GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN A PHILOSOPHICO-PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDY OF GENIUS, TALENT AND PHILISTINISM IN THEIR BEARINGS UPON HUMAN SOCIETY AND ITS STRUGGLE FOR A BETTER SOCIAL ORDER BY OSIAS L. "SCHWARZ «»( With a Preface by JACK LONDON and an Introductory Letter by MAX NORDAU Savoir, c’est prevoir; prevoir, c’est pouvoir; pouvoir c’est devoir.—A. Comte, M. Guyau Zur Wahrheit durch Entsagung.—O. L. S. OvSiv wpifa.—Zeno BOSTON: RICHARD G. BADGER TORONTO: THE COPP CLARK CO., LIMITED COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY RlCHABD G. BADGER All Rights Reserved Made in the United States of America The Gorham Press, Boston, U. S. A. TO MY WIFE: I Ich bin ein armer Denker, Hab’ weder Ruhm noch Geld; Doch hole mich der Henker, Ob so was mir vergallt Das Leben hier auf Erden, Wo manche Nullitat Sich stolz oft kann geberden Als gross’ Autoritat. II Das Einz’ge was ich bieten Dir, meine Liebste, kann, Sind reine Liebesbliihten Von einem treuen Mann. Ich kann auch auf den Schwingen Der kiihnen Phantasie Dich in die Sphare bringen Erhab’ner Philosophic, Von wo aus wenn Du schauen Wirst nach der kleinen Erd’, So wirst Du nicht mehr bauen Auf eitler Dinge Wert. Wie kleinlich und verganglich Erscheint auf dieser Hoh’, Wie leer und unzulanglich Alltaglich Freud’ und Weh! Nur Wahrheit und die Liebe Sind ew’ge, heil’ge Giiter: Die fiirchten keine Diebe Und brauchen keine Hiiter. III Drum liebe Deinen Denker So ohne Ruhm und Geld. Es hole mich der Henker, Ob ich Dir’s nicht vergelt’! O. L. S, Berlin, October 20, 1901. I Abseits von den Menchenwogen, Welche stromen hin und her, Unbewusst sich hingezogen Fiihlend nach erhab’ner Sphar’, Wandr’ich einsam, unbeachtet, Auf bewusstem, eig’nem Pfad, Wo mein Herz fortwahrend schmachtet Nach mehr Licht und guter Tat. II Und so wandernd ganz alleine Auf dem schweren Lebenspfad, Schopf’ ich, teure Liebste meine, Frischen Mut und neuen Rat Aus der heil’gen, reinen Liebe, Welche unser Herz belebt Und die harten Schichsalshiebe Zu vermindern ist bestrebt. O. L. S. Berlin, October 27, 1901. I Si l’on veut 6crire sur des matieres oil la connaissance ne peut provenir que de l’observation et la solidite que de la meditation, a ses heures sur des donnees complexes et de plus en plus nombreuses, il faut avant tout n’etre pas presse d’etre lu. En eifet, travailler en ces matures, c’est attendre. Attendre, c’est se laisser instruire par les choses, par les gens, par les livres, et plutot encore en profitant de ce qu’on les recontre qu’en se don- nant grand’ peine pour les aller chercher; car les livres, choses, gens, sont tous un peu comme les complaisants: questionnez-les, ils se font de votre avis; n’ayez pas l’air de vous soucier de leur opinion, leur pensee se trahit et la verity leur 6chappe. R. Topffer. (Reflexions d’un peintre genevois, t. II, p. 46.) II Was eine lange weite Strecke Im Leben von einander stand, Das kommt nun unter einer Decke Dem guten Leser in die Hand. Goethe. PREFACE “General Types of Superior Men” is one of those immortal, epoch-making works which appear only at very long intervals, and which leave an indelible, con- structive impression on the mind of the world and mark a century mile-stone on the arduous and painful path of the world’s intellectual development. This is so because such a work as this springs from the bottom- most deep of a prophetic soul which is moved by an insatiable and impervertible impulse for truth as well as by the purest love for the entire human family. This present work gives us vastly more than can be inferred from the title. The psychology of the various and many types of superior men is merely the nucleus of his subject from which Mr. Schwarz ventures into all regions of human knowledge in order to build up his original philosophy of human life. His philosophy, as embodied in this work and in two as yet unpublished works on ethics, is not the nebulous, lifeless, grandilo- quent but meaningless theorizing of our universities, but is the reasoning of an intensely original thinker— one who deals with the realism of life, who is not afraid to touch upon the fierce class struggle that seems to him to threaten to strangle human progress, and one who uses simple, easily intelligible language because he really has something freshly new and intelligible to say under the sun. One of Mr. Schwarz’s greatest merits is the fact that he voices a vigorous protest against the tendency of our capitalistic civilization towards over-specialization, 6 PREFACE which is egotistic unconcern about remote ends, totality of happiness, and wholeness of life. His work is truly a revival of Socrates’ fight against the shams and sophists who ever bend themselves to the dethronement of ethics and the instatement of the worship of mam- mon. What Sigmund Freud tries to accomplish with his psycho-analysis in the field of mental pathology, Mr. Schwarz (himself not so faithful and precise a disciple of Max Nordau as he strives to make himself believe) tries to accomplish in the field of social pathology by breathing into the various fields of human activity the revivifying air of sincerity, self-scrutiny, straight thinking, and plain speaking. What many of our radical writers have striven to accomplish indirectly, implicitly, concretely in novels of social criticism, Mr. Schwarz handles boldly, directly, and explicitly, not alone in this work, but in the two works on ethics pre- viously mentioned which it is to be hoped will soon see the light of day. Jack London. Glen Ellen, Sonoma Co., Calif. August 19, 1915. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. Definition, General Characteristics of Genius and Talent. Genius and Talent 11 General Characteristics of Their Fields of Ac- tivity—Difference of Degree—Aim and Abil- ity—Natural Interests—Self-Instruction—Gen- ius and Erudition—Memory—Imitation, Teach- ableness, Thouglit-Pride, Verbosity, Grandilo- quence. Superior and Average Mind 23 Social Significance—Impressibility, Conscious- ness, Personality—Difference in Thinking— Mental Harmony—Difference in Affection and Volition. Adaptation, Heredity, and Variability ... 45 Adaptation—Heredity—Variability and Prog- ress—Difference in Racial Influence—Genius and Nationality—Attitude Towards the Established Order of Things—True and False Superiority— Sociability—Difference in Intellectual Needs— Difference in Originality. II. Origin and Conditions. Origin, Causes 83 Heredity, Spontaneous Variations—Environ- ment—Necessity—Historical Progress of Gen- ius—Is Genius a Partial Increase of Abilities? —Social and Economic Causes of Philistinism —Economic Cause of Philistinism. Conditions, Incentives 99 Pain—Poverty—Poverty and Intellectual Fertil- ity—Isolation and Social Life—Division of Labor —Human and Animal Intelligence. III. Types of Superior Men, Intellectual Hierarchy. Types of Superior Men . . . ' . . .114 Observation and Interpretation—Impressibility— 8 CONTENTS chapteb page Sentimentalism and Cogitation—Subject-Matter and Method—Point of View and Aim—First Cause, Ultimate Result—Ability and Sphere of Interests—Contact with the Daily Life—Special- ism and Many-Sidedness. Intellectual Hierarchy, Classification . . 134 The Man of Action—Poet and Thinker—Juvenile and Mature Types—Classification—Hierarchy— Curves of Development—Scientist and Philoso- pher—Realistic and Romantic Thinker. IV. Creative Life 156 Imitation and Creation—Inspiration, Intuition— Quest of Truth—Thought and Language—Art, Poetry, Psychology—Play and Serious Activity —Wit and Humor—Dream and Dramatic Activ- ity—Dream Activity—Philosophy, Science, Ulti- mate Concepts. Idealism or Philosophic Ro- manticism—Scientific Laws—Causation — Ac- quisition and Limitations of Human Knowl- edge—Facts and Hypotheses—Diagrammatic Representation of the Evolution of Hypotheses, Theories, Philosophical Systems—Progress in Knowledge and Understanding—Evolution of Knowledge—Knowledge of Other Selves—The Various Organs of Knowledge—Potentiality— Truth and Error—Truth of Opposite Theories —Belief, Doubt, Law of Conservation—Truth, Beauty, Utility, Morality—Truth from the Cap- italistic Point of View—Quantity and Quality —Does the Actor Create?—Authorship. V. Affective Life 276 Solitude—Pain, Pleasure, Emotions—Wisdom and Aspirations—Morality, Success, Happiness, Love of Approbation. VI. Striving Life 297 Theory and Practise—Thinking and Acting— Aims and Activity—Reward for Right Acting— Leadership—Pursuit of Truth and Struggle for Existence—Pursuit of Social Happiness. VII. Influence Upon the Masses 329 Influence of Thinkers and Artists—Influence of Mystics—Why and How Far Is the Mass Influ- enced?—How Suggestion Works. VIII. Appreciation 349 Difficulties in Appreciation—Admiration With- out Adherence—Treatment of Superior Men and CHAPTER PAGE Their Social Usefulness—Mutual Appreciation Between Superior and Average Man—Self-Ap- preciation—Criteria of Genius—Appreciation and Reward of Genius Under the Capitalistic Regime. IX. Normality and Abnormality 387 Normal and Abnormal Ideals—Sane and Insane Genius—Normal and Abnormal Originality— Common Sense, Science, Speculation—Mysticism —Regressive Genius—Mathematical Mysticism— Psychic Poison—Sex and Mental Superiority— Genius and Paramnesia, Amnesia, Perceptional Obtuseness and Other Apparent Deficiencies. Index 425 CONTENTS 8 rue Henner, Paris, June 4th, 1912. My dear Mr. Schwarz, At last I have achieved the perusal of your Mss. with the additional notes; much later than I had anticipated; but I could not do it sooner, as I hate mere skipping and want to read carefully. I have never been more embarrassed to judge a work than in your case. If I were to discuss all your ideas—and the temptation to this course is very strong—I should have to write several volumes. This being out of the question, I must needs limit myself to mere generalities which are just as unsatisfactory to myself as to you. However, I have no choice. Your book is teeming with ideas, but still more seething with feelings. It is a vehement preaching in the old testamentary prophetic style, abrupt, fitful, violent, abundant, just as the momentary wrath or sorrow inspires the preacher; it is Isaiah holding forth on the structure of modern society and on the barren- ness and wickedness of the souls of contemporary civilized men. Your study on genius, pseudo-superior man and philistine is in reality a pretext for invective against the average man who is in fact an average beast. Your indictment against that type is wonderful in its quaintness, raciness and overwhelming power. It com- pares favorably with the very best, most scathing satires on the miserable creature man that I know of in the world literature. But it is dogmatic, not scien- tific, it is subjective and cannot claim that calm ob- jective argumentativeness that carries with it convic- 12 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN tion even to obtuse or oppositionally oriented minds. You charm by your wit, your imagery, your originality; you dazzle by your temperament, your vigor, your torrential and breezy dash and pluck; you stun with your thunder-bolts; but you scarcely ever stoop to prove, to discuss, to argue, to count with the possibility of a disagreeing opinion and to refute it. In detail, there are some statements and presump- tions which I deem dubious; your analysis of hereditary influences in the formation of genius is hazy. But this is of no importance. Only a pettyish carping critic would stop at it. We must span the whole, and this is, not dry, lifeless, pale abstractions, but impassioned, hot-blooded, flushing life. Your picture of real society, especially, I suppose, in America, is ghastly and appalling. Many of its features apply to civilized society everywhere and hold good in every country. Your idealism which makes you fervently believe that socialistic society would show none of the vices you so marvelously brand in the capitalistic society, is beautiful and lofty. I doubt, however, that you are right. Socialistic society would be constituted by, and composed of, men, and as, on your own showing, the philistine is vastly predominat- ing in our species, this stupid and evil fellow would carry his own shortcomings into socialistic society as well. The state of mankind is conditioned by the quality of men, not by institutions. Your mastery of English is astounding. Altogether you are a powerful writer and sure to achieve success in the long run. Yours very faithfully, Dr. Max Nordau. GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN CHAPTER I DEFINITION, GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF GENIUS AND TALENT GENIUS AND TALENT General Characteristics of Their Fields of Activity— The man of talent subsumes special cases, isolated phe- nomena, under a known general rule, under a known general law; the man of genius is rather concerned with ascending from a few special cases, from a few isolated phenomena, to a new general rule, to a new general law. But new generalizations are not the only field for the activity of a genius. Sagacity is displayed not only in discovering something quite new. It is not less required in reducing something unknown to something known, something apparently known to something really unknown; in identifying things commonly con- sidered unlike, as well as in separating or in discrimi- nating things vulgarly regarded as identical; in finding relations between things and events which to the tal- ented man seem entirely unrelated; in finding expression or means of realization for what in others are mere vague, groping, timid feelings and wishes. From a maximum of observations the talented man draws a minimum of conclusions, whereas the genius draws a maximum of conclusions from a minimum of observations. Talent is mostly concerned with apply- ing, interpreting, modifying, verifying, . . . the crea- tions of the genius. The startlingly novel creations of the genius are 12 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN largely due to the fact that he draws the material for his reasoning processes in particular and for his mental activities in general from all available sources, unhampered in hife selection by either prejudices or fear of consequences. He draws not only upon the limited scientific stock in trade and upon those con- scious personal experiences which enjoy scientific popu- larity and social approval, as the mere man of talent does, but he also draws upon the tabooed, unpopular, obscure facts and claims and upon the vast store of subconscious perceptions and long-forgotten memories. Only in distinction from the philistine who reacts to his mental torpor and dull daily routine by resorting at intervals to stimulants, intoxicants, excitements in order to break for a short while the barriers between the subconscious reservoir and the dried-up conscious streams of thought, and in distinction from the genuine psychic mediums, hypnotic subjects, crystal-gazers, clairvoyants, mind-readers, etc., who, when not resort- ing to the easier method of fraud, resort to artificially induced states of mental dissociation, inner absorption, hypersensitiveness, in order to dig up from their sub- conscious some forgotten trivial, personal memories and some directly or telepathically obtained percep- tions—the man of genius draws naturally, steadily, slowly, effortlessly, during his normal state upon the worth-while contents of his subconscious reservoir, by keeping the gates of his consciousness always wide open and by keeping his attention always concentrated upon some vital question or problem. And just as he draws fearlessly, impartially and patiently upon the vast but chaotic store of the subconscious, just so is it his prac- tise not to dismiss from his consciousness any thought, feeling, or impulse that claims his attention before hav- ing found for it the proper place or function in his mental economy, no matter how distasteful, unflatter- GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 13 ing, tabooed, unpresentable that thought, feeling or im- pulse may appear. And if, for some reason, he is com- pelled to deviate from this wholesome habit of constant self-scrutiny, psycho-analysis, intellectual impartiality, and to relegate certain thoughts to the subconscious, he never allows them to remain there long in an isolated, erratic, dissociated, non-incorporated state; for they may work havoc by developing into mental weeds (fixed ideas, phobias, obsessions, delusions, etc.) which tend to overrun, displace, replace, or break up the normal, primary personality. The hypermnesia of fever, dreams, trance, etc., proves that our subconscious or automatic mental ac- tivity (subconscious perception, memory, . . . ) is richer in contents, in receptivity and in invention, but poorer in orderliness, general harmony, organization, selection, adaptation, utilization, is less our own, than our conscious perception, conscious memory, conscious judgment. Conscious mental activity means to select those of our numerous present, past, and possible im- pressions which we can organize into a working mech- anism in conformity with our few dominant, driving, guiding ideas and ideals. There is no or little room in an average sane consciousness for ideas which do not fit into a teleological scheme: such ideas are con- sciously soon forgotten, although they may leave nomi- nal or verbal representatives in consciousness for a certain time. Conscious activity is never an exact repetition or copy of an older or usual activity; moreover, it is always selective, critical, teleological: it suspects, ex- pects, or tends towards harmony, an aim. Semi-con- scious, inspirational, spontaneous activity is a still greater deviation from the usual, but is not teleological for the actor or agent himself. Automatic behavior is an exact copy of an older one; it may tend towards 14 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN an aim, a priori unknown to the agent. The fact that a close observation can always detect a difference be- tween a really and a seemingly conscious activity, proves that consciousness is not a mere epiphenomenon, a mere mental image; it is a regulator, a factor helping in new situations, but disturbing in usual circum- stances. “Conscious” means influenced by, influencing, harmonizing with, the mind at large. The achievements of the talented men are conscious, anticipated, slightly original, voluntary; the creations of the genius are semi-conscious, inspirational, spontaneous, highly original; the average man is best fit for muscular or automatic activity. The convictions of the genius are mainly first-hand, i. e., drawn directly from the hard school of bitter personal experience, from the cosmical and social environment, and deeply rooted in his inner- most soul. Others’ opinions are wholly adopted by talented, and especially by average men. They do not separate fact from interpretation and appreciation (emotional interpretation); whereas the genius ex- tracts the objective components of the facts, adding his own interpretation and valuation if necessary. The intellectual seeds of thoughts planted into an average or talented mind, either perish or develop into thoughts more or less similar to their mother-thoughts; whereas the genius grafts his own thoughts and feelings upon those which are transplanted into his mind, and thus gives birth to improved, new intellectual plants. He invents means and ways of increasing the amount of truth, beauty, love, social happiness; of enriching and ennobling human life. Difference of Degree—Does the man of genius differ in degree or in kind, quantitatively or qualitatively, from the average man? How does he differ from the man of talent? It depends upon the point of view from which we GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 15 look at them simultaneously. What appears to be a quantitative difference from the objective point of view, appears as a qualitative difference from the sub- jective point of view. The abilities of the original man are not different from those of the routine man: they are merely more developed, richer in *results. Looked at from above, from the philosophical point of view, the genius may not seem much more than an average man. But from the social or human standpoint, the quantitative differ- ence seems so large that it can be taken for a difference in quality. If we look at their abilities, geniuses differ merely in degree from others; but if we look at their achievements, fields of activity, they differ in kind. All the mental processes (perceiving, remembering, imagining, judging, reflecting and their various com- binations) presuppose and arise from a dualism, a dis- crepancy between the self and the not-self, the present and the past, the present and the future, the actual and the possible, the known and the unknown. All these processes have in common such a dualism, and involve the same, irreducible elementary operations of discriminating, identifying, linking. They differ, how- ever, in the degree of complexity, of remoteness between the related facts. What is true of the various mental processes in one and the same individual, holds also of the mental processes of the genius when compared with those of the average man: The genius has no abilities different from those of the average man, he only has them in a larger quantity. Where the mental energy of the common mortal is soon exhausted when applied to simple, concrete facts having reference to his daily needs, the genius can apply his mental energy as easily in attacking abstract notions, whole complexes of facts having no immediate bearing upon the narrow 16 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN sphere of actual human interests. Aim and Ability.—Ability and aim, force and direc- tion, are inseparable. But this does not mean that the same ability, the same force, must always persist in the same direction, and cannot be turned towards a different aim; nor does it mean that the same aim cannot be attained, or at least striven after by differ- ent abilities. There is no limit to the number of aims, directions of activity; but the number and the magni- tude of the abilities, forces, impulses are limited. Hence arises the need of neglecting, reducing, subordi- nating some aims in favor of others. The mere fact of getting interested in a certain line of activity, of beginning to pursue a certain aim, reduces, often against our will and without our knowing it, our ability of pursuing other aims. Aims and means lie on the same line; only the means must be first passed through before the aim can be attained. This being often the only difference between means and aims, we understand why a means may become an aim and why an aim may become a means to a further end. Some geniuses differ from each other more in aim than in ability (various classes of scientists: physicists, chemists, geologists . . . ; various classes of artists: poets, novel- ists, dramatists; painters, sculptors, musicians, actors, etc.). Others differ from each other more in ability than in aim. Thus observers, scientists, philosophers, all pursue truth. Only the first stop at facts and simple relations, at perceptions; the second rise to more complex relations, to concrete concepts; the third rise to the most general concepts, to world-conceptions, to first principles. Philistines differ from geniuses in both aims and abilities. The talented man differs from the genius belonging to the same class more in than in aims. What for a more able man, for a genius, is a mere means or secondary aim, is for a talented or less GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 17 able man who works in the same direction a primary aim. What is a primary aim for a man working in one direction, for one class of genius and talent, is a mere secondary aim or a means for one working in a different direction, for another class of genius and talent, and vice versa. Natural Interests.—In addition to the difference in abilities, other fundamental differences between genius, talent and average mind must be looked for in the quality and quantity of their respective inborn, natural interests; for it is these interests that deter- mine the content and direction of our consciousness, perception, memory, imagination, revery, thinking; it is these interests that set in action or stimulate our mental abilities. We usually notice, remember, . . . spontaneously, involuntarily, easily, what we are di- rectly interested in; we notice, remember, . . . delib- erately, intentionally, vountarily, slowly, what we are indirectly interested in; we disregard, we relegate from our consciousness whatever is against our natural in- terests and inclinations. To the philistine, food, shel- ter, clothing, sexual love affairs, his bodily appearance, gossip, external approbation, material possessions, su- perficial intellectual pleasures, are just as serious af- fairs or aims of life as the pursuit of general, abstract, impersonal knowledge, of beauty, of social reform and social happiness, of self-perfection and self-approba- tion, of spiritual possessions, of refined and ethereal intellectual joys, are to the genius. The philistine is just as insatiable, just as philoneistic and persistent, and often just as original in his trivial pursuits and petty ambitions as the genius is in his lofty aspirations. Only the philistine insatiableness is detrimental to so- ciety as a whole, the philistine’s philoneism consists merely in love of new sensations, of fads, of fashion, of distinction, of new appearances. A philistine would feel 18 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN just as unhappy if he had to eat every day the same kind of food, and wear a whole year the same clothes, as a philosopher would feel if he were compelled to think continually the same few thoughts, and to read his whole life only one and the same book, say the Bible. The man of talent stands midway between the genius and the average man. The pseudo-superior man or the ordinary man of action, in addition to the philistine pursuits and the sham intellectual pursuits, and the semi-superior man, in addition to some real intellectual pursuits, strive also for power, influence, popularity, political or economic leadership. The natural interests or inclinations of an indi- vidual being given, the characteristic objects of his thoughts, the permanent content of his consciousness, and his characteristic ways of action follow as neces- sary corollaries; for qui veut la fin, vent les moyens. A great, exclusive interest in, or an intense desire for, a certain object, joined to a little ability, can ac- complish much more in that direction than a great ability guided by a feeble interest. Looking at the results alone, such an individual with an intense, one- sided desire, great perseverance, but little ability, is often mistaken for a genius. This is the case espe- cially of financial kings, political and military heroes, explorers. . . . True genius, however, is more or less universal; it attains many-sided results in a compara- tively short time, with comparatively little labor, with comparatively simple tools or apparatus, without pre- meditation, without perseverance conscious of its par- ticular aim. Self-Instruction.—In study, in self-instruction, the genius seeks rather confirmation of, than impulse for, his creations; whilst the talented man seeks rather im- pulse, stimulation for mental activity. Some learn in order to know; others read in order to GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 19 have something to talk about; a third class utilize their learning either for theoretical or for practical purposes, either for theoretical or financial speculations. Both extremes, the disinterested genius and the selfish ma- terialist, belong to the third class; dilettante readers, professors, etc., belong to the second group; scholars, serious readers, etc., belong to the first. To the superior man, to the man with genuine hunger for knowledge, books are a means of supplementing, completing, broadening, strengthening and unifying his knowledge gained from personal experience; in books he seeks stimulation to further thinking and personal observation or investigation; books serve to widen his intellectual horizon, i. e., to make his mind still more receptive for an ever-increasing field of impressions; they help him overcome, in imagination at least, the limitations imposed upon him by the daily routine and prosaic struggle for bread as well as by the shortness of human life; in books he looks for the acquaintance with such men, things and epochs as are not accessible to his direct observation. To him book knowledge is not—as it is to the pseudo-superior man—a substitute for the communion with men and Nature, for the personal search after knowledge, an excuse for laziness and parasitism, an object of luxury or a dead weight to be stored away, carried around and preserved intact in his memory in order to be displayed, boasted, exhibited on certain occasions; to him it is an indispensable brain food to be digested, assimilated and transformed into available energy, into dynamic, energizing, guiding ideas; unlike our dignified scholars, he does not allow his attention to be entirely absorbed by the opinions and speculations of others about men, things and life’s struggles, but prefers to consult the latter directly and to keep in touch therewith. Genius and Erudition.—In science the conservative 20 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN element is represented by scholars, savants; in prac- tical life it is represented by women. The more we know about the opinions of others, the less opinions of our own can we form. Vast erudition—narrow views. The memory of the pure scholars is puffed up with verbal wisdom and with studied words of praise, or ad- miration for acknowledged, past progress; but their own mental eyes are blind to the real progressive move- ments and intellectual fermentations going on under their very noses. Erudition is to, or, rather, beyond a certain extent, an obstacle to originality. Erudition is only a means to the original man, but no end in itself. In the works of others, the genius does not look so much for in- formation as for stimulation of his own creative activity. Memory.—The memory of the genius is assimila- tive; that of the savant is mainly reproductive. The memory of the genius is essentially assimilative, com- parative, harmonious, i. e., it retains those experiences which can be brought into connection with its own original content; whereas the memory of the savant and of the average man is chronological, topograph- ical, unharmonious, accumulative except in the sphere of his specialty or of his personal interests. The genius remembers what he understands; the others may come to understand in the long run what they remember, although too much memorizing, i. e., absorp- tion of too much intellectual food—especially if not called for by a higher or an organic need—usually hin- ders digestion, assimilation, understanding. Imitation, Teachableness.—Just as the human baby seems to be at a disadvantage, because of its clumsiness, helplessness, unadaptedness, when compared with many animals that come into the world almost completely equipped with instincts of self-preservation; GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 21 just so does the genius seem to be clumsy, backward, unteachable, unsociable, unadapted, slow-witted, when compared with the philistine and particularly with the pseudo-superior man, who learn quickly to imitate the language, manners, behavior of others and the outward form of everything. But just as the initial advantage of animals over men, i. e., their well-defined inherited abilities, proves a stumbling-block to learning from in- dividual experience, to further progress and self-ex- pansion; just so the apparent greater teachableness at school, the passive adaptability or inborn imitative- ness, the grasping of forms, conventions, surface of things of the philistine proves to be a stumbling-block to teachableness at the school of life, to creativeness or active adaptability, to mental self-development, to get- ting at the bottom, substance or essence of things, to finding the path to be followed under new, unusual cir- cumstances. The genius may show awkwardness and lack of skill in the field of tradition worship, routine and convention; but the philistine is absolutely helpless in the field of self-education, innovation, pioneering, coping with new and broad problems. Imitation of other people’s doings and sayings is the most natural, hence the easiest method of mental growth, in philistines, in one-sided and semi-superior individuals. Imitation, learning, begins, of course, with the mere form, outer appearance, word, or the letter of the true, beautiful, and the moral; and it ends with more or less complete assimilation of the hidden, invisible content. The growth of the genius proceeding from within, from content towards form, from thought and feeling towards expression, we can understand why he is un- able to imitate others, we understand why he is so awkwrard and hence so easily detected when he tries to speak and act without having the corresponding 22 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN convictions and feelings, we understand why an actor is very seldom a good playwright, and vice versa; we understand why the genius—even the many-sided— makes the impression of being less adaptable to new circumstances, less teachable, than the semi- and the pseudo-superior men. In the philistine and the pseudo- superior man, form and content are usually dissociated, or rather form is the all-important pursuit, form is an end-in-itself; whereas in the genuine superior man, form and content are inseparably connected: He can- not accept the one without the other, he cannot speak for the mere beauty of the sound, he cannot act like others for the mere sake of acting or of pleasing, he cannot act without feeling and pursuing ends in con- formity with his actions, he cannot adopt publicly, externally or temporarily, the form of higher thoughts and sentiments and pursue secretly, innerly or later baser ends like the pseudo-superior man. So that where the philistine has merely to adopt a form, the genius has to adopt simultaneously the content hidden therein; and this retards his success in learning from others. Where the philistine and the pseudo-superior man rest satisfied with a superficial, partial assimilation of others’ thoughts and feelings, the genius cannot refrain from going to the bottom, origin and end of things; he cannot refrain from following up the thoughts to their remotest antecedents and down to their remotest consequences. And this is another cause of his slowness in assimilating others’ ideas. The ap- parent quick-mindedness, quick-wittedness, teachable- ness, adaptability, many-sided education of pseudo-su- perior men lies in their lack of conscientiousness and in their purely formal, verbal, partial, disconnected, superficial, imitative learning from others. The pseudo- superior man is richer in words than in ideas, richer in expression than in feeling, richer in appearances than GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS in realities. The reverse is true of the genius. The genius, like an infant, disposes of more states of con- sciousness than of adequate words to express them. The philistine is poor in both ideas and corresponding words. Thought-pride, Verbosity, Grandiloquence.—Just as to the financial millionaire money has a very small sub- jective value, so the intellectual millionaire or the man of genius does not make so much of an original thought as the intellectually poor do. There is a thought-pride as well as a purse-pride. Verbosity and grandiloquence are an indirect be- trayal of thought-pride or intellectual snobbism; it is a substitute for self-praise and intellectual sterility. Verbosity is also a sign of thought-confusion; of in- ability to extricate and separate the clear, solid, valu- able thoughts from the ore of impure, muddy, useless, cumbersome, erroneous judgments. Hence genuine genius and verbosity are never found together. The very original man becomes blase to intellectual pleas- ures : Original ideas come naturally and easily to him, without any conscious or voluntary struggle on his part; not knowing the hardships of the struggle for truth, he cannot feel the joys of intellectual triumph. SUPERIOR AND AVERAGE MIND Social Significance.—Action precedes reaction; spon- taneous activity precedes voluntary activity; play pre- cedes serious activity; revery, imagination, hypothesis, precede perception of new realities or new facts. Se- rious activity consists of play activities which are modi- fied and oriented by the pressure of ungratified needs. Truths or facts are often nothing but verified and modified hypotheses, just as reaction is nothing but action modified by an external cause. The reaction is GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN not equal to the external action: it is merely propor- tional to it. The external action by itself could not provoke any reaction, if the body acted upon were not more or less self-active. Thus facts do not obtrude themselves upon the mentally inert individual, i. e., upon the unimaginative; education, argumentation, reason- ing, do not appeal to the philistine masses; insults are not quickly responded to by individuals who are free from vanity, unless these insults are calculated to wound the instinct of self-preservation. Children, women and the rich, whose needs are min- istered to by others, and who are kept aloof from the struggles against harsh realities, may indulge in play, revery, illusions, incomplete perceptions, unverified hypotheses. But adults, men, and the poor, who are thrown upon their own resources and, hence, have to face realities, must control and direct their activity, must verify their presuppositions and conform them to reality. The philistine masses, who indulge in all kinds of superstitions, mystical beliefs, illusions, preju- dices with regard to remote men and things that do not affect them directly, immediately and palpably, would be crushed out of existence if they did not form more or less correct opinions about men and things that constitute their immediate environment. The phil- istine does not see in men and things much more than he anticipated, nor does he anticipate very much. He does not see new facts unless they are forced upon his attention by geniuses and by the pressure of immediate circumstances, at the same time. If the genius is more impressed by the same things which act on everybody, it is because he is himself more disinterestedly active, it is because he anticipates more, it is because he is al- ways ready to meet half-way everything and everybody, since he does not waste too much energy, as the philis- tine does, on petty, trivial, selfish matters. If man is GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 25 much more capable of serious activity than animals, it is because—owing to his prolonged infancy—he has a much greater or richer store of play activities to draw upon in case of emergency. If human intelligence meets needs and external obstacles much more effectively than animals, it is because man exerts his intelligence even in the absence of needs or of obstacles, even before they arise and after their cessation. If the man of genius solves better than the philistine life problems of general, future, higher interest, it is because the per- sonal, momentary, selfish, bodily interests of the genius are reduced to a reasonable minimum, and hence do not absorb his entire attention and energy. Just as it is not so much the greater total relative weight of the brain as the greater weight and complexity of the frontal and parietal lobes which distinguishes the genius from the philistine; just so—to express the same thing in terms of energy—what characterizes the genius is not so much his greater total vital or merely mental energy as the greater surplus of mental energy which is at the disposal of higher, synthetic, conceptual, gen- eral, disinterested, prospective and retrospective think- ing, and which results from the fact that the genius spends a minimum of energy on lower, particular, per- sonal, present interests. It is easier to impart motion to a moving body than to a body at rest; for in the real world there is no such a condition as a zero velocity: A body at rest adheres ever more to its surroundings, henceN acquires an in- creasing negative velocity, which must be overcome be- fore the body can be set in motion. Just so knowledge or intellectual motion can be easily imparted to the thinking individual, but not to the adult philistine who did not stop at his childhood’s thoughtlessness or intel- lectual inertia, but adheres ever more to the fixed dog- mas, superstitions, customs of his immediate social 26 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN environment, and contracts an ever-increasing aver- sion to free, independent thinking. The genius is, in the animate world, the moving, progressive or dynamic element; he cannot take root anywhere; he moves freely —mentally, at least, if not bodily—from one social class, nation, race, to another; from the present to the past or to the future; from one object of thought to another. He is hated by the philistines, who form the static, conservative, nay, regressive element; for he recalls them from the easy, downward, catabolic path, and spurs them on along the arduous, onward, anabolic path of human life. A genius stands for a social organ, whose function is to elaborate a certain ideal, new aspiration, to be completed, counterbalanced by other aspirations elab- orated by other geniuses. In spite of the multi-lateral symmetry of the social organism, geniuses of the same class cannot so easily take the place of each other, for each has something sui generis, even when compared with those belonging to the same class. The average man stands for a mere social unit, social cell, easily replaceable, substitutable, frequently replaced and sub- stituted, and not infrequently misplaced on account of social imperfections, thus hindering the functioning of social organs, of geniuses. The moral geniuses form the brain, the cerebral or- gans, of the social organism. The agitators, organizers, leaders, form its nervous system: they carry to the moral geniuses detailed information as to the anomalies existing within human society; they give the signal of alarm in case anything goes wrong with human insti- tutions ; they also carry to the philistine masses, which represent the muscular system of the social organism, the general remedial measures devised and recommended for execution by the moral geniuses. The other gen- iuses, the purely technical, artistical, scientifical, philo- GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS sophical, merely play the role of organs concerned with particular functions but not with the welfare of the entire organism. The moral geniuses alone see to it— or, rather, will see to it—that the functions performed by these geniuses should run their normal course and should not be turned or shunted off into the channels of parasitic outgrowths, of intra- and extra-social parasites. Just as in the individual organism it is not the nerves that feel the pain or realize the cause of and remedy for the pain-producing disturbances, but the brain hid- den in its shelter does all this work noiselessly and un- ostentatiously; and just as in the individual organism there are special nerves, the sensory, afferent or centri- petal nerves, for transmitting to the brain the dis- turbances occurring in various parts of the organism, and other nerves, the motor, efferent or centrifugal, for reacting, according to the dictates of the brain, upon the causes of these disturbances: just so in the social organism it is not the pure agitators and pure truth-tellers that feel the grieves of mankind or elabo- rate suitable remedies, but the obscure, solitary, noise- less, moral geniuses do all this work. The pure truth- teller merely reports on abnormal conditions, iniquities, oppression, intolerance, without fully grasping their extent, deeper causes and far-reaching consequences. And the pure agitator stirs up the masses to action, without being fully aware of the imperiousness, scope, authorship of the message delivered -by him to the people. Since, however, the evolution of the social organism shows signs that it will not much longer fol- low the line of extreme specialization or differentiation, like the hierarchical evolution of the individual organ- ism, but will rather tend towards a democratic state of society in which all differentiation will be externalized, confined to tools, machinery, institutions, but not to 28 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN men, i. e., every member of society will be conscious of as many social happenings as possible, and capable of fitting into almost any social institution, function or position; it follows that we must not feel surprised to meet here and there with intellectual and artistic geniuses who are also moral geniuses, with intellectual producers who are also intellectual distributors, with moral geniuses who can also agitate or carry their own messages to the people—not to the too rough, stulti- fied, unthinking class—, with some agitators who really feel and partly elaborate themselves what they say, with dramatists who are also able to enact their own productions, etc. On the contrary, the opposite ought to surprise and pain us, viz., to find actors who mis- represent the author because they themselves are in- capable of feeling like him, with agitators who merely make a profession out of carrying the messages of hope and regeneration sent out by moral geniuses because they themselves are vain, selfish and incapable of self- sacrifice; in short, with interpreters who misinterpret the teachings and admonitions of geniuses. It ought to pain us that the masses have been so degraded to mere brainless tools by the spoliation or predatory sys- tem as to be deprived of understanding for the calmer expression of feelings and for the logic of the moral genius and to need the gesticulation, declamation, noise of the pure agitator in order to be aroused from their mental torpor. Impressibility, Consciousness, Personality.—The su- perior man, i. e., the man of great talent, has not only a more heterogeneous impressibility but also a more developed consciousness than the average man: His consciousness is more selective, teleological, differen- tiated, discriminating, orderly, harmonious, economi- cal, adaptive, spontaneous or self-active, and qualita- tively richer, i. e., richer in aims or interests. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 29 The average man leads a subconscious, suggestible, imitative life; only in new, unhabitual circumstances does he become self-conscious. When the tempest and the commotion of the unexpected is over, the average mind falls back into the sweet habitual sleep of its semi-conscious, hypnoidic life. The reverse is true of the normal superior man; his self-conscious personality is more stable, more steadily awake. The average man is hetero- and auto-suggestible, i. e., his systems of ideas can be harmonized only under the influence of an external authoritative will. Other- wise his mind is in a state of anarchy, disharmony, sub- ject to the tyranny of fixed ideas, false beliefs. The superior man is cosmico- and socio-suggestible, i. e., his systems of ideas are mutually harmonizing them- selves and under the control of real, objective relations. Blind imitation of local, self-styled authorities accounts for 99 per cent of an ordinary man’s thinking, feeling and doing. This is the reason why the statistical method is of such little use in psychology and social sciences. The personality of the original man is concentrated and determined rather by internal than by external factors. Changing the external factors (material pos- sessions, domestic, national, racial, professional in- fluences), the internal kernel is not intimately affected. The personality of the inferior man is dis-centrated, diffuse, determined and held together mostly under the pressure of external circumstances. On removing the latter the kernel soon volatilizes. If the educated philistines, and especially the pseudo- superior men, are so eager to live among or to be seen with a so-called better social class, it is not only be- cause they want to deceive others as to their value, but also because they themselves—owing to their suggesti- bility, imitativeness, mental mimicry—feel and tend to 30 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN become different in a different social environment. Only the genuine superior man, the man with a strong, original personality, can afford to mingle with all kinds of social elements without losing anything from his value; nay, he gains in many-sidedness and in consist- ency by doing so: by asserting and defending—either overtly or before his inner forum—his convictions, sen- timents, peculiarities, against those of others, he comes to find out which are of real, permanent, indestruct- ible social value and which are not worth being fought for and transmitted to posterity. The average man possesses on the whole less dis- criminative or selective ability and less motility and spontaneity than the genius; laymen less than special- ists ; females less than males; animals less than men; plants less than animals; inanimate and dead matter less than living matter or protoplasm. The philistine accepts almost indiscriminately the opinions and senti- ments thrust upon him by the men in authority; he hardly chooses his wife, friends, vocation, sources of enjoyment and information, etc.; he associates and makes friends with those with whom he happens to be thrown together; his horizon does not go much beyond the narrow circle of men and things into whose midst he happens to have been thrown by circumstances; he passively submits to the existing order of things, un- able as he is to conceive the possibility of a better one. His personality is so little his own, so little a product of his spontaneity and internal forces, and so much produced and maintained by immediate external, par- ticularly social, influences that it goes to pieces, i. e., he goes insane during a one or two years’ solitary con- finement, but it remains unaffected by a lifelong monot- onous occupation. The amount of solitude a man can bear, as well as the reciprocal of the amount of monot- onous work, blind obedience, compulsory sociability GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 31 with uncongenial men at which he begins to feel an- noyed, revolted, unhappy, could therefore serve as a measure of his individuality, originality, spontaneity, self-activity, independent personality. The average civilized man dreads nothing more than solitude, ostracism, the relaxation of the external in- fluences, suggestions or pressures, in the absence of which his unstable, volatile, hysterically predisposed mind threatens to break up, to disintegrate, to run wild or to fall into extreme, incurable hysteria. His apparent venality, his willingness to obey a master or to serve as a mere tool, his seemingly stupid or ungrate- ful opposition to socialism, anarchism or any other movement directed towards his emancipation, and his hero-worship, are reducible to his dre&d of mental dis- sociation if left to himself, or to his acquired inability to act spontaneously except within very narrow limits and only in one or two directions allowed by local pub- lic opinion and by his exploiters. External or social pressures brought to bear from all sides by various kinds of oppressors or exploiters prevent the average man’s mind from evolving, and split it up into innerly incoherent bundles of impulses; and these very same external pressures, which have destroyed the evolutive power and inner unity of the philistine’s soul, become now indispensable for the keeping up of its external, apparent, artificial integrity. The less one has in one’s self, the more does one try to have on, with, and around one’s self; the less abil- ity, the more noise about one’s own doings and merits; the less reason to be proud of one’s own merits, the more does one boast of those of others, of one’s descent, family, friends, club, party, sect, race, vocation, ma- terial possessions, social rank; the less esteem one de- serves, the more does one ask of one’s fellow-men, and the more vulnerable is one’s self-love; those are most GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN proud of their school education, profession, college, who have intellectually least profited from them. The philistine is in the social world what an inert body is in the physical realm. Like an inert body, the intellectual and the moral philistine do not enter into intellectual or moral activity from their own initi- ative or spontaneously: they need an impulse from without, from a foreign will. Nor do they cease persisting in beliefs, customs, moral practises, etc., im- posed upon them by intellectual or moral geniuses— even if the latter have become absurd, harmful—until an impulse towards a contrary or a different direction is given them. The spontaneity of the genius is like the spontaneity of an explosive which does not need an external cause proportional to its effects in order to explode; it is the apparent spontaneity of accumulated little causes which begin to act visibly merely upon the addition of another little cause, which seems to be the only one on account of its being the last and the noticed one. What distinguishes the philistine from the genius is the fact that in the former external influences remain separated, unconscious, dormant, and hence without appreciable effect; whereas in the latter these small impersonal cosmico-social influences are accumulated, summed up, concentrated until they give rise to new thoughts, sentiments or acts of will, personal and strong enough to externalize themselves and to act upon the inert minds of the philistines. Difference in Thinking.—What distinguishes the thinking of a superior man from that of the average man is the fact that a thinking process, once begun, in the mind of a superior man, tends to persist in the same direction, after the cessation of the external or internal stimulus; it tends to spread, not only over actual and present experiences, but also over past and possible ex- GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 33 periences and circumstances; whereas with the average man the thinking processes are of short duration and of little extension, and are aroused by immediate ex- ternal stimuli. To the genius, thinking is an organic, permanent need, an end-in-itself. To the philistine, thinking is either an adventitious, aimless, play activ- ity, or a mere means used only under the pressure and for the gratification of urgent bodily needs. Under ordinary circumstances, the philistine docs not care much, nor is he able, to meditate on general problems (origin, meaning, aim of human life and of the universe . . .), on questions having no direct and immediate bearing on his own material welfare. Only under the stimulus of intense psychical pain or deep discontentedness, and sometimes under the stimulus of a general surplus of vital energy, do such questions arise in his mind; but his thinking usually stops soon without having advanced much beyond the raising of the questions. Owing to cumulative hereditary ten- dencies, to spontaneous variations, or mutations, the organ of thinking—which in his philistine and semi- intellectual ancestors arose only adventitiously under the pressure of intense psychical pain, or of a great general surplus of vital energy—becomes in the genius permanent, endowed with specific energy which causes it to function under the stimulus of the slightest psy- chical pain, nay, even in the absence of such a stimulus, and even in the absence of a total, general surplus of vital energy. The genius discriminates in a thing and in a phe- nomenon, the typical, general, essential, permanent . . . from the individual, particular, accessory, change- able. . . . The philistine is inclined either to regard every object or phenomenon as particular, as sui generis, or to regard everything as typical. The man of talent, the scientist, are less penetrating and hence GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN more cautious than the man of genius: They observe a large number of similar things or phenomena before they dare to separate the typical from the individual. The philistine, like the child and the primitive man, mistakes fable for fact, second-hand for first-hand knowledge, the accidental for the essential, the form for the spirit, the ephemeral for the eternal, the means for the end, the copy for the original, tautologies for explanations, the particular for the general, the arti- ficial and the conventional for the natural, the change- able for the permanent, the trivial for the important, the local for the universal, the appearance for the reality, words for things, thoughts, feelings or will. This distinction between the philistine and the intellect- ual man in matters of general human interest is also found between the ignorant and the educated, the in- experienced and the experienced, between specialists and laymen, pupil and teacher, in matters of theoret- ical, indirect, practical interest. The philistine can- not discriminate in the present the vestiges of the past and the germs of the future; he is unable to see how the present can serve to reconstruct the past and to foretell the future. He does not discriminate between accidental, changeable, occasional, imagined, desired, subjective, apparent relations and material, essential, permanent, immutable, causal, real relations between things; between spiritual and material possessions. Compared with the slow, uncertain, groping infer- ences of the philistine and of the talented man, those of the genius make the impression of intuitions. Where the man of talent reasons, the man of genius perceives. Where the man of talent searches without finding, the man of genius finds without searching. Where the man of talent sees darkness, inextricable confusion, the genius sees light, clearness, obvious relations. Thinking, reason, docs not transcend experience. We GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 35 do not get by reasoning more than what is given in experience, i. e., in perception and feeling. Reason can only analyze and synthesize the data of experience, but it cannot increase their number. If from the present we draw conclusions as to the future, it is because ex- perience has shown us that the future is to the present what the present is to the past; that what is prominent in the present was a mere tendency in the past, hence what is a mere tentative to-day may become a reality to-morrow. If from a few particular known instances we draw conclusions as to the whole class, i. e., as to the unknown instances belonging to the same class, it is because experience has shown us that things, events, men having one attribute in common usually have or tend to have in common other attributes also. Our ex- perience teaches us not only what is, not only the real, but also what ought to be, the ideal; for the “ought” is one of the actual tendencies, the ideal is an exceptional or embryonal real, the future is embryonal in the present. If genius seems to transcend experience, it is be- cause the experience of the genius is richer, more con- scious of the whence and the whither than the experi- ence of the talented man and of philistines. It is be- cause the mental eye of the genius is tuned to perceive tendencies, nascent movements, while others are wholly absorbed in noisy actualities; his eye is tuned to look for the deeper similarity and unity of things, while others’ attention is entirely engrossed with superficial variety. Hence, what is reality, a general truth, a perception, a conscious or inner command, a clear state of mind, “Zweckbewusstes Streben,” an actual experi- ence to the genius, is still a dream, a particular truth, a bold inference, a law or duty or outer command, a dim state of mind, a vague desire timidly groping in the dark for expression or realization, a possible ex- 36 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN perience to the philistine. Formal, external, superficial, geographical, histor- ical, striking differences between men, things or phe- nomena, captivate the whole attention of the philistine and blind him as to the essential, inner, hidden, perma- nent, time- and space-independent, less striking simi- larities. And vice versa: Formal similarities take pos- session of the philistine’s entire attention or interest, and do not allow him to see essential differences. To the thinker, however, both geographical or spatial and historical or temporal differences, the differences be- tween nations and the differences between epochs, are not so much differences of kind or essence as of degree or form: Evolution is not so much creative as selec- tive; human progress is not so much in the line of in- tensity as of comprehensiveness, i. e., higher intellect, refined sentiments, and higher morality are not a prod- uct of modern times, or the exclusive possession of a certain race; and do not increase with time or place, but merely meet with ever more opportunity and ad- herents. Just as the railroad and the telegraph have practically reduced the bodily or physical distances between men; just so this insight into the permanent and universal similarities hidden beneath the changeable and local forms reduces considerably the soul- or psy- chical distances between men. And where the philistine mind sees nothing but bewildering chaos and unceasing disharmonies, deeper insight reveals to the thinker un- derlying order or unity and an ever-growing harmony. All our mental processes, even the simplest, most short-lived, and seemingly instantaneous, pass through stages of growth and of decay. Thus, the simplest process of sensation, if attended to, begins with a vague consciousness of some undifferentiated, unlocalized, un- identifiable experience; after a moment the process be- comes ever more differentiated into an experience of a GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS definite quality, intensity, duration, local sign . . .; in exceptionally favorable circumstances, this simple sen- sation may evolve or rather get incorporated into an increasing complex process of perception, apperception (= perception —j— memory), conception, general view. An incipient perception, an incipient recollection, is a vague experience of something indefinable, unnameable; after a while, if no other experience has captivated our attention, the perception or the recollection be- comes clearer, more differentiated, we discriminate it from other past and present experiences, we localize it, we classify it as novel, as familiar, as belonging to a certain setting, etc. Likewise, the conception of a class of things or of phenomena, the conception of a general or common property, begins with a vague sus- picion which only after days, months, years—if ever— takes on a definite, more or less sharply marked-off, shape. The stage of dissolution of a mental process is the reverse of the evolutional stage. Thus, if, after coming to a clear decision as to what to do and as to how, when, where, why do it, our attention happens to be captivated by some sudden flash of memory or of perception, our decision rolls back into the depths of subconsciousness, of indecision, from which it has pain- fully and elaborately been carried up to the heights of conscious, harmonious life: we first remember only what we decided to do, but we cannot recall the how, where, why . . .; then, we do not even know what we had de- cided to do, we merely know that something has been decided upon. Now, to revert to our subject of superior and of average minds to which I wanted to apply the above- given psychological considerations. In the philistine mind, mental processes, especially the conceptual proc- esses, never pass the embryonal stage of vagueness, in- definiteness, lack of individual characterization. The 38 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN unbalanced, nebulous, immature or decaying, mystical thinkers succeed occasionally in carrying their concep- tions very near the height of clearness, of intellectual safe standing ground; but either their intellectual cour- age or their intellectual strength fails: they become dizzy, and allow their conceptions to slip back into the dark abysses of unconsciousness, of intellectual con- fusion and uncertainty. Only the balanced intellectual genius succeeds in maintaining some concepts upon the luminous heights of clear thinking. Only the ideal man of action, the volitional genius, is fully conscious of his wishes, aspirations, and means of reaching them. The volitional philistine only knows that he wishes to live differently; but what this difference consists in he does not even suspect. And volitional talent knows what it craves for, but it does not know how to give it reality. The emotionally talented man feels the pressure of a strong feeling in his heart; but how to deliver his heart, how to bring this emotional child to daylight, how to bring it up to full maturity and to social usefulness: this task is left over for the emotional genius. The normal average man is intellectualy anthropo- centric, and emotionally ego-centric, which is not iden- tical with egoism; the intellectually superior man is intellectually cosmo-centric, and emotionally ego- or anthropo-centric; the morally superior man is intellect- ually and emotionally anthropo-centric. The common mortal turns his mind to disinterested thinking when he is free from material preoccupations; the superior man does so in spite of the cares and troubles of the daily life. The thinking function of the common mortal, and especially of women, is not yet differentiated; it has no specific energy at its dis- posal ; it works only in the case of a surplus of energy, or under the pressure of immediate necessity; it is in- GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 39 termittent, adventitious, unstable. Common sense rea- sons sanely, but very seldom clearly; whereas philo- sophical speculation reasons clearly rather than sanely. The moral philistine, after having secured some spot of solid ground in the midst of the stormy ocean of human life, may begin to feel interested in the lot of his less fortunate brothers who are driven around by the merciless, savagely raving storms; he may come to con- sider those who worry about others’ troubles as not mere eccentrics. Whereas the moral genius is deeply pained by the sight of his drowning fellow-men, and he devises schemes of bringing them to the solid ground which he sees extending near at hand and in great abundance, while he himself is floating around upon unsteady waves foaming with rage and is in danger of being swallowed up himself at any moment by the bot- tomless abyss. The art-philistine becomes aware of the beauties of Nature only after—and not before—he has become free from material cares, from the uncer- tain struggles for economic security. Nature with her elementary, untamed forces, the ocean with its raging, stormy waves, are beautiful to look at, but not to strug- gle against. Just as one cannot afford to rejoice in the contemplation of the muscular strength and dexterity of wild beasts before these beasts have gone out of sight, or have been rendered inoffensive by being im- prisoned behind the iron railings of menagerie cages; just so with the rest of nature: until the men of genius have taught their fellow-men how to domesticate nat- ural forces, animals, and plants, to make provision for the future, Nature was—as she still is for the pariahs of modern civilization—a vast reservoir of inimical forces, a vast hiding-place of unexpected, ubiquitous, steadily lurking dangers for man to avoid or to contend with. Nature’s apparent and hidden beauties remained unnoticed by the majority of primitive men who were 40 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN ignorant of her laws and ways, whose entire time and energy were consumed by the struggle against the un- chained, capricious forces. Her horrors disappear for the civilized man in proportion as he comes to know her better, to comply with her laws, to domesticate ever more of her forces, to secure ever more solid standing- ground from which to contemplate safely the rest of the untamed domain of nature, to secure ever more provi- sions for the future in order to be able to indulge in revery and in retrospections. The man of genius for whom ideals are not mere dreams, but anticipated future realities; the man of genius for whose mental eye the potentialities of cosmic and of human nature are quasi- actualities, may enjoy, anticipatingly, the beauties of Nature, while she is still treating him stepmotherly. The moral genius may rejoice, anticipatingly, over the beauties, amenities, bright opportunities of a future human society—while being ill-treated and roughly handled by actual human society—because he sees it potentially existing in the present, because he rests satisfied with a minimum of material gratifications in order to save the rest of his time and energy for the contemplation and pursuit of higher aspirations. Mental Harmony.