ART AND INSANITY.

A psychological judgment of a man demands a double estimation of his

mental action. We have to consider that action, in the first place,

as strictly personal, and in the second place as a link in the great

chain of growing humanity. Every epoch has its errors and falsities,

and every man is subject to the spirit of his times, from which he is

powerless to free himself. Even those mental heroes who outstripped

their age in hardy flight and turned culture into new paths clung in

part to the erroneous views of their contemporaries, and, as Goethe

says, were connected with their century by their defects. We need never

consider the errors and perversities of the time as a morbid symptom,

for then all mankind would always have been mad. What one period of

history has held to be high and holy another has derided and scorned;

and absolute, irrefragable truth no age has been able to bring forth.

The error of the time must not, therefore, be confounded with that

phenomenon which was described in the last chapter under the name of

secular hysteria. In this latter we have a typical image of disease

observable at all times and particularly characterized by definite

sensational ideas. It makes no difference what the matter of the ideas

is; it is rather the whole behaviour--the collective phenomenon of the

persons concerned--by which they are marked as sick. The same persons

who, in the Middle Ages, danced through the streets as bewitched, might

perhaps, in other eras, have become fanatic revolutionists; or they

might hold intercourse with spirits of the departed in spiritualistic

circles, but they would always exhibit the same typical image of

hysteria. On the other hand, the error of the time affects all alike,

the strong-minded as much as the weak-minded. Everybody in the Middle

Ages believed in witches and devils, so they can not be called insane

for that. They simply partook of the universal error of their age. If

Luther had been born in the nineteenth century he probably would not

have believed in a personal devil at all.

It would therefore be absurd to judge of mental sanity by comparing the

subject’s opinions with our own. Our only fixed standard is the body of

society. If a scientifically educated man of our day were to pay divine

honour to a bull, and ascribe to it almighty power, there would be a

plain pathological state. But in early Egypt such a belief would accord

with the universal notion of the universe, and in a subject of Pharaoh

would bespeak only the error of his time and no derangement of mind. A

few centuries ago astrology was practised by even the most eminent men.

How firmly Wallenstein believed in such things is well known. So great

a man as Kepler wrote as follows: “According to the configurations of

the rays of the stars at the birth of a man, life flows to the new-born

in this or that form. If the configuration is harmonic, a fine form of

heart arises, and this builds itself a beautiful habitation. At the

same time the strong are born of the strong, the good of the good.

Single cases stand under the might of God and under his permission

in the strength of the tutelary spirit. If the heart is prepared

for evil, one must endeavour to improve it. Harmony is completeness

of relations. Only the Infinite knows the harmony of the spheres in

their full extent; the earth-ball has but a feeble after-feeling. This

after-feeling animates the earth-soul and makes the man cleverer for

thinking and for every deed.”

Just as we look back upon the errors of the past and consider them as

a weakness of humanity gradually overcome, so will future generations

perhaps look back upon us. What we to-day hold for irrefragable truth,

coming generations may indicate as the mightiest errors. The world has

always erred, and so long as there are men there will be errors.

Es irrt der Mensch, so lang er strebt.

(As long as man strives he errs.)

We grow up in the errors of the time, we have them before us from

childhood, and the average man takes them without consideration as

true. Religion, art, morals, manners--all human culture--have their

inheritance of weakness and error handed down from generation to

generation and from century to century.

Es erben sich Gesetz und Rechte

Wie eine ew’ge Krankheit fort.

(Law and rights are inherited like a disease that never dies out.)

One of the chief characteristics of those powerful natures whom the

world has to thank for its progress and its knowledge of new facts

is, therefore, an absolute doubt of the truth of everything. “He who

does not doubt,” says Hagen,[124] “whether what is known concerning

any matter may not be false, has no capacity for discovery; and for

the finding out of new ways and laws, not only is he unfitted who has

little understanding, but so is he, too, who has merely understanding,

who is unable to conceive how it is possible to think otherwise about

things concerning which the world has long since made up its mind.”

Hagen here quotes an admirable remark of Lichtenberg: “The common man

always conforms to the reigning opinion and reigning fashion. He holds

the state in which things now are to be the only one possible, and

assumes an altogether passive attitude. It does not occur to him that

everything, from the form of the furniture to the finest hypothesis,

has been resolved upon in the great council of men of which he is a

member. The great genius, on the other hand, always asks, Might not

this be untrue?”

While, therefore, we should certainly be guilty of a great error if,

judging of an individual, we were to lay the errors of the time to his

account, yet we should proceed in a thoroughly amateurish way if we

were to regard as deranged those great thinkers who doubt the truth

and the value of existing relations, or who in their sentiments and

views depart from common sense. The great crowd has a way of calling

everything “crazy” which it does not understand or which departs from

its ancient habits, however irrational those ways and habits may be.

But whoever is acquainted with the psychical development of humanity

will see in this only a matter of course--phenomena that are necessary

and that continually occur.

To judge an individual, then, it is not so important to consider _what_

he thinks and does as _how_ he thinks it, or what his motives for doing

it may be. “Duo cum faciunt idem non est idem.” That which in one man

may be the symptom of mental derangement is perhaps in another brought

on by a perfectly healthy and rational mental action. The psychiatrist

must therefore not halt at the outward phenomenon, but will have to

consider the casual connection of the psychical condition, and must

endeavour to find the secret springs of the acts or words in question.

National psychology has to proceed in a similar way in judging of

single phenomena. The spirit of the time, the soul of the people, which

is expressed in the most diverse departments--politics, philosophy,

art, literature--can only be appreciated and correctly understood when

it is considered in its causal connections as a link in the great chain

of historical development. Torn from its connections, no epoch of art

or literature can be comprehended, and such fragmentary data will give

rise to mistakes, while the creations of art as parts of a great

whole, as links of a great chain, shed great light upon the thought and

feeling of their time. An exact knowledge of the way in which single

phenomena have arisen, an ascertainment of the motives of definite

artistic expressions, are absolutely requisite for the correct judgment

of art as a symptom of the contemporary soul of the people, as a

partial manifestation of the spirit of the times. Whoever considers our

modern art relations as things in themselves and leaves unnoticed their

connection with times past and their psychological origin, will surely

fail if he wishes to appreciate the same as material for a judgment

upon the collective spirit of the times.

If one walks through a modern exhibition of paintings and observes

there the viewers of pictures, how they sometimes stand shaking their

heads before this picture or that without being able to make out what

it was at all that the artist was trying to paint; if he considers

the peculiar collections of colours, the glaring contrasts, the vague

outlines, the peculiar ground tone, he will be led to say to himself

that our time has introduced a new method of pictorial representation,

and both the art critic and the psychologist must seek the _raison

d’être_ of the new art.

Nordau says: “All these new tendencies, realism or naturalism,

‘decadentism,’ neomysticism, and their sub-varieties, are

manifestations of degeneration and hysteria, and identical with

the mental stigmata which the observations of clinicists have

unquestionably established as belonging to these.”[125] Certain

peculiarities in painting are explained by Nordau as due to defects

of vision of the painter. “The curious style of certain recent

painters--‘impressionists,’ ‘stipplers,’ or ‘mosaists,’ ‘papilloteurs,’

or ‘quiverers,’ ‘roaring’ colourists, dyers in gray and faded

tints--becomes at once intelligible to us if we keep in view the

researches of the Charcot school into the visual derangements in

degeneration and hysteria.”[125] Vagueness of outline is produced,

Nordau says, by nystagmus, or trembling of the eyeball. Insensibility

of patches of the retina occurs among degenerates. The result must be,

he says, that the subjects do not see distinctly rounded images. If

such a person paints what he sees he will be inclined to put spots,

larger or smaller, side by side, the spots not being united together,

or only imperfectly. Some painters, according to Nordau, are capable of

only certain colour-sensations and perceptions, and sometimes see but

a single hue. This affords his explanation of peculiar colourists, the

preference for particular colours, and the monotone frequent in modern

art. Dun-coloured painting is a consequence of complete absence of the

sensation of colour, or _achromatopsia_.

Some colours have, according to Nordau, peculiar effects upon the

nervous system. Thus red has a “force-producing” or “dynamogenous”

property; and thus, says Nordau, it is easy to understand “that

hysterical painters revel in red, and that hysterical beholders take

special pleasure in pictures operating dynamogenously and producing

feelings of pleasure.” Other colours, especially violet, have an

inhibiting and debilitating effect upon the nervous system. “The sight

of this colour has a depressing effect, and the unpleasant feeling

awakened by it induces dejection in a sorrowfully disposed mind. This

suggests that painters suffering from hysteria and neurasthenia will

be inclined to cover their pictures uniformly with the colour most in

accordance with their condition of lassitude and exhaustion. When the

entire surface of walls in _salons_ and art exhibitions of the day

appears veiled in uniform half mourning, this predilection for violet

is simply an expression of the nervous debility of the painter.”

These remarks of Mr. Nordau may seem to many quite clever. It must

be confessed that the audacity and self-importance with which he

enunciates the most incredible propositions, as if he were giving

information of irrefragable truth, is startling, at least. Nor does he

on any single occasion make the least attempt to bring any evidence

to support his arbitrary assertions, or to prove them by objective

observations. All that Mr. Nordau tells us of impairment of vision

of painters, of the defects of their retinas, of their nystagmus,

etc., is the product of his fancy, of his imagination. Why did he not

actually investigate a number of painters and convince himself how far

his imaginations corresponded with facts before he put them before the

world as new discoveries? Mr. Nordau has nothing to utter but unfounded

assertions. Not only is proof of them entirely wanting, but their

falsity is in every instance capable of ready demonstration. Whoever

has had the opportunity of coming in contact with painters knows that

they are not colour-blind and have no trembling of the eyeball, even if

they belong to new schools of art. With the same logic with which Mr.

