It cannot, I think, be without importance for the history of science or without interest for psycho-analysts that a distinguished contemporary of Professor Freuds, Professor E Metschnikoff, should have produced independently somewhat similar ideas in certain directions. The most interesting and most important similarity lies in Metschnikoffs formulation of the idea of a Todestrieb. Before dealing with this I may remind the reader of the more important facts concerning Metschnikoffs life and works, drawing attention at the same time to other points of similarity and dissimilarity. I shall take the liberty of assuming that references to Freuds works are unnecessary.
Elie Metschnikoff was born in 1845 of Russian Jewish parents. He died in Paris in 1916. He studied natural sciences in Cracow (18621864) and then started a life of research, which took him to Italy, Switzerland and Germany. Influenced by Darwins Origin of Species, his early work was mainly directed towards finding additional proof for the general theory of evolution in the invertebrate kingdom. The rather lucky discovery of phagocytosis in 1882 brought him first notoriety and, later, fame, as the discovery proved to be of first-class importance for the future development of pathology. The years from 1888 until his death were spent in Paris at the Pasteur institution, where he did very valuable work on phagocytosis, immunity, cholera, syphilis, and the pathology of old age, work which received only its due recognition when he shared the Nobel Prize with P Ehlrich in 1908. He was made an honorary doctor of science of Cambridge University in 1891 and an honorary doctor of medicine of the military academy of St Petersburg in 1909, besides being an honorary member of seven scientific academies.
In the latter part of his life (in Paris) he began to apply to the general problems of life the scientific method that had served him so well in the limited field of detailed scientific research. Then at last he could give his love for speculation a freer rein. Darwins theory was again the starting point for his line of thought in this wider field. He considered man a type of intelligent anthropoid abortion, capable of going very far indeed.1 As witness to this origin man carried with him a collection of physical and psychical disharmonies,2 which were the chief cause of human unhappiness. He believed that there was no inevitable tendency towards progress3 in nature and that man himself must free himself from his disharmonies.
He had been an atheist from an early age and talked so much about it that he earned at college the nickname, God is not. Later, in his book Etudes sur la nature humaine (1903), he attacked religion with true biological vigour, especially those ideas concerned with the immortality of the soul and the life after death.4 He considered that religion represented a primitive attempt on the part of man to resolve these disharmonies,5 which had been a complete failure.6 Metaphysics, in his opinion, represented another such attempt with which he dealt in a similar cavalier manner.7 He believed that neither of them had been in the least effective in dealing with the three chief human disharmonies: the fear of death, disturbances in sex life, and disease, more especially pathological old age. He believed that neither religion nor the systems of the metaphysicians could solve the problems of human happiness and human death, and that science alone could carry out this task.8 If it is true that one cannot live without faith, then that faith must be faith in the power of science.9
Metschnikoff at first considered sexual difficulties of great but nevertheless of secondary importance in the causation of human unhappiness. The fear of death was, in his opinion, the greatest disharmony; but as he grew older the sexual achieved, perhaps paradoxically, an ever increasing importance in his eyes.
In an early article, The Time of Marriage (1872), he discussed the effect of the increasing lateness of marriage on mans adolescence. He came to the conclusion that it produced a dangerous period of disharmony which was reflected in the suicide statistics. In the Etudes sur la nature humaine he discussed the disharmonies which can appear in the sexual function during the period of development; he mentioned the frequency of perversions and substitute satisfactions and the disproportion between mental desire and physical capability. He believed that the Church, frightened by the frequency of the deviations from the normal, had decided to suppress it as far as possible, and to announce the doctrine of original sin.10 He contrasted the results of this type of remedy with those which he believed would be made possible by a scientific study of the subject.
In his later book Essais optimistes (1907) he called attention to the connection between sex and both intellectual and artistic talents. The truth is that artistic genius and genius in general are intimately connected with sex.11 And The indisputable connections that exist between intellectual activity and sex.12 When he died he was at work on another book, dealing exclusively with sex in its various manifestations. Only the first chapter, unfortunately, was sufficiently finished for it to be published.13 In this chapter he expounded the theory that ideas about sex had been falsified through fear of venereal disease, at a time when no one knew how to avoid or cure such diseases. He attempted to shew (sic) that the religious condemnation of sex was based on this fear. The rest of the book (he had spoken of it in great detail to his wife) was to have consisted of ideas for the rationalization of sex life in general, especially as regards education and marriage. Another section was to have been devoted to the detailed study of the role of sex in the life of genius. To this end he had studied many biographies, including Rousseaus Confessions and the Nouvelle Heloise.