—In the mind of the average man there is an apparent harmony between the most an- tagonistic and contradictory states of consciousness, just as there seems to be harmony between savage peo- ples wrho never come in contact. This state of affairs is neither harmony nor disharmony: it is anharmony. True harmony must be preceded by more or less con- flict. The harmony in the mind of the superior man is like the harmony between civilized nations who have learned to appreciate the advantages of peace and co- operation in the light of the disadvantages resulting from a previous state of wTar. The great mass of av- erage men live in continual contradiction between words GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 41 and deeds, between opinion and behavior. Their life is full of contradictions, inconsistencies, for the simple reason that they lack the capacity for self-scrutiny and their opinions are impressed from without, and are not the product of an inner evolution. Hence, their con- tradictions are more extramental than mental; they exist for others rather than for the actor himself. In other words, the average man is not illogical, he is alogical; his mind is not dis-harmonious, it is an-har- monious, or broken up into disconnected compartments. Mental disharmony seems to be the prerogative of the thinking man, either in the initial or in the declin- ing stage of his evolution. In the average mind, cruelty and kindness, superstitions and sound judgments, pred- atory and cooperative impulses, live side by side with- out coming into contact for lack of a unifying, self- scrutinizing, higher brain organ. As affections, or emotions, have a centrifugal, dif- fusive, directly communicative character; and as ideas, convictions, are centripetal, concentrative, but indi- rectly communicative; we understand why opposite, contrary, contradictory emotions never coexist in mind at the same moment, for they either neutralize each other, or predominate alternately; we understand why even philistines may attain emotional harmony, al- though there is disharmony, contradiction, between their convictions. Harmony between ideas, thoughts, convic- tions, is indirectly established through their accom- panying affective components. Only convictions, theor- ies, general views springing from within, from the depth of our soul, are accompanied by strong affections. Whenever a new theory on a certain matter is thrust upon the attention of an original man having theories of his own on the same matter, he feels immediately whether the new theory agrees with his own or not, even before he is able to bring forward logical argu- GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN merits for or against it. Before he is able to confront the theories themselves, he feels the agreement, or the opposition between their irradiating emotional waves. Whereas the convictions, theories, of the philistine, of the semi- and the pseudo-superior man, being imposed from without, are rather superficial, deprived of emo- tional roots and ramifications of their own, more or less skilfully grafted upon vain and selfish ideas and desires; we understand therefore why there is no har- mony, at best no lasting harmony, between their ideas; we can understand why they can simultaneously give their assent to contradictory theories, to religion and science, to knowledge and superstition, to capitalism and socialism. Their only means of testing a new theory is to see whether it subserves personal interests, whether it does not run counter to the approval of in- fluential, prominent men, whether its verbal adoption is conducive to an increase in popularity. Difference in Affection and Volition.—In the evolu- tion of mental activity from the average man to the thinker, the following law seems to dominate the affec- tive and volitional aspects. The thinker gains in dura- tion and clearness what he loses in rapidity and intens- ity. Irritability, impulsiveness, intolerance become, or make room for, sensibility, deliberation, tolerance. In psychology, like in mechanics, the products “duration X rapidity” or “clearness X intensity” remain con- stant, as we advance from the unthinking to the think- ing stage. The affections of the philistine, especially of women, have the following characteristics: (a) They are in- tense, promptly aroused, but inconstant, short-lived, and vague (unconscious of origin and aim). (b) There is no differentiation, no purity, no independence of sen- timents: The object of love is at the same time an object of admiration, sexual attraction, respect, pride, GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS hope, joy, envy . . the object of hatred is also an object of contempt, anger, disrespect, fear, shame, sorrow . . .; self-love is inextricably mixed or alloyed with self-conceit. Thus to the moral philistine, poverty (including the poor man) is at the same time an ob- ject of pity, contempt, ridicule, antipathy, dread . . and wealth (including the wealthy) an object of de- sire, wmrship, admiration, love, confidence. ... (c) There is an undue extension or transference of senti- ments from one quality of the object inspiring them to all the other qualities which by themselves would not be able to inspire the same sentiments, nay, which would often inspire quite the opposite sentiment. Thus the philistine cannot admire the intelligence of a man and despise his character at the same time; he cannot love merits and find defects also, (d) Undue extension or transference of sentiments to other objects having purely superficial or accidental connections with the primary object of love or of hatred. If the philistine loves or hates a person, nation, race, he also loves or hates their possessions, wearing apparel, pet animals, manners, language, etc. (e) The philistine’s affections are evoked by, and often entirely concentrated upon, the mere form, symbol, name, outward or accidental and per se insignificant qualities of the object. This can be seen in sexual fetichism, idolatry, superstitions, beliefs, individual and collective antipathies. ... (f) Between two opposite emotions there are no, or merely embryonal, intermediary emotions. Thus women es- pecially may swing back and forth between love and hatred without stopping at any transitional sentiment (sympathy, warm politeness, indifference, cold or formal politeness, antipathy). They may swing al- most instantaneously from extreme enthusiasm, exalta- tion, happiness, blind confidence, conviction ... to extreme unhappiness, depression, discouragement, ab- 44 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN solute distrust . . . without stopping at any inter- mediary step (zeal, interest, indifference, disinclination; contentedness, indifference, discontentedness, etc.). (g) The philistine mistakes an interested, associative or heteronomous affection for a disinterested, directly pro- duced, objective, autonomous affection, (h) The phil- istine is philoneistic in the realm of sensations and emo- tions, but misoneistic in the realm of ideas, thoughts. The reverse holds of the scientific and philosophic genius. The artist and the poet discover new emotional sources in the old objects of affection; the philistine looks for new emotions by changing the object of his affection. This accounts partly for the rapid spread- ing of alcohol, tobacco, narcotics, new beverages, new foods, new fashions, new objects of affection. This ac- counts partly for the fact that modern and civilized men differ from previous generations and from uncivi- lized men much more in objects of affection, in language, food, shelter, clothing, than in the affections themselves and in beliefs, convictions, ideas, (i) Parallel to the philistine’s hopeless confusion and inextricable mixture of thoughts (mistaking of identical objects for differ- ent ones, and vice versa; mistaking of appearances for realities; inability to analyze a manifold; inability to discriminate between necessary and contingent . . .) there runs a confusion and mixture in his affections. Parallel to his narrow-mindedness, ignorance, erroneous judgments there is narrow-heartedness, indifference or lack of sympathy, misplaced and uncalled-for affec- tions, undeserved antipathies, emotional outbreaks at the wrong moment and in undue proportion. Not only most of his opinions about, but also most of his affec- tions towards, things and persons, and himself, come from without, through hetero-suggestion. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 45 ADAPTATION, HEREDITY AND VARIABILITY Adaptation.—The genius anticipates the future. The common mortal is adapted to actual circumstances ; the genius is adapted to ideal future circumstances which are potentially contained in actuality. Like a converging lens, the genius concentrates the weak, un- conscious, scattered tendencies of the mass of philis- tines into a luminous, conscious, life-producing focus. The direct influence of the cosmico-social environment does not rise to the level of consciousness in the average mind. Only through the suggestive intermediation of the genius does it gain entrance into it, after having undergone many mutilations. The common mortal, left to himself, adapts himself negatively: by fleeing, forgetting, renouncing; by drowning thought in ferverish, aimless, single-aimed activity; by indulging in illusions, hopes, appearances, stupefying practises and beverages; by seeking refuge in torpor, sleep, ecstasy, mysticism, nirvana. The genius causes positive adaptations: change of environ- ment, of self, or of both. The sane genius is highly adaptable; his mental equilibrium is stable, i. e., en- vironmental influences displace, or lift his psychical center of gravity or the center of his vital interests, and this displacement is gradual and proportional to the external cause. The insane man has an unstable mental equilibrium; an insignificant external cause may suddenly and ir- recoverably overthrow the center of his vital interests. The average man is adaptable only under the combined influence of the environment and of the geniuses; he has an indifferent mental equilibrium; if new environ- mental influences supervene, he cannot displace accord- ingly his psychical center of gravity without the assist- ance of the geniuses. 46 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN The male is variable, adaptable, teachable (which, of course, has nothing to do with verbal or school teach- ing), acquisitive, original. The female is stable, con- servative, imitative, individually or ontogenetically un- progressive. Thus many a man born in the so-called higher stations of life has adapted himself, when he had to, to the rough, harsh, uncertain, struggling life of the poor; whereas even women born in poverty can never adapt themselves to the difficulties, uncertainties and lack of luxuries of such a life. That so-called lowly born women fit in easily in higher ranks, if good luck brings them there, is no proof of adaptation. A smooth course of life does not demand any effort, and the aristocratic atmosphere with its empty convention- alities is nothing new to any woman, for whom simula- tion, the desire to please or to make impression by any means, is a natural, inborn aim of life. Intelligence means, primarily, the ability to adapt one’s self to changeable, uncertain surroundings, with a minimum of action or expenditure of energy, and with a minimum of loss. Animal and philistine adaptation consists either in running away from unfavorable sur- roundings, or in persistent efforts, untiring, blind at- tempts to overcome them. Human and original adapta- tion neither gives up the struggle altogether to seek refuge in vegetation, torpor, forgetfulness, self-decep- tion, self-stupefaction, nor does it persist in continual, blind, exhausting, harmful action, but looks for the most economical way of changing either the environ- ment or the subject himself. The genius, in distinc- tion from the philistine, and man, in distinction from animals, is neither over-active nor indolent, i. e., averse to action in general; he is rather lazy, i. e., averse to muscular effort, especially to useless and harmful ef- fort. The moral genius is seemingly less adaptable to actual social circumstances than the a-moral and the GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 47 immoral genius who have no self-respect, no moral char- acter to fight for or to guard against mutilation. The genuine intellectual genius for whom thinking, or the pursuit of knowledge, has become an aim-in-itself, is ap- parently less adaptable to our modern social environ- ment than the pseudo-superior man in whom thinking has remained a means of furthering his personal well- being, of regulating and economizing his expenditure of energy. But the genuine intellectual genius has an- other way of saving his energy, viz., by renouncing the gratification of vanity and of the desire for material luxuries. The moral genius does not fight against human laziness or aversion to muscular effort, for he knows that man’s strength and progress does not lie in the direction of muscular growth but in the direc- tion of brain development. He merely fights against laziness at the expense of one’s fellow-men, while he praises laziness which results from and leads to re- flective subjugation of natural forces. He knows that laziness is not such a hateful thing as selfish and parasitical employers would have their employees be- lieve; if it were so, they would not reserve laziness as a privilege for themselves. The moral genius hates drudgery, bestial display of muscular action, just as much as he does extreme general laziness, torpor, vegetation, simultaneous inertia of mind and body. A lower kind of bodily adaptation, a passive or sub- missive adaptation, is seen in plants and in cold-blooded or poikilo-thermous animals, whose life-intensity fluct- uates with the fluctuations in the atmospherical, aqua- tic and food-supplying conditions; these animals can or rather must even suspend their life activities, if they are unable to keep pace with external fluctuations in temperature, moisture, etc. Very primitive is the adaptation of these animals and of most plants—es- pecially of the so-called hibernating and aestivating—■ 48 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN and of primitive men, to fluctuations in the food-sup- plying conditions. They can gorge themselves with a seemingly unlimited amount of food, if there is plenty of it; they can also stand starvation, if there is no food supply: a kind of inter-cellular and inter-organic cannibalism is going on which enables the more essen- tial organs and cells to eat up the less esential; the life functions are reduced to a minimum, or even to zero, so as to reduce the expenditure of energy. A higher degree of bodily adaptation, an active or pro- gressive adaptation, is to make the body independent, within certain limits, of external fluctuations. Thus the warm-blooded animals, by means of internal heat- producing mechanisms, sudoriferous (sweat) glands, etc., succeed in maintaining their temperature, moisture, life rhythm more or less uniform or constant, in spite of external fluctuations. Likewise, the habit of storing away food, and agriculture, give independence of the fluctuations in the food-supply conditions. What has been said about bodily adaptation holds also of psychical and social adaptation. There is a lower, passive or philistine type of adaptation to one’s social environment which consists in allowing one’s con- victions and sentiments to fluctuate in accordance with, to take on the color of, one’s changing social environ- ment. The adult philistine becomes more imitative, suggestible, hypnotizable, i.e., he suspends his own judgment and critical ability, and becomes a believer among believers, skeptical among skeptics, cynical among cynics, tyrannical and selfish among exploiters, etc.; or he gives up his mental activity altogether and becomes a stupid, docile, harmless, intellectually inert and indifferent individual. The higher kind of adapation to one’s social envi- ronment is that of the genius who either creates for him- self a social environment in conformity with his OAvn GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 49 convictions and sentiments; or keeps at a distance from others so as to preserve his individuality against the crushing burden of imposed beliefs. Unlike the emo- tional individual whose psychical equilibrium is exposed to being disturbed by the fluctuating, capricious changes of fate and of human affections; the intellect- ual individual is well equipped with psychical self-pro- tective mechanisms which enable him to preserve his mental temperature and equilibrium by discriminating between realities and appearances, between realizable and unrealizable wishes; by eliminating vanity, illusory aspirations, wishes whose fulfilment depends on others; by transforming dreams into realities; by avoiding too close contact with capricious men; by learning how to calm down capricious emotional upheavals, etc. The more accelerated the growth of a living being is in a certain direction or along a certain evolutional path, and the farther it travels thereon the less is its chance and ability of changing direction and of fol- lowing a better, higher-leading, new path. The more moldable by environment animals are, the less capable are they of molding and transforming it, or of creating a better artificial environment. The more adapted an 50 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN animal is to a given environment, the less adaptable does it prove in case of an environmental change. The philistine and the man belonging to an inferior race are bodily more developed, i. e., nearer to the mature simian type than the intellectual man and the man belonging to a superior race, who bodily stand nearer to the in- fantile type. What one gains in adaptiveness to one’s given en- vironment, one loses in adaptableness to a new or dif- ferent environment. In other words, the more we con- fine ourselves to the pursuit of a few objects near at hand, the less able we become to pursue the numerous and as yet remote or non-existent ends. In order to live one must be somehow adapted to one’s surround- ings. The degenerate is unadaptable but not un- adapted. Or, more correctly, he is actively, but not passively, unadaptable. He lives because he has found some simpler, smoother, more frictionless conditions and surroundings; but he could not survive if these conditions, too, would change or be taken away from him. An extreme degree of degeneration is to be both actively and passively inadaptable: such an individual, if there be such a one, could not survive any change in his habitual course of life. The actively adaptable is unadapted to, dissatisfied with, existing or stable conditions ; he is capable and fond of initiating changes ; he has the power to resist, to change, select, subdue, ex- ternal influences, and to assert, maintain, freely modify his natural or inborn tendencies. The adapted is pas- sively adaptable to slowly changing conditions, but in- adaptable to rapid, and still less to sudden, changes; he is imitative, submissive, yielding, self-surrendering, renunciating, suggestible. In prehistoric times, the bodily stronger but psychi- cally less adaptable dark races drove the bodily weaker but psychically more adaptable white race away from GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 51 the warm zone, which does not demand much exertion and initiative on the part of the living beings which inhabit it. Heredity.— Heredity means persistence and trans- mittal of old environmental influences, i. e., of the or- ganism’s reactions thereto, as long as the provocative environmental causes remain the same or vary but slightly, i. e., in details only. The genius inherits the parental tendencies to react in a modified way to the environmental changes. The philistine inherits the rougher, more organized, more primitive ways of reac- tion. The genius inherits the potential, undeveloped, unfinished, unrecorded, insecure, socially unprotected, variable mental possessions of his parents; whereas the philistine inherits their actual, developed, localized, se- cure, constant, socially approved mental possessions. What in the parents or ancestors was but a timid, nas- cent, acquired, secondary way of reaction, becomes in the genius a regular, natural, instinctive, primary way of reaction; and the primary reactions of the ancestors (struggle for food, shelter, clothing, social rank, re- production . . .) become either all or most of them secondary in the genius; they become subordinate to his intellectual, social, or other ideals, i. e., he is ready to sacrifice them or to reduce them to an indispensable minimum in case of conflict with the latter. The experiences passed through during an individ- ual’s lifetime can neither destroy natural impulses nor create new ones. All they can accomplish is to slightly increase or decrease the natural, inherited proclivities. Thus a naturally truth-loving individual cannot very well become an accomplished, undetected liar or im- postor, in spite of his bitter experiences due to sin- cerity. An individual’s experiences do, however, get accumulated, summed up, in the form of instincts, emo- tions, in his descendants, provided the external physico- 52 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN social circumstances remain the same, i. e., cause the descendants to have experiences similar to those of their ancestors. The more intellectually gifted an in- dividual is, the more easily can he free himself from inherited impulses which are counteracted by his nat- ural environment, or the more easily can he change his environment so as to support his natural proclivities. It was natural for prehistoric man to inherit and to preserve various emotions, or instincts of fear (fear of darkness, animals . . .), for his environment was full of dangers threatening his life at every step. But if a modern man is haunted by the same phobias which are no longer justified by his environment and individ- ual experiences, it is a case of degeneration, of atavism, at best of philistine inertia. Instinctive suspicion, with- holding of truth from, and cruelty towards, strangers, which is natural in primitive peoples surrounded by in- imical tribes, is often to be considered as pathological, or at best as philistine conservatism in a civilized man who ought rather to cultivate emotions of altruism, effusiveness, communicativeness. Variability and Progress.—Progress, evolution, de- velopment, means adaptive change, i. e., a change to the benefit of the organism undergoing it. Progress does not mean continual, uninterrupted, rapid change or variation. Progress means change at the moment and in the direction needed. What, for instance, would become of human intercourse if language varied rapidly, if the number of dialects increased instead of being re- duced? Linguistic evolution means increasing clear- ness, comprehensibility,and economy of the correspond- ence between words and ideas; but all these require- ments necessitate fixity, uniformity rather than va- riability, slow rather than rapid change. Nor does progress necessarily imply absolute novelty, increasing complexity. Progress may often require a return to GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 53 older and simpler ways. Progress, like anything else, is rather characterized by its aims and results than by its means, rather by its content than by its form. Progress is not necessarily simultaneous in all the parts or functions of an individual or social organism; it often necessitates temporary stagnation or even regress in some of them. Not only the genius, but the philistine also is variable. Only in the philistine the tendencies towards variability are weak, repressible, and do not meet with an intelligence that can seize upon, retain, reinforce the adaptive ones, and neglect, eliminate the non-adaptive. The philistine’s tendencies to vary re- main latent until they get an additional stimulus com- ing from geniuses with irrepressible tendencies to vary. The philistine is variable, but not progressive; imita- tive but not creative; original in form, trivial and sim- ple matters, but not in content, important and com- plicated matters. What is progress, adaptation, advantageous varia- tion, to a certain individual or social class, may mean regress, maladjustment, disadvantage, for mankind as a whole. What is progress for mankind may be irrele- vant, meaningless to the universe. What is a disad- vantage, a voluntary or non-voluntary maladjustment, for the genius, results in advantages, better adjustment for human society as a whole. Hence, from the social standpoint, from the standpoint of social progress, the genius is more adaptable than the philistine; whereas from the standpoint of the individual’s interests, the philistine may be and often is better adapted, better fitted for survival, which does not mean that he is more adaptable than the genius. Thus, for instance, the moral genius knows very well the tricky ways and means of our so-called successful men; but his higher ideals, his self-respect, make him despise such a course of life. The philistines make often the impression of being more GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN adaptable than geniuses, because they easily imitate, and get accustomed to, the external appearances and manifestations of new situations, if they are compelled to. But, at bottom, they assimilate and understand just as little of the spirit of progress as their uncivilized, primitive brothers and sisters. And women often seem more adaptable than men because women are never brought into really novel circumstances: at various times, in various places, in various social classes, women in reality have to play one and the same role, viz., the role of inspiring, spreading, refusing love, with or with- out domestic drudgery in addition; the actress and the play remain the same, only the language and the costume vary. Progress means to come ever nearer to one’s aims or goals. Human progress or civilization means a quali- tative and quantitative increase in the realization of economic, intellectual, emotional, aesthetic and moral ends. It means increasing security of livelihood, in- creasing number of means for the gratification of bodily needs, increasing certainty and generality (comprehen- siveness) of knowledge, increasing number in the sources of healthful enjoyment, increasing happiness, solidar- ity, love, liberty or respect for individuality among men. In short: It means to enrich and to intensify human life, to lengthen it spiritually if not materially, to in- crease it qualitatively if not quantitatively. Spencer’s formula of evolution as applied to human societies em- phasizes the formal, irrelevant, outer aspect; but fails to touch the kernel, the soul, of the matter. As an at- tempt to embrace in a single glance such a vast field of seemingly disparate phenomena from the vertiginous height of philosophical generalization, Spencer’s form- ula certainly deserves all our praise and admiration. But the respect for the boldness and lofty aim of the attempt must not blind us as to the meagerness of the GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 55 results. The method by which progress is effectuated is ac- tive adaptation, i. e., change of cosmical and social en- vironment ; creation of better, securer, more constant, artificial surroundings; domestication of physical and of psychical forces; weeding out of harmful variations in self and in not-self; seizing upon and cultivating use- ful variations. Difference in Racial Influence.—Bodily differences between different races are more pronounced, more nat- ural, than psychical differences; and geniuses belonging to different races differ still less in the latter respect than the average men of different races. This fact can easily be explained if we keep in mind that the body is adapted to relatively stable physical circumstances limited in time and space, whereas the mind is a product and a factor of superior adaptation to unstable, change- able, past, present and possible physical and social cir- cumstances. Geographically, the various races live in different circumstances, but intellectually they live or tend to live in the same world. Actual circumstances may differ from race to race, but possible circum- stances are the same for all races. Hence, the uni- formity of the philosophical temperament all over the world. Bodily and externally, man is dependent on, shaped by, and has to conform with, the physical and the social environment. Mentally, however, the superior man mas- ters and shapes the environment in conformity with his needs and wishes, and makes himself within certain limits independent of it. The stronger one’s inner mental life, i. e., the greater one’s genius, the more indepen- dent does he become of his physical and social en- vironment; the less is he influenced by so-called racial and national mental traits which are not permanent, stable and natural, as ethnical psychologists would 56 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN have us believe, but accidental, superficial, changeable, artificial, due to philistine, or compulsory, imitation of tone-setting pseudo-superior men. Genius and Nationality.—The more isolated a group of men, a community, tribe or nation, the less isolation, solitude, freedom or independence, do its in- dividual members enjoy, and the less is the number of thought-stimulating influences acting on them. With increasing relations or intercourse between nations, the originality and normal peculiarities of individuals increase, while the national or abnormal, unnatural peculiarities disappear: national and individual origin- ality are inversely proportional. The peculiarity of a province or nation consists in the uniformity or lack of peculiarity in its individual members, i. e., in their enforced unilateral development. What distinguishes provinces or nations from each other is not funda- mental differences but the accentuation or greater fre- quency of certain common human qualities in some nations and of other qualities in other nations. That these provincial and national mental characteristics are mostly superficial, enforced, artificial, simulated, is proved by the fact that the children of immigrants do not differ psychically from the children of natives: The sons of supposedly effusive, impulsive, emotional Italians become self-controlled, reticent, taciturn, foxy, intellectual-looking Yankees; the child of a sup- posedly monotheistically predisposed, peace-loving Jew can be brought up to become a fanatic polytheist or a pugnacious Gentile. The more original an individual is, the less national characteristics does he possess. Geniuses belonging to different nationalities resemble each other both physi- cally and psychically much more than they resemble their own countrymen; not only geniuses, but also average men belonging to different nationalities but GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 57 having the same profession, sympathize with and re- semble each other much more than their own country- men who follow different professions. So artificial and purely accidental or compulsory a matter is the division of mankind into nations; patriotism usually unmasks itself as being a cloak for class interests; rulers and capitalists of one nation intermarry with those of other nations, and feel degraded if one of their class intermarries with a member of a socially or finan- cially lower class, although belonging to the same nation. Attitude Towards the Established Order of Things. —The common mortal accepts the world and its actual organization as a complex of indisputable, inalterable facts; the superior man of an extreme moral idealism refuses it any reason of existence; the balanced idealist accepts the world and human society as a complex of facts on the way of being transformed, capable of be- ing remodeled. Desire, belief, knowledge, do not form three inde- pendent, differentiated processes in the mind of the average man (and still less in women): he does not believe nor does he try to know what he does not de- sire to be true; he is convinced of and believes in his superiority, immortality, etc., because he desires it; whereas the thinking man strives to know the world in order to change his desires and beliefs accordingly, where the contrary is not feasible. The average man, when he becomes sentimental, swings between hope and fear, between the extremes of rose-tinted optimism and pessimistic wailings; the balanced superior man persists in meliorism. Modern pragmatism is a relapse into this primitive, undifferentiated, philistine way of thinking. William James, one of the most brilliant among modern sophists, frankly dethrones logic; in his “Will to Believe” he reduces truth or reality to a mere 58 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN product of our beliefs, and later in his “Pragmatism” and “Meaning of Truth” he makes the last regressive step, i.e., he subsumes both knowledge or truth and belief under value, utility, or human desires. To the average man, the ideal is realized somewhere or nowhere; to the superior man, the ideal is projected into the future. The ideals of perfection, justice, goodness, etc., are conceived by the inferior man in the form of actual realities (God, paradise, etc.) ex- isting externally, in a remote space. The superior man conceives them as possibilities, existing internally and potentially, as possibilities that the human soul is gradually approaching—like the parabola its asymp- totes—which, in other words, tend to become realities in an infinite time. The men of genius form the periphery of the hu- man phalanx; they are more in touch with the sur- rounding environment, with the cosmical and social milieu; they receive the first impact, the first blows, which they transmit in a mitigated form to the great mass of men, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, they transmit the accumulated unconscious reactions of the mass in the form of conscious, apparently spon- taneous reaction against the environment. The philistine has a blind, disinterested respect for the established institutions, for established opinions; he judges their soundness by the number of adherents, regardless of the psychical and other differences be- tween the adherents; he looks up to them as indisput- able, immutable, divine institutions which are beyond comprehension, beyond criticism. The pseudo-supe- rior man is an interested, insincere worshiper of suc- cess. He never attacks a harmful social institution, a misleading and erroneous system of beliefs, as long as they are in power and in favor with the majority, as long as it pays better to be on good terms with them. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 59 He never defends a nascent theory, a nascent institu- tion, as long as it is dangerous, risky, unremunerative to do so. Only the genuine genius does not allow him- self to be carried away by the torrent of blind and of interested worshipers, or by the imposing externals and by the momentum of a long past, or by the aureola of traditions. The only raison d’etre of theories, be- liefs, opinions, he finds in their amount of truth. The only title to existence of social organs or institutions he finds in their social usefulness, i.e., in their perform- ing more efficiently, more economically, the functions which single members or private groups of members of the community perform but imperfectly, inefficiently; just as in the individual organism cutaneous respira- tion and cutaneous elimination of waste products do not render superfluous the more efficient pulmonary breathing or the more efficient elimination through the kidneys, nor would the brain enjoy the privilege of being constantly supplied with food even in times of starvation if it were not of unique, paramount, in- dispensable importance to the whole organism. The philistine’s conservatism or reverence for and idealization of the existing order is nothing but the obverse of his misoneism or aversion and opposition to real, fundamental, far-reaching changes. Thus the proletarian philistine may overcome his natural mis- oneism to the extent of seeing the advantage of trades unions, whose object it is to force exploiters to pay higher wages, to improve the working conditions, but he is unable to go a few steps further with the socialists and industrial unionists and strive to do away with exploitation altogether. The minority of aristocratic or predatory philistines, in their turn, may go the length of conceding a few superficial, formal, partial, apparent reforms; but—even when they herald them- selves as liberals, progressives, reformers, etc.—they 60 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN remain bent upon preserving the old social organiza- tion based upon slavery, upon a more or less disguised oppression, exploitation of their weak, poor, defense- less, friendless, foreign fellowmen, whom they drive either into a shiftless, erratic, insecure livelihood or into lifelong vegetation and monotonous drudgery. True and False Superiority.—The true or voca- tional superior man strives to become better and wiser than he is; the senational, noise-making, self-advertis- ing, professional, pseudo-superior man strives to ap- pear superior to others and greater than he is. These two tendencies, viz. the tendency to be superior, to be- come perfect, and the tendency to be recognized, ac- knowledged as such, exclude each other. Hence, the late, often posthumous, but enduring glorification of genuine idealists, and the promptly acquired, noisy, but perishable glory of the heroes of the day, perish- able and ephemeral like the mass of their admirers itself. The pedant, the financial aristocrat, the intellec- tually pseudo-superior man, is much more anxious than the true scholar, the born intellectual aristocrat, the intellectually genuine superior man, to impress others with his superiority by means of select language, man- ners, outward appearances, company, surroundings. The liar, the hypocrite, the morally pseudo-superior man, feels more than the sincere the necessity of emphasizing and trumpeting out his sincerity, of beau- tifying his motives, of having all appearances or cir- cumstantial evidence speak in his favor, just because he himself is not very much convinced thereof. The pseudo-superior man believes in his own intellectual or moral excellence in proportion as he succeeds in making others believe therein. The knowledge of the pseudo-superior man is super- ficial, verbal, lazily and incidentally picked up from lectures, conversations, journalistic accounts, and GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 61 criticisms of books, etc. The ideas of the genuine su- perior man are laboriously worked out from personal experiences and observations, or patiently gleaned from the perusal of the original works of other honest thinkers. The pseudo-superior man learns just enough to be able to hide his ignorance and to make believe that he knows much more than he actually does. The pseudo-superior man is superficially many- sided; there is no inner connection between his ideas, no harmony between opinions and acts; he does not approach the study of the world from inner or evolu- tional impulses: he is guided by fashion, by the im- portance given to it by actual society; his guide is not within himself, for he pursues ostentation, notoriety, fame, success rather than truth. He apparently serves two masters: the criminal financial and the dis- interested thought speculators. Pseudo-superior men differ from average men not so much in their thinking, feeling, and striving as in their way of expressing it, in their language or rather refined slang and in their manners or rather manner- isms; they differ not so much privately, internally, really as they do publicly, externally, apparently; not so much in intelligence, real knowledge, stock of ideas as in verbal knowledge, education, stock of words, use- less neologisms and formalities, in astuteness, in their feminine ability to simulate superiority and to conceal their prosaic pursuits beneath an external crust of poetry; they do not differ so much from the mass as they endeavor to make themselves and others believe by resorting to intellectual snobbism, i.e., by using and hunting for rare, pedantic, high-sounding, oracular words, inflated manners, gestures, by keeping at a dis- tance from the great mass, by enshrouding themselves in an atmosphere of mysteriousness and assumed im- portance. The genuine superior man does not waste 62 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN time in delighting in, in showing off, and in exploiting his superiority: he tries to be, not to appear, greater than he is. The pseudo-superior man gratifies his per- sonal vanity, his selfish pursuits, advertises himself in- directly while apparently glorifying the profession, caste, sect, nation, race to which he happens to belong; he conceals his egotism and conceit under the more respectable and more presentable cloak of professional, fraternity, sectarian, national, racial megalomania. The pseudo-superior man accepts such truths only as are valuable to him; he considers truth and personal value as identical or, more correctly, value is his prac- tical criterion of truth. Not so the ideal man: he ac- cepts and defends truth, even if it be detrimental to his personal interests; only in ethical matters which depend partly on human will does he test truth in the crucible of social value. Ethical, religious, artistical, philosophical theories and ideas are for the former a full dress to be put on for great occasions and festi- vals ; to be shown, exhibited on the platform or stage, in the classroom or in books, but not to be worn, to be made use of in every-day life. The pseudo-superior man does not love knowledge, truth, art, religion . . . for their own sake or for the sake of their general usefulness, but for the sake of the material benefit he can derive therefrom. He considers them as his private property to be kept a secret, to be protected against theft, to be used as a source of power over the propertyless, i.e., over lay- men and over the ignorant. He carries the individual- istic, egoistic habit from the economic world over into the intellectual, spiritual world as much as the spirit of the time or the Zeitgeist allows it. The modern western pseudo-superior men do not openly form such hermetically sealed castes as the ancient priests did and the Brahmins still do, but the open-eyed connois- GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 63 seur can still detect much of this caste spirit, caste secrecy, caste grandomania, caste or interested solidar- ity euphemistically called esprit de corps among our academicians, politicians, liberal professions, and, what is worse still, he discovers among them the pred- atory or gang spirit. But, in spite of their endeavors to monopolize knowledge, art, religion . . . and the material advantages going therewith, the intellectual world is ever more penetrated by the international, socialistic, communistic, hospitable spirit, thus paving the way for socialism, community of material goods in the economic world. The genuine superior man is too rich in original thoughts and too high above the applauses of the ephemeral masses to resort to the pseudo-superior man’s various forms of intellectual dishonesty: obscure, mystical, picturesque, dazzling language; puzzling, mystifying theories; adulteration, distortion of com- monplace truth; plagiarism, feeding one’s readers or audience on empty words, on Hegelian nonsense and vagaries. . . . The genuine superior man adopts the intellectual or moral sphere as his permanent place of abode, just as in the economic world the independence-seeking type of pioneer ventures into new lands with the intention of creating for himself and others a new and more tender adoptive fatherland. The intellectual world is not the natural element in which the semi-superior, and still less the pseudo-superior man, can permanently live. He only occasionally, if at all, ventures to those as yet little inhabited regions in order to have some amazing, sensa- tional wonders to report to the sedentary, conservative masses of philistines, which, although averse to actual changes of place, opinions, habits, unless compelled by external circumstances, enjoy hearing about such wonderful possibilities. The semi-superior man is in 64 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN the intellectual world the analog of the predatory pion- eer, adventurous traveler, explorer of unknown lands, who travels thither, not in order to live there, but in order to satisfy either his own curiosity, aimless Wan- derlust or the curiosity of the non-nomadic masses, and thus to earn fame, money, and what not. The pseudo- superior men, the academical philosophers, the profes- sional moralists, are in the intellectual or theoretical world what the politicians, demagogues, office-seekers are in the economic world or world of action. The intel- lectually pseudo-superior men pose as originators of new thought directions, of intellectual progress, while doing their best to discourage, to suppress, to silence the contemporary genuine theoretical geniuses of whose rivalry they are afraid. The volitionally pseudo-supe- rior men pose as social reformers, as benefactors of the people, as benevolent rulers, while persecuting, im- prisoning, destroying the genuine contemporary and social reformers in whom they scent dangerous rivals destined to supersede them some day when the people will be more enlightened, more critical and open-eyed. The genuine superior man strives modestly and noise- lessly towards self-perfection, towards excelling him- self. He does it out of an inner evolutive impulse, and not, like the semi- and pseudo-superior men, out of envy, ambition, or compelled by the need of com- peting with others and to surpass them by any means, either in reality or in appearance. This unscrupulous competitive need is a mitigated form of the fighting instinct, and is still considered in our actual society as the chief characteristic of manliness; whereas the harmlessness, sincerity, straightforwardness of the genuine superior men points to the existence in embryo of a cooperative instinct which, in a more perfect so- ciety, will supersede aggressiveness and interested do- cility; from a mere demand of reason that it is now- GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 65 adays, collaboration will become an instinctive or emo- tional demand. In all their doings the pseudo-superior men assume an air of self-importance which gives them the appear- ance of taking their work seriously, of considering their work as a primary end, as the only or most im- portant aim of their life. Only the connoisseur un- masks an actor in the pseudo-superior man, only the connoisseur sees that the real aim is self-aggrandize- ment. Like the actor, the pseudo-superior man may sometimes deceive himself as to the real materialistic aim of his acting, and identify himself for a moment with the disinterested intellectual hero whom he im- personates. The pseudo-superior men in the intellectual world treat knowledge and classes of knowledge or sciences in a similar way as women and financial aristocrats in the economic world treat men and classes of men. They are very anxious to keep up artificial demarcation lines between various sciences; they are more anxious about methods and terminology than about the knowledge pursued; style, form, manner and order of exposition, are more essential to them than the ideas expounded; they care more for the author, origin of an idea, its bearing on their own interests, than for the idea itself, for its truth, for its bearing on general human inter- ests ; they lay more emphasis upon formal, abstract, dry, verbal than upon material, concrete, living, real logic. Their works, if they produce any, are a display of elegant, brilliant, refined, fashionable methods; of over-systematization, of musical, hypnotizing, multi- colored language or expression; of mathematical gar- ments; of everything that is mystifying, awe-inspiring, but not of real, substantial, socially useful knowledge or truth. The pseudo-superior man, like children and women, 66 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN strives for authority, power, social distinction, linguis- tic wealth, which are but symbols of superiority. He imagines that with the symbol the thing represented by it will infalliby come also. Or he mistakes, and hopes that others will also mistake, the appearance, the symbol for the reality, the thing-in-itself. The crav- ing for power, for sham superiority or social distinc- tion, is a remnant, a mitigated form of the pi’imitive, bestial predatory or parasitical habits of the nomadic aggressive tribes who preyed upon the peaceful, seden- tary, agricultural races; and the spontaneous, quasi- instinctive, distinterested respect or fear shown by the masses to such sham superior individuals, even if they have no real power, is a relic of the primitive justified fear shown by the conquered, exploited, ill-treated masses in the presence of a despotic, capriciously cruel member of the ruling class or of the victorious invad- ers. The aim of the pseudo-superior man being power, social distinction and superiority over others, but not truth, not real intellectual superiority; we understand why he looks for truth—or rather pretends to do so— everywhere except where it is to be found; at best, he preferably looks for it in the distance, among primi- tive peoples, in uninhabited lands, in the remote, inac- cessible past. He prefers intricate, mathematical, dia- lectical, incomprehensible, abstract methods which are inaccessible to and uncontrollable by the majority. He seemingly looks in the clouds and in the heavens for things that are on earth, under everybody’s eyes. He prefers roundabout, untrodden, deserted, mysterious paths where nobody can follow him and see whether he really travels thereon or merely sits down in idleness while people consider him a pioneer and expect him to return with a message that he has discovered new perspectives. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 67 The proletarian philistine is frankly materialistic and prosaic, frankly narrow-minded and narrow- hearted ; nay, he often hides a tender soul under his rough exterior and higher aspirations under his as- sumed or externally imposed brutal manners. Whereas the aristocratic philistine, and particularly the pseudo- superior man, is a philistine with the appearance or in the garb of a superior man. He conceals his hard- heartedness under a smiling, soft-mannered behavior; he conceals his prosaic, materialistic nature under memorized poetical expressions; he conceals his egoism under the cloak of altruistic pursuits; he has a hideous soul in a beautiful, attractive body. In short, he is a phrase-monger, an appearance-monger; he imitates or mimicks and deals in the outward forms of all that is noble and ideal. The parasitical or pseudo-superior man, who takes on the outward appearance of the gen- uine superior man, and even improves upon it, in order to reap the credit and remuneration due to the latter for his social services, reminds me of those African savages who, after the confinement of their wives, lie in bed and simulate all the sufferings of childbirth in or- der to receive the consolations and congratulations to which by right their wives are entitled. The pseudo- superior man leaves the earnest, hard, ungrateful, dan- gerous pioneering work to the genius; and, when the new land is already prepared and rendered sufficiently safe for mass colonization, or, to drop the figure, when the new doctrines are sufficiently cleared up, rendered immune from attack and opposition, he jumps in, stirs up the public, constitutes himself a leader or an execu- tive authority, in order to reap the admiration and the benefits which are really due to publicly unknown, long forgotten or merely posthumously honored geniuses. If our present-day rulers had been born a hundred years earlier, they would not have styled themselves 68 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN defenders of international peace, of international mor- ality, friends of the negroes, etc., just as they hate to-day to take up the cause of unemployment, of so- cialism, of child labor, etc., because these movements are not yet sufficiently advanced or free from danger and, hence, demand too much self-abnegation, too much real work and self-sacrifice of their defenders. The pseudo-superior man wages war while seemingly mak- ing peaceful transactions; he competes under the mask of cooperation; he furthers solely his own interests under the mask of serving others; he commits crimes under the appearance of seeking justice or of enforc- ing the law; he is an innocent-looking criminal; when he finds the antiquated or military form of war inef- ficient, he claims to be a defender of peace while he goes on using the more dangerous—and to him harm- less—weapon called capital to crush his competitors and to enslave his fellow-men, carrying the spirit of war over into new fields of human activity (industry, commerce, politics, education, church, etc.) ; he is an intelligent-looking fool, a friendly-looking egoist, an active-looking idler, a serious or dignified-looking, frivolous creature, a brave-looking coward, an honest- looking rascal, a beast of prey in a sheep’s skin. He hides his obtuseness, superficiality, ignorance, nonentity behind mystifying conventionalities, formalities, cere- monies, sonorous words, etc. Sociability.—The philistine is more sociable, al- though less social or altruistic, than the superior man, because he has less refined intellectual and emotional needs than the latter. The philistine has no strong convictions to defend against unbelievers or skeptical people; he has no clearly defined and imperious aspira- tions beyond food, shelter, reproduction, bodily amuse- ments and clothing, on account of which he should differ from his fellow-men. He has no penetrating in- GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 69 sight into others’ hearts and minds to distinguish im- pure, mixed, interested, simulated feelings towards him from pure, unmixed, distinterested, genuine ones; to distinguish words of the tongue from words of the heart. Nor has he any longing for such subtle, in- visible, ethereal possessions as friendship, love, fame; he has no understanding and hence no yearning for the chastity of the soul: the chastity of the body is sufficient to him; friendliness, politeness taste to him just as good as—nay, much better than—friendship and sympathy. He has no trains of thoughts to fol- low out, no problems to think out, so that transitory solitude is no necessity to his mind; nay, more, soli- tude is a horror to him, for his soul or inner world is such a desert that he is afraid of being left alone with his own thoughtlessness. Thinking is, or rather has become, so unnatural to him that an occasional reflec- tive state of mind is regarded by himself and others as a symptom of mental derangement, whereas in the superior man the opposite symptom, thoughtlessness, becomes alarming; just as revolutionary thoughts, which are natural in a social philosopher, are a symp- tom of moral insanity in the ignorant and narrow- minded. The philistine is more communicative, for he makes no selection among his few banal, trivial, suggested, ever-recurring thoughts to see which deserve being com- municated to others; he is too naive to know that what is important to him may not seem so to others. Where- as the superior man tries to select those which appeal to the interest and understanding of others, and this selective process going on inwardly is another obstacle to ordinary sociability. With the philistine, language is not so much a means of conveying his thoughts and feelings as a means of sociability, of approaching his fellow-men, a channel of discharge for his surplus of 70 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN motor energy; talking is no serious activity to him, no means to a higher end, it is rather play activity; it is not a means to externalize his own, or to penetrate into others’, inner, psychical, sensory activity; it is rather an end-in-itself, a source of immediate pleasure. All men, both superior and philistine, have the same bodily needs (in financial aristocrats these become more refined and more differentiated); whereas not all superior men have the same intellectual needs and abili- ties, for specialization is carried to its extreme: some delight in observation, experimentation; others in speculation, interpretation, invention; within each field the material worked upon and the method pursued differ from superior man to superior man to such an extent that no two superior men of like intellectual needs are likely to meet one another in persona; they only meet through the intermediary of their published works. Solitude is the price paid for mental superi- ority, be it even solitude in the midst of admirers. The sociability of the philistine springs from disinterested love of men and human company; whereas the sociabil- ity of the pseudo-superior man is like the helpless at- tachment of the parasitical animal to its host. The incentives of the pseudo-superior man to socia- bility are his self-seeking nature or desire to further through others his personal interests, and his vanity or love of being admired by the masses; the causes of his dexterity and success in society are his ability to simulate and to dissimulate, his little degree of su- periority over philistines, his ability of indirect self- advertising, his lack of strong convictions and feelings, and of intellectual honesty which should prevent him from playing any role. Whereas the superior man, compared with the pseudo and semi-superior man, seems unsociable because he is not bold enough, not promi- nent enough, not naive enough, or he is too polite, too GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 71 poor or dependent, too riicksicktsvoll to assert his own personality in society and to impose it upon others; he is too unskilled an actor, too self-respecting, too honest intellectually to make believe that he thinks and feels like others, and to act accordingly; he is too original, natural, and engrossed with permanently im- portant matters and thoughts to have time or patience for imitating artificial, trivial, transitory social man- ners, empty conventionalities and formalities, stereo- typed phrases. Thinking is a private matter. Only the results of thinking, only thoughts and conclusions, can be shared, communicated, used for social purposes. But the proc- esses and ways of thinking, the searching after conclu- sions, are unsharable, uncommunicable, because not fully known to the thinking individual himself: To know in what way new conclusions are to be reached means to have almost reached them. Hence, to be sociable all the time or at any time means to give up one’s thinking, to relapse into animal superficiality and thoughtless enjoyment of life. Likewise with love: Conjugal, parental, fraternal love are private matters. One cannot fondle one’s wife, children, brothers and sisters, intimate friends in public, without arousing the envy, indignation, laughter of the unheeded selfish on- lookers. Continual or frequent social intercourse makes, therefore, for the destruction, not only of origi- nality or truth-seeking, but also of love. Sociability breeds conventionality, superficiality, posing, acting, shallowness of heart and mind. When thinking people will become more numerous and economically less dependent, they will reform social life: They will impose upon it respect for in- dividuality, naturalness; they will make it more agree- able by combining it with more free play, with inter- missions of isolation, with the freedom of retiring with- GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN out formalities from and of joining at pleasure again in the social circle. An ideal human life cannot sub- sist without a healthful alternation and combination of activity and rest, of work and play, of effort and re- laxation, of sociability and isolation, of social inter- course and privacy. . . . Difference in Intellectual Needs.—The objects of needs, in contradistinction to the objects of luxury, must be enjoyed continually or at least periodically; they cannot be dispensed with without causing pain, unhappiness, harm; one never tires of them; one longs for them instinctively and not merely out of imitation; hence, one cannot with impunity be dissuaded from pur- suing them. The objects of needs are not always different in kind or quality from those of luxuries. One and the same object is usually an object of need or an object of luxury according to the quantity that one may dispose of and enjoy. The boundary line between needs and luxuries is shifting, not only for various individuals, but also for one and the same individual. The limits, however, within which the boundary line may slide to and fro without destroying the happiness, health or even the life of the individual, are fixed for one and the same mature individual. Intellectual pursuits which are organic needs for the genius are mere luxuries for the philistine; and most of the bodily comforts and gratifications of vanity which seem to be a need to the philistine are dispensable luxuries for the genius. The philistine has no real or only rudimentary in- tellectual needs. He has curiosity, but no thirst for knowledge, no ideal aspirations. In the man of talent, the intellectual needs are somewhat developed, but not so pronounced, whole-heartedly adhered to, and not so impulsive as to assert themselves in spite of adverse circumstances. External circumstances, the social GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS milieu, accentuate some intellectual tendencies and point out the direction of their development, but suppress many others. Hence the intellectual mani- festations of the man of talent are voluntary, method- ical, systematical, planmdssig, full of erudition, but ridiculously poor in new conclusions. The pseudo- superior man has some talent and often even a spark of genius; but he subordinates his little, superficial in- tellectual ability to the attainment of material and vain pursuits. In the man of genius, the intensity and the direction of intellectual impulses are determined from within. Hence their manifestations are spontaneous, unmethodical, poor in erudition, but rich and bold in conclusions drawn. The pursuit of uncertain, risky, not wholly attain- able ends, requires most—if not the whole—of our energy. We cannot therefore afford to pursue two opposite kinds of such ends. He who chooses, or rather feels impelled by his nature to pursue, truth, knowl- edge, social happiness, must be either sufficiently pro- vided with resources and means of satisfying his mate- rial bodily needs, or he must reduce these to a minimum whose gratification is well-nigh secure; for no one can take his flight into the higher, intellectual spheres with- out starting from a bit of secure, safe, solid, econom- ic standing ground. Likewise the great mass of toil- ing people, and the insatiable materialists, need their whole energy in the pursuit of food, clothing, shelter, social recognition—no matter whether deserved or not —vain luxuries, petty ambitions, etc. They need there- fore a bit of apparently momentarily safe intellectual standing ground in order to take refuge therein when- ever they get tired and feel the vanity of their petty pursuits; in order to appease their occasionally awak- ening drowsy conscience when it reproaches them for their materialism. And this minimum of solid intel- 74 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN lectual standing ground they find in dogmatic religion, in dogmatic science, which save them the trouble of personal pilgrimage to the lofty regions of philo- sophical meditation on such intricate, subtle, vital matters as immortality, origin and aim of human life, justification and valuation of various ways of human activity, etc. The philistine, the materialist—if not too much stupefied by drudgery or greed and un- bridled enjoyment—although lacking themselves the leisure and ability to pursue spiritual values, feel just as much the need of an indispensable minimum of solid intellectual ground in the form of dogmas, religious practises, ready-made convictions as the most world- despising, impassible philosopher is in need of a secure indispensable minimum of economic standing ground in the form of food, shelter, clothing. The aristocratic or parasitical philistine pretends to strive after knowledge, education, when in reality he is after a mere semblance of knowledge or the mastery of a grandiloquent caste language, which should constitute his title to a privileged position, that is, to the exertion of authority over the masses of proletarian philistines. This fact is well known, al- though not openly admitted by all pseudo-superior men, successful lecturers, preachers, heads of educa- tional institutions, who spurn to divulge their precious knowledge in the market place, in the street corners, and prefer to attract their audiences through personal ties, exclusive fees, imposing buildings, dazzling pomp and ceremonies, adorned flattery, etc.; for they know that the mere prospect of acquiring knowledge would not attract the aristocratic philistines, and still less would it in- duce them to open their purses and to part with some of their money, their only object of sincere adoration. Difference in Originality.