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"They Were All Human Beings: So Much Is Plain": Reflections on Cultural Relativism in the
Humanities
Author(s): E. H. Gombrich
Source: Critical Inquiry, Vol. 13, No. 4 (Summer, 1987), pp. 686-699
Published by: University of Chicago Press
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"They Were All Human Beings-So Much
Is Plain": Reflections on Cultural Relativism
in the Humanities
E. H. Gombrich
I can never adequately thank you, dear Professor Sch6ne, for the wholly
unexpected and undeserved honour of your invitation to me, a nonGermanist,
to give the first plenary lecture at this gathering of specialists
in Germanic studies. I shall not even try to do so, for after all we have
come together for the purpose of discussing "old and new controversies."
In the fourth section of Goethe's ZahmeXenienwe find the quatrain
from which I have taken the theme of such an old and new controversy,
which, as I hope, concerns both Germanic studies and the other humanities:
"What was it that kept you from us so apart?"
I always read Plutarch again and again.
"And what was the lesson he did impart?"
"They were all human beings-so much is plain."'
In the very years when Goethe wrote these lines, that is in the 1820s,
Hegel repeatedly gave his lectures on the philosophy of history. Right
This essay was first delivered as an address to the Seventh International Congress of
Germanic Studies in G6ttingen, August 1985, and was published in Kontroversen,alte und
neue, Akten des VII. Internationalen Germanisten-Kongresses G6ttingen 1985 (Tiibingen,
1986), 1:16-28. The translation (including that of quotations) is by the author.
1. 'Was hat dich nun von uns entfernt?'
Hab immer den Plutarch gelesen.
'Was hast du denn dabei gelernt?'
'Sind eben alles Menschen gewesen.'
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, SaimtlicheWerke.Jubiltiums-ausgabein 40 BMinden(Stuttgart,
1902-7) 4:73; with commentary.
CriticalInquiry 13 (Summer 1987)
?1987 by E. H. Gombrich. All rights reserved. Permission to reprint may be obtained only from the author.
686
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CriticalInquiry Summer1987 687
at the beginning he formulated the opposite view which I should like
briefly to characterize as "cultural relativism."
Every age has such peculiar circumstances, such individual
conditions that it must be interpreted, and can only be interpreted,
by reference to itself.... Nothing is shallower in this respect than
the frequent appeal to Greek and Roman examples which so often
occurred among the French at the time of their Revolution. Nothing
could be more different than the nature of these peoples and the
nature of our own times.2
What is at issue here is not, of course, Hegel's assertion that ages
and peoples differ from each other. We all know that, and Goethe, the
attentive reader and traveller, also knew, for instance, that the Roman
carnival differed in its character from the celebrations of the Feast of
Saint Rochus at Bingen, both of which he had described so lovingly.
What makes the cultural historian into a cultural relativist is only the
conclusion which we saw Hegel draw, that cultures and styles of life are
not only different but wholly incommensurable, in other words that it
is absurd to compare the peoples of a region or an age with human
beings of other zones because there is no common denominator that
would justify us in doing so.
Friedrich Meinecke, who investigated the roots and the rise of this
conviction in his fundamental work, The Origins of Historism,3realised
2. See Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Vorlesungeniiberdie Philosophieder Geschichte,
Werke,20 vols. (Frankfurt-am-Main, 1969-79), 12:17.
3. See Friedrich Meinecke, DieEntstehungdesHistorismus(Munich, 1936). I have translated
Historismusas "historism" to avoid confusion between this belief in the incommensurability
of historical periods with the belief in the existence of compelling "lawsof history" which
Karl R. Popper has called "historicism." Unhappily his optimism proved unfounded when
he wrote in The Poverty of Historicism (London, 1957), "I have deliberately chosen the
somewhat unfamiliar label 'historicism.' By introducing it I hope I shall avoid merely verbal
quibbles; for nobody, I hope, will be tempted to question whether any of the arguments
here discussed really or properly or essentially belong to historicism, or what the word
'historicism' really or properly or essentially means" (pp. 3-4). On p. 17 of the same book
the author warns against the confusion I have wished to avoid.
