plant with its blossom and its fruit, I am unable for psychological
reasons to concede. I grant that I find with Ola Hansson psychology is so
far poorly represented in the naturalistic literature as the growth and
evolution of character is made to appear a much too simple process; and
I concede furthermore that the evolution of character in the individual
case is very far removed from anything like resemblance to an example
in mathematics, inasmuch as quantities may be lacking us in such a case
which are absolutely necessary to be taken account of for a correct
solution of the problem; but these missing quantities need not for that
reason be at all matters of mystery, in their true nature wholly unknown
to us.
To what limits the domain of mystery has shrunk and to how great an
extent its expressions may be made intelligible and to a certain degree
even may be “regulated,” provided, equipped with thorough knowledge, we
courageously look the things in the face, is exemplified in a marked
degree by a voluminous work of the above mentioned Dr. Schmidkunz. The
so-called Suggestion passed for a long time as something wonderful
and had to rest its defence in the hands of the representatives of a
psycho-physical mysticism as opposed to a “surface”-psychology which
in the words of Du Prels occupied itself exclusively with surface work
without penetrating to the depths. SCHMIDKUNZ now points out in his
_Psychologie der Suggestion_ (Stuttgart, 1892: Ferdinand Enke) in a
very comprehensive manner what others had very plainly hinted at before
him, namely, that in the case of a very great number of phenomena we
have, exactly viewed, to deal only with some very simple and quite
explainable things which unite in the composition of what is commonly
called suggestion. The contents of the work, however, are not exhausted
with this; under the influence of a tremendous scope of reading, the
author treats the whole domain of suggestion, and if he understood more
perfectly the art of good writing, he would have earned a much greater
gratitude than that which in any event is his due.
Schmidkunz touches repeatedly in his work upon a domain which still
belongs to the most obscure of the history of civilisation, namely
witchcraft and the trials of witches. This topic, likewise viewed from
a psychological point of view, forms the subject of a special treatise
by SNELL, entitled _Hexenprocesse und Geistesstörung_ (Munich, 1891:
J. F. Lehmann). In this book no rôle is ascribed to suggestion, but as
the title indicates the treatment centres about the question of what
significance mental disorders generally may have possessed in the trials
of witches. The author concedes that demented persons became the victims
of the trials for witchcraft either because they had rendered themselves
by their character open to the suspicion of a compact with the devil,
or because they had by self-obtrusion directly drawn upon themselves
this persecution, but asserts nevertheless, that the number of demented
persons that fell victims to the trials for witchcraft, was comparatively
very small. Mental disorder however played in so far a great rôle in the
trials for witchcraft as demented persons, especially such as suffered
from hysteria, became false witnesses and brought sound and healthy
people into the hands of the persecuting judges.
As I am now treading the province of psychiatry, I will mention, that
WILHELM GRIESINGER’S celebrated work _Pathologie und Therapie der
psychischen Krankheiten_ has just been published in its fifth edition
under the direction of Dr. Levinstein-Schlegel, the director of the
Maison de Santé in Schöneberg (Berlin: August Hirschwald). I do not of
course specify this work solely for the sake of the physicians who may be
readers of _The Monist_, but am rather impelled to the act by a universal
psychological consideration, for Griesinger in the first edition of
the work also made a name for himself as a psychologist. It appeared
originally in 1845, and possessed a compass of 396 pages; the fifth
edition numbers 1100 pages and has increased considerably in size as
compared with the fourth. Whether the augmentations have added anything
to the value of the work is a question which must first be submitted for
answer to our physicians. In psychological respects its value has in so
far been very much increased as the experiential data have assumed much
greater proportions: the psychological analysis however has been somewhat
neglected.
Psychological analysis in fact is not the strong side of the majority of
our psychiatrists. What Griesinger and still more so Spielmann sought
after in this direction, has been greatly forced in the background.
As a general rule our inquirers content themselves with a description
of symptoms and the construction of a more than copious nomenclature,
in the midst of which the connections are Very easy to be overlooked.
Among the commendable exceptions is to be named in this respect the
well-known Vienna professor THEODOR MEYNERT. In addition to his extensive
psychiatrical works he has also published a considerable number of
lectures and discourses partly in magazines and partly in separate
brochures. These discourses are now presented in collected form in a
book entitled _Sammlung von populärwissenschaftlichen Vorträgen über den
Bau una die Leistungen des Gehirns_ (Vienna, 1892, Wilhelm Braumüller).
The most noticeable discourses are the following: The Significance of
the Brain for the World of our Ideas; The Mechanics of the Cerebral
Structure; On the Feelings; On Illusion; On the Significance of the
Development of the Forehead; The Mechanics of Physiognomy; Brain and
Culture; The Co-operation of the Parts of the Brain; On Artificial
Disturbances of the Psychic Equilibrium. No words need be wasted in the
recommendation of the book of Meynert.