—Strictly speaking, it is not correct to say that originality is what distinguishes GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 75 the genius from the masses of philistines, unless we understand by originality any mental difference from the multitude; in the latter case, however, our whole statement reduces itself to a tautology. If we give to the word originality its true meaning of initiative, in- ventiveness, mental variability, mental capacity of going beyond imitation, of doing more, better or dif- ferently than we have been taught, of impressing the stamp of individuality on what has been suggested to us, then we cannot deny a certain amount of originality and of philoneism to any philistine, for there are no two perfectly identical things, let alone identical men, in this world. It is a common observation that philistines, particularly the minority of aristocratic philistines, also enjoy being different from their neigh- bors; nay, they mistake their formal, petty differences for superiority and try to compel others to acknowl- edge it. It is also a common observation that many a would-be aristocratic philistine, who has been born into a low, humble, poor, servile condition, takes very easily, when favored by circumstances, to automobile riding, to indulgence in luxury and in ostentatiousness, to a domineering, tyrannizing, haughty attitude and be- havior, etc., thus disproving Lombroso’s contention that the philistine is misoneistic or averse to change and novelty. The truth is that the philistine is merely averse to the mental effort necessitated by higher, dis- interested pursuits; he is averse to changing himself (and very naturally so) and to such new circumstances as compel a change of self or a greater mental effort than he is capable of; he is averse to new institutions that demand, not outward conformation, but compli- ance with their spirit. But he is not in the least averse to an improvement in his material condition, to amus- ing novelties, to new comforts, to new sensations, to commercial innovations and technical progress that 76 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN bring him in greater returns. He is averse or opposed to radical, substantial, great changes, but not to super- ficial, formal, trivial, slight changes. He is disinclined to adopt new ends, but does not object to new and better means for the attainment of his every-day ends. Thus the alleged conservatism of the savage philistines did not prevent them from appreciating the superiority of firearms over their bow and arrows. Likewise the conservatism of the church did not shrink in ancient times from using steam power and mechanical inven- tions for the purpose of fraudulently maintaining the popular belief in miracles; nor does it shrink in our times from adopting the use of electricity and of other modern inventions; all it cares to conserve is the stupidity of the flock and its privileges based there- upon. What is euphemistically called the antagonism between misoneism, conservatism, individualism, . . . and philoneism, progressivism, socialism, ... is in reality nothing else than the antagonism between selfish, parasitic, low, stupid pursuits and unselfish, pro- ductive, higher pursuits; for the progressive individual never dreams of throwing overboard all the past acquisitions of mankind; nay, he is more anxious than anybody else to conserve whatever has proved to be generally useful. The only difference between philis- tine and superior originality, individuality, mental variability is this: that the former is purely quantita- tive, applied either to trivial, useless, aimless, playful pursuits or to selfish, materialistic, bodily, narrow, simple, immediate needs, or to outstripping one’s fel- low-men by slightly deviating from the common road and temporarily following an unencumbered round- about way; whereas the originality of the genius is qualitative, that is to say, his mental abilities are quantitatively much greater than those of the philistine and his interests or aims differ qualitatively, i. e., in GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 77 kind, number, seriousness, comprehensiveness, from those of the philistine; his originality applies itself to remote, ultimate, broad, intellectual, generally useful ends, to setting new ideals or new aims of life. The originality of the minority of snobbish or aris- tocratic and commercial or would-be aristocratic phil- istines invents new amusements, new games, but not new machines; new words for old ideas; more palatable, but not more wholesome or more substantial food; more adorned, but not more hygienic dresses; new appear- ances, but not new realities; luxuries, but not new means of gratifying real needs; charity, but not altru- ism; jurisprudence, legal tricks or subtleties, but not a reorganization of society upon an equitable basis. The originality of aristocratic philistines also mani- fests itself in idealizing, disguising their own base pur- suits, and not in adopting nobler aims of life; in in- venting methods of deceiving, enslaving, spying and im- posing upon their fellow-men, and methods of rising on the backs of the latter; in inventing methods of self-advertising, self-glorification, flattering self-decep- tion, and not of self-perfectioning. From aristocratic philistines we can learn how to uselessly spend our sur- plus energy in games, hunting, dancing, athletics and on other wasteful, stultifying forms of muscular activ- ity, or in idle, verbal speculation, reverie, psychical re- search, spiritism, occultism, etc., but not how to trans- form this surplus energy into sensory energy, idea- forces, sane and useful thoughts, or how to make it render generally useful services while relieving ourselves thereof; or, in other words, how to combine productive work with play (so as to avoid the accumulation of a dangerous surplus), mental uplift with amusement, pub- lic service with personal benefit. From aristocratic originality we can learn how to pass off for pro- moters, leaders, benefactors, useful members of society, 78 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN when in reality we are incompetent, non-producers, in- dolent parasites; we can learn how to invent conven- tions, formalities, ceremonies, excuses, lies to fit every occasion and to serve as shields for concealing our ignorance, misdeeds, callousness, egotism, embarrass- ment, etc. The originality of proletarian philistines applies it- self to finding out ways of pleasing the exploiters and their allies; it also manifests itself in taking personal advantage of the existing artificial social order, but not in improving it; it finds ways of enduring, mitigat- ing, avoiding existing evils, but not in facing and de- stroying them once for all; it finds some amount of happiness in the midst of privations of all sorts, some amount of hope and consolation in illusory beliefs, self- stultification, etc. The formal, low-grade, deceptive, anti-social origi- nality of the aristocratic philistines reaches its climax in their leaders, champions and spokesmen, the pseudo- superior men, who, while being really in the employ of the exploiters or aristocratic philistines, pose as leaders of the entire congregation, community, nation, in order to gain the confidence of the exploited. In addition to formal, verbal, deceptive originality, the pseudo-superior man also possesses a spark of real originality. He prostitutes and degrades, however, the art or science in which he happens to be gifted; he per- verts it from its true, socially useful mission and presses it—under a disguise, of course—into the serv- ice of his employers. Thus, if he happens to be a psychologist like Hugo Miinsterberg, he degrades psy- chology to the art of the detective (“On the witness stand”) or to the art of the slave-driver (“Psychology and industrial efficiency”) ; at best, he wastes his in- genuity on trifling, useless, playful, sensation-arousing investigations. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 79 If a surplus of energy is left to the rich philistine in consequence of his freedom from material cares (food, shelter, clothing), he either spends this surplus in pleasure-seeking which ruins his mind and body, or, in exceptional cases, he turns his mind to original activity. But this originality, in distinction from the genuine originality of the genius, does not manifest it- self so much in setting new and socially useful aims of life, in enriching the contents of human aspirations, as in enriching and uselessly beautifying the mere forms of old pursuits. The rich philistine is intellectually too timid to venture upon new, untrodden ground, to venture beyond the externals of old or proposed insti- tutions. He rather prefers to go around vital prob- lems, not too far away from the masses, than to try to bring light into the dark interior of the problems themselves, where he may find himself all alone. The rich philistine spends his surplus of energy on invent- ing, or delighting in, socially detrimental play activities and luxuries (food-delicacies, new fashions in dress or shelter, etiquette, conventionalities, love-play or flirta- tion, dilettantism, decoration, eccentricities, fads, use- less neologisms, . . . ) rather than in serious activi- ties, in socially useful aims (pursuit of real knowledge, of vitalizing love, of substantial beauty). What dis- tinguishes the genius from the philistine is, not so much the latter’s inability to strike upon new interpre- tations, thoughts, feelings or manners of acting, as his fear of the unknown, his fear of getting too far away from the multitude, his lack of intellectual cour- age to invite his fellow-men to follow him into the new intellectual regions of which he happens to get a glimpse. The mercenary or pseudo-superior man, on the other hand, is not afraid of the unknown. But he is too little thirsty for knowledge, and he is too much concerned with his own material comfort to venture too 80 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN far into the unknown; nor is he very eager to bring light into the darkness of the unknown, from fear of betraying his little advancement therein, and also from the desire to exploit the fear and curiosity of the masses which do not dare to follow him, but are nevertheless waiting to get enlightenment or consolation from him on his return from the transcendental world. The rich philistine, to whom a superficial or verbal education lends the appearance of intellectual superiority, and the pseudo-superior man, lack the modesty, the disin- terested, impersonal, self-forgetful love of knowledge of the genuine superior man to go too far away from the public: They venture far enough to attract the public attention upon themselves, but they do not go too far to get lost sight of, nor do they absent them- selves for too long a time in the realms of thought and meditation to be forgotten by the admiring contem- poraries. They also lack the genuine superior man’s intellectual honesty to see how little real knowledge is left to impart to others after it is disentangled from its academic verbiage and from the purely ornamental, useless, fictitious, pseudo knowledge. Not that the field of human inquiry has been exhausted or is limited and exhaustible, but under present conditions the teacher lacks either the ability or the means of guiding his pupils along the path of independent inquiry. It was not only fear of intellectual prostitution that made Spinoza shrink back from notoriety and refuse a uni- versity professorship, but also his modesty, his fair- mindedness, his feeling that he did not know enough yet to teach others, let alone to spread it out in a two years’ college course. Likewise with Schopenhauer: it was not grando-mania that made him lecture to his students on his own “Die Welt als Wille und Vorstel- lung,” but it was the conviction that this was for the time being the best and most secure knowledge he could GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 81 impart to others. Whereas the pseudo-superior men (99 per cent, of college professors, academic philos- ophers, priests, ethical culture leaders, journalists, statesmen, . . . ), driven by vanity or by greed, un- dertake to teach and preach things that they do not know themselves, to enlighten others in matters about which they are themselves in the dark, to lead their fellow-men towards goals unknown to themselves, or towards goals that they do not care to reach. The dilettantism of rich philistines is analogous to the flirtation of brainless and heartless women. The dilettanti do not take art and science seriously. Un- like the genuinely superior men, they do not concen- trate their love and constant attention on one single pursuit while preserving their friendship or interest for all the other nobler pursuits. All they want is to draw selfish amusement, to gratify their vanity; and to kill their time or ennui; just as flirts degrade love —which is a serious matter for the preservation and improvement of the species—to a mere plaything, pas- time or weapon of exploitation. The semi-superior men take their intellectual pursuits seriously. Only, like the great mass of normal women, whose love seems to be re- served merely for successful men, the semi-superior men reserve their interest merely for fashionable scientific and artistic pursuits. Just as the merchant deals with a commodity not because he is interested in it or because he desires it for his own use, but merely because there is a demand for it, i. e., because it is saleable; and just as a mediator between marriageable men and women treats both the genuine and the spurious need of love as a commodity; just so does the pseudo-superior man treat knowledge, art, morality as a commodity to be sold, to be transferred from the producer to the con- sumer, in a more or less adulterated form. What has been said about male aristocratic philis- 82 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN tines applies also to the female philistines. During their first youth and during their child-bearing period, they indulge mainly in flirtations, love affairs, sex parasitism, with hardly any understanding for the real world they are living in. Those who are not entirely degenerate also take upon themselves part of their ma- ternal duties. During the second youth, however, when they have no more maternal duties to attend to, those who are incurable sex parasites foolishly try to live their girlhood over again, giving food to scandal- mongers and destroying the happiness of many a home. Whereas those who have not been entirely crippled by their parasitic function try to develop to a certain extent the neglected organs of their souls, viz., the need for sociability, female friends, knowledge, social welfare work, defending the women’s rights movements, spreading light on sexual hygiene, etc.; they are in- capable, however, to embrace serious pursuits that re- quire more courage, more energy, more self-denial, such as scientific investigations, socialistic propaganda, radical reforms, nursing of the poor, taking care of orphans or of children whose parents go out working, starting a crusade against the tyranny and the morally ruinous effect of fashions, luxuries, display of wealth. CHAPTER II ORIGIN AND CONDITIONS ORIGIN, CAUSES Heredity, Spontaneous Variations.—Heredity and variation are two simultaneous, complementary quali- ties of reproduction. Neither is more primitive and more in need of explanation than, or a special case of, the other. The elementary functions of life (nutrition and reproduction) being given, heredity and variation follow as necessary corollaries. For life means some sort of changes or variations. If the parents vary, i. e., if the parents are different at every moment from what they were at preceding moments, owing to varia- tions in the external and internal environment, how can we expect the child who is born and lives in a dif- ferent environment to reproduce all the parental traits exactly as they were in the parents at the same periods of their lives? On the other hand, the internal and external environment of every foetus and child over- laps more with the parental environment than with any- body else’s environment. What wonder, then, that his variations are nearer to the mean variation of his parents than to anybody else’s mean variation? Any character or trait consists of three parts: One is in- herited ; one is apparently due to variation, but is really mostly due to the actualization, liberation, or emer- gence in the child of an inherited latent parental trait, or vice versa; it may be due to the latentification or repression of a parental actual trait; the third part is GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN 84 really due to variation, i. e., to acquisition made under new circumstances. From the subjective point of view, genius appears to be a spontaneous phenomenon, a creation ex nihilo; objectively, however, it can be regarded as a result of accumulation or of summation of inherited unconscious tendencies, of inherited cosmical-sugges- tive impulses. If heredity meant persistence, conservation, copy- ing; if heredity were only uniparental or alternate, then, of course, genius and heredity would be incom- patible. But if we keep in mind that we inherit tend- encies, that tendencies which have been counteracted, repressed, neutralized in our ancestors may become freed, released, actual in us, their descendants; that there is such a thing as bi-parental or blended inherit- ance, i. e., summation of similar parental characteristics in the descendants, then there is no contradiction be- tween inheritance and genius. The child is not simply a copy of his parents. He is a continuation of the parental tendencies; he con- tinues their curve of development, in its ascending or descending stage. The child of a genius who has reached the culminating point of his development- curve, who—in other words—has no more potential tendency toward a higher stage, is likely to be an in- ferior being, inferior to his father, at least. Hereditary, inner, physiological influences could be interpreted in the last analysis as cumulative environ- mental, outer, social influences; for what w’e inherit from our ancestors must have been acquired at some remote past under the influence of the social-physical environment. Only those acquired characters are transmitted hereditarily which affect strongly the par- ent’s organism, i. e., which affect not only the soma, but also the germ plasm. ORIGIN AND CONDITIONS 85 To produce a genius, the qualitatively similar char- acters of the parents must be added algebraically; a geometrical addition gives birth to common mortals and to talented men. The resultant, however, of such an algebraic addition is unstable. Hence, the non- hereditary characteristic of higher genial abilities. The geometrical addition of potential or actual abilities can give an indefinite number of different resultants, start- ing from zero, and reaching as a maximum the arith- metic sum. If we have an angle of maximum attrac- tion between two characters, cx and c2, that is an angle of 0°, we have a resultant c3=c1-f-c2. This is a case of creative inheritance. That “love- children,” i. e., children conceived in mutual sexual at- traction and in noble self-forgetfulness, untainted by sordid financial and other selfish considerations, are both mentally and bodily exceptionally vigorous, is a well-known fact. If the angle of attraction is such that the resultant c3 equals either cx or c2 we have a case of alternate inheritance. A maximum angle of repulsion, i. e., 180°, gives 03=0!—c2 or degenerative inheritance. 86 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN Environment.—Every man is both a product and a factor, at the same time, of the environment in which he lives. Only the genius is a more important factor than the others. Both the working class and the class of geniuses, i. e., the physical and the mental workers, the protecting, supporting, and the really guiding classes, arise from the ecto-derma of the social embryo, from the outer, more exposed to, but not wholly worn- out by, physico-social environmental influences and frictions, from the less protected, less supported, and the less guided strata of human society. The influence of the actual, immediate environment is not so evident or manifest in the individual life of the genius as in that of the average man; it is not so evident in the life of individuals as it is in that of the race and of the species; not so great upon the body as it is upon the mind. The reverse is true of heredity: Its influence upon the genius, the race, the mind, is not so great, manifest and univocal as it is upon the philis- tine, the individual, the body. The influences of the environment seem to be cumulative, hence the appear- ance of spontaneity given to original creations. In the genius, the latent, remote, mediate environmental influ- ences seem to be more concentrated to a burning, active focus than in the talented or the average man. In the individual life, the point of application of tend- encies (the matter upon which the tendency is exerted) is apparently more subject to environmental influences than their magnitude (capacity of achievement) and than their direction (general nature), which are rather hereditary, inborn. Theoretically, the environment of a thing, of a being, is all the rest of the world except itself. Practically, however, the environment of a being consists only of those things and beings which can act upon it. The environment of animals, especially the social environ- ORIGIN AND CONDITIONS 87 ment of man, is largely selected. This fact makes it difficult to disentangle the share of external influences and opportunities from that of individual peculiarities and abilities, the share of compulsion, suggestion from that of will, adaptation, originality. Strong individual peculiarities, pronounced originality, cause their owner to avoid as far as possible the company of those in the midst of whom he cannot manifest or at least pre- serve his nature. The superior women of all times, such as the hetairag of ancient Athens, have always tried to surround themselves in their salons with a select social milieu or to find it in convents, literary circles, etc. The less original an individual, the more easily does he discover his like to associate with. The philistine is welcome everywhere, because he has the most elementary human needs which are common to and approved by all men. If the environment of a being consists only of those things, events and beings which act upon it; it follows that the genius lives in a different environment from that of the philistine; or, more correctly, the environ- ment of the genius is more extended than that of the philistine. Whereas the philistine is acted upon by his narrow, local, physical, artificial, personal, phe- nomenal, immediate, visible, present, actual, . . . en- vironment, the genius is also acted upon by the cos- mical, psychical, natural, hidden, impersonal, remote, invisible, past, possible, latent, . . . environment. The philistine, in order to change his behavior, needs examples given by living authoritative persons. To the genius a mere hint, a mere suggestion coming from any source—from the animated or inanimated world, from obscure or prominent men, from persons or books, . . . —is sufficient. Individuality and environment, ability and oppor- tunity, are correlative terms; one presupposes the 88 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN other; they have to be explained in terms of each other. Neither is a mere cause, or mere effect of the other. Individual differences, variations, originality, are partly due to environmental changes. And vice versa: changes in man’s physico-social environment are caused by in- dividual peculiarities, by originality or genius. If an environmental change, in order to stimulate original human action and thinking, has to work cumulatively by means of heredity, the same holds of the influence of the genius upon his surroundings; attempts at in- novation have to be repeated by a succession of similar geniuses and talents, their efforts must be cumulated before a real and lasting innovation can take place. The psychically independent or isolated individuals, i. e., the individuals who for some reason or other are more or less free from the shackles of tradition, custom, externals, conventions and from restless material pur- suits ; the individuals who without breaking entirely— like the extra-social criminals, the insane, the eccentric, Natur-Menschen—with the slowly and blindly ad- vancing compact group of human beings, keep at a cer- tain distance from it: such individuals, I say, have a bet- ter, more comprehensive view of both nature or physical environment and human society or social environment. They see the opportunities of the physical environ- ment, they are open to its suggestions and teachings; they also receive the impact of the blind strivings, aspirations, tendencies of the social group which, on account of counteracting tendencies and on account of the great mass acted upon, cannot see their way out of the state of mere latency or vague desire, cannot go over into an actual change of direction, but which in the independent individuals go freely over into an actual movement in a different direction. The semi-independ- ent individuals who are often nearer to the independent individuals than to the bulk of philistines, soon follow ORIGIN AND CONDITIONS 89 dragging along a greater or lesser part of the de- pendent, imitative, mentally inert individuals. The bulk of human beings may preserve its old course and perish little by little; whereas the new little social group may break gradually all its connections with the old group and form a group apart, following a different and more advantageous or progressive course. This new group, in its turn, may also get split up, after a certain time, into a smaller, more progressive and into a large, conservative group; and so on. Necessity.—Individual necessity does not engender genius. Nor does social necessity. The only thing it does, is to select, to encourage useful originality. The social needs prepare channels for the activity of the genius, prescribe its direction, but do not create it. Otherwise, we could not understand why different races, different nations having the same social needs, do not produce the same quality and quantity of genius. Or, if these needs do contribute towards creating genius, they are certainly among the secondary factors. Abilities, originality, genius, are not by any means the products of aims, needs, wants, necessity, poverty. The latter merely select, guide, seize upon, make subservient the former; nay, more, they degrade, pervert, deflect, the former from their natural course. Higher abilities (intellectual, artistic, moral, . . . ) arise spontaneously whenever the lower abilities that minister to the gratification of bodily needs leave a surplus of mental energy. Geniuses arise in families that either do not need or do not care to spend much energy on the acquisition of food, shelter, social rank. Geniuses, inventors, are very seldom greedy or sensitive to their material wants, nor do they reap many mate- rial benefits from their intellectual labor. In our mod- ern society where the majority of men are compelled to spend their whole time and to exhaust their entire 90 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN energy in the gratification of lower needs, higher abili- ties and genius must remain the apanage of a privi- leged but often degenerate minority. But in a socialistic society where, thanks to genuine solidarity and cooperation, all men will enjoy the privilege of economic security, of leisure and of liberty, higher pursuits and genius—from exceptional, abnormal, dearly paid-for natural endowments—will become gen- eral, normal, common attributes of mankind. Our necessities or needs induce us to seize upon every- thing that can best gratify them; they make us invent new means of satisfying them. But it is only a surplus of energy, leisure, freedom from material cares and from restraint or oppression, that enriches our lives by enabling us to look for new aims or new needs, or to develop our neglected, embryonal, spontaneously aris- ing needs. A need never leads to the adoption of new needs. On the contrary: every need tends to subjugate, minimize, displace the others, and to press all our abilities and our entire energy into its service. Neces- sity is not the mother of real and great inventions; it is rather the exploiter of such inventions as promise to be useful and docile. The greed and vanity of capitalists encourage technical inventions which lend themselves to an increase in the capitalistic power; but all other technical inventions and all the new moral or social ideas, in order to assert themselves, have to struggle very hard against capitalistic persecution. It is not economic pressure, it is not poverty that in- duces the genius to invent: it is by freeing himself from this pressure, it is by reducing his bodily needs and by giving up petty ambitions that he gains a sur- plus of energy which he devotes to creative work. Historical Progress of Genius.—It is an admitted fact that the average duration of life increases, not in consequence of an increased vital energy, but in conse- ORIGIN AND CONDITIONS 91 quence of a decrease in its being wasted, due to greater cleanliness, to better hygienical and social circum- stances. The same holds of the modern genius when compared with the genius of antiquity: he is not richer in mental abilities, but he can make a better and more economical use of them, thanks to the greater wealth of knowledge at his disposal, thanks to the laws and formulas discovered by the geniuses of the past which enable him to survey with little effort vast horizons of particular phenomena and thus to save his mental energy for further new acquisitions. The modern genius owes his superiority over the an- cient genius, and the educated genius owes his superi- ority over the uneducated genius, to the accumulated human knowledge which is transmitted to the former in a condensed, handy form through the channels of school, class or caste, and home education. And just so man owes his conceptual thinking, his superiority over other intelligent and teachable animals, not only to an inborn greater mental ability, but also to social heredity, to language which allows him to learn from the experience of his ancestors and contemporaries; whereas the animal has no other channel of trans- mitting its experiences than the narrow channel of in- stincts, of physiological heredity. But if it is doubtful whether human genius is increasing in intension, ability, absolute magnitude, there is not the least doubt that its sphere of interests, its field and the number of men endowed therewith, are steadily increasing until under a more equitable social regime the human species will consist only of geniuses of all sorts who will enrich, beautify and beatify each other’s lives. Is Genius a Partial Increase of Abilities?—The rudimentary organs, the muscular inferiority of the civilized man compared with his uncivilized ancestors, and of the genius compared with the philistine, the 92 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN organic deficiency of man in comparison with his cousins on the zoological scale: all these facts prove that intellectual progress is necessarily compensatory, i. e., at the expense of the body; they prove that in- ferior instruments of adaptation disappear, become atrophied by disuse before superior ones. Particu- larly the unequal development of non-substitutional abilities speaks unambiguously in favor of the origin of genius by compensation. The division of labor in social life makes it unnecessary and impossible for the individual to develop all his abilities equally. Without the division of labor we could have talented men, but never men of genius. Hence, the scarcity of genius in the country, and its frequency in cities, where, alas, it is outweighed by poverty in morality, in solidarity. Up to a certain limit there is no antagonism between the receptive and the reactive abilities of the mind, there is no antagonism between the intensity of special abilities and the total number of abilities, there is no antagonism between the objective and the subjective aspects of our mental processes. In other words, a continuous, normal, many-sided progress in mental abilities may occur at the expense of the body alone (thinking at the expense of acting, or of the repro- ductive power; intelligence or soul-beauty at the ex- pense of the bodily beauty) ; whereas an abnormal, dis- continuous, one-sided progress of abilities is made at the expense of the mind itself (intellect, conception, cogitation, introspection, at the expense of the senses, perception, observation, extro-spection, sentiments, moral character, and vice versa); an addition, a synergy of certain abilities, goes hand in hand with a subtraction, divergence, disharmony of others. Physiologically speaking, we are perhaps right in saying that both genius and insanity are due to an overflow, to a debordation of mental energy (due to a ORIGIN AND CONDITIONS 93 shock, obstacle, stopping up of a channel, or to a leak- age). In the genius, the overflowing energy finds chan- nels of discharge in the higher centers of the brain; whereas in the insane, the overflowing energy, not find- ing such channels, causes devastations, both sensory and motor. Unlike the hierarchical social organisms, which, if not soon democratized, are invariably doomed to see their leading or ruling class lose its usefulness— if it ever had any—and become a dangerous parasite perishing itself of fatty degeneration while plunging the ruled majority into the abyss of atrophic degenera- tion—the individual organism is the only hierarchic society, in which the ruling class, that is, the brain, is always concerned with the general welfare and never thrives at the expense of the organism; even in the man of genius, the growth of the higher functions of the brain—although taking place to a certain extent at the expense of the body—does not lead to degeneration or decay, except under highly unfavorable conditions, nor does it proceed from degeneration, as Lombroso would have us believe, but it merely eliminates or rele- gates to a subordinate rank the physiological-anatom- ical methods of adaptation and the destructive, predatory abilities by replacing them with superior weapons, with constructive and cooperative abilities, with means of preventing waste of energy, with means of making up in quality, intensity, for any loss in quan- tity, extensity. Social and Economic Causes of Philistinism.—Owing to the primitive compact tribal or horde life during the nomadic, hunting period with its external uni- formity or uniformity of occupation for all members, which tends to bring about an internal or mental uni- formity also; owing to the tyranny exerted at a later period by nomadic invaders, by parasitic conquerors and subsequent rulers, upon their military forces and 94 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN upon the subjugated peaceable, agricultural tribes, which tyranny does not tolerate any critical, independ- ent judgment in the conquered, in the ruled; owing to the pressure of economic dependence, during the mod- ern industrial period, which crushes all individuality out of existence, by reducing the masses of men to mere machines, to mere instruments for increasing the wealth and the comforts of a few idlers; owing to these and other external, social pressures which can be reduced ultimately to the pressure of fear, of direct or indirect intimidation exerted by the crowd, leaders, exploiters, which paralyzes all mental spontaneity—at least, all its overt manifestations—leaving untouched only one spring to action, viz., that of instinctive or of volun- tary imitativeness; owing to the social pressures, I say, the human species consists of a considerable mass of philistines, i. e., of thoughtless, automatic, empty- minded, empty-hearted, intellectually blind, purely imitative individuals; and of a non-negligible minority of semi- and of pseudo-superior men who dare to assert their originality or spontaneity only in directions which are useful to—or which at least do not harm—the in- terests of their immediate social superiors, of the hand- ful of rulers and exploiters (monarchs, financial kings, employers, capitalists, government, church, organized parasitic professions). Owing to natural or physio- logical causes alone, we ought to have only a vanishing minority of philistines among men. Fortunately, the increasing division of labor; the lack of rational solidarity, nay, the occasional antagonisms and mutual indictments or exposures between the exploiters them- selves ; the increasing individual liberty due to increas- ing traveling facilities, and to increasing agglomera- tions of men into cities; the privilege of anonymity due to the press and to city life; the possibility for the mod- ern or industrial slave to pay with his independence for ORIGIN AND CONDITIONS 95 that of his children and for that of the intellectual proletarians who make it their business to enlighten the masses in open or disguised ways; the lack of foresight in the exploiters who, while caring for their immediate and personal interests, undermine the interests of their class and of their remote posterity, etc., etc.: all these and many other subtle, imperceptible causes work towards freeing the majority of men from the grip of paralyzing and stultifying fear, from the grip of human parasitism which is the main cause of philistinism and of social misery. Social pressure weighs more heavily upon the grown- ups, and among these mostly upon the normal or sane- minded; whereas children and eccentrics are allowed a little more free play or spontaneity. This fact might be a partial explanation of why hereditary philistinism manifests itself after the period of adolescence, i. e., there are less philistines among children than among the mature; it might also explain partly why genius manifests itself more frequently in families with a nerv- ous, eccentric diathesis than in families with a sedate temperament. The philistinism, empty-mindedness and mental degeneration of the rich is not so much ac- quired, i. e., due to the power, privileges, idleness, ex- cessive indulgence in pleasures afforded by wealth, as it is inherited from degenerate self-seeking and ma- terialistic ancestors, in whom all human aims were atrophied or destroyed by an unquenchable greed or rapacity. These parvenus or upstarts had at least one aim in life, viz., accumulation of money, which stimulated their activity and made them indirectly in- terested in those phases of human progress which lend themselves to exploitation; whereas their children, whose fortunes grow quasi automatically, find them- selves brought into this world without any aim of life, without any natural interests on which to spend use- GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN fully their energy. It is not always the fit, the strong, the courageous, the progressive animals that survive. Often the unfit, the timid, weak, unprogressive animals survive, because they do not venture out of their dark hiding-places, and thus escape dangers, pitfalls, the attacks of enemies. Just so the darkness of ignorance, stupidity, humor-worship or, more correctly, frivolousness, saves many a man from being crushed out of existence by exploiters, who only hate and destroy competitors, critics, the serious-minded, the moral geniuses who try to spoil their lucrative spoliation business. Only those proletarian geniuses escape corruption or persecution who remain in the lower, ignorant, oppressed social strata, and confine themselves, like the fluorescent deep- sea animals, to carrying around their feeble, self-cre- ated light merely within the boundary lines of their own milieu which stands under such a high, crushing pres- sure from above. Economic Cause of Philistinism.—All manifestation of misoneism, of aversion to change, of aversion to new ideas, institutions, reforms, which seems to be such an insurmountable obstacle to progress, would dwindle into an insignificant, impotent, negligible resistance, if it were not secretly backed up or reenforced by economic interests, by a fear of financial loss or loss in prestige. The psychological cause of misoneism, i. e., the aver- sion to a change in our habits, the dislike of mental effort, does not count for much with normal men living under normal circumstances, who are rather thirsting for—though not always capable of finding through themselves—some change, some new aims of life, some new source of activity, knowledge and enjoyment. The same pseudo-rulers, the same captains of industry, and the same parasitical nobility who so vehemently oppose all reforms demanded by socialists, moral geniuses, ORIGIN AND CONDITIONS 97 altruists, as soon as the demand for certain reforms becomes too widespread to be resisted, and as soon as they find some cheap way of apparently or superficially complying with such demands without any loss of prestige or money for themselves, begin to call them- selves promoters of such reforms and become very proud of the credit which is undeservedly given them. The same vain academicians and pseudo-scholars who vehemently refuse to accept the new theories and philo- sophical conceptions of non-professional, non-academ- ical, self-taught, genuine thinkers, because the accept- ance of such new truths would mean a loss of prestige for their self-important personalities and for the capital-supported institutions of learning, are only too glad to have something new to promulgate provided it is their own or provided they have succeeded in un- detectedly stealing it from some poor devil of a socially obscure genius. The same captain of industry whose sleep and conscience are not in the least disturbed by the vision of thousands and thousands of human lives wrecked and lost in his mills, or by the thought that his millions are paid for with streams of human blood and tears, is proud, however, of the financial support which he lends to the International Peace Movement, because such a movement does not harm, nay, it fur- thers his commercial interests. As soon as our caste and clique system and all eco- nomic dependence—which are ultimately based on class parasitism—will be done away with, it will be surpris- ing to see how rapidly men can progress and how little philistinism or misoneism is natural to the human species. Similarly, men’s aversion to being criticized is largely due, it is true, to their hypocrisy, deceitfulness and self-conceit; but it is also due a good deal to the fear of financial loss that is usually entailed by criticism. 98 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN If human self-conceit and hypocrisy seem ineradicable, it is all due to their economic basis. If Religion seems to be fundamentally conservative and antago- nistic to science, it is because we mistake the Church for the seat of Religion: We mistake for the seat of Religion what is in reality a parasitical institution thriving on the people’s ignorance, superstitions, un- grounded fears. Karl Marx and Achile Loria have so masterfully proved that economic or financial interests are at the bottom of all intolerance shown by temporal and spirit- ual pseudo-leaders to the pioneers of science, new creeds, free thought, democracy; just as economic or financial interests, and not mere stupidity or vanity, are often at the bottom of the hunting for titles, class distinctions, empty honors, and at the bottom of court scandals, intrigues, ludicrous ceremonies or formalities, pomp, royal marriage affairs, etc. The intolerance manifested by philistines is of a disinterested, purely psychological nature: it is due to suggestion, mental inertia or aversion to a change in the habits of think- ing, feeling, acting. Their intolerance and prejudices would never go over into active aggression and persecu- tion of superior men and of other races, if they were not fanned into a flame of passion by the deliberate lies, press machinations, etc., of the pseudo-leaders whose economic interests are in danger of being harmed by the real but unpaid leaders of mankind. As a proof that the real cause of the rulers’ intolerance of honest, critical, independence-loving, ideal, original men is not due to misoneism or mental conservatism, we have the fact that they tolerate men of a different type provided the latter are inferior, more stupid, uglier than them- selves, so as to throw into relief the superiority of the former; they also tolerate more intelligent men, pro- vided the latter are mercenary, homage-paying, sub- ORIGIN AND CONDITIONS 99 missive; nor do they interfere with the various species of intra-social brainy parasites whom they are afraid of. But they are intolerant of, and impatient, harsh, or cruel with, defenseless superior individuals who put them into the shadow and whose light discloses to view their defects kept hidden in the dark. They are in- tolerant of independence-loving individuals who refuse to subserve their make-believe game of directive or guid- ing ability, and who refuse to pay them homage, thus betraying their uselessness and purely ornamental, self- assumed social function. CONDITIONS, INCENTIVES Pam.—Pain is a stronger stimulus to thinking and creating than pleasure. Socially considered, it may be one of the causes of genius; individually consid- ered, it is a stimulus only: A social cause may de- generate into an individual stimulant, and an individual incentive may become a cause, in the long run. The awakening from the inertia of thoughtlessness, under the pressure of necessity or need, is painful. Thinking, in its initial stage of running away from unfavorable circumstances, is painful; but in its second stage, of seeking better circumstances, it becomes pleasure-giving. The post-thinking stage, of finding favorable or satisfactory solutions, terminates in in- difference, just as the pre-thinking stage, the stage of mental inertia, started with indifference. Poverty.—Poverty, it is maintained, stimulates thinking, creation. It is true, but every truth holds within certain limits only. So does temperature, up to a certain degree, stimulate our psycho-physical activity. But below and above certain limits it paralyzes. Pov- erty may intensify original activity, if it does not reach the limit of insecurity, uncertainty as to the 100 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN gratification of the most elementary bodily needs. There is as little progress in equatorial regions as near the poles; there is as small a percentage of men of genius among the paupers as among the high financial aristocrats. Only the poor, socially obscure individuals have a chance to know the real predatory basis of human so- ciety and the hideous souls of the so-called upper class, for nobody considers them worth while to put on a poetic mask in their presence. The real world obtrudes itself upon the attention of those who have to struggle against its asperities and thorny paths. Even our own real self is revealed only when its wishes and impulses are resisted, when its assertions are disputed and contradicted. The poor, the unprotected individual, he who is thrown upon his own resources, he whom nobody has relieved of the burden of responsibility, he whose every step requires forethought and foresight, he whose every attempt at self-assertion is being opposed, cannot very well afford to lose himself in revery, dreams, delusions, musical and mystical intoxications, sweet thoughtlessness and self- conceit, as the rich do. The life-path of the rich— owing to the quasi-automatical self-multiplying power of capital—is so smooth and their wants are so regu- larly ministered to by hirelings that they need not make any voluntary effort, any muscular or mental exertion which would prevent them from falling asleep, from falling an easy prey to hypnotizing, fantastic, morbid and shallow literature, to the flattering delu- sions of spiritualism, psychic research, idle speculation, day dreaming, Christian Science, theosophy, and other mystic humbug. Only the state-, church- or capital- supported idealistic philosopher can afford to shut him- self up within the narrow circle of his shadowy ideas, and to forget, ignore, or even deny the existence of a ORIGIN AND CONDITIONS 101 harsh, stern, stormy reality beyond. Only he can afford to forget the inseparability and distinction be- tween subjective and objective, dream and reality. In the struggle against Nature, man comes to a clearer insight not only into the hidden reality of the material world, but also into his own soul. If to live means to struggle, to be active, to overcome obstacles, to gain mastery over nature and over one’s own soul by means of increased knowledge, to increase one’s power and develop one’s psycho-physical organs by a constant and reasonable use; it follows that the finan- cial aristocrats, in spite of their luxurious, noisy, seem- ingly brilliant and happy parading, in reality vegetate and constitute a dangerous crushing burden upon the toiling classes which are worn out by unnecessary over- exertion, by a hopeless and compulsory drudgery whose only aim is to make the path of a negligible minority of idlers, not only smooth, but dangerously slippery and vertiginous, while the life-path of the great mass threatens to become ever more obstructed by insur- mountable obstacles. Both the extremely poor who have neither the opportunity nor the strength to struggle and to assert themselves, and the extremely rich who have nothing to struggle against, nothing to strive for, are doomed to degenerate in mind and body, and to constitute a burdensome obstacle in the way of human progress. Geniuses, leaders of mankind, defend- ers of great causes, arise mainly from the social middle classes which enjoy an optimum of economic independ- ence, and which are not entirely free from, nor entirely crushed by, the struggles for existence. To take seri- ously the higher or intellectual pursuits, to advance in the purely intellectual direction, one must be sufficiently advanced bodily and economically, i. e., one must save energy by having his lower, bodily needs regularly, automatically, rhythmically attended to, one must be 102 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN protected against and free from economic fluctuations and uncertainties demanding over-exertion and pro- longed, restless, unrhythmical attention. Thus in in- tensively industrial and commercial countries, like the United States, the public struggles too hard against economic uncertainties to be able to look for moral and intellectual uplift in the theaters, at lectures or else- where : All they look for is amusement, relaxation, forgetfulness, thoughtless pleasure, emotional intoxi- cation. Poverty and Intellectual Fertility.—Necessity, not poverty, is the mother of invention. The struggle against poverty excludes the pursuit of truth. If poor geniuses are seen to be productive, in spite of their poverty, this does not prove anything against the paralyzing influence of poverty. It merely means that geniuses do not struggle against it, in order to be able to pursue truth. Only when poverty becomes intoler- able does the genius awake from his habitual indiffer- ence or impassivity towards it; he struggles for a mo- ment to surrender again. Instead of defending himself, he addresses the threatening poverty, as Archimedes addressed the Roman soldier, with the words betraying his only preoccupation: “Noli turbare circulos meos.” Isolation and Social Life.—The impulse to mental activity comes mostly from without—from the cos- mical or social environment—; but the activity itself is purely individual, and, in order to run its course, re- quires prolonged isolation of the creating individual, admitting only an intermittent contact with nature and society, if the first impulse has not been strong enough to push the activity to satisfactory results. Too close, continued, direct, immediate contact with our fellow- men prevents us from gaining a general and broad view, true conceptions about human nature and human or social relations; it also renders us unable to resist com- ORIGIN AND CONDITIONS 103 pulsory, automatic, unreflective suggestion. Too much separation or isolation, on the other hand, renders our general views blurred, vague, lifeless; we become estranged from, and in course of time we lose sight of, everything that is human. A wise combination or com- promise between, and alternation of, isolation and as- sociation, leads to an harmonious development of in- dividuality. Entirely isolated or entirely absorbed by social life, man loses his personality and his equilibrium. Both the absolutely solitary and the absolutely gregari- ous animals remain unprogressive. Only in an economically advanced society, in cities, where the division of labor is carried very far, is such isolation of the thinking individual possible, is he freed from the pressure exerted by the mass. Whereas in the country, in undifferentiated, primitive, tribal life, the pressure of the mass with its fixed customs, in- violable traditions, represses every manifestation of originality except in the despotic chief, and in the un- manageable children and insane. Division of labor depends, among other conditions, on the density of population. And the denser the popu- lation of a city, the greater is the chance of being psychically isolated for every individual, i. e., the chance of living less known, less noticed, less influ- enced by people differing in nature; the greater also is the chance of meeting and of associating with, or at least of hearing from, congenial minds; hence the greater is the courage in every individual of remaining true to himself, of allowing free course to his natural propensities, of manifesting his peculiarities, his origi- nality. Isolated, man and animal are thrown upon their own resources; the yoke of the responsibility for their actions weighs heavily upon their minds and impels them to control, inhibition, deliberation, poly-ideistic 104 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN thinking, foreseeing of consequences and learning from past experience, selection of the fittest among the spontaneously arising ideas and impulses. As a mem- ber of a crowd, man and animal relapse into a condi- tion of intellectual inertia, confused thinking, credulity, of emotional, instinctive, automatically imitative, un- stable, exaggerated, uncontrolled, destructive, non-in- hibited, impulsive, non-harmonized, mono-ideistic, motor activity, either bodily or mental, lacking in in- trospection, circumspection and prospection. Between the extremely objective, critical, original thinking of the psychically isolated, contemplative genius and the extreme suggestibility, automatism of the crowd, there is the rationally imitative, conservative life of socie- ties, clubs, parties, corps, etc., and the impersonal, in- direct, self-imposed suggestions of the public, of book and magazine readers. The genius is constructive, pro- gressive; the public is cooperative; societies are con- servative; crowds are destructive. The life of solitary (isolated) animals is relatively simple; there is not much change in their surroundings, nor do many unexpected events occur during their life time. Hence, no great amount of brain work is re- quired of such animals. The minds of animals living in crowds or herds have no free play (Spielraum) or psychical isolation, hence no individuality of their own. Forethought and responsibility resting with the leaders only, it follows that the brain work of such gregarious animals is reduced to a minimum, to mere imitation and docility. Social life offers a reasonable amount of free play or psjmhical isolation, but it also imposes a tolerable share of responsibility upon every member. The con- tact between the members of society is not so close, not so personal, not so material, not so compulsory and immutable as that between the members of a crowd ORIGIN AND CONDITIONS 105 or horde. Whoever has a strong, expansive, original individuality which requires more free play or isolation and contemplation, has also to take upon himself a greater burden of responsibility and of discomfort re- sulting therefrom; for leaders do not tolerate and do not protect their like, and still less their critics or superiors who might eclipse them. It is true, the re- sponsibility of a gregarious, social animal is less than that of an isolated, solitary animal; but social life is so complicated and progressive that more brain work is required of a relatively protected social animal than of an isolated animal thrown upon its own resources, be it mere imitation of tone-setting individuals. A maximum amount of brain work is required of inde- pendent individuals who keep at a distance from the herd and also of leaders—I mean real, and not sham or nominal leaders who protect and preserve them- selves under the mask of protecting and serving the community; I also mean leaders in the broadest sense of the word: any superior man influencing or guiding others directly or indirectly, mediately or immediately, consciously or unconsciously. The above trend of thought leads me to the assump- tion that all the solitary animals belonging to the same species are almost equally intelligent because they have equal shares of responsibility for their own preserva- tion and that of their progeny. Whereas social life by distributing unequal shares of responsibility among the members of society necessitates an accumulation of intelligence at the periphery, in the unprotected, in the most responsible, in the most isolated. This, how- ever, is not as argument in favor of the cruel competi- tion of our individualistic, capitalistic society in which a majority break their necks and waste their brain energy in their hopeless fight against insurmountable obstacles, their souls being dwarfed, mutilated, or killed 106 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN by a tantalizing anxiety as to the future, and a minor- ity of the brainless individuals, sons of men in power, find upon entering life’s battlefields too smooth and slippery a path without any obstacle to hold them back from gliding down into the abyss of degeneration, im- becility, insanity: they degenerate because nobody and nothing hold them back from over-gratifying those psycho-physiological functions which yield immediate pleasures. The economic dependence or slavery of our capitalistic system brings into close, compulsory, and indissoluble connection men of the most divergent intellectual abilities and inclinations. The more capable and the more ideally inclined are thus hindered in their onward and upward course of life; they cannot ad- vance, they cannot venture to express any opinion that is likely to meet with hatred, jealousy, opposition, or at best with mere indifference. In a socialistic society where every individual will have a right to employment, where men will be dependent merely on the community and, hence, economically independent of particular in- dividuals, intellectual progress will become an easier, more common and less risky affair. A more intellectual or more altruistic individual will not risk anything in trying to invite less gifted fellow men to travel along the same path which he pursues; because he will be in a position to dissolve his contingent and loose connections with such individuals as prove to be opposed to prog- ress, and to associate with more willing, more pro- gressively predisposed individuals, or even to isolate himself psychically from his contemporaries if his pur- suits are of such a nature as to appeal merely to posterity. Close, intimate, continual association between fellow- creatures, between mother and child, between action, feeling and thinking, between master and disciple, . . . is possible and necessary during the initial stage of de- ORIGIN AND CONDITIONS 107 velopment, during the stage of weakness, maladjust- ment, simple organization, imitativeness, singleness of purpose; but it becomes impossible, stifling, detrimen- tal, if kept up during the age of maturity, strength, adaptability, initiative, complex organization, many- sided pursuits: This stage is best subserved by a loose, voluntary, soluble, intermittent association. It is not sufficient that an individual should feel and know his own interests: he must also be able to act towards their preservation. For the defense of general inter- ests, however, it is at present better to divide this work among thinkers, poets and men of action: He who acts has no time and no original ability to find out the vital needs of the masses, nor is he able to create the emo- tional or poetical stimulus to action; likewise, the thinker who spends his energy in finding out the real needs of mankind and the ways of realizing them, has no patience for leadership and agitation. Only among primitive peoples pursuing few and simple ends is it pos- sible for every and for one and the same individual to think and feel for the people, and to lead them at the same time. And it will be so again in an advanced democratic society. Close and continual association exerts an accelerating or stimulating influence on in- dividuals who naturally and spontaneously move in the same direction; but it is a source of tyranny, disturb- ances, mutual obstruction, between uncongenial indi- viduals, i. e., between individuals who naturally follow different paths. Motion, variation, progressiveness, spontaneity, is the primary, original, uncaused condition of isolated beings, unicellular organisms, elements, atoms; close, indissoluble association or aggregation is a cause of stagnation, inertia, unprogressiveness, imitativeness, oscillating or undirected (aimless) movement; an in- crease in the bulk or size of the aggregate leads, how- 108 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN ever, to a regrouping, differentiation, division of the tasks, and hence to a restoration, rehabilitation of progressiveness, individuality, variation, or, more cor- rectly, it leads to a higher plane of progressiveness. The previously seemingly homogeneous group splits into several smaller groups loosely or flexibly connected among themselves, so that a progressive individual does not need any longer to have the approval and follower- ship of the entire mass in order to effect an innova- tion: He merely needs the consent of the members be- longing to the same group. If bodily progressiveness or direct adaptability has almost reached its limit, it is partly because an affected organ is hindered in its tendency to change in conformity to outer stimuli by its being too strongly interrelated or correlated with the rest of the body. If even our indirect or psychical adaptability and variability stagnates in small com- munities, and, after a certain period of development, begins to stagnate even in large cities, it is due in the former case to the strong, indissoluble, rigid ties be- tween the exceptional, original individual and the rest of the community, and in the latter case it is due to the ties of economic dependence, to capitalistic oppres- sion and repression of all spontaneity in the exploited. Fear of the majority in small communities, and fear of a despotical, predatory minority, which soon gains control over the jobs and lives of the majority in large cities, inhibits all tendencies towards originality and is one cause why the man of genius avoids the com- munication of his thoughts through conversation, through personal contact with his fellow-men, but does so from a distance, through books, the press, etc. The pressure of the majority in small communities hinders the putting into practise of innovations. On the other hand, the despotical independence of the leading minori- ties in large cities and capitals encourages only such ORIGIN AND CONDITIONS 109 innovations as are beneficial to themselves. The remedy does not lie, however, in the Tolstoian return to the land, in the so-called Rousseauian return to Nature, to the isolation and liberty of roaming of the ungre- garious primeval man, but in the democratization of society, in ascending to a higher plane of independence or of isolation, viz., to a voluntary isolation in the midst of society, to the freedom or opportunity of as- sociating and cooperating with like-minded individuals and hence of easily dissolving one’s connections with uncongenial people. Progressiveness will be reen- throned as soon as mutual control, and continual ex- change of members, between the various social classes will be established; as soon as the bulk of the nation will constitute itself into a final court of appeal and ultimate judge of innovations affecting the general welfare; as soon as a socialistic regime will guarantee to every man the right to employment, the right to a decent and secure livelihood, the right to transfer from one line of employment or one place of abode to others on the basis of mere personal fitness and of mere personal responsibility, and not on the basis of references, recommendations, influence, etc. Division of Labor.—Division of labor, which is an effect of inequality of talent or of opportunity, be- comes in its turn a cause of increasing inequality and differentiation between human talents and opportuni- ties by enabling single individuals or classes of indi- viduals to devote more time to one line of pursuit. In primitive communities all the members of which had the same occupations and were each self-sufficient, as soon as certain individuals, owing to greater talent or opportunity, began to make certain things better than the other fellow-tribesmen, there arose in the less gifted or less favored the desire to exchange a greater quantity of their other productions for a small quantity 110 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN of such products of better quality; and this demand, increasing with the density of population as well as with the intercommunication between tribes, became an in- ducement for the gifted or fortunate individuals to give up producing things which they could get in ex- change for their favorite productions. Unfortunately, however, with the appearance of division of labor and of the exchange of values between various producers there was also made room for the quasi-parasitical class of middlemen; and later, when exchange became facili- tated by the introduction of money or a conventional medium and unit of measure, there sprang up from the midst of the non-productive class of middlemen the still more dangerous predatory class of financial specu- lators. It is probable that the first producers who had been relieved of the unprogressive condition of a Jack-of-all- trades were those who in their leisure time produced artistical works or articles of luxury, next came the men who were capable of producing useful things of a better quality or at least with an artistic flourish; only lately has division of labor been degraded from a pro- moter of talent and of quality to the role of increasing mere quantity, to the role of making the industrial exploiters independent of and masters over the workers, and hence to the role of stultifying, philistinizing, en- slaving, automatizing the masses. Human and Animal Intelligence.—The four-footed ancestor of man, owing to his greater intelligence, spe- cialized his fore limbs for the prehensile function, and his hind legs for locomotion and for supporting the whole weight of the body. He began to use his fore legs, not only occasionally and temporarily, as the now living apes do, for the purpose of reaching for thinys at a height Greater than that of his body when resting on all four legs, and for the purpose of handling ORIGIN AND CONDITIONS various natural things or objects (stones, bones, sticks, . . .) as tools; but he preferred to persist in the erect posture, in spite of its requiring painful effort in the beginning, even when he had nothing to handle or to reach for, probably for the reason that the erect pos- ture enabled him to have a larger visual horizon and hence, to detect his enemies at a distance. To say with some anthropologists, Munro for example, that the erect posture is a cause of human intelligence, or of an increase in human knowledge or intelligence, is just as wrong as to say that the use of tools and machines make man more intelligent, make man invent other ma- chines, and make him come to a better understanding of self and Nature. As a matter of fact, we see men using machines and becoming more stupid in conse- quence of a constant use; whereas improvements upon existing machines come from those workers who make a less steady use of them; and entirely new inventions do not come from machine-workers, but from brain- workers. Of course, intelligence alone, without nat- ural material to work upon, and without natural sug- gestions to start from, could not have invented any- thing. Without seeing animals clinging to floating trees, man would not have invented the boat; without caves or hollow trees, offering refuge in case of incle- ment weather or of pursuing wild beasts, man would not have invented the house, etc. But if Nature or chance suggests the use of floating trees, caves, sticks, . . .; the improvements upon these spring from intelligence alone. I do not maintain, however, that the intelligence of our four-footed ancestors created the erect posture: It merely seized upon, and held fast to, it, after having struck it unintentionally, accidentally, while the fore limbs were busy grasping objects, and because the hind legs proved adaptable for the support of the entire 112 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN body weight. Mental energy cannot spend itself on remote objects or pursuits, before having dealt with more immediate, nearer, urgent needs and desires, with- out having been entirely absorbed by the latter; just as a spring of water can give birth to a river only after having filled the cavities first met with, and only in the case when the cavities are not too large to absorb the whole quantity of water and, thus, to prevent it from overflowing. To say that man took to the use of tools because of his erect posture, because of having thus the fore legs set free, is tantamount to saying that the river is due to the smallness of the excavations met with by the spring water in the beginning of its course. If the water had no potential energy, it would not overflow so as to create the bed of the river: it would merely form a lake of smaller or larger extension than the cavities. To say that man owes his increase of intelligence, his civilization, his superiority over ani- mals, to the mere fact that his erect posture leaves his hands free, leaves a surplus of energy to be used in tool-handling: to say that means to maintain that human mental energy does not differ from animal men- tal energy, not even in quantity, let alone in quality, potential, pressure, or capacity for aspiring. More- over, this theory leaves not only the nature of intelli- gence just as mysterious as before, but it also leaves the erect posture itself a mystery: Why of all animals has the erect posture become a permanent characteris- tic in man alone? If human progress is due merely to a surplus of energy, why do the strong wild beasts and the favored domestic animals spend their surplus of energy in mere aimless play-activity, whilst man alone spends it in serious, purposeful activity? The truth seems to me to be that the only cause of why the sur- plus of human mental energy, in distinction from that of animals, is teleological, directed towards new goals, ORIGIN AND CONDITIONS 113 is that mysterious quality of a high potential, inborn pressure, discontented restlessness. This higher po- tential of human intelligence enables it to rise from the sensational level, on which the animal mind nor- mally dwells, to the perceptional level, which is the nor- mal place of abode of the philistine mind, and finally to the highest or conceptual planes where the superior intellects feel at home. In the human species racial experience is transmit- ted non-compulsorily, through education or social heredity rather than compulsorily, through physiolog- ical inheritance, and also through generalized, non- specialized, vague instincts, that leave room for indi- vidual adaptations, additions, or modification and evo- lution, rather than—like in animals—through well- defined and fully developed instincts, that leave little room for individual initiative or for exerting individual intelligence. In animals not only habits or acquired characters but also actions performed but once may become instinctive or hereditary modes of behavior, i. e., they may leave behind an organized physiological mechanism, which is immediately set going whenever the original internal or external stimulus of the instincti- fied actions recurs. CHAPTER III TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN, INTELLECTUAL HIERARCHY TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN Observation and Interpretation.