E. H. Gombrich was director of the Warburg Institute and Professor
of the History of the Classical Tradition at the University of London
from 1959 to 1976. His many influential works include The Storyof Art,
Artand Illusion, Meditationson a HobbyHorse, TheSenseof Order,Idealsand
Idols, The Image and theEye, Tributes,Aby Warburg,arid New Light on Old
Masters.His previous contributions to CriticalInquiryinclude "The Museum:
Past,Present and Future"(Spring 1977), "Standardsof Truth: The Arrested
Image and the Moving Eye" (Winter 1980), and "Representation and
Misrepresentation" (December 1984).
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688 E. H. Gombrich CulturalRelativism
that Goethe was somewhat in two minds about this trend, though Meinecke
neither mentions the epigram about Plutarch nor the semi-humourous
verse which follows it in the Xenien:
To censure others Cato was prone
Himself he preferred not to sleep alone.4
The context makes it quite clear that the old sage of Weimar thought
he understood Cato only too well, for after all, he had learned from
Plutarch that they were all human beings, men and women of flesh and
bone like any of us.
It is of course this naive conviction which the cultural relativists are
proud to have left behind because they refused to acknowledge any
constants that would enable us to recognise the identical human nature
behind all changing appearances.5 Hegel would probably have pointed
out that Cato belonged to an earlier phase of the self-realization of the
Absolute than Goethe, Marx would have argued that the economic circumstances
of a slave-holding society must have resulted in a different
ideological superstructure than that of early capitalist Weimar, the archrelativist
Oswald Spengler would have emphatically denied that a product
of the Faustian civilization could have any access to a man of classical
antiquity, and a racial theorist, of course, would have pointed out that
the psyche of the Mediterranean race differed wholly from that of Nordic
Man, even if-as must be feared-Cato may not have had a dash of
inferior, that is, of Etruscan blood which would have certainly helped to
explain his sensual leanings.
I hope you will forgive me if I do not dwell at length on these theories
and pseudo-theories. He who wants to force an open door is likely to
fall flat on his face and if he tries to force a bolted door the result may
be even more unpleasant. What concerns me is only the situation which
arises for the humanities from the extirpation of the notion of man from
our vocabulary on the ground that, in contrast to the concepts that occur
in the natural sciences, this notion does not describe anything tangible
or clearly defined.6
Nobody has wrestled more with this problem than Wilhelm Dilthey
who contributed so much to the orientation of the humanities, especially
in Germany. However much Dilthey referred to psychology for its value
4. Cato wollte wohl andere strafen;
Selbander mocht' er gerne schlafen.
5. For the following see also Maurice H. Mandelbaum, History,Man, and Reason: A
Studyin Nineteenth-CenturyThought(Baltimore, 1971), and W. Brtickner, "Der Mensch als
Kulturwesen," in WieerkenntderMenschdie Welt?ed. M. Lindauer and A. Sch6pf (Stuttgart,
1984), pp. 177-95.
6. See Hans Erich B6decker, "Menschheit," in LexikongeschichtlicherGrundbegriffe,ed.
Otto Brunert, Werner Conze, and Reinhart Koselleck (Stuttgart, 1982), pp. 1063-1128.
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CriticalInquiry Summer1987 689
to the study of human culture he still questioned the justification of
basing his research on the nature of man. "The individual"-he wrote
for instance-"is merely a nodal point of cultural systems, of organisations
which are inextricably intertwined with its existence; how could it then
offer a basis for understanding?"'7In contrast to the natural scientist the
humanist must therefore forgo causal explanations, the discovery of valid
laws. He is not concerned with explanation but with understanding, with
hermeneutics, a branch of knowledge still to be established which should
enable us, who are subject to constant change, nevertheless to interpret
the changing realities of other forms of human life.8
We must certainly be grateful to Dilthey and his followers for having
drawn the conclusion from the doctrines of historism that the humanist
will always have to be interested in the individual and nonrepeatable
fact. Even so, I do not think that we humanists should allow anyone to
forbid us occasionally to look up from our detailed research, indeed from
turning round and asking in which wider context the problem we have
in hand might be seen? How much and how often we do that may be a
matter of temperament, but if we are honest with ourselves, we will also
realise that even the original choice of our subjectfor research presupposes
an explicit or implicit scientific theory.
