No More Learning

Is it that life becomes easy if one doesn't bother with emotions but merely keeps to one's goal; or is it a mur- derous enjoyment to calculate with the emotions instead of suffering from them? It seems to me I know what the devil felt when he threw a fistful of salt into life's ambrosia! "
The General was all fired up. "But that's what I told you at the beginning! " he exclaimed. "I only happened to be talking about lies, but genuine malice is, in all its forms, an extraordinarily exciting
1238 · THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
thing! Even Leinsdorf, for instance, has rediscovered a predilection for realpolitik and says: Realpolitik is the opposite ofwhat you would like to do! "
Ulrich went on: "What makes the difference is that before, Tuzzi was always confused by what Diotima and Arnheim were talking about together; but now it can only make him happy, because the loquacity of people who aren't able to seal off their feelings always gives a third person all sorts of footholds. He no longer needs to lis- ten to it with his inner ear, which he was never good at, but only with the outer, and that's roughly the difference between swallowing a disgusting snake or beating it to death! "
"What? " Stumm asked.
"Swallowing it or beating it to death! "
"No, that bit about the ears! "
"I meant to say: it was fortunate for him that he retreated from the
inward side of feeling to the outward side. But perhaps that might still not make sense to you; it's just an idea I have. "
"No, you put it very well! " Stumm protested. "But why are we using others as examples? Diotima and Arnheim are Great Souls, and for that reason alone it'll never work right! " They were strolling along a path but had not got very far; the General stopped. "And what happened to me isn't just an army story! " he informed his ad- mired friend.
Ulrich realized he hadn't given him a chance to speak, and apolo- gized. "So you didn't fall on account ofTuzzi? " he asked politely.
"A general may perhaps stumble over a civilian minister, but not over a civilian section chief," Stumm reported proudly and matter- of-factly. "I believe I stumbled over an idea! " And he began to tell his story.
To HER DISPLEASURE, AGA THE IS CONFRONTED WITH A HISTORICAL SYNOPSIS OF THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE EMOTIONS
Agathe, meanwhile, had come upon a new group of pages, in which her brother's notes continued in a quite different manner. It ap- peared that he had suddenly made up his mind to ascertain what an emotion was, and to do this conceptually and in a dry fashion. He also must have called up all manner of things from his memory, or read them specifically for this purpose, for the papers were covered with notes relating in part to the history and in part to the analysis of the concept of the emotions; altogether, it formed a collection of fragments whose inner coherence was not immediately apparent.
Agathe first found a hint about what had moved him to do this in the phrase "a matter of emotion! " which was written in the margin at the beginning; for she now remembered the conversation, with its profound oscillations that bared the foundations of the soul, which she and her brother had had on this subject in their cousin's house. And she could see that if one wanted to find out what a matter of emotions was, one had to ask oneself, whether one liked it or not, what emotion was.
This served her as a guide, for the entries began by saying that everything that happens among people has its origin either in feel- ings or in the privation of feelings; but without regard to that, an an- swer to the question of what an emotion was could not be gained with certainty from the entire immense literature that had grappled with the issue, for even the most recent accomplishments, which Ul- rich really did think were advances, called for an act of trust of no small degree. As far as Agathe could see, he had not taken psycho- analysis into account, and this surprised her at first, for like all people stimulated by literature, she had heard it spoken of more than other kinds of psychology. Ulrich said he was leaving it out not because he
1239
I240 • THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
didn't recognize the considerable merits of this significant theory, which was full of new concepts and had been the first to teach how many things could be brought together that in all earlier periods had been anarchic private experience, but because its method was not really appropriate to his present purpose in a way that would be wor- thy of its quite demanding self-awareness. He laid out as his task, first, to compare the existing major answers to the question of what emotion is, and went on to note that on the whole, only three answers could be ascertained, none ofwhich stood out so clearly as to entirely negate the others.
Then followed sketches that were meant to work this out: "The oldest but today still quite prevalent way of representing feeling pro- ceeds from the conviction that clear distinctions can be made among the state of feeling, its causes, and its effects. This method under- stands by the emotions a variety of inner experiences that are funda- mentally distinct from other kinds-and these are, according to this view, sensation, thinking, and willing. This view is popular and has long been traditional, and it is natural for it to regard emotion as a state. This is not necessary, but it comes about under the vague im- pression of the perception that at every moment of an emotion, and in the middle ofits dynamic changes, we can not only distinguish that we are feeling but also experience, as something apparently static, that we are persisting in a state of feeling.
"The more modem way of representing emotion, on the other hand, proceeds from the obseiVation that it is most intimately as- sociated with action and expression; and it follows both that this view is inclined to consider emotion as a process and that it does not direct its attention to emotion alone but sees it as a whole, together with its origin and forms of expression. This approach originated in physiol- ogy and biology, and its efforts were first directed at a physiological explanation of spiritual processes or, more emphatically, at the physi- cal totality in which spiritual manifestations are also involved. The results of this can be summarized as the second main answer to the problem of the nature of emotion.
"But directing the thirst for knowledge toward the whole instead of its constituent elements, and toward reality instead of a precon- ceived notion, also distinguishes the more recent psychological investigations of emotion from the older kinds, except that its aims
From the Posthumous Papers · 1 2 4 1
and leading ideas are naturally derived from its own discipline. This leads these recent investigations to yield a third answer to the prob- lem ofwhat emotion is, an answer that builds on the others as well as standing on its own. This third answer, however, is no longer in any way part of a retrospective view, because it marks the beginning of insight into the concept formation currently under way or regarded as possible.
