Leaving these extreme cases in order to consider pathology proper, we may first ask ourselves whether we really have here a subject for study, or whether we are pursuing a mere chimera. The question is not here put quite in the same form as elsewhere. Pathology signifies disorder, deviation, anomaly; now, in æsthetic activity, where is the rule? It has often been repeated that the essence of art is absolute liberty. I see no objection to this statement; art has its end in itself, and is subject to no other requirement than that of creating works able to live, accepted by contemporaries, and, if possible, by posterity also. By what method, then, can we decide that any given æsthetic manifestation is normal or abnormal? Such a decision can be merely arbitrary. We have not even the resource of saying that everything belonging to beauty is healthy, and everything belonging to ugliness unhealthy; for—not to mention that the line of demarcation between the two is frequently very vague—the ugly is admitted into all the arts by way of ingredient or foil, and one author (Rosenkranz) has even written on the “Æsthetics of the Ugly.” I see only one way of escaping from the difficulty, viz., transposing the subject, studying, not the pathology of the æsthetic feeling itself, but that of the source whence it emanates; in other words, considering it merely as a symptom. This requires some explanation.
Every failure of harmony between the tendencies which constitute a healthy human being shows itself in a disturbance of equilibrium, an anomaly in the affective life. This deviation from normal life may be considered under two aspects: one general, the other special; one human, the other professional.
If we consider it under its general form—i.e., as simply inherent in the human constitution—the want of equilibrium expresses itself in many ways, following different directions according to temperament, character, and circumstances, such as melancholia, phobias, sexual aberrations, irresistible impulses, etc.
If we consider it under its special, particular form, as peculiar to a given individual carrying on a given occupation and having given habits of life—an artisan, a labourer, a tradesman, a lawyer, a physician, etc.—the disturbed balance will appear to us as setting its mark on the individual’s professional activity and its products. The artisan will pass from a fury of work to excesses of idleness or drink; the merchant from exaggerated caution to a reckless daring in his enterprises; and the same in every trade or profession. Now art is a profession like any other, and the artistic product must bear the mark of the craftsman—a mark of disequilibrium in the present case. Consequently the anomalies of the æsthetic sentiment may be studied by comparison, not with an imaginary norm, not with any alleged regulative principles of art with which we are unacquainted, but with a psychological criterion; they may be studied as the effects and the revelation of a morbid diathesis. To speak more simply, we have to deal, not with æsthetics, but with psycho-pathology in connection with æsthetics.
Even thus transposed, the subject still presents inevitable difficulties, the principal being as follows. With regard to the psycho-physiological constitution of the creative artist, there are two theories. (We must not forget that, in the amateur, or mere taster of works of art, the same psychological conditions are required, though in a less degree, being more strongly accentuated in proportion as he feels more acutely.)
One of these theories, set forth in many well-known works, maintains that æsthetic superiority is incompatible with health of mind and body. The facts in support of it have often been very uncritically collected, and among the characters mentioned as typical we find all sorts. Among creative artists there are vigorous men and puny ones, tall and short, handsome and deformed, weak-willed and enterprising, slowly-developed and precocious, misanthropists and men of pleasure, the morose and the cheerful. In short, we can only conclude, at most, that they have a tendency to depart from the average—whether to rise above it or fall below it.
According to the other theory, all this is secondary, accessory, physical and psychical defects being by no means a necessary condition of genius. It grows equally well on a sound stem or a rotten one; it bears the marks of its origin, but this is quite a matter of accident. There are also facts in support of this view, though it must be acknowledged that they are less numerous than those on the other side.
We may also generalise the question, and ask whether æsthetic activity is not always a deviation. Nordau has maintained the affirmative: “Art is the slight beginning of a deviation from complete health.” Thus presented, the question is equivocal. If we understand by mental health the ataraxia of the ancient philosophers, it is clear that creative and even æsthetic enjoyments are incompatible with it. To demand that we shall create or enjoy without excitement, remaining all the time in the level, prosaic calm of every-day life, is to expect the impossible. On this showing we might say as much of any emotion whatever and allege it to be a deviation from health. Some intellectualists, Kant among others, have ventured to make this claim, which is as much as to say that man is, by nature, an exclusively reasonable being—so enormous a psychological error that we need not discuss it. Besides, even supposing this to be the ideal, the mission of psychology is not to study an ideal man, but the real one.
After this somewhat lengthy preamble, rendered necessary by the ambiguity of our subject, let us investigate the part played by the two essential factors, emotion and imagination, when their activity is pathological, and in clearly-defined cases.
I. The necessity for vividness and sincerity of feeling in the artist is so obvious that I need not insist on it. This disposition, however, is not in all cases identical. Acute emotion may be intermittent, appearing only at moments of inspiration and creation, and then, the crisis over, disappearing to let the emotional life take its normal course. This is the characteristic of healthy genius or talent, which, descending from the heights, returns and adapts itself to the groove of ordinary life. A more frequent case, if we may judge by biographical documents, especially as we approach our own day, is the state of permanent excitement or hyper-excitability. Artists and dilettanti are exceedingly delicate instruments vibrating continually to every sound. Here our triple criterion of pathological activity comes again into use: we find (apparent) disproportion between cause and effect, violent and prolonged shock to the system, chronicity. This physiological state is one of continual loss; not a combustion, but a series of explosions; not a life, but a fever. Hence the craving for artificial excitement so frequent in emotional natures of this kind; they seek it under all its forms, and the remedy aggravates the evil. It is needless to multiply examples, we need only recall the great contingent of melancholiacs, hypochondriacs, alcoholics—persons subject to hallucinations, insane, or merely déséquilibrés—furnished by artists or passionate lovers of art. Besides these general characteristics, we may note as particular pathological symptoms of æsthetic emotion: