The Transition to the Psychic Character of the German Present — What Is History

LECTURE III

THE TRANSITION TO THE PSYCHIC CHARACTER OF THE- GERMAN PRESENT; UNIVERSAL MECHANISM OF PSYCHIC PERIODS OF TRANSITION

LECTURE III

THE TRANSITION TO THE PSYCHIC CHARACTER OF THE- GERMAN PRESENT; UNIVERSAL MECHANISM OF PSYCHIC PERIODS OF TRANSITION

We have outlined the development of the German people from its very beginning to the nineteenth century, and have noted how all outward events get the impress of their time and epoch. We saw that, after an age of symbolism in psychic life, say down to the third century a.d., there followed an era in which everything conformed to certain types, say down to the Salic line of emperors; that this again was followed by the conventionalism of the Hohenstaufen and of the later Middle Ages; that afterwards the mighty era of individualism set in with the Reformation and the Renaissance, which was in turn succeeded by the so-called age of the Aufklarung; that finally there ensued, talcing its origin about the middle of the eighteenth century, the era of subjectivism, — including the

movements of Sentimental ism and Storm and Stress, of Classicism and Romanticism, — the first period of which ended about the year 1S70. We belong to-day to its second period, which, it seems, is already approaching its end.

In this rapid enumeration of the vast psychic changes which are included in the course of these ages, we have always tried to follow up one particular moment, paying more and more attention to it as the sources continued to increase, the moment in which the transition of one age into the other took place. Our presentiment, at first vague, — typical events of the psychic mechanism of transition constantly recurring, — finally took the shape of definite assumption, so that to test it by facts seemed to be essential.

It is evident at first sight that recent facts which mark another transition are of special importance for such a test, since we have now so much better material for observation. "We have, therefore, discussed this point more at length and in more detail than usual. It is especially the transition to our present period of history that brings us to the point in question.

It is highly instructive and it also serves our purpose to observe more closely the changes which have led to our own epoch. I have delayed a discussion of these phenomena until to-day, in order to enter somewhat more into detail.

A consideration of these events requires, even in so short a time as we have at our disposal, a somewhat general characterization of the psychological mechanics which underlies them, and this, as I think it will be shown, at least in so far as the nature of our data will allow, is identical with the psychological moments which have attended the earlier tran-sitidn epochs of our history, a fact which is not surprising, since the whole process is certainly the outcome of general psychological laws.

The stage of evolution at which the German people have arrived was brought about through most radical economic, social, and political changes — changes which go back as far as the last decades of the eighteenth century. There appeared, even at that early date, in the country as well as in the towns, something of the modern " Unternehmerthum " (spirit of

enterprise) ; the owners of manorial estates in the northeastern part of Germany engaged in a considerable corn-export, especially to England, changed their wealth into capitalistic form, and began to sever the seigniorial and patriarchal relations with their villagers, looking toward the development of a class of agrarian wage-workers; the rising industrialists of the middle classes founded here and there their manufacturing plants. But these were only beginnings. Not till after the wars of independence did a somewhat stronger growth succeed under the influence of the newly awakened energy and as a result of a new unifying commercial policy, which was aimed at by the agrarian legislation of the Prussian reforin-movement. Not until the years of Reaction so often misunderstood, not until after 1848, was there a full development of modern industry and capitalistic agriculture in Germany.

There appeared at this time, however, strong indications of what the result of the new system would be. The rapidly growing class of wage-workers had as yet made no general movement; the enormous emigration of the time testifies

to the radical social changes going on. The country noblemen do not seem to have much changed, though the psychology of the social groups behind the Prussian government of the time of reaction is still to be investigated. But in the towns there sprang up during the forties a new class of industrial workers, and there appeared, in contrast to it, a new citizen aristocracy produced by the bourgeois spirit of enterprise long since in process of development, — beginnings of our present system of production.

In the meantime, however, while these political and social changes slowly went on, the momentous political changes of the period of the unification of Germany gave to the country an altogether new social and intellectual outlook : 1848 was followed by 1866 and 1870.

After the creation of the empire and after the establishment of the close reciprocal relations with Austria, we find a new set of conditions, which now gave the first opportunity for the development of inner political and social ideals. The peace of 1871 was immediately followed by a turbulent forward move, which was somewhat stifled by the Berlin Crisis ; but there began

soon afterward, under the cover of a protective tariff policy, which at once appeared to be indispensable, that growth of German industry which is still continuing, and which has even given, by its extraordinary intensity, another character to-the country itself. Still, this development was not without a bitter after-taste; agriculture did not share the fruits of the new situation, because it suffered by foreign competition, and thus the social elevation of those dependent upon it has not been realized.

