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LECTURE IV
PSYCHOLOGY OF THE EPOCHS OF CULTURE IN GENERAL LECTURE IV
PSYCHOLOGY OP THE EPOCHS OF CULTURE IN GENERAL
Let us recapitulate briefly the psychic processes outlined somewhat in detail in the last lecture.
We have seen how a vast amount of hitherto unknown, or at least unusual, stimuli forced themselves on the minds of men about 1850 to 18S0. We have seen how difficult it was to these minds to grapple successfully with these new demands. The first stage began in a sort of coalescing of the new with the old. At least this was the case with a number of remarkable intellects. In the minds of larger groups a mixture of the new and old forces resulted: a certain sentimentality spread abroad; pessimistic, and at the same time humorous, tendencies developed abundantly. But a second stage introduced such a preponderance of new impressions that this complex attitude disappeared. All gave way before the reenforced attack: men became one with their age. A dissociation of the usual groups of conceptions, an uncertainty of purpose and unsteadiness of will, indeed of the feelings in general, were the consequence. The dominant of the individual perished, and inner consciousness was given up to a hitherto unknown form of sensation, of imagination, of associations, and all their tendencies. Moreover, these unknown forms compared with the preceding were differentiated, and revealed in part provinces of the psychic existence which till then had remained concealed behind the threshold of consciousness. It was a time of the keenest excitement, which in the beginning took hold of but a part of the nation, and which was regarded as both sickly and nervoiis. But soon it was understood, together with the general stimuli conditioning it, in so far as these came out of the economic commercial and political life, to be universal; and finally also it was regarded as an unavoidable product of the process of development. And in place of the word " nervousness" there appeared a specific condition for which the definition "sensitivity" had first to be made. But this transition, together "with the recognition of it, was the expression of the fact that the social psyche of the time, that of the leading psychic life, was not willing to submit it-self to this sensitivity in its naturalistic, dissociating effects. Or understanding the conditions, clearly or instinctively, the tendency was to resist and overcome it. The formation of a new psychic germ, of a new dominant of personality, began to grow under the new conditions of stimuli, association, tendencies, and emotions. The individual man came to the fore as master of his impressions; the idealistic period of a new psychic time began,
It is a process which in itself in the various stages of its individual course is certainly of the greatest interest. But it is not on this account that Ave have traced its primary psychic motif through its very network of muscle and sinews. It is of far greater interest that it is felt, on closer inspection, in this same network, as a systematic process in which the transitions of earlier periods of culture have merged. Therefore what has been revealed is the psychic mechanism of change in general from one age of culture to another.
Of course this is not meant in the sense that every - phenomenon of the transition in the second half of the nineteenth century is a repetition with almost pedantic accuracy of all former transitions even to the smallest details. Rather, a more searching investigation yields as a result that occasionally a whole series of transitional phenomena fail to reappear, or at least are less emphasized. Moreover, if we cite not only German history for comparison, but take a survey of the transition processes of all other nations of west and middle European peoples, as also that of other groups of nations, for example the Japanese, we find certain differences which are, however, only variations such as one national type differs from another intellectually as well as in ideals and feeling. But apart from this, similar phenomena of psychic transitional mechanism reappear continually.
Let us trace this somewhat more carefully in German history. To begin with, the period of transition of the individualistic generations of the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries up to the earlier subjectivism just after 1750 is exceedingly instructive. In this period, too, we notice an extraordinary augmentation of the stimuli and causes of association; above all, the rise of a new education of the generations who were recovering from the total collapse of culture during the Thirty Years' War, the increase of journals of all kinds since 1725, the appearance of a most extensive literature of ethnology and travel, and a thousand other events closely related to the new psychic stimuli. These incidents were accompanied by the early attempts of a triumphant and masterful union of old and new on the part of some leading spirits Leibnitz, Handel, Bach, von Haller — as was also the case of the earlier spiritual culture of mingled feelings, — Pietism, Sentimentality. Then comes the outburst of the new,-— Storm and Stress; loss of all dominants. But in the midst of this chaos the greatest minds find salvation by positively asserting their personality, as also in part by a well-developed hold on the earlier Hellenistic culture as taught by Kant, Schiller, Goethe, Beethoven. Yet it has long been known that these very men did not really rule their age. The direct route of evolution was rather one of progressive dissociation in the so-called first stage of Romanticism. In later Romanticism came the reactiou; the search for a- new dominant begins. Then Idealistic philosophers come to the fore; science branches out into new syntheses; the great fight against Napoleon tightened the sinews of the will, and the personality of the first half of the nineteenth century comes into being.
