Chapter II: Part 2

Radestock,[21] to mention one more among many, expresses a similar opinion: “And yet there are certain characteristics common to all genius--to wit, originality and the height of creative power. Different kinds of genius are only distinguished in a secondary manner by their objects and the spheres within which they are exercised.” Here is the same inversion of cause and effect as in Gerard.

Investigation having made it clear that common language throws together under the one head of genius elements the most heterogeneous, science reaches this parting of the ways--either to discard the concept entirely as scientifically useless, or to limit it to one definitely describable combination of psychological conditions.

Kant and Schopenhauer, recognising this fact, restricted genius to art. Schopenhauer[22] showed that totally different psychical conditions would make an artist on the one hand, and a man of learning on the other; so that it was not admissible to call them both by the same name. Here is one of his remarks: “The work of genius has always been regarded as an inspiration, as the word itself implies, as the work of a superhuman being different from the person and only periodically taking possession of him. Experience shows, too, that the greatest artistic geniuses have no capacity for mathematics. There never lived a man distinguished in both particulars. Alfieri relates that he never could advance beyond the fourth proposition of Euclid. Goethe has been reproached enough with his lack of mathematical knowledge. Thus, also, is explained the notorious want of artistic sensibility in all distinguished mathematicians. A great French mathematician, on hearing the Iphigénie of Racine, exclaimed, ‘What does that prove?’ Great genius is seldom combined with predominance of reason; on the contrary, men of genius are particularly subject to overpowering sentiments and irrational passions.”

It must be confessed that the limitation of genius to artistic power has met with general disapprobation among the later authors who have written upon the subject. Jürgen Bona Meyer[23] assures us that there is such a thing as scientific genius; and so do other authors who have not reconciled themselves to this limitation of the common mode of speech. Since Kant and Schopenhauer, people continue to attribute genius to scientists, just as they did before.

Thus the question whether the popular word genius can be used as a scientific term can only be decided by a psychological analysis of those poets, composers, painters, virtuosos, actors, scholars, statesmen, and generals who have generally been reckoned as geniuses. That analysis performed, comparison will show whether they have any common characteristic, such as justifies us in comprehending such persons under one psychological concept.

Famous poets, observant of their own inward conditions, have often said that their works were composed as in a dream, unknown to themselves; that, instead of being deliberately constructed, their ideas have, as it were, flown to them.

Goethe says: “There is a sense in which it is true that poets, and indeed all true artists, must be born, not made. Namely, there must be an inward productive power to bring the images that linger in the organs, in the memory, in the imagination, freely, without purpose or will, to life. The ideas must unfold themselves, grow, extend, and accumulate in order to become no longer fugitive diagrams, but living pictures.”

Voltaire, on seeing one of his tragedies performed, exclaimed: “Was it really I who wrote that?” Lamartine said: “It is not I who think, but my ideas which think for me.” Of Werther, Goethe said: “Having written this little book somewhat unconsciously, like a sleepwalker, I could not help wondering, in lately reading it over, whether I should find anything in it to alter and improve.”

Schiller writes to Körner: “It is not well in works of creation that reason should too closely challenge the ideas that come thronging to the doors. Taken by itself, an idea may be highly unsuitable, even venturesome, and yet in conjunction with others, themselves equally absurd alone, it may furnish a suitable link in the chain of thought. Reason can not see this unless it carefully considers the idea in its connections. In a creative brain reason has withdrawn her watch at the doors, and ideas crowd in pell-mell.”

Bettinelli says: “The happy moment for the poet may be called a dream--dreamed in the presence of the intellect, which stands by and gazes with open eyes at the performance.”

“Schiller,” says Vischer, in his treatise upon Esthetics,[24] “annotating a passage in Schelling, energetically requires that the poet should begin his work unconsciously, and says that he ought to consider himself fortunate if, after a consecutive and distinct consideration of what he is about, he does not find himself set back, or if he finds his finished work as good as the obscure but powerful impression from which he set out. Schiller himself, who fluttered midway between thought and intuition, complains that theory and criticism quench his ardour, and that when he sees himself at work creating and constructing, his imagination is embarrassed, and does not perform with the same freedom as it had done when nobody was looking over its shoulder.”

Jean Paul Richter had, perhaps, the above passage of Goethe in his mind when he wrote:[25] “Genius is, in more senses than one, a sleepwalker, and in its bright dream can accomplish what one who woke could never do. It mounts every height of reality in the dark; but bring it out of its world of dreams, and it stumbles.” The last clause contains an observation that Goethe also had made upon himself and which he describes as follows: “It had happened to me so often that I would repeat a song to myself and then be unable to recollect it; that sometimes I would run to my desk and, without taking time to lay my paper straight, would, without stirring from my place, write out the poem from beginning to end, slopingly. For the same reason I always preferred to write with a pencil, on account of its marking so readily. On several occasions, indeed, the scratching and spluttering of my pen awoke me from my somnambulistic poetizing and distracted me so that it suffocated a little product in its birth. I had a particular reverence for such pieces, like a hen for her brood of chickens pipping around her.”

