Hugo Münsterberg

“ The Italian is not to be disparaged for being unlike the American and for letting his eye rest on pleasing contours without asking what new undertakings could be devised to make reality express his own spirit of initiative. One must also not blame the American if he does not scrutinize his vistas with the eye of a Florentine, if he is not offended by the ugly remains of his nation’s past, the scaffolding of civilization, or if he looks at them with pride, noting how restlessly his countrymen have stuck to their work in order to shape a future from the past. ”

“ But shame upon him who wants to educate youth toward the view that man as an animal is the true man! If we educate at all, we educate in the service of culture and civilization. All building up of the youthful mind is itself service to human progress. But this human progress is not a mere growth of the animal race. It has its total meaning in the understanding of man as a soul, determined by purposes and ideals. Not the laws of physiology, but the demands of logic, ethics, æsthetics, and religion control the man who makes history and who serves civilization. ”

“ The spectator may not and ought not to be aware that the lines of the background, the hangings of the room, the curves of the furniture, the branches of the trees, the forms of the mountains, help to point toward the figure of the woman who is to hold his mind. The shading of the lights, the patches of dark shadows, the vagueness of some parts, the sharp outlines of others, the quietness of some parts of the picture as against the vehement movement of others all play on the keyboard of our mind and secure the desired effect on our involuntary attention. ”

“ We do buy the object that we do not need, and we do follow the advice which we ought to have reconsidered. And what would remain of art if it had not this power of suggestion by which it comes to us and wins the victory over every opposing idea? We believe the painter and we believe the novelist, if their technique is good. We do not remember that the inventions of their genius are contrary to our life experience; we feel sympathy with the hero and do not care in the least that he has no real life. The suggestion of art has inhibited in us every contrary idea. ”

“ In the midst of the panic or in the midst of the heroic enthusiasm no one has kept his own characteristic mental features. The individual no longer judges for himself; he is carried away, his own heart reverberates with the feelings of the whole crowd. The mass consciousness is not an adding up, a mere summation, of the individual minds, but the creation of something entirely new. Such a crowd may be pushed into any paths, chance leaders may use or misuse its increased suggestibility for any ends. No one can foresee whether this heaping up of men will bring good or bad results. ”

“ We have depicted the brighter side of the American sense of equality, and may now, with a few strokes, put in the shadows. No one has denied that there are unfortunate features, although some assert that they must be accepted or else more important advantages sacrificed. A stranger is at once struck by the tendency to uniformity which arises from the belief in general equality. The spirit of comradeship is unfavourable to individual differentiation, no matter whether it is a question of a man’s hat and necktie or his religion and his theory of the universe. ”

“ The work of art shows us the things and events perfectly complete in themselves, freed from all connections which lead beyond their own limits, that is, in perfect isolation.
Both the truth which the scholar discovers and the beauty which the artist creates are valuable; but it is now clear that the value in both cases lies not in the mere repetition of the offerings of reality. There is no reason whatever for appreciating a mere imitation or repetition of that which exists in the world. Neither the scholar nor the artist could do better than nature or history. ”

“ If society has the wish to force Sylvia to a decision in the opposite direction, only one way is open: to make the belief in the sacred value of virtue so deep and powerful that any mere reasoning and calculation loses its strength. But that is possible only through an education which relies on the instinctive respect and mystical belief. Only a policy of silence could have saved Sylvia, because that alone would have implanted in her mind an ineffable idea of unknown horrors which would await her when she broke the sacred ring of chastity. ”

“ With the expansion of the country has grown the individual’s love of expansion, his delight in undertaking new enterprises, not merely to hold his own, but to go on and to stake his honour and fortune and entire personality in the hope of realizing something as yet hardly dreamed of. Any Yankee is intoxicated with the idea of succeeding in a new enterprise; he plans such things at his desk in school, and the more venturesome they are the more he is fascinated.
Nothing is more characteristic of this adventurous spirit than the way in which American railroads have been projected. ”