Under the constant growth of population, a rapid rise of the entrepreneur classes, of the bourgeois manufacturers and merchants as well as of the fourth class, takes place; the importance of this movement is evidenced in the formation and growth of other classes. The rise of new professions changed at the same time the whole character of the old social classification. Farmers, artisans, and last, but not least, the different classes of intellectual workers, so numerous in Germany, and to which belong not only the so-called liberal professions and the officials, but also the army officers, all received an entirely different standing; the semi-sacredness

of the position of the latter classes disappears, and they must now prove their economic value to the community by their deeds. Socially and politically the older orders suffered most by the radical changes which took place.

And yet it is clear that all these effects of the new economic development and class-formations were by no means the most general and the most profound. It was more important by far that the soul of the nation in general had been stirred up, that the old methods of thought and association had disappeared, and that they were replaced, for the moment, by a chaos of formidable extent. This vast psychic and intellectual revolution was reenforced by other influences. The development which took place in Germany was not an isolated one; it had begun in other lands, too: in the countries of Europe and beyond the ocean, especially in North America and Japan. The effects of these changes were in the main produced by the rise of the technical sciences, which totally revolutionized the means of communication : the world appeared altogether different; experience was widened in a thousand directions; and the foreign policies

of nations had to be changed. These psychic changes were indirectly augmented by the circumstance that science with vastly increased activities began to search the remotest corners of the new domain of experience. Spectro-ana lysis is applied to celestial bodies, while the purely human affairs of this earth are subjected to all the scrutiny of ethnographical and historical science.

It is impossible to enter into the details of all these changes, and it is not necessary. We can easily call to mind the most important of them. What engages out attention here is their psychic effect, particularly In Germany, though the phenomena, thus limited to 3. narrow field, will in most, cases be of the same nature as those which have been observed elsewhere.

The first effect of the revolution is a complete dissociation of the former socio-psychic conditions. The social changes with the resulting increase of city activity, with its nervous haste and anxiety, its unscrupulous abuse of individual energy, progress of the technical arts, and the extraordinary multiplication of the means of communication throughout the world, the rapid

development of all the sciences which deal directly with man, followed this enlargement of life: all these and a thousand other moments of modern development produced a great number of new stimuli, which neither the individual nor the community could escape; for they formed in their totality, so to speak, a new historical atmosphere. But the individual as well as the soul of the people as a whole, being continually surrounded, besieged, and permeated by a flood of new impressions, soon lost the former self-mastery and weakly yielded to the new stimuli. This went on, in the beginning, under a strong repulsion of the higher moments of will; energy was absorbed in a high degree by the acceptation and augmentation of the new stimuli, and was thus limited to an energetic volition in economic life and to a marked receptiveness in the domains of the higher intellectual culture. Moral standards¹ and intellect were taxed to the utmost; they were subjected to the perpetual assault of the new stimuli. This is the cause of the general nervous excitement, which now began and which often came to light in pathological

¹ " Anschauung."

investigations, — it was now that neurasthenia was discovered as a special form of disease,— and which has not abated until today, but rather entered, into the very psychic nature of the preseut and has become a constituent of the excitability¹ or mental attitude of the age.

There appeared hand in hand with this increased irritability, according to the law of interaction, and as a sort of accompaniment, a condition of motor-psychic weakness : quick but shallow excitation of the will and a strong tendency to the enjoyment of excitation became general, because the much-desired compromise of excitations was never produced ; excitations followed each other so rapidly that the even temper of mind, the aequitas auimi of the ancients, was only seldom acquired.

These were, and partly still are, conditions which can be observed in all departments of life, but most distinctly among the entrepreneur class and in the new society. The entrepreneurs, the social and political leaders of the upper bourgeoisie, arc above all typical representatives

¹ " Rcizsamlkeit."

of this modern Reizsamkeit. How docs this class of men despair during great economic crises, then how rash are they in periods of prosperity ! And how irregular do these people appear in their pleasures, when, after the excitement of the day, they repair either to the exciting charms of color and form in a modern home or to the modern theatre or concert-hall, where the mind is kept in constant tension!

Even the laboring classes created under the new conditions are subject to similar, though modified, psyehic impressions ; up to what degree is shown by the fact that special forms of psychosis, as, e.g., the traumatic one, have appeared in that class as well as with their employers. Have the older classes remained untouched by the modern psychic state of excitability ? We can hardly say positively that the peasants themselves, since they have exchanged their chalk-accounts on the wall-door for the ledger and begin to read the market quotations, remain untouched, not to speak of the artisans, who have been seized by the rush of industrialism in the cities. What of the intellectual classes ? The new nervosity is winning

its way among them in various unobserved, and therefore most devastating, forms.

