JEALOUSYHas any one counted the victims of jealousy? Daily a revolver cracks somewhere or other because of jealousy; daily a knife finds entrance into a warm body; daily some unhappy ones, racked by jealousy and life-weary, sink into fathomless depths. What are all the hideous battles narrated by history when compared with the endless slaughters caused by this frightful passion! It enslaves man as no other passion does; degrades him, humiliates him, and makes him taste the hell of many other passions, such as envy, mistrust, revengefulness, fear, hate, anger, and poisons the meagre pleasure-cup that imparts a touch of sweetness to bitter life.What is jealousy? Whence flow its tributaries? Is this the Danaidean gift to humanity? Is it the twin sister of love? Do we acquire it or is it born with us? It is surely worth while to consider every one of these questions and to attempt to determine the nature of this unholy passion.To understand jealousy we must go far, very far back into the history of man’s origin. Yes, far beyond man, as far as the animal world! For certain animals, intelligent animals, showclearly evidences of jealousy. Pet dogs resent it if their masters pet another dog. They are even jealous if the master caresses human beings. There are dogs who begin to whine if their master plays with or fondles his children. Very much the same thing is told of cats. Who of us on reading Freiligrath’s gruesome ballad, “The Lion’s Bride,” has not felt the terror of the beast’s furious jealousy?Our observation of animals has taught us one of the fundamental characteristics of jealousy. Animals know very definitely what is theirs. They have a fine perception for what is theirs. Most dogs snarl even at their masters if they attempt to take their food from them. Their jealousy is the mood in which they express their possession, the egoism of their share. They defend as their possession even the affection to which they think themselves solely entitled.The emotional life of the young shows the same phenomenon. They too do not know the distinction between thine and mine. What they happen to have in their hands is theirs and will defend it with their weak powers and loud howls. Many psychologists, including Percy, Compayné, Sully, Anfosse, Schion, Ziegler, consider the child an unmitigated egoist. Even in its love it is out and out egoistic and therefore extremely jealous. Young children’s jealousy may attain an incredible degree of intensity. A little two-year-old girl cried incessantly if her mother took the baby brother in her arms.A little boy was so jealous of his younger sister that he used to pinch her leg at every opportunity; having been smartly punished for it on one occasion he spared the little girl thereafter, but became afflicted with a peculiar compulsion neurosis: he pinched the legs of adults. Such experiences are of profound significance. They give us a glimpse of the primitive times when man had no idea yet of altruism. The whole world was his as far as his power, his strength, went. Man’s jealousy developed out of this primary ego-feeling, out of his right to sole possession. Before man could be civilised this tremendous barrier had to be overcome. The first community, the first social beings, were the first stages of altruism and civilization.From this period emanate the subterranean sources from which jealousy is fed. We have probably all become more or less altruistic. But always in conflict with ourselves, in conflict with the beast, in conflict with the savage within us. Even to this day the whole world belongs to each one of us. Our desires extend our property to infinity. What would we not own? What do we not desire? The wealth of the rich, the honour of the distinguished, the triumphs of the artist, to say nothing of his sexual triumphs. The less we can fulfil these desires the more do we cling to what we have, or, somewhat more accurately, could have had. For jealousy does not concern only what one actually possesses. Women may be jealousof men they do not love and do not even possess. They simply begrudge the other woman her conquest. Don Juans know this very well. The best way of conquering a woman is still the old, old way: to make love to her friend. In this case wounded vanity plays a part, of course. But what is vanity but the over-estimation of the Me, the striking emphasis laid on one’s own value? And thus we again come back to the root of all jealousy: the pleasure in one’s own possession, in one’s embellished egoism.Jealousy need not always have a sexual motive. A woman may be jealous of her husband’s friend because he has been more successful than her husband. Her husband is her possession. He ought to be the foremost, he ought to have achieved the others’ successes, so that his fame should revert to her too. Pupils are jealous of one another even though not a trace of a sexual motive may be demonstrable. We may be jealous of another’s horses, dogs, furniture, virtues, honours, friendships, responsibilities, etc. Behind it there always is our brutal egoism, the desire for another’s possessions, or at least the fear of losing one’s own possession.Jealousy is generally regarded as a pre-eminently feminine quality. Erroneously so. It would be more nearly correct to say that the heroic side of jealousy is to be found only in men. It is not a matter merely of chancethat we have no feminine counterpart to Othello, Herod and the Count in Hauptmann’s “Griselda.” Jealousy in women has received a social valuation from men; it always has a smack of the ridiculous, pathological, or unjustified. It is a subject for satire, and is more often a comedy motive than a tragic reproach. This is due to the fact that woman’s love is monopolised by men, whereas a man’s loyalty is demanded by most women but attained only by very few. A man’s infidelity is not a dramatic reproach because it is a daily occurrence and wholly in accord with the lax conception of the majority. A woman’s infidelity is an offence against the sacred mandates imposed by—men. And therefore the jealousy of a man—be the subject of the passion a fool, a fop, an old man, or some other laughable type destined for cuckoldry—is a struggle for just possession, a conflict which always has an heroic effect, whereas a woman’s jealousy is always a dispute for the sole possession of a man, a right which is disputed by a great majority (namely, the men, and even some women).But there are men and women who are not jealous even though they love intensely. And with this we hit upon a second and important root of jealousy. Only one who contemplates an act of disloyalty against the object of his jealousy, or who, as a result of doubts about his own erotic powers, thinks he cannot gratify that object can be jealous. Of course I am notnow speaking of justified jealousy based on facts, but of baseless, unjustified jealousy. Whence comes the suspicion that attributes infidelity to the beloved being? What is the driving power in these cases? Only the knowledge of one’s true nature. Only they can be jealous, jealous without cause, who cannot guarantee for themselves. In other words: jealousy is the projection of one’s own shortcomings upon the beloved.If we find a woman who is all her life torturing her husband with her jealousy, complaining now that he has been looking at some woman too long, now that he stayed out too long, now that he was too friendly with one of her friends, etc., then it is the woman who has seen the weakness of her own character and who, in thought, is guilty of every infidelity which she will not admit even to herself. And in the same way faithless husbands who love their wives make the most jealous husbands. That is the vermuth potion which leaves with them a bitter after-taste as soon as they have made another conquest. Their own experiences entitle them to be jealous. Bachelors who had been philanderers and can boast of many conquests usually marry plain or unattractive women—alleging, by way of explanation, that they want to have the woman for themselves and not for others, meanwhile forgetting how often they themselves had been caught in the nets of homely women. For almostany woman who will permit herself to do so can find admirers, and ugliness is no protection against dramatic or comic marital infidelities.The absence of jealousy in cases of intense affection usually, but not always, indicates a nature immune against all assaults. But those who are free from this passion need not therefore be puffed up. We are poor sinners all, and the time may come sooner or later for any of us in which we shall transfer our weaknesses upon others and become jealous. But it also happens that freedom from jealousy is a sign not of security but of stupidity, unlimited vanity. The woman is regarded as a paragon of all the virtues, without a touch of frailty. The husband may be an ideal specimen of an otherwise frivolous species. In these cases one’s inadequacy is so covered up by our over-estimation of our endowments that comparisons are never instituted and projection is impossible.Consequently baseless jealousy and baseless confidence will always be. And therefore we shall not follow Bleuler in his estimation of jealousy as one of the “unconscious commonplaces” which makes love valueless as “the plant-louse does the rose-bud.” We shall recognise in it, when it is baseless, a disease of the soul occurring in persons whose cravings and realities do not coincide and who have with a heavy heart been forced to the recognition after cruel inner conflicts that their virtue is only an over-emphatic opposition to their weakness. Their jealousy has taken on a pathological(neurotic) character because of this repression and this relegating of their own desires into the unconscious. That is why all the logic of realities is effectless when opposed to the logic of the unconscious. One might almost say that jealousy is a cultural disease which results from the restrictions on our love-life imposed by law and morality. If so-called “free love” ever becomes a fact there will be far fewer cases of jealousy than we have to-day. That sounds plausible. But will life be more worth living when there will be no more jealousy? We gladly put up with jealousy if only our costly treasure of love continues secure. Would a life free from all jealousy and pain, a life without passions, be worth while? Is it not a fact that our possessions are most highly valued by us at the moment when we fear to lose them?... The sweetest harmonies are to be found only in contrasts. The wagon of life rolls with greater tempo over the endless lonely roads when it is harnessed to the passions.
Has any one counted the victims of jealousy? Daily a revolver cracks somewhere or other because of jealousy; daily a knife finds entrance into a warm body; daily some unhappy ones, racked by jealousy and life-weary, sink into fathomless depths. What are all the hideous battles narrated by history when compared with the endless slaughters caused by this frightful passion! It enslaves man as no other passion does; degrades him, humiliates him, and makes him taste the hell of many other passions, such as envy, mistrust, revengefulness, fear, hate, anger, and poisons the meagre pleasure-cup that imparts a touch of sweetness to bitter life.
What is jealousy? Whence flow its tributaries? Is this the Danaidean gift to humanity? Is it the twin sister of love? Do we acquire it or is it born with us? It is surely worth while to consider every one of these questions and to attempt to determine the nature of this unholy passion.
To understand jealousy we must go far, very far back into the history of man’s origin. Yes, far beyond man, as far as the animal world! For certain animals, intelligent animals, showclearly evidences of jealousy. Pet dogs resent it if their masters pet another dog. They are even jealous if the master caresses human beings. There are dogs who begin to whine if their master plays with or fondles his children. Very much the same thing is told of cats. Who of us on reading Freiligrath’s gruesome ballad, “The Lion’s Bride,” has not felt the terror of the beast’s furious jealousy?
Our observation of animals has taught us one of the fundamental characteristics of jealousy. Animals know very definitely what is theirs. They have a fine perception for what is theirs. Most dogs snarl even at their masters if they attempt to take their food from them. Their jealousy is the mood in which they express their possession, the egoism of their share. They defend as their possession even the affection to which they think themselves solely entitled.
The emotional life of the young shows the same phenomenon. They too do not know the distinction between thine and mine. What they happen to have in their hands is theirs and will defend it with their weak powers and loud howls. Many psychologists, including Percy, Compayné, Sully, Anfosse, Schion, Ziegler, consider the child an unmitigated egoist. Even in its love it is out and out egoistic and therefore extremely jealous. Young children’s jealousy may attain an incredible degree of intensity. A little two-year-old girl cried incessantly if her mother took the baby brother in her arms.A little boy was so jealous of his younger sister that he used to pinch her leg at every opportunity; having been smartly punished for it on one occasion he spared the little girl thereafter, but became afflicted with a peculiar compulsion neurosis: he pinched the legs of adults. Such experiences are of profound significance. They give us a glimpse of the primitive times when man had no idea yet of altruism. The whole world was his as far as his power, his strength, went. Man’s jealousy developed out of this primary ego-feeling, out of his right to sole possession. Before man could be civilised this tremendous barrier had to be overcome. The first community, the first social beings, were the first stages of altruism and civilization.
