5. Luther’s Psychology according to Physicians and Historians
It is not our intention in the following to criticise the opinions quoted; they have been collected chiefly with the object in view of providing those qualified to judge with matter on which to exercise their wits. Nevertheless, we have no intention of depriving ourselves of the right of making occasional observations. Thus Hausrath’s opinion, to be given immediately, calls for some revision, as will be clear even to the lay mind. No disturbance of Luther’s intellectual functions or mental malady amounting to actual “psychosis” can be assumed at any period of his life. This, however, is a quite different thing from admitting that his case was not entirely normal.
“The psychology of men, who, like him, are engaged in such a struggle,” rightly remarks a Protestant theologian, “is exceedingly complicated. Discrepancies are to be met with side by side, and, according to the circumstances, now one element now another comes to the fore.”[548] In Luther’s case the co-existence of bouts of illness with the unfettered use of his powers, of fundamental delusions with true though misapplied ideas, of frivolity, sensuality and temptations to despair, and, on the top of all this, the contradictory statements he himself makes about himself, i.e.—he, the only man who could have told us how the facts really stood—all these circumstances render any sure conclusion extremely difficult.
No Protestant hitherto has used terms so strong to describe Luther’s overwrought nerves as his most recent biographer, Hausrath, the Heidelberg theologian, in his first edition of his “Life of Luther.” His assertions do undoubtedly err on the side of exaggeration.[549] For instance, when he says, that, owing to his illness in the monastery Luther had more than once been in danger of sinking into “the abyss of religious melancholia.”[550] Erroneously regarding the “temptations”—in reality mere remorse of conscience—from which Luther suffered, as the outcome of his morbid bodily and mental state, he even ventures to hint expressly at the nature of the malady: “The regularity with which the attacks return during all the years spent in the monastery and after he had commenced his public career, leads us to infer a recurrent psychosis, the attacks of which became less frequent after his marriage, but never altogether ceased.”[551]
In recent times, apart from Hausrath, two other writers, both of them non-Catholics, have looked more closely into Luther’s pathology. Dr. Berkhan in an article in the “Archiv für Psychiatrie” entitled “Die nervösen Beschwerden Luthers,” and Gustav Kawerau in the study “Etwas vom kranken Luther,” printed in the “Deutsch-evangelische Blätter.” The two Protestants, Küchenmeister and Ebstein, who also dealt with Luther’s maladies,[552] failed to discuss the psychological phenomena here under consideration; what interested them was more Luther’s ordinary illnesses though, it is true, they bring forward various data which may prove of interest here; these, nevertheless, must be cautiously used, as the authors are somewhat deficient in historical criticism. Older writers who treated of Luther’s illnesses, e.g. the Protestant pastor Friedrich Siegmund Keil, Garmann, the Chemnitz physician and an anonymous writer in the “Neues Hannöversche Magazin” are even less satisfactory.
