Chapter VIII: Part 8

National psychology has to proceed in a similar way in judging of single phenomena. The spirit of the time, the soul of the people, which is expressed in the most diverse departments--politics, philosophy, art, literature--can only be appreciated and correctly understood when it is considered in its causal connections as a link in the great chain of historical development. Torn from its connections, no epoch of art or literature can be comprehended, and such fragmentary data will give rise to mistakes, while the creations of art as parts of a great whole, as links of a great chain, shed great light upon the thought and feeling of their time. An exact knowledge of the way in which single phenomena have arisen, an ascertainment of the motives of definite artistic expressions, are absolutely requisite for the correct judgment of art as a symptom of the contemporary soul of the people, as a partial manifestation of the spirit of the times. Whoever considers our modern art relations as things in themselves and leaves unnoticed their connection with times past and their psychological origin, will surely fail if he wishes to appreciate the same as material for a judgment upon the collective spirit of the times.

If one walks through a modern exhibition of paintings and observes there the viewers of pictures, how they sometimes stand shaking their heads before this picture or that without being able to make out what it was at all that the artist was trying to paint; if he considers the peculiar collections of colours, the glaring contrasts, the vague outlines, the peculiar ground tone, he will be led to say to himself that our time has introduced a new method of pictorial representation, and both the art critic and the psychologist must seek the _raison d’être_ of the new art.

Nordau says: “All these new tendencies, realism or naturalism, ‘decadentism,’ neomysticism, and their sub-varieties, are manifestations of degeneration and hysteria, and identical with the mental stigmata which the observations of clinicists have unquestionably established as belonging to these.”[125] Certain peculiarities in painting are explained by Nordau as due to defects of vision of the painter. “The curious style of certain recent painters--‘impressionists,’ ‘stipplers,’ or ‘mosaists,’ ‘papilloteurs,’ or ‘quiverers,’ ‘roaring’ colourists, dyers in gray and faded tints--becomes at once intelligible to us if we keep in view the researches of the Charcot school into the visual derangements in degeneration and hysteria.”[125] Vagueness of outline is produced, Nordau says, by nystagmus, or trembling of the eyeball. Insensibility of patches of the retina occurs among degenerates. The result must be, he says, that the subjects do not see distinctly rounded images. If such a person paints what he sees he will be inclined to put spots, larger or smaller, side by side, the spots not being united together, or only imperfectly. Some painters, according to Nordau, are capable of only certain colour-sensations and perceptions, and sometimes see but a single hue. This affords his explanation of peculiar colourists, the preference for particular colours, and the monotone frequent in modern art. Dun-coloured painting is a consequence of complete absence of the sensation of colour, or _achromatopsia_.

Some colours have, according to Nordau, peculiar effects upon the nervous system. Thus red has a “force-producing” or “dynamogenous” property; and thus, says Nordau, it is easy to understand “that hysterical painters revel in red, and that hysterical beholders take special pleasure in pictures operating dynamogenously and producing feelings of pleasure.” Other colours, especially violet, have an inhibiting and debilitating effect upon the nervous system. “The sight of this colour has a depressing effect, and the unpleasant feeling awakened by it induces dejection in a sorrowfully disposed mind. This suggests that painters suffering from hysteria and neurasthenia will be inclined to cover their pictures uniformly with the colour most in accordance with their condition of lassitude and exhaustion. When the entire surface of walls in _salons_ and art exhibitions of the day appears veiled in uniform half mourning, this predilection for violet is simply an expression of the nervous debility of the painter.”

These remarks of Mr. Nordau may seem to many quite clever. It must be confessed that the audacity and self-importance with which he enunciates the most incredible propositions, as if he were giving information of irrefragable truth, is startling, at least. Nor does he on any single occasion make the least attempt to bring any evidence to support his arbitrary assertions, or to prove them by objective observations. All that Mr. Nordau tells us of impairment of vision of painters, of the defects of their retinas, of their nystagmus, etc., is the product of his fancy, of his imagination. Why did he not actually investigate a number of painters and convince himself how far his imaginations corresponded with facts before he put them before the world as new discoveries? Mr. Nordau has nothing to utter but unfounded assertions. Not only is proof of them entirely wanting, but their falsity is in every instance capable of ready demonstration. Whoever has had the opportunity of coming in contact with painters knows that they are not colour-blind and have no trembling of the eyeball, even if they belong to new schools of art. With the same logic with which Mr. Nordau, from the colouring of modern painters, diagnoses a “weakness of the nerves,” he might, in the great painters of the Renaissance, who gave expression in their pictures to the religious ideas of the time, find a general religious insanity. It can hardly be necessary to examine more closely such superficialities, which ought to make no pretension to a scientific character.