I need hardly dwell on the fact that these are questions which have
become very topical today in many of the fields of our enquiry. On the
one hand ideologies have gained an increasing hold over them, on the
other the wish to do without any theoretical framework has landed the
humanities in a cul-de-sac. What I have in mind, above all, is the demand
that has been raised during the last few decades that not only the search
for explanations but even the striving for understanding should be thrown
onto the scrap heap. For now Man as such is to be altogether removed
from our field of vision, we confront only the text, and whatever sense
we may make of it is and remains our own sense and not the one intended
by the author.9 What Goethe found in the text of Plutarch, and what we
in our turn find in the verse I have quoted remains in the last analysis
our own business. Cultural relativism has led to the jettisoning of the
most precious heritage of all scholarly work, the claim of being engaged
in a quest for the truth. Since the testimonies of the past must no longer
be regarded as testimonies, our concern with them cannot be much more
7. See Wilhelm Dilthey, "Der Aufbau der geschichtlichen Welt in den Geisteswissenschaften,"
GesammelteSchriften,ed. Bernhard Groethuysen (Leipzig and Berlin, 1927), 7:251.
See also Gerhard Bauer, 'Geschichtlichkeit':Wegeund Irrwegeeines Begriffs(Berlin, 1963).
8. See Hans-Georg Gadamer, Wahrheitund Methode: Grundziigeeiner philosophischen
Hermeneutik(Tiibingen, 1965).
9. See Harold Bloom, Paul de Man, Jacques Derrida, Geoffrey Hartman, and J. Hillis
Miller, Deconstructionand Criticism(New York, 1979). For further bibliography and criticism
see also M. H. Abrams, A Glossaryof LiteraryTerms,4th ed. (New York, 1981).
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690 E. H. Gombrich CulturalRelativism
than a clever game that does not serve knowledge but simply the display
of intellectual acrobatics.
I do not want to enumerate all the tendencies which aim today to
cooperate in this enterprise of deconstruction. The catalogue of Greek
ships in the Iliad is not its most entertaining section and a roll call of the
academic warlords who are aiming at dismantling the citadel of our
studies would hardly be more amusing. Thus I will limit myself to introducing
you to one of the myrmidons because his battle cry suits my
books so very well. I am thinking of the valiant warrior Norbert Bolz
whose paper "Odds and Ends: From Man to Myth" culminates, after
dutiful obeisance to the tribal heroes Heidegger, Lacan, Levi-Strauss,
Adorno, and Richard Wagner, in the sentence "for Man does not exist."'1
Could it not be that the author confused homosapienswith the snark of
Lewis Carroll?
Joking apart, I know very well that it may also be due to my age
that I can make so little sense of the canonical texts of that movement,
but since I am not a relativist I still do not believe that every generation
has its own truths. I prefer to rely on my contemporary, that great student
of literature, M. H. Abrams, who has concerned himself intensely with
this school of thought and has come to the conclusion that it must be
considered an ephemeral intellectual fad." It probably appeals to the
young because it permits its followers to look down on the poor uninitiated
who not only believe in Father Christmas and in the stork but even in
Man and in Reason. It adds a lot to one's self-respect if one has learned
to see that all this is humbug, a fairy tale for children, which we have
long outgrown. It is an opinion-I believe-which sounds doubly convincing
because it is undeniable that in our reading of texts we inevitably
run the danger of misunderstandings. Whoever is afraid of doing so can
now comfortably withdraw into scepticism and dismiss any striving for
understanding as naive and obsolete.
Well, the insight "to err is human" is not new, nor do I think that
it should make us despair of progress in knowledge. Such despair only
arises when we expect too much. The demand of "all or nothing" which
may appeal to the young must be countered on the part of the mature
humanist by the reminder that we must practise a little humility. You
may perhaps discern in this advice the voice of my friend Karl Popper
and you would be right."2 He has convinced me that neither in the
sciences nor in the humanities must we aim at total solutions but that
10. See Norbert W. Bolz, "'Odds and Ends': Vom Menschen zum Mythos," in Mythos
und Moderne:Begriffund Bild einerRekonstruktion,ed. Karl Heinz Bohrer (Stuttgart, 1982).
11. See Abrams, "Literary Criticism in America: Some New Directions," in Theoriesof
Criticism,ed. Abrams and Jessie Ackerman, Occasional Papers of the Council of Scholars
of the Library of Congress, no. 2 (Washington, D.C., 1984).
