A Novelist's Laboratory

Investigating the Balance Between the Mysterious and the Reasonable in Life and Nature

ARTHUR SCHNITZLER

§1

METAPHYSICAL Gold Bricks:—The field of metaphysics should be closed to all but those whose good behaviour in dealing with less remote aspects of reality has shown them to be worthy of such a privilege. No one should be allowed to concern himself with the occult sciences who is not thoroughly familiar with issues of a comparatively tangible nature. Finally, a person should not be granted the right to roam about the field of the unconscious until he has scrupulously investigated the areas of consciousness to the farthest reaches of clarity. But it is naturally in these vague, elusive regions of metaphysics, occultism, and the unconscious that the adventurers, speculators, and confidence-men of thought are most at home. And though they return with the most muddled and trumped-up reports of their meanderings, there will always be fools and imbeciles enough to find them more convincing than investigators whose calling, courage and sense of responsibility properly equip them for such voyages of discovery.

§2

Disquieting Silences:—The concern with metaphysical problems which derive their essential character from the fact that they are unsolvable, must be listed as one of man's hallucinations. A cure is all the more difficult because people usually feel no need of a cure. Our predilection for the snugness and comfort of the dark is carried over into the field of philosophy. People are rarely at ease beneath the full glare of clarity, and would retreat to places where it is harder to hold them to account, places where the one instrument of human understanding, the word, loses its validity, or rather constantly fluctuates in meaning. But the metaphysical calls for absolute silence— here statement and counter-statement are senseless and arbitrary.

§3

Three Germs:—There are certain maladies of a metaphysical nature which show up as ailments corresponding to the three Kantian categories of time, space, and causality. Their characteristic symptoms (the feeling of superiority or dread) resemble the megalomania and persecution mania of psychopathology.

We may consider the yearning to encompass other realms in the universe, the desire to surmount infinity, as the sense of superiority with relation to space. And as dread with relation to space, we have the feeling of vertigo, not the physical fear of falling, but that terror which is different from ordinary fear and which often besets us if we suspect that we might be near a precipice or if we look up at the sky.

The sense of immortality may be interpreted as superiority in the matter of time. And dread with relation to time may range anywhere from the milder forms of impatience and haste to a tormenting restlessness.

Superiority in the matter of causality would be the feeling that one is always stronger than

fate; this is megalomania, pathological arrogance, per se. And dread with relation to causality can assume highly diversified aspects, from vague feelings of uneasiness and fear, to genuine fear of life; and it can be sublimated aesthetically into that brooding, pessimistic sorrow over the woes of the world, known as Weltschmerz.

§4

What Is a Miracle?—The phenomena which are usually spoken of as miracles are distinguished by the following facts:

1—That only a very small fraction of mankind is, or was, permitted to witness them, under a wholly exceptional set of circumstances.

2—That they are usually of less interest to non-participants, and because of their great rarity seem less significant and less real to the world in general, than the miracles which we live among continually and have become accustomed to, and which we consider to be caused by the constant operation of natural laws.

3—That they, to whatever extent they are believed in, could only be understood as the effects of certain laws which function more sparsely (though by no means more mysteriously) than those natural laws which we have heretofore been able to observe.

§5

Laws in Flux:—We speak of things which we cannot explain rationally, in contrast to others which we believe that we have explained rationally.

And we consider that we have found a rational explanation when we see some isolated phenomenon, which admits of no explanation in itself, recurring regularly, so that we have occasion to suspect as its cause some natural law existing from all eternity.

But we forget that even the laws of nature, in so far as they bear upon our earth and upon that portion of the universe accessible to our senses, have developed but gradually, and that they had no validity in chaos.

§6

Expected and Unexpected Miracles:—The nature of so-called occult phenomena does not consist in the fact that they are more mysterious than thousands of others, which we do not designate as occult purely because we have become used to them. We mean by the occult merely that which apparently does not fit in with the laws of nature as they are known to us, and seems even to contradict them.

