The pathology of the æsthetic sentiment would require a work to itself.[227] We must here confine ourselves to some remarks on the most general physiological conditions producing it, and on the natural causes nearly always at work to produce deviation.
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Footnote 227:
The only attempt in this direction I am acquainted with is Nordau’s book, _Degeneration_ (_Entartung_), which is limited to the present day, and, moreover, treats of other questions as well.
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Can the faculty of artistic feeling be absolutely wanting? Are there cases of complete insensibility to every artistic manifestation, however humble? I do not think it in any wise rash to affirm this. _A priori_ since the existence of moral blindness and religious indifference is certain, it is improbable that a superfluous emotion should have, in all men without exception, an indelible character. As a matter of fact, it is difficult to supply the proof; the insensibility passes unnoticed, having no injurious consequences to the individual or to society. However, partial cases, at least, may be observed. Total insensibility to music is not rare, and if this is a known fact, it is because it is the most easily verified.[228] Many people declare that the reading or hearing of poetry bores and wearies them to an extreme degree, and they cannot understand why poets take so much trouble, when it would be so much easier to express themselves in prose.
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Footnote 228:
There is, with regard to this point, a very complete observation of Grant Allen’s (“Note Deafness,” in _Mind_, iii. 1878). The subject, a young man of great intellectual cultivation, had studied music during his childhood without result. It was discovered, later on, that he was incapable of distinguishing one note from another, except at intervals which were sometimes as much as an octave, or even more. He was quite unconscious of harmonies and discords, or the _timbre_ of instruments. The distinctive features of the latter were, for him, only clearly perceived noises of different kinds—a sound of wire-work for the piano, a scraping for the violin, a puff of air for the organ. He was very sensitive to the rhythm of poetry. It is not known whether anomalies of this kind originate in Corti’s organs or in the cerebral centres.
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Leaving these extreme cases in order to consider pathology proper, we may first ask ourselves whether we really have here a subject for study, or whether we are pursuing a mere chimera. The question is not here put quite in the same form as elsewhere. Pathology signifies disorder, deviation, anomaly; now, in æsthetic activity, where is the rule? It has often been repeated that the essence of art is absolute liberty. I see no objection to this statement; art has its end in itself, and is subject to no other requirement than that of creating works able to live, accepted by contemporaries, and, if possible, by posterity also. By what method, then, can we decide that any given æsthetic manifestation is normal or abnormal? Such a decision can be merely arbitrary. We have not even the resource of saying that everything belonging to beauty is healthy, and everything belonging to ugliness unhealthy; for—not to mention that the line of demarcation between the two is frequently very vague—the ugly is admitted into all the arts by way of ingredient or foil, and one author (Rosenkranz) has even written on the “Æsthetics of the Ugly.” I see only one way of escaping from the difficulty, viz., transposing the subject, studying, not the pathology of the æsthetic feeling itself, but that of the source whence it emanates; in other words, considering it merely as a symptom. This requires some explanation.
Every failure of harmony between the tendencies which constitute a healthy human being shows itself in a disturbance of equilibrium, an anomaly in the affective life. This deviation from normal life may be considered under two aspects: one general, the other special; one human, the other professional.
If we consider it under its general form—_i.e._, as simply inherent in the human constitution—the want of equilibrium expresses itself in many ways, following different directions according to temperament, character, and circumstances, such as melancholia, phobias, sexual aberrations, irresistible impulses, etc.
If we consider it under its special, particular form, as peculiar to a given individual carrying on a given occupation and having given habits of life—an artisan, a labourer, a tradesman, a lawyer, a physician, etc.—the disturbed balance will appear to us as setting its mark on the individual’s professional activity and its products. The artisan will pass from a fury of work to excesses of idleness or drink; the merchant from exaggerated caution to a reckless daring in his enterprises; and the same in every trade or profession. Now art is a profession like any other, and the artistic _product_ must bear the mark of the craftsman—a mark of disequilibrium in the present case. Consequently the anomalies of the æsthetic sentiment may be studied by comparison, not with an imaginary norm, not with any alleged regulative principles of art with which we are unacquainted, but with a psychological criterion; they may be studied as the effects and the revelation of a morbid diathesis. To speak more simply, we have to deal, not with æsthetics, but with psycho-pathology in connection with æsthetics.