With this the transition from one psychic period to another is completed ; the further course of events next claims our attention, yet out and beyond the possibilities of observation in the present. Of this the characteristic is an increasing preponderance of intellectual will-power, properly so-called, the realism of the thirties and the political aspirations of the forties. And it ends in a degenerative imitation that revered the great masterpieces and simply sought to imitate and elaborate them. It bequeathed to us all the previous period had to offer, particularly in its early development, in as far as it furnished here and there instances of dominants. Therefore, at first, preponderance of inclinations, based on pure reason and pure volition, contrasted with the enthusiastic divination and the vague aspirations of the early times, unquestionably the necessary symptoms of the complete development of a new dominant; following this, we note a certain barrenness and the gradual oncoming of lifelessness in the new and elaborately rounded state of affairs.
Let us go back farther into German history, and we shall find everywhere the same fundamental elements of a psychic mechanism, not only of the transition, but also of the course of separate periods of culture.
The immediate observation concerning these phenomena leads us to the period of the Reformation ; to be historically accurate, into the centuries of Individualism (fifteenth to eighteenth centuries). And here we need only to call attention to a few stock phrases in order to show the existence of an essentially similar psychic mechanism. It is shown in the rise of finance, and with it, during the fourteenth to the middle of the sixteenth century, a vast expansion of the boundaries of time and space with an almost inexhaustible supply of new stimuli and associations ; a disturbance and disruption of the dominants of the mediaeval world in the fifteenth century; a thousand petty isolated political and social revolutions, a hitherto unheard-of naturalism in imaginative activity, an increasing uncertainty of the emotional life, chiefly in the province of religious feeling; the rush to what was new, and the finding of a new dominant in the Reformation; the development of the vitality of will and reason in natural law and rationalistic religion, art, and poetry, and last the period closes in the epigon-like ideas of the Aufklarung.
But even if we go back still farther into the Middle Ages, or even the still more remote past, the same picture of psychic mechanism appears, except that here a twofold method of study agreeing with the double nature of the subject is necessary. First the religious factor prevails in the mass-psyche. In the individualistic period just noticed this phenomenon confronts us on every hand. It is still more the case, though the reasons for this may not be entered into here, in mediaeval as in prehistoric times. A result of this religious bias is the marked onesidedness of the sources. At bottom we have exact knowledge of religious movements only ; this defect is slightly remedied by the fact that religion was the very heart of all intellectual development. The second point is this : all comparative psychology is based on the comparison of foreign psychic life with the domestic. The disappointments of the comparison in general are smaller in proportion as the foreign psychic life somewhat resembles that of the individual. But where the resemblance is not easily detected, the danger of disappointment increases, and only very experienced master minds are partially protected from grave errors. In investi-gatingUhe history of the Middle Ages, and still more of course of prehistoric times in Germany, the danger of falling into gross error is very great.
Yet in spite of these difficulties the psychic facts, at least of the Middle Ages, bear out the above claims so clearly that we do well to recall certain main features. And their testimony concerning our claim is decidedly in the affirmative; mighty changes of stimuli and confirmation of association, together with the rise of nationality and the unity of the empire in the ninth and tenth centuries; complex feelings and dissociation of the most marked kind in the development of the piety of the tenth century; asceticism in Lothringia, and Cluny calling aloud for general reforms; the winning of a religious moral and intellectual dominant in the ecclesiastical and moral code of Gregory VII, and of those who built up this system; the voluntary application of this system to the methods of thought in the days of Innocent III; and finally the hopelessly pedantic intellectualism of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, all show the same course of events.
This, then, was the condition of things. The description of the phenomena of transition, as given in the preceding lecture, has laid bare the universal psychic mechanism of the course of the various periods of culture.
This result is in itself new; and we shall soon see to what important consequences it leads for the further development of the science of history. But is it a surprise to one well grounded in psychology", or even to one only acquainted with the main principles of the subject ? I hardly think so. Rather, the impression is that it could not possibly be otherwise. Besides, when the functions of socio-psychic mechanism within the courses of separate cultural periods are established as essentially similar, the question at once arises, in what, then, properly speaking, does the difference of the periods consist ? This brings us back to the study of two kinds of factors: first, of that which is called the psychic dominant; and secondly, of that which may be denominated psychic scope, the extent of the possible phenomena in the psychic life of the individual as well as in things universal.