This Reizsamkeit is something new. It is a form of socio-psychic dissociation that did not exist in earlier times; even the forms of dissociation of the first period of subjectivism, sentimentalism, and romanticism are, in spite of all typical similarity of the progress of events, intrinsically different; and it would be one of the finest and most attractive tasks of modern socio-psychological detail-investigation to fix this difference in its minutest variations by means of an extensive comparison of the two classes of historical data.

The new and very marked state of soul-life, brought about under the influence of innumerable new stimuli, began immediately to produce new elements of culture. It is the transition to the psychic life of recent years, as contrasted with the last appearances of the psychic life of the first " subjectivistic" period, as contrasted with the realism of the natural and mental sciences of the thirties to the sixties of the last century, as contrasted further with the epi-gonlstie philosophy following Hegel, and of the

inadequate Rubens-Rembrandt colorists system in the domain of painting, as contrasted with the gilt-edged Lilliputian lyric,¹ the professorial-novel, the feuilleton style, and the theatre of Paul Lindau in the domain of poetry. This is, especially in the domain of the imagination, the transition to open-air painting and impressionism.

These movements began in Germany as far back as the seventies; they become clear, decided, revolutionary, and finally victorious in the eighties. It was the era of a new naturalism in which one discovers, in the exterior appearance of things, new features, new sides, and new qualities. Liebermann and von Uhde were beginning their careers; Liliencron was producing his wonderfully detailed poetry, the truest to nature yet known, also his battle songs of 1870. Indeed, it was the epoch of the new naturalistic novel, and of the short story with its complete subordination to the minutiae of life. But soon the devotion, with which it had been applied to the immediate reproduction of the exterior world, begins to extend to the inner life; there

¹ " Butzenscheibenlyrik."

appears by the side of the physiological impressionism, replacing it partly since the end of the eighties, a new psychological art. The art of painting begins now to seize the impressionist qualities of subjects: and efforts are made in the novel and drama to portray natural processes which had hitherto never developed into consciousness, or to reproduce them in the mind of the hearer by exciting the feelings; lyric poetry, too, aims at a most delicate reproduction of the stimuli, the avdition coloree, the colored sensations of touch, the sounding taste, the tasting sense of words. These are the years of the fully developed naturalism of the open air, of a fertile lyric of the highest perfection of form, — the brightest period of Skarbina and Kuhl, of Stephan George and Hofmannsthal.

Not only the works of the imagination, but also those of science, are subordinated to the new psychic state. The natural scientist and the psychologist make their investigations under pressure of an unheard-of nervous tension; the historian penetrates the depths of the development and life of individuals and tries to become

the master of a most refined individual-psychologic method and style. Under these circumstances science, having a tendency to minute division of labor, comes into closest contact with artistic naturalism; however, the intermingling of the two in Germany was not so complete as in France. German culture has not yet produced such a man as Taine, the historical artist of petits documents; nor a Zola, to whom the novel was an oeuvre scienlifique and a collection only of documents huniains.

As imagination and intellect were worked out upon the basis of Reizsamkeit, so in the realm of feeling and of volition we find a similar development from the same foundation. By the circumstance that the memory could not master at once the innumerable stimuli, — and from this comes the complaint of a supposed diminution of the strength of memory and of an overpressure on memory, especially of young people, — the emotions were touched; a state of continual excitement was produced, which was but too easily combined with the general nervous excitement of the new period.

Thus was bred a pathos of the individual,

but a rather shallow one ; constant excitement seemed to be a sign of constant happiness. Since these formed the basis of the freer development of impressionistic art and science, it is clear that they were again characterized and made fertile by the same. Shading off into the almost imperceptible, objective unconscious growth became the watchword; the slightest variations in color, the indefinite titillation by minimal dissonances of the tones, the gentle rustling audible in the building and the interior rooms, suggestive silence in conversation, were sought. By way of contrast people seek deafening music, a life in the streets filled with the greatest discords of movement, of visual phenomena, and of tones; business-meetings are characterized by craftiness in the settling of material interests, competition and the idea that " might makes right " take precedence ; on all sides there is hypertrophy of enjoyment or of success.

