No More Learning

Every other art has more definite relations to empirical art. Even architecture, which has been compared with music, has definite relations to matter, although, like music, it has no anticipations in the senses. Architecture, too, is an entirely masculineoccupation. Theveryideaofafemalearchitect excites compassion. *)
The so-called stupefying effect of music on the creative or practical musician (especially instrumental music) depends on the fact that even the sense of smell is a better guide to man in the world of experience than the contents of a musical work. And it is just this complete absence of all relation to the world of sight, taste, and smell, that makes music specially unfitted to express the female nature. It also explains why this peculiarity of his art demands the highest grade of imagination from a musician, and why those to whom musical compositions " come " seem stranger to their fellow men than painters or sculptors. The so-called " imagination " of women must be very different from that of men, since there is no woman with even the same position in the history of music that Angelica
Kaufmann had in art.
Where anything obviously depends on strong moulding
women have not the smallest leaning towards its production, neither in philosophy nor in music, in the plastic arts nor in architecture. Where, however, a weak and vague senti- mentality can be expressed with little effort, as in painting or verse-making, or in pseudo-mysticism and theosophy, women have sought and found a suitable field for their efforts. Their lack of productiveness in the former sphere is in harmony with the vagueness of the psychical life of
119
? I20 SEX AND CHARACTER
women. Music is the nearest possible approach to the organisation of a sensation. Nothing is more definite, characteristic, and impressive than a melody, nothing that will more strongly resist obliteration. One remembers much longer what is sung than what is spoken, and the arias belter than the recitatives.
Let us note specially here that the usual phrases of the defenders of women do not apply to the case of women. Music is not one of the arts to which women have had access only so recently that it is too soon to expect fruits
;
from the remotest antiquity women have sung and played. Andyet. . .
It is to be remembered that even in the case of drawing and painting women have now had opportunities for at leasttwocenturies. Everyoneknowshowmanygirlslearn to draw and sketch, and it cannot be said that there has not yet been time for results were results possible. As there are so few female painters with the smallest importance in the history of art, it must be that there is something in the nature of things against it. As a matter of fact, the painting and etching of women is no more than a sort of elegant, luxurious handiwork. The sensuous, physical element of colour is more suitable for them than the intellectual work of formal line-drawing, and hence it is, that whereas women have acquired some small distinction in painting they have gained none in drawing. ^The power of giving form to chaos is with those in whom the most universal memory has made the widest comprehension possible ; it is a quality of the masculine genius. /
I regret that I must so continually use the word genius, as if that should apply only to a caste as well defined from those belowasincome-taxpayersarefromtheuntaxed. Theword genius was very probably invented by a man who had small claims on it himself greater men would have understood
;
better what to be a genius really was, and probably they would have come to see that the word could be applied to mostpeople. Goethesaidthatperhapsonlyageniusisable to understand a genius.
? TALENT AND MEMORY 121
VThere are probably very few people who have not at some time of their lives had some quality of genius. If they have not had such, it is probable that they have also been without great sorrow or great pain^ They would have needed only to live sufficiently intently for a time for some quality to reveal itself. The poems of first love are a case in point, and certainly such love is a sufficient stimulus.
It must not be forgotten that quite ordinary men in moments of excitement, in anger at some underhanded deed, have found words with which they never would have been credited. sThe greater part of what is called expression in art as in language depends (if the reader will remember what I have said about the process of " clarification ") on the fact that some individual more richly endowed clarifies, organises, and exhibits some idea almost instantaneouly, an idea which to a less endowed person was still in the henid form. The course of clarification is much shortened in the mind of the second person. )
If it really were the case, as popular opinion has tried to establish, that the genius were separated from ordinary men by a thick wall through which no sound could penetrate, then all understanding of the efforts of genius would be denied to ordinary men, and their works would fail to make anyimpressiononthem. Allhopesofprogressdependon this being untrue. And it is untrue. <^he difference be- tween men of genius and the others is quantitative not qualitative, of degree not of kind.
There is, moreover, very little sense in preventing young people from giving expression to their ideas on the pretext that they have less experience than have older persons. There are many who may live a thousand years without encountering experience of any value. It could only be in a society of persons equally gifted that such an idea could have any meaning. /
Because the life of the genius is more intense even in his earliest years than that of other children, his memory can go further back. In extreme cases the memory may be cor iplete and vivid back to the third year of life, whereas
? 122 SEX AND CHARACTER
in most recollection begins much later. I know some people whose earliest recollections date only from their eighth year, and there are instances of an even later begin- ning of the conscious life. I do not maintam that the date at which active memory begins can be taken as a measure of relative genius, that he who remembers from his second year is so much the more of a genius than he who can go back only to his fourth or fifth year. But in a general way, I believe the parallel to hold good.
Even in the cases of the greatest men, some time, greater or shorter, elapsed between the date of their earliest recol- lection and the time from which onwards they remember everything, from the time, in fact, in which their genius was ripe. But in the case of most men there is forgetfulness of the greater part of their lives ; they are conscious only that they themselves and none other have lived their lives. Out of their whole lives there only remain certain moments, and scatteredrecollections,whichserveassign-posts. Iftheyare asked about any particular thing they can only tell, for in- stance, because in such and such a month they were so old, or they wore such and such clothes, they lived at this place, or that their income was so much.
If one has lived with them in former years, it is only after great trouble that the past can be brought to their mind. In such cases one is surely justified in saying that such a person is ungifted, or at least in not considering him con- spicuously able.
The request for an autobiography would put most men intoamostpainfulposition; theycouldscarcelytellifthey were asked what they had done the day before. Memory with most people is quite spasmodic and purely associative. In the case of the man of genius every impression that he has received endures ; he is always under the influence of impressions ; and so nearly all men of genius tend to suffer from fixed ideas. The psychical condition of men's minds may be compared with a set of bells close together, and so arranged that in the ordinary man a bell rings only when one beside it sounds, and the vibration lasts only a moment.
