"The soul is a vast country, where many different things find place side by side," says Dr. Theodor Reik in his interesting volume named "Arthur Schnitzler als Psycholog" (Minden, 1913). Thus he explains the meaning of the title given to "The Vast Country" (_Das Weite Land_). And I don't think it is possible to get closer than that. Nowhere has Schnitzler been more casual in his use of what is commonly called plot. Nowhere has he scorned more completely to build his work around any particular "red thread." Event follows event with seeming haphazardness. The only thing that keeps the play from falling apart is the logical development of each character. It is, in fact, principally, if not exclusively, a series of soul-studies. What happens serves merely as an excuse to reveal the reaction of a certain character to certain external pressures or internal promptings. But viewed in this light, the play has tremendous power and significance. Dr. Reik's book, to which 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.