"I wish to add, since I mentioned earlier the question of whether emotion is a state or a process, that this question actually plays just about no role at all in the developments I have outlined, unless it be that of a weakness common to all views, which is perhaps not entirely unfounded. If I imagine an emotion, as seems natural in the older manner, as something constant that has an effect both inwardly and outwardly, and also receives input from both directions, then I am obviously faced with not just one emotion but an indeterminate number of alternating emotions. For these subcategories of emotion, language rarely has a plural at its disposal: it knows no envies, angers, or spites. For language these are internal variations of an emotion, or emotion in various stages of development; but without question a se- quence of stages points just as much toward a process as does a se- quence ofemotions. If, on the other hand-which would accord with this and also seem to be closer to the contemporary view-one be- lieves that one is looking at a process, then the doubt as to what emo- tion 'really' is, and where something stops belonging to itself and becomes part of its causes, consequences, or accompanying circum- stances, is not to be solved so easily. In a later place I shall come back to this, for such a divided answer customarily indicates a fault in the way the question is put; and it will, I think, become clear that the question of whether emotion is a state or a process is really an illu- sory one, behind which another question is lurking. For the sake of this possibility, about which I can't make up my mind, I will let this question stand. "
"I will now continue following the original doctrine of emotion, which distinguishes four major actions or basic states of the soul. It goes back to classical antiquity and is presumably a dignified rem- nant of antiquity's belief that the world consists of the four elements
1242 • THE MAN WITH 0 U T QUALITIES
earth, air, fire, and water. In any event, one often hears mention even today offour particular classes ofelements ofconsciousness that can- not be reduced to each other, and in the class of 'emotion' the two feelings 'pleasure' and 'lack of pleasure' usually occupy a privileged position; for they are supposed to be either the only ones, or at least the only ones involving emotions that are not in any way alloyed with anything else. In truth they are perhaps not emotions at all but only a coloration and shading of feelings in which have been preserved the original distinction between attraction and flight, and probably also the opposition between succeeding and failing, and other contrasts of the originally so symmetrical conduct of life as well. Life, when it succeeds, is pleasurable: Aristotle said it long before Nietzsche and our time. Kant, too, said that 'pleasure is the feeling of furthering life, pain that of hindering it. ' And Spinoza called pleasure the 'tran- sition in man from lesser to greater perfection. ' Pleasure has always had this somewhat exaggerated reputation of being an ultimate ex- planation (not least on the part of those who have suspected it of deception! ).
"But it can really arouse laughter in the case of thinkers who are not quite major and yet are suspiciously passionate. Here let me cite from a contemporary manual a lovely passage of which I would not like to lose a single word: 'What appears to be more different in kind than, for example, joy over an elegant solution to a mathematical problem and joy over a good lunch! And yet both are, as pure emo- tion, one. and the same, namely pleasure! ' Also let me add a passage from a court decision that was actually handed down just a few days ago: 'The purpose of compensation is to bestow upon the injured party the possibility of acquiring the feelings of pleasure correspond- ing to his usual circumstances, which balance the absence of plea- sure caused by the injury and its consequences. Applied to the present case, it already follows from the limited choice of feelings of pleasure that correspond to the age of two and a quarter years, and the ease of providing means for them, that the compensation sought is too high. ' The penetrating clarity expressed in both these examples permits the respectful observation that pleasure and the absence of pleasure will long remain as the hee and the haw of the doctrine of feeling. "
From the Posthumous Papers · 1243
"If I look around further, I discover that this doctrine that care- fully weighs pleasure and the absence of pleasure understands by 'mixed feelings' the 'connection of the elements of pleasure and lack of pleasure with the other elements of consciousness,' meaning by these grief, composure, anger, and other things upon which lay peo- ple place such high value that they would gladly find out more about them beyond the mere name. 'General states offeeling' such as live- liness or depression, in which mixed feelings of the same kind pre- dominate, are called 'unity of an emotional situation. ' 'Affect' is what this connection calls an emotional situation that occurs 'suddenly and violently,' and such a situation that is, moreover, 'chronic' it calls 'passion. ' Were theories to have a moral, the moral of this doctrine would be more or less contained in the words: Ifyou take small steps at the beginning, you can take big leaps later on! "
"But in distinctions such as these, whether there is just one plea- sure and lack ofpleasure or perhaps several; whether beside pleasure and the absence of pleasure there are not also other basic opposi- tions, for instance whether relaxation and tension are not such (this bears the majestic title of singularistic and pluralistic theory); whether an emotion might change and whether, if it changes, it then becomes a different emotion; whether an emotion, should it consist of a sequence of feelings, stands in relation to these the way genus stands in relation to species, or the caused to its causes; whether the stages an emotion passes through, assuming it is itself a state, are conditions of a single state or different states, and therefore different emotions; whether an emotion can bring about a change in itself through the actions and thoughts it produces, or whether in this talk about the 'effect' of an emotion something as figurative and barely real is meant as if one were to say that the rolling out of a sheet of steel 'effects' its thinning, or a spreading out of clouds the overcast- ing of the sky: in such distinctions traditional psychology has achieved much that ought not to be underestimated. Of course one might then ask whether love is a 'substance' or a 'quality,' and what is
1244 · THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES involved with regard to love in terms of'haeccity' and 'quiddity'; but
is one ever certain of not having to raise this question yet again? "
"All such questions contain a highly useful sense of ordering, al- though considering the unconstrained nature of emotions, this seems slightly ridiculous and is not able to help us much with regard to how emotions determine our actions. This logical-grammatical sense of order, like a pharmacy equipped with its hundred little drawers and labels, is a remnant of the medieval, Aristotelian-scho- lastic observation of nature, whose magnificent logic came to grief not so much on account of the experiences people had with it as on account ofthose they had without it. It is particularly the fault ofthe developing natural sciences and their ~ew kind of understanding, which placed the question of what is real ahead of the question of what is logical; yet no less, too, the misfortune that nature appears to have been waiting for just such a lack of philosophy in order to let itself be discovered, and responded with an alacrity that is by no means yet exhausted. Nevertheless, so long as this development has not brought forth the new cosmic philosophical egg, it is still useful even today to feed it occasionally from the old bowl, as one does with laying hens. And this is especially true for the psychology of the emo- tions. For in its buttoned-up logical investiture it was, ultimately, completely unproductive, but the opposite is only too true for the psychologists of emotion who came after; for in regard to this rela- tion between logical raiment and productivity, they have been, at least in the fine years oftheir youth, well-nigh sans-culottes! "
"What should I call to mind from these beginnings for more gen- eral advantage? Above all that this more recent psychology began with the beneficent sympathy that the medical faculty has always had for the philosophical faculty, and it cleared away the older psychol- ogy ofemotion by totally ceasing to speak ofemotions and beginning to talk instead about 'instincts,' 'instinctive acts,' and 'affects. ' (Not that talk of man as a being ruled by his instincts and affects was new; it became the new medicine because from then on man was exclu- sively to be so regarded. )
From the Posthumous Papers · 1245
"The advantage consisted in the prospect of reducing the higher human attitude ofinspiration to the general invigorated attitude con- structed on the basis of the powerful natural constraints of hunger, sex, persecution, and other fundamental conditions of life to which the soul is adapted. The sequences of actions these determine are called 'instinctive drives,' and these arise without thinking or purpose whenever a stimulus brings the relevant group of stimuli into play, and these are similarly activated in all animals of the same species; often, too, in both animal and man. The individual but almost invari- able hereditary dispositions for this are called 'drives'; and the term 'affect' is usually associated in this connection with a rather vague notion according to which the 'affect' is supposed to be the experi- ence or the experienced aspect of the instinctive action and of drives stimulated to action.