? TALENT AND MEMORY 123
In the genius, when a bell sounds it vibrates so strongly that it sets in action the whole series, and remains in action throughout life. The latter kind of movement often gives rise to extraordinary conditions and absurd impulses, that may last for weeks together and that form the basis of the supposed kinship of genius with insanity.
For similar reasons gratitude is apparently the rarest humanvirtue. Peopleareoftenveryconsciousofhowmuch they have borrowed, but they neither can nor will try to remember the necessity in which they stood, nor the free- dom which that help brought them. Even if want of memory were really the cause of ingratitude, it would not be sufficient for a man to possess a marvellous memory to have a like spirit of gratitude. A special condition is also necessary, but its description cannot be undertaken here.
From the connection between giftedness and memory, which is so often mistaken and denied because it is not sought where it is to be found, from the power of self recol- lection,afurtherfactistobededuced. Thepoetwhofeels urged to write without premeditation, without reflection, without having willingly pressed the pedal ; the musician to whom the desire to compose has come, so that he must create whether he will or no, even if he feels more inclined to sleep or to rest ; tnese, in such moments, will simply reproduce thoughts they have carried in their heads all their lives. Acomposerwnocanremembernoneofhissongsor subjects by heart, or a poet who cannot recollect any of his poems--without having carefully learned them--such men are in no sense really great.
Before we apply these remarks to the consideration of the mental differences of the sexes, we must make yet one more distinction between different kinds of memory. The individual moments in the life of a gifted man are not remembered as disconnected points, not as different particles of time, each one separated and defined from the following one, as the numerals one, two, and so on.
The result of self-observation shows that sleep, the limitations of consciousness, the gaps in memory, even
? SEX AND CHARACTER
special experiences, appear to be in some mysterious way one great whole ; incidents do not follow each other like the tickings of a watch, but they pass along in a single unbrokenstream. Withordinarymenthemomentswhich are united in a close continuity out of the original discrete multiplicity are very few, and the course of their lives resembles a little brook, whereas with the genius it is more like a mighty river into which all the little rivulets flow from afar ; that is to say, the universal comprehension of genius vibrates to no experience in which all the individual moments have not been gathered up and stored.
^This peculiar contmuity by which a man first realises that he exists, that he is, and that he is in the world, is all comprehensive in the genius, limited to a few important moments in the mediocre, and altogether lacking in woman? ) When a woman looks back over her life and lives again her experiences, there is presented no continuous, unbroken stream,butonlyafewscatteredpoints. Andwhatkindof points ? They are just those which accord with woman's naturalinstincts. Ofwhattheseinterestsexclusivelyconsist the second chapter gave a preliminary idea ; and those who remember the ideas in question will not be astonished at the following facts : The female is concerned altogether with one class of recollections--those connected with the sexual impulse and reproduction. She thinks of her lovers and proposals, of her marriage day, of every child as if it were a doll ; of the flowers which she received at every ball, the number, size, and price of the bouquets ; of every serenade; ofeveryversewhich(asshefondlyimagines)was written for her ; of every phrase by which a lover has im- pressed her ; but above all--with an exactness which is as contemptible as it is disquieting to herself--of every compliment without exception that has ever been paid her.
That is all that the real woman recalls of her life. But it is just those things which human beings never forget, and those they cannot remember that give the clue to knowledge of their life and character. It belongs to a later period of the book to go more thoroughly into the reason why the
124
? TALENT AND MEMORY
female has precisely the remembrances she has. Some important conclusion may be expected from reflection on the incredible memory with which women recall all the adulation and flattery, all the proofs of gallantry, which have happened to them since childhood.
Whatever may be urged against the present complete limitation of the female memory to the sphere of sexuality and conjugal life, it is to me quite evident. Various arguments about girls' schools, and so forth, I am prepared for. These difficulties will have to be cleared away later. But I must just say again that all memory, which is to be used as a means of psychological definition of the individual,
can include only the memory of what has been learnt when learning means actual experience.
The explanation of the discontinuity in the psychical life of women (reference to which is introduced here, only because it is a necessary psychological factor in the problem of memory, and without reference to its spiritualistic or idealistic significance) can be reached only when the nature of continuity is studied with reference to the deepest problems of philosophy and psychology.
As a proof of the fact I will at present quote nothing more than the statement of Lotze, which has so often caused astonishment, that women much more readily submit them- selves to new relationships and more easily accommodate themselves to them than men, in whom the parvenu can be seen much longer, whereas one might not be able to tell the peasant from the peeress, the woman brought up in poor surroundings from the patrician's daughter. Later on I shall deal more exhaustively with this subject.
At any rate, it will now be seen why (if neither vanity, desire for gossip, nor imitation drives them to it) only the better men write down recollections of their lives, and how I perceive in this a strong evidence of the connection between memory and giftedness. It is not as if every man of genius wished to write an autobiography : the incitement to autobiography comes from special, very deep-seated psychological conditions. But on the other hand, the
125
? 126 SEX AND CHARACTER
writing of a full autobiography, if it is the oi. tcome of a genuine desire, is always the sign of a superior man. For realfaithfulmemoryisthesourceofreverence. Thereally great would resist any temptation to give up his past in exchange for material advantage or mental health ; the greatest treasures of the world, even happiness itself, he would not take in exchange for his memories.
