All this may be well and good, but it still does not explain just how das Lebensgefühl spoke to the problem of the coherence of mythical thinking. What precisely did the feeling of the unity of life have to do with whether and why a story made sense for traditional folk? How did the feeling of the unity of life perform as any sort of prototype of a Kantian unity? What can Cassirer possibly mean when he tells us that the world of myth 'becomes intelligible only if behind it we can feel the dynamic life feeling from which it originally grew'?

To understand this, one needs to appreciate that Cassirer held a variety of faculty psychological beliefs, treating the 'emotions' and the 'intellect' as if they were subtle internal organs of some sort. Unlike physical organs, which secrete hormones and other physical substances, these subtle organs 'secrete' their own distinctive products—the intellect generates thoughts, the emotions generate feelings, and so on. Thus, for Cassirer to attribute an element of culture to the 'emotions' is virtually for him to say that such an element cannot be judged by rational standards. If mythical thought originates in the emotions, it cannot come from the intellect. It must thus be irrational, a mode of pseudo-thought.

Put differently, when Cassirer attributes a belief to emotional, he is making at least two strong claims: (1) the belief is false; (2) it is held without good reasons—it derives from strong wants or desires on the part of the believer, from coercion or need, impulse, confusion, or the like. In short, Cassirer rejects such beliefs because they fail to meet the normal criteria of rationality: the believer is not able to offer (good) reasons why the belief is held.

Cassirer believed that no good reasons could be offered for saying the kinds of things found in myths. No good reasons could be given for making the kinds of connections made in myths. Yet myths persisted. And people manifestly believed in myths—and believed that they made a kind of 'sense'. This could only be explained, Cassirer believed, by appealing to the 'emotions'—and in particular the feeling of the unity of life. By evoking this he seems to have meant that myths cohered simply because people wilfully insisted that they did, felt coerced to believe that they did, impulsively concluded that they did, or the like. In this way, myths represented in some sense the paradigm of an active irrationally constituted cultural form. No autonomous logical force made myths make sense in the way a good valid syllogism would make sense. It was merely human wilfulness which prevented myths from flying apart in a shower of narrative fragments. The mythical 'unity' testified to the stubborn, impulsive, arbitrary and uncritical will of the people devoted to them. Cassirer even dramatises this irrationality by casting myth as an appropriate object of physical analysis. In myth the elements are linked together by a 'real force'. In myth 'the relations which it postulates are not logical relations … they are a kind of glue which can somehow fasten the most dissimilar things together'.

This talk of physical connection and emotional force may come as a surprise from one who had promised a 'spiritual' analysis of myth. Yet the logic of Cassirer's internal position dictates that he treat myth and emotion in this material way. In Cassirer's Hegelian hierarchy of value, knowledge ranks higher the more abstract and ideal it is. Abstract mathematics, logic and the new physics rank high, while sensory awareness, immediate experience and feelings rest at the bottom. If thought-like entities occupy the highest status, then act-like things take the lowest places. What is more, if Cassirer wanted to neutralise the Mandarin infatuation with irrationalism in his time, he could have done no better than to associate myth, life, emotion, materiality and so on as he did. From both the internal and the external perspective, Cassirer's peculiar argument here makes sense.

That myth is held together by 'real force' also fits nicely with the fact that Cassirer held that it works as a 'real force'. By speaking of myth as an action, and thus as something which can impose its a priori forms onto nature, Cassirer claims the legacy of Humboldt. Humboldt was an Idealist pragmatist with respect to the agency of language; in Mythical Thought Cassirer comes very close to being a materialist pragmatist, as he does later in The Myth of the State. This he does by likening and logically subordinating myth to ritual activity. Unless one understands ritual, one cannot understand mythical stories:

It can clearly be shown that a vast number of mythical motifs had their origin in the imitation of a cultic rather than natural process.…The action is the beginning; the mythical explanation … comes later … it is … the cult which forms the preliminary stage and objective foundation of myth. [Mythical Thought]

It also seems evident that Cassirer had particularly good external reasons for casting myth in this ritualist, irrationalist and material light: the 'Volkish' movements not only sought to ground their behaviour in the exemplary images of Teutonic mythology, but also sought to ground these myths in ritual performances which involved the entire community in a ceremonial celebration of the 'Volkish' world-view. Known as Thinge, these open-air rituals were first staged in the late nineteenth century under the direction of Ernst Wachler, and later were taken over by the Nazis as the basis of their mass liturgical spectacles. One ought also to keep in mind here the place of Wagner and his Ring cycle and the ritualistic use of theatre to impress the lessons of Germanic mythology on its audiences. It would be surprising indeed if Cassirer had been insensitive to these features of contemporary culture, and if they were not in some way behind his implicit criticism of ritual. Later, in The Myth of the State, Cassirer becomes much more explicit in his criticism of ritual, giving it the Freudian sense of 'ritualistic' by linking it with the irrational unconscious and merely motor activity: 'Rites are… mere motor manifestations of the psychic life … they disclose … appetites, needs, desires; not… "representations" or "ideas" … these tendencies are translated into movements—into rhythmical solemn movements or wild dances.…'