Klopstock says himself that he got many of the ideas of his Messiah in dreams.

Voltaire wrote to Diderot:[26] “It must be confessed that in the arts of genius instinct is everything. Corneille composed the scene between Horatius and Curiatius just as a bird builds its nest, except that the bird always builds well, while with us poor feeble little creatures that is not the case.”

Upon what does this instinctive creating, this unconscious poetizing, this spontaneous emerging of thought, that we meet with in so many great poets, depend?

In our first chapter we recognised two different kinds of processes of thought--voluntary thinking, in which the sequence of ideas is determined by the will, and involuntary thinking, which takes place in a purely associative way. This last we may term _fancy_. The two processes have, in truth, no sharp delimitation. We may conceive the process of thought to be an action of fancy with varying activity of the will, from the weakest to the strongest grade. So Wundt[27] speaks of an active and a passive fancy. “Our fancy,” says he, “is passive when we allow the play of ideas to go as it will, beginning with any complete idea. It is active when our will sifts out the ideas that are produced, and thus purposively brings about a new whole.” In the present work we shall use the word _fancy_ without qualification to denote a passive involuntary train of ideas; while a purposive sequence of ideas, or voluntary thought, shall be termed _intellectual function_ (_Verstandesthätigkeit_).

Involuntary thought is frequently described by the poets as unconscious. That can not be accurate, for “unconscious thought” is a contradictory phrase. Not even a dream can be said to be unconscious, whether it be purely ideal, like most dreams, or produce action, as in sleepwalking. In such a state self-consciousness alone is suspended, not consciousness itself. It is true that § 51 of the German criminal code pronounces actions performed unconsciously to be unpunishable; but that is psychologically incorrect. A person is unconscious in a deep swoon or occasionally in a stupor. But actions are never performed without being connected with ideas; this it is that distinguishes them from automatic and reflex motions. Now, ideas form a part of consciousness. Ideas without consciousness are therefore inconceivable. The paragraph of the criminal code ought to read: “Actions performed while self-consciousness is suspended shall not be punished.” So when a poet tells us he has composed verses while in a state of unconsciousness or as in a dream, similar considerations show how we are to understand his language.

Fancy stands half-way between dreaming and active intellectual function. The latter depends directly on the will, while in the former the will is in total abeyance. Purposive thought is like a ship with a strong rudder which follows every turning and winding and can be carried through the narrowest straits. A dream is a rudderless hulk wandering hither and thither, the play of the winds and waves. Fancy is a ship which, with its sails set, wends its way over the deep, moving like a ghost with no visible impulse, yet directed toward its destined port. The will takes part in fancy, but behaves more passively than actively. It removes all hindrances which might confuse the thoughts and prevent ideas from forming a harmonious whole.

All men exercise the above-described action of fancy. In ordinary men it makes daydreams, which everybody recognises to be opposed to purposive thought. All that fancy produces depends on former impressions of sense. It is powerless to create anything new; its products are mere combinations in memory of the residua of former impressions. They may be unlikely enough, and in that sense it may be true that its products are “original.” But this does not conflict with the facts alleged.

As in a kaleidoscope a relatively small number of bits of broken glass can enter into most manifold combinations and produce the most diverse images, so the residua of former impressions of sense can, by means of fancy, combine into the most variegated mixture of original ideas. If a kaleidoscope contains only a small number of morsels of glass of tolerably large size, the images will be relatively monotonous and small in variety; but if it contains smaller and more numerous pieces of glass, the images will be more manifold and more variegated. In an analogous way, a rich fancy, as we call it, is able to dissect the sense-impressions that are received into their smallest constituents, and to fuse them together into infinitely numerous new shapes. If this faculty is combined with a great facility of association and imagination, it will result in that lively and creative action of fancy which we find in the poet.

The daydreams of ordinary men are mostly uninteresting. But in a man with a cultivated and refined fancy, daydreams will bring those creative thoughts of genius, in which fancy reveals itself _a posteriori_ to his knowledge. Hence it is that he seems to himself to have created his ideas unawares. He seems, like an objective spectator, to see the poem spring up within him.

This state of fancy, which depends upon an ordinary psychical process, not qualitatively different from the mental process of common men, but only differing quantitatively, is that which gave rise to mystical explanations and to the belief in supernatural processes. Kant remarks: “The reason why exemplary originality of talent receives that mystical title is that the subject of it can not himself explain its eruptions, or that he finds himself in possession of an art which he could not have learned and which he can not comprehend. For invisibility (the cause of an effect) is an attribute of the mind (a genius with which the gifted person is endowed from his birth) whose inspiration, as it were, he only follows.” So Vischer says: “We apply to it the name of inspiration, an expression recalling a mystical idea, the flow of which only begins here to grow into a river in its further advance. The ancients, for whom the unknown upon the limits of self-knowledge appeared so strange as to be the work of God, thought it was really inspiration. The poet is inflated with the Muse, he is ἔνθεος, θεόπνευστος, κατεχόμενος, ἐκστατικός, he is snatched away by the goddess ὑπὸ θείης ἐξαλλαγῆς, out of himself, ἔξω ἑαυτοῦ, he is breathed upon, ἐπίπνοια.”