Before I undertake the psychological analysis of the phenomena of the world of art of to-day let me be permitted, for the sake of avoiding misunderstandings, to define certain philosophical concepts which have been transported into the language of art criticism. I mean the variously applied designations, Realism, Naturalism, Idealism, and Romanticism.

By Realism I mean the aim to reproduce everything just as it is perceived by the eye in colour, form, and light, without adding or subtracting anything for the sake of beauty. Its contrary is Idealism, which takes for its task to weed from every fact its most beautiful aspect, and to suppress the unbeautiful by silence and by cloaking it, so that beauty may shine forth in all its lustre. Thus these two terms refer exclusively to the outward form of art, to its mode of presentation. A centaur playing with a nymph, or any other subject, can be painted realistically just as well as it can be painted idealistically. By Naturalism I mean an artistic aim which takes for its subjects such things as the world of observation (_Natur_) affords, and renders only actual facts, actual creatures. Romanticism, on the other hand, gives free rein to fancy, enriches the world with angels and devils, and draws its subjects from religious or mythological sources.

These different elements have from of old, and at all periods, played a great rôle in the history of art. They mostly depended on the spirit of the times. They answered to the feeling and thought of the people, and manifested themselves at the same period in different branches of art in the same way. According to the above definitions, ancient Greek art was prevailingly romantic. The character of this ideal, myth-forming people expressed itself distinctly in its art. Gods and heroes were the subjects of the masterpieces of Greek statuary; gods and heroes were sung by the poets who inspired the people through the theatre. This Romanticism was coupled with the Idealism proper to the Greeks. The beautiful alone seemed to them worthy of being represented. Symmetry of limb and a bold, courageous eye were to them as indispensable in sculpture as euphony and rhythm were in the drama. In the rough presentation of the fights of the Lapithæ and Centaurs, of gods and giants, they always knew how to vindicate the rights of the beautiful. By pictorial grouping, by rich drapery of the vestments, by the beauty of the forms, the agreeable and conciliating were kept constantly before the sight.

Nevertheless, a certain Realism and Naturalism are discernible even in Greek art. Among the numerous portrait statues dug up at Olympia we find not seldom realistical busts whose faces had been abraded or bruised in boxing. The cherries of Zeuxis, at which the birds picked, are an example of realistic Naturalism. This aim in art was yet more active with the Romans, without, however, rising to be the prevalent tendency.

After Art had gone to sleep in the decadence of Greeks and Romans, it was reawakened in an age when a new idea and a new metaphysics, or conception of the universe, filled the minds of the peoples. Christianity, after a struggle of centuries, had conquered the world, and it offered a new romantic world to art. Hence arose that art of the Christian-romantic ages which prevailed until recently. Among single artists a certain inclination toward Naturalism showed itself during the whole period; but it could not endure in opposition to the all-ruling Romanticism which provided its subjects partly from Christianity and partly from antiquity. It was not until the nineteenth century that an open warfare broke out between Romanticism and Naturalism, while Realism at the same time sought to displace Idealism. What value Realism and Naturalism may have in comparison to Idealism and Romanticism let professed art critics decide. Our part is only to examine the phenomena from a psychological standpoint and to discover the motives which produced those phenomena.

In the course of time, as in all new movements, parties and schools were formed which waged the fiercest warfare, every man holding his school and his method to be the only right one. It is easily understood that in a matter of this kind, in the effort to make one’s own point of view as important as possible, a contestant will shoot far over the mark he had originally set before himself. So it happened that the realists, who in the beginning only opposed idealism in so far as to say that the task of art is to represent Nature in its truth, without concealment and without prevarication, were spurred on by opposition to mark their effort in their work much more strongly than was needful, so that they not only presented the ugly and disgusting, because they would not deny the existence of those elements, but went so far as to seek it out, and at last quite forgot the beautiful and overlooked it in their attention to the ugly.

It is the same with the Naturalists in their attitude toward Romanticism. Their zeal to represent real life just as it is went beyond all measure. The stronger the opposition to the new movement, the more zealously did they try to bring forward the ugly and common, while entirely overlooking the good. In this way genuine Realism and Naturalism were corrupted, and the picture often became little better than a burlesque.

The inclination, in the pursuit of a new idea, to press it far beyond what was originally intended is a phenomenon grounded in the normal human character, and found not merely in art, but in every department of human production.

Carl Gussow was the founder of the latest Realism in German painting. His endeavour was to represent Nature, unadorned, in its truth, without shrinking at any blemish whatever. His peculiar colouring, the new manner of his technique, his tendency to give special prominence to ugliness, raised at the first appearance of his pictures in Berlin a decided and general disapproval. But voices of wrath soon became weaker and weaker, adherents and admirers began to appear, imitators arose, and a new school was founded.