^he desire for a draught of the waters of Lethe is the traitofmediocreorinferiornatures. Andhowevermucha really great man, as Goethe says, may condemn and abhor his past failings, and although he sees others clinging fast to theirs, he will never smile at those past actions and failings of his own, or make merry over his early mode of life and thoughty^
The class of persons, now so much in evidence, who claim to have " conquered " their pasts, have the smallest possibleclaimtotheword"conquer. " Theyarethosewho idly relate that they formerly believed this or the other, but have now " overcome " their beliefs, whereas they are as little in earnest about the present as they were about the past. Theyseeonlythemechanism,notthesoulofthings, and at no stage what they believe themselves to have conquered was deep in their natures.
4n contrast with these it may be noticed with what painful care great men render even the, apparently, most minute details in their own biographies tjffor them the past and present are equal ; with others neither of the two are real/
The famous man realises how everything, even the smallest, most secondary, matters played an important part in his life, how they have helped his development, and to this fact is due his extraordinary reverence for his own memoirs. And such an autobiography is not written all at once, as it were, with one event treated like another, and without meditatio , ; nor does the idea of it suddenly occur to a mnn ; the material for such a work by a great man, so to speak, is always at hand.
<^is new experiences acquire a deeper significance because of the past, which is always present to him, and hence the
? TALENT AND MEMORY
great man, and only the great man, feels that he himself is in very truth a " man of destiny. / And so it comes that great men are always more " superstitious " than average men. Tosumup, I maysay:
Y^ man is himself important precisely in proportion that all things seem important to him. /
In the course of further investigation this dictum will be seen to have a deep significance even apart from its bearing on theuniversality, comprehension, and comparison exhibited by the genius.
The position of woman in these matters is not difficult to explain. Arealwomanneverbecomesconsciousofades- tiny, of her own destiny ; she is not heroic ; she fights most for her possessions, and there is nothing tragic in the struggle as her own fate is decided with the fate of her possessions,
/inasmuch as woman is without continuity, she can have no true reverence ; as a fact, reverence is a purely male virtue. A man is first reverent about himself, and self- respect is the first stage in reverence for all things^ But it costs a woman very little to break off with her past ; if the word irony could be fittingly used here, one might say that a man does not easily regard his past with irony and superiority as women appear to do--and not only after marriage.
LateronI shallshowhowwomenareexactlytheopposite of that which reverence means. I would rather be silent about the reverence of widows.
The superstition of women is psychologically absolutely different from the superstitions of famous men.
The reverent relation to one's own past, which depends on a real continuity of memory, and which is possible only by comprehension, can be shown in relation to a still wider and deeper subject.
Whether a man has a real relationship to his own past or not, involves the question as to whether he has a desire for immortality, or if the idea of death is indifferent to him.
The desire for immortality is to-day, as a rule, treated shamefully, and in a very different spirit^
127
? J
SEX AND CHARACTER
Not only is the problem treated as merely ontological, but / the psychological side of it is only trifled with. It has been held that it is connected, like the doctrine of the trans- migration of souls, with the feeling that we have all experi- enced, when, in doing something certainly for the first time, we seem to remember having gone through the same experience before. Another generally adopted view is to derive the idea of immortality from the belief in spirits, as has been done by Tylor, Spencer, Avenarius, and others, although in any other age than this age of experimental psychology it would have been dismissed a priori. ( I am sure that it must seem impossible to the majority of thinking men to regard a belief so important to man- kind, about which there has been so much strife, as merely the last stage in a syllogism of which the first premiss is the midnight dream of a dead man. How can phe- nomena of that kind explain the belief in the continuity of their lives after death held so firmly by Goethe or Bach, or the desire for immortality which speaks to us in Beethoven's last sonatas ? The desire for the persistence of the con- scious seit must spring from sources mightier than these
feeble rationalistic guesses^
\The deeper source of the belief depends on the relation of
a man to his own past. Our consciousness and vision of the past is the strongest ground for our desire to be conscious in the future. The man who values his past, who holds his mental life in greater respect than his corporeal life, is not willing to give up his consciousness at death. And so this organic primary desire for immortality is strongest in men of genius, in the men whose pasts are richest. This con- nection between the desire for immortality and memory receives strong support from what is related by those who have been rescued from sudden death. > Even if they had not thought it out before they relive their past in a few moments, at once and with frantic rapidity. The feeling of what is impending brings in violent contrast the intensity of thepresentconsciousnessandtheideathatit mayceasefor ever. In reality we know very little of the mental state of
^28
? TALENT AND MEMORY
the dying. It takes more than an ordinary person to inter- pret it, and for reasons connected with what I have been saying men of genius usually avoid death-beds. But it is quite wrong to ascribe the sudden appearance of religion in so many people who are fatally ill, to a desire to make sure of their future state. It is extremely superficial to assume that the doctrine of hell can for the first time assume such an importance to the dying as to make them afraid to pass away "with a lie on their lips. "*
The important point is this : Why do men who have lived throughout a lying life feel towards the end a sudden desire for truth ? And why are others so horrified, although they do not believe in punishment in the next world, when they hear of a man dying with a lie on his lips or with an unrepented action ? And why have both the hardness of heart until the end and the death-bed repentance appealed so forcibly to the imagination of poets ? The discussion as to the " euthanasia " of atheists, which was so popular in the eighteenth century, is more
than a mere historical curiosity as F. A. Lange con- sidered it.
I adduce these considerations not merely to suggest a possibility which is hardly more than a guess. It seems to be unthinkable that it is not the case that many more people than actual geniuses have some trace of genius. The quantitative difference in natural endowment will be most marked at the moment when the endowrr'^nt becomes active. And for most men this moment is the point of dearh. If we were not accustomed to regard men of genius as a separate class shut off from the others like the payers of income-tax, we should find less difficulty in grafting these new ideas on the old. And just as the earliest recollections of childhood which a man has are not the result of some external event breaking through the
* I venture to remind readers how often at the approach of death those who have been occupied with purely scientific matters have turned to religious problems, e. g. , Newton, Gauss, Riemann, Weber.
