ideas resemble coins which have a certain exchange value according to written and unwritten laws. some are copper coins, so defaced and dirty that no one would suspect from their looks that they had once sparkled like bright gold. others shine even to-day, after a lapse of a thousand years, and a commanding figure proudly proclaims its origin. one might even more aptly say that ideas resemble securities that are highly valued to-day and may be worthless to-morrow; one day they promise their possessor wealth and fame, and the next day there comes a spiritual break, he is impoverished, and is left with an apparently worthless piece of paper....
there is as yet, alas! no standard by which the values of different ideas might be measured. every man constructs for himself without much ado a canon whereby to value his own thoughts. as a rule he swims with the tide of current opinion; more rarely he goes with the minority and very rarely he independently makes his own measure wherewith to judge matters. strange! in the end the conflict of minds turns altogether about ideas and their estimation. what else do geniuses, the pathfinders of mankind, accomplish but to disseminate a hitherto neglected or even unknown idea and cause it to [pg 153]be generally accepted or to cause ideas that have hitherto stood high in the world’s estimation to topple from their thrones?
just as everything else in life runs a circuitous course, in which beginning and end touch, so is it also with the valuation of ideas. not only the genius, but the fool also strips old, highly esteemed ideas and overvalues others that he has created for himself. the genius and the fool agree in that they permit themselves to be led by the “overvaluation” of their ideas. this expression was coined in a happy moment by the psychiatrist wernicke. it tells more in its pregnant brevity than a long-winded definition would. formerly it was the custom to speak of the “fixed ideas” of the sufferers from the peculiar form of insanity which physicians call “paranoia,” the mental disease which the laiety knows better and understands less than any other psychosis. a delusion was regarded as a fixed idea which neither experience nor logic could shake. to-day we have penetrated deeper into the problems of delusions. we know that ideas differ from one another tremendously. some are anemic and colourless, come like pale shadows and so depart. others have flesh and blood and scintillate in brilliant colours. long after they have vanished, their image still trembles in our souls in gently dying oscillations. the explanation for this phenomenon is very simple. our attention is dependent upon our emotions. pale thoughts are indifferent and have no emphasis. [pg 154]coloured ideas are richly endowed with emotions, being either pleasurable or painful.
as a rule ideas are in continual conflict with one another. the instincts surge upward from the depth, the inhibitions bear down from above, and between them—owing to stimuli from within and without—the sea of ideas rocks up and down, during which time another idea rises to the mirror-like surface of consciousness. suddenly one remains on top and becomes stationary, like a buoy anchored deep to the sea’s bottom. this is the “fixed idea” of older writers and the “overvalued ideas” of modern psychotherapeutists.
this idea is really deeply anchored. at the bottom of the unconscious lie the great “complexes” which impart a corresponding accent to our various ideas. an overvalued idea is anchored in a “complex” which has repressed all other “complexes.” it is accompanied or invested with a powerful affect which has stripped other ideas of their affects.
a very old example—if one may so call it—of physiological insanity is the condition known as “being in love.” a german psychiatrist has taken the wholly supererogatory pains to prove anew that a lover is a kind of madman and he designates love as “physiological paranoia.” but, unfortunately, he makes no distinction between loving and being in love. but it is just through this distinction that we are enabled precisely to define the conception of an [pg 155]overvalued idea. like an example from a text-book. for love is an idea whose value is generally acknowledged. we love our parents, our teacher, our country, art, our friends, etc.
but as regards being in love it is quite a different matter. as to this the environment does not accept the exaggerated valuation of the emotions. here love becomes an overvalued idea. arguing with one who is in love about common sense, religion, education, station, or politics will not affect him in the least. he is dominated solely by the love-complex. this alone determines the resonance of his thoughts and feelings. the attraction to the chosen object has attracted all the other affects to it, has placed all the impulses at the service of one overvalued idea. he loves life but only if he be together with his beloved; he is jealous, but only with reference to the love-object; he is interested only in such matters as are in some way related to that object. the fool who is being dominated by an overvalued idea acts exactly in the same way. the lunatic who imagines himself the king of the world, and in whom a childhood wish had overpoweringly established itself as a fact in his consciousness, has interest only for such things as find access to this wish; the victim of ideas of persecution discovers in the news items of the daily papers the important communication that his enemies are laying traps for him; the unfortunate love-sick youth who imagines that princess x wants to give him her hand in marriage [pg 156]sees in all sorts of advertisements of love-hungry ladies secret communications from his princess.
these poor fools bring everything they see and everything they feel into relationship with the overvalued idea which, projected outward in the shape of an hallucination, sounds to their ears like a spiritual echo and blinds their eyes like a vision.