From this period emanate the subterranean sources from which jealousy is fed. We have probably all become more or less altruistic. But always in conflict with ourselves, in conflict with the beast, in conflict with the savage within us. Even to this day the whole world belongs to each one of us. Our desires extend our property to infinity. What would we not own? What do we not desire? The wealth of the rich, the honour of the distinguished, the triumphs of the artist, to say nothing of his sexual triumphs. The less we can fulfil these desires the more do we cling to what we have, or, somewhat more accurately, could have had. For jealousy does not concern only what one actually possesses. Women may be jealousof men they do not love and do not even possess. They simply begrudge the other woman her conquest. Don Juans know this very well. The best way of conquering a woman is still the old, old way: to make love to her friend. In this case wounded vanity plays a part, of course. But what is vanity but the over-estimation of the Me, the striking emphasis laid on one’s own value? And thus we again come back to the root of all jealousy: the pleasure in one’s own possession, in one’s embellished egoism.
Jealousy need not always have a sexual motive. A woman may be jealous of her husband’s friend because he has been more successful than her husband. Her husband is her possession. He ought to be the foremost, he ought to have achieved the others’ successes, so that his fame should revert to her too. Pupils are jealous of one another even though not a trace of a sexual motive may be demonstrable. We may be jealous of another’s horses, dogs, furniture, virtues, honours, friendships, responsibilities, etc. Behind it there always is our brutal egoism, the desire for another’s possessions, or at least the fear of losing one’s own possession.
Jealousy is generally regarded as a pre-eminently feminine quality. Erroneously so. It would be more nearly correct to say that the heroic side of jealousy is to be found only in men. It is not a matter merely of chancethat we have no feminine counterpart to Othello, Herod and the Count in Hauptmann’s “Griselda.” Jealousy in women has received a social valuation from men; it always has a smack of the ridiculous, pathological, or unjustified. It is a subject for satire, and is more often a comedy motive than a tragic reproach. This is due to the fact that woman’s love is monopolised by men, whereas a man’s loyalty is demanded by most women but attained only by very few. A man’s infidelity is not a dramatic reproach because it is a daily occurrence and wholly in accord with the lax conception of the majority. A woman’s infidelity is an offence against the sacred mandates imposed by—men. And therefore the jealousy of a man—be the subject of the passion a fool, a fop, an old man, or some other laughable type destined for cuckoldry—is a struggle for just possession, a conflict which always has an heroic effect, whereas a woman’s jealousy is always a dispute for the sole possession of a man, a right which is disputed by a great majority (namely, the men, and even some women).
But there are men and women who are not jealous even though they love intensely. And with this we hit upon a second and important root of jealousy. Only one who contemplates an act of disloyalty against the object of his jealousy, or who, as a result of doubts about his own erotic powers, thinks he cannot gratify that object can be jealous. Of course I am notnow speaking of justified jealousy based on facts, but of baseless, unjustified jealousy. Whence comes the suspicion that attributes infidelity to the beloved being? What is the driving power in these cases? Only the knowledge of one’s true nature. Only they can be jealous, jealous without cause, who cannot guarantee for themselves. In other words: jealousy is the projection of one’s own shortcomings upon the beloved.
If we find a woman who is all her life torturing her husband with her jealousy, complaining now that he has been looking at some woman too long, now that he stayed out too long, now that he was too friendly with one of her friends, etc., then it is the woman who has seen the weakness of her own character and who, in thought, is guilty of every infidelity which she will not admit even to herself. And in the same way faithless husbands who love their wives make the most jealous husbands. That is the vermuth potion which leaves with them a bitter after-taste as soon as they have made another conquest. Their own experiences entitle them to be jealous. Bachelors who had been philanderers and can boast of many conquests usually marry plain or unattractive women—alleging, by way of explanation, that they want to have the woman for themselves and not for others, meanwhile forgetting how often they themselves had been caught in the nets of homely women. For almostany woman who will permit herself to do so can find admirers, and ugliness is no protection against dramatic or comic marital infidelities.
The absence of jealousy in cases of intense affection usually, but not always, indicates a nature immune against all assaults. But those who are free from this passion need not therefore be puffed up. We are poor sinners all, and the time may come sooner or later for any of us in which we shall transfer our weaknesses upon others and become jealous. But it also happens that freedom from jealousy is a sign not of security but of stupidity, unlimited vanity. The woman is regarded as a paragon of all the virtues, without a touch of frailty. The husband may be an ideal specimen of an otherwise frivolous species. In these cases one’s inadequacy is so covered up by our over-estimation of our endowments that comparisons are never instituted and projection is impossible.
Consequently baseless jealousy and baseless confidence will always be. And therefore we shall not follow Bleuler in his estimation of jealousy as one of the “unconscious commonplaces” which makes love valueless as “the plant-louse does the rose-bud.” We shall recognise in it, when it is baseless, a disease of the soul occurring in persons whose cravings and realities do not coincide and who have with a heavy heart been forced to the recognition after cruel inner conflicts that their virtue is only an over-emphatic opposition to their weakness. Their jealousy has taken on a pathological(neurotic) character because of this repression and this relegating of their own desires into the unconscious. That is why all the logic of realities is effectless when opposed to the logic of the unconscious. One might almost say that jealousy is a cultural disease which results from the restrictions on our love-life imposed by law and morality. If so-called “free love” ever becomes a fact there will be far fewer cases of jealousy than we have to-day. That sounds plausible. But will life be more worth living when there will be no more jealousy? We gladly put up with jealousy if only our costly treasure of love continues secure. Would a life free from all jealousy and pain, a life without passions, be worth while? Is it not a fact that our possessions are most highly valued by us at the moment when we fear to lose them?... The sweetest harmonies are to be found only in contrasts. The wagon of life rolls with greater tempo over the endless lonely roads when it is harnessed to the passions.
CHILDHOOD FRIENDSHIPAn indescribably sweet breeze blows over the friendships of childhood. They are tender, delicate, pale blue petals that tremble with each stir of the childish soul and whose roots even then already penetrate down to the deep layers in which inherited instincts and tempting desires fertilise the soil of the passions. Its first friendship is a revelation for the child. Till then it loved its parents, its surroundings, its teacher. But behind this love the educational tendency was always in evidence. “You must love your parents because they are so good to you. You must respect your teacher because from him you get the knowledge that is indispensable to you in your life.” Thus we make that love a duty for the child which ought, on the contrary, to make it conscious of its duties.How different it all is in the case of friendship. Here the child can follow its natural inclinations. Here it can choose according to its own standards without having to listen to the dictates of its educators. And indeed one has thousands of opportunities to observe that a child is much more cautious than adults in the selection of its friends, that it will not accept a friend assigned it by its parents unless he meets with its approval,unless an unconscious urge pleads in his behalf.How peculiar children are in their choice of a friend! Either he is the nicest or the finest, the quietest or the noisiest, the best or the worst, the strongest or the weakest. They prefer one whose traits are clearly and sharply defined, rather than one who is neither one thing nor the other. There must be something about the friend that they can admire; he must excel them in something. But it is not a bar to friendship that they excel the other in something.Let no one say that it is an easy matter to read the souls of children! That their emotions are simple, that their soul’s an open book! We can discover all the puzzling roots of love, even in the friendships of children,e.g., sympathy, cruelty, desire, humility, and subjection.It is my belief that we adults cannot love with the love we were capable of in childhood. We cannot hate so, cannot be so resentful, and cannot be so self-sacrificing. Alas! even our emotions become pallid with the years and can make a show of colour only with the aid of memory.Let us watch a child that has entered into a close friendship. Is it not playing the same game that we adults later on designate as love? Have we forgotten the feverish impatience with which we awaited the hour of the friend’s coming and how jealous we were if he stopped to converse with another? How we hated him then and how terribly unhappy we were? How we would have loved to cry aloud, if wehad not been ashamed to betray such weakness. Have we forgotten how the hours flew when we were playing together, how we whispered dreadful and mysterious things to each other in the twilight, how passionately we embraced each other, and kissed, and how ready we were to give up our little treasures to our friends? There is but one time that resembles this friendship:—the time when a happy love makes a wooer a sweet child again.Even in a child’s soul the hunger for love cries aloud and will not be stilled. For a love that is more than a love of parents, for a love that is touched with that dark power which at a later period shapes the life of man to its will.Oh! blessed time, in which our yearning for a second human being is so easily gratified! Blessed time, in which we do not yet feel the hot breath of burning desires when the arm of a beloved being entwines us, in which the threatening fist of Destiny does not pin us to the ground at the moment when we think we are plucking down the sky! The mirror of our soul still reflects pure innocence; we do not yet suspect that the passions that set the waters in motion must also stir up the muddy ooze that lies at the bottom.Childhood friendship is the school of love. Without such friendship the child is impoverished and forever loses the power to love. Look at the mothers’ darlings whose mothers took the place of friends! See how they are bound totheir mothers by all their emotions, by all the bonds of their souls, incapable of breaking loose from the love for the mother and founding another generation. The stupidest dream of parents is the wish to be the friends of their children. But are we not deceiving ourselves? Is such a thing possible? Is there not between ourselves and our children a world of disappointments and buried hopes? Are there not here yawning chasms in whose depths wild torrents carry away the residue of past years, chasms which cannot be bridged? Say what we will, only a child can be a child’s friend!And there is much food for reflection in this. The child is surrounded by so much authority, so much school, so much dignity, so much law, that it would have to break down under the weight of all these restraints if it were not saved from such a fate by meeting with a friend. In secret conferences, at first in whispers and only in hints, but subsequently more and more clearly and distinctly, the road to life is outlined. The gods are dethroned, or, at any rate, are not feared so much; little jokes about the teacher are the beginning, and gradually the excess of parental authority goes tumbling till it assumes just proportions. The way to freedom of thought, the way to independence, the way to individuality is opened. What the child could not have accomplished alone was a mere toy with the help of another. And the friendship grows ever prouder and more intimate themore the child loses the feelings enforced upon it.One great mystery, the child’s eternal question, occupies its mind more than most parents, most persons, will believe: the question about the origin of man, the question which is customarily answered with a childish tale about a stork (or a big tree in heaven, a large cabbage, or a department store), a tale with which the clever little ones make fools of their elders who go on repeating for many years a story they had long ago ceased to believe. Behind all the child’s curiosity there lurks the one great question: “Where do children come from?” One will never go wrong in concluding that a child who is plaguing his elders with a thousand stupid and clever questions is suffering from a kind of obsession, an obsessive questioning, behind which lies the one great and important question that troubles all children. On this subject the child cannot speak with its parents. Instinctively it feels that here is a great mystery that is being withheld from it and whose solution the parents have put off for a future time. It is during childhood friendship and in connection with this question that sexuality plays its first trump. It is a pity that human beings so easily forget their own childhood, else parents would not be so blind in this regard. In the northern psychologist’s, Arne Gaborg’s, best work “By Mama” there is a wonderful scene copied direct from nature: Two little girls are sitting on the basementstairs whispering to each other their latest bit of information about the great mystery; gradually it grows dark and an inexplicable dread of something great, threatening, mysterious, fills their trembling souls; it is that fear which faithfully accompanies love throughout life and whose dark wing has just barely brushed their innocent childhood.The child gets older and friendship changes its nature. Life and its claims interpose their authority. Into the quiet and unselfish friendship of childhood, into the pure and simple childish harmonies there penetrate various over- and under-tones whose inharmonious character is not discovered until long after. Envy, egoism, covetousness, cunning, distrust,—all these feelings steal their way into the childhood friendship, and finally friendship degenerates into what Moebius has so aptly namedPhantom-practice. Young obstetricians train their unskilled hands on “phantoms” (or mannikins) to fit them for the serious requirements of their art. Something exactly like this is the conduct of young adolescents, especially girls, who are still half-child and already half-woman. To a girl the admiration of a girl friend takes the place of a lover’s wooing; to be kissed by her results in a dream of being kissed by a man. Recently biology has developed the idea, erroneously attributed to Otto Weininger, that every human being is a mixture of both sexes. Before puberty the two elementsM.andF., male and female, must balance. The child is bisexually constituted, and therefore every friendship is in a certain sense a love affair. About the time of sexual maturity the sexuality of every individual triumphantly asserts itself. This is the great moment when childhood friendship has fulfilled its mission. It is as if the child were now freeing itself from the yoke of its own sex and entering the arena equipped for the battle of love.This also explains why childhood friendships so seldom are preserved and carried over into adult life. The friendships of adults are based upon different foundations. Now it is the thinking, reflecting, conscious being who seeks a fellow combatant who he hopes will fully understand (and sympathise with) him. Higher interests determine their friendships. But it is no longer so deeply rooted as childhood friendship. It no longer requires the co-operation of the instinctive emotions.Now and then one comes across persons who are always children, whom not even the bitterest experiences can stripoffthe pollen linked with their emotions. They are the only ones capable of true friendship even in their old age. They spread friendship with the sweet smile of the child; they do not love for the sake of the advantages to be derived; they do not even ask whether they are their friends’ friend. Ah! If we could be such a child again! Or if we could but find it!