I
129
? I30 SEX AND CHARACTER
continuity of the past course of his life, but are the result of his internal development, there comes to every one a day on which his consciousness is so intensified that remem- brance remains, and from that time onwards, according to his endowment, more or fewer remembrances are formed (a factor which by itself upsets the whole of modern psychology), so in different men there are many different stimulants of the consciousness of which the last is the hour of death, and from the point of view of their de- gree of genius men might almost be classified by the number of things that excite their consciousness. I take this opportunity of again urging the falseness of a doc- trine of modern psychology (which treats men simply as better or worse pieces of registering apparatus and takes no notice of the internal, ontogenetic development of the mind) ; I mean the idea that in youth we retain the greatest number of impressions. We must not confuse really ex- perienced impressions with the mere material on which to exercise memorising. Such stuff a child learns more easily simply because it is not weighted with mental impres- sions. A psychology which is opposed to experience in matters so fundamental must be rejected. What I am attempting at present is no more than to give the faintest indication of that ontogenetic psychology or theoretical biography which sooner or later will replace what now passes for the science of mind. Every programme repre- sents some definite conviction ; before we wish to reach a goal we have some definite conception of what the goal is to be. The name " theoretical biography " will define the new subject from philosophy and physiology, and the biological method of treatment introduced by Darwin, Spencer, and others will be widened until it becomes a science capable of giving a rational orderly account of
the whole course of the mental life from the cradle to the grave. It is to be called biography, not biology, because it is to deal with the investigation of the permanent laws that rule the mental development of an individual, whereas biology itself concerns itself with individuals themselves.
? TALENT AND MEMORY
131 The new knowledge will seek general points of view and the establishment of types. Psychology must try to be- come theoretical biography. Existing psychology would find its place in the branches of the new science, and in this way only would Wundt's desire to establish the founda- tions of a science of the mind be fulfilled. It would be absurd to despair of this simply because of the uselessness
of the existing science of the mind which has not yet even grasped its own object. In this way a justification for experimental psychology might yet be found, in spite of the important results of the investigations by Windelband and Rickert on the relation between natural and psychical science, or the old dichotomy between the physical and mental sciences.
The relation between the continuity of memory and the desire for immortality is borne out by the fact that woman is devoid of the desire for immortality. It is to be noted that those persons are quite wrong who have attributed the desireforimmortalitytothefearofdeath. Womenareas much afraid of death as are men, but they have not the longing for immortality.
My attempted explanation of the psychological desire for immortality is as yet more an indication of the connection between the desire and memory than a deduction from a higher natural law. It will always be found that the con- nection actually exists ; the more a man lives in his past (not, as a superficial reader might guess, in his future) the moreintensewillbehislongingforimmortality. Thelack of the desire for immortality in women is to be associated with the lack in them of reverence for their own personality. It seems, however, that the absence of both reverence and desire for immortality in woman is due to a more general principle, and in the same fashion in the case of man the co-existence of a higher form of memory and the desire for immortality may be traced to some deeper root. So far, I have attempted only to show the coincidence of the two, how the deep respect for their own past and the deep desire for their own future are to be found in the same individuals.
? SEX AND CHARACTER
It will now be my task to find the common origin of these two factors of the mind.
Let us take as a starting-point what we were able to lay down as to the universality of the memory of great men. To such everything is equally real: what took place long ago and the most recent experience. Thus it happens that a single experience does not end with the moment of time in which it happened, does not disappear as this moment of time disappears, but through the memory is wrested from the grasp of time. vM^^mory makes experience timeless ; the essence of it is that it should transcend time. A man can only remember the past because memory is free from the control of time, because events which in nature are functions of time, in the spirit have conquered time)
But here a difficulty crops up. How can memory be a negation of time if, on the other hand, it is certain that if we had no memory we should be unconscious of time ? It is certainly true that we shall always be conscious of the passing of time by our memory of the past. If the two are in so intimate a relation how can the one be the negation of the other ?
Vrhe difficulty is easy to resolve. It is just because a living creature--not necessarily a human being--by being endowed with memory is not wholly absorbed by the experiences of the moment that it can, so to speak, oppose itself to time, take cognisance of it, and make it the subject ofobservation. Werethebeingwhollyabandonedtothe experience of the moment and not saved from it by memory then it would change with time and be a floating bubble in the stream of events ; it could never be conscious of time, for consciousness implies duality. The mind must have transcended time to grasp it, it must have stood outside it in order to be able to reflect upon it. This does not apply merely to special moments of time, as, for instance, to the case that we cannot be conscious of sorrow until the sorrow is over, but it is a part of the conception of time. If we could not free ourselves from time, we could have no knowledge of time^
132
? TALENT AND MEMORY
133 In order to understand the condition of timelessness let us reflect on what memory rescues from time. What tran- scends time is only what is of interest to the individual, what has meaning for him ; in fact, all that he assigns value to. We remember only the things that have some value for us even if we are unconscious of the value. It is the value thatcreatesthetimelessness. Weforgeteverythingthathas no value for us even if we are unconscious of that absence
of value.
What has value, then, is timeless ; or, to put it the other
way, a thing has the more value the less it is a function of time. In all the world value is in proportion to inde- pendence of time ; only things that are timeless have a positive value. Although this is not what I take to be the deepest and fullest meaning of value, it is, at least, the first special law of the theory of values.
A hasty survey of. common facts will suffice to prove this relation between value and duration.