In the 'Volkish' view, these rituals, which were staged out in the countryside, served to unite their participants with the spirit of the Volk. One was made 'whole' again by breathing the fresh air and at the same time absorbing the healing lesson these dramas narrated and acted out. In this natural and ritual setting, the 'life force' of the Volk flowed into the participant, healing the ills of modernity and acting as a tonic. From Cassirer's point of view, ritual was also a stiff narcotic which incapacitated human reason.

CASSIRER AND 'PROPHETIC FAITH'

One wonders how Cassirer managed, so remarkably, to keep his balance amid such a tumult of social, political and philosophical conflicts. The faith of a Hegelianised Aufkldrer can be mighty indeed. Yet Cassirer did not hold this faith in its pure secular form. He synthesised his Enlightenment faith with a universalist prophetic Judaism, which gave added depth and perspective to his critique of mythical thinking.

Although he always thought of himself as a German first and then as a Jew, Cassirer's religious moorings were strong and steady. Unlike many of his Jewish contemporaries, he was repelled by the thought of a conversion of convenience to Christianity. On the other hand, his Judaism was universalistic and cosmopolitan. Until his exile from Nazi Germany, Cassirer found the thought of Zionism and Jewish ethnocentrism 'completely foreign'. One gathers that it was the rise and triumph of anti-semitism in Germany from the 1920s on which pushed him, like Einstein and others, to acknowledge his own Jewishness and then, later, even entertain the thought of emigration to what in 1933 was still Palestine. In her biography of her husband, Toni Cassirer recounts her astonishment at her first personal encounter with blatant anti-semitism. In Hamburg in 1922, a disagreement with a neighbour erupted into a personal verbal attack on the Cassirers, who were told, in precise words, to 'go back to Palestine'. The high-born Cassirers associated Palestine with either narrow orthodoxy or displaced East European Jewry. 'Unser Vaterland was Deutschland—Ernst war ein deutscher Philosoph', Toni Cassirer writes with indignation.

Cassirer's Judaism was not, however, as assimilationist as this may suggest. Beyond rejecting all thoughts of conversion to Christianity, he deeply admired the Jewish prophetic tradition as interpreted by his teacher at Marburg, Hermann Cohen. With Paul Natorp, an acknowledged leader of the critical branch of the neo-Kantian movement, Cohen was also an inventive and influential thinker in his own right. Although loyal to the special message of the Old Testament prophets, Cohen believed they taught the gospel of universalist humanitarian cosmopolitanism. His belief that to be most Jewish was to be most universal may in part explain his early aloofness to the young Cassirer. Cohen suspected Cassirer was one of those ambitious converts to Christianity who ignorantly threw off their cultural, racial and religious heritage for the sole purpose of conforming to the common culture. Cohen's coldness to him was especially disappointing for Cassirer, both because he did not then know the reason for Cohen's behaviour and because he had come all the way from Berlin especially to study Kant under Cohen's direction. Once, however, Cohen had realised his mistake and recognised Cassirer's sympathy with his own views, the two men became fast friends. They remained so until Cohen's death in 1918.

Cassirer seems to have been particularly affected by Cohen's theory of the distinctive nature of prophetic Judaism. Cohen taught the distinction between 'religion' and 'prophetic faith', his term for Old Testament monotheism as taught by the prophets. 'Religion' here refers to that element in a religion which man contributes. For Cohen, this includes cultural elements such as myth, ritual, feelings and the general tendencies among religious folk to anthropomorphise the deity. 'Prophetic religion' refers to God's contribution to the relationship with man. For Cohen, this consists in monotheism, universalist morality and orientation given to the future development of mankind as a whole. Cohen's preference for the ideal conforms nicely to certain anti-ritualist interpretations of the role of the Old Testament prophets, centred in reform traditions of both Judaism and Christianity. Cohen could not have been unaware either of German 'Volkish' criticisms of Judaism as legalistic and sterile in contrast to the supposed vitality of German national neo-pagan or pseudo-Christian religions. At times, Cohen's formulation of Judaism seems almost a direct reply, to the 'Volkish' detractors of the prophetic faith. True Judaism—the faith of the prophets—is a Judaism of internal and universal moral purity, not the ritual purity of legalistic and parochial orthodoxy. Judaism is indeed a 'living' faith. What is more, unlike the narrow nationalistic and mystically inspired 'Volkish' religions, it had broken free of all parochialism, ritualism and myth. Cassirer puts these sentiments as well as Cohen himself might have done:

In the prophetic books of the Old Testament we find an entirely new direction of thought and feeling [as compared to primitive myth-laden religions]. The ideal of purity means something quite different from all the former mythical conceptions. To seek for purity or impurity in an object, in a material thing, has become impossible. Even human actions, as such, are no longer regarded as pure or impure. The only purity that has a religious significance and dignity is the purity of the heart. [Essay on Man]

Anticipating Cassirer in other ways, Cohen held that, while religion may be lifeless without myth, myth had to be subordinated to the rule of reason. True religion should complete and perfect theoretical thought. Since myth grew out of human emotions and fantasies, it could never be the basis for a purified religion. Thus, as the prophets in their own time overcame idolatrous mythical and ritual religions, so also modern man could and should learn to overcome the new political and racial mythologies of the twentieth century. This required firm commitment to transcendental elements of religion which, for Cohen and Cassirer, were the universal, moral and intellectual truths found in the immemorial teachings of the prophets. Cohen himself, in addressing the 1913 World Congress for Free Christianity and Religious Progress, says,

We have to regain the belief in moral regeneration, in the moral future of mankind. We have to regain this belief in the face of, and in spite of the egoism of nations and the materialism of classes. The true living God cannot breathe except in social morality and cosmopolitan humanity. [Quoted in Cassirer, "Hermann Cohen, 1842-1918"]

Whether Cohen had German 'Volkish' movements specifically in mind as he spoke I cannot say. In theory, his pointed remarks apply just as well to their tribalistic nationalism as to the egoistic 'nations' and 'classes' actually mentioned.

Cassirer picked up Cohen's tune and played it as Hegelian fugue: to be most profoundly Jewish meant to follow the example of the Hebrew prophets; to follow the example of the prophets meant to be most profoundly universalist and rational. Even the evolution of the spirit one witnesses with the modern triumph of science and mathematics over mythical conceptions of nature was foreshadowed and prepared by the zealous anti-ritualism and demythologising of the Hebrew prophets. Both mark the growing power of abstraction and generality, and man's freedom from his 'lower' nature—the life of the emotions and sensuous experience. In Cassirer's view, of course, emotion and sense experience are the essence of mythical thinking. As the spirit evolves to newer heights, it does the work both of the prophets and of the great thinkers of the modern world.

This again brings us full circle to my earlier characterisation of Cassirer as classicist and rationalist. Both his religious background and his philosophical background in Kant, Hegel and the philosophy of science and knowledge equipped him to do battle with the forces of irrationalism as they displayed themselves in the occult, mythically motivated movements of Weimar Germany. That Cassirer tried to oppose these trends in a conciliatory way shows, I think, his own disciplined sense of fairness and humanity, rather than the weakness of character that seemed to afflict other Weimar intellectuals.

A THEORETICAL AFTERWORD

It would be treacherous indeed to attempt a summary of Cassirer's views here. Rather, let me conclude by dwelling on some theoretical matters, since they have been better put into perspective by the historical inquiry. It is possible to treat Cassirer's theory outside the context I have argued that it had, and this in fact is what every previous critic has done. Yet to ignore the context is to produce less pertinent understanding. Thus, in raising here certain general theoretical points my aim is to illuminate them within Cassirer's Weimar context. The internal and external aspects of Cassirer's theory intertwine themselves with the systematics of Cassirer's theory; it is not always possible or desirable to keep these aspects of an interesting piece of intellectual work separated.

Cassirer's systematics—his monistic a priori approach—typifies a whole style of philosophical and theoretical anthropology. Granted, one can deduce ever more abstract common principles in so-called 'myths'—perhaps even a single unifying principle. But what is achieved in the end? What is the logical status of such a mythical a priori? Are 'myths' only those stories having essentially to do with that idea of 'unity', and an 'emotional' unity at that? Clearly not. Without saying so explicitly, Cassirer simply stipulates that 'myth' is a story 'held together' by the monistic principle of 'emotional unity'.

Thus Cassirer commits the offence of 'prescribing' what 'myth' is under the guise of simple description; he assumes a notion of 'myth' and prescribes its employment, when he should have been persuading us to accept a recommendation. If there is anything the endless wrangling about the nature of myths should have indicated, it is that 'myth has meant, and is likely to continue to mean, just about whatever one would like it to mean. On the face of it, there is no one strong candidate for the meaning of the term. 'Myth' means many things, and not one thing. In this light, even the good-faith descriptions of myth that mythologists of the past have offered must be looked on as prescriptions.