An indescribably sweet breeze blows over the friendships of childhood. They are tender, delicate, pale blue petals that tremble with each stir of the childish soul and whose roots even then already penetrate down to the deep layers in which inherited instincts and tempting desires fertilise the soil of the passions. Its first friendship is a revelation for the child. Till then it loved its parents, its surroundings, its teacher. But behind this love the educational tendency was always in evidence. “You must love your parents because they are so good to you. You must respect your teacher because from him you get the knowledge that is indispensable to you in your life.” Thus we make that love a duty for the child which ought, on the contrary, to make it conscious of its duties.
How different it all is in the case of friendship. Here the child can follow its natural inclinations. Here it can choose according to its own standards without having to listen to the dictates of its educators. And indeed one has thousands of opportunities to observe that a child is much more cautious than adults in the selection of its friends, that it will not accept a friend assigned it by its parents unless he meets with its approval,unless an unconscious urge pleads in his behalf.
How peculiar children are in their choice of a friend! Either he is the nicest or the finest, the quietest or the noisiest, the best or the worst, the strongest or the weakest. They prefer one whose traits are clearly and sharply defined, rather than one who is neither one thing nor the other. There must be something about the friend that they can admire; he must excel them in something. But it is not a bar to friendship that they excel the other in something.
Let no one say that it is an easy matter to read the souls of children! That their emotions are simple, that their soul’s an open book! We can discover all the puzzling roots of love, even in the friendships of children,e.g., sympathy, cruelty, desire, humility, and subjection.
It is my belief that we adults cannot love with the love we were capable of in childhood. We cannot hate so, cannot be so resentful, and cannot be so self-sacrificing. Alas! even our emotions become pallid with the years and can make a show of colour only with the aid of memory.
Let us watch a child that has entered into a close friendship. Is it not playing the same game that we adults later on designate as love? Have we forgotten the feverish impatience with which we awaited the hour of the friend’s coming and how jealous we were if he stopped to converse with another? How we hated him then and how terribly unhappy we were? How we would have loved to cry aloud, if wehad not been ashamed to betray such weakness. Have we forgotten how the hours flew when we were playing together, how we whispered dreadful and mysterious things to each other in the twilight, how passionately we embraced each other, and kissed, and how ready we were to give up our little treasures to our friends? There is but one time that resembles this friendship:—the time when a happy love makes a wooer a sweet child again.
Even in a child’s soul the hunger for love cries aloud and will not be stilled. For a love that is more than a love of parents, for a love that is touched with that dark power which at a later period shapes the life of man to its will.
Oh! blessed time, in which our yearning for a second human being is so easily gratified! Blessed time, in which we do not yet feel the hot breath of burning desires when the arm of a beloved being entwines us, in which the threatening fist of Destiny does not pin us to the ground at the moment when we think we are plucking down the sky! The mirror of our soul still reflects pure innocence; we do not yet suspect that the passions that set the waters in motion must also stir up the muddy ooze that lies at the bottom.
Childhood friendship is the school of love. Without such friendship the child is impoverished and forever loses the power to love. Look at the mothers’ darlings whose mothers took the place of friends! See how they are bound totheir mothers by all their emotions, by all the bonds of their souls, incapable of breaking loose from the love for the mother and founding another generation. The stupidest dream of parents is the wish to be the friends of their children. But are we not deceiving ourselves? Is such a thing possible? Is there not between ourselves and our children a world of disappointments and buried hopes? Are there not here yawning chasms in whose depths wild torrents carry away the residue of past years, chasms which cannot be bridged? Say what we will, only a child can be a child’s friend!
And there is much food for reflection in this. The child is surrounded by so much authority, so much school, so much dignity, so much law, that it would have to break down under the weight of all these restraints if it were not saved from such a fate by meeting with a friend. In secret conferences, at first in whispers and only in hints, but subsequently more and more clearly and distinctly, the road to life is outlined. The gods are dethroned, or, at any rate, are not feared so much; little jokes about the teacher are the beginning, and gradually the excess of parental authority goes tumbling till it assumes just proportions. The way to freedom of thought, the way to independence, the way to individuality is opened. What the child could not have accomplished alone was a mere toy with the help of another. And the friendship grows ever prouder and more intimate themore the child loses the feelings enforced upon it.
One great mystery, the child’s eternal question, occupies its mind more than most parents, most persons, will believe: the question about the origin of man, the question which is customarily answered with a childish tale about a stork (or a big tree in heaven, a large cabbage, or a department store), a tale with which the clever little ones make fools of their elders who go on repeating for many years a story they had long ago ceased to believe. Behind all the child’s curiosity there lurks the one great question: “Where do children come from?” One will never go wrong in concluding that a child who is plaguing his elders with a thousand stupid and clever questions is suffering from a kind of obsession, an obsessive questioning, behind which lies the one great and important question that troubles all children. On this subject the child cannot speak with its parents. Instinctively it feels that here is a great mystery that is being withheld from it and whose solution the parents have put off for a future time. It is during childhood friendship and in connection with this question that sexuality plays its first trump. It is a pity that human beings so easily forget their own childhood, else parents would not be so blind in this regard. In the northern psychologist’s, Arne Gaborg’s, best work “By Mama” there is a wonderful scene copied direct from nature: Two little girls are sitting on the basementstairs whispering to each other their latest bit of information about the great mystery; gradually it grows dark and an inexplicable dread of something great, threatening, mysterious, fills their trembling souls; it is that fear which faithfully accompanies love throughout life and whose dark wing has just barely brushed their innocent childhood.
The child gets older and friendship changes its nature. Life and its claims interpose their authority. Into the quiet and unselfish friendship of childhood, into the pure and simple childish harmonies there penetrate various over- and under-tones whose inharmonious character is not discovered until long after. Envy, egoism, covetousness, cunning, distrust,—all these feelings steal their way into the childhood friendship, and finally friendship degenerates into what Moebius has so aptly namedPhantom-practice. Young obstetricians train their unskilled hands on “phantoms” (or mannikins) to fit them for the serious requirements of their art. Something exactly like this is the conduct of young adolescents, especially girls, who are still half-child and already half-woman. To a girl the admiration of a girl friend takes the place of a lover’s wooing; to be kissed by her results in a dream of being kissed by a man. Recently biology has developed the idea, erroneously attributed to Otto Weininger, that every human being is a mixture of both sexes. Before puberty the two elementsM.andF., male and female, must balance. The child is bisexually constituted, and therefore every friendship is in a certain sense a love affair. About the time of sexual maturity the sexuality of every individual triumphantly asserts itself. This is the great moment when childhood friendship has fulfilled its mission. It is as if the child were now freeing itself from the yoke of its own sex and entering the arena equipped for the battle of love.
This also explains why childhood friendships so seldom are preserved and carried over into adult life. The friendships of adults are based upon different foundations. Now it is the thinking, reflecting, conscious being who seeks a fellow combatant who he hopes will fully understand (and sympathise with) him. Higher interests determine their friendships. But it is no longer so deeply rooted as childhood friendship. It no longer requires the co-operation of the instinctive emotions.
Now and then one comes across persons who are always children, whom not even the bitterest experiences can stripoffthe pollen linked with their emotions. They are the only ones capable of true friendship even in their old age. They spread friendship with the sweet smile of the child; they do not love for the sake of the advantages to be derived; they do not even ask whether they are their friends’ friend. Ah! If we could be such a child again! Or if we could but find it!