12. See Popper, Conjecturesand Refutations:TheGrowthof ScientificKnowledge(London,
1963), ObjectiveKnowledge:An EvolutionaryApproach(Oxford, 1972), and UnendedQuest:An
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CriticalInquiry Summer1987 691
we still have the right to go on asking and searching, because we can
learn from our mistakes. I believe that this also applies to our efforts at
understanding other peoples, other civilizations,and other ages. No doubt
it is fallacious to conclude from the fact that they were all human beings
that they must also have thought and felt as we do. Ethnology has long
confirmed that some institutions and ideas of remote tribes are harder
to understand than others. Here the influence of cultural relativism must
certainly be welcomed, that is where it restrains us in applying our own
cultural standards to other societies. And yet even here exaggerations
must be avoided, for the negation of all standards can only lead ad
absurdum.I am thinking of the much discussed argument which denies
us the right of attributing any influence on reality to widespread magical
practises, since our notion of reality is rooted in our language and our
culture and therefore not applicable beyond these narrow confines.'3
One is tempted to ask whether these arguments are more than examples
of modish gamesmanship. In any case in ethnology there are certain
correctives which prevent relativism from dominating the entire field.
After all, travellers have seen their foreign fellow-humans laugh and
weep, play and quarrel; anyone who has been lucky enough to see films
and snapshots of the life and behaviour of totally isolated tribes, such as
those Irenaus Eibl-Eibesfeldt has brought home and used to illustrate
his recent book TheBiologyofHuman Behaviour,can no longer doubt that
certain human reactions are indeed universal.'4
The historian frequently lacks these controls. He must essentially
rely on the testimonies of the past which tradition and coincidence have
preserved for us, documents of legal practice, of literature, art, and
religious cults. Small wonder that the encounter with these testimonies
of a vanished style of life have focused attention particularly on the
variability of Man. Nature abhors a vacuum and the same applies to the
human mind. Where testimonies are absent, the imagination takes over
to fill the void and thus we come to fashion the image of people in past
ages on the impression which we derive from their art. Hearing or reading
of Man in classical antiquity or of "Gothic Man" (particularly in German
writings) we automatically visualize a typical figure we remember from
the art of these ages.
IntellectualAutobiography(London, 1976). For the problem area of this essay see ThePoverty
of Historicism. For bibliographies, see The Philosophy of Karl Popper, ed. P. A. Schilpp
(La Salle, Ill., 1974) and A PocketPopper, ed. David Miller (London, 1983).
13. See Peter Winch, "Understanding a PrimitiveSociety,"AmericanPhilosophicalQuarterly
1 (1964): 307-24; reprinted in Rationality,ed. B. R. Wilson (Oxford, 1970), where other
contributions to this debate can be found. See also Rationalityand Relativism, ed. Martin
Hollis and Steven Lukes (Oxford, 1982)
14. See Irenaius Eibl-Eibesfeldt, Die Biologie des MenschlichenVerhaltens:Grundrissder
Humanethologie(Munich, 1984).
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692 E. H. Gombrich CulturalRelativism
Great humanists such as Johan Huizinga and Ernst Robert Curtius
have warned us against this type of mental short-cutwhich I have described
as "the physiognomic fallacy."'5 I must admit that my own field of study,
the history of art, has been responsible for many such misunderstandings
whenever it claimed that the style of every period can and must be
interpreted as a symptom or-as the saying goes-as the expression of
the spirit of the particular age or nation. Thus the champion of expressionism
in art history, Wilhelm Worringer, declared seventy-five years
ago in his book Der Geistder Gotik(The Gothic Spirit) quite consistently:
"For art history Man as such can exist as little as can Art as such. These
are ideological prejudices which condemn the psychology of mankind to
sterility." And thus the decoration and drapery style of medieval works
of art suggested to him the surprising conclusion: "Nordic Man is a
stranger to rest and tranquility; his whole creative power is concentrated
on the idea of unbridled and unchecked movement."16 He obviously
never asked himself whether the notion of a whole population of "Fidgety
Phils" can be confirmed from other types of evidence, indeed whether
his diagnosis is not refuted by the art of the Van Eycks, Vermeer, or
Caspar David Friedrich who, after all, were presumably also "Nordic
Men." What has been called the hermeneutic circle, the search for the
confirmation of the initial intuition, degenerates simply into a circular
argument if only allegedly supporting evidence is admitted. Thus the
rendering of space in a certain style is being explained by reference to
the way the world was "seen"in that period which, in its turn, is supposed
to account for the peculiarities of representation--and nobody asked
whether people who did not know our kind of perspective were also
incapable (as a psychologist once asked wittily) of hiding behind a column
if they did not want to be seen,17 or whether the Chinese whose painting
gets along without the contrast between light and shade are really not
in the position of seeking refuge under a shady tree on a hot summer's
day.