Somewhat earlier, but in exactly the same way, a yet more extreme Realism and Naturalism had been started in France. Manet was the founder of a new school in which we see a radically new artistic aim. While hitherto painters had hastily sketched in the open air what they observed, and afterward in their studios had repainted it, drawing largely from fancy in the process, and indifferent to the difference of light, Manet carried on his painting _en plein air_. The image, just as it presented itself to the sight, and at that very moment, must be put upon the canvas. Of course, these “impressionists” had voluntarily to renounce all finer technique. They clutched at the coarsest methods, in order that they might quickly, and without sophistication, reproduce the impression seen. The soft transition of colours which the old masters thought they perceived in Nature did not exist for Manet. For him every object bore its own abrupt colour. In a landscape illuminated by a dazzling sun, the green of the fields, the blue of the sky, the red of the roof tiles, stood unmitigated and abruptly adjacent.

This sort of Realism, combined with a corresponding Naturalism, called forth a veritable hurricane of censure. Again and again were the canvases of Manet rejected by the _Salon_, so that he had to hold an exhibition of his own. Nevertheless, a group of young men collected about him, and it augmented as time rolled on; so that at last he became a factor in the history of art. The endeavour to bring unfalsified Nature upon the canvas led to special studies of light. Previously the pictures produced in the artist’s studio had a certain conventional illumination. Now there was an effort to reproduce with the brush the colours as they were presented to the artist’s sight under bright sunshine, in the dusk, in bad weather, by artificial light, etc. Thus arose the dazzling colours which represent the effects of direct sunlight. The violet landscapes show the attempt to reproduce the illumination of the dusk; the “wan painting,” as Nordau calls it, is intended to represent the mist-filled landscape of the great heats of summer. It is not our part to decide how far the painters who have pursued this aim have been justified by success. The only task of psychology is to ascertain the psychical processes which were the reason of the production of the picture. To criticise it does not belong to psychological or to psychiatrical science. The psychiatrist as such is a layman in the department of art, and would be guilty of transgressing the limits of his competence were he to undertake to give a judgment of a work of art, especially to draw from it psychiatric conclusions.

As for the general end of art, we have seen, in considering the psychology of genius, that fixed rules for it do not exist. The kind of art considered needs neither a creative fancy nor a refined feeling in order to express the peculiar moods of the painter in artistic form, for painters who attempt that are rare. They wend their solitary way, without following the army of any school.

Nordau sees in the “formation of close groups or schools” a symptom of degeneration and hysteria.[126] He says: “Healthy artists or authors in possession of minds in a condition of well-regulated equilibrium will never think of grouping themselves into an association.... True talent is always personal. In its creations it reproduces itself, its own views and feelings, and not the articles of faith learned from any æsthetic apostle.” This assertion is not true. Nordau confounds genius and talent; and this shows how important it is to be clear in such expressions. Simple talent by no means possesses the properties stated by Nordau.

Jean Paul Richter[127] drastically styles the man of talent “the gaily imitating ape of genius.” Men of talent to whom Nature has denied creative power have from of old formed groups and schools. Even Schiller became the founder of a school, although Goethe said his scholars could learn no more than his language. In the formation of schools nobody ever before saw a morbid symptom. But does Mr. Nordau see what he is doing when he classes as degenerate and hysterical all painters who possess only talent and are wanting in the creative power of genius? His great saint, Lombroso, to whom he has consecrated himself, says that “if in the nature of a genius signs of an abnormal disposition are wanting, there must be some deceptive circumstance.” Yet Nordau holds those artists to be degenerate who have only talent and not genius. According to this, we must come to the conclusion that if a man has genius he is insane, and if he has only talent he is degenerate. Here the great doctrine blossoms out into its essential absurdity. But as for groups and schools, in what department are they worse nuisances than in science, and in particular in those branches to whose advocates Mr. Nordau appeals by preference?

In realistic and naturalistic movements some great painters, I admit, were concerned; and these embodied their own intuitions and sentiments in their art. But they are scattered sparsely, rising like rocks here and there out of the dead level of the ocean.

Böcklin was a painter whose pictures contain the sentiments and moods of an artist. He tried by colouring and by the peculiarity of his colour tones to lend to his pictures a mood which should affect the spectator like the tones of music, like the harmonies of an organ. In this idealistic garment of painting he wrapped, as a rule, a romantic subject. His figures are centaurs, nymphs, satyrs, bacchantes, mermaids, etc. He does not trouble himself much about the correctness of his drawing, so that the grossest errors in that respect are common enough with him. All he aimed at was to embody certain moods in painting, and this he fully succeeded in doing in his Isle of the Dead, his Elysian Fields (Die Gefilde der Seeligen), his Leviathan (Meerungeheuer), and his Prometheus Bound. Böcklin is justly called a poet in painting. He knew how to speak in colour tones and how to awaken the most diverse kinds of moods. In spite of all enmities, he soon found adherents and imitators, who have had no slight influence on the subsequent development of art.