EATINGI was once invited to the house of a certain writer who had made a name for himself by several very clever novels and had acquired a fortune by the publication of a successful journal. He was now living on an estate in the country, retired from active life, spending his days in luxurious peace. Much too soon, as I very quickly found out. For he was in no sense old. A man about fifty whose eyes still looked challengingly at the world. His look had in it nothing of the asceticism of one who is tired of life. No; here the fire of secret passions still blazed; here one could still detect power, ambition, and desires.Much in his conduct seemed puzzling to me. A stony calm, a certain lassitude in his movements,—an enforced pose calculated to conceal the internal restlessness which his eyes could not help betraying.Only when the time to eat came he became all life. Then he stretched his neck aloft, that he might see clearly the dish that was being brought in. His nostrils dilated as if the sooner to inhale the delightful aroma. His mouth made remarkable twitching movements and his tongue moved over his thin lips with that peculiarrapid movement that one may observe in a woman when she is engaged in animated conversation with a man. He became restless, fidgetted nervously in his chair, and followed tensely the distribution of the food by his wife, a corpulent, energetic and almost masculine woman, who, very naturally and to his secret distress, helped her guests first. Finally—much too late to suit him—he received his portion. First he regarded his food with the eye of an expert, turning it from side to side with his knife and fork. Then he cut off a small piece and rolled it about in his mouth with audible clucking and smacking of his tongue, let it rest on his tongue awhile, his face the meantime assuming an expression of visionary ecstasy. It was easy to see that for him eating had become the day’s most important task. During the meal he never stopped talking of the excellence of the food, all the while smacking his tongue and lips, and literally expounding a system of culinary criticism.When finally, to my great relief, the grace after dinner had been pronounced, I hoped at last to be done with the wearying, unpleasant chatter about eating. But this time I had really reckoned without my host.“What shall we serve our guests to-morrow, my dear?” the gourmand inquired of his sterner half.“To-morrow? The big white goose with the black patch.”“The big white goose with the black patch! Ah! She’ll taste wonderful! You don’t know how childishly happy it makes me. Come, let me show you the white goose with the black patch!”Resistance was useless. I had to go into the poultry-yard, where my host stopped in front of a well-fed goose. “She’ll make a fine roast! I am greatly pleased with this goose.”No matter what subject was discussed, political, literary, or economic, the main motif kept recurring: “I love to think of the big white goose with the black patch!”The meaning of gourmandism then suddenly flashed on me. What passions must this man have suppressed, how much must he have renounced, before his craving for pleasure had found new delights in this roundabout way! Behind this monomaniac delight in eating, thought I, there must lurk a great secret.And such was indeed the case. My amiable host was really his wife’s prisoner. While he was residing in the capital he had begun to indulge in a perversion. His vice grew on him to such an extent that it threatened to destroy everything, health, fortune, mind, ambition, personality, spirit, everything. There was nothing left for him to do but to tell his wife all and implore her assistance in saving him. The virile woman soon hit on the only remedy. He became her prisoner. They broke off all relationships that bound them to their social group. Most of the year they spent in thecountry and lived in the city only two or three winter months. The time was spent in eating and card playing, to which fully half of the day was devoted. He was never alone. At most he was permitted to take a short walk in the country. His wife had charge of the family treasury, with which he had nothing to do. Of course, this did not cure his pathological craving, but it made gratification impossible. And gradually there began to develop in him the pleasure for delicate dishes. In this indirect way he satisfied a part of his sensuous craving. Thus he transformed his passion. His meals took the place of the hours spent in the embraces of a lover. For him eating was a re-coinage of his sexuality.Is this an exceptional case, or is this phenomenon the rule? This is the first question that forces itself on our attention. An answer to it would take us into the deeps of the whole sexual problem. But let us limit ourselves for the present only to what is essential for an answer to our immediate question. Between hunger and love there is an endless number of associations. The most important is this: both are opposed by one counter-impulse, namely, disgust. Both love and hunger are desires to touch, (to incorporate or to be incorporated with the desired object); disgust is the fear of doing so. Love is accompanied with a counter-impulse, a restraining influence, which we call shame. But this very feeling,shame, is manifested by certain primitive peoples in connection with eating. In Tahiti, says Cook, not even the members of the family eat together, but eat seated several metres apart and with their backs to one another. The Warua, an African tribe, conceal their faces with a cloth while they are drinking. The Bakairi are innocent of any sense of shame in connection with nakedness, but never eat together.The Viennese psychiatrist Freud, the Englishman Havelock Ellis (“The Sexual Impulse”), and the Spanish Sociologist Solila, regard the sucking of the breast by an infant as a kind of sexual act which creates permanent associations between hunger and love. And the language we speak has coined certain turns of expression which bring these connections out unmistakably and which have great interest for us as fossilisations of primitive thought processes and as rudiments of cannibalism. Note, for example, the following expressions: “I could bite her”; or, “I love the child so I could eat it up!” But we express even disgust, aversion and hatred in terms of eating,e.g., “I can’t stomach the fellow,” or, “he turns my stomach,” “she is not to my taste,” etc.On the other hand the names of certain dishes reveal connections with other emotional complexes than the pure pleasure of eating. There is an everyday symbolism which we all pass by blindly. Let him who has any interestin this subject read Rudolph Kleinpaul’s book, “Sprache ohne Worte” (Language without Words). This symbolism plays a much more important rôle than we are wont to admit. For it alone is capable of interpreting the puzzling names of the various delicacies on the bill of fare. We are cannibals, for we eat “Moors in their ‘Jackets’” (a fine revenge on the tawny cannibals!) “poor knights,” “master of the chase,” “apprentice-locksmith,” and many more of the same kind. “Bridal roast” holds an important place in the menus of the whole world. Social inferiority is compensated for by numerous royal dishes ...e.g., steak-a-la-king, cutlet-a-la-king, chicken-a-la-king, royal pudding, etc., etc. One who will take the trouble, as Kleinpaul did in his “Gastronomic Fairy-tale,” to follow up these things, will discover many remarkable links with unconscious ideas. We are really hemmed in on every side by fairy tales. Every word we speak, every name we utter, has its story. And the many fairy tales in which children are devoured by wolves, witches, man-eaters, and sea-monsters, together with the tales in which so much is said about man-eating cannibals, reveal to us a fragment of our pre-historic past in which love and hate actually resulted in persons being eaten. In their naïveté our children betray this very clearly. When the little ones eat maccaroni, noodles, or similar dishes, they often make believe they are eating up somebody.But, “something too much of this.” Let us turn our attention again to the epicures, the little progeny of a great race. It is not difficult to divide them into five classes according to which one of the five senses is being chiefly gratified during the eating process. First, there are the “Voyeurs,” to use the term so aptly coined by the French with reference to a phenomenon in the sexual sphere. They must “see” before they can enjoy. To see is the important thing with them. The dishes must be served neatly and must look inviting. They are the admirers of the many-coloured adornments on patisserie, of torts, cakes, and puddings built in the shape of houses, churches, towers, animals, wedding-bells, etc. They reckon their pleasures by the colour nuances of their foods. Their chief delight is in the fore-pleasure derived through the eyes. (This is clearly implied in the popular phrase “a feast for the eyes.”)Not quite as common are the listeners “who are thrown into a mild ecstasy by the sizzling of a roast, the cracking of dry crumbs, and the fiz of certain liquids.” Numberless are the “smellers” whose sensitive noses drink in the aroma of the foods as their chief delight, whereas the eating, as such, is performed mechanically, as an unavoidable adjunct. Such persons can revel in the memories of a luscious dish, and many of their associations are linked with the olfactory organ. The pleasure in offensiveodours, such as arise from certain cheeses, garlic, rarebits, and wild game is to some extent a perversion nutritional instinct and betrays innate relationships to sexual aberrations, as are unequivocally indicated by certain popular ditties and college songs. The folk-lore of all nations teems with hints at such things.An important group, the fourth, is that of the “toucher.” As we know the tongue of man is the most important of the gustatory organs, even though it has not that primacy and importance which it has in many animals. Such “touchers” derive their greatest pleasure from the mere touching of the food with the tongue. They prefer smooth and slippery foods,e.g., oysters which they can suck down, and they love to roll the food around in their mouths. It goes without saying that these persons are also “tasters,” as indeed the majority of eaters are. But for all that, these have their own peculiar traits; whereas the feeling of fullness or satiety is to many persons a kind of discomfort, and a full stomach gives rise to a disagreeably painful sensation, to these “touchers” a full stomach means the most delightful sensation the day has to offer.Of the “gourmands” (literally “the relishers”) we need not say much. The whole world knows them; to describe them many words and phrases have been coined,e.g., sweet-toothed, cat-toothed, epicures, etc.As might have been expected, these variousforms are often combined in one person, and your genuine gourmand eats with all his senses. We need only keep our eyes open at a restaurant to observe that most persons show some trace of epicurism. Very few resist the temptation to follow the platter the waiter is carrying to some table. (Almost every one likes to see what his neighbour is eating.) We may be discussing art, politics, love, or what not, yet watch carefully how much the person serving is taking for himself or dishing out for the others, and how little he is leaving for us. Most of the time in these cases we are the victims of an optical deception. Our neighbour’s portion always seems bigger than ours. Hunger and envy magnify the other person’s portion and minimise ours. And is it not an everyday experience that we order what our neighbour is eating? “Waiter, what is that you served the man over there? Bring me the same!”How a person eats always reveals something of his hidden personality. In the case of most human beings at meals the same thing happens that one may observe at the menagerie during feeding-time: the peacefully reposing lion becomes a beast of prey. That is why beautiful women become ugly when they eat and lose their charm, cease to become interesting when they are seen eating. It is not a meaningless custom that we honour distinguished persons by dining them. By so doing we create a situation in which there is no superiority andin which we feel ourselves at one with the great man and on a level with him.Much more complicated than the psychology of the ordinary eater is that of the gourmand, who always seems even to himself to be an exceptional kind of person and who has in unsuspected ways enlarged the sphere of possible pleasures. In most of these cases we shall find that they are persons of whom life has demanded many renunciations. Just as the habitual drinker rarely stupifies himself because of the pleasure he takes in drinking but mostly out of a desire to drown in unconsciousness a great pain, to draw the veil over some humiliation, disillusionment, failure, or disappointment, so the gourmand likewise compensates himself for his lost world. He has the same right to the pleasures of life that others have. Well for him that he is capable of securing his portion in this way!Inexperienced humanitarians long for the time when eating will be superfluous, when a few pills of concentrated albumin combined with a few drops of some essential ferment will supply the necessary energy for our mental and physical labours. What a stupid dream! If such a time ever came, how unhappy humanity would be! The most of mankind, truth compels me to say, live only to eat. For them “eating” is synonymous with “life.” With the discovery of such pills the wine of life would be drawn. No! No! No! If there were no such thingas eating we should have to invent it to save man from despairing. Eating enables one who has suffered shipwreck on Life’s voyage to withdraw into a sphere which once meant the greatest happiness to all human beings and still means it to all animals. One takes refuge in the primal instincts where one is safe and comfortable, until Mother Earth again devours and assimilates him before she awakes him to new life. We are all eternal links in an unending chain of links.And that is the whole meaning of eating: life and death. Every bite we eat means a quick death for myriads of living things. They must die that we may live. And so we live by death until our death gives life to others.It’s no mere accident that Don Juan is summoned from the feast to his death.
I was once invited to the house of a certain writer who had made a name for himself by several very clever novels and had acquired a fortune by the publication of a successful journal. He was now living on an estate in the country, retired from active life, spending his days in luxurious peace. Much too soon, as I very quickly found out. For he was in no sense old. A man about fifty whose eyes still looked challengingly at the world. His look had in it nothing of the asceticism of one who is tired of life. No; here the fire of secret passions still blazed; here one could still detect power, ambition, and desires.
Much in his conduct seemed puzzling to me. A stony calm, a certain lassitude in his movements,—an enforced pose calculated to conceal the internal restlessness which his eyes could not help betraying.
Only when the time to eat came he became all life. Then he stretched his neck aloft, that he might see clearly the dish that was being brought in. His nostrils dilated as if the sooner to inhale the delightful aroma. His mouth made remarkable twitching movements and his tongue moved over his thin lips with that peculiarrapid movement that one may observe in a woman when she is engaged in animated conversation with a man. He became restless, fidgetted nervously in his chair, and followed tensely the distribution of the food by his wife, a corpulent, energetic and almost masculine woman, who, very naturally and to his secret distress, helped her guests first. Finally—much too late to suit him—he received his portion. First he regarded his food with the eye of an expert, turning it from side to side with his knife and fork. Then he cut off a small piece and rolled it about in his mouth with audible clucking and smacking of his tongue, let it rest on his tongue awhile, his face the meantime assuming an expression of visionary ecstasy. It was easy to see that for him eating had become the day’s most important task. During the meal he never stopped talking of the excellence of the food, all the while smacking his tongue and lips, and literally expounding a system of culinary criticism.