It is this creative and somewhat independent power of fancy which lends to the work of art its character of originality; and hence it is that many inquirers have found in that the essence of genius.

Garve[28] expresses himself emphatically upon this point. “Nothing,” he says, “is harder to ascertain than the peculiarity of a particular mind, especially of a great mind, and most of all of a genius. All perfections of the mind consist in certain perfections of thoughts; or, rather, we only know as many differences and superiorities of capacities and powers as we find of differences and grades of eminence in the ideas. There is hardly any way to describe the character of a capacity except by describing the origin and mode of formation of the thoughts which are peculiar to that faculty. This can only be done in so far as these thoughts follow other thoughts--i. e., are reflections and after-thoughts. But when they seem to spring immediately out of the power of the soul, when the higher or previous suggesting thoughts are not to be found even by the man who had the idea in question, our inquiry comes to an end, as inquiries always do when, in place of tracing one effect from another, we are brought up to the actual force. Now, thoughts of that kind are precisely such as are ascribed to genius, a word signifying the source of those ideas which have not been gradually elaborated, but have sprung up in a night from the soil of the soul.”

Jürgen Bona Meyer says: “Talent, being self-conscious, knows the why and wherefore of its conclusions and principles. But for genius all that is in darkness. Nothing is more unconscious and involuntary than the process of thought of genius.”

Although, as we shall soon see, this creative fancy is not sufficient by itself to produce a poetic genius, and, as we shall at the same time see, the degree of its development is not always proportional to the greatness of the poet, yet it must be granted that the action of fancy is an indispensable psychical ingredient of every poet. We are confirmed in this opinion by the fact that those poets who only possess it in small or inconsiderable amounts themselves lament the want of it as a misfortune. When Lessing confesses there is no living spring within him which wells up fresh, rich, and pure, but that everything has to be pumped up with straining and groaning, he simply denies his own possession of the proper organ of poesy. Schiller complained that theory and criticism had damaged the free play of his fancy. When Wieland had once reproached him with want of facility he wrote: “While I am at work I feel only too keenly that he is right; yet I feel, too, where the fault lies, and I hope that I shall be able to improve very much in that respect. Ideas do not flow richly enough to me, however luxuriant my works turn out; and until I write them down my ideas are not clear.”

Here, then, is a very important mental difference between poets of high rank. While in Goethe the mainstay of his artistic power was the free play of fancy, with Schiller the turning point was a power of intellectual function which, in his own words, often choked the luxuriance of his fancy.

From this fact we can draw the corollary that however indispensable to a poet fancy may be, it is not a synonym of poetic greatness; for Schiller is undeniably a greater poet than many another whose fancy is under no such intellectual inhibition.

The psychological analysis of famous poets will show that the intellectual function is no whit less important a factor of poetic genius than fancy itself, although the latter is the one immediately employed in the act of composition. We have seen that creative fancy works with the material which former impressions of sense have left behind as their remains or residua. The more comprehensive the knowledge of the poet, therefore, and the more he is in condition to assimilate and compact the impressions the world conveys to him, and the sounder and truer his judgments of persons and situations, and the more methodical his thought and the better his memory, by so much the more will his fancy display luxuriance, and by so much more various will be his creations.

Lessing[29] falls into error when he says: “It is permitted to genius not to know a thousand things that every schoolboy knows; for it is not the provision with which his memory is stored, but what he can bring forth out of his own feeling, that constitutes his wealth.” On the contrary, the really great poet is usually marked by solid erudition and thorough comprehension of the world. Of course, there are fools enough who fancy they need learn nothing, that their genius has only to walk forth naked in its own stately form, and that erudition would be but a detriment to its creativeness. But these are unfortunates, of whom we shall treat in another chapter of this book. Goethe hit them off in the following epigram:

Says Zigzag, in his latest book,
“Within no school have I a nook;
From living wight no thoughts I’ve took;
Still less to dead men do I look.”
He means, unless I’ve much mistook,
“I’m just a crank on my own hook.”[30]

Kant, too, says that genius must undergo the “constraint of the school” (_Zwang des Studiums_). “To free imagination from this constraint and to allow one’s peculiar talent to rove about in wild disorder, contrary to the laws of Nature, might betoken, perhaps, a great original madness.”