Even thus transposed, the subject still presents inevitable difficulties, the principal being as follows. With regard to the psycho-physiological constitution of the creative artist, there are two theories. (We must not forget that, in the amateur, or mere taster of works of art, the same psychological conditions are required, though in a less degree, being more strongly accentuated in proportion as he feels more acutely.)
One of these theories, set forth in many well-known works, maintains that æsthetic superiority is incompatible with health of mind and body. The facts in support of it have often been very uncritically collected, and among the characters mentioned as typical we find all sorts. Among creative artists there are vigorous men and puny ones, tall and short, handsome and deformed, weak-willed and enterprising, slowly-developed and precocious, misanthropists and men of pleasure, the morose and the cheerful. In short, we can only conclude, at most, that they have a tendency to depart from the average—whether to rise above it or fall below it.
According to the other theory, all this is secondary, accessory, physical and psychical defects being by no means a necessary condition of genius. It grows equally well on a sound stem or a rotten one; it bears the marks of its origin, but this is quite a matter of accident. There are also facts in support of this view, though it must be acknowledged that they are less numerous than those on the other side.
We may also generalise the question, and ask whether æsthetic activity is not always a deviation. Nordau has maintained the affirmative: “Art is the slight beginning of a deviation from complete health.” Thus presented, the question is equivocal. If we understand by mental health the _ataraxia_ of the ancient philosophers, it is clear that creative and even æsthetic enjoyments are incompatible with it. To demand that we shall create or enjoy without excitement, remaining all the time in the level, prosaic calm of every-day life, is to expect the impossible. On this showing we might say as much of any emotion whatever and allege it to be a deviation from health. Some intellectualists, Kant among others, have ventured to make this claim, which is as much as to say that man is, by nature, an exclusively reasonable being—so enormous a psychological error that we need not discuss it. Besides, even supposing this to be the ideal, the mission of psychology is not to study an ideal man, but the real one.
After this somewhat lengthy preamble, rendered necessary by the ambiguity of our subject, let us investigate the part played by the two essential factors, emotion and imagination, when their activity is pathological, and in clearly-defined cases.
I. The necessity for vividness and sincerity of feeling in the artist is so obvious that I need not insist on it. This disposition, however, is not in all cases identical. Acute emotion may be intermittent, appearing only at moments of inspiration and creation, and then, the crisis over, disappearing to let the emotional life take its normal course. This is the characteristic of healthy genius or talent, which, descending from the heights, returns and adapts itself to the groove of ordinary life. A more frequent case, if we may judge by biographical documents, especially as we approach our own day, is the state of permanent excitement or hyper-excitability. Artists and dilettanti are exceedingly delicate instruments vibrating continually to every sound. Here our triple criterion of pathological activity comes again into use: we find (apparent) disproportion between cause and effect, violent and prolonged shock to the system, chronicity. This physiological state is one of continual loss; not a combustion, but a series of explosions; not a life, but a fever. Hence the craving for artificial excitement so frequent in emotional natures of this kind; they seek it under all its forms, and the remedy aggravates the evil. It is needless to multiply examples, we need only recall the great contingent of melancholiacs, hypochondriacs, alcoholics—persons subject to hallucinations, insane, or merely _déséquilibrés_—furnished by artists or passionate lovers of art. Besides these general characteristics, we may note as particular pathological symptoms of æsthetic emotion:
1. An obstinate tendency to pessimism—the persistent and exclusive taste for gloom in art predominating in certain epochs of history, especially in our own. Its contagion is not sufficiently explained by imitation and fashion; it springs from deeper causes—from a general state of depression, enervation, and debility. Art is the expression of this secret uneasiness, both among those who create and those who enjoy. This pessimism is not a disease of art, but of the individual and the age, which can bring forth no other fruit. We know that the nature of the ground modifies the flowers of plants and gives to their fruits a peculiar taste—the flavour of the soil; the human soil is subject to the same necessity, and at certain stages of civilisation it can produce nothing save a melancholy crop of flowers with strange and acrid odour. The constant love and complacent enjoyment of the mournful and morbid, of all connected with death, is the æsthetic form of the _luxury of pain_ which I have already (Part I., chap. iv.) tried to analyse, and to determine its pathological causes.