Let these brief sketches suffice to describe the mode of psychological origination of modern phenomena in this department. What we have here seen are but repetitions of facts often to be observed in history. New ideas, especially when they emerge suddenly and without preparation, and, above all, if they contain great departures from ancient customs, have always a rough fight to make. They have generally excited a storm of abuse and an apparently invincible opposition. It may be said that just those ideas which later appeared to have opened the paths of advance the most met at first the most stubborn resistance. It is in human nature to hold fast to the ancient inheritances and to turn away from them unreadily. Hence we must deduce the proposition that all novelties ought to be met in as fair a spirit as possible, and that we must always reflect that we are apt to have an unconscious prejudice against new ideas which depart from our habits.

But there is another class of men who, on the contrary, think everything new to be sublime and beautiful. Since they really understand neither the new nor the old, they cherish the vague feeling that the more strange and unintelligible a proposition is, the more judicious and “profound” it must be. They speak in raptures and ecstasy of the new art, and think it extremely clever to throw out as many technical terms as they may have picked up without precisely understanding them. Nordau terms these “persons of superior intelligence who look down with pity upon the Philistine” who can not rise to their genius for understanding art, as all hysterical. I can not share this conception. It seems to me rather a characteristic due to social conditions and to imperfect education. The ostentation and vanity which so often show themselves in externals, such as furniture, etc., are still more manifest in men’s acting and thinking. Many parents educate their children, not for the sake of making of them well-prepared and serviceable men, but for the sake of being able to make a show with them. Not the happiness of their children, but their own vanity, is, unfortunately, but too often the leading motive. Children are taught music, not to form their heart in the beauty of art and to ennoble their sense, but from vanity, to bring them forward as trained monkeys. This vanity, this passion to appear more than they are, is inculcated into many children of so-called good society from their childhood up. They have to dazzle by their many-sided capacity, by their understanding of art and learning. Evidently, it is for the most part hollow, and if the thin covering of superficiality is raised, nothing but a desert void is found. But they show well, and that is the main point. In society, it of course belongs to good tone to chat about philosophy, literature, and art, whether one knows anything or not. Indeed, the more strange and unintelligible anything is, the more they feel obliged to surround themselves with an appearance of intelligence. If the question is about painting, they prate about the powerful “mood”; in music the “working up of the counterpoint” impresses them, without their having the slightest understanding of such things.

I should never think of declaring anybody diseased on account of such traits of character as these, nor should I excuse his silliness in that way. No, it is not hysteria, but simply bad education that is in question. Educate your children to candour and integrity, impress upon them that truth is the most indispensable of all virtues, that there is nothing more contemptible than the wish to appear to be more than one really is, and thus clear the world of such fools!

The sort of men whom I have here described are in their inculcated superficiality of course aware of no inclination to take up a serious calling. They would like to be imposing and to make themselves spoken of; that is their highest ambition, and often the highest ambition of their pretentious parents for them. Some feel themselves called upon to become actors; others, musicians; others, painters; others, to delight the world with their literary performances. No serious study is contemplated, of course. With a certain enthusiasm they range themselves with any new aim in art. They do not comprehend the spirit of it, but they mimic the externals of the masters.

How he hawks and how he spits,
To spy that out they’ve used their wits!

When they have daubed a canvas violet or dark blue they think that they have created a mood. If they can handle a brush like a broomstick and smear about with it so that one can not tell whether the picture is upside down or right side up, they call themselves, with pride, modern realists and naturalists.

Undoubtedly there are a number of hysterical and degenerate subjects among this class of people. But, in order to establish this, it is necessary thoroughly to investigate every single case, since this trait of character alone does not constitute disease. It would also be extremely fallacious to reason from this sort of men to the population in general. They are, at all events, exceptional individuals. Moreover, such people have existed at all periods of history. We have seen that Kant painted them in 1788 as a well-known category of society, calling them the “monkeys of genius.” And in no age can the existence of such persons escape the sharp observer.

The phenomena whose acquaintance we have made in the department of painting have their analogues in modern literature. Here, too, the Romanticism and Idealism of an earlier period of art are, in accordance with our scientific metaphysics, displaced by Naturalism and Realism. Thus the historical drama, whose subjects poets used to take from prehistorical times and whose characters they altered and idealized at will, as well as the romantic drama, in which the fantastical and supernatural came to expression, belong to times gone by. The modern poet draws his subjects not from early ages, but from the present. He does not create his characters, but seeks to reproduce what he has himself observed. He does not conceal any defect or weakness of his stage heroes, but deals out equal justice to the good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly. The language of which he avails himself is not poetical, sonorous, or metaphorical. His heroes spout no iambics, but speak, for all the world, like all of us. In short, we are living in the Bessemer-metal age of literature, and poetry sounds ridiculous to us.

