THE PSYCHOLOGY OF GENIUS.

It is plain from the nature of psychology, as well as from its history, that it has to contend with difficulties and perplexities of a magnitude and character with which no other observational science is perplexed. An immediate acquaintance with psychical conditions can only be obtained by self-observation; so that this has always formed the foundation of the scientific edifice. Nor can any generalization of observation possibly be attained except by means of the concepts derived from self-observation. This entails the great disadvantage that there is wanting to psychology the objectivity of the observation, in that the subject and object thereof are one person. This is yet further increased by the impossibility of repeating any observation, so that in psychology we lack almost entirely one of the most important aids of natural sciences—namely, experiment.

Our knowledge of the physiology of the human body has been so much enriched by pathological facts that we may truly say that some branches of it would, as far as we can see, have remained forever closed books if the effects of disease had not been observed. So it is with psychology, in its turn. Since mental disease has been systematically studied the science of the mind has undergone a veritable revolution. Psychology and psychiatry are to-day inseparably connected. Neither could survive, were the bond between them severed.

Psychology began by being largely speculative. It preserved this character for quite a lengthy period. It has, in more modern times, passed into paths essentially different, and stands to-day, side by side with the other positive sciences, upon the solid ground of critical observation. Partly, though only to a moderate extent, it has entered upon experimental investigations.

Every observational science, after having effected a preliminary rough analysis of the ordinary facts, has fastened its scrutiny upon extreme cases and apparent departures from the uniformities of the matter in hand. From a study of these varieties and from a comparison of them with ordinary cases, it brings forth fresh knowledge. Psychologists are beginning to do this; and especially of late years much attention has been bestowed upon those extraordinary powers which we ordinarily indicate by the word genius.

The results of these inquiries are thus far as diverse as possible, and, just as in former scientific controversies, leading men assume attitudes of almost flat contradiction. Let us see whether we can not, with the investigations already at our command, attain a clearer conception of the concept of genius.

As the etymology of the word, which is derived from genius or ingenium, directly indicates, the ancients believed, according to their view of the world, that within persons of eminence—those men who guided the destinies of nations or were able to accomplish phenomenal deeds in the domains of art or science—a divine spirit dwelt. A genius, for example, spoke to the people through the mediumship of the Pythian priestess; a divine spirit opened to Socrates the fountains of knowledge and science, and inspired Homer with divine song, enabling him to perceive the world as a magnificent fulness of ideals and beauties. It conducted Miltiades through the tumult of battle to glorious victory and smoothed for Plato the path to eternal wisdom.

This idealistic method of viewing things has been transmitted from century to century down to our own time. In the saints of the Middle Ages we see the idea of the Holy Ghost corporealized. By the mouths of priests and prophets “God” speaks to the people. Rulers are invested with “divine right.” They rule by the “divine will.” The powerful thinkers who guide the world by great discoveries are filled with “divine grace.” In those who by their art embellish the world there shone a “divine spark,” a fragment of the Holy Ghost. By their mouths God spoke to men. Genius was eternal and incomprehensible. Its knowledge and power were infinite.

Modern science has applied the dissecting knife to this fantastic web of speculative philosophy, has analyzed the whole matter into its elementary constituents, stripped the natural phenomena of their habiliments of superstition and mysticism, and, while thus destroying many a beloved ideal, acts in the consciousness that it is struggling after real knowledge and truth.

Psychology, having by self-observation laid down a series of conceptions, and having attained the knowledge that psychical processes, like all other phenomena of Nature, are subject to definite law, made an effort to determine the laws of the mental processes of genius, and to frame a definition of genius, which should take into account facts which are now scientifically established.

But these efforts are characterized by the same mighty error and the same important defect that has ere this provoked many a battle between scientific men. In vain had philosophers for several ages endeavoured to say in what genius consisted, until in these latter times some authors believe they have discovered the philosopher’s stone and have pronounced genius to be a variety of insanity. Unfortunately, they were not themselves clear about the definition of genius nor, perhaps, about that of insanity.