But there was to be found — in spite of these efforts to build a new home of the soul full of inner harmony — susceptibility to suggestion and receptivity to the most important questions

of life. With conservative natures the value of that which bears the stamp of age, that which looks old, even, appears all-important, — what has been done must continue to be done. Clerical and political feudalism thus remains triumphant, and there arises by the side of the archaic forms of intolerance the intolerant self-advertisement of chauvinism. But to those individuals, however, whose temperaments ever lead them forward to new ideas and new values, it is given to understand, according to the strength or weakness of their perception, the most characteristic criteria of an epoch. The first class feel in themselves the overwhelming impulse to deny, to dispute, even destroy everything which seems to be novel; and thus this period begins with pessimism, whose superior power has been the undoing of the lives of many, chiefly juvenile, creative natures, and it closes with the tragic person of Nietzsche, and the consummation of his fate, which is to a certain extent typical of the time. Wherever the desire for negation in creative natures, who become all too easily presumptuous, even imagining themselves to be

demigods,¹ turns in the direction of monomania, and thereby begins to become positive, a fatal neologism appears, a worship of the novel, of the extraordinary. Thus the word " sensational" becomes a fashionable expression, especially in the first period of Reizsamkeit; spiritualism and thaumaturgism, belief in the mysterious, mark its further progress. Combining neologism and negativism, we meet the cult of the hateful, of the decaying, and of the perverse, and a tendency to psychic prostitution, which is so characteristic of a considerable part of the early impressionistic literature, especially of that produced by women.

Parallel to the auto-suggestion of creative natures we find the suggestibility, the blind devotion of receptive individuals, of the masses: thus is produced a real automatic action of emotion and of will, and a formation of cliques and hero-worshippers, and as a result of these two influences it comes to be the fashion both to admire and to persecute independent persons.

The socio-psychical side of individualism suffers because of these social tendencies. The

¹ " Ubcruienschen."

former motives of activity for the average citizen have almost entirely disappeared; former religious and moral ideals no longer influence men vitally; an egotism, devoid of higher control, develops economically, under the badge of free competition, into formidable proportions and governs politically, under the mask of a policy of power (Machtpolitik), not only the tendencies of expansion of the nations, but also the very motive and purpose of science.

But have all these forms of dissociation of the old socio-psychic state been actually completed ? And have they remained without counter-effects which annihilated at once a part of their influence, or presented its development ? Have the conditions, as described above in then sad and broken tones, ever actually existed ?

These are questions which can be answered somewhat in the negative. In the very beginning of the dissociation there set in at once a process of new formation ; and the very elements of dissociation are, considered from another point of view, so to speak, positively charged and contain creative power. Has there not arisen, in the last decades of the nineteenth

century, out of the imaginative activity of dissociation, a new and higher naturalism, that of the impressionist ? And has there not arisen out of the dissociation of the former combinations of volition a new economic view of life and a hitherto unknown system of national and universal politics ?

However, beginning at this point in the process, a tendency to build up and to classify sets in. The social psyche finds again the core of its life; it looks for a new vantage-point in the flood of new phenomena. Thus the movement is continued under a new dominant note, under a new order of inner life ; and it can be observed clearly that this movement, becoming especially prominent about the year 1890, is continually gaining ground.

Imaginative activity assumes the lead, and its outward expression is again especially clear and significant. In plastic art as well as in poetry a standard of excellence, especially in the reproduction of the natural world, has been reached which surpasses all former efforts ; the reproduction of new life-phenomena, of the various soul-activities, was next attended. But whilst

men thus occupied themselves with practical psychology, or even almost practical neurology, the standpoint was gradually shifted. The psyche, which, being engaged ordinarily in the observation of one's own inner life, now becomes the object of contemplation, begins as it were to become the subject of its own efforts, and thus projects its own character on the objective observation. Thus, when the dissector is about to dissect himself, the inner life reacts in the shape of a stronger accentuation of personality. And so what Wundt calls Apperception begins to play an important role: a new dominant has been won. This process was at first slow and sometimes invisible; naturalistic descriptions partook, largely of personal fancy and mood ; a quiet lyric tone characterizes this class of work; something harmonious envelopes and permeates it. Symbolism in painting and lyric poetry makes its appearance now along with the revival of the fairy-tale and the dreamlike drama, a sort of bewitching theatrical illusiveness enveloping it all.

But this was not all. Several great masters — especially those who had, even in the beginning

of the period of geueral transition, if not earlier, anticipated the psychic tone of the new period—had developed a strongly marked style: Bitzius and ludwig, Hebbel and Anzengruber, Feuerbach and Bocklin, Thoma and Klinger, to name only the most important. They found themselves in full vogue; having attained distinction in the eighties, they were triumphant masters before the close of the century. It was seen that the general yearning was fulfilled in them, the longing for a new fully developed personality, embracing and personifying the elements of the latest culture, for a personal command over the surging chaos of the new stimuli.

In thousands of cases this longing after new things took a socio-psychic tone. The demand of the time was not merely for strong and self-contained individuals, but for a new system of morals, a new philosophy, and a new religion; the realization of these ideals took the form of an entirely original poetry. The climax of these aspirations for a new dominant, which seems to have been reached during the last five years, has brought a sort of initial stage of a

new style in plastic art as well as in poetic idealism.