I believe the fallacies which tempted art history to adopt cultural
relativism also occur in other fields of the humanities; I mean the inference
ex silentio, the idea that the life and thought of the past can only have
exhibited those features which are also known to us from artistic manifestation.
A classicalphilologist once notoriously suggested that the ancient
Greeks must have been colour-blind since they had so few words for
colours. Admittedly one would then have to conclude that we are also
colour-blind since our languages have infinitely fewer names than hues
15. See my "Art and Scholarship," "Meditationson a HobbyHorse"and OtherEssayson
the Theoryof Art (London, 1963).
16. See Wilhelm Worringer, Der Geistder Gotik(Munich, 1910), pp. 10, 50.
17. It was M. H. Pirenne, the author of Optics,Painting, and Photography(Cambridge,
1970). See also my Art and Illusion: A Studyin thePsychologyof PictorialRepresentation(New
York, 1960).
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CriticalInquiry Summer1987 693
we can perceive. The conclusion of course is based on a misunderstanding
of the nature of language, because language must be selective if it is to
serve the function of communication. To be sure this varied selectivity
of language poses enormous difficulties to the translator, and yet I must
again agree with Popper who has warned us in this connection not to
confuse a difficulty with an impossibility. However hard it may often be
to render the meaning of a sentence in another language, and however
much we may have to resort to glosses and roundabout explanations,
the sense can be made accessible even though it may entail a loss in
neatness and elegance.'8
I need hardly explain that works of great literaturefrom other periods
and civilizations confront us with similar difficulties. The concepts, the
human relationships, the institutions of which they speak stand constantly
in need of laborious explanations. But the effort that we expend on these
tasks should not tempt us to equate the world which we encounter in
the poetry and prose of foreign civilizations with the everyday reality
from which they sprang. What applies to language, after all, applies even
more to the means of these art forms: the topoi,the types we encounter
in these texts never reflect the infinite variety of experience but rather
the autonomous traditions of literary genres. A book such as Auerbach's
Mimesis has shown us to what extent new means of expression become
receptive to new experiences, but even where they do not enter into
literature we have no right to assume that these experiences never occurred
in everyday life.19 Admittedly we cannot know this for certain. It is clear
that the text of Plutarchis also dependent on the traditionsand conventions
of the ancient world and leaves many questions unanswered which might
perhaps have interested a modern psychoanalyst. Goethe's remark "They
were all human beings" does not formulate an ultimate truth so much
as a hypothesis. We might describe it as a working hypothesis or perhaps
as a heuristic principle,20 because I believe it is always worthwhile to
make the initial assumption that even in foreign countries and in distant
ages we have to do with people who are not all that different from
ourselves-even though this assumption may occasionally fail to stand
a further test.
Perhaps I may here insert a little anecdote which should illustrate
my conviction more clearly than lengthy methodological reflections. I
am thinking of a discussion about the intellectual historyof the Renaissance
in which I was provoked to the remark that one should not treat "Renaissance
Man" as a separate species, and was tempted to say that I was
18. See Popper, "The Myth of the Framework," in TheAbdicationof Philosophyand the
Public Good:Essaysin Honour of P. A. Schilpp,ed. Eugene Freeman (La Salle, Ill., 1976).
19. See Erich Auerbach, Mimesis:DargestellteWirklichkeitin derabendliindischeLiteratur
(Bern, 1970); in English, Mimesis: The Representationof Reality in WesternLiterature,trans.
Willard R. Trask (Princeton, N.J., 1953).