When finally, to my great relief, the grace after dinner had been pronounced, I hoped at last to be done with the wearying, unpleasant chatter about eating. But this time I had really reckoned without my host.
“What shall we serve our guests to-morrow, my dear?” the gourmand inquired of his sterner half.
“To-morrow? The big white goose with the black patch.”
“The big white goose with the black patch! Ah! She’ll taste wonderful! You don’t know how childishly happy it makes me. Come, let me show you the white goose with the black patch!”
Resistance was useless. I had to go into the poultry-yard, where my host stopped in front of a well-fed goose. “She’ll make a fine roast! I am greatly pleased with this goose.”
No matter what subject was discussed, political, literary, or economic, the main motif kept recurring: “I love to think of the big white goose with the black patch!”
The meaning of gourmandism then suddenly flashed on me. What passions must this man have suppressed, how much must he have renounced, before his craving for pleasure had found new delights in this roundabout way! Behind this monomaniac delight in eating, thought I, there must lurk a great secret.
And such was indeed the case. My amiable host was really his wife’s prisoner. While he was residing in the capital he had begun to indulge in a perversion. His vice grew on him to such an extent that it threatened to destroy everything, health, fortune, mind, ambition, personality, spirit, everything. There was nothing left for him to do but to tell his wife all and implore her assistance in saving him. The virile woman soon hit on the only remedy. He became her prisoner. They broke off all relationships that bound them to their social group. Most of the year they spent in thecountry and lived in the city only two or three winter months. The time was spent in eating and card playing, to which fully half of the day was devoted. He was never alone. At most he was permitted to take a short walk in the country. His wife had charge of the family treasury, with which he had nothing to do. Of course, this did not cure his pathological craving, but it made gratification impossible. And gradually there began to develop in him the pleasure for delicate dishes. In this indirect way he satisfied a part of his sensuous craving. Thus he transformed his passion. His meals took the place of the hours spent in the embraces of a lover. For him eating was a re-coinage of his sexuality.
Is this an exceptional case, or is this phenomenon the rule? This is the first question that forces itself on our attention. An answer to it would take us into the deeps of the whole sexual problem. But let us limit ourselves for the present only to what is essential for an answer to our immediate question. Between hunger and love there is an endless number of associations. The most important is this: both are opposed by one counter-impulse, namely, disgust. Both love and hunger are desires to touch, (to incorporate or to be incorporated with the desired object); disgust is the fear of doing so. Love is accompanied with a counter-impulse, a restraining influence, which we call shame. But this very feeling,shame, is manifested by certain primitive peoples in connection with eating. In Tahiti, says Cook, not even the members of the family eat together, but eat seated several metres apart and with their backs to one another. The Warua, an African tribe, conceal their faces with a cloth while they are drinking. The Bakairi are innocent of any sense of shame in connection with nakedness, but never eat together.
The Viennese psychiatrist Freud, the Englishman Havelock Ellis (“The Sexual Impulse”), and the Spanish Sociologist Solila, regard the sucking of the breast by an infant as a kind of sexual act which creates permanent associations between hunger and love. And the language we speak has coined certain turns of expression which bring these connections out unmistakably and which have great interest for us as fossilisations of primitive thought processes and as rudiments of cannibalism. Note, for example, the following expressions: “I could bite her”; or, “I love the child so I could eat it up!” But we express even disgust, aversion and hatred in terms of eating,e.g., “I can’t stomach the fellow,” or, “he turns my stomach,” “she is not to my taste,” etc.
On the other hand the names of certain dishes reveal connections with other emotional complexes than the pure pleasure of eating. There is an everyday symbolism which we all pass by blindly. Let him who has any interestin this subject read Rudolph Kleinpaul’s book, “Sprache ohne Worte” (Language without Words). This symbolism plays a much more important rôle than we are wont to admit. For it alone is capable of interpreting the puzzling names of the various delicacies on the bill of fare. We are cannibals, for we eat “Moors in their ‘Jackets’” (a fine revenge on the tawny cannibals!) “poor knights,” “master of the chase,” “apprentice-locksmith,” and many more of the same kind. “Bridal roast” holds an important place in the menus of the whole world. Social inferiority is compensated for by numerous royal dishes ...e.g., steak-a-la-king, cutlet-a-la-king, chicken-a-la-king, royal pudding, etc., etc. One who will take the trouble, as Kleinpaul did in his “Gastronomic Fairy-tale,” to follow up these things, will discover many remarkable links with unconscious ideas. We are really hemmed in on every side by fairy tales. Every word we speak, every name we utter, has its story. And the many fairy tales in which children are devoured by wolves, witches, man-eaters, and sea-monsters, together with the tales in which so much is said about man-eating cannibals, reveal to us a fragment of our pre-historic past in which love and hate actually resulted in persons being eaten. In their naïveté our children betray this very clearly. When the little ones eat maccaroni, noodles, or similar dishes, they often make believe they are eating up somebody.
But, “something too much of this.” Let us turn our attention again to the epicures, the little progeny of a great race. It is not difficult to divide them into five classes according to which one of the five senses is being chiefly gratified during the eating process. First, there are the “Voyeurs,” to use the term so aptly coined by the French with reference to a phenomenon in the sexual sphere. They must “see” before they can enjoy. To see is the important thing with them. The dishes must be served neatly and must look inviting. They are the admirers of the many-coloured adornments on patisserie, of torts, cakes, and puddings built in the shape of houses, churches, towers, animals, wedding-bells, etc. They reckon their pleasures by the colour nuances of their foods. Their chief delight is in the fore-pleasure derived through the eyes. (This is clearly implied in the popular phrase “a feast for the eyes.”)
Not quite as common are the listeners “who are thrown into a mild ecstasy by the sizzling of a roast, the cracking of dry crumbs, and the fiz of certain liquids.” Numberless are the “smellers” whose sensitive noses drink in the aroma of the foods as their chief delight, whereas the eating, as such, is performed mechanically, as an unavoidable adjunct. Such persons can revel in the memories of a luscious dish, and many of their associations are linked with the olfactory organ. The pleasure in offensiveodours, such as arise from certain cheeses, garlic, rarebits, and wild game is to some extent a perversion nutritional instinct and betrays innate relationships to sexual aberrations, as are unequivocally indicated by certain popular ditties and college songs. The folk-lore of all nations teems with hints at such things.
An important group, the fourth, is that of the “toucher.” As we know the tongue of man is the most important of the gustatory organs, even though it has not that primacy and importance which it has in many animals. Such “touchers” derive their greatest pleasure from the mere touching of the food with the tongue. They prefer smooth and slippery foods,e.g., oysters which they can suck down, and they love to roll the food around in their mouths. It goes without saying that these persons are also “tasters,” as indeed the majority of eaters are. But for all that, these have their own peculiar traits; whereas the feeling of fullness or satiety is to many persons a kind of discomfort, and a full stomach gives rise to a disagreeably painful sensation, to these “touchers” a full stomach means the most delightful sensation the day has to offer.
Of the “gourmands” (literally “the relishers”) we need not say much. The whole world knows them; to describe them many words and phrases have been coined,e.g., sweet-toothed, cat-toothed, epicures, etc.
As might have been expected, these variousforms are often combined in one person, and your genuine gourmand eats with all his senses. We need only keep our eyes open at a restaurant to observe that most persons show some trace of epicurism. Very few resist the temptation to follow the platter the waiter is carrying to some table. (Almost every one likes to see what his neighbour is eating.) We may be discussing art, politics, love, or what not, yet watch carefully how much the person serving is taking for himself or dishing out for the others, and how little he is leaving for us. Most of the time in these cases we are the victims of an optical deception. Our neighbour’s portion always seems bigger than ours. Hunger and envy magnify the other person’s portion and minimise ours. And is it not an everyday experience that we order what our neighbour is eating? “Waiter, what is that you served the man over there? Bring me the same!”
How a person eats always reveals something of his hidden personality. In the case of most human beings at meals the same thing happens that one may observe at the menagerie during feeding-time: the peacefully reposing lion becomes a beast of prey. That is why beautiful women become ugly when they eat and lose their charm, cease to become interesting when they are seen eating. It is not a meaningless custom that we honour distinguished persons by dining them. By so doing we create a situation in which there is no superiority andin which we feel ourselves at one with the great man and on a level with him.
Much more complicated than the psychology of the ordinary eater is that of the gourmand, who always seems even to himself to be an exceptional kind of person and who has in unsuspected ways enlarged the sphere of possible pleasures. In most of these cases we shall find that they are persons of whom life has demanded many renunciations. Just as the habitual drinker rarely stupifies himself because of the pleasure he takes in drinking but mostly out of a desire to drown in unconsciousness a great pain, to draw the veil over some humiliation, disillusionment, failure, or disappointment, so the gourmand likewise compensates himself for his lost world. He has the same right to the pleasures of life that others have. Well for him that he is capable of securing his portion in this way!
Inexperienced humanitarians long for the time when eating will be superfluous, when a few pills of concentrated albumin combined with a few drops of some essential ferment will supply the necessary energy for our mental and physical labours. What a stupid dream! If such a time ever came, how unhappy humanity would be! The most of mankind, truth compels me to say, live only to eat. For them “eating” is synonymous with “life.” With the discovery of such pills the wine of life would be drawn. No! No! No! If there were no such thingas eating we should have to invent it to save man from despairing. Eating enables one who has suffered shipwreck on Life’s voyage to withdraw into a sphere which once meant the greatest happiness to all human beings and still means it to all animals. One takes refuge in the primal instincts where one is safe and comfortable, until Mother Earth again devours and assimilates him before she awakes him to new life. We are all eternal links in an unending chain of links.
And that is the whole meaning of eating: life and death. Every bite we eat means a quick death for myriads of living things. They must die that we may live. And so we live by death until our death gives life to others.
It’s no mere accident that Don Juan is summoned from the feast to his death.