Of the two first mentioned, Kawerau supplies a careful review of those statements of Luther’s which concern his nervous maladies, not, however, carrying them back to his earliest years. He gives us the picture “of a man occupying a most responsible position, ever in friction with his surroundings” and “in a state of nervous overstrain due to too much work of body and mind.”[553] With these words he seeks to pave the way for a psychological appreciation of all that, as he says, “so often appears repulsive or regrettable in Luther, for instance, his waxing irritability, his unbridled anger, the excesses he commits by word and pen, and his sudden changes of mood.” He even opines that “the spiritual temptations may be accounted for by his all-too-great labours and anxieties, and their effect upon his constitution”;[554] his conclusion is that a fuller knowledge of Luther’s ailments “helps us to understand him aright and better to appreciate his greatness.”[555]
The other writer, Dr. Berkhan, a Brunswick physician, had, previous to Kawerau, attempted to lift the veil which shrouds the “anomalies” presented by Luther; he did not, however, properly sift his materials, nor did he consider the various symptoms in their complexus.[556] He comes to the conclusion that some of Luther’s troubles, for instance, his “hallucinations,” “must be ascribed to an affection of the nerve centres.” These “hallucinations” he attributes to “fluxions” due to overwork. Such hallucinations, according to him, were, in Luther’s case, of two kinds; some optical and some auditory. They were induced, so he thinks, not only by the permanent excitement of Luther’s life, but also by “his doubts and controversies.” What Luther terms temptations Berkhan also regards as, in the main, mere psychic depression bound up with nerve disturbance. In view of certain other symptoms he diagnoses a case of præcordial trouble.[557]
After Kawerau and Berkhan we must refer to P. J. Möbius, the Leipzig expert in mental ailments. He is known in connection with his highly original studies on Rousseau, Goethe, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche; on Luther he has not expressed his views at any great length, but, such as they are, they are drastic enough.[558]
Möbius points out[559] that “in Luther’s case the pathological element is of the utmost significance.” “Even Luther’s recent biographer, Professor Hausrath,” he writes, “spoke of ‘recurrent psychosis.’[560] According to what Kraepelin now says, it would be better to term it a mild form of maniacal depression.[561] The main point is that Luther, from his youth upwards, suffered at times from the dumps without any apparent cause, was oppressed with gloomy forebodings, sadness, fear and despair. The melancholic phases may easily be traced throughout Luther’s life; probably, too, the periods when he felt his power and gave vent to his boundless wrath should be regarded as morbid and maniacal. We may take it that, in Luther’s case, the morbid mood made the illness, and that his fantastic interpretation of certain incidents—combats with the devil, intercourse with spirits and Divine inspirations—are to be explained, not as delusions, but as the explanations he sought in the ideas then current.”
“The present writer,” continues Möbius, “does not in the least believe that Luther suffered from hallucinations. It seems always to have been a case of placing a superstitious interpretation on real phenomena. The black pig in the garden and the black dog on his bed, were, most likely, of flesh and blood. In many instances (the wrestling with the demon, and so forth) the language is simply figurative. With Luther the pathological element made history. His morbid fear led him to brood over justification; the sense of his own utter weakness convinced him that man can do nothing of his own strength and by his own works, and that the only possible course is to stretch out yearning hands and seize on Grace. In his melancholic state he fell in with the doctrine of justification by faith alone of St. Paul (who himself suffered from the same ailment [!]), and, around this centre, his theological ideas grouped themselves, and, with ‘sola fides’ as his war-cry, he proceeded to do battle with the ancient Church. Thus, from the monk’s melancholia, sprang the Reformation.”
Proceeding on similar lines, Professor Willy Hellpach, of Carlsruhe, observed in the Berlin “Tag” (“Psychologische Rundschau,” Jan. 18, 1912): “Several years ago the Jesuit scholar, Pater Grisar, published in the ‘Kölnische Volkszeitung’ an article entitled ‘Ein Grundproblem aus Luthers Seelenleben.’ Of this work Möbius said, and quite rightly, that it was the best account so far given of the pathology of Luther’s mind. That Luther’s mind was at times morbidly depressed without any reasonable cause has never been doubted by any who knew him, even when they happened to be Evangelicals. Hausrath, in his biography, had spoken of ‘recurrent psychosis’ a statement, which, it is true, he modified later on account of the storm of indignation which broke out among those queer folk who seem to look upon a gifted man’s malady as a worse blot than the greatest crime.” Hellpach points out that laymen are wrong when they imagine that “psychosis” involves “an absolute derangement of the power of thought.”