An accurate science ought to provide names only for known phenomena. It might view a complex of phenomena as one object, and apply to it a collective name. Having done so, it can again perform specification within the limits of the genus. But science shall always go wrong and shall exercise itself about phantoms, if it accepts a priori some word or other as something laid down, so to speak, independently, and then tries to call forth from the phenomena sufficient material whereby to explain a notion somehow made inherent in this word.

To so plain a truth one might hesitate to refer. And yet how often has science sinned against it! Innumerable tomes, for example, have been written on the inquiry of whether the human will is free or determined. Quarrels, bitter to the point of persecution, have been indulged in by high authorities upon this question. Finally, it has been proved to be merely a contest about “words,” for each individual combined with the word “will” some different notion regarding which he himself never for an instant was clear. Nowhere is this error of science better expressed than in the words of Goethe:

Many authors make any person endowed with specially excellent mental powers a genius. Thus Sulzer, in his dictionary,⁠[2] says: “Genius seems to be ascribed to any man who, in departments for which he shows a natural turn, displays remarkable skill and a more copious fertility of mind than other men.... Genius seems at bottom to be nothing but great general power of mind; so that ‘a great mind’ and ‘a man of genius’ are synonymous terms.” Du Bos⁠[3] defines genius as “the natural skill by which a man is enabled to perform certain things well and easily that other men, whatever pains they may take, can only do ill.” Riedel,⁠[4] Feder,⁠[5] Baumgarten,⁠[6] and others express themselves to the same effect. Herder⁠[7] says: “Everybody knows that genius is nothing but the intensive or extensive quantity of psychical power exerted.” A struggling sort of definition, conceived in the same strain, is thus formulated by Flögel:⁠[8] “Genius is unquestionably an attribute of the faculty of cognition, for no inclination for an art or a science will induce us to say of the man that feels it that he has genius.” This marvellous utterance is rendered somewhat more intelligible by the definition of the cognitive faculty that immediately follows it: “The faculty of cognition is a tree with many branches. Attention, memory, abstraction, wit, discrimination, understanding, and reason, by whatever names they may be called, belong to cognition. Experience shows that these different branches or parts are not all equally developed, but that one may in a given man preponderate over another. One man has more wit than discrimination; another has good sense but a poor memory; a third has a solid understanding but a deficiency of imagination. Thus, there is a certain degree of repugnancy between a man’s different cognitive powers; and it is their proportion which constitutes a man’s genius in its widest sense. In this sense every man has his genius.” He continues thus: “We are accustomed to deny genius to numberless men. We deny it to learned men who have written libraries; and it would be equally out of place to speak of an author as a genius who had only written a few pages in which a moderate enthusiasm was displayed. We associate the term genius with something great, something superior in its way. Whatever capacity in a man seems great, pre-eminent, of singular force, distinguishing him from average brains, is called genius, without qualification. If this superiority belongs to all he does, we say the man has universal genius; if it is confined to certain directions, we call it special or peculiar genius.” Wieland⁠[9] divides genius into three kinds: the genius of pleasing, which operates within the domain of the graces and consists in a special facility for carrying out the ideas it prosecutes; philosophical genius, which consists in a capacity for discovering those truths resulting from correct conceptions which concern the felicity of mankind; and practical genius, which consists in a ready activity in availing itself of known facts and in producing the highest and most prompt resolutions. But there is no psychological foundation for this arbitrary division of the phenomena. Here, again, it is the mere greatness and pre-eminence of the achievements, without reference to their psychical origin, which is made to constitute the essence of genius. H. Joly⁠[10] says that genius is “creative power, using this term in the relative sense in which alone it is permissible to apply it. It is the production of something which the combined efforts of other men have hitherto been powerless to effect. It is that which puts at the disposition of humanity either means of expression, or means of talent and invention, or means of new action, which add something to the common intelligence and common power.”

The conception of genius of all these authors is even in conflict with that of ordinary language, for which genius and talent are qualitatively different. If those authors are right, genius and talent are merely different degrees of the same quality. However this may be, according to the above definition, the word genius has, generally speaking, not much value as a psychological term.

