[1] This passage has been misunderstood. It has been taken to mean that all the French nation had degenerated, and their race was approaching its end. However, from the concluding paragraph of this chapter, it may be clearly seen that I had in my eye only the upper ten thousand. The peasant population, and a part of the working classes and the bourgeoisie, are sound. I assert only the decay of the rich inhabitants of great cities and the leading classes. It is they who have discovered fin-de-siÈcle, and it is to them also that fin-de-race applies. [2] ‘My thought I hasten to fulfil.’ [3] A four-act comedy, by H. Micard and F. de Jouvenot, named Fin-de-SiÈcle, which was played in Paris in 1890, hardly avails to determine the sense of the word as the French use it. The authors were concerned, not to depict a phase of the age or a psychological state, but only to give an attractive title to their piece. [4] TraitÉ des DÉgÉnÉrescences physiques, intellectuelles et morales de l’EspÈce humaine et des Causes qui produisent ces VariÉtÉs maladives. Par le Dr. B. A. Morel. Paris, 1857, p. 5. [5] At the instigation of his mistress Ebergenyi, Count Chorinsky had poisoned his wife, previously an actress. The murderer was an epileptic, and a ‘degenerate,’ in the Morelian sense. His family summoned Morel from Normandy to Munich, for the purpose of proving to the jury, before whom the case (1868) was tried, that the accused was irresponsible. The latter was singularly indignant at this; and the Attorney-General also contradicted, in the most emphatic manner, the evidence of the French alienist, and supported himself by the approbation of the most prominent alienists in Munich. Chorinsky was pronounced guilty. Nevertheless, only a short time after his conviction, insanity developed itself in him, and a few months later he died, in the deepest mental darkness, thus justifying all the previous assertions of the French physician, who had, in the German tongue, demonstrated to a German jury the incompetence of his professional confrÈres in Munich. [6] Morel, op. cit., p. 683. [7] L’Uomo delinquente in rapporto all’ Antropologia, Giurisprudenza e alle Discipline carcerarie. 3ª edizione. Torino, 1884, p. 147 et seq. See also Dr. Ch. FÉrÉ, ‘La Famille nevropathique.’ Paris, 1894, pp. 176-212. [8] ‘La Famille nevropathique,’ Archives de Nevrologie, 1884, Nos. 19 et 20. [9] See, on this subject, in particular, Krafft Ebing, Die Lehre vom moralischen Wahnsinn, 1871; H. Maudsley, Responsibility in Mental Disease, International Scientific Series; and Ch. FÉrÉ, DÉgÉnÉrescence et CriminalitÉ, Paris, 1888. [10] J. Roubinovitch, HystÉrie mÂle et DÉgÉnÉrescence; Paris, 1890, p. 62: ‘The society which surrounds him (the degenerate) always remains strange to him. He knows nothing, and takes interest in nothing but himself.’ Legrain, Du DÉlire chez les DÉgÉnÉrÉs; Paris, 1886, p. 10: ‘The patient is ... the plaything of his passions; he is carried away by his impulses, and has only one care—to satisfy his appetites.’ P. 27: ‘They are egoistical, arrogant, conceited, self-infatuated,’ etc. [11] Henry Colin, Essai sur l’État mental des HystÉriques; Paris, 1890, p. 59: ‘Two great facts control the being of the hereditary degenerate: obsession [the tyrannical domination of one thought from which a man cannot free himself; Westphal has created for this the good term ‘Zwangs-Vorstellung,’ i.e., coercive idea] and impulsion—both irresistible.’ [12] Morel, ‘Du DÉlire Émotif,’ Archives gÉnÉrales, 6 sÉrie, vol. vii., pp. 385 and 530. See also Roubinovitch, op. cit., p. 53. [13] Morel, ‘Du DÉlire panophobique des AliÉnÉs gÉmisseurs,’ Annales mÉdico-psychologiques, 1871. [14] Roubinovitch, op. cit., p. 28. [15] Ibid., p. 37. [16] Ibid., p. 66. [17] Charcot, ‘LeÇons du Mardi À la SalpÉtriÈre,’ Policlinique, Paris, 1890, 2e partie, p. 392: ‘This person [the invalid mentioned] is a performer at fairs; he calls himself “artist.” The truth is that his art consists in personating a “wild man” in fair-booths.’ [18] Legrain, op. cit., p. 73: ‘The patients are perpetually tormented by a multitude of questions which invade their minds, and to which they can give no answer; inexpressible moral sufferings result from this incapacity. Doubt envelops every possible subject:—metaphysics, theology, etc.’ [19] Magnan, ‘ConsidÉrations sur la Folie des HÉrÉditaires ou DÉgÉnerÉs,’ ProgrÈs mÉdical, 1886, p. 1110 (in the report of a medical case): ‘He also thought of seeking for the philosopher’s stone, and of making gold.’ [20] Lombroso, ‘La Physionomie des Anarchistes,’ Nouvelle Revue, May 15, 1891, p. 227: ‘They [the anarchists] frequently have those characteristics of degeneracy which are common to criminals and lunatics, for they are anomalies, and bear hereditary taints.’ See also the same author’s Pazzi ed Anomali. Turin, 1884. [21] Colin, op. cit., p. 154. [22] Legrain, op. cit., p. 11. [23] Roubinovitch, op. cit., p. 33. [24] Lombroso, Genie und Irrsinn; German translation by A. Courth. Reclam’s Universal Bibliothek, Bde. 2313-16. See also in particular, J. F. Nisbet, The Insanity of Genius. London, 1891. [25] Falret, Annales mÉdico-psychologiques, 1867, p. 76: ‘From their childhood they usually display a very unequal development of their mental faculties, which, weak in their entirety, are remarkable for certain special aptitudes; they have shown an extraordinary gift for drawing, arithmetic, music, sculpture, or mechanics ... and, together with those specially developed aptitudes, obtaining for them the fame of “infant phenomena,” they for the most part give evidence of very great deficiencies in their intelligence, and of a radical debility in the remaining faculties.’ [26] Nouvelle Revue, July 15, 1891. [27] Tarabaud, Des Rapports de la DÉgÉnÉrescence mentale et de l’HystÉrie. Paris, 1888, p. 12. [28] Legrain, op. cit., pp. 24 and 26. [29] Lombroso, Nouvelles recherches de Psychiatrie et d’Anthropologie criminelle. Paris, 1892, p. 74. [30] Axenfeld, Des NÉvroses. 2 vols., 2e Édition, revue et complÉtÉe par le Dr. Huchard. Paris, 1879. [31] Paul Richer, Études cliniques sur l’HystÉro-Épilepsie ou Grande HystÉrie. Paris, 1891. [32] Gilles de la Tourette, TraitÉ clinique et thÉrapeutique de l’HystÉrie. Paris, 1891. [33] Paul Michaut, Contribution À l’Étude des Manifestations de l’HystÉrie chez l’Homme. Paris, 1890. [34] Colin, op. cit., p. 14. [35] Gilles de la Tourette, op. cit., p. 548 et passim. [36] Colin, op. cit., pp. 15 and 16. [37] Gilles de la Tourette, op. cit., p. 493. [38] Ibid., p. 303. [39] Legrain, op. cit., p. 39. [40] Dr. Emile Berger, Les Maladies des Yeux dans leurs rapports avec la Pathologie gÉnÉral. Paris, 1892, p. 129 et seq. [41] TraitÉ clinique et thÉrapeutique de l’HystÉrie, p. 339. See also Drs. A. Marie et J. Bonnet, La Vision chez les Idiots et les ImbÉciles. Paris, 1892. [42] Alfred Binet, ‘Recherches sur les AltÉrations de la Conscience chez les HystÉriques,’ Revue philosophique, 1889, vol. xxvii. [43] Op. cit., p. 150. [44] Ch. FÉrÉ, ‘Sensation et Mouvement,’ Revue philosophique, 1886. See also the same author’s Sensation et Mouvement, Paris, 1887; DÉgÉnÉrescence et criminalitÉ, Paris, 1888; and ‘L’Énergie et la Vitesse des Mouvements volontaires,’ Revue philosophique, 1889. [45] Lombroso, L’Uomo dÉlinquente, p. 524. [46] ‘Les Nerveux se recherchent,’ Charcot, LeÇons du Mardi, passim. [47] Legrain, op. cit., p. 173: ‘The true explanation of the occurrence of folie À deux must be sought for, on the one hand, in the predisposition to insanity, and, on the other hand, in the accompanying weakness of mind.’ See also RÉgis, La Folie À Deux. Paris, 1880. [48] Journal des Goncourt. DerniÈre sÉrie, premier volume, 1870-71. Paris, 1890, p. 17. [49] Viennese for ‘fop.’—Translator. [50] TraitÉ des DÉgÉnÉrescences, passim. [51] Personally communicated by the distinguished statistician, Herr Josef KÖrÖsi, Head of the Bureau of Statistics at Budapest. [52] Speech of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Goschen, in the House of Commons, April 11, 1892. [53] J. Vavasseur in the Economiste franÇais of 1890. See also Bulletin de Statistique for 1891. The figures are uncertain, for they have been given differently by every statistician whom I have consulted. The fact of the increase in the consumption of alcohol alone stands out with certainty in all the publications consulted. Besides spirits, fermented drinks are consumed per head of the population, according to J. KÖrÖsi: | Great Britain. | | Wine
Gall. | Beer and Cider
Gall. | | 1830-1850 | 0.2 | 26 | | 1880-1888 | 0.4 | 27 | | France. | | 1840-1842 | 23 | 3 | | 1870-1872 | 25 | 6 | | Prussia. | | Quarts. | | 1839 | | 13.48 | | 1871 | 17.92 | | German Empire. | | Litres. | | 1872 | | 81.7 | | 1889-1890 | 90.3 | [54] In France the general mortality was, from 1886 to 1890, 22.21 per 1,000. But in Paris it rose to 23.4; in Marseilles to 34.8; in all towns with more than 100,000 inhabitants to a mean of 28.31; in all places with less than 5,000 inhabitants to 21.74. (La MÉdecine moderne, year 1891.) [55] TraitÉ des DÉgÉnÉrescences, pp. 614, 615. [56] Brouardel, La Semaine mÉdicale. Paris, 1887, p. 254. In this very remarkable study by the Parisian Professor, the following passage appears: ‘What will these [those remaining stationary in their development] young Parisians become by-and-by? Incapable of accomplishing a long and conscientious work, they excel, as a rule, in artistic activities. If they are painters they are stronger in colour than in drawing. If they are poets, the flow of their verses assures their success rather than the vigour of the thought.’ [57] The 26 German towns which to-day have more than 100,000 inhabitants, numbered altogether, in 1891, 6,000,000, and in 1835, 1,400,000. The 31 English towns of this category, in 1891, 10,870,000; in 1841, 4,590,000; the 11 French towns, in 1891, 4,180,000; in 1836, 1,710,000. It should be remarked that about a third of these 68 towns had not in 1840 as many generally as 100,000 inhabitants. To-day, in the large towns in Germany, France, and England, there reside 21,050,000 individuals, while in 1840 only 4,800,000 were living under these conditions. (Communicated by Herr Josef KÖrÖsi.) [58] FÉrÉ, La Semaine mÉdicale. Paris, 1890, p. 192. [59] See, besides the lecture by Hofmann, the excellent book: Eine deutsche Stadt vor 60 Jahren, Kulturgeschichtliche Skizze, von Dr. Otto BÄhr, 2 Auflage. Leipzig, 1891. [60] In order not to make the footnotes too unwieldy, I state here that the following figures are borrowed in part from communications made by Herr Josef KÖrÖsi, in part from a remarkable study by M. Charles Richet: ‘Dans Cent Ans,’ Revue scientifique, 1891-92; and in a small degree from private publications (such as Annuaire de la Presse, Press Directory, etc.). For some of the figures I have also used, with profit, Mulhall, and the speech of Herr von Stephan to the Reichstag, February 4, 1892. [61] See G. AndrÉ, Les nouvelles maladies nerveuses. Paris, 1892. [62] Legrain, op. cit., p. 251: ‘Drinkers are “degenerates”;’ and p. 258 (after four reports of invalids which serve as a basis to the following summary): ‘Hence, at the base of all forms of alcoholism we find mental degeneracy.’ [63] Revue scientifique, year 1892; vol. xlix., p. 168 et seq. [64] Legrain, op. cit., p. 266. [65] Quoted by J. Roubinovitch, HystÉrie mÂle et DÉgÉnÉrescence, p. 18. [66] Legrain, op. cit., p. 200. [67] The scientific psychologist will perhaps read with impatience expositions with which he is so familiar; but they are, unfortunately, not superfluous for a very numerous class of even highly educated persons, who have never had instruction in the laws of the operations of the brain. [68] Mosso’s experiments on, and observations of, the exposed surface of the brain during trepanning have quite established this fact. [69] The experiments of Ferrier, it is true, have led him to deny that a stimulus which touches the cortex of the frontal lobes can result in movement. The case, nevertheless, is not so simple as Ferrier sees it to be. A portion of the energy which is set free by the peripheral stimulus in the cells of the cortex of the frontal lobes certainly transmutes itself into a motor impulse, even if the immediate stimulation of the anterior brain releases no muscular contractions. But this is not the place to defend this point against Ferrier. [70] A. Herzen is the author of the hypothesis that consciousness is connected with the destruction of organic connections in the brain-cells, and the restoration of this connection with rest, sleep, and unconsciousness. All we know of the chemical composition of the secretions in sleeping and waking points to the correctness of this hypothesis. [71] ‘One tread moves a thousand threads,