—The different types of geniuses taken as a whole differ quantitatively from the class of average men, but they differ qualitatively among themselves and from intermediate types. A common characteristic of all geniuses is combin- ing and creative imagination. Observation is mostly required for scientific creations; interpretation or ex- planation is the main requirement for philosophic work. The technical and the artistic genius have a maximum power of observation and of constructive imagination built thereupon; the philosophical genius has a maxi- mum power of interpretation ; in the scientific genius the two abilities are balanced. The specific ability of the technological genius is clear perception and im- agination of movements, i. e., of correlated space and time relations. From a large number of observations, the scientist draws a few conclusions, the talented scien- tist draws less general conclusions than the scientist of genius; from a few observations the philosopher draws many conclusions, or more general conclusions than those of the scientist. The genuine, born, original, pure observer observes spontaneously, unintentionally, involuntarily, disinter- estedly, without any foregoing conscious aim of satis- fying an intellectual or bodily need, nor under the im- INTELLECTUAL HIERARCHY 115 pulse of any preconceived idea or hypothesis; but the elaboration, the mental digestion, the interpretation of the observational material, is voluntary, interested, self- or hetero-imposed. The reverse is true of the original, born, pure thinker, speculative mind: Except the mini- mum of observations which form the ground-work of his reasonings, all the other and subsequent observations occur under the impulse of interest, will, intention, in the view of confirming or invalidating theories which come to him naturally, spontaneously. The philosopher’s mind’s-eye being accommodated for the embracing of vast horizons, for bird’s-eye views, rather than of details, is, therefore, liable to become intellectually far-sighted; whereas the scientist who is in the habit of paying more attention to particular phenomena, to narrow generalizations, is, therefore, likely to contract intellectual myopy, contempt for (arising from the inability to attain) wide generaliza- tions. An excess of metaphysical speculation leads to mental presbytia; an excess of positivism leads to mental myopy; and vice versa. The philosopher is indirectly interested in particular phenomena; he deems them worthy of his attention in so far only as they allow him to ascend through them to general views, for he is more interested in the har- mony, relation, between things than in the things them- selves. To the scientist, and more so to the technolo- gist, generalizations are a mere means to a better com- prehension or utilization of things, of particular facts. The objective, positive, naturalistic or experimental thinker approaches men and things from without; he displays a maximum activity of the perceptive or re- ceptive organs and a minimum of reasoning, i. e., a minimum activity of the associative or combinative brain organs; he reifies men, i. e., he is inclined to obliterate 116 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN the distinction between human, vital and mechanical phenomena; he advances from the simple to the com- plex by adding, synthetizing elementary properties; he abstains from accepting hypotheses as long as the sense data are scarce; to rise above things upon a weak factual foundation terrifies him, nor does he feel any necessity for doing so; he preferably dwells in the low, prosaic regions of facts and actualities; if he is original, it is in observation, in the discovery of new facts. The subjective, humanistic, or speculative thinker approaches everything from within; he displays a minimum of observation, perception and a maximum of interpretation, combination; he humanizes things and animals, i. e., he is inclined to attribute to them too many human qualities; he advances from the complex, from his own ego, to the simple by means of abstraction, subtraction, simplification, analysis; he prefers any provisional hypothesis, no matter how wildly specula- tive, to none; disconnected, unexplained, brute facts are a burden to him, his mind cannot digest them unless held together by or diluted in theories; his usual and favorite abode are the high, poetical regions of abstract concepts and general views; his originality consists in inventing new theories to include, to shelter the new facts discovered by the observer or by the experimenter, or dimly foreseen by himself. Both the positive and the speculative thinker natu- rally dislike, and even ignore, unless compelled by public opinion or by professional interests to take notice of, each other. Both admire and accept as teacher the happy genius who is both positive and speculative at the same time and who in his turn understands how to learn from both speculators and observers. Subjective or humanistic speculation can be easily perverted by, and pressed into the mercenary service of, egoism, commercialism, profit-seeking. Such a per- INTELLECTUAL HIERARCHY 117 verted form is pragmatism, which is a new name given by modern representative sophists to the old sophistic theory that man is the measure of all things. One need not be surprised that pragmatism or instrumental- ism arose or was rather revived and brought into vogue in the United States of America, and in England under the more original, hence more innocent name of human- ism; for, the English-speaking race being the commer- cial or predatory race per excellentiaon, it was natural that the self-seeking commercial standards should have first exerted their influence on, and been echoed b}r, English-American philosophy. Let us hope that the philosophers belonging to other less predatory nation- alities will resist the contagious effects of such a mer- cenary and morally perverted philosophy. Impressibility.—The poet has more impressibility but less clearness of consciousness than the thinker. The poet depicts the world and the soul as they impress him under certain peculiar psycho-physical circum- stances ; the scientist describes the world as it im- presses him under relatively constant or normal psycho- physiological circumstances. In ordinary circumstances, the philistine is very lit- tle impressed by things not belonging to the sphere of his bodily needs; the psycho-technical artist and the physico-technical artist or technologist are impressed by certain things at the expense of others, or by some aspects of things exclusively: The artist, in the narrow sense of the word (poet, painter, sculptor, etc.), by the emotional or beauty aspect; the technologist, by the practical or utilitarian aspect; the scientist and the philosopher pay more attention to the harmony of things, to the harmony of various aspects: the scientist deals with partial harmony, relative truth; the philos- opher with total harmony, absolute truth. Sentimentalism and Cogitation.—The youth, igno- GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN 118 rant of life’s obstacles and of his fellow-men’s meanness, looks with sentimental hopes forward into the future; the old man, mentally and bodily weakened, looks with sentimental admiration and regret back to an idealized past; the prosaic man, who finds nothing poetical in real life, becomes sentimental when human life is repre- sented on the stage or in novels. What is the common characteristic of all the above-given cases of sentimen- tal attitudes, what does sentimentalism mean? Sentimentalism means one-sideness; cogitation is many-sidedness; prosaic attitude means no-sidedness or affective blindness. Sentimentalism means that the mind recurs periodically to and dwells a long time on a few things or aspects of things; whereas in cogitation the mind dwells a relatively short time on many things or aspects of things. Opposite aspects awaken oppo- site feelings that partially neutralize each other, and thus free our mind from a narrow sentimentalism. Just as there is no motion or force independently of matter, nor matter in a state of absolute rest; so there are no sentiments independently of ideas, nor ideas lacking a sentimental aspect. Sentiments are motion, commotion of ideas; ideas are psychical matter in mo- tion. Too strong a sentimental shock produces con- fusion, dissociation or disintegration of ideas and of mental functions, hysteria, stupor, hinders precipita- tion of pure ideas; a moderate sentimental shock stimu- lates thinking, facilitates combination, colligation, fu- sion of ideas. Emotions and ideas are not separate states of mind. Emotion and idea are inseparable constituents, com- bined in various proportions, of one and the same state of mind. The emotion is the centrifugal, materializable, dynamical constituent; the idea is the centripetal, stat- ical, ethereal part. With increasing clearness, mean- ingfulness of the idea, i. e., with increasing associations INTELLECTUAL HIERARCHY 119 between the idea and other ideas, there is a parallel decrease in the intensity, explosiveness, immediacy of motor discharge in the emotion. With decreasing clear- ness or associative links, with increasing independence or isolation of an idea or system of ideas, there is an increase in the emotional and volitional (motor) con- stituent. The fact that strong emotions go together with confused, vague ideas, leads many psychologists to the pr'vma facie plausible theory that emotions are nothing else but obscure ideas, as if there were not plenty of confused ideas in the human mind without any appreciable emotional fringes. Vague, inarticulate longings which shift around aim- lessly on the stormy ocean of the sentimentalist’s soul; simple, undifferentiated, elementary states of mind, in which the emotional constituent is prepotent and the idea is almost reduced to zero, find their most adequate or most beautiful expression in music—including dance or acted music—which is the lowest, most primitive art, hence the favorite art of women, children and philis- tines. With increasing complexity in the states of mind, with increasing clearness in the cogitational con- stituent, and with decreasing impetuosity in the emo- tional part, higher arts (sculpture, painting, poetry, drama, novel) are resorted to. States of mind in which the cogitational element dominates and the impetuosity of the emotional element is reduced to a minimum, find their best expression in science and philosophy. Mysticism (spiritualism, occultism, theosophy, . . .) is an intermediate step between pure emotionalism and clear thinking: it may mean an ascending stage towards clear, original thought, or a descending stage of decay into emotionalism, into primitive confused ideas. In mystical minds, the boundary lines between related and analogous concepts is totally obliterated, hence the concepts are confounded, interchanged. 120 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN There is no fundamental antagonism between cogita- tion, reason, knowledge, science, . . . and emotion, sen- timent, feeling, art, religion. . . . Only those emotions are dispelled by increased knowledge which are illusory, which have no objective foundation, which owe their apparent, idealized, or magnified value to the intellect- ual mist which enshrouds the ignorant and to the hypnotic suggestions of the charlatans who exploit ignorance. Genuine, objective, useful sentiments persist—nay, they thrive better—in the light of truth. Thus the atheist who does not believe in any divine sanction of morality, nor in future reward and punishment of human actions, is not less—nay, he is more—moral and altruistic than the religious; the naturalist, the physi- cian, the scientist, who study the sexual organs and the other mechanisms of the human body in all its naked- ness, are not less exposed to falling in love than the ignorant common mortal; the psychologist who cannot idealize his parents and children, does not love them less, nay, he loves them more sanely, than the ignorant man loves his idealized family. The love of the enlightened is sane, constant, pure, unalienable. . . . Enlighten- ment or science does not attack or destroy genuine or metaphysical religion, i. e., the cosmic sentiments or the consciousness of our being one with, an integrating part of, the whole universe; the sentiments of wonder and awe inspired by infinity, by the mysterious and un- known potentialities of nature; the sentiments of mod- esty, good will and humility inspired by the frailty and ephemeralness of human life, etc. Science merely at- tacks superstition, fear, ecclesiastic non-sense and ex- ploitation. Reason does not destroy instincts; it only renders them modifiable, adaptable, useful. Knowledge and truth are not incompatible with sentimentalism; they merely do not tolerate error, illusion, ignorance, INTELLECTUAL HIERARCHY 121 fetishism, ungrounded opinions, sentiments or actions. Mature, masculine reflection does not go together with youthful and feminine (explosive, impulsive) enthusi- asm. But there is not the least reason for regret; for such an enthusiasm is unstable, short-lived, unreliable, it either remains inactive or overshoots the mark. No amount of theological sophistry will ever succeed in covering up the irreconcilable conflict between science and anthropomorphic religion, as manifested in the in- vocation of supernatural help, in prayer and ritual; for the office of science is to promote progress by teaching us how to gain knowledge of and mastery over nature, whereas prayer is a hindrance to progress, a mere faded relic of the primitive man’s magic rites, by means of which he both gave vent to his desires and vainly hoped to influence the course of natural events in his favor. In short: Just as in social life the parasitical insti- tutions or organizations, the fraudulent reputations and the absurd customs, can subsist and thrive only on condition that they shun the light of public criticism, of free discussion, of a comparison with similar but useful institutions, and on condition that they seek the protection of darkness, secrecy, legal suppression of free speech (through laws against libel, lese majesty, contempt of court, etc.), taboos, terrorism, etc.; just so in individual life the injurious emotions, the phobias, the parasitic or fixed ideas, the hypnotically instilled be- liefs, the bad habits, can subsist and thrive only on con- dition that they shun the light of consciousness, of self- scrutiny, of reason, of a comparison with objective and useful mental acquisitions, and on condition that they seek protection in the darkness of the subconscious, in isolation, in opaque or adorned linguistic garbs. Subject-Matter and Method.—The subject-matter of art, taken in its broadest sense, i. e., including useful arts also, is formed by the harmonies and the conflicts 122 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN between desire and reality or knowledge; the end pur- sued is beauty or utility. The subject-matter of science is formed by knowledge, that of philosophy is the harmony of various classes of knowledge or the un- derlying reality; their direct aim is truth, and indirectly they lead to the useful. A practical art is a system of useful, perceptual, con- crete, individual, particular, implicit knowledge. The knowledge of an esthetical art is about emotions, pas- sions, states of mind and their outward manifestations. A science is a system of explicit, verified, conceptual, general, class knowledge. Philosophy is a system of the highest, ultimate, most general conceptual knowl- edge of both mind and cosmos. The artistic or es- thetic sense represents the lowest or initial stage of unselfish human interests: it is a vague, emotional, unselfish, general or undifferentiated, and formal or superficial interest in cosmic and human nature. Whereas the scientific and the philosophic spirit represent clearly-defined, intellectual, unselfish interests in the essence of the universe. When we perceive a thing a single time or for the first time, we certainly have no way of telling what be- longs to the thing perceived and what to its environ- ment, to its setting, i. e., to the other things perceived simultaneously and more or less connected therewith; so that we cannot recall the thing without recalling its context. After repeated experience, however, i. e., after having perceived the thing in various contexts, with various emotional fringes, we come to separate the thing from other things with which it is fortuitously or merely contiguously associated, we come to separate the objective from the subjective aspect; we become able to evoke free ideas, the image of the thing without being encumbered by a mass of other irrelevant, un- related images; we become able to recall the things in INTELLECTUAL HIERARCHY 123 consequence of a mere resemblance with other things thought about; we become able to use it, not only as an object of revery, but also as an object of classification, thought, as an element of reasoning. Experiences sui generis, unclassified and emotional experiences, belong to the realm of Memory and of Imagination. Fre- quent, recurrent, common, objective experiences belong to the realm of knowledge, of thought. The poet, the artist, deals with the individual, exceptional, subjective, emotional, unclassifiable, unanalyzed part of human ex- perience; he deals with objects of Memory and of Im- agination. The thinker takes his subject-matter among the typical, general, objective, recurrent, communicable elements of human experience; he deals with objects of thought, with experience stripped of the contingent, accidental, purely individual, incommunicable elements and of the variable emotional fringes. In Art, knowing and doing are inseparable, continu- ally cooperating and mutually furthering. In Litera- ture (Poetry, Drama, Novel), Science and Philosophy, knowing is separated, differentiated, from doing: Know- ing merely sets aims to our doing, but does not pre- scribe, or busy itself too much with, the means to be employed and the single actions to be performed. In Literature, unlike Science and Philosophy, laws or the conception of constant, causal, intimate relations be- tween things and phenomena are not presented explicitly or separately from the described particular phenomena. In Science more attention is paid to the changing, di- versifying, superficial relations between things than to their underlying, deeper, constant, unifying relations. Philosophy prefers to search beneath the troubled sur- face of striking and ephemeral appearances, for the slow but steady course of cosmical and human events; it searches, beneath historical and geographical superfi- ciality and diversity, for psychological profundity and 124 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN similarities; beneath political exaggeration, bluff, noise and vicissitudes, it looks for economic truth, stability, or slow progress; behind dazzling and changing forms, it sees the permanent, indestructible essence or spirit. All the grandiloquent, sonorous talk of our profes- sorial and academical philosophers and scientists about methodology consists mostly of empty phraseology. The methods of thinking, acting, investigating cannot be followed separately or one at a time like the roads leading to a city. Thus no complex can be analyzed without separating its elements by synthesizing them with other elements. We cannot think out one prob- lem without seeing more or less the parallel or analo- gous problems in other fields of knowledge, and the supra-ordinated or more general problems, as well as the sub-ordinated or more particular and practical problems to which the problem under consideration leads. No generalization can be reached by induction without making sure of every upward step by looking down, I mean deductively, to the further particular facts supporting it. We cannot start from the simple and advance towards the complex, unless we admit that the simple presents itself to our consideration without being looked for. As a matter-of-fact, we do not know that we are in the presence of the simple unless we start from complexes of various degrees and compare them among themselves. The experimental method cannot be followed without the speculative; the most insignifi- cant step in experimenting starts from a supposition, it starts as the verification of some anticipated succes- sion, coexistence or other relation of phenomena; all conscious activity is guided by ideas. Only verballv, i. e., in exposition, can we afford to follow a single method, to simplify and separate what is in reality complex and connected; but in thinking and invention such a simplification is impossible. INTELLECTUAL HIERARCHY 125 The main method of art is synthetical; the analytical is of secondary importance only, i. e., analyses are made in the view of subsequent larger syntheses. In science the reverse is true: Description, the concrete, paves the way for explanations, for generalizations, for the ab- stract. In philosophy, both methods seem to be of equal importance. Synthesis in Art and Philosophy is constructive, it creates concrete or abstract organic wholes; synthesis in science is classificatory, it arranges in order to handle more easily, it prepares the raw ma- terial for the former. Analysis puts into our hands the inert matter, the substance, the body, the anarchic elements of things and of ideas; but it lets escape their collective or resultant motion, their associative energy, their souls, their spirit of cooperation. Art synthesizes anew or recombines the scattered elements of cosmic and human nature into new, more beautiful or more useful wholes. And Phi- losophy synthesizes the scattered, disconnected scien- tific concepts into a more or less unified, consistent, life-guiding or life-illuminating system. What the psychologist, the scientist, the philosopher express explicitly, in abstract form, the artist and the technician express implicitly, in a concrete body, in a work full of life, or in a mechanism of far-reaching usefulness. Point of View and Aim.—Art looks at the world from one point of view, science from an indefinite number of points of view, philosophy tends to embrace the world from an infinite number of points of view, sub specie aeternitatis. Art attains subjective truth (beauty or utility), science attains objective relative truth, philosophy strives after objective absolute truth. Primitive art looked at the world successively from many points of view; hence, no perspective and lack of congruity. Modern art looks at the different parts 126 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN of a whole simultaneously from one point of view. The artistic type of mind does not mistake the inferential rectification of the primary perceptions for the latter, what is seen from one point of view for what would be seen from a more habitual or more practical standpoint, the result of unconscious inference for immediate ob- servational data; in the psychical combinations he does not lose sight of its elements, he distinguishes what is given to his senses from what is added by his imagina- tion and intellect. What is said about the artist in the sphere of per- ceptions holds—mutatis mutandis—of the scientist and of the philosopher in the sphere of the concrete or abstract concepts. First Cause, Ultimate Result.—The first cause and final aim of art, science, philosophy, is normally a gen- eral increase or intensification—and abnormally a com- pensatory, unilateral intensification—of the psycho- physiological rhythms. This rhythm-intensification of our life functions is produced by Art directly, through the intermediation of one sense by the lower arts (music, dancing, color-painting, etc.) or through several senses plus lower intellectual organs by the higher arts; it is great but transitory; it arises and ceases almost im- mediately with the stimulus; it throws the individual under its influence into ecstasy, exaltation, self-es- trangedness; it makes him a docile instrument in the hands of the person exerting this intensification. The rhythm-intensification induced through coarse dance and music or other physical and emotional intoxi- cants (religious, sexual, gambling, self-deceptive or other exciting practises) is not only unstable, ephem- eral, uncontrollable, unavailable for constructive, up- lifting purposes, a fruitless reaction against mental decay, an inadequate, though the easiest, means of ap- peasing discontent or the thwarted evolutional impulse, INTELLECTUAL HIERARCHY 127 but is also followed by a swinging of the mind to the opposite extreme of bestiality, torpor, paralysis, iner- tia, weariness of life. The rhythm-intensification produced by, and giving rise to, Science and Philosophy, is small but permanent; it is communicated indirectly through the senses; it ap- pears much later than the stimulus, and may never dis- appear ; it enriches the individual, it renders him aspir- ing, it makes him a willing colaborer of his teachers and congenial minds. Science tunes the individual in harmony with the world as it is; philosophy tunes him in harmony with the world as it tends to become. Philosophy—I mean real, self-created and not verbal, school philosophy—tunes the human mind in harmony with eternity, infinity; it lifts man above the stormy, cloudy, impure, narrow, petty-minded, discomforting, disconsolate every-day life; it lifts man above vain, illusory, fragile hopes and above ungrounded, unavoid- able fears. The physiological criterion of a normal or general intensification of the vital ryhthms, is an increase in the demand for more and better nourishment, for an in- tenser and richer field of activity; the psychical crite- rion is a state of optimism, of psycho-physiological euphoria, or at least of hopefulness. Science (s) looks mostly at the divergence, dissimi- larity, differentiation of phenomena, of things (I differ- entiates, falls into, 1 and 2; II into 3 and 4; A into I and II). 128 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN Philosophy (p), on the contrary, looks at the con- vergence, similarity, origin, unification of phenomena and of things (1 and 2 unified into I, I and II unified into A). Ability and Sphere of Interests.—Sometimes not a difference in the prevailing ability, but a difference in the predominating interests, will determine the type of superiority to which an individual will belong: Many philosophers could have become scientists, were not their sphere of interests too vast to permit a prolonged sojourn in a single domain of human knowledge. Like- wise, many scientists could have become technologists, had they been more patient and their intellectual hori- zon narrower. What makes the thinker unfit for action, for so-called leadership, is, not inability or ignorance of human nature, but his broader and unselfish interests, his greater self-respect, his greater morality, his higher ambition, viz., the ambition to be a leader of leaders, a leader of seeing, enlightened, thinking men, and not of blind, credulous, ignorant, easily deceived masses. No amount of patience and of voluntary effort can enable one to accomplish things which he may be inter- ested in, but which he is not fit for; although interest aroused by education and other external circumstances, if reinforced by concurrent heredity, may succeed in creating, after one or two generations, the correspond- ing ability. Thus, the reproductive artist (singer, actor, . . .) cannot, by dint of mere will or effort, rise to the level of a productive or creative artist (com- poser, dramatist, . . .). Nor is the observer able to rise to the level of the thinker, i. e., to rise above the low region of brute facts, and to see the subtle connec- tions between them. Nor can the purely scientific thinker, who dwells at a certain height above the re- gion of brute facts, rise to the still higher level of the philosopher, who dwells in a region above that of con- INTELLECTUAL HIERARCHY 129 crete or scientific concepts, and who soars so high above the region of brute facts that these almost dis- appear from his view. But a little voluntary effort can enable a man of higher abilities to accomplish—although less efficiently than the specialist—things that require lower abilities. For those who have risen to a higher intellectual sphere must have passed through, or dwelt for a certain time in, the lower sphere; nay, more, they cannot throw off entirely the lower kind of mental work and shift it on to the shoulders of the intellectual subordinates. In the intellectual world, unlike the economic world, men ca- pable of higher activities do not feel themselves entitled to the privilege of keeping the biggest profits for them- selves and of being exempted from all lower or simpler activity: they only feel entitled to giving less time and less attention to lower mental work. Thus, the thinker must come down from time to time into the region of observational and experimental workshops; the produc- tive or creative artist must do a certain minimum of reproductive or imitative work. One cannot simultaneously exert one’s ability or in- telligence, and become equally skilled, in two diverging, let alone in two opposite, lines of activity: in both the pursuit and shunning of truth, in both cherishing love and bearing hatred for one’s fellow-men, in both sin- cere effusion and crafty reticence, in both self-expres- sion and self-denial, in both invention and imitation, in both progressive and regressive adaptation, in both paving new ways and submitting to the established order of things, in both talking sense and keeping up a conversation by means of platitudes and conventional non-sense, etc. One cannot become skilled in things that one does against one’s will, reluctantly, merely on external provocation or compulsion, without previous preparation. Even in lying, cheating, preying, under- 130 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN mining, torturing, oppressing, . . . one cannot become skilful unless one does these things continually, natu- rally, spontaneously, for their own sakes, even in the absence of external compulsion or of urgent needs, dis- interestedly and not only with a view to getting personal benefit therefrom. The good-natured and sincere indi- vidual does not display any tact, inventiveness, intelli- gence, foresight, mindfulness of his own interests dur- ing his justified outbursts of anger, indignation or re- volt; for, judging others by himself, he is never pre- pared to see them misconstrue or deliberately distort his words, belittle or question his pure intentions, be- tray and misuse his confidence. Whereas the bad-na- tured, venomous, hypocritical individual displays a dia- bolical intelligence, tactfulness, resourcefulness, calm- ness in his vindictiveness and rapacity; for he is plan- ning evil all the time, before he can make use of it, so that he is never unarmed or taken unawares in cases of friction with his fellow men. Contact with the Daily Life.—The artist stands in direct and continual touch with the daily life of the common mortal, and with Nature (hence, the personifi- cation thereof) ; whereas the thinker is somewhat es- tranged from the plain man’s sphere of interests. The artist accentuates the ideal germ contained in the prose of the daily life; he forms a connecting bridge between the low regions of the daily life and the high regions of thinking. Specialism and Many-Sidedness.—The many-sided- ness of the philosopher is acquired by a simultaneous consideration of various fields of knowledge; that of the scientist is successively acquired. There is no conflict, no antagonism, between speciali- zation and polyhistory or philosophy. The true or profound specialist ends by becoming a philosopher, or, at least, philosophically minded; the objective phi- INTELLECTUAL HIERARCHY 131 losopher ends sometimes by concentrating his interests upon one specialty more than upon others; the former ends by acquiring, and the latter ends by objectively corroborating his previously purely subjective sense for proportion or sense for the relative and unequal im- portance of the various fields of human endeavor. The specialist begins by concentrating his interest upon one science (S); and, as he advances further into the domain of his science of predilection (s approaches S), he comes necessarily in contact with the other sciences (S15 S2, S3 . . .), and lastly he begins to suspect, to seek a harmony between all the fields of human knowl- edge. The polyhistors or the philosophers begin with many points of view, with a diffusion, dissemination of their interests. They begin to glean simultaneously in various fields of knowledge (a, b, c, . . .). When their partial acquaintance with the various fields increases, they begin to perceive a philosophical system. Every science—especially psychology—is an avenue leading to, and ending at, the Heights of Philosophical GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN 132 Contemplation. The contempt for philosophy of those scientists who did not succeed in advancing far enough on the rough, arduous, and thorny road of their own specialty to be able to cherish the hope of arriving soon at the Philosophical Heights: the contempt for philos- ophy, I say, shown by this kind of narrow-minded scientists springs from the same source as the contempt of the fox in the fable for the sour grapes. There is antagonism between superficial specialism and dialectic, speculative philosophizing. The super- ficial specialist does not know enough of his own spe- cialty to see the innumerable ways of communication be- tween the field of his specialty and the fields of other specialists. The speculative philosopher knows too lit- tle about the different domains of human knowledge to find an objective harmony between them; therefore his lazy mind establishes a fictitious link between his scat- tered ideas, and he mistakes this fictitious connection for an objective philosophic system. This dialectic, romantic, ideologist, idealistic, parasitical type of spec- ulative thinker is largely responsible for the existence of mental poverty and confusion; just as the parasiti- cal type of financial speculators is largely responsible for the existence of economic poverty and slavery. Theoretically we do not see any reason for stopping at, and resting satified with, ultimate explanations; but practically we have to do so, we have to hold in check our explanatory aimless Wanderlust which is a relic of primitive unbridled imagination, a relapse into the primitive aimless wandering of animistic thought; just as the Wanderlust of the tramps is a relic of or re- lapse into the wandering instinct of our nomadic an- cestors. The purely speculative philosopher is a scien- tific tramp and parasite: just as the regulations, norms, drudgery, unnecessarily complicated machinery of our economic world, form an unbearable burden to the INTELLECTUAL HIERARCHY 133 tramp; so are the norms, methods, propasdeutics, un- necessarily long preparatory work of the scientific career to the speculative philosopher; he prefers to live and travel around in the world of imagination at the expense of scientific, experimental workers, just as the proletarian tramps and particularly the idle aristo- crats or privileged tramps live and travel around at the expense of manual workers. Just as nomadic Wan- derlust could with impunity be gratified as long as there were uninhabited regions, and regions inhabited by weak races; and just as parasitism will become im- possible in an ideal society in which the working classes will manage their own affairs: Just so will pure meta- physics become impossible when every science will not shrink from working out its own metaphysics, after having established a firm, practical, experimental foundation. Not to do injustice to the genuine, ideal metaphysi- cians, we must rather compare them to the explorers of unknown and of the pola r regions: they have, it is true, the nomadic instinct of Wanderlust, like the tramps, but they subordinate it to and apply it in the pursuit of higher aims of life, in the exploration of the misty unknown regions of metaphysics. The scientific- ally poorly-equipped speculator either perishes in these metaphysical lands, or returns without bringing any new information about them except the phantoms of his own mind exalted by fear. The verbal, adventurous, or pseudo-metaphysician returns without having reached the misty, frozen, as yet uninhabited land of meta- physics ; but he makes more fuss about his excogitated exploration than real explorers. The antipathy felt by scientific specialists for philosophers has its ana- log in the economic world in the antipathy felt by set- tled or routine people for nomadic or traveling, adven- turous individuals. 134 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN INTELLECTUAL HIERARCHY, CLASSIFICATION The Man of Action.—Intellectually, the pure or ordinary man of action does not stand much higher than the philistine. He is, as a rule, a pseudo-intel- lectual man, and, often, a morally pseudo-superior man. Although mercenary and success-worshiping histo- rians, and the credulous masses, erect him monuments and immortalize him in various other ways, the im- partial student of human nature cannot assign him any high rank in the hierarchic scale of psychical abili- ties. Human progress would be more continuous and less subject to disturbances or retrogressions, if the thinkers, the genuine superior men, exerted direct guid- ance over the masses. The man of action needs the sug- gestions and guiding ideas elaborated by the thinkers; but the latter—if they had their choice—could dis- pense with the intermediation of the former—not, how- ever, with the intermediation of technologists, but merely with that of leaders, statesmen, professional re- formers, ethical culturists, organizers. . . . The pure man of action has the following character- istics : Activity, restlessness is his life. Solitude, in- action, revery, thinking for its own sake, thinking that cannot immediately be communicated and put into prac- tise, is a dread to him. His mental activity runs in simple, unilateral, unramified circuits, leading to im- mediate muscular discharge. His knowledge of men and things is purely empirical, and of no general or theoretical nature. He does not care for the “why”; he merely cares for the “what.” In other words: He merely cares to know how to act quickly and efficiently upon a particular class of men or things, and how to make them react; but he does not care to know about physical and psychical behavior in general, nor about their inner, hidden causes. If he is a leader of men, INTELLECTUAL HIERARCHY 135 all he cares to know is, what pleases and displeases them, what prompts them to action, what gains their confidence, what are the safest means of using them for the gratification of his material and egoistically- vain pursuits—if he is a pseudo-morally active man— or what are the safest means of making men work in their own interest and for the gratification of his al- truistical vanity—if he is a genuine morally active man, i. e., an ideal man of action. But the fact that he knows how to lead men does not at all prove that he knows and understands them. On the contrary! If he really knew and understood men, as a genuine psy- chologist does, he would be less enthusiastic; if he had a clear idea of how empty of reality the pursuit of im- mortality is, and of how insignificant human life and struggles are in comparison with the infinite, eternal processes going on in the universe, he would probably be more sober and less impulsively active. Compara- tively speaking, the physically active man or the tech- nologist knows more about the substances acted upon than the socially active man or the leader knows about his flock. Both act for the sake of getting useful re- sults. Knowledge is a mere means to them. Too much, too general, too deep knowledge would be a hindrance to them. Hence, they avoid it, and are averse to it. They tolerate Science, Art, Philosophy, purely intel- lectual pursuits, so long and in so far only as it serves their purposes so to do. If the socialistic philosopher works hand in hand with socialistic leaders and organ- izers, it is—not because he does not know their aversion to intellectual pursuits, but—because he knows that they will bring about a social organization under which there will be more leisure and more liberty than under the capitalistic spoliation regime, hence more oppor- tunity for intellectual pursuits. The man of action is necessarily narrow-minded, one- 136 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN sided, oligo-ideistic, or even mono-ideistic; for one can- not pursue many practical aims, i. e., the realization of many ideals, as one can pursue many trains of thoughts. To put into practise a single idea and to preserve the practical results against degeneration or destruction, requires—in our human society which is spoiled by an anarchical, cut-throat competition—untiring attention, uninterrupted application, and readiness to act at any moment; whereas a train of thoughts may be dropped for some time and resumed later, without any detri- ment, nay, with positive advantage. The pursuit of a practical end, on the contrary, does not allow any in- terruption, and jealously forbids the pursuit of any other practical end; it requires steady preoccupation with details and with trivial matters; it also requires direct contact with the objects or persons acted upon. The greater the mass to be acted upon and the greater its ignorance or intellectual blindness, the greater is the chance for its falling a prey to unscrupulous, criminal rulers or leaders whose so-called executive ability un- masks itself, on closer inspection, as consisting of mere flattery, terrorism, intrigue and bribery. The distinction between active and contemplative men is not always a distinction between two kinds of men; it is more often a distinction between two degrees of activity. What is commonly known and spoken of as the active type of men consists of men who are prompt in putting into practise whatever they see, think or is suggested to them; who feel the necessity of being al- ways doing something—be it even something useless, something they do not believe in, something that does not appeal to their interests—rather than do nothing or indulge in thinking and deliberating; who prefer to do something now, at the risk of having later to undo it, rather than deliberate, plan the whole scheme of action, and postpone action or agitation until the en- INTELLECTUAL HIERARCHY 137 tire scheme is worked out in their minds; who feel the impulse of exhibiting themselves, of drawing the people’s attention upon themselves; who learn to do bj doing, and learn such things only as they themselves can do or put into practise. Whereas what we commonly call the contemplative class of men does not necessarily or entirely consist of inactive men. The contemplating man is not prompt in acting, nor does he like to be continually active. He does not act before having planned the system of means to be employed, before having weighed and valued the consequences, before having made sure that the trouble is worth his while and will yield lasting results. He has no patience for carrying out details and for remaining active in a single cause; nor can he rest satisfied merely with immediately realizable or working knowledge. The man of action acts promptly, much and continually, but achieves very little; whereas the thinking man acts after delibera- tion and mature conviction, he acts little and but rarely, but achieves much. Left to themselves, the thinkers and philosophers of mankind would have accomplished long ago the international peace, general culture and universal brotherhood which the men of action have been promising and claiming to pursue for so many thousands of years. Poet and Thinker.—From the evolutionary stand- point, the thinker, the philosopher, must be regarded as superior to the pure poet; since sentimentalism goes together with an immature age, is only a stage of transi- tion in the life of the thinker, whereas philosophic and scientific thinking comes with maturity. If we admit that the evolution of the superior man during his indi- vidual life represents an abridged copy or recapitula- tion and an anticipation at the same time of the evo- lution of mankind, we have to accept the conclusion that art, in general, and poetry, in particular, repre- 138 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN sent a lower stage of development than science and philosophy. The thinker may exceptionally redescend into the warm regions of poetry; and the poet, the artist, may from time to time ascend into the serene regions of phil- osophical thinking. But, in spite of occasional deep philosophical insights or intuitions, the poet remains a superficial, confuse, obscure, inconsistent or imma- ture thinker. Even Goethe, the philosophical poet per exceUentiam, makes no exception thereto. The poet is a primitive type of thinker: He thinks in images, mental pictures, not in concepts; he ex- presses, therefore, his thoughts in pictorial language; he thinks the general and the abstract in the form and by means of the particular or concrete; he thinks the new, the inanimate, the impersonal in terms of the old, traditional, animate, personal. Since conflicting or an- tagonistic images, unlike conflicting concepts, cannot coexist—but only succeed each other—in conscious- ness, we understand why poets are partial, one-sided, inconstant, inconsistent, sentimental. Juvenile and Mature Types.—Psychical maturity is characterized by a better, more rapid perception of wholes, of manifolds, and by conception of the abstract, of the content, of remote ends; psychical juvenility has a clearer and more objective perception of parts, of details, of the concrete, of form, of immediate ends. What is true of maturity and juvenility in common mortals, holds also of the different types of superior men. The artist represents the juvenile type in com- parison with the scientist and the philosopher, who represent maturer types. And within each class we can make the same distinction: one artist may lav more stress on details, form: he belongs to the juvenile type of artists; another one may pay more attention to the whole, to the conception, idea: he is a philoso- INTELLECTUAL HIERARCHY 139 pher-artist, he belongs to the maturer type. Exclusive emphasizing of form or of idea is a symptom of com- plete immaturity or of complete decay. Theology is either the immature, juvenile or the senile stage of metaphysics. The tenth step does not cost any more energy than any preceding step did consume (it only requires a greater effort, on account of the fall in the normal level of vital energy), but the tenth step cannot be made before the ninth. The same holds true of mental proc- esses. Abstract mental processes do not absorb more energy than concrete processes, but the concrete is the foundation of the abstract. To start with the concrete and end with the abstract presupposes an intellectually richer, higher, maturer individuality than to remain forever in the concrete sphere. The juvenile or immature novelist and dramatist do not go much beyond the fantastic stories and fairy tales heard during their childhood; at best, they merely repeat, in a more or less altered form, what they have heard from gossipers or what they have read; they de- scribe men and things as seen from the outside; they concentrate their entire attention upon a single indi- vidual or a few individuals to the exclusion of the rest of the world, or as if the rest of mankind were mere appendages and had a purely incidental existence; they either disregard reality altogether, or reproduce in- discriminately, like a photographic film, the most in- significant, trivial, obvious, encumbering, minute de- tails ; if they possess some introspective ability, they depict a single emotion, a single pursuit of their hero, as if he were obsessed day and night by it and had no other needs or aims in life. The maturer, psychological, philosophical novelist and dramatist have the gift to fathom beneath the surface of things, to scrutinize their own souls and to penetrate into the souls of all 140 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN types of men; they disclose the type or class behind or around the individual characters which they depict; they give the reader glimpses of broad views or of life- conceptions while dealing with particular experiences of particular individuals; they open vistas into the fu- ture while dealing with the past or present; they af- ford glances into the whole complex structure of human society wdiile dealing with one social stratum in particu- lar ; their fine sense of proportion enables them to sepa- rate the vital from the irrelevant, the instructive and interesting from the trivial, causal connections from mere chance connections. Classification.—Strictly speaking, we ought not to base our hierarchical classification of superior men merely upon the prevailing mental function, for all men- tal functions are implied in any mental process, nor upon the proportion between the observational and the interpretative (speculative, hypotheses-making) abil- ity. In other words, we ought not to make a distinction between speculative and non-speculative or observa- tional thinkers, we ought not to make speculation the differentia between philosopher and scientist; for there is just as much theory, fiction, arbitrary—although not explicit—assumption in the latter as in the former. The experimental chemist does not imply less specula- tion in his account of analyses and syntheses of simple, palpable chemical substances than the social reformer makes in his ideal reconstructions of mankind; the physiological psychologist, who scoffs at the philo- sophical psychologist, is not aware that he is forging just as many unverified and even unverifiable theories in his psychometrical experiments and in his analysis of sensations as the latter does in his combinations of concepts, mental functions, etc. ; metaphysics is based just as well upon observation as is physics ; only physics builds upon its observations an intellectual edifice of INTELLECTUAL HIERARCHY 141 ordinary altitude, whereas metaphysics builds upon its observations a gigantic tower. In reality both philoso- pher and scientist start from observations; then they forge hypotheses in order to connect and organize them; then they proceed to further observations and experi- mentations in order to test the strength of the hy- potheses which are usually modified and multiplied to meet the demands of additional facts, and so on. The real difference between the speculative or philosophical thinker and the non-speculative or scientific thinker is a difference in the complexity of the problems attacked. The philosopher having a wide mental grasp, a broad intellectual horizon, higher aspirations, great intellec- tual boldness, many-sided and refined intellectual inter- ests, attacks highly complicated problems which are not within easy reach. The scientist having a narrow intellectual horizon, very few and rougher intellectual needs, little intellectual boldness or spirit of adventure, ventures therefore merely into the lower, immediate, simpler, handier realms of knowledge. It is not proper to classify mental superiority merely on the basis of predominating abilities (observation, memory, imagination, reason) without taking into con- sideration the fundamental aims or interests. For we perceive, remember, . . . spontaneously, quickly what we are directly, constantly interested in; and we learn to withdraw our attention from whatever we feel to be against our aims. Thus women notice in one second more things referring to the clothing, hairdressing, talk, etc., of passers-by than the best man observer could notice in one hour; the self-important individual, the ego-maniac, the born auto-biographer, will remem- ber the most trivial happenings in his and others’ life, if they only seemed to flatter his self-love. The philo- sophically minded individual, i. e., the individual who is interested mostly in broad, general views, eternal 142 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN values, higher thoughts, will as a rule hardly notice or remember persons, things, events of mere actual, transi- tory interest, and still less will he notice or remember gossip, formalities, conventions, petty intrigues and rivalries, matters of fashion, fads, verbal knowl- edge. . . . What distinguishes scientific from non-scientific ob- servation is not the accuracy and quickness of the mental process, but the interests that guide it and pre- side over it, and the subject-matter of the observational process. Likewise with introspection: It is erroneously assumed that the psychologist has a generally keener introspective, self-scrutinizing, self-analyzing ability than the non-psychologist. But this is not necessarily true. If it were so, psychiatrists could not rely on the morbid self-analyses of their patients. What dis- tinguishes the self-analysis of the psychologist from that of the non-psychologist is the fact that the latter observes trivial, personal, strange states of mind, whereas the former notices and remembers only those of his states of mind which are of general interest, which lead to some broad conception or general truth. The philosophical psychologist has a keener self-observa- tion in concepts and complex mental states; the physi- ological psychologist displays keen introspection in sensations and elementary states of mind. The poet re- members his emotions, the psychologist remembers rather the thoughts stirred up by them. The born psychiatrist will be a keen observer of all deviations from the normal in his own mental life and also of their outward manifestations iji others. The ethical psychol- ogist is steadily on the alert to detect any frank or disguised and devious intrusions of impure, selfish motives into his own consciousness, and also manifes- tations of such intrusions into others’ minds; and in his meditations on any psychological problem he can- INTELLECTUAL HIERARCHY 143 not help starting from, or landing into, ethical con- siderations, just as any individual with inborn, con- stant, predominating interests cannot help taking these as a center of perspective, or as a reference point in any of his preoccupations. If certain individuals are called observers, this does not mean that they confine their mental activity to mere observing, and refrain from recollecting, imagin- ing, conceiving, reasoning, theorizing: it merely means that all the latter mental operations are subordinated to and pressed into the service of observation; whereas the thinker, if he observes or uses the observations and experiments of others, it is for the sake of reasoning about them, it is for the sake of using them as stepping- stones for the attainment or supporting of higher points of view, broader outlooks, general conceptions. What distinguishes the observation of the thinker from that of the pure observer is the fact that it is an end-in-itself for the latter, whereas for the former it is a mere means, a mere method of verifying old hypo- theses and of stimulating the conception of new hypo- theses. To the pseudo- or professional superior man, knowledge, art, morality, are mere means or methods of furthering his personal interests. To the genuine or vocational superior man they are ends in themselves, and only occasionally, secondarily, means of earning money or fame. Food, shelter, clothing, material pos- sessions, are aims to the philistine, but mere means to the intellectual individuals. For the technologist, mathematics, physics, chemistry, are mere means or methods of attaining and testing practical ends. The mathematician, physicist, chemist, see in the technical construction a mere embodiment of scientific principles, a mere method of illustrating scientific theories. To a linguist the literature of a nation is a mere means of getting at linguistic peculiarities and principles. To 144 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN the Kultur Historiker language is a mere means of getting at the literature, at the intellectual treasures of nations. Whoever is interested in a certain subject, in certain problems, must have some interest in the methods of approaching, of formulating, of solving, and of applying them. Thus the scientist who has no natural interest in, no inborn or specific ability for mathematics, or for Logic, may nevertheless gain a clear insight into mathematical and logical methods, as soon as he feels the need of applying them to his own field of scientific interests. A mathematician and a logician, on the other hand, for whom mathematics or logic are an aim and not a means, a science and not a method, may fail in applying correctly these methods to complex matters which do not interest them; they must, however, take some interest in simpler matters, in general scientific questions, as means of illustrating and of grasping their methods. Art and technology are for science mere means or methods of getting at, and of utilizing, knowledge. Science, in her turn, is for philosophy a mere means or method, a mere step- ping stone for getting at ultimate truth, at the sup- posedly unique reality underlying all the various classes of scientific knowledge. technological (observation > interpret.) perceptual, implicit, working knowledge, aim: utility, beauty action, expression physical: industry or useful arts psychical: fine arts social arts (politics, reform) Genius (combining and creative imagination) Scientific (observ .= interpr.) conceptual knowledge aim: truth, guiding principles physical: biology, psychical: psychology sociology Philosophic (i nterpret. > obser v.) ultimate conceptual knowledge aim: final harmony world-conception life-conception physical: ontology, psychical: epistemology INTELLECTUAL HIERARCHY 145 Hierarchy.—Lowest on the hierarchic scale of in- tellectual superiority, just a little above the level of average men, we have to place the thoughtless observer, the mechanical experimenters, the purely reproductive and imitative artists and writers. Just as the greedy money-maker consumes his entire activity and ability in the simple aim of amassing money to such an ex- tent that in the end he loses—if he ever had—the ca- pacity of enjoying his wealth, and must regretfully see how others more capable of enjoying life stretch their arms towards his so dearly paid-for pile of money; just so the thoughtless observer, the empty- minded experimenter, amass piles of facts and figures without stopping to digest part of them, in the hope— they claim—that the more gigantic their heap of raw observations will grow, the more easily will knowledge be extracted therefrom; but, alas, their minds end by losing—if they ever had—the capacity of digesting the intellectual wealth which, much to their disgust, they must hand over to the youthful minds of thinkers wdiich are more capable of drawing intellectual food and en- joyment therefrom. The purely observational, extro- spective, descriptive, experimental, intellectual man has no real, many-sided, comprehensive, deep thirst for knowledge, for otherwise he could not confine his mental activity for a long time, and often during his whole lifetime, to a particular, narrow class of objects, to which his attention is usually drawn by popular or scientific fashion. Within the observational field itself a difficulty meets us when we have to decide who stands higher on the hierarchic scale: the observer of pathological cases, or the observer of normal cases (for instance, the psy- chiatrist or the psychologist proper). For, on the one hand, the genuine observer who does not stop at superficial descriptions, who does not rest satisfied with 146 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN Philosophers Psychologists Scientists Novelists Dramatists Creative Artists Inventors, Technologists Critics, Popularisers, Pure Observers, Pure Experimenters, Mechanicians Critics, Reproductive and Imitative Artists and Writers, Actors, Singers, Men of Action, Pseudo- superior Men External World Average Men Internal World mere shadowy, speculative ideas as to the essence of things and processes observed, applies himself to the pathological field, for essential and distinctive features of things are better detected in the caricature, abnor- mal condition; but, on the other hand, it takes more genius to perceive the essence of things in their nor- mal than in their abnormal condition. The bulk of the army of geniuses is formed by scien- tists and technologists, the vanguard by philosophers, the rear by poets and artists. Or, more correctly, tal- ented men form the bulk of the army, and geniuses are leaders, officers. The poets, qua poets, conserve and revive the past; INTELLECTUAL HIERARCHY 147 the scientists and technologists represent the present in its evolutive course; the philosophers anticipate the future: They are the first to catch the only glimpse it is allotted to mortals to attain of ideal beauty, of absolute truth. It is needless to emphasize the fact that Nature knows of no such rigorous classification, of no fixed demarcation lines. There are no absolutely pure think- ers ; no absolutely pure poets, etc. The only differ- ence between a thinker and a poet, characterized as such, is that w’hat is the rule, an aim, with the former is the exception, fortuity, with the latter, and vice versa. The poet compared with the psychologist is what the practical man is when compared with the scientist. The psychologist observes his own soul directly and the souls of others indirectly in an impersonal, ob- jective, disinterested, impartial way; and so does the scientist with respect to the external world. Whereas the poet, the artist, observes his own soul and that of others for the sake of an emotion, in a subjective, partial, personal way; and the practical man notices the exterior world in so far only as it furthers his own interests. To the psychologist, concrete situations are a means to illustrate, or impure material from which he extracts, pure abstract thoughts and laws. To the poet, thoughts are a means to make concrete situations interesting, to characterize a personage or the hero; a hidden skeleton to support a concrete living being; a mere scaffolding by means of which to build a new ideal social organization. As we advance from the class of artists and tech- nologists to the highest class, to that of philosophers, the motor aspect or motor arc decreases in favor of the sensory aspect or sensory arc. Poly-ideists are oligo-active. (Does not this fact point to, or suggest, the theory that psychical energy is physiological energy 148 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN accumulated in a latent state? And, continuing this line of thought, emotional energy would represent a highly condensed or explosive form, whereas cogita- tional energy would represent a better available form of latent cerebral energy.) Of two men standing on the same level of many-sidedness, the more active, the experimentalist, is superior to the less active, to the speculative. Of two men of equal activity, that one is superior who is more many-sided. But the division of labor being a general rule, we very seldom meet with an experimenter who does not borrow his ideas start- ing-point from the speculative thinker who, in his turn, looks for confirmation of his original ideas to the ex- perimental researches of others. The speculative thinker (I do not mean the dialectic, parasitical, or dishonest type) is too rich in original ideas, too lofty and many-sided in his interests, to have time and patience for experimenting, for going deeply into details and consequences. The experimenter, on the contrary, especially the mechanical experimenter who in the intellectual world is the analog of the worker in the economic world, is too poor in original ideas, too poor in inner intellectual impulses and to let go so easily an original idea of his, such a rara avis, or one adopted on account of its being en vogue; it is easier for him to fathom, and to experi- ment upon, one and the same thing than to go over to a new order of things. “Too much of an experi- menter to be a deep thinker” ought, therefore, to be- come a stereotyped phrase. Without corroboration on the part of the patient scientist we could never distinguish the fruitful specu- lation of the genius from that of a lazy mind, the divination of intuition from the mere idle guesswork or fancies of a superficial, verbal speculator. And vice versa: without a guiding speculative idea the scientist INTELLECTUAL HIERARCHY 149 would never know what to observe or what to experi- ment on. To the moral genius no single definite place can be assigned on the hierarchical scale of genius and talent. He may be found anywhere. He may be intellectually a philistine; in this case his morality is manifested merely in action, in lending assistance to particular individuals. He may be an artist, poet, novelist: in this case he depicts with predilection the oppressed and the disinherited class; he invites our attention and cooperative sympathy for the latter. He may be a scientist (economist, sociologist, psychologist), a phi- losopher: in this case he searches after Truth about social conditions, he plans schemes of increasing social happiness or of reducing human suffering. What is common to all these classes of moral geniuses is their aim, viz., the increase of social happiness and solidar- ity. They only differ in methods, means: one uses direct, personal action and persuasion as a means (radical reformers, ideal politicians, ideal teachers and priests, agitators . . . ); another one pursues the same aim through the medium of art, literature, sci- ence, philosophy. Curves of Development.—The artist advances fur- ther than the average man along the line of receptivity (observation) and reproductivity; the scientist and the philosopher advance further than the average man and the artist along the line of creation and interpretation. The mental and bodily development of the genius are not so strictly parallel as in the normal philistine. (See figure on p. 150.) Part of the development curve drawn in detail so as to show the rhythm or periodicity of the abilities in their yearly (a), seasonal or quarterly (b), monthly (c), daily (d), etc., variations, is represented by the figure on page 151. Curves of development INTELLECTUAL HIERARCHY 151 Scientist and Philosopher. Realistic and Romantic Thinker.