“ We studied this unique feature of the film art when we spoke of the psychology of memory and imagination. With the full freedom of our fancy, with the whole mobility of our association of ideas, pictures of the past flit through the scenes of the present. Time is left behind. Man becomes boy; today is interwoven with the day before yesterday. The freedom of the mind has triumphed over the unalterable law of the outer world.
It is interesting to watch how playwrights nowadays try to steal the thunder of the photoplay and experiment with time reversals on the legitimate stage. ”

“ None of the traditions are dead; and any one who is not deceived by superficial impressions knows that the most essential traits of Boston and New England are the ones which, in respect to intellectual life, lead the nation. Quite as the marble Capitol at Washington is the symbol of the political power of America, and the sky-scrapers of lower Broadway are the symbol of America’s economic life, so we may say the elm-shaded college yard of Harvard is the symbol of American intellectual capacity and accomplishment. ”

“ All which really creates civilization and human progress depends upon symbols and belief. As soon as we make all those symbols of the historic community, all the ideals of honour and devotion, righteousness and beauty, glory and faithfulness, mere matters of scientific calculation, they stare us in the face as sheer absurdities; and yet we might again misname that as truth. Then it is the untruth which makes us free, it is the non-scientific, humanistic aspect which liberates us from the slavery of our low desires. ”

“ We enter into the play of those tones which with their intervals and their instrumental tone color appear like a wonderful mosaic of agreements and disagreements. Yet each disagreement resolves itself into a new agreement. Those tones seek one another. They have a life of their own, complete in itself. We do not want to change it. Our mind simply echoes their desires and their satisfaction. We feel with them and are happy in their ultimate agreement without which no musical melody would be beautiful. Bound by the inner law which is proclaimed by the first tones every coming tone is prepared. ”

“ But from the book-shelves of the millionaire to the carefully selected little shelf of the poor school-ma’am, from the monumental home of the national library to the modest little library building of every small village, from the nervous and rapid perusal of the scholar to the slow making-out of the working-man who pores over his newspaper on the street corner, or of the shop-girl with the latest novel in the elevated train, there is everywhere life and activity centring around the world of print, and this popularity of books is growing day by day. ”

“ When we sit in a real theater and see the stage with its depth and watch the actors moving and turn our attention hither and thither, we feel that those impressions from behind the footlights have objective character, while the action of our attention is subjective. Those men and things come from without but the play of the attention starts from within. Yet our attention, as we have seen, does not really add anything to the impressions of the stage. It makes some more vivid and clear while others become vague or fade away, but through the attention alone no content enters our consciousness. ”

“ If one does not purposely close one’s eyes, one cannot doubt that the public life of America holds certain abuses, which are against the spirit of the Constitution and which too often come near to being criminal. One can ask, to be sure, if that lack of conscience does not have place in every form of state in one way or another, and if the necessity of developing a sound public spirit to fight against abuse may itself not be an important factor in helping on the spirit of self-determination to victory. ”

“ Life pushes us forward. Yet sometimes a touch of nature comes to us; we are stirred by a thrill of life which awakens plenty of impulses but which offers satisfaction to all these impulses in itself. It does not lead beyond itself but contains in its own midst everything which answers the questions, which brings the desires to rest.
Wherever we meet such an offering of nature, we call it beautiful. We speak of the beautiful landscape, of the beautiful face. And wherever we meet it in life, we speak of love, of friendship, of peace, of harmony. ”

“ Economically to open up this gigantic country, to bring the fields and forests, rivers and mountains into the service of economic progress, to incite the millions of inhabitants to have new needs and to satisfy these by their own resourcefulness, to increase the wealth of the nation, and finally economically to rule the world and within the nation itself to raise the economic power of the individual to undreamt-of importance, has been the work which has fascinated the American. ”

“ Every change which is needed must be secured by our own mind. In our consciousness the attended hand must grow and the surrounding room must blur. But the stage cannot help us. The art of the theater has there its limits.
Here begins the art of the photoplay. That one nervous hand which feverishly grasps the deadly weapon can suddenly for the space of a breath or two become enlarged and be alone visible on the screen, while everything else has really faded into darkness. The act of attention which goes on in our mind has remodeled the surrounding itself. ”