Science has again taken the direction parallel to that of imaginative activity, and is advancing farther along in this way. Even in the natural sciences, which, in the course of two centuries, had developed the law of conservation of energy, as being a general hypothesis seemingly suited to all phenomena of nature, and being thus protected from all dissociations of its general basis, the merciless spirit of the new period has pointed out many occurrences which seemingly did not agree with this law; e.g. the catalytic and radio-active phenomena. These have yet to be subjected to minute research ; and efforts have already been made to establish, with reference to them, a modern theory of energy.

It is obvious, however, that, in a time of great psychic changes, the intellectual sciences would be thrust into the foreground. In this very domain a strong reaction set in against the unsystematic, individualistic investigation of the last decades; an analysis of the phenomena, to be made from new points of view, was required,

and thus one came to the paramount methodical principle that, in the phenomena of intellectual life, the innermost, psychologic proceedings should be clearly understood, so that their reduction to general laws might be possible, be it laws of psychological mechanics or of evolution or biology. This is the impulse which is coming more and more to dominate the intellectual sciences, and the goal is a new synthesis rather than the detail work of the last few years.

When thus the imaginative and intellectual activities entered into the vast sea of modern stimuli, taxing their own lines of development towards new dominants, a general stimulus seems to have been applied. Men began to collect their forces again in the several lines of human endeavor; personal motives and aims were soon more clearly defined and often not quite so high-flown; the excessive demands of the so-called Uberrnenseh¹ gave place to the more simple and yet entirely modern postulates as well of individuals as of the state, and in society. Ethical movements with high-set altruistic aims begin to take form — a universal

¹ " Uberoieuaclicntuni."

peace being one of the chief of these; a so-called aristocratic feeling or appearance became the first demand of cultivated society ; piety was no longer considered a luxury; the former exchange of aesthetic and religious devotion disappeared, nobody regretting or perceiving its loss. The great unifying elements, society and the state, gain the first place in men's minds, and that not because of the influence of a distinguished personality, like that of Prince Bismarck, but as a result of entirely new tendencies and motives in the lives of individuals. Unreasonable economic competition was first attacked ; new legislation corresponding to recently developed social-moral ideals was enacted; men felt the old avenues of progress, opened by the laissez-faire policy of the years just passed, closed by the new ideals of a growing moral and clerical cosmopolitanism.

These are the latest movements; with this description we have arrived at the very gates of the present.

Let us now proceed to the second problem, whose solution is the concluding part of this lecture. Out of the detailed description of the

socio-psychic transitions, which led front the last period of culture up to the present time, and out of the descriptions of similar transitions leading from one cultural age to another (given in the first lecture), we must try to develop the typical picture of such phenomena of transition. And this requires us to draw from the motley crowd of single processes their psychologic essence. The resulting psychologi-cal force which is recognized to be at the bottom of all our observations will then be traced through all its stages of growth.

In accordance with these requirements note first the beginnings of the socio-psychic changes. "We see at once in each individual example, because of an overplus of new forces, the reflex of a host of influences, — stimuli, events, and facts. And all these things act more or less sharply upon the inner life of every contemporary, whether he will or no. The influence of these stimuli becomes stronger, the more they are reenforced by the psychic triumphs which grow out of the contrasting of the effects of psychic events which have disappeared, or "which are just vanishing, with the new ones.

Considered from a purely psychological point of view, what is the outcome of these motor-forces ?

They produce new experiences of self-consciousness. And there are formed accordingly new bases of sensation and observation and of their complexes, further on new relations of the ego, and finally new contents of ideas, which correspond to all these new subjects of self-conscousness. Besides, feelings (which always accompany these proceedings) are produced, — aspiration, volition, etc. And these changes of the contents of self-consciousness as well as of the phenomena of feeling, which accompany them, consist in differentiation, modulation, and shading off of the various classes of sensations already considered. But does this result, this sum of new contents of self-consciousness and feelings, produce a new historical life ? Have we in these a certain precipitate of that new life ? It is necessary now to go on from the results and symptoms already observed to the events themselves. If we do this, there appear, according to well-known psychological laws, as active constituents of these events, only sensations, perceptions, associations, and dispositions.