"This also mostly assumes, either emphatically or discreetly, that all human actions are instinctive actions, or combinations from among such actions, and that all our emotions are affects or parts or combinations of affects. Today I leafed through several textbooks of medical psychology in order to refresh my memory, but not one of their thematic indexes had a mention of the word 'emotion,' and it is really no mean accomplishment for a psychology of the emotions not to contain any emotions! "
"This is the extent to which, even now, a more or less emphatic intention dominates in many circles to substitute scientific concepts meant to be as concrete as possible for the useless spiritual observa- tion of the soul. And however one would originally have liked emo- tions to be nothing more than sensations in the bowels or wrists (which led to such assertions as that fear consists of an accelerated heartbeat and shallow breathing, or that thinking is an inner speaking and thus really a stimulation of the larynx), what is honored and es- teemed today is the purified concept that reduces all inner life to chains of reflexes and the like, and this serves a large and successful school by way of example as the only permissible task of explaining the soul.
"So if the scientific goal may be said to be a broad and wherever possible ironclad anchoring in the realm of nature, there is still
1246 · THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
blended with it a peculiar exuberance, which can be roughly ex- pressed in the proposition: What stands low stands firm. In the over- coming of a theological philosophy of nature, this was once an exuberance of denial, a 'bearish speculation in human values. ' Man preferred to see himself as a thread in the weave of the world's car- pet rather than as someone standing on this carpet; and it is easy to understand how a devilish, degrading desire for soullessness also rubbed off on the emptiness of the soul when it straggled noisily into its materialistic adolescence. This was later held against it in reli- giously straitlaced fashion by all the pious enemies of scientific think- ing, but its innermost essence was nothing more than a good-natured gloomy romanticism, an offended child's love for God, and therefore also for his image, a love that in the abuse of this image still has un- conscious aftereffects today. "
"But it is always dangerous when a source of ideas is forgotten without this being noticed, and thus many things that had merely derived their unabashed certainty from it were preserved in just as unabashed a state in medical psychology. This gave rise in places to a condition of neglect involving precisely the basic concepts, and not least the concepts of instinct, affect, and instinctive action. Even the question of what a drive is, and which or how many there are, is an- swered not only quite disparately but without any kind of trepida- tion. I had an exposition before me that distinguished among the 'drive groups' of taking in food, sexuality, and protection against dan- ger; another, which I compared with it, adduced a life drive, an asser- tion drive, and five more. For a long time psychoanalysis, which incidentally is also a psychology of drives, seemed to recognize only a single drive. And so it continues: Even the relationship between in- stinctive action and affect has been determined with equally great disparities: everybody does seem to be in agreement that affect is the 'experience' of instinctive action, but as to whether in this process the entire instinctive action is experienced as affect, including exter- nal behavior, or only the internal event, or parts of it, or parts of the external and internal process in a particular combination: sometimes one of these claims is advanced, sometimes the other, and sometimes both simultaneously. Not even what I wrote before from memory
From the Posthumous Papers · 1247 without protest, that an instinctive action happens 'without intention
or reflection,' is correct all the time. "
"Is it then surprising ifwhat comes to light behind the physiologi- cal explanations of our behavior is ultimately, quite often, nothing but the familiar idea that we let our behavior be steered by chain reflexes, secretions, and the mysteries ofthe body simply because we were seeking pleasure and avoiding its opposite? And not only in psy- chology, also in biology and even in political economy-in short, wherever a basis is sought for an attitude or a behavior-pleasure and its lack are still playing this role; in other words, two feelings so paltry that it is hard to think ofanything more simpleminded. The far more diversified idea ofsatisfying a drive would indeed be capable of offering a more colorful picture, but the old habit is so strong that one can sometimes even read that the drives strive for satisfaction because this fulfillment is pleasure, which is about the same as con- sidering the exhaust pipe the operative part of a motor! "
And so at the end Ulrich had also come to mention the problem of simplicity, although it was doubtless a digression.
"What is so attractive, so specially tempting to the mind, that it finds it necessary to reduce the world ofemotions to pleasure and its lack, or to the simplest psychological processes? Why does it grant a higher explanatory value to something psychological, the simpler it is? Why a greater value to something physiological-chemical than to something psychological, and finally, why does it assign the highest value of all to reducing things to the movement of physical atoms? This seldom happens for logical reasons, rather it happens half con- sciously, but in some way or other this prejudice is usually operating. Upon what, in other words, rests this faith that nature's mystery has to be simple?
