THE WORLD AS WILL AND IDEA. VOLUME I.THIRD BOOK BY ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER
Part Three
Since the knowledge that pertains to genius, or the knowledge of Ideas, is that knowledge which does not follow the principle of sufficient reason, so, on the other hand, the knowledge which does follow that principle is that which gives us prudence and rationality in life, and which creates the sciences. Thus men of genius are affected with the deficiencies entailed in the neglect of this latter kind of knowledge. Yet what I say in this regard is subject to the limitation that it only concerns them in so far as and while they are actually engaged in that kind of knowledge which is peculiar to genius; and this is by no means at every moment of their lives, for the great though spontaneous exertion which is demanded for the comprehension of Ideas free from will must necessarily relax, and there are long intervals during which men of genius are placed in very much the same position as ordinary mortals, both as regards advantages and deficiencies. On this account the action of genius has always been regarded as an inspiration, as indeed the name indicates, as the action of & superhuman being distinct from the individual himself, and which takes possession of him only periodically.
The disinclination
of men of genius to direct their attention to the content of the principle
of sufficient reason will first show itself, with regard to the ground of
being, as a dislike of mathematics ; for its procedure is based upon the most
universal forms of the phenomenon space and time, which are themselves merely
modes of the principle of sufficient reason, and is consequently precisely
the opposite of that method of thought which seeks merely the content of the
phenomenon, the Idea which expresses itself in it apart from all relations.
The logical method of mathematics is also antagonistic to genius, for it docs
not satisfy but obstructs true insight, and presents merely a
chain of conclusions in accordance with the principle of the ground of knowing.
The mental faculty upon which it makes the greatest claim is memory, for it
is necessary
to recollect all the earlier propositions which are referred to. Experience
has also proved that men of great artistic genius have no faculty for mathematics;
no man was ever very distinguished for both. Alfieri relates that he was never
able to understand the fourth proposition of Euclid. Goethe was constantly
reproached with his want of mathematical knowledge by the ignorant opponents
of his theory of colours. Here certainly, where it was not a question of calculation
and measurement upon hypothetical data, but of direct knowledge by the understanding
of causes and effects, this reproach was so utterly absurd and inappropriate,
that by making it they have exposed their entire want of judgment, just as
much as by the rest of their ridiculous arguments. The fact that up to the
present day, nearly half a century after the appearance of Goethe s theory
of colours, even in Germany the Newtonian fallacies still have undisturbed
possession of the professorial chair, and men continue to speak quite seriously
of the seven homogeneous rays of light and their different refrangibility,
will some day be numbered among the great intellectual peculiarities of men
generally, and especially of Germans. From the same cause as we have referred
to above, may be explained the equally well-known fact that, conversely, admirable
mathematicians have very little susceptibility for works of fine art.
This is very naively expressed in the well-known anecdote of the French mathematician, who, after having read Racine’s “Iphigenia” shrugged his shoulders and asked, “Qu’est ce que cela prouve?” Further, as quick comprehension of relations in accordance with the laws of causality and motivation is what specially constitutes prudence or sagacity, a prudent man, so far as and while he is so, will not be a genius, and a man of genius,, so far as and while he is so, will not be a prudent man. Lastly, perceptive knowledge generally, in the province of which the Idea always lies, is directly opposed to rational or abstract knowledge, which is guided by the principle of the ground of knowing. It is also well known that we seldom find great genius united with pre-eminent reasonableness ; on the contrary, persons of genius are often subject to violent emotions and irrational passions. But the ground of this is not weakness of reason, but partly unwonted energy of that whole phenomenon of will the man of genius which expresses itself through the violence of all his acts of will, and partly preponderance of the knowledge of perception through the senses and understanding over abstract knowledge, producing a decided tendency to the perceptible, the exceedingly lively impressions of which so far outshine colourless concepts, that they take their place in the guidance of action, which consequently becomes irrational.
Accordingly the impression of the present moment is very strong with such persons, and carries them away into unconsidered action, violent emotions and passions. Moreover, since, in general, the knowledge of persons of genius has to some extent freed itself from the service of will, they will not in conversation think so much of the person they are addressing as of the thing they are speaking about, which is vividly present to them ; and therefore they are likely to judge or narrate things too objectively for their own interests ; they will not pass over in silence what would more prudently be concealed, and so forth. Finally, they are given to soliloquising, and in general may exhibit certain weaknesses which are actually akin to madness. It has often been remarked that there is a side at which genius and madness touch, and even pass over into each other, and indeed poetical inspiration has been called a kind of madness : amabilis insania, Horace calls it (Od. iii. 4), and Wieland in the introduction to “Oberon” speaks of it as “amiable madness.” Even Aristotle, as quoted by Seneca (De Tranq. Aniini, 15, 16), is reported to have said : Nullum magnum ingenium sine mixtura dementia fuit. Plato expresses it in the figure of the dark cave, referred to above (De Rep. 7), when he says “Those who, outside the cave, have seen the true sunlight and the things that have true being (Ideas), cannot afterwards see properly down in the cave, because their eyes are not accustomed to the darkness; they cannot distinguish the shadows, and are jeered at for their mistakes by those who have never left the cave and its shadows.”