It is evident that in the psychic processes themselves, which come into consideration here, the moment of volition appears somewhat to recede; less influenced by this and hardly touched at all by the feeling of aspiration, the psychic processes take place according to certain laws. And we therefore see clearly at this stage of our discussion why the history of culture in the truest sense has to do less with the complicated psychic processes (as they occur even in the most simple activity" of will) than with the more self-evident incidents of sensation, perception, and association. Still more. The last-named incidents are in fact historically the more elementary, and, therefore, those most easily recognized. The history of culture becomes the fundamental branch of historical research, as it is, above all, and essentially, based on psychical phenomena and treats only by the way the particularist tendencies. For in what other way can a fundamental historical science be developed, if not by going back to the most elementary experiences of the soul-life? All the secrets of the natural sciences have not been unlocked either by a single master key

such as the philosopher's stone, or by a system of natural philosophy, but by the solution of quite elementally problems, such as the inclined plane or the laws of gravitation.

When, however, in times of transition from one cultural epoch to another, the excitations of these elementary incidents throng into the soul in unusually great numbers and, at the same time, in unaccustomed forms and in new qualities, the former equilibrium is disturbed. If one distinguishes in the soul-life, considered from the historical viewpoint, between the actualities of rising sensations, aspirations, and feelings, and a feeling which, as it were, governs and regulates them, a certain dominant would seem to have regulated up to this time the proceedings of actuality, due to well-known stimuli and ineitations. But on the other hand, it turns out that this is no longer the case. The new era with its innumerable stimuli creates other forms of psychic experience, which remain foreign to the old dominant. This dominant, so to speak, the very kernel of personality, yields its foremost position, or, at least, loses a part of its controlling influence.

As a result, particularly in the field of intuition, the individual sense-impressions are no longer so clearly marked : forms of transition between the single effects of the stimuli begin to appear. And in the same way in the field of pure reason, argument and counter-argument, perception and counter-perception, are inextricably commingled ; reason is superseded by mere supposition, by views based on general impressions. These are dissociations of the former psychical unity, relaxations of the existing unity-relations of empirical associations. This breaking-up process leads gradually to the auto-suggestion of certain sensations, which are thought to be especially modern, and of certain judgments, by which personality appears as being changed in an arbitrary way; or it may lead to suggestions of similar sensations and judgments in an independent manner.

A similar process takes place in the domain of volition. Here, and especially in the foreground, as it were, of volition, hi the aspirations, there stand facing each other two elements in the inner man: on the one side the active aspiration, belonging to the dominant

of the personality, the tendency of the ego; on the other the impulses proceeding from the surroundings, a passive compulsion of outer influences. If these somewhat outward impulses prevail, or if they are merely marked in a relatively stronger way, there ensues a certain tardiness in final decisions, which — whilst the realization of the aspirations of the ego is always accompanied by pleasurable feelings — expresses itself in a painful vacillation and, at the worst, in pessimism¹ and melancholia- It-may even happen that under the influence of external things, especially if they come with the pressing claims of being new, modern, that the source of aspiration and soul of individuality is almost choked out; that, viewed from the standpoint of the individual, a certain automatic action of will results; that there arise certain aspirations which cannot be repelled; and that, wherever an epidemic suggestion puts into action the imitative instinct of the masses, extravagant modes and mental disorders impel to a universal madness. Though we certainly shall not lay down the law that these exterior consequences

¹ " Weltschmerz."

have appeared regularly everywhere just at the point of transition to present-day culture, it even is evident that they existed in many instances at earlier transitional periods; that they were not totally wanting during the last transitions; and that, at any rate, a certain dissociation of aspirations was characteristic in a general way.

In consequence of these events the manifestation of individualistic energy often takes a somewhat morbid form ; unsettled and weak already, the individual is continually excited and, being in this state, he yields to associations, perceptions, and interests which would otherwise be excluded because of the feeling of lethargy attached to them. The phenomena of negativism, self-torture, and perverseness belong, to a certain extent, to this domain. If one goes still more nearly to the roots of this connection, one remarks that the question turns on the energy of the aim-perceptions. If these remain sound and well grounded, there arises a very decided freedom of the will, and abnormal aims are wanting. If, on the contrary, this sense be more or less weakened, aspirations are directed, either in passionate impulsiveness or in blind

confidence, to aims which, would appear under normal conditions as being at least very difficult of attainment, if not impossible. Ordinarily, a vacillation between the attendant feelings seta in, which produces the most different, often the most delicately varying, alternations between light-mindedness and passion. All these phenomena — as can be shown from the above — are characteristic of the transition to our present-day culture as well as of former transitions. But this is rot all. The motor-conception may, in such a constellation and under the influence of contrary notions, retire, so to speak, into itself, so that nothing remains but an aspiration devoid of will and force: a general discouragement can only be the consequence. It is a well-known fact that this has been the case, at least for a while, at times of new economic crises and in similar phenomena, when the compulsion of passive, exterior counter-tendencies had attained an especially high degree of power.