—Just as we perceive things better if we ex- pect or anticipate the perception, or if—at least—we have had previous similar perceptions, just so do we understand general statements and conclusions drawn by somebody else from his particular experiences, if we have incipient, vague tendencies towards the same generalizations, or if—at least-—we have had identical or similar experiences to those of the man who dares or is capable to draw general conclusions. Just as remote objects are quasi non-existent for those Avho did not follow the objects in their movement, and for those whose attention is not directed towards the dim, distant objects; just so do general statements—espe- cially those of the highest degree of generality or the philosophical—remain meaningless, mere sounds, mental non-entities, mere mental shadows, at best life- less ideas for those who have not followed the trend of particular, concrete experiences moving towards the summit of general, philosophical views; and also for those who are left in the dark as to the experimental, 152 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN factual, concrete structure which supports on its top the dimly seen general, abstract, philosophical state- ment. All the factual, scientific avenues lead to the same summit of philosophic views. No matter along what scientific avenue one travels, the highest philosophical summit reached is the same for all. If not all the philosophers agree, it is because many stop exhausted on the mountain slope, or on a lower summit accessible through but one scientific avenue, which summit they mistake for the highest; and also because on a higher level many lose sight of what they experienced on a lower one, so that these experiences become obliterated, non-existent for this kind of philosophers, known under the euphemistic name of idealists. Realists alone, on their higher, subjective, introspective, conceptual standing ground, do not forget, and do not lose the connection with the lower, objective, extrospective, perceptual standing ground. The realistic philosopher, i. e., the philosopher who, while rising to ever higher points of view which enable him to embrace ever broader horizons, does not lose sight of the single, particular objects, individuals, pur- suits, events, met with in the low regions of concrete life: only this kind of philosopher, I say, is in a posi- tion to assign to everything its real place and signifi- cance by comparison with the entire field of human and extra-human activities. Only he is in a position to warn the philistines against the danger of allowing themselves to be exclusively and forgetfully absorbed in trivial, ephemeral pursuits; in noisy but empty, artificial, perishable humbug performances of ex- ploiters, while paying no attention to approaching catastrophes which spring from unchecked human parasitism. Only he is in a position to remind the in- tellectual proletarians of the real, fundamental eco- INTELLECTUAL HIERARCHY 153 nomico-ethical problems that must be solved before any other, and thus to save them from being caught in the nets of fictitious, shallow, nebulous, idle, formalistic, truth-shunning capitalistic philosophy. Among mod- ern philosophers the only one who, in my opinion, is fully entitled to the name of a genuine, consistent, un- shakable, many-sided realistic philosopher is Max Nordau. If the caste of academical, state- or capital- supported philosophers ignore him, it is on account of his plebeian manners, love of independence, non-official, non-technical, plain, unguarded and unsparing lan- guage, lack of grandiloquent and customary scholastic verbosity, disrespect for time-honored and school-sanc- tioned doctrines or authorities. Wundt, in spite of his great abilities, is too much of a hairsplitter, too selfish, too fame-seeking, too thirsty for the applause of all living philosophasters, too much entangled in the nets of academico-capitalistic philosophy, too busy dis- playing useless erudition and systematizing or assort- ing already existing doctrines, to work himself up to a realistic world-conception which is accessible only to bold, independent, disinterested, solitary, vanity-free, proletarian thinkers. Spencer lacked the life experi- ences of the proletarian to remain true to the philo- sophical and sociological realism of his early years. Only the realistic philosopher is in a position to see the chaotic conditions prevailing both in our intel- lectual and economic world, where fundamental activi- ties are neglected or given but scanty attention, and badly remunerated or even despised; whereas unessen- tial, playful, childish, useless, and even harmful pur- suits are indulged, paid for from public funds, highly esteemed, given undue importance, and munificently remunerated. One may be a realistic thinker in matters of phi- losophy, individual psychology, cosmological science, 154 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN and still remain an unrealistic, romantic, idly specula- tive, ideologistic, nebulous thinker in matters socio- logical, political, economic, ethical-psychological. And this for the simple reason that in the former fields there are no hereditary privileges: Every thinker must start out with personal observation and experi- ence, with sensations, and rise gradually to perceptions and thence to ever broader concepts; whereas, in the field of political, economic, social relations, ready-made fictitious concepts and spurious ideals are imposed upon the children of the privileged classes, and no chance is given them to get closely acquainted with the real pred- atory substratum of the social edifice. Only the in- tellectual proletarian is in a position to study the whole structure of human society from the bottom upwards and to fully realize its defective, tottering condition; for he is born in a lower social stratum, which has to carry daily the crushing burden of human uncertainties, hardships, oppression; but, owing to his superior in- tellect, he is able to get access—either bodily, or men- tally, i. e., through reading—to the higher social classes and to thus extricate the net of subtle causal connec- tions between the simplified, brutalized, struggling, harassed life of the men at the bottom and the increas- ingly refined, complicated, privileged, dream-indulging, smooth life of the upper classes. If he is also a moral genius, then, even if he has worked himself up to a secure position, he will never lose sight of the funda- mental, vital needs and problems of mankind to allow himself—like the thinker who is born into a privileged class—to be carried away by sociological and political abstractions, fictions, grandomaniacal dreams. What has been said about the reasons for the sociological realism of the intellectual proletarian, also holds, al- though in a reversed order, for the impoverished middle class thinker (Karl Marx, for instance) and for the INTELLECTUAL HIERARCHY 155 temporarily or permanently disinherited, persecuted aristocratic thinker (Peter Kropotkin, for instance) who begin their life among the privileged classes and are afterwards driven into the ranks of the desperately struggling proletarians, where they learn to rectify and complete their world-conception, or to see men and things in their true significance. CHAPTER IV CREATIVE LIFE Imitation and Creation.—Imitation and creation do not exclude each other. The particularity of an in- dividual, nation, race, manifests itself just as much in what they imitate as in what they create independently, just as much in the suggestions received as in the sug- gestions given out or exerted upon others. Suggestion alone can but intensify or minimize, accelerate or re- tard, start or arrest, associate or dissociate mental processes that are potentially or actually existent in the mind of the influenced individual; but it cannot give him what he lacks absolutely, it cannot make a blind man see, it cannot make an empty mind think, it cannot make an empty heart feel. Hence, to explain all the identical or similar myths, customs, beliefs, practises, found among distant races, nations, tribes, merely as results of contact, diffusion, imitation, is just as one- sided and childish as to explain them merely as aborigi- nal, spontaneous, independent creations, as proofs of the fundamental identity of men’s souls the world over. Not only truth and knowledge, but also error, illu- sion, beliefs, are based on the observation of real phe- nomena and of real things. Only the latter are built on incomplete, inaccurate, second-hand, emotionally ob- scured observations. There is no error, no belief, no legend, no myth, without a kernel of truth or fact there- in—be it ever so small and hidden from view. All creation, all original work, must be based upon, and contain, some amount of imitation. All speculation CREATIVE LIFE 157 must take its starting-point from some amount of ob- servation. The human mind can not create anything entirely from its own resources, without being assisted, stimulated, fertilized by suggestions coming from ex- ternal Nature. Even music, the so-called subjective art per excellentiam, draws inspiration, not only from the human heart with its mysterious longings and pas- sions, but also from the vast and mighty organ of Nature, from what Karl Merz so beautifully describes as the music of Nature: The wind that howls in caverns, and sighs through the pines, and whistles upon reeds; the wave that moans, the rivulet that laughs, the thunder that peals, the ocean that roars; the music of shifting sands, the mysterious sounds of the waters rushing through coral caves; the wild concerts of the animal world, the songs of birds and of insects; the yelling and screaming waves dashing against the rocks; man’s own outbreaks of emotional expression, etc. The genuine original man is original even when he tries to imitate and believes that he is imitating; he is original against his own will; he finds out at his own expense (for originality is mistaken for stubbornness or haughtiness, and hence offends and irritates those deprived of it) that he differs from others, but often he does not know it, or does not fully appreciate it. Whereas the pseudo-original man imitates while try- ing to create; if insane, he loves originality for its own sake without especial regard to the matter upon which his originality exerts itself; the affected originality of the pseudo-superior man aims at success; the pseudo- original is original in form, trivial matters, words, when he believes to be original in substance, important matters, thoughts. Verbal or formal originality spends itself on inventing big words for small thoughts; un- common, roundabout, humoristically ambiguous or ob- scure expressions for common, every day, simple, plain, 158 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN trivial facts. Verbal originality tries to hide ugly platitudes under stylish, adorned, picturesque linguistic garbs; just as women try to please, not with what they have in themselves, but with nice, colored dresses and borrowed feathers. Whereas philosophical, general, soul-uplifting, socially useful truth is too sublime in it- self to stand in need of showing itself in an adorned, picturesque, stylish, linguistic garb. Verbal originality repeats one and the same idea in various forms, giving thus the appearance of having exhausted the subject; or it finds an original form, an original exposition, for old, common-place truths which on account of their new garb are mistaken for new truths. Real originality expresses, presents, many original ideas, new truths, in one and the same linguistic garb. Variation in ideas, novelty and originality of conceptions, thought-wealth, go often together with a monotonous style, with linguistic poverty. And vice versa: linguistic wealth, variation in the st}distic forms, go usually together with mental poverty, with monoto- nous repetition of the same common-place truths. It is with ideas or thoughts as with men: ordinary, com- mon-place, empty-minded, philistine individuals often walk around in fashionable, brilliant, eye-catching, ex- ceptional garments; likewise, common-place, meaning- less ideas often circulate in high-sounding, brilliant, fashionable, scientific linguistic garments. Originality in certain things presupposes imitation in others; originality in ideas, essence, wholes, concep- tion of the end, goes very seldom hand in hand with originality in form, details, conception of the means, and vice versa. We cannot be teachers in certain things without being disciples in other things. The speculative thinker is original in ideas, ideals, aims; the original experimenter may be original in means and ways of testing, applying, realizing them. The former CREATIVE LIFE 159 is original in broad views, large syntheses; the latter is original in finding out details, in analyzing. The former sees many aspects, things, complexes, at a single glance; the latter sees many details of one and the same aspect, thing, complex. The speculator looks at things from above; the experimenter from a-near. The former looks for relations, causes, reasons, where the latter looks for facts, effects, consequences. The former looks for outer, complex relations; the latter for inner, simple relations. The former knows in- tuitively, simultaneously what the latter finds out by reasoning, successively. The former perceives unum in multis; the latter mult a in uno. Out of a great mass of vagaries and non-sense, a very slight but very precious quantity of deep, fertile truth can be extracted; but it takes a specialist in clear thinking and in penetrating, comprehensive, critical sense to undertake this delicate and difficult task of extracting it; to all others the scarce, subtle, precious truth, which is almost inextricably lost within the inexhaustible layers of metaphysical mud, escapes between their fingers, and nothing but metaphysical mud remains in their hands. An original man undertakes repugnantly the task of merely reproducing, popularizing, compiling, expound- ing, commenting upon others’ opinions, others’ scien- tific or philosophic work. If his ability consists mainly in creative and explanatory work, he will never excel in imitative and descriptive work. As a rule the knowl- edge acquired through reading and school education exerts merely a catalytic or stimulating action upon the mind of the genius, i. e., it merely helps, spurs, encourages his own thoughts to emerge, to enter new combinations, to give birth to new creations, without this knowledge itself being consumed, utilized, absorbed in these original products. 160 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN The premature longing for originality, for intel- lectual wealth, induces many to mistake tautologies for explanations, verbal for real similarities and distinc- tions, to falsify reality semi-consciously, to shun labori- ous verifications, and to bring forth theories having no foundation. These pseudo-originals forget that very often a little original thought is the result of long and laborious observations, experiences, just as a small quantity of gold is extracted from large masses of ore. An original idea which seems to have risen instan- taneously from a single observation, may in reality have lain prepared by many previous observations in our sub-consciousness, and this single observation may be that negligible quantity which by and through itself could never give rise to an original thought, but is just able to turn the scales, to lift the unconscious idea into consciousness. Both the premature and the decrepit yearning for originality, i. e., the yearning which is not yet or no longer accompanied by the power of being original or creative, manifest themselves in various manners: in indulging in physical or emotional intoxicants; in paradoxo-mania; in the spirit of contradiction; in philosophical negativism; in hunting for verbal origi- nality, for superfluous neologisms; in ignoring, belit- tling, ridiculing the real originality of others; in per- secuting contemporary genuine superior men; in getting easily wounded by—and, therefore, anxiously avoiding—criticism, except for advertising purposes; in semi-conscious, self-deceptive plagiarisms; in coun- terfeiting ideas by coining new words, etc. . As an example of how pseudo-originality manifests itself in philosophy let us take the master of modern sophists, Henri Bergson. He identifies, combines, fuses concepts which the human mind has taken so many pains to discriminate: To him space and time are identical, spirit is pure duration, intelligence is CREATIVE LIFE 161 pure space, the physical is merely the psychical in- verted. On the other hand, he dishonestly avails him- self of the fact that the same ideas appear under dif- ferent names; by combining such names he gives him- self the appearance of handing out explanations, new truths, when in reality he hands out tautologies, empty ph rases; by insinuating that such names stand each for a different idea, he simulates a greater intellectual wealth than he really possesses. Such dissimilar words denoting in reality one and the same concept, with which this philosophical magician is juggling, are: time and duration, space and externality, etc. “Mutual externality,” he says, “is the distinguishing mark of things which occupy space.” The abstract concepts of philosophy, and the same old worn-out disputes about time, space, motion, free will, and even the more recent theories which he does not hesitate to reject in their usual wording, he clothes and repeats ad nauseam in his own hybrid language formed from a combination of physical, chemical, mathematical, mechanical terms. Thus he declaims about: “fluid concepts capable of following reality in all its sinuosities,” “ontological affinity between knower and known,” “intuition re- fracted into concepts and propagated to other men,” “reflective consciousness solidifies into sensible quali- ties the continuous flow of reality,” “Nature is a neu- tralized consciousness,” “the mind diluting its quality into quantity,” “reality can pass from tension to ex- tension by way of inversion.” The old assertion that all accurate knowledge must lend itself to mathemat- ical expression he dishes up as an invention of his by disguising it in his hybrid linguistic garb: “All the operations of intelligence tend towards geometry as their perfect achievement.” He disconnects things that belong together, such as intelligence and instinct, in order to shift the burden of explanation for his pseudo- 162 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN theories from the one to the other at will. He de- thrones Reason, Logic, Intellect, because it is too demo- cratical, it does not lend itself to bribery, and because every man can directly appeal to it and find redress in its court against the harm done by falsehoods forced upon him by philosophical charlatans. He conspires with the other less brilliant sophists to reenthrone, under the new mask of Intuition, the Revelation or Inspiration of the oracles, the mystics’ and spiritists’ direct communion with God or spirits, Hartmann’s Unconscious; for the common mortal is not admitted into the precincts of such a ceremonious, secluded, capricious, despotical, autocratic Ruler, but must ap- peal through the intermediary of privileged courtiers, such as Bergson, William James, Rudolph Eucken, and their hangers-on. He dazzles, bewilders, confuses with picturesque, wildly metaphorical, symbolical, sonorous language. He does not use his wild metaphors, like the honest thinker, as mere illustrations, as vehicles for conveying abstract ideas or rather for carrying the readers along the upward path of analogy to the heights of general concepts; he expects us to take his metaphors literally, to stare at them and to admire their author, but not to use them as vehicles for higher and independent thinking; his metaphors are unre- deemable promissory notes that cannot be exchanged for real, solid, nourishing facts. He combines the most unexpected words, the names of mutually exclu- sive abstract concepts, but is smart enough not to play the same trick with concrete concepts and with per- cepts, for fear lest the majority, who live on the per- ceptual level and hence cannot be bluffed in their own domain, should not declare him fit for an insane asy- lum. Thus he declaims without a smile about: “spa- tialization of time,” “materialization of spirit,” “con- cretion of durations,” “duration increasing in tension,” CREATIVE LIFE etc., whch is just as meaningless as to speak about painting noises, humidification of dryness, smelling a color, etc. He revives the primitive man’s personifying, materialistic, anthropomorphic way of thinking under a more modern garb. Thus he says : “The Universe is a great individual akin to ourselves,” “intelligence has been deposited by life on its march,” “spirit contracts into intelligence,” “by turning and twisting on itself, the faculty of seeing becomes identified with the act of willing,” “matter is ballasted with geometry,” “intelli- gence insinuates itself into matter, adopts its rhythm, concentrates itself on it,” “the movement which issues in spatiality deposits along its route the faculty of induction as well as that of deduction,” “mathematics in general represents simply the direction in which mat- ter retails,” “physics comprehends its role when it pushes matter in the direction of spatiality,” “auto- matism lies in ambush for our freedom,” “our activity leaps from act to act.” The naive, materialistic, primitive theory that our ideas are copies, reflections, emanations, imprints of real things reappears in his babbling about: “fluid conceptions,” “the inability of the human intellect to grasp the dynamical,” as if the idea of a movement ought to be a moving idea and the idea of infinity ought to be infinite; to know some- thing means to him to become identical with it, to be in it; to perceive means to him to carve pieces out of the big stream of continuous reality. He thinks he writes metaphysics, when in reality he rewrites physics using abstract concepts as subjects instead of the names of material objects. And these ruminations of the little bit of physical, chemical and mathematical knowledge stuffed into his mind at school he has the insolence of regaling us with, as if it were a new, fresh philosophical dish. He abstains from defining—at any rate, from clearly defining—his terminology, in order 164 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN to be able to use it arbitrarily, to twist it according to his needs, to make it hide his tricks and plagiarisms. The commonplace truth “Nature knows of no sharp demarcation lines between things” he twisted beyond all recognition into the seemingly new dynamic theory of “fluid conceptions,” “dilution of quality into quan- tity,” “spatialization of time,” “concretion of dura- tions” ; but he is shrewd enough to behave sanely in the region of percepts and not to maintain, for in- stance, that Paris may dissolve or dilute into Berlin because the frontiers between Germany and France are conventional, or that East flows, melts into West be- cause the cardinal points are merely relative and not fixed. This clever sophist boldly speaks about knowing things intuitively, absolutely, from the inside, from their own point of view; but is careful not to make himself ridiculous by coming down from the realm of abstractions and speaking to us about smelling a flower from inside, about tasting an apple from its own point of view, about seeing the absolute shape of a table by placing ourselves inside its drawers, about feeling the absolute action of things upon ourselves by avoiding the ether waves proceeding therefrom and placing our- selves at the origin or center of irradiation. To give a glimpse into Mr. Bergson’s philosophical kitchen, into his method of seasoning his undigested, confused school knowledge with some nonsense of his own so as to dis- guise its origin and dish it up as a philosophical dis- covery of his, let us consider this notion of absolute, intuitive or inside knowledge and see how he manufac- tured it: He had a confused recollection of a con- venient simplification used in Mechanics which consists in substituting a simple fictitious, so-called apparent or relative movement from A to B in the place of 2 real or absolute movements, say of a falling body from A to C and of a vehicle moving towards it from B to C. CREATIVE LIFE 165 This simplification is convenient, because the effect or impact of the falling body against a man sitting in the vehicle would be exactly the same as if the vehicle were still and the falling body were moving along AB away from its real vertical path. This does not mean, however, that the man in the vehicle has no other way of knowing the real movement of the falling body ex- cept by transporting himself to its interior. Nor does it mean that he always forgets his own displace- ment toward the body and cannot escape the illusory impression that the latter moves towards him away from the vertical direction. One kind of nonsensical para- doxes, in which Bergson and the philosophical humbug- gers of all times take special delight, consists in pounc- ing upon correlated and hence inseparable concepts— such as space and time, change (flux) and permanency, motion (energy, force) and matter, subject (mind, nous) and object (matter, cosmos), etc.—and to deny the reality of one set or reduce it to a mere derivative, form, shadow of the other set. These humbuggers avoid, however, very carefully playing the same trick with correlated percepts. Thus they do not care to apply their vagaries to concrete cases and to tell us, for instance, that the flight of the birds is the only real thing whereas the birds are pure fiction, or that one can appease his hunger by imagining that he takes food, etc. Just as a quickly revolving wheel becomes impene- trable to bodies thrown against it, and behaves as if the interstices between the spokes were filled with mat- ter, just so a quick, sanguine, practical, preoccupied, busy, enthusiastic mind (a mind in which the asso- ciated ideas, idea and action, follow each other mechan- 166 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN ically, quickly) becomes impenetrable, impervious to original truths, incapable of really assimilating, in- corporating, taking in new doctrines which are floating around in the intellectual atmosphere. Spontaneity or passivity means the transformation of physiological into psychical energy. The reverse process, the transformation of conscious psychical energy into physiological energy, forms the voluntary or active processes. The will does not produce or create; it merely reproduces, arranges, directs the data of spontaneity. Will in its initial stage is self-imita- tion. A personality manifests itself in imitation as well as in creation: We cannot imitate what does not exist in us as a tendency at least. Avoidance of pain and pursuit of pleasure are the causes of voluntary action, but mere results of spontaneous action. The causes of the latter are purely physiological, viz. a surplus of energy tending to expend itself in new channels, if the old ones are sufficiently supplied with energy. Human desires stand like doorkeepers at the en- trance of our consciousness, and do not admit but anticipated, expected impressions, or impressions har- monizing with them. Any other impressions and memories are left outside, in the darkness of uncon- sciousness, until accumulating and associating they be- come able to force their way through. In conservative, custom-bound, letter-worshiping communities where originality or mental productivity is not tolerated, there it manifests itself in the shape of ingenious in- terpretations of and commentations on traditions, old texts, authoritative, classical and time-honored works or institutions: It reads new meanings into old words ; it hides the new, the unfamiliar, under the familiar, old cloak of the traditional, of the customary; it confines CREATIVE LIFE 167 itself to mere hints, to timidly raised questions, to parables, myths, symbols. Where intellectual energy is repressed and is not allowed to discharge itself freely in the form of a continuous, illuminating life-calling; there it bursts forth from time to time in the form of flashes—I mean of proverbs, short poems, winged words or phrases, epigrams. Invention or creation hides it- self under the cloak of imitation; hopes and ideals are presented in the form of real, historical, past events. Inspiration, Intuition.—The cooperation of the senses and of the motor centers is simultaneous, in- stinctive, automatic: What one hears, one generally tends to look at, touch, smell, act upon, imitate, etc., except when experience advises not to do so. Whereas the cooperation of the higher intellectual functions (perception, memory, imagination, reasoning, . . . ) is willed, spontaneous, occasional, capricious, difficult to attain, given to but few individuals at certain mo- ments and on certain topics only. The chance co- operation of the higher mental functions and of senti- ment constitutes inspiration, intuition.' If the abili- ties of the superior man are a prognostic of human evolution in general, then we may hope that the next higher mental acquisition to be made by mankind in a very remote future will be an automatic, constant, general, simultaneous cooperation of all mental func- tions at any moment, on any topic, in all men. Just as social happiness will be the result of in- stinctive, voluntary cooperation of men; and the highest esthetic enjoyment will result from a wise co- operation of all arts, as dreamt of by the semi-insane genius Wagner: just so the highest amount of truth, quasi-absolute truth, will result from instinctive, simul- taneous cooperation of all intellectual functions. Lack of cooperation between sensory and motor func- tions is the main cause of illusions, errors, fallacies. 168 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN Lack of economic, disinterested cooperation between men is the main cause of social insecurity and misery. Quest of Truth.—Truth, like woman’s love, does not tolerate any rivals in the heart of him who longs for it. Truth reveals itself only to him who renounces the pursuit of success, fame, social recognition, wealth. . . . The attractive force of truth is so powerful for the genius that he abandons his dearest illusions in order to follow its paths. Truth is an organic neces- sity, a permanent function, with the genius, and a mere luxury, or an adventitious function, with the others. Primitive, inferior creatures do not thrive in the sunlight. Likewise, morally inferior men shun the light of Truth, for their mind’s eye is blinded by it. In our quest of truth, we can easily fall a prey to prejudice, a guide who spares us trouble, spares us the effort of seeing with our own eyes. It allows us to indulge in laziness, to rest satisfied with the knowl- edge of classes and substitute it for the knowledge of individuals, to substitute the knowledge of the past for the present. Prejudices lose their subjective value long before they lose their value of exchange or market value. Hence an additional difficulty in eradicating them. Expectant or anticipating attention, preconceived opinions and feelings, prejudices, are serviceable if we do not rely too much on them, if we put them to a test from time to time, if they merely help us to start our thinking or to overcome the initial mental inertia, if we do not allow ourselves to be blindly guided by them, if we do not allow them to take the place of, or to hold in check, our own thinking. The hypnotic state is characterized by temporary, transitory, but strong, obsessive prejudices in one or a few directions; CREATIVE LIFE 169 whereas the mental condition of a normal average in- dividual is that of slight but permanent prejudices in many, if not in all, directions. Our imagination, anticipation, expectation, pre-per- ception of things or events, is both an aid and an obstacle to our perceiving them, according as we use it as a mere stimulus to or as a substitute for further objective thinking. We perceive things where they are not to be found and events prior to their occur- rence, and fail to perceive them where they are or when they occur; because our anticipation does not corre- spond to reality, is too much relied upon, or is too one-sided. Thus, in looking for a certain book in a library we may happen to stand right in front of it at the beginning of our search and still fail to see it, because we did not expect such a quick success. In examinations, the easiest questions prove often to be the most puzzling, because the candidates expecting hard questions become suspicious even of the most obvious simplicity. Even moderate, conservative, com- plimentary statements made by avowed socialists, anarchists, communists, alarm the prejudiced philistine, arouse his spirit of contradiction and of vindictive- ness ; whereas the remonstrances, criticisms, revolu- tionary statements, the betrayal of common secrets coming from confreres, from so-called respectable or conservative citizens, and high dignitaries he either listens to indifferently, thoughtlessly nodding consent, or responds to with his habitual stupid, fawning laugh- ter, as he responds to whatever passes for a good joke or clever trick. New truths unpretentiously expressed in plain language by an obscure, poor, non-academical, proletarian thinker are either ignored, belittled or ridiculed by our self-important, grandiloquent, verbose professors who, true to their mission of retainers of the money lords, do not expect any manifestation of 170 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN intelligence, originality or initiative on the part of the unsuccessful toiling class, for this would contradict their teaching and belief that all material success is the reward of higher intelligence: they do not expect any new truths to come from below, from the so-called lower social strata, but merely from above, from the acknowledged, official spiritual leaders who enjoy the confidence and approval of the master class. The broad-hearted or moral genius is not preju- diced against any human being. Every one is welcome to his sympathy and interest if he only proves to be worthy of it. He takes interest in any human and living being, without any side-intentions to use them as instru- ments for his own welfare. He judges and treats every man without regard to the latter’s influence or social rank, but merely according to merit. He does not shrink in horror from approaching even the so-called out- casts, for he is driven by the altruistic desire of finding out the kernel of goodness left in them and of using it as a handle for moral uplifting. No human being, no matter how low sunken, is given up by him as a hopeless, incurable case. The broad-minded or intellectual genius is not - prejudiced against any object of thought. He wel- comes every idea that knocks at the door of his atten- tion, no matter whether the idea is related or not to other ideas which are in vogue, popular, or at least in scientific fashion; no matter whether the time and energy spent on the ideas yields material profit or not. His main concern is intellectual profit, and such profit is always the reward of exerting our reasoning power, even if the results are negative and the welcomed theory has to be discarded. He takes the trouble—at the risk of being ridiculed and ostracized by academi- cians—of listening to the claims of the so-called exploded, risky, boycotted theories. No theory is con- CREATIVE LIFE 171 demned by him without being first impartially and critically examined into. Just as our parasitical leaders keep jealously watch over the social functions and offices usurped by and entrusted to them, and do not allow any new type of men—I mean the altruistic and truth-loving type—to join their ranks, just so the views, opinions, beliefs, artificial desires or inter- ests instilled in the minds of the masses keep jealously watch over the entrance gates of their senses and do not admit into the court of consciousness any facts which tend to contradict them. The masses see merely what the hypnotizing leaders suggest to them; and they pass by blindly the facts and things which they have been warned against. The more pains a writer takes in chiseling, studying, and adorning his style, diction or phraseology, the less eagerness for truth is to be expected from him. The more he thinks of pleasing as many readers as possible, i. e., the more he loves himself, the less love is put by him into the service of Truth. The more preoccupied he is with the impression to be made upon readers, the less preoccupied he is with the object of thought, with the problem he deals with. The genius does not need statistical data to draw his conclusions; a few observations—often, one only— form a sufficient basis for his generalizations. The genius prefers a simple, accurate, spontaneous, un- looked-for personal observation of a phenomenon un- detached from the context of antecedent, concomitant, and succeeding phenomena to a host of inaccurate, isolated, looked-for observations made by others on supposedly identical or similar phenomena detached from their context, and to a whole series of artificially prearranged experiments. Nor does the genius have much use for the “ques- tionnaire” method when he wants to get an insight into 172 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN the soul and heart of his fellow men; for this method of questioning others about their convictions, feelings, impulses and the causes thereof presupposes that everybody knows and understands himself, and sec- ondly that everybody is willing and able to make impartial statements about himself. Statistical work is a good field for talented men, who can thus verify, modify, extend, apply the results attained by geniuses. In the flight of his imagination the genius overlooks at a single glance a wider horizon of facts and of rela- tions than the scientist in his reptilian crawling on the surface can explore in a lifetime. Thought and Language.—Thoughts arise like plants: a certain period of life and a certain composi- tion of the brain are the prerequisites for their sprout- ing. Like plants, they remain for a long time in an embryonal state in the dark subsoil of subconsciousness before appearing into the light of consciousness as a fully developed intellectual plant. Language is no adequate translation of thought, not even of abstract thinking: there is no parallelism be- tween the categories and sub-categories of language (parts of speech) and those of thought. Language is a translation of our most important, latest, con- cluding thoughts and states of consciousness. Super- ficially thinking individuals are more talkative and more graphomaniacal—to use Lombroso’s term—than deeply thinking individuals; for they reach quickly conclusions, their premises or preparatory and gen- erating thoughts are incomplete, the concluding or resulting states of mind are never differentiated, sepa- rated, distinguished from the generating states, the genuine generating thoughts are not clearly discrimi- nated from collateral and antecedent states of mind, no hierarchy of valuation exists between the various conclusions attained, and hence no difference in their CREATIVE LIFE 173 claims on publicity or vocal expression. Clear thoughts are expressed in clear language. The reciprocal is not necessarily true, but the oppo- site is always so; confused, mystical language is apparently only concealing deep thoughts. To be rich in words does not save one from remain- ing poor in ideas; for there can be appearance and no reality behind it, or—more correctly—different ap- pearances may conceal one and the same reality in- stead of different realities, or different shades of the same reality. Increasing wealth in thoughts does not immediately bring about a parallel increase in termi- nological wealth. The balanced original man tries to get along, as far as possible, with the existing stock of words. The unbalanced inventor invents useless things, new words for old ideas, entirely new names for slightly original concepts, unusual groupings of words to ex- press banalities, he makes use of abstract and general terms to express very concrete and particular facts, the appearance of originality is more to him than the reality of it, he hunts for the appearance of originality to deceive others and himself as to his mental sterility. It is just as pathological to delight in self-deception as to our declining creative power as it is pathological to delight in euphoria when our bodily health is get- ting poorer and poorer. A less unbalanced semi- or pseudo-original man worries about his declining crea- tive power; and if he takes refuge in verbal originality, it is because he wants to keep alive the admiration of his disciples, to prevent his name from disappearing from publicity. “Ignoti nulla cupido.” He who hunts for origi- nality, creation, must have, or have had, at least a germ of it, must have tasted its pleasures. Only in the abnormal craving for originality do the desire and the will transcend the power, the physiological limits, 174 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN instead of being adapted to them. It is not abnor- mality to seek pleasure, consolation, in appearance when reality is unattainable or lost (it is merely a symptom of mental weakness), for this is practised by the great mass also in their various beliefs, customs, etc.; but it is abnormal to delight in an appearance, in pseudo-originality, as if it were a reality, true originality. Between the true geniuses who are origi- nal both in form and in content, in expression and in thought, and the philistines who are intellectually sterile, there is the class of semi-original individuals who are original either in content, thought, or in form, expression: In the former case, i. e., in the case of persons richer in taste than in creative power, the original ideas remain in the darkness of unconscious- ness until they find an appropriate garment or form given them by genuine geniuses; in the latter case we have pseudo-geniuses who give new forms to old ideas, who steal others’ intellectual property by hiding it under their own linguistic cloak. We treat words as we treat men. Some words be- come popular, not in consequence of their being mean- ingful, useful, but in consequence of their noble descent (from Latin, Greek, French, the language of the domi- nant class . . . ) or in consequence of their pleasing sound or appearance. Such words are entrusted with all kinds of offices, they are called upon to represent the most varied ideas even if they are not fit for the purpose; they are called upon to convey so many ideas that they end by conveying the opposite meaning or nothing at all, and by lingering as idle, meaningless sounds. On the other hand, we see strongly correlated functions or meanings, which could be best conveyed by one and the same word, subtly distinguished and torn apart by our academicians and assigned to sev- eral words so that not only waste, but also increased CREATIVE LIFE 175 mental confusion, is the outcome. Words that express the same idea with equal fitness are treated differently on account of their difference in sound; nay, they are mistaken for having different meanings; and the sup- posedly noble words are assigned to sinecures, better offices, colleges, etc. The genuine superior man, who has many and real ideas to communicate, uses there- fore plain, transparent, honest, unequivocal words which fitly convey his ideas. Whereas the pseudo- superior man, who has very few or no ideas to impart to his fellow men, prefers to use rare, high-sounding, intoxicating, vague, aristocratic, technical, caste lan- guage with a mere semblance of meaningfulness, depth, novelty, uniqueness. Just as in our modern social organization many kinds of useful work are left undone, whereas many kinds of purely ornamental, useless or even harmful work are done, nay, overdone; just so with our lan- guage or expression of ideas: many useful, beautiful, lofty ideas clamoring for the daylight hardly find any linguistic garb in which to present themselves, and remain therefore hidden from view or are presented in inadequate, worn-out, ambiguous garbs; whereas many a trivial, uninteresting, meaningless idea has at its dis- posal a rich selection of linguistic garments to disguise its ugliness or deformities therein. Articulate language, which to the thinker is a means of imparting, gaining and exchanging ideas or knowledge, arouses in the mind of the philistine merely confused ideas and emotions, and is used by him as a mere channel of motor discharge, as a relief valve in case he is not allowed to expend his energy in the di- rection of the gratification of his needs, or as a motor channel for expending a surplus of energy which he does not like to store up by transforming it into sensory energy or idea-forces. He who talks to a 176 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN philistine with the intention of conveying general views to him is usually painfully surprised to meet with anger, resentment, wounded self-love; for words do not convey any clear ideas to the philistine: they merely arouse in him feelings of like and dislike, love and hatred, self-complacency or self-degradation; he cannot understand how anybody can speak with any other intention—if with any intention at all—than that of pleasing, flattering, courting or irritating, in- sulting, humiliating, teasing his interlocutor. This ex- plains why a speech without strong intonation and unaccompanied by gestures or emotional language does not appeal to the masses, does not move them to action and only bores them. The attention of the genius is like a sensible bal- ance; a very small weight or an ordinary, by com- mon mortals unnoticed, fact suffices to change its center of gravity, to stir up the activity of his ideas and sentiments. I do not mean to say that attention is a power, a faculty. It is a quality of mental proc- esses, it is their intensity and the communication of their intensity to allied suggested processes. The streams of consciousness are quicker and richer in thoughts in the genius than in the ordinary man; it takes, therefore, the genius such a short time to bring into contact certain thoughts, to find their connection, as to give the appearance of intuitions to his reasonings. Perhaps the only difference between the conscious- ness of a common mortal and that of a poet, a thinker, is its subject-matter, its contents, the thing which it responds to. And who knows whether consciousness can be called a purely human attribute? Do not plants and animals respond to atmospherical changes where man remains blind? Are not plants geniuses in nutrition, whereas CREATIVE LIFE 177 man is a nutritive philistine and parasite? And with- in our own body, can we deny some sort of conscious- ness to individual cells? Do they not respond to in- fluences concerning them alone, and not the organism as a whole? Whereas what we call consciousness may in reality be but a higher consciousness concerned in matters referring to the organism taken as a whole, just as social consciousness, the state, is concerned or rather ought to be concerned with general interests and not with those of classes and of particular citizens. The common man is more conscious of his daily needs; the poet is more conscious of the emotional aspect of human experience, he is often blind and tactless in practical matters; the thinker is rather conscious of the cognitive aspect, frequently blind in emotional and practical affairs. Probably the cells forming the animal colony or animal organism have less consciousness than the in- dependent cells in single-celled creatures; just as individuals living in uninhabited spots, isolated from their fellow-men, at a distance from civilized centers, can better appreciate the advantages of protective social organization than individuals living in towns or cities. The distribution of consciousness is analogous to that of static electricity in conductors: it does not reside in every particle, but accumulates on the ex- ternal surface and in prominent points. The man of action, the experimenter, the imitative artist, are not fully conscious of all their aims and motives; they are rather conscious of their intended actions or movements, of their immediate aims and means to be employed. Whereas the thinking or con- templative man is rather conscious of ultimate aims, motives, ends, than of immediate aims, actions to be performed, means of realizing the former. The creative artist, the poet, the technician, are con- 178 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN scious of, and explicit about, concrete, particular things or events, details, single phenomena or states of mind; but they are only dimly conscious of, and ex- press implicitly, incompletely, vaguely, hesitatingly, in hints only, tacitly, the classes, wholes, laws, general conceptions, towering above the little bit of reality which forms the subject-matter of the artistic work. The reverse holds of thinkers, scientists, philosophers. The philosopher, particularly, while being fully con- scious of, and giving clear, bold expression to, general laws, comprehensive views, sweeping generalizations, world and life conceptions, is not quite aware of, and gives but an implicit, vague, timid, tacit expression to, the endless multitude of particular cases, concrete events and consequences that might be subsumed there- under or derived and deduced therefrom. Just as each of the cells constituting the animal colony called human organism is rather conscious of its own condition and immediate relations to other cells, whereas the brain is less conscious of its own condi- tion and more preoccupied with the general condition of the body and with the ultimate, remote external and internal forces acting upon the latter; just so with the social organism or human society: the moral philis- tine who represents but a cell of the social organism is conscious of his own immediate condition, needs and relationships; whereas the moral genius who is the brain of the social organism is less conscious of, less sensitive to, his own needs, risks, sufferings, and more preoccupied with the common weal and woe of the group, nation, race; he is seriously concerned with the remedies and fundamental causes of human misery or social maladjustment. Form is at the same time a means for and an ob- stacle to recognizing the matter, the substance, the content embodied in it; language both expresses and CREATIVE LIFE 179 conceals the thought contents. One and the same form, language, expression, can- not fit different kinds of contents, states of mind, thoughts. The fitness, definiteness, adequacy of a form, means its capacity of conveying, exteriorizing, com- municating a certain state of mind. It is nonsense to speak of music as a vague, indefinite language, without adding with reference to which states of mind it is so. Music is the most adequate, the most definite, the clearest language or expression of pure emotions; only if it attempts (I allude to Wagnerism) to ex- press ideas, does it become inadequate, vague. The same thing is true of articulate language: Words are comparatively definite, clear, generally understood ex- pressions of ideas; but for the purpose of expressing pure emotions they are too inadequate; nor is mere talk the proper expression of volition. The contents of music, however, i. e., the states of mind conveyed by music, are vague and indefinite in comparison with the contents of articulate language. Dance or acted music, and music proper, sculpture, painting, poetry, drama, novel, science, philosophy, express states of mind of an increasing degree of complexity, with an ever-increasing predominance of idea over emotion, of sensory and postponed motor activity over impulsive motor activity. What has been said of the various means of expression holds also for the varieties of one and the same expressional type. Thus the articulate language which fitly expresses concrete experiences is too vague, too misleading, for philosophical concepts, and vice versa. Mathematical language which is so adequate to express simple quantitative relations is entirely out of place and pedantic in Psychology, Philosophy, . . . where we deal with qualitative, com- plex relations. Just as analogy is both a means of facilitating, and 180 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN an obstacle to, the understanding of the unknown, in- visible, complex, unusual, psychical, ... in terms of the known, visible, simple, physical, usual, . . . ac- cording as the illustrations or explanatory terms are taken for what they are or are mistaken for, identified with, or more attended to than, the terms explained; just so language, form, outer appearance, symbol, . . . reveal or conceal thought, substance, reality, truth, . . . according as they merely arouse or capti- vate our attention. Form, language, the letter, symbols, manners, cus- toms, rituals, . . . —as long as they remain simple, natural, transparent—are a vehicle, a receptacle, serv- ing to convey, to perceive, to suggest content, mean- ing, thought, social feelings, the spirit, morality, truth, religiosity. . . . But as soon as they become compli- cated, adorned, conventional, they become untrue to their original mission; they captivate and absorb our attention, our interest entirely, and thus prevent us from looking into their contents; nay, more, we are blinded by their fascinating appearance and forget the more important reality which they are supposed to contain. The genuine original man does not need, and dis- dains to blind the people with, a pedantic, over-tech- nical, neologistic, figurative language; for his original, fully developed ideas do not fear the transparent garb of a simple, natural, commonly understood language, just as the harmoniously developed bodily forms of the ancient Greeks were made visible by their simple garments. If even honest, matter-of-fact, vocational writers hunt to a certain extent for unusual, high-sounding, so-called stylish expressions for their ideas, it is under the pressure of our age of word-idolatry, it is under the pressure of form-worshiping publishers and read- CREATIVE LIFE 181 ers. Whereas the dishonest, wilfully nebulous, profes- sional writer, preacher, teacher, orator, overstep all limits in their desire to hide falsehood, common-place, inconsistency, intellectual prostitution, empty-minded- ness, behind eye-catching, attention-absorbing, hypno- tizing, intoxicating, non-transparent, ambiguous, sophistical, evasive phraseology. If even an intellectually honest and original thinker like Kant mistook himself for more original than he really was and did not see, for instance, that most of his explanations were mere tautologies and that his cele- brated categorical imperative (“Act only on that maxim whereby thou canst at the same time will that it should become a universal law”) is nothing but a modification of the generally accepted maxim “Act as you expect others to act” and of the old wise maxim, “Do unto others what you want them to do unto you,” couched in a formalistic, nebulous, grandiloquent garb; it is due to the fact that he, as a professor, was com- pelled to accept the traditional academical verbal origi- nality or linguistic method of imposing upon the non- academical world. And since deception of others, par- ticularly unintentional deception, goes together with more or less self-deception, we understand how even the great Kant had become the dupe of his academical hairsplitting, word-idolatry, verbal originality and had come to mistake them for real, objective, original think- ing- The use in religious services of dead, archaic lan- guage and of archaic implements or symbols, that no longer convey any clear ideas but merely arouse con- fused, thought-paralyzing emotions, is mildly or timidly ascribed to the conservatism or to the emo- tional mission of the church, instead of being ascribed to its deceitful, parasitical pursuits and instead of being classified together with its other deceptive, 182 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN money-extorting devices: shutting out of the fear-dis- pelling bright daylight, lugubrious music, subdued or soul-depressing colors, meaningless and thought-con- fusing hocus-pocus, appeal to fear, to the imaginary horrors of hell and to other paralyzing feelings. The use by other pseudo-superior men of the not yet com- monly understood vague, abstract, conventional, tech- nical, insinuating, suggestive, covert language for trivial purposes, or even of the no longer commonly understood language of smiles, frowns, sneers, gestures, facial contortions, twinkling of the eyes, queer intona- tion, etc., is ascribed to their smartness, instead of being ascribed to its real motives: cowardice, hypocrisy, malice, evasiveness, moral crookedness. Among the languages of civilized nations, German—as used by academicians, professors, the cultured—will stand as a monument of linguistic deception and imposture. In no other nation does the language of the upper or parasitical class differ to such an extent, in every re- spect—in grammatical forms, illogical order of words, far-fetched relation between word and meaning, undue use of abstract words, unnaturally long and intricate sentences, etc.—from the language of the masses as to appear to the latter almost like a foreign tongue. If the poet shows predilection for archaisms, per- sonifications, pictorial language, figures of speech, concrete words reminding of outgrown beliefs or modes of life, it is not out of intellectual dishonesty; it is merely because the poet represents a primitive type of thinker and hence makes use of a more primitive mode of expression. Language is an inadequate, unidimensional, abbrevi- ated, selective, superficial, and merely suggestive ex- pression or translation of thought. Language is but a very imperfect instrument of thought expression. Words represent, but they may also misrepresent CREATIVE LIFE 183 things, thoughts, feelings. Thus “to save appear- ances” or “diplomacy” is identical with “telling lies,” “intriguing and bluffing,” but it does not shock any- body because it is presented in a different linguistic garb, because it is better dressed than its alter ego. Language gives the appearance of fixity, unchange- ableness, non-variability, ripeness, univocality, real existence, richness of meaning to what is changeable, variable, dynamical, growing, multi-vocal, imaginary, poor in or devoid of meaning. Not only identical things can be expressed by many differently sounding word combinations, but also the most dissimilar things, diametrically opposed feelings and convictions, circu- late under one and the same name. Thus those who cannot shut their eyes to the absurdities and puerilities of Religion, but do not dare to differ from the great mass or from their beloved beings, drop—often, with- out knowing it—the thing, but cling to the name: they cover under the cloak of Religion their new convictions which are rather science, philosophy, ethics, everything but religion. As there is greater abundance of forms than of matter, we can understand why the same discoveries are made independently by many, but we cannot ex- pect them to be expressed in the same form also. Sentimental natures can grasp bits of truth, but never a complete truth, since the flight of their imagi- nation does not allow itself to be guided by the will. The speculative or subjective thinker is more of a poet than of a thinker: he flies on the wings of imagination over the surface of things, and only from time to time does he condescend to come in touch with them. The greater the impressibility an original man has, i. e., the more systems of ideas are stirred up, shaken by a new idea, the more difficult is the harmonizing, its acceptance, but the more stable is the subsequent 184 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN harmony; whereas those who easily accept foreign opinions do not in reality assimilate them. Thinking and consciousness play the same role with respect to emotions and unconsciousness as the com- mutator of a dynamo with respect to the alternating currents: The spontaneous, discontinuous, sporadic, rhythmic, periodic emotive and subconscious processes are transformed into voluntary, continuous, constant processes; discontinuous enervating effort is trans- formed into continuous, calm, regulated volition; pain- ful ideas occurring but once or very rarely give place to painless or even pleasurable steady preoccupations. Another function of thinking is to store away volitional or motor energy for future use; to prevent emotional and volitional energy from spending them- selves wastefully or uselessly in the form of immediate muscular activity, and to store them away in the form of dynamic ideas until the most unobstructed and most appropriate channels are found; to prevent fluctuat- ing and antagonistic impulses from manifesting them- selves in the form of mutually destructive actions, until a way has been found of making them harmonize or cooperate towards the same goal; to preliminarily perform an action potentially or in one’s mind, with or without the assistance of a concomitant experi- mentation on a small scale, thus saving the troubles, irrecoverable expenditures of energy, non-retractable consequences of immediate, impulsive large-scale action; to transform impulses towards blind, aimless, wasteful, incoordinated, explosive, exhausting, de- structive, mutually neutralizing actions into tendencies towards teleological, far-sighted, economical, coordi- nated, regulated, wholesome, constructive, cooperating activities; to prevent the undue accumulation of pent- up emotional energy and hence its sudden, explosive, uncontrollable, harmful discharge in the form of in- CREATIVE LIFE 185 coordinated muscular activity. The emotional indi- vidual swings back and forth between extreme, opposite, mutually destructive lines of action, without advancing in any definite direction, without reaching any definite goal or settling on a higher plane of life. Whereas the thinking individual or the man who is guided by Reason advances steadily towards a definite goal, towards higher and ever broadening horizons. In freeing himself from the fetters and restraints of tradi- tion, custom, routine, externally imposed obedience and uncriticalness, the thinking man does not yield to the natural, first impulse of overstepping the limits of the golden mean and of going over to the extreme of freedom from all restraints: from the artificial, ex- ternally imposed, unnecessary or socially harmful as well as from the natural, self-imposed, necessary, socially useful restraints; from fear of innovations, from deep reverence for existing doctrines, beliefs, the established order of things and the powers that be to cynicism or disrespect for everything that is sacred to others and to paradoxomania; from indiscriminate, rigid morality to extreme laxity or indiscriminate im- morality. Unlike the emotional individual, the thinker does not yield to the first impulse towards destroying everything that proves obsolete or a hindrance to progress, but consults his reason which advises to build first something provisional at least in the place of what he intends to destroy; he does not throw over- board what is a hindrance in his onward course to- gether with everything that is connected therewith, but checks his first impulse and separates what is worth while keeping from what really deserves being discarded; if he happens to belong to the class of the robbed, exploited, down-trodden, he does not yield to the impulse of becoming a robber and exploiter in his turn who makes no distinction between those who de- 186 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN serve his revenge and those who are innocent, but turns against the causes, sources, roots of the entire ex- ploitation system; he does not yield to the first impulse towards freeing himself not only from intel- lectual restraints, but also from moral restraints, not only from drudgery, but also from restful and re- munerative work. It is natural for the thoughtless, stultified or intellectually intimidated individual to swing from one extreme of action over to the other extreme before settling in an intermediate course of action; for instance: from submission to an oppressive, despotical government, from blind faith in stultifying dogmas to bloodthirsty rebellion, fanatic iconoclasm, political and intellectual anarchy, absolute skepticism. The thinking man, however, instead of actually pass- ing from one extreme to the other, does so potentially only, i. e., in his imagination, but not in his actions. The foresight of the consequences and of the unneces- sary oscillations around the safe and sound inter- mediate line of action makes him save or omit the succession of mutually destroying and contradictory actions and proceed slowly but firmly towards the right course of action. The pedant clothes banalities in technical language; the popular writer, on the contrary, clothes abstract, scientific ideas in the narrow language of the people; the true man of science adapts language to thoughts. The pedant appropriates the form of culture; the popularizer, the contents; the scientist, both. Thinking and imagination are our mental micro- scope and telescope. They transform the invisible and the distant into the visible and near, the past into actu- ality, the impossibility into possibility. They form an extension of our senses, of our preceptions. Art, Poetry, Psychology.—Art pursues beauty, i. e., adequate, concrete, palpable forms and symbols for CREATIVE LIFE 187 thought, truth, reality, ideas tinged with emotion, i. e., implying either fundamental, or higher vital interests. We need not complain that the subjects of poetry are exhausted already. As long as the human heart, the human passions, do not change in their essence, we have no use for new subjects: The main function of poetry is to give an adequate expression to our nobler passions and longings, to find the appropriate lan- guage, the best form for human vital hopes and fears. Poetry is not so much a matter of content as a mat- ter of form. The form is more changeable, more destructible than the essence. Hence, there is a rich field for poetical originality. The remoter an object is from the sphere of our senses, the less intense is its mental image; if it leaves the sphere of our senses to pass into that of our imagination, instead of a presentation, we get merely a vague image, a representation of it. Since nothing can be represented if it has not been previously pre- sented ; in other words, since nothing can pass into the sphere of imagination if it has not previously been in the sphere of our senses; we understand why ideals cannot be wholly created, they are merely new vital combinations of representations, the corresponding sensations of which have been experienced already. The ideals arising in our imagination act back upon the sphere of our senses, and induce us to create corre- sponding objects in the sphere of reality. Ideals are a product of our past experience, and a factor, a cause, of future experience. The spheres of imagina- tion and perception, and the spheres of volition or de- sire and power, overlap partly. Some of our percep- tions do not recur in our imagination, and some of the actions which we have the power to perform do not re- cur in our wishes. The common part of the two spheres is formed by elementary perceptions and spontaneous 188 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN # actions which constitute the raw material for new imaginative and volitional combinations. Many of our imaginations and wishes remain forever outside of, and incapable of being incorporated into, the sphere of perceptions and powers. Outer volition is the psy- chical antecedent of muscular movement, or—ob- jectively defined—it is cerebro-spinal movement imme- diately preceding and exciting muscular movement; whereas thought is cerebral movement which is not— or is only indirectly and mediately—followed by muscular movement. Abulia is not a disease or defect of will, as the illustrious Ribot maintains. It is a de- fect of power, of the muscular system. The muscles of the abulic, like those of the sleeping individual, are too tired, too inert, too relaxed or atonic to be easily set in activity by mere volition, without the assistance of some outside stimulus. Both the poet and the psychologist carry the mate- rials for their study, for their creations, and their laboratory, mostly in their own soul. Consciousness is their microscope, their scalpel. Experimentation and observation are merely means of verification to them. The born psychologist finds his best and most re- liable subject of experimentation in himself. He does not put others or himself under artificial, prearranged circumstances in order to get a clearer insight into the human soul; but he takes his daily, natural, un- called-for experiences as material to draw general conclusions therefrom. Nor does he try to get an insight into the souls of others by directly questioning them: he merely watches their actions, outward mani- festations, the unintentional betrayals of their true peculiarities during their talk and during their actions when they believe themselves unwatched. Human life with its manifold relations and vicissitudes offers a sufficient change in one’s point of view, in one’s ex- CREATIVE LIFE 189 ternal situations and corresponding states of mind; it offers ample opportunities to bring out one’s abili- ties and to lay bare the most hidden nooks and corners of one’s soul; it offers enough opportunities to upset one’s a priori opinions about and expectations from others. Nay, more, is not human life itself a continued psychological experimentation with one’s own self and with others? Is it not a continued series of trials and errors, an uninterrupted chain of framed, discarded, modified, or verified hypotheses about our own abilities and pursuits and about others’ willingness to co- operate? To know what men really think, feel, desire and strive after, the genuine psychologist judges them, not by what they deliberately or parrot-like profess in books, in newspapers, on platforms, in public, but by their manner of acting, living, dealing with their fel- low-men, and by their unguarded gestures, utterances or remarks; not by their written, professed moral code, but by their customs and by their unwritten, acted upon, privately disclosed code of morals; not by their isolated, exceptional actions, but by their habits and daily practise; not by their overt behavior towards superiors, equals, patrons, publicly known men, inde- pendent and socially protected individuals, but by their behavior towards inferiors, subordinates, ser- vants, socially obscure, defenseless and dependent in- dividuals ; not by their compulsory, professional, bread-earning activities, but by their spontaneous, voluntary, recreational, self-chosen, disinterested activities; not by their professional, interested, busi- ness friendships, but by their disinterestedly chosen, private, intimate friends; not by their manner of act- ing under artificial, abnormal, experimental conditions, but by their manner of acting under natural, normal, ordinary circumstances. 