Goethe very clearly pictures the sources from which his own rich fancy drew the materials of its creations. “The greatest genius would be worthless without external aids. For what, after all, is genius but the capacity to seize every opportunity, to make use of everything that falls in our way, to impart form and life to whatever matter may be put within its reach, to take here marble, there earth, and out of them to build a lasting monument? Where, for example, should I be, or what would be left of me, if that sort of appropriation should cast a prejudice upon genius? What have I done? I have gathered and used whatever I have seen, heard, or observed. I have laid claim to the works of Nature and of man. To every one of my writings a thousand persons and a thousand different things have contributed. Old and young, gentle and simple, wise and foolish have brought their quotas. Mostly without being aware of it, they have bestowed upon me their thoughts, their faculties, and their experiences, sowing the grain that I have reaped. My work is an assemblage of essences which have been derived from the course of Nature. This bears the name of ‘Goethe.’... Foolish men! They remind me of a certain philosopher of my part of the country who fancied that if he were to imprison himself in his study for thirty years, and there sift and beat out the ideas which he would draw from his own poor brain, he would obtain a wonderful mine of originality! What came of it, think ye? Clouds, and only clouds!... I was long enough so silly as to grieve over these absurdities; but now in my old age I may be permitted to make merry over them and laugh at them.”[31]

Another psychical phenomenon, besides fancy and intellectual function, surprises us in famous poets--to wit: a refinement of the feelings, heart, and moods. We often find these qualities developed in great poets to a point we can scarcely imagine. The mere contemplation of a work of art may move them to tears. In Heine, music produced a peculiar mood which excited him to versification. Alfieri described his mood while writing poetry as a sort of soft fever. When Goethe read in Schiller’s family for the first time the scene between Hermann and his mother under the pear tree, in Hermann und Dorothea, he burst into tears, saying, as he dried his eyes, “One melts over one’s own fire.”

Schiller wrote to Goethe: “At first my sensations have no definite object; that is formed later. First comes a certain musical sensation, and after that, follows the poetical idea.”

What is described here is, as fancy, not a new, independent, or mystical condition, peculiar to certain individuals, but is merely a refinement of a certain part of the psychical organism, and consequently a mere alteration of intensity of a phenomenon observable in all men.

Our whole mental action, the train of ideas, voluntary or involuntary, is accompanied with a certain state of temper, best termed a _mood_ (_Stimmung_), to which I have referred in the first chapter. As we are not ordinarily conscious of any feelings produced by our internal organs, so, in spite of their continuous presence, we are not commonly aware of our moods. We recognise them only as they vary. Different authors are at variance in regard to the connection between our moods and our ideas. Some will have the moods dependent upon the ideas, while others make the content of the ideas follow the mood of the moment. My own opinion is that neither rule can be maintained, but that moods and ideas react upon one another, at one time a mood taking the lead, at another an idea. When sad news is received, a gloomy mood is plainly a consequence of the ideas; yet it is not to be denied that we have many ups and downs of mood for which no differences of ideas can account. Such moods are called _humours_.

It is well known that the multitude of qualitative differences of sense-perceptions exceeds every finite number. Not only can we perceive differences in the intensity of lights, but we can distinguish the most manifold shades of colour. Sounds differ not merely in intensity and in pitch, but also in the quality of tone. We not only hear upon what instrument a given note is sounded, but a connoisseur can tell upon what string of a violin it is drawn. Hence we recognise the voice of one acquaintance among hundreds.

The quality of a sensation can not be described in words. No doubt, we have names for the coarsest distinctions; but even these have a value only when they are brought into connection with previous impressions. A person blind from birth can in no way whatever get any idea of a distinction of colour. Nor can a deaf-mute get the most distant notion of the differences of qualities of sounds.

In strict analogy with sense-perception, the fundamentally different qualities of moods are likewise too multitudinous to be enumerated. Neither can they be described in words. We have names for certain states, and these names may suggest previous experiences of our states of mind. Compunction, pity, desire, worry, hope, fear, though they have names, are sensations and moods that no descriptions can paint. If a person had never felt pity in his life, you could in no way give him an idea of that mood.

Persons whose psychical organism is highly refined in this respect will have qualities of moods that there are no words to express. Just as the musically gifted can distinguish timbres that ordinary people can not, so those persons have mood-feelings for which the average man is incapable, and for which common language has no designations. Alfieri’s “soft fever” and Schiller’s “a certain musical mood of the heart” are obviously attempts to convey some notion of such refined mood-feelings.

Another trait remarkable in famous poets is an instinctive and invincible impulse to express the ideas and feelings within them. In consequence of this impulse the work of genius is not a voluntary labour, but the involuntary product of a psychical need. It is not a hankering after applause and success, nor a regard for his other interests, which induces the man of genius to perform his task. It is solely a passion to give shape and form to the idea that exists in his fancy. The true poet does not versify because he would, but because he must. Goethe has painted the poetic impulse in Tasso:

_Alfonso._ I beg of thee to break this habit up!
The poet’s loss will be the man’s success.

_Tasso._ I’ve struggled day and night against this need;
I’m worn out trying to shut up my breast.
’Tis useless! Sing I must; else life’s not life.
Prohibit the poor silkworm’s industry
On pain of death, yet still he’ll keep right on
Drawing the costly web from his entrails,
Nor cease until his golden cerecloth’s wove.--Act V, scene 2.