Nordau, from the colouring of modern painters, diagnoses a “weakness

of the nerves,” he might, in the great painters of the Renaissance,

who gave expression in their pictures to the religious ideas of the

time, find a general religious insanity. It can hardly be necessary

to examine more closely such superficialities, which ought to make no

pretension to a scientific character.

Before I undertake the psychological analysis of the phenomena of the

world of art of to-day let me be permitted, for the sake of avoiding

misunderstandings, to define certain philosophical concepts which

have been transported into the language of art criticism. I mean the

variously applied designations, Realism, Naturalism, Idealism, and

Romanticism.

By Realism I mean the aim to reproduce everything just as it is

perceived by the eye in colour, form, and light, without adding or

subtracting anything for the sake of beauty. Its contrary is Idealism,

which takes for its task to weed from every fact its most beautiful

aspect, and to suppress the unbeautiful by silence and by cloaking

it, so that beauty may shine forth in all its lustre. Thus these two

terms refer exclusively to the outward form of art, to its mode of

presentation. A centaur playing with a nymph, or any other subject,

can be painted realistically just as well as it can be painted

idealistically. By Naturalism I mean an artistic aim which takes for

its subjects such things as the world of observation (_Natur_) affords,

and renders only actual facts, actual creatures. Romanticism, on the

other hand, gives free rein to fancy, enriches the world with angels

and devils, and draws its subjects from religious or mythological

sources.

These different elements have from of old, and at all periods, played a

great rôle in the history of art. They mostly depended on the spirit of

the times. They answered to the feeling and thought of the people, and

manifested themselves at the same period in different branches of art

in the same way. According to the above definitions, ancient Greek art

was prevailingly romantic. The character of this ideal, myth-forming

people expressed itself distinctly in its art. Gods and heroes were the

subjects of the masterpieces of Greek statuary; gods and heroes were

sung by the poets who inspired the people through the theatre. This

Romanticism was coupled with the Idealism proper to the Greeks. The

beautiful alone seemed to them worthy of being represented. Symmetry

of limb and a bold, courageous eye were to them as indispensable

in sculpture as euphony and rhythm were in the drama. In the rough

presentation of the fights of the Lapithæ and Centaurs, of gods and

giants, they always knew how to vindicate the rights of the beautiful.

By pictorial grouping, by rich drapery of the vestments, by the beauty

of the forms, the agreeable and conciliating were kept constantly

before the sight.

Nevertheless, a certain Realism and Naturalism are discernible even

in Greek art. Among the numerous portrait statues dug up at Olympia

we find not seldom realistical busts whose faces had been abraded or

bruised in boxing. The cherries of Zeuxis, at which the birds picked,

are an example of realistic Naturalism. This aim in art was yet more

active with the Romans, without, however, rising to be the prevalent

tendency.

After Art had gone to sleep in the decadence of Greeks and Romans,

it was reawakened in an age when a new idea and a new metaphysics,

or conception of the universe, filled the minds of the peoples.

Christianity, after a struggle of centuries, had conquered the world,

and it offered a new romantic world to art. Hence arose that art of

the Christian-romantic ages which prevailed until recently. Among

single artists a certain inclination toward Naturalism showed itself

during the whole period; but it could not endure in opposition to

the all-ruling Romanticism which provided its subjects partly from

Christianity and partly from antiquity. It was not until the nineteenth

century that an open warfare broke out between Romanticism and

Naturalism, while Realism at the same time sought to displace Idealism.

What value Realism and Naturalism may have in comparison to Idealism

and Romanticism let professed art critics decide. Our part is only to

examine the phenomena from a psychological standpoint and to discover

the motives which produced those phenomena.

In the course of time, as in all new movements, parties and schools

were formed which waged the fiercest warfare, every man holding his

school and his method to be the only right one. It is easily understood

that in a matter of this kind, in the effort to make one’s own point

of view as important as possible, a contestant will shoot far over the

mark he had originally set before himself. So it happened that the

realists, who in the beginning only opposed idealism in so far as to

say that the task of art is to represent Nature in its truth, without

concealment and without prevarication, were spurred on by opposition to

mark their effort in their work much more strongly than was needful,

so that they not only presented the ugly and disgusting, because they

would not deny the existence of those elements, but went so far as to

seek it out, and at last quite forgot the beautiful and overlooked it

in their attention to the ugly.

It is the same with the Naturalists in their attitude toward

Romanticism. Their zeal to represent real life just as it is went

beyond all measure. The stronger the opposition to the new movement,

the more zealously did they try to bring forward the ugly and common,

while entirely overlooking the good. In this way genuine Realism and

Naturalism were corrupted, and the picture often became little better

than a burlesque.

The inclination, in the pursuit of a new idea, to press it far beyond

what was originally intended is a phenomenon grounded in the normal

human character, and found not merely in art, but in every department

of human production.

Carl Gussow was the founder of the latest Realism in German painting.

His endeavour was to represent Nature, unadorned, in its truth, without

shrinking at any blemish whatever. His peculiar colouring, the new

manner of his technique, his tendency to give special prominence to

ugliness, raised at the first appearance of his pictures in Berlin a

decided and general disapproval. But voices of wrath soon became weaker

and weaker, adherents and admirers began to appear, imitators arose,

and a new school was founded.

Somewhat earlier, but in exactly the same way, a yet more extreme

Realism and Naturalism had been started in France. Manet was the

founder of a new school in which we see a radically new artistic aim.

While hitherto painters had hastily sketched in the open air what they

observed, and afterward in their studios had repainted it, drawing

largely from fancy in the process, and indifferent to the difference of

light, Manet carried on his painting _en plein air_. The image, just as

it presented itself to the sight, and at that very moment, must be put

upon the canvas. Of course, these “impressionists” had voluntarily to

renounce all finer technique. They clutched at the coarsest methods, in

order that they might quickly, and without sophistication, reproduce

the impression seen. The soft transition of colours which the old

masters thought they perceived in Nature did not exist for Manet. For

him every object bore its own abrupt colour. In a landscape illuminated

by a dazzling sun, the green of the fields, the blue of the sky, the

red of the roof tiles, stood unmitigated and abruptly adjacent.

This sort of Realism, combined with a corresponding Naturalism,

called forth a veritable hurricane of censure. Again and again were

the canvases of Manet rejected by the _Salon_, so that he had to

hold an exhibition of his own. Nevertheless, a group of young men

collected about him, and it augmented as time rolled on; so that at

last he became a factor in the history of art. The endeavour to bring

unfalsified Nature upon the canvas led to special studies of light.

Previously the pictures produced in the artist’s studio had a certain

conventional illumination. Now there was an effort to reproduce with

the brush the colours as they were presented to the artist’s sight

under bright sunshine, in the dusk, in bad weather, by artificial

light, etc. Thus arose the dazzling colours which represent the

effects of direct sunlight. The violet landscapes show the attempt

to reproduce the illumination of the dusk; the “wan painting,” as

Nordau calls it, is intended to represent the mist-filled landscape of

the great heats of summer. It is not our part to decide how far the

painters who have pursued this aim have been justified by success.

The only task of psychology is to ascertain the psychical processes

which were the reason of the production of the picture. To criticise

it does not belong to psychological or to psychiatrical science. The

psychiatrist as such is a layman in the department of art, and would

be guilty of transgressing the limits of his competence were he to

undertake to give a judgment of a work of art, especially to draw from

it psychiatric conclusions.

As for the general end of art, we have seen, in considering the

psychology of genius, that fixed rules for it do not exist. The kind of

art considered needs neither a creative fancy nor a refined feeling in

order to express the peculiar moods of the painter in artistic form,

for painters who attempt that are rare. They wend their solitary way,

without following the army of any school.

Nordau sees in the “formation of close groups or schools” a symptom of

degeneration and hysteria.[126] He says: “Healthy artists or authors

in possession of minds in a condition of well-regulated equilibrium

will never think of grouping themselves into an association.... True

talent is always personal. In its creations it reproduces itself, its

own views and feelings, and not the articles of faith learned from any

æsthetic apostle.” This assertion is not true. Nordau confounds genius

and talent; and this shows how important it is to be clear in such

expressions. Simple talent by no means possesses the properties stated

by Nordau.

Jean Paul Richter[127] drastically styles the man of talent “the

gaily imitating ape of genius.” Men of talent to whom Nature has

denied creative power have from of old formed groups and schools. Even

Schiller became the founder of a school, although Goethe said his

scholars could learn no more than his language. In the formation of

schools nobody ever before saw a morbid symptom. But does Mr. Nordau

see what he is doing when he classes as degenerate and hysterical

all painters who possess only talent and are wanting in the creative

power of genius? His great saint, Lombroso, to whom he has consecrated

himself, says that “if in the nature of a genius signs of an abnormal

disposition are wanting, there must be some deceptive circumstance.”

Yet Nordau holds those artists to be degenerate who have only talent

and not genius. According to this, we must come to the conclusion that

if a man has genius he is insane, and if he has only talent he is

degenerate. Here the great doctrine blossoms out into its essential

absurdity. But as for groups and schools, in what department are they

worse nuisances than in science, and in particular in those branches to

whose advocates Mr. Nordau appeals by preference?

