In the Margin

94 Letters both as to what psychology must study and how it must methodology. His concern is with the philosophy of conduct its studies. science, not with epistemology and other ancient Now I argue that such a defence of behaviourism doctrines and disputes which are of no concern to is not scientific but philosophical since it is premised him." Contrary to Eysenck, there is plenty of epis- not on psychological facts, as Eysenck claims, but on temology in any philosophy of science. Moreover in philosophical theory. several places (e.g., Science and Human Behaviour, Eysenck protests against my conclusion that the Evans interview The Man and his Ideas) Skinner Skinner is a reductive (not "vulgar" as Eysenck advances epistemological theories. Skinner has also reports) materialist, that Skinner "is not identifying written extensively on operationalism, a doctrine his 'radical behaviourism' with vulgar materialism about meaning, and many other topics directly (as Machan supposes)." But whether Skinner so relevant to the issues treated within epistemology. identifies his position with the materialism I tag on Of the several positions Skinner and Eysenck claim him is irrelevant. He would very likely deny that he do not belong within behaviourist theory I maintain is in any simple metaphysical camp. The question only one (not 5) as indeed part of the behaviourist's then is whether my argument succeeds in putting him viewpoint, namely that behaviourism "has no place in the reductive materialist category. for intention and purpose." Any reasonably extensive Eysenck claims that "Skinner is talking about reading of Skinner should acquaint one with this fact. -In the Margin: T A RECENT diplo- gang and Wieland telling me of their grandiose A matic cultural func- revolutionary plans. But Richard was, as founding tion I found the place-card fathers in their eccentricity often are, rather less name next to me to be for single-minded and grimly purposeful. I have just a "Mrs Wagner." As it been reminded of this in reading that curious letter happened, the entire Wag- he wrote in February 1880 to an American friend, ner clan had been assemb- his good old reliable Dresden dentist, who had ling in London for a first returned to the United States* performance of one of the The letter contained (as one of Dr Jenkins' long-forgotten operas of friends, a Boston musicologist, remarked at the Richard Wagner's son, time) "an extraordinary and almost insane Siegfried; and the lady in proposal . .", namely, Richard Wagner's firm question might have been wife, or mother's daughter, suggestion to emigrate to the United States, to or perhaps somebody else altogether. As it also hap- work there on his Parsifal, and to go on with his pened, the new issue O/ENCOUNTER had just appeared career "in some state of the Union with a favourable with that disagreeably cool and critical account of climate"! Winifred Wagner's current and quite unreconstruc- ted attitudes towards the Bayreuth of the Third Reich where the Ftihrer felt so much at home THIS HAD BEEN for a long time an odd transatlantic ("Winifred, Wahnfried, Wagner: a Silence is obsession of his (it had also gripped, in various ways, Broken in Bayreuth", December). In any case, Chopin, Schubert, Mendelssohn, and others); and whether there was a connection or no, the lady in his persistently desperate finances only intensified question never turned up for dinner, and to make up his notions of a "permanent emigration." In 1854, for the empty place I surreptitiously removed the writing to Liszt, he said: "I would even go to place card as a memento and a possible cultural clue. America to satisfy my future creditors. I would make I suspected, in my chagrin, that the Wagner that sacrifice for the sake of finishing my Nibel- family always cast themselves in roles with a heavy ungen." And to his wife, Minna, he wrote (in 1859), Teutonic seriousness; and once many years ago, on "America, America, you must help! Money will do the lawn beyond the Franconian opera house which anything, you know!" For Philadelphia's great grandfather had built, I listened for hours to Wolf- Revolutionary memorial occasion in 1876 he com- posed, for a handsome fee, the "American Centen- nial March", and added a little motto from Goethe (who had, after all, mused "Amerika, du hast es * Dr Newell Sill Jenkins had been the dentist of besser! . .). By 1877 the fateful decision was Cosima and the Wagner children, and sometimes almost taken—"to put my property in Bayreuth up did emergency work on the Meister in Bayreuth. Wagner once sent him the following verses to for sale, to cross the sea with my whole family, and accompany a copy of some piano scores for The