This impulse of the poet of genius is again merely an exaggerated case of a purely physiological phenomenon found in all men. In every man strong emotions and powerful motions of the heart exercise a great influence upon his whole mental conduct. But the effects of emotions are not limited to the mind. They are centrifugally communicated to the other organs. They have spasmodic and paralytic effects upon the blood vessels, which are shown by blanching and blushing, cold down the back (shivers and gooseflesh), etc. The beating of the heart may be increased to the highest point or may be completely suspended. Glandular secretions, sweat, and tears are influenced by moods. The emotions are alleviated by such processes. The mood becomes calmer, the whole state of mind more agreeable. A decided relief is brought to great mental pain by tears, and a person may even speak of having “a good cry.” Anger is softened by “having it out,” be it even on a lifeless thing. Hysterical subjects and children strike or kick the object against which they may have struck. Cheerful emotions also seek “vent.” A comical emotion sets the laughing muscles in motion, and this is followed by a calmer mood.

The impulse to give expression to emotions and moods is not only shown in such reflex ways, but also in an intense desire for communication to other persons. The consequence of “telling all about it” is a measurable unburdening or relaxation which produces satisfaction. Thus, all men have a natural impulse to communicate their inward feelings and sensations. The suppression of it involves a tension, a heightening of the emotion, and a general uneasiness. A pain which circumstances forbid us to disclose, especially where tears have to be suppressed, is felt more intensely. Suppressed anger “gnaws the vitals” all the worse. The suppression of laughter is very uncomfortable, and for some persons quite impossible. Everybody knows how hard it is for women (shall we add for men?) to keep a secret.

When a woman has a piece of news, she “burns” to repeat it. Everybody suffering from the pangs of love feels much relieved when he has confessed his passion. Everybody experiences relief, when he bears a grudge against anybody, on “speaking his mind” about him. Criminals are not seldom led by an inward impulse to confess offences committed long before. Thus, this impulse, which I shall term the impulse of revelation, is a quite normal one, and belongs in some measure to every man.

In poets of genius, who have such manifold feelings and moods, and in whose rich fancy so many new thoughts and ideas are continually springing up, this impulse is proportionately manifest. But since, as we have seen, the feelings and moods of the poet cannot be described in simple words, art is required to give utterance to them. Such a poet no more writes for the sake of making poetry than a rational man talks for the sake of talking; he creates his work of art solely to the end that he may give utterance to the sentiments, feelings, and thoughts with which his soul is burdened. If he finds his work has no success nor recognition, he of course feels the same pain that any man would feel who wants to express himself to somebody and is understood by nobody. But he is incapable of altering anything in his work or reshaping it for a new edition. He can only be what he is. He feels himself incapable of creating anything but the embodiment of his ideas and sentiments.

Such a poet was Goethe. Art was for him only the means of expression of his sentiments. He expressed in poetic form only what really took place within himself, what he really lived, felt, and experienced. He himself said: “All my poems are occasional poems. They were called forth by real circumstances and have their reason and place therein. I never valued poems snatched out of the air. A special situation is universal and poetic, simply because a poet treats of it. What I did not undergo and what did not concern me I have never sung or expressed. I never wrote love poems without being in love.” And again he said: “If I desired for my poems a true basis and reflection, I had to get it in my own bosom. And so began that habit--from which I have never departed through life--of converting whatever rejoiced, or worried, or otherwise concerned me into a poem and so have done with it, and thus at once to correct my conceptions of outward things and to set my mind at rest. The gift for doing so could be to nobody more needful than to me; for my nature was always swaying from one extreme to another. Thus, all I have published are but fragments of a long confession.”

In Goethe the most diverse moods replaced one another. As he says, he passed from one extreme to another. To give them expression was the motive of his artistic production. The matter of his creations was furnished by his creative fancy, which in its turn took its material from the world in which he lived and into which he had such an insight as no other had. Thus, as often as his relations in life altered, he would alter the plan of his Wilhelm Meister, as he describes it in the following words: “Its beginnings came from a dim premonition that though a man may often essay things whose successful performance was denied to him by Nature, yet perhaps all false steps really carry him toward a priceless good. This conjecture is in Wilhelm Meister developed, illustrated, established, and at last expressly enunciated in the clear words, ‘Thou appearest to me like Saul, the son of Kis, who went out to fetch his father’s she-asses and found a kingdom.’” The following is likewise highly instructive: “For this purpose I collected the elements that I had been turning over in my mind for a couple of years, and examined the cases which had troubled me the most and occasioned me the most anxiety. However, nothing seemed to shape itself. I was in want of an incident or plot in which things could embody themselves. Finally, I got news of Jerusalem’s death; and just after the general notice came a precise and circumstantial account of the event. In an instant the remainder of the plan was found. Everything closed up on all sides and became a compact mass. It was like water in a vessel just on the point of freezing, which at the least joggle becomes a solid lump of ice.” His joys and sorrows, his desires, his pleasures and pains were exhibited by Goethe in the heroes of his poems. In their veins flowed his blood, they breathed with his lungs, and they lived by his life.