In realistic and naturalistic movements some great painters, I admit,

were concerned; and these embodied their own intuitions and sentiments

in their art. But they are scattered sparsely, rising like rocks here

and there out of the dead level of the ocean.

Böcklin was a painter whose pictures contain the sentiments and moods

of an artist. He tried by colouring and by the peculiarity of his

colour tones to lend to his pictures a mood which should affect the

spectator like the tones of music, like the harmonies of an organ. In

this idealistic garment of painting he wrapped, as a rule, a romantic

subject. His figures are centaurs, nymphs, satyrs, bacchantes,

mermaids, etc. He does not trouble himself much about the correctness

of his drawing, so that the grossest errors in that respect are

common enough with him. All he aimed at was to embody certain moods

in painting, and this he fully succeeded in doing in his Isle of the

Dead, his Elysian Fields (Die Gefilde der Seeligen), his Leviathan

(Meerungeheuer), and his Prometheus Bound. Böcklin is justly called

a poet in painting. He knew how to speak in colour tones and how to

awaken the most diverse kinds of moods. In spite of all enmities, he

soon found adherents and imitators, who have had no slight influence on

the subsequent development of art.

Let these brief sketches suffice to describe the mode of psychological

origination of modern phenomena in this department. What we have here

seen are but repetitions of facts often to be observed in history. New

ideas, especially when they emerge suddenly and without preparation,

and, above all, if they contain great departures from ancient customs,

have always a rough fight to make. They have generally excited a storm

of abuse and an apparently invincible opposition. It may be said that

just those ideas which later appeared to have opened the paths of

advance the most met at first the most stubborn resistance. It is in

human nature to hold fast to the ancient inheritances and to turn away

from them unreadily. Hence we must deduce the proposition that all

novelties ought to be met in as fair a spirit as possible, and that we

must always reflect that we are apt to have an unconscious prejudice

against new ideas which depart from our habits.

But there is another class of men who, on the contrary, think

everything new to be sublime and beautiful. Since they really

understand neither the new nor the old, they cherish the vague

feeling that the more strange and unintelligible a proposition is,

the more judicious and “profound” it must be. They speak in raptures

and ecstasy of the new art, and think it extremely clever to throw

out as many technical terms as they may have picked up without

precisely understanding them. Nordau terms these “persons of superior

intelligence who look down with pity upon the Philistine” who can not

rise to their genius for understanding art, as all hysterical. I can

not share this conception. It seems to me rather a characteristic due

to social conditions and to imperfect education. The ostentation and

vanity which so often show themselves in externals, such as furniture,

etc., are still more manifest in men’s acting and thinking. Many

parents educate their children, not for the sake of making of them

well-prepared and serviceable men, but for the sake of being able to

make a show with them. Not the happiness of their children, but their

own vanity, is, unfortunately, but too often the leading motive.

Children are taught music, not to form their heart in the beauty of

art and to ennoble their sense, but from vanity, to bring them forward

as trained monkeys. This vanity, this passion to appear more than they

are, is inculcated into many children of so-called good society from

their childhood up. They have to dazzle by their many-sided capacity,

by their understanding of art and learning. Evidently, it is for the

most part hollow, and if the thin covering of superficiality is raised,

nothing but a desert void is found. But they show well, and that is the

main point. In society, it of course belongs to good tone to chat about

philosophy, literature, and art, whether one knows anything or not.

Indeed, the more strange and unintelligible anything is, the more they

feel obliged to surround themselves with an appearance of intelligence.

If the question is about painting, they prate about the powerful

“mood”; in music the “working up of the counterpoint” impresses them,

without their having the slightest understanding of such things.

I should never think of declaring anybody diseased on account of such

traits of character as these, nor should I excuse his silliness in

that way. No, it is not hysteria, but simply bad education that is in

question. Educate your children to candour and integrity, impress upon

them that truth is the most indispensable of all virtues, that there is

nothing more contemptible than the wish to appear to be more than one

really is, and thus clear the world of such fools!

The sort of men whom I have here described are in their inculcated

superficiality of course aware of no inclination to take up a serious

calling. They would like to be imposing and to make themselves spoken

of; that is their highest ambition, and often the highest ambition

of their pretentious parents for them. Some feel themselves called

upon to become actors; others, musicians; others, painters; others,

to delight the world with their literary performances. No serious

study is contemplated, of course. With a certain enthusiasm they range

themselves with any new aim in art. They do not comprehend the spirit

of it, but they mimic the externals of the masters.

How he hawks and how he spits,

To spy that out they’ve used their wits!

When they have daubed a canvas violet or dark blue they think that they

have created a mood. If they can handle a brush like a broomstick and

smear about with it so that one can not tell whether the picture is

upside down or right side up, they call themselves, with pride, modern

realists and naturalists.

Undoubtedly there are a number of hysterical and degenerate subjects

among this class of people. But, in order to establish this, it is

necessary thoroughly to investigate every single case, since this

trait of character alone does not constitute disease. It would also be

extremely fallacious to reason from this sort of men to the population

in general. They are, at all events, exceptional individuals. Moreover,

such people have existed at all periods of history. We have seen that

Kant painted them in 1788 as a well-known category of society, calling

them the “monkeys of genius.” And in no age can the existence of such

persons escape the sharp observer.

The phenomena whose acquaintance we have made in the department of

painting have their analogues in modern literature. Here, too, the

Romanticism and Idealism of an earlier period of art are, in accordance

with our scientific metaphysics, displaced by Naturalism and Realism.

Thus the historical drama, whose subjects poets used to take from

prehistorical times and whose characters they altered and idealized

at will, as well as the romantic drama, in which the fantastical and

supernatural came to expression, belong to times gone by. The modern

poet draws his subjects not from early ages, but from the present. He

does not create his characters, but seeks to reproduce what he has

himself observed. He does not conceal any defect or weakness of his

stage heroes, but deals out equal justice to the good and the bad, the

beautiful and the ugly. The language of which he avails himself is not

poetical, sonorous, or metaphorical. His heroes spout no iambics, but

speak, for all the world, like all of us. In short, we are living in

the Bessemer-metal age of literature, and poetry sounds ridiculous to

us.

This realistic and naturalistic impulse in literature, which for its

outward form uses the novel as well as the drama, first found vent in

France. It has very often shot far beyond its mark, just as it has

done in painting. Anxiety not to conceal ugliness in a weak preference

for beauty, and to tell the truth that evil as well as good exists,

has egged on writers to hunting up whatsoever things were hideous and

whatsoever things were revolting, and has made them lose sight of the

beauty and the good that really do exist.

Other motives, however, may contribute to this effect. A number

of writers prefer to paint whatever is unlovely, and especially

immoralities, not in the above-described and half-involuntary way,

but for the sake of the moral. They do not look upon their art as

descriptive merely, but as partly rhetorical. That is to say, they do

not paint life truthfully without having an ulterior design. They do so

because the truth must awaken the moral sense of the people and their

aspirations for a better life. While the idealist, in the pursuit of

the same object, paints man in a lofty and scarce realized perfection,

the realist points out the shortcomings and feebleness of what actually

exists. He paints vice, not with the false glamour which an inclination

for it would shed upon it, but in the true hideousness of its details,

so that the contemplation of it may excite horror.

It is not my task to pass judgment upon the value and justification

of the different aims of art. I only analyze them psychologically. I

therefore pass at once to another class of writers, who have the same

preference for painting immoralities from a third motive.

These are those same uneducated and unintelligent ignoramuses whom

we mentioned above; for literature, too, is reduced to hack work in

their hands. Many persons whose capacities were sufficient to make

them good artisans, who might have been taught, perhaps, to make a

really good pair of shoes, or otherwise to fulfil a useful function in

the world, stick to the pen, because a bad writer is more respectable

than a good mechanic. They write, not because they have any calling

for literature, but because they know no other trade. These factotums

of the great literary army, shooting up like toadstools from the dung

heap, seize upon every dripping of filth that they can smell out, and

ask themselves, “How much money can I make with this production?” The

question, “What is the literary value of this fact?” does not occur

to them. That the task of art and literature is to ennoble the taste

of the public they have clean forgotten, even if they ever thought of

it. On the contrary, they speculate on the baser impulses and evil

qualities of the rabble. They have spied out the externals of the

modern Naturalists and Realists without attempting to penetrate into

the spirit of their works. Like senseless monkeys, they wade through

vulgarities and obscenities in order to excite the hankerings of the

great crowd, in order to be known as writers of the modern school,

and in order to succeed in a financial sense. The shameful influence

of this sort of authors--or, rather, writers--upon the population

is rooted in the disproportions of modern society. A reform in this

respect can only come from their gradual removal and from the elevation

of the culture and taste of the people.

Here, again, we meet, too, those unfortunate degenerate subjects who

possess a certain literary gift, but whose whole mental action is

morbid. They often show that marked inclination for every kind of

vileness and coarseness which is called moral insanity. This can not

fail to betray itself in their writings. The frivolous and vulgar

attract them, because they answer to their own thought and feeling. The

more obscene and indecent is the subject with which they deal, the more

they feel themselves in their own free element. But we must not reason

from the character of these last writers to that of authors as a whole.

It is not they who give literature in general its purpose. They only

ape the form of genuine authorship without being able to comprehend its

purpose.