Thus, the detached rising of a body in space, that defiance of the law of gravity known as levitation, is( or, rather, would be) no more wonderful than the movements of the stars, the processes of growth and decay, of life and death and all their related phenomena. The distinguishing feature of levitation resides (or would reside) simply in the fact that it always presented an exceptional case and occurs (or would occur) only under certain artificially produced conditions—two characteristics which would cause it to play a very insignificant role in the vast variety and regularity of every-day miracles.

But if we imagined an individual who existed in the times of chaos, before the motions of the stars were regulated and when there was yet no organic life on earth, and who now awoke after a dream of billions of years—to such an individual, levitation would certainly appear much less of a miracle than the sunrise or the burgeoning of a violet.

§7

Inanimate Heroes and Villains:—As though by a miracle, you say, that bullet went whizzing by your ear.

And just think: the same bullet hit another man full in the heart. Was this perhaps a lesser miracle?

You meet a friend at the same hour on the same street corner three times in succession. And this discloses to you a "law of series."

And what about the white-bearded gentleman whom you encountered only once, at the opera two years ago; and what about the countless others whom you never see again? Law of the special case, perhaps?

You misplace the key to your trunk just before leaving. You simply cannot find it anywhere—and you complain bitterly of that confounded key.

At another time you go to open your trunk, and lo! at the first touch of your hand the lock springs loose of itself. Why does it never occur to you to mention the object's affability?

§8

The Happy Land:—The great intensity of our impressions in a dream comes from the fact that while dreaming we are never subject to the distractions which are inevitable to our waking moments. Just as our field of vision includes not only the object under observation, but also the things adjacent to it, fading out gradually towards the periphery, so our consciousness involves not only the experience of the moment, but virtually all our knowledge, memories, and intentions. In the dream we are aware of nothing but the dream; the area of semi-consciousness is dormant, more profoundly dormant than the subconscious. Thus in a dream we are not surprised if we happen to fly, our dream-consciousness not taking gravitation into account; and we are not astonished that the dead return, because the dreamer recognizes no natural law of growth and destruction. Similarly, our tenderness for someone whom we love is a more beautiful thing in the dream than in actuality, because this tenderness gleams with the light of a clear flame surrounded by no circle of haze; for though when awake we have many reservations to make of love in general and of our own love in particular, during our dream all these have been omitted.

§9

Dream Evolution:—In our dreams a person who has just died usually returns to us bringing with him all the horrors of the grave, even though we never beheld him as a corpse. But gradually, from one dream to the next, those terrors drop away from him, even death itself seems discarded; and he moves through our sleep more lifelike than the living.

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§10

Composite Portrait:—Though it is well known that the memory will often distort our old impressions beyond recognition, people seldom observe that the memory also has a way of correcting impressions. Thus it sometimes happens that we imagine a person in some attitude or position, or with some expression which we have never actually noted in him. And yet we accept him as absolutely real, just as he now stands before us in the memory. Such a memory-picture presents what we might call the arithmetical mean of hundreds of pictures of that person which we have seen in the course of time or have considered likely. And thus memory, I say memory, may give us a deeper perception of the truth than was possible to any actually experienced moment.

§11

The Malicious Law of Probabilities:— We have an inborn tendency to feel that the maximum possible number of sufferings and pleasures on earth is limited. Thus if someone near us meets with adversity, we feel that the likelihood of something similar happening to ourselves is temporarily lessened; but if an instance of exceptional good fortune occurs in our vicinity, we consider that our own chances have ! fallen.

Does not this (probably spontaneous though not always conscious) belief that things will happen in accordance with the laws of the theory of probabilities, explain our envy in cases when the prosperity of our fellow man deprives us of nothing? And does it not account for our gratification at misfortune in cases where the ill luck of our neighbour has brought no tangible advantages to ourselves?

§12

Importance and Greatness:—No great attribute by itself ever led to any great work; yes, much more often it acts, in its state of isolation, as a precarious element, and even a destructive one. For instance, an enormous energy which is not coupled with profound understanding or genuine goodness, will never produce any really fruitful results. This is the dividing line between importance and greatness. For the great man is characterized by the harmonious interplay of great attributes, even when they are apparently counteracting one another.