Dilthey[32] says: “The poetic process is in most of Goethe’s creations the same. A state of heart is powerfully experienced in the whole outer situation, with all the ideas, states, and shapes surrounding it, and since now the inwardly moved poet meets an outward condition fit to be made the vehicle of the experiences of his heart, there arises in this coalescence the nucleus of a poem which at once contains in itself all characteristic traits, the entire mood, the lines of the whole.”

In giving artistic expression to his own sentiments and his own fancy, Goethe painted the sentiments and reactions of society. The reason was that his soul was but the mirror of the world in which he lived. The greatness of the poet consisted precisely in this accidental correspondence; and when he painted his own woes and joys he was painting unawares the woes and joys of humanity. Goethe himself touches upon this in the following words: “There is all the difference in the world between the poet’s seeking out the particular to fit the general, and showing the general in the particular. The former method gives rise to allegory, where the particular is only an example of the general; but the latter method is the proper nature of poetry. It expresses a particular without thinking of the general or referring to it. Whoever catches the particular in all its life will have set his finger upon the universal without at first knowing what he has captured.”

This method of poetic creation is not, however, found in all poets. Art is not always an expression of sentiments and feelings. Poets as famous as Goethe have worked under totally different psychical conditions, and have created in an altogether different way.

Such a difference is found in those two men whom the German people with just pride hold to be the greatest poets of the century. Between scarcely any two poets have so many parallels been drawn as between Goethe and Schiller. Critics of to-day often rate Goethe higher than Schiller, and make him the greater of the two poets. But from the psychological standpoint we are forced to the conviction that there is between them a difference other than one of degree. Were Schiller raised to an ever so much higher power (if an algebraical metaphor may be permitted), he could never become a Goethe, but he might become a Shakespeare.

While Goethe took “in his own bosom” the poetic basis of his works, Schiller placed the germs of his poems in the outer world. While Goethe conceived poetry as merely the means of utterance of his sentiments, and hence spoke of his writings as “fragments of a long confession,” Schiller declares the purpose of poesy to be “none other than the completest expression of humanity.” While Goethe’s heroes were made of his own flesh and blood, Schiller’s fancy produced, idealized and generalized embodiments of characters he had observed and studied in the outward world. Schiller attached an intrinsic value to the outward habiliments of poetry, the sonorous and metaphorical language, the melody of verse, the plot of the drama. Goethe regarded the outward form as the mere “_Machwerk_”--the make-up--and of course did not finish and polish his works with the same care as Schiller. Of his Wallenstein, Schiller said: “Almost everything is cut away from me by which I might get at this matter in my usual way. Everything has to be effectuated by a felicitous form.” The construction of the form sufficed to bring him inspiration, though he could take no real interest in his personages. Speaking of the same drama in a letter, he says: “The matter is so alien to me that I can hardly get up an interest in it. It leaves me well-nigh cold and indifferent. Yet I am enthusiastic over the work. Two personages excepted, for whom I have some sympathy, I treat the whole _dramatis personæ_, especially the leading character, with a mere artistic love, cold as charity; but I assure you, they shall not turn out any worse on this account.” Goethe could never have brought himself to write in that fashion. When he had once given expression to his sentiments in a poetic rough-draught, he would often neglect it for years before he finished it.

“Goethe,” says Hermann Grimm, “was in his inmost heart of quite the opposite way of thinking from Schiller. He acknowledged Schiller’s importance, reverenced his earnest life, esteemed his greatness as a man. But as for what Schiller called poems, they were in Goethe’s eyes not poetry at all. Schiller’s poetical creating was foreign to Goethe. Schiller would begin by casting about for material. Then he worked it till he had made it plastic. Next, he laid his plans. These plans he placed before himself, and went to work, so many hours _per diem_, to construct his work, as a mason would build a palace, in strict conformity to the plan before him. That done, he took a contract with himself to put in the painting, the ornaments, and the furniture; and finally he cleaned the whole thing up, and opened it to the public. This thorough workmanship was Schiller’s forte. He was a professional poet, and he excelled all other professional poets. Goethe appreciated this; but he could not practise it himself. He discussed the technical questions which are of importance in criticising poetry, and in producing it, too, with the utmost seriousness, but always as an outsider. Making verses was for him an inconceivable proceeding. Whoever applied to Goethe to know whether he ought to go into the poetical profession came to a fine quarter. Young persons with a turn for versification have an artless belief that there is somewhere an Areopagus from which they may obtain a solemn and authoritative concession to make verses; and that thereupon they may be assured that their verses will meet with ‘success’--that is, be read and admired. Goethe was only able to give an answer which threw them back upon a metaphor--that a silkworm had only to eat leaves, and the silk would surely not be in default. In short, he replied evasively, dissuasively, and hesitatingly. But Schiller would answer in good faith. He criticised the verses inclosed and required, if they would trust to him, that they should persevere industriously. Naturally, he warned them that the art of poetry must not be attempted unless the writer was prepared to dedicate his life to it, with other such admonitions of good sense.”[33]

Schiller, for his part, considered poems which sprang from the author’s personal feelings, which included Goethe’s, as not, in the proper sense of the term, poetry. Concerning the few things he had himself done in that way Schiller said: “These verses are a mere natural utterance--a _Naturlaut_, as Herder would say--a note of pain, artless and comparatively formless. They are too true for the individual, to be called poetry proper; for in them the individual appeases his need and alleviates his burden, while in lyrics of another kind, carried away by a flood, he yields to the need of creating. The present lines give utterance to the sentiment from which they sprang and, after their kind, they make no further pretension.”