Wilhelm Ebstein, a Professor of Medicine,[562] recently, and not without reason, registered a protest against the view of those who maintain that Luther was actually out of his mind. Himself interested in the treatment of cases of gout and calculus, he comes to the conclusion that Luther’s chief sufferings were caused by uric acid and faulty digestion, the two together constituting the principal trouble, and being accompanied, as is so often the case with gout, by “neurasthenic symptoms which at times recall psychosis”;[563] his “hypochondriacal depression which passed all bounds” was entirely due to these ailments. Not only these “nervous symptoms,” but also the other ailments of which Luther had to complain, his palpitations, headaches, dizziness, sore-throat, defective hearing, impaired digestion, fainting fits, and particularly his oppression in the region of the heart and the feelings of fear which accompanied it, all these were, according to Ebstein, due more or less to gout and the other troubles resulting from the presence of uric acid.[564]
There can be no doubt that this learned physician gives us many useful observations, but he has not himself selected his historical matter and carefully tested its source. Much of it comes from Küchenmeister, whereas, at the present stage of research, a medical opinion, to carry real weight, must necessarily enter at greater length into the facts more recently brought to light. Some of Küchenmeister’s opinions have, however, been revised by Ebstein, and not without good reason.
Among those of Ebstein’s statements that must be characterised as historically untenable are the following, viz. that Luther’s hallucinations and visions occurred “almost without exception at a time when he was yet under the influence of the asceticism of the monastery, with its night-vigils, spiritual exercises and strenuous mental labours,” i.e. in his Catholic days; likewise, that, in the monastery, he had striven “most diligently to outdo the other monks in the matter of fasting, watching,” etc.; that, in later days, he had “always been able to master his morbid states, and to bid defiance to his moods of depression,” and that these latter had “in no way detracted” from his mental labours; that his method of controversy had never been a morbid one, as Küchenmeister had asserted on insufficient grounds, and that, when even Luther referred to mental sufferings and temptations, his “bodily ailments” always occupied the first place and constituted the leading factor.[565]
His theory that Luther suffered from gout is also eminently doubtful.
Of any symptoms of gout, for instance, of gouty swellings, we hear nothing from Luther[566] though he was wont to expatiate on his complaints, and though, according to Ebstein, he possessed a “rare knowledge of medical matters.”[567] Nor did Luther permanently suffer from sluggishness and constipation of the bowels; we hear of it only at Worms and at the Wartburg in 1521, and then again in 1525. To put down “his moodiness, melancholia and depression” as Ebstein terms the remorse of conscience experienced in 1528 at the time of his greatest “temptations” to an attack of piles, described by Luther in a letter to his friend Jonas on Jan. 6, 1528, is to misapprehend the facts of the case; for, actually, it was three years before this that Luther had for a while been troubled with hæmorrhoids, as is evident both from the text of the inquiry made by Jonas (“ante triennium”), and from Luther’s answer: “My illness was as follows,” etc.[568]
Moreover, Luther was not suffering from stone in 1521, and it is only in 1526 that we hear him speaking of it for the first time; after this the malady was for a long time in abeyance,[569] until, between 1537 and 1539, it once more attacked him severely; it is again referred to in 1543.
Hence we must still await a more accurate medical diagnosis to determine—if indeed this be possible—how far the history of Luther’s outward and inward troubles was dependent on uric acid.[570] Maybe, eventually, greater stress than hitherto will be laid on Luther’s heart troubles; if so, then it will become necessary to find out what the so-called “cardiogmus” was, from which, according to Melanchthon, Luther suffered severely early in 1545; for, in his friend’s opinion, it was to this that Luther’s death later on was due.[571] Ebstein himself says of the oppression in the region of the heart and the resultant anxiety[572] from which Luther suffered, until his death was ultimately brought about by “heart failure,” that it “leads us to diagnose some heart affection”; this, according to his theory, was due, in part directly to gout, in part also to the obstinate constipation which accompanied it. According to him the periodic attacks of heart-oppression suggest heart asthma or angina pectoris, which, notoriously, often co-exists with gout.