The shuttles dart to and fro,
The threads flow on invisible,
One stroke sets up a thousand ties.’ [72] Karl Abel, Ueber den Gegensinn der Urworte. Leipzig, 1884. [73] James Sully, Illusions. London, 1881. [74] Th. Ribot, Psychologie de l’Attention. Paris, 1889. [75] It is possible that an active expansion of the bloodvessels does not take place, but only a contraction. It has been lately denied that there are any nerves of vascular dilatation (inter alia by Dr. Morat, La Semaine mÉdicale, 1892, p. 112). But the effect may be the same in both cases. For through the contraction of the vessels in a single brain-circuit, the dislodged blood would be driven to other portions of the brain, and these would experience a greater access of blood, just as if their vessels were actively dilated. [76] When I wrote these words I was under the impression that I was the sole originator of the physiological theory of attention therein set forth. Since the appearance of this book, however, I have read Alfred Lehmann’s work, Die Hypnose und die damit verwandten normalen ZustÄnde, Leipzig, 1890, and have there (pp. 27 et seq.) found my theory in almost identical words. Lehmann, then, published it two years before I did, which fact I here duly acknowledge. That we arrived at this conclusion independently of each other would testify that the hypothesis of vaso-motor reflex action is really explanatory. Wundt (Hypnotismus und Suggestion, Leipzig, 1892, pp. 27-30), it is true, criticises Lehmann’s work, but he seems to agree with this hypothesis—which is also mine—or, at least, raises no objection to it. [77] Brain, January, 1886, quoted by Ribot, Psychologie de l’Attention, p. 68. [78] Ribot, op. cit., pp. 106 and 119. [79] Legrain, op. cit., p. 177. [80] Ibid., p. 156. [81] In the chapter which treats of French Neomystics, I shall give a cluster of such disconnected and mutually exclusive expressions, which are quite parallel with the instances cited by Legrain, of the manner of speech among those acknowledged to be of weak mind. In this place only one passage may be repeated from the Vte E. M. de VoguÉ, Le Roman Russe, Paris, 1888, in which this mystical author, unconsciously and involuntarily, characterizes admirably the shadowiness and emptiness of mystic diction, while praising it as something superior. ‘One trait,’ he says (p. 215), ‘they’ (certain Russian authors) ‘have in common, viz., the art of awakening series of feelings and thoughts by a line, a word, by endless re-echoings [rÉsonnances].... The words you read on this paper appear to be written, not in length, but in depth. They leave behind them a train of faint reverberations, which are gradually lost, no one knows where.’ And p. 227: ‘They see men and things in the gray light of earliest dawn. The weakly indicated outlines end in a confused and clouded “perhaps.” ...’ [82] ‘It is certain that the Beautiful never has such charms for us as when we read it attentively in a language which we only half understand. It is the ambiguity, the uncertainty, i.e.. the pliability of words, which is one of their greatest advantages, and renders it possible to make an exact [!] use of them.’—Joubert, quoted by Charles Morice, La LittÉrature de tout-À-l’heure. Paris, 1889, p. 171. [83] GÉrard de Nerval, Le RÊve et la Vie, Paris, 1868, p. 53: ‘Everything in Nature assumed a different aspect. Mysterious voices issued from plants, trees, animals, the smallest insects, to warn and to encourage me. I discerned mysterious turns in the utterances of my companions, and understood their purport. Even formless and inanimate things ministered to the workings of my mind.’ Here is a perfect instance of that ‘comprehension of the mysterious’ which is one of the most common fancies of the insane. [84] An imbecile degenerate, the history of whose illness is related by Dr. G. Ballet, said: ‘Il y a mille ans que le monde est monde. Milan, la cathÉdrale de Milan’ (La Semaine mÉdicale, 1892, p. 133). ‘Mille ans’ (a thousand years) calls up in his consciousness the like-sounding word ‘Milan,’ although there is absolutely no rational connection between the two ideas. A graphomaniac named Jasno, whose case is cited by Lombroso, says ‘la main se mÈne’ (the hand guides itself). He then begins to speak of ‘semaine’ (week), and continues to play upon the like-sounding words ‘se mÈne,’ ‘semaine,’ and ‘main’ (Genie und Irsinn, p. 264). In the book of a German graphomaniac entitled Rembrandt als Erzieher, Leipzig, 1890 (a book which I shall have to refer to more than once, as an example of the lucubrations of a weak mind), I find, on the very first pages, the following juxtaposition of words according to their resemblance in sound: ‘Sie verkÜnden eine RÜckkehr ... zur Einheit und Feinheit’ (p. 3). ‘Je ungeschliffener Jemand ist, desto mehr ist an ihm zu schleifen’ (p. 4). ‘Jede rechte Bildung ist bildend, formend, schÖpferisch, und also kÜnstlerisch’ (p. 8). ‘Rembrandt war nicht nur ein protestantischer KÜnstler, sondern auch ein kÜnstlerischer Protestant’ (p. 14). ‘Sein Hundert guldenblatt allein kÖnnte schon als ein TausendgÜldenkraut gegen so mancherlei SchÄden ... dienen’ (p. 23). ‘Christus und Rembrandt haben ... darin etwas Gemeinsames, dass Jener die religiÖse, dieser die kÜnstlerische Armseligkeit—die Seligkeit der Armen—zu ... Ehren bringt’ (p. 25.), etc. [85] Dr. Paul Sollier, Psychologie de l’Idiot et de l’ImbÉcile. Paris, 1891, p. 153. [86] Poems by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. With a memoir of the author by Franz HÜffer. Leipzig, 1873, p. viii. [87] Gustave Freytag, Bilder aus der deutschen Vergangenheit, Bd. I.: ‘Aus dem Mittelalter.’ Leipzig, 1872, § 266. H. Taine, Histoire de la LittÉrature anglaise. Paris, 1866, 2e Édition, vol. i., p. 46. [88] This is not an arbitrary assertion. One of D. G. Rossetti’s most famous poems, of which further mention will be made, Eden Bowers, treats of the pre-Adamite Lilith. [89] J. Ruskin, Modern Painters, American edition, vol. i., pp. xxi. et seq. [90] Ruskin, op. cit., p. 24. [91] Ibid., p. 26. [92] ‘Ballade que Villon feit À la requeste de sa mÈre pour prier Nostre Dame. ‘Femme je suis povrette et ancienne.
Que riens ne scay, oncques lettres ne leuz,
Au Monstier voy (dont suis parroissienne)
Paradis painct, ou sont harpes et luz,
Et ung enfer, oÙ damnez sont boulluz,
L’ung me faict paour, l’autre joye et liesse,
La joye avoir faictz moy (haulte deesse)
A qui pecheurs doivent tous recourir
Combley de foy, sans faincte ne paresse,
En ceste foy je vueil vivre et mourir.’ It is significant that the pre-Raphaelite Rossetti has translated this very poem of Villon, His Mother’s Service to Our Lady. Poems, p. 180. [93] Edward Rod, Études sur le XIX. SiÈcle. Paris et Lausanne, 1888, p. 89. [94] Rossetti, Poems, p. 277. [95] ‘The springing green, the violet’s scent,
The trill of lark, the blackbird’s note,
Sunshowers soft, and balmy breeze:
If I sing such words as these,
Needs there any grander thing
To praise thee with, O day of spring?’ [96] Rod, op. cit., p. 67. [97] Poems, p. 16. [98] Sollier, Psychologie de l’Idiot et de l’ImbÉcile, p. 184. See also Lombroso, The Man of Genius (Contemporary Science Series), London, 1891, p. 216. A special characteristic found in literary mattoids, and also, as we have already seen, in the insane, is that of repeating some words or phrases hundreds of times in the same page. Thus, in one of Passanante’s chapters the word riprovate (blame) occurs about 143 times. [99] Poems, p. 31. [100] Poems, p. 247. [101] Algernon Charles Swinburne, Poems and Ballads. London: Chatto and Windus, 1889, p. 247. [102] ‘The Runic stone stands out in the sea,
There sit I with my dreams,
‘Mid whistling winds and wailing gulls,
And wandering, foaming waves.
I have loved many a lovely child,
And many a good comrade—
Where are they gone? The wind whistles,
The waves wander foaming on.’ [103] William Morris, Poems (Tauchnitz edition), p. 169: ‘And if it hap that ... My master, Geoffrey Chaucer, thou do meet,
Then speak ... the words:
“O master! O thou great of heart and tongue!”’... [104] A history of the commencement of this society has been written by one of the members, Mathias Morhardt. See ‘Les Symboliques,’ Nouvelle Revue du 15 FÉvrier, 1892, p. 765. [105] Charles Morice, La LittÉrature de tout-À-l’heure. Paris, 1889, p. 274. [106] Jules Huret, EnquÊte sur l’Évolution littÉraire. Paris, 1891, p. 65. [107] Charles Morice, op. cit., p. 271. [108] Huret, op. cit., p. 14. [109] Vte E. M. de VogÜÉ, op. cit., p. xix et seq. [110] Morice, op. cit., pp. 5, 103, 177. [111] Rembrandt als Erzieher. Leipzig, 1890, p. 2. [112] Edouard Rod, Les IdÉes morales du Temps prÉsent. Paris, 1892, p. 66. [113] Paul Desjardins, Le Devoir prÉsent. Paris, 1892, pp. 5, 8, 39. [114] F. Paulhan, Le nouveau Mysticisme. Paris, 1891, p. 120. [115] Pierre Janet, ‘Les Actes inconscients et le DÉdoublement de la PersonalitÉ,’ Revue philosophique, December, 1886. Paul Janet, ‘L’HystÉrie et l’Hypnotisme d’aprÈs la ThÉorie de la double PersonnalitÉ,’ Revue scientifique, 1888, 1er vol., p. 616 [116] Morhardt, op. cit., p. 769. [117] See the Catalogue of Scientific Papers compiled and published by the Royal Society. The first series of this catalogue, covering the time from 1800 to 1863, comprises six volumes; the second, dealing with the decade from 1864 to 1873, comprises two volumes, equivalent to at least three of the first series (1047 and 1310 pages); of the third series (1874 to 1883) only one volume has been issued as yet, but it promises to outrun the second by at least one half. [118] Jules Huret, EnquÊte sur l’Évolution littÉraire. Paris, 1891. [119] Huret, op. cit., p. 65. [120] Paul Verlaine, Choix de PoËsies. Paris, 1891. [121] Lombroso, L’Uomo delinquente, p. 184. [122] Lombroso, op. cit., p. 276. [123] Verlaine, op. cit., p. 272. [124] Verlaine, op. cit., pp. 72, 315, 317. [125] Shortly, but not immediately after, the immediate result being a sense of great relief and satisfaction. [126] Verlaine, op. cit., pp. 175, 178. [127] Legrain, Du dÉlire chez les dÉgÉnÉres, pp. 135, 140, 164. [128] Huret, op. cit., p. 8. [129] E. Marandon de Montyel, ‘De la CriminalitÉ et de la DÉgÉnÉrescence,’ Archives de l’Anthropologie criminelle, Mai, 1892, p. 287. [130] Ah! if these are dream hands,
So much the better, or so much the worse, or so much the better. [131] Virgil’s ‘lentus,’ when applied to aspects of nature conveys a very different meaning. [132] Charles Morice, La LittÉrature de tout-À-l’heure, p. 238. [133] Huret, op. cit., p. 33. [134] Since these words were written, M. MallarmÉ has decided to publish his poems in one volume. This, far from invalidating what has been said, is its best justification. [135] Huret, op. cit., p. 55. [136] Hartmann, Der Gorilla. Leipzig, 1881, p. 34. [137] Dr. L. Frigerio, L’Oreille externe: Étude d’Anthropologie criminelle. Lyon, 1889, pp. 32 and 40. [138] Lombroso, L’Uomo delinquente, p. 255. [139] Huret, op. cit., p. 102. [140] Ibid., p. 106. [141] Ibid., p. 401. [142] Jean MorÉas, Le PÉlerin passionnÉ. Paris, 1891, p. 3. [143] MorÉas, op. cit., pp. 21 and 2. [144] Ibid., p. 43. [145] MorÉas, op. cit., p. 311. [146] ‘O Syrinx! do you see and understand the Earth, and the wonder of this morning, and the circulation of life!