20. See E. D. Hirsch, Jr., TheAimsof Interpretation(Chicago, 1976), esp. p. 32.
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694 E. H. Gombrich CulturalRelativism
sure that these people too liked to stay in bed in the morning. It was a
risky assertion but I was undeservedly lucky, for I was able to tell my
opponent at the next occasion that Leonardo da Vinci describes symbolic
carvings on Tuscan bedsteads which are intended to warn lazy sleepers
not to waste too much time there, "particularly in the morning when
one is rested and sober and should be ready for fresh exertions."21
What I am driving at is the simple insight that in speaking of Man
one must not lose sight of Old Adam, that Old Adam who insists on the
satisfaction of those drives which all people have in common. True, the
way in which various cultures try to cope with the insistent clamour of
our natural instincts is subject to countless variations,22 but whatever
particular solution may have been adopted, no style of life is conceivable
in which the tension between the urge for satisfaction and the pressures
of cultural demands fails to find expression. Literature, above all, has
frequently concerned itself with these tensions. Think of the contrasting
figures of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, the one whose head has been
turned by the ideals of his culture, the other who has remained enough
of a peasant to know what he wants, exactly like Tamino and Papageno
in Mozart'sMagic Flute. The ancient Indian drama also knows of a similar
contrast between the noble hero who speaks Sanskrit and a comic figure
by name of Vidushaka who, despite belonging to the Brahmin caste,
speaks the popular language of Prakrit and is always out to indulge his
stomach.
When speaking of the difficulties that exist in understanding foreign
cultures and their values we must not omit therefore to take account of
important differences in this respect. As children of nature we are all
much more alike than in the spheres of the highest refinement. It is not
for nothing that Mephistopheles says to Faust: "The worst company will
make you feel that you are a man among men," and since it is the devil
who speaks we may understand him to say: "Preciselythe worst company."
Indeed we then hear him remark in Auerbach's tavern, "Justwatch and
see how splendidly bestiality will reveal itself." Beneath the all-too-human
there is the layer of animality:
We feel so barbarously well
As fifty thousand swine.23
21. See TheLiteraryWorksofLeonardoda Vinci,ed. J. P. Richter, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1939),
1:385.
22. See Heinz Hartmann, Ernst Kris, and Rudolph M. Loewenstein, "Some Psychoanalytic
Comments on 'Culture and Personality,' " PsychologicalIssues 4, no. 2 (1964): 86-
116.
23. Uns ist ganz kannibalisch wohl
Als wie fuinfhundert Saiuen.
This and the preceding quotations come from Goethe's Faust I, SiimtlicheWerke,13:66, 94.
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CriticalInquiry Summer1987 695
We need not forget, however, that the opportunity for this kind of
regression is also specific to a given civilization. Some civilizations forbid
the consumption of alcohol and they know of no open carousals of this
kind. For Goethe and his contemporaries, on the other hand, there were
also more noble ways to achieve freedom from the normal constraints
of culture:
And big and small shout with delight
To be a man here is my right.24
"Here" is of course in the freedom of nature outside the city, and this
feeling of liberation is again specific to a given culture. Maybe it did not
exist before Rousseau, though the tradition of the idyll reminds us that
the life of the shepherd, close to nature, had long before been idealised
by the town-dweller who longed for a form of existence remote from
the pressures and cares of civilization. We others, if we may believe
Schiller, can only throw off this burden in privileged moments. I am of
course thinking of his "Ode to Joy":
With your spell you can restore
What strict fashion now divides
Men are brothers as before
Where your gentle wing abides.25
Where Schiller here speaks of "fashion" (Mode)he refers to convention,
in other words what the Greeks called thesisin contradistinction to physis,
nature: Free from the constraints of convention, the poet says, all human
beings are alike.
Maybe the Age of Reason has rightly been accused of oversimplifying
this contrast, but it is to this sublime simplification that we owe the
concepts of the Rights of Man and Humanitait.On the other hand this
simplification also explains in its turn the reaction of "historism" which
did not have to wait for Hegel.
Today, after two hundred years, it should be obvious that the polarity
of convention versus nature is certainly insufficient to do justice to the
infinite variety of cultural life. Our biological inheritance consists less of
overt traits than of dispositions which can be developed or atrophied in
the life of the community. Neither among animals nor among humans
24. Zufrieden jauchzet gross und klein
Hier bin ich Mensch, hier darf ich's sein.
Goethe, "Vor dem Thor," Faust I, SiimtlicheWerke,13:40.
25. Deine Zauber binden wieder,
Was die Mode streng geteilt,
Alle Menschen werden Bruider,
Wo dein sanfter Fltigel weilt.