The inadequacy of such a view to meet the popular notion being recognised, efforts have been made to find something specially characteristic of genius. A great many philosophers have taken originality to be such a characteristic. Weise⁠[11] says: “All writers upon genius agree that invention is its essential mark.” Many authors seem quite to forget that the point is to establish a psychological conception, proceeding rather as if they had to accord a title or order for some special service. Thus Alexander Gerard⁠[12] adopts the view that everybody who makes an invention, whether valuable or useless, and everybody who has an original idea of any description, must be a genius. According to this, any fool who gives birth to original absurdities must be reckoned as a genius. In conflict with those passages is the subsequent remark of the same author, that “invention is the capacity of producing new beauties in works of art and new truths in matters of science.” Apart from the arbitrary character of this definition of the word “invention,” it is in distinct conflict with the above extract, which does not harmonize with such a definition.

Many authors express substantially the same opinion. Flögel,⁠[13] for example, says: “Down to Newton the colorific effects of prisms had probably been looked upon as a pretty amusement for children, unworthy the attention of philosophers; but that great mind founded upon these phenomena that acute theory of colours which by itself would have sufficed to win for him the title of genius had he been great (?) in nothing else.” The author talks as if genius were a rank like that of major or privy counsellor. Kant,⁠[14] too, quotes with approval the definition of genius as the “exemplary originality of a man’s talent.” Hagen⁠[15] says: “Originality, therefore, constitutes genius.... To me, accordingly, genius is the synonym of mind, but with the implication that the mental idiosyncrasy of the super-eminent individual is intended.... Now, in so far as every man has a mental individuality, he has a mind distinct from every other and is an original thinker. He has a mind of his own.... By genius, in the narrow and ordinary sense, we mean a mind of the first order endowed with a high originality of conception, of discovery, and of creative impulse.”

This conception of genius may, perhaps, accord better with common language than the previous one. At any rate, it furnishes the requisite qualitative distinction between genius and talent. Our present study, however, is not ordinary language. We are inquiring whether this definition creates a precise psychological concept of scientific value. Now, the concept of originality has nothing to do with psychical characteristics; it refers exclusively to outward facts. Originality may be produced by the most diverse psychical processes; and the same dispositions of mind may in one case lead to originality and in another not; since this is in no small measure an accident of the outward situation. A child is original at the period when its mind is awakening, when the more complex ideas of the world have not yet been apprehended, but primitive images are in his artless fashion fused together. That is why the speeches of children so often seem witty and excite smiles on the faces of the grown people who hear them. When we say a man is an “original” we often mean to imply that he is weak-minded and deficient in perception, not clearly understanding situations, and all his life long a foreigner to the world. So are those conceited fools original who, because their behaviour and propensities depart widely from commonsense, live in perpetual astonishment at their own genius. For example, the author of a recent book, intended to convince society that clothes should be discarded and men and women should go naked, was a genius, according to Gerard’s definition. A man publishes far and wide that he can cure all the ills that flesh is heir to by simply making people walk about barefoot over wet meadows. What a genius! And the prophet’s success, too, as regards the main chance, shows that the multitude honor him as a genius.

As we have seen, it has not taken long to learn that originality does not per se constitute genius. Hence common consent has agreed more accurately to define and limit the “originality of genius.” But in doing this, merely the outward phenomenon is treated; and in the most favorable circumstances some symptom only comes to be considered, instead of the causes and source of the fact being reached. To originality is added the further condition that “beauties” and “truths” (as Gerard said) must be produced to entitle it to the name of genius. So Weise⁠[16] says: “Genius is the immediate attraction of an individual in the harmonious concurrence of his mental and physical powers to the production of an ideal and typical work of intellect.” Many authors require that genius shall be “epoch-making,” that its achievements shall be “agreeable” or “useful,” etc. Gerard demands that artistic genius shall “please” and shall “gratify the taste”: “Objects and circumstances unfit to please, either do not at all occur to the artist or, being perceived at a glance to be unfit, are immediately rejected.” Dr. Blair says in his Lectures on Rhetoric (written about 1760), Lecture III:

“Genius always imports something inventive or creative, which does not rest in mere sensibility to beauty where it is perceived, but which can, moreover, produce new beauties, and exhibit them in such a manner as strongly to impress the minds of others.”