Bet us explain first the meaning of psychic scope. We note at once the distinction between conscious and unconscious psychic life. It is an acknowledged fact that in every soul innumerable processes of sensation and reflection take place, without there being any clear or indeed even recognized consciousness to correspond to them. We know of their existence and their significance only from the feelings by which they are accompanied. And we may conclude from the close texture of these feelings, as also from other associated phenomena, that the sum of these processes of unconscious psychic life is greater by far than the sum of the processes of that which is conscious.
Do there exist between conscious and unconscious psychic life hard and fast dividing lines ? Experience teaches us the contrary. These divisions can, by close attention, be shifted, i.e. by the application of greater psychic force. As a result of this, the number increases; a change takes place in the quality of the feelings, concepts, and emotions. It is an experience that holds good as well for the single individual in the course of his existence, as for collective individuals, for communities of men.; i.e. sociopsychic individuals with regard .to their own transformation and their relations to other communities.
And since the moments of conscious psychic life in every psychic, normally developed being are continually on the increase, we distinguish in the province of this life two spheres, a narrow and a wider one. The wider includes those contents of consciousness which are often transformed into consciousness, and therefore under corresponding stimuli instinctively reappear in these; the narrower circle includes those contents which first become conscious in consequence of specially directed attention, which may therefore be called contents of attention.
Therefore for both groups, that of the contents of consciousness and that of the contents of attention, it is an established fact that they grow with an increasing development of individual as of social psychic life, or, in other words, that in their development an augmenting psychic force is in operation; from the immense breadth of the psychic life, an increasingly large component part enters into the work centres, first of attention, then of the various kinds of con-sciousness.
But in another sense may we speak of a psychic scope ?
There is a large number of underlying laws of psychic phenomena which carried to their ultimate conclusion would exclude one another, and therefore, in fact, are logically contradictory. The soul is stimulated on both sides by the world of phenomena outside of it and from out of its own inner life. And very often, if not always, there exists a difference between these classes of stimuli. In the province of association, a given complex object may be treated, as either unified or as isolated, dissolved, in the expression of the will ; possibilities and counter-possibilities appear where there is visible a yearning for that which is antipathetic to our nature ; the same is true in the domain of the feelings, above all, where contradiction of the positive and negative is evident. Accordingly it is conceivable that all psychic incidents in individual communities occur between polaric opposites. The condition of the individual, like that of the social psyche, is at all times variable; and the balance of the functions can easily be shifted from one pole to another.
We see, then, that in this sense, too, there exists a psychic scope; in contrast to that mentioned above, which can be characterized as breadth of consciousness, I should call it functional breadth of the soul. In what relations to each other do they now stand, historically considered— this breadth of consciousness and function? It is very evident that breadth of function is dependent on breadth of consciousness, for the latter, the more it increases, the more it shifts the poles between which the functions act. Of course this is not saying that with increasing breadth of consciousness the functions of mind operate in increasing contrasts. Rather the breadth of functions which correspond to the new breadth of consciousness will be only gradually acquired. And the process in which it develops is, in psychic social relations, as may easily be divined, the transition process from one cultural age to another.
If from this it appears that the capacity for change of the psychic life in man as in a community is chiefly dependent on the breadth of consciousness, it is evident of what peculiar importance are those changes of stimuli and association, symptomatic as they are of psychic changes. The main question, however, which arises at this point is another. If changes in the breadth of consciousness take place, individual or socio-psychic, according to what principle are they worked out? The solution of this problem leads us farther along the lines of historical science.
Before we approach it, there is, however, another question to be dealt with by the way. If the psyche, as phenomenon, undergoes an actual change, is it a question of constitutional modification that modifies at once the biological character of the soul, or is it only a change in _ the manifestation of the same unaltered biological type ? As the following will show, the affirmation of the second alternative suffices for the establishment of the main facts of a psycho-historical science. But on principle, and in spite of the prevailing opinion, we decide for the first of the alternatives. According to all the analogies at our service we must assume.that certain definite physical or physiological changes in the visible representation of the soul must correspond to a changing breadth of consciousness of the human psyche, such as are proved to be the case with individuals, especially in the gradual growth of the child's brain. But as investigations in this domain of science are still quite in their infancy, we are not justified in asserting from what has been said above that man, especially in his spiritual nature, has come to an absolute physiological standstill; this would constitute the most peculiar exception in historical development. But to return to our main question. According to what principles do changes in the breadth of consciousness reach their consummation ?
