of the idealist for whom psychological reality only is interesting, and worthy of consideration. Warringer adds, “what is essential lies not in the gradation of the feeling, but pre-eminently in the feeling itself; that is to say, the inner movement, the intimate life, the unfolding of the Subject’s own activity; the value of a line or of a form, depends in our eyes on the biological value it holds for us; that which gives beauty is solely our own vital feeling, which we unconsciously project into it.” This view corresponds exactly with my own way of understanding the theory of the libido, in attempting to keep the true balance between the two psychological opposites of introversion and extraversion.
The polar opposite of sympathy is abstraction. The impulse of abstraction is conceived by Warringer “as the result of a great internal conflict of the human soul in the presence of the external world, and from the religious standpoint, it corresponds to a strong transcendental colouring of all the representations man has made to himself of reality.” We recognise clearly in this definition the primordial tendency to introversion. To the introverted type the universe does not appear beautiful and desirable, but disquieting, and even dangerous; it is a manifestation against which the subject puts himself on the defensive; he entrenches himself in his inner fastness, and fortifies himself therein by the invention of geometrical figures, full of repose, perfectly clear even in their minutest details, the primitive magic power of which assures him of domination over the surrounding world.
“The need of abstraction is the origin of all art,” says Warringer. Here is a great principle, which gains weighty confirmation from the fact that precocious dements reproduce forms and figures which present the closest analogy to those of primitive humanity, not only in their thoughts but also in their drawings.
We should recall that Schiller had already tried to formulate the same presentation in what he calls the Naive and Sentimental types. The latter is in quest of nature, whilst the former is itself “all nature.” Schiller also saw that these two types result from the predominance of psychological