This realistic and naturalistic impulse in literature, which for its outward form uses the novel as well as the drama, first found vent in France. It has very often shot far beyond its mark, just as it has done in painting. Anxiety not to conceal ugliness in a weak preference for beauty, and to tell the truth that evil as well as good exists, has egged on writers to hunting up whatsoever things were hideous and whatsoever things were revolting, and has made them lose sight of the beauty and the good that really do exist.

Other motives, however, may contribute to this effect. A number of writers prefer to paint whatever is unlovely, and especially immoralities, not in the above-described and half-involuntary way, but for the sake of the moral. They do not look upon their art as descriptive merely, but as partly rhetorical. That is to say, they do not paint life truthfully without having an ulterior design. They do so because the truth must awaken the moral sense of the people and their aspirations for a better life. While the idealist, in the pursuit of the same object, paints man in a lofty and scarce realized perfection, the realist points out the shortcomings and feebleness of what actually exists. He paints vice, not with the false glamour which an inclination for it would shed upon it, but in the true hideousness of its details, so that the contemplation of it may excite horror.

It is not my task to pass judgment upon the value and justification of the different aims of art. I only analyze them psychologically. I therefore pass at once to another class of writers, who have the same preference for painting immoralities from a third motive.

These are those same uneducated and unintelligent ignoramuses whom we mentioned above; for literature, too, is reduced to hack work in their hands. Many persons whose capacities were sufficient to make them good artisans, who might have been taught, perhaps, to make a really good pair of shoes, or otherwise to fulfil a useful function in the world, stick to the pen, because a bad writer is more respectable than a good mechanic. They write, not because they have any calling for literature, but because they know no other trade. These factotums of the great literary army, shooting up like toadstools from the dung heap, seize upon every dripping of filth that they can smell out, and ask themselves, “How much money can I make with this production?” The question, “What is the literary value of this fact?” does not occur to them. That the task of art and literature is to ennoble the taste of the public they have clean forgotten, even if they ever thought of it. On the contrary, they speculate on the baser impulses and evil qualities of the rabble. They have spied out the externals of the modern Naturalists and Realists without attempting to penetrate into the spirit of their works. Like senseless monkeys, they wade through vulgarities and obscenities in order to excite the hankerings of the great crowd, in order to be known as writers of the modern school, and in order to succeed in a financial sense. The shameful influence of this sort of authors--or, rather, writers--upon the population is rooted in the disproportions of modern society. A reform in this respect can only come from their gradual removal and from the elevation of the culture and taste of the people.

Here, again, we meet, too, those unfortunate degenerate subjects who possess a certain literary gift, but whose whole mental action is morbid. They often show that marked inclination for every kind of vileness and coarseness which is called moral insanity. This can not fail to betray itself in their writings. The frivolous and vulgar attract them, because they answer to their own thought and feeling. The more obscene and indecent is the subject with which they deal, the more they feel themselves in their own free element. But we must not reason from the character of these last writers to that of authors as a whole. It is not they who give literature in general its purpose. They only ape the form of genuine authorship without being able to comprehend its purpose.

Thus the Realism and Naturalism which are found in all departments of modern art and literature are not, as Nordau thinks, marks of a universal putrescence and nervous prostration, a “pestilential malady of degeneration and hysteria.” Though those endeavours often overshoot their mark, they are simply signs of that universal spirit of the times that desiderates truth and fact, and gives the lie to all that is mystical and supernatural.

The foregoing inquiries show that the same phenomena in art may be produced in ways most diverse psychologically. It is the most unscientific levity to treat them summarily and to say, as Nordau does, that whoever paints violet pictures has weak nerves, or whoever paints in the manner of Manet has lesions of the retina, etc. In a psychiatric diagnosis it is requisite strictly to individualize; and thus we are brought to a question of the highest importance for the psychiatrist: _How far can we, from a work of art or literature, diagnose a mental disease of its author?_

The influence of derangements of the mind upon the action of the subjects depends, in the first place, upon the kind of disease. In a great number of cases the disease does not manifest itself at all in action. In others, in consequence of diminished efficiency, the value of the work is diminished, and finally positively insane ideas may be manifest in products of the insane.

In an acquired disease accompanied with gradual decay of intelligence, as in general paresis, the disease may be detected by comparison with previous performances, and occasionally the typical perversities in the works of these patients lead to recognition of their misfortune. In the congenital weakness of mind of degenerate artists and _littérateurs_ case is different. The example of Courbet shows that a weak-minded man may paint very nice pictures while sane persons sometimes mine out the vilest stuff. For this reason the value of a work of art is not decisive in the diagnosis of the mental condition. Nor, as I said before, is the psychiatrist, as such, competent to express an opinion concerning the value of such a work.