It is quite clear that in the psychic domain changes of an exclusively quantitative character do not take place. For all that is psychic is in its final, its most vital form of expression of a qualitative nature. Correspondingly the phenomena which appear, together with increasing breadth of consciousness, cannot be deduced by quantitative calculation. Or does any one really believe it possible to follow the increasing and shifting breadth of consciousness in the indi-vidua!*psychic life to the logical conclusion that every representative of an individual psychic life must be first a child, then youth or maid, then man or woman, ending with old age ? It is a well-known fact that consequences and effets of the qualitative order cannot be deduced, that they must be experienced.
If we apply this experience to the socio-psychic solution of our question, we see how it at once resolves itself into a most important communities of men the evolution of the breadth of consciousness.1
This is the main problem of every scientific history of mankind. If its solution be attempted, the need of isolating the problem to certain peculiar cases is pressing ; for only in this way is it possible to gain a proper mastery of the vast material to be investigated, and through this, real scientific progress. Isolated communities of particular importance, of relatively normal development, and easy access to the traditional sources bearing on them would have to be carefidly studied in order to trace the course of psychic existence.
In view of these claims, the first thing is to limit the problem to the developments of national culture; for, indisputably, the nation is the most regular of all great communities of men. Among the national developments, those which,
1 The qualitative difference of the character of this period can be easily shewn. For, notably, every abstraction is rendered difficult, and in such a task as the one before us it becomes impossible, if the thing to bo apperceived, and that from which the abstraction should be drawn, belong to one and the same qualitative continuum.
For the sequence of thought in the last paragraphs, ep. Lipps's " Guide to Psychology," p. 338. in the light of history, offer the longest unbroken succession of culture epochs must be studied — nations for the exact investigation of whose evolution numerous and minute contemporary sources are available.
If one follows up these requirements, it will soon appear that, at least in the present condition of investigation, the history of contemporary nations of middle and western Europe is the first to be taken into consideration. And if one seek for the best subject among these, the choice will probably fall upon Germany. For which of the nations named could have made more of itself, wholly without the aid of the older Mediterranean civilization ? And which of these nations could have been the basis of such a detailed account as is given in the " Ger-mania" of Tacitus — the last great testimony of nearly two hundred years of Roman experience with the Germans 1 It was the expression of the views of the masters of the ancient world, of men who had the fullest knowledge of the men and nations of their time. Tacitus's "Germania " is both depot and reservoir of an exhaustive literature of Germany covering more than five generations; it is, moreover, the work of an author who himself knew how to observe, as few before or after him did, — an international monument of the first order, which throws a surprising light on more than a thousand years of the past of Germany before and after the Christian era.
These are some of the reasons which have led me to make German history the starting-point for scientific historical investigation. But this is not in the sense that, when, twenty years ago, I planned a German history, I was clearly actuated by the above-mentioned reasons. In undertaking to write that work I was in part influenced by national enthusiasm, even though I quickly realized the universal, and particularly the methodological advantages of this choice; and if 1 emphasized the socio-psychic side, it was due to an instinct which, a quarter of a century ago, impelled me to analyze the historical evolution of nations according to their great periods of culture.
However that may be, on purely empiric lines, and not influenced by any sort of philosophical historical doctrines, there came about the classification of German history according to which my book is planned and which is about two-thirds finished.1
At best the idea of individualism, as Burck-hardt developed it, for the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and as was here and there already manifest in existing literature, could have been drawn upon.
But if the course of the cultural periods of
1 This classification, and the peculiar nature of my historical point of view, have been ascribed to all imaginable systems and mode3 of thought already in existence, particularly those of Comte. He who does his own thinking will only reserve a smile for such philological efforts. Human progress, and therefore history, does not advance on the lines of receptivity, permutation, and combination of that which already exists; and every sort of comparison is unmethodical and unscientific which is based not on socio-psychic. but rather on individual-psychic elements. For the individual-psychic is, in its origin, under all circumstances included in the socio-psychic of the era to which an individual belongs. Whoever desires to understand the growth of my opinions and their likeness to those of Comte (and this I do not deny) should first inquire what elements there are in the socio-psychic constellation of France in the first, and of Germany in the second, half of the nineteenth century so similar that they could give rise to similar views. I deny any sort of dependence, direct or indirect, on Comte, and should this still be insisted on, can furnish the proof for my opinions from a manuscript preserved by me dating from my student years; i.e. about the end of the seventies. German history, as shown in the second lecture, be accepted without further question by those students who really see beneath the surface of things, — it is not accepted by writers of political history, for by admitting it they destroy the foundations of their intellectual existence,—— there arises the further question Avhether this course of development can be shown to have been followed by other great communities, other nations.