As regards Luther’s mental sufferings, Ebstein will not hear of Berkhan’s hypothesis of “fluxions”; he himself, however,—and herein lies his principal fault,—does not make sufficient account of his patient’s frequent nervous states. He thinks that Luther’s black outlook, which, according to him, resulted from gout, was not bound up directly with any sufferings.[573] As regards the “hallucinations of sight and hearing,”[574] which Luther regarded as the work of the devil, he declares, that Luther, from time to time, fell into a condition of “weakness and irritability which make the temporary disturbance of his brain-powers quite intelligible”; as to the cause of the lapses, Ebstein finds it in “the strenuous mental labour” leading to a “condition of inanition.”[575] He also allows, that, even as a monk, and in early life, Luther was a victim of moodiness.[576] He is, however, quite right when he says: “Insanity cannot be thought of, nor even epilepsy.”[577] In his admiration for Luther, he also credits him with having in his lifetime endured “more days of suffering than of well-being.” To make this statement entirely true it would, however, be necessary to include amongst the days of suffering, those when he was so paralysed by remorse of conscience as to be incapable of work. At any rate we quite admit with Ebstein that, in Luther, we have “a man, during a great part of his life, sorely tried by bodily ailments,”[578] a fact which can only make one wonder the more at the extent of his labours.
To pass now to some older Catholic writers. In 1874 Bruno Schön, of Vienna, published an essay in which he depicted Luther as mentally deranged.[579]
The author, who was chaplain to a lunatic asylum, was not merely no historian and still less an expert in mental disease, but lacked even a proper acquaintance with Luther’s life and writings. His historical groundwork he took from second-rate works, and his opinion was biassed by his conviction that Luther could not but be insane. He makes no real attempt to prove such a thing; all he does is to give us an account, clothed in psychiatric terminology, of the different forms of madness from which Luther suffered; in the first place he was afflicted with megalomania and the mania of persecution, two forms of insanity frequently found together.—But nervous irritability, anxiety, moodiness, excitability, a too high opinion of himself, perversion of judgment and even hallucinations—could such be proved in Luther’s case—all these would not entitle us to say that he was ever really insane. Nervous derangement, says Kirchhoff, is not psychosis, and people subject to hallucinations are not always insane.[580]
Long before this other Catholic writers had instanced certain peculiarities in Luther’s mental state, though they, like almost all recent writers, with the exception of Hausrath, were ignorant of one of the most remarkable elements to be taken into consideration, viz. the fits of terror to which Luther had been subject from early youth. The treatment of this matter was made all the harder by the fact that Luther’s extravagant after-accounts of his life in the monastery, and the growth of his ideas, were received with too much credulity, and that his letters, his Table-Talk and many details of his life were but little known.
Maximilian Prechtl, Abbot of Michaelfeld (†1832), though he refuses to regard Luther as insane, nevertheless calls attention to the many “phantoms of a sick brain” which he had seen; “Luther believed,” so he says, “that he often saw the devil, and that under different shapes.”[581] The learned Abbot brought out a new annotated edition of Luther’s “Against the Papacy founded by the Devil,” which he published at the time of the Reformation-Festival in 1817, in order to show the mad fury, hate and mental confusion to which its author had fallen a victim. Luther’s writing betrays, so he opines, “no common fury but the insane passion of the man, then almost at death’s door.”[582] Too great stress must not be laid on some of the opinions he here advances, which overstep the limits he himself had traced and appear to credit Luther with insanity. Prechtl spoke out more strongly in his “Rejoinder” to the attacks made on his remarks. He emphasises “the incontrovertible proofs” to be found in Luther “of a troubled fancy,” and asserts that “he was not always in his right mind.”