Thus the Realism and Naturalism which are found in all departments

of modern art and literature are not, as Nordau thinks, marks of a

universal putrescence and nervous prostration, a “pestilential malady

of degeneration and hysteria.” Though those endeavours often overshoot

their mark, they are simply signs of that universal spirit of the times

that desiderates truth and fact, and gives the lie to all that is

mystical and supernatural.

The foregoing inquiries show that the same phenomena in art may

be produced in ways most diverse psychologically. It is the most

unscientific levity to treat them summarily and to say, as Nordau does,

that whoever paints violet pictures has weak nerves, or whoever paints

in the manner of Manet has lesions of the retina, etc. In a psychiatric

diagnosis it is requisite strictly to individualize; and thus we are

brought to a question of the highest importance for the psychiatrist:

_How far can we, from a work of art or literature, diagnose a mental

disease of its author?_

The influence of derangements of the mind upon the action of the

subjects depends, in the first place, upon the kind of disease. In a

great number of cases the disease does not manifest itself at all in

action. In others, in consequence of diminished efficiency, the value

of the work is diminished, and finally positively insane ideas may be

manifest in products of the insane.

In an acquired disease accompanied with gradual decay of intelligence,

as in general paresis, the disease may be detected by comparison with

previous performances, and occasionally the typical perversities in the

works of these patients lead to recognition of their misfortune. In the

congenital weakness of mind of degenerate artists and _littérateurs_

case is different. The example of Courbet shows that a weak-minded

man may paint very nice pictures while sane persons sometimes mine

out the vilest stuff. For this reason the value of a work of art is

not decisive in the diagnosis of the mental condition. Nor, as I said

before, is the psychiatrist, as such, competent to express an opinion

concerning the value of such a work.

Sometimes delusions make their appearance in everything the

insane person does. A painter may, in consequence of religious

delusions, paint nothing but pictures of saints. But to maintain the

converse--that whoever paints nothing but saints is suffering from

religious insanity--would be ridiculous. No diagnosis, therefore, of

insanity can be made from a painting or similar work of art, nor from

a musical composition. A musician under melancholia may, owing to his

morbid mood, compose only elegies and funeral marches; but that does

not authorize us to presume that because a composer only writes elegiac

music he is probably insane. The assertion of certain supersubtile

minds that certain compositions of Schumann’s betray his morbid state

of heart rests upon mere words, and deserves no notice.

But with writers it is quite otherwise. Their action is much more

comprehensive, and commonly affords a much deeper insight into the

psychical life of the author than a painting can do. It is within the

power of a poet or a writer to disclose in his creations a mirror of

his whole inner life, his sentiments, and his thoughts. Hence we shall

sometimes be quite able to diagnose the insanity of a _littérateur_

from his works.

But even here we must proceed with the utmost caution and reserve.

The descriptions of the poet can only attain a diagnostic value when

they have express reference to his own individuality. The objective

description of situations and characters can usually afford no

inference concerning the psychical life of the poet, and we should

commit a gross error were we, without any particular information, to

identify him with a character created by him. Elegiac and melancholy

verses, even when they bespeak the sentiments of the poet, can not,

taken by themselves, justify us in presuming a pathological condition.

We have seen how Goethe frequently grieved nigh unto death, and really

contemplated suicide, yet we should not be justified in assuming

melancholy in the psychiatric sense.

Where manifest delusions are described we can, in many cases, state

positively that the writer is insane. We shall do so with all the

greater certainty when it is not merely insanity in general that is

indicated, but the description takes on the type of a well-known morbid

form.

Rousseau is a good instance in point. His Confessions and Dialogues

afford proof positive of insanity. A typical delusion of persecution is

manifest in his saying that “the Kings of Russia, England, and France,

all nobles, the women, the priests, and mankind in general,” wounded

by some statements in his works, “had banded themselves together and

declared a dreadful war” upon him. A full examination of the insanity

of Rousseau, with special reference to the above works, has been

undertaken by Möbius.[128]

Tasso, who suffered from _melancholia agitata_ complicated with

hallucinations, wrote in a letter: “My sadness is so deep and

persistent that people often think me crazy, and I am forced to assent

to the opinion myself when I am not able to shut my thoughts up within

my breast, but break out into long monologues. My hallucinations are

human and demoniac. The human express themselves in shouts and cries,

such as men, and particularly women, utter, and in bestial laughter.

The demoniac express themselves in songs, etc. I take a book in my

hand to gain some information, and at once voices sound in my ears and

I distinguish the names of Paolo and Fulvia.” A quite typical example

of a modern poet whose insanity can be determined from his works is

Strindberg with his passionate misogyny and his other absurdities. A

comprehensive account of the state of mind of this author as betrayed

in his writings would fill a volume. I will therefore merely note the

most important points in a single writing which fully suffice to render

the diagnosis of his insanity certain.

In Die Beichte eines Thoren (The Confession of a Fool) Strindberg

describes his ten years of married life. His wife had been divorced

from her first husband, a baron. The book is, in substance, a serious

complaint against this wife, whom he accuses of infidelity. If a sane

man thinks himself betrayed by his wife, he will either leave her or

forgive her. But in either case, both for the sake of his own honour

and for that of the children--and Strindberg had several--he will

endeavour, as far as possible, to screen such family affairs from

publicity, and will rather lead the public to suppose the fault is his

than call the mother of his children a harlot before all the world.

True, departure from, this principle is not of itself a symptom of

insanity; yet it must be admitted that it is at least very surprising

that a man should write a book for no other purpose than to accuse his

married wife, the mother of his children, of infidelity.

Let us, however, consider the grave charges which Strindberg publicly

makes against his wife. From the moment the woman left her first

husband in order to marry him he becomes suspicious and believes she

has intercourse with other men. He does not suspect any individual in

particular, but every single man with whom she comes in contact for

a long series of years awakens his doubt and jealousy. Though he is

never able to adduce one single real fact by way of proof, he is yet

unceasingly tortured by the idea of the infidelity of his wife. She

not only has illicit relations with other men, but even extends her

unnatural desires, in _amor lesbicus_, to her own sex. She can not

make a call, nor even kiss a young girl, but he believes he detects

an unlawful, sexually contranatural act; and in his mind’s eye he

continually sees his wife in prison for her infractions of the moral

law, etc. In spite of it all, he loves his wife, and can not leave her.

Though he is fully convinced of her crime and depravity, yet the sight

of her “foot in its black stocking,” or even of her “garter,” is enough

to make him fall at her feet and, “with tears in his eyes,” implore her

pardon. Still the pangs of jealousy torment him anew. No less than six

times he “escapes,” and that into distant countries. But scarcely is

he away when desire seizes upon him. He is “shackled, not with chains

of iron, which he might break, but with chains of India rubber, which

draw him back.” He either returns or has his wife and children follow

him. There is a _Wiedersehen_ with great emotion, and straightway

new pangs of jealousy. Every waiter in the hotel, the _concierge_, a

lieutenant who comes to the _table d’hôte_, are objects of his wife’s

love. Once he was with his wife in a boat which was managed by a sailor

who wore very high boots. His wife looked at the boots, and forthwith

he was beside himself, detecting in that look a sexual aberration. The

same pangs of jealousy were excited by any intercourse of his wife

with any female. Thus he describes an old “devilish-looking person”

whom he says his wife hugged and kissed in a “lustful” way. Once when

his wife came to him she seemed to him to have the face of “that old

devil’s dam,” and he at once concluded that she had been with her,

and had committed illicit acts. Thus, no matter whether it were man

or woman, young or old, ugly or beautiful, in every living being he

detected a partner of his wife’s sin, and was driven by continual

pangs of jealousy into that desperation in which he wrote the book. It

ends with the words, “This, beloved, is my vengeance.” Such is his own

account. The _audiatur et altera pars_ may here be dispensed with. It

is a manifest case of jealous insanity. The image of the disease is,

however, essentially completed by the nature of his description. The

satisfaction with which he speaks of himself, the self-glorification

which appears in all his descriptions, is either one of the signs of

mental degeneration or, what is more probable, there is a delusion

of grandeur. He always speaks of himself as the “great poet,” the

“renowned scholar,” etc. In one place he says that people are jealous

of his great talent, and therefore might put him out of the way, which

is a characteristic manifestation of the delusion of persecution.

Among the most important symptoms of such maladies are the so-called

referential ideas. The patients refer all that goes on about them to

themselves. In every look, in every harmless remark of a stranger, they

fancy they detect a hidden slight intended for them. Whatever is said

in their hearing they connect with their own individual selves, and

find in the simplest things strong confirmation of their delusions. If

people stand up in a shop, it is because they are present. If anybody

in the street spits, he means to do it at them. All the articles in the

newspaper are meant to apply to them. In short, everything that happens

has reference to them.

This symptom is strongly marked throughout Strindberg’s book. He

misunderstands the most harmless remarks of his wife. In travelling,

if anybody speaks to him, either they do it to mortify him or to make

advances to his wife. The most ordinary counsels of those about him he

takes for cunning traps.

