34. The Ingenious Man

I

What is genius? No less than this question is posed in the book "Der geniale Mensch" by Hermann Türck. The realization of genius is probably also linked to one of the most important problems in the world. For genius is spiritual procreation. And anyone with a modern scientific point of view can see in spiritual procreation, in spiritual productivity, nothing other than a higher level of productivity in the physical world. How does a new individual arise from the mother organism? How does a new spiritual entity arise in the course of the spiritual development of mankind: a musical composition, a poem, a new tool, or shall we say only a new joke? These are related questions for the modern world view. Genius depends on the creative, on producing, on bearing witness. There is no need for genius to mentally process what already exists and pass it on. You can carry all the knowledge in the world around in your head - if you have no new thoughts, you have no genius. And you don't need to know much at all - if something occurs to you, even if it's just a new way of tying your tie, you have something genius about you. We must not fail to recognize that in the great geniuses on whom the progress of culture is based there is not a special mystical gift, but only an enhancement of that mental faculty which appears in every new thought. In this sense, genius is a general human quality. Everyone has genius to a certain degree. And those who are called geniuses in the true sense of the word only have higher degrees of this general human quality. The ingenious, productive capacity of the soul stands in contrast to the merely combinative gift of the intellect. This does not produce anything new, but only shows the thoughts that come from genius the right paths, gives them the place in the thought system that they have to occupy.

The witty poseur Franz Brentano correctly pointed out in an interesting little book "Das Genie" (Leipzig 1892) that genius is a general human gift. Unfortunately, however, he confuses the specific nature of genius, the procreative capacity, the productivity, with the merely combinative, i.e. actually impotent capacity of the mind. He says: "We have sampled the various areas where one speaks of genius. We have measured the great distance that separates the chess player from the poet and musical composer, and the answer was the same everywhere. We have seen no inspiration of a higher spirit in them; deeper investigation always leads to faculties which are found in all men in the same way, and to connections of ideas which take place according to the same laws as ours. There is no unconscious thinking which is added to conscious thinking in genius. On the contrary, we find genius in certain cases only less thinking, in that it is relieved of a part of the work, namely, of critical improvement, because of the excellence of the first thoughts. Thus the distance between genius and common talent proves to be less than is often believed. And indeed there is no gulf between the one and the other, but we find intermediate forms, and every major difference appears to be mediated by transitions" (p. 37). This remark is based on the observation that genius is a general human ability, not a mystical gift of particularly favored individuals.

An unbiased assessment of the phenomena under consideration here is only possible from the standpoint of modern science. As long as it was held that all human beings are created according to a certain ideal model, one could do nothing other than carefully search for the differences between the average person and the one who deviates in some direction from the average. Modern natural science knows no image of a perfect human being. For it there are no two perfectly equal individuals; and between health and disease, between genius and idiocy, between unselfishness and criminality, and so on, it knows no fixed boundaries, because these manifestations of mental life gradually merge into one another through innumerable intermediate stages. How difficult it is, for example, to say where healthy mental life ends and insanity begins, is shown by the fact that the need for a reform of the legislation on insanity is pointed out, because the principles according to which the lunatic doctors today decide whether a person is to be excluded from the rest of society because of mental illness are found to be inadequate. The healthy soul's life is gradually transformed by a modification of its powers into outright insanity. The simple sensory perception of a healthy person never quite corresponds to the observed facts, otherwise two people could not sometimes give quite different accounts of one and the same event that they have seen. There is a gradual transition from this alteration of the perceived facts by our sense organs to the obvious illusion, where our perception is quite different from the external impressions, and from there to the hallucination, where a sensory image is present without external cause. Illusions and hallucinations are pathological phenomena, but they can form part of an otherwise healthy mental life. Only when the illusions are no longer seen through by the human power of judgment, but are taken for reality, does madness begin. But this can only be temporary at first. There are people who, under the impression of violent emotional movements, show completely the manifestations of madness, while otherwise they must be considered mentally healthy. The same can be said of memory. In so-called aphasia, which is based on a disease in the anterior parts of the brain, speechlessness occurs because the person loses the memory of word concepts despite perfect health of the organs of speech and the power of judgment. There are all kinds of transitions from poor memory to the appearance of false memories that destroy our entire mental life; from fantasy to pathological obsession.

Just as there is no fixed boundary between the so-called normal mind and the insane, there is no such boundary between the average talent and the genius. Every joke, every idea that springs from an average mind proves that a person is not merely registering observations, but is productive. In the genius the gift of invention is only richer than in the average man. Genius creations only become perfect when the gift of invention is accompanied by a corresponding degree of talent, which ensures that the genius has control over his ideas. If it loses the latter, it is dominated by its own creations as if by foreign powers. Therefore, if the gift of invention is one-sidedly developed and is not supported by any registering, organizing power of the soul, genius can turn into madness. From the fact that outstanding people and the insane often show abnormalities in the formation of the skull, that climate, temperature conditions, race and heredity have a similar effect on both, Lombroso concludes that genius is related to insanity, indeed, he goes so far as to think of genius as a special manifestation of an epileptic disposition, because epileptics and geniuses suffer in the same way from fits of dizziness and outbursts of rage. On closer examination, however, it turns out that similarities with the insane can only be shown for the individuals described with a one-sided genius disposition, whereas in important people with a harmonious development of all mental powers, such as Raphael, Shakespeare, Goethe, one must assume not a pathological brain activity, but a higher degree of efficiency of the central nervous system. However, Lombroso does not explain genius, but only individual phenomena in the mental life of those individuals in whom talent and genius do not balance each other out.