_These contrasts between the two poets did not rest upon any differences of principle, nor were they consequences of any divergence of theoretical views, but were due directly to differences of psychical mechanism._

Goethe in his prevailing moods was, as he describes himself, “tossed from one extreme to another.”

Now merry, now heart-cut,
Now thankful to be;
Or dangling uncertain
In flittering pain;
Exulting to heaven,
To death beaten down, etc.[34]

These words picture Goethe’s life. His moods were capable of the finest gradations. They arose spontaneously; he could give no account of them. His luxuriant fancy was formed from feelings and moods and pressed forward to artistic embodiment.

Goethe is often a riddle to himself. He considered his fancy as an objective spectator. Its variegated mixture became the source of his poetic ideas. But his strong intellectual power set limits to the rovings of his fancy, and did not allow it to be subjugated to his fluctuating moods, but held the mental balance even.

Schiller’s fancy was not excited by spontaneous moods. It was not in that way that he was urged to artistic expression. His moods depended upon his ideas. They were produced by ideas and modified by ideas. Schiller’s fancy no doubt lent poetic ideas to his searching intellect; but it did not work on its own account as Goethe’s did. It was an effect of the will. Schiller could never say that his works arose “as in a dream,” or that he versified “like a sleepwalker.” He did not feel that he produced “unconsciously.” What he did was the result of the most deliberate purpose.

Goethe’s impulse to deliver himself, to set forth his sentiments in artistic form, corresponds to Schiller’s need of producing, to the exuberance “impelled by superfluity” toward artistic creation. The turning-point for him lies in the intellect, and this draws from the outward world and from fancy in order to erect a sublime art temple. The characters produced by him did not, like Goethe’s, arise from his own sentiment, but were thoroughly artificial products.

Both Goethe and Schiller felt the gulf between them. After their first meeting, Schiller wrote to Körner: “His whole nature is laid down on other lines from mine; he lives in another world, and our modes of thought seem to be widely remote.”

Knowing that Goethe had in many ways excelled him, Schiller wrote: “It is true that, in entering this path, I encroach upon Goethe’s domain and must measure myself against him. It is furthermore certain that here I will be outstripped by him. But a remainder is left for me, which is mine, and which he can never attain; so that the preference given to him will be no shame to me, and I hope that things will about balance. In my most courageous moments I hope that the public will class us as different, but will not subordinate one species to the other, rather co-ordinating us both under a broader idealistic generic concept.” Thus Schiller justly recognised the difference of their “species” and had the right feeling that the one species ought not to be subordinated to the other. Twenty years after Schiller’s death Goethe said: “Schiller, who had the true poetical nature, but whose mind inclined to reflection and compelled much by force of reflection, that ought to spring up in a poet unconsciously and of its own accord, drew many young men his way who could, after all, only learn his language.”

The vast difference between these two men showed itself in many traits of their character. Goethe, who in his poems responded only to an inward impulse, a natural need, wrote above all for himself, and asked nothing for the public. Schiller’s efforts were to impose upon the world, to please the public. He himself says: “The public is now all with me; it is the subject of my studies, it is my sovereign, my friend. To the public alone I now belong. I shall submit to no other tribunal than this. This I fear, and this I respect.” Goethe neither feared nor honoured the public, and did not concern himself about what critics said of him, while Schiller often confessed that the critics had influenced him much. Goethe made no haste to get his works before the public; while Schiller could not wait till his creation was mature to commence publication. Thus, he published fragments of “Don Carlos” in Thalia, long before the poem was completed. But he himself regretted it later, for he would have liked to have altered something.

As I said above, Shakespeare might be called a Schiller raised to a higher power. Unfortunately, we have no detailed information about his life and opinions. But his works sufficiently show that never has poet been able to paint characters so true to nature and life as he. The world in its unadulterated genuineness and merest truth was reflected in the soul of this immortal poet. No theatrical puppets are they to whom his fancy gave being. They are men and women--living flesh and blood. They really feel, lament and make merry. But the poet himself does not speak to us through them. The man Shakespeare we do not know, nor can we guess what manner of man he was, nor what he felt. In every word of Goethe it is him we hear, and it is inconceivable that anybody should love his works without seeing the poet in them, who speaks to us by them. But with Shakespeare it is only for his characters that we warm up. With them we can sympathize, but the poet remains a stranger to us.