Sometimes delusions make their appearance in everything the insane person does. A painter may, in consequence of religious delusions, paint nothing but pictures of saints. But to maintain the converse--that whoever paints nothing but saints is suffering from religious insanity--would be ridiculous. No diagnosis, therefore, of insanity can be made from a painting or similar work of art, nor from a musical composition. A musician under melancholia may, owing to his morbid mood, compose only elegies and funeral marches; but that does not authorize us to presume that because a composer only writes elegiac music he is probably insane. The assertion of certain supersubtile minds that certain compositions of Schumann’s betray his morbid state of heart rests upon mere words, and deserves no notice.

But with writers it is quite otherwise. Their action is much more comprehensive, and commonly affords a much deeper insight into the psychical life of the author than a painting can do. It is within the power of a poet or a writer to disclose in his creations a mirror of his whole inner life, his sentiments, and his thoughts. Hence we shall sometimes be quite able to diagnose the insanity of a _littérateur_ from his works.

But even here we must proceed with the utmost caution and reserve. The descriptions of the poet can only attain a diagnostic value when they have express reference to his own individuality. The objective description of situations and characters can usually afford no inference concerning the psychical life of the poet, and we should commit a gross error were we, without any particular information, to identify him with a character created by him. Elegiac and melancholy verses, even when they bespeak the sentiments of the poet, can not, taken by themselves, justify us in presuming a pathological condition. We have seen how Goethe frequently grieved nigh unto death, and really contemplated suicide, yet we should not be justified in assuming melancholy in the psychiatric sense.

Where manifest delusions are described we can, in many cases, state positively that the writer is insane. We shall do so with all the greater certainty when it is not merely insanity in general that is indicated, but the description takes on the type of a well-known morbid form.

Rousseau is a good instance in point. His Confessions and Dialogues afford proof positive of insanity. A typical delusion of persecution is manifest in his saying that “the Kings of Russia, England, and France, all nobles, the women, the priests, and mankind in general,” wounded by some statements in his works, “had banded themselves together and declared a dreadful war” upon him. A full examination of the insanity of Rousseau, with special reference to the above works, has been undertaken by Möbius.[128]

Tasso, who suffered from _melancholia agitata_ complicated with hallucinations, wrote in a letter: “My sadness is so deep and persistent that people often think me crazy, and I am forced to assent to the opinion myself when I am not able to shut my thoughts up within my breast, but break out into long monologues. My hallucinations are human and demoniac. The human express themselves in shouts and cries, such as men, and particularly women, utter, and in bestial laughter. The demoniac express themselves in songs, etc. I take a book in my hand to gain some information, and at once voices sound in my ears and I distinguish the names of Paolo and Fulvia.” A quite typical example of a modern poet whose insanity can be determined from his works is Strindberg with his passionate misogyny and his other absurdities. A comprehensive account of the state of mind of this author as betrayed in his writings would fill a volume. I will therefore merely note the most important points in a single writing which fully suffice to render the diagnosis of his insanity certain.

In Die Beichte eines Thoren (The Confession of a Fool) Strindberg describes his ten years of married life. His wife had been divorced from her first husband, a baron. The book is, in substance, a serious complaint against this wife, whom he accuses of infidelity. If a sane man thinks himself betrayed by his wife, he will either leave her or forgive her. But in either case, both for the sake of his own honour and for that of the children--and Strindberg had several--he will endeavour, as far as possible, to screen such family affairs from publicity, and will rather lead the public to suppose the fault is his than call the mother of his children a harlot before all the world. True, departure from, this principle is not of itself a symptom of insanity; yet it must be admitted that it is at least very surprising that a man should write a book for no other purpose than to accuse his married wife, the mother of his children, of infidelity.

Let us, however, consider the grave charges which Strindberg publicly makes against his wife. From the moment the woman left her first husband in order to marry him he becomes suspicious and believes she has intercourse with other men. He does not suspect any individual in particular, but every single man with whom she comes in contact for a long series of years awakens his doubt and jealousy. Though he is never able to adduce one single real fact by way of proof, he is yet unceasingly tortured by the idea of the infidelity of his wife. She not only has illicit relations with other men, but even extends her unnatural desires, in _amor lesbicus_, to her own sex. She can not make a call, nor even kiss a young girl, but he believes he detects an unlawful, sexually contranatural act; and in his mind’s eye he continually sees his wife in prison for her infractions of the moral law, etc. In spite of it all, he loves his wife, and can not leave her. Though he is fully convinced of her crime and depravity, yet the sight of her “foot in its black stocking,” or even of her “garter,” is enough to make him fall at her feet and, “with tears in his eyes,” implore her pardon. Still the pangs of jealousy torment him anew. No less than six times he “escapes,” and that into distant countries. But scarcely is he away when desire seizes upon him. He is “shackled, not with chains of iron, which he might break, but with chains of India rubber, which draw him back.” He either returns or has his wife and children follow him. There is a _Wiedersehen_ with great emotion, and straightway new pangs of jealousy. Every waiter in the hotel, the _concierge_, a lieutenant who comes to the _table d’hôte_, are objects of his wife’s love. Once he was with his wife in a boat which was managed by a sailor who wore very high boots. His wife looked at the boots, and forthwith he was beside himself, detecting in that look a sexual aberration. The same pangs of jealousy were excited by any intercourse of his wife with any female. Thus he describes an old “devilish-looking person” whom he says his wife hugged and kissed in a “lustful” way. Once when his wife came to him she seemed to him to have the face of “that old devil’s dam,” and he at once concluded that she had been with her, and had committed illicit acts. Thus, no matter whether it were man or woman, young or old, ugly or beautiful, in every living being he detected a partner of his wife’s sin, and was driven by continual pangs of jealousy into that desperation in which he wrote the book. It ends with the words, “This, beloved, is my vengeance.” Such is his own account. The _audiatur et altera pars_ may here be dispensed with. It is a manifest case of jealous insanity. The image of the disease is, however, essentially completed by the nature of his description. The satisfaction with which he speaks of himself, the self-glorification which appears in all his descriptions, is either one of the signs of mental degeneration or, what is more probable, there is a delusion of grandeur. He always speaks of himself as the “great poet,” the “renowned scholar,” etc. In one place he says that people are jealous of his great talent, and therefore might put him out of the way, which is a characteristic manifestation of the delusion of persecution.