"There are, first, two distinctions to be made. The splitting up of the complex into the simple and the minuscule is a habit in everyday life justified by utilitarian experience: it teaches us to dance by im- parting the steps, and it teaches that we understand a thing better after we have taken it apart and screwed it together again. Science,
1248 · THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
on the other hand, uses simplicity really only as an intermediate step; even what appears as an exception subordinates itself to this. For ul- timately science does not reduce the complex to the simple but reduces the particularity of the individual case to the generally valid laws that are its goal, and which are not so much simple as they are general and summarizing. It is only through their application, that is to say at second hand, that they simplify the variety of events.
"And so everywhere in life two simplicities contrast with each other: what it is beforehand and what it becomes afterward are sim- ple in different senses. What it is beforehand, whatever that may be, is mostly simple because it lacks content and form, and therefore is generally foolish, or it has not yet been grasped. But what becomes simple, whether it be an idea or a knack or even will, both entails and participates in the power of truth and capability that compel what is confusingly varied. These simplicities are usually confused with each other: it happens in the pious talk of the simplicity and innocence of nature; it happens in the belief that a simple morality is closer in all circumstances to the eternal than a complicated one; it happens, too, in the confusion between raw will and a strong will. "
When Agathe had read this far she thought she heard Ulrich's re- turning steps on the garden gravel and hastily shoved all the papers back into the drawer. But when she was sure that her hearing had deceived her, and ascertained that her brother was still lingering in the garden, she took the papers out again and read on a bit further.
53
THE D AND L REPORTS
When General Stumm von Bordwehr began expounding in the gar- den why he thought he had stumbled over an idea, it soon became evident that he was talking with the joy that a well-rehearsed subject provides. It began, he reported, with his receiving the expected re-
From the Posthumous Papers · 1249
buke on account of the hasty resolution that had forced the Minister of War to flee Diotima's house. "I predicted the whole thing! " Stumm protested confidently, adding more modestly: "except for what came afterward. " For in spite of all countermeasures, a whiff of the distressing incident had got through to the newspapers, and had surfaced again during the riots of which Leinsdorf became the sac- rificial lamb. But on Count Leinsdorf's way back from his Bohemian landholdings, in a city where he was trying to catch the train- Stumm now spelled out what he had already indicated in Agathe's presence-his carriage had happened to get caught between the two fronts ofa political encounter, and Stumm described what happened next in the following manner: "Of course their demonstrations were about something entirely different: some regulation or other con- cerning the use oflocal national languages in the state agencies, or an issue like that, something people have got so upset about so often that it's hard to get excited about it anymore. So all that was going on was that the German-speaking inhabitants were standing on one side of the street shouting "Shame! " at those across the way, who wanted other languages and were shouting "Disgrace! " at the Germans, and nothing further might have happened. But Leinsdorf is famous as a peacemaker; he wants the national minorities living under the Mon- archy to be a national people, as he's always saying. And you know, too, if I may say so here where no one can hear us, that two dogs often growl around each other in a general way, but the moment someone tries to calm them they jump at each other's throats. So as soon as Leinsdorf was recognized, it gave a tremendous impetus to everyone's emotions. They began asking in chorus, in two languages: 'What's going on with the Commission to Establish the Desires of the Concerned Sections of the Populace, Your Excellency? ' And then they shouted: 'You fake peace abroad, and in your own house you're a murderer! ' Do you remember the story that's told about him that once, a hundred years ago, when he was much younger, a co- quette he was with died during the night? This was what they were alluding to, people are saying now. And all this happened on account of that stupid resolution that you should let yourself be killed for your own ideas but not for other people's, a stupid resolution that doesn't even exist because I kept it out of the minutes! But obviously word got around, and because we had refused to allow it, now all of
I250 • THE MAN WITH0 UT QUALITIES
us are suspected ofbeing murderers ofthe people! It's totally irratio- nal, but ultimately logical! "
Ulrich was struck by this distinction.
The General shrugged his shoulders. "It originated with the Min- ister ofWar himself. Because when he had me called in after the row at Tuzzi's, he said to me: 'My dear Stumm, you shouldn't have let it get so far! ' I responded as well as I could about the spirit ofthe times, and that this spirit needs a form ofexpression and, on the other hand, a footing too: in a word, I tried to prove to him how important it is to look for an idea in the times and get excited about it, even ifjust now it happens to be two ideas that contradict each other and give each other apoplexy, so that at any given moment it's impossible to know what's going to develop. But he said to me: 'My dear Stumm, you're a philosopher! But it's a general's job to know! Ifyou lead a brigade into a skirmish, the enemy doesn't confide in you what his intentions are and how strong he is! ' Whereupon he ordered me once and for all to keep my mouth shut. " Stumm interrupted his tale to draw breath, and went on: "That's why, as soon as the Leinsdorfbusiness came up on top ofthat, I immediately asked to speak to the Minister; because I could see that the Parallel Campaign would be blamed again, and I wanted to forestall it. 'Your Excellency! ' I began. 'What the populace did was irrational, but that might have been expected, because it always is. That's why in such cases I never regard it as reason, but as passion, fantasies, slogans, and the like. But aside from this, even that wouldn't have helped, because Count Leinsdorf is a stubborn old fellow who won't listen to anything! ' This is more or less what I said, and the Minister of War listened the whole time, nod- ding but not saying anything. But then he either forgot what he had just been chewing me out about or must have been in a really bad temper, because he suddenly said: 'You are indeed a philosopher,
Stumm! I'm not in the least interested in either His Excellency or the people; but you say reason here and logic there as if they were one and the same, and I must point out to you that they are not one and the same! Reason is something a civilian can have but can get along without. But what you have to confront reason with-which I must demand from my generals-is logic. Ordinary people have no logic, but they have to be made to feel it over them! ' And that was the end of the discussion," Stumm von Bordwehr concluded.