Thus, instead of returning to psychical causes, in such attempts to particularize the conditions, authors depart further and further from those causes, and dwell more and more upon the invention of others. Is there anything “beautiful” or “good” per se? Do these words express anything but a conformity to the ideas that are in fashion, but which at different periods vary monstrously? Is taste anything more than a personal preference? If the term genius is to be made contingent upon such wavering standards and the variable feelings of others, it must follow that many an individual will at certain periods of history be pronounced a genius to whom other generations will deny the epithet. So genius will lose all meaning as a psychological term; for if it is to be any character of the mind, the conception of it must be constructed and defined from within, and not be dependent upon outward circumstances.

Upon such outward circumstances originality is in part essentially dependent. Many great and useful discoveries and inventions have been due to accident solely. Many investigators have by a happy concatenation of circumstances been led into a line of study which has brought them to discoveries which have remained hidden from much higher minds. When the microscope was first discovered it was only necessary to apply it to any tissue of living matter to make great and important discoveries. So, too, as a matter of fact, a large number of discoveries are ascribed to persons who, under conditions other than those under which they were made, might perhaps in no way have particularly distinguished themselves. The possibility of originality is in many branches of art narrowly limited; and the chance of being original depends very much upon how far precursors have exhausted the department. In practical music we speak of a “brilliant rendering” (geniale Auffassung). Now, I ask whether a musician who executes a sonata of Beethoven according to his conception of it, is less a genius because others before him have had the same idea of it. Or is a musician a genius because, in his desire to be original and to be applauded as a genius, he does not reproduce the work of the composer, but rather a parody upon it? Often enough this is actually done nowadays.

Those inquirers who have sought to penetrate to the psychological laws of genius, and have sought to explain its phenomena upon recognised psychological principles, have been obliged at last to acknowledge that they had to do with the most diverse psychical conditions, which have been promiscuously labelled as genius. Even Gerard, in his psychological analysis, found himself at last compelled to recognise two essentially different varieties of genius—“genius for science” and “genius for the arts.”⁠[17] But he shows very plainly the error into which he had fallen. Instead of recognising that these two classes refer to utterly unlike psychical conditions, he again resorts to external circumstances to explain their difference, saying: “Some difference between genius for science and genius for the arts arises necessarily from the very diversity of their ends.”⁠[18] This is obviously putting the cart before the horse. He ought rather to say, “The diversity of their ends arises from different sources—genius for science and genius for the arts.”

Helvetius⁠[19] likewise comes to the conclusion that different kinds of genius differ psychologically. “Few men have perceived that these metaphors (fire, inspiration, etc.), applicable to certain kinds of genius, such as that for poetry and for eloquence, are not at all so to the genius for reflection, such as that of Locke and Newton.” But, in spite of his quite correct view that the psychical conditions requisite for a man of science and a poet are utterly different, he nevertheless endeavours to frame a definition which shall include both these dissimilar cases.⁠[20] Instead, therefore, of accounting for phenomena in scientific concepts, he avails himself of a loose usage of speech as the guide of his inquiries, and so comes to the conclusion that “invention” and the “making of an epoch” are the kernel of all genius.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In his inexhaustible and restlessly working fancy Mozart was very much like Goethe. His works commonly lay ready-made in his memory when he began to set them down on paper. He wrote most unwillingly, and generally waited till the last minute, so that he was commonly behind time. It is well known that he wrote the overture to Don Juan the night before the performance of the opera. While we consider creative fancy to be a part of the action of his genius, his vast musical memory was a matter of talent, which in Mozart was not less phenomenal. When he once sent his sister a fugue with a prelude he excused himself for writing the prelude after the fugue. “The truth is,” said he, “it was while I was writing down the fugue that I composed the prelude.”⁠[37] Thus his fancy was able to work undisturbed while he exercised his intellectual reproductive power. This fact may at first sight seem incredible and contradictory to common psychical conditions. But it is not so. Here again is a high refinement of a universal psychical phenomenon. Most men, while engaged in a mechanical occupation, can give a free rein to the play of fancy; and even when the mechanical work requires some attention, many men are able at the same time to think about something else. Whoever is accustomed to work in a laboratory knows very well what it is to follow those mechanical operations with attention and at the same time to be considering some important question. The strange thing in Mozart’s case is that the writing down from memory of a fugue—a work which would have required the concentrated attention of a fairly talented man—was for him a mere mechanical act. We hardly know which most to admire, his stupendous talent or his creative genius.