Among the most important symptoms of such maladies are the so-called referential ideas. The patients refer all that goes on about them to themselves. In every look, in every harmless remark of a stranger, they fancy they detect a hidden slight intended for them. Whatever is said in their hearing they connect with their own individual selves, and find in the simplest things strong confirmation of their delusions. If people stand up in a shop, it is because they are present. If anybody in the street spits, he means to do it at them. All the articles in the newspaper are meant to apply to them. In short, everything that happens has reference to them.

This symptom is strongly marked throughout Strindberg’s book. He misunderstands the most harmless remarks of his wife. In travelling, if anybody speaks to him, either they do it to mortify him or to make advances to his wife. The most ordinary counsels of those about him he takes for cunning traps.

It would, of course, carry me too far to inquire into all the particulars set down in this bulky book in reference to this morbid phenomenon. It may suffice here to mention one marked example of such referential ideas. When Strindberg first read Ibsen’s Wild Duck, he immediately thought the whole piece was intended for him and was only written on his account. He expresses himself as follows:

“It was a drama of the famous Norwegian spy, the inventor of equality madness. How the book fell into my hands I could not say. But now everything was clear, and gave occasion to the worst suspicions concerning the reputation of my wife. The plot of the drama was as follows: A photographer (a nickname I had earned by my novels drawn from real life) has married a person of doubtful repute, who had formerly been the mistress of a great proprietor. The woman supports the household from a secret fund which she derives from her former paramour. In addition to that, she carries on the business of her husband, a good for nothing who spends his time drinking in the society of persons of no consequence. Now, that is a misrepresentation of the facts committed by the reporters. They were informed that Maria [Strindberg’s wife] made translations, but they did not know that it was I who gratuitously corrected them and paid over to her the sums received for them.

“Matters become bad when the poor photographer discovers that the adored daughter who comes before her time into the world is not his child, and that the wife has warned him when she induced him to marry her. To complete his disgrace, the husband consents to accept a large sum as indemnity from the former lover. By this I understand Maria’s loan upon the baron’s security, which I indorsed after my wedding. But as for the birth of the daughter, I can see no trace of analogy, for my daughter was not born until two years after the wedding. But hold! The dead girl! There, I am on the track! The dead child which forced us to a marriage which otherwise would not have taken place!

“I prepared a great scene for the afternoon. I wished to catch Maria in cross-examination, to which I wished to give the form of a defence for us both. We had been equally attacked by the scarecrow of the masculinists, who had been paid for the pretty job.”

This is a perfect example of such a referential idea, than which nothing more typical can be imagined. Let it be observed how every detail of Ibsen’s play is made use of in order to establish a connection with the delusion. I have therefore no doubt at all that Strindberg was insane. His malady took a well-known form, called _paranoia simplex chronica_.

Such patients are, in the true sense of the words, dangerous to society. Strindberg himself tells how one day, “without direct occasion,” without being able himself to account for his act, but following a sudden impulse, he fell upon his wife unawares and beat her unmercifully, so that she only escaped further abuse by the cries of the children, who came running to her. Immediately after this conduct he surrendered himself to full sensuous love for this wife. He remarks himself that it is a peculiar union in which one drubs his wife by day and enjoys her embraces at night.

That a psychiatrical diagnosis is not to be based on isolated facts, under pain of error, but that the underlying motives of the suspicious behaviour must be examined most thoroughly, has been repeatedly said above. I do not know how I can better render my position clear than by placing into juxtaposition with the above case, in which I myself diagnose insanity, one or two others in which I can not accept such diagnoses. These will illustrate the extreme errors into which one may be led either by an insufficient examination or by an arbitrary delimitation of the latitude of health, and by accepting a definite type as the normal man.