Somewhat earlier, in 1810, the Catholic layman Friedrich von Kerz, who continued Stolberg’s “Geschichte der Religion Christi,” published a book “Über den Geist und die Folgen der Reformation” in which he comes to a far too unfavourable opinion of Luther’s mental state, which he seeks to bolster up by statements incapable of historical proof. In a nutshell, what he tentatively advances is, that, “owing to the shock following the death of a friend struck down at his side, Luther had lost his reason”; “the symptoms of a twisted mind soon became apparent.” “Luther not seldom appears in the light of an inexplicable moral enigma, so that we are led, not indeed willingly, to wonder whether a certain recurrent mental aberration and periodic madness was not in reality the first and perhaps the only source of his vocation as a Reformer, of all his public acts and of the greater part of his reforms.”[583]
As against Kerz, Schön and even Prechtl, we must urge that we have no proof that Luther was actually the slave of his morbid fancies, or mentally diseased; no such proof to support the hypothesis of insanity is adduced by any of the writers named. Of the temporary clouding of the mind they make no mention.
As for the kind of megalomania met with in Luther, when he insists on his being the mouthpiece of revelation, this is not the sort usual in the case of the mentally deranged, when the patient appears to be held captive under the spell of his delusion. Luther often wavered in his statements regarding his special revelation, indeed sometimes went so far as to deny it; in other words he was open to doubt. Moreover, at the very times when he clung (or professed to cling) to it with the greatest self-complacency, he was suffering from severe attacks of depression, whereas it is not usual for megalomania and depression to exist side by side. As for the periodic fits of insanity suggested by Hausrath his moods alternated too rapidly. His morbid ideas do not constitute a paranoic system of madness, and still less is it possible to attribute everything to mere hypochondriacal lunacy.
The theory of Luther’s not being a free agent is excluded not only by his doubts and remorse of conscience, but also by the bitter determination with which at the very beginning he persuades himself of his ideas, insists upon them later when doubts arise, and finally surrenders himself to their spell by systematic self-deception. Such behaviour does not accord with that of a man who is not free. It must also be noted that the morbid symptoms of which Schön speaks, in whatever light they be regarded, do not occur simultaneously; some disappear while others become more marked as time goes on. This, however, also makes it difficult and wellnigh impossible to discover what were the components which originally went to make up Luther’s mentality before it had been seared by the errors and inward commotion of his later passionate life. Above all a fact repeatedly pointed out already must not be overlooked, viz. that, throughout, wilful giving way to passion, lack of self-control and too high an opinion of himself, united with self-deception played a great part with him, particularly in those outbreaks of fury against Pope and Papists in which one might be tempted to see the work of a maniac. In view of Luther’s aptitude to pass rapidly from craven fear to humorous self-confidence it would be necessary in order to prove his insanity, to show clearly as far as possible—a demonstration which has not yet been attempted—that periods of depression or fear really alternated with periods of exaltation, and what the duration of these periods was.
We cannot too much impress on those who may be inclined to assume that, at least at times, Luther was not in his right mind the huge and truly astounding powers of work displayed by the man. Only comparatively seldom do we hear of his being disinclined to labour or incapable of work, and almost always the reason is clear. Even were the advocates of intermittent insanity ready to allow the existence of lengthy lucid intervals still so extraordinary a power for work would prevent our agreeing with them any more than with Schön, Möbius, Hausrath and the older authors referred to above.
As to the question of the possibility of such a disability having been inherited either from his father or his mother—a matter into which modern psychiaters are always anxious to inquire: Here, again, we find nothing to support the theory of mental derangement. Hans Luther, his father, was a stern, rude man of violent temper, and his wife, Margaret, would also appear to have been a harsh woman, without any joy in life and displaying small traces of the more winning traits of affection. Neither of the pair did much to sweeten the lad’s hard boyhood and youth. This certainly explains to some extent the thread of depression and pessimism which runs side by side with the lively and more cheerful one in the monk and university professor. Of greater importance to the question in hand is the irritability and violence of temper which showed itself in his father. If the latter really committed manslaughter in a fit of anger, as seems probable, and as has also been admitted by Protestant scholars,[584] then the son’s irritability, and his startling tendency to break out into foaming rage against his opponents, may doubtless be traced back in part to the effects of heredity. In 1906 the fact came to light that another Hans Luther, besides Martin’s father, resided at Mansfeld, and the latter, according to the records of the law-courts, would appear to have borne a bad character and to have been frequently punished for brawling and for being too ready with his knife. If the latter, as the name would imply, was a relative of Martin’s we have here one more argument to prove that the family was exceptionally irritable.[585]
Luther’s nervous irritability ought, indeed, to be made more account of than it has hitherto been.