Mozart’s rich fancy, like that of Goethe, was directed by a high intellectual faculty which checked its boilings over, held the ideas to an ordered sequence, and eliminated disturbing elements. Mozart’s capacity of concentrating his attention upon what was in his mind, and of shutting out all disturbing perceptions of sense, was tremendous. While he was at work social conversation about him was no annoyance, and even with an orchestra playing in his ears he could calmly follow out his own fancy. “His eldest sister, Frau Hofer, told Neukomm that even at the opera,—as anybody who knew him could easily observe by the restless movements of his hands, by his glance, and by his pursing his lips to sing or whistle,—he would be completely taken up in following out his inward train of music.”⁠[38]⁠

But wherever it was worth while to pay attention to the outer world, and to take in outward impressions of sense, he had an equally high capacity for that. His fancy received rich aliment from the action of his intellect. He had studied the old masters perfectly. He himself said: “Nobody takes so much pains in the study of composition as I. You could not easily name a famous master in music whom I have not industriously studied, often going through his works several times.” Rochlitz reports that he knew the chief works of Händel as well as if he had all his life been director of the London Academy for the Support of Old Music.

With all the likeness between Mozart and Goethe there was this remarkable difference between them, that Mozart was not influenced by moods. They had no part whatever in the work of his artistic production. Art was not for him the means of expression of his own sentiments, as it was with Goethe; he could adapt the play of his fancy to outward conditions, to motives of the outer world; so that, in this respect, Mozart strongly reminds one of Schiller. He could set his fancy any problem he liked, and it would promptly proceed to solve it. Mozart could compose to order; and many of his works, especially canons, were produced in that way. In consonance with this was Mozart’s power of setting foreign texts of operas to music, which corresponded precisely to the character and mood of the words, although he did not warm up to them.

In Beethoven, on the contrary, art was solely a means of expression of his own sentiments and feelings. The immortal creations which sprang from his artistic fancy enable us to look deeply into the spiritual life of the great artist. They paint his inner struggles, his anguish, and his delight.

The ideal that was constantly before him, and which by great struggles he sought to attain, was that of a strong, active, manly character, unmoved by any blow of fate and never despondent in the struggle of life, but keeping up its courage to its last breath. “Courage! However weak my body, my soul shall rule.” To this boast he always adhered, no matter how hard his lot. After a joyless youth he had to contend with the direst need. But worst of all was the defect of his hearing, which at last amounted to stone-deafness. One can imagine what it meant for him to be the only one to whom it was not permitted to listen to his own symphonies. But dreadful as it was, his courage was never broken; his soul marched victoriously to the strife and held command over his sufferings.

Such moods as struggle, gloom, hope, pleasure, suffering, burst into expression in his art of music—the mother tongue of sentiments and moods. Of every creation of Beethoven we may say, with Goethe, it was “a fragment of one long confession.”

The fineness of Beethoven’s faculty of sense, the subtilty in the nuances of his moods, was a no less important factor of his nature than his rich creative fancy. Words could not describe his sentiments; only music, the language of the heart, could render them; and his moods were the motives of the action of his genius.

How little such feelings and sentiments can be described in words is shown by Richard Wagner in his Programmatische Erläuterungen.⁠[38] In speaking of the Heroic Symphony he says: “The first movement brings to a focus all the sentiments of a rich manly nature in restless, youthful, active emotion. Bliss and woe, delight and suffering, joy and grief, musing and aspiration, yearning and revelling, daring, insolence, and indomitable self-feeling jostle so closely upon one another that while we sympathize with all these sentiments, we can isolate no one, but are obliged to partake of all as this master of all sentiments delivers them.” Of the second movement he says: “A sentiment excited in solemn nuptials and combined with profound pain is communicated to us in a tone language which takes possession of us; an earnest, manly sorrow looks forward out of its plaint to soft pathos, to recollections, to tears of love, to inward elevation, to inspired summons.” But it is in vain that Wagner strives to reproduce in words the mood produced by the work or the sentiments of his artistic heart. He confesses it himself: “But who could paint in words the infinitely manifold but inexpressible sentiments which pass from pain to the highest exultation, and from exultation to the softest grief, until they come to rest in a bottomless pondering? The tone poet alone could do this in this wonderful composition.” The account closes with the words: “But only in the master’s tone-speech could that unspeakable meaning be uttered which my confined words have attempted to describe with the greatest modesty.”