From the Posthurrwus Papers · I 25 I
"I can't say I understand that at all," Ulrich remarked, "but it seems to me that on the whole, your Second-Highest Generalissimo was treating you not ungraciously. "
They were strolling up and down the garden paths, and Stumm now walked a few paces without replying, but then stopped so vio- lently that the gravel crunched beneath his boots. "You don't under- stand? " he exclaimed, and added: "At first I didn't understand either. But little by little the whole range of just how right His Excellency the Minister of War was dawned on me! And why is he right? Be- cause the Minister ofWar is always right! Ifthere should be a scandal at Diotima's, I can't leave before he does, and I can't divine the fu- ture of Mars either; it's an unreasonable thing to ask of me. Nor can I fall into disgrace, as in Leinsdorf's case, for something with which I have as little connection as I do with the birth of my blessed grand- mother! But still, the Minister of War is right when he imputes all that to me, because one's superior is always right: that both is and isn't a banality! Now do you understand? "
"No," Ulrich said.
"But look," Stumm implored. "You're just trying to make things difficult for me because you don't feel involved, or because you have a feeling for justice, or for some such reason, and you won't admit that this is something a lot more serious! But really you remember quite well, because when you were in the army, people said to you all the time that an officer must be able to think logically! In our eyes, logic is what distinguishes the military from the civilian mind. But does logic mean reason? No. Reason is what the army rabbi or chap- lain or the fellow from the military archives has. But logic is not reason. Logic means acting honorably in all circumstances, but con- sistently, ruthlessly, and without emotion; and don't let anything con- fuse you! Because the world isn't ruled by reason but must be dominated by iron logic, even if the world has been full of idle chat- ter since it began! That's what the Minister ofWar was giving me to understand. You will object that in me it didn't fall upon the most barren ground, because it's nothing more than the old tried-and-true mentality ofthe military mind. Since then I've got more ofthat back, and you can't deny it: we must be prepared to strike before we all start talking about eternal peace; we must first repair our omissions and weaknesses so as not to be at a disadvantage when we join the
1252 • THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
universal brotherhood. And our spirit is not ready to strike! It's never ready! The civilian mind is a highly significant back-and-forth, an up- and-down, and you once called it the millennia! war of faith: but we can't let that destroy us! Somebody has to be there who, as we say in the military, has initiative and takes over the leadership, and that's the vocation of one's superior. I see that now myself, and I'm not entirely certain whether before, in my sympathy for every spiritual endeavor, I wasn't sometimes carried away. "
Ulrich asked: "And what would have happened if you hadn't real- ized that? Would you have been discharged? "
"No, that wouldn't have happened," Stumm corrected him. "Pre- suming, ofcourse, that I still showed no deficiency in military feeling toward power relationships.
But they would have given me an infan- try brigade in Wladisschmirschowitz or Knobljoluka, instead of let- ting me continue at the crossroads of military power and civilian enlightenment and still be of some use to the culture we all share! "
They had now gone back and forth several times on the path be- tween the house and the gate, near which the carriage was waiting, and this time, too, the General turned around before they reached the gate. "You mistrust me," he complained. ''You haven't even asked me what actually happened when the Peace Congress sud- denly materialized! "
'Well, what did happen? The Minister ofWar called you in again, and what did he say? "
"No! He didn't say anything! I waited a week, but he said nothing more," Stumm replied. And after a moment of silence he couldn't restrain himself any longer and proclaimed: "But they took 'Report D' away from me! "
''What is 'Report D'? " Ulrich asked, although he had some idea.
" 'Report Diotima,' of course," Stumm responded with pained pleasure. "In a ministry, a report is prepared for every important question, and that had to be done when Diotima began to use the gatherings at her house for a patriotic notion and after we found out about Arnheim's active involvement. This report was assigned to me, as you will doubtless have noticed, and so I was asked what name it should be given, because you can't just stick such a thing in a row like something in medical supplies or when you do a commissary course, and the name Tuzzi couldn't be mentioned for interministerial rea-
From the Posthumous Papers · 1253
sons. But I couldn't think ofanything appropriate either, so finally, in order not to say either too much or too little, I proposed calling it 'Report D': for me, 'D' was Diotima, but no one knew that, and for the others it sounded really terrific, like the name of a directory, or maybe even like a secret to which only the General Staff has access. It was one of my best ideas," Stumm concluded, adding with a sigh: "At that time I was still allowed to have ideas. "
But he did not seem entirely cheered up, and when Ulrich- whose mood of falling back into the world was almost used up, or at least its oral supply of talkativeness was pretty well consumed-now fell into silence after an appreciative smile, Stumm began to com- plain anew. "You don't trust me. After what I've said, you think I'm a militarist. But on my honor, I fight against it, and I don't want to simply drop all those things I believed in for so long. It's these mag- nificent ideas that really make people out of soldiers. I tell you, my friend, when I think about it I feel like a widower whose better half has died first! " He warmed up again. "The Republic of Minds is of course just as disorderly as any other republic; but what a blessing is the superb idea that no person is in sole possession of the truth and that there are a host of ideas that haven't yet even been discovered, perhaps because of the very lack of order that prevails among them! This makes me an innovator in the military. Of course, in the Gen- eral Staff they called me and my 'Report D' the 'mobile searchlight battery,' on account of the variety of my suggestions, but they really liked the cornucopia I was emptying! "
"And all that's over? ''
"Not unconditionally; but I've lost a lot of my confidence in the mind," Stumm grumbled, seeking consolation.
"You're right about that," Ulrich said dryly.