It is clear at the outset that the answer can only be given empirically; that is, by means of the most extensive investigation of universal history. Such investigations have not yet been set on foot. Still, one is quite justified in maintaining that the history of the nations of antiquity, particularly of the Greeks, took just such a course as we might expect to find; the same thing seems to be true with the nations of western Europe, as also with the Japanese. The fact that these evolutions of peoples, so far separated from each other in time and space, prove that the processes of growth as seen among the Germans manifest the presence of a universal law. And why should this not be the case ? If throughout the periods of a symbolic typical, conventional, individual, and subjective psychic life, it can be proved that there exist certain underlying elements of still stronger forces which intensify and expand the psychic life, which deepen and strengthen national consciousness ; if the course of things prove that following the early epochs came periods of, at first, slightly differentiated personality, in which the differentiation continued to grow, — then this final result corresponds to universally accepted experiences of history.
It cannot be expected, though, that in the nor-mal growth of a people the stages of evolution should always be the same as those which have been found for Germany and published in my " German History." It is quite possible that in the early attempts at exact limitation of these Gulture epochs, a number of errors should creep in — errors which are not only excusable, but which must naturally be expected.
In the second lecture of this series I have endeavored to correct some such errors which I have detected in the " German History" already referrred to. What is of much more importance is to recognize what is typical in each period in the stricter sense; this can always be done in any careful study of a national growth; the exact boundaries of these epochs cannot be deduced with absolute certainty. For, since in the setting up of certain types it is a question of comparison, there must clearly be, for the sake of certainty, at least two objects of comparison. Now the periods of culture described in my " German History" are not established with constant reference to the development of modern European and ancient Mediterranean mxtions, and later also to the development of Japan; there is a great difference between pressing forward by the help of a few guide-posts along one road to a fixed goal, and seeking the same goal by means of a number of similar and concentric roads. And hence there is no question that not all the real and perfect types of the periods, as set down in my book, have been traced out; but these can only be discovered and properly estimated after comparison of universal history with that of Germany has been made, and after more or less accurate studies of the various nations have been made by rejection of the individual and particular, and by emphasizing moments common to all classes. By leaving out the individual and particular elements J Is the full meaning of these words clear to us ?
Do we appreciate what an undertaking such a proposition presupposes ? How many questions bearing not only upon history but also upon geography — in the widest sense of the word — are embraced in such a scheme ? And what a part is played by the elements of race and the application of native endowments ? But these are by no means the only difficulties. We must consider that almost every psychic process is capable of different solutions; e.g. such a simple fact as the reproduction of associations according to the principle of similarity permits of a thousand possibilities ; that, according to the relation between the energy of the conceptions, and the intensity of the antithetic relations of unity, innumerable kinds of volition can be developed; that the height of psychic power, the gift for differentiating the stimuli and their after affects, and the capability of synthesis may be existent in very different combinations, and can therefore produce entirely diverging forms of psychic life. Is it possible — one is constrained to ask — imder such an infinitely varied influence, and cooperation of psychic forces, to suppose at all that certain fundamental traits can be common to the development of great human communities ?
If we want to press the question thus raised, we must bear in mind that it is not our endeavor to maintain or to prove the identity of the development; the question only turns on similarity, on the relation of equality and non-equality. But how can I derive the sense of equality and non-equality between two or more objects? By attentively examining each of these objects by itself, not. taking notice of its place and time, and by putting side by side the results of this examination of the single objects ? Putting aside all idea of time and place. That would be equiva.1ent to saying: In order that I may compare with absolute methodological certainty, I must take the single . cultural periods of the different great human communities which correspond to each other at first sight, without being obliged to consider either chronology or terrestrial localization.