Thus between these two classics, Mozart and Beethoven, there was a distinction analogous to that between Schiller and Goethe. Still, creative fancy is the common and indispensable factor, without which neither a poet nor a composer of genius can be conceived.

It plays the same important part in the minds of painters. Accordingly, Humboldt⁠[39] says: “As soon as the painter’s fancy has given birth to the living image, the masterpiece is completed, though his hand were that instant to be paralyzed. The actual execution is but the echo of that decisive moment.” But the same psychological distinction pursues us. For some painters art was merely the means of expression of their sentiments and moods. Examples will be mentioned in another chapter.

Let us first turn our attention to representatives of the arts of execution. I mean musical performers and actors.

We have already analyzed the nature of musical talent, so that we can come at once to the question, What is the distinction between a performer of talent and a performer of genius?

Jean Paul⁠[40] speaks of men of “receptive or passive genius” “who are richer in receptive than in creative fancy,” to whose productions that radiance of genius is wanting “which only breaks forth from the consensus of all the powers, and from great powers alone.”

By “receptive fancy,” which is an expression psychologically incorrect, Jean Paul means that state of heart which is particularly inclined to be put by a work of art into a responsive mood, a disposition that can enter into the sentiments of the artist and can fully enjoy his work. Jean Paul says: “There are men who, endowed with a higher sensibility than powerful talent in itself confers, but with less power, receive into a consecrated, open soul the great world-mind, be it in outward life or in poems and thoughts, and remain constant to it as the tender woman to the strong man, disdaining the vulgar, and who yet, if they would express their love, stammer out broken, confused words and say something different from what they wished to say.” These are people endowed with extreme delicacy of feeling and sentiment, so that they are more capable of being absorbed in a work of genius than others, yet lacking the creative fancy which would enable them to give to their sensations an independent artistic expression. Let such people be provided with musical talent which specially fits them for the use of an instrument, and they will have the opportunity, in playing the compositions of others, to express their own artistic feelings and sentiments. They will put their souls into the reproduction of the work. In short, they will be performers of genius. Schütz⁠[41] says of Paganini: “The instant he took his instrument a divine spark seemed to touch him, and celestial fire ran through his being. Every feeling of weakness departed. He was transformed into a new being; he instantly became another soul; and so long as he played, his strength was more than quintupled.” So it is with those actors and singers who in the performance of a part are completely absorbed in the situation. They throw into it their artistically excited hearts, and fulfil their feelings and sentiments.

Other performers of no less talent, or perhaps more, remain cold and without sensation in the performance of the work of art. With them the intellectual function alone determines their rendering of the piece. The effects are calculated, the execution studied, the whole is made up. However great the talent of such performers, bringing them to the highest pitch of technical skill, genius will never be attributed to them by the great public. Thus we see that in artists of execution the psychical causes of performances of genius have to be sought in the sphere of feeling and sensation. That faculty which we have recognised as the chief requisite for the genius of the creative artist—namely, creative fancy—is never present in the performer of genius.

Thus, in the attempt to reduce genius in different departments to the same or similar faculties, we are thrown into perplexity. There are doubtless common factors, but it must be admitted that the psychical elements which constitute the essence of genius in poets such as Schiller, and in performers such as Paganini, have nothing in common.

We now pass to the consideration of those famous men who are called men of scientific genius or scholars of genius. An inquiry into the causes of scientific genius will show that it has two factors—discovery and invention. Copernicus, Galileo, Newton distinguished themselves by many important discoveries. As we have seen above, the success of the discoverer is partly dependent upon external circumstances; so that we shall not remain content with the outward facts, but shall endeavour to probe the matter to the bottom. In short, we shall try to find psychical circumstances accounting for the discoveries of genius.

When Newton’s friend Halley once asked him how he ever came to make all those great discoveries, he said it was by incessantly dwelling on the problems concerned. On another occasion he said that the chief difference between him and other men was that he had more patience than others.