Addendum. Some Medical Opinions on Nervous Degeneration, and Abnormal Ideas.
What was said above about Luther’s “nervousness” (p. 105 ff) may here be supplemented by some quotations from August Cramer, the expert psychiater, now of Berlin. It is true that what we shall quote is not intended to refer to Luther, yet what he says may serve to explain certain of Luther’s symptoms, and, possibly, to show that some which were put down to mental derangement may have been due rather to a form of neurasthenia.[586]
“Even perfectly normal children are sometimes inclined in their growing period to display great variations of temper, and to be violent and changeable in their affections about the age of puberty. This, however, is far more noticeable in the case of people of a strongly developed nervous temperament. Groundless outbreaks of anger, marked pathological absence of mind and entire inability to concentrate their thoughts are often the result. Fits of oppression and anxiety are not unknown; headaches are fairly frequent and the patients seem at times not to be masters of themselves. They also tend to swing from an exaggerated idea of their own importance to a despondent lack of self-confidence. In their bents and friendships they are very fickle.” Hence we have here already in a very marked degree that instability which von Magnan has pointed out as characteristic of degenerates.
In later life, too, such highly strung temperaments are often, at least in the worse cases, predisposed to sudden changes of views, and to fly to extremes, their varying moods tend at times to become periodic, they are over-sensitive, are frequently unable to bear alcohol, their sexual inclinations are abnormal and they are often addicted from an early age to masturbation.… Thus the predominant characteristic of the degenerate is lack of constancy (p. 175).
Of “nervosity” where it is combined with fear the same author says: “The change of mood is often entirely without cause and is by no means of a regular type, though instances of a periodic character are occasionally to be met with.… We meet, for example, persons whom we cannot possibly describe as ill, who at times are exceptionally capable, lively and good-tempered, and yet at other times give the impression of being downhearted, self-centred and scarcely able to get through their daily tasks.”
“Apart from those who are habitually depressed, there are others who suffer from time to time, without any outward cause, from slight fits of depression, mostly accompanied by more or less severe fits of anxiety. Looking more carefully into these various types, we shall find that they belong almost exclusively to strongly marked nervous temperaments.… In bad cases the periodic changes of mood may become stronger and stronger, and lead eventually between the fortieth and sixtieth year to actual ‘folie circulaire.’ Anxiety is, of course, common to all nervous people, but in many cases it plays the prominent part.… Often the patients complain of all kinds of accompanying symptoms, not seldom of palpitations, weakness in the legs, headaches, attacks of dizziness, and, particularly, of the paralysing effects of their vague dreads. When this anxiety overtakes them they become unable to work as usual, and their spirit of enterprise is checked” (p. 207 ff.).
As to how far what Cramer says is applicable to Luther’s mental states may here be left open. The same holds good of what we shall quote below from C. Wernicke and H. Friedmann. What the former says of “autochthonous” ideas may conceivably be applicable to Luther’s conviction of the private revelations he had received and of which he speaks so strongly above (p. 142 ff.) as even to suggest actual auditory hallucination; that there was no real hallucination seems more likely for the reason that Luther elsewhere is disposed to regard the incidents as of an inward character and is not quite so wholly under their sway as would have been the case had they been strictly speaking hallucinatory.
As to “exalted ideas,” of which both speak, they put us in mind of some of Luther’s ideas concerning his own person, position, achievements and persecutions (cp. our summary in vol. iv., pp. 329-41).
It must, however, be noted that “exalted ideas” can be present in a mind otherwise perfectly sound, and that, consequently, even if Luther had such ideas it would not prove him to have been mentally deranged; the same holds good of “autochthonous” ideas, which, occurring singly, are no warrant of insanity.