ARE WE ALL MEGALOMANIACS?There is no sharp dividing line between health and disease. One shades off into the other by imperceptible gradations. Disease grows out of health organically. There are a thousand transitions from the one to the other; a thousand fine threads link them together, and often not even the best physicians can determine where health ceases and disease begins. As Feuchtersleben says, there is no lyric leap in the epic of life. Nor do delusions make their entry unheralded into a well ordered mental life. Delusions slumber in all of us and wait for their prey. The quiet normal being is just as subject to them as the raving maniac with rolling congested eyes. We need only open our eyes understandingly upon the bustle and tumult of life to be able to exclaim with Hans Sachs: “Madness! Everywhere madness!”Every form of insanity, one may say, has a physiological prototype. Melancholia takes for its model the little depressive attacks of everyday life; mania has its prototype in the unrestrained enthusiasm of the baseball “fan”; and even the various forms of paranoia, the true insanity, have their typical representativesamong normal persons. To bring out this kinship we need no better example than that offered by the delusion of greatness. This delusion is so bound up with the requirements of the human psyche, so organically knit together with the ego, that it constitutes an indispensable element of our ethical consciousness. Every one of us thinks himself the wisest, best, most conscientious, and so forth. Each one thinks himself indispensable. It is this delusional greatness of the normal person which makes life tolerable under even the hardest conditions. It gives us the strength to bear all our humiliations, disappointments, failures, and the “whips and scorns of time.”Of course we are very careful to conceal this delusional greatness from the rest of the world. We all have our secret chapels in which we offer daily prayers and into which no one, not even our nearest, is permitted even to glance. In this chapel our idol sits enthroned, the prototype of majesty, “our ego,” before whom we bend our knees in humble supplication. But out there—in the world without—it is different. There we play the role of the humble, respectful, subservient fellow. We swear allegiance to alien gods and mock our ego and its powers.But sometimes the delusional greatness breaks out with pathological elementary force. We ought to keep our light under a bushel, trudge along with the multitude, day in, day out. Then all would be well. But destiny must notlift us to heights where our behaviour cannot escape observation and every one of our thoughts will be deduced from our actions. Success must not narcotise us to the extent of depriving us of that vestige of self-criticism which we so imperatively need in whatever situation life may place us. Success does not pacify the roaring of our megalomania. Success goads it with a thousand lashes of the whip so that it becomes restive and escapes from the security of the preserves of the soul. Is this still a healthy manifestation? Or are we already in the realm of the pathological? Is it the first delusion or the ultimate wisdom?The delusion of greatness penetrates whole classes of humanity, infecting them like a subtle poison against which there is almost no immunity. We have only to refer to the “affairs” of all kinds of artists of the first, second, and third rank. The delusional greatness of the artist usually appears along with the belittling mania displayed by his confreres, his immediate competitors. The higher we esteem ourselves, the more we depreciate our fellow climbers. That is the reason why the artist, drunk with his own ego, loses the power to be just, to measure the work of others by any but an egocentric standard. Should any one venture to show this megalomania its true image in the calm mirror of justice, he would be characterized a malicious enemy. In the struggle to maintain the hypertrophied ego-consciousness the delusionof greatness is assisted by a willing servant: the delusion of persecution.Along with the artist class there are many other vocations which to a certain extent gratify the delusion of greatness. In some callings this is a kind of idealistic compensation for the poor material returns. The megalomania of the Prussian officer, or the American professor (who are the butts of even the so-called harmless comic-journals) is an example. A close second to this is the megalomania of certain exclusive student organizations, patriotic megalomania, etc.We can no longer escape a generalization. We note that delusional greatness is a compensation for some privation or hardship. This is especially illuminating with reference to that patriotic delusional greatness which has nothing whatever to do with a wholly justifiable self-consciousness. The self-consciousness of the Briton emanates from his proud history and the imposing power of his nation. But we note that it is especially small nations, who ought in reason to be very modest, who are guilty of a tremendous self-overestimation. And they do not scruple to invent an illustrious past which is calculated to lend some show of historic justification for the national delusion.Exempla sunt odiosa.This mechanism teaches us how to estimate folk-psychology. A people behaves like an individual. So that our findings with referenceto the psychology of individuals may be applied to whole races, andvice versa.And here we note that the individual’s delusional greatness invariably has one and the same root: it is an over-compensation for an oppressive diminution of the ego-consciousness. The daily life about us offers innumerable proofs of this assertion. Persons particularly prone to delusional greatness are those who suffer from certain defects and who in youth had been subjected to painful, derisive, scornful, or depreciative criticism. Amongst these we find especially the halt, the lame, the partly blind, the stutterer, the humpbacked, the red-haired, the sick, etc.—in short, persons with some stigma. By the mechanism of over-compensation such individuals may manifest inordinately ambitious natures. Is it accidental that so many celebrated generals—Cæsar, Napoleon, Prince Eugene, Radetzky—were of small stature? Was it not precisely this smallness of stature which furnished the driving power that made them “great”? Instead of looking for the essence of genius in peculiar bodily proportions (which Popper finds to be in a long trunk and short legs!) it would prove a more gratifying task to ferret out those primary factors that have brought about an unusual expenditure of psychic energy in one particular direction.A very brilliant and suggestive hypothesis (advanced by Dr. Alfred Adler) attempts toaccount for all superior human gifts as an over-compensation for some original “inferiority.” Even if this principle may not prove true in every case, it can be demonstrated to have played a part in the development of many a case of superior merit in some field of mental endeavour. We are all familiar with largely authentic anecdotes about distinguished scholars, who have just managed to squeeze through in their final professional examinations. In their case, too, by over-compensation a conviction of their inferiority brought about a heightened interest in their work and this interest then became permanently fixed.Unawares we have wandered from the delusional greatness to true greatness. But who will presume to decide what is true greatness and what delusion? How many discoverers and inventors were ridiculed and their imposing greatness stigmatized as delusion, and how many intellectual ciphers rejoiced in the applause and the worship of their contemporaries! It is this fact which encourages a megalomaniac to permit the criticism of his contemporaries to “fly by him as the idle wind which he respects not.” If it is not true that all greatness is ignored, the opposite is true: every ignored person is one of the great ones. At least he is so to himself. Delusional greatness unites both criticism and recognition in a single tremendous ego-complex.The roots of this delusion, as of all purelypsychic maladies, are infantile. There was a time in the lives of all of us when we were the victims of a genuinely pathological delusion of greatness. In the days of our childhood we were consumed by a longing to be “big.” At first it was only the desire to be a “big man,” to be grown up. A little later and our desires fluttered across the sea of our thoughts like sea-gulls or flew like falcons into the unknown vast. We were kings, ministers of state, princes, ambassadors, generals, trapeze artists, conductors, firemen, or even butlers.And yet we are all surprised when a butler plants himself squarely before the door and assumes the easy port of a person of some standing and identifies himself with the master of the house and graciously dispenses his domestic favours. Are we then, much better, more sensible, or freer from prejudice? We too stand before the doors of our desires and act as if we believed that they are realities which we are obliged to guard.
There is no sharp dividing line between health and disease. One shades off into the other by imperceptible gradations. Disease grows out of health organically. There are a thousand transitions from the one to the other; a thousand fine threads link them together, and often not even the best physicians can determine where health ceases and disease begins. As Feuchtersleben says, there is no lyric leap in the epic of life. Nor do delusions make their entry unheralded into a well ordered mental life. Delusions slumber in all of us and wait for their prey. The quiet normal being is just as subject to them as the raving maniac with rolling congested eyes. We need only open our eyes understandingly upon the bustle and tumult of life to be able to exclaim with Hans Sachs: “Madness! Everywhere madness!”
Every form of insanity, one may say, has a physiological prototype. Melancholia takes for its model the little depressive attacks of everyday life; mania has its prototype in the unrestrained enthusiasm of the baseball “fan”; and even the various forms of paranoia, the true insanity, have their typical representativesamong normal persons. To bring out this kinship we need no better example than that offered by the delusion of greatness. This delusion is so bound up with the requirements of the human psyche, so organically knit together with the ego, that it constitutes an indispensable element of our ethical consciousness. Every one of us thinks himself the wisest, best, most conscientious, and so forth. Each one thinks himself indispensable. It is this delusional greatness of the normal person which makes life tolerable under even the hardest conditions. It gives us the strength to bear all our humiliations, disappointments, failures, and the “whips and scorns of time.”
Of course we are very careful to conceal this delusional greatness from the rest of the world. We all have our secret chapels in which we offer daily prayers and into which no one, not even our nearest, is permitted even to glance. In this chapel our idol sits enthroned, the prototype of majesty, “our ego,” before whom we bend our knees in humble supplication. But out there—in the world without—it is different. There we play the role of the humble, respectful, subservient fellow. We swear allegiance to alien gods and mock our ego and its powers.
But sometimes the delusional greatness breaks out with pathological elementary force. We ought to keep our light under a bushel, trudge along with the multitude, day in, day out. Then all would be well. But destiny must notlift us to heights where our behaviour cannot escape observation and every one of our thoughts will be deduced from our actions. Success must not narcotise us to the extent of depriving us of that vestige of self-criticism which we so imperatively need in whatever situation life may place us. Success does not pacify the roaring of our megalomania. Success goads it with a thousand lashes of the whip so that it becomes restive and escapes from the security of the preserves of the soul. Is this still a healthy manifestation? Or are we already in the realm of the pathological? Is it the first delusion or the ultimate wisdom?
The delusion of greatness penetrates whole classes of humanity, infecting them like a subtle poison against which there is almost no immunity. We have only to refer to the “affairs” of all kinds of artists of the first, second, and third rank. The delusional greatness of the artist usually appears along with the belittling mania displayed by his confreres, his immediate competitors. The higher we esteem ourselves, the more we depreciate our fellow climbers. That is the reason why the artist, drunk with his own ego, loses the power to be just, to measure the work of others by any but an egocentric standard. Should any one venture to show this megalomania its true image in the calm mirror of justice, he would be characterized a malicious enemy. In the struggle to maintain the hypertrophied ego-consciousness the delusionof greatness is assisted by a willing servant: the delusion of persecution.
Along with the artist class there are many other vocations which to a certain extent gratify the delusion of greatness. In some callings this is a kind of idealistic compensation for the poor material returns. The megalomania of the Prussian officer, or the American professor (who are the butts of even the so-called harmless comic-journals) is an example. A close second to this is the megalomania of certain exclusive student organizations, patriotic megalomania, etc.
We can no longer escape a generalization. We note that delusional greatness is a compensation for some privation or hardship. This is especially illuminating with reference to that patriotic delusional greatness which has nothing whatever to do with a wholly justifiable self-consciousness. The self-consciousness of the Briton emanates from his proud history and the imposing power of his nation. But we note that it is especially small nations, who ought in reason to be very modest, who are guilty of a tremendous self-overestimation. And they do not scruple to invent an illustrious past which is calculated to lend some show of historic justification for the national delusion.Exempla sunt odiosa.
This mechanism teaches us how to estimate folk-psychology. A people behaves like an individual. So that our findings with referenceto the psychology of individuals may be applied to whole races, andvice versa.
And here we note that the individual’s delusional greatness invariably has one and the same root: it is an over-compensation for an oppressive diminution of the ego-consciousness. The daily life about us offers innumerable proofs of this assertion. Persons particularly prone to delusional greatness are those who suffer from certain defects and who in youth had been subjected to painful, derisive, scornful, or depreciative criticism. Amongst these we find especially the halt, the lame, the partly blind, the stutterer, the humpbacked, the red-haired, the sick, etc.—in short, persons with some stigma. By the mechanism of over-compensation such individuals may manifest inordinately ambitious natures. Is it accidental that so many celebrated generals—Cæsar, Napoleon, Prince Eugene, Radetzky—were of small stature? Was it not precisely this smallness of stature which furnished the driving power that made them “great”? Instead of looking for the essence of genius in peculiar bodily proportions (which Popper finds to be in a long trunk and short legs!) it would prove a more gratifying task to ferret out those primary factors that have brought about an unusual expenditure of psychic energy in one particular direction.