"Now you're saying that too? "
"I've always said it. I always warned you, even before the Minister
did. Mind is only moderately suited to governing. "
Stumm wanted to avoid a lecture, so he said: "That's what I've al-
ways thought too. "
Ulrich went on: "The mind is geared into life like a wheel, which it
drives and by which it is also driven. "
But Stumm let him go no further. "Ifyou should suspect," he in-
terrupted, "that such external circumstances were decisive for me,
1254 · THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
you would be humiliating me! It's also a matter ofa spiritual purifica- tion! 'Report D' was, moreover, taken from me with great respect. The Minister called me in to tell me himself that it was necessary because the Chief of the General Staff wanted a personal report on the Congress for World Peace, and so they immediately took the whole business out of the Office for Military Development and at- tached it to the Information Offices of the Evidenzbiiro-"
"The Espionage Department? " Ulrich interjected, suddenly ani- mated again.
"Who else? Whoever doesn't know what he wants himself at least has to know what everyone else wants! And I ask you, what business does the General Staffhave at a Congress for World Peace? To inter- fere with it would be barbarous, and to encourage it in a pacifist way would be unmilitary! So they observe it. Who was it who said 'Readi- ness is all'? Well, whoever it was knew something about the military. " Stumm had forgotten his sorrow. He twisted his legs from side to side, trying to cut off a flower with the scabbard of his sword. ''I'm just afraid it will be too hard for them and they'll beg me on their knees to come back and take over my report," he said. "After all, you and I know from having been at it for nearly a year how such a con- gress ofideas splits up into proofs and counterproofs! Do you really believe-disregarding for the moment the special difficulties of gov- erning-that it's only the mind that can produce order, so to speak? "
He had now given up his preoccupation with the flower and, frowning and holding the scabbard in his hand, gazed urgently into his friend's face.
Ulrich smiled at him and said nothing.
Stumm let the saber drop because he needed the fingertips of both white-gloved hands for the delicate determination of an idea. "You must understand what I mean when I make a distinction be- tween mind and logic. Logic is order. And there must be order! That is the officer's basic principle, and I bow down to it! But on what basis order is established doesn't make the slightest bit of difference: that's mind-or, as the Minister of War put it in a rather old-fash- ioned way, reason-and that's not the officer's business. But the offi- cer mistrusts the ability ofcivilian life to become reasonable by itself, no matter what the ideas are by which it's always trying to do so. Be-
From the Posthurrwus Papers · 1255
cause whatever mind there has ever been at any time, in the end it's always led to war! "
Thus Stumm explained his new insights and scruples, and Ulrich summarized them involuntarily in an allusion to a well-known saying when he asked: "So you really mean to say that war is an element of God's ordained ordering of the world? "
"That's talking on too high a plane! " Stumm agreed, with some reservation. "I ask myself straight out whether mind isn't simply dis- pensable. For if I'm to handle a person with spurs and bridle, like an animal, then I also have to have a part ofthe animal in me, because a really good rider stands closer to his steed than he does, for example, to the philosophy oflaw! The Prussians call this the scoundrel every- one carries inside himself, and constrain it with a Spartan spirit. But speaking as an Austrian general, I'd rather put it that the better, finer, and more ordered a nation is, the less it needs the mind, and in a perfect state it wouldn't be needed at all! I take this to be a really tough paradox! And by the way, who said what you just said? Who's it from? "
"Moltke. He said that man's noblest virtues-courage, renuncia- tion, conscientiousness, and readiness to sacrifice-really develop only in war, and that without war the world would bog down in apa- thetic materialism. "
'Well! " Stumm exclaimed. "That's interesting too! He's said some- thing I sometimes think myself! "
"But Moltke says in another letter to the same person, and there- fore almost in the same breath, that even a victorious war is a misfor- tune for the nation," Ulrich offered for consideration.
''You see, mind pinched him! " Stumm replied, convinced. ''I've never read a line of him; he always seemed much to<;> militaristic for me. And you can really take my word for it that I've' always been an antimilitarist. All my life I've believed that today no one believes in war anymore, you only make yourself look ridiculous if you say you do. And I don't want you to think I've changed because I'm different now! " He had motioned the carriage over and already set his foot on the running board, but hesitated and looked at Ulrich entreatingly. "I have remained true to myself," he went on. "But if before I loved the civilian mind with the feelings of a young girl, I now love it, if I
1256 · THE MAN WITH0 UT QUALITIES
may put it this way, more like a mature woman: it's not ideal, it won't even let itself be made coherent, all of a piece. That's why I've told you, and not just today but for a long time, that one has to treat peo- ple with kindness as well as with a firm hand, one has to both love them and treat them shabbily, in order for things to come out prop- erly. And that's ultimately no more than the military state of mind that rises above parties and is supposed to distinguish the soldier. I'm not claiming any personal merit here, but I want to show you that this conviction was what was speaking out of me before. "
"Now you're going to repeat that the civil war of '66 came about because all Germans declared themselves brothers," Ulrich said, smiling.
"Yes, of course! " Stumm confirmed. "And now on top of that ev- erybody is declaring themselves brothers! That makes me ask, what's going to come of it? What really comes happens so unexpectedly. Here we brooded for almost a whole year, and then it turned out quite differently. And so it seems to be my fate that while I was busily investigating the mind, the mind led me back to the military. Still, if you consider everything I've said, you'll find that I don't identify my- self with anything but find something true in everything; that's the essence, more or less, ofwhat we've been talking about. "
After looking at his watch, Stumm started to give the sign to leave, for his pleasure at having unburdened himselfwas so intense that he had forgotten everything else. But Ulrich amicably laid his hand on him and said: "You still haven't told me what your newest 'little job' is. "
Stumm held back. "Today there's no more time. I have to go. "
But Ulrich held him by one of the gold buttons gleaming on his stomach, and wouldn't let go until Stumm gave in. Stumm fished for Ulrich's head and pulled his ear to his mouth. 'Well, in strictest con- fidence," he whispered, "Leinsdorf. "
"I take it he's to be done away with, you political assassin! " Ulrich whispered back, but so openly that Stumm, offended, pointed to the coachman. They decided to speak aloud but avoid naming names. "Let me think about it," Ulrich proposed, "and see for myself whether I still know something about the world you move in. He brought down the last Minister ofCulture, and after the recent insult
From the Posthumous Papers · 1 2 5 7
he received, one has to assume that he will bring down the current one as well. But that would be, momentarily, an unpleasant distur- bance, and this has to be precluded. And, for whatever reason, he still clings firmly to the conviction that the Germans are the biggest threat to the nation, that Baron Wisnieczky, whom the Germans can't stand, is the man best suited to beat the drum among them that the government ought not to have changed course, and so on. . . . "
Stumm could have interrupted Ulrich but had been content to lis- ten, only now intervening. "But it was under him in the campaign that the slogan 'Action! ' came about; while everyone else was just saying 'It's a new spirit,' he was saying to everyone who didn't like to hear it: 'Something must be done! ' "
"And he can't be brought down, he's not in the government. And the Parallel Campaign has been, so to speak, shot out from under him," Ulrich said.