In the “Phaedrus” also (p. 317), he distinctly says that there can be no true poet without a certain madness; in fact, (p. 327), that every one appears mad who recognises the eternal Ideas in fleeting things. Cicero also quotes: Negat enim sine furore, Democritus, quemquam poetam magnum esse posse ; quod idem dicit Plato (De Divin) And, lastly, Pope says “Great wits to madness sure are near allied, And thin partitions do their bounds divide.” Especially instructive in this respect is Goethe s “Torquato Tasso,” in which he shows us not only the suffering, the martyrdom of genius as such, but also how it constantly passes into madness. Finally, the fact of the direct connection of genius and madness is established by the biographies of great men of genius, such as Rousseau, Byron, and Alfieri, and by anecdotes from the lives of others. On the other hand, I must mention that, by a diligent search in lunatic asylums, I have found individual cases of patients who were unquestionably endowed with great talents, and whose genius distinctly appeared through their madness, which, however, had completely gained the upper hand. Now this cannot be ascribed to chance, for on the one hand the number of mad persons is relatively very small, and on the other hand a person of genius is a phenomenon which is rare beyond all ordinary estimation, and only appears in nature as the greatest exception. It will be sufficient to convince us of this if we compare the number of really great men of genius that the whole of civilised Europe has produced, both in ancient and modern times, with the two hundred and fifty millions who are always living in Europe, and who change entirely every thirty years. In estimating the number of men of out standing genius, we must of course only count those who have produced works which have retained through all time an enduring value for mankind. I shall not refrain from mentioning, that I have known some persons of decided, though not remarkable, mental superiority, who also showed a slight trace of insanity. It might seem from this that every advance of intellect beyond the ordinary measure, as an abnormal development, disposes to madness. In the meantime, however, I will explain as briefly as possible my view of the purely intellectual ground of the relation between genius and madness, for this will certainly assist the explanation of the real nature of genius, that is to say, of that mental endowment which alone can produce genuine works of art. But this necessitates a brief explanation of madness itself.
A clear and complete insight into the nature of madness, a correct and distinct conception of what constitutes the difference between the sane and the insane, has, as far as I know, not as yet been found. Neither reason nor understanding can be denied to madmen, for they talk and understand, and often draw very accurate conclusions; they also, as a rule, perceive what is present quite correctly, and apprehend the connection between cause and effect. Visions, like the phantasies of delirium, are no ordinary symptom of madness : delirium falsifies perception, madness the thoughts. For the most part, madmen do not err in the knowledge of what is immediately present; their raving always relates to what is absent and past, and only through these to their connection with what is present. Therefore it seems to me that their malady specially concerns the memory; not indeed that memory fails them entirely, for many of them know a great deal by heart, and sometimes recognise persons whom they have not seen for a long time; but rather that the thread of memory is broken, the continuity of its connection destroyed, and no uniformly connected recollection of the past is possible. Particular scenes of the past are known correctly, just like the particular present ; but there are gaps in their recollection which they fill up with fictions, and these are either always the same, in which case they become Fixed Ideas, and the madness that results is called monomania or melancholy; or they are always different, momentary fancies, and then it is called folly, fatuitas. This is why it is so difficult to find out their former life from lunatics when they enter an asylum. The true and the false are always mixed up in their memory.
