ch I just referred, has been written to prove
the direct connection between Schnitzler's art and the new psychology
established by Dr. Sigmund Freud of Vienna. That the playwright must
have studied the Freudian theories seems more than probable. That they
may have influenced him seems also probable. And that this influence
may have helped him to a clearer grasp of more than one mystery within
the human soul, I am willing to grant also. What I want to protest
against, is the attempt to make him out an exponent of any particular
scientific theory. He is an observer of all life. He is what _Amadeus_
in "Intermezzo" ironically charges _Albert Rhon_ with being: "a student
of the human soul." And he has undoubtedly availed himself of every new
aid that might be offered for the analysis and interpretation of that
soul. The importance of man's sub-conscious life seems to have been
clear to him in the early days of "Anatol," and it seems to have grown
on him as he matured. Another Freudian conception he has also made his
own--that of the close connection between man's sexual life and vital
phenomena not clearly designed for the expression of that life. But--to
return to the point I have already tried to make--it would be dangerous
and unjust to read any work of his as the dramatic effort of a
scientific theorizer.

Schnitzler is of Jewish race. In Vienna that means a great deal more
than in London, Stockholm or New York. It means an atmosphere of
contempt, of suspicion, of hatred. It means frequently complete
isolation, and always some isolation. It means a constant sense of
conflict between oneself and one's surroundings. All these things are
reflected in the works of Schnitzler--more particularly the sense of
conflict and of isolation. Life itself is blamed for it most of the
time, however, and it is only once in a great while that the specific
and localized cause is referred to--as in "Literature," for instance.
And even when Schnitzler undertakes, as he has done in his latest play,
"Professor Bernhardi," to deal directly with the situation of the Jew
within a community with strong anti-Semitic tendencies, he does not
appear able to keep his mind fixed on that particular issue. He starts
to discuss it, and does so with a clearness and fairness that have not
been equaled since the days of Lessing--and then he drifts off in a new
direction. The mutual opposition between Jews and Catholics becomes an
opposition between the skept