Crime, too, can be understood from the standpoint of modern natural science. It cannot be a question of the individual crime, but of the criminal's entire mental life. In recent times it has been shown that criminals of all peoples share certain physical and mental characteristics. In these we have to seek the explanation for the criminal tendency. It seems wrong for individual researchers to attribute this tendency to a particular form of mental illness, moral insanity. For in people with a pronounced lack of moral concepts there are always defects in judgment and in their emotional life. Both criminal legislation and pedagogy will have to make use of this view.

I would like to look at Hermann Türck's book from this point of view.

It deals with the "man of genius" in the following sections: Artistic enjoyment. Philosophical striving. Practical action. Shakespeare's "Hamlet". Goethe's "Faust". Byron's "Manfred". Schopenhauer and Spinoza. Christ and Buddha. Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon. Darwin and Lombroso. Stirner, Nietzsche and Ibsen.

II

As in the physical act of fertilization two principles unite, one male and one female, so also in the generation brought about by the human genius. The artist, the philosopher: they take their material from outside and add the artistic, the philosophical design, the form, from within themselves. With this sentence I believe I have not merely expressed an image, but something that is well founded in the context of natural phenomena. Monistic science will one day build a bridge from the observations that Hertwig made in Corsica about the fertilization processes of living beings to the phenomena that the problem of genius presents to the psychologist.

In the process of fertilization, the living being follows a physical instinct. Nevertheless, it does not concern itself with its own selfish business, so to speak, but with that of nature as a whole; its actions go beyond the sphere of its instinct for self-preservation. If we may speak figuratively, we can say that in the process of fertilization nature uses a trick. It places an instinct in man through which a selfless, non-selfish act is nevertheless carried out out of selfish desire. The lust of the fertilization process is the selfish satisfaction of an action that is not directed at the self, but at the whole world. We notice something similar in genius. Through its creation it satisfies itself to the highest degree. In this creation lies the highest spiritual pleasure. Nevertheless, the goal of this creation is not the advancement of the self, but the participation in the great necessities of existence of the world order. At this highest level of man's existence, in his work of genius, he is selfless out of selfishness. Here egoism and altruism coincide in a higher unity.

Hermann Türck overlooked this. Instead of pointing out the point at which egoism turns into selflessness in genius, he creates a contrast. He says that the contrast between genius and the common man consists in the selflessness of the former and the egoism of the latter. The man who does not devote himself to the details of life in selfish concern, but who, regardless of his selfish purposes, objectively immerses himself in the eternal course of things, is said to be a genius. "It is objectivity, love, purely objective interest, that leads the man of genius to immerse himself in an object, to devote himself entirely to its impression" ($.15). "Objectivity, love is the secret of genius, thus also of artistic intuition. The artist loves the object he looks at, he wants its existence, and consequently he does not look at it one-sidedly, not only for certain features that have a practical interest, but all-sidedly, in all directions that are essential for the existence of the thing itself. In the forest he does not, like the timber merchant, see only a concept, a sum of money, no, he loves the thing, the forest itself" (5.17 £.). "If genius is synonymous with objectivity or selflessness, then the practical behavior of the man of genius will aim at doing everything that is to be done with his whole soul, with full devotion to the work itself, be it what it may" (p.55). You can see that Hermann Türck makes the same psychological mistake everywhere. He has correctly observed one fact, namely that genius has the character of selflessness; but he does not see at the same time that this selflessness gives the genius a satisfaction that increases to the point of spiritual voluptuousness. The characteristic feature of genius is the height of its culture, which allows it to have as much interest in the higher necessities of nature as the timber merchant has in the amount of money his forest brings him.

I am deeply suspicious of people who talk a lot about selflessness and altruism. It seems to me that these very people have no real sense of the selfish comfort that a selfless act provides. The people who claim that one should not cling to the accidental, insignificant, temporal aspects of existence, but should strive for the necessary, essential, eternal: they do not know that the accidental and temporal are in reality no different from the eternal and necessary. And it is precisely this ingenious behavior that conjures up the necessary and significant everywhere from the accidental and insignificant. Türck says: "Where personal interest, where subjectivity, where selfishness comes into play, the truth goes to hell. So if selfishness, subjectivity and lies are allied, then the opposite of selfishness, love, pure objective interest, objectivity is most closely connected with the truth" ($.4). No, and three times no! Where the personal interest, the subjectivity, the selfishness of a man are so ennobled that he takes part not in his own person alone, but in the whole world, there alone is truth; where man is so petty that he is only able to attend to the great business of the world by denying his personal interest, his subjectivity: there he lives in the worst lie of existence.