a lover acts essentially like this. that is why the world says of a person in love that he makes himself ridiculous. a handkerchief or a glove, or anything belonging to the beloved, becomes a fetich which can evoke the most ecstatic emotions. anything that can be associated with love is overvalued.
another question involuntarily presents itself. is love, in the form known as “being in love,” the only overvalued idea with which a normal person may be afflicted? are there any other forms of “physiological insanity”—if we may use the term coined by lower and subsequently imitated by moebius?
the answer to these questions is not difficult. a backward look teaches us what unspeakable evils overvalued ideas have wrought in man’s history. for overvalued ideas are sources of great danger. they are richly endowed with emotions and consequently lend themselves to suggestion more readily than almost any other idea. bleuler has proved that suggestion is nothing but the transference of an emotion. and such overvalued ideas can be hurled with great suggestive force among the multitude and change the individual—and even whole communities—into a fool. that is how the psychoses of whole nations have arisen. the tremendous power of overvalued ideas can be understood if one thinks [pg 157]of the crusades, the witchcraft persecutions, hysterical epidemics, the dreyfus affair, anarchism, etc.
it is a sad fact that none of us can be free from overvalued ideas. in this sense there is really no difference between fools and healthy persons. everyone of us bears within himself a hidden quantity of neurosis and psychosis. what saves us from the insane asylum is perhaps only the circumstance that we hide our overvalued ideas or that so many persons share our folly and that the multitude accepts it as wisdom.
there are innumerable aphorisms, the crystallised precipitations of thousands of years, experience, that express this truth. “every man has his little crack, his dross and his sliver.” (in the german saying the overvalued idea is compared to a splinter in the brain. an excellent metaphor!) “if you see a fool take hold of your own ears.” “you cannot name a wise man who was not guilty of some folly.” (the reader will find ample material on this subject in dr. moenkenm?ller’s book on ‘mental disease and mental weakness in satire, proverb, and humour,’ published in 1907.) in other words: we all suffer from a false and subjective valuation of our ideas. we all drag overvalued ideas about with us.
it is the dream of all great minds to revise these overvalued ideas. nietzsche’s life work was a struggle with overvalued ideas. while so engaged, he himself became the victim of an overvalued idea, and his superman will forever remain a literary myth. but if the twilight of gods could once set in for the overvalued ideas then only could we do full justice to his rhapsodies in “beyond good and evil.” for in no other sphere is there such luxuriance of overvalued ideas as in the ethical. all progress has been brought about by the suppression of the natural impulses. all our education, using the word in its true sense, consists in investing our instincts and impulses with don’ts. the sum total of these inhibitions we call morality. progress consists in getting pleasure out of the inhibition, in converting the displeasure of being inhibited into ethical pleasure. the striving for this goal results in a kind of ethical burdening. one who has had the opportunity to study neurotics will be amazed at the many agonizing conscious pangs they suffer from owing to their ignorance of man’s true nature. these times pant under the burden of morality as an overvalued idea. they are in danger of asphyxiating under the ethical burden. a false and hypocritical morality, by disseminating an unhealthy conception of our dispositions (instincts), has turned our views on what constitutes sin topsy-turvy. the consequences are only too evident. on the one hand, we behold, as [pg 159]evidences of suppression, indulgence in frivolities, pleasure in the piquant, a delight in indelicate jokes, which forcibly intrude into life and art; on the other hand, as the natural reaction to this, an over-luxuriance of scientific and pseudo-scientific sexual literature. and all because morality became a ruinously overvalued idea. i do not wish to be misunderstood. morality will always remain the goal of noble souls, but only that kind of morality which harmonizes with man’s nature. where morality does violence to nature it becomes natural, and brings about not ethical freedom but ethical burdening.
but morality is not the only overvalued idea that turns the half of mankind into fools. if we survey the chaos of modern social life we shall easily find everywhere evidences of the endless disputes and irritating conflicts caused by overvalued ideas. scientists may prove that the theory of races is no longer tenable, that the asserted purity of races is a fable, etc. notwithstanding all that, the german workurka and the czech rustic are always at each other’s throats. why cite other examples? in racial, religious, national, and other discords it is always an overvalued idea that makes a harmonious evolution impossible. verily, the whole world is an insane asylum because the essential factor in delusions, an overvalued idea, pervades the air like infectious psychic germs.
will the world ever be better? from a [pg 160]survey of the past we are justified only in being coldly sceptical and discouragingly dubious. a conflict of ideas will continue as long as there are dissensions between human beings. ideas to wage a war for existence. a few survive longer than others, are highly esteemed till their course is run and are discovered to have been overvalued. but as long as they have the mastery they change credulous men into foolish children.
from this endless round there is no escape. and folly and wisdom lead the never-ending dance until the dark, wide open gates of the future swallow them.