If I do that, and if I study more closely the different eras, there arises at once the question whether amongst the millions and milliards of psychic processes, which are already included within one single era, there can be a single moment or ruling idea which is common to this age. As you know, this question is answered in the negative by the representatives of the school of political history, without their ever having troubled themselves, however, about the psychological or cosmic laws which are important for its solution, even without having given any thought to the culture-historical material which must be made use of if one would understand these problems of history. But if we do take into consideration all these questions, we obtain from the total material not only the idea of unity, historical and empirical, but. also a general psychologic impression which absolutely declares and demands such a unity; all the simultaneous psychic incidents, the individual-psychic, as well as socio-psychic, have a tendency to approach common similarity. The unity of psychic phenomena, embraced inthe material for observation, in the separate psychic periods being thus indisputable, it may now be asked, according to what principles shall these different epochs be compared, as above described ? I can either attempt the comparison of objects as a whole, or I can analyze the object into details, lay bare the - elementary moments, and compare them with each other. The first kind of comparison is that of the older history of culture. There would result in this way, according to well-known psychological and epistomological laws, only vague similarities. Thus one might make brilliant generalization, based on such vague proofs of similarity, on the relation of the different ages; but this would be no exact proof of certain common traits.
If we would attain to this, it is necessary to choose the method indicated in the second place, that is to say, in our case, penetrate into the innermost constituent psychic elements of a given culture. That is what I have attempted in my characterization of the cultural ages of German history, and that is the new methodological feature of my work. Let us suppose that the periods of culture now clear to us had stood the test, not merely — as is really the case — for German history, but also for the history of the other nations of the world; what should we have gained ?
We should evidently have gained for the characterization of the single cultural ages and the similarity of their development a sum of empiric opinions which would be the product of a synthesis of all experiences which are of importance for it, and of all counter-causes which might have been brought forward against it, which, therefore, would be absolutely valid throughout the whole extent of available experi-enceV And these opinions would not be based on one object that may have been investigated in a single spacial and temporal certainty, but On the full understanding of the whole, qualitatively defined. Judgments which have been tested by experience, and refer only to qualitatively well-defined objects, are called laws.
What we should have attained, then, is the proof of a regular course of the socio-psycholog-ical development within great communities of men. It is a matter of fact, however, that the proof of the empiric validity required in the fixing of the different cultural epochs has not yet been furnished, though I no longer doubt, judging from examples taken at random, that this can be done by comparative investigations in universal history. Intensive work in special fields is required, and that means that much time and patient perseverance must be expended. Before this direct proof is produced — and I hope to be able to furnish some of it — there remains yet another means of assuring one's self of the probable result. It is that of a more detailed psychologic contemplation of the course of a single national-historical series of cultural ages.
The decisive moment from which we must proceed in such an undertaking is that of the psychic mechanism of the course of single culture-epochs. We must remember that herein two forces are operating side by side: the force of the world of phenomena, which continually provides new stimuli and possibilities of association, and the influence of the social psyche, to which those phenomena are always subordinated by separation (analysis) or* by comprehension (synthesis). What are now the mutual relations of these two forces ?
At first the following opinion may be advanced. The actual governing power of the psyche, which we have called above the dominant, is a is a deception, after all — it does not exist. The possibilities which rest in the psyche of historical, that is to say, outer-psychic activity, include a wide field, let us say, the superficies of a sphere. Within this sphere now one segment, now another, is brought into the foreground of effect; this is caused by incitation from the world of phenomena, which determine the history of a certain time. The cause of this action, produced at different times, does not depend upon the socio-psyche, but upon accidental external stimuli. History is a kaleidoscope with a certain number of group-possibilities in elementary psychic phenomena, and the pictures included in these possibilities are produced now in this way, now in that, by merely exterior incitations. But there is, indeed, a certain centre in every picture for the individual spectator in consequence of his inborn or inculcated views which easily lead to the aesthetic manner of treatment which we see illustrated again and again in European historiography ; and there thus appears the animistic requirement of an impersonifica-tion of this centre, which again quite naturally lends importance to the idea of an actually governing dominant.
This way of looking at things, which would certainly be appropriate in the consideration of the psychic mechanics of one single cultural age, and which could hardly be rejected when restricted to so narrow a field of investigation, proves to be at once insufficient, as soon as we take up the study of subsequent cultural ages in any great community. For we see that, according to the unanimous verdict of all historical experience, those ages do not, by any means, succeed each other accidentally and without inner connection. They proceed rather within the line of a continual reenforcement or weakening of the psychic powers; they correspond to the development of an increasing or (in the times of decay) diminishing intensity of the general dominant.