We are always in- clined to pay little attention to the views of those whom we have known only for a short time, and, as a rule, we think little of the hasty judgments of those who easily change their ideas. On the other hand, uncompromising fixedness gains respect, even if it assume the form of vindictiveness or obstinacy. ThecereperenninsoftheRomanpoetsandthe Egyptian pyramids lasting for forty centuries are favourite images. The reputation a man leaves behind him would soon be depreciated were it suspected that it would soon disappear instead of being handed down the centuries. A man dislikes to be told that he is always changing ; but let it be put that he is simply showing new sides of his character and he will be proud of the permanence through the changes. Hewhoistiredoflife,forwhomlifehasceased to be of interest, is interesting to no one. The fear of the extinction of a name or of a family is well known.
So also statute laws and customs lose in value if their validity is expressly limited in time ; and if two people are making a bargain, they will be the more ready to distrust one another if the bargain is to be only of short duration.
? SEX AND CHARACTER
In fact, the value that we attach to things depends to a large extent on our estimate of their durability.
This law of values is the chief reason why men are inte- rested in their death and their future. The desire for value shows itself in the efforts to free things from time, and this pressure is exerted even in the case of things which sooner or later must change, as, for instance, riches and position and everything that we call the goods of this world. Here lies the psychological motive for the making of wills and the bestowal of property. The motive is not care for relatives, because a man without relatives very often is more anxious to settle his goods, not feeling, perhaps, like the head of a family, that in any event his existence will have some kind of permanence, that traces of him will be left after his own death.
The great politician or ruler, and especially the despot, whose rule ends with his death, seeks to increase his own value by making it independent of time. He may attempt it through a code of laws or a biography like that of Julius Caesar, by some great philosophical undertaking, by the founding of museums or collections, or (and this perhaps is thefavouriteway)byalterationsofthecalendar. Andhe seeks to extend his power to the utmost during his life-time, to preserve it and make it stable by enduring contracts and diplomatic marriages, and most of all by attacking and re- moving everything that could endanger the permanence of hiskingdom. Andsothepoliticianbecomesaconqueror.
Psychological and philosophical investigations of the theoryofvalueshaveneglectedthetimeelement. Perhaps this is because they have been very much under the influence of political economy. I believe, however, that the appli- cation of my principle to political economy would be of considerable value. Very slight reflection will lead one to see that in commercial affairs the time element is a most important factor in estimating value. The common defini- tion of value, that it is in proportion to the power of the thing valued to relieve our wants, is quite incomplete with- out the element of time. Such things as air and water have
134
? TALENT AND MEMORY
135 no value only in so far as they are not localised and individualised ; but as soon as they have been localised and individualised, and so received form, they have received a quality that may not last, and with the idea of duration comes the idea of value. Form and timelessness, or indi- viduation and duration, are the two factors which compose
value.
Thus it can be shown that the fundamental law of the
theory of value applies both to individual psychology and to social psychology. And now I can return to what is, after all, the special task of this chapter.
The first general conclusion to be made is that the desire for timelessness, a craving for value, pervades ail spheres of human activity. And this desire for real value, which is deeply bound up with the desire for power, is completely absent in the woman. It is only in comparatively rare cases that old women trouble to make exact directious about the disposition of their property, a fact in obvious relation with the absence in them of the desire for immortality.
Over the dispositions of a man there is the weight of something solemn and impressive--something which makes him respected by other men.
The desire for immortality itself is merely a specific case of the general law that only timeless thmgs have a positive value. On this is founded its connection with memory. The permanence with which experiences stay with a man is proportional to the significance which they had for him. Putting it in a paradoxical form, I may say : Value is created by the past. Only that which has a positive value remains protected by memory from the jaws of time ; and so it may be with tlie individual psychical life as a whole. If it is to have a positive value, it must not be a function of time, but must subdue time by eternal duration after physical death. This draws us incomparably nearer the innermostmotiveofthedesireforimmortality. Thecom- plete loss of significance which a rich, individual, fully-lived life would suffer if it were all to end with death, and the consequent senselessness of everything, as Goethe said, in
? 136 SEX AND CHARACTER
other words, to Eckermann (February 14, 1829) lead to the demand for immortality. The strongest craving for immortality is possessed by the genius, and this is explained by all the other facts which have been discussed as to his nature.
Memoryonlyfullyvanquishestimewhenit appearsina universal form, as in universal men.
The genius is thus the only timeless man--at least, this and nothing else is his ideal of himself ; he is, as is proved by his passionate and urgent desire for immortality, just the man with the strongest demand for timeiessness, with the greatest desire for value. *
<And now we are face to face with an almost astonishing coincidence. Thetimeiessnessofthegeniuswillnotonly be manifest in relation to the single moments of his life, but also in his relation to what is known as " his generation," or, in a narrower sense, " his time. " As a matter of fact, he has no relations at all with it. The age does not create the genius it requires. The genius is not the product of his age, is not to be explained by it, and we do him no honour if we attempt to account for him by it. )
Carlyle justly noted how many epochs had called for great men, how badly they had needed them, and how they still did not obtain them.
The coming of genius remains a mystery, and men reverently abandon their efforts to explain it. And as the causes of its appearance do not lie in any one age, so also the consequences are not limited by time. The achieve- ments of genius live for ever, and time cannot change them, By his works a man of genius is granted immortality on the earth, and thus in a threefold manner he has transcended time. His universal comprehension and memory forbid the annihilation of his experiences with the passing of the
* It is often a cause for astonishment that men with quite ordi- nary, even vulgar, natures experience no fear of death. But it is quite explicable : it is not the fear of death which creates the desire for immortality, but the desire for immortality which causes fear of death.
? TALENT AND MEMORY
moment in which each occurred ; his birth is independent of his age, and his work never dies.