Again, even should Luther’s idea of his revelations turn out to be originally “autochthonous,” yet the reception he accorded it, the interpretation he placed on it and the use he made of it seem, as we have already set forth, to have been both deliberate and responsible. This is confirmed by the circumstance that, in time, his keen sense of such impressions waned under the objections brought against them, and that his insistence on the “revelations” and his interpretation of them no longer found quite the same vigorous expression as before. Nevertheless, we repeat it once more: It is for experts to pass a definite judgment, but, in order to do so fairly, they must not submit to the microscope merely one class of Luther’s mental manifestations, but consider him as a whole, as monk no less than as Reformer, and examine his mentality on all its sides.
Writing of certain kinds of abnormal ideas, viz. those which he calls “autochthonous,” Carl Wernicke says:[587] “The patient becomes aware of ideas springing up in his mind that are alien to him and not his own, i.e. which have not arisen along the normal ideas and on the ordinary lines of association.” Speaking of those actually suffering from mental derangement, Wernicke again alludes to this class: “Objective observers, who are quite conscious of the alien character of the autochthonous ideas and attach no fundamental importance to them, are only to be found as the exception among those who are really mentally unsound. Almost always the ideas are conceived as ‘ready-made,’ as ‘forced upon the mind,’ as ‘inspired,’ or as ‘derived,’ but, from whom, depends entirely on the individuality of the patient and on the nature of the autochthonous idea (which is not uninfluenced by the former). Pious thoughts are inspired by God, evil thoughts by the devil; more enlightened people have recourse to material remedies and put their case in the hands of a doctor.”
Of the so-called “exalted ideas” Wernicke says: “These are sharply defined from autochthonous ideas by the fact that they are in no way regarded by the patient himself as alien intruders into his consciousness: on the contrary, he sees in them the stamp of his innermost self, and fancies that, in vindicating them, he is in reality asserting his own personality.”
“One has to determine in each individual case whether the idea is truly morbid and ‘exalted,’ or does not come within normal bounds.”[588] On the next page he declares: “That almost any incident may give rise to an ‘exalted idea,’ that the nature of the emotion may be of the most varied character, and that ideas exist, which, though in themselves normal, are nevertheless able so to determine the individual’s action as to impress on it a morbid stamp.”
H. Friedmann[589] says of the same class of ideas: “According to its origin the ‘exalted’ idea … may find a place in the mental process without any apparent cause. A strong emotion may, so to speak, fling itself on a single idea, and, without any actual derangement of the mind, allow it, and it alone, to assume a morbid supremacy.” A few pages further we read:[590] “Hence, as a matter of fact, in the case of the ‘exalted’ idea, we have not an isolated monomaniacal affection but a general disturbance of the emotions and judgment. The result, likewise, is not an idée fixe as in the case of mania, but merely a strong belief.”
CHAPTER XXXVII
LUTHER’S LATER EMBELLISHMENT OF HIS EARLY LIFE
In later life, looking back on his past, Luther was in the habit of depicting certain of its principal phases in a way which is at variance with the facts, and which even Protestants in recent times have characterised, as “a picture in which he becomes a myth unto himself.”[591]
It will be no matter for surprise to the dispassionate observer that the memory of the vows Luther had broken and the thought of his early days in the monastery—which presented so striking a contrast with his later life—were subject-matters of warped and distorted images. Particularly is this true of his monastic years which he insists on depicting as one long night of sadness and despair.
Not merely in the fictions in which he came to shroud the more fervent days of his life as a monk, but also in his explanations of the various stages of his apostasy, Luther affords us fresh data for the psychological study of his personality, and thus the present chapter may serve to supplement the previous one. Only after having studied the legend he wove around himself and compared it with the truth as otherwise known, will it be possible to arrive at a considered judgment concerning Luther’s mental states.