Therefore this dominant is not the expression of socio-psychic forces, which have been stirred from without, — the manometer, as it were, or the regulator of the steam generator, or of the steam engin, — but it is something for itself — something that carries a certain power of development, which by external influences may be especially increased or repressed, which, however, can never be changed in the development of its innermost character. If we stop here and look out in the psychic and physical world for analogies of this peculiar phenomenon, we see at once that it is by no means an isolated one. It is indeed with a general principle of biology that we have to do here.
The individual psyche, too, is not merely a surface over which associations, perceptions, feelings, and aspirations rapidly glide, but it is in the first place an ego. Not one of us is simply a product of the influences which act upon him- Yet every one claims to be an individuality, a character. And no plant or animal, no living being, can be explained, in its development through millions of years, solely by the influence of external causes ; it has its inborn tendency of development, its own kind, and its special beauty.
It is evident that the question thus touched upon leads immediately to the discussions of the evolutionary theorists, like Darwin. If the onesided mechanical interpretation still prevails with them, a result of the mechanical development of the natural sciences for three and a half centuries and an instructive illustration of the psychic law of inertia, a similar mechanical interpolation of the psychic phenomena of life has enjoyed but a passing importance. It was the characteristic method of those years of modern naturalism in art and science which composed the period of transition to the last epoch in the history of civilization.
Just during those years of Darwinian supremacy, a high tide of new stimuli had almost totally enveloped the dominants of socio-psychic, and therewith also of individual psychic life, with, one may say, autonomous reactions upon the stimuli and with aspiration-relations; so that even experienced psychologists, except those who belonged to the school of experimental psychology, could hardly discover them. But we have passed this exceptional time and the individual psychic, and therewith also the socio-psychic dominant is recognized again. If, however, the individual psychic, as well as the socio-psychic life, does not develop mechanically, but in the separation and differentiation of the psychic unity according to its laws, in consequence of continual growth (and final retrogression) of psychic power, then must the incidents of such a development be equivalent to the single evolutionary examples, in their innermost and elementary processes ; and as the individual psyche runs through its specific development in the years of the child, of the adolescent, of the man, and of the aged, there must exist for the socio-psyche, too, a canon of development which runs through, in the unbroken succession, a series of cultural periods.
These are, considered from a fundamental and purely psychological standpoint, the elementary facts which may at present be laid down as the basis of cultural epochs in history. This scheme of the study of culture, though not yet established everywhere by adequate historical investigation, is, at least, as a result of well-tested qualities of psychic life, sufficient to rank as legitimate and authoritative. If this method is well grounded, and if we put aside the question of its legitimacy, — it is denied by nobody, — then there arises a further difficulty, to which a particular, though perhaps exaggerated, interest attaches,— the question as to the relation of the individual to the cultural age in which he lives.
It is perfectly clear, though the recognition of this fact had to be forced from the majority of German historians after many hard struggles, that everybody is dependent upon the civilization in which he lives ; that he is in this sense the child of his age. This holds good even for the greatest of men; and it is just they who have alwajs recognized it, whilst the negation of this claim has always come from idealists whose conceptions of the past are most often wide of the mark. A remarkable condition of our day is the hero-worship of many of our historians; these are the most dangerous enemies of true historical science. Therefore the question is not, whether one is dependent upon his surroundings, but how great and of what kind it is.
If we now consider the peculiarities of high and low cultural periods, we find the general psychological proposition that the closer the relations of unity between completed simultaneous events and partial, events of psychic life, the more complete the psychic unification. As is well known, these relations of unity are in lower cultural periods much more intimate than in higher grades, because the individualization of the single persons, in consequence of a still inferior differentiation of the whole culture, has made but little progress ; therefore the perception of these relations, by the single personality, is more uniform, or, expressed in other terms, the dependency of the individual upon his age is greater than in highly, developed eras.
To proceed a step further and consider the highly developed eras, we must note in the first place that, in whatever form it may be, mostly perhaps in the advanced grading of their social classes, they bear in themselves the signs of a long past. Now the realization of this is, to be sure, often blunted, even obliterated from mind, or in its elements of feelings and aspirations, at least, strongly modified by the surrounding conditions; but the fact remains that this element weakens the psychic effect of the unity-relations, so that a much greater personal breadth of psychic activity is given to the individual.