Here is the best place to consider a question which, strangely enough, appears to have received no attention. The question is, if there be anything akin to genius in the world of animals and plants ? Although it must be admitted that exceptional forms occur amongst animals and plants, these cannot be regarded as coming under our definition of genius. Talent may exist amongst them as amongst men below the standard of genius. But the special gift, what Moreau, Lombroso, and others have called the"divinespark,"wemustdenytoanimals. Thislimita- tion is not jealousy nor the anxious guarding of a privilege, but is founded on good grounds.
Is there anything unexplained by the assumption that the first appearance of genius was in man ! In the first place, it is because of this that the human race has an objective mind; inotherwords,thatmanistheonlyorganismwitha history.
^The history of the human race (naturally I mean the history of its mind and not merely of its wars) is readily intelligible on the theory of the appearance of genius, and of the imitation by the more monkey-like individuals of the conductofthosewithgenius. Thechiefstages,nodoubt, were house-building, agriculture, and, above all, speech. Every single word has been the invention of a single man, as, indeed, we still see, if we leave out of consideration the merely technical terms. How else could language have
arisen ? The earliest words were " onomatopoetic " sound similar to the exciting cause was evolved almost without the will of the speaker, in direct response to the sensuousstimulation. Alltheotherwordswereoriginally metaphors, or comparisons, a kind of primitive poetry, for all prose has come from poetry, f Many, perhaps the majority of the greatest geniuses, have remained unknown. Think of the proverbs, now almost commonplaces, such as " one good turn deserves another. " These were said for the first time by some great man. How many quotations
137
;
a
? 138 SEX AND CHARACTER
from the classics, or sayings of Christ, have passed into the common language, so that we have to think twice before we can remember who were the authors of them. Language is as little the work of the multitude as our ballads. Every form of speech owes much that is not acknowledged to individualsofanotherlanguage. Becauseoftheuniversality of genius, the words and phrases that he invents are useful not only to those who use the language in which he wrote them. /A nation orients itself by its own geniuses, and derives from them its ideas of its own ideals, but the guiding starservesalsoasalighttoothernations. Asspeechhas been created by a few great men, the most extraordinary wisdom lies concealed in it, a wisdom which reveals itself to a few ardent explorers but which is usually overlooked by the stupid professional philologists. ^
The genius is not a critic of language, but its creator, as he is the creator of all the mental achievements which are the material of culture and which make up the objective mind,thespiritofthepeoples. The"timeless"menare those who make history, for history can be made only by those who are not floating with the stream. It is only those who are unconditioned by time who have real value, and whose productions have an enduring force. And the events that become forces of culture become so only because they have an enduring value.
If we make a criterion of genius the exhibition of this threefold " timelessness " we shall have a measure by which itiseasytotestallclaimants. LombrosoandTu? rckhave expanded the popular view which ascribes genius to all whose intellectual or practical achievements are much above the average. Kant and Schelling have insisted on the more exclusive doctrine that genius can be predicated only of the great creative artists. The truth probably lies between the two. I am inclined to think that only great artists and great philosophers (amongst the latter, I include, above all, the great religious teachers) have proved a claim to genius. Neither the " man of action " nor " the man of science " has any claim.
? TALENT AND MEMORY
Men of action, famous politicians and generals, may possess a few traits resembling genius (particularly a specially good knowledge of men and an enormous capacity for remembering people). The psychology of such traits will be dealt with later ; they are confused with genius only by those whom the externals of greatness dazzle. The man of genius almost typically renounces such external greatness becauseoftherealgreatnesswithinhim. Thereallygreat man has the strongest sense of values ; the distinguished general is absorbed by the desire for power. The former seeks to link power with real value ; the latter desires that power itself should be valued. Great generals and great politicians, like the bird Phoenix, are born out of fiery chaos and like it disappear again in chaos. The great emperor or the great demagogue is the only man who lives entirely in the present ; he does not dream of a more beautiful, better future ; his mind does not dwell on his own past which has already passed, and so in the two ways most possible to man, he does not transcend time, but lives only in the moment. The great genius does not let his work be determined by the concrete finite conditions that surround him, whilst it is from these that the work of the statesman takes its direction and its termination. And so the great
emperor is no more than a phenomenon of nature, whereas the genius is outside nature and is an incorporation of the mind. Theworksofmenofactioncrumbleatthedeathof their authors, if indeed they have not already decayed, or they survive only a brief time leaving no traces behind them except what the chronicles record as having been done and later undone. The emperor creates no works that survive time, passing into eternity ; such creations come from genius. It is the genius in reality and not the other who is the creator of history, for it is only the genius who is outside and unconditioned by history. The great man has a history, the emperor is only a part of history. The great man transcends time ; time creates and time destroys the emperor.
The great man of science, unless he is also a philosopher
139
? SEX AND CHARACTER
140
(I think of such names as Newton and Gauss, Linnasus and Darwin, Copernicus and GaHleo), deserves the title of genius as little as the man of action. Men of science are
not universal ; they deal only with a branch or branches of knowledge. Thisisnotdue,asissometimessaid,merelyto the extreme modern specialisation that makes it impossible tomastereverything. Eveninthenineteenthandtwentieth centuries there are still amongst the learned men individuals with a knowledge as many-sided as that of Aristotle or
Leibnitz ; the names of von Humboldt and William Wundt atoncecometomymind. Theabsenceofgeniuscomes from something much more deeply seated in the men of science, and in science itself, from a cause which I shall explain in the eighth chapter. Probably some one may be disposed to argue that if even the most distinguished men of science have not a knowledge so universal as that of the philosopher, there are some who stand on the outermost fringes of philosophy, and to whom it is yet difficult to deny the word genius. I think of such men as Fichte, Schleier- macher, Carlyle, and Nietzsche. Which of the merely scientitic has felt in himself an unconditioned comprehen- sion of all men and of all things, or even the capacity to verify any single thing in his mind and by his mind ? On
the contrary, has not the whole history of the science of the last thousand years been directed against this ? This is the reasonwhymenofsciencearenecessarilyone-sided. No man of science, unless he is also a philosopher, however eminent his achievements, has that continuous unforgetting life that the genius exhibits, and this is because of his want of universality.