It is partly Cassirer's Hegelian inheritance, with its universalist and monist ambitions, that leads him to think he can grasp a single coherent essence in 'myth'. But we can also understand his deepened attraction for universalist and monist values in the context of the virulent national tribalism in the Germany of his time. Part of the purpose of assuming a single sense of 'myth' is to reduce the possible meaning of the term to manageable proportions—the better to attack and destroy what it is taken to signify. Cassirer seems never even to have considered a more culturally limited enterprise, say in the manner of Georges Dumezil. In the light of his inheritance and purpose, we can perhaps even admire Cassirer's universalism and sympathise with his hidden prescriptive strategy.

This appreciation of the limits to his intentions should free us from facile conceptual criticism of his theory. For example, Cassirer's theory might be criticised for having left out some particular characteristic of myth which another theorist has picked out. Or one might criticise him for saying that all myths manifest an emotional unity, when emotional factors seem to affect the formation of only some stories. Such criticisms are fair in so far as Cassirer earnestly and unambiguously sought to avoid prescription, but their usefulness is diminished by to the degree to which Cassirer confused description and prescription—although his confusion of the two is liable to censure on grounds of logic. It is better, I think, to describe Cassirer's theory of myth as a proposal of the broad agenda of modified evolutionist Enlightenment modernism.

Above all, Cassirer was recommending that we look on mythical thinking (and, of course, the mythical stories which we produce by that thinking) as a product of the emotions and as a survival of pre-modern ways of thinking. Cassirer's theory of myth is his way of trying to put to the mythophiles and romantics of his day some very hard questions about the consequences of their infatuation with a broad spectrum of occult, 'Volkish', mystic and irrationalist beliefs: Is the immediacy of the emotional experience of unity with Life really enough on which to ground a way of life? Might not this kind of emotionalism be as unreliable and regrettable as earlier kinds? Is the experience of the unity of the Volk really preferable to wider, perhaps more temperate, feelings of unity with all mankind?

In thus relativising the ideological choices people made, Cassirer tried, it seems, to afford people a perspective on their own moral and ideological positions. Granted, presenting believers with the possibility that their beliefs are at least partly matters of choice may not invariably cause them to abandon beliefs one considers evil, such as the various racist beliefs current in Cassirer's time. It is hard to imagine how any arguments could be guaranteed to dislodge beliefs strongly held. Yet showing people what their beliefs entail and asking them whether they want these consequences would seem at least a way of helping them begin to question beliefs which they may not have fully understood.

Having characterised (or caricatured) myth by associating it with a modernist concept of primitivism, Cassirer the Aufkidrer could draw on the whole rich tradition of Enlightenment polemic. 'Primitive' not only meant emotional, traditional, rural, organic and 'folksy': it also meant irrational, tradition-bound, underdeveloped and economically backward and superstitious. One could well argue that in his own time Cassirer was justified in sounding the alarm against primitivism. Debate over whether Nazi ideology was primarily romantic and primitivist or mechanistic and modernistic will probably never be resolved. The Nazis succeeded politically probably because they were both possessed by the 'dark gods' and also because they possessed powerful 'machines'. Thus the analyses of Cassirer and the other modernist critics of Nazism were not so much wrong as incomplete. If, in all this, Cassirer has left behind the innocent stories of tribal folk, one will understand that in many ways he had far more serious and urgent matters on his mind.

Thus, although Cassirer's theory has little utility as a general theory of myth, it may well tell us about Nazi political uses of myth and how sensitive thinkers could oppose them. But this perhaps tells us as little about myths in general as Cassirer's critique of Weimar 'primitivism' tells us about all 'primitive' folk. To be sure, we might pick out formal resemblances between the modern political myths and those of traditional societies, between Nazi mythology and ancient Teutonic mythology. But talk of substantial connections is absurd. The Volk would find Bayreuth as puzzling as the Bauhaus, Wagner's Die Walküre as modern as Lang's 'Metropolis'. The fact is, we know virtually nothing about ancient Germanic uses and interpretations of special stories; and, even if the opposite were true, they would still need to be translated across the centuries separating us from them. Furthermore, we have no evidence that 'myths' (however described) had any kind of emotional value for the Volk. Did the Teutonic ancestors experience the same kind of unity of feeling enjoyed by Nazis in Nuremberg? Who knows? Who could know? It is one thing that an alienated Lumpenproletariat might be stimulated emotionally by the old narratives; it is quite another thing to be sure that Volk felt the same way. Modern people should take responsibility for their own 'primitive' antinomian lusts and furies, without attributing them to a long-ago or faraway Volk.

Thus Cassirer's acceptance of the 'Volkish' thesis of a substantial continuity between ancient and modern German mythology causes his general theory of myth considerable grief. It also causes him to cast myth in ways which are at best irrelevant to many instances in which myths occur. The tragedy was that Cassirer had to work out his theory of myth within the framework established by those he opposed.