"So now the danger is that he'll start something else," the General went on.
"But what can you do about it? " Ulrich asked, curious.
'Well! I've been assigned the mission of diverting him a little and, ifyou like, also watching over him a bit-"
"Ah! A 'Report L,' you coy deceiver! "
"That's what you can call it between us, but of course it doesn't have an official name. My mission is simply to sit on Leinsdorf's neck"-this time Stumm wanted to enjoy the name too, but again he whispered it-"like a tick. Those were the Minister's own gracious words. "
"But he must have also given you a goal to aim for? "
The General laughed. "Talk! I'm to talk with him! Go along with everything he's thinking, and talk so much about it that he will, we hope, wear himself out and not do anything rash. 'Suck him dry,' the Minister told me, and called it an honorable mission and a demon- stration of his confidence. And if you were to ask me whether that's all, I can only respond: it's a lot! Our old Excellency is a person of enormous culture, and tremendously interesting! " He had given the coachman the sign to start, and called back: "The rest next time. I'm counting on you! "
It was only as the coach was rolling away that the idea occurred
1258 · THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
to Ulrich that Stumm might also have had the intention of render- ing him innocuous, since he had once been suspected of being able to lead Count Leinsdorf's mind off on some quite extravagant fancy.
54
NAIVE DESCRIPTION OF HOW AN EMOTION ORIGINA TES
Agathe had gone on to read a large part of the pages that followed. They did not, at first, contain anything of the promised exposition of the current development of the concept of emotion, for before Ulrich gave a summary of these views, from which he hoped to de- rive the greatest benefit, he had, in his own words, sought to "present the origin and growth of an emotion as naively, clumsily spelling it out with his finger, as it might appear to a layman not unpracticed in
matters of the intellect. "
This entry went on: 'We are accustomed to regard emotion as
something that has causes and consequences, and I want to limit my- self to saying that the cause is an external stimulus. But of course appropriate circumstances are part of this stimulus as well, which is to say appropriate external, but also internal, circumstances, an inner readiness, and it is this trinity that actually decides whether and how this stimulus will be responded to. For whether an emotion occurs all at once or protractedly, how it expands and runs its course, what ideas it entails, and indeed what emotion it is, ordinarily depend no less on the previous state ofthe person experiencing the emotion and his environment than they do on the stimulus. This is no doubt self- evident in the case of the condition of the person experiencing the emotion: in other words, his temperament, character, age, educa- tion, predispositions, principles, prior experience, and present ten- sions, although these states have no definite boundaries and lose
From the Posthumous Papers · 1259
themselves in the person's being and destiny. But the external envi- ronment too, indeed simply knowing about it or implicitly assuming it, can also suppress or favor an emotion. Social life offers innumera- ble examples of this, for in every situation there are appropriate and inappropriate emotions, and emotions also change with time andre- gion, with what groups of emotions predominate in public and in pri- vate life, or at least which ones are favored and which suppressed; it is even the case that periods rich in emotion and poor in emotion have succeeded one another.
"Add to all this that external and internal circumstances, along with the stimulus-this can easily be measured-are not indepen- dent of each other. For the internal state has been adapted to the external state and its emotional stimuli, and is therefore dependent on them as well; and the external state must have been assimilated in some fashion or other, in such a way that its manifestation depends on the inner state before a disturbance of this equilibrium evokes a new emotion, and this new emotion either paves the way for a new equalization or is one itself. But in the same way, the 'stimulus,' too, does not ordinarily work directly but works only by virtue of being assimilated, and the inner state again only carries out this assimila- tion on the basis of perceptions with which the beginnings of the ex- citation must already have been associated.
"Aside from that, the stimulus capable of arousing an emotion is connected with the emotion insofar as what stimulates, for instance, a starving person is a matter ofindifference to a person who has been insulted, and vice versa. "
"Similar complications result when the subsequent process is to be described seriatim. Thus even the question ofwhen an emotion is present cannot be answered, although according to the basic view by which it is to be effected and then produce an effect itself, it must be assumed that there is such a point in time. But the arousing stimulus does not actually strike an existing state, like the ball in the mechani- cal contraption that sets off a sequence of consequences like falling dominoes, but continues in time, calling forth a fresh supply of inner forces that both work according to its sense and vary its effect. And just as little does the emotion, once present, dissipate immediately in
1260 • THE MAN WITH0UT QUALITIES
its effects, nor does it itself remain the same even for an instant, rest- ing, as it were, in the middle between the processes it assimilates and transmits; it is connected with a constant changing in everything to which it has connection internally and externally, and also receives reactions from both directions.
"It is a characteristic endeavor of the emotions to actively, often passionately, vary the stimuli to which they owe their origin, and to eliminate or abet them; and the major directions of life are those to- ward the outside and from the outside. That is why anger already contains the counterattack, desire the approach, and fear the transi- tion to flight, to paralysis, or something between both in the scream. But an emotion also receives more than a little ofits particularity and content through the retroactive effect of this active behavior; the well-known statement of an American psychologist that 'we do not weep because we are sad, but are sad because we weep' might be an exaggeration, yet it is certain that we don't just act the way we feel, but we also soon learn to feel the way we act, for whatever reasons.