Although the immediate present is correctly known, it becomes falsified through its fictitious connection with an imaginary past; they therefore regard themselves and others as identical with persons who exist only in their imaginary past; they do not recognise some of their acquaintances at all, and thus while they perceive correctly what is actually present, they have only false conceptions of its relations to what is absent. If the madness reaches a high degree, there is complete absence of memory, so that the madman is quite incapable of any reference to what is absent or past, and is only determined by the caprice of the moment in connection with the fictions which, in his mind, fill the past. In such a case, we are never for a moment safe from violence or murder, unless we constantly make the madman aware of the presence of superior force. The knowledge of the madman has this in common with that of the brute, both are confined to the present. What distinguishes them is that the brute has really no idea of the past as such, though the past acts upon it through the medium of custom, so that, for example, the dog recognises its former master even after year.- that is to say, it receives the wonted impression at the sight of him; but of the time that has passed since it saw him it has no recollection. The madman, on the other hand, always carries about in his reason an abstract past, but it is a false past, which exists only for him, and that either constantly, or only for the moment. The influence of this false past prevents the use of the true knowledge of the present which the brute is able to make. The fact that violent mental suffering or unexpected and terrible calamities should often produce madness, I explain in the following manner. All such suffering is as an actual event confined to the present. It is thus merely transitory, and is consequently never excessively heavy; it only becomes unendurably great when it is lasting pain; but as such it exists only in thought, and therefore lies in the memory. If now such a sorrow, such painful know ledge or reflection, is so bitter that it becomes altogether unbearable, and the individual is prostrated under it, then, terrified Nature seizes upon madness as the last resource of life; the mind so fearfully tortured at once destroys the thread of its memory, fills up the gaps with fictions, and thus seeks refuge in madness from the mental suffering that exceeds its strength, just as we cut off a mortified limb and replace it with a wooden one. The distracted Ajax, King Lear, and Ophelia may be taken as examples; for the creations of true genius, to which alone we can refer here, as universally known, are equal in truth to real persons; besides, in this case, frequent actual experience shows the same thing. A faint analogy of this kind of transition from pain to madness is to be found in the way in which all of us often seek, as it were mechanically, to drive away a painful thought that suddenly occurs to us by some loud exclamation or quick movement to turn ourselves from it, to distract our minds by force.
We see, from what has been said, that the madman has a true knowledge of what is actually present, and also of certain particulars of the past, but that he mistakes the connection, the relations, and therefore falls into error and talks nonsense. Now this is exactly the point at which he comes into contact with the man of genius; for he also leaves out of sight the knowledge of the connection of things, since he neglects that knowledge of relations which conforms to the principle of sufficient reason, in order to see in things only their Ideas, and to seek to comprehend their true nature, which manifests itself to perception, and in regard to which one thing represents its whole species, in which way, as Goethe says, one case is valid for a thousand. The particular object of his contemplation, or the present which is perceived by him with extraordinary vividness, appear in so strong a light that the other links of the chain to which they belong are at once thrown into the shade, and this gives rise to phenomena which have long been recognized as resembling those of madness. That which in particular given things exists only incompletely and weakened by modifications, is raised by the man of genius, through his way of contemplating it, to the Idea of the thing, to completeness: he therefore sees everywhere extremes, and therefore his own action tends to extremes; he cannot hit the mean, he lacks soberness, and the result is what we have said. He knows the Ideas completely but not the individuals. Therefore it has been said that a poet may know mankind deeply and thoroughly, and may yet have a very imperfect knowledge of men. He is easily deceived, and is a tool in the hands of the crafty.
Genius, then,
consists, according to our explanation, in the capacity for knowing, independently
of the principle of sufficient reason, not individual things, which
have their existence only in their relations, but the Ideas of such things,
and of being oneself the correlative of the Idea, and thus no longer an individual,
but the pure subject of knowledge. Yet this faculty must exist in all men
in a smaller and different degree; for if not, they would be just as incapable
of enjoying works of art as of producing them; they would have no susceptibility
for the beautiful or the sublime ; indeed, these words could have no meaning
for them. We must therefore assume that there exists in all men this power
of knowing the Ideas in things, and consequently of transcending their personality
for the moment, unless indeed there are some men who are capable of no aesthetic
pleasure at all. The man of genius excels ordinary men only by possessing
this kind of knowledge in a far higher degree and more continuously. Thus,
while under its influence he retains the presence of mind which is necessary
to enable him to repeat in a voluntary and intentional work what he has learned
in this manner ; and this repetition is the work of art. Through this he communicates
to others the Idea he has grasped. This Idea remains unchanged and the same,
so that aesthetic pleasure is one and the same whether it is called forth
by a work of art or directly by the contemplation of nature and life. The
work of art is only a means of facilitating the knowledge in which this pleasure
consists. That the Idea conies to us more easily from the work of art than
directly from nature and the real world, arises from the fact that the artist,
who knew only the Idea, no longer the actual, has reproduced in his work the
pure Idea, has abstracted it from the actual, omitting all disturbing accidents.
The artist lets us see the world through his eyes. That he has these eyes,
that he knows the inner nature of things apart from all their relations, is
the gift of genius, is inborn; but that he is able to lend us this gift, to
let us see with his eyes, is acquired, and is the technical side of art. Therefore,
after the account which I have given in the preceding pages of the inner nature
of aesthetical knowledge in its most general outlines, the following more
exact philosophical treatment of the beautiful and the sublime will explain
them both, in nature and in art, without separating them further. First of
all we shall consider what takes place in a man when he is affected by the
beautiful and the sublime; whether he derives this emotion directly from nature,
from life, or partakes of it only through the medium of art, does not make
any essential, but merely an external, difference.