§13

The Cycle of Exploration:—As you stand at the foot of a huge mountain, you know little of its diversity; you do not suspect what peaks tower behind the one which appears to you like its summit; you imagine neither the treacherous chasms nor the pleasant resting places which lie hidden among the rocks. Only gradually, as you climb and ramble on, do you uncover the secrets of these highlands, whether surprising or ordinary, momentous or unimportant. And even so—your discoveries depend upon the direction you have chosen. The mountain will never be disclosed to you in its entirety.

The same applies to your knowledge of a person. However close you may be, the things that catch your eye at the first fleeting glance are not the truth, certainly not the whole truth. You must go farther; and then, if you have keen vision and fog does not obscure your view, the inner nature of that person is gradually, and only partially, revealed to you. The comparison also applies in another respect: as you move away from the explored territory, all the diversity which you found in the course of your wanderings pales like a dream; and when you look back once more before a final leavetaking, you again perceive nothing but that deceptive mass which seemed to you so simple, and you see that summit which was not a summit.

§14

The Strange Moment:—Each particular moment of life is so strange that it would be totally unbearable if we were in a position to feel its strangeness at the time as clearly as we generally do when recalling it or looking forward to it.

§15

Otters of the Unconscious:—Manymental experiences are enacted almost wholly in the unconscious. Occasionally, like divers who were swimming beneath the water, they will rise to the surface, look about them in the light of the conscious with astonishment, and then submerge to disappear forever.

§16

Concentric Circles:—Until an illusion is recognized as a deception, it has the full value of a reality, like other phenomena which we record with our senses even though they are illusory from the standpoint of physics or philosophy. But in case we have recognized the illusion as such, it is then no longer an illusion. Thus, the only illusion is the idea of an illusion.

§17

Illusion:—What -we call an illusion is either madness, error, or self-deception —unless it signifies some higher reality which we are too humble, too sceptical, or too timid to recognize as such.

§18

The Divinity of Haired:—Hatred is probably as strong an instinct as love and hunger. Otherwise it would be impossible to explain why people who are pure determinists and whose scientific attitude precludes all belief in guilt, will equal or even surpass in the intensity of their hatred persons who are convinced of the reality of free will. In any case, the impulsiveness of hate is also an unrelenting element in the interplay of natural forces; and it was surely a part of that original energy which continues to manifest itself in every expression of life and in the tendency toward destruction. It is equally as divine as love. The injunction to love one's enemies is, from a more comprehensive standpoint, just as opposed to morality as the prescribing of absolute chastity; and for normal people it is just as impossible to obey. Selfdeception is naturally the corollary to any attempt at following the rule of chastity, which is also frequently the case in observing the law to "love thine enemies." Consequently one finds many people who look upon themselves as good merely because their impulse to hate was prevented by various causes from translating itself into action. Surely one should, also in this matter, observe the law of moderation, especially where hatred figures purely as a mental function and thus does not find its outlet. Such haters are just as immoral as those individuals who are born with a strong impulse to love but do not do so.

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§19

Sense vs. Nonsense:—Meaning receives its significance, its possibility of existence, solely through our acceptance of the meaningless. If we try to imagine that there is neither sense nor nonsense in the world, the idea seems devoid of meaning. It is more natural for us to form a concept of the negative than of the positive. Similarly life gets its meaning from death. One without the other is nothing at all, and the thought of eternal death is just as senseless as the thought of eternal life. The frequent references to the terrors of annihilation are concerned with our sentiments, and have nothing to do with the deeper aspects of truth.

§20

The Possibility's Little Tragedy:— What a remarkable career it is when some possibility succeeds in raising itself to the importance of a reality; and it is all the more remarkable if this possibility stood among the general rank and file, rated as an improbability or even despised as an impossibility. On the other hand, what a pitiable fate it is when some possibility which had already considered itself a probability very near to fulfilment, discovers at a certain moment that it must renounce the hope of ever becoming a reality, and must enter for all time that unending ghastly horde of impossibilities to which it had felt itself superior.