"A familiar example of this back-and-forth pathway is a pair of dogs who begin to romp playfully but end up in a bloody fight; a simi- lar phenomenon can be observed in children and simple people. And is not, ultimately, the entire lovely theatricality of life such an exam- ple writ large, with its half-momentous, half-empty gestures ofhonor and being honored, of menacing, civility, strictness, and everything else: all gestures of wanting-to-represent-something and of the rep- resentation that sets judgment aside and influences the emotions di- rectly. Even the military 'drill' is part of this, based as it is on the effect that a behavior imposed for a long time finally produces the emotions from which it was supposed to have sprung. "
"More important than this reacting to an action, in this and other examples, is that an experience changes its meaningifits course hap- pens to veer from the sphere of the particular forces that steered it at the beginning into the sphere of other mental connections. For what is going on internally is similar to what is happening externally. The emotion pushes inside; it 'grabs hold of the whole person,' as collo- quial language not inappropriately has it; it suppresses what doesn't suit it and supports whatever can offer it nourishment. In a psychiat-
From the Posthumous Papers · 1 2 6 1
ric textbook, I came across strange names for this: 'switching energy' and 'switching work. ' But in this process the emotion also stimulates the inner sphere to turn toward it. The inner readiness not already expended in the first instant gradually pushes toward the emotion; and the emotion will be completely taken over from within as soon as it gets hold ofthe stronger energies in ideas, memories, or principles, or in other stored-up energy, and these will change it in such a way that it becomes hard to decide whether one should speak of a moving or of a being moved.
"But if, through such processes, an emotion has reached its high point, the same processes must weaken and dilute it again as well. For emotions and experiences will then crisscross the region of this climax, but no longer subordinate themselves to it completely; in- deed, they will finally displace it. This countercurrent of satiety and erosion really begins when the emotion first arises; the fact that the emotion spreads indicates not only an expansion of its power but, at the same time, a relaxation of the needs from which it arose or of which it makes use.
"This can also be observed in relation to the action; for emotion not only intensifies in the action, but also relaxes in it; and its satiety, if it is not disturbed by another emotion, can proceed to the point of excess, that is to say, to the point where a new emotion occurs. "
"One thing deserves special mention. So long as an emotion subju- gates the internal aspect, it comes in contact with activities that con- tribute to experiencing and understanding the external world; and thus the emotion will be able to partly pattern the world as we under- stand it according to its own pattern and sense, in order to be rein- forced within itself through the reactive aspect. Examples of this are well known: A violent feeling blinds one toward something that unin- volved observers perceive and causes one to see things others don't. For the melancholy person, everything is gloomy; he punishes with disregard anything that might cheer him up; the cheerful person sees the world in bright colors and is not capable of perceiving anything that might disturb this. The lover meets the most evil natures with trusting confidence, and the suspicious person not only finds his mis- trust confinned on every side, but these confirmations also seek him
1262 • THE MAN WITH 0 U T QUALITIES
out to plague him. In this way every emotion, if it attains a certain strength and duration, creates its own world, a selective and personal world, and this plays no small role in human relations! Here, too, is where our notorious inconsistency and our changeable opinions be- long. "
Here Ulrich had drawn a line and briefly reverted to the question of whether an emotion was a state or a process. The question's pecu- liarity now clearly emerged as illusory. What followed took up, in summary and continuing fashion, where the previous description had left off:
"Proceeding from the customary idea that emotion is a state that emanates from a cause and produces consequences, I was led in my exposition to a description that doubtless does represent a process if the result is obseiVed over a fairly long stretch. But if I then proceed from the total impression of a process and try to grasp this idea, I see just as clearly that the sequence between neighboring elements, the one-after-another that is an essential part of a process, is everywhere missing. Indeed, every indication of a sequence in a particular direc- tion is missing. On the contrary, it points to a mutual dependence and presupposition between the individual steps, and even to the image of effects that appear to precede their causes. Nor do any tem- poral relationships appear anywhere in the description, and all this points, for a variety of reasons, to emotion being a state.
"So strictly speaking I can merely say of an emotion that it seems to be a state as much as it is a process, or that it appears to be neither a state nor a process; one statement can be justified as easily as the other.
"But even that depends, as can easily be shown, at least as much on the manner of description as on what is described. For it is not a particular idiosyncrasy of mental activity, let alone that of emotion, but occurs also in other areas in describing nature; for instance, ev- erywhere where there is talk of a system and its elements, or of a whole and its parts, that in one person's view can appear as a state while another person sees it as a process. Even the duration of a pro- cess is associated for us with the concept of a state. I could probably not say that the logic of this double idea-formation is clear, but ap- parently it has more to do with the distinction between states and processes belonging to the way thinking expresses itself in language
From the Posthumous Papers · 1263
than it does with the scientific picture presented by facts, a picture that states and processes might improve but might also, perhaps, allow to disappear behind something else. "
"The German language says: Anger is in me, and it says: I am in anger [Ich bin in Zorn]. It says: I am angry, I feel angry [Ich fohle mich zomig]. It says: I am in love [Ich bin verliebt], and I have fallen in love [Ich habe mich verliebt]. The names the language has given to the emotions probably point back frequently, in its history, to lan- guage's having been affected by the impression of actions and through dangerous or obvious attitudes toward actions; nevertheless, language talks of an emotion as, in one case, a state embracing vari- ous processes, in another as of a process consisting of a series of states. As the examples show, it also includes quite directly in its forms of expression, various though these may be, the idea-forma- tions ofthe individual and ofexternal and internal, and in all this the language behaves as capriciously and unpredictably as ifit had always intended to substantiate the disorder of German emotions.