O thou, there! and I, here! O thou! O me! All is in All!’ [147] Morice, op. cit., p. 30. [148] Morice, op. cit., p. 321. [149] Dr. F. Suarez de Mendoza, L’Audition colorÉe: Étude sur les fausses Sensations secondaires physiologiques. Paris, 1892. [150] Alfred Binet, ‘Recherche sur les altÉrations de la conscience chez les hystÉriques,’ Revue philosophique, 1889, 27e vol., p. 165. [151] Legrain, op. cit., p. 162. [152] Lombroso, Genie und Irrsinn. German edition, p. 233. [153] I may here be allowed to remind my readers that in the year 1885, and, accordingly, before the promulgation of the professed symbolistic programme, I laid down in my Paradoxe (popular edition, part ii., p. 253) the principle that the poet must ‘to the majority of his readers utter the deep saying, “Tat twam asi!”—“That art thou!” of the Indian sage,’ and ‘must be able, with the ancient Romans, to repeat to the sound and normally developed man, “Of thee is the fable related.” In other words, the poem must be “symbolical” in the sense that it brings into view characters, destinies, feelings and laws of life which are universal.’ [154] Hugues Le Roux, Portraits de Cire. Paris, 1891, p. 129. [155] Vte E. M. de VogÜÉ, Le Roman russe. Paris, 1888, p. 293 et seq. [156] See, in War and Peace (Leo. N. Tolstoi’s collected works, published, with the author’s sanction, by Raphael LÖwenfeld, Berlin, 1892, vols. v.-viii.), the soldiers’ talk, part i., p. 252; the scene at the outposts, p. 314 et seq., the description of the troops on the march, p. 332; the death of Count Besuchoi, pp. 142-145; the coursing, part ii., pp. 383-407, etc. [157] See, in War and Peace, the thoughts of the wounded Prince Andrej, part i., p. 516; Count Peter’s conversation with the freemason and Martinief Basdjejeff, part ii., pp. 106-114, etc. [158] War and Peace, the episode of Princess Maria and her suitor, part i., pp. 420-423; the confinement of the little Princess, part ii., pp. 58-65; and all the passages where Count Rostoff sees the Emperor Alexander, or where the author speaks of the Emperor Napoleon I., etc. [159] VogÜÉ, op. cit., p. 282. [160] Count Leo Tolstoi, A Short Exposition of the Gospel. From the Russian, by Paul Lauterbach. Leipzig: Reclam’s Universal-Bibliothek, p. 13. [161] L. Tolstoi, Short Exposition of the Gospel, p. 13. [162] Tolstoi, Short Exposition, etc., p. 172. [163] More accurately, in VedÂntism.—Translator. [164] Tolstoi, Short Exposition, etc., p. 128. [165] Short Exposition, p. 60. [166] De VogÜÉ, op. cit., p. 333. [167] L. Tolstoi, Gesammelte Werke, Berlin, 1891, Band II.: Novels and Short Tales, part i. [168] LÉon Tolstoi, La Sonate À Kreutzer. Traduit du Russe par E. HalpÉrine-Kaminsky. Paris: Collection des auteurs cÉlÈbres, p. 72. [169] P. 119. [170] Short Exposition of the Gospel, p. 140. [171] Le Roman du Mariage. Traduit du Russe par Michel Delines. Paris. Auteurs cÉlÈbres. [172] Ed. Rod, Les IdÉes morales du Temps prÉsent. Paris, 1892, p. 241. [173] Raphael LÖwenfeld, Leo N. Tolstoi, sein Leben, seine Werke, seine Weltanschauung. Erster Theil. Berlin, 1892, Introd., p. 1. [174] Lombroso, Genie und Irrsinn, p. 256, foot-note. [175] LÖwenfeld, op. cit., p. 39. [176] Ibid., p. 276. [177] Professor Kowalewski, in The Journal of Mental Science, January, 1888. [178] Griesinger, ‘Ueber einen wenig bekannten psychopathischen Zustand,’ Archiv fÜr Psychiatrie, Band I. [179] Lombroso, Genie und Irrsinn, p. 324. [180] Sollier, Psychologie de l’Idiot et de l’ImbÉcile. [181] LÖwenfeld, op. cit., p. 100. [182] LÖwenfeld, op. cit., p. 47. [183] Legrain, Du DÉlire chez les DÉgÉnÉrÉs, pp. 28, 195. [184] It is not my object, in a book intended primarily for the general educated reader, to dwell on this delicate subject. Anyone wishing to be instructed more closely in the morbid eroticism of the degenerate may read the books of Paul Moreau (of Tours) Des Aberrations du Sens gÉnÉsique, 2e Édition, Paris, 1883; and Krafft-Ebing’s Psychopathia sexualis, Stuttgart, 1886. Papers on this subject by Westphal (Archiv fÜr Psychiatrie, 1870 and 1876), by Charcot and Magnan (Archives de Neurologie, 1882), etc., are scarcely accessible to the general public. [185] V. Magnan, LeÇons cliniques sur la Dipsomanie, faites À l’asile Sainte-Anne. Recueillies et publiÉes par M. le Dr. Marcel Briand. Paris, 1884. [186] Richard Wagner, Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft. Leipzig, 1850. The numbering of the pages given in quotations from this work refers to the edition here indicated. [187] Arthur Schopenhauer, Parerga und Paralipomena, Kurze Phil. Schriften. Leipzig, 1888, Band II., p. 465. [188] Charles FÉrÉ, Sensation et Mouvement. Paris, 1887. [189] Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft, p. 169: ‘It is only when the desire of the artistic sculptor has passed into the soul of the dancer, of the mimic interpreter, of him who sings and speaks, that this desire can be conceived as satisfied. It is only when the art of sculpture no longer exists, or has followed another tendency than that of representing human bodies—when it has passed, as sculpture, into architecture—when the rigid solitude of this one man carved in stone will have been resolved into the infinitely flowing plurality of veritable, living men ... it is only then, too, that real plastic will exist.’ And on p. 182: ‘That which it [painting] honestly exerts itself to attain, it attains in ... greatest perfection ... when it descends from canvas and chalk to ascend to the tragic stage.... But landscape-painting will become, as the last and most finished conclusion of all the fine arts, the life-giving soul, properly speaking, of architecture; it will teach us thus to organize the stage for works of the dramatic art of the future, in which, itself living, it will represent the warm background of nature for the use of the living, and not for the imitated man.’ [190] Richard Wagner, Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtungen. Leipzig, 1883, Band X., p. 68. [191] Compare also, in Das BÜhnenweihfestspiel in Bayreuth, 1882 (Gesammelte Schriften, Band X., p. 384): ‘This [the ‘sure rendering of all events on, above, under, behind, and before the stage’] anarchy accomplishes, because each individual does what he wishes to do, namely (?), what is right.’ [192] Edward Hanslick, Musikalische Stationen. Berlin, 1880, pp. 220, 243. [193] Wagner, Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtungen, Band VI., p. 3 ff. [194] In a book on degeneration it is not possible wholly to avoid the subject of eroticism, which includes precisely the most characteristic and conspicuous phenomena of degeneration. I dwell, however, on principle as little as possible on this subject, and will, therefore, in reference to the characterization of Wagner’s erotic madness, quote only one clinical work: Dr. Paul Aubry, ‘Observation d’Uxoricide et de LibÉricide suivis du Suicide du Meurtrier,’ Archives de l’Anthropologie criminelle, vol. vii., p. 326: ‘This derangement [erotic madness] is characterized by an inconceivable fury of concupiscence at the moment of approach.’ And in a remark on the report of a murder perpetrated on his wife and children by an erotic maniac—a professor of mathematics in a public school—whom Aubrey had under his observation, he says, ‘Sa femme qui parlait facilement et À tous des choses que l’on tient ordinairement le plus secrÈtes, disait que son mari Était comme un furieux pendant l’acte sexuel.’ See also Ball, La Folie Érotique. Paris, 1891, p. 127. [195] Lombroso, Genie und Irrsinn, p. 229: ‘When the expression of their ideas eludes their grasp ... they resort ... to the continual italicizing of words and sentences,’ etc. [196] Friedrich Nietzsche, Der Fall Wagner. Leipzig, 1889. [197] Der Fall Wagner. Ein Musikanten-Problem. 2te Auflage. Leipzig, 1889. [198] Sollier, op. cit., p. 101. [199] Lombroso, Genie und Irrsinn, p. 214 et seq. [200] Wagner, Ges. Schriften, Band X., p. 222. [201] Rubinstein, Musiciens modernes. Traduit du russe par M. Delines. Paris, 1892. [202] The Origin and Function of Music: Essays, Scientific, Political and Speculative. London: Williams and Norgate, 1883; vol. i., p. 213 et seq. [203] E. Hanslick, op. cit., p. 233: ‘As the dramatis personÆ in “music-drama” are not distinguished by the character of the melodies they sing, as in ancient opera (Don Juan and Leporello, Donna Anna and Zerlina, Max and Caspar), but all resemble each other in the physiognomic pathos of the tones of their speech, Wagner aims at replacing this characteristic by so-called leit-motifs in the orchestra.’ [204] Wagner, Ueber die Anwendung der Musik auf das Drama. Ges. Schriften, Band X., p. 242. [205] Lombroso, Genie und Irrsinn, p. 225. [206] Ibid., op. cit., p. 226. [207] Wagner, Religion und Kunst. Ges. Schr., Band X., p. 307, note: ‘The author here expressly refers to A. GleizÈs’ book, Thalysia oder das Heil der Menschheit.... Without an exact knowledge of the results, recorded in this book, of the most careful investigations, which seem to have absorbed the entire life of one of the most amiable and profound of Frenchmen, it might be difficult to gain attention for ... the regeneration of the human race.’ [208] ‘Alberich’s seductive appeal to the water-sprites makes prominent the hard, mordant sound of N, so well corresponding in its whole essence to the negative power in the drama, inasmuch as it forms the sharpest contrast to the soft W of the water-spirits. Then when he prepares to climb after the maidens, the alliance of the Gl and Schl with the soft, gliding F marks most forcibly the gliding off the slippery rock. In the appropriate Pr (Fr), Woglinde as it were shouts “Good luck to you!” (Prosit) when Alberich sneezes.’—Cited by Hanslick, Musikalische Stationen, p. 255. [209] Legrand du Saulle terms the persecutor who believes himself persecuted, ‘persÉcutÉ actif.’ See his fundamental work: Le DÉlire des PersÉcutions. Paris, 1871, p. 194. [210] Wagner, Das Judenthum in der Musik. Ges. Schr. Band V., p. 83. AufklÄrungen Über das Judenthum in der Musik. Band VIII., p. 299. [211] Wagner, Deutsche Kunst und Deutsche Politik. Ges. Schr. Band VIII., p. 39. Was ist Deutsche? Band X., p. 51 et passim. [212] Wagner, Religion und Kunst. Ges. Schr. Band X., p. 311. [213] Offenes Schreiben an Herrn Ernst von Weber, Verfasser der Schrift. Die Folterkammern der Wissenschaft. Ges. Schr. Band X., p. 251. [214] A game of cards to which Teutomaniacs are much addicted. [215] F. Paulhan, Le nouveau Mysticisme. Paris, 1891, p. 104. [216] Legrain, op. cit., p. 175: ‘The need for the marvellous is almost always inevitable among the weak-minded.’ [217] Sar MÉrodack J. PÉladan, AmphithÉatre des Sciences mortes. Comment on devient Mage. Éthique. Avec un portrait pittoresque gravÉ par G. Poirel. Paris, 1892. [218] JosÉphin PÉladan, La DÉcadence latine. EthopÉe IX.: ‘La Gynandre.’ Couverture de SÉon, eau-forte de Desboutins. Paris, 1891, p. xvii. [219] Maurice Rollinat, Les NÉvroses (Les Ames—Les Suaires—Les Refuges—Les Spectres—Les TÉnÈbres). Avec un portrait de l’auteur par F. Desmoulin. Paris, 1883. Quite as striking is his later collection of poems, L’AbÎme. Paris, 1891. [220] HumiliÉs et OffensÉs, p. 55; quoted by De VogÜÉ, Le Roman russe, p. 222, foot-note. [221] Legrain, op. cit., p. 246. [222] Journal of Mental Science, January, 1888. [223] Le DÉlire des PersÉcutions. Paris, 1871, p. 512. [224] Morel, ‘Du DÉlire panophobique des AliÉnÉs gÉmisseurs.’ Annales mÉdico-psychologiques, 1871, 2e vol., p. 322. [225] Maurice Maeterlinck, Serres chaudes. Nouvelle Édition. Bruxelles, 1890. [226] Lombroso, Genie und Irrsinn, p. 322: ‘Walt Whitman, the poet of the modern Anglo-Americans, and assuredly a mad genius, was a typographer, teacher, soldier, joiner, and for some time also a bureaucrat, which, for a poet, is the queerest of trades.’ This constant changing of his profession Lombroso rightly characterizes as one of the signs of mental derangement. A French admirer of Whitman, Gabriel Sarrazin (La Renaissance de la PoÉsie anglaise, 1798-1889; Paris, 1889, p. 270, foot-note), palliates this proof of organic instability and weakness of will in the following manner: ‘This American facility of changing from one calling to another goes against our old European prejudices, and our unalterable veneration for thoroughly hierarchical, bureaucratic routine-careers. We have remained in this, as in so many other respects, essentially narrow-minded, and cannot understand that diversity of capacities gives a man a very much greater social value.’ This is the true method of the Æsthetic wind-bag, who for every fact which he does not understand finds roundly-turned phrases with which he explains and justifies everything to his own satisfaction. [227] Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass; a new edition. Glasgow, 1884. [228] Maurice Maeterlinck, The Princess Maleine and the Intruder. London: W. Heinemann, 1892. [229] Omitted in the English translation.—Translator. [230] Lisandro Reyes has clearly seen this in his useful sketch entitled Contribution À l’Etude de l’État mental chez les Enfants dÉgÉnÉrÉs; Paris, 1890, p. 8. He affirms expressly that among degenerate children there is no really exclusive ‘monomania.’ ‘Among them an isolated delirious idea may endure for some time, but it is most frequently replaced all at once by a new conception.’ [231] Legrain (Du DÉlire chez les DÉgÉnÉrÉs, Paris, 1886) merely expresses this in somewhat different words, when he says (p. 68), ‘Obsession, impulsion, these are to be found at the base of all monomania.’ [232] Analyzed in the Journal of Mental Science, January, 1888. [233] J. Roubinovitch, HystÉrie mÂle et DÉgÉnÉrescence. Paris, 1890, p. 62. [234] Legrain, op. cit., p. 10. [235] Lombroso, Genie und Irrsinn (German edition cited in vol. i.), p. 325. [236] Dr. Paul Sollier, Psychologie de l’Idiot et de l’ImbÉcile. Paris, 1890, p. 174. [237] See on this subject the remarkable treatise of Alfred Binet, ‘On the Psychic Life of Micro-organisms,’ contained in the volume of extracts: ‘Le FÉtichisme dans l’Amour (Etudes de Psychologie expÉrimentale). La Vie psychique des Micro-organismes, l’IntensitÉ des Images mentales, le ProblÈme hypnotique, Note sur l’Écriture hystÉrique.’ Paris, 1890.—A short time before Binet, this same subject was treated by Verworn in a very deserving manner, at once original and suggestive, in his Psycho-physiologische Protisten-Studien. Jena, 1889. [238] ‘Certain [sick] persons enjoy keenly a sense of the lightness of their body, feel themselves hovering in the air, believe they could fly; or else they have a feeling of weight either in the whole body, in many limbs, or in one single limb, which seems to them huge and heavy. A young epileptic sometimes felt his body so extraordinarily heavy that he could scarcely raise it. At other times he felt himself so light that he believed he did not touch the ground. Sometimes it seemed to him that his body had assumed such proportions that it was impossible for him to pass through a door. In this last illusion ... the patient feels himself very much smaller or very much larger than he really is.’—Th. Ribot, Les Maladies de la PersonnalitÉ, 3e Édition. Paris, 1889, p. 35. [239] Sollier, Psychologie de l’Idiot et de l’ImbÉcile, p. 52 et seq. [240] Lombroso, L’Uomo delinquente. 3a edizione. Torino, 1884, p. 329 et seq. [241] Lombroso, Les Applications de l’Anthropologie criminelle. Paris, 1892, p. 179. [242] Th. Ribot, Les Maladies de la PersonnalitÉ, pp. 61, 78, 105. [243] Maudsley, The Pathology of Mind. London, 1879, p. 287. [244] See also Alfred Binet, Les AltÉrations de la PersonnalitÉ, Paris, 1892, p. 39: ‘His senses close to outside stimulation; for him, the external world ceases to exist; he lives no more than his exclusively personal life; he acts only through his own stimuli, with the automatic movement of his brain. Although he receives nothing more from outside, and his personality is completely isolated from the surroundings in which he is placed, he may be seen to go, come, do, act, as if he had his senses and intelligence in full exercise.’ This, it is true, is the description of a patient, but what he says of the latter applies equally, with a difference of degree only, to the ego-maniac. FÉrÉ has communicated to the Biological Society of Paris, in the sÉance of November 12, 1892, the results of a great number of experiments made by him, whence it appears ‘that among the greater part of epileptics, hysterical and degenerate subjects, cutaneous sensibility is diminished.’ See La Semaine mÉdicale, 1892, p. 456. [245] Alfred Binet, Les AltÉrations de la PersonnalitÉ. Paris, 1892, pp. 83, 85, et seq. [246] ‘The organic, cardiac, vaso-motor, secretory, etc., phenomena accompanying almost all, if not all, affective states ... far from following the conscious phenomenon, precede it; none the less they remain in many cases unconscious.’—Gley, quoted by A. Binet, Les AltÉrations de la PersonnalitÉ, p. 208. [247] This is not merely a simple hypothesis, but a well-demonstrated fact. Hundreds of experiments by Boeck, Weill, Moebius, Charrin, Mairet, Bosc, Slosse, Laborde, Marie, etc., have established that among the deranged, during periods of excitation and afterwards, the urine is more toxic, i.e., more full of waste and excreted organic matter, while after the periods of depression it is less toxic, i.e., poorer in disaggregated matter, than among sane individuals, which proves that, among the former, the nutrition of the tissues is morbidly increased or retarded. [248] Dr. Paul Moreau, of Tours, describes perversion (l’aberration) in these somewhat obscure terms: ‘Perversion constitutes a deviation from the laws which rule the proper sensibility of the organs and faculties. By this word we mean to designate those cases in which observation testifies to an unnatural, exceptional, and wholly pathological change, a change carrying palpable disturbance into the regular working of a faculty.’—Des Aberrations du Sens gÉnÉsique. 4e Édition. Paris, 1887, p. 1. [249] ‘The vices of the psycho-physical organization manifesting themselves by acts prohibited, not only by morality—that aggregate of necessary rules elaborated by the secular experience of peoples—but also by their penal codes, are in discord with life in society, in the midst of which humanity can alone make progress.... A man, from his birth adapted to social life, can only acquire such vices as a consequence of certain pernicious conditions, through which his psycho-physical powers are set in opposition to the necessary exigencies of social life.’—Drill, Les Criminels mineurs, quoted by Lombroso in Les Applications de l’Anthropologie criminelle. Paris, 1892, p. 94. See also G. Tarde, La Philosophie pÉnale, Lyon, 1890, passim; ‘The morally deranged are not true lunatics. A Marquise de Brinvilliers, a Troppmann, a being born without either compassion or sense of shame—can it be said of such an one that he is not himself when he commits his crime? No. He is only too much himself. But his existence, his person, are hostile to society. He does not feel the same sentiments which we civilized people regard as indispensable. It is useless to think of curing him or of reforming him.’ [250] Darwinism explains adaptation only as the result of the struggle for existence, and of selection which is a form of this struggle. In one individual a quality appears accidentally, which makes it more capable of preserving itself and of conquering its enemies than those individuals not born with this quality. It finds more favourable conditions of existence, leaves behind it more numerous descendants inheriting this advantageous quality, and by the survival of the fittest and the disappearance of the less fit, the whole species comes into the possession of this advantageous quality. I do not at all deny that an accidental individual deviation from the type of the species, which proves an advantage in the struggle for existence, can be a source of transformations having as their result a better adaptation of the species to given and unmodifiable circumstances. But I do not believe that such an accident is the only source, or even the most frequent source, of such transformations. The process of adaptation appears to me to be quite otherwise, viz., the living being experiences in some situation feelings of discomfort from which he wishes to escape, either by change of situation (movement, flight), or by trying to act vigorously on the causes of these feelings of discomfort (attack, modification of natural conditions). If the organs possessed by the living being, and the aptitude these organs have acquired, are not sufficient to furnish the counteractions felt and wished for as necessary to those feelings of discomfort, the weaker creatures submit to their destiny, and suffer or even perish. More vigorous individuals, on the contrary, make violent and continuous efforts in order to attain their design, of flight, defence, attack, suppression of natural obstacles; they give strong nervous impulses to their organs to increase to the highest degree their functional capacity, and these nervous impulses are the immediate cause of transformations, giving to the organs new qualities, and rendering them more fit to make the living creature thrive. That the nervous impulse produces, as a consequence, an increase in the flow of blood, and a better nutrition for the organ in play, is a positive biological fact. In my opinion, then, adaptation is most frequently an act of the will, and not the result of qualities accidentally acquired. It has as premise the clear perception and representation of the external causes of the feelings of discomfort, and a keen desire to escape from them, or, again, that of procuring feelings of pleasure, i.e., an inorganic appetite. Its mechanism consists in the elaboration of an intense representation of serviceable acts of certain organs, and in the sending of adequate impulses to these organs. That such impulses can modify the anatomical structure of the organs, Kant already anticipated when he wrote his treatise, Von der Macht des GemÜthes; and modern therapeutics has fully confirmed this, by showing that the stigmata of a Louise Lateau, the healing of tumours on the tomb of the Deacon Paris, the modifications induced by suggestion on the skin of hysterical subjects, the formation of birth-marks by eventualities and emotions, are the effect of presentations on the bodily tissues. It was wrong to laugh at Lamarck for teaching that the giraffe has a long neck because it has continually stretched it in order to be able to feed off the topmost foliage of plants with tall stems. When the animal elaborates the clear idea that he ought to elongate his neck as much as possible in order to reach the elevated foliage, this presentation will influence in the strongest manner the circulation of the blood in all the tissues of the neck; these will be quite differently nourished from what they would be without this presentation, and the changes desired by the animal will certainly take place little by little, if his general organization makes them possible. Knowledge and will are therefore causes of adaptation—not the will in the mystical sense of Schopenhauer, but the will that is the dispenser of nervous impulses. This summary must suffice for the reader; this is not the place to develop it more, and to demonstrate in detail how fertile these ideas are for the theory of evolution. [251] H. Taine, Les Origines de la France contemporaine: La RÉvolution, vol. ii., ‘La ConquÊte jacobine,’ Paris, 1881, pp. 11-12: ‘Neither exaggerated self-esteem nor dogmatic argument is rare in the human species. In every country these two roots of the Jacobin spirit subsist indestructible beneath the surface. Everywhere they are kept in check by established society, and everywhere they try to upheave the old historical structure which presses on them with all its weight.... At twenty years old, when a young man enters the world, his reason is hurt at the same time as his pride. In the first place, of whatever society he may be a member, it is a scandal to pure reason, for it has not been constructed on a simple principle by a philosophical legislator; it has been arranged by successive generations according to their multiple and varying needs.... In the second place, however perfect institutions, laws, and manners may be, since they have preceded him he has not assented to them at all; others, his predecessors, have chosen for him, and have enclosed him, in advance, in a moral, political, and social mould which pleased them. It matters little if it displeases him; he is forced to submit to it, and, like a harnessed horse, he must walk between the shafts in the harness put on him.... It is not surprising, then, if he is tempted to kick against the framework in which, nolens volens, he is enclosed, and in which subordination will be his lot. Thence it comes that the majority of young men—above all, those who have their careers to make—are more or less Jacobins on leaving college; it is an infirmity of growth.’ [252] Dr. Paul Sollier, Psychologie de l’Idiot et de l’ImbÉcile, p. 109 et seq.: ‘There exists among idiots another instinct which is met with, nevertheless, to a certain degree among normal children. This is destructiveness, which shows itself among all children as a first manifestation of their powers of movement, under the form of a desire to strike, break, and destroy.... This tendency is much more pronounced among idiots.... It is not the same with imbeciles. Their malicious and mischievous spirit drives them to destroy, not only for the purpose of expending their strength, but with the object of injuring. It is an unwholesome gratification which they seek.’ [253] Jules Huret, EnquÊte sur l’Évolution littÉraire, p. 288. [254] ThÉophile Gautier, Les Grotesques. 3me Édition. Paris, 1856. [255] Les Fleurs du Mal, par Charles Baudelaire, prÉcÉdÉes d’une notice par ThÉophile Gautier. 2e Édition. Paris, 1869, p. 46. [256] M. Guyau, ‘L’ÉsthÉtique du Vers moderne,’ Revue philosophique, vol. xvii., p. 270. [257] Th. Gautier, quoted by M. Guyau, loc. cit., p. 270. [258] Printed in L’Écho de Paris, No. 2,972, July 8, 1892. [259] ThÉodore de Banville, Petit TraitÉ de PoÉsie franÇaise. 2e Édition revue. Paris, 1880, pp. 54, 64. [260] M. Guyau, loc. cit., pp. 264, 265. [261] Compare with the above Tolstoi’s opinion on the same subject: ‘He is violently hostile to all rhymed verse. Rhythm and rhyme chain down thought, and all that is opposed to the most complete formation possible of the idea is an evil.... Tolstoi ... regards the decline in our esteem for poetry in verse as a progress.’—Raphael LÖwenfeld, GesprÄche Über und mit Tolstoi. Berlin, 1891, p. 77. [262] ‘Prince, je mens. Sous les GÉmeaux Ou l’Amphore, faire en son livre Rimer entre eux de noble mots, C’est la seule douceur de vivre.’ [263] EugÈne CrÉpet, Les PoÈtes franÇais, vol. iv., p. 536: study by Charles Baudelaire of ThÉodore de Banville. [264] ‘No human sobs in the poets’ song!’ [265] Jules Huret, op. cit., pp. 283, 297. [266] F. BrunetiÈre, ‘La Statue de Baudelaire,’ Revue des deux Mondes, September 1, 1892, vol. cxiii., p. 221. [267] Les Fleurs du Mal, par Charles Baudelaire, prÉcÉdÉes d’une notice par ThÉophile Gautier. 2e Édition. Paris, 1869, p. 22. [268] Baudelaire, in the work quoted by EugÈne CrÉpet, Les PoÈtes franÇais, vol. iv., pp. 541, 542. [269] Franz Brentano, Das Schlechte als Gegenstand dichterischer Darstellung. Vortrag gehalten in der Gesellschaft der Litteratur freunde zu Wien. Leipzig, 1892, p. 17. [270] Fr. Paulhan, Le nouveau Mysticisme. Paris, 1891, p 94. See, in addition, all the chapter ‘L’amour du mal,’ pp. 57-99. [271] Oswald Zimmermann, Die Wonne des Leids. BeitrÄge zur Erkenntniss des menschlichen Empfindens in Kunst und Leben. 2te umgearbeitete Auflage. Leipzig, 1885, p. 111. This book is without value in point of ideas, for it reproduces, in language deliberately inflated, and visibly aspiring to ‘depth,’ the most imbecile drivel of the trio, Edward von Hartmann, Nietzsche and Gustave JÄger. But the author, who is well read, has carefully compiled some useful materials in certain chapters, particularly in that entitled, ‘Association of Voluptuousness and Cruelty’ (p. 107 et seq.). (The case of Jeanneret, first published by Chatelain in the Annales mÉdico-psychologiques, has also been quoted by Krafft-Ebing, Lehrbuch der gerichtlichen Psychopathologie. 3te Auflage. Stuttgart, 1892, p. 248.) [272] Sollier, op. cit., p. 123: ‘The imbecile is refined in his persecutions, and that knowingly. He loves to see suffering. He skins a bird alive, laughs on hearing its cries and seeing its struggles. He tears off the feet of a frog, looks at its suffering for a moment, then abruptly crushes it, or kills it in some other way, as one of the imbeciles at BicÊtre does.... The imbecile is as cruel to his fellow-creature as to animals, and that even in his jesting. Thus he will laugh maliciously and mock at a comrade who has become crippled.’ [273] Paul Bourget, Essais de Psychologie contemporaine. Paris, 1883, p. 28. [274] Ibid., pp. 12, 13. [275] Verworn employs the word ‘chemotropism.’ [276] Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du Lundi, vol. xiv., p. 70. Article on the complete poems of ThÉodore de Banville. October 12th, 1857. [277] Barbey d’Aurevilly, Goethe et Diderot. Paris, 1882. [278] J. K. Huysmans, A Rebours. 4Ème mille. Paris, 1892, p. 251. [279] Paul Bourget, op. cit., p. 6: ‘He is a libertine, and depraved visions amounting to Sadism disturb the very man who comes to worship the raised finger of his Madonna. The morose orgies of the vulgar Venus, the heady fumes of the black Venus, the refined delights of the learned Venus, the criminal audacity of the bloodthirsty Venus, have left their memories in the most spiritualized of his poems. An offensive odour of vile alcoves escapes from these ... verses....’ And p. 19: ‘... It is not so with the mystic soul—and that of Baudelaire’s was one. For this soul did not content itself with a faith in an idea. It saw God. He was for it not a word, not a symbol, not an abstraction, but a Being, in whose company the soul lived as we live with a father who loves us.’ [280] ThÉophile Gautier, who was himself a member of a hashish club, tries to make us believe (Les Fleurs du Mal, p. 57 et seq.), that Baudelaire was addicted to the use of narcotic poisons only with the object of ‘physiological experiment’; but we know the tendency of the degenerate to represent the impulsions of which they are ashamed as acts of free will, for which they have all sorts of palliating explanations. [281] Dr. E. RÉgis, Manuel pratique de MÉdecine mentale. 2e Édition. Paris, 1892, p. 279. [282] Les Fleurs du Mal, p. 5—‘le culte de soi-mÊme.’ This is ThÉophile Gautier’s own term. [283] Paul Bourget, op. cit., p. 31. [284] Ch. J. J. Sazaret, Etude sur la Simulation de la Folie. Nancy, 1888. This pamphlet by a beginner, which contains a useful collection of clinical observations, is particularly amusing, in that all the observations cited by the author demonstrate exactly the reverse of what he proposes to prove. After having himself asserted (p. 22) that ‘the victims of hysteria are much given to simulate all sorts of maladies,’ he says (p. 29): ‘Persons mentally affected now and then simulate madness; the case is rare, but it has nevertheless been verified, and if it has not been oftener recorded, it is, we believe, that observers have limited themselves to a superficial examination, and certain actions have not been analyzed.’ The case is so far from rare that it is pointed out in every observation quoted by the author. In the case of Baillarger (2nd observation), the so-called simulatrix had been in a lunatic asylum eight years before, as a fully confirmed madwoman; in the case of Morel (4th observation), the simulator ‘had a nervous attack at the sight of a lancet,’ which is clearly aichmophobia and a certain stigma of degeneration; in the 6th observation Morel admits that ‘the extravagance of the subject, his fear of poison’ (thus a case of pronounced iophobia), ‘and the fact of picking up filth, indicate a possible mental disorder’; the case of Foville (10th observation) ‘had a certain number of insane in his family’; the case of Legrand du Saulle (18th observation) was ‘the son of a hysterical woman and grandson of a madman’; the case of Bonnet and Delacroix (19th observation) ‘numbers some insane among his ancestors’; the case of Billod (22nd observation) ‘has often manifested disturbance and delirium,’ etc. All these supposed simulators were insane quite unmistakably, and the fact that they intentionally exaggerated the symptoms of their delirium was only a further proof of their alienation. [285] Fr. Paulhan, op. cit., p. 92: ‘While affecting the faith of a seminarist, he [Villiers] delighted in blasphemy. He considered the right to blaspheme as his peculiar property.... This Catholic Breton loved the society of Satan more than that of God.’ [286] JosÉphin PÉladan, Vice suprÊme. Paris, 1882, p. 169. [287] Les Fleurs du Mal, p. 244: ‘TÊte-À-tÊte sombre et limpide
Qu’un coeur devenu son miroir!