That Dante had epileptic fits, is announced by Lombroso in a recent paper.[129] “In the Divina Commedia, Dante himself describes several fits in which he fell headlong and lost consciousness.” The passages referred to are two, as follows: After Charon had driven together the apostates from God, in order to carry them over the river, and Virgil had described the terrors which awaited them, Dante says:[130]

He ceased. The gloomy region shook amain!
Still its mere memory bathes with sweat my brow.
Rumbled that land of tears with moaning wind;
A light, vermilion-coloured, flashed from hell;
And, wholly vanquishing my palsied mind,
Even as a man whom sleep o’ertakes, I fell.

_Parson’s Translation._

Another passage is as follows:

Meanwhile he moaned so much, compassion took
My sense away, and like a corse I dropped.

_Parson’s Translation._

Lombroso thinks himself forced by these passages to diagnose epilepsy in Dante! Are we to take this seriously? If one of the comic papers had undertaken to parody psychiatry, how could it have been more extravagant? It would seem to me almost ludicrous to pay attention to such assertions and to parley with them. Lombroso, however, is not only a professor of psychiatry, but he is the founder of a “school,” and has many adherents, not to say warm advocates. He is said to be “one of the loftiest mental phenomena of the century.” He has “poured a veritable flood of light, which those alone have not perceived who obdurately close their eyes or who are too shortsighted to derive benefit from any enlightenment whatsoever.”[131]

Lombroso thinks, then, that Dante, in the verses quoted, describes an actual state in which he found himself. But what justifies such a presumption? To be logical, he ought to take all the other descriptions in the Divina Commedia for actual events. He ought to suppose that Dante actually saw and heard everything he describes in hell and in purgatory; in other words, he ought to consider Dante to be an hallucinant. Why does he not infer this from such lines as the following?

A leopard, glittering in a dappled hide,
That would not flee, though light and full of speed,
Hindering my way, before me I descried,
And often turned, as doubtful to proceed.

_Parson’s Translation._

On the same principles, we ought here to diagnose hallucinations, imperative ideas, or consecutive delusion. Dante addresses this supplication to Virgil:

Behold yon monster in my road, whose rage
Thrills through my veins until my pulses quake;
Defend me from her, thou illustrious sage!

_Parson’s Translation._

Why does not Lombroso infer from the “rage which thrills through the veins” that Dante had hallucinations of sensation? All this is inferable by the same logical principle as the epilepsy. The verses from which he infers epilepsy only describe the crushing sensations which the sight of the terrors of hell occasion in him.

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

To the next cornice we had come; here fled
All power of speech, mine eyes were ravished so.
For, seized with ecstasy, I seemed to be
Rapt in a sudden vision of a crowd
Met in a temple.

_Parson’s Translation._

Soon as my mind, that from itself had swerved,
Came back to true things that outside it lie,
I knew my dreams false, but their truth observed.
My leader then, who could perceive that I
Walked like a man by somnolence unnerved,
Said: “Come! what ails thee that thou canst not keep
Thy footing straight, but more than half a league
Hast moved with faltering steps, as if by sleep
Or wine o’ercome, and eyes that show fatigue?”

_Parson’s Translation._

Lombroso says: “It will be seen that the fits in the Purgatorio take more of the dreamy, somnambulic cast; those of the Paradiso more of the ecstatic.” Such a state he infers from the following:

So steadfast and attentive were mine eyes
In satisfying their decennial thirst,
That all my other senses were extinct,
And upon this side and on that they had
Walls of indifference, so the holy smile
Drew them into itself with the old net.

_Longfellow’s Translation._

If from such poetical expressions a somnambulic condition is presumable, then all poets suffer from that malady. Not only poets, but all ordinary human beings make use of expressions equally somnambulic. They say: “I did not know whether I was on my head or my heels,” “I was senseless with joy,” “The world swam before my eyes,” “I saw blood,” “I can give no account of what I did, but when I came to myself I was miles away.” Just such terms, clothed in poetic garb, are adduced by Lombroso as evidences of a somnambulic or ecstatic state. So he quotes the following:

At this voice saw I many little flames
From step to step descending and revolving,
And every revolution made them fairer.
Round about this one came they and stood still,
And a cry uttered so loud a sound
It here could find no parallel, nor I
Distinguished it, the thunder so o’ercame me.

So did my mind, among those aliments
Becoming larger, issue from itself,
And that which it became can not remember.

_Longfellow’s Translation._

Such are the evidences upon which “Master Lombroso” rests his thesis that Dante had epilepsy accompanied with somnambulic and ecstatic states. His disciples say that only the “obdurate” and the “imbecile” can fail to perceive the great wisdom of this new doctrine.