finally, it is to be observed that the investigations of the scientific are always in definite relation to the knowledge of theirday. Thescientificmantakespossessionofadefinite store of experimental or observed knowledge, increases or altersitmoreorless,andthenhandsiton. Andmuchwill be taken away from his achievements, much will silently disappear ; his treatises may make a brave show in the libraries, but they cease to be actively alive. On the other
? TALENT AND MEMORY 141
hand, we can ascribe to the work of the great philosopher, as to that of the great artist, an imperishable, unchangeable presentation of the world, not disappearing with time, and which, because it was the expression of a great mind, will always find a school of men to adhere to it. There still exist disciples of Plato and Aristotle, of Spinoza and Berkeley and Bruno, but there are now none who denote them- selves as followers of Galileo or Helmholtz, of Ptolemy or Copernicus. It is a misuse of terms, due to erroneous ideas, to speak of the " classics " of science or of pedagogy in the sense that we speak of the classics of philosophy and art. ^
The great philosopher bears the name of genius deservedly and with honour. And if it will always be the greatest pain to the philosopher that he is not an artist, so the artist envies the philosopher his tenacious and controlled strength of systematic thought, and it is not surprising that the artist has taken pleasure in depicting Prometheus and Faust, Prospera and Cyprian, Paul the Apostle and II Penseroso. The philo- sopher and the artist are alternate sides of one another.
We must not be too lavish in attributing genius to those who are philosophers or we shall not escape the reproach of being merely partisans of philosophy against science. Such a partisanship is foreign to my purpose, and, I hope, to this book, ^t would only be absurd to discuss the claims to genius of such men as Anaxagoras, Geulincx, Baader, or
Emerson. I deny genius either to such unoriginally pro- found writers as Angelus Silesius, Philo and Jacobi, or to original yet superficial persons such as Comte Feuerbach, Hume,Herbart,Locke,andKarneades. Thehistoryofart is equally full of preposterous valuations, whilst, on the other hand, the history of science is extremely free from false estimations. / The history of science busies itself very little with the biographies of its protagonists ; its object is a system of objective, collective knowledge in which the individual is swept away. The service of science demands the greatest sacrifice, for in it the individual human being renounces all claim to eternity as such.
? CHAPTER VI
MEMORY, LOGIC, AND ETHICS
The title that I have given to this chapter at once opens the way to misinterpretation. It might appear as if the author supported the view that logical and ethical values were the objects exclusively of empirical psychology, psychical phenomena, like perception and sensation, and that logic and ethics, therefore, were subsections of psychology and
based upon psychology.
I declare at once that I call this view, the so-called psy-
chologismus, at once false and injurious. It is false because it can lead to nothing ; and injurious because, while it hardly touches logic and ethics, it overthrows psychology itself. The exclusion of logic and ethics from the foun- dations of psychology, and the insertion of them in an appendix, is one of the results of the overgrowth of the doctrine of empirical perception, of that strange heap of dead, fleshless bones which is known as empirical psycho- logy, and from which all real experience has been excluded. I have nothing to do with the empirical school, and in this matter lean towards the transcendentalism of Kant.
As the object of my work, however, is to discover the differences between different members of humanity, and not to discuss categories that would hold good for the angels in heaven, I shall not follow Kant closely, but remain more directly in psychological paths.
The justification of the title of this chapter must be reached along other Unes. The tedious, because entirely new, demonstration of the earlier part of my work has shown that the human memory stands in intimate relation
? MEMORY, LOGIC, AND ETHICS
145
with things hitherto supDOsed unconnected with it--such things as time, value, genius, immortality. I have attempted to show that memory stands in intimate connection with all these. There must be some strong reason for the complete absence of earlier allusions to this side of the subject. I believe the reason to be no more than the inadequacy and slovenliness which hitherto have spoiled theories of memory.
I must here call attention to a theory first propounded by Charles Bonnet in the middle of the eighteenth century and towards the end of the nineteenth century, specially insisted uponbyEwaldHeringandE. Mach. Thistheoryregarded the human memory as being only a special case of a pro- perty common to all organised matter, the property that makes the path of new stimuli rather easier if these resemble stimuli that have acted at some former time. The theory really makes the human memory an adaptation in the sense of Lamarck, the result on the living organism of repeated stimulation. It is true that there is a point in common between the human memory and the increase of sensitiveness caused by the repeated application of a stimu- lus ; that identical element consists in the permanence of the effect of the first stimulation. There is, however, a fundamental difference between the growth of a muscle
that is much used or the adaptation of the eater of arsenic or morphia to increased doses, and the recollection of past experiencesbyhumanbeings. Intheonecasethetraceof the old is just to be felt in the new stimulation ; in the other case, by means of the consciousness, the old situations are actuallyreproducedwithalltheirindividuation. Theiden- tification of the two is so superficial that it is a waste of time to dwell longer on it.
The doctrine of association as the theory of memory is linked with the foregoing physiological theory as a matter of history, through Hartley, and, as a matter of fact, becausetheideaofhabitissharedbythetwo. Theasso- ciation theory attributes memory to the mechanical play of the linking of presentations according to four laws. It
? SEX AND CHARACTER
overlooks the fact that memory (the continuous memory of man) is a function of the will. I can remember a thing if I really will. In the case of hypnosis, when the recollec- tion of all that has been forgotten is induced, an outside will replaces the will of the subject. It is will that sets in action the chains of association, and we have to deal here with something deeper than a mechanical principle.