A very brilliant and suggestive hypothesis (advanced by Dr. Alfred Adler) attempts toaccount for all superior human gifts as an over-compensation for some original “inferiority.” Even if this principle may not prove true in every case, it can be demonstrated to have played a part in the development of many a case of superior merit in some field of mental endeavour. We are all familiar with largely authentic anecdotes about distinguished scholars, who have just managed to squeeze through in their final professional examinations. In their case, too, by over-compensation a conviction of their inferiority brought about a heightened interest in their work and this interest then became permanently fixed.
Unawares we have wandered from the delusional greatness to true greatness. But who will presume to decide what is true greatness and what delusion? How many discoverers and inventors were ridiculed and their imposing greatness stigmatized as delusion, and how many intellectual ciphers rejoiced in the applause and the worship of their contemporaries! It is this fact which encourages a megalomaniac to permit the criticism of his contemporaries to “fly by him as the idle wind which he respects not.” If it is not true that all greatness is ignored, the opposite is true: every ignored person is one of the great ones. At least he is so to himself. Delusional greatness unites both criticism and recognition in a single tremendous ego-complex.
The roots of this delusion, as of all purelypsychic maladies, are infantile. There was a time in the lives of all of us when we were the victims of a genuinely pathological delusion of greatness. In the days of our childhood we were consumed by a longing to be “big.” At first it was only the desire to be a “big man,” to be grown up. A little later and our desires fluttered across the sea of our thoughts like sea-gulls or flew like falcons into the unknown vast. We were kings, ministers of state, princes, ambassadors, generals, trapeze artists, conductors, firemen, or even butlers.
And yet we are all surprised when a butler plants himself squarely before the door and assumes the easy port of a person of some standing and identifies himself with the master of the house and graciously dispenses his domestic favours. Are we then, much better, more sensible, or freer from prejudice? We too stand before the doors of our desires and act as if we believed that they are realities which we are obliged to guard.
RUNNING AWAY FROM THE HOMEOnce more the physician felt the young woman’s pulse. “But it’s impossible: you must not go out to-day; you are running the risk of a relapse. You stay in your beautiful home that you have furnished so cosily, so comfortably, and with such good taste. I have no objection, however, to your inviting a few friends, having a little music, chatting, gossiping, but—stay home!”The pretty self-willed woman pursed her lips at this and though her grimace was very becoming to her it seemed a little to vex her old doctor who had known her from her infancy. Somewhat irritated, he continued:—“I don’t just know what you mean by the moue. Must I point out the dangers of exposing yourself to a ‘fresh cold’? Do you insist on making a Sunday of every week-day? First, it’s a café, then, a restaurant! From a hot room into the cold, moist, windy atmosphere of a winter night!”“But staying home is so stale and unprofitable,” wailed the young woman. “Home! I’m home all the live-long week! Sunday, one wants a change! I want to see human beings! You are very disagreeable to-day, Doctor!”The old doctor gently patted the young woman’s cheek. “Still the same self-willed, obstinate child that will butt its head against the wall. Ah, you seem to have forgotten how nice and sociable your parents’ home was. Those never-to-be-forgotten Sundays! How we used to congregate there, a group of intimates—the young ones chatting and singing while the older ones played cards,—and every Sunday was a real holiday! And when things got a little more lively, then young and old romped together. Do you remember? Now and then someone would read us a new poem or the latest novel. How we did enjoy those Sundays! And how unforced and unconventional it all was! We would get our cup of tea or coffee and were as happy as happy as could be. But the things that are going on now seem to me, in my rôle as physician, to be a kind of neurosis, a something that I should call ‘the flight from home!’”“But, my dear doctor, must it be a neurosis? Is it necessary to brand everything as a disease?”“But it is a disease and its character as such is very clearly established by this one element: its compulsive character. The flight from the home is a compulsive idea, that is, an idea against which logic, persuasion, and appeals are of no avail.”“I think you are going too far,” replied the young woman. “If I insist upon going to the café to-day, I do it not because I do not like my home;no, I do it because at the café I get a kind of stimulation which I do not get at home. There I can look through various journals and papers that I cannot afford to have at home. I get a chance to see friends and acquaintances whom I could not receive at home so often. And the main thing, at any rate for a young woman who still wishes to please—and that, I am sure you won’t resent, you dear old psychologist!—the main thing is that there I see new people and—am seen by them. I know that in return I must put up with a few unpleasantnesses. Yes, there is the stuffy and smoky atmosphere, the continual din and noise, and so forth. But I really do think that we moderns need these things. We are not born to rest.”The physician shook his head.“No! Never! You will pardon, I hope, my telling you that yours is a very superficial psychology and does not go down to the heart of the problem. To the modern civilized human being his home seems to be an extremely disagreeable place. All his life he is fleeing from his home, from his environment, and—yes!—even from himself. An inner restlessness, a discontent that cannot be quenched, a nervous stress permeates the people of our time. What they possess seems to them stale, worthless. What they pursued madly disappoints them when they have attained it. They crave for change because they do not know how to make the best use of the present and of their possessions.How else can we understand the phenomenon that the whole world is happy to get away from the home and those who are incapable of running away long to do so? For, I am sure if you will give it careful thought you will confess that you call ‘experience’ only what happens to you away from home. The days at home don’t count. Am I right?”“Only partly so, my dear doctor. It does not tally with the facts—because nothing can be experienced at home. And I would be only too happy to receive my friends here daily, if it were possible. Don’t you know that servants would rebel at it? That they want to have their day off? That I must not expect them to do such work as waiting on my guests every Sunday? Why even on week days the invitation of guests causes a little rebellion in the ordinary household!”“And why must there be invitations? Must your visitors always be guests? Just look at Paris! There you may drop in on any of your acquaintances after 9 p.m. You may or you may not get a cup of tea. You chat a few hours and then depart. With us that’s impossible, because our so-called ‘Teas’ have assumed proportions which were formerly unknown. You invite one to come and have tea with you but instead of that you serve a luncheon and make a veritable banquet of it, going to a lot of trouble and expense, a course which must have bad consequences.”“Do you know, doctor, I think you are a magician! It’s only conventional politeness that makes us receive our guests cordially. But you must serve your friends something when you invite them for a little chat, mustn’t you?”“There you are again! How beautifully you chatter away so superficially! No, my dear! Nowadays one no longer invites friends to spend a pleasant time with them, but to show them a new gown or to impress them with the new furnishings. The main thing is to poison the friend’s peace of mind. If the guest’s face betrays all the colours of envy then the hostess has attained the acme of delight. One might almost say that their dissatisfaction with their lot in life drives human beings on to stir up discontent in the hearts of others. This sowing of dragon’s teeth bears evil fruit. For at the next ‘tea’ the friend has a more beautiful dress, perhaps some other new sensation, and her husband’s achievements and income mount to supernatural heights, if one is to believe the hostess’ eloquent speeches. Finally, there is no possibility of out-trumping her and there is nothing left to do but, in a more moderate tone, to fight out the rivalry on a neutral soil. The restaurant or the café is this neutral soil.”“And what are your objections to this neutral soil?”“My objections? The people lose the greatest pleasure that they could derive from one another.At home it must happen now and then that the walls which separate the inmates from one another fall, the wrappings that encase our inmost being burst, and soul speaks to soul. At home it is possible to devote the time to the nobler delights that life has to offer. At one time there can be—as there was in your own parents’ home—a reading, on another occasion singing or music. And would it be such a terrible misfortune to spend one’s holiday with one’s family, to be one with them, reviewing the week that is past or playing with the children and being a child again? Don’t you see that you are giving up the gold of home-life and pursuing the fool’s-gold of pleasure outside the home? You do see it, you know I am right, and a little voice within you implores and pleads: ‘Stay home! Stay home! here you are safe and comfortable!’ But another power, a power that is stronger than you, drives you out, rushes you away from peace and quiet to restlessness, and whirls you about. And this whirl, you call ‘life.’ What have these empty pleasures to offer us? What inspiration for the work-a-day life do they leave behind? Is this anything less than just simply killing the hours? I don’t want to spin out the old stuff about the dangers of pleasures, getting over-heated, catching cold, overtaxing one’s nervous energies, losing one’s sleep, etc. As to these things, I must admit, there is a great deal of exaggeration. One ought not to fly from pleasures. But they ought to serve as inspiringexceptions to break, as it were, the day, just as a trip does.”“But, my dear doctor, now you’ve caught yourself in your own springe. Is not a trip a flight from the home?”The young woman laughed hilariously. But the doctor—now that he had assumed the rôle of preacher—did not permit himself to be put off or confused.“Of course, the ordinary journey does belong to my theme. A trip may, in fact, constitute the crisis in our neurosis. A crisis that we must all go through, for we all—I am sorry to say, I too—suffer from this compulsive idea. As after every other crisis the invalid is for a time restored to health, so is it also after a trip. But only for a short time. A few weeks—and the compulsive idea is again manifest and the flight from the home begins again.”“Come, now, doctor!” interrupted the convalescent, “travelling is a necessity. As you so aptly said, we want to break the monotony of the day—to get out of the customary environment.”“That’s just what I want to designate as the chief symptom of the neurosis of our time. Everyone wants to get away from the customary environments. Everybody makes attempts at flight. Whether they succeed depends upon other social factors. Why is the customary environment repugnant to you?”“Because I crave a change. I do not knowwhy. But I have an instinctive longing for it.”“There you have it, my dear. It’s just as I said: It’s a compulsive idea. The flight from one’s environment, from one’s home, from one’s furniture, is the same as the flight from one’s house. To me every piece of furniture that I have used a long time has become so dear and so much a part of myself that I do not like to give them away and can only with difficulty part with them. And if I were to come into possession of a vast fortune to-day I could not renounce these dear associates to whom I am bound by so many memories. With all their shortcomings and modesty they are a thousand times dearer to me than the most beautiful English or secessionist furnishings. I’ll confess that in these matters I am not at all modern. For the moderns are glad when they can change something, and so they change their furniture, their carpets, their pictures, etc. About every ten years there is a change in the fashions and your housewife cannot bear not to be in style. One day you enter her house and you find new rooms. And just as the furnishings in the house are changed from time to time, so the residence too must be changed frequently—in fact, everything that can be changed is changed: The servants, the familyphysician, the music teacher, and, where it is possible, the husband and even the wife.”The young woman reflected a little. “There is much truth in what you say. It is in fact atremendous flight that we see enacted everywhere about us, a flight from oneself and from one’s environment. If I were to judge by my own feelings I should say that this fleeing has its origin in our life’s needs. Wewomenall have a large ‘Nora’ element in us and are waiting for the ‘miracle.’ Inasmuch as we cannot find it at home we look for it elsewhere. Believe me, doctor, most women do not fall because of sensual appetites. No! they fall because they crave for some experience. We experience too little. The monotony of the days asphyxiates us. And this great whirl of life, this senseless running after a change—as you call it—is only because our hearts are discontented, because our spirits are wrecked by the monotony and insipidity of our lives. Do you think that it will ever be different?”“Why not, pray? Some day a great physician must arise, an apostle of human love, whose voice will pierce the whirl and who will be capable of opening man’s stupid eyes: A new religion would do it, a religion that would satisfy all of humanity’s longings, a religion of work and the joy of life. Our time is ripe for a Messiah. Whether he will come——.”“Ah, he has come,” said the charming young woman, her face beaming. “For me you are the Messiah of domesticity! You have cured me of my flight neurosis. I shall stay home to-day, and as often as I can do so.”The old doctor took his leave with animatedsteps. With the power of his words he had once again reformed a human being.But his joy was short-lived. That afternoon, as he walked by a café on the main thoroughfare his eyes fell on a vivacious group within. And there he saw his recalcitrant patient who had evidently gone out only to get a chance to discuss thoroughly with her friends the theme: “The flight from the house.”