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696 E. H. Gombrich CulturalRelativism
are all these developments reversible. Some behaviour patterns really
become second nature and create certain human types with their own
mentalities and their own possibilities and limitations. The humanist who
is interested in these complex processes will have to turn to psychology,
for however many schools and problem areas there may exist in that
science, they are all governed by Alexander Pope's dictum: "The proper
study of mankind is Man." True, since psychology aims at being a science
it must not submit to any dogma, not even to the dogma of the unity of
mankind, yet I for one side with those of my contemporaries who oppose
relativism.26 I believe with them that we must start from the hypothesis
that there are indeed constants in the psyche of Man with which the
humanist can reckon. Naturally we must not expect too much. It may
sound trivialto say that the enjoyment of rhythmical movement is common
to all normal human beings, but without this basic disposition we would
not have the various types of dance, or those refined forms of rhythm
which have so marvellously blossomed forth in Western and in Indian
music, and have also led to ever-fresh miraclesin the poetry of all nations.27
I am convinced that the visual arts also rest in a similar way on
biological foundations. Like the disposition for rhythmical orders which
here manifests itself in the decorative art of all peoples, so the pleasure
in light and splendour is common to us all. Man is a phototropic creature;
if he were photophobic, like the termites he would always have shunned
the light. Thus radiant splendour, sparkle, and glitter have always been
seen as the prerogative of secular and religious power out to impress
and to overawe. Admittedly it would be wholly misleading to try to
explain the origins of art exclusively with reference to these inborn positive
reactions. Only the interaction between fulfilment and denial, between
the delay of satisfaction and the surpassing of expectation leads to what
we call art, and for this to happen it needs a developed tradition and a
universal admiration of masters who can control such psychological effects.
But however varied these structures and these sequences may be which
result from such an interplay of elements, they all operate within fields
of tensions which derive their energy from the original polarityof universal
human reactions. In any social community every colour, every sound,
and naturally also every word has a feeling tone which determines its
exact position within this system. It goes without saying that these various
systems will not be accessible to the outsider without an effort of empathy
and yet there is much evidence to suggest that they all share a sufficient
number of features to justify us in making the attempt. Quite generally
it can be said that every one of the so-called sense modalities tends to
evoke resonances in other senses and that this type of correspondence
facilitates understanding. The universal capacity of language to resort
26. See Justin Stagl, Kulturanthropologieund Gesellschaft(Munich, 1974), p. 120.
27. See my TheSenseof Order:Studiesin thePsychologyofDecorativeArt (Oxford, 1979).
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CriticalInquiry Summer1987 697
to synaesthetic metaphors must be due to this inborn disposition.28 In
German we say "helle Freude," the English speak of "a bright hope,"
and Eibl-Eibesfeldt reports that among the Eipos of New Guinea there
is an expression for joy, "the sun shines on my breast." If the termites
had a language they would have to speak of "darkjoy," of a "gloomy
hope," and of "night descending on their antennae," for they shun the
light. The inhabitants of tropical climates naturally prefer coolness to
warmth, and so Indians would rather be coolly than warmly received,
but even so the Gita likens the Divine to the light of a thousand suns.
Far be it from me to want to send the practitioners of Germanic
studies on a hunting expedition after psychological literature on the
metaphor, a literature which may still have to be written.29 For as I
discovered to my surprise and admiration, these insights have long since
been laid down in the canonical text of their studies to which I can refer
you-I mean the German Dictionary founded by Jacob and Wilhelm
Grimm. It was a fortunate accident that prompted me to search this book
for examples of synaesthetic metaphors which I wanted to use to illustrate
my belief in the universal validity of certain psychological reactions. I
had not expected the wealth of treasures which lies hidden there for the
psychologist of expression.
I must recommend to you to read up the term siiss (sweet) in that
dictionary, though you may have to take a day off for the purpose. The
entry with its derivations runs to at least seventy-eight columns. But right
at the beginning we are presented with an important insight. We learn
that the word siissdid not originally signify a taste which was subsequently
applied to other sensory modalities such as a sweet smile, sweet harmonies,
or sweet rest; on the contrary, the word appears originally to have been
synonymous with soft to the touch, mild or pleasurable, that is, it refers
to that positive pole of our sensations of which I spoke, and it is for this
reason that it also signifies the taste which is biologically pleasing. However,
this narrower meaning only became fixed in contrast to other tastes, that
is, to bitter and sour, which in their turn point to further ranges of
feeling. But the dictionary also throws much light on the reaction of
surfeit, which is of such psychological and aesthetic importance. Here it
is the derivative siisslich(roughly corresponding to the English "syrupy")
which received a pejorative connotation, most of all since the eighteenth
century when the term begins to express revulsion. It thus anticipates
28. For these problems see also my articles "Visual Metaphors of Value in Art,"
"Expression and Communication," and "The Cartoonist's Armoury" in "Meditationson a
HobbyHorse" as well as "Verbal Wit as a Paradigm of Art: The Aesthetic Theories of
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)," in Tributes:Interpretersof Our Cultural Tradition(Oxford,
1984), pp. 93-115.