It would, of course, carry me too far to inquire into all the

particulars set down in this bulky book in reference to this morbid

phenomenon. It may suffice here to mention one marked example of such

referential ideas. When Strindberg first read Ibsen’s Wild Duck, he

immediately thought the whole piece was intended for him and was only

written on his account. He expresses himself as follows:

“It was a drama of the famous Norwegian spy, the inventor of equality

madness. How the book fell into my hands I could not say. But now

everything was clear, and gave occasion to the worst suspicions

concerning the reputation of my wife. The plot of the drama was as

follows: A photographer (a nickname I had earned by my novels drawn

from real life) has married a person of doubtful repute, who had

formerly been the mistress of a great proprietor. The woman supports

the household from a secret fund which she derives from her former

paramour. In addition to that, she carries on the business of her

husband, a good for nothing who spends his time drinking in the

society of persons of no consequence. Now, that is a misrepresentation

of the facts committed by the reporters. They were informed that Maria

[Strindberg’s wife] made translations, but they did not know that it

was I who gratuitously corrected them and paid over to her the sums

received for them.

“Matters become bad when the poor photographer discovers that the

adored daughter who comes before her time into the world is not his

child, and that the wife has warned him when she induced him to marry

her. To complete his disgrace, the husband consents to accept a large

sum as indemnity from the former lover. By this I understand Maria’s

loan upon the baron’s security, which I indorsed after my wedding. But

as for the birth of the daughter, I can see no trace of analogy, for my

daughter was not born until two years after the wedding. But hold! The

dead girl! There, I am on the track! The dead child which forced us to

a marriage which otherwise would not have taken place!

“I prepared a great scene for the afternoon. I wished to catch Maria

in cross-examination, to which I wished to give the form of a defence

for us both. We had been equally attacked by the scarecrow of the

masculinists, who had been paid for the pretty job.”

This is a perfect example of such a referential idea, than which

nothing more typical can be imagined. Let it be observed how every

detail of Ibsen’s play is made use of in order to establish a

connection with the delusion. I have therefore no doubt at all that

Strindberg was insane. His malady took a well-known form, called

_paranoia simplex chronica_.

Such patients are, in the true sense of the words, dangerous to

society. Strindberg himself tells how one day, “without direct

occasion,” without being able himself to account for his act, but

following a sudden impulse, he fell upon his wife unawares and beat

her unmercifully, so that she only escaped further abuse by the cries

of the children, who came running to her. Immediately after this

conduct he surrendered himself to full sensuous love for this wife. He

remarks himself that it is a peculiar union in which one drubs his wife

by day and enjoys her embraces at night.

That a psychiatrical diagnosis is not to be based on isolated facts,

under pain of error, but that the underlying motives of the suspicious

behaviour must be examined most thoroughly, has been repeatedly said

above. I do not know how I can better render my position clear than

by placing into juxtaposition with the above case, in which I myself

diagnose insanity, one or two others in which I can not accept such

diagnoses. These will illustrate the extreme errors into which one

may be led either by an insufficient examination or by an arbitrary

delimitation of the latitude of health, and by accepting a definite

type as the normal man.

That Dante had epileptic fits, is announced by Lombroso in a recent

paper.[129] “In the Divina Commedia, Dante himself describes several

fits in which he fell headlong and lost consciousness.” The passages

referred to are two, as follows: After Charon had driven together the

apostates from God, in order to carry them over the river, and Virgil

had described the terrors which awaited them, Dante says:[130]

He ceased. The gloomy region shook amain!

Still its mere memory bathes with sweat my brow.

Rumbled that land of tears with moaning wind;

A light, vermilion-coloured, flashed from hell;

And, wholly vanquishing my palsied mind,

Even as a man whom sleep o’ertakes, I fell.

_Parson’s Translation._

Another passage is as follows:

Meanwhile he moaned so much, compassion took

My sense away, and like a corse I dropped.

_Parson’s Translation._

Lombroso thinks himself forced by these passages to diagnose epilepsy

in Dante! Are we to take this seriously? If one of the comic papers

had undertaken to parody psychiatry, how could it have been more

extravagant? It would seem to me almost ludicrous to pay attention to

such assertions and to parley with them. Lombroso, however, is not only

a professor of psychiatry, but he is the founder of a “school,” and has

many adherents, not to say warm advocates. He is said to be “one of the

loftiest mental phenomena of the century.” He has “poured a veritable

flood of light, which those alone have not perceived who obdurately

close their eyes or who are too shortsighted to derive benefit from any

enlightenment whatsoever.”[131]

Lombroso thinks, then, that Dante, in the verses quoted, describes

an actual state in which he found himself. But what justifies

such a presumption? To be logical, he ought to take all the other

descriptions in the Divina Commedia for actual events. He ought to

suppose that Dante actually saw and heard everything he describes in

hell and in purgatory; in other words, he ought to consider Dante to

be an hallucinant. Why does he not infer this from such lines as the

following?

A leopard, glittering in a dappled hide,

That would not flee, though light and full of speed,

Hindering my way, before me I descried,

And often turned, as doubtful to proceed.

_Parson’s Translation._

On the same principles, we ought here to diagnose hallucinations,

imperative ideas, or consecutive delusion. Dante addresses this

supplication to Virgil:

Behold yon monster in my road, whose rage

Thrills through my veins until my pulses quake;

Defend me from her, thou illustrious sage!

_Parson’s Translation._

Why does not Lombroso infer from the “rage which thrills through

the veins” that Dante had hallucinations of sensation? All this is

inferable by the same logical principle as the epilepsy. The verses

from which he infers epilepsy only describe the crushing sensations

which the sight of the terrors of hell occasion in him.

In the Purgatorio, Dante describes three phenomena which he saw in a

dreamlike state.

To the next cornice we had come; here fled

All power of speech, mine eyes were ravished so.

For, seized with ecstasy, I seemed to be

Rapt in a sudden vision of a crowd

Met in a temple.

_Parson’s Translation._

Soon as my mind, that from itself had swerved,

Came back to true things that outside it lie,

I knew my dreams false, but their truth observed.

My leader then, who could perceive that I

Walked like a man by somnolence unnerved,

Said: “Come! what ails thee that thou canst not keep

Thy footing straight, but more than half a league

Hast moved with faltering steps, as if by sleep

Or wine o’ercome, and eyes that show fatigue?”

_Parson’s Translation._

Lombroso says: “It will be seen that the fits in the Purgatorio take

more of the dreamy, somnambulic cast; those of the Paradiso more of the

ecstatic.” Such a state he infers from the following:

So steadfast and attentive were mine eyes

In satisfying their decennial thirst,

That all my other senses were extinct,

And upon this side and on that they had

Walls of indifference, so the holy smile

Drew them into itself with the old net.

_Longfellow’s Translation._

If from such poetical expressions a somnambulic condition is

presumable, then all poets suffer from that malady. Not only poets, but

all ordinary human beings make use of expressions equally somnambulic.

They say: “I did not know whether I was on my head or my heels,” “I was

senseless with joy,” “The world swam before my eyes,” “I saw blood,”

“I can give no account of what I did, but when I came to myself I was

miles away.” Just such terms, clothed in poetic garb, are adduced by

Lombroso as evidences of a somnambulic or ecstatic state. So he quotes

the following:

At this voice saw I many little flames

From step to step descending and revolving,

And every revolution made them fairer.

Round about this one came they and stood still,

And a cry uttered so loud a sound

It here could find no parallel, nor I

Distinguished it, the thunder so o’ercame me.

So did my mind, among those aliments

Becoming larger, issue from itself,

And that which it became can not remember.

_Longfellow’s Translation._

Such are the evidences upon which “Master Lombroso” rests his thesis

that Dante had epilepsy accompanied with somnambulic and ecstatic

states. His disciples say that only the “obdurate” and the “imbecile”

can fail to perceive the great wisdom of this new doctrine.