Once more the physician felt the young woman’s pulse. “But it’s impossible: you must not go out to-day; you are running the risk of a relapse. You stay in your beautiful home that you have furnished so cosily, so comfortably, and with such good taste. I have no objection, however, to your inviting a few friends, having a little music, chatting, gossiping, but—stay home!”
The pretty self-willed woman pursed her lips at this and though her grimace was very becoming to her it seemed a little to vex her old doctor who had known her from her infancy. Somewhat irritated, he continued:—
“I don’t just know what you mean by the moue. Must I point out the dangers of exposing yourself to a ‘fresh cold’? Do you insist on making a Sunday of every week-day? First, it’s a café, then, a restaurant! From a hot room into the cold, moist, windy atmosphere of a winter night!”
“But staying home is so stale and unprofitable,” wailed the young woman. “Home! I’m home all the live-long week! Sunday, one wants a change! I want to see human beings! You are very disagreeable to-day, Doctor!”
The old doctor gently patted the young woman’s cheek. “Still the same self-willed, obstinate child that will butt its head against the wall. Ah, you seem to have forgotten how nice and sociable your parents’ home was. Those never-to-be-forgotten Sundays! How we used to congregate there, a group of intimates—the young ones chatting and singing while the older ones played cards,—and every Sunday was a real holiday! And when things got a little more lively, then young and old romped together. Do you remember? Now and then someone would read us a new poem or the latest novel. How we did enjoy those Sundays! And how unforced and unconventional it all was! We would get our cup of tea or coffee and were as happy as happy as could be. But the things that are going on now seem to me, in my rôle as physician, to be a kind of neurosis, a something that I should call ‘the flight from home!’”
“But, my dear doctor, must it be a neurosis? Is it necessary to brand everything as a disease?”
“But it is a disease and its character as such is very clearly established by this one element: its compulsive character. The flight from the home is a compulsive idea, that is, an idea against which logic, persuasion, and appeals are of no avail.”
“I think you are going too far,” replied the young woman. “If I insist upon going to the café to-day, I do it not because I do not like my home;no, I do it because at the café I get a kind of stimulation which I do not get at home. There I can look through various journals and papers that I cannot afford to have at home. I get a chance to see friends and acquaintances whom I could not receive at home so often. And the main thing, at any rate for a young woman who still wishes to please—and that, I am sure you won’t resent, you dear old psychologist!—the main thing is that there I see new people and—am seen by them. I know that in return I must put up with a few unpleasantnesses. Yes, there is the stuffy and smoky atmosphere, the continual din and noise, and so forth. But I really do think that we moderns need these things. We are not born to rest.”
The physician shook his head.
“No! Never! You will pardon, I hope, my telling you that yours is a very superficial psychology and does not go down to the heart of the problem. To the modern civilized human being his home seems to be an extremely disagreeable place. All his life he is fleeing from his home, from his environment, and—yes!—even from himself. An inner restlessness, a discontent that cannot be quenched, a nervous stress permeates the people of our time. What they possess seems to them stale, worthless. What they pursued madly disappoints them when they have attained it. They crave for change because they do not know how to make the best use of the present and of their possessions.How else can we understand the phenomenon that the whole world is happy to get away from the home and those who are incapable of running away long to do so? For, I am sure if you will give it careful thought you will confess that you call ‘experience’ only what happens to you away from home. The days at home don’t count. Am I right?”
“Only partly so, my dear doctor. It does not tally with the facts—because nothing can be experienced at home. And I would be only too happy to receive my friends here daily, if it were possible. Don’t you know that servants would rebel at it? That they want to have their day off? That I must not expect them to do such work as waiting on my guests every Sunday? Why even on week days the invitation of guests causes a little rebellion in the ordinary household!”
“And why must there be invitations? Must your visitors always be guests? Just look at Paris! There you may drop in on any of your acquaintances after 9 p.m. You may or you may not get a cup of tea. You chat a few hours and then depart. With us that’s impossible, because our so-called ‘Teas’ have assumed proportions which were formerly unknown. You invite one to come and have tea with you but instead of that you serve a luncheon and make a veritable banquet of it, going to a lot of trouble and expense, a course which must have bad consequences.”
“Do you know, doctor, I think you are a magician! It’s only conventional politeness that makes us receive our guests cordially. But you must serve your friends something when you invite them for a little chat, mustn’t you?”
“There you are again! How beautifully you chatter away so superficially! No, my dear! Nowadays one no longer invites friends to spend a pleasant time with them, but to show them a new gown or to impress them with the new furnishings. The main thing is to poison the friend’s peace of mind. If the guest’s face betrays all the colours of envy then the hostess has attained the acme of delight. One might almost say that their dissatisfaction with their lot in life drives human beings on to stir up discontent in the hearts of others. This sowing of dragon’s teeth bears evil fruit. For at the next ‘tea’ the friend has a more beautiful dress, perhaps some other new sensation, and her husband’s achievements and income mount to supernatural heights, if one is to believe the hostess’ eloquent speeches. Finally, there is no possibility of out-trumping her and there is nothing left to do but, in a more moderate tone, to fight out the rivalry on a neutral soil. The restaurant or the café is this neutral soil.”
“And what are your objections to this neutral soil?”
“My objections? The people lose the greatest pleasure that they could derive from one another.At home it must happen now and then that the walls which separate the inmates from one another fall, the wrappings that encase our inmost being burst, and soul speaks to soul. At home it is possible to devote the time to the nobler delights that life has to offer. At one time there can be—as there was in your own parents’ home—a reading, on another occasion singing or music. And would it be such a terrible misfortune to spend one’s holiday with one’s family, to be one with them, reviewing the week that is past or playing with the children and being a child again? Don’t you see that you are giving up the gold of home-life and pursuing the fool’s-gold of pleasure outside the home? You do see it, you know I am right, and a little voice within you implores and pleads: ‘Stay home! Stay home! here you are safe and comfortable!’ But another power, a power that is stronger than you, drives you out, rushes you away from peace and quiet to restlessness, and whirls you about. And this whirl, you call ‘life.’ What have these empty pleasures to offer us? What inspiration for the work-a-day life do they leave behind? Is this anything less than just simply killing the hours? I don’t want to spin out the old stuff about the dangers of pleasures, getting over-heated, catching cold, overtaxing one’s nervous energies, losing one’s sleep, etc. As to these things, I must admit, there is a great deal of exaggeration. One ought not to fly from pleasures. But they ought to serve as inspiringexceptions to break, as it were, the day, just as a trip does.”
“But, my dear doctor, now you’ve caught yourself in your own springe. Is not a trip a flight from the home?”
The young woman laughed hilariously. But the doctor—now that he had assumed the rôle of preacher—did not permit himself to be put off or confused.
“Of course, the ordinary journey does belong to my theme. A trip may, in fact, constitute the crisis in our neurosis. A crisis that we must all go through, for we all—I am sorry to say, I too—suffer from this compulsive idea. As after every other crisis the invalid is for a time restored to health, so is it also after a trip. But only for a short time. A few weeks—and the compulsive idea is again manifest and the flight from the home begins again.”
“Come, now, doctor!” interrupted the convalescent, “travelling is a necessity. As you so aptly said, we want to break the monotony of the day—to get out of the customary environment.”
“That’s just what I want to designate as the chief symptom of the neurosis of our time. Everyone wants to get away from the customary environments. Everybody makes attempts at flight. Whether they succeed depends upon other social factors. Why is the customary environment repugnant to you?”
“Because I crave a change. I do not knowwhy. But I have an instinctive longing for it.”
“There you have it, my dear. It’s just as I said: It’s a compulsive idea. The flight from one’s environment, from one’s home, from one’s furniture, is the same as the flight from one’s house. To me every piece of furniture that I have used a long time has become so dear and so much a part of myself that I do not like to give them away and can only with difficulty part with them. And if I were to come into possession of a vast fortune to-day I could not renounce these dear associates to whom I am bound by so many memories. With all their shortcomings and modesty they are a thousand times dearer to me than the most beautiful English or secessionist furnishings. I’ll confess that in these matters I am not at all modern. For the moderns are glad when they can change something, and so they change their furniture, their carpets, their pictures, etc. About every ten years there is a change in the fashions and your housewife cannot bear not to be in style. One day you enter her house and you find new rooms. And just as the furnishings in the house are changed from time to time, so the residence too must be changed frequently—in fact, everything that can be changed is changed: The servants, the familyphysician, the music teacher, and, where it is possible, the husband and even the wife.”
The young woman reflected a little. “There is much truth in what you say. It is in fact atremendous flight that we see enacted everywhere about us, a flight from oneself and from one’s environment. If I were to judge by my own feelings I should say that this fleeing has its origin in our life’s needs. Wewomenall have a large ‘Nora’ element in us and are waiting for the ‘miracle.’ Inasmuch as we cannot find it at home we look for it elsewhere. Believe me, doctor, most women do not fall because of sensual appetites. No! they fall because they crave for some experience. We experience too little. The monotony of the days asphyxiates us. And this great whirl of life, this senseless running after a change—as you call it—is only because our hearts are discontented, because our spirits are wrecked by the monotony and insipidity of our lives. Do you think that it will ever be different?”
“Why not, pray? Some day a great physician must arise, an apostle of human love, whose voice will pierce the whirl and who will be capable of opening man’s stupid eyes: A new religion would do it, a religion that would satisfy all of humanity’s longings, a religion of work and the joy of life. Our time is ripe for a Messiah. Whether he will come——.”
“Ah, he has come,” said the charming young woman, her face beaming. “For me you are the Messiah of domesticity! You have cured me of my flight neurosis. I shall stay home to-day, and as often as I can do so.”
The old doctor took his leave with animatedsteps. With the power of his words he had once again reformed a human being.
But his joy was short-lived. That afternoon, as he walked by a café on the main thoroughfare his eyes fell on a vivacious group within. And there he saw his recalcitrant patient who had evidently gone out only to get a chance to discuss thoroughly with her friends the theme: “The flight from the house.”