2. The tendency to megalomania under the form of pride, and still more of excessive vanity. The remark on the _genus irritabile vatum_ is of old date; but at various epochs the insanity of greatness has raged like an epidemic in the domain of art. It has found its supreme expression in this century in the doctrine of “the divinity of art” proclaimed by the school of Schelling, and surviving among contemporary “æsthetes.” “The beginning of all poetry,” said Schlegel, “is to suspend the march and the laws of reason, to plunge us once more into the beautiful maze of fantasy, the primitive chaos of human nature. The good pleasure of the poet suffers no law above him.” We have gone still farther since then, and an interesting collection might be made of the folly written on this subject. When, sincerely and without prepossessions, we ask ourselves what are the grounds of these high pretensions, of this apotheosis, they are not very evident. Is it because art yields enjoyments far superior to those of the senses? But scientific research, and the love of travelling and exploration, do the same thing. Is it because of its creative function? But we find creation everywhere—in science, mechanic art, politics, commerce, industry: artistic creation is only one form among many others. Is it because it adds an ideal world to the real? Religions do as much, with the advantage that they do not work for the few, the elect, but for the whole world. Malherbe used to say that a good poet is no more useful to the State than a good skittle-player. This is an extreme statement on the other side, for the poet, after all, has a social value; he can foresee, instruct, express the confused feelings of the mass of human beings who arrive through him at the consciousness of life.
If, accepting this form of megalomania as a fact, without discussing its legitimacy, we seek for its psychological causes, we shall find two principal ones.
The first is in the character of the individual, the hypertrophy of his _ego_. The self-feeling breaks out under an æsthetic mask, as it might do under any other. “Egotist” art is the sincerest expression of this impulse of pride (be it noted in passing that it is the very antipodes of primitive art, which is collective, social, anonymous); but it is an ephemeral form destined to die of inanition. Besides, its expansive force would be, if necessary, limited by the expansion of rival individualities. The production of monsters is a necessity of civilisation. By means of the division of labour, it imposes, in all positions and occupations, an excess of unilateral development, of tendency towards a single aim; it requires specialisation. In primitive times, art was not a profession; the artist, while all the time going on with other work, produced naturally, spontaneously, as a rose-tree gives its roses; it was a superabundance of mental activity which thus found vent. Gradually he fell into the professional track, and now, a victim to his own glory, he is _forced_ to produce, _nolens volens_, as he can, consciously fabricating works of art as others do articles of commerce, reckless of over-production. It is a hypertrophy of the creative function.
The second cause must be sought in a deeper region than that of consciousness, in that unconscious part of us (whatever opinion may be entertained as to its nature) which produces what is vulgarly called inspiration. This state is a positive fact accompanied by physical and psychical characteristics peculiar to itself. First and foremost, it is impersonal and involuntary; it acts like an instinct, when and as it pleases, it may be solicited but not compelled. Neither reflection nor will can supply the place of original creation. We have numerous anecdotes relating to the habits of poets, painters, and musicians when composing: striding up and down, lying in bed, seeking complete darkness or full daylight, keeping the feet in water or ice, and the head in the sun, the use of wine, of alcohol, of aromatic drinks, of haschisch or other poisons acting on the intellect. Apart from some oddities not easy to explain, all these proceedings have the same object—viz., to bring about a particular physiological condition, and increase the cerebral circulation in order to provoke or maintain the unconscious activity. The ancients saw in inspiration a supernatural state, a divine action, a possession in which they firmly believed. Certainly, we now look on the Muses, and the various mythological gods of music and poetry, merely as superannuated fictions; yet there remains an impression of mystery, of a superior power, of a rare inborn gift bestowed on a man, which is his special privilege, which acts through him and is unknown to others, something analogous to what we have already met with in the case of theomania. From the vague consciousness of this state of election, this exceptional favour on the part of nature, it is for the artist an easy step to the affirmation of his greatness.
II. The pathology of the creative imagination does not belong to our subject; it is only connected with it through the influence of feeling on its operations. The power of constructing an imaginary world is a human attribute of which no one is devoid, since without it we could never take one step out of the present into the future and form for ourselves an image, however inadequate, of the latter. Observation shows that, from this universal level upward, there are all gradations, from the dry, clear, coherent imagination to incoherent, impalpable reverie and disordered exuberance: now, the increasing predominance of the imagination involves the danger of living entirely in the world of the unreal, which frequently happens. Biographical documents permit us to note the stages in this ascent towards the suprasensible.
There are artists who divide their lives into two parts and keep them distinct; they keep their accounts in double entry; they have their hours of unbridled imagination, and their hours of practical good sense. Ariosto was one of these; it was said of him that he had put his folly into his books and his wisdom into his life.