never again to return to Germany." Ring: As the ironies of transatlantic cultural history I speak not of the tooth of time, would have it, it took an American finally to dissuade The tooth's own time is drawing nigh. him, to purge him of his "illusions", and (as Dr Is Jenkins then within this clime? Jenkins writes in his "Reminiscences") "to make it Time and its tooth I will defy. plain that the place for his great triumph was in his PRODUCED 2005 BY UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED Letters 95 Intentions and purposes are, by Skinner's account, no respect for logic—he admits so much in one of his theoretically tied to the existence of inner agents, so articles discussed in my book. He is inconsistent. He they could not exist in any scientifically respectable can be used to give support to many viewpoints. He fashion. usually speaks only of what "may" be the case. He is My own work cannot be chided, pace Eysenck, for slippery. But by claiming to be scientific he has won extending into areas I am unqualified to treat. I make the alliance of many people who, like myself, would clear that I am not dealing with psychology but with welcome a scientific psychology. With the major philosophy and political theory. It is Skinner who alternatives to behaviourism it is no wonder that advocates the reduction of all human attributes and many people cling to Skinner. But, as my book actions to behaviours of the directly observable indicates, there are better answers to the questions of organism (and so denies the existence of what psychology than what Skinner offers. And they are psychology is supposed to study, namely conscious- better because they, unlike much of Skinner's material, ness). Thus he advances moral and political theories are not pseudo-science. under the rubric of behaviourism. Then to charge me with imperialism is unjust. Any reading of my book TIBOR R. MACHAN should clear up that impression from the first page on. State University College, Finally, one problem with Skinner is that he has Fredonia, New York Richard Wagner & a Million American Dollars- own country and among his own people." (Deutsch- Now I remember that on your last visit here, in land, du hast es besser....) friendly enthusiasm, you offered to assist me in case I should ever wish to make a so-called artist's The letter—which was recently reproduced in tour in America. You will therefore find it natural Die Welt, Bonn (and there is a translation offered that I should turn to you and to no one else to by Klaus Liepmann in an American musical explain my very much more far-reaching plan. A magazine, High Fidelity)—is worth reprinting, not mere artist's tour, to make so-and-so much money least for the shadows it throws over the simple by giving concerts and then return to Germany, clichis of musical ideologues and cultural national- would never be a thing for me. Only a permanent ists who have plagued a century of Wagner studies. emigration could have any significance for me! LlEBER, SEHR GEEHRTER HERR UND FREUND! Kindly take a little counsel with yourself in regard to this matter and, if it impresses you It seems to me as if, in my hopes regarding favourably, give me your opinion! Germany and her future, my patience would very Mit grosster Freundschaft soon be exhausted and that I might then regret not Ihr having long ago confided the seeds of my artistic hochachtungsvoll ergebener ideas to a more fruitful and promising soil. February 8,1880 RICHARD WAGNER I do not regard it as impossible that I decide to Naples, Villa Angri, Posilipo emigrate forever to America with my latest work and my entire family. For this, since I am no longer But the fabled fortune and the last great journey young, considerable advances from across the ocean across the sea were, as in O'Neill's Marco Millions, would be necessary. An association would have ill-fated and not to be; the first performance of to be formed that would offer me, upon condition of Parsifal was given in Bayreuth in July 1882, and my permanent settlement there and as a onetime some six months later Wagner died in Venice. payment for all my exertions, a sum of one million dollars, of which half would be placed at my disposal THE WHOLE AFFAIR is curious enough, but one upon taking up my residence in some state of the melodramatic item makes it even curiouser. For the Union with a favourable climate, the other half being original text of the letter—which for subsequent invested as capital in a government bank at 5%. generations of earnest Wagnerians might have Thus would America have bought me from Europe amounted to little less than high cultural treason— for all time.

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