But, does one ask, in view of the foregoing facts, what is the difference in the individual psychic freedom attainable in the. various cultural ages ? We want to know whether all individuals are equally free, especially whether the heroes — the eminent individuals — are not totally free. The answer, however, cannot be simple. We must follow up more closely the difference between average and eminent individuals, and only then can the general answer be given : it will depend upon the difference thus discovered.
Difference between individuals ! Is this not an inexhaustible theme ? Does not the saying, Individuum est ineffabilc, hold good here ? No doubt: innumerable shades of distinctions, from the one pole of the enlightened, high-minded, and creative individual down to the darker world of the simple, the imitative, passive ones, can be remarked. But there must be, nevertheless, marked boundaries here as everywhere ; for our thinking is subject to the economy of simplification. We speak especially of those who belong to one of the above-mentioned poles of the average and of geniuses. And if we make these and similar differences, do we not proceed from the difference of the degree in which the single individuals are governed or not by the socio-psychic elements of their time ? At any rate, we single out one group in particular, and maintain that it shows the least dependency on the socio-psychic elements of the time. This is the group of the great ones. What is, then, the condition of this class? If we approach the answer to the question thus given, a standpoint will naturally be gained for the solution of the problem, " Individual and Culture." The genius is the specifically creative individual. Every one agrees to this. But out of which psychic combination does this creative power come ? It is not that, as Transcendentalists always maintain, a special power from heaven, a breath which is breathed by Elohim personally into these favored children of destiny after the general creation of human spirit has been completed. There is no fundamental difference, qualitatively considered, between heirs of other souls, but only an exceptionally great psychic strength. This strength, however, may be portioned out in different ways; either harmoniously, so that all psychic qualities and accordingly often all physical qualities, appear to be enhanced, or unharmoniously, so that one or a few psychic qualities appear to be augmented at the cost of others. And according to this we distinguish harmonious and unharmonious geniuses.
But in our case it is not so much a question of individual capacity, but of the historical development of the same. And here this is evident: the unharmonious genius can attain to a high grade of effectiveness in transition times, for its psychic mechanism is favorable. On the other hand, the harmonious genius only excels in a uniformly developed culture. The effectiveness of genius is dependent on the socio-psychic constellation. What, on the other hand, is the case with the so-called "brilliant failures " ? Here we may say, that neither can the unharmonious genius in a perfected culture, nor a harmonious genius in a time of transitional culture, find a field suited to his endeavors. Men of unharmonious genius are effective in a period of transitional culture only when they are out of sympathy with the times;, the harmonious genius is effective only when his general surroundings correspond to his nature.
In short, no matter where we look, the result is the same: the genius is enveloped by the period of culture to which he belongs, and he reaches his full perfection just in proportion as he is active among the developing tendencies of his time. These are dependent on the periodic development of the socio-psychic dominant. To give a concrete example, Prince Bismarck, one of the greatest of modern geniuses, laid it down as a law of life with him that unda fert nec regitur. And Bismarck's work was in a field usually supposed to be most subject to personal caprice. And so are we all, great and small, exposed in similar manner to the conditioning of socio-psychic forces, and a sort of servitude of the will runs all through our culture ! Yet how false would be the general application of this melancholy conclusion ! True we are in the midst of certain cultural conditions ; we are parts of the socio-psyche of our time. At the same time we are parts of that directive force. And that means that, viewed from individual-psychic or socio-psychic points of view, we are constituent parts of a complete organism. As with the individual, so also with every community of men, there is a great psychic tract, in which antipathetic conceptions, endeavors, and feelings may make themselves felt. By no means are individuals or societies cleverly devised books, but organisms made up of contradictions. But just as the psychic tract with the individual is not so extensive that it can include the experience of the complete sensations of old age in youth, or of youth in old age, not even in serious pathologic cases, so the psychic tract of a great society of men is not of such a nature that it can be made to receive the experience of reversed cultural periods. It is even rare that individuals of one epoch can so emancipate themselves as to be able to comprehend and absorb the essence of a past civilization.
But let us linger no longer here with details. Possibly in the future the elements of historical evolution bearing on the lines of thought just considered may be more accurately explained, perhaps, when the principles of psychology have been, applied to universal history. For the present the grouping of isolated events within the realm of psychic mechanics and the portrayal of certain parts of the processes of the evolution of single cultural periods are mainly problems of art, and not scientific analyses.
After this cursory review of the main outlines of a history of the various culture-epochs of the past, we turn with interest to that field of endeavor which to-day gives most promise for the future -— the field of universal, not individual, restricted, history. |
