| Talent and Memory #1. |
|
|
|
|
|
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |  |  |
Talent and Memory #1
The following observation bears on my henid theory:
I made a note, half mechanically, of a page in a botanical work from which
later on I was going to make an extract. Something was in my mind in henid
form. What I thought, how I thought it, what was then knocking at the door of
my consciousness, I could not remember a minute afterwards, in spite of the
hardest effort. I take this case as a typical example of a henid.
The more deeply impressed, the more detailed a complex perception may be the
more easily does it reproduce itself. Clearness of the consciousness is the
preliminary condition for remembering, and the memory of the mental
stimulation is proportional to the intensity of the consciousness. "I shall
not forget that"; "I shall remember that all my life"; "That will never escape
my memory again." Such phrases men use when things have made a deep impression
on them, of moments in which they have gained wisdom or have become richer by
an important experience. As the power of being reproduced is directly
proportionate to the organisation of a mental impression, it is clear that
there can be no recollection of an absolute henid.
As the mental endowment of a man varies with the organisation of his
accumulated experiences, the better endowed he is, the more readily will he be
able to remember his whole past, everything that he has ever thought or heard,
seen or done, perceived or felt, the more completely in fact he will be able
to reproduce his whole life. Universal remembrance of all its experiences,
therefore, is the surest, most general, and most easily proved mark of a
genius. . . .
The great extent and acuteness of the memory of men of genius, which I propose
to lay down dogmatically as a necessary inference from my theory, without
attempting to prove it further, is not incompatible with their rapid loss of
the facts impressed on them in school, the tables of Greek verbs, and so
forth. Their memory is of what they have experienced, not of what they have
learned. . . .
Only what is harmonious with some inborn quality will be retained. When a man
remembers a thing, it is because he was capable of taking some interest in the
thing; when he forgets, it is because he was uninterested. . . .
The ideal genius is one in whom perception and apprehension are identical in
their field. Of course no such being actually exists. On the other hand, there
is no man who has apprehended nothing that he has perceived. In this way we
may take it that all degrees of genius (not talent) exist; no male is quite
without a trace of genius. Complete genius is an ideal; no man is absolutely
without the quality, and no man possesses it completely. Apprehension or
absorption, and memory or retention, vary together in their extent and their
permanence. There is an uninterrupted gradation from the man whose mentality
is unconnected from moment to moment, and to whom no incidents can signify
anything because there is within him nothing to compare them with (such an
extreme, of course, does not exist) to the fully developed minds for which
everything is unforgettable, because of the firm impressions made and the
sureness with which they are absorbed. The extreme genius also does not exist,
because even the greatest genius is not wholly a genius at every moment of his
life.
What is at once a deduction from the necessary connection between memory and
genius, and a proof of the actuality of the connection, lies in the
extraordinary memory for minute details shown by the man of genius. Because of
the universality of his mind, everything has only one interpretation for him,
an interpretation often unsuspected at the time; and so things cling
obstinately in his memory and remain there inextinguishably, although he may
have taken not the smallest trouble to take note of them. And so one may
almost take as another mark of the genius that the phrase "this is no longer
true" has no meaning for him. There is nothing that is no longer true for him,
probably just because he has a clearer idea than other men of the changes that
come with time. . . .
From what one has thought or said, heard or read, felt or done, one can give
the smallest possible to another, that the other does not already know.