190 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN The scientist and the psychologist control the simplified and idealized past of their recollection and imagination in the light of the present; whereas the poet tries to mold the present in conformity with the imaginary world of his recollections and hopes. The true poet exaggerates reality, truth, not in order to deform them, but in order to throw them more into relief. He exaggerates the form, the accidental parts, in order to give prominence to essence, to permanent and eternal parts. Reality alone can normally interest us, can gain our attention and sympathy. Not the daily, obvious and banal reality, but that one which is inaccessible, un- known, exceptional, still ideal, the ideal tending to be- come real, the exceptional tending or deserving to be- come the rule, the ideal built up by means of realistic constituents, the exceptional and pathological in so far as it is an exaggeration of what is good and noble in human nature. The ideal, to interest us, must have points of contact with our real life, with our daily experience. This explains why the great mass of naive novel-readers ascribe historical reality to the events and personages; whereas more educated novel-readers look at least for psychological reality or verisimilitude. Even the consumers of sensational, blood-and- thunder literature (shockers, dreadfuls, dime-novels) take interest therein because they believe it deals with the realm of reality and possibility. People who lead a life of monotonous daily drudgery, a life devoid of all opportunities, and who are kept in ignorance as to how the world’s affairs are administered and as to how the spoils, are divided, soon forget—if they ever knew—how to discriminate between wish and reality, between what is probable or possible and what is im- probable or impossible; they lose the sense for various degrees of probability. Since they are tied hands and CREATIVE LIFE 191 feet, and have to feed their souls on empty hopes, why not hope for the highly improbable and even for the impossible, why not enjoy in their imagination the wildest dreams or adventures, when it does not require any greater mental effort to do so than it does to dream less ambitious, more modest, but equally un- realizable dreams? Why not reach for the moon, for the remote, if things nearer at hand are just as in- accessible? Why should not the servant girl, the shop girl, dream of a prince, a millionaire, a great hero, when even a seven-dollar-a-week clerk looks down upon her and is just as much beyond her reach? The poetical description differs toto orbe from the scientifical: the former is subjective, personal, uni- lateral, i. e., written in the view of arousing certain emotions; the latter is objective, impersonal, multi- lateral. A poetico-scientifical description unites the two sets of qualities, harmonizes the subjective and the objective point of view. The difference between the scientific or professional psychologist and the practical psychologist or knower of men (diplomats, detectives, business men, etc.), and that between the psychologist and the poet is not a difference between analytical and synthetical psy- chological knowledge. It is a difference between general, theoretical, explanatory and particular, prac- tical, factual, empirical psychological knowledge, be- tween knowledge as an aim in itself and knowledge as a means. The practical knower of men and the poet do not care why men, or whether all men, act, feel, and think in a certain way in given situations; they care to know, not to understand, how men, or only a certain class of men, act or feel under special circumstances with respect to things of importance to the former. The philosophico-poetical genius infuses new life into 192 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN abstract, dry thoughts; he gives a new, palpable, more attractive body to spiritual values which either he him- self or an analytical thinker has extracted from the actual semi-prosaic life. He not only restores to life what has been extracted therefrom, but restores it to a higher and better plane of life. He revives the Past, not only as it was, but also as it might have been or as it tended to become. He represents not only the Present, but also the embryonal Future which is con- tained therein, which gives meaning and value to the former and is also destined to supersede it. Poets, artists, novelists, technicians, sentimental natures, may grasp bits of general conceptions; but consistent and harmonious thoughts cannot be ex- pected of them. They may for a moment rise to such a height of cool, abstract thinking where they catch a glimpse of the common ethereal bonds that unite, and of the hidden unique reality that underlies, the mani- folds of seemingly disconnected particular situations; but they forget all about it as soon as they come down from the Philosophical Heights to the concrete world of physical events, of human actions and passions. The purely poetical genius is impressed by events, personages, concrete social conditions which are preg- nant with great ideas and ideals, which are the carriers of deep and eternal truths; but is himself unable to generalize, to separate the general from the particu- lar, the abstract truth from the concrete, changeable, perishable receptacles: he rather feels than knows the eternal, valuable truths expressed in his own creations and in the dramas of real life. The philosophical thinker who congratulates himself on having found a Gesinnungs-Genosse in a novelist, dramatist or poet who happens to describe concrete events similar to those from which he himself has extracted his general views or theories, is soon bitterly disillusioned if he CREATIVE LIFE 193 gets better acquainted with the poet and finds that the latter has rather confused and inconsistent general views—if he has any—about the very same concrete happenings which he so beautifully renders in his works. The pure poet, the pure artist, reproduces more or less faithfully what he has seen, heard, and felt, without much speculation as to the causes, meaning, underlying psychical laws; without much speculation as to what is typical, constant, eternally and uni- versally human, and what is individual, accessory, superficial, transient in his poetical or artistical paint- ings. If he were interested in, like the philosophical thinker, or if he intended to bring out, the typical, the hidden truth, the inner driving psychical forces, he could not pay attention to, and still less remember, the little details and accessory events which lend life and give the stamp of reality to his descriptions and crea- tions. The poet, the novelist, the artist, stand much nearer, than the philosopher or the critic think, to the masses of philistines and of semi-intellectual people. They share with the latter an almost exclusive interest in concrete events, in brute, uninterpreted, unsifted facts bearing on the daily life and struggles of men. They only differ from the masses in emotional wealth, in emotional sagacity, in the ability to render and to synthetize what they see, hear, feel. Morbidly intensi- fied and differentiated emotions may transform even a philistine into a temporary poet, novelist: it makes him notice things which he normally does not pay at- tention to; it makes him connect events and actions which he normally does not link from lack of sym- pathetic understanding of their agents; it makes him step out temporarily from his narrow sphere of per- sonal and practical interests. The pure poet, the purely emotional genius, is normally never held back by social class barriers, he normally has no class preju- 194 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN dices, he moves around and feels at home in all social elements, he partakes mentally in all human dramas without regard to the social or geographical stage upon which they are played (enacted). The philo- sophical poet, and still more so the philosophical thinker, rises above mankind; he is free from human or anthropocentrical prejudices; his place of abode is above the low regions of actual human life; he partici- pates mentally in everything that was, is, or will be, going on in the infinite, eternal universe. The poet detaches, frees himself only of his caste, of his narrow social element into which he happens to be born; the philosopher frees himself of contemporary mankind, of the Present, of Mother Earth. The true poet knows how to discover the poetry hid- den in the darkness of unconsciousness of the lowest type of men; for even the mean aims of a criminal may be a means used by the genius of the species in its striving for higher ideals; individual perversities are sometimes symptoms of undercurrent social ideals; human hypocrisy, defined in optimistical language, means a manifestation, a betrayal of our being con- scious of our own imperfections. The genuine poet discovers also the prosaic egotism hidden behind the manifested poetry and simulated altruism of a pseudo- superior man; he discovers the eternally valuable in the insignificant acts of the most humble; he discovers the ideal kernel in perversities, the striving for har- mony in the midst of contradictory and hypocritical complexes of acts. He discovers behind the egotistic, criminal exploitation of the poor by capitalists, behind their conscious striving for material wealth he dis- covers, I say, the wonderful concentration of scattered unproductive individual efforts, the preparation for solidarity, for a socialized concentration of work; he sees in capitalism a wonderful, but dearly paid for les- CREATIVE LIFE 195 son given by individual egotistical capitalists to the government as to what it has to do in order to do away with misery arising from unsocialized, uncon- trolled, scattered efforts. The true thinker does not so easily become enthu- siastic about deceptive, dazzling appearances, i. e., mere superficial resemblances with, or imitations of, truth and goodness. He discovers stagnation, or very slow progress under apparently rapid progress; he detects persistence of old superstitions, iniquities and parasitism, unsettled difficulties under modern eulogis- tic names, under the appearance of altruism and social service, outgrown points of view. He sees the old slavery, superstitions, intolerance, vandalistic invasion and rapacity, dogmatism and scholasticism, etc., per- sisting more or less behind modern proletarianism, spiritism, Christian Science, forced civilizing of in- ferior races, missionary proselytizing, positivism and evolutionism, etc. The talented novelist, the talented poet, can never take their present and recent experiences as subject- matter of their creations, for our present and recent experiences dominate us: we are still living in them, among them, and not above them, we are still actors, and not yet critical spectators. The novel-reader identifies himself with the novel; whereas the novel- writer is above it, is equal to it plus an additional dose of wisdom. The present personality of the poet is a purified form of his past personality. Only the humor- ist is—as it were—self-estranged: He sympathizes with his past emotions, beliefs, etc.; but he ridicules them at the same time, for he does not share, or pro- fess them, any longer. The poet of genius who can build upon the present experiences is like those ab- normal individuals who suffer from a double person- ality without amnesia: he is himself, and, at the same 196 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN time, above himself. When a genius seems to utilize his recent experiences for his creations, it is in reality his old experiences ripened under the influence of the recent ones that he works out under the name of the latter. The genuine, creative poet or artist extracts from his experiences only those events and aspects of events which are of a general and permanent human interest. This requires a survey of the whole class of similar experiences. In order to accomplish this, the experi- ences to be utilized must lie in the past, must have be- come objects of memory. For the field of actual, recent experience, and of perception, is too confused, too nar- row, too much entangled with selfish interests: It does not give us simultaneously the similar materials from whose comparison permanent, common values can be ex- tracted ; it gives us a mixture of a few dissimilar, un- related experiences, in which personal and general val- ues are intermingled. Only memory is the common, hospitable, broad repository in which related, cooperat- ing experiences have a chance of coming and of being evoked together. In memory the beautiful can be easily separated from the ugly, the true and disinterested can impartially be separated from error, illusion and interestedness. Women are too much engrossed with their own personality and with their present experi- ences to become creative artists or poets. In order to be creative one must soar so high above real events and experiences as to be able to imagine the various possible harmonious combinations between these ill- assorted elements. To create means to call into life an ideal complex of human relations by simply bringing together characters, things, events, which in real life, for want of favorable conditions or owing to social bar- riers, unfortunately remain apart and therefore run to waste, but which would harmonize beautifully and would fulfil a high mission if they could meet or hap- pen in the order and connection indicated by the cre- ative artist, poet, novelist or dramatist. Play and Serious Activity.—Play, in a restricted sense, is an abridged, smoothed copy of a serious ac- tivity taken from our own experience (self-imitative play), from the experience of others (hetero-imitative play), from the experience of the race (instinctive play), or arising spontaneously (creative play). Play is activity in the direction of habits, instincts, spon- taneity. Play is activity minus asperities and preci- pices, minus the impulse of necessity, minus the tyranny of an externally imposed aim. Play, in general, and art, in particular, begin with a quasi-imitation of real life, and end with the tendency to model, to transform it in agreement with the life of play and art: it be- comes creative in the end. In its wider sense of self- imposed activity, play includes children’s plays, idlers’ games, and also art, science, philosophy, in their im- mature stage. On the one hand, play recreates us from, reminds us of, prepares us for, serious action; on the other hand, it disgusts us of it, by way of con- trast, and prepares us for an ideal life. The world of play, art, imagination, is a world of refuge for those tired of, and disgusted with, the real prosaic world; and also a prototype, a model, for the real world to come. In the case of a surplus of energy, we feel pleasure in extra-organic activity or expenditure, independently of the manner in which it is expended (play or serious action) ; in the case of a normal quantity of energy, the pleasure feeling depends on the manner of its being expended, on the “how” (play, revery) ; in the case of a fall in the normal level, pleasure arises from non- expenditure or intra-organic activity (recreative play, rest). CREATIVE LIFE 197 198 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN If we include under the name of play-activity any kind of activity—mental or sensory, and physical or motor—which is spontaneous, involuntary, purpose- less, non-oriented, an aim-in-itself, or at least self- imposed, revocable, . . .; we can see that both theories of play-activity—that of Spencer which finds the cause of play-activity in a surplus of energy, and that of Groos which claims that play-activity arises from a complex of useful, life-preparatory instincts—are in- correct. For play-activity sets in and takes the place of serious or teleological activity both in the case of a surplus of energy and in the case of a slight deficit or of moderate exhaustion, as well as in all cases of a normal level of vital energy, as soon as the external or the internal control, i. e., as soon as the pressure of an ungratified need or of fear, is relaxed or removed. If children play, it is because they are being taken care of, it is because and in so far as neither their own con- sciousness nor their guardians compel them to care for the gratification of their needs. For the same reason many women and rich individuals remain children all their life long, i. e., they indulge permanently in bodily and mental play-activity (sports, games, day-dream- ing . . .). If more geniuses arise among the hopefully struggling social middle classes, it is because the chil- dren of such parents have inborn, inherited aims of life. As soon as a social class is allowed to live and to thrive without any exertion on its part, it relapses from serious, purposeful, teleological, directed, volun- tary activity into playful, aimless, undirected, auto- matical, capricious, illusory, dreaming, thoughtless ac- tivity. In preglacial times when Nature was a kind mother to men and animals, when food was in abund- ance and there was no need of shelter and of social or- ganization, play-activity, revery, thoughtlessness, was the rule, whereas serious activity, thinking, was but an 199 CREATIVE LIFE exception, an anomaly, a puzzle in need of solution. Play-activity which puzzles the poor, the struggling, the adults, is the natural or given state of mind and body for the rich, the idlers, children and women. In- tellectual pursuits (artistic, scientific, philosophic, so- cial) which may become serious aims of life for men, for thinkers, seem to women and to philistines a mere anomaly, luxury, a curious kind of play-activity which requires explanation. The child does not take very seriously anything, either his bodily or his mental needs. The genius has in common with the child his lack of seriousness and of perseverance in pursuing personal, material, bodily interests; and is therefore looked upon as childish by the philistines and the pseudo-superior men who are more serious about these matters. The philistine remains a child in his intellect- ual pursuits, and is therefore being ridiculed by the genius who is more mature in this direction. To call all art a play-activity means to adopt the philistine’s point of view, who does not seriously, i. e., persistently, passionately and consistently, pursue any- thing but his material or economic interests. To the real artist, artistic creation is a more serious affair, a more irresistible pursuit than the accumulation of money, and just as much of a need as eating, drinking and sleeping. I do not deny that the art of the aristo- cratic philistine, the art which caters to idlers, para- sites and would-be parasites, is playful, petty-minded, shallow, fantastic, thoughtless, merely meant to amuse and to lull men’s minds to sleep. Nor do I deny that all arts, like all other serious activities, are derived and in their immature stage indistinguishable from play- activity. It is natural for those who believe that all play-activity springs from a surplus of energy to con- sider Art and Literature as a kind of play-activity; because serious, realistic, thought-stimulating, socially 200 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN useful Art and Literature, which springs from inner, organic needs, is so rare as to be hardly known to the public at large, whereas ephemeral, immature, pseudo- artistic and pseudo-literary works which are the prod- uct of leisure, ennui, vanity, imitation, overflood the market. Just as consciousness, reflection, deliberation, do not necessarily and always mean an advantage over, or a progress in comparison with, automatism, sub-con- sciousness, instinct; just as it is advantageous, a sign of progressiveness, to be conscious of, to reflect upon, or to deliberate about, new, complex, unusual circum- stances, and a disadvantage, wastefulness, a sign of regressiveness or backwardness, to do so under old, usual, recurrent, simple circumstances; just so with serious and play-activity: a play-activity may some- times mean a relapse from a more advanced, serious activity into a more primitive, aimless, demoralized one; and sometimes it may mean an advance from a primitive, cruel, unavoidable, compulsory, material- istic serious way of action to a loftier, free, intellectual, sociable, amusing way of action. Thus, for instance, it is probable that art, or some arts at least, began as a refined, voluntary, sociable, leisurely way of imitat- ing (painting, describing, mimicking) fights with beasts and other tribes, hunting for food, meeting with acci- dents in primeval forests, etc., into which primitive men were driven by dire necessity. It is probable that some primitive dramas were nothing but the imitation of real grievances brought before the tribe or the elders of the tribe by two quarreling parties that were afraid and forbidden to use personal, direct revenge or the club-law; while it meant a serious or practical matter to the litigants, it proved to be amusing, interesting, worthy of reproduction or imitation, to the people. It was, however, a still greater advance when these amus- CREATIVE LIFE 201 ing representations of real or mock grievances, fights or other events came to be used, not only for amuse- ment or time-killing purposes, but also for the serious purpose of instructing, elevating, influencing the masses. To learn things for present, immediate use is a serious activity dictated by the struggle for bread, but to learn for future, possible use, although a play- activity from the practical or bread-and-butter point of view, may be considered as an advance over the former way of learning, if it is taken seriously from the intellectual point of view, i. e., if it gratifies an intellectual need and is not merely one of the means of discharging a surplus of energy. The amateurishness of the rich in questions of art and philanthropy, their love for animals, are certainly regressive, degenerate forms of play-activity, i. e., perverted and declining serious human activities. From play-activity we advance to a higher type of serious activity, and from the latter we advance to a higher type of play-activity, and so on; just as from theory we go over to practise, and from the latter to broader or more solid theories which in their turn lead to new and more useful applications, and so on. To ask “which is prior, serious or play-activity?” is prob- ably just as foolish as to ask “which is older, the hen or the egg?” Just as each hen is older than the eggs she lays and younger than the egg she has been hatched from, and just as at the beginning of animal life or in the case of many single-celled animals there is no dif- ferentiation, no distinction between ovum or egg and animal; just so with play-activity and serious activity, theory and practise, thought and action, intelligence and instinct: Primitive activity partakes of the char- acters of both serious and play-activity without being either in particular; in spite of Bergson’s pretentious attempt in his “Evolution Creatrice” to make out of 202 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN instinctive activity something sui generis, something entirely different from intelligent activity, the two are in reality just as correlated as parent and child, as lower and higher, play and serious activity. Only academic philosophers can go on disputing forever in abstracto whether thought is prior to action, intelli- gence to instinct, play-activity to serious activity, etc., or vice versa, without going to the trouble of opening their eyes for a moment and just watch how every thought, every intelligent act, every play-activity is based upon, arises from, follows after some actions, in- stinctive acts, serious activity, and in its turn gives rise to, or is followed by, other kinds of actions, in- stinctive acts, serious activities. Wit and Humor.—Wit is an intellectual play-activ- ity. Humor stands between wit and serious intellectual activity: in its form it is still intellectual play-activity, but its aim is already serious. Both wit and humor differ from serious literature in the fact that the lat- ter presents meanings, thoughts, realities in usual, ade- quate, natural, commonly expected and commonly un- derstood words, forms, appearances; whereas wit and humor present them in disguised, roundabout, indirect, unusual, inadequate, unexpected, incongruous, con- densed, figurative forms. Wit manufactures incongrui- ties between expression and meaning, roundabout and puzzling ways of expressing simple and obvious rela- tions; it plays upon words; it ridicules serious affairs; it sneers at sacred pursuits and virtues; it uses tragic, dignified, general, abstract, big expressons for comical events, trivial affairs, commonplace occurrences, con- crete things, platitudes, small ideas, and vice versa. Whereas humor discovers real incongruities and con- tradictions in human nature, between appearances and realities, between real and professed intentions; it ridi- cules masked vices, sham virtues; it ridicules persons, CREATIVE LIFE 203 things and customs which are undeservedly treated like serious, important affairs; the humorist does not spare himself and his own shortcomings. To the witty indi- vidual wit is an aim-in-itself, a wasteful discharge of superfluous energy, or a means to a frivolous, personal end, or a means for selfish amusement. Wit is some- times a device resorted to by unsubstantial writers in order to hide their scanty substance beneath a mass of sparkling verbal foam. Wit is often the shield of the coward who does not dare to openly vent his real feelings towards and opinions about others. Whereas to the humorist humor is a means to a serious, moral end; humor is amusing and instructive or uplifting at the same time. Humor is one of the weapons of the morally courageous individual. The humorist uses the very same mask, disguise, and perverted or sophis- tical language of the persons ridiculed in order to de- feat them with their own arms, in order the better to unmask their hidden hypocrisy, cowardice and im- morality. The only aim which the philistine pursues seriously (persistently, consistently, thoroughly, whole-heart- edly, . . .) and which absorbs almost his entire time and energy is bodily comfort, food, shelter, clothing. And so does the pseudo-superior man; only he does not do it openly, directly, like the philistine, but under the guise of higher, disinterested, generally useful pur- suits. Higher pursuits the philistine is either frankly averse to, or treats them playfully, superficially, wit- tily, as a pastime, but does not degrade them to a busi- ness like the pseudo-superior man. The philistine may enjoy wit, which approaches playfully the mere forms or appearances of higher pursuits; he may even enjoy humor which seriously pursues higher aims, but adopts the playful, adorned, figurative, incoherent, superficial, roundabout method of making others acquainted there- 204 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN with; but he has no understanding whatsoever for the serious thinker who goes straight to the mark both in his thinking and in the exposition of his thoughts, for serious intellectual pursuits require more intellectual energy, courage, independence than even the materially successful philistine selected for survival by our spo- liation system can dispose of: his independent, critical judgment and spontaneity have been crushed by ex- ploitation, his energy is absorbed by drudgery or un- certainty, wasted on artificial needs and ridiculous fashions imposed upon him by a shrewd commercialism, and side-tracked by the example of parasitical aristo- crats into the channels of unsatiable, degenerative, anti- social pursuits of luxury, wealth, empty titles. The humoristic writer saves mental labor and ef- fort to his hearers or readers by caricaturing reality, i. e., by exaggerating, throwing into relief, personify- ing, visualizing its hidden characteristics or vitally im- portant parts and by suppressing, ignoring, simplify- ing, distorting the other parts, in order to irresistibly draw attention to the former. Whereas the serious thinker who is anxious to depict complex reality and to give due emphasis to all its constituent parts, does not appeal to the masses who are unable to concentrate their attention on more than one thing at a time, and to grasp the subtler relations between things, particu- larly the remote, mediate, hidden relations between classes of things. Dream and Dramatic Activity.—In revery or day- dreaming, trains of ideas and feelings which have been rejected or suppressed during teleological, purposive thinking emerge spontaneously into the light of con- sciousness. There are two kinds of revery: (1) revery as a reaction against, and as a consequence of, mental exhaustion caused by fruitless teleological thinking; (2) revery caused by a surplus of mental energy left CREATIVE LIFE 205 after gratification of immediate needs. The main difference between night- and day-dream- ing is the fact that in the former purposeless, sup- pressed trains of ideas easily displace each other, thus obscuring and truncating the meaning of the dream; whereas in the latter the imaginary drama is followed into the most insignificant and trivial details. Another important difference between day- and night-dreaming is the presence of a dim or clear consciousness of its unreality in the former; whereas in night dreams im- aginations, unrealities, are mistaken for realities, be- cause we do not experience clear sensations at the same time in the light of which we should be able to recognize our imaginations as such, as mere distorted copies, or combinations of past experiences; because it is natural to mistake copies, imitations, secondary, un- usual, derived experiences for the originals, models, primary, usual experiences. Dreams are usually trans- mutations, translations of bodily, coenesthetic, organic feelings into psychical feelings of which we do not be- come directly and immediately conscious, but merely as the results or as the kernels of dream-dramas which are improvised from experiences of vital, customary hopes and fears. The difference between the revery of the layman and the dramatic thinking of the novelist, artist, poet, etc., is the fact that in revery our own ego forms the main personage; our own wishes, hopes and fears form the content of the drama; whereas the drama, properly so-called, is of a more general human interest, of a more permanent and social value. Dream Activity.—Between waking mental activity and dreamless sleep there is an infinite series of all de- grees of mental activity, ranging between highest ra- tionality, coherence, richness in symbolical meaning and extreme irrationality, incoherence, meaningless- 206 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN ness, lack of control; so that it is almost impossible to establish a sharp line of division between dream and waking activity. If we compare the dream activity immediately before waking up or immediately after falling asleep with the waking mental activity, we can merely say that the former is not controlled or regu- lated by sense impressions; it draws all its material from memory, from stored-up impressions; only its starting point may be an isolated peripheral or or- ganic sensation, it does not terminate in motor response or muscular activity (except in the somnambulist). Those, however, who are waked up in the middle of dreams taking place long after having fallen asleep or long before the natural or spontaneous awakening, will, of course, emphasize the lack of coherence, harmony, meaning, rationality, etc. The most important and almighty law of dream activity is determined by the course of cerebral fatigue: Those brain centers fall first asleep which have been most used, most fatigued; and those centers begin first to enter into activity which are most easily recreated. This explains why thinking in images, long-forgotten or never-thought-of individuals and incidents, nay, even ancestral experi- ences, reappear in dreams. This explains why clear sense impressions and motor response are most lack- ing in the dreams of normal sleep; for the senses and the muscular system are the most fatigued, the most overworked parts of the organism. During normal sleep our sense-organs are almost closed, almost in- accessible to external stimuli. And even if a stimulus succeeds in making some impression, it usually im- presses only one sense-organ. This is the reason why in dream we always misinterpret or exaggerate our sensations: Because they are vague and isolated, we do not know to what objects they have to be referred; isolated sensations lead to illusions, hallucinations; CREATIVE LIFE 207 associated, they lead to perceptions. In spite of his ingenious use of dreams for diagnostic purposes, Freud’s interpretation of dreams as imag- inary realizations of unfulfilled wishes, which have been repressed during waking hours, is certainly one-sided and incomplete. It does not cover the whole field of mental activity as it occurs in dreams and in related states of mind (insanity, day-dreaming of the ex- hausted). Not only our wishes, but also our dreads, come true in dreams. Freud’s attempt to reduce these apprehensions or fears to wishes of early childhood is certainly ingenious; but, unfortunately, it does not correspond to reality. If we dream about the death of beloved beings, it is not because at some early period we may have wished their death. Still less can one in- terpret incests committed in dreams as due to early im- pure sexual wishes. A candidate never wishes to fail in his examination. Nor does an actor wish to be else- where and unable to get to the theater when it is time to ring up the curtain; and still they often dream of such situations. The only true explanation of the in- coherent, pictorial, hallucinatory, primitive way of thinking during sleep, insanity, some cases of day- dreaming, is to be found in the laws of cerebral fatigue. The effects of fatigue—no matter whether cumulative or sudden (shock)—-upon a cerebral organ (sensation, perception, apperception, memory, imagination, con- ception) are inversely proportional with the amount of disposable or specific energy of the organ and directly proportional with the amount of work performed by it. Both the oldest and the most recent cerebral organs, i. e., the perceptual and the conceptual organs, are most exposed to fatigue, hence are out of work during sleep. The motor and the perceptual brain centers become exhausted or obtuse, because too much used; and the reasoning centers become exhausted because they have 208 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN but little energy at their disposal. Hence, the dream stuff is mostly made of pictorial thinking, of recollec- tions and imaginations which—for want of vivid per- ceptions to be compared with—are mistaken for reali- ties. What has been said about the various fields of mental activity, holds also within every field: Only such recollections and imaginations are evoked and thought about in dreams as have not been under- or over-worked, repressed or over-fatigued during the waking condition. Thus, the more we think of a per- son during the day, the less do we dream about him or her; we begin to dream about deceased beloved beings, as soon as our grief becomes less absorbing dur- ing the daytime. If both apprehensions and wishes are dreamed of as if they were actual events, it is because primitive, infantile, pictorial thinking has no way of distinguishing between desire, belief and knowledge, between will and power, actuality and possibility, af- firmation and negation, intention and ability. If more primitive ways of feeling, thinking and doing (crimes, selfishness, laxity, impulsiveness, playful moods, . . .) come into play during dreams, it is because the more recently acquired inhibitory, purposeful abilities are out of work. Philosophy, Science, Ultimate Concepts (Cate- gories). Idealism or Philosophic Romanticism.—From the heights of philosophical contemplation, the low regions of facts and objects, the solid ground peopled by individual men and animals, are lost sight of or are seen so dimly and confusely that a great many philoso- phers (idealism, solipsism or idealism carried to its logical extreme, monopsychism) are prone to deny the existence of this object or external world altogether, to regard it as a complex of mere ideas or imagina- tions. Were not these naive gentlemen compelled to go down into these lower regions to gratify their bodily CREATIVE LIFE 209 and lower intellectual needs, they would deny the ex- istence of this world not only in words but also in their deeds, as some lunatics suffering from negativism do. The idealists forget that imagination cannot create new attributes, new elements; that all it can do is to create new combinations. They neglect to ask them- selves : Why should our imagination endow some of our states of consciousness with the attribute of external- ity, or space, to the exclusion of others? If sometimes (in a state of hallucination) one can perceive objects in the external world without there being any, there arises naturally the suspicion that what we call objects, the external world, in the so- called normal state might also be a kind of hallucina- tions, a kind of mental constructs, a kind of internal or imaginary world. But leaving aside the nonsense into which this doubt raised by idealists would land us, viz., to talk about an internal world when we deny in the same breath the existence of an external world, as if internal had any meaning without reference to external, to which it is correlated; leaving aside, I say, this logical objection, we can raise the following psychological ob- jection. If what we believe to be external objects may be unmasked as internal, imaginary, subjective con- structs, it never happens that what we first know to be a purely novel imaginary being should prove itself later on to be a real object; the external world is the cause of our internal world, but our internal world never creates new elements in the external world, nor does it create complexes in the external world out of imaginary elements. Scientific Laws.—Scientific laws, it is said, express constant relations between phenomena; they prove the uniformity of Nature. We forget that what is ap- proximately constant for us may be variable in the 210 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN highest degree for beings having an acute mathematical sense, for whom an error of one-millionth of a milli- meter or of a second means very much. What is equi- librium for us may be a very quick succession of im- perceptible inclinations now in one direction and now in the opposite, since even the adjacent portions of a small environment are not absolutely homogeneous. What would we think of a savage who, having no concept of a number greater than 10, would establish a scientific law that never do more than 10 immigrants arrive to- gether on his island? Men do not suspect how little uniformity, constancy or periodicity there is in the phenomena of Nature. The layman does not know how much uncertainty and disagreement there is in Science and Philosophy; just as the ordinary citizen does not suspect how much ar- bitrariness, personal machinations and hostilities, usurpation, iniquity, favoritism, law-breaking or an- archy, and how little protection there is in the govern- mental institutions. The ordinary man projects his own ephemeral constancy, conservatism, monotony, loy- alty, into external Nature and into his rulers or sup- posed protectors. If Nature seems to him constant, and his leaders seem to him to be in possession of cer- tain, clear, positive knowledge; it is because and so long as he does not venture beyond the limits of the sphere of his practical, immediate interests; it is be- cause he does not pry into the workshop of Nature or of his teachers and preachers; the government, the Law, seems to offer him reliable protection because and so long as he is not badly in need thereof. If theo- ries seem to be reliable guides, it is because in practise one never depends entirely on their guidance; just as men can rely on each other in proportion as they can dispense with and are independent of each other. Causation.—Our belief in the constancy of nature CREATIVE LIFE 211 is an effect of psychical inertia (persistence in old ways of thinking, resistance to changes). A visible, an easily accessible, an outer quality A has been asso- ciated in our past experience with an invisible, not eas- ily accessible, inner quality B. In virture of the law of inertia, it is natural to expect B when A presents itself again in our experience. If some subsequent ex- perience presents to us A dissociated from B we first refuse to accept the reality of this dissociation, but finally our former association becomes weakened, doubted. Or, instead of doubting the univocality (Eindewtigkeit) of the association, we may transfer our doubt to the reexperiencing of A, i. e., we may doubt whether the A dissociated from B is really iden- tical with the A we had experienced formerly in associa- tion with B. What is true in the realm of perception is also true in the realm of concepts. The conviction that the same or identical causes produce the same or identical effects (which statement does not exclude the possibil- ity of practically identical effects being produced by practically dissimilar causes), is also an effect of the law of psychical inertia applied to the whole of our experience, and is corroborated by our ability to fore- tell future events by means of past events. To the objection of subtle philosophers that, owing to the continuous flux of things, no identical events and causes can recur, hence no identical effects can be expected, the answer is very simple: When we speak of identical things and causes we mean what may ap- pear to us as identical; if our imperfect senses are not able to detect slight variations in the causes, they will also be unable to detect the non-identity of the expected effects with the really occurring effects. And this is all we want, for we do not care to perceive and foresee things as they may appear to some superior 212 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN minds, or as they may be in themselves (if there be any meaning in the word things-in-themselves). We care to foresee things as they impress our actual imper- fect human senses. What distinguishes mind from matter is the fact that in mind effects often precede causes, whereas in matter causes precede effects. The effects and the causes of our conscious activity are identical in es- sence, and differ in form only. Pleasure-causing sen- sations, conceptions, perceptions, given as uninten- tional, fortuitous, indirect effects, or consequences of our activity, become, in the shape of representations, images, symbols, the aims or causes of repeating the same or a similar activity. Bergson calls the psychical causation circular in con- tradistinction to the physical which is rectilinear. It seems to me more correct to say spiral instead of cir- cular, for in a circular causation there is no room left for progress, variation. In the physical world the complex of causes must also be considered identical in essence, or quantity with their effects, if we admit that motion can only be trans- ferred, added to, or subtracted from, existing motion, that motion can never create motion just as matter can never create matter. If it seems that sometimes iden- tical effects can be produced by dissimilar causes, it is either an illusion easily explained by our inability to disentangle the true causes from the complex of indif- ferent circumstances of which they form a part, by our confounding partial with total causes, remote and mediate with immediate causes, by taking the whole re- action of a body as the effect of the action of another body, forgetting that in this reaction is also included the activity of the body previous to the action ex- erted upon it; or it is because the dissimilar causes have some common property which alone is responsi- CREATIVE LIFE 213 ble for their similar effects, whereas their uncommon, peculiar properties have not participated in the effect under consideration. Thus it is a mistake to regard laughter as an ef- fect which can be produced by dissimilar causes. A close observation shows that the purely physiological laughter of hysterics differs to to orbe from the psy- chical laughter, and this in its turn differs according as it is the expression of pure, genuine joy, or of simu- lated joy, or of joy mixed with irony, hatred, hypoc- risy, envy, etc. Laughter being a complex phenomenon is naturally due to a complex of causes. And the va- rieties of laughter are to be explained by the pre- dominance, supervening, absence of some ingredients of the causal complex. What they all have in common, however, is due to one and the same partial cause, viz., an incongruity between appearance and reality, the actual and the ideal, aim and achievement, thought and expression, etc., that tickles our self-conceit or self- love. But if, philosophically speaking, unlike causes cannot give rise to like effects, for practical purposes they may sometimes be considered as such. If we admit that all phenomena can be reduced ulti- mately to transfers, additions, and subtractions of movement; if we admit that the state of motion is the natural, original, primordial state of the smallest par- ticles of matter, and that their rest is but suspended movement, i. e., an artificial, unstable state resulting from equal but opposite impacts: We can understand how an effect may be actually, perceptibly, a new crea- tion, i. e., different from its causes in both quantity and quality, although potentially the effect cannot con- tain either more or less motion and matter than its causes; we can understand how poisons may give birth to non-poisonous substances, how light added to light may sometimes result in darkness; we understand how 214 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN children born of the same parents under varying cir- cumstances, and even unrelated individuals, differ act- ually rather than potentially. To solve the great mystery of the origin of organic life means to solve the question, How has the rectilinear anorganic causation been changed into a circular and spiral causation? Acquisition and Limitations of Human Knowledge.— The average man pursues pleasure, happiness, whereas the genius pursues truth. Since truth can never be so completely and easily attained as pleasure and satis- faction ; since truth is rather a fortuitous, contingent product of spontaneous activity, whereas pleasure and satisfaction are the direct outcome of instinctive, ha- bitual, imitative activity; we understand why the ac- tivity of the average man is rather circular, self-repeat- ing; whereas that of the genius is rather spiral, ever advancing, never wholly repeating itself. Philosophers having a rigid system of their own, or an adopted one, are usually blind to new facts that do not fit into their so much so that they do not yield even to coercive evidence. Just as political par- ties, or rather politicians, differ in theory but not in practise, so do philosophical systems and philosophers differ rather in labels, etiquettes, phraseology, a few paradoxical assertions, than in fundamental concepts and views. Philosophers without a system and those with a flexible system are more open-minded and more open-hearted. The common mortal admits even ab- surdities and impossible relations, especially when they flatter his desires, fears and hopes. Superstition stands at both extremes of the human hierarchy: negative superstition at the top, positive superstition at the bottom. Abstract reasoning is almost nil in the higher ani- mals, and even in many human beings. Hence, we may CREATIVE LIFE 215 regard it as a late acquirement of the human species. Whether mankind, in its further development, will ever acquire a new and higher ability, or will merely improve upon the old ones, we cannot decide. Our knowledge of and about the world begins with dark ignorance as to the elements, and ends with con- fused ideas as to their more complicated combinations, colligations: Darkness within and darkness without the sphere of human knowledge. A system of philos- ophy working synthetically upwards from the elements has as little advantage over a philosophy working analytically downwards from complexes: both begin and end in doubt and perplexities. Both the macrocosm and the microcosm, the infi- nitely large and the infinitely small, the beginning and the end of things, the primary cause and the ultimate goal of events, . . . are hidden from view, and will probably remain forever beyond the grasp of human understanding, for the simple reason perhaps that they have no real, objective, absolute existence. Thus, what is imperceptible, extremely small and simple, a microcosm for man, may be perceptible for a thinking or philosophizing microbe—if there be such a one— and may impress it as infinitely large, exceedingly com- plex and heterogeneous, as a—nay, as the—Universe. The farther we try to follow up an event, a process, a thing, in the light of the little knowledge and of the few discoveries in our possession—no matter whether we follow it up in the direction of effects, consequences, futurity, end or in the direction of causes, antecedents, past, origin, beginning; no matter whether synthet- ically or analytically; no matter whether deductively or inductively; no matter whether in the direction of greater, more inclusive wholes, of the macrocosm, of the infinitely large, or in the direction of ever- smaller constituent parts, of the microcosm, of the 216 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN infinitely small—the deeper grows the darkness, igno- rance, uncertainty and mysteriousness which enshrouds our feebly shining intellect; the less reliable become the experiences of single individuals, of few genera- tions. The attempt to infer or to trace indefinitely, il- limitably backward and forward the course of events by means of what we know about a definite, limited number of events, is certainly too bold and beyond act- ual human ken. The failure of such an attempt, how- ever, is neither a sign of its eternal futility and of scientific impotence, nor is it a justification for theo- logical beliefs; for—we can answer with Diderot—if the light of our intellect is like a candle that illuminates but an infinitesimal part of our path, and hence does not enable us to overlook at a single glance the entire path, and to see whence it begins and whither it leads; this is no reason why we should blow out our candle and grope in the dark, guided by mere blind faith which is built on a mixture of fear and hope, of unrealizable wishes and ungrounded fears. How can one ask for positive information about the past and the future, when we hardly know much of what is going on in the present? We are so little conscious of things that act directly on our senses; how, then, do we expect Science to give us unquestionable information about things and phenomena which do not act at all or act but indirectly on our senses? The common mortal receives knowledge impressed from without; in the genius knowledge works its way from within; in the superior man (great talent) both methods work towards each other, like in tunneling a mountain. Hence, the quicker and the more successful acquisition of knowledge by the great talent. To acquire knowledge of something through inner evolution, and to get it verbally, from without, are such different processes, or have at least such different CREATIVE LIFE 217 forms, that the man of genius is usually unable to iden- tify their results when they have reference to one and the same thing; he often believes to know two differ- ent things where in reality he knows but one, he does not recognize his original ideas in those of others. This is a similar phenomenon to the internal “autoscopie” of hysterical persons, studied and explained by Dr. Sollier. The autoscopical knowledge of the inner organs cannot be identified by the patients with the verbally obtained knowledge about the same organs; just as the blind whose sight has been restored are at first inclined to look upon the objects seen as new and entirely dif- ferent from the objects of their tactual experience. Every classification of sciences presupposes a philo- sophic system as a center of perspective from which they are looked at. Changing the philosophic system, or the center of perspective, we change the number and kind of sciences which appear on the same vector; what was coordinate, subordinate or superordinate from the standpoint of one system, is not so from the standpoint of another system. The ideal is a center of perspective at infinity, from which but one classification is possible, or no classification is necessary. Pseudo-superior men jealously keep watch over ar- tificially established boundary lines between nations and sciences. They forget that an advanced science, like a civilized nation, cannot be self-sufficient. In order to advance, sciences, not less than individual men and nations, must obey the principles of division of labor, i. e., every science must confine herself to ac- complishing such tasks only which she can do most efficiently; she must make use of the methods, results or acquirements obtained by other sciences, and give in exchange her own. Nay, more, just as in modern times the workingmen of certain nationalities begin to realize what their exploiters (kings, noblemen, cap- 218 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN italists, . . .) have realized long ago, viz., that they stand nearer to, and have more interests in common with, the workingmen of other nationalities than with the other social classes (capitalists, bureaucrats, clergy, teachers, . . .) belonging to their own nation- alities; just so a certain class of knowledge which is commonly considered as belonging to one science may be brought into close community of interests with classes of knowledge commonly assigned to other sciences. Facts and Hypotheses.—Hypotheses are supposed to explain the distant, past, future, unexperienced, complex, unknown, unusual, imperceptible, microcosm in terms of the near, present, experienced, simple, known, usual, perceptible, macrocosm. Does not this mean that truth is already in our possession in germ or in essence; that truth has not to be discovered, but merely uncovered, unfolded? Is it not ridiculous to raise our impotence of transcending the data of our senses to the rank of a law of Nature, of a scientific law, of a logical necessity? Diagrammatic representation of the evolution of hy- potheses, theories, philosophical systems. I. —First or rectilinear stage explains or links a few facts: a, b II. —Second or circular stage is more inclusive, broader: it ex- plains the additional facts or systems of facts: c, d, e III.—The third or elliptical stage, and IV.—The fourth or parabolical stage, are still broader CREATIVE LIFE 219 To support a theory, facts must be unexplainable on any other theory. Facts are the material, the bricks or stones; h3Tpotheses, theories, are the cement, the mor- tar ; both are means for constructing spiritual edifices for the delight of human souls. A purely speculative system is like an edifice constructed out of mortar only; a purely experimental system, if there be any possi- bility for it, is like an edifice built out of bricks or stones only. Both are extremely vacillating. It sounds so comical to me to hear experimenters, observers, scientists, even philosophers, maintain seri- ously that they want to remain within the boundaries of facts, of science; that they do not want to venture into hypotheses, speculation, metaphysics. First of all, every fact, every experiment, every science, is based upon some theory, speculation, metaphysics, and leads to more comprehensive and bolder speculations. We do not see things and connections between things en- tirely as they are, but largely as we imagine them to be. The only difference between matter-of-fact think- ers and speculative or hypotheses-framing thinkers is that the former use theories, metaphysics, implicitly and unconsciously, and are not able to separate fact from theory, physics from metaphysics, nor are they able to rise from a few facts and narrow theories to the conception of the whole class of similar facts, and to a more comprehensive theory; whereas the latter use hypotheses explicitly and consciously, and are able to advance to ever-higher points of view, to ever-broader outlooks. It is so comical to hear our self-important academical philosophers belonging to the various classes of the so-called idealistic philosophy maintain that ideas, feelings, the mind, or only the writer’s mind, are real facts; whereas objects, the external world, matter, are mere hypotheses, are non-existent or un- knowable and utterly beyond our reach. If objects 220 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN are non-existent, why cannot the idealistic writers make a single statement merely in terms of ideas, with- out implying objects? If objects are beyond our reach, how did we come to speak about them? The same contradiction is observed in those who maintain that energy, force, movement, change, is the only real- ity; and matter, permanence, is but an appearance, hypothesis, mental construct. If so, why cannot these dynamists or energists make a single statement without making use of matter? And those who reduce matter to energy, electricity (electrons), or to a mere unstable form of ether, thinking that they have thereby dealt a death-blow to matter, fail to see that they speak about ether, electricity, energy, corpuscles, in the same way as atoms, matter, have heretofore been spoken about, they fail to see that ether or energy is to them what matter has been to the materialists. These learned gentlemen, who would doubt the sanity of an individual who could not understand why a sentence must neces- sarily consist of a subject and a predicate, fail to see the insanity of their analogous assertion that there is movement but no moving things, there is a perceiver and perceptions but no things perceived. Progress in Knowledge and Understanding.—As long as there are no absolutely isolated things, no ab- solutely isolated states of mind, knowledge is neces- sarily comparative, relative, dynamic. This does not mean that we know only changes, only relations, only similarities and dissimilarities, associations and dis- sociations between things. We cannot know changes without knowing more or less the state preceding the change, or the thing changed; we cannot know rela- tions between things without knowing more or less the related things themselves. We cannot know our ego without knowing other egos and the external world with which it stands in constant and changing rela- CREATIVE LIFE 221 tion. Just as reaction has no separate existence from, and no meaning without, action; just so knowledge of things, i. e., of their actions upon our mind, goes to- gether with some sort of knowledge of our states of mind, i. e., of the mind’s reactions to external or or- ganic actions. We cannot know things without know- ing their relations or connections with other things; for things are nothing but centers of irradiation or bundles of relations, or, more correctly, things are noth- ing but places of intersection where relations are more condensed, more numerous, just as nerve cells are the crossing-places or irradiation centers of nerve fibers. The difference between thing and relation is merely a difference in complexity, density, a difference be- tween the whole and its parts, but not a difference of kind or of materiality. Knowledge is a general or collective name for sens- ing, perceiving, conceiving, being conscious. Under- standing is a special case, or a higher, deeper, more general, more comprehensive, more penetrating, con- ceptual, causal kind of knowledge. To know a thing means to compare it with others, with ourselves; to associate it with, or to attend to its relations to, cer- tain things, which necessitates a dissociation, or an abstraction from its relations to, others. One and the same thing impresses us differently according to the point of view, according to the setting in which it pre- sents itself to us. Thus one and the same kind of work may be tedious and appear as never-ending, or it may be pleasant and seem to last but a while; accord- ing as it is considered as a whole or as a heap of dis- connected parts, according as our attention is concen- trated upon the result or upon the means, according as our attention is entirely absorbed by it or distracted in other directions. To speak about knowing things- in-themselves amounts to speaking about knowing 222 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN things that do not act on our mind; it is tantamount to speaking about seeing things that do not impress our eyes, and hearing sounds that do not reach our ears, etc. Likewise, to know our mind-in-itself would mean to know a mind that does neither act upon nor react to external events; it would mean to be con- scious of our unconsciousness, which is certainly a contradiction in terms. To say that reaction is equal to action means to deny all spontaneity, independence or self-activity, to objects. Even if we say that the total reaction of a thing is equal to the total action exerted upon it, we do not bring our statement much nearer to reality. For this means that everything derives its whole being, existence and behavior, merely from outside, from the rest of the world; it means to conceive of matter, of the world, as naturally inert—a conception which would involve us in more inextricable difficulties than those we try to escape. Hence, it is more; accurate to say that reaction is proportional to action. If conscious- ness or knowledge is a kind of total or unitary reaction of the mind to external actions, we understand how there can be many different degrees of knowledge of one and the same thing or action, merely because of varying internal conditions or degrees of self-activity of the mind itself. If too many things force them- selves or act simultaneously on the mind, or if a single thing acts too strongly and exclusively on it, it can no longer respond as a whole: It splits into smaller, separately reacting parts; it sinks to a sub-conscious or disintegrated state. The mind can perceive but successively. To gain in simultaneity or comprehen- siveness, it must lose in clearness, i. e., it must deal, not with the things themselves, but with mere symbols or images. Consciousness and self-consciousness are the two CREATIVE LIFE 223 inseparable aspects of one and the same process. From this inseparable connection, or parallelism, between the consciousness of objects as known and the conscious- ness of knowing objects, between the consciousness of matter or of not-self and the consciousness of mind or self, it follows that it is a fallacy to say that we un- derstand mind better than matter; that we explain matter in terms of mind, or vice versa. It is rather true that we are equally ignorant of or equally ac- quainted with the nature of both mind and matter, with the two antithetic aspects of knowledge. We under- stand others, the individual, mankind, the soul in so far and so much only as we understand ourselves, so- ciety, the environment, the cosmos. If the knowledge of our body comes through identi- cally constituted nerves as the knowledge of the ex- ternal world, if the understanding of our self goes hand-in-hand with the understanding of the not-self, if the substance of our experiences is inseparable from some form imparted to it by our mind, it follows that the concept of causality is not first abstracted from the voluntary part of our inner life, and then trans- ferred, by analogy, from our movements following upon the efforts of our will to the successions of movements and changes observed in the external world. If causal- ity were a purely subjective concept, like animism, which has been reified or projected into the objective world, men would sooner or later free themselves from it; whereas the contrary is seen to happen: its impor- tance, its grip on human reasoning, is steadily increas- ing. Moreover, causality or causation is nothing but a short-hand name for the mutual influences between things, which no sane man denies. The progress in understanding the human soul is strictly parallel, contemporaneous with the progress in understanding the external world. Only the prog- 224 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN resses in knowing are not parallel. Our internal rela- tions are regulated without necessitating any conscious effort, whereas our relations with the external world are not so constant as to become automatical. Hence, we are more interested, in learning facts about the ex- ternal world than about the internal world: our no- ological knowledge lags behind the cosmological. In antiquity when the struggle for existence was extra- social, against nature and other tribes, it was more useful to have knowledge of external facts. In the modern individualistic society in which the struggle for existence is rather intrasocial, against fellow- men and fellow-citizens, noological knowledge is of greater importance. The average savage was rather a naturalist and so is the villager; whereas the average civilized man, and particularly the city dweller, is more of a psychologist, if I may use these terms for knowledge devoid of understanding. Our body is just as external to our consciousness as the surrounding physical world. Hence the knowledge of our own body does not differ in the way of its being obtained from the knowledge of the surrounding world; the former kind of knowledge cannot be said to be more objective, or more certain, than the latter. The reason why we know from direct sources less about the processes going on in our own body than about the phenomena of the external world, is the constancy, regularity, rhythm, of the former, and the irregularity, continual change, lack of perceptible (I do not say conceivable) rhythm in the latter. The organic, in- ner nerves do not differ in construction from the pe- ripheral, outer nerves. The knowledge of others’ minds is just as inferential as the knowledge of any material object which does not impress all our senses (distant objects, like stars, etc.) or which does not impress them directly (electric and magnetic phenomena). If CREATIVE LIFE the cerebro-molecular movements of others would di- rectly impress our highest or synthetic cerebral center, instead of communicating with us through their rougher and superficial muscular discharges, we would know others’ minds just as much or just as little as we do know our own mind. With increased power of obser- vation, of voluntary attention, we come to notice ever greater differences between the behavior of material, inanimate objects, of other men, and our own behav- ior ; and we succeed in freeing ourselves from animism, from personification of material—especially of mov- able—objects, from projecting behind the acts of others thoughts, feelings, and intentions identical with our own: for no matter how similar-looking the actions of different persons are, especially in their rough and superficial part, they always differ in their inner and less striking parts, as long as they proceed from dif- ferent psychical causes. Maybe our power of ob- servation is in reality not increasing, is not greater than that of primitive people: we merely notice better than they did the less striking, less immediately useful things and events, the configurations of wholes, because the knowledge of the striking, of immediately useful things, of the details, has been transmitted to us, or at least facilitated by our attention being drawn to them, so that a surplus of intellectual energy is left to us to be used in the acquisition of more general, more re- fined, more theoretical knowledge. The philistine is ignorant of his own self, because his evolution comes very early to a stop, because there is no change and no variety in his pursuits, thoughts, feelings: he neither differs from his neighbors, nor from himself at different stages of his life. Whereas the superior man is impelled to self-analysis by the constant change in his aspirations, or rather in the width of his intellec- tual horizon, and by the difference between himself and 226 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN his fellow-men which is painfully brought to his atten- tion in various ways, through many disappointments in his expectations, through ill-treatments inflicted upon him by philistines and especially by pseudo or parasitical superior men whom he mistakes for ideal men, i. e., for his equals. Sensation, perception, memory, imagination, judg- ment, reason, are not like receptacles or grinding-ma- chines that have a separate existence from and inde- pendent of the materials to be stored away or ground. In the animal mind, functions and experi- ences or data to be worked upon are interdependent, mutually determining. Only such external vibrations give rise to experiences, sensations, perceptions, for which we have corresponding sympathetically vibrating brain centers. In the absence of such centers, vibrat- ing sympathetically with the external vibrations, there is no real, objective, definite experience: there is only a shock, often a painful destruction of nerve tissue. Thus the human brain having no centers vibrating sympathetically with electric waves cannot respond adequately, and without danger to the organism, to the impact of electric waves; many microbes having no optical sensibility perish under the impact of light waves. If quick and intense electric discharges, like those of lightning, were a common aerial phenomenon, men could not exist unless they would develop a brain center vibrating sympathetically with these electric currents, and thus preventing rupture of tissue. To take analogous examples from the social environment: men, like the genius and the insane, who do not vibrate sympathetically with, who cannot imitate, their neigh- bors, their fellow-men, with whom they come in con- tact, are not tolerated, nay, they are persecuted; their lives are endangered, especially in the midst of primi- tive, compact communities and small towns where every CREATIVE LIFE individual is constantly in contact with and watched by the others; the motto is “either imitate or starve.” If the social organism would have real philanthropical institutions vibrating sympathetically with the crim- inal, extra-social element, it would be less endangered and less undermined by the latter. The moral genius is a man whose brain vibrates sympathetically with all the exploited, disinherited, ill-treated social classes; and whose intelligence is pressed into the service of his altruistic experiences. No amount of intelligence can make the rich egoist see our system of cruel spoliation in its true light, for he has no sympathetic feelings with the condition of the exploited. The somnambulist, the hypnotized, the mentally absorbed, the fanatic, the man of strong one-sided opinions, i. e., individuals in whom some ideas are over-active, over-conscious, are blind to everything except to events with which their minds vibrate sympathetically at the time. During the indi- vidual lifetime very few brain centers are being created. Most of them, if not all, are hereditarily predeter- mined. Owing to such hereditary predispositions— which in their turn are largely due to the frequency and intensity, to the cumulative impressions, of exter- nal stimuli—we notice much better animate beings than inanimate, animals than plants, moving things than stationary things, men than animals, the opposite sex than our own sex, things of immediate bearing on our well-being than things of mediate bearing. Hereditary predispositions, i. e., interests and sensitiveness, and the intensity or the frequency of the actual, individual experiences, are responsible for the adequacy and for the extent of our mental reactions. One and the same experience may stop in some individuals at the level of sensation, of brute, partial feeling, or perception; in other individuals, the memory centers are also set into action, and the perception is thereby completed 228 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN or transformed into apperception; in other individ- uals the process goes a step higher, it arouses the ac- tivity of the synthetic or conceptual brain centers: parts of percepts and related memories are synthe- tized into a more comprehensive whole; in imaginative individuals, memories rise spontaneously into con- sciousness and new connections are thus established between them, etc. Intelligence or mental adaptability, i. e., the capac- ity of acquiring new experiences, of acting accord- ingly, of relating them to similar past experiences, of synthetizing them into classes, is in reality not a simple, undivided ability, but a collection of partial abilities dependent on inborn interests or hereditary predispositions and on external opportunities or sources of experiences. An individual may be very intelligent in one line of activity, and be quite stupid in all other respects. Thus a passionate man may display intelligence in inventing means and devices of gratifying his passion, but he remains blind to the dam- age resulting for him from the passion as a whole: his intelligence, his mental field of vision, does not ex- tend beyond the sphere of his passion; the commercial philistine may be clever in his narrow sphere of profit- seeking, but he unmasks himself as a stupid fellow when he comes to discuss about higher pursuits, such as re- ligion, to which he naively applies his give-and-take logic, and sees the weightiest reason for his compliance with the externals of religion in his assertion that it is more profitable or at any rate safer and less risky to do so than otherwise; the stupidity, the credulity, of children, of some intelligent men, is due to lack of experience. Every perception, in order to be com- plete, objective, presupposes the collaboration of memory, imagination, judgment, reason. But beyond a certain point, these functions cease to collaborate CREATIVE LIFE 229 equally. Perception, observation, predominates in some individuals; memory and imagination, in others, etc. So that intelligences differ, not only in the kind of ma- terial or experiences on which they exert themselves, but also in the kind of function which predominates (observers, poets, artists, thinkers, . . .). In a more restricted and modern sense, intelligence means knowl- edge and understanding of men, for in our technically advanced but parasitical society most inhabitants of large cities live on their wits, on their ability to make others work, on their ability to please—which presup- poses the ability to understand—others. Evolution of Knowledge.