It must also be admitted that even the other orgiastic manifestations may serve as purely cathartic means of relieving emotional pressure. It is, as has already been remarked, impossible to decide in individual cases whether an activity of expression—a dance, for instance—serves to enhance a pleasurable feeling or to relieve a pain. Suffering, sorrow, and despair may often, in their outward reactions, borrow the forms of expression which are usually connected with joy. Thus frenetic games and dances are often met with on occasions when we should least of all expect them, as, for instance, in time of famine, epidemic, or war.[96] Such paradoxical manifestations, in which an overstrained despair attempts to obtain some kind of relief, are externally not to be distinguished from the genuine expression of joy. On the other hand, an abnormally strong emotion, which is primarily caused by the objective conditions of pleasure, may in its excess be perceived as a pain. Joy itself can thus be felt as an oppressive burden, which we try with all our power to get rid of. The motor discharges, by which we seek relief from such a “Noth der Fülle und der Überfülle,” can, however, only indirectly offer us any real deliverance. A wild dance, for instance, will inevitably accentuate the original feeling as a conscious state, and thereby increase its intensity. But with this increase the craving for relief will also become stronger. As long as expression is unable to satisfy the ever-growing nervous tension, there must remain an element of “never enough” in the orgiastic exaltation. It is only when repeated solicitation has brought on bodily exhaustion that a real release is attained.
There is no doubt that such a relief-bringing exhaustion was the ultimate aim of all those exalted manifestations to which the poor tarantuli and the Vitus dancers abandoned themselves. But the problem presented by the similarity between the pathological despair which constitutes the initial stage of such epidemic mental disorders, and the oppressive feeling of joy whose expression has been thwarted, is so difficult that we can hardly expect to obtain a decisive answer to such questions as whether, for example, the mænadic exaltation is to be considered as a melancholic or a cheerful state of mind. And in most cases it would probably be equally impossible to ascertain whether in a given manifestation we have to do with pleasure that seeks enhancement, or with pain that seeks relief in exhaustion.
While every one is thus free to interpret the facts according to his optimistic or pessimistic bias, it must nevertheless be considered as a confusion of ideas to make the quest of unconsciousness a universal and fundamental impulse in man. It is impossible for us to assign any psychological importance to commonplaces on the enviable state of the insensible and the happiness to be found in unconsciousness. It is only when it delivers us from pain that a state of partial insensibility and cessation of function may be perceived as relatively agreeable. That an absolute absence of feeling could afford us any pleasure is a psychological contradiction in terms.
This illusion of unconsciousness can, however, be easily explained by the fact that intense emotional states are generally dominated by a single preoccupation. A strong feeling, by reason of the limitations of our consciousness, annihilates external sensations and ideas. Ecstasy, that “over-conscious” state of highly concentrated activity, rises above space and time to a state in which we feel liberated from all forms of perception. But the highest pleasure which we may thus experience is not, as Wagner in his pessimistic period would have it, a sinking and drowning of ourselves in unconsciousness; it is far rather—
“endlos ewig
einbewuszt.”
To enjoy so rich and complete a sensation of life has, we believe, been the object for which, each in his own manner, all men of strong vitality have striven. Even if there are individuals so unfortunate that for them a cessation of life and function appears as the highest end of desire, such negative instances need hardly be taken into account in a survey of universal human impulses. The longing for unconsciousness is moreover so passive a condition of mind, that by itself it could never explain expressional activities of the more violent or elaborate sort. And it is even more insufficient as an explanation of all those secondary expressions which are to occupy us in the sequel. Art production would never have reached so high a development if it had served only as a sedative for human feelings. But neither does art, any more than the direct activities of expression, involve mere excitement; it too fulfils, and with even greater efficacy, a relieving and cathartic mission. While supplying man with a means of intensifying the feelings connected with all the varied activities of the soul, art at the same time bestows upon him that inward calm in which all strong emotions find their relief.
Every interpretation of art which does not pay due attention to both of these aspects must needs be one-sided and incomplete.
CHAPTER VI
SOCIAL EXPRESSION
In order to find an explanation of the nature and origin of the art-impulse we were compelled to enter upon a digression on the general psychology of feeling. It appeared from this hasty examination that in the motor concomitants of physical as well as of mental feeling we have to do with a form of activity which, taken by itself, is independent of all external motives. It was shown that the diffusion of a feeling-tone always corresponds to some active manifestation, generally outward, which increases in the same degree as the state of consciousness gains in intensity and distinctness. Besides these immediate transformations of energy which, owing to the law of inertia, follow the primary enhancement or inhibition of function, we met with reactions of a more conscious kind, by which the organism strives to overcome the inhibition of pain, and to keep up the excitement of pleasure. And it was also found that the universal animal desire to increase every pleasure and to relieve every pain has given rise to a multitude of secondary manifestations, by which we try to sustain every pleasure, to make it more distinct for consciousness, and thus enhance it by expression, while, during states of pain, we strive for relief in diversion or in violent motor discharge. Finally it was remarked that by the side of this expressional impulse we must take account of a yearning after increased consciousness, which leads us to pursue, even at the risk of some passing pain, all feelings and emotions by which our sensation of life is reinforced and intensified. All these impulses, accompanied by higher or lower degrees of conscious endeavour, are psychical phenomena of fundamental importance. They are not restricted to any particular stage of culture. And their coercive force is equal—nay, even superior to that of the imitative impulse, the play-impulse, and the impulse “to attract by pleasing.” If we could deduce the desire for artistic creation from the activities connected with feeling, we should here find the explanation of its universality as well as of its force.