Others are, for the moment, caught by their own creations, and so violently carried away by them that they are near the state of hallucination. According to the constitution of their minds, they either see their characters or hear them speak; the sounds are in their ears, they breathe odours, taste flavours. On this last point, Flaubert’s declaration, reported by Taine has been doubted, but without sufficient reason.
There are some who appear to be in an almost continuous state of hallucination. Such seems to have been the case of Torquato Tasso. “At certain moments,” Gérard de Nerval used to say, “everything would assume a new aspect to me: secret voices rose from plants, trees, animals, to warn and encourage me. Formless and lifeless objects had mysterious ways, whose meaning I understood.” The “symbolists” of various countries—French, Belgian, English—are now telling us the same thing with more to the like effect. I do not think, however, that we can be deceived by them. They are returning, through a sharpened and refined sympathy, to the primitive period of naïf animism, in which everything in nature has life, sight and voice, in which, as one of them says, the real world assumes the air of fairyland.
Beyond this there is only one step, that of complete and permanent hallucination, such as is to be found in lunatic asylums; the total substitution of an imaginary world for the real, without intermission, doubt, or consciousness of unreality.
This is the clearest part of the subject, but there is one obscure point which must detain us, the more that it is connected with the fundamental phenomenon of emotional life: _tendency_. If there is one psychological law more firmly established than another, both by facts and argument, it is that every intense representation of an act tends to realise itself; which is inevitable, since the vivid image of a movement is the beginning of a movement—a revival of motor elements included in the image. A man who, standing on the top of a tower, is fascinated by the idea of a possible fall, runs the risk of throwing himself over; the attraction of the abyss is nothing else but this. On the other hand, artists naturally have intense representations and feel things violently; they dream of orgies, love adventures, sanguinary dramas, self-devotion, virtues and vices of all sorts. How comes it that all this is merely imagined, and never passes into action, or becomes a reality?
It is because in their case the law is subject, not to an exception, but to a _deviation_. The intense representation _must_ be objectivised—_i.e._, from being internal become external, and it may arrive at this result in two ways: by a real action, as in the case of ordinary people, or by the creation of a work of art which delivers one from the haunting idea: this is the peculiarity of artists. If, besides this, a physiological reason is required, it might be admitted, merely as a hypothesis, that in these cases the motor centres have not, usually, sufficient energy for practical realisation, whence it comes that their satisfaction is a purely æsthetic one.
To keep strictly to our subject, we have a large body of testimony to show that many have only been delivered from their haunting ideas by creative production, as I have already mentioned when treating of memory. It is fixed in a poem, a novel, a drama, a symphony, on the earth, or in stone; we may remember Michelangelo and the sculptures of the Medici chapel, Schiller’s early manner and the “Robbers.” Is not Byron, whose psychological state has been so well analysed by Taine (born for action and adventure, returning, perhaps, to his true vocation when he went to die at Missolonghi), the poet of pirates, of strange and doubtful enterprises? The reader will think it needless for me to enumerate further instances.
This rule, however, is not without exceptions. The law which requires that the intense image shall be actualised is always satisfied; but sometimes this happens in two ways, artistically and practically, at once. Many have lived out their dreams of love, orgies, adventures, violence, and have produced a work of art besides; a double stream has flowed from the same source. Some of the romantic school have revived the aspect of past ages in their houses, their furniture, their lives. Artistic sovereigns have been able to realise their imaginations to the full: Nero, Hadrian, Ludwig II. of Bavaria, and others.
An Italian anthropologist, Ferrero, has pointed out, with some justice, that, in spite of our complaints of the pessimistic, satanic, _macabre_, or neurotic character of contemporary art, this evil is not without its accompanying good; it is a safety-valve, an overflow channel. Morbid art “is a defence against abnormal tendencies, which, otherwise, would tend to transform themselves into action.” Many content themselves with a literary, plastic, or musical satisfaction. This seems to be indisputable. We may also grant to this author that the suggestion of a work of art has not the power of direct suggestion, that of the actually perceived fact, and that, so far, it is less dangerous. But as it is more widely diffused and acts especially on subjects predisposed to it, it may be questioned whether, in the long run, the gain is serious.
This is a sociological question which it would be out of place to discuss here, and which, consequently, we may dismiss with a bare reference. Our conclusion is that the pathology of the æsthetic sentiment has no independent existence. It is one among many forms of expression (of which we have already pointed out several) of a morbid predisposition which can only follow this track in a small minority of persons—those possessed of the power of creative imagination.