Hermann Türck's error becomes very clear in his treatment of Goethe's Faust. In Faust, Goethe portrayed the genius personality. The devotion to magic is only a symbol for the devotion to the eternal powers of the world. As long as Faust feels this magical power of genius within him, Mephistopheles will not be able to help him. He is not concerned with the temporal worries of existence. He is absorbed in the eternal. Then worry approaches him. It makes him blind. Now he should no longer have any sense for the eternal powers, now he is absorbed in the temporal worries of existence. He finds satisfaction in an everyday activity. I fully agree with Hermann Türck that worry brings about the greatest possible change in Faust. Türck's interpretation is ingenious. But it proves exactly the opposite of what Türck wants to prove. Faust was completely unconcerned about all things temporal before worry came to him. He wanted to chase the eternal. When worry comes upon him, he learns to appreciate the value of the temporal, the immediate everyday goals of existence. The temporal now becomes the eternal for him. The immediate existence gains an infinite value for him. The trace of his days on earth cannot perish in eons. He no longer seeks an eternal beyond out of selfish desire; he now longs to satisfy himself in selfless, this-worldly work. When appearances no longer blind him, when he goes blind, the eternal is revealed to him in the finite. Most people are blind throughout their lives, Faust goes blind at the end. But Faust's blindness has a completely different meaning to that of most people. They cannot see the eternal throughout their entire lives because their egoism is too narrow, too limited to even penetrate to this eternal. In their blindness, they cling to the temporal. Faust does not cling to the temporal throughout his life because he is chasing after an illusion of the eternal; at the end of his life he clings to the temporal. So he seems to become like most people. He becomes blind. But the reason why he clings to the temporal is quite different from that of most people. He has learned to recognize the infinite value of this temporal, its eternal value. He used to believe that the whole world only had to be there for him in order to satisfy him. That is why he wants to rise to the highest pleasure through the power of magic. In the end, he finds that in doing for the world he finds the highest self-indulgence. Selflessness only satisfies his highly heightened selfishness.

Hermann Türck's approach is therefore one-sided. That is why he cannot appreciate people like Stirner. For him, Stirner's wisdom is antisophy. For him, Stirner's glorification of the one and only is an outgrowth of narrow-minded egoism. He does not even notice that it is precisely such spirits who strive to the highest degree for what he demands of genius: Love of truth. They do not want to cultivate the hypocritical lie of existence, as if man, at the highest stage of his existence, had completely emptied himself of his self in order to work selflessly. No, these people want nothing more than to be true, true to themselves and true to the world. Away with the lie, as if there were a self-emptying, a selflessness for its own sake. There are selfless people who lay down their lives in devoted love. But it is not true that they do this by giving up their self. They love because love gives them a supreme self-indulgence; they love because it is their pleasure to give themselves. And if a god had created the world out of love, he would have done so because in this self-emptying he would at the same time have felt a divine lust, a divine self-indulgence.

Türck's book is a highly commendable one. It stimulates. But only those who draw the opposite conclusions from those of the author are stimulated by it in the right way. The dualism of egoism and altruism, of the narrow-minded and the ingenious individual, which Türck represents, must be dissolved into a monism. Man should not become selfless; he cannot. And anyone who says he can is lying. But selfishness can rise to the highest world interests. I can concern myself with the affairs of all mankind because they interest me as much as my own, because they have become my own. Stirner's "own" is not the narrow-minded individual who encapsulates himself and lets the world be the world; no, this "own" is the true representative of the world spirit who acquires the whole world as his "property" in order to treat the affairs of the whole world as his own. Only expand your self to the world-self first, and then act egoistically all the time. Be like the farm wife who sells eggs at the market. Only don't do the egg business out of selfishness, but do the world business out of selfishness! "Our whole trick is that we give up our existence in order to exist," says Goethe. And Hermann Türck interprets this as follows: "Our whole art consists in the fact that we give up our selfish and personally limited existence in order to exist truly, in an elevated way." But I would like to interpret it as follows: "Our whole trick is that we give up our existence, which is only attached to and interested in narrow interests, in order to exist with the higher interests, to find our selfish satisfaction in them."

Now some will certainly come along and say: all this is just sophistry. I am merely reinterpreting selflessness into a higher degree of selfishness. That may be. But such a person should bear in mind that all progress in knowledge is based on the reinterpretation of facts that were previously regarded as false. Whoever wants to regard Darwinism as nothing more than a reinterpreted Bible may do so. He cannot be helped. But neither can he be counted on when it comes to true questions of knowledge. It is simply not true that any human being can be selfless. But it is true that his selfishness can become so refined that he becomes interested not only in his own affairs, but in the affairs of all mankind. Do not preach to men that they should be unselfish, but plant in them the highest interests, so that their selfishness, their egoism, may attach itself to them. Then you will ennoble a power that really lies in man; otherwise you will be talking about something that can never exist, but which can only turn people into liars.