29. See L. E. Marks, The Unityof theSenses:InterrelationsamongtheModalities(London,
1978), and C. E. Osgood, "The Cross-Cultural Generality of Visual-Verbal Synaesthetic
Tendencies," Behavioral Science 5 (1960).
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698 E. H. Gombrich CulturalRelativism
the meaning of kitschig(roughly "chocolate-boxy" or "cloying") which,
in its turn, has reacted back on the overtones of the word "sweet." We
no longer much like to use it as a term of aesthetic approval. After all
we live in an age in which the dread of being kitschighas assumed endemic
proportions, while it especially welcomes artistic creations which go, as
it were, against the grain.
It would be much to be welcomed if the study of comparative literature
could be extended to embrace a comparative study of expression in which
the meaning of metaphors might offer a bridge into the wide and fascinating
field of synaesthetics for which psychology is competent. But that is music
of the future. Rather than losing myself even further I propose to resort
to an example which might help me to sum up what was and is my
essential point.
The first two stanzas of a poem by Simon Dach dating from the year
1638 will, I hope, not be unwelcome in this context since they will bring
us back to Germanic studies. Its title runs "The Bridegroom to His Dearly
Beloved Bride on Her First Visit to His House":
Welcome, welcome, you my treasure
You, the solace of my heart.
Oh what sunshine and what pleasure
Does your presence here impart.
Splendours blaze across this house
Which your golden rays arouse.
Everything will bid you greeting
There is not a brick or tile
Which delighted at this meeting
Will not hail you with a smile,
Where the walls which you behold
You will soon turn into gold.30
No doubt the trained student of German literature will be able first
to explain to us how this poem relates to the tradition of the epithalamia
30. Seid mir tausendmal willkommen,
Ihr mein Trost und Sonnenschein!
Ach, was Segen, Heil und Frommen
K6mmt mit euch, mein Licht, herein!
Welch ein Glanz bricht durch mein Haus
Jetzt mit giildnen Strahlen aus!
Alles beut euch dar die Hainde,
Nichts bei mir ist so erstarrt,
Das nicht laichle;ja die Wainde
Merken eure Gegenwart,
Eure, die ihr sie in Gold
Bald hernach verkehren sollt.
Simon Dach, Gedichte,ed. Walther Ziesemer, 4 vols. (Halle, 1936-38), vol. 1, no. 49; with
commentary. I have here modernised the spelling.
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CriticalInquiry Summer1987 699
and which position it occupies within the work of Dach. He will also be
able to tell us that the poet put these words into the mouth of a wealthy
contemporary who had commissioned him to write them. We can therefore
agree with those of our colleagues who insist that it is always the text
that matters and not the alleged sentiment of the author to which we
really have no access. But this does not mean that the text is fair game
and that we must grant it to deconstructionists that the line "Splendours
blaze across this house" might also be interpreted as alluding to a conflagration,
which might possibly impress a fanatical Freudian as a symptom
of anxiety that the bride might destroy the bachelor's cosy mode of
life-nor that we should allow an orthodox Marxistto discern an indication
that she might want to sell the house-since we read that she "will soon
turn" the walls "into gold."
Speaking seriously, we need not permit anyone to deprive us of our
conviction that we can enjoy and understand these fine lines as they were
intended to be understood, quite irrespective of the fact that the middleclass
culture of the so-called Baroque Age differed so widely from our
own style of life. For what use would be our imagination if it could not
close such a gap?3'
The cultural relativist is still welcome to remind us that the situation
from which this poem springs would be even harder to understand in a
society where the abduction or the purchase of brides is the norm and
where nobody lives in houses. For if these barriers were really quite
insurmountable in principle we would have to take leave forever of
Goethe's dream of a "world literature." He could never have coined this
beautiful term if his reading of Homer and of Shakespeare, of Hafez,
Kalidasa, and finally of Plutarch, had not convinced him "They were all
human beings-so much is plain."
31. On the legitimate role of the imagination in the humanities, see also my address
to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, "Focus on the Arts and Humanities,"
Tributes(Oxford, 1984), pp. 11-27.
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