The fear of death was in his opinion the greatest source of human unhappinessthe most important disharmony. He found this fear so universal that he considered that it deserved the name instinctive.14 He assumed it to be one aspect of the instinct de la vie.15 He noted that this instinct, as regards the effect of satisfaction, differed from all others, e.g. in contrast to satiety from eating, the more one lived the more one wanted to live.16 He set to work to solve this disharmony by a scientific study of old age and death. He reached the following conclusions:
On this evidence he brought forward the theory that if one attained to the normal span of life (he estimated it at about 100 years) the desire to live would slowly disappear and be replaced by a desire for deatha desire to return whence one had come. If this longer healthier life should really produce this instinct de la mort at its end, and thus rob death of its horrors, then he considered the greatest disharmony would be resolved. He remained more optimistic than sceptical about the possibility of bringing this latent instinct to the light of day. This instinct lies latent in the depths of human nature. Shall we find a means to bring it forth?21 He answered that only science could decide. He considered it also possible that the instinct de la vie might change from one extreme to another, as in the case of love and hate, and in the changes in the sense of taste which go on during a childs development,22 and so produce the effects of the instinct de la mort.
At the end of Essais optimistes he leaves the realm of science and adopts a definite Weltanschauung. He made the important point that scientific knowledge could be utilized to produce any required end. He considered it therefore necessary to chose a particular ideal. This ideal ... is the orthobiosis, that is to say, mans development, with its object a long, active and vigorous old age, leading to the final period of satiety with life and desire for death.23
Several similarities between Professor Metschnikoff and Professor Freud are at once apparent. Both were scientists, beginning with detailed biological research in a limited field. Later, with increasing belief in the value of the method, they both began to apply it to the greater problems of life, shewing at the same time an increasing love of speculation. (Though in the formers case the speculation did not begin with the same abruptness as with Professor Freud.)
The results of this application are also in the two cases not dissimilar. Both dismissed religion as worthless and philosophy as of secondary importance. Both emphasized, though to a varying extent, the importance of sex in all fields of life. Both denied the existence of tendency towards progress in nature. Both agreed in believing in the sole importance of science as a means of obtaining knowledge for the purpose of intellectual understanding and for discovering methods to resolve the disharmonies or, in Professor Freuds language, in the primate of the intellect.
One sees, on the other hand, a general difference in Professor Metschnikoffs use of physiological standards as opposed to Professor Freuds psychological ones, e.g. his standard of normality for the sexual function: that desire should run parallel with the physiological ripeness of the sperm. Another general, and perhaps paradoxical, difference lies in their attitude towards their theoriesmore especially in the case of the death instincts. Professor Metschnikoff, a pure scientist, no doctor, was interested in his because of the hope it brought to othersand to himselfwhile Professor Freud, the doctor, is interested in his as representing a simplification of the Trieblehre. It is in keeping with this that Professor Metschnikoff should adopt a definite Weltsanschauunga liberty which Professor Freud refuses. The similarity, too, between the instinct de la mort and the Todestrieb might at first glance be considered as lying only in the name. In the book the instinct de la mort does rather appear as an offspring of Theology out of Wish-fulfilment, scarcely redeemed by its biological godparents, and hardly deserving of comparison with the scientifically controlled speculation in Jenseits des Lustprinzips. This difference however is less important than it seems, since the written origin of the theory bears very little relation to the more interesting psychological origin, and has no bearing on the value of the speculative ideaas idea.
Metschnikoff was also too obsessed with the conscious psychology of the time to conceive of an instinct being effective without being conscious. Although he attributed an instinct de la mort to the mayfly on the ground of its behaviour, he refused to take the same attitude about man; but there were glimmerings of the idea of an unconscious effective instinct, and one finds it, as one would expect, in his analogies, e.g. They die in horror of death without knowing that it is the death instinct. One can compare them with those young frigid wives, who die in childbirth, without knowing what real love is.24
But there are, I think, some striking similarities between the two:
I took the liberty of asking Professor Freud if he knew of any contacts direct or indirect that might have existed between them. He answered in the negative.
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2 Etudes sur la nature humaine, p. 376.
3 Etudes sur la nature humaine, p. 23.
4 Etudes sur la nature humaine, p. 377.
5 Etudes sur la nature humaine, p. 378.
6 Etudes sur la nature humaine, p. 377.
7 Etudes sur la nature humaine, p. 378.
8 Etudes sur la nature humaine, p. 383.
9 Etudes sur la nature humaine, p. 399.
10 Etudes sur la nature humaine, p. 132.
13 Etudes sur la fonction sexuelle, Mercure de France, p. 120, 1917.
14 Etudes sur la nature humaine, p. 168.
15 Etudes sur la nature humaine, p. 137.
16 Etudes sur la nature humaine, p. 171.
17 Etudes sur la nature humaine, p. 358.
18 Etudes sur la nature humaine, p. 365.
19 Etudes sur la nature humaine, p. 369.
21 Etudes sur la nature humaine, p. 393.
22 Etudes sur la nature humaine, p. 373.
24 Etudes sur la nature humaine, p. 375.