—When an object impresses for the first time the mind of a baby it probably causes a complex of vague, weak, undifferentiated sensations. The accidental qualities are on the same level of indis- tinctness as the essential or permanent qualities. If the same object is presented again to the baby’s mind, the essential, permanent or unchanged qualities will be better perceived than the accidental or those de- pending on every alteration in circumstances, for the impression of the former adds itself to their impres- sion left the first time, whereas the impression made by accidental qualities is different with every presen- tation of the object. Hence, to perceive an object means to notice what is common to all its impressions upon our mind made at different times, i.e., to notice what is repeated. Likewise, if objects belonging to the same class are presented, the baby notices more easily what they have in common than the individual qualities, for the former are repeated and added. The class attributes are known before or better than the individual attributes. To conceive means to notice what is common to many objects coexisting in space. To form concepts of a higher order means to notice what is common to related concepts of a lower order. 230 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN If the knowledge of perceptible class qualities precedes the knowledge of individual qualities, the reverse holds for the knowledge of individuals and of groups or classes. First, all the individuals belonging to the same class are mistaken for one and the same, or for identical individuals; then those individuals are distin- guished from each other and the correlated notions, “individual-class,” “part-whole,” are acquired. First, such groups are distinguished which differ perceptibly much from each other and are mutually exclusive; then those classes are distinguished which stand nearer to and include each other. The scientific or logical hierarchy of classes does not, of course, run parallel to that of psychological or common-sense classification whose grounds of division are mere superficial or per- ceptible qualities of things. What has been said about the genesis and evolution of objective knowledge can be repeated—mutatis mutandis—about our subjective, inner or introspective knowledge. When we begin to pay attention, not only to the content of our mental processes, but also to their form, i.e., not only to the “what,” but also to the “how” of our experiencing, feeling, reacting; we notice that there is something constantly recurring in the manner in which we take cognizance, feel or react, and this something is independent of and prior to the matter or cause of cognition, feeling, volition. This constant form, this bed in which our streams of ex- periences are flowing and to which they must conform themselves, we call our self, our ego, our character and temperament, our individuality. Like the bed of a river, our self is, on the one hand, preexisting to our experiences, and, on the other hand, it is deepened and broadened by the early experiences; nay, more, its di- rection may even be changed by these early experi- ences. But the self, the bed of our experiences or CREATIVE LIFE 231 streams of consciousness, once formed, exerts a mold- ing, shaping, and directing influence on later experi- ences. The genius, in distinction from common mor- tals, has a self which is more or less fully developed at birth, and which will, therefore, rather mold, select and direct the individual experiences than be formed or dug by the latter. The self of the genius is active from the beginning; that of common mortals is passive with regard to early individual and suggestive or edu- cative experiences, and active with regard to later ones. The self of average men is teachable, a result of deliberate and of unintentioned external human in- fluences ; the self of the genius is unteachable, it is a cause of change in human attitudes. There is just as little, or rather just as much mystery in understand- ing the identity of self as there is in understanding the identity of the not-self, of the objective world. If the external world—and our own body may be consid- ered as a part of it—furnishes the stuff for our men- tal processes, and our mind gives the form, we may say: Amidst the changing contents and the changing forms of our thoughts there is something constantly recurring, ever the same, which constitutes the two in- teracting principles called self and not-self, mind and cosmos. What for logic is an ultimate concept, a category of thought, is psychologically primary, given in the form of meaningless, vague sensations. What for logic is last, is first for psychology. We can best notice this gradual advancement from vague, meaningless sen- sations of objects or of relations to the interpreta- tion of these sensations, i.e., to the linking of these sensations with images of other sensations associated therewith from our previous experience: We can best notice this, I say, in the case of a distraction of our attention while sensing or after having sensed some- 232 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN thing. If our mind is absorbed while an external or internal impression calls on it, we first feel that some- thing is going on; but it takes a certain time before we make out what that something is before we interpret it or give it a meaning. Likewise, if we have decided to do something and our attention is diverted before we have begun to carry out our decision, we notice that we forget the aim of our incipient movements, sometimes we even forget the movements to be made and remember only that we intended to do something. We remember a vague impulse, but forget its direction or goal. Logically, the notion of the class comes after the notion of the individuals constituting it. Psycho- logically, the class attributes are known before the individual attributes. Logically, the notion of animal cannot be grasped before the notions of vertebrates, fishes, mollusca, worms, etc. Psychologically, we may know clearly what an animal is, without ever getting a clear idea about the subdivisions. Knowledge of Other Selves.—We describe mechan- ical phenomena and movements by means of words re- ferring to human actions and human movements, be- cause the latter have been noticed and, hence, endowed with names prior to the former. Likewise with human mental processes. We speak of the semi- and of the unconscious processes in terms of, and therefore we mistake them for, conscious processes; because the lat- ter have attracted our attention prior to, or more directly than, the former, and have therefore received names before the former. If a psychologist, a knower of human nature, has to describe the dimly conscious operations, the flow of semiconscious intentions, feel- ings and thoughts in introspectively less gifted in- dividuals, he cannot help using descriptive terms which apply to analogous conscious processes in his own mind, and which convey therefore the idea of clear CREATIVE LIFE 233 consciousness in the agent described. He describes the mental processes of his nonpsychological fellow- men as these would describe them if they were fully conscious thereof. The psychologist cannot help ascribing to others the same clearness of thought and of intentions as he has himself; just as the sincere and honest man believes in the sincerity and honesty of rascals, or, if he is too much of a sharp-eyed, ob- jective psychologist not to notice their tricky and mean ways of acting, he considers them as hypocrites and intellectual prostitutes who knowingly do what they themselves consider as wrong. He cannot under- stand that there is such a thing as self-deception, self- sophistication, insincerity with one’s self, self-hypno- tising into seeing men and things according to or in agreement with one’s desires or self-interest. The pseudo-superior man who makes a business out of everything, who uses everybody and everything to further his own interests, cannot believe in the exist- ence of genuine superior men, i.e., in men who love truth, knowledge and art for their own sakes, who dis- interestedly take others’ troubles to heart, who argue merely for the sake of getting at some truth without intending to belittle others and to extol themselves. Such individuals the pseudo-superior man looks down upon as either unskilled fakers or cranks. In our attempt at getting a glimpse into the soul of other men, into the soul of animals, and into the nature of so-called inanimate things, we can just as little help taking our own soul as a starting point as, when we wish to go somewhere, we cannot manage to be there at the moment of conceiving the desire but must patiently start out from the place where we happen to be. To understand others we must wander in our imagination either upward, onward, in the di- rection of our aspirations, visions, hopes, tendencies 234 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN or backward, downward, in the direction of our recol- lections, past, prenatal and prehuman conditions. It is neither possible nor useful or desirable to know men and things in themselves, from their own point of view, from inside or intuitively in the Bergsonian sense. Nor is there any meaning in such a knowledge, for knowledge presupposes a mutual interaction be- tween knower and known. Bergson alone seems to know the secret of such absolute knowledge, but he does not care to reveal it to us common mortals: it is enough honor for us if he condescends to point out to us that he is endowed therewith. The only drawback resulting from judging others by ourselves does not lie in the fact that we must start from ourselves, from our own experience, from our preconceived opinions, but in the fact that we are too lazy to go beyond that, to budge from the place, to shift our point of view in order to compare and coordinate the partial experi- ences gained under various angles. We prefer either to identify others with ourselves, as children, philis- tines and savages do; or we assume and compel others to be what we wish them to be, as parasites or ex- ploiters do with the poor. The productive individual, who relies on his own abilities, starts by assuming that his fellowmen are like him and treats them accordingly. Experience, however, and objective thinking, i.e., thinking guided by experience, teaches him that not all men are alike and willing to cooperate with him. He thus attains objective knowledge, he learns to as- sociate with his own kind, to modify his preconceived opinions and conduct and to shun parasites. The parasitical, predatory, unproductive individual, on the other hand, in his indifference to real or disinterested knowledge, in his desire to live indolently on the toil of others, assumes and persists in his subjective or a priori assumption that his poorer fellowmen are noth- CREATIVE LIFE 235 ing but what he wishes and compels them to be, viz., tools, stupid automata, animals born to do his bid- ding, unworthy of proper or individual names, which are in need of his supervision in order to get along in this world; those who refuse to do his bidding or to look up to him as a master and try to assert their individuality, he hates and exterminates as being mor- bid, abnormal cases; he overlooks the fact that if the few altruistic and independence-loving proletarians are abnormal because they differ from the majority, then both his class and his prostituted defenders, the official psychologists and psychiatrists, also belong to the abnormal, pathological, degenerate class, as they, too, are in a minority, and hence deserve just as much—if not more so—to be persecuted and exterminated by the exploited masses. Whereas the honest, creative, aspiring thinker sees in the downtrodden masses the crippled souls of dimly aspiring men, who have been hypnotized and frightened into intellectual torpor and blindness by their exploiters; the rich who use them as mere tools, and hence want them to be nothing else, prefer to deny them all higher needs, nay, all human feelings, because this conception suits better their ma- terialistic, predatory, anti-social pursuits. The same applies to our conception of the animal mind. The vegetarian, the kind-hearted and nonvo- racious man, are inclined to look upon their animal cousins with unprejudiced eyes, to perceive that they, too, are stirred by passions, hatred, love, joy, sorrow, care, and are capable of appreciating fair and loving treatment. The liking of children for animals springs not only from the fact that they—like our preglacial ancestors whose life history every child briefly recapit- ulates—stand psychically nearer to the animals, but also to the fact that the preglacial man was a vegeta- rian and hence had no reason for denying a soul to 236 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN his animal cousins, as the exploiters do with their poorer brethren, and the Americans do with their immigrant wage slaves, in order to be able to feed remorselessly on their blood. Nay, more, the child, like the primitive man, is rather inclined to overesti- mate the psychical qualities of animals by analogy with their superior physical qualities; just as, conversely, he cannot conceive of a superior, extraordinary intel- lect possessed by a small man with an insignificant ex- terior. The egoistical, voracious, flesh-eating individ- ual, on the other hand, prefers to see in animals noth- ing but automata, stored-up food or energy, just as the carnivorous animals, when hungry, probably look upon man and upon the herbivorous animals. To know others we must have been, at some stage of our development, similar to them. For this reason, the best detectives and policemen are recruited from among ex-criminals and men with a criminal predisposition. The best laquais, valets, butlers, servants, are to be found among aborted or would-be aristocrats. If the socialist is better able than the congenitally noble- hearted anarchist or communist to understand the psyche of a capitalist, it is because the socialist has passed during his immature years through the parasit- ical stage before he reached the humanitarian plane in theory at least, if not in practise. The capitalist, however, who does not evolve morally beyond the plane of jungle life, remains devoid of all understanding for the mentality of a socialist: Thus, Gustave Le Bon, a very capable scientist of the predatory class, who, like all capitalistic writers, is manufacturing volumi- nous and numerous books for want of some more useful occupation, when he attempted to fathom the soul of the socialist in particular and of the revolutionist in general in his “Psychology of Socialism,” “Psychology of Revolutions,” etc., made a sorry mess out of it; CREATIVE LIFE 237 whenever he seems to talk sense, he merely repeats what he has appropriated from socialistic writings; but whenever he talks in his own name, he talks nonsense, and all he succeeds in discovering in the minds of social- ists is the reflected image of his own hidden qualities, viz., hatred of superiority, envy of wealth, morbid or aimless restlessness and discontentedness, and such-like. If the intelligent man is able to understand the fool, and if the sane man is able to understand to a certain extent the insane man, it is because the former’s think- ing processes pass through the fool’s and madman’s stage of nebulousness, incoherency, impulsiveness, dis- sociation, subjectivity, etc., but do not stop at that stage and do not go over into action or into talk until the entire related experience of the past has been con- sulted and until all the thinking material has been sifted, distilled, purified, worked up into valuable con- cepts or rules of conduct. The Various Organs of Knowledge.—Just as in the field of social activities the accomplishment of any kind of work requires the cooperation of, and the division of the task among, helpers, workers, foremen, super- intendent, manager, promoter or initiator; just so in the narrower sphere of individual activity the success- ful performance of any act requires the cooperation of, and the division of the task among, reflex move- ments, instinctive acts, habitual acts, imitation and individual initiative or reflection. There is no strictly or purely manual, automatic work: The work of the helper cannot be done without some amount of brain work (attention, reflection, discrimination, etc.) or in- dividual initiative; only his reasoning power exerts it- self on single or simple matters, while that of the promoter exerts itself on more complicated or more numerous matters. Hence, instead of speaking of hand- workers and head-workers, of mechanical and intel- 238 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN lectual work, we ought to speak of simple, subordinate and of complex, higher work. What has been said about outer or muscular activity holds also of inner or mental activity. Every mental process, to attain truth or objectivity, requires the co- operation of the senses, memory, instinctive knowledge or intuition, spontaneous activity (imagination, reflec- tion, analysis, synthesis, . . . ). The difference be- tween sensation, perception, memories, intuitions, imaginations, conceptions, is the complexity or num- ber of objects which cause the mental process. If a mental process is designated as perception, and not as recollection, imagination, conception, ... it is not because it lacks the cooperation of the latter processes, but because the latter are in the background and their cooperation is of a secondary importance or of an auxiliary nature. Up to a certain point, thinking and doing, feeling and expression, go together, collaborate simultaneously, work side by side; but beyond this limit they have to part company, they have to cooperate separately or successively. What has been said of outer (muscular) and inner (mental) activity holds also of the com- ponents and sub-components of each. Thus the vari- ous mental faculties (perception, memory, imagination, conception) work side by side, simultaneously or in quick alternation in simple matters; but in more com- plicated problems it is best to let them work separately or in succession. Likewise with each single mental faculty: Passive or receptive perception, if allowed to become dominant or to rule continually—as in some savage or degenerate peoples—excludes observation or active, selective, purposive perception. Reproduc- tive or imitative and productive or creative imagina- tion, in order to grow, must part company at a certain stage of development. Verbal, perceptual (pictorial), CREATIVE LIFE 239 discriminating memory is inseparably connected with ideational, conceptual, assimilating (synthetic) mem- ory in simple and easily understood questions; but in more important and more complicated affairs, the more attention we pay to, the better we try to remember and to comply with words, forms, the letter, particular phenomena, details, differences, . . . the less do we ob- serve, remember, assimilate, comply with, keep before our mind’s eye ideas, substance, the spirit, classes of phenomena, wholes, similarities or unifying principles. Since our mental faculties or abilities cooperate either simultaneously or successively; since the successive faculties draw their energy and material from the pre- ceding ones; it follows that one cannot test one mental faculty or ability without testing the other faculties or abilities at the same time. Thus one remembers clearly what one has perceived clearly—the clearness may re- sult from a single but vivid perception, or from imper- fect but repeated perceptions; one perceives dis- tinctly and quickly what one understands and attends to; one pays attention to and understands only such things as one is interested in, i.e., such things as one deals with or thinks about spontaneously or without external stimulation or suggestion. Perception rests on sensations, memory rests on per- cepts, imagination rests on memories, and conception rests on imagination. A higher faculty, like the upper stories of a building, affords a broader—if vaguer and more easily misleading—outlook upon the world, life and their potentialities than do the lower faculties, upon which it rests. In other words, we may remember things which we can no longer perceive or feel; we may imagine things which we no longer remember or per- ceive, or which we cannot render perceptible as yet, or which are non-existent; and we may conceive things which are not accessible to either imagination or per- 240 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN ception. If Kant had kept this familiar fact in mind, if he had not—like all idealistic or nebulous philoso- phers—reached for clouds or empty concepts while allowing the solid ground of facts to slip from under his feet, and if he had not run after the mental shadows called absolute truth or things-in-themselves, he would not have involved himself in what he called the four antinomies or seemingly inextricable, irreconcilable, contradictory concepts (finiteness and infinity, free- dom and causation, contingency and necessity), and he would not have had to resort to a sham reconcilia- tion of these contradictions by attributing them to a confusion between the noumenal and the phenomenal spheres. He would have seen that the infinite divisi- bility of matter, which seems possible to our imagina- tion because we cannot help picturing to ourselves the invisible ultimate elements of matter by analogy with visible wholes, is shown to be absurd by our conception or reason which tells us that the infinite divisibility of matter implies the existence of infinitely small particles, which practically means particles of zero dimensions, hence non-existent particles. To the matter-of-fact thinker—who knows that all truth is necessarily rela- tive, which does not mean changeable—there is no con- tradiction between necessity, causality, natural law and freedom, contingency; for a certain event may at the same time be contingent, independent of or unin- fluenced by another event and caused by or dependent on other events. More between two seem- ingly opposite concepts—such as necessity and con- tingency, greatness and smallness—there is neither contradiction nor harmony; contradiction sets in when they are applied to one and the same thing as com- pared to another thing; a thing cannot be both greater and smaller than another thing, or both influenced and uninfluenced thereby. About the world as a whole it CREATIVE LIFE 241 is, of course, meaningless to say that it is necessary or contingent. Our imagination cannot make us realize the infinity and eternity of the world, but our concep- tion can. Our imagination is not always able to show us that what is true of wholes is not necessarily true of parts and vice versa, but our conception helps us realize that although wholes are changeable, perishable, still their ultimate elements must be eternal, indestruct- ible, indivisible, uncaused, uncreated. If everything had to be accounted for as an effect or a product of something entirely different, then, of course, we would become involved in an endless chain of causes and there would be no meaning in speaking about uncaused causes, that is, about uncreated, eternal things and un- created, spontaneous movements. All knowledge is relative or comparative; but this does not mean that all knowledge is equally valid or reliable. Only that knowledge which is based on a con- stant, fixed point of reference or of comparison, or a practically invariable unit of measure, is valid, reliable, useful, communicable, objective. Thus if the tempera- ture of our body were always fluctuating between ex- tremes as in fever, our thermal nerves could never give us reliable knowledge about the changes in the outside temperature. If our spontaneous activity would vary between extremes without the aid of any external stimu- lation, or would be of such an explosive, unstable nature as to be radically changed by the slightest external stimulus, as it happens sometimes or periodically in women and emotional men, we could never gain adequate, objective, differentiated knowledge about other men and the external world that impresses or stimulates our senses. To gain such knowledge, our inner activity must be more or less constant, it must have a small range of fluctuation, and the changes caused therein by external stimuli must be proportional 242 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN to the latter. The irritable or explosive individual who expects things to happen according to his wishes and needs, and who, therefore, never makes an effort to meet men and things half-way, is bound to be subject to illusions, errors, disappointments, shocks, unhappi- ness. All knowledge is knowledge of relations, actions, in- teractions ; for there is no such thing as isolated, unrelated, inactive, inert things. Even latency and potentiality do not mean absolute inaction, suspended action or suspended movement: they merely mean im- perceptible, intra-molecular, intra-atomic or intra- corpuscular action. If relative knowledge holds only for a certain time, place (point of view), individual, this does not mean that it can turn into untruth, error at some future time, for other individuals and for dif- ferent points of view. It merely means that in order to know anything there must be an observer occupying a certain position in space and time; but if the mood of the observer changes owing to organic disturbances, or his point of view is shifted, he has no right to claim that the external object changed. Nor does relativity of knowledge mean uncertain, incomplete, partial knowledge. It merely means that we cannot know men, things and ourselves except as related to, acting upon, or acted upon by, other men and things. What is an individual, a thing, a self, from one point of view may be but a part of a more comprehensive whole or self, when seen from another point of view. In so far and so long as a number of things or men act simulta- neously, concertedly and similarly on another group, they constitute or become a single object or whole. The conflicts between men are invisible from an extra- terrestrial, philosophical point of view, and the human species appears as a single being striving toward the same goal and acting on the external world in a single, CREATIVE LIFE definite direction. But if the intra-human conflicts are neither seen nor felt by an extra-terrestrial being or aristocratic closet philosopher, they are none the less harsh realities for men. To expect knowledge and truth to be independent of time, of space, of the human mind and its points of view, means to expect things to be motionless, un- changeable, inactive, homogeneous, unreal, for there is no such thing as absolute rest, inaction, simplicity. Nay, knowledge itself is a process, an activity of the human mind, an interaction between the human mind and external things. To say that things would still exist even if all men and sentient beings should die out and hence cease experiencing them, means to say that things will still act on other things; it means to say that things are related not only to the human and animal mind, but also to each other. Existence is more comprehensive than being experienced: a thing does not cease to exist if it ceases being experienced by men, but it would cease to exist if the rest of the world could be annihilated. Truth is nothing but a general or class name for all actual and possible human and animal sensations, feelings, perceptions, conceptions, views and relations between them. If, instead of disputing in abstracto as to whether or not there is absolute truth, i. e., truth independent of the human mind and of all relations, we would descend to the concrete realm of our sensa- tions or particular experiences, and would ask, for in- stance, what is the color of a thing in the dark or when not looked at, we would soon agree as to the absurdity of our search after absolute truth. Quan- titatively, truth is more comprehensive than knowledge and existence, for it deals with actuality and poten- tiality, with past, present and future, and transcends experience, whereas knowledge is coextensive with ex- 244 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN perience. Qualitatively, however, truth is poorer than knowledge; for it does not admit of any degrees, where- as knowledge may be certain (facts), merely adhered to (faith, belief), or doubtful, conjectural, hypothet- ical. To say that truth cannot transcend experience, or to say that the human mind cannot know things a priori, is just as absurd as to say that the human mind can merely react to, but not act upon, the ex- ternal world; it means to deny the spontaneity, self- activity or very existence of the human mind; it means to deny prevision, it means to confine our knowledge to the past, it means to deny the link between past and future. But, on the other hand, from the fact that human knowledge can transcend or go beyond experi- ence, it does not follow that it can grow in any other soil but that of experience. All knowledge is empirical, i. e., it draws its origin and food from experience, and is also transcendental, i. e., it does not remain confined to mere past and actual experience, but surpasses it: it anticipates and creates new experience. Potentiality.—To make clear or to explain and de- fine the meaning of a concept we have to distinguish it from its super-, co-, and sub-ordinated concepts; to give a description of its intension and extension; to trace its psychological genesis which may coincide with its historical genesis. Thus potentiality can be sub- sumed under the categories of existence and of energy, according as we consider it statically or dynamically. Potential existence is never separated from some form of actual existence: the tree exists potentially in the seed; before being recollected our ideas exist potentially in our memory; before becoming dynamical, psychical, conscious, our ideas are statical, structural, physio- logical, unconscious; combinations exist potentially in their elements. Potentiality is appealed to to explain hereditary transmission, the recollection of forgotten CREATIVE LIFE things, the continuity of our individuality during sleep, the reestablishment of a disturbed stable equilibrium. Physiological energy contains potentially psychical energy; achievement, actions, are contained potentially in our abilities, thoughts and feelings; a body in a higher position exists potentially in a previously occu- pied lower position; ethical ideals exist actually in moral geniuses, but merely potentially in the great mass of morally average men; potential molar energy is actual molecular energy; an increase in the quantity of heat communicated to a body manifests itself first in expanding its volume, i. e., in a molar form, and then in changing its state of aggregation, i. e., in a molecular form imperceptible for us. To make the usual definition of potential and actual energy more inclusive, I would define potential energy as energy of condition, and actual energy as energy of action. All cases of impeded movement, of impeded action, would be special cases of potential energy. The distinction between actual and potential existence would disappear, say the spiritists, for a being endowed with the, to us incomprehensible, ability to look into temporal sequences alternately and at will back and forward as we can do with respect to spatial sequences: everything would exist actually for such beings moving freely in time as we do in space. But on closer in- spection this spiritistic high-sounding speculation un- masks itself as a nonsensical assertion: If time were a kind of space, sequence would be a kind of coexist- ence. Coordinated concepts of potentiality are: latency, possibility, immanency, etc. Potential existence de- pends more on the hidden qualities of the evolving thing than on external circumstances; the reverse holds for possible existence. In latency the idea of evolution is not implied. In immanency we do not ascribe any 246 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN efficient causation to external conditions. Potential energy accounts for energy which is not yet manifest for our senses; latent energy accounts for energy ceas- ing to manifest itself in a perceptible or external man- ner, for energy being absorbed and expended in internal work. The concept potentiality arises from the inconceiv- ability of a creation ex nihilo, from our need to con- ceive causation as an unbroken chain of necessary sequences. Looked at prospectively, the concept of potentiality furnishes an explanation of evolution; retrospectively it interprets causality and continuity; aspectively it accounts for the imperceptible. The naive concept of potentiality is that potentiality is of the same nature as the resulting actuality, but reduced in size, in magnitude; that the external conditions have merely a catalytic influence. The riper concept of po- tentiality says that the potential is a form of the actual, the actual is a resultant of the potential and of certain external conditions, in which resultant, howrever, the contribution of the potential is greater than that of the conditions. Just as the magnitude of angles does not depend on the length of the sides, so the potential differences be- tween individuals (I, II, III, etc. . . . ), between the genius and the philistine, between the male and the female, are given congenitally, and hence do not vary with age, with growing achievement (01, Oil, OIII CREATIVE LIFE . . . ). But the distances between the sides increase with the length of the sides; just so do the actual in- dividual differences vary in quality and quantity of achievement with age. If all children seem to be alike, it is on account of our inability to see in the small present differences between the individualities the great potential differences which determine their future careers; it is because we have not the prophetic gift of seeing the future in the present, of seeing great future results in humble beginnings; it is because we are mentally blind and judge men, not by their abilities and tendencies, but by their visible and momentary achievements, not by their thought-out opinions, but by their memorized and professed opinions, not by what they really do, feel and think, but by what they imitate, pretend to feel and to think. Truth and Error.—Theories, opposites, ultimate categories of thought which seem irreconcilable, irre- ducible to one another, indefinable in terms of one an- other, from a fixed point of view, may be unmasked as mere abstractions, as relative, interchangeable, inter- definable, reconcilable, complementary theories and concepts, as soon as our scrutinizing critical mind be- gins to shift its point of view. What from a lower standpoint is regarded as reality, continuity, perma- nence, individuality, unrelatedness, quality, facts, ab- solute truth, beauty, importance, etc., if viewed from a higher, conceptual standpoint, becomes appearance, discreteness, instability, element, relatedness, quantity, relations, relative truth, ugliness, insignificance, etc.; or it disappears altogether. Confusion, illusion, error, begin to arise when we transfer our knowledge gained from one standing ground to—and take it for—what we see from another point of view. The mind’s eye, like the bodily eye, has first to accommodate itself to the new horizon which it tends to overlook; it has to 248 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN shake off the disturbing positive or negative after- images, after-thoughts, after-affections. What holds for philosophy does not hold, or may be irrelevant, for the scientific, artistic, and practical points of view; what is real for the conceptualist whose standpoint is existence in time is an empty word for the nominalist whose standpoint is spatial existence; not all we know about mathematical space, time and numbers, about a class, can be indiscriminately applied to the corre- sponding physiological and psychological concepts of space, time and numbers, to individuals; the real, the experienced, is partly prior to and a cause of, and partly subsequent to and an effect of the imaginary. Truth depends on three factors, on the point of view, on the observer, on the objects observed. If truth hap- pens to be the same for different observers, it is so in so far as they are alike. Truth, as I said above, depends on three inseparable factors: on the observer or thinker, on the object observed or imagined and its setting, and on the point of view. By this I do not mean to say, like the com- mercially-minded pragmatists, instrumentalists and other philosophical hypocrites, sophists, inconsistent minds, that there are many kinds of truth; that truth is subjective like, nay, identical with, value; that truth is merely a tool; that Avhat is true for one individual, for one point of view, for one science, for reason, for direct observation, from anear, is not necessarily true for another individual, for another point of view, for another science, for feelings, for indirect or roundabout observation, from afar, and vice versa. What I mean is only this: that the whole truth is not accessible to every man, at any time, under any circumstances, from a single point of view, to a single science, to pure rea- son, etc. The truth perceived from one standpoint is only a part of the whole truth; is invisible from or CREATIVE LIFE 249 obscured and irrelevant for another standpoint; is not antagonistic, but complementary to the aspect of truth as seen from another point of view. Memory and imagination help us to synthetize the bits of truth or the various aspects of truth as perceived from various points of view into a harmonious single truth. Memory and imagination complete actual experiences, fill in the deficiencies and gaps, make good for the deficits of perception, enable us to dispense with a minute and fatiguing observation. To ask for absolute truth, for truth independent of the observers, for truth about things-in-themselves, for truth about things independent of their settings and independent of the observer’s standing ground; to ask, in other words, how a thing looks when nobody looks at it, and how a thing would look if nothing else would exist in the universe, is a mere play of words, a purely verbal, i. e., meaningless question which no sane-minded man except an idealistic philosopher would persistently try to answer. We might just as well ask, How does a man feel when he is dead, what becomes of the light when the candle is put out? etc. We mistake the imaginary, the dream, for the real; the abstract for the concrete; mere words and symbols for thoughts and things; the inanimate, impersonal, unfamiliar for the animate, the personal, the familiar; the new, unusual, individual for the old, usual, class; the conventional, voluntary for the natural, sponta- neous. For the imaginary, the dream, are more or less distorted copies of the real; the abstract does not exist apart from the concrete; we are used to associate signs, symbols with things, with objects of thoughts or objects of perception; we use for the abstract, the psychical, the imaginary, the same words which origi- nally designated concrete, bodily, real things; habitual, organized, actual, hereditary ways of thinking and of 250 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN acting cost less effort than the unhabitual, individual, acquired ones; will and convention are derived from spontaneity and nature. Mental inertia, exhaustion, laziness, habit, distrac- tion, preoccupation, are the sources of all errors and illusions. Owing to them, the knowledge gained, the feeling and attitude of mind aroused, under past, usual, old, subjective, personal, narrow . . . circumstances, are wholly taken over, indiscriminately applied to pres- ent, unusual, new, objective, impersonal, wider, . . . circumstances; or vice versa. In mature life it is hard to separate the direct and immediate data of our senses from the corrections and additions due to inference, memory, imagination, sub- conscious reasoning. But in moments of distraction when our minds are absorbed in associative or centrally arising mental processes, we can sometimes get a glimpse of what our peripherally incoming experiences or sensations are in themselves, and thereby of what they were originally, in babyhood. Thus, in moments of absorption we can catch ourselves believing that two objects belonging to different planes are in one and the same plane. This shows that pure visual percep- tion does not contain the quality of distance and solidity which are rather a result of subconscious in- ference. Abnormality does not consist so much in the experi- encing as in the despotical persistence of illusions, errors; not so much in acting in response to them as in acting inadequately; it consists in indulging in mutually exclusive illusions. Just as ignorance and wrong opinions, in distinction from stupidity and prejudices, are curable, corrigible; just so the illusions and delusions of the insane, in distinction from the errors and illusions of the sane, are incorrigible, in- capable of rectification. CREATIVE LIFE 251 Our reason (apperception, memory, imagination, conception, understanding) being but an extension, an aid of our senses, it is not proper to make either the former or the latter exclusively the judge of Reality or of Truth. The criterion of Truth is rather the agreement between both Reason and Senses. Only in matters which are indirectly accessible to the senses, the criterion of Truth is to be looked for in Reason alone (electrical phenomena, past and probable events, distant events, the microcosm and the macrocosm, the minds of others, . . . ). And in simple, habitual, nor- mal, constantly recurrent experiences, we can entrust the senses alone with the criterion of Reality. The lowest senses, the so-called chemical senses, of smell and of taste, give us little information about a few bodies, and that only when a part of these bodies is absorbed by the corresponding nerves. The mechan- ical senses, the muscular, the thermal, the tactile, give more information about innumerable bodies, but only when the bodies act directly on our nerves. The sense of hearing can be acted upon at a distance through another coarse medium (air, liquids, solids). The sense of sight can be acted upon from a much greater dis- tance, through the most subtle medium called ether. Memory and imagination enable us to complete and to anticipate actual experiences. Conception enables us to survey in a minimum of time and with a minimum of effort vast fields of experiences, without having to pay attention to every particular experience. Con- ception also enables us to know things that act but indirectly, or imperceptibly, on our senses. Under usual conditions, all our senses reveal Reality more or less perfectly. The older senses (tactile, muscular) reveal the general and relatively unchange- able or primary properties (pressure, weight, . . .). The senses acquired later (sight, hearing, . . . ) re- 252 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN veal the particular, changeable, secondary properties (color, sound, . . . ). Under unusual conditions, our senses interpret the new experiences in terms of the old ones, giving thus rise to illusions which are corrected either by adaptation of the senses or by reasoning in the light of past experiences. II.—Frequency curve of materialism, monism, realism, mechanism, sciences . . . I.—Frequency curve of spiritualism, dualism, idealism, vitalism, religion . . . Truth of Opposite Theories.—It is exceedingly hard to decide by statistical methods between opposite philosophical views as to which is in the ascendancy, i. e., is the true one. To decide this point, we ought to know the number of real adherents of each theory, of both I and II, at different successive periods, in order to be able to construct the frequency curves I and II, and to infer therefrom the general tendencies of de- clining or of rising—the underlying assumption being that Truth gains the upper hand in the long run. But a better and easier proof of the truth of II, is the fact that, at an advanced stage, the adherents of I act mostly as if they were adherents of II; and in action—we know—true convictions betray themselves better than in professed theories. There is no such thing as a compromise between the two. The compro- mise is possible only in words, but not de facto. I do not mean to deny that a man may profess I but CREATIVE LIFE 253 act according to II, from lack of inner harmony, from timidity, owing to suggestion or hypocrisy. Thus preachers and religious people cling so tenaciously to life and its pleasures as to disprove thereby the sin- cerity of their belief in a hereafter. The spiritualists attribute so many material properties to the human soul that their belief becomes a purely verbal idol or a party shibboleth. In matters of vital, general importance, in matters having a direct, immediate bearing on human well- being, truth, i. e., conceptions, generalizations, views built directly or indirectly upon a broad sensational substratum, can be tested by the general amount of agreement between men, by counting the opinions pro and con. For people who are blind to truth in such matters either perish or end in insanity. But in matters of indirect, remote, impalpable bearing on human well-being, in scientific and philosophic mat- ters, agreement between many is no reliable test of truth: one man’s opinion may be true, and the opinion of thousands may be wrong. Truth, of course, gains continuously adherents; whilst error may also gain as- cendency, but it cannot maintain it for a long time. Thus the fact that scientist after scientist, and philos- opher after philosopher, attribute to ether all the gen- eral properties of matter except weight, does not prove in reality that ether has no weight. For they forget that if ether seems to be imponderable, it is because we live in an ocean of ether of which we cannot get out, in which all the worlds are floating, which surrounds and penetrates all the other forms of matter. They forget that air would also seem imponderable to us if we had no means of producing a vacuum in a bottle, and hence of weighing the bottle before and after pumping out all the air. Likewise with water: the weight of water cannot be measured by means of scales 254 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN immersed in it. They forget that weight being a spe- cial case of attraction between two bodies when sepa- rated or when at a distance from each other, cannot be measured directly when the distance is zero, i. e., although the attraction is supposedly at its maximum. The tendency towards association, the power of cohe- sion, is measured by the required force of dissociation, of separation. If we had any means of separating the ether from other substances and from the earth, we could tell whether it has any weight or not; just as in the psychical world, individuals do not always realize how much they love each other, how much they are attached to each other, until some external circum- stances threaten to separate them. Belief, Doubt, Law of Conservation.—Originally we are inclined to believe, to rest satisfied with, to accept as real, objective, permanent, constant, absolutely and generally true, everything we experience, or are told. Doubt, the distinction between reality and appear- ance, objective and subjective, absolute and relative, permanent and changeable, is imposed upon us by in- creased knowledge, by contradiction coming from subsequent experiences about the same objects. A new theory, a new doctrine, which shatters our belief in a former experience, in an old doctrine, does also harm to our belief in its own implications; the micro- scope destroys not only our belief in the homogeneity of the cell, but also our belief in homogeneity, con- tinuity, etc., in general; just as a slanderer destroys not only our confidence in others, but also in himself. Our ultimate concepts lose their validity; but our be- lief in their relative validity becomes, in its turn, abso- lute, in a certain sense: it transcends the experience of which it is a result. We believe in persistency, con- stancy, as long as we do not experience change. If our belief in the persistence of things, of phenomena, CREATIVE LIFE 255 of the known, is shattered, we transfer this belief over to forces, noumena, to the unknown, substrata; and from these we transfer it over to a hypothetical primitive energy and substance, of which the actual forces and substances are supposed to be forms, mani- festations. The law of conservation of energy and matter is not so much a law of Nature as an approximation to it, a means of understanding the world, it is rather a prod- uct of our mind, of our aspirations and desires, than of our actual objective experience. It is rather a corollary of our instinct of psychical and bodily self- preservation. Only when there arises a conflict be- tween permanence in the external world and perma- nence in our self, do we sacrifice the former for the benefit of the latter, do we admit miracles; or we modify our concept of self-conservation, immortality: From immortality of the statical, physical, whole, con- scious, of men, ... it becomes an immortality of the dynamical, psychical, part, unconsciousness, cosmos, ... Or it might as well be maintained that our in- stinct of self-conservation is a corollary or mental aspect of the cosmical law of persistence of energy. The maturer thinker comes to see that body and mind qua personal are perishable, and the only way in which our thoughts, feelings, tendencies, become im- mortal or permanent is by becoming common property, impersonal, detached from our individuality, decor- poralized. Truth, Beauty, Utility, Morality.—Corresponding to the three constituent elements of every state of mind, viz., cognition, affection, volition, there are three constituent qualities in the objects arousing the states of mind, viz., reality (unreality), beauty (ugliness), and utility (harmfulness). Reality refers to the essence, to the permanent, hidden qualities of objects; 256 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN and it reveals itself in our sensations, perceptions, con- cepts. Beauty refers to the form, outer appearance, changeable qualities of such things as tend to intensify our life rhythm or to gratify general vital needs; and it reveals itself in our affections of pleasure and pleas- antness. Utility or value refers to the capacity of things of satisfying our particular needs, of filling in the gaps in our psycho-physical organism. By an ex- tension of its meaning, beauty is attributed, not only to things that tend to gratify general vital needs, but also to things which are symbols, products, reminders, fore-runners of generally favorable and life-stimulat- ing circumstances. Hence, beauty is also justly ascribed to moral intentions. Entirely unjustified, however, is the mystical identification of the beautiful in general with the ethical. Not only external objects arouse states of mind, but each state of mind in its turn may become an object of thought, of memory or of imagination. In this case, the object of thought is true if it is based on a sensa- tional substratum; it is beautiful if it fits in or agrees with a vaster system of states of mind; it is useful if it leads to a more stable equilibrium and to a richer or intenser life; it is moral if it is useful to the com- munity, species, groups to which we belong. Just as idea, affection, and volition are irreducible, untranslatable in terms of each other; just so reality or truth, beauty (ugliness), and utility (harmfulness) are irreducible qualities of objects. Reality, beauty, and utility may go together or cooperate; but they may also part company and work against each other. Thus a thing may be real, a concept may be true, but neither beautiful nor useful. Illusions are often beau- tiful and temporarily useful. Truth is not always use- ful ; nay, it is detrimental to certain social classes; but it is never detrimental and often useful to man- CREATIVE LIFE kind as a whole. The capitalistic philosopher (the pragmatist or sophist) and the church-devoted phi- losopher (the scholastic) are, therefore, prone to reject such truths as are not useful to the exploiting class. Of course, they conceal their materialistic, selfish and artificial criterion of truth under the more respectable cloak of social value. Truth goes always together with intellectual usefulness in the truth-lover, i. e., in the man to whom truth or knowledge has become a need, an aim of life. Truth from the Capitalistic Point of View.