Schiller himself tells us that the matter of his poems often left him cold. His feelings were not engaged. In the whole of Wallenstein only two persons interested him (probably Max and Thekla). With many poets we can see that their heroic characters, which mounted their fancy, exercised a powerful influence upon their poetic hearts. So Dickens tells us that he sympathized with his favourite heroes; that he decidedly looked upon them as living persons; that during the composition he concerned himself about their fate as he would about a dear friend’s; that, in short, he partook of their sorrows and joys in his inmost soul. Thus, while with Goethe moods and sentiments were at the bottom of the production of the work of art, such psychical conditions were called forth in Dickens in a secondary way by the productions of his fancy. With Schiller, again, moods seem to have played neither an active nor a passive part in the creation of his poems. A poet who, from a psychological point of view, is to be compared with Goethe--though in a much lower potency, for whom, however, art was equally a means for expressing his feelings and sentiments--is Byron, on which account Goethe rated him particularly high, feeling in him a certain mental affinity to himself.

We see, then, how enormous a difference, from a psychological point of view, there is between the greatest poets, especially between those two whom the German people are accustomed to couple together as inseparable. Nor do these differences consist in one’s being placed above the other; but those psychical phenomena which for Goethe formed the main condition of his poetic life are not present at all in Schiller, but are replaced by different qualities. Yet there is one element they have in common. I mean creative fancy, without which it is impossible to conceive of a poet. This creative fancy therefore forms a common factor of all poetical genius.

Let us now turn to a psychological study of the most famous composers. We frequently meet with descriptions of the mode of production of their works, as we do with those of poets of genius. They, too, have the feeling of unconscious production, of the independent springing up of their tone-poems. Mozart frequently said the ideas of his creations came to him as in a dream. Gluck said thoughts flowed to him, and he knew not whence they came. Haydn believed that a “divine will” had through him created his greatest work--Die Schöpfung.

Here again, then, we find an independent fancy, such as we have recognised in poets of genius. In quite an analogous way in painters of genius fancy sometimes pours out its wealth in an inexhaustible spring. The imagination bodies forth new shapes unceasingly, and every figure, every tree, every stream is set forth in its smallest details; and these ideas weld with others in harmonious ideal images.

The question which presents itself, then, is: Whence comes it that one fancy expresses itself in poetic production, that in another musical creations spring up, while in a third painting is the vent of the creative imagination? The answer to this question leads us to consider that congenital capacity which is generally called Talent.

What is, for example, musical talent? While at the first hearing of a concerted piece unmusical persons hear nothing but the flow of the melody and the general character of the sounds, those who are talented comprehend the composition in all its divisions. In their apperception the harmony resolves itself into its parts, and the general effect of the sound is analyzed. While the sensuous impression called forth by music quickly passes away in those without talent, with talent a single hearing suffices to create a lasting memory. Musical talent is able to make out subtleties which are quite hidden from those who want it. In musicians of talent not even the direct excitation of musical reminiscences is needed to suggest auditory images, but they may be produced associatively from optical centres of apperception. Such people can, for example, read over a score and acquire as clear an idea of the composition as if they actually heard it. Though these qualities be carried to their highest pitch, they still remain matters not of genius but of talent. Mozart after hearing a mass once was able to write the whole down; but this is only a proof of vast talent, and does not depend upon that creative fancy which his compositions bespeak.

We have reason to presume that the causes of talent are to be attributed to anatomical conditions. For example, the autopsy of the brain of Gambetta (whose extraordinary oratorical power is well known) showed an uncommonly great development of the third frontal or Broca’s convolution--that is to say, of the part of the brain in which the centre of language is situated. It is to be presumed that musical talent depends upon a specially refined development of a certain acoustic centre, although its exact localization at present escapes our knowledge. Talent is certainly nothing but the material for artistic creation. It is, so to say, the instrument of the artist, while the creative power of genius corresponds to the artistic power of drawing tones from that instrument.

In Mozart the turning point of his artistic production lay in his inexhaustible fancy, which, according to his family, was in incessant action. His wife said: “In truth, his head was working all the time, his mind was ever moving, he composed almost unceasingly.” “In Prague it once happened that Mozart, while he was playing billiards, was humming a _motif_, and from time to time would look into a book he had with him. Afterward he confessed that he had been at work upon the first quintette of the Zauberflöte.”[35] His sister Sophia described him as follows: “He was always in good humour, but even at best very reflective, looking one very sharp in the eye meantime, answering attentively whether he was cheerful or sad, yet always seeming to be preoccupied with something else. Even while washing his hands in the morning he would walk up and down the room; and he never stood still, but would strike one heel against the other. And he was always reflecting.”[36] “When he travelled with his wife through a beautiful country he looked attentively and silently upon the world about him. His physiognomy, commonly rather self-contained and gloomy than brisk and free, would gradually become more cheerful, and then he would begin to sing, or rather to hum, until at last he would exclaim, ‘If I only had that theme on paper!’ And if she said that it could easily be done, he would say, ‘Yes, of course, it is a stupid thing that we must sit down and do our work in the room.’” This remark reminds us of a passage in a letter of Goethe: “As you may readily imagine, I have a hundred new things in my head; and now it does not depend on thinking; it depends on the making. What a thing it would be if we could confine objects so that they would stay put!”