Further, it is very characteristic that in a psychical epoch almost without a ruling ideal, bereft, as it were, of its very heart, the tendency to exhaust one's vital power in the existing

psychic functions manifests itself in an abnormal devotion to externals; one may say, in a positive sacrifice of individuality. This is the view which lies at the foundation of every nationalistic movement in the art of our time. If, however, this tendency is permitted to go to extremes, the most remarkable forms of curiosity arise, — a love for the deformed, the desire to penetrate into one's own inner life objectively, a craving for self-torture and self-mutilation, and, finally, even to commit suicide. And there is developed in the same way enjoyment of uneasiness, a sort of painful pleasure, a taste for dissonance of colors and of tones, delight in extravagances, in the fortissimo of music, and in loud and gaudy architecture.

This is why, at the beginning as well as the end of an epoch of this dissociation, the so-called mixed sensations play an important part. These consist in transition feelings between pleasure and discomfort, because there is a pleasure which consists largely of pain, bitter-sweet feelings ; e.g. the sensation of greenish yellow, etc. To this class belongs also the decided development of sentimental feelings ; that is to say, the

feelings of deep emotion, of tender sadness, and especially of humor; and again we have here the intensification of tragic sensations, which produced during the nineties of the last century a short but characteristic growth and development of dramatic art.

If we try to find, in the general course of the development, once more the fundamental motifs of these phenomena, we shall perhaps agree upon the following: individuality first yields to the overwhelming influences of a new, overpowering external world ; then comes a decided reaction, yet without disturbing the inner counterpoise which marks the limit of sensation ; the essence of individualism becomes more stirred. up than before. There rise conceptions which, without the former control, lead to sudden and new judgments; external impulses are felt which cause, in consequence of the absence of sufficiently strong counter-motives, rash and unusual actions. Under these influences the ego is itself transformed. Whilst on one side the new, rich, and varying influences are overcoming the essence of personality, on the other that peculiar harmony

which hitherto dominated the more modest experiences is sacrificed. Devotion, or, more correctly speaking, the yielding, to the new stimuli, leads in art to a naturalism which reveals more deeply than ever before the motives of the outer as well as of the inner life, which abolishes, however, as far as possible, the temperament; as, for example, in Zola's definition of a work of art as a coin de nature vu a travers un tempiera-ment. Yielding to these notions hinders the formation of collected judgments and at the same time the inner necessity of formulating an opinion on the cosmic position of man ; action becomes subject to sudden impulses and often degenerates through them to the extremes of extravagance and weakness.

To put the whole matter in a few words, we may say that individuality becomes suggestive in a very high degree to the external world. And since this is its constant position, individualism becomes self-suggestive too; if it surrenders to the deceptions of auto-suggestion, it is at the same time more given over to the effects of the broad unconscious substrata of the new psychic life. Therefrom arise again new forms

of intuition, judgments, and acts, and in this way new spheres of inner life, which lay, up to this time, under the threshold of consciousness, are made distinctly visible: thus admittance is gained to new shades of sensation, conception, aspiration, and activity.

But this condition of the soul is dangerous in itself, and contemporaries, as a rule, recognize that this is the case. But how can it be remedied ? Given the new world of phenomena, the immense sum of new stimuli, it cannot be set aside; it becomes rather the task of the inner personal life to adapt itself to surroundings.

For, this two things are required. First, a greater breadth of soul must be gained ; that is to say, the psychic power must be increased, so that the possibility of the simultaneous absorption of the new and more various psychic influences arises. Secondly, the soul must not only absorb this new world, but govern it from a certain centre. And thereto is required the complete realization of two different psychic proceedings. The soul must know, on one side, how to distinguish, to separate, and to analyze the new movements and

stimuli. But there belongs to this Divide also an Impcra. Thus the mass of stimuli already described must be brought together through the soul, linked together, and despite all difficulties rendered serviceable to the inner ideal, to the dominant of personality in a last synthesis, after all contradictions have been removed.

It can, of course, happen that this way is not found at once ; and, according to a well-tested and apparently unbroken rule, the signs of a transition period appear at this juncture; and in the particular instance of the transition to the culture of the present day, which has quickly gone by, though it has about lasted through the life of one generation.

One sees that the necessary psychic breadth, or, which is the same thing, the new psychic power of assimilation, is only slowly gained. The mind is not equal in the beginning to a complete mastery of the new phenomena. Hardly more satisfactory have been the attempted analyses of the phenomena of the present times. The sense of arrangement and classification is not yet sufficiently developed ; even in the practical management of business affairs the number of

those who do not succeed is constantly increasing- Even more wanting is the command over the new forces. Science sticks to mere description, is devoted to mere objective study; art pays homage to a naturalism which is gradually becoming barren; idealism lingers in the same domain, for both imagination and reason have failed to reach out beyond the transient and the small detail work and to present the other departments of human endeavor with new materials.