—If the revelation of truth depends on the observer’s mental constitution and point of view, it follows that the capitalist’s conception of life, human relations, society, and of the world must differ from that of the proleta- rian. It follows that the class struggle, the disguised war waged between the capitalistic, parasitic, preda- tory class and the toiling masses on the economic- industrial-political field is only one manifestation of the fundamental psychical and often physical differ- ence between the members composing these two varie- ties of men; and that this manifestation, called the class struggle proper, cannot successfully be combated and studied apart from the other manifestations of this fundamental or constitutional difference on the in- tellectual field (Religion, Ethics, Philosophy, Art, Literature, etc.). The productive, gregarious class can just as little afford to accept the false, narrow doctrines conceived by capitalism or its perversions of true and broad doctrines as it can afford to accept the intolerable economic conditions imposed upon it by the latter. Capitalism and socialism are two anti- thetic, mutually exclusive systems of philosophy, ethics, art, and methods of struggling for existence. It stands to reason that the human beast of prey, who only consumes, destroys, interferes with production, 258 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN must needs have a different conception of himself, his fellow-men, etc., from that of the productive, creative, peaceful individual; nay, the exploiter’s conceptions or rather the conceptions of his spokesman, the pseudo- superior man, are the exact opposite of the producer’s conceptions as expressed by his spokesman, the genuine superior man. What appears true and good from the capitalist’s narrow, low, selfish, predatory, local, mo- mentary point of view is certainly false and bad from the socialist’s broad, high, humanitarian, constructive, cosmopolitan, eternal point of view. Many a genuine superior man has been prevented from rising to an understanding, let alone to an original conception of, a purely, consistently socialistic philosophy, ethics, world-conception by his dependence on capitalistic pub- lishers, patrons, employers, by the influence of capi- talistically-biased friends, hearers, readers and of a capitalistic education. And the fact that among intellectual proletarians the interest in history, eco- nomics, literature is naturally more widely spread than the more difficultly attainable and more leisure requir- ing interest in philosophy, psychology, ethics explains why the first-mentioned fields of knowledge have been and are being rewritten from a socialistic point of view, whereas the minority of philosophically-minded proletarians have to try in vain to quench their intel- lectual thirst at the inaccessible, dried-up, infested, muddy fountain of academic philosophy. The capitalists and their retainers look upon their unfavorably situated fellow-men as living tools or stupid beasts of burden that must be driven to work either by compulsion, fear, intimidation, or by decep- tion, flattery, jollying. Judging others by himself, by his inability and unwillingness to produce, the active parasite or exploiter feels and acts as if the Earth were not big enough for all, as if she were step-mother- CREATIVE LIFE 259 ly, as if poverty were a result of over-population and not vice versa, as if the means of existence were non- multipliable, scarce, and hence must be grabbed as quickly as possible. He is naturally an admirer of war—both in its primitive, military form and in its modern, disguised, competitive form—because he al- ways reaps the benefits without risking his skin. Even the greatest American sociologist, Lester Ward, who is fair enough to admit the wide-spread reign of decep- tion, greed, and parasitism, does not find anything wrong or blameworthy therein; on the contrary, he defends it and considers it just as irrepressible and just as little conscious or guilty of its immorality as a devastating stream of lava; nor can he see the horrors, the hideous and destructive role of war, for, as a mem- ber and retainer of the predatory class, he sees only the immediate, selfish, apparent benefits resulting there- from for his class. The predatory individual lacks the sense and hence the understanding for universal kin- ship and cooperativeness, for the unifying and strength- ening power of love, for the ultimate superiority of truth over falsehood, for the far-reaching and con- structive potentialities of cosmopolitism. Pie who denies the class struggle and the class differences, when their ugliness is laid bare by socialists, is the first to spread the beliefs in “blue blood,” aristocracy of birth, reward of ability, God-ordained rulers, etc.; he is the first to keep away and to accentuate his difference from the toilers. Life to him is an interesting game of mutual deception and of outwitting others. The world is a stage for the display of histrionic talent, and not a place where a mission or duties are to be fulfilled. His conception of altruism or benevolence is something to be simulated, expressed in words only; at best, it means a little moderation in, and not the giving up of, his predatory pursuits. His relations to the imaginary 260 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN deity he conceives of as business relations, i. e., as an exchange of what costs little or nothing for something of greater pecuniary value. His conception of intelli- gence is the ability of deceiving others, of cheaply win- ning their favor and support. He cannot conceive of intellectual and humanitarian pursuits as ends-in- themselves, but merely as means of acquiring fame, wealth, bodily comfort. A man who really finds happi- ness in disinterested, non-lucrative intellectual or hu- manitarian pursuits impresses him as a fool or a crank. Of religious and moral practises he conceives as of something good for him, if and so long as other people indulge therein. His conception of language is a means of concealing his own thoughts, intentions, affairs, weaknesses, and of making other people betray theirs. Virtue to him means something that it is advisable to simulate and to urge others to practise; whereas vice means something which he himself may practise secretly, and which others must be openly dissuaded from. Truth to him means views which it is advan- tageous for him to hold or at least to profess. His conception of social service, leadership, cooperation, the aim of human society, is to make noise, to command, to act busily and self-importantly, while leaving the real work to others. A good man in capitalistic lan- guage means a man who can be either easily fooled or easily silenced and bribed. Capitalistic art and litera- ture are romantic, fantastic, morbid, effeminating, prostituted, sensational, shallow, playful, amusing, petty-minded, eccentric, and not realistic, penetrating, serious, instructive, uplifting. Capitalistic science is prejudiced, exclusive, formal, a mere display of wit, a pastime, idle and grandiloquent talk, or an instrument of exploitation, and not an earnest search after truth and socially useful inventions. Capitalistic ethics is double-faced, sophistical, deceptive, intended to blind CREATIVE LIFE 261 the masses to the true significance of our social organi- zation, to the real and only justification of gregarious life, viz., the increase in every individual’s security, happiness, efficiency, opportunities; it is also framed so as to hide, .and idealize the ugliness of, the real, preda- tory, destructive, demoralizing role of the so-called upper classes. Capitalistic philosophy is a mere per- version, caricature of the genuine philosophy taught by the great thinkers of the world; it is lifeless, barren, verbose, nebulous, word-worshiping, estranged or re- moved from daily life, from the market place whither it was carried by Socrates, Jesus, and other genuine philosophers; it is destined to lull its upholders in dreams of self-conceit or of imaginary superiority over the herd of common people. Capitalistic charity, re- form, government, administration of justice, are a mere farce, a mere excuse or cover for cruel sport or for shameless graft, or a cheap device for pacifying, brib- ing and fooling the exploited masses. Corresponding to their double dealing or moral duplicity, the capital- ists and their chaplains, the pseudo-superior men, also use a double vocabulary: a laudatory, hyperbolic vocabulary to designate their own qualities and actions; euphemisms to designate their own crimes and vices; and a denigrating vocabulary to designate the qualities and actions of their victims, the disinherited. Their language is vague, nebulous, ambiguous, para- phrastic, pedantic, deceptive, evasive, distorted, per- verted or diverted from its natural mission of convey- ing ideas. When the capitalist declaims about the blessings of liberty, laissez-faire, competition, private enterprise and initiative, he does not mean by these words what Herbert Spencer meant and what the in- dividualistic anarchists mean, viz., the free and fair exchange of services between men capable and willing to make themselves useful in one respect or another: 262 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN he simply means the undisputed right of the deceitful, parasitical individuals to prey upon the producers; just as to the female parasite, to the sex-parasite, a single moral standard for both sexes does not mean that the same sexual purity should be demanded of men as they demand of women, but it means that women be granted the same right to sexual laxity and licen- tiousness as is tacitly granted to men. The logic displayed by the exploiter, when his privi- leged position is at stake, will form an inexhaustible source of fun for future generations, and would be so for us, too, if unfortunately we did not have to pay so dearly and often with our own skins for its foolish- ness and fallacies. Thus it seems quite natural to the exploiter that he should be entitled to an easy, com- fortable, happy life; but it is beyond his comprehen- sion why the modern toilers, instead of looking up with envy to him and his class, do not rather draw consola- tion for their poverty by looking down to the paupers or by looking back to ancient times when even a king did not dream of such comforts as many a workingman enjoys nowadays. That he, the parasite, has been accustomed to luxury from early infancy appeals to his logic as sufficient justification for keeping his privi- leged position; but the poor men’s desire and capacity for also becoming quickly accustomed to such privi- leges and good things does not strike him as just as valid a claim as his. He does not see anything wrong, nor does he feel the least remorse, when he idles away his time and hunts continually for enjoyment while his fellow-men are at work, ruin their health and cripple their minds in exchange for a bare existence or for the mere daily bread. It does not occur to him that he commits a crime if he shuns work while enjoying the fruits of other men’s labor; but he becomes quite indignant if some poor devil also tries to enjoy what CREATIVE LIFE 263 he has not produced. If he, the idler, despises labor and the man on the fruits of whose labor he con- descends to live, it is natural and there is nothing un- grateful about it; but if a starving propertyless man shows no respect for usurped property, it is an atrocious crime that calls for the severest punishment. The propertied, pot-bellied, well-fed, idle parasites, who under the shield of laws made by themselves or by hirelings prey continually and with impunity upon the entire nation, do not find it ridiculous in the least to sit in judgment on a hungry, hollow-cheeked, poor devil who in a moment of starvation has dared to steal something from a single individual; it seems to them an undisputable right of theirs to sit in judgment upon the poor, whom they rob of their lives, liberty, health, self-respect, etc., but they cannot see anything but insolence and “contempt of court” in the latter’s attempt at also passing judgment upon their master’s doings and decrees. The workers or the poor, says the capitalist or his prostituted spokesman, the pseudo- superior man, ought to blame themselves, i. e., their lack of ability, ambition, thrift, etc., if they do not rise to sinecures, high, better paid or supervisory posi- tions ; he does not think for a moment that even if all the workers were equally highly gifted, they could not all serve as supervisors or as his slave-drivers. The parasitical aristocrat is proud of his ancestors on the ground of their supposed superior qualities or valuable services; it does not, however, occur to him that he who lacks such qualities or is incapable of rendering such services ought to abdicate his privileged position and be ashamed of himself. He is proud if he can trace his pedigree farther back than the toilers, as if the latter’s ignorance of their ancestors’ names would imply that they have sprung up spontaneously from the ground or that they cannot claim the same Adam and Eve or 264 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN the same kind of anthropoid apes as their ancestors. The American parasite or parasitically inclined imbe- cile finds reason for feeling superior to the immigrants in the mere fact that he has been born on American soil, as if the atmosphere and soil of this country had any- thing to do with his mental make-up and had a differ- ent chemical composition from that of other countries; it never occurs to him to push his deep process of ratio- cination a little farther and to see in the Indian his superior, the typical American aristocrat, for the In- dian has had the privilege of inhaling more of this en- nobling, soul-transmuting American air than he did. It seems beyond dispute to him that men who cannot speak his language are his inferiors and uncivilized; that his ignorance of their language and customs could just as well be imputed to him as a mark of inferiority, does not disturb him in the least in the cocksureness of his logic. If the exploiter preys upon the poor on the strength of laws and agreements, in which the poor had neither a voice nor any choice, his conscience feels at ease; but he would indignantly jump up in the air if it were pointed out to him that he is even worse than a highway robber who says plainly to his victims, “give me either your life or your purse,” and that his way of acting is exactly similar to that of a hypothetical highway robber who, before robbing his victims, would first satisfy his legal conscience by politely requesting them at the point of his pistol to sign a written agree- ment to their being relieved by him of all their burden- some valuables. It seems axiomatic to the parasite that he is entitled to get out as much remuneration as pos- sible for as little services as possible and even for mere hot air or sham services, and that he is fully justified to squeeze out of his employees the last drop of energy, as long as they themselves have agreed to it; whether the agreement has practically been extorted at the CREATIVE LIFE 265 point of a pistol, I mean, under the compulsion of dire necessity, imminent starvation, the threat of being sent to the workhouse, etc., he assumes to be no concern of his. To the intellectual prostitute (the college pro- fessor, preacher, rabbi, journalist, pot-boiler, official scientist, etc.) it seems quite natural that he should be well paid for his platitudinous, thrashed-out, re- hashed, or stolen and adulterated lectures, sermons, stories, articles, etc.; but he contemptuously and mer- cilessly laughs out of court the pretension of some poor genius who also wants to live on his wits and takes it into his head that, if plagiarisms and empty imitations are so richly rewarded, his original poems, heart-felt stories, altruistic social schemes, fertile ideas, also deserve some public reward. If here and there a few moral geniuses arise who take to heart the suf- ferings, degradation and demoralization of the down- trodden masses and try to arouse the latter against their exploiters, our prostituted academical psycholo- gists and psychiatrists come quick to the rescue of their employers and with their insolent cocksureness declare these moral geniuses as abnormal, morbid, eccentric, mal-adjusted individuals on the ground of their differ- ing from the majority, on the ground of their being in a minority, careless of material success or of social disapproval, etc.; they neglect, however, to apply the same logic to themselves and their masters who, being also in a minority, nay, more, in a minority that acts against the interests of the majority, have a better claim to the title of abnormal, pathological individuals. The exploiter does not doubt for an instant that he is a useful member of the human society and that without his orders the toilers would not know how to perform the world’s work, although he is unable to show us the standard or unit of measure by means of which his use- fulness could be estimated quantitatively or at least 266 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN qualitatively; but as soon as the socialist stands up and advocates that the price of commodities and the remu- neration of services should be determined principally and above all by the amount of useful labor spent or by the amount of social labor saved, he immediately cries out against the impracticability, injustice, arbitrari- ness and conventionality of such a standard that fails to completely take into consideration individual differ- ences, the inconvertibility of quality into quantity, or of one kind of labor into another kind. That the labor standard of value with all its drawbacks and difficul- ties still towers high above the arbitrary, fluctuating, life-poisoning, commercial standard, is beyond his nar- row, self-centered field of vision. That men who have not done a stroke of real, useful work during their lifetime have the right to bequeath to their heirs their usurped property, or rather their titles to the fruits of the poor men’s labor, does not strike the parasite’s in- tellect as absurd, nor does it impress his heart and conscience as an atrocious crime; but that men who have toiled and suffered all their lifetime should leave their children unprovided for and a helpless prey in the hands of beasts of prey such as he, seems to him compatible with both logic and ethics. To him the only reprehensible form of theft is to appropriate some- thing without the verbal consent of its owner; but from his low, selfish standpoint, the capitalist cannot see that it is an incomparably more dangerous theft to monopo- lize common property (land, water power, forests, mines, public offices, . . .) with the consent of a few bribed officials who have no right to give away what is not theirs, or to enslave one’s disinherited fellow- men with their consent which they must give any- how unless they prefer to starve or to be sent to the workhouse as vagrants. The problem of un- employment does not give much trouble to the capital- CREATIVE LIFE 267 ist logician. He solves it quite promptly: the cause of unemployment he finds in the unfitness of the unem- ployed, and the remedy, of course, lies in technical training, vocational education, extirpation of the un- teachable, etc. That under our regime of usurpation or private monopoly the number of applicants must and does always exceed by far the number of positions, and that this would be the case even if all applicants were equally fit, does not occur to the capitalist’s de- fender; still less does it occur to him that to speak of general unfitness in our age of extreme specialization, simplification or division of labor and machine produc- tion, is pure nonsense. Quantity and Quality.—Quantity and quality are correlated terms, i. e., they are inseparable from each other, and neither can be expressed in terms of, nor re- duced to, the other. But just as the fact that the terms father and son are correlatives does not mean that a father is not in his turn the son of somebody else, and that a son cannot become in his turn a father; just so the fact that quantity and quality are corre- lated does not mean that what is quantity in one sense, or in relation to certain objects can never be at the same time a quality when looked at under a different angle, or in relation to other objects. Thus matter and energy (motion) form an insep- arable couple of quantity and quality. But matter may present itself in so many various combinations which from certain points of view differ so much among themselves as to be considered as different in kind, or as qualitatively different substances. Motion (force) is in its turn both a quantity (magnitude, velocity, ac- celeration) and a quality (direction). Various mo- tions may enter into such combinations as to give rise to qualitatively different energies. Time and space form another inseparable couple of quality and quan- 268 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN tity. But just as time admits of quantitative subdivi- sions, so does perhaps space draw its origin from quali- tative syntheses. Differences between varieties of the same species appear to be qualitative or differences of kind from a lower, emotional, practical, narrow point of view; but from a higher, intellectual, theoretical, broader point of view, i. e., when the varieties of one species are simultaneously compared with the varieties of other species, the self-same varietal differences will appear quantitative, whereas the difference between spe- cies will appear qualitative. From a narrow point of view the pursuits of superior men seem altogether dif- ferent from those of philistines; but from a higher, more eternal or philosophical point of view the pur- suits of superior men differ from those of philistines only in quantity, in the remoteness of the goals aimed at. In its advanced human, complex stage, mind seems to be an energy sui generis which has nothing in com- mon with the other mechanical energies and which de- fies the laws followed by the latter (law of conserva- tion, law of equivalent transformation) ; but future in- vestigations may succeed in tracing all the energies back to their common point from which they begin to diverge. Maybe Jacques Loeb’s study of tropisms will prove to be the path towards the discovery of the origin of mind. Does the Actor Create?—The genius of the actor —if it deserves that name—consists in the ability of auto-hypnotization, in his ability to evoke the con- sciousness of a certain personality, to identify himself with it, and to act accordingly. This imaginative abil- ity, of course, presupposes, as Nordau says, an unde- veloped, unstable, fleeting or multiple personality of the actor himself, i. e., a mind with a shiftable center of gravity or a shiftable nucleus of dominant interests. Owing to the persistence of the infantile imitative CREATIVE LIFE 269 instinct; owing to the constant observation of his own and others’ outbursts of emotions, the actor gains vol- untary control over his emotional expressions, over his gesticulations. And this control over his physiognomy is often enhanced by auto-suggestibility, i. e., by the hysterical ability to conjure up various successions and combinations of emotions, by the ability to identify himself with any dramatic or living character. The actor must be classed with the lowest class of artists, i. e., with the purely emotional, reproductive, formal, juvenile type. He expresses in his own face, attitude, bodily movements, voice, . . . the same emo- tional states of mind, the same human passions, as the painter and the sculptor express through external ma- terial means; just as the dancer expresses and arouses through his own rhythmical bodily movements the same emotions and vague, indefinite states of mind as Music tries to express and arouse through external means (air vibrations). The actors of the future will no longer be recruited from hysterical and epileptoidal persons whose multiple or rather unsettled personality enables them to imper- sonate a number of characters. The actors of the future will be normal individuals; for—owing to eco- nomic independence—they will have merely to im- personate a dramatic hero or personage of their own type; they will have to represent themselves on the stage, or rather idealized or caricatured forms of their own personalities. Acting will be a vocation, and not a profession. Our modern theaters, being commercial enterprises, cannot afford to engage normal, sane- minded, self-respecting actors who can play but one character, and who are not willing to lead an irregular, nomadic, lax life. All the pseudo-superior men (professional moralists, preachers, orators, politicians, leaders, rulers, organiz- 270 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN ers, . . .) must be put in the same class with actors or imitative geniuses, as we might call them. The main difference between the actors of the stage or actors in the restricted sense of the word and the actors of the pulpit or of the platform, is the fact that the latter make their task easy by playing, as a rule, one single role, hence they can afford to be mentally more bal- anced. Another difference is the honesty of the stage actor, whereas the pseudo-superior man is a dishonest actor, i. e., an actor who wants to be mistaken for the hero whom he impersonates. If he is a priest or a rabbi —particularly a reformed rabbi—or a professional ethical culturist, he poses as a moral genius; if he is a politician, leader, or ruler, he poses as a patriot or even as a social reformer; if he is a professor, journal- ist, orator, he poses as an original thinker; if he is the head of a hospital, charitable institution, etc., he poses as an altruist. And so on. The relationship between actors and pseudo-superior men is so close that it is not an uncommon occurrence in a country like the United States, which is comparatively free from the fetters of tradition, to see actors, politicians and jour- nalists becoming preachers or priests, and vice versa. Authorship.—The thinker, the genius, becomes an author, a writer, when his amorphous, scattered, frag- mentary thoughts find a central idea, around which they group themselves, like the crystals around the center and axis of crystallization. In the merely erudite au- thor, the central ideas alone are original, the rest is work of compilation; but more often it is only the method of exposition that he can call his. The erudite author proceeds systematically, methodically; he can appreciate the far-reaching bearings of original truths, but lacks the power of attaining them. The author of genius, on the contrary, reaches easily original con- clusions without his being fully aware of the how, why, CREATIVE LIFE 271 to what purpose. In the poet, an emotional commotion (inspiration) brings into contact ideas and sentiments converging towards the same emotional effect: the dominant emo- tion attracts, selects such ideas or such of their aspects only as can be brought to a common focus. The orig- inality of the poet does not lie in his ideas, it lies rather in their arrangement, in the language expressing them. Hence, the absurdity of changing poems into non-poet- ical prose. There are two types of aphoristical writers. Some write in aphorisms because they are unable to think out a whole problem under its various aspects, or because they are not learned enough to fill in the gaps between their original glimpses of truth with others’ opinions about those parts which remain hidden to their own observation or introspection. They usually overesti- mate the import of their scattered aphorisms, because the whole context is lacking within which every apho- rism ought to get due proportion. Others write in aph- orisms because they do not like much talking about and around a question, because they do not like to repeat over again what others have already said, because they do not like to present an original germ and gem of truth in a vast setting of erudition, because they do not believe that truth is not sufficiently beautiful and imposing if not adorned in linguistical and scholastical gowns with long trains. If their own aphorisms prove in the long run to be but the disjecta membra of an intellectual edifice on the way of being organically, un- consciously built up, well and good: they are glad then to be able to present mankind with an harmonious whole, and not with mere intellectual bricks or amorphous ma- terial to be made use of by more powerful geniuses, by more broad-minded spiritual architects. Original knowledge being mainly drawn from per- GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN sonal observations and experiences, from the School of Life, under the catalytic or merely stimulating influ- ence of knowledge acquired directly or indirectly from the works of other original men; we understand why the writings of a genius are hardly interspersed with quota- tions ; whereas the writings of talented men which con- sist mostly of common-place truths plus new restate- ments with but few modifications of or improvements on old knowledge, are so much interspersed with, and often consist only of quotations from original writers, whose names are not always mentioned, especially if they do not happen to be of universal fame, or not in a position or mood to vindicate their intellectual property. If original works contain comparatively scarce quotations for the reason that creation goes to- gether with a minimum of imitation, it does not follow that the converse is also true. Scarcity or lack of quo- tations does not necessarily point to originality; it may result from unconscious or unavowe.d imitation, or from purely verbal originality, or because of anony- mous, common-place truth. The clear-headed thinker does not feel any impulse to writing until he has come to clear, definite conclu- sions ; nor does he feel the need of burdening his read- ers with the wanderings and errings of his mind, or with the many personal, trivial, accidental, irrelevant thoughts and feelings from which the few valuable con- clusions had to be extricated. Whereas the nebulous, inconsistent, mystical thinker begins to write and to teach before having reached any agreement with him- self, nay, he begins to write and to teach in the hope that some truth will reveal itself to him while doing so; he communicates to his readers and hearers every- thing that passes through his mind, in order that they shall find out for themselves what is valuable, true, or to their liking, and discard—if they choose—the trivial, CREATIVE LIFE the erroneous, the disagreeable. The less original the central idea is and the less clear it is to the author himself, the more does he like to in- dulge in preliminary, methodical, formal remarks; the more does he talk around and about the matter, without getting to the point, to the kernel of the matter, or in medias res. The less valuable an author’s opinions are in themselves, the more careful is he to postpone their presentation to the expectant reader, the more careful is he to present them in good company, i. e., in the midst of time-honored and authoritative opinions, in the hope that the indisputable reverence for the latter will re- flect part of its aureola upon his own meager ideas. Whereas the original individual speaks to the point and goes straight to the mark without any—at least, with- out many—introductory remarks, without obscuring the main idea by wrapping it up in flourished, para- doxical, complicated, attention-distracting, linguistical garments, or by presenting it in a setting of imposing, mystifying, hypnotizing erudition. At the risk of being stigmatized as dogmatical, the original writer hastens to present his general conclusions, and support them— if feasible and necessary—by means of only a few, but typical, well-established, personally observed, easily ac- cessible facts. The disinterestedly truth-loving writer does not over- cautiously or self-importantly beat around the bush, but goes straight to the mark. He does not selfishly sell or keep to himself the wisdom that he could not have acquired without the help of the common intellectual property bequeathed by the thinkers of past genera- tions. Unlike the pseudo-superior man, he does not keep his readers in painful suspense or work up their curiosity to a high pitch before imparting to them the new truths that he has in store for them. Nor does he expatiate on his new views in order to impress his 274 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN readers or hearers with profundity, originality, wis- dom. He does not select his words according to their pleasing sounds, nor does he care much about the order of exposition. The selfishness, self-glorification, idleness, indulgence in dreams, formalism, appearance-hunting, shallowness, conventionalism, word-idolatry, deceptiveness of the parasitical, dominant class reflect themselves in the lit- erature, philosophy and certain sciences (economics, sociology, theology, history, . . .) of their hired art- ists, academicians, historians, priests, moralists. . . . Unlike the honest thinker, the capital-owned, merce- nary, deceptive thinker tries hard not to be understood, not to convey any ideas, not to talk the plain, unam- biguous language of the people, but merely to frighten his readers or hearers into adoring him and distrusting, or despairing of, their own judgment and mental capacities. The pseudo, unfair, or intellectually dishonest critic ignores, passes lightly over, or diverts the public atten- tion from, the strong, convincing points, good sides, original portion, practicable consequences, real merits of the content of the refuted doctrine; and insists ex- clusively or unduly on the weak points, bad sides, non- original portion, apparent, irrelevant and purely specu- lative difficulties, formal or linguistic defects. His praise is insincere, confined to trivial or unimportant details, meant to inspire confidence in his destructive criticisms. He condemns social, ethical, religious movements in the name of general usefulness, humanity, civilization, patriotism, liberty, etc., when in reality he thinks of the welfare, liberty of preying of his class, party, caste, clique. He condemns theories and artis- tic works in the name of truth, objectivity, logic, etc., when in reality he does so with a view to personal ag- grandizement, out of personal dislike for same or for CREATIVE LIFE 275 their authors. The honest, genuinely original thinker clearly de- fines his words and unambiguously sets off his own opin- ions from those refuted by him, not because he does not know that words have no fixed, unchangeable mean- ing and that there are no sharp boundary lines between what is one’s own and what belongs to others, but be- cause he is sincerely concerned with truth and right, and hence prepared to defend or abandon his ground according to the impartial verdict of human Reason: he is willing to take not only the credit but also the responsibility and blame for his claims. Whereas the dishonest, sophistical, fame-seeking, self-advertising writer abstains from definitions—from clear definitions, at least—and from clearly circumscribing his own con- tentions, in order to be able to encroach upon the do- main of others while jealously keeping watch over what he claims to be his own, in order to be able to claim as his what really belongs to others or has become com- mon property, in order to appear original and reap credit without exposing himself to blame, detection, or the burden of responsibility. Thus—to take a single example of such an intellectually dishonest method of undeservedly reaping credit—Bergson, one of the fash- ionable sophists and phrase-mongers, in his defense of free will raises the sophistical claim that “free will” is indefinable, in order to be able to appropriate for his own use any facts that by right could be claimed by determinists; he also obliterates, whenever convenient, the distinction or boundary line between time and space, in order to be able to move undetectedly back and forth and to find refuge in one of these conceptual domains whenever his position becomes insecure, i. e., whenever his weaknesses or tricks become too apparent, in the other conceptual domain. CHAPTER V AFFECTIVE LIFE Solitude.—Although endowed with so much vital en- ergy, the superior man suffers—and this suffering leaves deep traces behind—when he has to break away from the beaten paths, when he has to abandon the dear old illusions of the average man, and, after throw- ing them overboard, to start on a new lonely road, to venture upon untrodden ground. But in another sense, the superior man is never quite lonely, for he carries a vast world of thoughts and of sentiments within him- self ; he lodges the times gone by and those yet to come in the sphere of his imagination, he communes with the best of mankind through the intermediary of the thoughts they have bequeathed to us. Whereas the common mortals are afraid of solitude, of the company of their internal world which is but a vast desert; hence their rush into outside amusements and distractions. What makes the superior man so solitary in this world is the fact that those who love him do not under- stand him, and those who do understand him are strang- ers to him. His loneliness is a two-fold one: he is iso- lated from the common mortals who are living in re- gions much below him; he is isolated from the other superior men, who, although living on the same plane or in the same sphere, very seldom follow the same paths. If thinking were the rule, the end, and not the ex- ception, a mere means for the vast majority, the think- ers would not have to lead a solitary life, they would AFFECTIVE LIFE not be rari nantes in gurgite vasto. Thoughtless ac- tivity (playing ball, cards, etc.), unbridled imagination (poetry, wit), are more sociable qualities than log- ical thinking. To become sociable, the thinker must imitate and thoughtlessly approve what others do or say; he must, more or less, deny his nobler self. The novelist and the psychologist, who get the impulses for their creations from society, are more sociable than those thinkers who get their creative impulses from the inanimate world; and they are more so during the period of conception and the final period or that of communication than during the period of incubation and creative activity which requires a solitary, un- disturbed life. The novelist who is interested in particular human events, is more sociable than the psychologist who is rather concerned with the laws of human thinking, feel- ing and conduct. The ethical psychologist, the moral critic, who is anxious to discover the true hidden mo- tives of human action and the psychical roots of the social evils, must keep at a greater distance from his fellow-men than the non-ethical psychologist; for too intimate relations and too great community of interests with one’s fellow-men are obstacles to a clear vision in moral matters and their general trend. The unfortu- nate whom nature has endowed with both intellectual and moral genius, feels solitary and uneasy both in the midst of the intelligent few and in the midst of the philistine masses: he likes the latter for their frankness, directness, unspoiled kernel of morality and altruism, but their stupidity and ignorance exasperate him; he likes the educated for their understanding of higher aims of life, but his warm, broad, sincerely loving heart freezes in their selfish and hypocritical atmosphere. The moral genius is particularly anxious to keep aloof from the character-destroying and ideal-stifling GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN organizations, parties, cliques, whose only aim is to hunt for power, authority, privileges. He prefers to watch their doings from a safe distance, to infer their plans or intentions from occasional glimpses, and to compel them to fulfil their promises by fearlessly de- nouncing their trickeries or evasions and by teaching the people—either directly as an agitator or indirectly through his writings and readers—how to keep control over their supposed representatives and how to insist upon tangible results. But most unbearable to the intellectual-moral genius is the company of the aristocratic and would-be aristo- cratic philistines who are both egotistic, self-adoring, self-conceited, stone-hearted, greedy, envious, full of venom, snobbish and stupid, dull, empty-minded, unin- teresting, slaves to formalities and conventions. His soul-penetrating knowledge of men, his ability to read indifference or even hatred behind words of friendship, to read what is left unexpressed behind what is expressed, to discriminate mere friendliness and po- liteness from friendship, make the superior man—much to his regret—less expansive, less effusive, less enthusi- astic, less society-seeking, which, however, differs toto or be from the wilful stiffness, self-conceit, assumed air of importance, and selfish reserve of the merely financial or sham aristocrats and of the pseudo-supe- rior man. The superior man is often unjustly accused of misan- thropy, because he does not associate with philistines. We might as well call the great mass of average men misanthropists, because they do not feel at ease in the company of thinking men. The idealist passes lonely through life, making no or very few real friends; for he expects just as deep, pure and sincere love as he gives; he prefers to lose in quantity in order to gain in quality. AFFECTIVE LIFE 279 If thinking and love of truth were the rule, and not mere exceptions, the genius would not be solitary, he would feel more at ease among his fellow-men. The pseudo-superior man is only apparently sociable. Ex- cept for exploitation or demagogical purposes, he keeps at a distance from, and looks down with scorn and an- tipathy upon, the masses. And even when approaching them, he does it with a condescending, simulated kind- ness, and not without continually and diplomatically reminding them of the favor he confers upon them, of his superiority, of the persisting psychical distance in spite of a momentary reduction in the physical or geographical distance. He selfishly enjoys his little intellectual superiority over the ignorant masses, and he tries, therefore, to maintain them as long as possible on their low plane of intellectual stagnation. Horace speaks in the name of pseudo-superior men when he sings “Odi profanum vulgus et arceo.” Had he been the spokesman of genuine superior men, he would have changed his verse to “Amo profanum vulgus sed arceo.” If the genuine superior man keeps at a dis- tance from the masses of the philistines, it is not from antipathy, misanthropy, or because he enjoys being different from and superior to them. On the contrary, it pains him that the masses are under the spell of pseudo-superior men, it pains him that they have not yet reached such a level as to be able to understand him and to follow his upward path leading plainly and straight to happier and sunnier regions, instead of al- lowing themselves to be guided by profit- or fame-seek- ing pseudo-superior men who prefer tortuous, sinuous, dark, mysterious, wearisome paths in order to prolong and increase their own importance, and in order to make their leadership indispensable and lucrative. Likewise: If the intellectual genius does not feel at ease in, and hence keeps away from, the company of women, it is 280 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN not because of misogyny or morbid antipathy against the female sex; on the contrary, it pains him that so few women are as yet fit for and worthy of intellectual intercourse. It is merely because he cannot breathe in their philistine, materialistic, prosaic, terre-a-terre atmosphere. If exceptionally an intellectual genius like Goethe seems to take special delight in female society, it is due either to sensuality, or to vanity, or to both, and not to any higher motives as he would have others and himself believe. Far from being a woman-hater, it pains the man of genius that the female sex has not succeeded so far in producing more than single and widely scattered specimens of an Aspasia, Cornelia, Mary Wollstonecraft, Rahel Varnhagen, George Eliot, Olive Schreiner, Ellen Key, Ida M. Tarbell, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Clara Zetkin, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Emma Goldman, Mother Jones, etc. Communicativeness, effusiveness, talkativeness that does not restrict itself to definite, conventional subjects, is certainly a sign of sincerity and of genuine sociabil- ity. The proletarian philistine displays this kind of communicativeness. If the genuine superior man, who is certainly honest and desirous to impart knowledge to others, does not often show communicativeness, it is not because—like the hypocritical, misanthropic pseudo-superior man and aristocratic philistine—he lacks the need for disinterested sociability, or has little to say, or desires to hide his ignorance and real individ- uality, or speaks only for the sake of displaying supe- riority and when something can be gotten out of the persons spoken to, or refrains from communicativeness when he is afraid of encouraging thereby familiarity and inquisitiveness; it is merely because he pursues se- rious aims in life and therefore hates to talk plati- tudes, nonsense, about conventional topics merely for the sake of companionship or for the sake of killing AFFECTIVE LIFE 281 time; it is because he likes to seriously discuss things worth while, but sees that his words will be wasted, i. e., they will not meet with any real response or under- standing ; it is also because—unlike the philistine wdiose only audience is formed by his neighbors and chance ac- quaintances—he also has access to the channel of writ- ten works and hence consoles himself over the unap- preciativeness of his acquaintances with the hope of reaching through his works appreciative readers sparsely scattered over the entire globe and among the future generations. Pain, Pleasure, Emotions.—That the superior men are more sensitive to moral pain than the average man, does not embitter their life; for they are also more sen- sitive to moral, esthetic, and intellectual pleasures. In addition to this, their affective resources being very rich, they can easily find consolation and compensation for any loss. If they had no other pleasures besides those of creation, they would be compensated more than enough for any abnegations. The intellectual joys of creation have, of course, their concomitant physical pains which, however, do not leave any traces in a bal- anced superior man; just as the pains of childbirth do not kill a bodily normal woman, and are more than com- pensated for by the ensuing and enduring intellectual joys of maternity. Wisdom does not consist in killing our emotions; it consists in keeping them under the control of reason. The emotions, affections, of the superior man are in- tellectualized: they are not so violent, not so explosive as in the average man, but they are more enduring, more constant, more conscious of their origin and aim. He is not irritable, not impulsive, but he is sensible, de- liberating. His opinions are not enthusiastic, intoler- ant ; but they are constant, tolerant. What he loses in impetuosity or intensity, he gains in duration; his emo- 282 i tive energy, instead of overflowing with violence, is dis- tributed and directed into useful channels; instead of being expended at one moment and over one opportu- nity, it is distributed over all his life and all bis ex- periences. He avoids extreme exalting emotions in which the soul is unable to preserve its equilibrium, in spite of having the entire mental energy concentrated on a unique aim; in which the human soul is exposed, at the least shock, to tilt over into the other extreme. He avoids both extremes of emotions, the depressive as well as the exalting, which are equally intoxicating, equally destructive of mental and bodily equilibrium or health. The main stream of his esthetical joys and pleasures shifts its bed: from the philistine field of sensation and perception over to the field of concepts and ideas, from the concrete to the abstract, from the known to the unknown. That some geniuses have no esthetic taste may mean only that their esthetic sentiments are wholly transferred into the region of broad concepts, abstract truth. The child, the savage, enjoy sensations of sound, color, etc.; the youth, the common mortal and the sen- timental men, enjoy perceptions: paintings, statues, etc.; the thinker enjoys the beauty of a theorem, of a scientific law, of a social scheme, of a philosophic gen- eralization. A higher esthetic pleasure does not neces- sarily wholly exclude a lower one. The genuine intellectual man has a disinterested, di- rect, self-sacrificing love for knowledge, i. e., he loves Truth for its own sake, as an aim-in-itself. The pseudo-intellectual man has an interested, indirect love for knowledge, i. e., he loves knowledge because and in so far as his material interests and his vanity are gratified thereby; but he is willing to sacrifice or adul- terate it in case of conflict. The intellectual philistine is frankly indifferent, or even hostile to abstract, im- personal knowledge. At best, intellectual pursuits are GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN AFFECTIVE LIFE 283 a mere play or aimless activity for the pseudo-superior man and for the philistine. Likewise in the realm of morality: the genuine altru- ist loves disinterestedly, often self-forgettingly, his fel- low-men and other living beings. The pseudo-altruist loves other men interestedly, i. e., he loves them really or apparently because, and in so far as, it is in his own interest to do so. The moral philistine is frankly indifferent to the weal or woe of others. To love dis- interestedly men, or truth, does not necessarily mean to love them more than one’s self—although this kind of altruism or of truth-loving occurs. It merely means to love them for their own sake, as ends-in-them- selves, and not as means either actual or prospective. The balanced intellectual genius is often mistaken for an egoist, for more selfish and less altruistic than he really is; because more altruism is expected of him than of other mortals; because he has not much re- gard for the little material comforts of others, nor for his own, especially when preoccupied by intellectual pursuits; because his altruism or love for others is rather passive than active, rather general than indi- vidual, i. e., he loves men but does not mingle much with them, he does not confine his love to a few related or known individuals, but he rather distributes it over a larger group extending in both time and space; be- cause his love and enthusiasm are shared by too many pursuits ; because he shows or expresses less love than he feels; he has neither time nor patience to express his affections in trivial matters, in conventional ways, on conventional occasions. A dog that barks is certainly less to be feared, less dangerous, than the one who bites from behind without betraying himself by barking. The same with men: The common man or the proletarian philistine who easily gets irritated and immediately gives vent to his 284 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN fury, is socially more useful than the pseudo-superior man who does not explosively or visibly get irritated, but never fails to take revenge sooner or later, to bite from behind when unnoticed and undetectable. The most useful are the genuine superior men who neither get irritated against nor meditate revenge on their malefactors, but merely confine themselves to openly despising and shunning the latter. The same motive that impels the dog, before and after he has succeeded in stealing a bone, to hide him- self or to assume a threatening, bullying attitude, viz., his guilty conscience or rather the fear lest his plans be thwarted while he is lying in wait for the opportune moment, and the fear lest the stolen bone be snatched away from him, also underlies and explains the preda- tory philistine’s narrow gamut of base emotions and his queer behavior: it is to be found at the bottom of his unsociableness, unapproachableness, reticence, secre- tiveness, over-cautiousness in selecting his partners, hor- ror of intimacy, suspicious attitude towards strangers and towards the harmless proletarian philistines, prone- ness to see nothing but envy in socialism, fondness for veiled blackmailing, readiness to bluff, distrustful dis- position, incapacity for friendship or love, assumption of an air of superiority, aversion to fearless and critic- ally-minded individuals, morbid sensitiveness to and vin- dictive resentment of criticism, eagerness to disguise his parasitical pursuits under the cloak of social service, etc. The volitional courage of the ignorant and of the insane flows from over-estimation of their own power and from under-estimation, or even ignorance of the external resistances. This courage is, therefore, quickly followed by deep discouragement. The voli- tional courage of the vain or pseudo man-of-action consists in unscrupulously and dishonestly imposing his AFFECTIVE LIFE 285 will upon others, in order to make others and himself believe in its strength. The volitional courage of the ideal man of action prefers self-imposed rather than compulsory obedience. The ideal man of action draws his energy from the conviction that the direction of his will leads to socially useful results. He knows his volitional strength, his steadiness of purpose, too well to be in need of breaking and subduing others’ wills, in order to feel the strength of his own. He is also fully aware of the magnitude of the external, both physical and social, resistances to become over-enthusiastic and to triumph anticipatingly over his success. The same remarks apply to the intellectual courage or assertive- ness of the naive, of the pseudo-thinker, of the genuine thinker; to the emotional courage of the naive, of the self-conceited, of the genuine poet. The naive individ- ual dares to express his opinions or feelings because and so long as he does not know those of others, or assumes that others have the same. The self-conceited man im- poses by all means his convictions or feelings upon others, not because and in virtue of his convictions or feelings, but because of strong self-adoration, self-wor- ship or vanity, whereas the intellectual courage of the thinker flows from the strength or irrepressible objec- tive truth of his convictions; and the emotional cour- age of the poet flows from the strength or general, impersonal, eternal worth of his emotions. The cour- age of the naive does not know, and hence does not avoid obstacles. If, by a happy chance, the naive man docs not come across any obstacles, contradictions, vis- ible disapproval, his courage persists. The courage of the pseudo-superior man is kept up by ignoring, going round, jumping over, the obstacles; by intimidating, removing, or bribing opponents. The courage of the genuine superior man consists in facing and trying to overcome fairly and once for all the resistances met 286 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN with in the form of selfishness, indifference, inertia, wounded vanity, ignorance, superstitions that cannot be shaken off on account of their being interwoven with dear human sentiments. Wisdom and Aspirations.—The true superior man is ever the same amidst changes and vicissitudes; he does not become dizzy upon the summits of Glory and Fame. Only the artistically superior man has a fickle, capri- cious and irritable temperament, i. e., his lower or re- flex centers are dissociated from, or not strongly as- sociated with, his higher or sensory centers; his motor reactions, his reactions dictated by emotions and de- sires, predominate over his sensory, cognitive reactions, over his reactions dictated by knowledge and reflection. This dissociation is either structural, permanent, patho- logical, or merely dynamical, transitory, due to the fact that the mind being absorbed, the higher brain organs being centrally set into activity, oppose resist- ance to peripherally incoming nervous currents which are thus compelled to discharge themselves at a lower, reflex and emotional level; or the higher centers may be too exhausted to be able to influence the lower ones. Human happiness is still in many respects in con- flict with the natural course of things: we wish for con- stancy, continuity, duration, persistence, essence . . . where nature offers inconstancy, caducity, rhythm, pe- riodicity, form. . . . But the vicissitudes of life grieve little souls only; the superior man is freed of vanity’s yoke by the contemplation of the frequent changes in human destinies. Wisdom is ambition in its maturer stage. The am- bitious man desires not so much to be, to become su- perior, as to be honored, to have the appearance of su- periority. The superior or wise man strives to be, to become perfect, and finds satisfaction in the forum of his own consciousness. The desire to please is for him AFFECTIVE LIFE 287 no direct incentive to action; for the judges of his merits are not the blind ephemeral philistines, but the impartial soul-penetrating thinkers of all times and places. With developing intelligence, the objects of our as- pirations change: A higher stage of development as- pires to things of a more enduring value, of a value less subject to vicissitudes. Apathy makes room for vanity, vanity for ambition, ambition for wisdom; empty-mindedness makes room for curiosity, curiosity for thirst for knowledge; respect for form makes room for respect for content or essence; sentimentalism makes room for cogitation; stupid or cowardly abstinence from passing judgment on one’s fellow-men makes room for gossiping, newsmongering, malicious, petty or purely aimless criticism of particular individuals, which in its turn makes room for social criticism, ethology, a disin- terested study of the various types of men and of their influence upon the welfare and progress of the human species. Morality, Success.—Average morality, average good- ness, is a product of circumstances; superior morality is a factor, a cause of change in circumstances, a cause of the creation of new social circumstances. The man of superior morality is moral in spite of adverse cir- cumstances ; the man of average morality or the moral philistine is moral if the circumstances allow and re- quire it. Unlike jurisprudence and school ethics which concern themselves merely with acts of direct and im- mediate moral consequences, the ideal ethics includes also in its sphere the thoughts, feelings, intentions, ten- dencies leading thereto, and also the remote, indirect consequences flowing therefrom, in so far as the agent is conscious of them. Moral philistinism, which finds its expression in ju- risprudence, shortsightedly concerns itself with—and 288 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN hence judges human actions from the standpoint of— narrow, immediate, local, personal and class interests, professed intentions, more striking though less im- portant effects; it wastes its wit and time on the prose- cution of individual culprits for some of their crimes; it cannot devise any better means for maintaining the existing social order than laws, courts, the police, the army, etc., which—even if we make abstraction of their corruptibility—can only grapple with crimes after they have been committed, with the few visible and less important effects of men’s detached actions, and have no other guidance but that of pervertible precedents, empty traditions, arbitrary decisions of a few unscru- pulous self-constituted authorities. Whereas moral genius, which finds its expression in socialistic ethics, is rather concerned with—and hence judges human activities from the standpoint of— vital, general interests, social welfare or general hap- piness, and in this valuation is guided solely by logic, reason, common sense; it cannot rest contented with mere jurisprudence, penology, patch-reform; it goes to the bottom of things, it studies the ultimate causes of—and hence the means of preventing—crimes and misery; it concerns itself with types of men and not with single individuals, with lifelong pursuits and not with detached, momentary actions; it points out the social and the anti-social or parasitical types of men, the effects of various life-activities or professions upon human society; it demands therefore radical changes in our economic, political and other institutions, the control of men’s entire life-activity and not of some striking disconnected actions; it insists, not upon the reformation and extermination of criminals, but upon the abolition of our laissez-faire, predatory system, which creates them or favors their multiplication; it does not believe in the preservation of order by setting AFFECTIVE LIFE 289 up a group of corruptible men to protect the vast masses of men against each other, but it believes that order, fair dealing, is best insured bj intrusting each and all therewith, by implanting good will in each man’s heart and self-control in each man’s brain. To the moral genius our entire intricated, unwieldy, and out- wardly imposing legal machinery is nothing but a piti- able makeshift, and its working is doomed to remain a farce at bottom, as long as it leaves untouched the pred- atory economic basis of our social organization, that is, as long as no stop is put to the parasitical, profit-seek- ing, privilege-hunting spirit, as long as production is carried on primarily for sale or profit instead of being carried on primarily for general use and only secondar- ily for international exchange, and as long as the most fundamental human right, viz., the right to employ- ment, is not secured for every able-bodied adult. When, however, legislation will decide to put into practise these preachings of the moral genius, it will be ripe to disentangle itself from all the dangerous weeds by which it is overrun at present to such an alarming extent: From its present-day bewildering confusion and inex- tricably growing pseudo-complexity, our legal appara- tus will return to its original normal state of a few plain, common-sense rules, which will be immune against the distortions or perversions of professional jurists or legal sophists, and whose interpretation will not leave any room for the verbiage and hair-splitting ingenuity of college professors. Superior morality is not the exclusive property or appanage of intellectually superior men. It is found near the two extremities of the human scale: in simple- minded working people, and in the great talents; it is rare at the extremities, in the weak-minded and in the one-sided geniuses; it is still rarer in the middle of the intellectual scale, in the “smart” and talented people. GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN 290 Just as water flows from a higher to a lower level, so does wealth flow from the higher moral level of the working class and of the superior men to the all-absorb- ing lower moral level of the “smart set” and talented men: In the animal kingdom the strong survive, wdicreas within the human species it is the self-seeking, the hypocrites, the cunning and their proteges who survive and succeed; only in an ideal, solidary society we shall have selection of the morally superior men. What the moral genius regards as a duty, is for actual mankind a sacrifice, a meritorious act; what to him is a crime, does not yet fall under the jurisdiction of actual ethics. The average moral man calls himself good if he does his duty, if he lets the world run its usual course, if he does not participate directly, actively, in the increase of human “misery”; whereas the moral genius calls a crime our indirect, unintentional contribution to the world’s iniquities, nay, he calls a crime our passivity, our attitude of indifferent spectators with respect to the bloody dramas played upon the world’s stage; he calls a crime our enjoying life’s pleasures while being conscious of the innumerable heartrending tragedies that fill the daily embittered lives of our fellow-men, fellow-citizens, colaborers in the making of our happi- ness ; he calls immoral the rulers, scientists, poets, pro- fessors, journalists or professional gossipers, etc., who find mere words of compassion for the disinherited work- ing class where they ought to act, to fight energetically to make a human life possible for human beings. Not those living within human society and enjoying its benefits, can judge about its imperfections and iniqui- ties. Truth about social matters comes from outsiders, from moral geniuses leading a quasi-extrasocial life, excluded from the banquet of the so-called sociable men. Only these moral bohemians are in a position to AFFECTIVE LIFE 291 overlook, geographically and historically, in space and in time, human society as a whole, and thus to discover that it misses its way. Only these disinherited moral geniuses are in a position to hold up before actual hu- man society the image of its horrid criminal face; only they are in a position to foresee the fatal consequences of mankind’s false step, and thus to give the cry of alarm in due season. Morality varies inversely as the intensity of our as- pirations for success, for external possessions. There- fore, it is easier for a man striving for self-perfection to reach the summits of morality than it is for an am- bitious man. “Tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner” is true for superior men only. For others we ought to say, “Tout oublier c’est tout pardonner.” What self-control, self-consciousness, is for the su- perior man, public opinion is for the average man. The former is controlled from within, the latter from with- out. Public opinion is a substitute for and a fore- runner of self-control, just as politeness is a substitute for or forerunner of love, sympathy. Under the modern competitive system, with its com- plicated, large and, hence, unsolidary and uncontroll- able communities, it is not the harmoniously developed, the wise and altruistic, the many-sided and balanced superior men who attain authority, leadership, success: it is the degenerate, the one-sided, the men of a single pursuit, the usurpers, the greedy, the unscrupulous, the hypocritical cowards, the obtrusive self-constituted au- thorities, the morbidly vain, the bluffers or hunters of appearances who succeed, lead, rule, control the means of existence, and hence impose their standards of liv- ing and acting upon the great masses. If superior men, as a rule, seem timid, awkward, ir- resolute, inactive, unsociable, unfit for money-making 292 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN occupations, unable to gain popularity, it is because they lack the deceptive ability and the disguised aggres- siveness (euphemistically called diplomacy, histrionic ability, self-reliance, spirit of enterprise, etc.) of the commercial, would-be aristocratic philistines and of the pseudo-superior men; it is because they like to deal with men and things thoroughly, conscientiously, feelingly, whole-heartedly, and spurn to rely upon studied ready- made, stereotyped, conventional phrases, gestures, man- ners, platitudes, which outwardly fit every occasion; they spurn to respond verbally, unfeel- ingly, thoughtlessly to the appeals of their fellow- men, nor can they rest contented with such sham re- sponses on the part of others to their heart or soul effusions; they are not as prone as the notoriety-seek- ers to engage in public activities where there is no chance to accomplish something worth while, let alone to redeem the promises made to the people; they are too serious-minded, engrossed with higher, intel- lectual, unselfish aims of life to feel at ease and to be welcomed in the company or in the employ of frivolous, materialistic, selfish, pleasure-seeking individuals; they are too straightforward, frank, open-hearted, fair- minded to resort to the crooked, devious, hypocritical, cowardly, aggressive and predatory ways of the busi- ness world (I mean the world where everything, com- modities, religion, knowledge, philanthropy, etc., is de- graded to a business) and of so-called Society; nor are they successful with the honest but intellectually blind masses of proletarian or toiling philistines, who mistake the demagogue’s flatteries for personal friendship and compliments, his promises for good intentions, his stage heroism for genuine courage, in short, his pretenses for realities. Happiness, Love of Approbation.—Many-sidedness saves the amour-propre of the superior man from AFFECTIVE LIFE 293 degenerating into megalomania, for it shows him how insignificant his abilities are in comparison with those he has not, or has in a very slight degree only. The happiness of the common mortal consists in liv- ing in conformity with instincts, habits, traditions, in following the beaten paths, whereas the happiness of the superior man results from opening new ground for fu- ture generations. The philistine feels a desert in his soul when he breaks away from routine; the superior man suffocates in the narrow horizon of philistine mo- notony. The philistine feels lost and becomes horror- stricken when a superior man invites him to leave the narrow grooves of conventionality and to follow him into the vast untrodden fields of possibilities which are full of promises for him who is not afraid to explore them. The balanced superior man, in whom the critical sense is not mutilated by vanity and impulsiveness, knows his own merits and defects. He is therefore unsnub- bable and less vulnerable when insulted, or when he does not meet with approbation. The common mortal, who has no introspective criterion of his own personality, for whom the only way of knowing himself and the worth of his possessions is external approbation, praise, envy, etc., the common mortal, I say, suffers very much, for this reason, when he is disapproved, blamed, ridi- culed, shunned by his fellow-men. In pseudo-superior men, in philistines, especially in women, even self-knowledge and self-esteem are deter- mined from without. A pseudo-superior man, a philis- tine, a woman, respect themselves in proportion with the respect shown them by others. Let some one show them disrespect, and their entire self-confidence is shaken thereby, their self-love becomes incurably wounded and unquenchably irritated. They avoid there- fore such occasions, nay, they crave and pay directly 294 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN or indirectly for a little flattery, for undeserved compli- ments ; they are so little convinced and conscious of having good or superior qualities and abilities that they feel the need of being repeatedly complimented by others for their supposedly superior advantages; they try to please by all means and especially to oblige those who assume the role of critics, of panegyrists, in order to hear compliments and praise in exchange. Unable to command respect through his real personality, through his real knowledge, the pseudo-superior man hunts for marks of distinction, titles of nobility, diplomas, social rank, mysteriousness, secrecy, odd manners and ex- pressions, etc., in order to reach that goal. The high opinion that the megalomaniac has of him- self is subjective, i. e., it does not admit the existence of greater personalities, it is not a continuously and slowly increasing quantity, it is ostentatious, egotistic, proud, cruel. The self-esteem of the superior man is objective, i. e., based upon knowledge of his own merits, upon a comparison of his own achievements with those of others; it increases proportionally with the increase in the manifestations of his originality; it is inclusive, modest, not ostentatious. While the intellectual courage, self-confidence, high opinion of self increases in the balanced superior man with his increasing knowledge of self, of others, and of the world; with increasing manifestations of originality, of foresight of coming events, of hypotheses proving to be true, there is a parallel decrease in his suggestibility or blind, uncritical obedience to, and belief in, what others say, command (directly or indirectly) or do. The genuine intellectual genius, unlike our college professors, academicians, etc., is less sensitive to criti- cisms, and takes no offense at refutations; not only be- cause he loves Truth for its own sake, but also because his merits are sufficiently numerous and sufficiently sure AFFECTIVE LIFE 295 of being acknowledged sooner or later, so that he does not need to hunt for undeserved recognition, and he has no difficulty in consoling himself over abilities de- nied him by nature. The moral genius, unlike the professional moralists, preachers, ethical culturists, social workers, labor or- ganizers, etc., can afford to have his intentions, feel- ings, actions and superiority criticized; not only be- cause he is convinced that genuine, real, superior mo- rality cannot be demolished, but also because he does not make a business out of Ethics, and hence has no pecuniary interests at stake. Unlike the philistine who is entirely engrossed with the present and does not see much beyond the narrow circle of men in whose midst he happens to live, the genius can enjoy, anticipatingly, the remote future, the potential, the distant, which to him are more real than the present, the actual, the near. The philistine exag- gerates both momentary joys and momentary troubles, for he lacks the sense of proportion, i. e., he lacks the broad outlook of the Imaginative Heights from where the present and the immediate past and future, which constitute his entire world, are seen in their true in- finitesimal magnitude: what to the philistine appears fearful, colossal, all-powerful, tremendously important, endless, dwindles into insignificance and ephemeralness when looked down upon from these heights. The genius does not become broken-hearted, despondent and self- distrustful because of poverty, obscurity, because his benighted contemporaries ridicule him, or because the exploiters hound him; for, just as the explorer of un- civilized lands, or the missionary, is more than com- pensated for the scorn of savage hordes by the esteem of his few companions and by the thought of his far- away countrymen’s gratitude or admiration, just so can the pioneer of the land of the future perceive at a GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN 296 dim distance, behind the scorn of the present-day gen- erations, the admiration and gratitude of the as yet un- born generations of better and more enlightened men; he can enjoy, anticipatingly, the sunnier and happier life of these future children of men because of having followed the path pointed out by such despised dream- ers as he. His dream of immortality is not the phil- istine’s vain and childish dream of a bodily resurrection; his is a dream of intellectual immortality, of the per- sistent influence exerted upon future generations by his intellectual creations, by the new truths, by the higher potentialities and worthier aims of life revealed to his mind’s eye. His failure to meet with a congenial life companion and to enjoy domestic felicity does not ren- der his life empty or aimless; for he finds consolation in his vision of the future woman, for whom he tries to prepare the ground, and who will be economically inde- pendent, man’s colaborer and faithful life companion, and not an empty-minded sex-parasite like the majority of present-day women. He is not in the least surprised that superior men are very seldom happily married, for after so many ages of vegetation and seclusion women have drifted so far apart from the male sex as to form almost a distinct species devoid of understanding or sympathy for man’s higher aspirations and seeing in him nothing else but a provider of food, shelter, dresses, luxuries, protection, means of gratifying her vanity. The existence of so many intellectually and morally crippled human beasts of prey, in whose midst he is doomed to live a lonely, harassed life, do not make the superior man despair of the human species; for he can enjoy in his imagination the sight of a nobler, big- hearted, broad-minded type of men and women who will thrive under the cooperative regime which the small and scattered army of moral geniuses strives to bring about. CHAPTER VI STRIVING LIFE IM REICHE DES MAMMONS I Ach, wie ist das Leben In der Gross-Stadt, hier: Kampf und rastlos Streben, Selbstsucht, Neid und Gier! Menchenfluten stromen, Wissen kaum wohin, Stiirmisch, nicht zu zahmen, Bald her, bald dorthin. Alles lauft in Eile, Gonnt sich keine Ruh. “Bald, noch eine Weile,” Sagt man ab und zu, “Sind wir schon am Ziele, Ist das Gluck erreicht.” Doch! wie endlos viele Gehen zu Grund so leicht, Im Wirrwarr des Lebens, Wo man ohne Rast Kampft, bekampft vergebens Der Begierden Last! II Wahrheit nur und Liebe: Wenn dies unser Streben ‘ Hier auf Erden bliebe, Dann nur konnt’ es geben Wahres Gluck hienieden, Allen gleich beschieden, O. L. S. Berlin, October 19, 1901, 298 GENERAL TYPES OF SUPERIOR MEN Theory and Practise.—The theoretical man sees in succession what the practical man sees simultaneously. To profess something theoretically does not mean to possess the ability of putting it into practise. For practise is the resultant of component forces which do not usually act in the same direction: theory, emotions, habits, instincts, external suggestions. Theory is not quite another aspect of practise, it is usually its complement: The less idealism in our actions, in our practise, the more do we put into, do we profess in, our theories: we make up in our professed and auto-suggested theories what we lack in actual practise. If theory were a mere translation, a poten- tial or mental equivalent of action or practise, we ought to expect most idealism, altruism, moral progress, toler- ance in priests, preachers, moralists, religious people, orators, leaders and least in materialists, atheists, plain men; whereas the reverse is usually true. In an-har- monious and in disharmonious individuals, the pro- fessed and sometimes auto-suggested convictions C, which are expressed in speech, mannerisms, dress, etc., are the complement of actual practise P, which is the outer expression of their habits and instincts H & I. (C + P=V; C