In his chapter on Examples of Insane Genius in his Genio e Follia,

Lombroso adduces Schopenhauer as a case in point. Let us consider

upon what this diagnosis rests. Lombroso says: “Schopenhauer suffered

from melancholy. Dread of smallpox scared him away from Naples; the

idea that he had used poisoned snuff ousted him from Verona. From

Berlin he fled before the cholera, having once before left the same

capital because of a levy of soldiers.” No evidence whatever is

adduced that Schopenhauer suffered from melancholia. On the contrary,

Schopenhauer had all his life long an enormous self-conceit, while

genuine subjects of melancholy are marked by the absence of that

trait, considering themselves rather as bad and incapable. Unless

it be proposed to identify an earnest and pessimistic temperament

with melancholy, there is no reason for saying that Schopenhauer

had melancholy. As for timidity about smallpox, cholera, and the

conscription, it is not a symptom of insanity. Lombroso enlarges

upon his great feeling of anxiety, his fear of men, etc. But these

are phenomena found in all neurasthenic subjects, and are not in

the least indicative of mental disease. “He hated Jews, women, and,

above all, philosophers. Dogs, on the other hand, he loved so that he

remembered them in his will.” If hatred of Jews is to be taken as a

morbid symptom, the world is in a bad way! Schopenhauer’s hatred of

philosophers can readily be explained. His essay on women is eccentric

and passionate. But is that insanity? Lombroso himself, in his own

book on women,[132] has far overtrumped Schopenhauer on this point; so

that he ought to be cautious about considering misogyny as a morbid

symptom. “Everything,” continues Lombroso, “was for him an object of

reflection and of earnest discussion. He sought after the causes of

the most insignificant things, such as his own excellent appetite, of

moonlight, etc.” The only peculiarity here is the juxtaposition of

his appetite and moonlight, which is not Schopenhauer’s doing. Then we

read: “He believed in the table communications of the spiritualists,

was convinced that his dog’s crooked leg could be straightened by

magnetism, that he could recover his hearing in the same way.” I

know nothing about Schopenhauer’s belief in spiritualism. As far as

I know, he wrote nothing about it. Lombroso ought to elucidate this,

and state his authority for the assertion. But what I do know is that

Lombroso himself was so befooled by a spiritualistic she-swindler that

he wrote: “I heartily repent and am ashamed that I have so stubbornly

contested the spiritualistic facts.”[133] There is nothing additional,

except matters which may be called little _traits_ of character, but

are certainly not morbid symptoms. “He who so often suffered from

the intolerance of others, raised against Moleschott and Büchner the

most grievous and unjustifiable menaces. He hid his joy from nobody

when he learned that they had been forbidden to teach.” Just because

Schopenhauer had suffered so much at the hands of his adversaries,

he became malicious and filled with hate against them. We further

read: “He also considered himself as the object, as the victim of a

widely disseminated conspiracy of professors of philosophy directed

peculiarly against him, that they had come to an agreement in Gotha not

to mention his works, but to kill them by silence. On the other hand,

he feared that they would express an opinion on his works.” But this

opinion of Schopenhauer, whether quite true or not, had a sane reason

in the hostile attitude of the university professors toward him. It

would therefore be a great mistake to diagnose from that a delusion of

persecution, especially since the whole mode of manifestation of the

idea had nothing in common with a clinical symptom. Thus Lombroso’s

data afford no presumption that Schopenhauer was at any time mentally

diseased, and I can but pronounce the attempt to range him in the

category of insane genius to be distinctly unsuccessful.

Nordau, for whom every assertion of Lombroso’s is an oracle, goes a

step further, and pronounces that “the congregation of Schopenhauer

is made up of the degenerate and insane.” Of the man himself he

says: “Imagine a Schopenhauer who had written no astonishing books,

and we should have before us only a repulsive _lusus naturæ_, whose

morals would necessarily exclude him from all respectable society,

and whose fixed idea that he was a victim of persecution would point

him out as a subject for a madhouse.” Now, quite independently of the

gross blunder about the delusion of persecution, this proposition is

psychologically entirely incorrect. At best it amounts only to this:

that had Schopenhauer not been Schopenhauer, then he would have been

another man than he was. I have shown, in speaking of the psychology

of genius, that the little peculiarities of character and manners were

readily explained by the peculiar mental action of men of genius. It is

therefore illogical, to say the least, to subtract his genius and leave

his peculiarities as a remainder.

The special diagnoses that Nordau sets forth from the writings or art

works of famous men are quite of a piece with his judgment of the

population generally, and form a fit pendant to Lombroso’s diagnosis of

the epilepsy of Dante. But Nordau considerably surpasses the method of

his master. Lombroso limits his efforts to the discovery of symptoms

of insanity, and proceeds according to the well-known method, “was

nicht herausinterprätiert werden kann, das wird hineininterprätiert,”

or what can not be made out by exegesis is to be made in by inegesis.

Nordau, on the other hand, is an æsthetic critic. With the professional

omniscience of his craft, he criticises whatever falls within the

domains of philosophy, literature, music, and painting, and as soon

as the criticism turns out unfavourable to the author, down comes the

diagnosis of degeneration. Thereupon, by Lombroso’s method, a list of

symptoms are _hineininterprätiert_, or made in, and the justice of the

verdict is beyond all cavil. The boyishness and amateurishness of such

a proceeding need scarcely be pointed out.

Zola, as everybody knows, is the founder of modern Naturalism in

literature. His “Naturalism” is, however, not Naturalism in the sense

defined above, though perhaps the definition may agree with his

theoretical views. But practically his Naturalism is that which--in

its endeavour to exhibit life without any sort of falsehood, without

ignoring all that is grievous and base in it, nor pretending that

there is more of the agreeable and the elevated than there really

is--so widely overshoots its mark as to search out the vile and the

degraded. He does not fairly sample human life upon the average; the

characters he paints do not afford a type of the time in its general

character. On the contrary, all his novels describe the members of one

degenerating family which is subject to extreme deficiencies, mostly

of morals. Upon this aim of Zola’s Nordau pours out the critic’s

bitterest vials, and in fact he flies into a rage with the founder of

Naturalism. “He,” says Nordau, “who ridicules the ‘idealists’ as being

narrators of ‘exceptional cases,’ of that which ‘never happened,’

has chosen for the subject of his _magnum opus_ the most exceptional

case he could possibly have found--a group of degenerates, lunatics,

criminals, prostitutes, and ‘mattoids,’ whose morbid nature places them

apart from the species, who do not belong to a regular society, but

are expelled from it, and at strife with it; who conduct themselves as

complete strangers to their epoch and country, and are, by their manner

of existence, not members of any modern civilized people whatever, but

belong to a horde of primitive wild men of bygone ages.”[134] Does

the reader not see against what an enormous and crass contradiction

Mr. Nordau here bumps his head? What! He who, in most self-sufficient

fashion and in his most resonant chest tones, proclaims that for the

last half century the good society of all civilized countries has been

in a progressive mental dissolution, a state of “putrefaction,” and

that we are now “in the midst of a grave endemic, a species of black

plague of degeneration and hysteria”--_he_ asserts all at once that the

degenerate, the weak-minded, the criminal, “are the most exceptional

case” that could be found, that degenerates not only belong to no

regular society, but that they only “belong to a horde of primitive

wild men of bygone ages!” Well, well! Why, wherein does Zola conflict

with Nordau? Zola describes a group of degenerate persons, and, being

a naturalist, he is understood to imply that this is a type, a fair

sample, a representative of a family of our times. Is not this a Nordau

in the shape of a novelist? Nordau’s purpose is to instruct us that the

society of our time is in a state of putrefaction and that we are in a

black plague of degeneration. Anybody can see that he is Zola dressed

up like a scientific man. But when Nordau looks in the glass and sees

his own caricature grinning him in the face he loses his temper and

declares that such a society, just as he himself had painted it, is,

of all things that exist, “the most exceptional case.” Nordau, like

the witch of the fairy tale, has unwittingly passed judgment upon

himself, and has destroyed his whole theory with his own hand. But here

as everywhere he exaggerates beyond all bounds. To say that Zola’s

degenerate family naturally belongs to some “horde of primitive wild

men of bygone ages,” is for its inaccuracy and its screaming tone on

a par with his “black plague of degeneration.” Nordau thus takes up

a peculiar attitude, for he declares that “Zola’s novels do not prove

that things are badly managed in this world, but merely that Zola’s

nervous system is out of order”;[134] and his reason is that Zola

fancies he sees in a degenerate family a type of modern society, which

seems to be precisely what Nordau himself says.

But the way in which Nordau, in order to support the correctness of

his diagnosis from Zola’s novels, endeavours to refer all possible

symptoms of insanity to the author is the most comical thing that ever

was. Even Lombroso, though he is utterly unjustified in using the

fancies of the poet as data, does nevertheless adhere to what Dante’s

language, taken literally, expresses, for Dante does say, “_I_ fell

down,” etc. Nordau, however, without the slightest reason, identifies

the novelist with his quite objectively described characters. Although

Nordau himself finds their originals in the Karangal family, yet he

saddles the author with all the faults of the degenerate personages of

his novels. Thus he says: “Zola is affected by _Coprolalia_ to a very

high degree.” Coprolalia means an involuntary utterance of maledictions

and vulgar speech. It belongs to the series of imperative acts and is

often observed in degenerates. Zola himself is adjudged to exhibit this

symptom because he puts curses and dirty language into the mouths of

the degenerates described by him. From his pictures of prostitutes and

narratives of sexual perversities and exacerbations Nordau, without

further information, concludes that Zola himself is sexually insane.

Because Zola, in his naturalistic endeavour to paint everything

unfalsified, minutely indicates the various smells, Nordau presumes

that he has a morbidly developed sense of smell. “He shows at times an

unhealthy predominance of the sensations of smell in his consciousness

and a perversion of the olfactory sense which make the worst odours,

especially those of all human excretions, appear to him particularly

agreeable and sensually stimulating.” “Smellers among degenerates,”

says Nordau, “represent an atavism going back, not only to the primeval

period of man, but infinitely more remote still, to an epoch anterior

to man. Their atavism retrogrades to animals among whom sexual activity

was directly excited by odoriferous substances, as it is still at the

present day in the musk deer, or who, like the dog, obtained their

knowledge of the world by the action of their noses.”[135] To this

category Zola belongs, because his novels have many mentions of smells!

What should we come to were we to judge all poets according to this

example, and identify them with their creations?

A phenomenon, interesting in many respects, which has given occasion

to various psychiatric discussions, is that of Tolstoi. Both poet and

philosopher, he is of most interest to us in our present inquiry in his

quality as philosopher. Already in early years the writings of Tolstoi

displayed, besides a remarkable gift of graphic description and notable

psychological character study, also a struggle for a metaphysics

which might appease the doubts and contradictions born in his soul.

That civilization which consists in bringing pleasure and joy to a

slender minority at the expense of the mass of humanity seemed to him

worthless, and property the source of all evils. In The Cossacks and

Cholstomêr he gave expression to these views. Later he became engrossed

with the problem of death--the connection between being and non-being.

In Three Deaths he paints the disparity between Nature and civilization

in respect to death. The solution of this problem gradually absorbed

him more and more. New doubts continually arose, until he at last

came to deny every end of life, and suffered, according to his own

narrative, unspeakable anguish about it.