At the same time, altruism, and all that is connected with it, the sense of fellowship among men, capacity for self-sacrifice, moral idealism, — all these tendencies are being crowded to the wall; egoism rules the day.

If this continues without interruption, it is quite clear that it must lead to total psychic decay. Putting aside for the time the aims and purposes of the present, there remain to us, in so far as the desires of men go, only the sensual tendencies ; in the matter of feelings, only those things which aim at the satisfying of sensual impulses ; and from the principle of association the memories of past influences alone

have effect. Even these conditions are changing for the worse, and we are moving toward a psychic state which, as we shall see later on, corresponds in a certain sense to those of a lower stage of civilization.

Was this — we cannot evade the question at this point — the sad pathway along which the highly gifted nations of the past have travelled to intellectual ruin ?

In modern civilization, and especially in the phase of it with which we have been dealing, fortunately the victory of a new and positive force seems quite clear. And it is equally clear also that individual psychic phenomena are manifesting themselves, in which this victory has already been won or in which the struggle is still going on.

Individuality, so to speak, surprised, pushed aside, and, for some time, almost annihilated, reasserts itself and develops a new dominant.

Let us apply this statement to the important field of the fine arts. As opposed to the naturalism of art and poetry, we find the beginnings of a fresh idealism, which assimilates well new impressions and utilizes them technically, not for

mere reproduction, however, but in favor of an imaginative activity, so that the soul of the artist speaks through his work.

This is a point which must be treated in some detail in view of the interest that will probably be aroused later on in the study of imaginative activity. According to well-tested rules of aesthetics, the normal psyche recognizes the beauty of an object only when two fixed conditions are satisfied, the impression of the well-rounded totality of this object and its rhythmical arrangement. This rhythmical arrangement depends, above all, with regard to single works of art, upon personal taste; it corresponds to the harmony of the psychic content of the individual soul, which varies widely with different persons : thus in poetry one person prefers dactyls ; another, anapaests. In the second place, however, this impression depends upon a socio-psychic moment, in as far as it expresses or fails to express the feelings of a given epoch. It is here a question of style. The real artist lives, however, in his style ; and a work of art of any period of well-defined imaginative activity combines within itself socio-psychic and individual.

psychic motifs in such a manner that the former, as a result of evolutionary influences, is the first impression received. That is why a great artist who dominates the world of phenomena according to his own inborn rhythmic feeling develops fully only along certain lines of style. This style is possible only when the corresponding outer world of intellect has come to be dominated by certain fixed ideas whose nature is fully appreciated and understood.

As in the domain of imaginative activity, so also in the realm of merely intellectual problems, a central and unifjing idea gains the ascendency. The shades and degrees of opinion entering into the compound of present-day thought, the total impressions of the preceding time, are now analyzed and classified. Causes and counter-causes are clearly separated, and one tries to bring about an accurate evolution of the contents of the whole; new phenomena are subordinated to a more complete world of ideas, and the latter, built up after the synthetic fashion, is crowned by a kind of collection of higher ideas from which men hope to gain a better outlook which shall bring a clearer

view of the world, an imaginable, metaphysical conclusion.

Finally, the compound of interests emerges from the state of vacillating, now thoughtless, now passionate, treatment to which they have hitherto been subjected; the difficult question of "either — or" is put more quickly to individuals, and decisions come about more rapidly.

And thus the whole psyche is set free, and — a centre of the total personality being created — regains its former self-mastery; it now seeks the highest pleasure of existence by proceeding, considering carefully what is possible, to the most energetic activity of its functions under the direction of a central dominant. There remains, as the fundamental condition of a regulated exercise of the vital, powers, the new-won unity of psychic functions ; and hence one may predict that a new period of idealism will open ; that is to say, an idealism of the psychic authority of man over the outer world. In anticipation of this, every individual becomes in a high degree active and happy, feels a sense of pride in his creative powers, and therefore fortifies himself against negative reaction, against ennui, the perverse,

and all those forces which run counter to the highest human desire.

As we approach a new psychic condition, we euter upon a state of things decidedly unlike that which preceded dissociation, already described; indeed, an epoch is beginning — a world of new associations, stimuli, feelings, and ideals is preparing — which will bring a new era full of vital energy.

What will be its nature ? This is a question which brings our investigation out of the isolation which has characterized it thus far, and which carries us on to the inquiry of the more general socio-psychic phenomena of the next lecture.