Puits de vÉritÉ, clair et noir,
OÙ tremble une Étoile livide, ‘Un phare ironique, infernal,
Flambeau des grÂces sataniques,
Soulagement et gloire uniques,
—La conscience dans le Mal!’ [288] Les Fleurs du Mal, pp. 17, 18. [289] Les Fleurs du Mal, pp. 17, 18. [290] J. K. Huysmans, A Rebours. 4me mille. Paris, 1892, p. 49. [291] Henri Kurz, in his introduction to the ‘Simplician’ writings of Grimmelshausen. Leipzig, 1863, 1st part, p. li. See also his remarks on the German of Grimmelshausen (author of Simplicissimus), p. xlv. et seq. [292] Paul Bourget, op. cit., p. 24. [293] The sacculus is a cirripedia which lives in the condition of a parasite in the intestinal canal of certain crustacea. It represents the deepest retrograde transformation of a living being primarily of a higher organization. It has lost all its differentiated organs, and essentially only amounts to a vesicule (hence its name: little bag), which fills itself with juices from its host, absorbed by the parasite with the help of certain vessels, which it plunges into the intestinal walls of the latter. This atrophied creature has retained so few marks of an independent animal that it was looked upon for a long time as a diseased excrescence of its host’s intestines. [294] Maurice BarrÈs, Trois Stations de Psycho-thÉrapie. Paris, 1892. ‘DeuxiÈme Station.’ [295] Ibid., Un Homme libre. 3e Édition. Paris, 1892. [296] Ibid., Le Jardin de BÉrÉnice. Paris, 1891, p. 37 et seq. [297] Ibid., p. 245 et seq. [298] Ibid., L’Ennemi des Lois. Paris, 1893, pp. 63, 88, 170. [299] Maurice BarrÈs, Examen de trois IdÉologies. Paris, 1892, p. 14. [300] Examen de trois IdÉologies, p. 36. [301] Ibid., p. 46. [302] L’Ennemi des Lois, p. 285. [303] Oscar Wilde, Intentions. London, 1891, p. 197. [304] Schiller also says: ‘Ewig jung is nur die Phantasie;
Was sich nie und nirgends hat begeben,
Das allein veraltet nie.’—An die Freunde. ‘Forever young is fantasy alone;
That which nowhere ever has existed,
That alone grows never old.’ But Schiller did not mean by this that Art should disregard truth and life, but that it must discriminate between what is essential, and consequently lasting, in the phenomenon, and that which is accidental, and therefore ephemeral. [305] Compare this with Kant’s Kritik der Urtheilskraft (herausgegeben und erlautert von J. H. v. Kirchmann); Berlin, 1869, p. 65: ‘All interest spoils the judgment in matters of taste, and deprives it of its impartiality, especially if it does not, as rational interest does, make the feeling of utility paramount to that of pleasure, but bases it upon the latter, which always happens in an Æsthetic judgment in so far as a thing causes pleasure or pain.’ Modern psycho-physiology has recognised this notion of Kant’s as erroneous, and has demonstrated that ‘the feeling of pleasure’ in itself is originally a feeling of organic ‘utility,’ and that ‘judgment in matters of taste’ does not exist at all without ‘interest.’ Psycho-physiology makes use of the terms ‘organic tendency’ or ‘proclivity,’ instead of ‘interest.’ Moreover Wilde, who does not mind contradicting his own loose assertions, says (p. 186): ‘A critic cannot be fair in the ordinary sense of the word. It is only about things that do not interest one that one can give a really unbiased opinion, which is no doubt the reason why an unbiased opinion is always absolutely valueless. The man who sees both sides of a question is a man who sees absolutely nothing at all.’ Hence Hecuba must be something to the critic, that he may be able to criticise at all. [306] See in my Paradoxe the chapters ‘Inhalt der poetischen Literatur’ and ‘Zur Naturgeschichte der Liebe.’ [307] S. A. Tokarski’s article on ‘Myriachit’ in the Neurologisches Central-Blatt for November, 1890. Tokarski in this article also informs us that this word should be written meriatschenja, and not myriachit. [308] Edmund R. Clay, L’Alternative. Contribution À la Psychologie. Traduit de l’anglais par A. Burdeau; Paris, 1886, p. 234: ‘Sympathy is an emotion caused in us by that which seems to us to be the emotion or the sensation of others.’ [309] Helmholtz, Die Lehre von den Tonemfindungen. 4 Aufl. Braunschweig, 1877. [310] Pietro Blaserna, Le Son et la Musique, followed by Causes physiologiques de l’Harmonie musicale, par H. Helmholtz. 4e Édition. Paris, 1891. [311] E. BrÜcke, BruchstÜcke aus der Theorie der bildenden KÜnste. Leipzig, Intern. wissensch. Bibl. (The French edition of BrÜcke’s works contains also Helmholtz’s L’Optique et la Peinture.) [312] Henry Joly, Les Lectures dans les Prisons de la Seine. Lyon, 1891. See also Lombroso, L’Uomo delinquente. Turin, 1884, p. 366 et seq., and p. 387 et seq. [313] PitrÈ, Sui Canti popolari italiani in Carcere. Firenze, 1876. See also the portrait-group of the three brigands of Ravenna in Lombroso, op. cit., Plate XV., facing p. 396. [314] Raskolnikow, Roman von F. M. Dostojewskij, Nach der vierten Auflage des russichen Originals; Prestuplenie i Nakazanie, Übersetzt von Wilhelm Henckel. Leipzig, 1882, Band I., pp. 122-128. [315] The knowledge of this fact is as old as Æsthetic science itself. It is well expressed, as by others, so by Dr. Wilh. Alex. Freund, in his Blicken ins Culturleben; Breslau, 1879, p. 9: ‘Idealization consists ... in the removal of accidental accessories disturbing the true expression of the essential;’ p. 11: ‘All [eminent artists] raise that which they see to a purified image, purged of all that is unessential, accidental, disturbing; from that image springs up in all of them the idea lying at the base of the vision;’ p. 13: ‘He [the artist] comprehends the essential ... from which the accidental disturbing accessories of the external phenomenon fall off like withered leaves, so that to his inner eye the truth appears as a living idea,’ etc. [316] See foot-note to p. 38. [317] Wilhelm Loewenthal makes the feeling and need of religion spring from the same presentient emotion. For the author of GrundzÜge einer Hygiene des Unterrichts, religion is the form assumed in man’s consciousness by the ideal, i.e., the presentient knowledge of the aim of evolution. ‘The instinct of development—the indispensable base of all life and all knowledge—is identical with the religious need.’ Thus he writes in a memoir, unfortunately only ‘printed as a manuscript,’ but most worthy of being made accessible to all the world. [318] Nora (the children talk all at once to her during the following). And so you have been having great fun? That is splendid. Oh, really! you have been giving Emmy and Bob a slide, both at once! Dear me! you are quite a man, Ivar. Oh, give her to me a little, Mary Ann. My sweetheart! (Takes the smallest from the nurse, and dances it up and down.) Yes, yes; mother will dance with Bob, too. What! did you have a game of snowballs as well? Oh, I ought to have been there. No, leave them, Mary Ann; I will take their things off. No, no, let me do it; it is so amusing. Go to the nursery for awhile, you look so frozen. You’ll find some hot coffee on the stove. (The nurse goes to the room on the left. Nora takes off the children’s things and throws them down anywhere, while she lets the children talk to each other and to her.) Really! Then there was a big dog there who ran after you all the way home? But I’m sure he didn’t bite you. No; dogs don’t bite dear dolly little children. Don’t peep into those parcels, Ivar. You want to know what there is? Yes, you are the only people who shall know. Oh, no, no, that is not pretty. What! must we have a game? What shall it be, then? Hide and seek? Yes, let us play hide and seek. Bob shall hide first. Am I to? Very well, I will hide first.—A Doll’s House, Griffith and Farran, p. 30. [319] Rank (in Nora’s and Helmer’s room). [He has that day discovered a symptom in himself which he knows is an infallible sign of approaching death.] Yes, here is the dear place I know so well. It is so quiet and comfortable here with you two. Helmer. You seemed to enjoy yourself exceedingly upstairs, too. Rank. Exceedingly. Why should I not? Why shouldn’t one get enjoyment out of everything in this world? At any rate, as much and as long as one can. The wine was splendid. Helmer. Especially the champagne. Rank. Did you notice it, too? It was perfectly incredible the quantity I contrived to drink.... Well, why should one not have a merry evening after a well-spent day? Helmer. Well spent? As to that, I have not much to boast of. Rank (tapping him on the shoulder). But I have, don’t you see. Nora. Then, you have certainly been engaged in some scientific investigation, Dr. Rank. Rank. Quite right.... Nora. And am I to congratulate you on the result? Rank. By all means you must. Nora. Then the result was a good one? Rank. The best possible, alike for the physician and patient—namely, certainty. Nora (quickly and searchingly). Certainty? Rank. Complete certainty. Ought not I, upon the strength of it, to be very merry this evening? Nora. Yes, you were quite right to be, Dr. Rank.... I am sure you are very fond of masquerade balls. Rank. When there are plenty of interesting masks present, I certainly am.... Helmer. ...But what character will you take [at our next masquerade]? Rank. I am perfectly clear as to that, my dear friend. Helmer. Well? Rank. At the next masquerade I shall appear invisible. Helmer. What a comical idea! Rank. Don’t you know there is a big black hat—haven’t you heard stories of the hat that made people invisible? You pull it all over you, and then nobody sees you.... But I am quite forgetting why I came in here. Helmer, just give me a cigar—one of the dark Havanas.... Thanks. (He lights his cigar.) And now good-bye ... and thank you for the light. [He nods to them both and goes.—A Doll’s House, pp. 96-100.] [320] Frau Alving is speaking with Pastor Manders, and is just relating that she was one day witness to a scene in the adjoining room which proved to her that her departed husband was carrying on an intrigue with her maidservant. In the next room are Oswald, her son, and Regina, the offspring of the intercourse of her husband with the maidservant. [From within the dining room comes the noise of a chair overturned,
and at the same moment is heard: Regina (sharply, but whispering). Oswald, take care! Are you mad? Let me go! Mrs. Alving (starts in terror). Ah! (She stares wildly towards the half opened door; Oswald is heard coughing and humming inside. A bottle is uncorked.) Manders (excited). What in the world is the matter? What is it, Mrs. Alving? Mrs. Alving (hoarsely). Ghosts! The couple from the conservatory have risen again!—Ghosts, The Pillars of Society, and other Plays. By Henrik Ibsen, Camelot Series, p. 150.] [321] Frau Helseth has in vain sought for Rosmer and Rebecca in the house. Madame Helseth (goes to the window and looks out). Oh, good God! that white thing there!—My soul! They’re both of them out on the bridge! God forgive the sinful creatures—if they’re not in each other’s arms! (Shrieks aloud) Oh—down—both of them! Out into the mill-race! Help! help! (Her knees tremble, she holds on to the chair-back, shaking all over, she can scarcely get the words out.) No. No help here. The dead wife has taken them.—Rosmerholm. London, Walter Scott, p. 144. The last sentence is not a happy one. It is commonplace, upsetting the mood of the hearer or reader. [322] Hjalmar has passed the night away from home, having learned that his wife before her marriage with him had had a liaison with another. He returns in the morning, crapulous and hipped. He is bombastic and melodramatic, while his wife is calm and practical:— Gina (standing with the brush in her hand, and looking at him). Oh, there now, Ekdal; so you’ve come after all? Hjalmar (comes in and answers in a toneless voice). I come—only to depart again immediately. Gina. Yes, yes; I suppose so. But, Lord help us, what a sight you are! Hjalmar. A sight? Gina. And your nice winter coat, too! Well, that’s done for.... Then, you are still bent on leaving us, Ekdal? Hjalmar. Yes; that’s a matter of course, I should think. Gina. Well, well.... (Sets a tray with coffee, etc., on the table.) Here’s a drop of something warm, if you’d like it. And there’s some bread and butter and a snack of salt meat. Hjalmar (glancing at the tray). Salt meat! Never under this roof! It’s true I haven’t had a mouthful of solid food for nearly twenty-four hours; but no matter.... Oh no, I must go out into the storm and the snow-blast—go from house to house and seek shelter for my father and myself. Gina. But you’ve got no hat, Ekdal. You’ve lost your hat, you know, etc.—The Wild Duck, Act V. [323] Auguste Ehrhard, Professor À la FacultÉ des Lettres de Clermont-Ferrand, Henrik Ibsen et le ThÉÂtre contemporain, Paris, 1892, p. 233: ‘Ibsen’s characters may in general be divided into two categories—those in which the moral element, the life of the soul, dominates, and those in which the animal prevails. The first are, for the most part, mouthpieces of the theories dear to the poet.... They have their primary origin in the brain of the poet.... It is he who gives them life.’ [324] Right out here so early—eh?... Well, did you get safe home from the quay—eh? Look here. Let me untie the bow—eh? etc.—Hedda Gabler. London, W. Heinemann, pp. 7-9. [325] Nora. Yes, I really am now in a state of extraordinary happiness. There is only one thing in the world that I should really like. Rank. Well, and what’s that? Nora. There’s something that I should so like to say—but for Torvald to hear it. Rank. Then, why don’t you say it to him? Nora. Because I daren’t, for it sounds so ugly.... Rank. In that case I would advise you not to say it. But you might say it to us, at any rate.... What is it that you would like to say in Helmer’s presence? Nora. I should like to shout with all my heart—Oh, dash it all!—A Doll’s House, op. cit., pp. 26, 27. [326] Auguste Ehrhard, op. cit., p. 270. [327] Dr. R. von Krafft-Ebing, Psychopathia sexualis mit besonderer BerÜcksichtigung der contrÄren Sexualempfindung. Eine klinisch-forensische Studie. Dritte vermehrte und verbesserte Auflage. Stuttgart, 1888. See (p. 120) the observation relative to the young nobleman who was erotically excited by his ‘boot-thoughts.’ I cite this single case only, but it would be possible to instance dozens of cases where nightcaps, shoe-nails, white aprons, the wrinkled head of an old woman, etc., have excited sensuality in the highest degree. [328] A Doll’s House, p. 112: Helmer. To forsake your home, your husband, and your children! And only think what people will say about it. Nora. I cannot take that into consideration. I only know that to go is necessary for me.... Helmer. ... Your duties to ... your children? Nora. I have other duties equally sacred ... duties towards myself, etc. [329] Ghosts, p. 170: Oswald. At last he said, ‘You have been worm-eaten from your birth.’ ... I didn’t understand either, and begged of him to give me a clearer explanation. And then the old cynic said, ‘The father’s sins are visited upon the children.’ And p. 194: Oswald. The disease I have as my birthright (he points to his forehead, and adds very softly) is seated here. [330] The Wild Duck, Act III.: Gregers. Besides, if I’m to go on living, I must try and find some cure for my sick conscience. Werle. It will never be well. Your conscience has been sickly from childhood. That’s an inheritance from your mother, Gregers—it is the only inheritance she left you.... Relling. But, deuce take it, don’t you see the fellow’s mad, cracked, demented! Gina. There, you hear! His mother before him had mad fits like that sometimes. [331] The Wild Duck, Act II.: Hjalmar. She is in danger of losing her eyesight. Gregers. Becoming blind? Hjalmar. ... But the doctor has warned us. It’s coming, inexorably. Gregers. What an awful misfortune! How do you account for it? Hjalmar (sighs). Hereditary, no doubt. Again, Act IV.: Mrs. SÖrby. ... He (Werle) is going blind. Hjalmar (with a start). Going blind? That’s strange—Werle, too, becoming blind! [332] Dr Prosper Lucas, TraitÉ philosophique et physiologique de l’HÉrÉditÉ naturelle dans les États de SantÉ et de Maladie du SystÈme nerveux, etc. (The title occupies seven lines more!) Paris, 1847, 2 volumes, t. i., p. 250. (It appears that Montaigne had this inherited horror of doctors.) [333] Lucas, op. cit., t. i., pp. 391-420: De l’hÉrÉditÉ des modes sensitifs de la vue. On page 400 he tells of a family in which the mother became blind at the age of twenty-one years, and the children at sixteen and seventeen respectively, etc. [334] August Weismann, Ueber die Vererbung. Jena, 1883. [335] F. Galton, Natural Inheritance. London, 1888. [336] Page 136: Mrs. Alving. I know one who has kept both his inner and his outer self unharmed. Only look at him, Mr. Manders. [337] Krafft-Ebing, Psychopathia sexualis, p. 139. The author here cites all the features in question as characteristic of the first stage of general paralysis: ‘Libidinous talk, unconstraint in intercourse with the opposite sex, plans of marriage.’ [338] Rosmersholm, p. 23: Rebecca (to Brendel). You should apply to Peter Mortensgaard. Brendel. Pardon, Madame—what sort of an idiot is he? See the flat travesty in An Enemy of the People (Act IV.) of the forum scene in Shakespeare’s Julius CÆsar, and the characterization of the ‘crowd,’ in Brand (Act V.). [339] Herbert Spencer, The Man versus the State, 1884, p. 78. [340] In the German text, ‘only of themselves and their families.’—Translator. [341] Edward Westermarck, The History of Human Marriage. London: Macmillan, 1892. See especially the two chapters on ‘The Forms of Human Marriage,’ and ‘The Duration of Marriage.’ [342] ‘At leve—er Kamp med Trolde J Hjertet og Hjernens Hvaelv; At digte—det er at holde Dommedag over sig selv.’ [343] Dr. Wilhelm Griesinger, Pathologie und Therapie der psychischen Krankheiten fÜr Aerzte und Studirende. 5te Auflage. GÄnzlich umgearbeitet und erweitert. Von Dr. Willibald Levinstein-Schleger; Berlin, 1892. (See p. 143, on ‘Diseased Impulses’; and p. 147, on ‘Excessive Energy of Will.’) [344] Griesinger, op. cit., p. 77: ‘Retardation of thought may be produced ... by the state of constriction following a mental depression, by complete inertia extending to the arrest of thought.’ [345] Rationalized in the English version cited, as follows (p. 25): ‘Yes, perhaps I am a little delicate.’—Translator. [346] Rationalized in the English version by ‘now soon,’ being rendered as ‘nearly.’—Translator. [347] ‘True’ is omitted in the English version quoted.—Translator. [348] Bracketed clause not in English version.—Translator. [349] Griesinger, op. cit., p. 176. He names the coining of words ‘phraseomania.’ Kussmaul gives the name Paraphrasia vesana to the coining of incomprehensible words, or the using of known words in a sense wholly foreign to them. [350] Dr. A. Marie, Études sur quelques SymptÔmes des DÉlires systÉmatisÉs et sur leur Valeur; Paris, 1892, chap. ii.: ‘Eccentricities of language. Neologisms and conjuring incantations.’ Tanzi cites, among others, the following examples: A patient used continuously to repeat, ‘That is true, and not false’; another began every phrase with, ‘God’s Word’; a third said, ‘Out with the vile beast!’ making at the same time a sign of benediction with the right hand; a fourth said unceasingly, ‘Turn over the page’; a fifth cried, in a tone of command, ‘Lips acs livi cux lips sux!’ etc. One of Krafft-Ebing’s patients (op. cit., p. 130) constructed, among others, the following words: ‘Magnetismusambosarbeitswellen, Augengedanken, Austrahlung, GlÜckseligkeitsbetten, Ohrenschussmaschine,’ etc. Krafft-Ebing, op. cit., pp. 130, 131. [351] Vicomte E. M. de VoguÉ, ‘Les Cigognes,’ Revue des deux Mondes, February 15, 1892, p. 922: ‘Ibsen would have won our trust, were it only by certain axioms [?] which appeal to our actual distrusts, such as this ... in Rosmersholm: “The Rosmer view of life ennobles, but it kills happiness.”’ I am convinced that, unless previously told that they emanated from confined lunatics, these ‘comprehensives’ would, without difficulty, understand and interpret the expression ‘little-cupboards-of-appetite-of-representation’ (Vorstellungs-AppetitschrÄnkchen), freely used by one of Meynert’s lunatic patients, or the words of a patient under Griesinger’s care (op. cit., p. 176) that ‘the lady superior was establishing herself in the military side-tone and in the retardation of her teeth.’ [352] Tanzi, I Neologismi in rapporta col Delirio cronico. Turin, 1890. [353] ‘Vi vil gjÖre det om igjen raditalere,
Men dertil sordres baade Maend og Talere.
J sÖrger sor Vandflom til Verdensparken,
Jeg laegger med Lyst Torpedo under Arken.’ Observe the purely mystic vapours of this thought. The poet wishes to destroy everything, even the ark which shelters the saved remnants of terrestrial life, but sees himself placed beyond the reach of the destruction, and hence will survive the annihilation of everything else on earth. [354] Georges Brandes, op. cit., pp. 431, 435, 438, etc. [355] J. Cotard, Études sur les Maladies cÉrÉbrales et mentales; Paris, 1891. In this book the dÉlire des nÉgations is for the first time recognised and described as a form of melancholia. The Third Congress of French Alienists, which sat at Blois from the 1st to the 6th of August, 1892, devoted almost the whole of its conferences to the insanity of doubt. In a work by F. Raymond and F. L. Arnaud, ‘Sur certains cas d’aboulie avec obsession interrogative et trouble des mouvements’ (Annales mÉdico-psychologiques, 7e sÉries, t. xvi.), we read, p. 202: ‘The invalids occupy themselves with questions intrinsically insoluble, such as the creation, nature, life, etc. Why the trees are green? Why the rainbow has seven colours? Why men are not as tall as houses?’ etc. [356] Lombroso and B. Laschi, Le Crime politique et les RÉvolutions par rapport au Droit, À l’Anthropologie criminelle et À la Science du Gouvernement. Traduit de l’Italien par H. Bouchard. Paris, 1892, t. i., p. 195. [357] Auguste Ehrhard, op. cit., p. 412: ‘He [Ibsen] assigns himself a rÔle to acquaint us in a direct manner with his own disillusionings.... He presents himself in the fantastic and tormented character of Ulric Brendel. Let us not be deceived by the disguise in which he veils himself. Ulric Brendel, the fool, is no other than Henrik Ibsen, the idealist’(?). [358] Auguste Ehrhard, op. cit., p. 120: ‘With admirable frankness Ibsen, in his latest works, points out the abuse which may be made of his ideas [!]. He counsels reformers to extreme prudence, if not to silence. As for himself, he ceases to excite the multitude to the pursuit of moral and social progress [!]; he entrenches himself in his disdainful pessimism, and in aristocratic solitude enjoys the serene vision of future ages.’ [359] Henrik Jaeger, Henrik Ibsen og haus Vaerker. En Fremstilling i Grundrids. Christiania, 1892, passim. [360] G. R. S. Mead, Simon Magus. London, 1892. [361] Ehrhard, op. cit., p. 94. [362] W. Roux, Ueber den Kampf der Theile des Organismus. Leipzig, 1881. Since the appearance of Roux’s work, the theory of phagocytose, or the digestion of weaker cells by the stronger, has been considerably extended. This, however, is not the place to cite the numerous communications bearing on this subject which have appeared in the Zeitschrift fÜr wissenschaftliche Zoologie, in Virchow’s Archiv, in the Biologische Centralblatt, in the Zoologische JahrbÜcher, etc. [363] Jacoby, La Folie de CÉsars. Paris, 1880. [364] Alfred Binet, Les AltÉrations de la PersonnalitÉ, Paris, 1892, p. 23, communicates the case (observed by Bourru and Burot, and often cited) of Louis B., who united in himself six different personalities—six ‘I’s’ having not the slightest knowledge of each other, each possessing another character, another memory, other peculiarities of feeling and movement, etc. [365] ‘Suicidal’ is here not a mere rhetorical expression. If the tyrannical power of instinct always ends by leading the individual in the long-run to his destruction, it sometimes does this directly. Instinct, namely, may have for its direct object suicide or self-mutilation; and the ‘free’ man obeying his instinct has then the ‘liberty’ of mutilating or killing himself, although that so little tallies with his real wish that he seeks in others a protection from himself. See Dr. R. von Krafft-Ebing, Lehrbuch der gerichtlichen Psychopathologie. Dritte umgearbeitete Auflage. Stuttgart, 1892, p. 311. [366] Herbert Spencer, The Individual versus the State. London, 1884. [367] Dr. Ph. Boileau de Castelnau, ‘MisopÉdie ou LÉsion de l’Amour de la Progeniture’ (Annales mÉdico-psychologiques, 3e sÉrie, 7e volume, p. 553). In this work the author communicates twelve observations, in which the natural feeling of the mother for her children was transformed by disease into hatred. [368] G. Ferrero, ‘L’Atavisme de la Prostitution,’ Revue scientifique, 50e volume, p. 136. [369] R. von Krafft-Ebing, Psychopathia sexualis, etc., 7te Auflage, p. 89 (the third edition of this book, from which I have made my previous citations, contains nothing on masochism), and Neue Forschungen auf dem Gebiete der Psychopathia sexualis eine medicinisch-psychologische Studie, Zweite umgearbeitete und vermehrte Auflage, Stuttgart, 1891, p. 1 ff. Krafft-Ebing gives this explanation of his word (p. 1 et seq.): ‘By masochism I understand a peculiar perversion of the psychic vita sexualis, consisting in this, that the individual seized with it is dominated in his sexual feeling and thought by the idea that he is wholly and unconditionally subjected to the will of a person of the opposite sex, who treats him imperiously, humiliates and maltreats him.’ The word is formed from the name Sacher-Masoch, because ‘his writings delineate exactly typical pictures of the perverted psychic life of men of this kind’ (Neue Forschungen, etc., p. 37). I do not look upon this designation as a happy one. Krafft-Ebing himself shows that Zola and, long before him, Rousseau (he might have added Balzac in Baron Hulot in Parents pauvres, part i.: La cousine Bette) have embodied this condition quite as clearly as Sacher-Masoch. Hence I prefer the designation ‘passivism,’ proposed by Dimitry Stefanowsky. See Archives de l’Anthropologie criminelle, 1892, p. 294. [370] Ehrhard, op. cit., p. 88. [371] Persian for Zoroaster. [372] Dr. Hugo Kaatz, Die Weltanschauung Friedrich Nietzsche: Erster Theil, ‘Cultur und Moral’; Zweiter Theil, ‘Kunst und Leben.’ Dresden und Leipzig, 1892, 1 Th., p. vi.: ‘We are accustomed, especially in matters concerning the deepest problems of thought, to a finished, systematic exposition.... There is none of all this in Nietzsche. No single work of his forms a finished whole, or is wholly intelligible without the others. Each book, moreover, is totally wanting in organic structure. Nietzsche writes almost exclusively in aphorisms, which, filling sometimes two lines, sometimes several pages, are complete in themselves, and seldom manifest any direct connection with each other.... With proud indifference to the reader, the author has avoided cutting even one gap in the hedge with which he has closely surrounded his intellectual creations. Access to him must be gained by fighting,’ etc. In spite of its seeming obscurity, Nietzsche has himself given such pointed information concerning his method of work as amounts to an avowal. ‘All writing makes me angry or ashamed; for me, writing is a necessity.’ ‘But why, then, do you write?’ ‘Yes, my dear friend, let me say it in confidence: I have hitherto found no other means of ridding myself of my thoughts.’ (The italics are Nietzsche’s.) ‘And why do you wish to rid yourself of them?’ ‘Why I wish? Do I so wish? I must.’ Die frÖhliche Wissenschaft. Neue Ausgabe, p. 114. [373] Dr. Max Zerbst, Nein und Ja! Leipzig, 1892. [374] Robert Schellwien, Max Stirner und Friedrich Nietzsche, Erscheinungen des modernen Geister und das Wesen des Menschen. Leipzig, 1892. [375] I refuted this silly sophism before Nietzsche propounded it in the passages above quoted from Zur Genealogie der Moral, p. 66, and Jenseits von Gut und BÖse, p. 228. See Die conventionellen LÜgen der Kulturmenschheit, 14 Aufl., pp. 211, 212: ‘This expression [of Proudhon’s, that property is theft] can be regarded as true only from the sophistical standpoint that everything existing exists for itself, and from the fact of its existence derives its right to belong to itself. According to this view, forsooth, a man steals the blade of grass he plucks, the air he breathes, the fish he catches; but, then, the martin, too, is stealing when it swallows a fly, and the grub when it eats its way into the root of a tree; then Nature is altogether peopled by arch-thieves, and, in general, everything steals that lives, i.e., absorbs from without materials not belonging to it, and organically elaborates them, and a block of platinum, which does not even pilfer from the air a little oxygen with which to oxidize itself, would be the sole example of honesty on our globe. No; property resulting from earning, that is, from the exchange of a determined amount of labour for a corresponding amount of goods, is not theft.’ If, throughout this passage, ‘theft’ be substituted for the word ‘exploitation,’ used by Nietzsche, his sophism is answered. [376] The Sacred Books of the East. Translated by various Oriental scholars, and edited by F. Max MÜller. The Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1st series, vol. x.: Dhammapada, by F. Max MÜller; and Sutta-NipÂta, by V. FausbÖll. [377] The Sacred Books of the East, etc., vol. xix.: Fo-sho-hing-tsan-king, by Rev. S. Beal. [378] Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex; London, J. Murray, 1885, p. 101: ‘All the baboons had reascended the heights, excepting a young one, about six months old, who, loudly calling for aid, climbed on a block of rock, and was surrounded. Now one of the largest males, a true hero, came down again from the mountain, slowly went to the young one, coaxed him, and triumphantly led him away, the dogs being too much astonished to make an attack.’ [379] Friedrich Nietsche, Zur Genealogie der Moral. Eine Streitschrift. Zweite Auflage. Leipzig, 1892, § 80. [380] Gustav Freytag, Bilder aus der deutschen Vergangenheit. Erster Band, aus dem Mittelalter. Leipzig, 1872, p. 42 ff.: ‘The Roman Consul, Papirius Carbo ... denies the strangers [the Cimbrians and Teutons!] the right of sojourn because the inhabitants are enjoying the rights of hospitality of the Romans. The strangers excuse themselves by saying they did not know that the natives were under Roman protection, and they are ready to leave the country.... The Cimbrians do not seek a quarrel; they send to Consul Silanus, and urgently entreat him to assign them lands; they are willing in return for it to serve the Romans in time of war.... Once more the strangers do not invade Roman territory, but send an embassy to the Senate and repeat the request for an assignment of land.... The victorious Germans now sent a fresh embassy to the leader of the other army, for the third time, to sue for peace and ask for land and seed-corn.’ [381] Zur Genealogie der Moral, p. 79. [382] Ibid., p. 73. [383] Charles Darwin, op. cit., p. 98: ‘As soon as the mental faculties had become highly developed, images of all past actions and motives would be incessantly passing through the brain of each individual; and that feeling of dissatisfaction, or even misery, which invariably results ... from any unsatisfied instinct, would arise as often as it was perceived that the enduring and always present social instinct had yielded to some other instinct, at the time stronger, but neither enduring in its nature nor leaving behind it a very vivid impression. It is clear that many instinctive desires, such as that of hunger, are, in their nature, of short duration, and, after being satisfied, are not readily or vividly recalled,’ etc. [384] Zur Genealogie der Moral, p. 9. [385] Ibid., p. 48. [386] Jenseits von Gut und BÖse, p. 91: ‘The criminal is, often enough, not grown to the level of his deed: he dwarfs and traduces it. The legal defenders of the criminal are rarely artists enough to turn the beautiful terribleness of the deed to the profit of the doer.’ [387] ‘A people is the detour of nature, in order to arrive at six or seven great men.’ See also: ‘The essential thing in a good and healthy aristocracy is, that it should feel itself to be not the function, but the end and justification, be it of royalty or of the commonwealth—that it should, therefore, with a good conscience, suffer the sacrifice of a countless number of men who, for its sake, must be humbled and reduced to imperfect beings, to slaves, to instruments.’—Jenseits von Gut und BÖse, p. 226. [388] The following are a few examples, which could easily be centupled (literally, not hyperbolically)—Jenseits von Gut und BÖse, p. 63: ‘It is the Orient, the deep Orient.’ p. 239: ‘Such books of depth and of the first importance.’ p. 248: ‘Deep suffering ennobles.’ ‘A bravery of taste, resisting all that is sorrowful and deep.’ p. 249: ‘Any fervour and thirstiness which constantly drives the soul ... into the bright, the brilliant, the deep, the delicate.’ p. 256: ‘An odour quite as much of depth [!] as of decay.’ p. 260: ‘To lie tranquilly like a mirror, so that the deep heaven might reflect itself in them.’ p. 262: ‘I often think how I may make him [man] stronger, wickeder, and deeper.’ Also sprach Zarathustra, pt. i., p. 71: ‘But thou Deep One, thou sufferest too deeply even from little wounds.’ Pt. ii., p. 52: ‘Immovable is my depth; but it sparkles with floating enigmas and laughters’ (!!). p. 64: ‘And this for me is knowledge: all depth should rise—to my height.’ p. 70: ‘They did not think enough into the depth.’ Pt. iii., p. 22: ‘The world is deep, and deeper than the day has ever thought it.’ Pt. iv., p. 129: ‘What says the deep midnight?... From a deep dream am I awakened. The world is deep, and deeper than the day thought. Deep in its woe. Joy—deeper still than sorrow of heart. All joy ... wishes for deep, deep eternity,’ etc. [389] Zur Genealogie der Moral, p. 167. [390] Jenseits von Gut und BÖse, p. 159: ‘Our virtues? It is probable that we, too, still have our virtues, albeit they are no longer the true-hearted and robust virtues for which we hold our grandfathers in honour—though at a little distance.’ p. 154: ‘The man beyond good and evil, the master of his virtues ... he ought to be the greatest.’ So then, ‘beyond good and evil,’ and yet having ‘virtues’! [391] Zur Genealogie der Moral, p. 79: ‘As a premise to this hypothesis concerning the origin of the evil conscience [through the ‘transvaluation of values’ and the ‘revolt of slaves in morality’] belongs the fact ... that this transformation was in no way gradual, or voluntary, and did not manifest itself as an organic growing into new conditions, but as a rapture, a leap, a compulsion.’ Hence, not only was that good which had previously been evil, but this ‘transvaluation’ even occurred suddenly, ordered one fine day by authority! [392] Jenseits von Gut und BÖse, p. 232: ‘Slave-morality is essentially a utilitarian morality. [393] Die frÖhliche Wissenschaft, p. 32: ‘In reality, however, evil instincts are just as purposive, as conservative of the species, and as indispensable as the good, only they have a different function.’ Zur Genealogie der Moral, p. 21: ‘At the root of all ... noble races lies the beast of prey ... this foundation needs from time to time to disburden itself; the animal must out, must hie him back to the desert.’ This means that it is essential to his health, and, consequently, of utility to him. [394] Zur Genealogie der Moral, p. 6: ‘To what disorders, however, this [democratic] prejudice can give rise, is shown by the infamous [!] case of Buckle. The plebeianism of the modern spirit, which is of English origin, once more breaks forth ... there.’ Jenseits von Gut und BÖse, p. 212: ‘There are truths that are best recognised by mediocre heads.... We are driven to this proposition since the intellect of mediocre Englishmen—I may mention Darwin, John Stuart Mill, and Herbert Spencer—acquired preponderance in the mean region of European taste.’ [395] Die frÖhliche Wissenschaft, p. 43. [396] See, in my novel, Die Krankheit des Jahrhunderts, Leipzig, 1889, Band I., p. 140, SchrÖtter’s remarks: ‘Egoism is a word. All depends upon the interpretation. Every living being strives for happiness, i.e., for contentment.... He [the healthy man] cannot be happy when he sees others suffer. The higher the man’s development, the livelier is this feeling.... The egoism of these men consists in their seeking out the pain of others and striving to alleviate it, in which, while combating the sufferings of others, they are simply struggling to attain to their own happiness. A Catholic would say of St. Vincent de Paul or of Carlo Borromeo, He was a great saint; I should say of him, He was a great egoist.’ [397] Die frÖhliche Wissenschaft, p. 48. [398] Dr. Hugo Kaatz, op. cit., Thiel I., Vorrede, p. viii. [399] Robert Schellwien, Max Stierner und Friedrich Nietzsche. Leipzig, 1892, p. 23. [400] Also sprach Zarathustra, pt. i., p. 84: ‘The “thou” is proclaimed holy, but not yet the “I.”’ [401] Zur Genealogie der Moral, p. 43. [402] Die frÖhliche Wissenschaft, p. 222. [403] Jenseits von Gut und BÖse, pp. 78, 106. [404] C. Lombroso and R. Laschi, Le Crime politique et les RÉvolutions. Paris, 1892, t. i., p. 142. [405] R. Schellwien, op. cit., p. 7: ‘The literary activity of the two thinkers [!] is separated by more than fifty years; but great as may be the difference between them, the agreement is not less, and thus the essential characters of systematic individualism are presented with all the more distinctness.’ [406] See, in my Paradoxe, the chapter ‘Wo ist die Wahrheit?’ [407] ‘With what magic she lays hold of me! What? Has all the world’s repose embarked here?’ ‘What use has the inspired one for wine? What? Give the mole wings and proud imaginings?’ ‘In so far as he says Yes to this other world, what? must he not then say No to its counterpart, this world?’ ‘Round about God all becomes—what? perhaps world?’ ‘A pessimist ... who says Yes to morality ... to lÆde-neminem-morality; what? is that really—a pessimist?’ ‘Fear and pity: with these feelings has man hitherto stood in the presence of woman. What? Is there now to be an end of this?’ I will content myself with these examples, but let it be remarked once for all, that all the specimens I adduce here for the purpose of examining Nietzsche’s mental state could easily be multiplied a hundredfold, as the characteristic peculiarities recur in him hundreds of times. On one occasion he plainly becomes conscious of this living note of interrogation, always present in his mind as an obsession. In Also sprach Zarathustra, pt. iii., p. 55, he calls the passion for rule, ‘the flashing note of interrogation by the side of premature answers.’ In this connection, this expression has absolutely no sense; but it at once becomes intelligible when it is remembered that the insane are in the habit of suddenly giving utterance to the ideas springing up in their consciousness. Nietzsche plainly saw in his mind ‘the flashing note of interrogation,’ and suddenly, and without transition, spoke of it. [408] ‘A Greek life, to which he said, No.’ ‘A pessimist who not merely says, No, wishes No [!] but who ... does No’ [!!]. ‘An inward saying No to this or that thing.’ ‘Free for death, and free in death, a holy No-sayer.’ Then as a complementary counterpart: ‘Pregnant with lightnings, who say, Yes! laugh Yes!’ ‘While all noble morality grows to itself out of a triumphant saying Yea.’ (He feels himself to be something) ‘at least saying Yea to life.’ ‘To be able to say Yea to yourself, that is ... a ripe fruit.’ (Disinterested wickedness is felt by primitive humanity to be something) ‘to which conscience valiantly says Yea.’ We see what use Nietzsche makes of his saying ‘Nay’ and ‘Yea.’ It stands in the place of nearly all verbs joining subject with predicate. The thought ‘I am thirsty’ would, by Nietzsche, be thus expressed, ‘I say Yes to water.’ Instead of ‘I am sleepy,’ he would say, ‘I say Nay to wakefulness,’ or, ‘I say Yes to bed,’ etc. This is the way in which invalids in incomplete aphasia are in the habit of paraphrasing their thoughts. [409] Dr. Hermann TÜrck, Fr. Nietzsche und seine philosophischen Irrwege, Zweite Auflage. Dresden, 1891, p. 7. [410] B. Ball, La Folie Érotique, Paris, 1888, p. 50: ‘I have sketched for you the picture of chaste love (amorous lunacy, or the erotomania of Esquirol), where the greatest excesses remain enclosed within the limits of feeling, and are never polluted by the intervention of the senses. I have shown you some examples of this delirium pushed to the extreme bounds of insanity, without the intermixture of a single idea foreign to the domain of platonic affection.’ [411] In one passage of Zur Genealogie der Moral, p. 132, Nietzsche speaks of the ‘species of moral onanists and self-indulgers.’ He does not apply the expression to himself; but it was unquestionably suggested by an obscure suspicion of his own state of mind. [412] Dr. R. von Krafft-Ebing, Neue Forschungen, u. s. w., p. 45 ff.: ‘The complete contrary of masochism is Sadism. While in the former the subject desires to suffer sorrows, and to feel himself in subjection to violence, in the latter his aim is to cause sorrows, and to exercise violence.... All the acts and situations carried out in the active part played by Sadism constitute, for masochism, the object of longing, to be attained passively. In both perversions these acts form a progression from purely symbolic events to grievous misdeeds.... Both are to be considered as original psychopathies of mentally abnormal individuals, afflicted in particular with psychic HyperÆsthesia sexualis, but also, as a rule, with other anomalies.... The pleasure of causing sorrow and the pleasure of experiencing sorrow appear only as two different sides of the same psychic event, the primary and essential principle in which is the consciousness of active and passive subjection respectively.’ See Nietzsche, Also sprach Zarathustra, pt. i., p. 95: ‘Thou art going to women? Forget not the whip!’ Jenseits von Gut und BÖse, p. 186: ‘Woman unlearns the fear of man,’ and thus ‘exposes her most womanly instincts.’ [413] Krafft-Ebing, Neue Forschungen, u. s. w., p. 108. (A sexual-psychopath thus writes): ‘I take great interest in art and literature. Among poets and authors, those attract me most who describe refined feelings, peculiar passions, choice impressions: an artificial (or ultra-artificial) style pleases me. In music, again, the nervous, stimulating music of a Chopin, a Schumann, a Schubert[!], a Wagner, etc., appeal to me most. In art, all that is not only original, but bizarre, attracts me.’ P. 128 (another patient): ‘I am passionately fond of music, and am an enthusiastic partisan of Richard Wagner, for whom I have remarked a predilection in most of us [sufferers from contrary-sexual-feeling]; I find that this music accords so very much with our nature,’ etc. [414] See, in Paradoxe, the chapter on ‘Evolutionistische Æsthetik.’ [415] Dr. Max Zerbst, Nein und Ja! Leipzig, 1892, p. vii.: ‘It is not impossible that this little book may fall into the hands of some who are nearly connected with the invalid ... whom every indelicate treatment of his affliction must wound most deeply.’ The very last person having the right to complain of indelicate treatment, and to demand consideration, is surely a partisan of Nietzsche’s, who claims for himself the ‘joy in wishing to cause woe,’ and ‘grand unscrupulousness’ as the ‘privilege of the over-man’! Zerbst calls his book a reply to that by Dr. Hermann TÜrck; but it is nothing but a childishly obstinate and insolent repetition of all Nietzsche’s assertions, the insanity of which has been proved by Dr. TÜrck. It is exceedingly droll that Zerbst, appealing to a feeble compilation by Ziehen, wishes to demonstrate to TÜrck that there are no such things as psychoses of the will. Now, TÜrck has not said a single word about a psychosis of the will in Nietzsche; but Nietzsche, indeed, in FrÖhliche Wissenschaft, p. 270, does speak of ‘monstrous disease of the will,’ and of a ‘will-disease.’ Zerbst’s objection, therefore, applies, not to TÜrck, but to his own master—Nietzsche. [416] Dr. Hugo Kaatz, op. cit., pt. i., p. 6. [417] Ola Hansson, Das junge Skandinavien. Vier Essays. Dresden und Leipzig, 1891, p. 12. [418] Albert Kniepf, Theorie der Geisteswerthe. Leipzig, 1892. [419] Dr. Max Zerbst, op. cit., p. 1: ‘O, this modern natural science! these modern psychologists! Nothing is sacred to them!’ ‘When a man, grown up in the school of sickly “idealism,” confronts a cruel savant of this kind ... this godless man takes a small piece of chalk in his hand,’ etc. He ‘turns to the nonplussed idealist,’ and the latter somewhat timidly answers, and ‘adds something sorrowfully,’ whereupon ‘the young psychologist replies, with a gentle shrug of his shoulders.’ Quite so! the ‘cruel,’ the ‘godless,’ the ‘shoulder-shrugging’ young psychologist is himself, Zerbst; the whimpering idealist, the ‘timid’ and ‘sorrowful’ speaker and questioner is his opponent, Dr. TÜrck! [420] Kurt Eisner, Psychopathia spiritualis. Friedrich Nietzsche und die Apostel der Zukunft. Leipzig, 1892. [421] Ola Hansson, Materialisimen i SkÖnlitteraturen, PopulÄr-vetenskapliga [scientific!] Afhandlingar. Stockholm, undated, pp. 28, 50. In this brochure Hansson also designates the author of Rembrandt als Erzieher as a ‘genius’!! [422] Revue politique et littÉraire, annÉe 1891. [423] ‘During his sojourn of several years in the solitary mountainous district of Sils Maria ... he was in the habit ... of lying on a verdant neck of land stretching into the lake. One spring he returned, to find, on the consecrated [!] spot, a seat, on which trivial folk might rest, in the place hitherto peopled only by his most secret thoughts and visions. And the sight of this all too human [!] structure was enough to render the beloved place of sojourn insupportable to him. He never set foot there again.’—Ola Hansson, quoted from Dr. Hermann TÜrck, op. cit., p. 10. [424] Dr. Wilhelm Griesinger, op. cit., p. 77. [425] Dr. von Krafft-Ebing, Lehrbuch der Psychiatrie auf klinischer Grundlage fÜr praktische Aertze und Studirende. Vierte theilweise umgearbeitete Auflage. Stuttgart, 1890, p. 363 ff. [426] Translator. [427] Dr. Hermann TÜrck, op. cit., s. 59. [428] Jenseits von Gut und BÖse, pp. 198, 201. [429] Die frÖhliche Wissenschaft, p. 130. [430] Jenseits von Gut und BÖse, p. 147. [431] Also Sprach Zarathustra, pt. iii., p. 74. [432] Paris unter der dritten Republik, Vierte Auflage. Leipzig, 1890. Zola und Naturalismus AusgewÄhlte Pariser Briefe, Zweite Auflage. Leipzig, 1887. ‘Pot Bouille, von Zola.’ [433] Jules Huret, EnquÊte sur l’Évolution littÉraire, p. 135. [434] J. H. Rosny, Vamireh: Roman des Temps primitifs. Paris, 1892. [435] Ferdinand BrunetiÈre, Le Roman naturaliste, nouvelle Édition. Paris, 1892, p. 285. [436] Thirty years before realism began to create a disturbance in Germany, with its mania for description, the Swiss novelist, Gottfried Keller, with a curious premonition, ridiculed it. See Die Leute von Seldwyla, Auflage 12, Berlin, 1892, Band II., p. 108. (The hero of the story entitled Die missbrauchten Liebesbriefe [the misused love-letters] suddenly conceives the notion of becoming an author.) ‘He laid aside the book of commercial notes, and drew forth a smaller one provided with a little steel lock. Then he placed himself before the first tree he came to, examined it attentively, and wrote: “A beech-trunk. Pale gray, with still paler flecks and transverse stripes. Two kinds of moss cover it, one almost blackish, and one of a sheeny, velvety green. In addition, yellowish, reddish and white lichen, which often run one into another.... Might perhaps be serviceable in scenes with brigands.” Next he paused before a stake driven into the earth, on which some child had hung a dead slow-worm. He wrote: “Interesting detail. A small staff driven into the ground. Body of a silver-gray snake wound round it.... Is Mercury dead, and has he left his stick with dead snakes sticking here? This last allusion serviceable, above all, for commercial tales. N.B.—The staff or stake is old and weather-beaten; of the same colour as the snake; in places where the sun shines upon it it is covered with little silver-gray hairs. (This last observation might be new, etc.),”’ etc. [437] Edmond et Jules de Goncourt, Manette Solomon. Paris, 1876, pp. 3, 145, 191. [438] F. BrunetiÈre, op. cit., p. 153. [439] F. BrunetiÈre, op. cit., p. 156. [440] ‘Everything is a mystery. Everything is a semblance. Nothing really exists.’ The saying of one of Arnaud’s patients afflicted with the mania of negation. See F. L. Arnaud, ‘Sur le DÉlire des NÉgations,’ Annales mÉdico-psychologiques, 7e sÉrie, t. xvi., p. 387 et seq. [441] I would lay humanity on a white page, all things, all beings, a work which would be a vast ark.’—E. Zola, preface to La Faute de l’AbbÉ Mouret, edition of 1875. ‘Throw yourself into the commonplace current of existence.’ ‘Choose for your hero a person in the simplicity of daily life.’ ‘No hollow apotheoses, no grand false sentiments, no ready-made formulÆ.’—E. Zola, Le Roman expÉrimental, passim. [442] The family of KÉrangal has been the subject of many works, and is well known in technical literature. The last published work on them is due to Dr. Paul Aubry: ‘Une Famille de Criminels,’ Annales mÉdico-psychologiques, 7e sÉries, t. xvi., p. 429 (reproduced in La Contagion du Meurtre, by the same author; Paris, 1894). See especially, pp. 432, 433, the curious genealogical tree of the family, in which Zola’s celebrated genealogical tree of the Rougon-Macquart and the Quenu-Gradelle can be immediately recognised. [443] BrunetiÈre, op. cit., p. iii. [444] James Sully, Pessimism: A History and a Criticism. London, 1877, p. 411. [445] Dr. Paul Sollier, Psychologie de l’Idiot et de l’ImbÉcile. Paris, 1891, p. 95. [446] Catrou, Étude sur la Maladie des Tics convulsifs (Jumping, Latab, Myriachit). Paris, 1890. [447] Lombroso, L’Uomo delinquente, etc., pp. 450-480. [448] His descriptions of impulsive criminals are not really exact. The laity have greatly admired his description of the assassin Lantier in La BÊte humaine. The most competent judge in such matters, however, Lombroso, says of this character, which has been inspired in M. Zola, according to his own declaration, by L’Uomo delinquente: ‘M. Zola, in my opinion, has never observed criminals in real life.... His criminal characters give me the impression of the wanness and inaccuracy of certain photographs which reproduce portraits, not from Nature, but from pictures.’—Le piu recenti scoperte ed applicazioni della psichiatria ed antropologia criminale. Con 3 tavole e 52 figure nel testo. Torino, 1893, p. 356. [449] Dr. R. von Krafft-Ebing, Psychopathia Sexualis, etc., 3e Auflage; Stuttgart, 1888. Beobachtung 23, Zippes Fall, s. 55; Beobachtung 24, Passow’s Fall, s. 56; Aum. zu s. 57, Lombroso’s Fall. CÆsare Lombroso, Le piu recenti scoperte, etc., p. 227: ‘He always had voluptuous sensations on seeing animals killed, or in perceiving in shops feminine under-garments and linen.’ The case of which Lombroso here speaks is that of a degenerate of fifteen years old, who had been observed by Dr. MacDonald, of Clark University. [450] LÉon Tolstoi, [Œuvres complÈtes, p. 385: ‘He smelt the warmth of her body, inhaled the odour of her perfumes ... and at this moment Pierre understood that not only might HÉlÈne become his wife, but that she must become so—that nothing else was possible.’] It is related that the King of France, Henri III., married Marie of Cleves because, at the wedding of the King of Navarre and his sister, Marguerite of Valois, wishing to dry his face in the chemise wet with the perspiration of the young princess, he was so intoxicated by the scent which emanated from it, that he had no rest till he had won her who had borne it. See Krafft-Ebing, Psychopathia Sexualis, p. 17. [451] LÉon Tolstoi, [Œuvres complÈtes, t. ii., p. 385: ‘With him there had come into the room a strong, but not disagreeable, smell,’ etc.] [452] Maurice BarrÈs, L’Ennemi des Lois, p. 47. [453] Edmond de Goncourt, La Faustin. Paris, 1882, p. 267. [454] Alfred Binet, Le FÉtichisme dans l’Amour, etc., p. 26. This passage will make the German reader think of the sniffer of souls, G. Jaeger; I have no occasion to mention him here. [455] Dr. R. von Krafft-Ebing, Psychopathie Sexualis, p. 15, foot-note, p. 17. [456] E. SÉguin, Traitement morale, HygiÈne et Education des Idiots. Paris, 1846. [457] L. Bernard, Le Odeurs dans le Romans de Zola. Montpellier, 1889. [458] Le Temps, No du 13 FÉvrier, 1892: ‘Current literature ... is, at present, at an inconceivably low ebb in Germany. From one end of the year to the other it is becoming an impossibility to discover a novel, a drama, or a page of criticism worthy of notice. The Deutsche Rundschau itself recently admitted this in despair. It is not only the talent and the style which are deficient—all is poor, weak and flat; one might imagine one’s self in France, in the time of Bouilly.... Even the desire to rise above a certain level of ordinary writing seems wanting. One ends by being thankful to any contemporary German author who is seen to be making ... the simplest effort not to write like a crossing-sweeper.’ Every German who observes all the literary productions of his contemporaries will see that this is the opinion of a spiteful enemy. This opinion, nevertheless, is explained and justified by the fact that at the present day it is only the ‘realists’ who make enough stir to be heard in certain places abroad, and that there the natives are delighted to be able to consider them as representing all the German literature of the day. [459] Arno Holz—Johannes Schlaf, Die Familie Selicke, 3e Auflage; Berlin, 1892, p. vi.: ‘In fact, nothing so provokes us to smile ... as when they, in their anxiety to find models, label us as plagiarists of the great foreign authors. Let them say it, then.... It will be acknowledged some day that there has never yet been in our literature a movement less influenced from without, more strongly originated from within—in one word, more national—than this movement, even at the further development of which we look to-day, and which has had for its visible point of departure our Papa Hamlet. Die Familie Selicke is the most thoroughly German piece of writing our literature possesses,’ etc. This passage may serve the reader as a model both of the style in which these lads write, and of the tone in which they speak of themselves and their productions. [460] The complaint of want of money is a constant refrain among the ‘Young Germans.’ Listen to Baron Detlev von Liliencron: ‘You had nothing to eat again to-day; as a set-off, every blackguard has had his fill.’ ‘The terror of infernal damnation is—A garden of roses under the kisses of spring,—When I think of how heart and soul fret,—To be hourly bitten by the need of money.’ And Karl Bleibtreu: ‘Brass reigns, gold reigns,—Genius goes its way a-begging.’ ‘To call a ton of gold one’s own,—Sublime end, unattainable to man!’ etc. [461] Heinz Tovote, Im Liebesrausch, Berliner Roman, 6e Auflage. Berlin, 1893. [462] Hermann Bahr, Die gute Schule; SeelenstÄnde. Berlin, 1890. [463] Einsame Menschen; Drama. 1891, p. 84. [464] Gerhart Hauptmann, Vor Sonnenaufgang; Soziales Drama, 6e Auflage; Berlin, 1892, p. 14: ‘During the two years of my imprisonment, I wrote my first book on political economy.’ p. 42: ‘The Icarians ... share equally all work and all desert. No one is poor; there are no poor among them.’ p. 47: ‘My fight is a fight for the happiness of all.... Moreover, I must say that the fight in the interest of progress brings me great satisfaction.’ (Let it be understood that not the smallest trace of this famous ‘fight’ is to be seen in the piece!) p. 63: ‘I should like to study the state of things here. I shall study the position of the miners here.... My work must be pre-eminently descriptive,’ etc. [465] Since this book has been published, Hauptmann has put on the stage two new pieces: The Beaver Pelisse, which was an utter fiasco, and Hannele, a Dream Poem, much discussed on account of its strange mysticism. [466] Scipio Sighele, La Folla delinquente, Turin, 1892; translated into French, La Foule criminelle, Paris, 1893. Fournial, Essai sur la Psychologie des Foules. Lyon, 1892. [467] Gerhart Hauptmann, Die Weber, Schauspiel aus den vierziger Jahren, 2e Auflage; Berlin, 1892, p. 39: Bertha. Where is father, then? [Old Baumert has gone silently away.] Mother Baumert. I don’t know where he can have gone. Bertha. Could it be that he’s no longer used to meat? Mother Baumert (beside herself, in tears). There now, you see—you see for yourself, he can’t even keep it down. He’ll throw up all the little good food he has had. Old Baumert (returns, crying with vexation). Well, well, ’twill soon be all over with me. They’ll soon have done for me. If one do chance to get something good, one isn’t able to keep it. (He sits down on the bench by the stove, weeping.) [All this conversation is written in Silesian dialect.] [468] Gerhart Hauptmann, Der Apostel, BahnwÄrter Thiel, Novellistische Studien. Berlin, 1892. [469] Hans Merian, Die sogenannten ‘Jungdeutschen’ in unsererzeitgenÖssischen Literatur, 2e Auflage. Leipzig, ss. 12, 14. Undated. [470] C. Lombroso and R. Laschi, Le Crime politique, etc., t. ii., p. 116. [471] Dr. R. von Krafft-Ebing, Neue Forshungen, etc., 2 Auflage, pp. 109, 118. By the same, Psychopathia Sexualis, 3 Auflage, p. 65. [472] Dr. A. B. Morel, TraitÉ des DÉgÉnÉrescences, p. 581, note: ‘The state of arrested development and sterility are the essential characteristics of beings arrived at the extreme limit of degeneracy.’ [473] C. Lombroso and R. Laschi, Le Crime politique, etc., t. i., p. 8 et seq. [474] Charles Darwin, A Naturalist’s Voyage round the World, Journal of Researches, etc., chap. x. [475] Ernest Renan, Feuilles dÉtachÉes. Paris, 1892, PrÉface, p. 10. [476] Ludwig Fulda, Das verlorene Paradies, Schauspiel in drei AufzÜgen. Stuttgart, 1892. Cf. p. 112: MÜhlberger. Rika, Rika; come out! Frederika. Oh, Lord! will they send me back? MÜhlberger. Here’s my daughter. She must go into the fresh air—into the fresh air. Frederika. Father, let me be. I must work. MÜhlberger (with passionate resolution). No. No more work—no more—no more work. You must go out into the fresh air, my child—my good sick child. (He holds her in his embrace. Pause. No one present can escape from the impression of this episode.) So says the author! I do not think that these sentimental phrases produce the smallest effect on anybody. Note (in the original) how Fulda, an author of talent, in no way affiliated to the ‘Young-German realists,’ is himself sufficiently intimidated by their ranting to seek for ‘modernity’ by using the Berlin dialect. [477] Ernst von Wildenbruch, Die Haubenlerche, Schauspiel in vier Akten. Berlin, 1891. Cf. p. 134: August. Work builds the world. Therefore, it must be executed for its own sake; it must be loved!... And you—when I have seen you standing before your tub—with the water-scoop in your hand—in such a way that the windows flew open—then I thought, Ah! here is one who loves his tub!... Ilefeld. Master August, ‘tis as if I had been married to it, to my tub—that’s how it’s been! August. And yet you leave it standing there so that anybody might take your place? What am I to say to the tub, should it ask after Paul Ilefeld? Ilefeld (sits down heavily and dries his eyes with his hand). All the workmen I know would be convulsed with laughing at this conversation. [478] Madame Minna Wettstein-Adelt, Three and a Half Months in a Factory, Eine praktische Studie, 2e Auflage. Berlin, 1892. [479] Paul Goehre, Three Months Factory Hand and Apprentice, Eine praktische Studie. Leipzig, 1892. [480] Dr. S. Frenkel, ‘Die Therapie atactischer BewegungstÖrungen,’ MÜnchener medizinische Wochenschrift, Nr. 52. 1892. [481] A. G. Bianchi, La Patologia del Genie e gli scienziati Italiani. Milano, 1892, p. 79. [482] Allusion is here made to the political influence exercised in a number of German electoral districts by the anti-Semite Passchen, a proved lunatic, with a mania for persecution.—Translator.
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