Page:American Journal of Psychology Volume 21.djvu/94

84 present to Hamlet's mind; it was a deep and undeveloped feeling that had not fully dawned. I would agree that in no other way can the difficulty be logically met, and further, that in the recognition of Hamlet's non-consciousness of the cause of the repugnance to his task we are nearing the core of the mystery. But an invincible difficulty in the way of accepting any of the causes of repugnance suggested above is that the nature of them is such that a keen and introspective thinker, as Hamlet was, would infallibly have recognised them, and would have openly debated them instead of deceiving himself with a number of false pretexts in the way we shall presently mention. Loening well states this in the sentence: "Handelt es sich um einen Konflikt zwischen der von aussen gebotenen Racheplicht und einer inneren sittlichen oder rechtlichen Gegenströmung, so muss dieser Zwiespalt und seine Ursache bei einem so denkkräftigen und ans Denken gewohnten Menschen wie Hamlet zur Reflexion gebracht werden."

In spite of this difficulty the hint of an approaching solution encourages us to pursue more closely the argument at that point. The hypothesis stated above may be correct up to a certain stage and then have failed for lack of special knowledge to guide it further. Thus Hamlet's hesitancy may have been due to an internal conflict between the need to fulfil his task on the one hand, and some special cause of repugnance to it on the other; further, the explanation of his not disclosing this cause of repugnance may be that he was not conscious of its nature; and yet the cause may be one that doesn't happen to have been considered by any of the upholders of the hypothesis. In other words the first two stages in the argument may be correct, but not the third. This is the view that will now be developed, but before dealing with the third stage in the argument it is first necessary to establish the probability of the first two, namely that Hamlet's hesitancy was due to some special cause of repugnance for his task, and that he was unaware of the nature of this repugnance.

A preliminary obstruction to this line of thought, based on some common prejudices on the subject of mental dynamics, may first be considered. If Hamlet was not aware of the cause of his inhibition, doubt may be felt as to the possibility of our penetrating to it. This pessimistic thought was thus expressed by Baumgart: "Das was ihn–Hamlet an der Rache hindert, ist ihm selbst ein Problem und deshalb musste es für uns alle ein Problem bleiben." Fortunately for our investigation, however, psycho-analytic study has proved beyond doubt that