In the association psychology, which first splits up the psychic life, and then vainly imagines that it can weld the re-assorted pieces together again, there is another confusion, the confusion between memory and recollection, which has persisted in spite of the well-founded objections of Avenarius and von Ho? ffding. The recognition of a circum- stance does not necessarily involve the special reproduction of the former impression, even although there seems to be a tendency for the new impression, at least, partly to recall the old one. But there is another kind of recognition, perhaps as common, in which the new impression does not appear to be directly linked with an association, but in which it comes, so to speak, "coloured" (James would say "tinged") with that character that would be called by von Ho? ffding the "familiarity quality. " To him who returns to his native place the roads and streets seem familiar, even although he has forgotten the names, has to ask his way, and can think of no special occasion on which he went along them. A melodymayseem"familiar"andyetI maybeunableto say where I heard it. /The " character " (in the sense of Avenarius) of familiarity, of intimacy, hovers over the sense- impression itself, and analysis can detect no associations, none of the fusing of the old and new, which, according to the assertion of a presumptuous pseudo-psychology, produces the feeling ; these cases are quite easy to distinguish from cases in which there is a real although vague association with an older experience in henid formj
In individual psychology this distinction is of great importance. Inthehighesttypesofmankindtheconscious- ness of the continuous past is present in so active a form that the moment such a one sees a acquaintance in the
144
? MEMORY, LOGIC, AND ETHICS
street he is at once able to reproduce the last meeting as a complete experience, whereas in the case of the less gifted person, the feeling of familiarity that makes recognition possible, occurs when he is able to recall the past connection in all its details.
If we now, in conclusion, ask whether or no other animals than man possess a similar faculty for remembering and reviving their earlier lives in their entirety it is most probable that the answer must be in the negative. Animals could not, as they do, remain for hours at a time, motionless and peaceful on one spot, if they were capable of thinking of the future or of remembering the past. Animals have the feeling of familiarity and the sense of expectation (as we find from the recognition of his master by a dog after twenty years' absence); buttheypossessnomemoryandnohope. They are capable of recognition through the sense of familiarity, but they have no memory.
As memory has been shown to be a special character unconnected with the lower spheres of psychical life, and the exclusive property of human beings, it is not surprising that it is closely related to such higher things as the idea of value and of time, and the craving for immortality, which is absent in animals, and possible to men only in so far as they possess the quality of genius. If memory be an essen- tially human thing, part of the deepest being of humanity, finding expression in mankind's most peculiar qualities, then it will not be surprising if memory be also related to the phenomena of logic and ethics. I have now to explore this relationship.
I may set out from the old proverb that liars have bad memories. It is certain that the pathological liar has prac- tically no memory. About male liars I shall have more to say ; they are not common, however. But if we remember what was said as to the absence of memory amongst women we shall not be surprised at the existence of the numerous proverbs and common sayings about the untruthfulness of women. It is evident that a being whose memory is very, slight, and who can recall only in the most imperfect fashion
K
145
? SEX AND CHARACTER
146
\vhat it has said or done, or suffered, must lie easily if it has the gift of speech. The impulse to untruthfulness will be hard to resist if there is a practical object to be gained, and if the influence that comes from a full conscious reality of the past be not present. The impulse to lie is stronger in woman, because, unlike that of man, her memory is not continuous, whilst her life is discrete, unconnected, dis- continuous, swayed by the sensations and perceptions of themomentinsteadofdominatingthem. Unlikeman,her experiences float past without being referred, so to speak, to a definite, permanent centre ; she does not feel herself, past and present, to be one and the same throughout all her life. It happens almost to every man that sometimes he
"does not understand himself"; indeed, wilh very many men, it happens (leaving out of the question the facts of psychical periodicity) that if they think over their pasts in their minds they find it very difficult to refer all the events to a single conscious personality ; they do not grasp how it could have been that they, being what they feel themselves at the time to be, could ever have done or felt or thought this, that, or the other. And yet in spite of the difficulty, they know that they had gone through these experiences. The feeling of identity in all circumstances of life is quite wanting in the true woman, because her memory, even if exceptionallygood,isdevoidofcontinuity. Theconscious- ness of identity of the male, even although he may fail to understand his own past, manifests itself in the very desire to understand that past. Women, if they look back on their earlier lives, never understand themselves, and do not even wish to understand themselves, and this reveals itself in the scanty interest they give to the attempts of man to understand them, u he woman does not interest herself about herself, and hence there have been no female psychologists, no psychology of women written by a woman, and she is incapable of grasping the anxious desire of the man to understand the beginning, middle, and end of his individual
life in their relation to each other, and to interpret the whole as a continual, logical, necessary sequence. )
? MEMORY, LOGIC, AND ETHICS
At this point there is a natural transition to logic. A creature like woman, the absolute woman, who is not con- scious of her own identity at different stages of her life, has no evidence of the identity of the subject-matter of thought at different times. \If in her mind the two stages of a change cannot be present simultaneously by means of memory, it is impossible for her to make the comparison and note the change. ) A being whose memory is never sufficiently good as to make it psychologically possible to perceive identity through the lapse of time, so as to enable her, for instance, to pursue a quantity through a long mathematical reckoning
;
such a creature in the extreme case would be unable to control her memory for even the moment of time required to say that A will be still A in the next moment, to pronounce judgment on the identity A=A, or on the opposite propo- sition that A is not equal to A, for that proposition also requires a continuous memory of A to make the comparison possible.
I have been making no mere joke, no facetious sophism or paradoxical proposition. I assert that the judgment of identity depends on conceptions, never on mere perceptions and complexes of perceptions, and the conceptions, as logical conceptions, are independent of time, retaining their constancy, whether I, as a psychological entity, think them constant or not.