In My Confession he describes how for a long time he sought in vain to

answer the question, “Wherefore do I live?” Whatever he undertook, this

question pressed forward--“To what end, and what then?” If at death all

ceases, he asked himself, to what end are we producing and working?

What is the use of being respected and renowned? “Any day disease and

death may come to those I love and to me, and nothing but putrefaction

and worms will be left. My actions, however great they may be, will all

be forgotten--whether sooner or later is indeed indifferent. The chief

matter is that I will no longer be in existence. To what end, then,

are all these cares? That a man should see this, and seeing it, go on

living, is indeed a matter for astonishment.”

Powerfully does he describe his sensations in the following words:

“It is now a long, long while since that Oriental tale was told of the

traveller in the desert who is pursued by an animal that has grown

wild. In order to escape it he jumps into a waterless well, at whose

bottom, however, a dragon is lying, with open jaws, ready to devour

him. The unfortunate man dares not creep out, lest he be torn to pieces

by the savage animal; and he also does not dare to jump down to the

bottom of the well for fear of being devoured by the dragon. So he

remains clinging to the branch of a wild shrub which has taken root in

a rift of the well. But his hands begin to get tired, and he feels that

it will soon be quite impossible for him to escape the destruction that

awaits him on either hand; nevertheless, he still holds on, but now

sees that two mice--a black one and a white one--are running about the

trunk of the very shrub to which he is clinging and nibbling it away.

Soon--aye, soon!--will the shrub break off and precipitate him to the

bottom of the well into the jaws of the monster. The traveller sees

this and knows full well that he is irrevocably doomed to death; yet,

while he still clings to the shrub, he looks about him and discovers

drops of honey on its leaves. He reaches out to these with his tongue

and licks them.

“Just in the same way do I hold on to the branch of life. I know that I

can not escape the dragon of death, who is waiting, ready to rend me,

and I can not comprehend why I have been condemned to this torture. I

try to suck the honey which in earlier years gave me comfort, but it

delights me no longer, and the white and the black mouse gnaw day and

night at the branch to which I am clinging. I see the dragon quite

clearly, and the honey is no longer sweet on my lips. These alone I

do indeed see plainly--the unavoidable dragon and the mice--and I can

not turn my gaze away from them. This is no fairy tale, but a real,

irrefutable truth which is comprehensible to every one.

“The earlier delusion caused by the joys of life, which made me forget

the horror of the dragon, cheats me no longer. They may say to me as

often as they like: ‘You are not able to comprehend the meaning of

life; do not think about it--live.’ I can not do that any more, because

I have done so indeed too long already. Now, it is no longer possible

for me to avoid seeing the days and the nights which are hurrying by

and carrying me toward death. I see only this because it is the truth.

Everything else is untruth. Those two drops of honey which more than

anything else diverted my eyes from the horrible truth--the love of my

family and love of writing, which last I called ‘art’--seem no longer

sweet to me.”

In vain had he endeavoured to gain enlightenment from science on the

question that tormented him, “Wherefore do I live?” And so he sought to

find the solution in life itself: “And I found that the people of my

class have four ways of getting out of this dreadful position in which

we all are situated.

“The first way out is that of ignorance. It consists in this: that one

does not need to know, does not need to understand, that life is an

evil and devoid of sense. The persons belonging to this category--who

for the most part are women or very young or stupid men--have not yet

comprehended that question of life which Schopenhauer, Solomon, and

Buddha set before themselves. They see neither the dragon that is

awaiting them nor the mice that are gnawing at the shrubs to which they

are clinging, and they lick the drops of honey....

“The second way out is that of the epicurean. It consists of this: that

having come to see the hopelessness of life, one simply enjoys the good

it offers, looking neither at the dragon nor the mice, and sucks up

carefully every drop of honey, especially if there is a great deal of

it....

“The third way out is that of the strong and energetic. It consists in

destroying life as soon as the knowledge is attained that life is an

evil and devoid of meaning....

“The fourth way out is that of the weak. It consists in this: that,

in spite of the fact that the evil and its lack of meaning are

comprehended, one does not cease to live, though knowing that nothing

will be attained in the end. The persons who form this group know that

death is better than life, but lack the courage to act rationally by

making an end of the deception as quickly as possible and taking their

own lives. Yet they act as if they still expected something. That is

the way out of the weak; for why do I not procure myself the greater

good, which I know full well, and which lies within my grasp?... To

this group it was that I belonged.”

In his further researches, Tolstoi arrived at the conclusion that

“rational knowledge” could only extend to that which we are in a

position to apprehend.

“What did I do when I sought for an answer in the philosophical

sciences? I studied the thoughts of those who found themselves in the

same position as I, but they had no answer to the question, Wherefore

do I live? It is obvious that I, too, could not learn anything more

than what I already knew--that one is not able to know anything.”

He came to this conclusion: that “rational knowledge” can apply

only the finite to the finite and the infinite to the infinite, and

that it is therefore impossible to find in “rational knowledge” any

answer to his question. Only the assumption of something which is

beyond our capacity of apprehension, and therefore not capable of

being established by rational knowledge, can give an answer to his

question, and that something is the joining of the finite with the

infinite--faith. “Thus I inevitably came to see that in addition to

the rational knowledge, which at an earlier time I had considered to

be the only thing, all mankind possesses still another knowledge, an

irrational one--faith, which makes life possible.” Thus it was that

Tolstoi, at the age of fifty-five, returned to the orthodox Christian

faith in which he was originally trained, and in which he now again

found that calm and contentment after which he hankered.

Nordau does not agree with Tolstoi’s philosophy, therefore Tolstoi is a

degenerate. Now, unless the conception of psychical degeneration is to

be completely turned upside down, it can not be assumed that a person

can suddenly become a degenerate in the fifty-fifth year of his life.

One may get an attack of mental disease at any age, but degeneration

means disturbances of development; and therefore if a person has

not manifested any disturbances of this kind before his fifty-fifth

year, he is not a degenerate. If it is to be assumed that Tolstoi’s

views were caused by some diseased mental process, then it ought to

be proved that he had become mentally diseased, that he had suffered

from delusions or other phenomena of the same kind, or psychical

disturbances must be found in his whole past life.

Nordau does none of these things. He contents himself, in his customary

manner, merely with criticising Tolstoi’s philosophy, and sets up his

own infallible, sole, proper metaphysics in opposition to it, and

the degree of deviation from his opinion defines the degree of the

“degeneration” of the other.

This is not the place, nor do I feel any special inclination, to

undertake a discussion of Nordau’s philosophy; but, as he fancies that

he sees a symptom of disease in every deviation from his own opinion,

it will be as well for us to consider at least its principal points.

Tolstoi was tormented by the question, “Wherefore do I live?” That is

in Nordau’s eyes a sign of degeneration, for he considers this question

a superfluous one, since it can be answered quite satisfactorily

without any special difficulty. The man who has faith, says Nordau,

will have no occasion to ponder over this question. “The unbeliever,

who is convinced that his life is a particular instance of the

universal life of Nature, that his individuality has blossomed into

existence as a necessary law-governed operation of eternal, organic

forces, knows also very well not only ‘wherefore,’ but also ‘what for,’

he lives. He lives because, and as long as, life is to him a source of

gratification--that is to say, of joy and happiness.”[136] According to

this view, life ought to be for all living people a source of joy and

happiness, since, as Nordau says, one lives only so long as this is the

case. But does this view correspond with the facts? Do not thousands

of persons live who have no faith, whose life is to them anything but

a source of joy and happiness? Any one who really knows the world in

which we live will know that there are thousands of persons devoid

of faith whose life gives them nothing but unspeakable suffering,

torments, and misery, and who would yet not voluntarily leave this

world. We often see persons who have been deprived by incurable and

painful disease of every joy and hope yet clinging to life with every

fibre of their being. Joy and happiness, therefore, are not the causes

of our continuing to live. It is a powerful instinct residing in all

living beings which lies at the root of our clinging to life--the

instinct of self-preservation. This instinct is compounded of a number

of impulses and sensations, such as the impulses to eat, drink, sleep,

etc. It is the satisfying of these impulses, which in the case of

human beings are refined to a high degree, as we have seen in another

place, that forms the joys of life. The latter, therefore, are only the

results of our continuing to live, and not, as Nordau maintains, its

causes, in which light the instinct alone can be regarded.

Quite apart from its general incorrectness, therefore, Nordau’s

explanation is no answer to Tolstoi’s question, “Wherefore do I live?”

Our instincts form one cause of our existence. It is not, however, into

this, but into the aim that Tolstoi inquires. If, nevertheless, the

satisfying of the impulses--that is, the joys--of which Nordau speaks

is considered to be the aim of life, if consequently it is maintained

that we live in order to eat, while we yet eat in order to live, then

one is guilty of a voluntary perversion of the facts.

The question as to the aim and meaning of life has occupied many

philosophers before Tolstoi, and will continue, in spite of Nordau, to

be frequently a subject of reflection, and no symptom of degeneration

need be seen therein. Nordau, of course, according to his well-known

method of perverting and misusing scientific terms, calls this

investigation of the philosopher a “mania of doubt and brooding

thought.” He says: “It is not, then, the noble desire for knowledge

which forces Tolstoi to be ceaselessly occupied with questions

concerning the aim and meaning of life, but the degenerative mania

of doubt and brooding thought, which is barren, because no answer,

no explanation, can satisfy them; for it is obvious that be the

‘therefore’ ever so exhaustive, it can never silence the mechanically

impulsive ‘wherefore’ proceeding from the unconscious.”[137] Does

Nordau really consider his “therefore” clear and exhaustive? That

the real mania of doubt of the degenerate can never be satisfied is

perfectly true, but it would be ridiculous to turn this proposition

around and say that every one who fosters doubts for which he is unable

to find any satisfactory explanation is a degenerate. Besides, Nordau

has here once more defeated his own ends, for Tolstoi did after all

find satisfaction, and that in religious faith.

I freely concede that it is psychologically a peculiar phenomenon that

any one who has occupied himself so much with natural sciences as

Tolstoi has should suddenly become an orthodox believer; but if the

nature and manner in which he has come to this do not correspond with a

clinical form of disease, then faith as such does not entitle us in any

way to assume a pathological process. Religious faith can be reconciled

with the metaphysics of the present day, and is to be considered as a

symptom of disease only when it manifests itself, as in paranoia, as a

delusive idea.

Nordau is an optimist, and therefore declares the whole system of

pessimism in philosophy to be a symptom of disease. His interpretation

of the riddle of life “explains optimism and pessimism simply as

an adequate or inadequate vitality, as the existence or absence of

adaptability, as health or illness.”[138] He overlooks completely the

fact that optimism and pessimism in philosophy are entirely the results

of intellectual action, that it is in an objective manner that the

philosopher attains his conclusions, and that these are independent

of his subjective sensation, or exert only a secondary influence upon

it. Schopenhauer, in spite of his pessimism, desired a long life.

What Nordau means, what he designates as health and disease, refers

entirely to subjective sensation, and therefore to the love of life and

weariness thereof. That philosophical pessimism may in many cases be

the result of a diseased feeling of weariness can be conceded without

further discussion, but this is by no means invariably the rule, and

therefore here also, as always is the case in psychiatry, there is

need of a rigid individualization. Were Nordau less superficial he

would know that subjective optimism--the love of life--may be just

as complete a symptom of disease as the weariness of life. The power

of easy endurance in the insane paretic who finds himself in a happy

state of mind, and to whom the world appears in its rosiest aspect,

is a classical symptom of this disease. The weak-minded person whose

imbecility prevents him from reflecting on the seriousness of life,

and who is imbued with a sense of his own importance and greatness,

generally feels himself happy and contented, whereas, as we have seen

in our discussion about the man of genius, great, powerful minds

are just those that are always discontented and dissatisfied. That

optimism and pessimism are to be conceived of as health and disease, is

therefore another of those arbitrary assertions of Nordau which lack

all scientific foundation.

In his researches into the subject of morality it was especially

modern marriage which occupied Tolstoi, and he endeavoured to study

its nature and right of existence from all sides. The Kreutzer Sonata,

in which he developed his views upon this point, very soon gained a

world-wide reputation, and gave rise to the most violent discussions

and misunderstandings. The conclusion to be extracted from this work

(which, in fact, has been extracted therefrom) is that, according to

his moral teaching, the destruction of the human species should be

brought about by absolute continence, and that mankind should die out

with the present generation. On the strength of this theory there were

people who fancied that they recognised in Tolstoi a sexual psychopath,

and traced to this fact his surprising doctrines. In consequence of

these misunderstandings Tolstoi was induced, after repeated requests,

to explain in a special commentary what had been his real intention in

writing the Kreutzer Sonata.

After a detailed examination of matrimonial and extra-matrimonial

sexual intercourse in its sanitary and social relations, he sets up

absolute continence as an ideal worth striving for. To the objection

that in carrying out this ideal the human race would become extinct he

rejoins: “Apart from the fact that the destruction of the human race is

no new idea for the inhabitants of our world, that it is in the case of

religious persons an article of faith, and in the case of scientists an

inevitable conclusion from the observations regarding the cooling of

the sun, there lies in this objection a widespread and ancient error.

It is said that if mankind attains the ideal of perfect chastity it

destroys itself, and that therefore this ideal is not a true one. But

those who speak in this way confuse intentionally or unintentionally

two distinct subjects--the direction or precept and the ideal.

Chastity is not a precept or direction, but an ideal, or a preliminary

condition thereto. But an ideal remains an ideal only so long as its

accomplishment is possible solely in the idea, in the mind, so long as

it appears to be attainable solely in eternity, and consequently so

long as the possibility of an approach thereto is infinite. Could the

ideal be attained (if we can conceive of its accomplishment), then it

would cease to be an ideal.”

Accordingly, Tolstoi merely attacks sexual immorality, and neither this

nor his other doctrines of morality, in which he preaches the love

of one’s neighbour and the equal rights of all men, contains any new

feature.

In questions of philosophy, of metaphysics and morality, in which we

are still very far from being able to establish absolute truths, we

ought therefore, more than on any other subject whatever, to practise

toleration toward our antagonists. Every one must be free to criticise

his opponent, and Nordau may say of Tolstoi that his “theory of life,

the fruit of the despairing mental labour of his whole life, is

therefore nothing but a haze, a failure to comprehend his own questions

and answers and hollow verbiage. His ethics--on which he himself lays a

far greater stress than on his philosophy--is not in much better case

than the latter.”[139]

So long as Nordau confines himself to simple criticism, freedom must be

accorded to him to pass sentence on Tolstoi. But every one will have

the same right with reference to Nordau’s ethics and metaphysics. To

deduct, however, a condition of disease from a deviation from one’s own

particular opinion is, and must always be, unscientific.

Many persons would without doubt judge Nordau’s philosophy and ethics

in a similar manner as he does Tolstoi’s. Take, for example, what

he says about marriage: “Marriage, moreover, was not instituted for

the man, but for the woman and the child. It is a protective social

institution for the benefit of the weaker part. Man has not yet

conquered and humanized his polygamous animal instincts to the same

extent as woman. It would, for the most part, be quite agreeable to him

to exchange the woman he possesses for a new one.”[140] If every one

who does not agree with this view, as well as with very many others of

Nordau’s contentions on this point, is a degenerate, there would not, I

fancy, be many sane persons in this world besides Mr. Nordau.

If marriage, as he maintains, was instituted, not for the man, but only

for the woman and child; if the man enters into an agreement for his

whole life, not from ideas of self-interest, but merely from ideas of

compassion, and in order to give “protection” to the “weaker part,”

then marriage as a whole would have neither title nor moral foundation.

An agreement only holds so long as it is founded on legitimate mutual

interests. When these fail, the agreement must be dissolved, and no

power in the world will be able to uphold it.

The idea that Nature intended man to be polygamic but the woman not,

is not original with Nordau. It has been frequently brought forward,

and has in later times found upholders in Hartmann[141] and others. I

have never been able to see in this idea anything beyond an endeavour

to furnish a scientific excuse for the immorality and excesses of the

stronger sex. Even though it should be assumed that in general the

sexual instinct is stronger in men than in women, would this justify a

morality which permits the man to do what he likes, even to indulge in

the most dissolute debauchery, while the woman, on the contrary, who

lacks the strength even only once to withstand an impulse, is branded

as deeply fallen? Is this the protection which the “stronger” sex gives

to the “weaker”?

But Nordau’s opinion--that man originally did not have stronger

sexual instincts than the woman, but that he has “not yet conquered

and humanized his polygamous animal instincts to the same extent as

woman”--is certainly new. Therefore, according to him, the “weak

woman,” who requires the protection of the strong man, stands higher on

the ladder of development than the strong man himself. What wisdom we

do invent to palliate our own weaknesses!

Nordau’s chief fault and error are that he considers himself justified

in drawing a psychiatric conclusion from his purely subjective

criticism of a work of art. The art-critic’s point of view toward a

work of art must be an essentially different one from that of the

psychologist or psychiatrist. The first merely considers the work as

such according to its value; the latter, on the other hand, seeks to

ascertain from the work of art the psychical processes of the author.

It is evident that to do this it is indispensable to get at the purpose

of the artist or writer which lies at the root of his work. Nordau,

however, exercises criticism primarily, and troubles himself little

about the real purpose of the writer.

In the same way he judges, among others, also Ibsen. The literature

with reference to this writer is enormously large, and opinions about

his purpose are very diverse. By many Ibsen is not generally regarded

as a Naturalist, but it is fancied that in his characters are to

be found symbolical incorporations of poetical and philosophical

ideas. That his later writings, in particular the Master Builder,

are to be regarded in an allegorical light, seems, indeed, pretty

well established. Nordau, however, treats them throughout as purely

naturalistic productions, criticising the individual characters without

at the same time reflecting whether it was at all the writer’s purpose

to describe real characters taken from life.

It would carry me too far if I were to indulge here in further

researches as to whether the view Nordau has adopted regarding Ibsen’s

writings corresponds with that writer’s intention. In any event,

Nordau’s psychiatric judgment of Ibsen is again entirely based on a

purely subjective criticism of his works.

How important it is for the psychologist and psychiatrist, in judging

a work of art, primarily to ascertain the purpose of the artist--the

motive which lies at the basis of his work--I will make clear by an

example, which shows to sufficiency into what errors one may fall

when, in forming psychiatric expert opinions, he confines himself to

subjective criticism of a work of art, instead of investigating the

psychological sources to which it owes its origin. This example is

that of Richard Wagner, who has already given manifold occasion to

psychiatric errors. As this case is instructive for many reasons, and

at the same time of general interest, I shall investigate it a little

more in detail, and treat of it in a separate chapter.