Consideration of the amount that a man can take in from another would seem to
serve as a sort of objective measure of his genius, a measure that does not
have to wait for an estimation of his actual creative efforts. I am not going
to discuss the extent to which this theory opposes current views on education,
but I recommend parents and teachers to pay attention to it. The extent to
which a man can detect differences and resemblances must depend on his
memories. This faculty will be best developed in those whose past permeates
their present, all the moments of the life of whom are amalgamated. Such
persons will have the greatest opportunities of detecting resemblances and so
finding the material for comparisons. They will always seize hold of from the
past what has the greatest resemblance to the present experience, and the two
experiences will be combined in such a way that no similarities or differences
will be concealed. And so they are able to maintain the past against the
influence of the present. It is not without reason that from time immemorial
the special merit of poetry has been considered to be its richness in
beautiful comparisons and pictures, or that we turn to again and again, or
await our favourite images with impatience when we read Homer or Shakespeare
or Kloppstock. Today when, for the first time for a century and a half,
Germany is without great poets or painters, and when none the less it is
impossible to find any one who is not an "author," the power of clear and
beautiful comparison seems to have gone. A period the nature of which can best
be described in vague and dubious words, the philosophy of which has become in
more than one sense the philosophy of the unconscious can contain nothing
great. Consciousness is the mark of greatness, and before it the unconscious
is dispersed as the sun disperses a mist. If only consciousness were to come
to this age, how quickly voices that are now famous would become silent. It is
only in full consciousness, in which the experience of the present assumes
greater intensity by its union with all the experiences of the past, that
imagination, the necessary quality for all philosophical as for all artistic
effort, can find a place. It is untrue, therefore, that women have more
imagination than men. The experiences on account of which men have assigned
higher powers of imagination to women come entirely from the imaginative
sexual life of women.
Where anything obviously depends on strong moulding women have not the
smallest leaning towards its production, neither in philosophy nor in music,
in the plastic arts nor in architecture. Where, however, a weak and vague
sentimentality can be expressed with little effort, as in painting or verse-
making, or in pseudo-mysticism and theosophy, women have sought and found a
suitable field for their efforts. Their lack of productiveness in the former
sphere is in harmony with the vagueness of the psychical life of women. Music
is the nearest possible approach to the organisation of a sensation. Nothing
is more definite, characteristic, and impressive than a melody, nothing that
will more strongly resist obliteration. One remembers much longer what is sung
than what is spoken, and the arias better than the recitatives.
Let us note specially here that the usual phrases of the defenders of women do
not apply to the case of women. Music is not one of the arts to which women
have had access only so recently that it is too soon to expect fruits; from
the remotest antiquity women have sung and played. And yet . . .
It is to be remembered that even in the case of drawing and painting women
have now had opportunities for at least two centuries. Every one knows how
many girls learn to draw and sketch, and it cannot be said that there has not
yet been time for results were results possible. As there are so few female
painters with the smallest importance in the history of art, it must be that
there is something in the nature of things against it. As a matter of fact,
the painting and etching of women is no more than a sort of elegant, luxurious
handiwork. The sensuous, physical element of colour is more suitable for them
than the intellectual work of formal line-drawing, and hence it is, that
whereas women have acquired some small distinction in painting they have
gained none in drawing. The power of giving form to chaos is with those in
whom the most universal memory has made the widest comprehension possible; it
is a quality of the masculine genius.
I regret that I must so continually use the word genius, as if that should
apply only to a caste as well defined from those below as income-tax payers
are from the untaxed. The word genius was very probably invented by a man who
had small claims on it himself; greater men would have understood better what
to be a genius really was, and probably they would have come to see that the
word could be applied to most people. Goethe said that perhaps only a genius
is able to understand a genius.
There are probably very few people who have not at some time of their lives
had some quality of genius. If they have not had such, it is probable that
they have also been without great sorrow or great pain. They would have needed
only to live sufficiently intently for a time for some quality to reveal
itself. The poems of first love are a case in point, and certainly such love
is a sufficient stimulus.
It must not be forgotten that quite ordinary men in moments of excitement, in
anger at some underhanded deed, have found words with which they never would
have been credited. The greater part of what is called expression in art as in
language depends on the fact that some individual more richly endowed,
clarifies, organises, and exhibits some idea almost instantaneously, an idea
which to a less endowed person was still in the henid form. The course of
clarification is much shortened in the mind of the second person.
If it really were the case, as popular opinion has tried to establish, that
the genius were separated from ordinary men by a thick wall through which no
sound could penetrate, then all understanding of the efforts of genius would
be denied to ordinary men, and their works would fail to make any impression
on them. All hopes of progress depend on this being untrue. And it is untrue.
The difference between men of genius and the others is quantitative not
qualitative, of degree not of kind. . . .
Continue...
|