Galileo investigated and worked restlessly to his latest years. When he was blind in both eyes, he wrote, by the hand of another, that in his darkness his mind was perpetually turning over the problems of nature, and would not cease its activity, even when he desired rest; so that he was deprived of his sleep.

These and other sayings of famous men of science about the actions of their mind and the origin of the ideas of genius have an entirely different tone from the analogous reports of poets and composers. Great discoveries, unless they were mere effects of chance, have never been made “unconsciously,” “as in a dream,” “like sleepwalking,” but, on the contrary, require the completest wakefulness, self-conscious thought, and untiring industry. These characters, which we find in all great investigators and scholars, depend upon the extremest refinement of that part of the psychical organ which is the vehicle of the intellectual powers. In the first place, and above all, great discoverers have great powers of observation. For this, as we know, undivided attention concentrated upon an exterior process is requisite. The faculties of perception and ideation are highly refined; the organs of apperception and reproduction act with the greatest energy. The ideas obtained in this way are connected into conceptual forms by that intellectual action which Wundt⁠[42] terms the “inductive understanding.” Upon the extremest refinement of this faculty depends the quick and correct recognition of the connections of things which is met with in great investigators.

We find here, then, essentially different psychical conditions from those of poets and artists of genius. We may go so far as to say that they are antagonistic, the one to the other. A rich fancy and a variety of moods, feelings, and sentiments, which form the main condition of a productive artist, are not only of no use to a great investigator of Nature, but they are positively disadvantageous to him. Every human being possesses fancy, and an absolutely sharp line of demarcation cannot be drawn between fancy and intellect. Every man, too, is subject to oscillations of his moods. But to the great investigator it is absolutely essential that his intellect should possess an iron rule over all other psychical factors. Schiller says of the poet: “He will do well not to let his reason keep too severe a guard at the doors against the incrowding ideas.” But for the investigating scholar it is not well that a rich fancy should modify the result of his objective observations or should draw his attention away from the object of his research.

Those authors who endeavour to find a general psychological basis for genius, but strive to limit the term to a particular class of famous men—as, for example, to productive artists—cannot avoid the incorrect reasoning into which Meyer falls when he says⁠[43]⁠: “Nobody can dispute that genius, even in science, is only the result of the creative force of imagination.” In another place the same author says: “Reflective thought is often prejudicial to the creative power of genius. Thought must come from itself and conclude according to its elective affinities.” According to this, all reflective thought must be prejudicial to the genius of the scholar. But we have learned from their own words that reflection is requisite to the success of scholars.

Whoever, like Meyer, recognises “creative imagination” and the “unconscious origination of thoughts” as the essence of genius ought not to apply that term to the learned. But when Schopenhauer, who gave a similar meaning to genius, says of generals and statesmen, “It is ridiculous to talk of genius in such folks,” Herr Meyer protests and says: “I should rather call it ridiculous to deny that Frederick the Great was a political and military genius, that Napoleon was a general of genius, or that Bismarck was a statesman of genius.”

The usage of language alone, irrespective of other considerations, must determine whether we shall apply the name of genius to generals or statesmen; but this much is manifest, that the greatness of a military commander depends upon essentially different psychical conditions from the greatness of an artist. If we are to conceive of genius as Meyer does, and are to follow him in declaring that the “how” and the “wherefore” “remain obscure” for genius, that “nothing is less conscious,” “nothing less voluntary,” than “a thought of genius,” and that “reflecting thought is sometimes prejudicial to the creative force of genius,” then it certainly must seem ridiculous to connect such an appellation with Frederick the Great, Napoleon, or Bismarck. Imagine a great statesman for whom the “how” and the “wherefore” remain always obscure. Think of a Bismarck devoid of “reflective thought.”

The greatness of a general or a statesman is exclusively due to sharpness of intellect. A power of swift apprehension, an instantaneous recognition of facts and their connections, a logical and consecutive reason—these are the qualities which are indispensable to a general of genius. The great statesman and the great soldier must neither of them be influenced by varying moods and feelings. All moods and feelings must be entirely subordinated. An understanding conscious of its purpose and an iron will must direct and lead the whole action of the soul. The general of genius is always distinguished by discretion and cold deliberation; he preserves an imposing calm. At critical moments he shows a wonderful presence of mind. He never permits any upwellings of feeling or preponderance of emotion. Hence the greatest statesman of our age has received the admirable epithet of the Man of Iron. How utterly is the psychical constitution of such a man unlike the rich and sensitive heart of the artist of genius! For the substance of the great statesman of genius iron is required; but it is wax that has to compose the sensitive artist.

The psychical faculties are not sharply separable. They insensibly shade into one another. Hence we find a gradual transitional series of minds bridging over the interval between creative art and inductive science. It is in this series that we are to place the inventor. For him a combination of fancy with “inductive intellectual action,” as Wundt calls it, is what is to be desired. The action of his productive imagination is essentially different from that of the free, creative fancy of the artist of genius. In the dreams of the artist the work of art emerges freely, without that definite, prefigured, foreseen purpose which is needed in the imagination of the inventor. Well-planned, systematic thought is for him not less requisite than the productive faculty. It is the combination of both states, or an intermediate condition, which we find here.

There are many points of agreement between the psychical conditions of the creative artist and those of the scientific investigator. But where art begins science ends. Speculative philosophy used to call for creative imagination, no doubt; but this department of thought, which among the ancients was the queen of the sciences, is to-day scarcely recognised as science at all. Plato was much more a poet than a representative of science. On the other hand, those poets and novelists who undertake the construction of characters in objective fashion, on a basis of research and observation, approximate toward scientific minds.

Perhaps when Meyer says that genius in science is fulfilled only by the creative force of imagination he means the speculative sciences of theology and philosophy. But the further science advances toward its goal of truth, the more it will emancipate itself from fancies; or, to express the matter more accurately, the less science has to do with fancy, the more truthful will it become and the higher will be its value. In the truest of all the sciences, mathematics, fancy will accomplish very little. Fancy can not solve equations nor enunciate theorems. Fancy never discovered bacteria, nor has it been successful as a method of medical diagnosis.

We conclude, then, that genius in different departments is referable to the most diverse psychical conditions. Psychical faculties and characters which in one case constitute the essence of genius, in another case are inconsistent with the action of genius. In short, definite psychical characters common to all genius are not to be found. One would seek in vain any common psychological explanation of the greatness of a Paganini and a Bismarck, of a Mozart and a Napoleon.

That which of old connected all genius in the eyes of men and, in fact, gave rise to the conception, was the idea of the mystical, the unaccountable, the supernatural. If any such standpoint as that is to be assumed, of course there remains no difficulty in finding an unequivocal meaning for the term. Prof. Jürgen Bona Meyer says: “The ancient Greeks considered poets and artists to be consecrated to God and inspired of God. When they produced their works the Godhead seized upon them in sacred madness, and through them spoke to men. Who knows but that is the very truth? Perhaps God really does lead the world by these creative souls to the high goal to which it is destined. Perhaps a philosophy of history might make this significance of the heroes of spirit and of force manifest, and vindicate the faith which, in the geniuses of earth, will recognise the immediate agents of God.” If notions like these are what is meant by ideas of genius, Meyer is quite right in saying that genius can be introduced into science only by the creative force of the imagination. Modern science, however, can not follow Mr. Meyer in these “fancies of genius,” for it is restricted to objective observation and to actual knowledge.

The foregoing researches will bring the reader to the conviction that no psychological meaning can be attached to the word genius. We can make out what a poetic genius is, what a composer of genius is, what a performer of genius is, what a military genius is, what a scientific genius is, etc.; but to accept genius as a univocal term and attach one psychological definition to it, to any good purpose, is not to be done. Undoubtedly all men of genius have common traits; but they are not traits characteristic of genius; they are such as are possessed by other men, and more or less by all men. Indeed, in no case is there anything in the mode of action of genius qualitatively different from that of other men; there are only different degrees of the same qualities. We can, for any psychical character, form an unbroken series of instances from the grade met with in the average man up to phenomenal genius, and every rung of the ladder will be occupied; so that it is impossible to say where the line is to be drawn between ordinary men and men of genius. In psychology every individual man is a species sui generis. To attempt to separate men into disparate kinds, as we do plants, would be a backward step in biology.